One of the many problems with electric cars is that places to “refuel” them are neither convenient nor common. You can plug in at home, but that’s slow (it takes hours to resurrect a wilted battery this way) and it means you are at home. Not somewhere else. A car is supposed to take you to other places – not be umbilically tied to an outlet in your garage.
There are “fast” chargers (the rent-seeking King of Crony Capitalism, Elon Musk, calls them “Superchargers”) that can partially juice up a battery in just six or seven times the time it takes to fill up a normal IC-engined car’s gas tank (30-45 minutes vs. less than 5 minutes) but these are mostly hypothetical because very expensive and so, few and far between.
If there were money in it, some entrepreneur would erect Fast Chargers all over the country. This happens routinely with gas stations, which earn their proprietors money. Hence the incentive to build the station.
But electric recharging stations? There’s no money in them.
Which is why government builds them. With your money and mine, taken not freely.
The Obama Regime (they are all regimes, being a minority cabal of authoritarians who rule with – at best – the actual support of a small percentage of the populace; the rest being dragged along contrary to their will) last week decreed that it will funnel extorted taxpayer dollars to pay for a grid of electric vehicle charging stations on 25,000 miles of highways in 35 states.
Befehlshaber (order giver) Obama has decreed that “1 million” electric cars must be on the road by 2015.
Whoops, it’s almost 2017 and that “goal” (his word) hasn’t been reached. A fraction of it has – even with massive federal and state “incentives” amounting to billions of dollars, also not taken freely.
So now, more billions must be devoted to charging stations for electric Turduckens like the Tesla – the fire-prone/crash-prone $70,000 (to start) crony capitalist conveyance purveyed by Musk – and other such like the $36,000 Chevy Bolt (successor to the very badly failed Spark EV).
Der Fuhrer befehle:
By working together across the Federal government and with the private sector, we can ensure that electric vehicle drivers have access to charging stations at home, at work, and on the road – creating a new way of thinking about transportation that will drive America forward. Today’s announcements demonstrate a continued partnership between the Administration, states, localities, and the private sector to achieve these shared goals…
Note the italics. “Working together”? Can any of us decline? Or is there a bayonet prodding our backsides? “Shared goals.” Really?
I don’t recall… .
Never mind.
Atlanta will install 300 EV charging stations by the end of next year. LA will add another 500 (and – hilariously – will replace 200 IC-engined cop cars with electric units; a small but nonetheless bit of good news for us as it will now be easier to get away from the armed government workers).
And of course, the car companies – which spoon with Uncle – have bought in. Literally. Like Musk, they know there is more money to be taken (as opposed to honestly earned) by “partnering” with Uncle than by offering products and services people are free to buy on the merits… but which they are also free to not buy, if they lack merit. As decided by those who choose to buy – or not buy.
Of course, it’s easier when you have a captive market. Literally captive.
Thus, GM – in particular – has agreed to “work together” with the government to “jump start” the electric car thing.
BMW has also bought in. Nissan, too.
I am slightly sympathetic. Because they almost have to. The German companies especially.
In Europe, there are already internal combustion No Go zones – areas where only electric cars (or hybrids capable of running entirely on their batteries) may tread. In Germany, there is a serious plan to ban IC engines altogether by 2030 – which isn’t that far away from today.
And here in Amerika, it is clear that the same anti-car (anti-IC car) animus is likely to impose similar such hobbles on any car that is not an electric car.
Because it is the only way they can get people to buy them.
That is, by forcing them out of IC-engined cars.
Lord knows they have tried every other way. See massive “incentives.”
But these notwithstanding, electric cars still cost too much, don’t travel far enough and take too much time (and hassle) to recharge.
So not many people buy them.
Hence the new push for massive federal (and state) subsidization of EV charging stations. The idea being these will somehow remedy the functional gimps mentioned above.
This is flapdoodle of the highest kind.
Consider just one problem: throughput.
Imagine an EV charging station that has say six “pumps” – analogous to a typical service station where gas is sold. Imagine each EV hooked up for 30-45 minutes.
Imagine the lines.
Keep in mind, too, that the 30-45 minutes does not fully recharge the EV. Which under the best case scenario has a range on a full charge of of maybe 200 miles, or about half the range of almost any current IC-engined car, which car can be refueled in 5 minutes or less and once fueled can go another 400 miles (or more) under any conditions.
That 30-45 minute hook-up gives you (typically) about half to three-quarters a charge. You will need to stop again.
Soon.
For another 30-45 minutes.
People accuse me of “bashing” electric cars, of being an “anti.” But these are facts, which – as John Adams noted – are stubborn things.
There is a reason why electric cars haven’t been able to compete with gas-engined cars. The hagiographic (and mechanically illiterate) automotive press either covers this up or is too addled to grok it. Perhaps because so many of them are City Boys who drive rarely and not far – circumstances for which an EV may be ideally suited. Many of them are also rather well-off and do not relate at all to the concerns the average person has about buying a $60,000 EV (or even a $30,000 EV) that is functionally inferior to a $5,000 2003 Corolla.
But the bottom line is the Emperor has no clothes.
Maybe one of these days, someone will notice this.
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I would run an electrified cable along the freeway. Your electric vehicle only needs enough battery to get to the freeway, then it hooks up to the rail just like electric trains do. It runs off and charges off the rail until you get to your exit. You NEVER charge it at home or work, only while sitting in traffic on the freeway. Use your toll tag to pay for the juice. You could use 4 lead acid normal car batteries. Of course, that would put teslas and gm’s and … ALL the existing guys out of business because we could build our own motor addons for existing cars way too easy.
Ever see “The Last Chase”?
Thank God Trump doesn’t buy into this bullshit of electric cars!
If you support US Currency Green Stamps you might as well Support Carbon Trading Stamps
https://climateobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Carbon-Market-Review-2016.pdf
They’re both hall passes that allow you to bribe authorities not to hurt you and little else.
Neither is legitimate. Nor even functional.
Uncle, who is just DYING for me to drive an electric car – STILL TO THIS DAY will arrest me if I drive my golf cart to the store.
That’s funny…and unfortunately true.
Gee, I remember when there would be battery stations. You would drive your EV in, swap batteries in 3 or 4 minutes, and be on your way. About as much trouble as swapping your grill’s propane tank at a Home Depot. What happened to that? Maybe they realized a stack of lithium batteries would be like having an ammunition bunker near your house. (I still believe that pallet of lithium batteries is the real reason MH-370 went down. But that would not look good for a certain aircraft manufacturer in Washington State.)
well I’m a thinkin of the possibility/probabiity that Uncle Stupid likes and promotes the full electric car for another reason not mentioned in this article. I can think of a number of scenaria wherein the Nanny State would be quite keen on assuring we mundanes are unable to freely roam as we wish, and as we do now. They’ve tried things like restricting petrol supplies at the consumer level, price managing, etc, rather ineffectively so far. But imagine a GOVERNMENT owned/controlled recharge station system, subject to complete control by said government. Now imagine they’ve prevailed in their campaign to remove effectively all non-electric vehincles. Now imagine the remaining electic car users effectiely chained to their homes because all the recharge stations are shut down.
Worth a read. The latest incident of the Amazing Fiery Bomb from Tesla….
http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/tesla-worlds-safest-car-explodes-like-a-bomb/
I’m so fulfilled knowing that Scrobama supports this crap…not.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/soon-every-ferrari-will-be-a-hybrid/#ftag=CAD590a51e
Cucked Cars
The irony: Places where the electric buggy would be most practical (if that isn’t an oxymoron…)- big densely-populated congested cities, like NYC, are the places where most people live in apartments and park on the street, so essentially have no way to charge their electric turdburgers at home, but are fully dependent upon charging stations! Can’t exactly get that Muskmobile up the stairs into your third-floor walk-up! Can you imagine the lines/wait times, even if/when charging stations are plentiful- in places where there can often be a wait for gas??!!
To think that anyone would even propose such absurdities as these electric cars! They’ve been trying it since the 70’s. Only now they’re forcing it via gov’t subsidies, but of course subsidizing a bad idea does not make it any better or more practical!
The sad thing is, that so many people buy into the idea (even if they don’t by the electric jalopies) that Onkle can actually get away with advocating such things, and using our tax dollars to subsidize it and build an infrastructure for it! One needn’t even be a Libertarian to realize the impracticality and utter stupidity of this…..
Nunzio,
Problem – “Can’t exactly get that Muskmobile up the stairs into your third-floor walk-up!”
Solution – Building owners will loose the Certificate of Occupancy if charging stations are not provided or Charging Station Credits are not obtained by March 1, 2017.
See how easy it is to fix the problem? All things can be remedied by laws.
Next problem?
Not quite so easy, Tuanorea. Getting the ‘lectric service from the building to curbside – and in places with very congested parking where you often have to park blocks away from where you live…. And who pays for the electricity? (In some places, electricity is already very expensive).
Of course, none of that would stop Onkle from doing as you described…. 🙂
Nunzio,
Majority of the “city dwellers” use public transportation to and from work. Yes, there are exceptions but it wouldn’t be as dire of a situation as you make it out to be. For those with a driveway/garage, their need to recharge midday would be almost non-existent as they’d be able to plug in overnight and be good to go.
I agree with you that gov ramming this down our throat is not good at all but I think that once EV’s hit a critical mass #, we’ll see the costs come down quite a bit. Probably wishful thinking but hopefully once EV’s have momentum on their side the gov will step aside…but history would say that’s probably not going to happen.
jack, costs for EV’s may come down but infra-structure will be something everyone pays for, car owner or not and everywhere possible, it will be thrown off onto land owners and oil companies. Hell, oil companies are heavily invested in electric companies just to get some of that subsidy and tax back.
But places where cars are parked along the street you’ll see some hugely expensive infra-structure built. Power won’t go overhead for the most part. Streets will be torn up, power run in conduit with charging stations stuck up every 20′ or so and then all that stuff will be covered in concrete and asphalt once again. All of it will have to conform to explosion proof specs since it will be cars with gasoline in them also in some. It will have to be ground-fault too. $500,000 per block in the easier places, double that in others, much much higher in places with lots of power and underground access already under the streets. Costs for this bullshit would be astronomical. No telling what govt. mandates for the actual charging station will run that to. I don’t see it happen except in places you can pull a boondoggle like that where crooked politicians(redundant)can push shit like that through regardless of how taxpayers feel.
It took decades to create the infra-structure to have easily accessible gasoline and diesel. We’re not doing as well as a country now as we were during those decades. Even in the 30’s most places had drugstores or feed stores that sold drums or cans of gasoline. The underground storage tank and hand cranked fuel dispenser was a big step up and fuel wasn’t cheap.
Politicians can dream up all types of irrational dreams but most are simply bs.
Nunzio,
I’ll build 10,000 charging stations in the middle of the desert and sell you the credits so you can keep renting out your building.
HAhahaha! That’s probably the way it’ll end up going, Tuan., like all things subsidized/manipulated by Onkle.
Gotta love it. They make ya do an “environmental impact study” to so much as drive a piece of rebar into the dirt in the middle of the woods….but they have no problem taking a semi-rural/suburban area and and making it into a high-density thousands-of-people-per-acre human warehouse to house all the illegals, as long as the property taxes keep flowing into their coffers.
Agree. Cities are where the zero emissions (from the car) make EVs an option to consider, due to the high density of vehicles, and associated concentration of pollutants.
They still don’t make economic sense, though.
I have a 2003 Corolla that is most definitely functionally superior to a $70,000 Tessa; I drive it from here to Florida every winter and it gets us there in two 12 hour stints, with all the heat or a/c we need to be comfy. Gets 40 mpg on the highway, about 400 miles on a tank, and refills in 5 minutes. Maybe when they develop Mr. Fusion ala “Back to the Future” a non IC vehicle will be able to match that but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Of course that’s probably what the PTB have in store for us mundanes, the inability to travel very far outside of their controlled area.
Facts… yeah explaining the facts to the faithful is practically impossible. The basic physics of chemical batteries is simply ignored because there is a higher agenda at stake.
The reason the fast chargers can only go to 80% or so is because that after that point the charge current must taper or the cells will be damaged. It’s the nature of the Li-Ion chemistry. It takes a relatively long time to do that remaining 20%.
There would have to be a remarkable breakthrough to get more than incrementally better charge performance. The increments should be getting smaller and smaller and more expensive from here.
Eventually there will be an electric car that works. I doubt it will use chemical batteries. It will use something that maybe we can conceive of but not build or maybe something we can’t conceive of right now. Maybe even a zero point automobile. However if we could summon this thing into being today it would be made illegal or forced to fail. There is no political desire to have such a thing. Imagine the political consequences of zero point. Even instant charging would pose huge control problems.
Electric cars are a stepping stone to no cars for us. Like windmills are a stepping stone to no electricity for us. People are being sold these things so they go along with it until its too late. Putting human society back in the bottle.
Years ago Jim Kunstler talked about Dubya’s touted “Hydrogen Economy” as a case of “blowing green smoke up out asses”. And so it is with the electric car, another “clean” fantasy, wrapped up in energy independence delusions. And the same with Ethanol.
And then their was the other alternative fuel craziness about bio diesel. My shop still sees the occasional hippy dippy grease car conversion still running around although the owners are just running regular diesel now and years have gone by since the last time they put any french fry oil in them.
If you’re loaded a Tesla can be a fine toy for running to the tennis club in and blowing off Porsches at the stoplight. it’s kind of like having a bunch of custom Harleys in your garage, good for playing rich white guys version of “looka me”.
Why, why would anyone not want an electric car? They really want to know. In the minds of these people, the ICS is a relic of a bygone era, right up there with coal fired steam heat and tube radios. Just look at your modern engine compartment. Open up the hood, no wait, now remove the “under-hood,” -cheap lingerie covering up the good parts. You don’t want to see all that stuff. Better to make it look like a microprocessor, just a black plastic slab.
Simple physics gives a motorcycle the edge if CO2 reduction is the goal. Much less weight to move means far fewer Watts of work needed. Much less space taken up in the crowded city streets and parking lots. People out in the weather and making eye contact with each other. Not saying a city of motorcycles would be a utopia (and there’s that whole icy weather thing in the winter), but we’re pretty far from ideal right now. Plus you have to learn how to drive one.
The truly amazing thing about these debacles is that this sort of behavior from the political/elite class is exactly what drove the Trump phenomena. The Trump phenomena that continues to confound them. Very few of the people pushing electric cars are actually living with them, nor will they ever. But they just don’t understand that we (the Deplorables), have noticed that fact. We see that they want us to live with less while they party in Versailles. Things didn’t end too well for King Louie. The Trumpers (formerly the Tea Partiers, and some of the Ron Paulians) wouldn’t be too upset if the same fate came to the rulers in the emerald city. They are the same people who burned disco records in Comiskey Park, not just because disco was soulless music, but because it was a lifestyle of the rich and exclusionary, the cool kids. Make millions crunching spreadsheets at Goldman, party all night with skinny white chick models (or if you really get to the top, much worse…). Electric cars and climate change nonsense seems to be a tipping point. Every climate change bill seems to die in Congress, only to be implemented by executive orders. I really don’t know what to think about the whole debate. What is observed isn’t anywhere what the “science” has been telling us, but the real facts are that something is happening. But I also realize that humans aren’t really equipped to manage an entire planet. In the end efficiency should be preferred over inefficiency, but for that to happen we’d need to get rid of the (extremely inefficient) ruling elites.
Eric G that’s all true. So how do we do it when you and I and the rest of the productive class who don’t get gummit subsidy spend over half our income in taxes? Want to see a big drop in all types of gases in the upper atmosphere? Stop that incessant fuel useage of the US military. The fact that in the shrub’s Iraq war the US used more petroleum than in all WWll tells you some people are getting very rich.
If the need’s not there to use the military to supposedly keep “our” oil safe in the Persian Gulf then keep the military cranked up enough we can’t do without it. There are so many lies involving energy production it would take a virtual army of economic Houdini’s to sort the shit from shinola.
I realize in areas of this country people realize only the needs they think they see around them. We can’t fool ourselves in Texas though, it’s the oil field that keeps us afloat and the refuge for countless millions of refugees from other states and the rest of the world. How many Tesla’s would it take to haul a load of 12″ coated pipe from Houston to Balmorrhea? Oh, that’s right, they won’t need that pipe since Tesla supposedly proved we could gather electricity from the atmosphere. So how many Tesla’s would it take to haul all the pieces of a windgenerator to Schliecher county?
Why, why would anyone not want an electric car? They really want to know. In the minds of these people, the ICS is a relic of a bygone era, right up there with coal fired steam heat and tube radios. Just look at your modern engine compartment. Open up the hood, no wait, now remove the “under-hood,” -cheap lingerie covering up the good parts. You don’t want to see all that stuff. Better to make it look like a microprocessor, just a black plastic slab.
Simple physics gives a motorcycle the edge if CO2 reduction is the goal. Much less weight to move means far fewer Watts of work needed. Much less space taken up in the crowded city streets and parking lots. People out in the weather and making eye contact with each other. Not saying a city of motorcycles would be a utopia (and there’s that whole icy weather thing in the winter), but we’re pretty far from ideal right now. Plus you have to learn how to drive one.
The truly amazing thing about these debacles is that this sort of behavior from the political/elite class is exactly what drove the Trump phenomena. The Trump phenomena that continues to confound them. Very few of the people pushing electric cars are actually living with them, nor will they ever. But they just don’t understand that we (the Deplorables), have noticed that fact. We see that they want us to live with less while they party in Versailles. Things didn’t end too well for King Louie. The Trumpers (formerly the Tea Partiers, and some of the Ron Paulians) wouldn’t be too upset if the same fate came to the rulers in the emerald city. They are the same people who burned disco records in Comiskey Park, not just because disco was soulless music, but because it was a lifestyle of the rich and exclusionary, the cool kids. Make millions crunching spreadsheets at Goldman, party all night with skinny white chick models (or if you really get to the top, much worse…). Electric cars and climate change nonsense seems to be a tipping point. Every climate change bill seems to die in Congress, only to be implemented by executive orders. I really don’t know what to think about the whole debate. What is observed isn’t anywhere what the “science” has been telling us, but the real facts are that something is happening. But I also realize that humans aren’t really equipped to manage an entire planet. In the end efficiency should be preferred over inefficiency, but for that to happen we’d need to get rid of the (extremely inefficient) ruling elites.
It seems that there are fans of Rush in government.
We will pay the price
But we will not count the cost
http://www.songlyrics.com/rush/bravado-lyrics/
They have little interest in the cost and/or inconvenience of these devices. Especially since they are not personally footing the bill.
If an electric car was able to meet the following conditions:
• travel 400-500 miles on a single charge (with AC and/or heat and other accessories running) regardless of the weather
• recharge completely in less than 8 minutes
• be priced within $5 000 FRN of a comparable ICE
Then I would really consider an electric car.
I might still balk at one depending on the maintenance required and how difficult (and expensive) it might be to maintain an electric car.
Rush is one of the reasons there aren’t any female libertarians 🙂
Very shortly, it will be well below zero here. There are mornings my Tahoe throws a code because the intake manifold gaskets are getting close to done. I can’t fathom how you could possibly expect an EV to even maintain a fraction of its performance when it gets that cold. I suppose if you went from heated garage to heated garage…
In re Rush: I would like to see Deliverance re-made. With Rush playing the part of Ned Beatty.
*crosses Rush box set off eric’s xmas list*
A.Yeti,
He certainly seems to have a problem with the fact that they have “taken care of everything”.
And it seems as if his “spirits are low in the depths of despair”.
Probably ought to get him one of those waterfall machines. That seemed to work for Neil Peart
Well, an economic collapse would certainly affect the adoption of these stupid plans, no?
People accuse me of “bashing” electric cars, of being an “anti.” But these are facts, which – as John Adams noted – are stubborn things.
Meh. It’s your site. Besides, if every EV on the planet suddenly exploded, killing dozens, there would still be fanbois lined up to tell you you just don’t understand – that you aren’t forward-thinking enough. Fuck them.
I’ve decided that my new role for the brave new world of electric cars and constricted liberties will be that of the uncle in Red Barchetta. They can make all the laws they want – I will always have a car or two stashed away.
A.Yeti,
Ironic that I also thought of Rush while commenting. Great music.
Don’t forget to store some petrol as well. 🙂
Me too, Yeti.
Only mine Barchetta is lurid bright orange 🙂
I read yesterday that BO has a plan to install(of course it won’t be him but Hitlery if it happens)something like 50 charging stations on I-55 and another interstate(I think) with same amount. As if we have the electricity to power them and as if it wouldn’t take years to accomplish. But let’s not let reality smudge political rhetoric.
Naturally, all those big to small trucks and equipment that causes that great society(al)change are going to run on fairy farts supplied by clover and company.
But big biz will always be the benefactor of these schemes along with politicians, bureaucrats and connected bidnessmen.
Many years ago I saw a guy who had built his house to have an enclosed septic system where he caught the methane and stored it. Nobody ever speaks of renewable sources like this. Bartertown runs on shit.
Hey Right,
“50 charging stations on I-55 ”
I don’t know how long it will take to build them, but I do know a couple of determined teens will be able to “tag” them and short one of them out in less than 15 minutes.
Eight, not Right.
Just think of a world where possession of any conductive materials will be considered an act of terrorism. A paperclip will be a WMD.
Home Depot will be banned from selling electrical supplies or you’ll need an Electrician’s license and a Brady check just to grab a few feet of Romex.
Praise Godvernment the TSA will be there to protect us all.
“Home Depot will be banned from selling electrical supplies or you’ll need an Electrician’s license and a Brady check just to grab a few feet of Romex.”
That’s about what is already going on in the People’s Republic of Montgomery County, just outside the DC Belchway. Harry Homeowner cannot change out an outlet that has failed himself, must hire a licensed electrician. And said licensee must install a ‘tamperproof’ outlet.
Harry might hurt himself or burn down the town.