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Are You Clamoring for an Electric Car?
(With my apologies to Gary McVey, prepare for one of my incendiary posts.)
Is a Tesla or a Chevy Bolt, or a Nissan Leaf on your Christmas list this year? Can you hardly wait to ditch that gas-guzzler in the driveway and replace it with a vehicle that you can “fill up” from an installation in your garage, at a lot less than a tank of Regular?
Well, if that’s what you see in your future, so do most of the world’s car manufacturers. There probably isn’t a car manufacturer who isn’t working on designing and building an electric car, either purpose-designed or just replacing the internal-combustion engine in a model they already build with a big battery. General Motors has already announced their coming “All-electric future.” The European Union is mandating more and more strict emissions rules for vehicles sold there, and their carmakers like BMW, Renault, Daimler, Fiat, and Volvo are all touting their electric vehicles.
But you might wish to wait a moment before you go all-in on electric, especially if you live in the United States outside of a central large city. First, let’s check out the price of that electric car versus its gas-powered brother. The Nissan Leaf retails for about $30,000. Its near twin, the Nissan Versa, costs about $19,000. An electric Chevy Bolt will set you back about $36,000. Its similar brother, the Cruze, is about $17,000. See a pattern developing here? In the past, you could rely on a nice Federal tax credit for your electric car, to help mitigate that huge price differential, but not anymore. Most carmakers have sold enough cars that they don’t earn any tax credit now. So, it looks like GM’s All-Electric Future will be a lot more expensive than its Internal Combustion Present.
That nice home charger in the garage will set you back another $700 or so. However, unlike the five-minute fill-up of your gas-powered ride, it will take you up to 3-4 hours to recharge that electric car. And the “range” of an electric car is a lot smaller than the range of miles you can get from a tank of gas. So, you’ll probably want to forget those long road-trips in your new electric car. And if you get caught in an unexpected traffic jam, that electric car’s range might just shrink. If you get caught with your battery down in the middle of a busy street or freeway, it might be pretty embarrassing to have AAA send a truck to hoist it up and carry it to the nearest charging station. And there’s no guarantee that there will even be a nearby charging station! They are still pretty few around the country today.
Also, what about that wildfire in your area, when the police or highway patrol comes to your house and tells you to evacuate? What? Your electric car is out of charge? It won’t get you very far when you need to evacuate? Too bad, it becomes a hunk of junk when the fire reaches your house, and you really can’t carry much on your back. Then, what about that power failure in the next thunderstorm? Your car needs a charge? Impossible with no power! That’s especially worrying when you are a rural resident, where you are already far from most services.
Now, I’ll bet that new electric car might not seem like such a good investment. And electric cars are so new, there’s really not much of a market for used ones. And big Li-ion batteries don’t last forever, and eventually need to be replaced, at a cost far above that of an internal-combustion engine. So your electric car might not be worth very much when its battery wears out, and you might be out one-third the price of the car for a new one. Oh, and batteries don’t perform very well in the cold, so if you live in a northern state like Minnesota, your car will need to be kept indoors so its battery doesn’t freeze or get drained by the cold weather. And beware of the company parking lot while you’re at work — your car might not run when you come out to go home at the end of the day.
My own viewpoint is that I will never, ever, buy or drive an electric car. I appreciate being able to get in my gas-powered car, and go wherever I want, whenever I want, with no “range anxiety.” I like long car trips, without the worry of how long I have left before my car dies. Gas stations are everywhere, and if you keep a full or close to full tank, you can even drive around during a power outage. And when you are forced to evacuate, you can fill up the trunk with your goods and just drive away. I’m betting that most Americans aren’t clamoring for an electric car, and that GM’s future might not be so prosperous if it expects most Americans to want one.
An electric car will not be in my future.
Published in Economics
Bull.
Gas is the best store of energy we have. That is fact.
If electric cars are more expensive, have less range, take longer to refuel, do worse in cold, and have no resale value. They are inferior in every way to real cars other than acceleration, which I don’t need more of.
Prove to me your new thing is better. Onus is on you, not me.
We…could let the market decide.
And flywheels.
And the grid cannot support all electric in 15 years. Fact. Answer me that problem future man. CA is shutting its power off at times and has rolling brown outside now. They are not adding power. They won’t have it. We cannot support all these electric cars. We can’t. You have to answer that.
I’ll wait.
I have been told I am fool for doubting. Perfectly reasonable to demand real proof, not Poe in the sky and insults for not believing .
David, do you know any electric car owners who get their energy from solar, let alone all of it? I don’t. Do you know anyone who ever claimed to?
BTW, Musk would be happy to sell you a house battery, a “powerwall”.
Sure, TANSTAAFL. How about a large volume of gasoline? Ever see James Cagney in the ending of “White Heat”?
H2 is more explosive than gas.
No, I don’t have to answer a damn thing. I don’t want your lifestyle, and you don’t want mine. You know as little about California as I do about Georgia. Live your life the way you want, and if everyone doesn’t approve of it, or of mine, what do we care? Why should we? Since when do conservatives get conniptions because someone else has a differing opinion?
Bryan, technologies are superseded from time to time. Candles and oil lamps gave way to gaslight, which was replaced by incandescent light. The biggest problems come when the Government tries to force it. The only things they have competence in are defending the coasts and delivering the mail, and they are losing market share in the latter.
If you are going to extol the future and how great it is, you have a responsibility to answer questions like I posed.
Guess it is too damn hard.
Prove to me electric cars are like the electric light.
It is funny, I am asking to be sold, and what I get is called ignorant.
This is like people who demand I believe in UFOs
Wanna bet? Not a chance……
Well I guess you are with me heh
No, not even the slightest desire for one let alone clamoring. Most are more like appliances than cars in my opinion.
When you get the anal probe, you’ll believe. 👽
My 2012 F350 dually super duty diesel has 400,000 miles on it (390,000 to be exact). Call me when you start driving that little thing.
Seriously though, that’s awesome you have a great car you are happy with, whatever it is.
In today’s immediate gratification society, when people get mad if their streaming music or video buffers because they’re not getting 20 Mbps download, that’s probably going to be the biggest negative toward full acceptance of EVs, if faster charging can’t be developed (and as I posted above, the government in Blue states’ answer to 20-30 minute recharges might be to put limits on the number of gas pumps, in order to create artificially long refueling lines in order to make gasing up as slow or slower than electric charging stations).
They are both technologies. One is currently* dominant, one not.
Not by me.
With that kind of attitude, see if I ever offer you a ride in mine.
*See what I did there? Currently. Electric light. Get it? Oh never mind.
In the peoples paradise of California, particularly those tied to PGE, that charging which must be done daily, pushes your consumption into a higher tier with really high KWH rates. Think $0.35/KWHr and rising. No bargain here…
Not that impressed with Elon Musk, his Apple wannabe press conferences introducing “trucks” that look like they were drawn on a 1st grader’s notebook, his failure to be profitable , his cars poor quality…..
Ok, it’s personal taste. I don’t like the cars (other than the door handles, those are slick) I’m not into the futuristic interior with no gauges and a 32″ tv in the center of the dash. However, more power to him and people who do like them. I still think they are cars designed by appliance engineers but hell I like a 1968 Lincoln not a driving I Pad.
It’s not practical or in my opinion possible that EV’s will be all that’s on the road in 15 yrs or possibly ever. That said, their use will increase at least due to busy body governments mandating it. They are also getting better and better with some really excellent hybrids that seem to be the best of both worlds in many cases.
I remember as a relatively junior officer in the mid 70s, visiting the office of a US oil company in Bogota. Their oil price projections over the subsequent few years was $70. I asked if his company actually believed that? He said yes. I said, I didn’t know much about energy, but I’d guess that rather than continuing to climb, oil prices would probably fall below $30. I didn’t know how much or when but the direction was a certainty. I’d say the same about the demand for electric cars. They’re expensive and their fuel costs more than gasoline and gas. If we go to such a top down economy that we allow politicians to dictate electric car outcomes, we can’t know what other nonsense might happen but other than widespread political stupidity I’d not invest a cent in electric car, and certainly not buy one.
In April I was still paying $140 a month for gas. Since then I’ve paid about $20 extra per month for electricity. That’s an annual saving of $1,440. Like they say, your mileage may differ.
Gary, is all your electricity use billed the same? When you got that charging station in the garage, did the electric utility install it? If not, who did? Does the electric utility know you have an electric car? Do you have to tell them when you buy one?
It ain’t all about fuel mileage…….
Part of the environmental sales pitch for electric cars is that over time the grid will evolve to all wind & solar. This pitch rarely takes into account the costs of storing large amounts of electricity.
Yes, I’m familiar with Musk’s Powerwall. I believe the current price is $9000 for a 13.5 kWh battery. 13.5 kWh is not anywhere near enough to charge an electric car battery, so you’ll need 2-4 of the Powerwalls ir a larger system for another supplier. And if there are a few days of overcast weather and you need to charge your car every day…not to mention other electrical needs in your home…you’re going to run out of electricity.
RB, it is. There are hours-of-the-day variations, so night use is cheaper, but not all that much cheaper. I had it installed privately by a licensed contractor. No, I don’t have to tell them. SoCal Edison has power to spare, especially at night. True, only homeowners enjoy easy recharging at night, but most people in this area are homeowners. I know some EV owners who recharge at work only. Nobody ever said it was for everybody. Quite a number of apartment dwellers have no car at all, so it doesn’t affect them.
My three previous cars were a German built “Chrysler” Crossfire that was a re-skin of a Mercedes CLK, a Pontiac GTO from Australia with the Corvette LS engine, and a Jaguar with a big stonking V-8. I’m not exactly a greenie snowflake.
Again, do you know of even one EV owner who says they charge off solar? That environmental sales pitch is one I haven’t ever heard, so I think you should ignore it. It’s easy to “nutpick” arguments with no real world relevance.
Hell no. It’s idiotic. A gallon of gasoline is cheaper than a gallon of water. And it’s questionable whether the electric car is even more environmentally friendly. Definitely not in my future either.