The word is not politically correct, of course – but it does convey an important meaning. One retards the ignition timing, for instance.
Or, progress.
Volvo’s 2022 C40 Recharge being an example of the latter.
And a warning – about what’s coming.
What is the C40 Recharge? It can be described as an electrically retarded version of the Volvo XC40 – Volvo’s compact-sized crossover. The Retard – whoops, Recharge – is based on the same underlying platform, or chassis architecture but differs radically in terms of what propels it – as well as what follows from that.
The XC40 comes standard with a 2.0 liter turbocharged four cylinder engine that can pull a 3,500 trailer – and pull you more than 400 highway miles before the tank runs dry. Its tank can be fully refueled in five minutes or less, practically anywhere.
Volvo asks $34,100 for this.
The C40 Recharge retards all of this.
Well, except for one thing . . . .
Its electrified propulsion system might take you about half as far (210 miles is advertised) as the XC40, provided it’s not too cold out and provided you can refrain from using the heater – which will sap the charge available, reducing how far you can travel. The same goes for the use of any electrically powered accessory in an electric car. The air conditioner/defroster, for instance. Also the lights. All electrically powered.
But call it 210.
It’s still not quite half as far as the XC40 can go – heater on, full blast (because in a not-electric car, heat is a free byproduct of combustion, the use of which doesn’t reduce the vehicle’s range at all).
Range is also immaterial, in a non-retarded car.
Even if the XC40 could only travel 210 miles before it ran out of gas, it only takes about five minutes to re-instill a full tank of gas. The C40 requires you to retard your day – via the delay.
Volvo crows that the thing can be partially recharged to 80 percent capacity in just 40 minutes – provided you can find a high-voltage “fast” charger within your ever-dwindling remaining range.
Forty minutes’ wait – for 80 percent charge.
Which is to say, 40 minutes’ wait to recover 168 miles of theoretical range, Faberge egg under the accelerator pedal, heater and AC off or at least, turned down low.
How else to describe this but retarded?
As in, limited or reduced.
Including what you can tow with this thing. Which is only 2,000 lbs.
Well, there is one thing . . .
The situation is actually worse than the numbers reflect. One can drive a not-electric vehicle like the XC40 without worry – literally, One hardly has to think about fueling because fuel is everywhere – and the wait is incidental. Most of us have run our vehicles “on fumes” at one point or another – knowing that we’d be able, probably, to make it to the next station.
Any station would do. They are all fast – actually. Not in air-fingers-quotes.
No need to plan. No need to panic. Even if you do run dry, you can be back on the road in minutes. Just jog down the road to the gas station and bring back a gallon. How do you bring back a kilowatt-hour?
In the electrically retarded car, you’d better plan. Because if a “fast” charger isn’t found in time, you will be spending a lot of time, derelict by the side of the road. Waiting for a tow. Or plugged in to a standard (120 volt) outlet, which will recharge your electric car extremely slowly.
As in overnight.
Even if you find a “fast” charger in time, you will still lose at least 40 minutes of your time. This assumes you’re first in line. If you’re not, you’ll wait until the car ahead of you is finished partially charging up. His 40 minute wait added yours.
It could be longer.
Keep in mind throughput – the term for how many cars can be refueled – or recharged – at a given number of pumps or plugs. Six pumps can refuel – to full – six non-electric cars in five minutes or so. The spots open up for the next six cars.
Six plugs can recharge – partially recharge – six electric cars in 40 minutes. While these six electric cars are partially charging – while their owners are waiting – a fleet of not-electric cars has been refueling.
To full.
And leaving. Making way for other cars that need fuel.
The not-electric car that pulled up to the pump at the same time the electric car pulled up to the plug was gone – and back on the road – five minutes later. The owner of the electric car followed, about 35 minutes later. He’ll be forced to stop – again – much sooner. Remember, 80 percent “full.” So not even 210 miles.
Is it not . . . retarded?
Oh, yes. There is the one thing that isn’t less about the C40 Recharge. It is what you pay for it. Nearly $60,000. That’s nearly twice what you’d pay to drive an XC40 twice as far without having to stop – and being able to go, again, much faster.
You’d have to be retarded to buy into this.
Which is why it’s being forced on us.
The Retard – oops, Recharge – isn’t the only example of regression and decline that’s new and not-improved. It is a preview of the general short-bussing that’s coming. After 120 years of progress, of cars that are better and cost less with each generation, we are now experiencing the leading edge of a forced reversal – the equivalent of eating chips of lead-based paint and washing them down with a mercury-laced cup of milk.
The enstupidation of vehicles follows upon the enstupidation of the coverage thereof. The car press isn’t explaining what’s coming – nor what it will cost. It’s all so very cool and forward thinking!
And they ask me why I drink . . .
. . .
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Love Eric gave it a head of “Retard” LOL
Long before Subaru, Volvo was the vehicle of choice for virtue-signaling lefties… if you and your lesbian partner are tenured professors of sociology each making $100,000, I guess you have sixty grand to burn on an electric Volvo to drive three blocks to campus and park in the faculty lot. Burnishing your lefty creds with the EV will sure help when a $175,000 provost’s position opens up…
Wouldn’t the most environmentally friendly car be one that isn’t disposable garbage? What happened to the days of the rear-wheel-drive, red block Volvos that went half a million miles, 240s, 760s, 940s? Even the 5-cylinder, white block, front-wheel-drive 850s and S/V70s that were ubiquitous family hand-me-downs in my high school parking lot circa early 2000s were indestructible. Can any of these electric nightmares realistically be passed through a family from mom’s soccer mobile to the kids as they learn how to drive? I doubt they have the range to even make it to an away game and back. These aren’t family cars, they aren’t fun cars, what exactly are they other than a virtue signaling analogue of an “in this house…we believe sign?”
Eric – heres one. If you are charging with more than one car at a station, that 150 Kw gets divided. So now the 40 minutes to 80% charge becomes 80 mins !
Just look at that thing……
Whichever power plant you choose, THE AZTEK IS BACK!
Eric forgot to mention that the battery pack needs to be kept warm in freezing weather, so if you want to get some heat for yourself as well the range will be extra shortened.
Meanwhile when I have enough time and feel somewhat lazy I can start my IC Corolla, crank the heater/defroster to full blast and go back inside to finish a cup of coffee while the ice melts off the windshield. Then I get to drive off in a toasty warm car.
So now they changed the percentage full to 80%? I thought it used to be ‘to 90%’.
Makes sense they have to reduce the ‘to full %’ in order to reduce the time.
So I guess we’ll be seeing ‘to 70%’ soon, etc….
hahahahaha…………….
Fast charging can only be safely done to a limit between 80-85% for li-ion. If you don’t start tapering after that it’s cell damage and possibly fire at some point if you keep charging that way time after time.
Because of the charging curve and the tapering that has to happen past 80% charge, it takes as much time to get that last 20% as it did to charge to 80%. It’s possible to charge to 100%, but it’ll take you twice as long vs. fast charging to 80%
Haha, I think I speak for everyone in that I sincerely appreciate how you don’t give a shit, Eric!
Also, added “enstupidation” to my lexicon.
The EP Autos education never ends.
‘added “enstupidation” to my lexicon’ — BaDnOn
It’s the equivalent of eating chips of lead-based paint and washing them down with a mercury-laced cup of milk.
And they ask me why I munch Quaaludes . . .
They don’t want us to travel to far away from our transhumansist smart cities.
TPTB don’t want us to travel AT ALL! There, FIFY… 😉
After the collapse of the west due to psychotic communist initiatives, we will all be back in horse & buggies. I’m about to learn to blacksmithing so I can forge horseshoes and replacement wagon wheels.
DO it, im ahead of you, I started last year and got the anvil (good ones aren’t cheap), a cheap $120 forge from india, and bought 1200lbs of anthracite coal for $275. And a few tongs plus at least a ball peen hammer and sledge and youre set for a business when shtf
These electric cars weigh far too much for the performance they have. The Tesla Plaid is fast but it weighs about 5000 lb.
This Mk2 VW Golf only weighs 2000 lb and has a four cylinder gas engine, it is a lot faster then the Plaid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7t4C_0BZT4
If you think electric is expensive now, just wait!
In 19 years from now it will be 2030 CE. Everybody will be driving an EV by then, maybe.
Almost, not quite, not even close.
Agenda 30 will be so cool.
By 2030, the leaders in the Democratic Party will have aged even more.
Joe Biden will be 97.
Nancy Pelosi will be 100.
Hillary will be 93.
John Kerry will be 96.
Bill Clinton will be 94.
Charles Schumer will be 99.
The chances of survival by age reaches zero, eventually and inevitably. The actuarial tables tell the sad story. If you can’t breathe, there will be zero carbon emissions. har
Mother Nature is the greatest teacher and she kills all students.
You don’t have to lift a finger, Mother Nature will take care of matters.
Something to look forward to……
Just 9 years away Drumpish!
Why can’t I add anymore? Just wishing for more time on the planet is all, I guess.
Agenda 40 then.
Ahh…2030 is only NINE years away…And Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky will be 50…
Thanks for the snarky humor. 👍
Had me laughing to tears.
I envision Triple A having mobile rapid charge vehicles to get your electric car going if you are stuck. They will probably perform this service free for premium card holders and charge big bucks to the rest of us. There will be people stranded, unless there is a massive increase in the number of charging stations and hugh investment in the modernization of the nation’s electrical grid.
No, they hate cheap electrical power too. There will be huge SPENDING on windmills and solar arrays, while continuing to crush the life out of naturally fueled and nuclear plants.
Obastard bragged that the price of electricity would necessarily skyrocket. But you will pay it and like it peasant. We’ll make a law, just like Obastard care, if the service is too expensive, we will mandate (bonus for recognizing this as a synonym for DICTATE) that you have to buy it, thus relieving all the rest of the actual market pressure keeping the price from skyrocketing.
Hi Ernie,
I’ve become convinced that the main object of all of this is to make it difficult if not impossible for most people to live outside the cities, in single family homes. The end goal is to herd most of the population into urban hives, where of necessity they will be controlled. Everything from their expensive collective/communal living arrangements to their meager but also-expensive food allotment. They have no use for people who live in their own private homes, perhaps with their own private food supply… because such people are of no use, to them.
If it were not propagandized to be a solution to a problem that as yet, in spite of 50 years of prediction, has not come to pass, at least we might notice this is in direct opposition to our welfare. It has nothing to do with climate “control” because climate cannot be controlled. The energy of this dynamic chaotic system dwarfs any human endeavor short of nuclear war.
Actually, even nuclear war as terrifying and horrible as it would be, would be nothing like most folks expect. The blasts wouldn’t create a nuclear winter in excess of what a couple of big volcanos cause, and the billions killed would be repopulated in a generation or two.
“Forty minutes’ wait – for 80 percent charge.” — eric
You don’t need no PhD in Operations Research to grok that long dwell times mean many more charging stations — and more real estate — will be needed, compared to a humble gas station.
How’s that gonna work out for us in densely-packed metros like New York and San Francisco?
Yet the charging stations — many of them centrally-planned under FJB’s infrastructure bill — can be expected to STILL suffer from overcapacity at peak hours.
Just like the DMV. Take a number and wait … serf.
Once Elon gets involved as a power supplier, that quick charge might cost you 30 or 50 cents a kilowatt-hour (plus fees) — possibly even floating during the day, according to the state of the grid.
Cloudy day, a buck per kWh. Take it or leave it, chump.
To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, you have to plug it in to find out how much it’s gonna cost.
*flees in horror from the big-busted old hooker*
I’m sure there are proposals to get every parking meter replaced with a charging station. The municipalities are chomping at the bit for revenue to cover the underfunded pension plans, and why not get into the “fuel” business?
Then we can all use EVgo type apps to set charging appointments for us. Maybe new side hustles for paid runners to pick up and deliver our fully charged evs.
A lot of electric vehicle first adopters are going back to ice powered cars……because of the charging time problem.
I thought the same thing sitting at a gas station on the turnpike. Or any toll road.
Those gas/food stations are usually pretty busy. There are lines most of the time during busy times.
Now reduce range to half, add ‘fueling’ time by 5-10x’s, and there will be very big issues.
Even if 20% of all cars were EV, I see bug problems ahead and in places we haven’t even thought about yet.
‘Now reduce range to half, add ‘fueling’ time by 5-10x’s, and there will be very big issues.’ — Chris
But Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have a plan.
Trust the experts!
(Hungry? Broke? Out of gas? Call a Democrat lawyer! :-))
“…big busted old hooker…”
You sir are a very ill individual to even have that enter your mind…
“Personally, I think the utilities should plan right now for the integration of electric vehicles into their systems. They should offer electric vehicle owners financial incentives for plugging in and sending their stored power to the grid.”
Oh, hey partner! We noticed you have a full charge on your EV. We need to take some of your range to run the big marijuana grow house down the road. Hope you didn’t have any plans. Here’s a few cents back on your bill, maybe put it toward buying some Purple Passion and Netflix instead!
https://www.aier.org/article/how-the-consumer-will-become-a-partner-on-the-electric-grid/
But if Kleiner Perkins just convinces enough congress critters to back “green” transportation projects, they’ll get a fantastic return!
https://www.kleinerperkins.com/case-study/amprius