Guest Post by Eric Peters
Maybe you remember Disco Fever.
Mid-70s, United States. For no apparent reason, suddenly everyone seemed to be singing in a high-pitched falsetto voice and wearing skin-tight lycra with open collared shirts displaying chest hair and gold medallions.
It was fun for awhile but got old fast.
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Electric Car Fever is now upon us. Laws are being passed – the Brits being the latest – mandating the production of electric cars by outlawing the production of cars powered by internal combustion.
This will get old fast, too.
King Canute could decree that the tide not come back – and politicians can decree that we’ll all be driving electric cars by “x” year, not too far from now. But wishing – and decreeing – can’t overcome reality. It can just make things really expensive and difficult for us.
One reality almost no one seems willing to talk plainly about is the fact that hundreds of thousands of electric cars queuing up to spend 30-45 minutes each at a recharging port is as ludicrous in concept as waiting that long at McDonald’s to get a burger. Especially when there is a Wendy’s across the street that’ll get a burger in your hands and you back on the road in less than 5 minutes.
Most people will never accept this. Would you accept waiting 30-45 minutes (absolute best-case scenario, if a “fast” charger is available) to put a partial charge back into your EV? Were you aware that at the high-voltage “fast” chargers, due to the nature of the thing (and for the sake of battery life) you cannot put more than 80 percent charge back into the thing?
So, whatever the advertised best-case range of the car is, subtract 20 percent.
That puts even the longest-ranged of them in the same class as the fiercest-guzzling IC-engined SUV. Maybe 200 miles or so. But the fierce-guzzling SUV can be refueled to 100 percent in 5 minutes.
Which would you prefer to take on a road trip? One where there might not be a “fast” charger available when you run out of juice. What then?
Then, you spend overnight wherever you happen to be.
Electric car freaks peddle a Disney-esque fantasy to counter this objection. They envision everyone plugging in at home, overnight – or at work, while they work. The problem with this idea is the ant-like uniformity of use it assumes. Everyone going to work – and back home – at pretty much the same time.
A middling-bright eight-year-old would be raising his hand about now.
American driving patterns are scattershot. People are individuals and have individually variable schedules. They work odd hours. Part-time. They need to go Here – and then There. Have a look outside and see whether you see vacant streets during the hours in between 9 and 5. Then a sudden effusion of cars and people migrating homeward.
How about . . . traffic? It’s quite true that an electric car’s battery isn’t being drained to move the car when it’s not moving, as when it is stuck in traffic. But if you are running the AC (or the heater) and the lights you are drawing volts – and running the battery down. Keep in mind the best-case 30-45 minute wait to “fill ‘er up.”
It’s so laughable it’s painful.
The reality of EV World would be conga queues that would make the gas lines of the early ’70s (the result of oil embargoes, not lack of oil) seem like a minor irritation in comparison.
The Conga Effect would multiply, too – as (potentially) hundreds of thousands of EVs jockey for a slot at a charging port. Imagine a gas station, right now, with each taking a minimum of 30-45 minutes to finish its business.
Certifiable.
Leaving aside the economic absurdity of electric cars – the least expensive of which cost in excess of $30,000 (heavily subsidized) and thus obviating any talk of “saving money” when you buy a more functionally competent IC-powered car for half that sum – there is one non-negotiable technical hurdle that must be overcome before EVs could conceivably replace IC-powered cars on a mass scale:
They must be able to get back on the road within 5 minutes.
Or – as a compensatory fix – they must be able to travel at least 600 miles before needing to be recharged.
Absent one or the other, the whole scheme is preposterous. Either that or deliberately calculated to be ruinous.
Which my well be exactly it.
The people pushing electric cars are well aware of the realities discussed above and – their pie-in-the-sky assurances notwithstanding. By pushing cars that don’t work and which they know don’t work, they may be deliberately trying to recreate the world that existed before Henry Ford gave the world the Model T.
Which made cars affordable.
Before the T, cars were expensive extravagances, the toys of the rich.
Sound familiar?
From a certain point of view, affordable mobility is not desirable. That is to say, independent mobility. It is harder to control, encourages random and unpredictable patterns of human activity – the kind of activity loathed by the central planning, nudging technocrats who are (among other things) pushing electric cars.
The question is – will there be any push back?
And will it come in time?
Do I remember Disco ? I was a Disco god with a little g .I had the hair ,the clothes ,the cars ,the body and you put that all together I had the girls.God I miss me I was so great.
Now I’m basically a 55 year old truck driver who’s only companionship is a cat ,my mom and you knuckleheads.God
Sure does have a strange sense of humor.Oh well it is what it is .
We demand pictures! Please post.
Found it!
Don’t ya luv the colours!
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annnd you’re welcome,
Yours in Odin,
RiNS
Please don’t.
You lie BB,
Fess-up! You really have a paid off condo in San Diego,
and you drive the new Bentley SUV. No alimony or child
support either. You are rich.
Jeeziz Tittz. Is this the same guy who accused me of being an alien for listening to Zappa? Heh… it is a strange world, isn’t it?
It is as if Europe is being ruled by madmen. Of course the ministers in England and France who are issuing these decrees will be long gone in 2040 but their madness may not be.
It was only a dozen or so years ago that another batch of government ministers decreed diesel engines were the future. Based on nothing more than climate cranks theories they pushed Europeans into buying diesel powered cars and now the British government is trying to figure out how to scrap these vehicles and other governments working to BAN them from the places people live and work.
Its worth noting that, in order to electrify just Britain’s motor vehicles, it would require more than a dozen new nuclear power plants! They’ve been squabbling for years to build just one!
Where will the other dozen come from? Factor in the actual costs of-
1. Building the additional electric capacity.
2. The associated infrastructure to support EVs
3. The stranded costs of existing fossil fuel infrastructure
and the real cost of your Tesla Model 3 or Nissan Leaf would be more like that of a Porsche 911 and it becomes apparent only madmen could believe it.
All you need is a 500 mile extension cord.
fabulous response there Iska
One of Kunstler’s book is all about how over the past 70ish years or so, we have misallocated our ressources to create a world in which cars are not just important, but are required. Our cities and towns have been built for cars. Our sprawling suburbia only works with cars. Electric cars may be able to replace ICE cars for short trips for some of us who don’t travel very far day to day, but for rural or semi-rural folks or anyone who drives more miles that an electric car’s range they don’t make any sense what so ever. It seems like TPTB desire is to create a subservient, unthinking, scared population who will go along with whatever they are told. Perhaps the electric car is part of the plan since it would reduce our abiliry to move around and restrict our movements.
If you don’t start to at least suspect conspiracy, you aren’t paying attention. It all smacks of Agenda 21 where we’re all crowded into cities. 1) We’re easier to control/kill. 2) The pristine wilderness is left to our betters. If they just outlawed cars for everybody, they’d tip their hand. Total control from cradle to grave is the goal. See also: phasing out of cash and centralizing of “healthcare”.
https://www.facebook.com/Energy-Topics-603694946470166
German solar cell covered car.
The biggest fad perpetrated on the public.
Barring some major breakthrough in batteries the electric will remain a minor thing unless fuel cell technology is implemented to power them.
Fuel cells would result in their dominance of the market in short order.
The author has clearly never driven an electric car for any length of time. They are charged at home 99% of the time. Otherwise they are rarely charged at work and then on long trips.
That being said, the biggest limitation to an electric car is the cost, durability, and energy storage of the battery. A fast recharging rate is nice to have, but not critical.
Fast recharging is critical if you want/need to go on a trip that is longer than the car’s single charge range. Some existing electric cars like the Leaf, would not get me to and from the airport for my monthly work travels. That makes them a non-starter for me, not to mention that times when we drive 500 or more miles to visit relatives. The lack of fast recharging would turn that journey from a 9 hr drive to a couple day drive if there were even the infrastructure to support charging along the way.
Depends on how you define fast. If I am taking a long trip, I am not going to go nonstop. I need to stop to eat, use the bathroom, and stretch my legs. That usually takes 30 to 60 minutes depending on how much of a rush that I am in. Which is plenty of time to recharge the car, assuming that there is a charger along the way.
I have driven an ICE car all my life, except until the past few months. The last one I had was a Honda Accord for 15 years. Electric cars do not drive the same as ICE cars. They brake differently, accelerate differently, don’t “refuel,” the same way, and have markedly different maintenance requirements.
From my experience with an electric car, they superior to ICE cars in almost every way, except for the main issue that they are NOT yet cost effective with ICE cars due to the battery issues. Once/if the issue of cost, energy storage, and durability are resolved, electric cars will make ICE cars virtually extinct.
You make an electric car that can keep charged in -40°, keep me warm in the same, haul a ton or so of firewood, hit a deer without bursting into flames, and not cost the price of a new house, I’m all ears.
Until then, you can keep ’em.
BTW, disco was created and shoved up everyone’s rectums to slow the Vietnam Train blowback, and King Canute used the tide to prove he was just a man and could not control everything. That canard gets old.
All the greenies blathering on about zero emission cars only succeeds in skirting the real debate that should be had. Those batteries only store energy. The focus should start with how energy is produced. Wind and solar will never replace demand load on grid of a modern industrial economy. Coal has been vilified and right now the push in new power generation is NatGas. Burning it produces the same maligned CO2.
These folks pushing this agenda will, if successful, only be able to flaunt zero emissions by shitting on the floor in someone else’s house.
Electric cars make sense in Europe but not the US. As far as I can see most Americans have an emotional relationship with their cars and “much freedom” whereas Europeans see them as tools. If I can reach financial independence more quickly by cycling and using public transport rather than borrowing money from Jews for a declining asset I know what I will choose.
Cars make most people fat,hence the obesity of the average American.
Anyway, driving is a proles job!
“Public transport,” sans softserve euphemism = stealing money from the proles. Which rhymes doles. How do you like them pineapples? Grenades serenade. Just so long as others take most of the shrapnel.
^^^^ That point is how I have won EVERY debate with a libtard, greenie, both in the “industry” and the home gamers for the last year or so. With little exception, most of these people seem to think that electricity comes from a magic place beyond the outlet that requires no energy to produce. When I burst their bubble that you are literally just moving the emission from the tail pipe to the power plant plus the additional energy loss (fluid dynamics) of the trip, they seem to go in to some type of epileptic shock. Then I drop the nuclear nut on them, and that is it….debate over.
Fun times….
Coming soon, Affordable Car Act. Don’t worry, you can keep your fuel, you can keep your steering wheel. The whole point of this is for the Deep State to ban private transportation. Just like Obamacare, these lunatic ideas will fail so badly that the government (Remember the Government?) will have to step in and declare all private transport illegal, and implement single payer transportation run by guess who?
Robert (QSLV)
Will an electric furnace cook me as efficiently as a gas furnace when I attend my final barbeque?
“My uncle has a country place that no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the eyes and hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire where my white-haired uncle waits”
I never would have thought that almost 40 years later we’d be talking about a motor law or that I’d be the white-haired uncle!
Surprised Starfkcr hasn’t shown up to sell us on Tesla.
So….. The hydro company tells me that we are at 98% usage on the grid to the point of “brown outs” and we all “need to conserve” by instituting “hydro tiers”. They believe that by using tiers, customers will avoid the higher tier by wisely conserving power. So at 98% consumption on the power grid, how is this going to fare out when we all want to “charge” my car, and does the car get to have the preferred lower tier?….
I didn’t think so either……
One curious note: I fully expected the A/C unit would go off during high heat days, per our agreement with the power co. We have had some pretty hot days and nobody is cutting back.
It could be because the mayor has pushed solar power on folks here in the valley. Then the electric company needs new sources of revenue.
As central power generation viability continues to erode or when liquid fuels are rationed, an EV is a fantastic life providing “oil drum”. You can buy a car with 30/60 kWh of storage for less than you can buy just the Batteries outright. 350Vdc is extremely useful and easily/safely convertible to any type of juice you need with “Universal” off shelf devices. You can buy an EV for 30% the price of a Tesla from BYD in Asia- Warren Buffets jewel. What’s not to like?
Changing the subject slightly but staying on Peters and the topic of cars,I just walked in from following my mom to the rental car agency to turn in a rental car she had for a couple of days.
I had her stop at a station so I could gas it for her.
In the past Peters has written about the danger of the # of gauges and buttons that can distract the driver.
I could not figure out how to open the gas tank covering so I sat down in the driver’s seat to check out each individual button and switch.No luck but there are a helluva lot of distractions for a driver in the driver compartment-Peters is correct.
I wound up getting the manual out of the glove box and reading it.This was an Elantra-to open the gas compartment,all doors must be unlocked and you then have to press at a certain spot on the door of the gas compartment.
I had a 1951 Cadillac. In the early fifties Cadillac put the gas fill cap under the left rear tail light. You would never find it except for the fact that, this being Cadillac, the tail light with the gas cap also had a keyed lock that allowed you to lift up the tail light to reach the cap.
How will we dispose of the tremendous amount of used batteries? What would be done with power outages, including a collapse of the national grid? Or shutting down of electric power by an enemy, foreign or domestic? Automobiles run very well on alcohol derived from many sources (Alcohol Can Be a Gas) is good book on the subject, and hydrogen is another good source of power.
Hydrogen stores energy. It is not a source of energy.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss EVs. I’m a confirmed petrol head (current car’s power-plant is a 3.2 V6) and even I have had my head turned by what EV’s could offer.
The are (potentially) a total game changer – at least here in the UK, and other smaller advanced countries.
Here, huge numbers of people travel less than the 200 mile range that we are seeing each week. Most people can stand the ‘inconvenience’ of one charge a week. Many (most?) longer journeys are to destinations where people stay long enough to charge up. Having the ability to charge there is mostly a cultural restriction, not an infrastructure one – i.e. having the balls to ask if you can charge your car.
Live in a flat and can’t run a cable to your car? There are likely people locally who have a drive and will sell you a slot, for a fee, to charge up. This will be a thing.
And as for electricity supply side issues – well this is where it starts to get REALLY interesting. We don’t so much have an energy generation problem in this country, we have an electricity storage problem – particularly with regard to renewables – the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow etc. What we really need is a huge investment in battery storage. Well, what have you done when you put a million EVs out there; you have created a huge battery storage system. Leave the car plugged in all the time you are not using it, tell it the range below which you do not want it to fall and the grid can top it right up when the renewables are online……and then drain it back down (to the preset limit) when they are not and demands are high. Still need conventional / nuclear power stations to provide base load, but it saves extra stations having to be brought online to meet peak demand – an effect that will only become more pronounced as more EVs (i.e. the installed battery base) come online. Power cut? You can run your house off of your car for a few hours – the time it takes for most power cuts I’ve suffered to be rectified.
As for the performance of EVs – max torque from the moment power is applied will satisfy even the most committed speed freaks. Personally I’m not sure it’s worth the price of losing the burble and scream of a V6, but most people don’t care about that. With batteries mounted low the center of gravity is also lowered providing better handling.
And they will utterly destroy the current model of dealerships and garages.
Just about the only ‘oily’ bits carried over from internal combustion engined cars will be suspension, steering and brakes. No need for expensive servicing, very few consumables to replace / top up / check. Little need for an extensive dealer network for servicing, and none at all for retailing the cars – manufacturers can go direct to consumers online or in mall space rather than dealerships. Less cost to consumers.
EVs will be hugely disruptive to the hydrocarbon industries and the traditional motor manufacturing industries. Their advantages may be easily mocked at the moment but they are becoming more compelling all the time.
And that is before we even get to autonomous driving, which would negate the need for most people to even need a car at all. But that’s another story.
Whether any of this comes to pass of course is another matter – there are huge vested interests in the status quo. Meantime I’ll continue to enjoy my V6.
What sounds good in theory has problems in practice. Having a million EV ‘feeding’ power back into the grid would make it impossible to service that grid without a million automatic disconnect devices… unless you want to see a utility worker electrocuted. Besides no net power is generated so the gross need of the EV fleet would still have to be satisfied.
This is the same sort of problem using EVs as a power source as with photo electric arrays. Most people are not electricians and having them servicing batteries or climbing on the roof to clean their PV arrays is a recipe for a trip to the hospital.
Doesn’t it take the same number of BTU’s to move a vehicle weighing a few thousand pounds? Generate electricity with some loss of efficiency, transmit through the electric grid via alternating current and lose some more potential energy, store it in a battery which loses still more. . . and what if the energy is generating by burning coal? OR NUKE? Planners in offices are delusional.
Next: drones for everyday commercial use is another load of bullshit
There are a lot of issues with electric cars.
1) Rare earth requirements. Electric cars need a lot of them, and the UK has none of them. The US doesn’t have a lot either – nowhere enough to power a replacement fleet of EVs
2) Electricity production capacity. If even 20% of the US passenger fleet were to switch to electric, the electricity consumption would be huge. The Focus gets about 3 miles per kwh; the total US distance driven per year is a bit under 3.2 trillion miles per year. 20% of 3.18 trillion miles / 3 miles per kwh = 212 billion kwh. The entire electricity production of the US is 3.9 trillion kwh. It means ramping up US electricity production by at least 5.5% – more like 7%.
A full switchover to electric means increasing US electricity production by 30% or more – the equivalent of the entire annual electricity consumption of India or Russia.
3) Cold weather. EVs make more sense in warm environments, but they suck in cold. Well documented – electricity sucks for heating.
4) Electrical grid. Average US household consumes a bit under 11,000 kwh per year. The average person drives 15000 miles, the average household drives at least some multiplier to that number. It means – at the 3 miles per kwh Focus threshold – that the electricity grid must support at least a 50% increase in electricity delivered to every household in America. Ouch.
5) Electric cars are far more complex and it is far from clear what the long term durability is. Regenerative braking is great – how do those systems hold up over time? Can electric motors be serviced by the web of technicians presently out there? How vulnerable are electric cars and their systems to cyber attack?
There are a number of benefits to EV, but equally a lot of real and potential problems. It is far from clear to me (as an electrical engineer by training) that the net is positive.
have had this discussion with a friend many times. there is a solution, but my friend says it will never happen. In Seoul, South Korea. they have electrified the bus service. works great we could do it here, but requires the government to step up and provide the infrastructure. here is a link so i do not have to do all the running down. bottom line, it works. does not require large batteries. does have small batteries for when a bus needs to leave the system, as in to pick up or drop of passengers. here it is, i would like to see some comments about this.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-korea-tests-new-technology-for-electric-bus-1377570761