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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
The Toyota CEO has said that electric cars are too expensive. He likened them to “a flower on a high mountain” which most people would not be able to obtain.
I’m betting on Toyota being right about that. The company is legendary for its superior market planning and prescience. Like Henry Ford they made their mark by building cars that the average person could afford through superior manufacturing practice.
After 4 decades of being a Ford owner it seems I’ll have to switch to Toyota to buy a reliable sedan since Ford has abandoned that market.
Knowing commies as well as we do, you can be sure the punitive government will make sure gas stations are rare and expensive to visit.
The Toyota Avalon seems to be about the only large mass-market (i.e., not $60,000+) sedan on the U.S. market. There are a few mid-sized sedans out there besides the Toyota Camry.
Really? It more than triples your total time for making a trip. It takes less than half an hour to cover 25 miles, and then an hour to charge for another 25? That makes 90 minutes total for 25 miles of travel. An overall speed of about 18 miles per hour. Who thinks that’s a good idea?
My “doesn’t sound like a lot” was referring to the 25 miles, not the hour.
Okay, I see what you meant now.
That is an excellent point that no one ever makes. Mobil, Shell, Exxon, and many others have to run a very tight ship in order to compete for your business. If one gas station doesn’t satisfy you, you can go down the street to a different one. You have no choice who you buy your electricity from, unless you want to move hundreds of miles.
This makes me crazy. I read a long article about how effectively corrupt and inefficient the utilities are. Decentralized grids* are very doable now and they would make the world a lot better place. The left is against it not just because it would require compact nukes, but also because they would lose political control.
edit for spelling
Kick out the left coast. Return to a saner time. Re lefties, Michael Walsh says,” they never stop, they never sleep, they never quiet,” I say winning elections is just a speed bump.
It will take about ten hours to recharge a fully depleted EV battery.
Yeah, just look at what happened in Texas.
I agree. Just because the PR department says that a company is putting all its eggs in one basket doesn’t mean it’s really going to happen. Just as a company may may make some noise about diversity, blah, blah, blah, doesn’t mean they are going to lay off the bulk of their white male employees.
A really important thing that was learned from Texas was, coal and nuke work better because the fuel is stockpiled on site. Natural gas is a complex just in time system.
This is a very politically incorrect thing to say, but I think if clean coal is cheap enough it’s going to net out even with the externalities. I would save natural gas for other things.
Everybody knows the phrase, “The customer is always right.” Most people misunderstand the original meaning of the phrase. It doesn’t mean that a business is obligated to satisfy every unreasonable demand a customer comes up with. It means that you have to sell what the customer wants to buy. Regardless of what kind of vehicles the product planners may want to build, if you look at a parking lot and see that the vast majority of new vehicles are crossovers/SUVs/pickups, that’s what you better be selling. Porsche could not stay in business anymore just selling sports cars. They want to build sports cars, but without the sales of SUVs, they couldn’t make it. Even Jaguar and Lamborghini sell SUV’s now. Volkswagen is also cutting back on the number of car models. I think Mazda is, too. It’s not a development I am happy about, but “The customer is always right.”
Same goes for manual transmissions. It makes life somewhat less worth living knowing that every year there are fewer brand new cars offered with manual transmissions. Seriously, I may have to go on anti-depressants the day that you just cannot get them anymore on new cars. Even the Corvette is no longer available with a stick, and with the design of the current chassis, Chevrolet couldn’t make a manual version if they wanted to. But what are the car companies supposed to do? The vast majority of even sports car buyers are too lazy to shift for themselves. I cannot fault companies for not building vehicles that the public doesn’t want. All I can do is enjoy fine automobiles while they exist and hope that some day the car buying public realizes what they are missing out on before it is too late.
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When I get around to new-car shopping, I intend to let every salesperson know that I am opposed to the new concentration on electric cars, and will never buy one. I will urge them to notify their corporate office of that sentiment, so they don’t get too fat and happy with the EU mandates.
I can’t remember if I already said this, but I think what happens in Minnesota is the electric cars get subsidized out of other car purchases. It starts in 2024. On top of that, the car shortage supposedly isn’t going to get resolved until sometime in 2023.
This is called cross subsidization, and it should be against the law to do this without explicitly saying they are doing it that way. Any subsidization should come straight out of the treasury so it’s progressive. This is regressive taxation. It’s everywhere.
The problem there was not centralized vs decentralized, it was too much reliance on highly-subsidized energy sources that failed when the weather got bad. Especially the windmills.
They would have been largely OK if their natural gas was winterized better. Depending on who you talk to, it was a one in 10 year event or a one in 30 year event. In any case, you have this big system that wasn’t run right. Small grids are the only way to go.
Natural gas is fine too, the problem there was mostly that the power plants weren’t built to operate in such extreme weather conditions. Which can also affect coal plants, and others. Then it becomes a calculation on whether it’s cost-effective to build power plants that can operate in weather conditions that might arise perhaps less often than even the plant’s expected lifespan.
It’s not that simple. If the small grid is too reliant on windmills etc, it’s going to fail too.
I have never once heard this said by anyone.
Well, it caused a lot of death, grief, and economic destruction. Everything should have been winterized.
Obviously. If they are dumb enough not to use compact nuke, which is the only thing that decentralized grids are mentioned with, they are going to have problems.
I think it was more like a 75 or 100 year event. I know in 34 years here I’d never seen anything like it. The weirdest thing is that if the natural gas sources hadn’t had their power cut off they could have kept the gas flowing, which would have kept the grid from having anything but very short service interruptions. The worst part is it means we won’t really know if the grid is secure until the next time when everyone has forgotten about this last one.
The local environmental lobbyist says it was a ten year event.
I think particularly in energy, it’s very difficult to deal with the lies from the left.
There were coal plants that failed too, because the facilities/equipment couldn’t handle the extreme cold. Having a local fuel supply was not the only issue. Having the coal right there is meaningless if the machinery that moves the coal, freezes up.
It WAS winterized, probably even to some degree beyond “typical” winters. That was far from typical. Making it MORE winterized, able to withstand a level of cold that might happen once in… oh, maybe, what, 50 years?… is expensive. If you ask people NOW if they SHOULD have done that, you’ll get “well, obviously, duh!” But if you ask them – in the form of rate requests, etc – when the plant is built, “should we build this power plant to withstand cold that might never happen during its lifespan, and by the way it will cost you an extra $1 or $2 per month?” you’re likely to get a very loud “$2 A MONTH???? NO WAY!!!!”
You wouldn’t get that from ME, but I’m smarter than most people.
The problem is, mission critical is mission critical.
Yes, and again, they planned for “mission critical” down to maybe -5 degrees or something, and maybe for a duration of 12 hours or something. Planning for “mission critical” down to maybe -10 or -20, and/or maybe for DAYS IN A ROW, involves additional cost that they didn’t have, couldn’t get via regulatory processes, wouldn’t be acceptable IN ADVANCE by ratepayers, etc etc.
What should be done?
Well I don’t think “compact nukes” and “decentralized grids” are the be-all/end-all, larger grids have their values and the February event illustrates that pretty well. Even a “decentralized grid” with “compact nuke” isn’t likely to plan for a 50% or more “oversupply” that might be required in an extreme situation: heat, cold, equipment damaged by weather…
Customers tend to be unwilling to pay for extra capacity that isn’t actually needed on a day-to-day basis. The larger grid system can actually work very well, but it’s also been starved for support by people who seem to think all they should pay for is the ability to turn on one more light, not the ability to keep heating or cooling their home if a once-in-30-years-or-something event occurs.
It seems odd to me, considering that people don’t seem to mind paying for their home to have a roof even if they don’t really need it all the time.
Perhaps some (larger) portion of utility costs needs to be seen as similar to car insurance: something you pay for while hoping you never really need it. Or more like a capital investment – like the roof on their house – and not just a “consumable” like the food in the fridge.
And it could be handled in a market way. People who want the extra security pay their additional $1 or $2 a month or whatever. Those who don’t, if there is such an emergency, their power goes off. And no whining, no lawsuits, even if someone dies as a result. Because that’s what they chose. It’s like the people who wanted to “play the market” by having “market rate” billing. They saved maybe $10/month or whatever when things were good, and after Feb they maybe got a bill for $10,000, which is what the market cost was. I think they should have been required to pay it, or gone without.