Guest Post by Eric Peters
I received the following from a Clover:
Denny writes: I’m afraid I am forced to conclude that you are either a liar or just plain stupid. You simply can’t be that ignorant. If you can somehow manage to get Elon Musk to build you a rocket to bring you from your planet to Earth you’ll find that people here really love their electric cars–especially Tesla owners – and are planning on abandoning ICE vehicles forever, regardless of losing tax incentives and regardless of whether global warming is real or just a hoax. I’m not sure what your problem is; maybe obsolete data, maybe simple prejudice, or maybe something more nefarious involving money, but one day you are going to wake up and find that you’ve been on the wrong side of history. Give it up. The future is electric!
My reply: Did I ever write that people who own electric cars don’t like them? I have no doubt that you and other electric car owners do like your electric cars. I like my Trans-Am.
Neither of our likes being relevant to the question of the viability – or advisability – of electric cars as replacements for gas-engined cars.
Which is a function, first of all, of their affordability.
However much you like something is immaterial if you cannot afford it. I very much like Porsches; trouble is, I can’t afford one.
Electric cars are Porsches – in terms of their economics. People who buy both cars do so because they have the disposable income to indulge their wants. And there’s nothing wrong with this.
But there is a problem with this – in terms of mass-marketing electric cars. The least expensive electric car – Nissan’s Leaf – costs twice as much to buy as an otherwise similar compact economy sedan/hatchback (like Nissan’s own Versa).
It makes no economic sense to buy the Leaf.
In which case, we get back to the car being an indulgence – like a Porsche – for those with significant discretionary income to allow them to indulge.
But most people can’t afford to spend even another 30 percent to move from IC to electric – and this is why electric cars will remain specialty cars for those relatively few people who can afford to indulge.
Unless the price of electric cars comes way down – and there is no evidence this is happening (in fact, electric car prices are artificially low because of the various “incentives”) or the buying power of average people goes way up, electric cars cannot be “the future.”
No matter how much you love them.
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The entire subject of electric vehicles is illogical……Electricity is not a source of energy but simply a form of energy that can be stored and transmitted. Oil the primary input into Gasoline is a source of energy….it takes oil to run the machines that both make the electric vehicles, the batteries that go into them and to create the energy that is stored in the batteries. Alternative sources of energy whether it be solar or wind woefully weak compared to the BTU/unit in Gasoline. No comparison. Nuclear is pretty good but the externalities of toxic waste and occasional devastation (Fukushima, Chernobyl) give pause to widespread utilization (though that could change).
Hydro is awesome for generating energy in the form of electricity but the progtards would rather have fish (though with some flexibility we can have both).
There are also massive performance problems with electric vehicles though the hybrid versions extend the range etc.
So what is it all about? Virtue signaling……”I show my love for the environment with hideously wasteful expensive and dirty vehicles, made with oil!”….Nobody ever said libturds were intelligent.
This bullshit never would have even started w/o govt subsidies. $7500 I believe. Smelly Birkenstock wearing dipshits can all go fuck themselves! I have never seen a Tesla or any other EV in the mountains of NC where I live. Plenty of Jeeps, 4WD Pickemups, and Subarus.
I have seen the Gem electric limited use vehicles on the road. No teslas or whatevers.
Come to Jersey. Overpriced cars and Teslas everywhere.
Where I live the Clover idiots are paying stupid property tax money for $500k houses with huge driveways and a quarter acre lot, but choose to park the damned cars in the street. When the next economic downturn comes all those rich Brooklyn Jews will be pooling their money into real estate LLC’s and buying the McMansions … and I’ll be laughing my ass off when it happens. When that time comes there will be no real middle class families wanting to live here and the only people left will be over 55 pensioners, Orthodox Jews, and their minority renters.
I’m gone.
I wonder what the fuel cost per mile is with electric? After all the taxes and fees on your electric bill what is the cost per mile for that coal or natgas generated electricity? Including all the taxes etc. $3 per gallon gas is 10 cents per mile in a 30 mpg car. 15 cents if you get 20 mpg.
The cars cost thousands, even tens of thousands more and I just don’t see any financial savings were electric even a lot less to use. Shit hole Illinois has imposed a $1,000 fee for plates for electrics since they discovered they get no road tax money from electrics.
Anyone have any numbers on kWh per mile or how many miles per kWh?
The major fuel cost of electric vehicles is not the electricity that goes into them, it is the battery that will wear out. It will wear out whether it is used or not. That’s just how they work.
And then all those “savings” on gas and oil changes go out the window and the true unsustainability of electric vehicles emerges.
Some day the levee is going to break and TPTB will have to admit that the earth generates hydrocarbons primarily through abiotic processes and we can end these arguments. I won’t hold my breath.
The battery last 5 years, and will cost 1/3 the vehicle price to change, which means you just trade it in your car for new payments, all part of a the disposable economy, all planned.
I worked at GM in the late 90s to just before the Great Wipeout in 2009. Remember the EV1??? GM found out, like every other car maker going back to the late 1800s, that the battery is the weak link in any electric powered vehicle. And GM found out that a battery that could supply enough power for the same amount of run time as a gasoline powered car was a rolling bomb (right up there with C4). Any fault condition (short circuit/battery punctured by external object) caused the thing to a) blow up (with a kill radius of ~ 100 ft., b) give off toxic gases with the same kill radius, and/or c) electrocute anyone who touched the car frame. The safety systems that would have been needed to protect the public from such a battery would easily double the weight of the car and cut its range to 10s of miles at best.
Nope, electric vehicles are niche products, not for prime time.
A gallon of gasoline contains 114,100 B.T.U. or 33.42 kW-Hrs. electrical energy equivalent. Look up the cost of 1 kW-Hr for your local rates and you should be able to make a real quick comparison.
If you do that analysis the electric becomes more economical when oil prices are high. You need to do a true cost of ownership. Outside of the batteries the electrical motors should be more reliable than the ICE (no oil changes, less mechanical wear, etc.) but the purchase price easily will offset any maintenance savings. I live about 5 miles from my work and park in a ramp with EV chargers. I am the prime candidate for the electric car. Have done the math several ways. It just does not pencil out. Not now, not until gasoline is $10/gal – assuming in that world my electricity remains 10 cents kwh.
The problem is it takes a lot of miles to make the cost per mile look good. But you’re not going to be taking 500 mile trips in these cars, so when you factor in the battery double depreciation the cost per mile gets rather ugly. I doubt it ever exceeds the cost of running gasoline, but you should get a discount for driving a car that can self immolate your ass any time it wants.
In the comments under the last Peters’ article, Coalclinker wrote: “The Elites don’t intend for us to be able to drive their fiat mandated cars”
I replied:
No, but we will ride in them.
They will be electric (no matter how stupid that currently seeems) come hell or high water.
They will be “autonomous” or “self-driving” (aka driven by the authorities).
They will not be owned by you.
They will not be controlled by you.
They will, ultimately, not have their destination set by you (e.g., you can set the destination for work, but not the titty-bar).
They will be paid for by you, whether you use them or not.
Your payment for them will not entitle you to their use.
and,
Everyone but you, me, Eric Peters, other TBP commenters, etc, will absolutely LOVE them.
I’m sure the biker crowd will have an opinion on them.
Imagine food cost escalation, and scarcity, if farming is required to use them.
Our country won’t last that long before the lid blows off of the reactor. The elites may very well share the same enthusiasm that William McKinley had when he had his very first and definitely last ride in an electric ambulance.
They want the guns GONE before then, too. Folks, this is going to be more exciting than reading a story or watching a movie about a Kentucky/West Virginia blood vendetta feud. I think the whole country is just one step away from a John Brown moment when the whole country turns into a one big feud.
3 minutes
These stupid Clovers and socialists irritate the hell out of me because they’re too stupid to understand that a conversion to a New Deal “green” future in order to eliminate industrial emissions means the destruction of jobs, economic systems, and the deaths of many people as wealth is transferred elsewhere.
If these idiots ever get their way you can be sure there will be hell to pay, and my advice is to learn how to ride a horse because that will be the major means of transport for the fortunates until things get sorted out.
” I’m not sure what your problem is”… uh, reality for starters.
Funny how halfwits like this never realize that electric cars essentially run on burning coal and take unsustainable amounts of rare earth minerals to build.
All I know is gangs of kids gather around parked Teslas with hot dogs on sticks. Or wave hot dogs out the windows of their ICE cars when Teslas wizz by…. /sarc
If you see people driving Teslas attracting children with candy and ice cream you need to take a picture- it may be a famous Hollywood director or actor!
And what about the infrastructure to make the conversion from gas stations to electric stations. That’s $trillions. And new electric generation stations all over because of the massive increased demand for electricity would probably require coal to be used. There isn’t enough lithium for all these batteries and disposable of these batteries,etc would be an ecological nightmare. I’m not sure anybody has thought about all that’s involved.
They don’t think about anything. They are running a program.
There will be no conversion, these electro mobiles are nothing but short distance commuters. the idea is to keep people inside local areas, thus limiting where they can spend the rest of their money, and to keep low rent folks from ever owning one.
Whenever you hear someone say that you are on “the wrong side of history” what they really mean is that they will see you executed after the revolution.
Pretty sure executions are coming no matter which side wins this war. Martel.
Can you imagine the task of having a 150,000,000 person purge?
Coal,
All they have to do is just turn off the grid for as long as it takes.
I don’t disagree that food and fuel are the choke points, but what about the 6-10 million people who work in and around intelligence, largely in the Northeast? Are they going to starve? What about the 6 to 10 million in and around the LE and criminal justice system? Will they quickly perish? The 15 million vets and 15 million civvies who can still fight effectively? The millions upon millions of the public sector employees who collect gov’t checks?
It’s fun to war-game but people still want to eat.
That must be an Old World phrase.
Sort of like “The situation is normalized” thanks to T-55s in the city square.
I am starting to believe you are a genuine wise man, Hardscrabble. Thank you for that. I know it doesn’t come easy.
While we’re discussing electric cars, no one should forget the Prius people. In the last 2 days I have managed to be driving right behind one. They do shit like drive below the speed limit, and slow down WAY before they get to the stop light.
Maybe that’s me you’re behind.
I kinda like my wife’s Prius. It costs less than $20 to fill up, gets an average of 49mpg, and we can go almost 400miles on a single tank of gas. That’s from Jersey to Vermont on 3/4 of a tank, average of 60mph. We’ve done that more than once. Pushing on the brake during stop and go traffic engages a mechanism to keep the main battery recharged, and besides, the version we have only has 1.8l engine.
Fine on flat terrain but sucks on steep inclines.
I’m in Kentucky, and the Prius in front of me yesterday had a New York plate
I despise Nyackers, too, so don’t feel bad. They just need to leave, too many people in the Garbage … errrr, Garden State already.
It’s the 21st Century. Cell phones and free GPS apps can be had and those idiots are STILL getting lost.
I can’t and won’t despise people with out of state plates. Most of them are here because they came from here, or still have family in the locale. During the holidays I still see lots of plates from Michigan, and the drivers are usually elderly. They’re Eastern Kentuckians who moved and set up a life for themselves when they were part of the Great Detroit Migration of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
And once again the best choice is the Toyota Plug In or Prime Prius. Perfect blend of EV and ICE, and no worries to get a charge, plug in when convenient.
Are clovers flammable?