Electric Vehicle Sales Beginning to Run Out of Fuel
Americans seem to be less trusting of “The Science” and are now climate-crisis-questioning.
I have reported on a number of concerns raised about electric vehicles (EVs), especially in light of the relentless promotion by politicians, politically connected eco-activists, and Americans.
For example, the CEO of Toyota has reported most of his colleagues do not think EV-only transportation is sensible, practical, or realistic. EV drivers are experiencing “range anxiety,” and short trips have doubled or more in time due to charging times. Blackouts, especially during the summer heat waves, make reliance on EVs impractical.
Americans seem to be less trusting of “The Science” and are now climate-crisis-questioning. This may, in part, explain why there are now reports of a slowdown in EV sales.
Nearly 300,000 new full battery-electric vehicles (EVs) were sold in the U.S. from April through June, a record for any quarter and an increase of 48.4% from the same period a year ago, said automotive services and technology provider Cox Automotive. Additionally, EV share of the U.S. market was 7.2%, up from 5.7% a year ago and down from the high in the first three months of the year of 7.3%.
Still, one of the tell-tale signs that “the days of 75% year-over-year growth are in the rearview mirror” include building EV inventory, Cox said. In late June, the days’ supply of EVs topped 100, nearly double industrywide inventory levels closer to 53 days, it said.
Numbers exclude Tesla, which sells direct to consumers. However, Tesla, the most-wanted car brand in the world, according to an Auto Trader analysis of Google searches, is seeing its share of EV sales “fizzle,” Cox Automotive said. Tesla’s share fell below 60% for the first time, but the No. 2 seller of EVs in the U.S. – Chevrolet – is a distant second. Tesla outsold Chevrolet 10 to 1 in the three months through June, it said.
“When it comes to EV sales, the market is likely heading into its Trough of Disillusionment … where collaboration across many parties will be necessary to push through,” Cox said in a release. “Building EVs is one thing, and many in the industry are proving excellent at that skill. Selling EVs is something different altogether.”
Unexpectedly….there appear to be signals that boosting U.S. EV sales above the current 7% market share level will be more costly and difficult, even with federal and state subsidies.
Automakers North America have billions of dollars in EV-related investments riding on how the next several quarters play out. If production of EVs continues to outpace demand, automakers will have to choose between slashing prices and profit margins, or slowing assembly lines.
More than 90 new EV models are expected to hit the U.S. market through 2026, according to AutoForecast Solutions. Many will struggle to reach profitable sales volumes, analysts said.
Dealers for established automakers such as General Motors (GM.N), Ford (F.N), Hyundai (005380.KS) and Toyota (7203.T) have more than 90 days’ worth of unsold EVs at their stores at current sales rates, according to a report from Cox Automotive.
Even Detroit is noticing:
Unplugged: Slow EV sales at odds with automakers' electric ambitions https://t.co/ppFaTe4ono
— The Detroit News (@detroitnews) July 24, 2023
The good news is that if you want an EV, the prices are dropping.
Manufacturers “are having a ‘Field of Dreams’ moment,” said Jonathan Gregory, a senior manager of economic and industry insight at Cox. “They have built E.V. inventory, but now they wait for buyers to come.”
In view of this unbalanced supply and demand, automakers are cutting prices and offering more incentives. On Monday, Ford Motor reduced prices of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck by $6,000 to nearly $10,000, or as much as 17 percent on some versions. The company is also offering discounted interest rates of 1.9 percent to 3.9 percent on certain loans for Lightning purchases.
These moves follow several rounds of price cuts by Tesla, the dominant seller of electric cars. Tesla’s price reductions earlier prompted Ford to lower prices of its Mustang Mach-E electric sport utility vehicle, although that hasn’t brought Mach-E inventory back in line with sales.
While EV sales have been slowing, some intriguing studies have been published that offer real insight as to how much greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compare between EVs and Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs).
- A new study from the Manhattan Institute concluded that certain EVs emit more greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetime than certain ICE vehicles.
- According to the report, the possibilities of GHG emissions for EVs is much wider than for ICEs.
- In base case scenarios, EVs start off as having more emissions mainly due to the energy intensity of the EV and battery metals used in their manufacture but eventually catch up to ICEs around the 60,000 driven miles mark.
Electric vehicle skeptics have frequently argued that the manufacturing and disposal of battery-electric vehicles like Teslas as well as reliance on coal to generate the electricity that powers them leaves EVs with a larger carbon footprint than nonelectric vehicles. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of studies that have tried to approve or disapprove this notion. But finally, the Manhattan Institute has compiled a comprehensive report that compares lifetime greenhouse gas emissions of EVs vs. ICEs by looking at dozens of parameters and data points.
I am fond of giving people choices. However, choices should be made based on full information, personal budgets, and individual preferences…not government mandates.
Less than 1 in 10 new car sales are EVs.
Meanwhile, New Jersey plans to REQUIRE all new car sales be EVs by 2035.
NJ Governor Murphy won his bid for re-election by just 3.2 percentage points in 2021. Now Jersey residents will pay the price.
— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) July 19, 2023
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Comments
Evs are just like all other autos in that there is a fixed number of people that want one. Convertibles, two-door, four-door, gas, diesel, etc, there are only so many people that want a specific vehicle. For some strange reason, all of the automakers except Toyota jumped into the
EV craze with both feet. GM has made fools of themselves by stating that they would be all-electric by 2035. Ford is now stuck with a mammoth problem called the F-150 EV. Jeep is going to offer an electric version soon, can you imagine being off-road, deep into the woods, and needing a charge? I have been trying to buy a new midsize GMC or Chevy truck and they aren’t available because of many reasons but there are EVs in every showroom. Now they are going after our gas water heaters and generators. Where is all of this electrical power going to come from?
Yup, by this point, most everyone that wants one, has one. Most people I know are still at the “not just no, but hell no” stage.
I know they are useless to me. I need to be able to travel about 450 miles in a day, often towing a load – sometimes as much as 10,000 lbs. An EV just ain’t gonna cut it. Their published range isn’t up to the task even when not towing. I saw a review of the Lightening trying to tow a relatively light travel trailer and if I remember correctly, they only made it about 80 miles before they had to stop to recharge.
Not happening.
My guess is the “only EV sales after 2035” is going to fall by the wayside as that date approaches and it becomes more and more clear that, not only aren’t EV’s the be-all and end-all, but that our electrical supply and grid simply isn’t up to the task.
If they don’t repeal it completely, they’ll start pushing the date back. And back. And back.
If you travel 450 miles a day, EVs are definitely not for you. The average person drives about 30 miles a day.
You don’t have to Drive long distances every day for EVS to be a joke. All it takes is having to do so every few months and they’re worthless to you.
I wouldn’t want my only car to be an EV, but they work well as second cars. I can easily imagine how, for some people an EV would work as their only car. Not for me, though.
Agree with RandomCrank. We have an EV and an ICE. The EV does the around-town role more than magnificently, but trying to road trip with it (we tried once) is painful. For anything more than an hour and a half, we take the ICE car. We would have to rethink a lot of things if we only had the EV… and for what purpose? I think we will always have 2 cars and at least one of them will be an ICE.
Toyota is still betting on hydrogen long term.
I’d say they’re probably more correct than the people betting on batteries. It seems a much less daunting challenge to make affordable hydrogen than it does to make energy dense, affordable, reliable batteries that don’t fail within a few years of their creation.
Hydrogen is a joke once you look into the details.
I agree, basically all electric vehicles utility are limited to short distance commuting and best when someone has a solar array with enough capacity to charge a battery array which then charges the EV at night. All that is kind of cost prohibitive. Say $30K just to support the EV. I also have heavy equipment and long distance trips where EV is not up to the power requirements, especially when compared to diesel.
The EV option might be a 3rd or 4th car. But we won’t buy a 3rd car. Only 2 in my driveway / garage.
Also, we’re hesitant in buying a whole house generator because Biden wants to shut off natural gas going into our houses and ban them from new housing construction.
Hopefully, Biden will be out of the WH in 2025 but then we might have Newsom or MO in the WH who will continue Obama/Biden energy policies.
Furthermore, they may be seeing the EV as a viable option for 15 minute cities.
Add to battery/fuel cell waste issue that I haven’t seen anyone addressing it.
Spent batteries will be recycled, just as lead acid batteries are. EVs are new enough that there aren’t many dead batteries yet, but there will be.
EVs came out way (1830s) before gas powered cars. In the early 1900s, there were more EV cars than gas powered cars, but the limitations of EVs led to gas powered cars winning in the market (especially when the gas powered cars got electric starters instead of hand cranks). EVs today have many of the same limitations, and the only way they “win” is by government distortion of the free market.
Exactly. Electric vehicles are old technology, but zealots want to act like there is some conspiracy going on that greedy car companies are not developing EVs because they are not profitable. Guess what, zealots? It’s not a conspiracy, EVs are not profitable.
Oh, please, you two! The technology has changed drastically for both. The Tesla is no more a Baker Electric than a Ford Edge is a Model T.
I’m not defending electric over petroleum fueled vehicles and in fact see them as a dead end at least for now. But to say today’s electric cars are old technology is just being silly.
For the record, I’ve driven both a Baker and a Mach E. Both have the same number of wheels. That’s it.
New electric cars are interesting and have use cases that could make sense. Frankly the main use case I see for them is 2nd or 3rd car replacing dads Corvette or Mustang. Fast powerful often cool looking but not very practical as a sole vehicle for lots of people.
No, the texhn is not different. Keep telling yourself that when your car doesn’t hold a good charge in 115 degree heat or below zero temperatures.
Also, it doesn’t refute what I said about EVs being unprofitable. Even Tedla is having a tough time selling these things at a profit. Let’s see how they perform without the federal government tax credit.
That should be “technology.”
Have you looked at Tesla’s Ks and Qs lately? The company is not only GAAP profitable, but generates free cash. You are a knee-jerker who doesn’t know what you’re talking about. I say this as someone who doesn’t like Tesla cars, but also as someone who’s not a fact-free idiot.
Of course technology has improved for both formats. Maybe it would be better to say it is an “old approach” vs. “old technology”. This old approach for EVs had limitations that caused it to lose in the marketplace. The point is, all those same limitations exist today (as pointed out by many in the comments). The improved technology has not changed the head to head competition & the only way EVs “win” is by government distortion of the free market.
EVs are not old technology. Lithium-ion batteries were a game changer compared to lead-acid.
How can you say EVs are not old technology when they were one of the first autos ever sold? Batteries powering an electric motor were in the very first EV. Batteries powering an electric motor are in the Tesla and all other EVs that I know of. It is old technology with updated parts. Tesla has cut its prices twice in less than a year so I don’t think they are rolling in cash. No company ever cuts its prices because they are nice people. Musk is like Bezos in that if any part of their empire is inspected on its own, they are losing money. It is only when they can use the entire empire that they seem to be making tons of money.
The first EVs are as different — actually, more so — from today’s EVs, as the Model T is from today gassers. Don’t be stupid. It looks bad, even in a comment section.
There is a staggering difference between DC brush motors and lead acid batteries and todays tech with LiFePo4 and other battery technologies & variable frequency drives.
The concept is still old technology. Battery powering an electric motor. Both have changed but they are still what they were called in the 1800s, battery, and an electric motor.
If every original concept were called “old technology” then there are a whole lot of old technologies. Time marches on, and there are improvements that fundamentally transform the original idea. Lithium-ion batteries fundamentally transformed EVs, period. Do you really need a long list of improvements in other areas that have done the same? Really?
Imagine how beneficial it will be when some genius invents a wind powered ship!
It will be an amazing achievement that will save the planet!
Sure will and while they are at it maybe they could invent a system of government where the privileged few govern the many. They’d probably need to have a hierarchy so that the central rulers in the Capital would have trusted subordinate leaders out in the hinterland keeping the unwashed masses in line and toiling for their betters.
We’ve been there and are doing that.
Subotai Bahadur
The privileged elites along with the neo clerisy bureaucrats/info workers always see themselves as the aristocracy v a member of the toiling masses in their neo feudal dream.
I just call it peasant mentality. John Lennon called them out in “Working Class hero.” The sad part is that the peasants want to be controlled because the notion of freedom and responsibility scares them.
Maybe we can call it a “sailboat”!
Why do you think the left always used corruption? It’s cars now and soon it will be energy for your home, (not just gas appliances) where you work, the miles you can drive, and a host of those jackbooted thug moves.
You will soon learn to appreciate the outstanding benefits to you, Comrade, and your neighbors, once we’re able to implement all the healthy & sustainable qualities the new 15-minute cities will bring.
Car loans going up, government less wanting to hand out free cash to EV buyers, the cold nose of reality poking into the warm fuzzy of a green future perhaps?
-Straight EV makes sense for a small fragment of the population, depending on their situations, but that fragment has a sharp drop-off. We may be close to that now.
-Plug-in hybrids likewise. I’d love to see a plug-in hybrid truck with an RV variant that could be at home in pampered campgrounds and out in the woods alike. With so many boomers ready to retire, something reliable in that regard would sell well.
-Straight gas or diesel are facing dwindling numbers, but they still have an edge on reliability/range/price. Only delusional politicians think they’ll go away with the wave of a hand.
US auto manufacturers *need* to put far more effort into reliability and replacement. Consumers don’t want to have a vehicle that breaks every month and requires a part that takes three weeks to ship and costs more than the monthly car payment. Same thing for comfort. US cars are more noisy, have bizzare dashboards, radios that take a PhD to program, etc…
These vehicles are ridiculous. Their carbon footprint is easily larger than a gas car of similar size. This is a grand illusion.
I call them what they are: emission shifters, not zero emissions. I also call them coal-powered cars.
That is a good name. I will steal it for my own use.
In the US, the power grid is more natural gas powered vs coal, which is more ironic. You could make an IC car that runs directly on natural gas without massive trouble.
What wins the carbon emission contest, I wonder, once you account for the approx 50% losses between generation and the power plug? (YMMV, of course it varies with location, etc. etc.)
Back when we were serious about alternatives there was a cottage industry in retuning farm tractors to run on gas; gas generated from biomass digesters on the farm itself. Can’t do that with locked-programming all electronic ignitions, tho. I’m certain that’s just an unfortunate unexpected consequence of that tech. Just coincidence that ever-tighter “emission” caps on gasoline cars *require* sophisticated ignition schemes.
What wins the carbon emission contest, I wonder, once you account for the approx 50% losses between generation and the power plug? (YMMV, of course it varies with location, etc. etc.)
50% losses between generation and the plug. Um, no. It’s 6%. Look it up. Energy Info Administration has the number. Don’t make shit up. Someone who actually knows anything will catch you. As for CNG, if you don’t like EV range, you’ll hate CNG range.
I might add that, although I haven’t found a number, there’s a power loss when gasoline and diesel are sent from the refineries to the filling stations. It takes energy to ship through pipelines and then put it on delivery trucks. Or maybe you believe in magic and think that filling station fuel tanks fill themselves. My guess is that the transport costs in terms of energy are more than 6% of what comes out of the refinery, but that’s only a guess.
p.s.: I have looked in excruciating detail at the numbers surrounding electric cars and the generation of electricity. I decided to leave out the 6% transmission loss on account of the energy used by transporting gasoline and diesel. I wanted better numbers but they were unavailable. I think that cancellating both terms on opposite sides of the equation probably favored gas and diesel. By how much, I cannot say.
That depends on how a particular area’s electricity is generated. Where I live, about 90% of the electricity comes from hydro (the large majority) or a nuke (which I favor). The idea that EVs are “coal powered” is true in a few places, but not many.
But, but…! Think of all of those fish chopped to pieces in the turbine thingies that spin the hydro generators!!!!1!!!11!!!!
Yeah but what is the good in front shifting emissions when trying to reduce them?
If you wantIf you want to perplex a retard, try calling your gasoline powered car try calling your gasoline powered car solar powered since hydrocarbons are nothing other than powered since hydrocarbons are nothing other than sunlight in chemical form
Variation: I do the same thing with the import snobs when they go on and on about the superiority of their whatever. I point out that I. too, drive an import. It is imported all the way from faraway and exotic Canada.
I think import snobbery was a function of crappy domestic car quality in the ’70s and ’80s. The differential is pretty much gone now.
People are waking up to the EV scam. By every metric that matters to working-class folks — as opposed to virtue-signaling, deep-pocketed, coastal Dumb-o-crats with money to burn — these vehicles are inferior to gas-powered ones.
EV’s are a fire hazard in car collisions; feature batteries that need expensive replacement only a few years after purchase; take obscene amounts of time to charge, relative to a gas tank fill-up; are more environmentally destructive and resource-intensive than gas-powered vehicles; have a ridiculously restricted range; can only be charged up to around 80% of their full battery capacity, per manufacturer guidelines; suffer serious performance deterioration in both cold and hot weather; wear tires out faster than gas-powered vehicles because of their comparatively heavier weights; etc., etc.
Only a narcissistic, virtue-signaling, deep-pocketed fool with money to burn would purchase an EV.
Wanna buy a Tesla?
Sure! First I need to get some hot dogs, marshmallows, some burgers… 😉
I do that with Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators.
They don’t care. They just want to force us into 15-minute cities with no private transportation.
Someone contend that one of the reasons is to slow down, reduce, or eliminate private transportation to prevent riots and rallies.
You don’t have to buy one. We enjoy ours, and it performs the runabout role remarkably well. But we also have an ICE car for more serious trips. And I don’t consider myself narcissistic, virtue-signaling, deep-pocketed, nor foolish.
“You don’t have to buy one” … well, not yet!
If they made EVs big enough, they could run on dark energy.
So, Hunter could use one.
Hunter has enough dark energy to power the USS Enterprise.
Joe Biden has channeled more dark energy than Hunter and taught Hunter everything.
I just took delivery of my eco-friendly vehicle.
It’s a Ford Bronco.
It’s painted green so it must be eco-friendly, right. 😀
I wonder if Ford is repurposing their warehoused Anti Establish Mint paint for the 1972 Maverick.
OMG, we had one of those Mavericks. Then it was the Mountain Dew Green Mustang II.
My big question is how the EV’s are going to run when they ban coal for electricity.
And my other question is “when are they going to make them available with a 5 or 6 speed?” My left foot tends to cause problems when it doesn’t have anything to do.
I don’t want one but I love
My electric bike
I’m not peddling 30 miles a day
It’s for fun and exercise. , maybe 45 minutes 5/7 days
I now understand love of motorcycles
Pedaling the bike.
Peddling your body around town.
I have this image …
.
Shame on you!
One of the concerns I have always have is use in urban areas. I am not talking about going to work in an urban setting, but where does a person who lives in a townhouse with no dedicated parking in the front or the back plug the EV in?
What would be the costs of dedicated EV charging stations in front of every townhome and stoop? It has to be more than a charging station in a garage that can be locked at night.
EV’s don’t work for most suburbanites because of range issues, and they don’t work for inner city citizens.
It may be that the market is falling not because of costs or not wanting an EV, but that EV’s don’t work for the vast majority of the buying population.
The average daily commute is about 30 miles. For that niche (which is large) they work. This is very much a numbers game. I know the numbers, and they work in urban areas. I do NOT think anyone should be forced into them, but anyone who uses them for a typical daily commute will save money.
They may ‘work’ in that niche market as far as daily driving, but only if you close your eyes to laying off most of the cost of having one to others. Factor in the true cost on roads, mining, power generation etc. and there is not a single area in which EV’s are better.
EVs don’t impose road costs. Mining? What, lithium? Look, I suppose I sound like the EV p.r. guy, but the mining of hydrocarbons and uranium ain’t exactly benign. Power generation? Most EV charging is done at night when demand is low.
The only real problems with EVs are range and recharging times. These make them unsuitable for road trips, work trucks, hauling, towing, and other heavy use. But for typical daily urban/suburban driving, they are winners.
Some of the comments here are just as stupid as the “no carbon” b.s. from the “progressives.” Quit jerking your knee. It only makes you look like a spastic. They’re just cars, not causes — in either direction.
“Most EV charging is done at night when demand is low.”
What do you think the demand will be when everyone has an EV? Electric stoves, water heaters, clothes dryers? When do you think power companies perform maintenance and repairs? What is your solution for apartment complexes that have parking garages with all of the EVs needing charging overnight? Has anyone even thought about any of this? BTW, most parking garages were built using a weight for the typical type of cars owned, not ones that weigh much more than their ICE counterpart. What will happen to all of those garages? What about street parking in city areas where there is no place to plug in a charger? Has anyone thought about any of this?
At average usage, EVs need recharging every week. Allow for variation, and call it every 4 days.
“EVs don’t impose road costs.”
Don’t be stupid and make shit up. They are heavier, causing more wear and tear on the roads. And tires.
No, they don’t cause more road wear. Way >95% of pavement damage is caused by much heavier vehicles: semitrucks and buses. I’m afraid that YOU have made shit up, stupid zealot.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads
By the way, cars and other light vehicles are responsible fror 2.7x the miles traveled relative to heavy trucks. (Source: Federal Highway Administration.) Yet a standard 5-axle semi-truck (roughly 70% of big trucks on the road by my count — it’s a roadtrip passtime for me) does 10,240x the road danage of a 4,000-lb sedan.
Increase the sedan weight to 6,000 lbs for the battery (which is way too much), and the 5-axle semi does 2,018x the road damage as the EV. Bottom line: a) You don’t know what you’re talking about, b) You made it up, and c) If you’re looking for pavement damage, look at big trucks because they cause all of it.
Consider the watts necessary to charge 50 EVs of townhome owners in one night.
No different than running 50 electric dryers.
Also: In a 50-unit building, on any given night it’s highly unlikely that there’d be more than 10 vehicles being charged at once.
I suspect that EV have used up all the early adopters as well as those with a particular motivation to buy one. There are probably some more folks out there who might choose to buy one IF they can get their concerns over range, length of charge time, availability of charging station addressed.
There may be a few more willing purchasers beyond those who also want answers about battery safety, battery weight and battery replacement cost/frequency addressed.
Beyond these though? Not without a mandate. Even then the issue of additional electricity production, transmission and the reliability of electricity delivery must be addressed. That’s not even touching on whether the greenies and leftists will allow/tolerate the orders of magnitude increase in mining required to build the damn things.
EV’s might be fine in short term, have doubts you can get years of daily heavy driving. That that daily driving will require lots of down time sitting at a charging station unless you pony up for your own.
And then you’ll be sitting at home waiting for the EV to charge.
We plug ours to an L2 charger in the garage overnight once a week. There is no “waiting for the EV to charge.”
BINGO! Charge an EV on a 240V 30A circuit, and it will stick 50-55 kWh into the battery in 10 hours. Given that anyone with an EV who cares about battery life will charge from 20% to 100% (or 10% to 90% if it’s a really hot climate, i.e., the Southwest), you’re very unlikely to add more than 50-55 kWh per charge unless you have one of the really expensive Teslas with a 90 or 100 kWh battery.
The typical new-generation EV has a 60-65kWh battery, meaning 50-55 kWh per charge. Plug it in at 8 p.m., and it’s full by 6 a.m. the next morning. And given the average driving distance of about 30 miles a day, that works out to a recharge every week, although for conservatism’s sake I have said 3 to 4 days to account for variation. At least 90% of EV recharging is done at home. The need for “public chargers” is pretty much a myth, especially given how slow even the fastest ones work.
This is why EVs don’t make much sense for the average apartment dweller, unless they happen to live in a building equipped with 240V 30A outlets in the parking area. Charge at a “public charger,” and you’ll be wasting time, plus I have no doubt that the electricity price will be substantially marked up.
Let’s look at cost of fuel. The average electricity rate in the U.S. is 15 or so cents per kWh, and the typical EV gets 3.5 miles/kWh. This means that the typical EV fuel cost will be about 4.3 cents/mile. In high-cost states, call it 8.5 cents a mile. The average gasser comparable to the average EV gets 28 mpg, which at $3.50/gallon comes to 12-1/2 cents a mile.
People can yammer all they want to about the downsides of EVs, and as my comments in this thread will attest, I will agree on several points. But when it comes to fuel cost, electricity is much cheaper, period — even in the high-cost states. Where I live, electricity costs just under 10 cents/kWh, making the fuel cost of an EV just over 3 cents a mile.
Yes, if you have to replace the battery, ka-ching! But I’ve shown that the newest generation EV batteries can be expected to last 175,000 miles, and that’s a conservative estimate. The owner who takes care of the battery (easy) isn’t likely to have to replace it, although it will cost on the back end when the car is sold. In the meantime, the EV owner will spend nothing on engine, transmission, and exhaust system maintenance or replacement.
I have argued that EVs work as urban (and suburban) commuter vehicles. They are poor choices for road trips, hauling, and towing, and the range also suffers badly in winter. If you live in the northern Great Plains, or Canada, an EV makes no sense, and same for electric work trucks on farms and ranches, or for long road trips.
But that urban niche is a big one, and for the two-thirds of Americans who own a house and have a 240v 30A electric dryer circuit and use an EV for local driving, they make a lot of sense. I would add that, in the early years of EVs, I consistently argued that they’d be limited to early adopters until they came with 60 kWh batteries. I took all kinds of shit for that argument, but I held my ground. Now that they have those bigger batteries, EVs have gone from 1% of the market to 7%-8% of the market.
This post about EVs dying on the vine reminds me of (I think) Mark Twain’s quip about the rumors of his death being exaggerated. I happen to think that the time for tax credits and other subsidies has passed. EVs should not be subsidized, now that manufacturing scale efficiencies have driven down battery costs.
No one should be forced to buy one, nor should anyone be subsidized to buy one. For a big chunk of the vehicle market, an EV is a rational choice. Much of the yammering against them here is foolish. My mantra has been consistent for years: “They are cars, not causes.” That goes both for and against.
RC,
Using 28mpg and applying the total fuel excise tax for my State of Alabama, 38.5¢ per gallon, works to 1.375¢ per mile driven of total Fed/State/local fuel excise tax. Alabama doesn’t apply the sales tax on top of that but some States do so their figures are likely higher, depending upon their State/local level of fuel excise tax. Ignoring the taxes alters the numbers quite a bit.
The cost you cite for your average EV driver of 4.5¢ per mile would go up to 5.875 per mile; a nearly 30% increase which is currently avoided by EV drivers. That’s not fair at all.
IMO the only way to equalize the costs and retain our user funded system for roads is to low jack the EV and then charge them quarterly based on miles driven v equivalent fuel excise tax on a standard mpg, say 28mpg, to get the energy equivalent fuel excise tax owed. Or scrap the fuel excise tax all together and charge a flat per vehicle fee.
Alabama gas prices include only the tax? Wow, such a deal!
“Plug it in at 8 p.m., and it’s full by 6 a.m. the next morning”
Great, you can’t go out at night.
RC,
Seriously? I ain’t trying to yank your chain, just have a discussion. Of course the price of fuel includes more than the fuel excise taxes in Alabama.
Just pointing out the complexity of EV when determining true cost and true subsidies along with some needed adjustments to the way we traditionally fund roads.
In some States, like WA, an EV driver gets an even bigger subsidy than the 1.375¢ per mile savings from not paying fuel excise tax b/c in WA they do apply their State sales tax onto fuel.
Apples to apples is a much more fair comparison. When folks shy away from a fair comparison it makes me wonder about their motives.
Look, I have an insanely detailed spreadsheet that breaks it all down, separating the taxes. There’s even a column that calculates WA State’s flat EV tax per mile driven. Yes, the taxes are different in different states. The underlying fuel price varies, and so do electricity rates.
Therefore, someone will always be able to pop out of the woodwork and say, “Here in East Dogshit, Nebraska, it’s different.” Yeah, we know. But we also know that, no matter how much you pay for electricity, you’ll pay less per mile for the electricity to operate an EV than you’ll pay for the gas or diesel to operate a conventional vehicle.
The worst it’ll get for an EV is if youre running that thing in the dead of winter up a mountain in North Dakota (believe it or not, that actually have some mountains, at least if you’re willing to call 3,000 feet a “mountain”) while towing or hauling something heavy.
In that case, the per-mile fuel cost would probably be equal, but who’d be stupid enough to own an electric truck in North Dakota? Not my potato farmin’ buddy who lives there and wouldn’t let us leave in early June without two 50-lb sacks of reds. LOL
FOAF, there are reasons why I wouldn’t want my only vehicle to be electric. If I were in the habit of driving around every night, that would be one of them. But the point still stands. EV owners with a standard 240V circuit are in good shape, charging-wise.
It’s one reason why I laugh at new buyers of EVs people who fall for “home charging stations” priced in the low four figures. They should just spend a couple hundred bucks for a cable that plugs into 240V, and if they don’t have an outlet then either run an extension cord back to where they plug in the electric dryer, or have an electrician stick a 240V outlet in the garage.
Every car dealer in NJ will be closed by December 31, 2034.
Only three kinds of people bought electric vehicles:
1) Rich virtue signalers who smugly and condescendingly announced how pure they were. These sales will not change – but selling to rich people is a very limited market
2) Leftist cultist true believers. These sales are going to continue to decrease as they simply will not be able to afford them in this economy
3) Dumb people who bought the lies about how ‘economical’ they were and are now finding out just how much the snake oil they bought ACTUALLY costs (just like the rooftop solar panel market). These sales are cratering and never coming back as more and more people find out just how much the electricity COSTS in the first place, and secondly the insane cost of replacing the batteries every 5-7 years.
Just like the idiotic rooftop solar panels, the very foundation of electric vehicles was based on a lie – that they would save huge amounts of money. What money the do ‘save’, is eaten up by the massive cost of battery replacement.
Hula hoops.
Barbie dolls.
Tailfins.
Pet rocks.
Mood rings.
Beanie babies.
Troll dolls.
Purse dogs.
Solar panels.
EVs.
The crap you can talk a gullible public into.
And jacking the ante up to real money was a stroke of genius.
Bud Light Beer
“Beer”
Wait a sec…I have fond memories of the hula hoop
I am sure you do, and you looked really special spinning in one while wearing your Nehru jacket.
/ducking
High anachronism!
Hula hoops go with poodle skirts and bobby sox.
Nehru jackets go with Beatle haircuts.
I have the numbers, being an EV owner who bought one at a deep discount as an experiment. Not to “save the planet,” but just to see for myself. No one should EVER be forced into it, period. That said, the numbers favor them. It depends on how much you pay for electricity, and in the b.s. blue states where electricity rates have skyrocketed, the cost numbers begin to equalize. Exactly how that works is complicated, and beyond the scope of a limited-attention-span comment section.
Consider the cost for battery replacement.
I detailed it elsewhere in this thread. The latest EV batteries ought to last for at least 175,000 miles.
A significant $-cost of that self-satisfied so-progressive virtue signalling being subsidized by taxpayers – being the rest of us, the cranky skeptics.
I prefer ground mount solar arrays. Most solar systems are grid tie and do not have batteries. Battery life can be well over 7 years.
Me too. I don’t want solar panels on my roof. Not even the solar shingles! But consider the waste of solar panels that cannot be recycled.
4) Early adopters.
4) None of the above.
I have a neighbor that got a Lightening. He also has a boat. His range pulling the boat is 95 miles. About 3 weeks ago I noticed the Lightening was gone and a new Supercab F250 was sitting in the driveway. He has the 7.3 Godzilla engine in it. He told me it was $350 difference between a F150 XLT with a 5.0L and F250 XLT with the 7.3L.
Not many ppl are going to invest the insane amount of capital to just try out an “ET”
Too much could go wrong or underperform.
When I used to drive a taxi, sometimes I would get asked my opinion regarding EVs. My response was that they may be fine for everyday tooling around town, but as a cabbie it’d be nothing but an expensive hassle due to range issues.
Time is money, and cabbies don’t want to spend 30 minutes or more to recharge when they could fuel up and be on their way again in 5 minutes.
I think that depends on how far the taxi drives in a day, and the topography. I’m far from the EV p.r. guy, but the latest generation EVs will go 200+ miles on flat ground. I was a taxi driver in college, and can say without many doubts that today’s EVs would have worked okay on my routes.
Sorry for the accidental downvote. My average was around 300 miles a day, so range really is an important consideration (I don’t buy the greenie weenie arguments regardless). Couple that with the reduced capacity in colder weather (such as Chicago winters are known for), and it’s a hard no.
I didn’t drive fulltime, so I didn’t have a good idea of how many miles a fulltime driver puts in on an 8-hour shift. If you’re doing 300 miles, an EV taxi is not a good idea. And I agree with respect to winters.
EVs won’t work in Alaska and Canada. Vehicles in Alaska and Canada require a lot of horsepower.
The issue in those places is temperature, not power. Batteries of all kinds crap out in really cold temps.
“Batteries of all kinds crap out in really cold temps.”
Thank God for global warming! Oh wait …
I know enough about EVs to bore the living hell out of anyone. Electric sedans are fine as urban commuter vehicles as long as the owner has a garage with a 240V 30A socket (same as an electric dryer), but that’s all.
As for the Ford Lightning, there are multiple problems, starting with a recharging procedure that requires a phone app and doesn’t work half the time. When I saw the videos detailing that issue, I was really dumbstruck by the incompetence at Ford. The mother of all unforced errors, to use a hackneyed phrase.
As for range, yeah, if you’re hauling or towing anything significantly heavy, uphill, and in winter (say, a trip to a ski resort), the listed range is going to get absolutely killed. Between that and the aforemention recharging debacle, it’s no surprise at all that Ford is marking the Lightnings down. Frankly, I wonder if $10,000 is enough to move the tin.
And people should see what’s happening with the Rivian pickups! Get in a fender bender, and you just might wind up with a $40,000 repair bill. Bottom line: An EV is a specialty niche vehicle. If your needs put you in that niche, they’re not a bad idea at all. But the minute your needs go outside that niche, forget it.
Towing anything regardless of the weight. Look for the video of the guy who took his Ford lightning with an aluminum trailer to get a model T. Started with a full charge and barely made it back on a 64 mile round trip.
I haven’t seen that one, but I did suffer through a 25-minute YouTube video of a Tesla Model X pulling the rated 5,000 lbs over a course of mild ups and downs, with pathetic results. I’m not anti-EV for niche applications, but they stink at towing. I own an EV, and can say that once you go uphill, even with no towing, you lose range in a major way. That’s the mercifully short statement, but it’s true.
The rest is boring, and this is a comment section. Suffice to say that, from experience and observation, EVs are niche vehicles. They work well in relatively flat urban environments, but the minute you exit the niche, you’re screwed.
Yeah, I guess that sounds like it could be okay for some.
Just get my taxpaying self out 9f the $-cost evaluation.
If you’re talking about EV subsidies, we are in heated agreement. There was an argument for subsidies in the beginning, but now that the battery costs have fallen I don’t think any subsidies should be continued.
Rural countries in multiple states, such as Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, et al, are full of large pickup trucks with many agricultural businesses. No way they will give up their pickup trucks AND tractors.
I don’t expect to see electric pickups until the batteries are much, much bigger. Problem there is the expense. If they were cheaper, battery pickups would rule because of the torque. But these new ones are not farm and ranch work trucks. They lack the range.
I wonder if the just ridiculous amount of scaremongering about the temperature this summer has help or hurt in the trust of The Science.
Interesting that this would be hyped in late July, the hottest time of year.
RC,
Speaking of summer what’s the impact of running the AC on mileage? Is it as bad as running heat in winter?
I think your niche argument is well done. I do wonder what role geographic location plays in reducing the usable area for EV.;Winter in the Northern States and Summer in the Southern States.
A Mediterranean ish climate like much of CA wouldn’t have the same temperature extremes and owners would avoid those issues.
AC really didn’t have much impact. My EV’s heater was awesome, to be honest. Best heater of any of the 16 vehicles I’ve owned. Cut the range, but never enough to be a problem.
Is the heater a heat pump, or something else?
Just an open coil, like an old school electric space heater, plus a fan. One big plus is you don’t have to wait for the engine to heat up. I suppose I sound like the EV p.r. guy, but I’m not. They’re just cars, and the heater in my EV is second to none.
I was inquiring as to the impact on range in average conditions. Say July and Aug in Alabama where temps are 95 with humidity above 50% and AC nearly mandatory. Then for say Michigan in the Winter months. I would suspect that non routine travel would be impacted due to the hit on range. A trip by EV to grandma’s house for Christmas might be a problem if she lives in Michigan and you live in Missouri.
What happens in the event of a winter accident where you get stuck on a stretch of roadway for a few hours? I don’t have experience with an EV and just asking for clarification and input of potential problems.
I do agree that the for the urban driver with a short commute an EV makes more sense as the primary vehicle; if the parking decks can hold the weight of the EV that is. They just won’t work out, IMO, as a primary vehicle for the suburban, exurban or rural driver.
50% losses between generation and the plug. Um, no. It’s 6%. Look it up. Energy Info Administration has the number. Don’t make shit up. Someone who actually knows anything will catch you. As for CNG, if you don’t like EV range, you’ll hate CNG range.
I can’t specifically give you the power consumption numbers for the A/C and heater, but I can say that the fan is a bigger power draw. I was particularly surprised by how little the A/C seems to affect range. I haven’t been stuck for a few hours, but I’d probably rather have it happen in an EV because what really uses the juice is making the wheels roll.
I’ve never let it sit there with only the A/C or heater running, but my guess is that it’d last a lot longer than with a gasser, which would require the engine to be on. One fly in the EV ointment would be if climate control stuff ran off the supplementary 12v battery and not lithium-ion one. In that case, I don’t know how long either function would last.
(note: that comment about power loss got put in the wrong place.)
By the way, EVs aren’t THAT much heavier. Ever look at the extra weight of a diesel engine? Some of these comments are laughably ignorant, clearly unresearched.
Oh, and yes, I couldn’t agree more than EVs suck as road trip vehicles. I have said so for years on EV sites, and taken all kinds of crap for it. Even the so-called “superchargers” from Tesla take way too long to recharge.
I’ve done those numbers. My Ram 3500 truck, which gets 16 mpg., adds about 80 miles of range per minute at the gas pump. A “supercharger” adds 5 or 6 miles per minute at the plug, and less if multiple vehicles are sharing it. The “public charger” networks being installed add more like 3-4 miles a minute.
Take an EV on a road trip, and you’ll spend a minimum of 1/6th of your drive time recharging. And that’s optimistic. The way to recharge EVs is overnight at home, on a 240V 30A circuit, the same as an electric clothes dryer or oven uses. The newer EVs need recharging every 3 or 4 days at the average commuting range.
I’ve been batting down some ignorance in my comments here, but make no mistake: EVs have downsides, and range and towing/hauling capability are biggies. I see little prospect of material improvements for either of those. The best idea out there is to install put 2-speed transmissions — an “overdrive” — to improve highway mileage by 10%-15%, which is a pretty big deal in the automotive world.
From the start of the EV phenomenon, there has been a steady stream of breathless hype about new battery chemistry that would add major capacity improvements without adding battery weight, and speed up recharge times. None of them have come to pass.
Two months ago, we took a 4,300-mile road trip between WA State and Milwaukee and back. We saw maybe 5 EVs the whole way, and only in the proximity of a few college towns. Not a single one of ’em on the open road. Only a fool or a true believer or a hobbyist would dare use an EV for a real road trip.
RC,
Thanks for the info. Appreciate it.
There does seem to be a large difference in weight when looking at gasoline engines v EV. The Ford F150 base model w/V8 gas engine is 4,224 lbs. The Ford F150 lighting EV comes in at 6,500 lbs.
That apple to apple comparison has a 2,276 lbs difference or just under 54% heavier. That’s a significant difference. A diesel engine is heavier but someone buying a diesel truck isn’t likely to substitute an EV truck due to their towing and hauling constraints, IMO anyway.
I appreciate the info you provided.
My pickup truck weight comparison was between a diesel engine and a battery truck. You have to add about 1,000 lbs for a diesel engine the last time I looked.
The pickup truck market is highly segmented. A lot of light-duty pickups (F150, Chevy 1500, Ram 1500) are urban grocery getters and light delivery vehicles. I fail to see the appeal of battery trucks even in that market.
When you get to heavy-duty pickups (250/2500, 350/3500), the case falls apart completely. They are either agriculural work trucks or RV haulers, almost always diesel, and batteries simply lack the range. Increase the battery size to where it needs to be, and you’d run into diminishing returns as the battery becomes quite heavy.
The only way that’ll be solved is if there’s a battery chemistry breakthrough, and the various press release hype notwithstanding, I simply do not see anything on the horizon. If that changes and they can radically increase battery energy density at an acceptable cost, then those vehicles will be electrified.
Electric drive has a big plus: torque. Look at freight trains. Every last one of them is powered by a diesel-electric locomotive. The diesel engine runs a generator, and the train’s wheels are rotated by electric motors. They have so much torque that a freight train has to use only some of the electric motors’ power when starting to move, lest the steel wheels fail to gain traction.
At the same time, those trains have the diesel component because batteries would be too heavy and too expensive. Again, if there’s a chemistry breakthrough that radically increases battery energy density, freight trains would ditch the diesel engines in a heartbeat.
RC,
I agree on the weight of the diesel. That’s why I specifically said gas engine. IMO that’s a far more fair comparison for weight. The average EV truck purchaser isn’t buying an EV truck to replace a diesel truck. They are likely a person who doesn’t rely on the truck for work but own it for other reasons; they’re an accountant not construction contractor who hauls loads or pulls a.trailer daily. IOW it’s really a passenger vehicle.
I also agree that road damage is negligible for EV trucks/cars. My concern would be parking decks where if adoption rates increase or a no shit mandate comes into being that extra 50% of weight is likely going to exceed the safety margin.
Given that pickups are niche vehicles and electric ones are a niche within a niche, a better comparison would be a Tesla Model 3 vs. a Toyota Camry. The standard Model 3 weighs 3,582 lbs vs a Camry at 3,340 lbs. The difference is immaterial.
A F-150 gasser weighs 4,700 lbs and a Lightning weighs 6,000 lbs. If that’s enough to collapse a parking garage, then yes, we really have become Argentina.
RC,
It isn’t a single vehicle that is the potential issue. As I clearly stated it is when a larger market share adopts them voluntarily or via mandate.
The F150 is the most popular in the US and most drivers use them primarily as passenger vehicles not as a work truck. If tomorrow morning 50% of them were swapped with the Ford lightning then the increased weight may be a problem for a parking deck.
I pulled the 4200 lbs for a F150 base model V 8 and the 6500 lbs for a Ford Lightning from the Ford website to get an apple to apple comparison. Even if we use your # that’s still a 1300 lbs increase per vehicle or nearly 28% increase in weight.
That’s not an insignificant increase, especially when the context is a parking deck where a large number of these vehicles would be concentrated.
I actually tried to find a layman’s explanation of parking garage building standards. Someone wrote a book on it, but it costs $35 and I didn’t see any reason to go that far. In any case, there have been some collapses, but they’ve been because of faulty constuction and a couple times from heavy snow on an unprotected top deck.
I doubt that an extra 1,300 lbs of battery weight on an electric pickup truck (and about half that for EV sedans) will be bringing parking structures down. I found one, count ’em one, post from someone who asked in an engineering forum about the extra battery weight implications for parking structure design, and the answer was that none of the engineers have examined it.
We shall see. Life is full of surprises, but that would be a surprise.
Stick a diesel engine in a pickup, and you add $10,000 and 1,000 lbs. As for road wear, there’s an old formula used by road builders. The short version is that light vehicles, which include all cars and pickups, do no pavement damage. Pavement damage is caused entirely (okay, north of 95%) by buses and semitrucks.
By analogy, think of a big tree’s branches. Cars are mosquitoes. Heavy-duty pickups and the RVs they are towing are birds. Buses and semitrucks are anvils. At the very worst, an EV battery might turn a car into a pickup truck, i.e., a mosquito into a bird. And that’s exaggerating.
The idea that EVs do more damage to roadbeds on account of the battery weight is just laughable. Again, EVs have their downsides, but not that one.
What does Dr. Fauci have to do with EVs?
How DARE you question The Science. He is in all things and decides all things.
🙂
Heck, they just censured a climate denier. Another lockdown for us all?
One thing I noticed from the study by the Manhattan Institute is that the estimated CO2 emissions comparing gas vs electric stop at 120k miles and don’t take into account battery replacement which would negate any reduction of electric from gas or diesel. How many people are going to not only drive the car that long but pay upwards of 10k to replace them?
Typical EV battery will last for 1,200+ charge cycles if you treat the battery right, which is not hard at all. The new ones are at least 60 kWh, and the sedans will get 3.5 miles/kWh on average — less in winter, more in summer, and less on highways and a lot less going uphill. But 3.5 miles when you average it.
60 (x) 3.5 (x) 1,200 = 252,000 miles. Further multiply that by 0.8, to account for not fully discharging the battery in use, and you can expect the latest EV batteries to last for 200,000 miles before they degrade to the point of replacement. You could also apply a degradation factor of about 10%-15% over the life of the battery and call it 175,000 miles..
Keep in mind that, during that time, there’ll be no oil changes or engine, exhaust, or transmission maintenance. If I lived in the city and were going to buy a second car for tooling around the city, or if I really didn’t need one that could go out of town, and if I had a garage with a 240V outlet, I’d get an EV.
And no, I don’t think they should be subsidized or required.
You make a great point about the batteries. As long as the end users do what they are supposed to do and take care of the batteries they will perform. Doing so isn’t all that difficult or complicated so long as they are attentive and can exercise a little self discipline.
That said, the Army adopted rechargeable batteries for nearly all of our tactical communications gear, night vision goggles and optics. I can attest that many of these particular users, who literally depended on these batteries for their lives, didn’t take care of them nor perform basic user level charging/discharge maintenance.
Maybe civilian car owners will be more diligent than Soldiers in taking proper care of their equipment. Lord knows the average Soldier will eff up anything if given the chance. After all he didn’t buy it and the Army get him a new one, while the civilian is on the hook for car payments.
Soldiers don’t pay for their own equipment, and have little incentive to take care of it, at least in peacetime. Pay for your EV, and you’ll take care of the battery unless you’re a moron. It’s a big country, so there’ll be the same morons who don’t take care of their gassers, but most owners will do it.
No rocket science: Don’t habitually recharge until you hit the equivalent of a quarter tank — actually 20% is best, but 10% will work. If you’re in a really hot climate, don’t charge past 90% unless you’ll be driving it right away.
I agree which is why I alluded to private ownership perhaps being the difference in level of care and attention. FWIW the point was about combat conditions not peace time. Crazy but true.
The rechargeable batteries were good for 200 charging cycles. After the fifth charge was the break even point on the cost of batteries/charging equipment. So far so good, we gonna save some $ to use for other priorities! Not! The Soldiers wouldn’t take care.of them. We then tried centralized charging, didn’t work b/c they wouldn’t remember to being them back or would somehow crack the housing of the battery.
My 26+ years in the Army made me incredibly cynical about human nature. Perhaps overly so. I simply do not expect people to do the ‘right thing’ even when it is easy or to their long term benefit. Folks tend to prioritize short term comfort instead of making minimum effort for long term reward and I am rarely disappointed.
There is a lot of dispute about what I’ll say, but I still pretty much believe that all (or at least most) charging cycles are equal, with the exception of the very constrained ones in some of the plug-in hybrids. But for BEVs (battery electric vehicles), it’s what I think.
Therefore, people who “top it off” every night will find that their car battery craps out fast, and has the longevity of a typical cellphone. People who discharge to 10%-20% will have long battery life because they use fewer charging cycles.
I am a lifelong civilian, so I am not familiar with daily life in the military. What sticks with me is Herman Wouk’s line in “The Caine Mutiny” about the U.S. Navy being a system designed by geniuses to be operated by idiots. I think that’s a great guideline for a lot of systems, not because people are idiots (some are, but most are not) but because a) no one can know everything, especially in an engineering-heavy society, and b) people are too busy to become familiar with the workings of every device.
Applying it to recharging of military equipment, I’d guess that there’s a lot less care by the soldiers because their lack of ownership (and sacrifice to obtain ownership) puts those devices in the general category of just use it and don’t think about it. But if you fork over X tens of thousands of dollars, i.e. labor hours translated to money, for an EV, that plus their being different from familiar gassers makes most of the buyers attuned to things like how to treat the batteries.
How many charge cycles an EV battery is good for until it can no longer hold 70% of its original capacity (the general definition of “kaput” for them) is still an open question. I use 1,200 cycles, which is the midpoint of ranges I’ve seen out there.
I recently chatted with a retired engineer who worked in the renewable energy sector for many years. He described coming back from S. Fla. and nearly getting stuck in an HOURS LONG traffic jam that was caused by only a couple cars. He then researched the numbers and found that it would take only a small percentage of the cars on the highway to fail to completely SHUT DOWN the system.
That points to a severe limitation on places like Key West, coastal Louisiana, open rural areas like west Texas, Montana, and Wyoming where a “round trip to town” may exceed the EV’s limit.
Even worse, it would require Hurricane Evacuation Orders to be set a couple WEEKS ahead of a storm, just to allow that 3% or so of EVs of the entire vehicle fleet to be fully charged and begin evacuation to avoid clogging the highway with disabled vehicles on the long march out. Now realize that many of those “topped off” vehicles will be running “empty” about the same time … ALL looking for a Refueling Point. And from firsthand experience, I know that many of the roads in S. La. will have water on them … and that can be disastrous for an EV (explosively so!) causing further disabled vehicles on the road.
Imagine evacuating ANY metro area and these EVs “dying on the streets” and clogging the exits …. It would look like the disaster movies. Example: New Orleans evacuating for Katrina.
And it’s not unusual for hurricanes to knock out power to large areas, leaving EVs unable to charge ~ so now you have to have a second gas-powered vehicle to even get emergency supplies while you wait in the dark.
Most of the population can’t afford a “spare car” for trips the EV can’t make.
I hate to be stuck in any traffic jam, having been in a few hundred. That said, EVs, for all their downsides, don’t use juice when they’re not moving. Gassers, on the other hand, do. Water on the roads don’t kill EVs. If it did, I’d have been fried a long time ago.
When hurricanes knock out power, they also knock out gas pumps, which require electricity to operate. As for 2-car households, it’s a fair point. It’s why I wouldn’t want my only vehicle to be electric. That said, 58% of households have more than one vehicle.
I’m not arguing for forcing everyone into an EV, or even for continuing the various subsidies. I’m only arguing for rationality rather than the knee-jerk crapola that I see in the wing-o-sphere. It’s the mirror image of the left-o-sphere’s laughable promotion of EVs as “climate savers.”
Look: They’re cars, not causes, and that runs both ways. Don’t be foolish. There are solid reasons to have an EV. They’re for for everyone, but they work for a lot of people, whatever your might imagine when you have a fever. LOL
correction: “They’re NOT for everyone … “
Random crank,
I am impressed you seem so knowledgeable about roads and E V’s.
Here in hurricane prone Florida, there is a law that all gas stations shall have a fossil fuel pump to pump gas out of the storage tanks when there is a blackout.
So we can get gas even after a hurricane.
I didn’t know that. I wonder if a) the stations comply, and b) how much fuel that fossil fuel pump can access. Weirdly enough, on my last road trip, I ran into a guy outside of our hotel in Williston, North Dakota (one of the most interesting shitholes I’ve ever been to, and I’ve really been everywhere in this country) who worked for a company that services the pumps in gas stations.
I wish we’d had this thread three months ago, because I’d have asked him all about it. The guy was one of those crackpot geniuses that make this country so great, and he’d have been able to tell me everything I wanted to know and a lot more.
water ON the roads may not knock out EVs (or they wouldn’t run in the rain), but ahead of hurricanes there is water sometimes KNEE-deep OVER the roadway. It’s hell on electronics, but I would bet even worse on a huge battery. There were reports of fires from EVs in S. Fla a couple years ago following flooding.
While the EVs may not use power while STOPPED, I’m betting they consume it fairly well while CRAWLING along for hours (maybe even the distance is still comparable) but with the a/c going in the hot humid car as the evacuation inches along, the power IS being consumed and therefore range diminished.
Gas can still be pumped using gas generators … Oh yeah, Biden wants to eliminate those too.
And tanker trucks can carry in and dispense fuel in a crisis. I’ve never seen a “Battery Truck” on the highway yet … but maybe THAT is a market to develop.
And two cars in every garage is still a failure if BOTH of them are EVs!
I’m only pointing out that there are HUGE logistical challenges that are being ignored.
Now you’re just spiraling. You’re a laughable zealot.
It seems my comment about “water hazards” for EVs is not so far fetched … assuming you believe OTHER items in LI archives.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/10/after-hurricane-ians-floods-florida-battling-fires-from-water-damaged-electric-vehicles/
And my comments are in the context of the “100% EV fleet by 2035” utopia being promoted, and that the grid/logistics support would require a 100% overhaul to be feasible too.
Zealot? No. Just recognizing serious obstacles that must be overcome. No particular vested interest either way ~~ just want what will work for my needs.