The California warning signs may be verification about the drawbacks of EV’s
By Ronald Stein
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Irvine, California
With a simple stroke of the pen, Governor Newsom believes he has the power to change the lifestyles of all California residents, and control the supply-demand balance for societies and the economy’s’ transportation needs.
Granted, that half the EV’s in the entire country are registered in California, the troubling news is that there may be warning signs about a bust to the EV growth bubble, as the statistics from California demonstrate that:
- The highly educated and financially well off are currently the primary owners of EV’s.
- EV usage being slightly more than 5000 miles a year is a reflection that the EV is a second vehicle and not the family workhorse vehicle.
- The growing percentage of EV owners that are switching back to gasoline cars, is a message that may deflate EV growth projections.
- The larger and heavier gasoline driven SUVs are currently half of the new car sales.
Governor Newsom apparently did not read the required reading for the next EV owner: Drawbacks of EV’s, before he announced on September 23, 2020 an executive order to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. He is directing the state to require that, by 2035, all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles.
Maybe the residents of the other 49 states that collectively make up the other 50 percent of EV’s in America (approximately one percent per state) have read what California Governor Newsom has not comprehended from the following 20 drawbacks of EV’s provided by Motor Junkie:
20. Short Range Anxiety. Range anxiety is the number-one factor when it comes to EV downsides. Simply, modern electric vehicles are still range-limited due to their small capacity batteries. Most affordable electric cars on the market have a bit more than a 130-mile-range.
19. Long Charging Times. Even though Tesla and Porsche have made significant improvements, charging is still far from the speed to fill a gas tank. Putting the fuel in your car only takes a couple of minutes compared to charging your vehicle overnight.
18. Trip Planning Problems. Small ranges and long charging times can put a strain on any road trip plans. You cannot plan a fast trip in an electric car without knowing the location of charging stations. You will also need to know the estimated duration of charging or supercharging.
17. Mostly Good for Urban Use. The EV’s range is longer if you drive in the city. Second, there are far more charging stations in metropolitan areas.
16. Not So Environmentally Friendly. Did you ever think about what it takes to make just one electric vehicle? Apparently, the process of making a big chunk of Lithium-Ion batteries from the exotic minerals and metals mined in foreign countries, as well as their disposal is polluting since they are not recyclable. Weakest link to EV growth is the material supply chain. There may not be enough minerals and metals in the world to achieve the planned EV growth.
15. Too Expensive. There is a range of electric cars for sale on the current market, with the top models going for well over $100,000. Although there are affordable models like the Volkswagen Golf E or Nissan Leaf, electric vehicles still cost significantly more than models that run on fossil fuels.
14. Repair Difficulties. If you own an electric car, you can forget going to your local shop or fixing it inexpensively. Regardless of the type and the model, all-electric vehicles require specific maintenance and service procedures as well as extremely high safety standards.
13. Too Heavy. Some of the high-end models like the Tesla Model X, the battery pack weighs in at over 1,000 pounds. Also, the car itself weighs over 2.3 tons. Heavy vehicles mean more tire wear, more energy consumption, and maintenance too.
12. Cold Temperature Issues. Where the winters are cold and snowy, cold weather battery drain can be a big problem for everyday use. Owners report a reduced range and even the failure to operate in especially harsh winter conditions. That could be life-threatening.
11. Low Top Speeds. Most regular everyday EVs are quite slow. The top speed of the Golf E or Kia Soul EV is limited to below 100 mph, for instance.
10. Highway Driving Consumption. The advertised range that many manufacturers brag about is the average or city driving figure. However, the highway range is much smaller, sometimes up to 50 percent less.
9. High Heavy Load Consumption. No matter how strong or big your battery pack is, the energy consumption under a heavy load is excessive.
8. Ease of Tracking Your Movements. Those systems are designed to track your driving habits, locations, charging points, and so on. Are you sure that you want your every move to be recorded on a server?
7. Just Plain Ugly. There are some electric vehicles that are stunning beauties, but most of them are just plain ugly or ordinary at the very least.
6. Threatening Existing Economy Models. Some economic experts fear that the mass production of electric vehicles and focus on this kind of technology will destroy the current economic model. Also, think about the enormous car industry with all the companies that make fuel-related products, such as engine parts, fuel injection systems, transmissions, and drivetrain components. All those companies and millions of people will be out of a job, which would put further strain on the economy and global standards.
5. Major Car Companies Are Not So Sure. Although almost all the major car manufacturers have at least one electric vehicle in their lineup, most of their CEOs are not fully convinced that electric cars are the future of the industry. Their board of directors and marketing people have observed how problematic the EV segment is, so they hesitate to go all-in on electric cars.
4. Practically Unusable in Third World Countries and Markets. The EV craze is limited to just a few first world countries and markets in the world. But other than that, electric vehicles in other areas are nonexistent. Even China, the world’s biggest market, has a hard time implementing any initiatives for electric cars.
3. Buyers Still Consider Them A Gimmick. Most car buyers still consider EVs to be some sort of a sales trick. Their specific operation procedures, limited usability, and different driving dynamics make them cars for tech geeks, but not as regular transport devices.
2. An EV Cannot Be the Only Car in Your Household. Even if you own one or are looking to acquire an EV, you should know that it cannot fulfill all your transportation needs. That is especially true if you have a family and need a dependable vehicle for your family.
1. A Hard Sell. Most drivers lease their electric cars and then return them to the dealer after a few years to get a new model. However, those people who have bought electric vehicles could experience great difficulty selling them on the used car market or trading them in at the dealership.
Time will tell if the California Governor Newsom can inflict with a simple executive order, lifestyle changes to the transportation needs of residents, businesses, and the economy.
Ronald Stein, P.E.
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure
http://www.energyliteracy.net/
Some of the 20 “drawbacks” are actual drawbacks, while some of them stretch credulity. I think the list would have benefited by being culled to ten good items.
One of the most damning observations about EVs is that they are predominantly used as second cars by people of above average means, where their main role is as short-range runarounds. I have read elsewhere that EV owners go back to ICE, but the figure of 18% as given is too low to prove anything. (Of course this stat should only refer to EVs as primary vehicles, but presumably does not.) Depreciation certainly has been high: articles a few years ago showed (low tier) EVs lose a large proportion of their value in the first few years. But I have not seen data for more recent models.
Personally I don’t have a driveway, so unless I planned to run a cable out over the pavement, I would be stuck with charging using public facilities at high leccy cost, which also presumably shortens battery life. That means EVs are a solid NO from me until the powers that be make ICE impossible to keep on the road.
I discussed the psychology of EVs last weekend at Cliscep. https://cliscep.com/2021/05/15/i-dream-of-ev/
Clearly the author has not reviewed the new Ford f-150 Lightening.
Including the new dual steering wheel option?
Carlo,
You mean Biden was not in full control?
Not even of an EV?
Did Biden realize their were 2 steering wheels?
The driver next to him was doing the actual driving by using the second steering wheel?
Gee, I wonder if any of the media caught that?
If any of them did, why would they not report it?
The usual media bias prevented it?
Would that bias change after the forensic recounts in Arizona and Georgia, etc.?
Now what’s the contribution of this non-sequitur? What does Biden have to do with this?
Sheesh, next you’ll be ranting that Biden should sell his Corvette to prove his consistency.
#infantile
You’re just not current on current events… https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/05/18/this-suckers-quick-secret-service-allows-joe-biden-to-speed-away-in-electric-f-150/
…but afterward, there was speculation whether he even drove it… https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/wow-biden-caught-fake-driving-someone-else-steering-vehicle-stunt-video-pics/
Either way, the wheel is so soft and easy when the car is stopped. I don’t get it. Is it like a joystick with the mechanical connection with the wheels?
“Sheesh, next you’ll be ranting that Biden should sell his Corvette to prove his consistency.”
Don’t pay attention to what politicians say, pay attention to what they do. They can talk the talk but do they walk the walk? If he has a corvette (frankly I don’t know what car(s) he owns, nor do I really care) and truly believe in made-mad climate change as a result of burning fossil fuels (as he’d have you believe), why hasn’t he traded it in for a Tesla (or other EV) yet?
You are correct at all points, sir.
Sounds like Lisa Simpson driving on the back seat.
The one with a 300 mile range before you put anything in the back or start towing something?
It will be used for shopping at Home Depot, Walmart, etc
Yup. I have no objection to “Gentlemen (PC *ahem* here) Pickup Trucks”.
I’ve always said that if you have more than one vehicle, at least one of them should be a truck. (and don’t ask to borrow mine, dammit! 😜)
If you’re towing the boat to the lake or picking up gardening or home improvement supplies, an electric F-150 would be just fine and dandy.
As for me? I’m towing a #16,500 5th wheel a minimum of 1,200 miles and I don’t care to do the math to see if an electric F-150 will work for me.
I think I’ll stick with a dually diesel.
Oh… YMMV.
When I tow a boat, I usually back the truck until the rear wheels are submerged.
Will those electric motors or their circuit boards handle getting submerged? In salt water?
Ford lists the standard Ford F150 Lightning EV as strictly a 2,000 pound payload.
Only speculation is available regarding payload for their top of the line model with increased battery power.
Ford does claim their extended-range battery pack version of the truck will provide up to 10,000 pounds of towing capacity when equipped with the Max Trailer Tow package...
Does anyone believe that?
Estimate cost for the mid level F150 is $53,000, $40,000 for the entry level and neither price includes destination or dealer’s fees.
Ford’s 2022 F150 EV will have aluminum sheet metal bodies. When the battery ignites, all that might be left is the frame.
“Ford does claim their extended-range battery pack version of the truck will provide up to 10,000 pounds of towing capacity when equipped with the Max Trailer Tow package…
Does anyone believe that?”
Would you believe it if they wrote that about the ICE version?
IC engine Ford, Dodge and GM pickup trucks have towing capacity up to 12,000 pounds.
Only simpletons doubt that capability.
ok, I have a question about the range that maybe someone can offer some input. All of the literature says you can charge it from 15% to 80% in forty minutes. I had assumed that the 15% was because you didn’t want to discharge a Li ion battery any lower than that for the health of the battery. A commenter on another site said, no, that was already factored in. When the meter said no charge left, the battery still had 15-20%.
If true, why don’t they show a 0 to 80% charging time? If I knew my battery had a 15% reserve, I would run the meter to zero.
Here’s how it plays out: assuming a “300 mile range”, if you are to charge it at 15%, you are ‘leaving’ 45 miles in the battery. If the time to charge it from 80% to 100% is objectionably large, and you only charge to 80%, you are forgoing another 60 miles of range. Your true range becomes 195 miles. Maximum. No load, flat ground, no extra electrical stuff (lights, wipers, AC, heat, etc.). No. Just, no. That’s like a 30 mpg ice vehicle with less than a seven gallon tank.
And just the range lost only by charging to 80% puts you at 240 miles.
Jtom- I commented on this down the page. Because battery packs will get damaged if fully discharged or fully charged, manufacturers limit charging to between about 10%-15% and 80%-85% of capacity. The maximum stated range is 100% of a brand new battery. Given that batteries degrade in a set pattern – a rapid drop-off in charge for the first few recharges, then a more gradual drop-off of around 2.5%-4.2% (ish) per year, your EV will never even get close to the stated range and, even just after a few months, will experience a large drop in performance.
Many thanks.
Simply not true. And I am fully against EV subsidies.
I think you should just buy one and find out the hard way . .
In most cases it is fine to charge to 90 plus percent, if managed. Managed means to have the charge complete just before you drive the vehicle. Apparently the battery sitting at full charge for many hours is the major cause of battery deterioration.
Or temperatures start dropping below 70F or above 90F.
Is that the official range according to the
untrustworthy EPA?According to Ford, the official EPA “estimated” range of the Ford Lightning EV is 230 miles.
It requires vehicle upgrades, undefined at this point, to reach the EPA “estimated” 300 mile range.
Ford also states that this “estimated” range is before considering the effects of vehicle use, vehicle maintenance, external conditions, battery age, battery health.
“Final ‘EPA-estimated’ ratings available in 2022” when Ford F150 Lightnings are actually available to test.
Caveat Emptor!
My Silverado can go 450 miles between fills.
And that is without the heater or A/C on. Here in Silicone Valley everyone who thinks green has one as their second car or an expensive replacement for their commuter subcompact beater car they used to drive. For a time, they could use the HOV lanes for free and it saved them a bit of time, but those advantages mean buying or leasing a new one every few years.
One guy here is getting rid of his hydrogen powered Toyota after 2 years, because he’s figured out how inconvenient they are. There are very few stations, they have limited hours and few pumps, and they run out of fuel from time to time. To travel from S.F. to San Diego you have to plan routes that include one of the few fueling locations in your plans, which can take you off your normal course, sometimes by a hundred miles or more round trip. He’s buying a hybrid to replace it.
Perfect for a work vehicle though. Charge it at home then, drive to the job(assuming it is within a 100 mile radius. Use the power outlets for the tools, haul a few tonnes around then head home and charge again. No need to visit gas stations and waste time and sooooo much cheaper. And is literally the fastest F150 ever made (for when you want to have fun).
Spending other people’s money – and you like to whine and moan all the time about “oil” subsidies.
Hypocrite.
What other peoples money?
Most job sites have power from someone else’s meter. When I had a house and barns built, I never saw the construction crew running a generator. They rigged extension cords and outlets off of my panel.
And a lot of public charging stations don’t charge for the power. It’s kind of a status symbol to lure in the rich Tesla owners. At least for now, because it’s a novelty.
Not to mention the generous tax credits available to the wealthy purchasers of EV vehicles.
You really think electricity is free?
/boggle/
It’s not free if you use your own.
“Perfect for a work vehicle though.”
Spoken like someone who has never used a work vehicle for any work ever.
Minus 10% retained in the battery pack by the management system.
And if travelling recharge 80% if unwilling to wait many hours to recharge to 100% (less 10%, less variable energy usage).
I saw something earlier, don’t remember where exactly, but hauling a heavy load (trailer, boat, building materials) it’s more likely the range will be in the double digits). Less than impressive.
The concerns with the Ford (besides price) are range, recharge time, charge station availability, and hauling capacity. I live in the country and have a Chevy Silverado crew cab, with 4wd. I need all that it has to offer. The lightning wouldn’t cut it.
How good is it for snow plowing?
Or towing? On a couple of RV trailer fora I follow there’s discussion of the practicality of EV Trucks. We already know how much more fuel is consumed towing.
Supposedly the F150 EV has less than 150mi range when towing its rated load. That range is actually then only 75miles if you have to tow a load somewhere and then bring it back with no charging station between the two points (e.g. pulling a camping trailer to an isolated fishing area and then back home)
You have to fish at fish market
As I understand it, the torque is great. Pulling that boat up the ramp is a breeze.
But the range… the range…
You’re not about to enter that regional bass tournament 2 States over, unless there’s a fish pond next to every charging station.
.
.
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“Your truck is charged, sir.”
“FISH ON! Go away.”
😜
Can tow 10000 pounds and load 2000.
Where is the PTO?
Rofl sure and distance with those loads … well you better not want to go more than 50miles from your charge point unless you want to carry a diesel generator.
If you turn it sideways on and have it pushed by a powerful ICE vehicle, then not too bad all told!
Running hydraulics, carrying the snowblade payload, heating that cabin and pushing heavy loads of snow or scraping ice are going to cut into that EVs range…
Maybe one driveway or two. Forget a whole parking lot.
Number 13 will be the curse of the new Ford in locales where snow and icy covered roads can make stopping difficult. The resulting rear end conditions will make insuring these vehicles expensive.
And just who makes carbon-free tires?
And carbon free roads.
The asphalt is a byproduct of refineries
horses do just fine on cobblestones, Willem.
Yah, but… horses have rather carbon rich exhaust, eh?
How are those cobblestones shaped?
By hand? Without metal tools?
From blocks of granite that naturally fall off mountains?
Carried by hand to where needed?
They’ll have all the conveniences of the 16th Century. Hopefully they haven’t lost track of how cobblestones were made in the 1500s.
Think of all the Green jobs, just to pave a road under the new serfdom!
Actually not. They do best on dirt roads. Cobblestones are slippery and hard on hooves.
I stand corrected. Back to the neolithic then!
Purity test?
Similar to greenies who are against nuclear power because it isn’t ‘renewable’.
Let’s not allow anyone to buy electric until everything is carbon-free? (BTW, carbon black in tires does not make it to the stratosphere, to don’t worry about that Red Herring)
…but how much CO2 was released manufacturing that tire?
And Gangrene is constantly advocating for carbon-free this and carbon-free that, I’m just taking their word for it!
I don’t think that there are any tires made from natural rubber anymore, are there? First thing they have to stop using synthetic SBR rubber derived from petroleum. Not many rubber plantations near tire factories. I guess that they will need to put the latex into wooden barrels and transport them on sailing ships. They’ll have to use biofuel to make the carbon black or else just go without and replace the tires more frequently. They can vulcanize the natural rubber using a press heated electrically using off-the-grid windmills. But how do they get the windmills (or the presses) without fossil fuels? Sorry, not sustainable. Back to horses and wooden wheels.
Notice how chris just assumes that because we ridicule EV’s, this means we would ban them if we could.
Yup, MarkW – I think EVs are great. Awesome, in fact. But for me, they fall low on the list because of range and charging times.
I live in the outer, outer ‘burbs of a major metropolitan area. My township is lousy with Teslas. They’re all over the place! But the neighborhoods, that are interspersed among the farm fields, are close enough to town that range will never be an issue, even in Winter.
Just my speculation, but I’d guess that many, maybe most of those Teslas were bought for the performance. The rest were bought for Green virtue signaling. I’d be lying if I said I knew the real ratio.
Anecdotal, but my son wants a Tesla for the performance. He laughs at Climate Alarmism and knows all about the range and charging limitations. He just wants ‘Ludacris Mode’ so he can go zooooooom!
.
.
So you are right to bust chris on that point, Mark.
Most anti-EV here is “don’t ram it down my throat” anti-EV and/or “where are we gonna get the grid and materials for this” anti-EV. Oh, and the hypocrisy of driving a coal-powered vehicle and claiming it is ‘Green’.
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And then there’s those amongst us that think Musk is just a subsidy-farming shyster.
But none of the above positions are mutually exclusive.
Indeed. My brother has a plug-in hybrid (not a Tesla) and isn’t a believer in climate alarmism. He bought for the tech and the performance (and the subsidy gave him the extra push to buy, as the price would have been outside his acceptable range otherwise).
And throws in his own red herring while blaming it on skeptics.
Indeed, very telling. The fact is, most of us have nothing against companies building EV and selling them to whomever actually wants to buy them off their own dime. What we object to is the subsidies (our tax money) and the mandates (telling us what we can and can not buy). It’s the subsideis and mandates we want banned, not EVs.
“Carbon” is the word used by the delusional proselytizing EV vehicles.
Nor is that “carbon black” available naturally without tools, fossil fuel engines or transported by animals.
Only a portion of the rubber in a tire is from rubber trees. The rest is derived from fossil fuels, as is the manufacturing that tire.
Bringing us back to factories are not run by renewable energy. They require consistent high quality energy.
They’re planning to plant latex-free rubber trees and using sulfur free additives for the goodyear process.
/S
simple? Have you been in one? I have, it is an inadequate toy and nothing more. Dmaned sure not a work truck and you would not want to take it offroad or any appreciable distance away from 240 volt charger, that is according to Ford. You really are a simple minded idiot.
He’s paid to be that way.
simple? Have you been in one?
Ad hom …. i win.
And really, you have been in one? Please prey tell when did you get the privilege to ride in one of these yet to be released machines?
Simon’s been caught in another lie, so he grabs any excuse he can to leave while claiming to have won.
I’m not the one lying. I want to know how 2hotel9 can claim he has been in one of the new F150’s like he claims. Maybe he can direct us to the review he wrote?
You lose, yet again. They are being built less than 100 miles from me, and have had examples at several auto shows. Two were at a local Ford dealer, trucked in on a flatbed cause they could not make the drive on their own. Please feel free to quite clearly illustrate just how simple minded an idiot you are, it is quite entertaining. Oh, and do another 180 and claim you are talking about some other electric F 150. Then do another 180 and claim you were not talking about any F 150. Then do another 180 and cry that everyone is being unfair and hurt you precious feelings. That is always worth a laugh.
So this guy flat out lies about driving this truck and he still gets 15 up votes here. No integrity whats so ever.
Never said I drove the turd, no one did, simple minded idiot, we just got to sit in the cab, look underneath, feel how flimsy the bed was. You really just can’t help being a simple minded idiot, can you?
Have you?
Have you? Nope, no one has except the very lucky few select reviewers.And they are reaving.
Selected reviewers, you mean?
Now that’s a typo that I actually agree with.
What are they reaving, exactly?
They would hand selected initial reviewers would be hand picked who are guaranteed to print the right message.
The fun part about this sucker is it weighs in at over 2 tonnes and that is empty as the battery weight alone is over a tonne. The one thing you can say is true is you don’t want to run into or get hit by one of these suckers.
You haven’t driven one? then you’re not qualified to talk about them (by your own logic). No integrity whats so ever.
Really? Their “reaving”? If so that’s a damned good reason nobody should every buy one, and the rest of us better destroy those things fast.
Does the Biden know we’re facing a crisis much worse than ChiCom-19 — EV Pickup trucks that turn drivers in to Reavers?
Could someone wake him up and tell him please?
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1132316_2022-ford-f-150-lightning-ev-photos-price-specs-review-details
2022 Ford F-150 Lightning
“Ford claims to be the first automaker to add a backup power system for the home. Called Intelligent Backup Power, it can output 9.6 kw to power home appliances and keep the lights on during a brownout or natural disaster. To enable this, an available 80-amp Ford Charge Station Pro will be offered with a home management system and home solar from SunRun. Altogether the system will be able to make smart power fill-in decisions and power a home for up to three days at full power or up to 10 days “if power is rationed,” Ford said.”
Ford says the all-electric F-150 starts at $40,000, and you get a subsidy from the federal government of $7,500, so that’s not a bad price, especially when you can use it to power your house in a power outage.
I would prefer the hybrid gasoline/electric F-150. The hybrid could power your house longer than three days by just keeping it full of gasoline. I’m not sure, but I think the hybid version has a 7.4kw external power option, but the last price I saw quoted for the hybrid was about $70,000, and I dont know if it qualifies for a federal subsidy or not.
If they priced the hybrid down at about $40,000, that might be my next car. 🙂
Forcing people to drive electric vehicles is a very stupid idea. I’m glad California is playing the role of crash-test dummy here. The stupidity done in the name of reigning in CO2 is unbelievable.
I get the feeling that spectacular government failures are just around the corner.
$70k is top-of-the-line. Hybrid version adds $2500-4500. It adds power and slightly-better fuel economy.
Tested: 2021 Ford F-150 Hybrid Proves to Be an Electrifying Workhorse (caranddriver.com)
So the price difference between the price of a total electric F-150 ($40k – $7.5k = $32.5k) and a hybrid/electric (70k) is $37.5k.
I don’t know that that is enough of a price difference to get me to go through the hassle of recharging the vehicle every day. 🙂
Including a small gasoline engine in with all those batteries costs an extra $40k?
I wonder if Ford will make any money selling the all-electric F-150 for $40k?
I wonder how much it would cost an individual to add a small gasoline engine to an all-electric F-150?
I sense an opportunity here for some enterprising individual or individuals. 🙂
Buy an all-electric F-150 for $33k and add a gasoline motor for a cost of about $5k, to the configuration, and you have a $40k hybrid/electric vehicle which compares favorably to the cost of a hybrid/electric F-150 at $70k+.
It’s my understanding that the all-electric F-150 has an empty compartment where the gasoline engine used to be located, and they now are going to use it for trunk space. They call it a frunk (I guess because it is located in the “F”ront of the vehicle).
So just slip a gasoline engine back into the frunk and save $30k over the price of a hybrid/electric F-150.
Small gas-powered generator bolted to the bed, there you go.
But that cuts into your bed space…
In the frunk, TonyG (the old engine compartment).
Yeah, Tom, I missed that the first time around, noticed you mentioned it AFTER I posted. (reminder: read more carefully)
But it did get me wondering if this thing comes in a full-length bed model. Not that I want one, just curious.
Ford is breathing their exhaust gasses when they say that their 125 kW-H battery can supply 9.6 kW for three days. It comes out to about a half day, and that would leave no power left to move it to a recharge station. 9.6 kw would barely run a good heat pump as well. You will need a heat pump when they turn off your natural gas and fuel oil.
You just gave the best reason for buying a hybrid F-150 over a total electric F-150.
With the hybrid/electric, you don’t have to mess with recharging from the electric grid. All you need is gasoline to run the gasoline engine, which does the charging for you, and you can power your house for as long as the gasoline lasts.
? A solar system generating 5 kwh can easily run a 50 amp circuit.
So would not a 125 kwh battery give you at least 25 hours of said continues production. In a black out one generally nerds intermittent draw to cycle a refrigerator and freezer, spark gas appliances, lights and TV, recharge cell phones. ( Not much else)
A solar system generating said 5 KWH at peak may produce 45 KWH a day. That would run a normal house with a pool and pump running 8 hours a day, and still have excess production back to the grid ( when they most likely do NOT need it) I see zero problem in 125 KWH battery giving more then 3 days of emergency power. ( Unless of course you just got home with a depleted battery and the power went out)
kWh is a unit of energy (SI joule), not power. Energy is the time integral of power (W).
Yes, yet that does not contradict what I said.
What you wrote makes no sense at all.
If I have a 50 amp breaker, running an AC that pulls 40 amps and a solar system producing 5 KWH, I have adequet power production to supply that draw. A watts to amps calculator can demonstrate this.
A 125 KWH battery can supply more then the average household draw or load for 3 days.
Toyota’s Rav 4 prime ( much smaller 19 KWH battery) provides a15 amp outlet that, in an emergency, can power some lights, a TV, and cycle your refrigerator as needed. Adequet for most black outs. And the 600 plus mile range does not hurt. (42 miles elect only)
We had two examples of this wonder turd all electric F 150 at a local Ford dealer. Brought in on flatbed, only one actually moved around the parking lot. Very sadly comical.
A 10 KVA whole-house natural gas generator will run a whole lot less, and has the advantage it will work while you have your EV F-150 away from the home, where the rest of the family won’t be stuck without power. Here’s a 10 KW propane / 9 KW natural gas model for $2,997.
The utility-mandated automatic transfer switch, professional installation and possible code upgrades will run at least another $1,000. But the transfer switch and code upgrades would be required for the EV F-150 option also.
From someone who uses a truck (as opposed to just driving one), you can keep it.
How are those knuckles bleeding these days?
Just a few minutes ago, Simon was declaring that an insult was proof that he had won.
Just goes to show how big a hypocrite he is. It also goes to show that even he knows he can’t win on the facts.
Apparently Simon doesn’t like that I make decisions for myself on what sort of vehicle I prefer. I guess he’d rather force me to choose what he prefers.
Apparently, simple was upset at being termed simple.
The trouble with ad hominems is that they’re not ad hominems when they’re true.
Every time simple and his cohorts comment here they prove their nicknames.
Childish nicknames are used by childish people. The thing is they are not mature enough to realise how it makes them look.
Is that better or worse than making your initial comment?
So take care we have a mature pratt or what most of us call a dropkick on our hands.
Isn’t it funny how Simon invoked the worst bit of name-calling in this thread in response to someone who has never called him anything but Simon?
I’m guessing that you actually believe that the F-50 actually refutes anything that was written.
I read a review of the Ford F-150 Lightning. What does the version with the extra “e” add? And what does the small “f” take away?
No such vehicle.
I think there is, the payload gets lighter the larger the battery pack installed.
wink!
I think I understand, Dennis!
Empty headed vehicle buyers offset extended range battery weight, a little?
Needs a kite and a thunderstorm to recharge?
Look at the bright side no criminal in their right mind would want to steal it.
Exactly the security would be too much for them and they probably wont grasp for some time what they are missing out on.
Some people.
You can take a horse to water . . .
It’s already underwater on all topics at WUWT.
in the last few years, there have been multiple examples where large numbers of people had to use their cars to flee natural disasters. With limited range and limited ability to recharge while on the road, EVs could be a death trap. I am not going to give up ICE. I don’t dare put my family’s life at that kind of risk.
The normal risk of being stranded without “juice” is enough of a trauma. I normally keep a quarter tank of fuel in reserve to reduce anxiety and increase safety. This reduces the effective range of an EV considerably. With scarce charging stations 1/4 charge reserve may not be enough.
Back in the old days last century, I always carried a one-gallon can of fuel in case of emergency. Haven’t done that for decades, but at least it is an option for an I.C. engine. Not so with an EV, although a tiny fossil-fueled generator, and a can of fuel for that, could be an option. Marketing opportunity for very small lightweight generators?
Hahahahah! Practical suggestion, Mike… and funny!
Somewhere in the past year or two (or 3?), someone posted a picture of (I think, Old Timer’s disease) it was an EV towing a diesel generator.
Now there is someone without an iota of range anxiety 😜
This isn’t the one I remember, but close enough.
electric-vehicle-generator-trailer.jpg (468×242) (gajitz.com)
Perfect, you would only need to use it on long road trips.
One company was marketing a generator on a trailer you could tow behind your EV. It was even painted to match.
Can you run the generator while you’re driving, with the EV plugged in?
I live in a medium sized city. In my area, many homes do not have a parking space, everyone parks on the street at whatever spot is free, many times at some distance from their house. How does one charge their car under those circumstances? This has not been well thought out.
This idea was never intended to work.
They have always been opposed to private transportation. The proles are supposed to ride busses, or walk. Cars are for the elite.
When unemployment is high, well, good thing it usually takes about 8 to power a sedan chair.
Who need cars when you have prole power?
.
.
High octane is when Nancy gives them all a scoop of ice cream from her $26,000 freezer so they can double-time it on the sugar buzz.
It sucks when one of the proles gets a pebble in their sandal. Fix-a-Flat is useless for that.
There’s the problem, thinking things out properly is not applicable to the left.
Who needs thinking (and logic) when you have feelings? Ideas don’t have to be effective and solve problems, the just have to feel like they do. And when those meanies on the right point out the flaws with thier microaggressions (IE using thinking and logic), just duck into the nearest safe space, where you don’t have to listen.
Like a long discharged EV?
11. Low Top Speeds. Most regular everyday EVs are quite slow. The top speed of the Golf E or Kia Soul EV is limited to below 100 mph, for instance.
This was a joke right?
German autobahns, 130 – 140 mph is quite normal.
Having driven on lots of German Autobahnen over twenty years I would question whether ‘140mph is quite normal’. I did not come across many stretches of Autobahn where there was no speed limit. Otherwise the top limit is 130kmh (81mph) and many strecthes have a lower limit. Also, in practice, many Autobahnen are very busy and you would find it very difficult to drive at anywhere near 100mph. One of the most comon words associated with Autobahnen in Germany is Stau (Traffic jam).
I have been on the Autobahn back in the 1970’s when there were no speed limits. Urban density was not what it was back then. My family drove from Frankfurt to Calais, Fr. Driving a new Mercedes from the factory, we had to break it in at 55mph. You could look out the back window and see a little dot of a car, then 2 seconds latter, they were cruising by so fast the wake of the air rocked a 3 ton Mercedes .
That was my experience on trips to Germany when I rented slow vehicles like a Renault Clio.
Scissor, I admire your self-deprecation by admitting this in public.
Respect!
The Germans drove fast on the secondary roads, too.
I had a head-on collision with a German car going about 80mph (him) around a snow-covered curve in the road, and he couldn’t hold his car in his lane and slid right into our front bumper. I was in a two-and-a-half-ton truck crawling up an incline in the road and going about 20mph.
I wasn’t driving, I was a passenger. The three of us in the truck were not injured, but it took the life of all three people in the car. It was a really sad, unhappy incident.
The driver of our truck was traumatized for a long time afterwards, even though there was nothing he could have done to avoid the accident. We just had to sit there helplessly and watch it all unfold right in front of us.
That is a truly tragic, but all too common event, Tom.
A simple piece of advice I got from a tire guy last time I was shopping for snow tires was –
“There’s really only one basic strategy for snow driving.
That’s to drive like you’re driving on snow”
Tom Abbot:
“The driver of our truck was traumatized for a long time afterwards, even though there was nothing he could have done to avoid the accident. We just had to sit there helplessly and watch it all unfold right in front of us.”
Sad, very sad. When I was young and full of testosterone, a common saying amongst the gang was, “Live fast. Die Young. Make a good looking corpse.”
I made it through all that and am now old enough to know that is all ballocks.
Was it Stalin who said, “The loss of one life is a tragedy, but the loss of millions is a statistic”?
He (whoever said that) was wrong. It messes me up viscerally to squish a squirrel or racoon or possum when driving; I’m upset for a long while.
But fellow members of the human race? I’m very rational. I’d know if it was or wasn’t may fault. But still I would still be VERY messed up for a l-o-o-o-n-g time even if I was not at fault. Heartbreaking.
“Was it Stalin who said, “The loss of one life is a tragedy, but the loss of millions is a statistic”?
He (whoever said that) was wrong. It messes me up viscerally to squish a squirrel or racoon or possum when driving; I’m upset for a long while.”
Um, no offense, but how does your anecdotes about the tragedy of individual deaths prove that statement wrong? While I’m no fan of Stalin’s, his statement is a keen observation of the human condition. Humans can easily emphasize with the death of individuals (hence the tragedy, as your own anecdotes attest) but large numbers of lives we have no connection to? we tend not to have the same reaction. When we can put a face on a death we tend to feel it more strongly. We simple can’t put a face on large numbers.
When someone you know dies, you might cry, you might be upset, you might spend days/weeks being depressed over it. Thousands or millions of strangers die from a natural Disaster, war, famine, disease, or other cause that you have no connection to? You might say “that’s a shame” or “those poor people” and then go about you day as normal. Even if you were the type to shed a tear over such terrible news, it’d be brief and in passing and not the longer period of grief that you’d feel from the death of a single individual.
“Was it Stalin who said, “The loss of one life is a tragedy, but the loss of millions is a statistic”?
He (whoever said that) was wrong. It messes me up viscerally to squish a squirrel or racoon or possum when driving; I’m upset for a long while.”
I feel the same way. I don’t like taking any life, even when it is sometimes necessary. I try to avoid it as much as possible.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/22/germanys-climate-crusade-may-put-an-end-to-no-speed-limit-autobahns/#comment-2600367
I have driven on the autobahns in West Germany and former East Germany. I never had a problem with the fast drivers – they typically flashed their headlights before passing me and were easy to spot.
My problem, particularly in former East Germany, were the slow-moving Trabants – round a curve and there they were, almost stopped as they plodded along with their 24hp two-stroke engines, a “marvel” of Soviet engineering, spewing ten times the pollution of a modern Mercedes, and almost invisible from their trailing cloud of white smoke.
After the Berlin Wall fell, there was so much construction on the autobahns that there were frequent episodes where the entire traffic line would completely stop. This was exciting – round a bend at speed and both lanes are stopped – you and the car beside you are running parallel, brakes in full lock-up, skidding a half-mile to a stop with a few feet to spare… … those German cars are well-engineered, and skid remarkably straight in full lock-up. And it’s way better than coffee for a wake-up call. 🙂
On remembrance of things past…
This reminds me of the sudden fall of the Berlin Wall in early November 1989.
Five of us were on a multi-week trip to West Germany in July 1989, when at the last minute we were asked to also travel to East Germany for a long weekend to meet with industry representatives there. One of our group refused on conscientious grounds, and we met him later in Cologne. The rest of us saw a piece of history – the last days of the repressive East German Honecker regime.
We arrived at Tegel Airport in West Berlin on a Friday night, and were met by an East German Stasi driver in a VW minibus. We were driven through West Berlin, alive with bright lights and partying crowds, and entered East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie just before dusk. A sharp left turn and there was the Brandenburg Gate to our left; a right turn onto Unter den Linden, and to our left was the Reichstag. I raised my camera to take a picture and our driver screeched to a halt – this seemed a dangerous move and I braced in case our vehicle was rear-ended – just then I realized ours was the only vehicle on the street, and there were no pedestrians. The contrast with the vibrant energy of West Berlin was startling – the sun was not just setting physically, it seemed to have suddenly vanished spiritually as well. Where the hell was everyone?
We arrived at our hotel, the Metropole, and later had dinner with our hosts. I was admonished over dinner conversation that “we do not jog in East Berlin”. I asked if I could go for a walk, and was told ”You can walk anywhere in East Berlin. You will be perfectly safe. Not like your New York and Los Angeles.” We went for a stroll after dinner and understood the comment – in every block there were eight police guardposts, each about the size of a bus shelter, encased in dark glass, to prevent East Germans from trying to defect through the nearby Western Embassies.
We walked past a storm sewer grate and the smell almost knocked me down – I realized then that the East Germans did not treat their sanitary sewage – they merged it with their storm runoff and dumped it into the rivers – yuck!
In the next two days we traveled though the city and countryside, visited an operating mine and had lengthy meetings in a very hot room with our counterparts. I was generally impressed with the professionalism of our hosts and particularly our interpreter, who had a remarkable memory.
I was totally unimpressed with everything else in East Germany – the people were terrified of authority and particularly of any unauthorized contact with us Westerners, clearly identifiable by our clothing – the newer buildings had rivers of rust running down their facades, probably because re-bar had not been properly buried in the concrete and was corroding dangerously – the mechanical and electrical systems were WW2 vintage, and the electronics were decades behind ours. East Germans were well-fed, but lived frightened, grey lives behind the barbed wire of the Wall.
We were fed up with the East and left a day early without our Stasi driver, made our way to Checkpoint Charlie and were allowed to leave after a rather thorough checkout process. We walked around West Berlin, and saw a memorial to those who had been killed trying to escape from East Berlin. Officially 136 people were killed trying to escape across the Wall, and hundreds more were wounded. The last person to be shot and killed trying to escape was Chris Gueffroy, on February 6, 1989. He was shot ten times in the chest and died between the wire fences. Chris Gueffroy was twenty years old.
Later, our West German industrial hosts quizzed us at length about what we saw – most had never been into the East. I described the fear I saw in the eyes of East German people, and the terrible state of their physical plant – the buildings, mechanical and electrical systems, highways, railways and the lack of sewage treatment. I ventured that given the political situation, the East German regime could not last, but I was thinking it would take five to ten years for the Wall to fall. It took 4 months.
Maybe that is the real “tipping point” that the global warmists are so worried about. There is a point when they will just drown in cesspools of their own BS. Let us hope that day is soon.
Denouement
A few years later, I returned to Berlin with two colleagues. We walked from the West toward the Brandenburg Gate, and although I no longer jogged due to cratered knees, I asked my friends if they would excuse me for a few minutes. I broke into a slow painful jog, passed under the Brandenburg Gate and ran a short distance down Unter Den Linden into former East Berlin. A curious sight for passing motorists, no doubt, but a small triumph for those of us who remember the dark days of East Germany.
“I broke into a slow painful jog, passed under the Brandenburg Gate and ran a short distance down Unter Den Linden into former East Berlin.”
Who’s the boss now! 🙂
Good story, Allan.
My one time with a fast rental car in Germany, I was able to reach about 150 mph. I about ran out of highway on my way back to the Frankfurt airport.
Most Californians don’t drive on the Autobahn, and if they do, they’re not driving their home car.
So yes, this one must be a joke.
I’ve driven in California and was passed frequently while I was driving at 70mph.
That’s in most of the state, except Los Angeles and San Fran.
My wife, eldest son, and I went to Germany in 2015. I was going on US government business, and my wife paid for herself and my son to go to be with me. I rented a no-name car (turned out to be manufactured by Volkswagen), and we drove all through Germany. I routinely cruised at 160 km/hr on the Autobahn, only because the car was under-powered and wouldn’t go any faster. The other drivers were the best I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world, and the experience was sheer bliss for me. See, I had lived in Maryland for six years just prior. Maryland: home of the very worst drivers on the planet Earth (on top of the most brain-dead parking lot design in the entire Universe). Prior to that, I had lived 28 years in Southern California, where my longest daily commute was exactly 90 miles each way, on the I-15 between Redlands and Santa Monica. That drive could take up to four hours, meaning an average speed of 22.5 mph on an interstate highway. Never ran into the same problem in Germany. If only I could import Germany into Tennessee, I’d retire there…
If you are commuting, do you ever reach that speed? No!
How often do you ever get that fast even on an Interstate/freeway?
(UK speed limit top is 70)
I’ll provide an actual practical answer to your inane question… yes, I do. This is why I am fed up with my Ford F-250, it has an electronic governor that caps speed at ~95 mph (probably at the demand of regulators to make the all-electrics seem normal). If I am driving on a highway, one-lane each way, with a 75 mph speed limit (this is not just a hypothetical, I have done it) and I overtake a vehicle doing 70 mph, I want to pass. Now when I pass, I spend the minimum of time in the opposite lane, that means I floor it, and keep it floored until I am back in my own lane of travel again. Except the speed limiter kicks in about the time I get even with the mirror of the car I’m passing. I hate it!!! I know how to suck out the governor when it’s purely mechanical, but this one is electronic, it’s all in the chip. That should mean the fix is simple, I just need to find a (possibly bootleg?) chip that doesn’t have the limiter. Anybody have any contacts?
As one who commuted an hour each way for several years…I hit 90 each way basically every day. And 100 in stretches on the way home was common.
Speed limits on the Rte 95 Highway into Washington DC are 65mph for most of Virginia and 55mph near DC.
Most drivers drive near 75mph, including near and in DC.
An EV plugging along at 60mph is just a moving road obstacle that causes people to pull dangerous driving acts to escape the EVs tail end traffic jam.
Griff winds up his rubber band on his gogo mobile when he has to drive because he is a true champion of the planet …. no fosil fuel use for him.
Have you ever driven rural roads in Texas? Cruising at over 80 is common. The scenario where most EVs would fail would be the San Francisco Bay area to Los Angeles over the Grapevine, where every EV I have heard of could not do that at speed on one charge.
I’ve driven from Chicago to St. Louis on hwy 55 and if you aren’t doing 90 mph, you’d better be in the right lane.! My rented Kia would barely do 90.
I-80 and I-70 in the central plains are the same. My old Kawasaki hog would barely do 80mph safely and with a 75mph speed limit it is common for the over-the-road haulers to be doing 80-85mph (or higher) let alone the cars!
If only the most expensive model made, can do an adequate rate of speed, that doesn’t say much for cars that might actually be affordable.
Assuming they actually getting around to making one.
You need to know what you are talking about before typing. All three models go like scolded cats. The new F150 starts at 39k which is very competitive. And try and buy a gas powered car that can move like these Tesla’s can and you will pay twice as much.
Funny you mention cats….quite a good analogy. Some EV’s are indeed like cats (a cheetah is a perfect example) – wicked fast, but no stamina to speak of. The cheetah can run circles around a horse, a dog, a camel, etc, but after a very short distance there the cheetah sits, panting and exhausted, while the slower creatures keep right on going and going and going.
Slow and steady wins the race – well, at least for those who want to get where they are going on a daily basis.
New Ford F-150 Lightning can tow 10,000 pounds. I’d say that is pretty strong. Thing is it can do 0-60 in just over 4 seconds too. Find me a petrol or diesel powered vehicle that can do that?
If they were so good Simon you wouldn’t need LAWS to force people to buy them 🙂
$39k is not the F150 EV.
It’s scalded cats.
And you are absolutely bonkers about the gas powered car claim.
When you’re ignorant, keep your mouth shut and your fingers still and you just might learn things.
“$39k is not the F150 EV.”
“When you’re ignorant, keep your mouth shut…”
Again, maybe best to actually know what you are talking about before typing. The base model F-150 EV is $39000
https://www.motor1.com/news/508435/2022-ford-f150-lightning-debut/
Like most cars the base model likely has a much slower 0 to 60 and even further reduced range. A larger battery back and more capable electric motor is likely far higher cost. I don’t know if the lightning has a build your own at Ford, but go build the Mustang Mach E, and see what I mean.
One can get a decent quick EV that makes an excellent commuter car.
( Makes a lot of sense if you have inexpensive elect and don’t depend on OPM.)
I suspect the truck EV will have limited usage.
I previously posted the link to Ford’s F150 Lightning EV page.
My source is Ford.
Yours is some magazine article.
That is just the vehicle MSRP price, not what one will be required to pay.
Making the rank bottom Ford F150 EV at least $41,000
But then, if you read either my comment on May 22nd,
OR
actually read the Motor1 article you claim establishes a $39,000 price level, you’d now the price starts at least in the $41,000 range.
That’s before Biden’s inflation adds price increases.
From Motor1 you linked:
That’s almost a thousand more than your $39,000.
Simon – My son wants one for the performance. Fun car. Awesome! Good times!
He also knows it’s pretty much useless for anything other than “fun car, awesome, good times,” and will have an ICE in the other bay of the garage for Winter or when he wants to travel.
.
.
Excellent video, Simon. Plus 1 for fun! Minus a ton for overall practicality, particularly long road trips or frigid weather.
Minus a gigaton if someone wants to tell me I have to buy one.
P.S. For the same money, I’d rather have one of the new (finally, finally!) mid-engine ‘Vettes. Where else can you get a supercar for around $100,000?
No. Even in the USA acceleration is key with most vehicles and, while top speed isn’t always linked to good acceleration, it can be a good indicator. So people will look for a good top speed as an indicator of performance when buying an ev.
I will never be forced into an EV, but electric motors have great torque, especially at low end. With an IC motor, when you have 0 rpm, you also have 0 torque. With an electric motor 0 rpm is where you get maximum torque. That’s why they can retrofit a Mazda RX-7 with a nominal 60 hp DC motor and a battery pack, and in a quarter mile beat a Dodge Viper. Top speed at the end of the run was far greater for the Viper, but it had lost so much distance in the first 50-100 ft, it couldn’t make it all up. But that is not sufficient justification to get me to put any money into an electric vehicle.
I really like the idea of EV’s but the batteries are the crucial limiting factor – too damn heavy, too long to recharge most of the time (what does constant quick-charging do to the battery life) and not enough charge in the battery. When an EV has a battery pack that can be recharged in 5 mins or less, weighs half of the current ones and has the same range as an ICE on a full tank of petrol – THEN and only then will I be interested.
👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 Richard!
Other than cost, range, recharge time, weight, coercion to buy one, and the fact they don’t offset a bit of CO2,…
…they are great!
To respond to a comment about high end acceleration, you tell how great the low end acceleration is.
No.
Top speed only tells you the vehicle has the gearing and powerful enough motor to reach that speed.
It’s really the gearing and sufficient torque to reach that top speed.
Cars set up for drag racing, even street car races install rear axle gears meant for acceleration, but punt out achieving a high top speed.
Drag racers and quarter mile times are best when the engine is powerful enough that when coupled to the right transmission and rear axle allow a driver to keep accelerating by maximizing use of the engine’s power curve for each gear.
Pushing their engines well over most vehicle’s red line limits.
Vehicles set up for touring comfortably have rear gears meant for steady highway speeds, but they might no accelerate very well.
Old VW beetles with the 1500 engine were incredibly fast accelerating off of the line. Thirty to fifty yards down the road, they couldn’t keep up the acceleration.
By the time they were put into 4th gear all real acceleration was muted and it took planning and opportunity to actually pass drivers at highway speeds.
Nor are speedometers accurate indications of a car’s ability to accelerate.
I get your point, but as an indicator, a top speed of 100 mph means that even on many US Interstate highways with speed limits of 70 or higher, such a vehicle would be struggling near its top end trying to cruise at near 80 or above. That seriously degrades range, and you rarely see an EV cruising in the left lane at those speeds, and often they are the slowest vehicles in the right lane, those you curse as idiots-going-to-cause-an-accident. Those considerations don’t exist for my ICE vehicle. 80 mph is nowhere near a rational limit, and I can cruise there for 500 miles, which I do regularly between my homes in NJ and Tennessee, stopping once in Virginia for gas. 645 miles in 9.5 hours.
My 2010 Prius had no problem cruising at near 80 or above. I certainly impacted gas mileage the way I drove it on interstate commutes (very aggressively), and nobody seems to believe I exceeded 100 mph (which I did in stretches). But it drove fine cruising near 80. 77 for long drives was my police-safe cruise control setting.
Most EVs that I see are Teslas, and they have no issues with top speeds, acceleration, or being slowest vehicles in the right lane.
Yeah that was one bad entry.
Limited to below 100mph.
Driving at 75 mph, legally applicable in many places means driving near the maximum.
Or perhaps better phrased as at battery drain maximum draw. That is, less efficient and a smaller range.
EPA’s distances are estimated using much slower speeds, driving at real highways speeds places greater burden on the battery and system.
It appears no politician has any engineering, or even scientific knowledge.
We live in a world designed by ArtStudents™ (you know them as burger flippers) and built by frauds
In New Zealand, we have one of those burger-flippers as Prime Minister!
We actually have 1 politician in the UK who can count & has engineering & technical experience .
https://thecritic.co.uk/its-alright-for-some/
Quote ” Most people will not be able to afford to have EVs “.
Quote ” Most people will not be able to afford to have EVs “.
I firmly believe that to those pushing EVs, that is a feature, not a flaw.
Way too many of them have never even had a real job! (Are you listening, AOC?)
Don’t you think bartending is a real job?
You could drop both “engineering” and “scientific” from that statement and it would still remain a correct statement.
You can add common sense to to that statement too. How many governors do you know of that got caught screwing their secretary at work (who also happens to be your best friend and campaign manager’s crackhead wife) and still gets no condemnation from women’s rights groups?
I know of only one, Gavin Newsom, the man who claims to have a moral commitment to ending climate change.
Depends on which party they belong to. If there’s an R after their name, instant condemnation. If there’s a D, silence to start with, maybe a few grumbles later down the road. Only once their “usefullness” has faded enough will you hear any condemnation
The True Cost Of Running An Electric Vehicle.
The US “Green New Deal” and UK’s similar planning to install 6 rapid charging station at main route petrol stations come in at U$990000 per charging station and UK at £1000000 or U$720000 per station – seems to me like a lot of money and got me to thinking about the “true” cost of EV’s (electric vehicles).
Ignoring all the possible subsidies and tax breaks etc. I’m going to look just at the “fuel” costs in U$ per km.
A Polestar 2 EV uses ±37kWhr per 100 km and at average European electricity price in 2021 = ±U$0.2571 per kWhr you get U$0.095c per km.
Considering that against an ICE car with similar performance say around 7.5l per 100 km at an average fuel price of U$1.08 per litre we calculate our ICE engine car costs U$0.084c per kilometre just for fuel.
So on just the energy cost, there is not a lot in it.
Next point – an EV requires a lot less maintenance – at least until the battery packs up in 8 to 10 years at which point the car is generally scrapped – no seriously – consider a 2013 Nissan Leaf (purchase price U$30000) which in 2021 has a value of U$2400 to U$6000 – entirely dependent on the condition of the battery – because a new battery in 2021 will cost you $5500 pretty much more than the car is worth.
That would cover an awful lot of the supposed “higher maintenance costs” of an ICE vehicle
Had you factored that into a life expectancy of 10 years (for the battery) and averaged 20000km per year then that would have added another U$0.0275 per km to your costs.
You also have to install a home charging system of which there a two variants :-
1) A “slow” charger that will run off your domestic supply pulling from 3kw to as much as 7kw (pretty much the upper limits for a single phase domestic dwelling).
This will cost you ±U$1500.
Remember a 37kW for 100km recharge is going to require a 12+ hour recharge at 3kW down to 5+ hours on 7kW (as per Polestar 2 EV)
2) A quick charger – this will require a three phase heavy duty supply to power this 100 to 150kW charger that will charge your car within an hour or two.
The downside is the cost of the charger is ±U$4000 and the three phase installation a further U$2000.
Recovering that U$6000 over a 20 year life expectancy whilst doing 20000km per annum you add a further U$0.015c per km to your costs
Now back to the US & UK projects that got me thinking.
I would presume the cost of U$700000 (or thereabouts) included all the facilities including the 1000kVA supply transformer required for the proposed 6 charging stations.
Now I’m going to be generous here and assume that the 1000kVa transformer (which would normally service ±200 homes) and its supply cables etc. etc. would cost ±25% of the “budget” and could further expand to support up to 15 charging stations (with reduced charging rates if all are occupied to keep the demand down to the supply limits).
Then we get ±U$690000 per charging station which can at best provide 150kWhrs to an EV in a 1 hour rapid charge or ±400km of motoring per hour.
What is the life expectancy / recovery period for this investment – let’s assume 20 years.
That can provide ±70 million kilometres of motoring in its lifespan – that’s U$0.0098c/km assuming 100% utilisation. More likely 40% therefore U$0.0246c per km
And someone is going to have to pay for it – so let’s assume it’s you! So it’s going to cost you U$0.015 at home or somewhat more on the road.
So your EV is going to cost you U$0.095c per km in energy cost plus U$0.0275 in battery replacement (maintenance) costs plus U$0.015c in charger recovery costs
Total:- U$0.1375 per km vs U$0.084 per km for your ICE car – that’s 60% more.
Yes I have ignored the tax breaks and incentives. But trust me those will have to fall away and be completely gone if (and when) we ever get to the utopian all EV future. (I have also ignored the heavy and unjust taxation of ICE vehicles used for cross subsidisation of electric vehicles or the fact that rapid charging shortens the life expectancy of your EV’s battery.)
https://thenextweb.com/news/scientists-fast-charging-destroys-electric-vehicle-batteries-tesla-panasonic
Extract :- According to the researchers, the standard process effectively killed the batteries after just 25 charging cycles. An EV car battery is considered end-of-life when it holds less than 80% of its original total capacity.
Tesla warns EV owners not to deep cycle or rapid charge more than might be necessary as it shortens battery life.
And if all that isn’t bad enough, as weather dependent energy (renewables) intrude further into the grid and older reliable plants are retired – there are going to be ongoing abnormally high cost escalations in the price of electricity as well as electricity rationing (which will euphemistically be called “demand side management”).
Typically this will take the form of turning off non-essential use to shed load – so when you wake up in the morning and find your car isn’t charged and your hot water is cold because it was turned off by the system during the night to protect the grid – then don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!
https://thenextweb.com/news/how-much-does-it-cost-to-buy-electric-car
Average European electricity price 2021 = €0.2134 = ±U$0.2571 (as of 5th May 2021)
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
I really do appreciate all the work you put into this post but I found it really hard to follow. When you write something it is easy to understand what you write. But it can be hard to follow. My critiques, meant constructively.
1.Way to many numbers back to back.
2. Too much nomenclature. You said it was in US dollars, why keep repeating it. Here is an example: U$0.1375 per km vs U$0.084 per km for your ICE car. I think this is better: 13.75c per km vs 8.4c per km for your ICE car. Others may feel different but I find it easier to read.
3. Some commas would be helpful. U$690000 vs $690,000
Take care
Further proof (your numbers) that driving fast ruins ‘economy’ per mile or kilometer.
In the US, I once had a remarkably nice BMW 745i; really something as machines went. But like all big bore, big displacement cars, something of a gasoline guzzler. Got about 17 miles to the gallon for trips between the Bay Area SF and Los Angeles … 300 miles. In metric, that’d be 7.23 km/liter, for the about 500 km trip.
Calculating backward from the 42 MJ/kg of American gasoline (and 0.88 kg/L), thermodynamically, this comes in at 5 MJ/km thermal, or 8.3 MJ per mile. Gasoline engines aren’t known for their thermodynamic brilliance, so say 20% or so. That means 1 MJ of engine power per km, or 1.6 MJ per mile.
Good enough. A 1-kWh is 1,000 W × 3,600 seconds = 3.6 MJ of energy. Therefore, I would have expected an electric conversion of my 745i to have gotten about 3.6 MJ ÷ 1.6 MJ = 2.25 miles per kWh. About 3.6 km/kWh. Good!
By comparison, using the same fuel, my newer smallest-SUV (most popular in the US) gets well over 38 MPG (16+ km/L) on the SF to LA trip. Just went there and back, and confirmed it. Finishing off the math, that turns into a combination of things, mostly that the motor is running at higher efficiency (I’m guessing near 27%), better aerodynamics, much lighter weight vehicle with somewhat higher pressure tires, and conservatıve driving. I do NOT exceed the US posted speed limits. Ever. Period. I’m old. Who cares. Bite me!
This though corresponds to about 0.75 MJ per mile, or well over 4.8 mi/kWh of electric power. In truth, somewhat less, because of the higher ICE modern-engine efficiency. Call it 3.5 mi/kWh. Or, as I like to remember, ‘1 MJ per mile’.
America’s roads sport quite conservatıve posted speed limits. Once this was done for safety; then in the 1970s, posted limits were reduced because of fuel shortages. (PS: it worked, too… we saved a bunch of fuel). The’ve been restored to the higher posted limits, and in California as well as a fair number of other states, one not only can, but is expected to regularly exceed those limits by 10-15 miles per hour.
In any case, for one tank of fuel on a long road trip, I decided to exceed all speed limits (safely, of course) by a full 12 miles per hour or about +18%. Unsurprisingly, my car’s fuel efficiency dropped by a similar percentage. One expect from Reynolds aerodynamics that air-displacement turbulence will increase as the CUBE of velocity, all things considered. Therefore 1.18³ = 1.63. If turbulence were the dominant loss, then I would expect mileage to drop substantially for that apparently small change in velocity.
At our posted 65 MPH ÷ 100 km/h limits, clearly it is not the dominant loss.
But to rejoin my original quip, at European nominal highway velocities, turbulent friction losses start to dominate the energy-use equation. Taking over from rolling friction.
Hence why the complaint of ‘at highway velocities, the actual mileage is definitly less than claimed ‘.
This would be true for petrol-or-electric cars, folks. There is nothing about an electric car that ‘revolutionizes’ the physics of moving vehicle energy consumption. It is all about mass, frontal area, Reynolds number and tire-pressure-and-‘make’.
So, mileage specs being substantially down-rated when buzzing around at 150 km/h in Europe does not much impress me as ‘an issue’.
OR RATHER… it does impress, but from the leveraged inconvenience of having a lengthy battery recharge situation every couple of hours. That is the ‘gotcha’. Unfortunately, ‘solving’ that requires something which is hard to swallow. Way more KILOWATTS of juice delivery at the recharging plug, way more charging kiosks in convenient locations, and yes, way larger batteries of LESS total weight in order to stretch those lengthy recharge ‘cycles’ out substantially. Have me a car that gets 500+ open road miles on a charge, and I’d be mighty happy with a 2 hour recharge. Or overnight at a e-vehicle motel. In America, driving more than 450 miles a day … is not fun. And frankly, rarely necessary.
The 2 hour recharge also can be mitigated by a 1.5 hour dinner …
GoatGuy
That sounds sensible, but isn’t, unfortunately.
I regularly (until covid) travel across Europe by car. I prefer to drive so I have my car at the destination. Whenever I stop at a motorway service station which has EV charging, there are literally dozens of EVs circling endlessly waiting for a free charger. The car park is full of them.
I don’t stop at these any more, I avoid them like covid. It has caused me to decide not to buy an EV for my next vehicle in Europe, especially since my current car gives me 40 mpg even at 85 or 90 mph with a/c.
That’s only if you can get to it, i.e., there is a 3-phase transmission within sight of your residence. But most residential developments in the U. S. don’t have 3-phase available within miles. (The neighborhood is laid out taking a single phase and sending each in different directions, in a development of a 10,000 acre parcel, the only 3-phase is at one side of that 10,000 acre parcel.) And last I heard, installation/extension of a 3-phase transmission line was $1,000,000/mile(? I don’t have a reference so I’m going by memory, if I’m wrong I’m sure someone will let me know).
Most people that can afford an EV have a garage and sleep at night.
( Really, many computer EV owners love never having to pull off the Highway and get in a Costco line. Often there is a 25 minute trip, off highway, get gas, back to highway.): So for THEM night charging is very effective and convient.
The Toyota system is built to fully charge your vehicle just before you leave. They guarantee their battery for 150 k miles.
It’s very sad. BEVs are almost there. It all boils down to the battery, in the end, It’s too heavy for its energy storage and uses too much of an element that isn’t that abundant…all the other problems are soluble. Just not those two
what we need of course is a way to take a tablet of plutonium and use to to power the car for a whole lifetime…never mind cold fusion – cold fission would be brilliant. Of course, it’s a myth…like the rest of ‘renewable energy’
In Search of the Magic Battery.
I often ponder something, a little bit, similar
From being a near naighbour of what was Windscale, now Sellafield, I remeber attempts by them to dispose of ‘nuclear waste’ by glassifying it into (45 gallon sized) barrels. (The dumping them into subduction zones in The Ocean Somewhere.
But I thought, they’re still making heat, quite a lot hence all that stuff sitting in cooling ponds all around the world.
Especially for Sellafield part of the world, I thought:
Why not bury one of these barrels in the garden of people’s houses/homes and use it as a ‘furnace’ heat source to keep the house warm
No emissions. No maintenance, Ever lasting. Solves soooo many problems all at once. ##
Especially Cumbria and further north into Scotland, houses there need heat for at least 10 months of the year, (It’s the wet, damp and wind that are the ki11ers)
## Apart from the fact that everyone, certainly now in the UK and many thanks to Tony Blair and Harriet Harman tripling the size of the UK Statute Book…
…..that everybody is A Villain. All the time. Everybody is A Crook, Liar, Cheat and Potential Terrorist
And therein is The Madness that will destroy us. Nobody trusts anybody any more. Everybody is depressed and and paranoid. Constantly
Exactly what’s happening inside Climate Science
I’ve said why so many times:
So my nuclear heating system goes right down the pan.
But again, all its ‘pros’ don’t leave room for tax, regulate and control
Radioactive materials can leach out of glassified waste. You don’t want that in your garden getting into your carrots or leaching into the water table. Deep burial of radioactive waste is safe, burying it in your garden isn’t.
Soil erosion from plowed fields is a problem – that’s why there are soil conservation programs to help minimize it. Soil erosion in natural, untilled areas has been going on for millions of years – that’s why there are valleys – nothing new and certainly nothing to get your panties all in a bunch over. Give it up – move on to something that is actually a problem.
I think you’ll find that the battery is a substantial portion of a BEV, hence the name. Most of the vehicle parts and structure have been culturally misappropriated from ICE vehicles. That means that anyone building a BEV doesn’t really have too much work to do, yet they still can’t get around all the problems.
Most affordable electric cars on the market have a bit more than a 130-mile-range.
No longer true.
Yes Griff. Good pick-up.
As has been documented here, the actual mileage is significantly less, especially if your travel requires that you do more than 70 kph for any distance.
“Most affordable” needs to be defined, I would put that as anything under €30,000. You’re not reasonably going to put any more than that into a commuter vehicle.
That covers the gamut from something like a Renault Twingo to a JAC iEV7s, which have ranges of 80 and 139 miles respectively.
(Notable exceptions: Mazda MG5 183 miles, Zoe ZE40 158 miles)
Adding a few grand more to the price (€34,000) to buy something like a Kia e-Soul 39 or a Skoda Enyaq iV 50, you’d get a range of 142 and 183 miles respectively.
It should be pointed out that these are showroom numbers and real world driving has difficulty replicating them.
Still not even close. I will settle for nothing less than 350+ miles without refueling, fully refuel in <10 minutes, and no increase in price. Anything else is a step backwards and I will not do, I’ll make like a Cuban and build my own parts for may damn ICE before I drive an all electric vehicle. Unless I’m getting in at least 9 holes while I do it.
The new Merc EQS coming out soon is the only one I know of with potentially that kind of range, but you’re talking silly money.
I’m a total petrolhead Red, I just like to keep up with what’s happening.
My land cruiser will go 1,600km (1,000m) on a tank. In Australia, EVs are useless except for the latte-drinking suburban soccer-mom classes.
Doesn’t even work for latte soccer moms anymore by now they just tried to update the EV and found out it’s resale value 🙂
Volt EV 260 miles, 22 k out the door. ( Subsidy gone) Consistently gets more miles then range stated.
Good commuter car for anyone with a garage and EV outlet.
All true, but they’ll just continue to force the price of internal combustion off the charts. Then none of this matters to the choice between bad or worse.
Indeed, the decision has been made and the peons just need to get with the program. Of course many of us will be bounced out of driving and onto public transport which is another feature of the plan.
While those in charge continue to use the three ton+ Ultra ICE SUVs.
Or be chauffeured in an equally massive limosine.
Just goes to show being highly educated doesn’t make you clever
Or smart for that matter.
Indeed, many “highly educated” people may have a lot of “book smarts”, do very well in their field of expertise and can rattle off trivia like nobodies business, but a lot of them also lack “street smarts” IE when it comes to everyday life, they’re not very bright. some of the “smartest” (in street smarts) people I’ve every met never went to college, and some of the “dumbest” (again in terms of street smarts) had degrees from “top ranked” institutions of higher learning. Education = aquired knowledge*, it doesn’t = smart.
* and even that can be questionable given some of the classes taught in todays colleges and universities.
My father used to call them “educated fools”
A missing point: the grid can only recharge a small number of EVs at any one time. Second missing point: there is not enough copper mining capacity in the world to provide the metal that widespread conversion to EVs would require. It takes between 12 and 20 years to develop a known copper deposit into a producing mine, thanks in part to government regulations. The same can be said for the metals used in the battery. Third point: while crude oil comes from widespread deposits including deep ocean, the minerals that EV production need only come from land that must be dug up and from far fewer countries. In short, an EV future is not the Utopian replacement for existing vehicle technology that it’s advocates tell us it is.
There is a mountain of high grade copper in the Aleutians, however the same people that want EVs have closed it down forever.
not to mention a billion pounds of copper in the Pebble Mine … alas that won’t ever be mined.
That is the big issue – not enough electricity. We already have rolling brown-outs/black-outs in CA, and the Governor already issued emergency stay-of-closure orders for many nat gas peaker plants because we simply do not have enough other electrical generation.
Add in the loss of Diablo Canyon in a few years and it’s going to get even worse.
Adding a few million more EVs to the grid is simply not possible. There isn’t enough electrical power now – increasing demand whilst cutting generation ensures a massive fiasco.
Doesn’t mention agency charging costs. IONITI, a European agency, charges 0.69 euro per KWh. Say £27 for 150 miles. I get 470 miles for £55.Running a 1600 cc diesel. With ADBLU my road tax is £20 a year because it’s so clean!
One could argue that EV mandates in the US are unconstitutional, but then I would also have argued that forcing people to purchase health insurance was also unconstitutional. The focus has to remain on overturning the Endangerment Finding for CO2 in order to put an end to this nonsense. Barring that, those States that are willing to protect their citizens from progressive tyranny are going to have to step up and nullify external mandates on energy use and production.
This idiot Zhou BaiDen actually believes it is feasible to make the entire U.S. government fleet 100% electric — 150,000 vehicles.
Might as well convert them to dilithium crystals.
To succeed in those objectives one must win elections. That would require honest elections.
I have been driving EV since 2015 and I wouldn’t go back to ICE because there is no advantage to me given the Cost of Fuel here in Ireland, + I have free work charging so most of the 700 odd Kwh I consume a month is free for roughly 800 Kms driving.
I started with the Nissan Leaf with 100-110 kms range, 140 if I drove slower in Summer but it was too much of a compromise and it charged way too slow on DC especially when cold but it was a 1st Gen affordable Ev so one could forgive it for a lot.
2nd ev, a BMW i3 with Rex, amazing car, up to 200 Kms on battery with the 94 ah battery but mostly around 140 driving hard then if needed the Rex would take over until I got to the next charger or if it was busy I could continue on petrol. Really great system and what really amazes me is that I got the BMW i3 @9 months old and 9,500 Kms, now the car is 4 years 2 months old and has 118,000 Kms, nearly 75,000 Miles and I notice no loss of range compared to when I got it.
I have a VW ID.3 on the way with 77 Kwh battery, 350-450 kms range and has 125 Kw charging can replace roughly 50 Kwh in 30 mins vs 16 Kwh in 30 mins with the 24 Kwh 2015 Leaf.
On one of my work sites I have access to a 22 Kw AC charger and with the 11 Kw charger in the id.3 I will be able to charge from empty to full in around 7 hrs not bad for 84 Kwh battery with 77 Kwh usable.
So if I have 350 Kms at a speed of around 75 Mph which was tested by battery life on youtube and an 30 mins charge will be able to get another 300 kms n a high power DC charger that would be 650 kms from setting off with 100% and stopping for 30 mins, that’s good enough for me, the only real issue here in Ireland is that high power chargers are few and far between, still, if I stop for a meal somewhere, usually I’d be longer with the family on a long trip anyway so a 50 Kwh charger would do fine in most cases but using public chargers would be a rare occurrence with 350-450 Kms range anyway.
I really like the idea that there is no Pm.2.5 and other pollutants coming from the car, I don’t care about Co2 because I think there should be more of a focus on actual pollution that causes real harm to human health and any wind energy on the grid can go to charging the car as up to 65% of the total grid mix can come from wind alone on windy days here.
As seen in this link below currently 48% of our energy is coming from wind and that’s no band thing for Ireland where we have little natural resources and depend a lot on foreign energy.
https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all
Its nice that your electricity is subsidized. How do the very poor―pedaling bicycles in the adverse weather at night―feel about your load they’re bearing as you whiz by in warmth and comfort?
@Lil-Mike, my work charging is free because the site owners decide they will pay for it because it’s a data centre and it consumes so much energy that charging an EV would not be noticed on the bill + they get electricity at a far cheaper rate than what I would pay for it at home.
+ the site owners can’t legally bill me for electricity as this would be against regulations as they are not authorised to re-sell electricity. They could employ a 3rd party company to bill for electricity but it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
Your numbers don’t add up. One, 700 KWh of energy would cost me about $80 in the USA. I don’t spend that much in gas commuting to work, about 1000 km a month. Also, why does you i3 have so many miles on it now if you only drive 800 km a month? Your lifestyle and mine are far different. 800 km is a weekend for me, fishing in the mountains. EVs are great for people that don’t go anywhere, don’t live life. Life for many of us Americans is more than going to work, going to the pub, and going home. We explore, travel, visit family, go to the lake and mountains, camp, fish, boat, dirt bike, ATV…
Hi Jeremiah, sorry, should have said 800 Kms per week give or take, sometimes more sometimes less.
I’m driving 30 odd thousand kms a year and probably looking like it will be more now since I changed jobs and don’t work shift any more, I used to get days off in between shifts now I’m Monday – Friday.
I’d be able to drive 800 Kms in a weekend with the id.3 84 Kwh without too much difficulty if I want.
I think you have some odd assumptions as to what us Irish get up to in our spare time. You do know Ireland is an Island don’t you ? So a lot of time is spent at Airports or on Ferries lol.
I get you don’t like ev because you don’t believe in all this climate change bullshit and I don’t either but it’s not why I drive an ev, I drive one because I like driving EV compared to ICE and it’s a lot cheaper to drive because of the tax we pay on fuel. It would cost me around 2200 Euro’s a year in Diesel compared to around 200 in EV or less with work charging, I charge some at home for non work related trips but this will be even less when I have the id.3 with much more Kwh of storage. it’s really a no brainer for me don’t you think ? For me, I didn’t say it should be for you or anyone else.
“700 KWh of energy would cost me about $80 in the USA”
In California try $129 to $245 season and time of use.
North to south, Ireland is 486 km (302 miles) long and 275 km (171 miles) wide, going east to west. It’s slightly smaller than Indiana.
Several times a year I drive 1000 miles in 14 hours, traversing three states.
Yes, it’s an Island so Airports and Ferries are busy lol.
I could drive 1000 Miles or 1600 kms with 4-5 30 min stops if I wanted to on the Continent, even though I’ve never driven that far in one go I would think it reasonable for someone to require such stops on such a long drive. I don’t even think I would drive such a distance in our Outlander Diesel without stopping after at least 350 Kms for 30 mins.
Stopping after at least 350 Kms for 30 mins would turn my 14-hour/1000 mile drive into a 16.5 to 17-hour drive. I find that entirely unreasonable. Maybe being forced to make a half hour stop every 217 miles is acceptable in tiny countries like Ireland but it’s definitely not acceptable in the wide open expanses of the United States.
at least this tiny country doesn’t have a crappy 120 volt Ac network connected with endless amounts of wooden poles, at least not in towns and cities.
Mark, I wasn’t dissing Ireland, I was just pointing out the vastly different driving conditions between it and the US.
BTW, wooden power poles last hundreds of years in my dry, high desert climate where daytime humidity levels are frequently in the single digits and exceed 50% only when it’s raining, which isn’t very often, evidenced by our annual 15″/year rainfall. No need for concrete or metallic local power poles.
My 150-year-old neighborhood has 7,200 volts running down the alleys which is stepped down to 120 volts (times two, 180° out of phase) from the power pole to the service entrance/meter, which usually no more than 50 feet away.
We have our fair share of wooden power poles mostly in the country areas where under ground cabling isn’t practical but they’re not everywhere like they are in a lot of US Urban areas and over head cabling is a lot more vulnerable to failure not to mention the cahos they can cause to Amateur radio Folk. + so many poles is very unsightly, in my opinion.
Mark, geology probably has a lot to do with the prevalence of local power distribution installed underground vs. strung on poles. All of Europe north of Spain was fully enveloped in miles-thick ice during the last glaciation period, while only the northern third of the present day US was. Glaciers grind subsurface rock into fine soil, typically to a depth of several meters. It’s much easier and less expensive to put underground cabling in clay and loam than bedrock.
In my part of the US putting local power cables underground would require explosives to remove the bedrock, much of which is exposed.
I do the same, on one tank of fuel, and staying in one state!
No road tax, just wait. Your usage and supposedly free power is very exceptional
No road tax ? explain that one to me ? We have Motor tax in Ireland and all electric cars have to pay it along with ICE cars, no exceptions.
“Your usage and supposedly free power is very exceptional” What do you mean by this ?
This is the BMW app for the i3 and in the below pic it shows what I consumed fro April, consumption would have been higher but I had a few days off.
Mark, I don’t know how Ireland structure it’s taxes, but in the US, ICE owners pay taxes everytime they fuel up (Gasoline tax, which is “earmarked” for road maintenence). EVs don’t use gasoline, so aren’t paying that tax.
As for second point ““Your usage and supposedly free power is very exceptional”, While I don’t know how exceptional your usage is vs typical Ireland drivers, It’s certainly not typical of drivers over here in the states, but that seems to me the least important part of that point that was being made by nickc, the more important part, which you didn’t reply to in that post, is the bit about your free power being exceptional. Most EV dirvers, I hazard to guess, don’t have the luxury of a free charge from their work place. Where I work, for instance, there are no charging stations, so If I had an EV, I’d either have to charge at home (adding to my electric bill – which is OK for folks like me who live in a house where I can do so, high-rise apartment dwellers, for example, aren’t so lucky) or spend precious time waiting at a thrid party charging station to charge up (which would also likely require a payment to do so). So not exactly free or convienient for a good portion of the populace.
Hi John, Fuel tax here in Ireland is 60 Euro Cents on 1 litre of Petrol, or roughly 6.74 USD per US Gallon. Extortion.
I still pay Tax called motor tax every year the same as any other car. + when I buy a new car there is substantial tax on the cost of a new car. A Tesla Model 3 SR+ basic costs nearly 50,000 Euros here, around 12,000 of this goes straight to the Government to squander as they wish.
In my previous work place, A gigantic Data Centre, any employee could charge for free also as the cost of charging electric cars is minuscule compared to powering a 200+ Megawatt site. I’m sure there are other work places who offer free charging.
Indeed there are People who have not got the ability to charge their cars and this is not something I can solve, I do feel the Government could do more to make apartment owners/renters have the right for the ability to charge but apartments are complicated here as they are controlled by so called management companies and their sole purpose is to say no to everything.
…I do feel the Government could do more to make apartment owners/renters have the right for the ability to charge but apartments are complicated here as they are controlled by so called management companies and their sole purpose is to say no to to everything.
How exactly would that work? The government creates the right to charge and then what? Where would the charging stations be located if, as would be likely in a dense urban area, there’s no room to put them?
I don’t know about Ireland but apartment buildings in the big US cities usually don’t have resident parking lots or garages. Residents park on the street.
Most apartments here have parking and the reason I said the Government could do more is because usually People have to pay a decent price for this parking which in a lot of cases comes with the apartment and the management agencies that are responsible for managing the apartments/facilities/maintenance etc refuse to allow a charge point in this parking space for unacceptable reasons as they refuse a lot of requests just because they can. There are apartments where the owner doesn’t own any particular space and this is more complicated but nothing that can’t be solved.
For residents that park on the street there is not much that can be done for those People except charge at DC points, cars now can charge much faster and a 10 min charge can get a lot of range for city folk. At some shopping centres here they have AC points which helps.
The likes of the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 can replace 100 Kms range in 5 mins but it will be some time before there is widespread coverage of 300 odd Kw chargers but it’s a step in the right direction.
“ I said the Government could do more “
Translation: let the taxpayers pay for what you want.
Exactly. In Victoria, Australia, they just introduced a ‘kilometrage tax’ on EVs. There was such outrage, they had to add huge subsidies for buying one!
It’s funny how fixing problems caused by government always needs more government.
You say that like it’s a bonus, but in my mind it’s a drawback, ’cause nothing is free. Since you’re not paying for it, who is? About the time subsidies run out, that will cease also. I predict, just as parking meters can now accept credit cards, the day is not too far off where you have to swipe a credit card at one of those charging stations or it will remain dark. That will also be where the road repair taxes will be applied and collected.
There are no subsidies being paid by the taxpayer for my free work charging, as I said, I work in a Data Centre and they pay very little for electricity and are not authorised to sell electricity so they’d have to hire a 3rd party company who can bill for electricity and this is too much hassle for them and besides, the amount of electricity to charge any EV would not be noticed compared to powering a Data Centre.
Free public charging ended here last year which did help a lot to free up charger access as People were using them to suck as much free electricity out of the grid as they could not caring about anyone else who actually needed to charge.
1) Great for you. The rest of the populace, however, isn’t so lucky as to work for your Data Centre, and thus don’t have the same “free option” you do.
2) What percentage of the employee vehicles are they charging “for free”? If it’s a small fraction, then yeah it might nor be “noticable” or “worth it”. When it becomes the entire workforce, well that might just be a difference story.
3) All that “free energy” costs the company some amount of money. The company has to cover that expense somehow. If they’re not taking it from you (either directly by charging you or indirectly but not increasing your salary as much as they could have come raise time), then they’re factoring it into their prices (same as all their other expenses get factored in) and ultimately it’s their customers who are paying for your “free lunch”. Someone always pays, even if that someone isn’t you.
This little vignette only emphasizes that Europeans’ driving habits are much different than those in the U. S., and not even all of Europe can do what you do. For the same reason one of those single-door cars like the BMW Isetta and everything like it can sell in Europe and does not in the States. It does nothing to convince me, but by all means, continue to enjoy your subsidized transportation.
There are plenty of Americans driving electric cars and fuel prices are much cheaper there.
You bet I’ll enjoy my free work charging for as long as I can, for too long I was ripped off with high taxes on fuel.
BMW does sell the i3 in the US.
Australia even more so.
European: I’ve been driving for 20 minutes, and I’m in a different country.
Australian: I’ve been driving for 20 minutes, and I’m at the end of my driveway!
It really amazes me how easily you justify taking money from people who probably earn less than you do, just to lower your own costs.
Oh dear. Never let anyone tell you what comes off of your tyres while driving, then! And 800km a month? That’s less than 40km a working day, 20km each way. No wonder an EV would work. Little need for A/C in Ireland, too. Free charging at work? Lucky you.
The vast majority of people travel more than 20km to work, need a/c or heat, can’t park at work, can’t charge at work let alone get free charging, and can’t charge an EV at home. It’s a non-starter.
Mark I would not down vote your post except you are wrong about wind energy. And evs are great for some situations. ( Yet nobody should have to help pay for yours)
Thus was strange “have free work charging so most of the 700 odd Kwh I consume a month is free for roughly 800 Kms driving.”.
The Bolt stores 66 kwh and comfortably gets 250 miles. Almost 4 miles per KWH. 700 kwh in a bolt would give one over 2,500 miles.
I’d like to hear politicians tell us their plan on where society is going to get our plastics, asphalt, and all the other oil byproducts we use on a daily basis. If we successfully cut oil use, it’ll be exceptionally expensive to get it out of the ground at lower quantities, making everything in our lives unaffordable.
There will be no plastics, everything will be made from cardboard. Asphalt will not be required except in very small quantities to maintain the Zil lanes for the establishment elite, the rest of us will be walking.
The fact is the political left is, step by step, destroying America’s ability to produce electricity, intentionally. THIS is what will kill EVs. The only electric vehicles Americans are going to accept, long term, are those with ICE running a generator to operate the vehicle. Anything else is trash. Expensive, unreliable trash.
19. Long Charging Times. Even though Tesla and Porsche have made significant improvements, charging is still far from the speed to fill a gas tank. Putting the fuel in your car only takes a couple of minutes compared to charging your vehicle overnight.
18. Trip Planning Problems. Small ranges and long charging times can put a strain on any road trip plans. You cannot plan a fast trip in an electric car without knowing the location of charging stations. You will also need to know the estimated duration of charging or supercharging.
IMO, this is the real Achilles heal for EV’s. Based on the linked articles, getting a full charge using normal household outlets could take a couple of days if the battery needs a full charge – that is using a standard 120v 15 amp outlet that charges at the rate of 3 miles range per hour. Homeowners could put in 240v outlets and charge in half the time, but it still takes hours. Even 480 volt outlet will still take over an hour, and if you are traveling long distances, you may also need to wait in line at a charging station if other EV’s are ahead of you. And, unlike good old gas powered cars, you can’t simply have a 5 gallon spare gas can to get you a few more miles to the next station in remote areas.
You can’t just put a step up transformer in your garage to get 480. The load on your service drop is still the same and would probably overloaded the transformer feeding your community, that 4 ft cube in the corner of every fourth yard or hanging on the pole near your home. The Service drop would also have to be increased to handle the load.
Then, Calculate the expense to convert all of the present residential distribution systems to 480V [for the US]. Just one home on the present utility service transformer needing a high current charger affects the entire group of homes on that transformer. Don’t forget the most common commercial building electric service in North America is 120/208 volt wye, which is used to power 120 volt plug loads, lighting, and smaller HVAC systems. In larger facilities the voltage is 277/480 volt and used to power single phase 277 volt lighting and larger HVAC loads. This is where these high speed charges will be powered from.
I charge my tesla 3 at night (about once a week). Almost never waste time at a charging station. I get a range of 300 miles out of the tesla 3 long range so can do a 500 + mile trip with one charge at a station. And the time I save at home more than makes up for the forced 50 minute break on a long trip.
Just curious what do you do if someone is already using the charge station or it’s damaged by vandals?
You mean on the rare occasion I use a charging station? Never been a problem so can’t tell you. I guess the same thing a gas car does when the pump is broken or out of gas.
When a gas stations pumps are out of order, the next station over usually isn’t all that far away (often it can literally be in waking distance, so even if you didn’t have enough gas left to get there, you could walk the rest of the way and fill up a portable container to get your car going again). Right now, if a charging station is out of order, the next one over could be many miles away, if you are already low on charge, that could a a few miles too many and there currently isn’t the “fill up a portable container” option, even if you were close enough to the next charging station to walk it .
In Germany 17% of recharge stations are vandalized
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-icing-vs-germany-meat-prank-pictures/
This was my first thought when I heard that the new electric F150 can charge your home fully for three days. That means that it must take at the very least three days to charge it, Shirley? And of course, that is if you don’t use power for anything else!
it depends on the charging system you have at home. I can charge the Tesla to a full charge over night. If you own a f150lightening I’ll be surprised if you can’t charge it to capacity or pretty close over night.
Someone gave you a negative comment about being able to charge your tesla at home in one night lol.
Yep, they hate anything that is remotely a threat to the gas industry here. Anything. Eric Worrell is classic example. He writes article after article of anti-Tesla stuff, but admits he has never actually been in one. It is all about the mighty oil here my friend.
I can understand wanting to protect the domestic Oil Industry in the U.S, we have very little natural resources, wind being our main one so any Oil we buy has to be imported, we do have some gas in the Atlantic. So most of our energy is imported and this is an absolutely massive sum of money leaving the Island every year so I have no hesitation reducing the need for foreign energy as much as possible. The US needs a lot of Oil so it’s in the best interests there to keep producing it domestically as much as possible, the less used the more to be saved for the future.
Electric cars are somehow seen as a treat to Oil production but in my opinion the less used for cars the more to keep for the future not to mention a drastic reduction of local pollution levels.
I was about to pull the trigger on a 2nd hand model 3 Performance but the interest was too much so opted for the id.3 84 Kwh at 0%, the tax we pay on cars here is massive. Basic model 3 SR+ here costs almost 50,000 Euro’s with a nice sum of 12,000 going straight to the Government in Tax.
First two paragraphs are completely wrong. And Simon, you don’t get it, neither of you do. Nobody wants to be forced to pay for your car.
Oh, and the gas industry, liquid or natural gas, is not threatened. ( Except by politicians) Imagine Texas without natural gas.
Sans nuclear generation, EVs will never dominate the car industry.
It is the arrogance of statist idelogy that threatens us, and you as well, even if ignorance precludes your ability to understand that.
“First two paragraphs are completely wrong.” What’s wrong with what first two paragraphs ?
There’s been a lot worse subsidised than those for electric cars.
I like getting something for all the tax the Government have ripped me off for years.
If EVs were so great compared to ICE, there wouldn’t be any need for subsidies, people would be glad to buy them without “getting something” from the government in the process.
As I said elsewhere, most of us have nothing against EVs in general, it’s the subsidies and mandates we detest. By all means let companies build them and people that actually want them buy them for the actual going market rate (undistorted by subsidies) and let the market decide their fate. If they’re really as great as you think, people will be lining up to get them.
Subsidies will end some day for EV and the process has already begun here but just imagine the amount of subsidies that went to the ICE industry and the oil companies over the decades ?
For years the E.U allowed the car companies away with murder with their NEDC emissions test, a complete and utter farce created to allow the car manufacturers get away with disgracefully high emissions levels and I’m talking the real nasty stuff not Co2 which plants and forests love.
I would support subsidising EV’s more than subsidising wind farms here in Ireland which only go to line the pockets of investors and yet they can’t pay the consumer money for feeding power to the grid from their solar PV or Wind farm, yes subsidising electric cars is going to line the pockets of the investors in car companies etc but at least the person buying the EV is seeing some benefit and this will mean more 2nd hand cars in a few years time.
There are other benefits to EV too such as not having to buy small slow cars due to high fuel costs, for too long here we’ve been forced into tiny slow piles of junk with manual gear boxes due to extortionate taxes.
“Subsidies will end some day for EV ”
And everywhere they have ended resulted in a significant drop in sales. Face it, as much as you love your EV, they’re not something the public is demanding on it’s own, it’s being pushed on them whether they want it or not. Minus those subsidies and mandates, EVs would be a tiny niche of the market. Even with the subsidies they’re still no more than a small niche of the market, which is why governments are ramping up the mandates to eliminate ICE and force people into EVs. (see California’s “by 2035” mandate for example)
Do you need to try poison to know it’s bad for you to injest? One doesn’t need to drive a Tesla to discuss either the pros or the cons of one. Harping on his not having driven one is simply your method of plugging your ears and singing “LaLaLa” in order to not hear the facts that you don’t want to hear.
Yep, I live in California. I vote against every “blue planet in green Shackles” plan there was.
Suddenly my summer monthly electric bill was almost $400.00 monthly. My water bill was through the roof, and I helped fund a train to nowhere, while millions of acre feet are let go into the ocean, to save a fish they can’t find that lived well in brackish waters before the state imported game fish that ate them.
I got out voted every time, and you can’t fight city hall.
So, being priced out of house and home, I spent 15 k and put in solar. I tore out my lawn and the stupid state gave me 4 k. ( A tiny portion of my taxes paid over the years)
My solar produces about 300 excess kwh I can’t properly use, yet I still need about 300 kwh monthly from the utility for when my solar does not produce. So I bought a 600 mile range hybrid Rav 4 prime. ( Fun practical crossover car, AWD, 0 to 60 in 5.7 sec, can tow 2500 pounds) I will be able to put most of that excess solar kwh production into its 18.9 kwh 43 mile range battery that comes with a 150k mile warranty. This will save me about 200 monthly in gasoline, and 30 monthly in electricity. ( 10 cents kwh Reduced rate) The solar saves another 175 monthly.
I would have left California but my family, children and grandchildren live here. I grew up here.
Government laws and elections drive decisions. I have, over a life time, paid over 400 k in taxes, ( fed state only) and state and federal decisions are insanely expensive.
The state and federal decisions, all of which I voted against, are now paying some of my tax money back; 10 k reduction in taxes I pay, for the car, 4 k for the solar, 4 k to remove a lawn, and over a $400 monthly reduction in fuel and reduced utility (electric and water) charge going forward. Elections have consequences. My right to be left alone disappeared some time ago.
And if we get a mega drought, natural to California on a milennial scale, our people will face deep hardship and the politicians will retire to escape the folly of their callous ineptitude.
I love all the misleading pictures of EV charging. They almost always show the owner with their hand on the plug or standing by the charging port, the implication being it’s just like filling your vehicle with gasoline.They should depict wristwatch-checking and sleeping..
Or sitting in a motorway service station with the kids yelling “Are we there yet?”
Usually the kids are occupied while charging, either having food or asleep for the night or the car is parked in town on AC while we are doing what we need to.
Basically, you’re telling us if you have an EV be prepared for longer journey times, overnight stops, and expect overweight kids.
Kids need food you do know that right ? and they don’t all need or have to eat junk food and over night means cars can charge over night if you have destination charging, for instance many hotels here have charging facilities + some bed and breakfast.
No denying that an EV is not as easy to live with as ICE, I’ll be the first to admit it’s not but I have been spoiled by the Generator in the BMW i3 meaning I could bypass all chargers if I wanted to and this would be a great feature in any EV, the Generator is in no way connected to the wheels, it’s very unique, no other car like it on the road and I have control over when it comes on for instance, once charge reaches 75% it allows you to turn on the generator, so I use it on the motorways and then battery on slower roads and in town or I can stop and charge if I need to, I have the choice and I’m going to miss it probably when I get the VW id.3.
In the future a small hydrogen generator could do the same thing only we first need a way to produce hydrogen that doesn’t require fossil fuels, Nuclear being a good way but the world is too scared of Nuclear power.
If one has nuclear generation why would they use hydrogen?
In my experience, at a motorway service station, circling endlessly, searching desperately for the next free charging station. They can’t even get a meal, someone has to circle out they won’t get the next charging station. (maybe they take turns on a long trip?) And they get in everyone else’s way.
It’s ridiculous!
In Ireland there are not that many electric cars and I have yet to see all Ionity chargers in use, there are 6 sites of 4 chargers. The main company to install chargers in Ireland are the ESB and they have failed miserably to install proper charging hubs, to them a Hub is 1 x 50 Kw DC and 1x 150 KW DC which load shares with a ChaDeMo car and they only have 2 or 3 sites in Ireland with these so called hubs.
The only good thing is that having 350-450 Kms range gets you far in Ireland, if I set off with 350-450 Kms range I can get another 300-400 kms with a 30 min charge that’s if I can find a 150 Kw charger if not it would take 1 hr to get 50 Kwh on a 50 Kw charger vs 30 mins on the higher power charger.
In many big cities there are hundreds of apartment buildings lining the streets. You circle around sometimes over and over again until you finally find a parking spot. When I was a teenager living on the north side of Chicago I often had to park three blocks or more from my house. How are those people living in apartments and condominiums in big cities going to charge their cars?
In theory you could build large charging parks with hundreds of charging stalls. You would need hundreds of charging stalls for charging park because each charge is going to take over an hour and there would be thousands of cars to charge. But after working all day who wants to spend another hour or two driving to the charging park and then waiting around while your car charges? Especially if you are tired and cold and hungry and you just want to go home and have supper with your family. And anyway where would you find the open land to build these large charging parks in already congested neighborhoods?
^^^ this
It also assumes the local kids haven’t vandalized them … want to lay odds the spot you get is next to a broken one 🙂
Because of the many drawbacks mentioned, the masses are unlikely to ever adopt EVs in mass. But Norway has proven that you can entice (or coerce) people into buying them with enough financial subsidies for the EVs plus lots of other benefits coupled with lots of taxes and other penalties on ICE vehicles. I suspect that is the playbook the Dems intend to follow if allowed to proceed without a voter backlash. In addition, the Dems will do everything within their power to force up the price of gasoline to help prod the great unwashed masses into EV purchases. Expect $100 oil within the next two years as part of that process. The current administration is already putting pressure on banks to curtail lending to fossil fuel producers in addition to their other recent mandates. The US shale patch has been the swing producer in the oil markets for the last 6-8 years. That takes lots of capital. Without money for US shale the world may end up without a swing producer. That always leads to exploding oil prices.
The point is that, without the totally false and faked “climate emergency”, the market for EVs would be very very small, if not non-existent. The market for them is based on a huge lie, plus government support. Not exactly a sound business model. How long do they think they can keep the charade going?
The charade will continue as long as most people believe government lies. But there is always President Abraham Lincoln’s observation: “You can fool ….”
I think if the worlds largest Auto Maker, VW, are starting to mass produce electric cars then I think the writing is already on the wall for ICE cars. I’m 6 years driving electric and I’ll never go back. It works for me and Public charging is infrequent with work charging and I’m soon going to have a range with 350-400 kms range which I can get in work for free and even if I couldn’t I could charge at home over night while I sleep. So public charging will be even rarer.
Mark, I think we clearly ascertained above that your situation is rather rare, if not unique. How can everyone charge their cars if the writing is truly on the wall for ICE vehicles?
To back up what Zig Zag says I drive more than 130km each day … sounds like a lot but it’s just under 1hour to work and back each day (it is exactly 68km one way). On a number of days I will clock up 300-400km if I have to do site visits.
The only writing on the walls is government pushing EVs with subsidies and other incentives and mandates to do away with by ICE 20xx. If left up to actual consumers to decide, EVs would remain a tiny niche product. As can be seen by the following facts:
1) that even with current subsidies and mandates, EVs still remain a niche product at present
2) that everywhere subsidies have been cut, there was a corresponding drop in EV sales.
Most people simply aren’t demanding EVs. It’s not a product that people were calling for and they’re not rushing out to get them (certainly not abesent subsidies and other incentives).
More and more people are choosing to buy electric cars here more to do with the fact the range is a lot higher than it was back in the Leaf MK I days, charging is much faster also and the more People change to ev the more they can share their experiences with others who may then choose to buy an EV, people are changing because it suits them not because they’re being forced to but a big driver here is the extremely high cost of Petrol and Diesel fuel. If buying a new car tomorrow then they make the decision to choose EV, Petrol or Diesel, there’s no one with a gun to their heads.
I’ll take any subsidy I can get because for too long I’ve been screwed with fuel taxes for many years.
==>I’ll take any subsidy I can get because for too long I’ve been screwed with fuel taxes for many years.
You aren’t much of a thinker Mark what do you think the government will do when there revenues drop off?
“More and more people are choosing to buy electric cars here”
Great, then there’s no need for subsidies and other incentives and mandates. If they’re as popular as you say they should be able to sustain sales all on their own merits. But until then, I stand by the statement that absent those things, EVs would still be a tiny niche of the market.
I said getting more popular, without the subsidies the cars would be much less affordable and if the state wants lower emissions cars on the road they’ve no choice but to subsidise electrics and pay back some of that tax they robbed off the car driver for decades.
The state here pays millions every year to a private company for use of a toll bridge that they can choose to stop paying if they wanted to, then they have to pay millions of Euro’s a year to another private company for underuse of one of our Motorways because they get much less revenue from another toll.
They subsidise ( we the tax payer ) subsidises a lot worse than electric cars such as funding private companies, for example wind energy companies with nothing in return to the tax payer so every electric bill has a charge to fund these companies.
I am all in favour of subsidising something to return money to the tax payer much more than funding private companies. We’re not even paid if you want to export solar PV to the grid, but give it to private energy companies.
“I said getting more popular, without the subsidies the cars would be much less affordable”
And much less “popular”: IE they’d be a tiny niche of the market. Thanks for confirming what I already said.
“I am all in favour of subsidising something…”
…that you want.
I’m in favour of subsidising something that benefits the taxpayer a lot more than private companies and yes you’re correct electrics are much less attractive without subsidies but you probably come from a place that pays a fraction of the fuel costs we have to pay here and probably pay many thousands less for a new car be it ICE or EV, with subsidies here the Tesla model 3 SR+ still costs nearly 50,000 Euros 12,000 of which goes to the government so you can see the difference of why subsidies here are necessary even more so than the USA for instance which already pay a lot less for electric cars than we do after subsidies.
I think most People driving electric are more concerned about not having to pay high fuel taxes, at least where I live. + there’s the benefit of not having to get into a cold car with fogged up windows or scrape ICE off. + as more and more people drive EV and share their experience it encourages more to change, most People are not changing to EV to save us from climate change.
As the gasoline tax reduces, another tax will increase. You will pay.
As long as government is giving him stuff, he doesn’t care.
A motoring correspondant on the BBC a couple of days ago gave experiences of using a Nissan Leaf.
As mentioned above his main use was as a runabout going to the shops, school run etc.
His mileage from a charge was about 88 in good weather when new, dropping to the 50s after a few years.
He said that one should be able to buy a second hand one for about £2500, ( 90%depreciation) and a new battery would cost £5000.
So £7500 for a local runabout, but unable to pull a trailer or caravan.
I don’t know how long ‘free charging will continue, nor freedom from road tax and city congestion charges, but the big item is the depreciation from new which works out at around 35p per mile.
If you want a runabout, then a second hand ICE car will be about 22p per mile for depreciation and fuel, and it will be OK for longer runs to visit aged parents or going on holiday to Cornwall or Scotland.
You can buy a 2011 Leaf cheap like you can buy an ICE car of that age cheap, what’s the big deal ? early leaf battery from 2011-2016 will degrade faster due to the smaller batteries needing to be charged more frequently but the more Kwh the less need to charge so frequently and the longer the battery lasts and this also means that with a range of 300-400 kms currently even with 20% degradation these cars will still be more than usable than a 1st gen 100 Km range EV.
My 2017 BMW i3 with 33 Kwh battery however has shown no sings of capacity loss since I got it, it’s got nearly 120,000 Kms.
I could certainly use a cheap EV like that for my bi-weekly trip to town. I could charge at home easily too.
I’d keep my land cruiser for real trips.
I’m not sure it would be economical unless i get substantially lower or zero road tax and insurance, however, as I’d have to keep two cars. I also fully expect my land cruiser to lat at least 20 years. After 9 years it goes like new, and even the engine looks like it just came out of the showroom.
#16 Not so Environmentally Friendly is the worst problem with EV’s
Another problem not mentioned is lack of electric generation capacity to power large numbers of EV’s A problem made worse by increasing reliance on “renewables” – wind and solar.
Also the mining of minerals, manufacture and ultimate decommissioning of wind and solar when when their useful life is reached are not environmentally friendly.
A fantastic amount of misinformation and bullshit in this post, especially the laugher claiming that maintenance is more expensive and burdensome for EVs that for IC vehicles. This post is nothing but propaganda.
The cost of EVs is way down primarily because the initial EVs were sold by Tesla competing against Porches, Maserati, and BMW – not against Fords, Chevies, Rams, etc.
But now Ford has released two “everyman” vehicles including the MachE Mustang which is actually a four door CUV, and the F150 Lightning. Both of these sell for the normal range of all such vehicles they are competing against from $40K to $50K new. The other manufacturers including GM, Toyota, Nissan etc that are competing for typical middle class buyers are also pricing vehicles in that range, with Nissan offering its EV for less than $30K list price new.
Note that at least half of the cost of ownership of any vehicle in fuel and maintenance – and it is in both of those areas the EVs are far cheaper than ICVs – less than half.
And no, the range is not 130 miles – all of the newer EVs feature ranges of about 230 miles for base models and 300+ miles for upgraded batteries.
The charging time for a “quick charge” is just 20-30 minutes, time to get lunch or complete a short shopping trip. And most charging is done at home overnight, wherein a single charge will take the driver all week long on typical trips around town. New faster chargers are also coming online that are expected to reduce the fast charge down to less than 10 minutes – no longer than the average time required for an ICV to refuel.
Yeah, just not buying that stuff on projected range – that’s maybe for a 100% of the power in the battery with minimal loading, no other energy drains and with a brand new battery. Batteries degrade non-linearly, in a sort of s-shaped curve – as soon as you use and recharge a battery there’s a sharp drop-off in maximum capacity, with a similar drop-off at the end of its life, with a degradation of around 2.5% to 4.2% per year (early Nissan Leafs down to about 4.2%, new Tesla’s are about 2.5%) in between. Add to that problem that manufacturers put a recharge limit of around 85% on the batteries (due to full discharge/full recharge damaging the batteries) and you’ll quickly see that the shiny EV you buy will never reach that stated range, even under optimal conditions – in fact, if you have the radio going, aircon on and your phone on charge then you’ll be lucky to get half the stated range, getting worse the moment you drive it off the forecourt and gradually worse over the life of the battery.
I find it interesting to note that battery packs have a warranty of 8 years, a projected lifespan of about 12 years and manufacturers proudly note that the batteries should be able to last the lifetime of the car – which only gives the ev a life of about 12-14 years – most ICE vehicles will be expected to easily outlast that by a large margin.
Richard, some of your post is simply wrong. Battery degradation is not that fast. Toyota guaranteed 150 k miles on their battery, and many EV owners, not Tesla so much, claim to consistently reach or exceeded the stated range.
You say the range is 230-300 miles but as has been mentioned cold or other adverse weather affects range. #18 trip planning problems – in 2009 we had to make a fast overnight trip from southern ON to Kansas City due to a very ill daughter. How would we do that today if our only vehicle was an EV?
Projection much? This is the propaganda. Without government pressure, NO manufacturer would even contemplate an all electric vehicle, mostly because there is still going to be a price difference that current government subsidies cover.
My BMW i3 needs service every 2 years or 30,000 kms, hardly very expensive + the battery is showing no signs of capacity loss after 4 years 2 months and almost 75,000 Miles. It’s the 94 Ah battery, very impressed with the battery life. I have the VW id.3 Tour 5 ordered for July, 84 Kwh, can’t wait. Nice car to drive. 6 years electric now and will never go back to ICE.
Fine but don’t try and force others into that choice .. if they are so good everyone will choose to buy one. So are you against the compelling via the use of laws?
Force, you mean by talking on a website ?
I don’t think laws should force People into Ev because they have to make the choice themselves it’s just very attractive where I live due to much higher fuel taxes, People are not changing to EV because of some nonsense they call climate change, they’re changing to Ev because it’s right for them and compared to regular ICE car, a lot cheaper to run and if buying a new car or nearly new anyway Ev makes a lot of sense.
I’m unaware of any law here forcing anyone to change to Ev.
The new generation of electrics like the VW ID range is encouraging more people into EV that otherwise probably wouldn’t have changed and as they improve further even more people are going to be interested and not want to drive ICE cars, I drove diesels for years and some petrols and I was a die hard TDI fan but it just doesn’t suit me any more because EV has many more advantages for me.
Try C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A
Duane
Here is best report comparing battery electric vs internal combustion vehicles that I have
seen. Mainly its a Tesla S vs Toyota Camry, but it looks at the entire life cycle: from mining
the ore for production, purchase price, maintenance, to recycling the car at end-of-life.
https://energy.mit.edu/insightsintofuturemobility
IIRC the 2019 MIT report assumed no battery replacement, no difference in insurance costs
and no subsides. A very thorough (and long, 220 page) review.
My take: because of the cost of the batteries a BEV will not be cost effective to an ICE for another 5-8yrs.
Duane, it was very nice of you to appropriately label your post with your first sentance, only you put a comma after the word “post” when a period would have been more accurate. sloppy.
The EV low hanging fruit has been picked by urbanites who find them superior to ICE cars for all the right reasons, have the ability to charge at home, stay within the range limit on a single charge, and can afford them. Those who don’t meet all that criteria return to ICE cars for the convenience they offer easily negating any of the downsides. Today EVs are a niche vehicle and in California have apparently jumped the shark.
Not even that. From the article, if you had read all the way to (near) the end:
So basically, the only ones to buy them are those who have the money to waste on Virtue Signalling. Otherwise an all electric vehicle serves no useful purpose.
ancedotal counter-points:
(a) I live in Northern Virginia, where it is typical to see at least one Tesla every mile when driving. Of course there are many Toyota plug-in hybrids as well, but they just blend in. Also, about half of the motor cycles around here are electric these days.
(b) two words (?): Mustang and F150-Lightning. The 2021 production run for the electric Mustang was sold-out in 2020.
(c) while traveling round-trip to/from North Carolina last week I frequently noticed Teslas on I-95, and none of them were marooned in the break-down lane looking for a charge.
just noticing.
Now how will that F 150 handle hauling my two quads and camper into the back country?
Simple
You won’t be allowed to haul anything into the backcountry
Not environmentally friendly
Your quads will be confiscated and donated to penguin research
Your welcome
“Also, about half of the motor cycles around here are electric these days.”
So? What does that have to do with Automobiles? They’re two different things. How many Motorcycles tow thousand pound loads on a regular basis? How often does someone drive a motorcycle on long (12+ hour) journeys across several states? Motorcycles (ICE or electric) are typically driven much shorter range than cars.In short they serve entirely different use cases. But beyond that, at motorcycle scale, electric has benefits that can outweigh the negatives in comparison to a gas powered bike (unlike at automobile scale, where the opposite is true).
A couple of examples of the benefits of E-bikes that don’t much apply to E-cars:
1) Electic motorbikes tend to weigh less than their gas powered equivilent. the opposite is the case for automobiles.
2) Gas bikes are extremely noisy in comparison to E-Bikes, and the rider is pretty much exposed to the full sound level. With most cars, the difference in noise level is much less extreme for the operator, with the engine sound being already fairly quite in the cabins of most modern ICE cars.
The Chevy Bolt was the first EV, that I gave serious thought to buying, as it had a 200+ mile range and cost under $40k. The 200+ mile range is a major selling point, as it would have been enough for a stint of 130 mile round trip commuting that I did 2013-14 (took the train 95% of the time and had a company leased EV to get from the station to work in 2014 – N.B. the Bolt wasn’t sold back then). The “thought” remained just a thought when faced with a estimated $20k bill to install a charger – installation have led to a cascade of changes to bring the utility entrance to code.
Newsome was being his usual self in confusing governing by decree with effective leadership. An effective leader would first start by making sure that 1) the plan made economic AND environmental sense, 2) start off by making usre the infrastructure was present (adequate number of daytime charging stations AND sufficient reliable generating capacity).
F=MA all day everyday. When you drag an extra 1000 lbs with you everywhere you go whether fully charged or not, you waste energy not converted to motion at all times.
Electric vehicles are fine for short, infrequent and slow trips and have been around for a long time. They are called golf carts.
Not to worry. As we are constantly lectured, all of these issues will be resolved soon because reasons.
A better way to describe the mix of current EV owners is high-tax credit users, or Mini Elons. The rich are erasing part of their large tax bills and getting a vehicle and in some cases an over-priced rooftop solar system in the deal. A more fair deal for the rest of the taxpayers and voters would have been to issue a tax deduction that can be capped by other deductions and income level. But no, let’s circumvent the tax code and favor the richest buyers.
Pretty much all CAGW ‘solutions’ give rich people money from poor people. Rooftop solar and EVs are just the most obvious.
This article has a good summary of the disadvantages of owning and using EVs.
However, quite surprisingly, it does not mention the single biggest disadvantage of EVs for those truly seeking out “green” technology: that is, mass use of EVs stands to be the biggest waste of electrical energy since the invention of the heated-filament electric light bulb.
EV batteries charge and store electricity on a DC basis whereas electrical grids connected to stand-alone homes, all multi-family residential complexes, businesses and charging stations require AC electricity supply.
The AC-sourced/DC-stored-and-used electrical conversion is costly and not very efficient.
To put just this portion of the energy waste issue into perspective, consider this:
Assuming an AC-DC converter for recharging an EV at home uses a special 240 VAC, 50 A max circuit and that the converter when connected to and recharging the battery plus the batttery’s internal ohmic heating losses when being charged combine to yield an overall power transfer efficiency of 90%, eight (8) hours of recharging under such conditions yields only 61 kWh into a 100 kWh battery pack, which is near the largest size for passenger car EVs. This is equivalent to a recharge from only about a 39% depth of discharge on the battery, therefore would be not be considered a “maximum-need” situation. The energy loss during those 8 hours of charging would be 6.8 Kwh, equivalent to leaving more than eight 100 watt incandescent light bulbs on during that time.
There are additional inefficiencies resulting from the battery pack’s thermal management and monitoring/regulating systems.
Moreover, there is an additional inefficiency with the self-discharge rate of the Li-ion battery packs (almost universally used in current EVs) even when sitting idle (e.g., inside a parked car). According to http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/elevating_self_discharge , Li-ion battery self-discharge rates are“5% in 24h, then 1–2% per month (plus 3% for safety circuit)”.
EV batteries must remain above a minimum charge level when operating and even when parked long term, to avoid permanent damage.
One does not have such non-operating/storage waste and energy/fuel-maintenance requirements with gasoline ICE automobiles that sit with their engine off over long periods.
Finally, consider that the preponderance of EVs will NOT be charged using home or work PV systems, but instead from remote power plants that have, on average, a loss of 5% of total electrical energy output in the course of distributing electrical power over the grid to the homes of end-users.
All of the above-described “inefficiences” and “losses” represent wasted energy and end up in the form of heat released into the global environment, which is something the AGW/CAGW alarmists should be concerned about, if their goal is have millions upon millions of “green” EVs running all over the planet.
This issue may be common with newer ICE vehicles too. My non-electric 2020 Kia has remote start, “find my car”, vehicle health status, and other features accessible from a smart phone. These data may be stored on a server somewhere.
I think this is an important point. We should know by now how these EV’s break down and what it takes to repair them. One of the EV sales features is that electric motors are less complicated than ICE, so repairs are simpler. That may be true, but a car is more than an engine.
For me, I wouldn’t mind a EV as a second vehicle; one that I would use for the daily commute, grocery shopping, etc. But for a longer trip on the highway, I’d prefer my ICE.
They definitely are, and they will definitely be sold and/or used for marketing.
The trouble is that since most people in the developed world voluntarily give away their personal data and location, everyone is pretty much used to it all being recorded. Surveillance by product providers of all types is now just accepted by all except the most paranoid like myself. I have no ‘smart’ devices except my phone which is as locked down as I can get it.
Yes, I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
EV’s will have there own set of problems, the issue is the number of skilled mechanics able to deal with the breakdowns will be less. Want to guess how many of the existing older service mechanics nearing retirement are going to want to learn how to fix the new EV’s.
Shortage of mechanics? The free market will resolve this. You guys should love that.
EVs are probably going to deep six a lot of brands and auto sector jobs if the transition does not go well. We’re going to need a lot more concrete and asphalt for all the extra parking spaces needed for the toy second and third cars. Who’s going to be first to buy the models from the historically least reliable brands with new tech? Sure, they can work with fewer parts than ICE models but that still leaves a lot of new parts to mess up and screw customers with. Get ready for Detroit bailout #3 on the back end of this adventure. But that also works in the new policy world where crisis is a fantastic opportunity for more overreach.
#17, as with so much of the renewable energy push, is so metrocentric. How are EV sales in the countryside?
I’ll watch from the sidelines with very long life used Toyotas and keep my money. That strategy limits the personal damage but the country will be worse off in income, savings, and productive investment. Sad times are coming in the collective unintended consequences in the name of new.
EVs are racist and elite, only the well off can afford them and that will only get worse
Indeed. over 90% of the EVs I’ve seen on the roads are driven by rich white folk. Where’s the outrage over the racisim and wealth inquality of EVs?
Unplugged: Electric Vehicles By John Phillips III, former executive editor of Car and Driver.
Car and Driver tests EVs on a formalized 200-mile loop until the vehicle whooshes to a halt, causing a traffic jam in Saginaw, where being stranded earns hazard pay. Random results:
2021 Volkswagen ID.4: 190 miles
2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV: 180 miles
2018 Tesla Model 3 Performance: 220 miles
2018 Tesla Model 3 Long Range: 200 miles
2019 Audi e-tron: 190 miles
2019 Hyundai Kona Electric: 160 miles
2019 Nissan Leaf Plus: 180 miles
2019 Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor: 230 miles
2019 Jaguar I-Pace EV400: 170 miles
2020 Tesla Model Y Long Range: 220 miles
2020 Tesla Model S Performance: 222 miles
2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo S: 209 miles
2020 Polestar 2: 190 miles
2020 Audi e-tron Sportback: 220 miles
2020 Kia Niro EV: 180 miles
2021 Porsche Taycan 4S: 170 miles
The Chevy Bolt had battery fires with plenty of news coverage on those.
Another version
Audi Etron 206 miles
Nissan Leaf Eplus 208 miles
Jaguar Ipace 223
Kia ENiro 255
Tesla Model 3 LR 270
H_ll, there are many places in the USA, Canada and Mexico where distances are far longer than EV capability, especially if a round trip is necessary before recharge. Just using an EV in one direction is impossible if the EVs utilize Air Conditioning at all to keep passengers comfortable. Trust me, in the American deserts, A/C is key in vehicles that are not built to run with open windows.
Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado are just a few of the states with long distances between civilized locations.
e.g. following the Pony Express route is impossible for EVs, except for a few short portions of the route near big towns.
Perhaps some of these states can install pedal powered charging stations in remote locations for EVs running low.
Even in the more populated USA East, real travel between two locations is impossible with EVs. Unless one wants to spend precious time waiting in lines for slow charging stations for their weekends and holidays.
Late 1800s EV was becoming popular, in a very limited market, and then a revolution ….
Henry introduced his Model T Ford with a gasoline fuelled internal combustion engine and refuelled from a tin can or three on long drives away from cities.
EV revolution, and in Australia vast reserves of oil and gas, shale oil, coal that could be converted into liquid fuel remain locked away, even deposits of uranium are locked away, by order the UN – Agenda 21 Sustainability and other economic vandalism getting around sovereignty of nations by applying pressure globally.
A lot of comments below on how these negatives are BS
But the early adopters are basically free riders, sure there is no problem charging your car at home overnight because there are so few.
As the numbers increase, there will have to be massive increases in public charging stations and the grid in every neighborhood everywhere will need massive upgrading, all the way back to the power generation.
When there are no more ICE vehicles you will see exponential increases in taxes and fees on your “cheap to operate” EV which will drive operating costs through the roof
And this does not even touch on what is going to happen to the cost of electricity if the idiotic renewable craze continues.
So yes, crow about how cheap your ev appears to be and take advantage of it
Because it’s not going to last
James May (Grand Tour, Top Gear, DriveTribe on YouTube) recently reported his new Tesla had locked him out. Drive batteries were at full charge, but a “utility/accessory” battery that handles the door locks apparently runs down if the car is not driven.
Perhaps the number one reason, or a summary of all 20, should be called market saturation? This is often the death stroke for any consumer item, when all the people who might want to buy one have done so, or given up o n the idea due to high cost.
My bet would be that half the companies that have committed to building only electric vehicles will quietly fail in the commitment, and the other half will fail and/or be bought out by those that continue building I.C. engines. We may see a great number of new hybrid vehicles, as we should, but get your Teslas now, folks, they may never be cheaper.
I wonder what might happen to all the venture capital that hopes to make the entire transportation industry reliant on electrical power available only through a price fixing cartel?
James May also loves his Tesla.
Thumb down is not love or like.
It’s symbolism for sending the tesla to hades.
Guess that by 2035, Californians will be purchasing their cars in Nevada.
And still moving to Greater Idaho.
Since EVs have fewer parts, it’s going to take a lot of new engineering to get cars and trucks to break at 130k miles in order to sustain the auto industry. But I know Chrysler, GM, Fiat, Nissan, and Renault are up to the job.
Fewer parts in any EV is sophistry.
Every circuit board in an EV is composed of hundreds to thousands of parts.
Circuit boards are easily damaged by vibration, high temperatures, dirt, short circuiting contaminants, magnetic fields, defective parts, poor assembly…
Alarmists love to include every screw and bolt contained in a ICE in their total parts count, yet ignore all subcomponents in their chosen EVs.
I hope california has a sensible governor who has a delivered a reliable power grid otherwise by 2035 as there will be a lot of blocked highways with EVs needing a charge and no means of removing them as there will be no ICE tow trucks
With all of our genius politicians regulating the end of the ICEVs over the next 5-10 years, let’s take a look at whether or not the grid can handle 100% of the transportation sector being grid-powered.
According to the EIA, in 2019 the US grid delivered 12.8QBTU. The transportation sector consumed 28.2QBTU. Internal combustion engines are very inefficient, so if we assume 30% of the energy makes it to the wheels, this equates to 8.5QBTU. BEVs are more efficient than ICEVs, but they are still not perfect. If we assume 70% of the grid power makes it to the wheels, then we need to deliver 12.1QBTU through the grid to power an all BEV equivalent fleet of vehicles. It quickly becomes apparent that the size of the grid needs to double to support moving from ICEVs to BEVs.
The world has been struggling to increase the share of “green energy” (GE) on the current grid. If the grid needs to double in capacity, this will dilute GE progress by 50%. Since most people will charge their vehicles overnight, solar will be out of the picture. This means we will have a fleet of coal and natural-gas-powered BEVs. This is an archetype of stupidity.
It gets even worse when we factor in the environmental damage from rare metal mining, the lack of charging options for city and apartment dwellers, lack of charging stations along highways, battery life degradation from high-temperature operation and fast charging, range degradation over recharge cycles and depth of discharge, battery recycling, etc. BEVs are not good for the environment, they will increase costs and make transportation less reliable.
It would make far more sense to use excess nuclear capacity and all “green energy” to make CO2-neutral gasoline from seawater. The US Navy, MIT and others have demonstrated the chemical process. The Navy estimates they can make gasoline (or jet fuel) for $3/gallon using seawater. They have a plan to use excess power from aircraft carrier reactors to make jet fuel for fighter jets. This would reduce resupply requirements during battle.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/4/7/1290380/-Navy-lab-makes-gasoline-from-seawater-as-low-as-3-per-gallon
This man-made fuel could augment the fuel stream. We already have the infrastructure to transport, store, distribute and dispense liquid fuels. We already have 120+ years of engineering invested in ICEVs. There are over 3M gas pumps in the US. Refilling is easy. Liquid fuels are the perfect energy storage system. They provide very high energy density and don’t degrade except over long periods of time.
I keep hearing promises of new battery technology, but batteries will never be better than liquid fuels. People seem to forget the basic laws of physics when it comes to charging. A 100kWh battery will take over 27 hours to charge on a 120V/30A circuit and 8 hours to charge on a 240V/50A circuit. There is no battery technology that can change this. We can dedicate a 100A circuit to charging and cut this to over 4 hours, but now we are consuming half of the power of the average home. Claims of charging 80% in 15 minutes can only be done with an industrial power service. And battery life takes a big hit for a rapid charge.
In comparison, BEVs make little sense vs. ICEVs. I can’t predict when, but I suspect at some point they will be viewed as the foolish fads they are. Historically, we have already had a Dark Age. Our current time will be known as the Delusional Age.
I work from home and ride a bike a lot to get away from sitting. I am ordering my 4th e-bike.
When temps dropped to the teens my range was terrible on a charge,
With nights in the 60’s now my range is 75% more than winter cold distance.
The problem I see is car range in the winter is very low, window defrosting and heat will hurt range. Summer A/C also will hurt range. Lastly wind hurts e-bike ranges as it will with cars.
Our daughter has a PhD Electrical Engineering Power Systems. Also a pilot. She has had no thoughts of her buying e-car..
This is a replacement of Democracy by a new system – “Programmed Future”, in wchich a majority in 2035 has nothing to say, because all decisions were preplanned in 2020.
“he announced on September 23, 2020 an executive order to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035”