The word charade has several meanings, and including an act or event that is clearly false (Cambridge Dictionary), something done just for show (Vocabulary.com), or a situation in which people pretend that something is true when it clearly is not (Oxford Leaner’s Dictionary).
The charade I refers to is President Biden’s $7.5 billion dollar investment to install 500,000 electric charging stations along America’s highways by 2030. A reliable and convenient public EV charging infrastructure is critical to achieve the President’s goal of meeting the recent EPA CO2 emission regulation that require nearly 72% of U.S. new light vehicle sales to be fully electric or plug-in hybrid by 2032. Without diving deeper into the announcement, one would likely assume that $7.5 billion is sufficient to construct the 500,000 charging stations, one every 50 miles along the nation’s highways.
To identify the charade, one must first, look at the math: 500,000 charging stations, each with a minimum of four chargers, accomplished with an investment of $7.5 billion dollars. But that is only $15,000 per charging station, installed. A single high capacity charger can cost $100,000 or more, and most stations have multiple chargers. We are now in the second year of the program and only seven stations have been opened so far. At this rate, it will require thousands of years to build all 500,000 charging stations, assuming there are sufficient funds to do so.
Global consulting firm McKinsey and Company estimates that the U.S. will need 28 million charging ports by 2030. There are just two million charging ports today. To meet the goal, about 12,000 new public and private charging ports will need to be added every single day to reach the goal by 2030.
It is true that significantly more government funded charging stations are in the works and will be opened. The stations completed so far cost significantly more than what has been promised. With retailers contributing land to the projects opened so far, the cost of each station has averaged one-million dollars, with the government participation of 80% of the cost. Eight-hundred-thousand dollars for each station is significantly more than the 15,000 committed by the administration. At this rate, the 500,000 charging stations will cost the government $400 billion, not the $7.5 billion the President has promised.
If the administration is so wrong with this program, one must consider how many government programs designed to bring electric vehicles to the masses are similarly defective.
Geoffrey Pohanka, Chairman, Pohanka Automotive Group
Capitol Heights MD
(p.s. I own two EVs, like them, and they are my daily ride)
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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Then there are the costs of replacing stolen cables.
Obviously, there needs to be common sense cutter tool laws to end this senseless stealing.
Ban scissors!
Should we ban assault tools?
I’m sure we would be treated to thousands of pictures (AI if necessary) of bolt cutters around the throats of frail and elderly appearing men and women, trying to make them look “scary” enough to attract just one more vote.
I’m sure such laws would stop dedicated crooks. 🙂
Because clearly it’s the fault of the tool, not the vandals wielding it.
Boy, pliers, electric wires.
Blue flashes.
Boy ashes.
Then there are the costs of subsidizing the electricity provided by those 500,000 government-funded EV charging stations.
Based on the above article’s estimate that each charging station will cost more like $800,000–1,000,000 instead of the pie-in-the-sky imputed $15,000, there is no way such additional infrastructure cost can be paid back by selling electricity even at $0.30 per kWh when amortized over, say, 30 years of service life.
Therefore, implicit in the above article but not mentioned, is that those 500,000 charging stations will have to offer
governmenttaxpayer-funded subsidies in order to draw in customers that would otherwise use commercial business-funded EV charging stations (e.g., Tesla, Ford*) that would offer lower per kWh pricing.*see also https://fordauthority.com/2023/07/seven-ford-rivals-team-up-to-create-new-ev-charging-network/
Let us not forget the continuous and forever increasing costs of maintenance, security and upgrades. Does anyone seriously expect a charge station to not need to be upgraded or replaced in its thirty year amortization? And look how much resistance there is now to the failed technology. We are supposed to believe that this whole concept of private ownership of EV will go forward even five years from now?
At best, the EV chargers are the Ink Jet Printers of our day, it isn’t the cost of the printer, it is the continued cost of all of the cartridges.
It is
funnypathetic that after $7.5B, only four or five chargers have made it into the field. I went by a Buc’ces recently, and they installed a dozen or more individual chargers/stations at one location. Willing to bet the price tag wasn’t 10 figures.Why not have the cable a part of the EV, like all of our other electrical appliances.
The charging station would have the power receptacle, and the EV owner gets his cable and plugs it into the car and then the charger.
So, no more stolen and damaged cables.!
Have you noticed the rate of catalytic converter thefts? Thieves are shameless.
A couple of problems.
Charging cables aren’t known for being overly flexible. They don’t fold up into a nice neat package. They are going to take up a lot of room inside that EV.
Charging cables, especially fast charge ones aren’t all that light either. More weight for an already too heavy EV.
A receptacle could be added to the charger, and leave the existing cable attached, so it would be an option to use the existing cable[ if its’ there], or use a separate cable.
.
If I owned an EV, I’d certainly want to carry a cable so that it’s more likely that the charger will be operating, even if the cable was cut off.
I see that a type 2 cable of 24 ft weigh about 10 lb, so a DC fast cable of 10-12 ft might not weigh much more.
I carry jumper cables in my Chevy and they shore nicely in the trunk.!
Don’t EVs have a trunk or storage area.?
If they are stealing cables from chargers, what makes you think putting the cables in a receptacle would protect them.
A charging cable will have to be many times heavier than booster cables.
You may want to carry such charging cables, but that would be merely more evidence that EVs simply aren’t ready for prime time.
Add in such cables would have sketchier maintenance and storage, that solution could cause more problems than it saves.
I expect most of that 7-bill was shipped to Ukraine, which then kicked X% back into the marxist-leftist-communist NGO slush funds.
You’re not the only who suspects that is exactly what happened. With a nominal amount of the 7-bill put into the charger program for looks. The chargers will become tourist attractions similar to the ones now crumbling along old Route 66. Ain’t going no where.
Don’t forget “10% for the big guy”.
Greens are generally appalling at simple arithmetic, but it rises above primary school level when it comes to their personal income.
Oh yeah, he needs his piece of the action.
What if I open a chain of laundromats with the the business name “Ukraine”? Think anyone will get the sick humor?
One way to find out…
It is true that significantly more government funded charging stations are in the works and will be opened.
And why should they be ‘government funded?’ I didn’t notice gas stations paid for by taxpayers. Will they be manned by unionized government employees?
Biden’s Climate Corps will top up your batteries and wash your windshield.
Government (taxpayer) subsidy = project too risky for private investors, or return on investment too low to incentivise investing.
In his February 7, 2023, State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden declared:
“We’re going to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations installed across the country by tens of thousands of IBEW workers.”
(my bold emphasis added)
Next question.
The other major difference is “for profit” owners need to be responsive to customer needs and to changes in the market (e.g. switching from “check your oil and change your tire gas stations” to “convenience stores that also sell gas”.
Gov stations will mimic motor vehicle and post offices (but probably less polite).
Think those taxpayer funded charging stations will even get an attendant? Dream on.
Good point!
But they will have gov paid managers.
Yeah, same with special bicycle paths and lanes on roadways –
why should all taxpayers and motorists in particular bear the costs of building and maintaining bike paths that only a small minority of taxpayers use.
Why not make bike paths have a toll system?
Or an annual registration fee for bicycles that use public pathways & lanes?
You expect leftists to pay for what they use?
As a bicyclist, we pay the taxes to make bicycle lanes just as much as we pay taxes to pay for auto paths. Surface roads that bicycles are allowed on are paid for out of general revenue, not from fuel and registration taxes. (county bridges might). On top of that I have a motor vehicle that requires an annual registration tax that currently is not subject to being taxed based on use. So a motorist pays the same as a bicyclist, but the motorist is actually using the roads with a vehicle far more heavier and destructive to the roadway than a cyclist.
All that said, I think that it is evil that roadways are being converted into bicycle paths. A bicycle can be used for recreation and transportation similar to automobiles, and it a bike path consumes less space than a roadway, yet a roadway moves several orders of magnitude more people than a bicycle path.
As a compromise, I would love that the right lane (in the US) be a few feet wider than usual so that it can accommodate the occasional bicycle without holding up traffic and the vast majority of time just be a wider lane for less attentive/skilled/sober drivers to weave around in without being a danger to others.
Sidewalks are for pedestrians and kids, not people training for a triathlon.
OK, so what other forms of personal conveyances should also be provided with free dedicated lanes –
horses?, dog-sleds?, roller skates?, billy-carts? scooters?
The reason that they have to be government funded is that they will never come close to being profitable. Even if they charge a multiple of the utility per kWh cost, there is no way the income will payback the capital investment in the lifetime of the equipment (or probably the life time of an investor).
How about a summary table of gasoline/diesel units.
How do I compare 500,000 x 4 to the existing system?
What’s the skinny on $100,000 per a single high capacity charger?
It wasn’t installed by Tesla! The federal government could have contracted with Musk and thousands more would be installed already.
The 38 billion rural “high speed” internet money produced ZERO homes served.
Starlink, which could have provided units to 150 MILLION homes for that money was rejected by a majority Democrat board because, as they claimed, Starlink is not “broadband” enough.
BUT Elon bought Twitter and broke the Democrat Oligarch control of internet access, so we all must pay.
BTW: Speed test on my Starlink, unusually slow today at 106 down, 15 up and a 26ms ping. We NEVER lose service, even with multiple TVs streaming.
Anyone but an online gamer would think that is GREAT.
I am thinking of getting a T Mobile hot spot when I move into our “last” home in Vegas. Haven’t been able to check the speed there yet.
Just checked it at our rural mountain cabin with my T Mobile Samsung 24 phone. 74.4 down, 24.6 up, 37 ms ping. With only 2 bars. Not bad. I have at times had connectivity problems however.
Ummm . . . would such be EV charging stations powered solely by solar cells, as Musk promised some seven or so years ago, or the Tesla charging stations that merely interface to the existing (near-limit capacity) national electrical grid?
…or the ones run by diesel generators just at the edge of hearing?
Musk dreams, and hopes, then moves on when it will not work. Of course they are attached to the grid.
BUT he now has 90% + of US space mass to orbit. And Starlink worldwide satellite internet and now cell phone network. And soon a Starship that is fully reusable. This is all to get humans to Mars, so that if anything happens to the Earth, the species will survive. An admirable pursuit.
A profitable EV company. That is also working on a robot. That also builds electrical storage. I know, I think most of that is a waste of government and ratepayers funds, but he is actually doing it.
Nuralink giving a quadriplegic the ability to rapidly communicate with his computer from brain impulses and working towards an exoskeleton to give him control to move his body.
I think his only major failure at this point is The Boring Company, and I don’t think his dream of a mile in a week will ever happen. Although the reason for the company, to move transportation in congested areas underground is an admirable goal.
But Musk h@ters gonna h@te. Right TYS?
Otherwise, how’s your investment in Tesla stock worked out for you over the last couple of years?
BTW, SpaceX has been awarded about $4 BILLION in contracts from NASA to develop Starship into a lander that can put astronauts on the moon. And in FY2022, SpaceX overtook Boeing to become the second-most-awarded contractor for NASA, just slightly behind CalTech which operates NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab facility.
So, let’s give credit where credit is due. Musk is not adverse to feeding at the public trough, despite what he would have many believe about his corporate “independence”.
You are funny.
SpaceX is actually launching the vast majority of US spy satellites. They are the only one who can. Other launch vehicles are being used only to maintain a Pentagon and NASA “second source” requirement. Silly but true. Since they pay other companies so much for their disposable rockets, SpaceX can charge much more for their launch services, thus making much larger profits from NASA and the Pentagon.
Fact, Blue Origin, you know Bezos’ company, was founded 2 years before SpaceX, and has yet to launch an orbital rocket. Bezos got, through Democrat crony politics during the 2 years they controlled all of the US congress and POTUS, over 3 BILLION to make a lander. I am sure you have no problem with that Crony Capitalism. And their lander will NOT be able to do anything more than, if it works, deliver men and some scientific experiments, to the moon.
So when SpaceX lands not only astronauts on the moon but delivers a whole habitat, are you coming back here to say that Musk’s 4 billion was worth every penny compared to Bezos’ 3.2 billion that MAY deliver almost no actual usable mass to the moon.
BTW: The NASA executive that selected ONLY SpaceX for the lunar lander due to the LOW bid and massively greater capacity was fired when Brandon got in control of NASA.
Blue Origin is trying to launch their first orbital rocket this month, 24 years after the founding of the company. Musk’s Space X has launched 363 times, landed 327 times and relaunched 296 falcon 9 rockets. Dragon 1 flew 23 cargo missions to the ISS starting in 2010, 8 years after the SpaceX founding, a $396 million contract with NASA. Dragon 2 has been carrying both crews and cargo to the ISS since 2019.
How much did NASA pay for the Boeing Starliner now stuck at the ISS since it is a POS? They are keeping it there to find out all that is wrong with the “service module” since it will be lost when the capsule returns. If the capsule returns.
Who would YOU put your trust in to deliver on the contract to put men on the moon?
As to TESLA stock, I am selling a house and intended to put 100K into Tesla. The sale is not complete so I missed the almost 50% run up over the last 2 weeks. I still think I will be buying Tesla anyway, with the intent to hold for a LONG time. The stock will probably be an inheritance for my children. They will be very well off after my wife and I pass. And as to your comment about Tesla stock. Yep it was above $400 and is now just at $260, I think in a year, those who had the stock at $400 and held it will be ahead, and will have nothing but higher values to look forward to forevermore. BTW, the recent low Tesla values were due to the lawfare in Delaware where a judge allowed ONE shareholder to act as a CLASS and sue to stop Musk’s compensation package. The lawyer wants BILLIONS for the suit, so everyone froze on Tesla. Now that the shareholders have reaffirmed Musk’s compensation package and voted to move the corporation from Delaware to Texas, the ice has melted and the market will react to the value Tesla actually is. Delaware is soon to be a wasteland since MANY corporation will be leaving the state due to this ONE judge’s rulings. Activist judges can burn more bridges than even liberal politicians. Do a little research on that, it will do you some good.
One of your probable idols, Bill Gates, is SHORT on Tesla. I wonder how much he has lost in the last couple of weeks. If he doesn’t get out soon, he may go from billionaire to millionaire, LOLOL.
So am I a Musk fan boy much? Yes. About 5 month ago I got drawn into SpaceX and then all of what Musk is doing. Being from Las Vegas, I was aware of the Boring Company’s tunneling at the convention center and now throughout the resort corridor, but not much else. My further research has just amazed me on what he has achieved in the furtherance of HUMANITY. Anyone who h@tes Musk has NOT done any research into him or his companies, or is a competitor of his companies, and not so much h@tes him, but fears him.
As like TRUMP!, does Musk use the US government $7,500 EV subsidy, of course. Does he charge more for government launch contracts then for private companies, OF COURSE! Don’t forget the US government has all types of rules so they should pay more just for the aggravation. BUT is the $4 billion (probably much more) paid to Musk for SpaceX development and delivery of services worth every penny, no doubt, since Space X actually delivers. Boeing and Blue Origin not so much.
Finally, who exactly is paying for the development of the super heavy and starship? Actually I am, and all the other subscribers to Starlink.
The Musk thing takes me to a scene in The Aviator where Alan Alda, playing a corrupt US Senator, asks Hughes about the cost of the “Spruce Goose” and Hughes answers “And more”. And the Senator jumps on the answer, and Hughes says “more of MY money.”
END RANT
Separating the wheat from all the chaff, NASA selected the SpaceX Starship (a non-existent but proposed HLS variant) in April 2021 to land astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis 3 mission.
NASA’s original launch date for the Artemis 3 mission was to be late-2024. In January 2024, NASA officially delayed Artemis 3 to “no earlier than September 2026”.
As of mid-2024, SpaceX has yet to have its unmanned commercial Starship spacecraft survive atmospheric re-entry, let alone go beyond a low Earth orbit . . . and there’s as yet no appearance of a Human Landing System variant of Starship. That is, a spaceship capable of carrying humans from a planned NRO around the moon, down to the lunar surface, dwelling there for days to weeks, and then returning safely to the NRO for rendezvous and docking with a capsule for return to Earth landing.
So, there is serious doubt that SpaceX will have anything approaching a space-demonstrated, human-rated Starship HLS in the next seven years given the present state and rate of its Starship development, thereby pushing the Artemis 3 mission (assuming it retains the objective of safely landing humans on the moon and safely returning them to a lunar orbit) launch to well beyond 2030.
Perhaps this is a case, in your words, where “Musk dreams, and hopes, then moves on when it will not work.”
Above all else, it is definitely NOT FUNNY.
Obviously you know NOTHING of what you speak.
Look at an arial view of the Sanchez area of Starbase. You will see what looks like a “nosecone” of a starship. It is next to the grass area where Musk gives his Starship presentations.
It is the mockup of the HLS crew section. It was built YEARS ago and it is believed that it is still in operation verifying the cooling/heating and other systems required for manned spaceflight. (Plumbing got to work) BTW SpaceX already builds and operates spacecraft that WORK in space and transport people to and from the ISS.
The HLS does not need to reenter Earth’s atmosphere. It needs to land ON THE MOON. So the current testing to achieve full reusability of the Starship and Super Heavy booster is to proof what is needed for Earth launch and return manned missions. A different animal altogether.
My thoughts, which you can take with your obvious disdain.
Go ahead and hook you wagon to the OTHER lunar lander company, you know BO, the one that can’t even get a rocket to low earth orbit after 24 years. Bezos can take people on a 7 minute carnival ride to “outer space” for the big bucks though.
Go ahead and consider a 20% slide in completion date equivalent to 24 years of incompetence.
Lets see, Boeing was given a contract in 2014 to get people from the Earth to the ISS and back for 4.2 billion and 10 years later have yet to deliver a completed mission.
SpaceX not getting a flight proven HLS system in just over 3 years, by your own date provided above, is disqualifying? REALLY???
NASA’s Artemis:
Original launch date in 2016, first launch November 2022.
Second launch PROJECTION is for September 2025.
Moon landing launch of Artemis is projected for September 2026.
So SpaceX is not the cause of any delay in the program. It is all NASA. We shall see if SpaceX has a flight proven HLS is ready by then.
Now a question for you. If not SpaceX, then who can get US astronauts back on the moon in a functional manner?
I await your response.
Since you started out your most recent post with the statement:
“Obviously you know NOTHING of what you speak.”
I’m very curious as to the logic that led you to conclude with:
“I await your response.”
Methinks your have been ranting too much . . . as in a mad dog barking at the sun on a swelteringly hot day.
You forgot the part ahead of your second quote:
Simple question, if not Musk and his company SpaceX, who can get astronauts back to the moon for the US government?
Like any CAGW adherent, you responded to my post and question with a personal attack but you didn’t answer the question.
BTW, SpaceX has spent less than 5 billion developing the Starship and the launch facilities, factories, etc. That is less than one Artemis launch costs.
Musk h@te is a real waste of your mental capacity. I read your posts and generally you come from some sort of a logical position. Your attitude towards Musk is based on what? Jealousy? I just don’t understand it.
No, I didn’t forget it . . . I just ignored it.
Cause h@ters gonna h@te, YES?
The answer to that question, which you CAN answer, but just refuse to, is No One.
For you to answer it would just show your earlier comments are just because you are a Musk h@ter who is not operating on logic or reason.
It is getting dark here so I guess I can stop howling at the sun, and start howling at the moon, mad dog that I am.
As regards your statement:
No, I just played back, with some embellishment, your own admissions that two of your postings—the first dated July 8, 2024, 9:34 am and the seconded dated July 8, 2024, 11:42 am—were “rants” (your word choice).
Finally, your armchair psychoanalysis of my “attitude” towards Elon Musk is worth exactly what I paid to receive it.
It is YOU who has concluded, wrongly, that I am a Musk h@ter.
P.S.
Since BO and Bezos sued NASA about not getting part of the original HLS contract, SpaceX progress was paused until November of 2021, 7 months, so the actual functional contract has been in place for less than 3 years.
OIG for NASA projects the total cost of the Artemis program to be $93 BILLION by 2025. That projection predates the 3.2 billion congress gave Bezos.
Just think what Musk and SpaceX could have done with 93 billion dollars if someone could Bezos from suing to block his efforts. We would already be back on the moon.
Just remember, Musk’s goal is Mars, not the moon. He is doing that FOR THE GREATER GOOD, not for the money, although he will be able to piggy back off of the crew quarters part of HLS.
Starship is for travel to and from Mars. It will need the heat shields for manned Mars Landings. To Mars will be MUCH more complicated. He already has teams working on the totality of the Mars mission.
Bezos and Boeing have teams working on K street to find ways to get as much from the federal government as possible.
Please don’t forget that since Musk bought twitter, the Democrat deep state has been using multiple regulatory agencies to attack Musk to punish him for bringing Free Speech to a major internet social media platform.
I guess you would be happy about that, being a Musk h@ter.
Another funny??
While I wrote my first reply, I received 2 notices regarding space news.
One was about Blue Origin and Stoke Space being added to the 10 current launch companies able to bid on 400 pound plus satellite launches for the US government. Nether have achieved orbital status, but Stoke is at least rapidly moving forward with their development. Stoke was founded in 2020 by ex SpaceX and Blue Origin employees. They left BO because of that companies corporate incompetence. They left SpaceX because they wanted to go a different way than SpaceX was going. Stoke will not be able to scale up their launch vehicle to the size of the Starship/Super Heavy of SpaceX. Stoke space is following Musk’s development process, not that of BO.
The second from NPR/KNPR of all sources provided a LOT of background on the Boeing to the ISS contract.
For example, in 2014 Boeing was given a $4.2 billion contract (Obama administration) to get to and from the ISS. They have finally gotten TO the ISS, but not yet back. For the crews’ sake I am praying that the return mission succeeds.
SpaceX was given a $2.4 billion contract and first flew a full crew to the ISS in 2020 and has flown 8 NASA manned missions. They have also flown private missions to the ISS. AND SpaceX used their own rockets.
It is speculated Boeing has LOST $1.5 billion on Starliner so far, $5.7 billion total to do what Musk did for less than $2.4 billion. They MAY just walk away from the whole mess if they can’t get “licensed” by NASA in time for the first formal flight next year.
Yep, bet on BO and Boeing, Billions of wasted $. Musk/SpaceX delivered, and they have also developed space suits that NASA did NOT fund. EVA suits that they will be testing out on the New Dawn PRIVATE space mission soon. That mission may well happen before BO even launches their FIRST orbital flight. LOLOL!
END RANT AGAIN
Some of that hatred is born of his taking advantage of EV subsidies. However, it was legal. Unfortunately, he didn’t turn it into a fiasco so that the subsidy program might be shut down. Unlike Warren Buffet, he has turned around and invested much of that money (at risk of losing it) into some amazing products that actually will benefit mankind (SpaceX and Starlink). He hopes to make money – but that’s a virtue, not a crime.
As a retired aerospace engineer for McDonnell Douglas and later Boeing, I give him kudos for trying to build a launch system from the ground up with no subsidies. I worked on the Delta Clipper project and learned firsthand the frustrations in building a ‘return to launch pad’ rocket. Musk has done what engineers more senior than I said couldn’t be done: building RP-1 fueled engines with a higher Isp than what all the rocket scientists at Lockheed and Boeing (and the companies they gobbled up) could achieve. In part he was able to do it by rejecting help from NASA, which has been a tremendous millstone around the necks of every contractor they’ve insisted on “helping”. Their help largely consisted of demanding analyses to the point of paralyzing launch programs. No interest in less expensive testing because they are so afraid of failure. Boeing had decades of experience and data at their disposal to design and build an upgraded space capsule, but with NASA’s help have managed to strand two astronauts on the Space Station – years after SpaceX has been flying astronauts up to the space station and back. And Boeing did it with a colossal price tag!
I’m so glad I wasn’t on the Starliner development team. It would be unbelievably embarrassing.
Expand that, how gov programs across the board are like this. The money basicly disappears into a corrupt sink hole, the Washington beltway.
When will the States Attorneys take up and lead a forensic audit. There needs to be criminal charges at the state level. The DOJ and federal court system is there to protect the beltway.
TRUMP!!!!
And a majority Republican House and Senate.
They had that and little was done to reverse the corruption.
They need a super majority to get around the Democrat road blocs aided by the RINO quislings.
A lot of distraction with all impeachments, investigations into Russian Collusion, the Steele Dossier, etc. Not even a deluded Democrat will believe it next time, although they will claim it to be true (example: Schiff and Nadler, who knew collusion was fake but tried to sell it anyway.) With a sufficient majority in the House and Senate, these distractions will get no traction.
What makes you think the state governments don’t do the same thing? Ever ride on the California train to nowhere?
The best government is the one closest to the People. So State government is better for the People than Federal government, and local government is better than State government.
And that complacent reliance on generalities allows the whole system to sink into corruption.
What’s the alternative? No government?
An alternative I would support, if I thought everyone else would/could behave. But I know they won’t so… *sigh*
Interesting article from Godfrey Bloom on YT. The war in Ukraine is being fought in Monaco with luxury sports cars.
https://youtu.be/ha9KUXeKyZQ?si=FD76s6k9RTwKncxs
Do these figures include the headworks involved in getting the required energy to the site? How are these costs dispersed or recovered? Who carries the cost of stranded assets due to government dictate? … mostly rhetorical questions, I guess.
They’ll be run on diesel generators. ⛽️
+1 for mentioning stranded assets.
I maintain that politicians have no constitutional authority to spend any money past the dates of the currently elected and seated Congress.
All revenue bills must originate in the house and the house only sits for two years. There is good reason for that. Funding future projects beyond a sitting congress negates the concept of one man one vote and is a threat to representative democracy.
And thus, any program that’s meant to exist in perpetuity (Social Security, Johnson’s “War on Poverty (Welfare)”, Medicaire, Medicaide, ObamaCare) all should require reapproval with each new Congress, i.e., every two years. Anything else would be unconstitutional.
If the administration is so wrong with this program, one must consider how many government programs
designed to bring electric vehicles to the massesare similarly defective.FIXED
One thing to remember…..
Of the “EV” family of vehicles the majority of vehicles are Hybrid and PLEV. Neither require a charging station. A gas station is all they need. In Australia HYBRID and PLEV make up 65% of “EVs” purchased. Would probably be the same in USA. So this charging “network” is for only 45% of EVs. Brilliant plan Brandon. All done with borrowed money. Start your Presidential warm up Mr Trump and hit the ground running. 😁👌
65 + 45 = ? 😁
65 + 45 = 97%
The sqrt of. FA
Lotta EVs down under
Brandon wants to ban non-plugin hybrids. Brandon wants us dependent on the electrical grid and government.
If Plug-in Hybrids don’t need chargers, into what do they plug? If the battery is never to be charged, why bother to tote the deadweight around and use more motor fuel?
EV is understood by most people to mean battery powered electric vehicle. I think it best to use BEV to avoid doubt.
Hybrids need no charger because it recovers power from deceleration and is de facto an ICE vehicle.
Everything associated with EVs and government involvement is nothing but virtue signaling. The only real target for EVs is urban dwellers with short commutes and overnight home charging. So what if you have a charging station every 50 miles of highway if you can’t count on it working?
It’s not just virtue signalling it’s fantasy land. I drove the entire length of the M62 (the trans Pennine motorway in the U.K.) in both directions last month, the traffic was heavy, virtually nose to tail cars and HGVs in all lanes for most of the journey.
I saw the very occasional green number plate (maybe lust into double figures) but after the journey the overwhelming conclusion was that it will be totally impossible to convert even a meaningful fraction of the tens of thousands of vehicles of all types that were on that motorway to EVs.
A TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE FANTASY
There are about 30M cars in the UK, assuming 65KWhs for each vehicle, is a lot of windmills. And Milliband is dead set on providing it all, within 6 years! God preserve us.
That’s assuming there’s a mobile(cell) service in the remote areas.
At this point we know fiat currency is an absurdity and the gov’t will print, or produce out of thin air, whatever dollars they want to do what they want. However this reeks of another insincere boondoggle, where some money is funneled to a donor or some bs program and the damn thing never gets built. And they know it is bs. They don’t care.
Correction/Update in CAPS.
HAVE FOUND SOME 2024 USA BEV, HYBRID SALES, PLEV SALES. “EV” FAMILY PURCHASE FIRST QUARTER IN USA ARE BEV 5%, HYBRID 11% PLEV 2%.
MORE THAN 65% of “EVs” ARE HYBRID AND PLEV. BEVs LOOK LIKE A DUD WORKD WIDE.
One thing to remember…..
Of the “EV” family of vehicles the majority of vehicles are Hybrid and PLEV. Neither require a charging station. A gas station is all they need. In Australia HYBRID and PLEV make up 65% of “EVs” purchased. Would probably be the same in USA. So this charging “network” is for only 45% of EVs. Brilliant plan Brandon. All done with borrowed money. Start your Presidential warm up Mr Trump and hit the ground running. 😁👌
French gov forbids retailers from printing paper receipts unless consumers ask explicitly, saying it would save many trees and avoid a lot of paper production, but the official numbers clearly are off by two digits. An easy calculation even children could make but no “journalist” even tried. Don’t they have paper receipts they could weight? But these clowns pretend to “fact check” the long term effects of an experimental gene therapy.
The EU harmonisation project means goods shipped must have labelling and instructions in the language of the destination market.
To accommodate this, manufacturers print multi-lingual leaflets and booklets, included in all packaging irrespective of destination
So in France, for example, when you get your new kitchen appliance, instead of a couple of pages in French, you get multiple pages in all the other EU official languages.
But don’t forget… save paper, save trees.
Same in US. Usually 4. English, French, Spanish, and Japanese.
However our government medical paperwork often has lists of dozens of languages you can get info in.
I recently bought a new monitor, I don’t remember how many languages it had, but it was over 15.
I’ve seen Thai, Viet, Korean, but never Russian.
How many monitors are shipped from western countries to Russia?
Get the government out of the energy and transportation business, they have done way to much damage already.
You could have stopped after “Get the Government out…”
Under estimating the cost in a BIG way and overestimating the benefits in a BIG way is SOP for government because it is so very effective in allowing them to get their way with little criticism or push back from the public. For some reason, most likely inherent in the human psyche, very few people seem to catch on to this practice no matter how many times it is used and publicized as truth when it is definitely, deliberately mendacious.
In the private sector, having a project run over budget is a good way to end your career.
In the public sector, hiding the real cost of a project is the best way to protect your career.
Willie Brown said it well. It fool the taxpayer to paying you to dig a hole, then tax them again to fill the hole back in.
Installation of chargers is just part of the EV issues.
Even when the charging points are put in place that is not the end of the difficulty of transitioning to EV from fossil fuel based transport.
The ongoing maintenance of the charging points is proving difficult here in UK. Many eager EV champions are turning back to ICE because they have no confidence the charging points listed will be either available or even working, when they need the energy infusion.
In my small central England UK town four charging points were installed by the town council at huge cost. £65,000 for the civil engineering digging up the car park to install the cables alone,
Those four bays on the car park are zoned EVs only for obvious reasons. In the first year of the installation only one vehicle was ever seen using the opportunity to charge and now all four stand posts that once held the charge cable head are taped up. They are bagged up multiple layers of plastic all nicely finished off with wrappings of duct tape. Clearly unavailable for use and never likely to be available ever again. But the bays are still reserved for EVs and you receive a ticket if an ICE vehicle parks there?
I am tempted to put a sign in the windscreen of my car (an ICE vehicle) saying ‘I am self identifying as an EV’ on a nice rainbow coloured paper, just to see if the wardens would ticket me.
The madness knows no limit.
There are four charging units in my town, and I have never seen even one car parked there. Admittedly, I don’t drive by the place every five minutes, but every time I do drive by there, it is empty.
There are EV’s in town. I guess they charge at home.
You would probably get two tickets, one for “offensive language”.
All for a handfull of battery bangers, hilarious.
“If the administration is so wrong with this program, one must consider how many government programs designed to bring electric vehicles to the masses are similarly defective.”
Why waste that time/money. They are ALL similarly defective, if not worse.
Narrabri Gas Project….
DOH
In the UK BP Pulse has recently cut it’s world wide charging workforce by 10% and pulled out of 8 countries to focus on US, UK, Germany and China. This follows it’s closing down of it’s home charging business in May last year.
And the cost of installing or upgrading low voltage supply to the charging stations, and the cost of increased generation and high tension transmission to meet the increased demand – not included.
Not In My Back Yard.
“one must consider how many government programs
designed to bring electric vehicles to the massesare similarly defective.”The vast majority of government programs follow the standard operating procedure of READY, FIRE, AIM. If any benefit from a government program ever happens, it is totally from luck or by sheer numbers of attempts, like a blind squirrel finding a nut.
Any organization that gets large, be it government, corporation, or religion, is rife with cronyism, nepotism, and all sorts of corruption.
There’s money in chaos.
FJB
There is insufficient electricity generation capacity to operate 500,000 chargers in America and Biden is reducing American electricity generating capacity intentionally. Can people really not see reality all around them?
Because of Leftist and Marxist media, in collusion with the Democrat Party and “intersectional” NGOs’ insane full-court push to deny the reality of The Big Guy 10% Joe “Biden Brand” Brandon aka Robert L. Peters aka J.B. Ware aka ROBINWARE456 aka FJB’s ongoing and worsening cognitive decline they have been caught out in the open blindly pandering to and lying for the big-money elites. The opportunistic Leftist cadres smell blood in the water and they are attacking each other without a care as to past loyalties. All of the ongoing election-interfering collusion is being exposed in the open press.
The thought of Biden dropping out seems to have driven ranking members of the NEA insane.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/nea-president-mocked-copying-office-character-dwight-schrute-totally-unhinged-speech
The thought of Biden dropping out
They’re tearing each other apart over that – there are two groups that want to keep him in (those who think he’s fine and those who think he and only he can beat Trump) and they’re attacking anyone who suggests him dropping out.
Can people really not see reality all around them?
Look at all the people saying Biden is fine.
No, they can’t.
EV’s are fine if you charge at home and get a rate plan for cheap overnight charging.
A rapid conversion to EV’s is mathematically impossible if the EV’s depend on public charging stations.
One gasoline pump provides the energy of least 20 superchargers. Do the math just for the NJ Turnpike. There are about 12 gas pumps per service plaza JUST FOR CARS. There are 12 service plazas. So, 144 gas pumps x 20 = 2880 Superchargers, just for cars. Each Supercharger can draw 250 kw. So, on a busy holiday weekend, with every travel plaza packed (I have seen this), your power draw is 250 kilowatts x 2880 = 720,000 kilowatts or 720 MW or 0.7GW (Somebody please check my decimal point!)
That is a lot of energy. For example, the average power demand in the UK last year was about 28 GW. So, just for cars on the NJ Turnpike, you would need 2.5% of the current electric power usage of the UK. This is close to the output of a nuclear power plant.
The average home in the US draws 1.2 Kilowatts, so you need the power for 600,000 homes. If each home contains about 2 people, the power usage of 1.2 million people in their homes.
It is madness.
I haven’t tried to do the numbers for trucks, but, there are a lot of trucks on the NY Turnpike.
As always, it would be nice if somebody checked my math!
Once the number of EVs reaches a non-trivial number, then those cheap over night rates are going to disappear.
California is in the process of banning diesel trucking — one small problem, the battery trucks to replace them do not exist, they are vapor-ware. Not to mention the utility supply to keep them charged.
This is not going to end well.
Multiply the number of gas pumps in America by 10 or 100 or 1000. That is the number of EV charging stations required due to slow EV charge rates. There isn’t enough land space to install them unless they become like parking meters. Installed every 25 feet.