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What Will You Do When Your Favorite Carmaker Goes All-Electric?
The EU has instituted onerous fuel-economy and carbon-emissions rules, causing many European automakers to declare that soon they will be building only electric cars. The EU determined that cars propelled by batteries emit no carbon that could be destroying Planet Earth; so they are prompting carmakers to quit making gasoline and diesel-powered cars. These changes are imminent, with Volvo (now owned by a Communist Chinese company) having announced last year that by 2030 they will only be producing electric cars. Just last week, Daimler, which makes Mercedes Benz cars, also announced that it will go all-electric by the end of the decade. Jaguar has announced that it will be all-electric by 2025.
So, what if you have aspired to own a Jaguar or Mercedes. Will you buy that electric car and risk being on foot if the power goes out? What if you will never be able to trade in that gas-powered Volvo for the newest model? Are you looking forward to the government essentially owning your car? Most electricity is provided by government-sanctioned utilities, so you will have few options for fueling up if all you are allowed to own and drive will be some kind of electric car. General Motors and Ford have also announced that they will be moving to building mostly electric cars. California and Washington have already passed laws against gasoline-powered cars.
Note, however, one of the big holdouts. Toyota has announced that they will not be building an all-electric fleet.
Nearly every week, I read a new article describing how this or that automaker has declared that they will be only building electric cars in the future. Not one of those articles has yet addressed what I think of as the most important question. What if the people don’t want electric cars? What if all those buyers and drivers out there are not one bit interested in driving a car which they have to constantly worry about running out of charge?
What will you do?
Published in Economics
Of course this is what CEO’s will say. I have delved deeply enough into this electric vehicle thing to weigh in.
Reading all the comments and agreeing with so many even when they are at odds,
We have to make a distinction between now and the future. Every technology needs adoption and acceptance whereby an infrastructure is created. There are
The future of electric will take care of most difficulties. One huge upside is that, with all the talk about grid failure, battery technology will allow less grid dependence. Every car is a power source. Solar into battery power Tesla’s model, is wonderfully independent. And the technology continues to improve. And what batteries are capable of now, in terms of charge rate, weight/power dynamic, capacity are continually improving.
That one faction is trying to politicize this weaponize tracking and taxing
Pushing change motivated by carbon emissions is stupid, since most sources for electricity emits carbon as well, just somewhere else.
Elon Musk is way out in front of these companies since he started as an electric auto manufacturer. All of thee companies have huge problems converting to all electric.
Electric vehicles have a fraction of the moving parts and systems required for a traditional fuel based vehicle.
The economic model these car companies have with dealers is a essentially a maintenance contract. They sell the car and make a mild profit, but they make most of their money servicing and repairing the car. Electric vehicles require radically less maintenance, so dealers have not been pushing the new electric models. This is just one of their problems.
There is almost no overlap with the technology of an internal combustion engine and an electric motor which is much simpler, so all the great engineers Mercedes has recruited and employed are worthless. Their factories are full of useless equipment, engine, coolant, exhaust, muffler.. and how do they survive the transition.
And then it’s still the same problem. A giant industry dependent on substances, be they liquid or solid, disrupting, exploiting, fighting over the precious resources …
Ultimately, I believe there will be a long period of legacy gas and diesel coexisting with electric.
Yes, and there are companies that have contracts to provide meals and stuff. When they get the call, they roll big trucks and trailers filled with food and other supplies, also cooking setups…
Toyota is massive in the third world where they hold a significant market share. the third world is not in a hurry to go to a more expensive solution for power generation let alone for vehicles. Toyota will continue to build for this market and hopefully the north american market as well.
I wonder how much electricity that new breathalyzer attachment in your steering wheel uses…. (exits whistling)
I had one of those, except mine was orange and it was called a Commut-A-Car. It apparently had more batteries, behind both front and rear bumpers which stuck out further than the photo. It would be great where I am now, but that was 30-plus years ago.
Meanwhile, Bombardier of Canada makes – or at least made – some rather nice-looking electric cars of a similar style but much nicer. The base models are not much different than golf carts, but others had pretty regular side doors etc.
I own two Mustang GT V8s (’85 and ’17) and belong to a Mustang club. This is a group with high loyalty to Ford products. When Ford placed the Mustang badge on their new electric vehicle, everybody in this group was disgusted. Also, Ford decided a couple of years ago to stop making sedans. Except for the Mustang coupe or convertible, all other Fords are now boxy SUVs. Those decisions are rapidly eroding the loyalty of my club. The club members will continue to treasure their cars, but Ford is giving them no reason to buy in the future. Granted, the majority of car club members can order off the Denny’s senior menu and may not be long for this earth, so maybe Ford is thinking of the future without them. Moreover, car loyalty seems be a quaint idea among the general populace, so the financial numbers may not support encouraging brand loyalty.
If I could afford another car and had the space for it and could live with some of the inconveniences, I would be very interested in an electric car, because they can be very quick. The instantaneous torque of electric motors can produce unbelievable acceleration. I think that is where car companies can make inroads to enthusiasts, who do tend to develop loyalties. I think it was a mistake for Ford to call their electric car a Mustang. It pissed off the older loyal enthusiasts without really appealing to the younger ones.
Like everybody else on this thread, I have no idea where the electricity is going to come from. The people who decided 40-years ago that nuclear energy must be shut down are the same kind that now want all electric cars all the time.
And when the batteries are made, they will be made in China using Rare Earth materials mined there (too ‘dirty’ for our Environmentalists, doncha know).
We are handing China another piece of rope with which to hang us.
Musk is a very successful farmer….. of subsidies, that is.
Musk started out exchanging the powerplant with a Lotus or something didn’t he? He just popped in batteries and electric motors, I thought. His learning curve for the rest of the car has been fairly flat as well, learning and how to make bodies and fit and finish, and also the intricacies of electrifying everything, even door handles. I suspect all the other standard auto makers have reached parity or have surpassed him.
Mine looked like this:
It isn’t just fun, it’s safer and easier to drive in bad traffic.
They don’t have to force it. If they put up compact nukes on decentralized grids, it would just happen.
Electric cars are not new. The electric Baker of 1911:
https://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z11282/Baker-Electric.aspx
Electric cars were marketed to women as cleaner than the gasoline powered cars of the day.
Also didn’t have to risk breaking your arm if you got a kickback when cranking.
Paging @randyweivoda. Randy Weivoda to the white courtesy phone.
This was dismaying. Do you know any of the back story on this? Their SUV lineup is lackluster, and the interior layouts are just awful. What is this about?
It’s what customers are buying. Our local Ford dealer stopped carrying the Taurus sedan a couple of years before Ford stopped making it.
I am a fan of the aesthetics of 1930s cars, particularly sedans. I was a bit dismayed to learn that the external dimensions of an early 1930s Ford V8 Fordor sedan are remarkably similar to the exterior dimensions of the 2019 Ford Escape my wife drives (overall length and height, and wheelbase). The Escape is several inches wider, and about 1000 pounds heavier. Other than a much shorter hood, the Escape is not that different in overall shape either. So why do I complain about Ford dropping sedans? I am left in a state of bafflement.
It may be simply because trucks and SUVs etc don’t have to meet the same MPG requirements as sedans.
Also from RushBabe49.com recently:
https://rushbabe49.com/2021/07/17/clean-energy-not-so-fast/
https://rushbabe49.com/2021/07/21/annals-of-stupid-electric-vehicles-philadelphia-edition/
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The government will have to pry my gasoline car out of my cold, dead hands. I will never, ever, consider or buy an electric car. My Car is My Liberty. Can we make some Ricochet bumper-stickers with that slogan?
I keep hearing this, but none of the people I know who have electric cars have had to replace the batteries, and most have not noticed significant capacity loss.
Does anyone have reliable statistics on real-world battery replacement rates?
Any cars that ran on anthracite?
“Her gown stays white
from morn till night
upon the Road of Anthracite.”
My daughter has been driving hybrid sedans for several years and loves them. Her Honda Accord plays a little jingle in golf cart mode until the engine kicks on. She gets great gas mileage and doesn’t have to plug in. I was shopping for a Honda CRV hybrid but cars are limited and more expensive right now. Another thing that bugs me is the lack of a CD player. My 2010 has a 6 disk player, a single CD player, a card reader, and a USB connection. I am still buying CDs. I like physical ownership.
Yes!
Before long the average age of our vehicles will be so old that we will be driving the equivalent of Cuba cars.
This also amounts to a regressive tax on the poor, does it not?
You can have one installed but it is kind of pricey. There is also the option of getting an CD player with Bluetooth if the car has Bluetooth capability, and there is some device on the market that allows you to transmit from a CD player to your car radio, a techie friend of mine has told me. Has anyone else heard of such a device?
I’ve had one in the past. It allowed me to broadcast my iPod to my FM radio. It was pretty cheap. That was its downfall in the end. The components were pretty cheap too, and eventually it became more trouble than it was worth because you had to find a empty frequency to broadcast to, and the frequency selector stopped working.
I get 811 hits on Amazon for auto Bluetooth CD players.
Me, too. I FLAC them into my media server, and then generate MP3 (with custom normalization) for the mobile devices.
My husband and I were joking about how we used to have after market cd players that held up to 10 CDs installed under a front seat and wired into the audio system. Then manufacturers got smart and had high end models come with them . Now we have gone full circle and are talking about aftermarket solutions again. They (kids designing cars) think Apple car play is the future. Yes, it is cool but who wants to rip a bunch of CDs? Looks like I will be doing that. I am going to pass on replacing my 2010 CRV this summer. Besides, we have my husband’s 2018 CRV for road trips. I was just wanting a hybrid with all those fancy safety features.
The local Honda place only had 32 total new cars the other day. They used to have that many CRVs alone.
Except for the gas already in your tank and in storage cans . . .