There’s nothing wrong with high-end cars or electric powerplants, per se. But the idea that the U.S. auto market is forced to accept a technology that is still underdeveloped and low-scale while the year quickly approaches that auto manufacturers will be required to produce EVs primarily is unacceptable.
Electric vehicles are for those with garage space for charging, multiple vehicles for different applications, and the ability to pay sticker prices. That list does not describe reality for most Americans.
Who says you need a garage to own an electric car? This fellow in the French town of La Roche Guyon seems to manage just fine.
The word primarily in the top paragraph is doing a lot of work here. The Biden administration is hardly banning gasoline cars, after all. Biden has a goal of increasing electric car sales by 2032 or so, but the actual rules he's enacted are all carrots: tax incentives, investment in charging infrastructure and battery manufacturing, and electrification of the federal fleet.
In addition, the EPA has proposed new tailpipe emission standards that would probably force about two-thirds of new cars to be electric by 2032. So far, though, it's just a proposal. It will be years before it's real.
So gasoline cars will continue to be available for a very long time. Even the aspirational 2032 goal is a decade away, and the whole point of this is to give auto manufacturers enough time to fully develop the technology. It may be underdeveloped and low-scale today, but the federal incentives will help ensure that it's robust and consumer-scale ten years from now. Is that really so scary?
86 thoughts on “Is Joe Biden bullying us to buy electric cars?”
CAbornandbred
This is the same crowd that fought seat belts, third tail lights, and catalytic converters. It's a commie conspiracy don't you know.
painedumonde
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Yikes
You can always count on a present day conservative to be reflexively against anything, no matter what it is, that government says needs to be adopted.
This is especially silly here. Gas cars are, IMO, going the way of flip phones, and if we are further speculating as to when, I would say well before 2032.
There will still be big numbers of the existing gas fleet around in that year, but it will be like horses in 1932.
cld
Social conservatives can be especially antagonistic to electric cars because they eliminate internal combustion engines which they associate with power, --explosions, the wealth of the petroleum industry --driving them involves them the existing physical power structure.
But as soon as the gas stations start going away, or put in rows of chargers, and realize the EV they bought kicking and screaming runs so much smoother, they'll forget about it.
The same way they're so often just nuts for nuclear power plants, while doing not much at all to try and build them.
Atticus
Give me break. No one's reluctance towards electric vehicles stems from associating internal combustion with power or wealth. The reluctance stems for electric cars currently being very inconvenient and expensive.
golack
ummm....."Rolling Coal"
CAbornandbred
Definitely a thing among the hyper-masculine conservative crowd. It's done for exactly one reason - to own the libs. They get a perverse pleasure in puking out the diesel smoke in peoples faces.
rick_jones
I would assert those ICE owners “rolling coal” and “icing” chargers are definitely power tripping.
Atticus
Had to look that up because I had no idea what you're talking about. I don't think the handful of people that do this have any bearing on this conversation.
Austin
“No one's reluctance towards electric vehicles stems from associating internal combustion with power or wealth… I don't think the handful of people that do this have any bearing on this conversation.“
Talk about moving the goalposts. No one became a handful of people in just 2 hours.
Atticus
Ok. Replace "anyone" in my original comment with 99.99% of people if that makes you feel better.
DButch
Not really. Our first Nissan Leaf, bought in 2019, had an EPA range rating of 150 miles - actual driving experience showed a consistent 160-165 mless. It only "lost" about 10% of that range in cold weather - mosly if you turned on the cabin heater. (Nissan only usies the middle 60% of the battery range - a technique that Toyota introduced in the first Prius.)
It turned out that the range took care of over 90% of our normal short and medium distance driving It also didn't cost any more than our 2011 Toyota Prius (inflation adjusted as Kevin likes to do)- and that was before we claimed the federal and state rebates/discounts. It was the least expensive car we'd bought in a bit over a decade.
Nissan threw in a smart charger cable and we had a 220V plug installed by our breaker box in the garage. We bundled it with a few other electrical upgrades, so in the end, we wound up paying the minimum $400 charge and the cost contribution of the 220V plug wound up being materials and about 30 minutes labor.
We had to adjust our driving expectations a bit - the Leaf gets a startling amount of torque out of a motor not much bigger than a small Folgers coffee can.
We upgraded to a Leaf+ in early 2022. EPA rating 209-212, actual range in practice 245-265. We can do a round trip from Bellingham to Seattle and back with 2-3 days of errand range left over. If we stay at the Camlin for a long weekend, we get L2 charging in the garage thrown in, so we can drive around freely in King county. Charge up the last night of our stay, and drive back with no range worries at all.
J. Frank Parnell
My Chevy Bolt didn’t cost that much (I did buy it before in 2019 when they were not selling all that well) and I find it very convenient. No more stops at gas stations, just plug it in at night and in a few hours it is ready to go. Electricity costs me less than $1.00 a gallon equivalent, and maintenance is minimal. I friend of mine just posted on line he had completed his annual maintenance: adding $3.00 worth of windshield washer fluid.
cld
I think you just don't want to admit to the childishness of those associations.
NotCynicalEnough
As an electric car owner I can say that it is somewhat more expensive in initial price, but not after the tax credit, but way, way less expensive to drive. As for inconvenience, yes, it adds an hour or 2 to a 500 mile trip but on a daily basis, it is far *more* convenient as you never have to stop at a gas station. If and when solid state batteries happen, the IC car is dead and supposedly that day is getting very close. Of course from a performance stand point electrics have IC cars beat to hell.
Ken Rhodes
CLD, I know how smooth those EV's are, and I'm old enough to appreciate a smooth ride. But my fond memories of internal combustion engines are of power, but not the kind represented by your memes. Rather, the kind of power that turns the rear wheels REAL FAST. So long as I am able to duck the ravages of dementia, I will cling to those memories of big loud engines, shifters as sturdy as tree trunks, and the chirp of the tires with every upshift.
cld
I was thinking physical sensations of oomph would be covered by 'explosions' but, you're right, I should have slowed down and phrased it better.
kaleberg
If you're an engineer, that sound is wasted energy. It should go to more torque. Chirping tires are a sign of traction problems, more wasted energy that could be used to make the car go faster.
The association of decibels and power output is an artifact of bad engineering. The really powerful stuff doesn't waste oomph on sound effects.
cld
Another thing that's happening with EVs is that it re-associates the idea of 'car culture' to something with lessened societal panache, where the car becomes simply another tool or appliance, not a foundation of life.
Atticus
It depends if on how much technology advances. Current electric cars are inadequate, inconvenient and/or cost prohibitive for most people. No doubt, one day the majority of cars will be electric and one day after that virtually all of them will. I think it will be way after 2032 though.
RZM
I think you are about 5 years out of date. The average new car price is about $40,000 and that price will get you several a very serviceable electric cars with ranges in excess of 250 miles. Charging stations are growing in number exponentially.
rick_jones
Gas cars are, IMO, going the way of flip phones
There is something of a resurgence in flip phones these days.
Salamander
Zing!! I can see consumers moving to a phone that's less likely to butt-dial for ya.
kaleberg
We're moving to a post-fire society. No more internal combustion engines and no more fires for cooking food or heating. We're even moving away from high temperature based illumination. More and more, it's about shoving around electrons and applying just the right amount of energy in just the right place.
So says the guy with an induction stove, a heat pump and a house full of LEDs. No electric car yet, but we'll be looking seriously when we need to buy a new one.
rick_jones
Mild jealousy as I anxiously await being able to use our induction stove top.
Ken Rhodes
National Review? Wall Street Journal?
These days, it's often hard to tell which.
DFPaul
TNR will be all pro EV once Clarence Thomas buys an electric bus. "Buys" of course meaning has Harlan Crow buy it for him.
JC
After scrolling through today's headlines from here and around the world it is infuriating to read that kind of b.s. from NR. The earth is going into convulsions. Fossil fuel based industries and their sycophants need to stop their whining, and policy makers need to stop listening to them.
Atticus
Those policy makers also want to win elections.
DFPaul
Guy could use a vacation in Maui.
Art Eclectic
So, technically this isn't entirely wrong. Batteries are a premium product and putting massive numbers of them (see Ford Lightning) is a waste. Hybrids make far more sense for the average person.
Batteries are better used to bridge the gap between when solar production drops in late afternoon and when most cooling is done for the day -- also known as "peak".
PaulDavisThe1st
Some us live in climates and houses where cooling is barely, if ever necessary, and "peak" power consumption means 03:00 because its 5F or colder outside.
Welcome to my little New Mexican village.
kaleberg
We just learned that newer heat pump models work down to 5F, down from the usual 18F. It'll be a while before they're good at -40F/C, but it may even be in my lifetime.
Art Eclectic
Already close, do some research on Cold Climate Heat Pumps.
If you're thinking heat pump, buy variable speed. Makes a huge difference in performance and energy consumption.
Five Parrots in a Shoe
I'm certainly not going to defend the NR article as a whole - Kevin's and the previous commenters' criticisms here are accurate - but I do want to point out that one sentence of the article actually makes sense:
"Electric vehicles are for those with garage space for charging, multiple vehicles for different applications, and the ability to pay sticker prices."
This is true. People without garages, or people who rent their homes and require landlord approval for charger installation, probably can't buy EV's today. And people who have only one car must consider carefully whether they are willing to give up the ability to go on long road trips (or whether they are OK with having to make a 2-hour stop every 300 miles to recharge).
These factors will get smaller over time as battery technology improves, and there will come a day when no one has any excuse to buy ICE cars. But today that one sentence of the NR article is valid.
DFPaul
More accurate to say that Teslas are high priced. Lots of other manufacturers like Nissan, Hyundai and Volvo, among others, have reasonably priced EVs which are, like other reasonably priced cars, on the smaller side.
As for long distance road trips, Youtube is full of videos of people successfully doing them in EVs.
Atticus
I haven't watched these YouTube vidoes, but I don't see how going on a road trip in an electric car could not be more inconvenient than in a gas car.
DFPaul
Maybe try watching? Sounds like you haven’t heard of “DC fast charging”. Various Hyundai models can add over 200 miles of range in under 20 minutes. And that’s only the current ones that have now already been available for a few years.
rick_jones
200 miles. That would be around 50 kW hours. To get that in 20 minutes means 150 kW charging, sustained. Which part of the deployed charging infrastructure supports that?
fast charger infrastructure is actually being built out along highways at a very rapid clip. Is it everywhere yet? Nope. But the installation rate is looking solid and more than adequate to handle the explosive rate of increase in EV sales.
rick_jones
By highways I assume you mean Interstates?
J. Frank Parnell
High speed DC charging stations range from 70kW to 250kW. Don't know because I don't own a Tesla, but my impression is 250kW Tesla superchargers are fairly common.
NotCynicalEnough
In theory, almost all of it, in practice I tend to see between 70 kw to 130Kw from 150Kw rated chargers.
Atticus
20 minutes? Yea, I'm not going to wait 20 minutes every time I need to "fill up the tank".
DFPaul
So Mr. Atticus, your only use for a car is for long road trips? How often do you do that? For gosh sakes, if it's less than 10 times a year, rent!
As to 20 minutes being a long time, ask anyone with a wife and 2 kids how long the average rest stop -- assuming the bathroom is free, that is -- is.
Most ev owners are charging overnight and are never stopping at all for a charge 99% of the year.
rick_jones
Most ev owners are charging overnight and are never stopping at all for a charge 99% of the year.
Chicken and egg. While the long EV trip can be done successfully (Modulo the definition) I suspect that most of us EV owners are not using their EVs for the long trips.
In my case is was switch to the Fusion hybrid to go from the SF Bay Area to Seattle and back to bring daughter back from freshman year.
DFPaul
Chicken and egg? Apples and Oranges maybe? Sure, it's entirely possilble that EVs usher in a new and much more rational approach to car use -- the car you own you use for the 30-40 miles a day you drive to work and/or the supermarket daily, and for those a-couple-times-a-year longer trips, you rent a car.
A lot of young people are already doing this, with the first part replaced by not owning a car at all and using public transport or -- god forbid -- walking to get to work. Saves a ton of money.
J. Frank Parnell
Yea, 5 minutes once a twice a week, driving out of my way to refuel at some dirty smelly gas pump? No way, I just go home plug in, and in a few hours the car is fully charged.
Five Parrots in a Shoe
And that's why people who rent their homes will be the last to adopt EV's.
Listen, I know this is a temporary problem. In just a few years all new homes, including apartment complexes, will be built with EV charging equipment included. And DC fast charging stations will be located conveniently on every major highway and most minor ones.
But we're not there yet. That's all I'm saying.
NotCynicalEnough
We have driven from SF to San Diego a couple of times in our electric car. It adds a couple of hours to an 8 hour trip, but we would stop for food and breaks anyway and the charging stations right now tend to be in malls. It is a fairly minor inconvenience, or it would be if electrify america did a better job of maintaining their charging stations. It is a valid to question as to whether the growth in charging stations will keep up with EV sales.
Bardi
Garage requirement? Nope. Most of the people in my neighborhood park and charge outside on their driveways. In fact, note the picture supplied by Kevin, is that a charging cable laying out on the road?
rick_jones
A driveway is functionally equivalent to a garage in this case. Still a space under the homeowner’s or renter’s control.
Salamander
Why would most people require "garage space for charging, multiple vehicles for different applications"? So, every household needs its sedan, its sports car, its van, its pickup truck? Seriously?
Maybe Nat Rev readers. But then, they've got the money to pay "sticker price" and then some.
However, "conservative" means "whiny babypants snowflake".
Austin
“And people who have only one car must consider carefully whether they are willing to give up the ability to go on long road trips (or whether they are OK with having to make a 2-hour stop every 300 miles to recharge).”
You know, you can take the savings from not having to buy gas every week and use it to rent cars for the 1-12x a year you make a long distance (over 300) mile trip. Nothing about car ownership mandates that you use the car you own for literally every single trip you make. It’s ok to own a car for just driving around your county or metro area (ie probably 99% of all trips most people make in a year) and rent a car for everything else.
cmayo
"Is that really so scary?"
When you're in the business of providing paid propaganda for fossil fuel billionaires - yes.
Pretty simply, really.
MindGame
These days, Kevin, conservatism is just another term for outrage.
rick_jones
So, Kevin, which model of EV do you have, or will have and when? …
rick_jones
Who says you need a garage to own an electric car? This fellow in the French town of La Roche Guyon seems to manage just fine.
That is either a plug-in hybrid or he doesn’t drive much. That looks to be at most a 1kW charger. I’ve used one with my 2017 Bolt. It’s fine so long as I don’t break more than about thirty miles in a day. That can be addressed with an overnight (and off peak after 9 pm with CA’s time of day tariff…) but if one takes the battery close to empty, it will take the better part of three days to recharge to full.
Which is why I _still_ await a service connection upgrade (PG&E) to enable a Level 2 ~6kW home charger. Thankfully, I needed the service upgrade for other purposes or the $15k I’ll have spent on it (trenching and electricians and …) would have been too much.
And yes, there are DC fast chargers. Their rates are … high. And to fully charge at one of those is two hours maybe longer. Starts at 55kW and pretty much describes a right triangle from there as the rate drops nearly continuously.
Suffice it to say, it isn’t a road trip car. IMO a road trip car needs empty to full in ten minutes. In my case, that would be a constant 360kW charging rate. Basically another order of magnitude and then some from where it is.
DFPaul
Rates are high? Many EVs — think Hyundai or VW — include 2 years of free fast charging. Know any gas cars that give you free gas for 2 years?
kaleberg
There was an article about Mercedes opening upmarket charging stations with clean restrooms, real coffee, fast internet and other amenities. I have no idea of what the current status is, but the parody writes itself. It reminds me of the gas station wars of the 1960s where they each brand tried to outdo each other with amenities and premiums.
DFPaul
Oh that is coming for sure. Once Heritage and AEI swing their battleships around from "electrification must be stopped!" to "woke charging stations must be stopped! Small business owners must have a chance to thrive!" it's a sure thing
rick_jones
Given that cars are kept for something like 12 years these days, two years of free charging is not that big a deal.
D_Ohrk_E1
My brother in law split the clothes dryer 240V line and put a manual switch to feed an L2 charger in the garage. $250 max, I think.
Austin
Some of us only take road trips a few times a year. I would venture a guess that “some of us” might number in the tens of millions nationwide. None of us are compelling you to buy an electric car, so don’t compel us to buy a gas guzzler.
Toofbew
Maybe a bit off-topic, but my neighbor has a recent model Tesla that he loves. It has a range of about 320 miles. He goes on trips with it, and charges it while he eats lunch or dinner somewhere. It costs him under $5.00 to charge it fully in his garage overnight, which is about the price of a gallon of gas.
The thing I did not know is that the weight of the batteries leads to tire wear such that he has to replace the tires after about a year of use. That's maybe $500 depending on where you buy tires. The savings on gas more than cover that expense.
The trucks that can light up a house seem overpowered. Or maybe (probably) someone knows more about this than I do?
Yikes
The amount of energy needed to move a car can run (not just light up) a house for like a full day (with A/C on) to several days.
There is a general lack of basic understanding of electricity. On one board a guy was saying that if you charged your electric tools (think electric drill or circular saw) from a Ford F150 Lightning, you'd "drain the battery" - yeah, if you charge like 1,000 of them.
The battery pack in 300 mile range EV's is huge.
rick_jones
I was at a Ford dealership, getting a Fusion Hybrid serviced. Looked at the sticker for a Lightning. It worked-out to 2.something miles per kWh. Yikes. So yeah, there’s going to be a lot of battery there.
rick_jones
The trucks that can light up a house seem overpowered.
Perhaps. Still, that is the foundation of vehicle-to-grid (v2g) being part of the storage solution no?
PaulDavisThe1st
Not sure that's a desirable end-goal, even though I understand the superficial appeal.
We will need lots of batteries out there. Where to put them? In vehicles with a potential grid tie *is* a possible answer, but I'm not sure it's the best one.
D_Ohrk_E1
I'm pretty sure the reason why your Tesla neighbor had to replace his tires is because he's got a lead foot on the accelerator, not because of the weight of the batteries.
realrobmac
I am far from the type of guy who has a kneejerk reaction against EVs. If anything my kneejerk reaction has always been in favor of them. But lately I've started to become skeptical as to whether there actually is much net environmental benefit to EVs when you do all the math. Maybe there is but I wonder what the real numbers are.
On the one hand with EVs you've got big chemical filled batteries with a limited lifecycle. What the expected life for an EV battery is, I don't know.
The batteries are also very heavy, especially for the high-performance EVs being pushed in the American market these days. As another commenter mentions, this leads to much shorter life for tires. I would think this would also render EVs a lot less safe in a high speed collision.
And unless you are charging your EV with a wind turbine or solar panels, you're charging it with gas or coal. We hear that this is more efficient than having your own gas engine, but by how much?
I guess I am at the point where my natural skepticism of corporations is kicking in. Are we actually polluting less with EVs or trading one set of pollution problems for another? I am highly dubious of those whose job it is to sell EVs or batteries or of politicians influenced by such people to give us the correct answer to that question.
Toofbew
You raise some good points. One suggested correction: "unless you are charging your EV with a wind turbine or solar panels, you're charging it with gas or coal." Or, as in our area, hydroelectric.
Of course, at the rate the world is going, hydroelectric may become a thing of the past.
J. Frank Parnell
Less than 20% of US electricity comes from coal. Coal advocates may rail against solar and wind, but it is primarily natural gas from fracking that has replaced coal.
I once went through the numbers as best I could and came to the conclusion that yes, you are right that an EV burning electricity generated from coal has a bigger carbon foot print than an IC car, but one using electricity generated from natural gas has a smaller carbon foot print, and one using electricity from solar, hydro, nuclear, or wind has a much smaller footprint.
Batteries will generally last the life of the car, and the batteries lend themselves to recycling, as they constitute hundreds of pounds of valuable chemicals packaged in a single housing.
No data, but I think electric cars would generally be safer in a high speed accident. Their low center of gravity makes them less likely to roll, and in a collision with another vehicle it is generally the heavier vehicle that comes off better. The battery constitutes a fire risk, but so does a gas tank.
Tire wear may be a bit greater due to the high weight and torque, but my 2019 Bolt still has plenty of tread at 37,000 miles. This may be because they are rock hard EV tires specially designed to give increased range at the cost of traction, which is miserable, particularly in the rain.
rick_jones
The EPA publishes figures for CO2e per MWH for coal and gas, and there are figures for CO2 per gallon of gasoline burned. From there, it is a matter of mileage figures and math.
NotCynicalEnough
We are mostly charging with solar and I haven't noticed the tire life being any worse than my last gas car of similar size. I believe that most of the chemicals in the battery can be recycled, and I know of a least one instance where old Nissan Leaf batteries are being used as industrial battery backup as even at 80% rated capacity they are more than adequate for that purpose. They don't just get thrown away as opposed to, say, gasoline, which is gone once it has been burned. There is the issue of lithium fires in a crash which damages the batteries but gasoline also catches on fire and we try to avoid high speed collisions in any event.
sonofthereturnofaptidude
NR? Dont' get them started on bicycles, especially e-bikes!
I recently checked out how much money I'd save by getting an electric car, and it wasn't enough to make me want to trade in my very fuel-efficient fossil-fuel burner quite yet. But I have replaced many trips with biking, either on my electric bike or my "acoustic" bike.
Just wait until gas prices start getting raised in order to diminish fossil fuel consumption: Pitchforks and torches will be raised, I'm sure.
PaulDavisThe1st
And 34% of the crowd raising them will own an e-bike.
J. Frank Parnell
The National Review opposes electric vehicles? Isn't that what reactionares do, oppose all change?
kaleberg
This illustrates a common conservative reaction. Anything less than abject denunciation of anything even slightly different is the same as forcing one to adopt it. Failure to loathe homosexuals is the same thing as forcing people to become homosexual. Placing any restriction on the sale of firearms is the same thing as confiscating them. Encouraging the sale of electric cars is the same thing as forcing people to buy them.
The presumption seems to be that conservatives and other proper people are so weak willed that even the slightest drift is tantamount to destruction. That's probably why encouraging induction stoves is the same thing as the Holocaust.
D_Ohrk_E1
I wish you wouldn't diminish the problems of going all-electric.
The cost to add circuits and bring additional power to existing multifamily homes and high rises with garages will cost a lot of money. [Side note: electricians and electrical engineers are going to be hot jobs for the next 3 decades.] This is not chump change -- very rough ballpark baseline is ~$10K per L2 stall.
And as you should already know, a big chunk of the US, led by California, will hit 100% zero emissions by 2030 for new vehicle sales.
The SFR and duplexes/townhomes will be fine, but everyone else, especially condo HOAs, will be facing a shock when they see the cost to upgrade and accommodate for an EV.
Federal credit program?
DFPaul
Wow. I admit I am pretty surprised that so many of KD"s readers are so resolutely anti-EV. To follow up on my posts above, here is a Youtube vid which covers charging on a road trip, and it is not -- not at all, in fact -- in California.
Is it really a surprise? For example, KD is militantly opposed to HSR and apparently avoided taking one on his trip to France because if he had he would realize how completely awful air (and car) travel is by comparison. For the record, as an EV owner, I think they beat gas cars by a huge margin even with present technologies *however*, if it came to a choice between incentives for EVs and incentives for subways and HSR, I'd vastly prefer the money be spent on subways and HSR. However the chance to that happening in the US is nil.
rick_jones
HSR isn’t about SF to LA but opening up (more of) the Central Valley for bedroom communities.
Martin Stett
GM for one is going all in on electric, and they plan decades into the future. They could try explaining that decision to the kids at National Review, but they'd probably give up after 45 minutes.
This is the same crowd that fought seat belts, third tail lights, and catalytic converters. It's a commie conspiracy don't you know.
↑↑+1↑↑
You can always count on a present day conservative to be reflexively against anything, no matter what it is, that government says needs to be adopted.
This is especially silly here. Gas cars are, IMO, going the way of flip phones, and if we are further speculating as to when, I would say well before 2032.
There will still be big numbers of the existing gas fleet around in that year, but it will be like horses in 1932.
Social conservatives can be especially antagonistic to electric cars because they eliminate internal combustion engines which they associate with power, --explosions, the wealth of the petroleum industry --driving them involves them the existing physical power structure.
But as soon as the gas stations start going away, or put in rows of chargers, and realize the EV they bought kicking and screaming runs so much smoother, they'll forget about it.
The same way they're so often just nuts for nuclear power plants, while doing not much at all to try and build them.
Give me break. No one's reluctance towards electric vehicles stems from associating internal combustion with power or wealth. The reluctance stems for electric cars currently being very inconvenient and expensive.
ummm....."Rolling Coal"
Definitely a thing among the hyper-masculine conservative crowd. It's done for exactly one reason - to own the libs. They get a perverse pleasure in puking out the diesel smoke in peoples faces.
I would assert those ICE owners “rolling coal” and “icing” chargers are definitely power tripping.
Had to look that up because I had no idea what you're talking about. I don't think the handful of people that do this have any bearing on this conversation.
“No one's reluctance towards electric vehicles stems from associating internal combustion with power or wealth… I don't think the handful of people that do this have any bearing on this conversation.“
Talk about moving the goalposts. No one became a handful of people in just 2 hours.
Ok. Replace "anyone" in my original comment with 99.99% of people if that makes you feel better.
Not really. Our first Nissan Leaf, bought in 2019, had an EPA range rating of 150 miles - actual driving experience showed a consistent 160-165 mless. It only "lost" about 10% of that range in cold weather - mosly if you turned on the cabin heater. (Nissan only usies the middle 60% of the battery range - a technique that Toyota introduced in the first Prius.)
It turned out that the range took care of over 90% of our normal short and medium distance driving It also didn't cost any more than our 2011 Toyota Prius (inflation adjusted as Kevin likes to do)- and that was before we claimed the federal and state rebates/discounts. It was the least expensive car we'd bought in a bit over a decade.
Nissan threw in a smart charger cable and we had a 220V plug installed by our breaker box in the garage. We bundled it with a few other electrical upgrades, so in the end, we wound up paying the minimum $400 charge and the cost contribution of the 220V plug wound up being materials and about 30 minutes labor.
We had to adjust our driving expectations a bit - the Leaf gets a startling amount of torque out of a motor not much bigger than a small Folgers coffee can.
We upgraded to a Leaf+ in early 2022. EPA rating 209-212, actual range in practice 245-265. We can do a round trip from Bellingham to Seattle and back with 2-3 days of errand range left over. If we stay at the Camlin for a long weekend, we get L2 charging in the garage thrown in, so we can drive around freely in King county. Charge up the last night of our stay, and drive back with no range worries at all.
My Chevy Bolt didn’t cost that much (I did buy it before in 2019 when they were not selling all that well) and I find it very convenient. No more stops at gas stations, just plug it in at night and in a few hours it is ready to go. Electricity costs me less than $1.00 a gallon equivalent, and maintenance is minimal. I friend of mine just posted on line he had completed his annual maintenance: adding $3.00 worth of windshield washer fluid.
I think you just don't want to admit to the childishness of those associations.
As an electric car owner I can say that it is somewhat more expensive in initial price, but not after the tax credit, but way, way less expensive to drive. As for inconvenience, yes, it adds an hour or 2 to a 500 mile trip but on a daily basis, it is far *more* convenient as you never have to stop at a gas station. If and when solid state batteries happen, the IC car is dead and supposedly that day is getting very close. Of course from a performance stand point electrics have IC cars beat to hell.
CLD, I know how smooth those EV's are, and I'm old enough to appreciate a smooth ride. But my fond memories of internal combustion engines are of power, but not the kind represented by your memes. Rather, the kind of power that turns the rear wheels REAL FAST. So long as I am able to duck the ravages of dementia, I will cling to those memories of big loud engines, shifters as sturdy as tree trunks, and the chirp of the tires with every upshift.
I was thinking physical sensations of oomph would be covered by 'explosions' but, you're right, I should have slowed down and phrased it better.
If you're an engineer, that sound is wasted energy. It should go to more torque. Chirping tires are a sign of traction problems, more wasted energy that could be used to make the car go faster.
The association of decibels and power output is an artifact of bad engineering. The really powerful stuff doesn't waste oomph on sound effects.
Another thing that's happening with EVs is that it re-associates the idea of 'car culture' to something with lessened societal panache, where the car becomes simply another tool or appliance, not a foundation of life.
It depends if on how much technology advances. Current electric cars are inadequate, inconvenient and/or cost prohibitive for most people. No doubt, one day the majority of cars will be electric and one day after that virtually all of them will. I think it will be way after 2032 though.
I think you are about 5 years out of date. The average new car price is about $40,000 and that price will get you several a very serviceable electric cars with ranges in excess of 250 miles. Charging stations are growing in number exponentially.
There is something of a resurgence in flip phones these days.
Zing!! I can see consumers moving to a phone that's less likely to butt-dial for ya.
We're moving to a post-fire society. No more internal combustion engines and no more fires for cooking food or heating. We're even moving away from high temperature based illumination. More and more, it's about shoving around electrons and applying just the right amount of energy in just the right place.
So says the guy with an induction stove, a heat pump and a house full of LEDs. No electric car yet, but we'll be looking seriously when we need to buy a new one.
Mild jealousy as I anxiously await being able to use our induction stove top.
National Review? Wall Street Journal?
These days, it's often hard to tell which.
TNR will be all pro EV once Clarence Thomas buys an electric bus. "Buys" of course meaning has Harlan Crow buy it for him.
After scrolling through today's headlines from here and around the world it is infuriating to read that kind of b.s. from NR. The earth is going into convulsions. Fossil fuel based industries and their sycophants need to stop their whining, and policy makers need to stop listening to them.
Those policy makers also want to win elections.
Guy could use a vacation in Maui.
So, technically this isn't entirely wrong. Batteries are a premium product and putting massive numbers of them (see Ford Lightning) is a waste. Hybrids make far more sense for the average person.
Batteries are better used to bridge the gap between when solar production drops in late afternoon and when most cooling is done for the day -- also known as "peak".
Some us live in climates and houses where cooling is barely, if ever necessary, and "peak" power consumption means 03:00 because its 5F or colder outside.
Welcome to my little New Mexican village.
We just learned that newer heat pump models work down to 5F, down from the usual 18F. It'll be a while before they're good at -40F/C, but it may even be in my lifetime.
Already close, do some research on Cold Climate Heat Pumps.
If you're thinking heat pump, buy variable speed. Makes a huge difference in performance and energy consumption.
I'm certainly not going to defend the NR article as a whole - Kevin's and the previous commenters' criticisms here are accurate - but I do want to point out that one sentence of the article actually makes sense:
"Electric vehicles are for those with garage space for charging, multiple vehicles for different applications, and the ability to pay sticker prices."
This is true. People without garages, or people who rent their homes and require landlord approval for charger installation, probably can't buy EV's today. And people who have only one car must consider carefully whether they are willing to give up the ability to go on long road trips (or whether they are OK with having to make a 2-hour stop every 300 miles to recharge).
These factors will get smaller over time as battery technology improves, and there will come a day when no one has any excuse to buy ICE cars. But today that one sentence of the NR article is valid.
More accurate to say that Teslas are high priced. Lots of other manufacturers like Nissan, Hyundai and Volvo, among others, have reasonably priced EVs which are, like other reasonably priced cars, on the smaller side.
As for long distance road trips, Youtube is full of videos of people successfully doing them in EVs.
I haven't watched these YouTube vidoes, but I don't see how going on a road trip in an electric car could not be more inconvenient than in a gas car.
Maybe try watching? Sounds like you haven’t heard of “DC fast charging”. Various Hyundai models can add over 200 miles of range in under 20 minutes. And that’s only the current ones that have now already been available for a few years.
200 miles. That would be around 50 kW hours. To get that in 20 minutes means 150 kW charging, sustained. Which part of the deployed charging infrastructure supports that?
Watch some YouTube is my advice
Here's a year-old video for you on charging in 20 minutes in Southern California. https://youtu.be/bE4OkylQ5o8
fast charger infrastructure is actually being built out along highways at a very rapid clip. Is it everywhere yet? Nope. But the installation rate is looking solid and more than adequate to handle the explosive rate of increase in EV sales.
By highways I assume you mean Interstates?
High speed DC charging stations range from 70kW to 250kW. Don't know because I don't own a Tesla, but my impression is 250kW Tesla superchargers are fairly common.
In theory, almost all of it, in practice I tend to see between 70 kw to 130Kw from 150Kw rated chargers.
20 minutes? Yea, I'm not going to wait 20 minutes every time I need to "fill up the tank".
So Mr. Atticus, your only use for a car is for long road trips? How often do you do that? For gosh sakes, if it's less than 10 times a year, rent!
As to 20 minutes being a long time, ask anyone with a wife and 2 kids how long the average rest stop -- assuming the bathroom is free, that is -- is.
Most ev owners are charging overnight and are never stopping at all for a charge 99% of the year.
Chicken and egg. While the long EV trip can be done successfully (Modulo the definition) I suspect that most of us EV owners are not using their EVs for the long trips.
In my case is was switch to the Fusion hybrid to go from the SF Bay Area to Seattle and back to bring daughter back from freshman year.
Chicken and egg? Apples and Oranges maybe? Sure, it's entirely possilble that EVs usher in a new and much more rational approach to car use -- the car you own you use for the 30-40 miles a day you drive to work and/or the supermarket daily, and for those a-couple-times-a-year longer trips, you rent a car.
A lot of young people are already doing this, with the first part replaced by not owning a car at all and using public transport or -- god forbid -- walking to get to work. Saves a ton of money.
Yea, 5 minutes once a twice a week, driving out of my way to refuel at some dirty smelly gas pump? No way, I just go home plug in, and in a few hours the car is fully charged.
And that's why people who rent their homes will be the last to adopt EV's.
Listen, I know this is a temporary problem. In just a few years all new homes, including apartment complexes, will be built with EV charging equipment included. And DC fast charging stations will be located conveniently on every major highway and most minor ones.
But we're not there yet. That's all I'm saying.
We have driven from SF to San Diego a couple of times in our electric car. It adds a couple of hours to an 8 hour trip, but we would stop for food and breaks anyway and the charging stations right now tend to be in malls. It is a fairly minor inconvenience, or it would be if electrify america did a better job of maintaining their charging stations. It is a valid to question as to whether the growth in charging stations will keep up with EV sales.
Garage requirement? Nope. Most of the people in my neighborhood park and charge outside on their driveways. In fact, note the picture supplied by Kevin, is that a charging cable laying out on the road?
A driveway is functionally equivalent to a garage in this case. Still a space under the homeowner’s or renter’s control.
Why would most people require "garage space for charging, multiple vehicles for different applications"? So, every household needs its sedan, its sports car, its van, its pickup truck? Seriously?
Maybe Nat Rev readers. But then, they've got the money to pay "sticker price" and then some.
However, "conservative" means "whiny babypants snowflake".
“And people who have only one car must consider carefully whether they are willing to give up the ability to go on long road trips (or whether they are OK with having to make a 2-hour stop every 300 miles to recharge).”
You know, you can take the savings from not having to buy gas every week and use it to rent cars for the 1-12x a year you make a long distance (over 300) mile trip. Nothing about car ownership mandates that you use the car you own for literally every single trip you make. It’s ok to own a car for just driving around your county or metro area (ie probably 99% of all trips most people make in a year) and rent a car for everything else.
"Is that really so scary?"
When you're in the business of providing paid propaganda for fossil fuel billionaires - yes.
Pretty simply, really.
These days, Kevin, conservatism is just another term for outrage.
So, Kevin, which model of EV do you have, or will have and when? …
That is either a plug-in hybrid or he doesn’t drive much. That looks to be at most a 1kW charger. I’ve used one with my 2017 Bolt. It’s fine so long as I don’t break more than about thirty miles in a day. That can be addressed with an overnight (and off peak after 9 pm with CA’s time of day tariff…) but if one takes the battery close to empty, it will take the better part of three days to recharge to full.
Which is why I _still_ await a service connection upgrade (PG&E) to enable a Level 2 ~6kW home charger. Thankfully, I needed the service upgrade for other purposes or the $15k I’ll have spent on it (trenching and electricians and …) would have been too much.
And yes, there are DC fast chargers. Their rates are … high. And to fully charge at one of those is two hours maybe longer. Starts at 55kW and pretty much describes a right triangle from there as the rate drops nearly continuously.
Suffice it to say, it isn’t a road trip car. IMO a road trip car needs empty to full in ten minutes. In my case, that would be a constant 360kW charging rate. Basically another order of magnitude and then some from where it is.
Rates are high? Many EVs — think Hyundai or VW — include 2 years of free fast charging. Know any gas cars that give you free gas for 2 years?
There was an article about Mercedes opening upmarket charging stations with clean restrooms, real coffee, fast internet and other amenities. I have no idea of what the current status is, but the parody writes itself. It reminds me of the gas station wars of the 1960s where they each brand tried to outdo each other with amenities and premiums.
Oh that is coming for sure. Once Heritage and AEI swing their battleships around from "electrification must be stopped!" to "woke charging stations must be stopped! Small business owners must have a chance to thrive!" it's a sure thing
Given that cars are kept for something like 12 years these days, two years of free charging is not that big a deal.
My brother in law split the clothes dryer 240V line and put a manual switch to feed an L2 charger in the garage. $250 max, I think.
Some of us only take road trips a few times a year. I would venture a guess that “some of us” might number in the tens of millions nationwide. None of us are compelling you to buy an electric car, so don’t compel us to buy a gas guzzler.
Maybe a bit off-topic, but my neighbor has a recent model Tesla that he loves. It has a range of about 320 miles. He goes on trips with it, and charges it while he eats lunch or dinner somewhere. It costs him under $5.00 to charge it fully in his garage overnight, which is about the price of a gallon of gas.
The thing I did not know is that the weight of the batteries leads to tire wear such that he has to replace the tires after about a year of use. That's maybe $500 depending on where you buy tires. The savings on gas more than cover that expense.
The trucks that can light up a house seem overpowered. Or maybe (probably) someone knows more about this than I do?
The amount of energy needed to move a car can run (not just light up) a house for like a full day (with A/C on) to several days.
There is a general lack of basic understanding of electricity. On one board a guy was saying that if you charged your electric tools (think electric drill or circular saw) from a Ford F150 Lightning, you'd "drain the battery" - yeah, if you charge like 1,000 of them.
The battery pack in 300 mile range EV's is huge.
I was at a Ford dealership, getting a Fusion Hybrid serviced. Looked at the sticker for a Lightning. It worked-out to 2.something miles per kWh. Yikes. So yeah, there’s going to be a lot of battery there.
Perhaps. Still, that is the foundation of vehicle-to-grid (v2g) being part of the storage solution no?
Not sure that's a desirable end-goal, even though I understand the superficial appeal.
We will need lots of batteries out there. Where to put them? In vehicles with a potential grid tie *is* a possible answer, but I'm not sure it's the best one.
I'm pretty sure the reason why your Tesla neighbor had to replace his tires is because he's got a lead foot on the accelerator, not because of the weight of the batteries.
I am far from the type of guy who has a kneejerk reaction against EVs. If anything my kneejerk reaction has always been in favor of them. But lately I've started to become skeptical as to whether there actually is much net environmental benefit to EVs when you do all the math. Maybe there is but I wonder what the real numbers are.
On the one hand with EVs you've got big chemical filled batteries with a limited lifecycle. What the expected life for an EV battery is, I don't know.
The batteries are also very heavy, especially for the high-performance EVs being pushed in the American market these days. As another commenter mentions, this leads to much shorter life for tires. I would think this would also render EVs a lot less safe in a high speed collision.
And unless you are charging your EV with a wind turbine or solar panels, you're charging it with gas or coal. We hear that this is more efficient than having your own gas engine, but by how much?
I guess I am at the point where my natural skepticism of corporations is kicking in. Are we actually polluting less with EVs or trading one set of pollution problems for another? I am highly dubious of those whose job it is to sell EVs or batteries or of politicians influenced by such people to give us the correct answer to that question.
You raise some good points. One suggested correction: "unless you are charging your EV with a wind turbine or solar panels, you're charging it with gas or coal." Or, as in our area, hydroelectric.
Of course, at the rate the world is going, hydroelectric may become a thing of the past.
Less than 20% of US electricity comes from coal. Coal advocates may rail against solar and wind, but it is primarily natural gas from fracking that has replaced coal.
I once went through the numbers as best I could and came to the conclusion that yes, you are right that an EV burning electricity generated from coal has a bigger carbon foot print than an IC car, but one using electricity generated from natural gas has a smaller carbon foot print, and one using electricity from solar, hydro, nuclear, or wind has a much smaller footprint.
Batteries will generally last the life of the car, and the batteries lend themselves to recycling, as they constitute hundreds of pounds of valuable chemicals packaged in a single housing.
No data, but I think electric cars would generally be safer in a high speed accident. Their low center of gravity makes them less likely to roll, and in a collision with another vehicle it is generally the heavier vehicle that comes off better. The battery constitutes a fire risk, but so does a gas tank.
Tire wear may be a bit greater due to the high weight and torque, but my 2019 Bolt still has plenty of tread at 37,000 miles. This may be because they are rock hard EV tires specially designed to give increased range at the cost of traction, which is miserable, particularly in the rain.
The EPA publishes figures for CO2e per MWH for coal and gas, and there are figures for CO2 per gallon of gasoline burned. From there, it is a matter of mileage figures and math.
We are mostly charging with solar and I haven't noticed the tire life being any worse than my last gas car of similar size. I believe that most of the chemicals in the battery can be recycled, and I know of a least one instance where old Nissan Leaf batteries are being used as industrial battery backup as even at 80% rated capacity they are more than adequate for that purpose. They don't just get thrown away as opposed to, say, gasoline, which is gone once it has been burned. There is the issue of lithium fires in a crash which damages the batteries but gasoline also catches on fire and we try to avoid high speed collisions in any event.
NR? Dont' get them started on bicycles, especially e-bikes!
I recently checked out how much money I'd save by getting an electric car, and it wasn't enough to make me want to trade in my very fuel-efficient fossil-fuel burner quite yet. But I have replaced many trips with biking, either on my electric bike or my "acoustic" bike.
Just wait until gas prices start getting raised in order to diminish fossil fuel consumption: Pitchforks and torches will be raised, I'm sure.
And 34% of the crowd raising them will own an e-bike.
The National Review opposes electric vehicles? Isn't that what reactionares do, oppose all change?
This illustrates a common conservative reaction. Anything less than abject denunciation of anything even slightly different is the same as forcing one to adopt it. Failure to loathe homosexuals is the same thing as forcing people to become homosexual. Placing any restriction on the sale of firearms is the same thing as confiscating them. Encouraging the sale of electric cars is the same thing as forcing people to buy them.
The presumption seems to be that conservatives and other proper people are so weak willed that even the slightest drift is tantamount to destruction. That's probably why encouraging induction stoves is the same thing as the Holocaust.
I wish you wouldn't diminish the problems of going all-electric.
The cost to add circuits and bring additional power to existing multifamily homes and high rises with garages will cost a lot of money. [Side note: electricians and electrical engineers are going to be hot jobs for the next 3 decades.] This is not chump change -- very rough ballpark baseline is ~$10K per L2 stall.
And as you should already know, a big chunk of the US, led by California, will hit 100% zero emissions by 2030 for new vehicle sales.
The SFR and duplexes/townhomes will be fine, but everyone else, especially condo HOAs, will be facing a shock when they see the cost to upgrade and accommodate for an EV.
Federal credit program?
Wow. I admit I am pretty surprised that so many of KD"s readers are so resolutely anti-EV. To follow up on my posts above, here is a Youtube vid which covers charging on a road trip, and it is not -- not at all, in fact -- in California.
https://youtu.be/1Vm_ASm2zfs
Is it really a surprise? For example, KD is militantly opposed to HSR and apparently avoided taking one on his trip to France because if he had he would realize how completely awful air (and car) travel is by comparison. For the record, as an EV owner, I think they beat gas cars by a huge margin even with present technologies *however*, if it came to a choice between incentives for EVs and incentives for subways and HSR, I'd vastly prefer the money be spent on subways and HSR. However the chance to that happening in the US is nil.
HSR isn’t about SF to LA but opening up (more of) the Central Valley for bedroom communities.
GM for one is going all in on electric, and they plan decades into the future. They could try explaining that decision to the kids at National Review, but they'd probably give up after 45 minutes.