Posted on 09/18/2023 8:42:25 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
There is a theoretical, magic tipping point for adoption of electric vehicles. Once somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of new car sales are all-electric, some researchers say, huge numbers of drivers will follow. They predict that electric car sales will then soar — to 25 percent, 50 percent and eventually to close to 80 percent of new sales.
Early adopters who love shiny new technologies will be replaced by mainstream consumers just looking for a good deal.
Last year, the United States finally passed that elusive mark — 5 percent of all new cars sold in the fourth quarter were fully electric. And earlier this year, all-electric vehicles made up about 7 percent of new car sales.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Other researchers say that that is made up out of whole cloth.
Well, lookee here...
Looks like quite a large number, eh...
Specifically, the proctological portion of their creative writing classes.
I just got back from a 650 mile trip. Stopped at two Buc-ees. For those who don’t know Bucees are giant all in one travel plazas typically 100 or more gas pumps with a large store selling a wide variety of quality eat on the go food as well as just about anything else you might need on a trip and whose bathrooms are the cleanest in the industry. Definitely worth visiting if you have one near you.
With that background the two Bucees where I stopped also have a dozen Tesla charging stations. In the first one there were four idiots sitting and charging. They were there when I got there and it took about 5 min to fill the tank and about 15 for the family to buy food and shop etc. they were still there when I left. Same with the second Bucees except there were 5 Tesla’s charging. In the amount of time I was at each station I’m estimating at a conservative minimum 200 to 300 real cars came filled up and went. (100 pumps almost all of them continuously busy, 5 min average to fill, 20 minutes of activity). This was a stark view of the reality of just how egregiously impractical EVs are and how completely inferior battery technology is compared to ICE technology.
I reached two conclusions:
1. Bucees is a great place to stop on a trip and
2. The vast majority of people prefer gas/diesel powered vehicles. So in spite of what the official Democrat media would have you believe I have hope that the EV insanity is not really taking root in the American populace.
The liberals who bought an EV even though it was impractical for his situation (i.e. can't charge at home, live in cold weather, etc.) are posting their regrets on the EV forums and saying loudly that they wish they had an ICE. On the flip side, some conservatives are buying EV's if it's practical for their situation (married and need 2 cars anyway so one can be EV and the other ICE, can charge at home, live in a warm climate, most road trips are along areas with good charging options, wife wants to stop every 200 miles anyway and walk around for 10-15 minutes which is how long it takes to charge at fast chargers, drive enough miles per year for the gas savings to be worth it, one of your cars needs replacing anyway so it's time to consider options, etc.).
In Alabama with our gas prices and power prices, the magic threshold miles/year is 12K for Biden gas prices, vs 15K to 16K for Trump gas prices (year 2019 gas prices, assuming year 2020's below $2/gallon is an anomaly that may never happen again). So obviously with my wife and I driving 26K miles per year (about 22K to 23K of those charged at home), having an EV is practical for us. Even though it works for us, I would advise anyone to do a study on the parameters of your driving situation before buying an EV (or for that matter before completely dissing the idea of getting an EV).
“Battery technology has a very long way to go before electric cars are viable.”
Not really — you mean “viable for my conditions”
As I mentioned above - if we talk of a purely rural situation then an electric car isn’t a good (in my opinion) choice. But if we talk of a purely urban - or megapolis situation then an electric car is a better choice.
Take 3 schmos - Ori, Dori and Nori —>
Ori lives on a farm in rural Montana —> a traditional gas engine vehicle is the right choice for him.
Dori lives in a suburb in Pennsylvania - about 30 minutes away from a city.
Nori lives in the heart of Manhattan, next to all of his journeys are in the city — for him an electric car is the best choice.
Dori is the guy who can go either way.
I’m kind of like Dori :-P and I have two cars - a pickup that I need for winter and for offroad around where I live, but in summer and for drives around, the electric car is super - quick starts and stops, cheap to run and maintain.
Now if you’re Ori then battery tech needs to go a way to suit your needs. If you’re Nori, then it already does. If you’re Dori, then somewhat
Cognitive dissonance is a term for convincing yourself that a decision you made is a good one in spite of evidence that it isn’t. I suspect that a lot of EV owners suffer from this - probably the FR EV fanboys exaggeration s and lies are driven in large part be this psychological condition.
EV are gadgets. Everyone likes gadgets. Everyone does not like waiting in line for a 45 minute charge to get to grandma’s house. Urban residents in cities subsidizing charging will adopt EV’s No one else will stay with them after the fun wears off.
Meanwhile, Pepsi somewhere in the midwest has a fleet of 24 Tesla semi’s that make deliveries to distant warehouses.
The usage/performance data provided last week is that the semis make daily trips of between 600 and 800 miles and as many as six deliveries. The day lasts about 20 hours.
The semis recharge midway at the time it is necessary to change drivers. Drivers are time limited.
Performance seems to be increasing as they learn more and more about the new electric semi tool. It is truning out that the electric semis are exactly suited for the tasks for which they are being used.
You do not know about Tesla.......
Tesla is producing an EV on assembly lines every 40 seconds. At the numbers increase, price comes down. Tesla produces and sells more EV’s in the USA than all the others put together.
Folks on this thread are thinking of all the others besides Tesla. Tesla is eating their lunch
And that is just cars. The Tesla Semi Trucks and the preordered 2 million cyber trucks must be included in the mix
Our insane potus intends to force it by making gasoline unaffordable. He's stupid. I know he's got dementia, but that's not why he behaves so erratically. He's stupid and always has been.
That does seem like a practical application. However, I'd be concerned with battery wear if they have to fast charge the battery every day during the 20 hour usage time, and at least somewhat fast charge it at night during the 4 hours down time (maybe 50kW). If they can get around that, perhaps battery replacement is part of the truck lease contract, then it seems like a good use case.
Biden is irrelevant
Elon Musk is the one making and selling EV’s all over the world
Given the risk of fire, it wouldn't seem prudent to charge in a garage attached to the house. I would have to build a detached garage space specifically to charge the car. I'm not going to build a detached garage to charge the car. Hence, I'm not going to own an EV.
Sorry, when did we replace the grid and power stations so that it won’t melt down when this avalanche of EV adoption happens?
Oh, yeah, thought not.
“. . . and it will soon be a requirement.”
That’s the unspoken key to much of this thread. If somebody finds that an EV is a nice match to their transportation needs, more power to them (no pun intended). But if the driving force for making and using these things is some grand scheme generated by a bunch of jerk-offs in DC who can’t even run basic services without spending trillions of dollars we don’t have - forget it. Something as important to most of us as personal transportation should develop as naturally as possible, which is why historically we went from steamers and electrics to IC’s (and perhaps from there to mostly hybrids and plug-in hybrids).
some body better start building lots and lots of nuclear power plants
The actual cost of ownership of an EV is pretty insane, considering battery life. Probably cheaper to make do with a Ferrari than a Tesla in the long run.
Not to mention no one is seriously considering upgrading the electric grid to feed all those batteries. In fact, the morons are so scientifically illiterate that they are hatching plans to feed the electric grid from the batteries.
Funny enough, when I decided 2 years ago to investigate going solar, the only people group that could supply real world data and experiences were the conservatives who went solar from a prepper mindset. The liberal greenies who talked the loudest about solar always touted numbers that were overly optimistic, as did the anti-solar conservatives going overly pessimistic. But the people who implemented decentralized solar strictly for a self-reliance purpose are the ones who posted on forums their real world experiences and how different configurations worked or didn't work for different situations and different climates.
Using their info I implemented half of the solar I wanted in the long run (trying it for a year before going all in). I liked it and, therefore, implemented Phase II which was buy an EV and upgrade the solar in various ways after studying the past year's worth of solar, battery, and grid usage recorded at 5-minute candles. That upgrade was completed a little over a year ago. I can tell you as a software engineer who's all about studying the data, especially for things that have to do with my money, that in the past 12 months our solar has provided 82% of all the power we consumed (in other words, we bought only 18% of our power from the grid) for our all-electric, 2,300 sq ft home, including charging the EV for about 22K to 23K of the 26K miles we put on it in a year. My past 12 power bills averaged $73/month -- without me selling power to the grid. My upcoming power statement next week will lower the 12-month average a bit (because the September 2022 bill included about 8 days before I did the solar upgrade). That's just the solar and other energy improvements done to the house reducing how much power I pull from the grid (again the power bill isn't lowered from selling power to the grid because I haven't exported power to the grid, though I'm considering doing so in the future).
There's a real comfort in my wife and I being about 75% energy self-reliant (the 25%-ish of our energy we buy is the 18% of our power from the grid + gas for the ICE pickup we every now and then drive + either power or gas for long trips, depending on which car we take). The EV is part of that energy self-reliance because it allows us to extend our homemade energy out onto the road for local driving and the first 250 miles of each trip.
But you don't get to that kind of self-reliance by "picking sides". Don't fall for the trap of the Dims making every argument a mutual exclusive decision (either you're all in on EV's or you're all in on ICE). Always and forever us conservatives should demand free market and let each consumer decide what he wants without incentive or persecution.
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