Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

The UK has spent billion of pounds and has set mandates to manufacturers. I wonder how the sales would fare without taxpayer subsidies and these mandates, e.g. that 22% of all cars sold in 2024 be zero emission. Remember also that zero emission refers to just the car, not from the NIMBY power plants where electricity is produced.

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

Hydro power is nice and “green” since water, a dam and gravity are all you need. It’s green compared to burning fossil fuels for energy production but the necessary dams can and have absolutely devastated local ecosystems. Salmon in NW states is a perfect example.

I’m sure all those Greenpeace activists would disagree about hydro being green. I guess whether or not hydro is green depends upon if you want to feel good about yourself when you charge your car or if you’re wanting to go salmon fishing. Just hope you don’t need to drive your EV to go salmon fishing.

Dikdik presented some cool charts about atmospheric carbon. Problem was they only went back 800,000 years. Yes that’s a long time for us but coal formation was 250 million years ago. Even without ice cores to examine it’s a known fact carbon dioxide levels were far higher then than any time since.

What is coal made from? The carbon portion of plants. (In Missouri you can separate layers of coal and still find individual grass leaves.). Where did the carbon in the plants come from? The atmosphere. Crude oil came from algae that pulled carbon from the atmosphere. So all the carbon in all the fossil fuels in all the world was once in the atmosphere. Even 100 million years after that Antarctica was green with plants and dinosaurs. Of course there won’t be any ice cores from that far back because there wasn’t any ice.

The beautiful thing about charts is that you don’t have to start at the beginning but you can start them at whatever point will make your case. Start that same chart at the year 2000 and it will show hardly any increase in atmospheric carbon has occurred. Yes that’s only 24 years but Dikdik’s charts were only 800,000 years. That’s only 1/312 of the time since the beginning of the Carboniferous period. In comparison that’s 1.2 days out of an entire year.

You don’t need to lie to prove your point, just provide the minimum facts needed to prove that you know what you’re talking about. Don’t tell the whole story, just enough of it to prove your point. (Not talking about Dikdik, rather researchers and scientists.)

photohelp

Hi Jerry. Please take another look at your catalog of fears about electric cars. You have been misled by unreliable antidotal and sensational stories. Electric cars are a relatively new product, and have some challenges, but the reporting about them is often unfair and misleading.
With respect to vehicle fires: “In the United States, according to a 2023 study citing recent data from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, gasoline-powered, internal-combustion engine (ICE) cars were involved in about 1,530 fires per every 100,000 sold. On the other hand, pure electric vehicles (meaning those powered only by batteries) were involved in just 25 fires per 100,000 sold.” https://spectrum.ieee.org/lithium-ion-battery-fires In other words, the risk of your gas power car catching fire is about 20 times higher than an electric car. However, fires in gas cars are not newsworthy and not reported, unlike the rare fires in electric fires. Further, many fires the press reports were in electric cars turn out not be correct when examined. On the other hand, fires in electric scooters and bikes are much more common due to unsafe manufacture and charging. It is also true that lithium battery fires are difficult to extinguish.
With respect to sales, press reports that electric sales are tanking is overstated. “Global EV Sales Hit A New Record In November 2023. Plug-in electric car registrations exceeded 1.38 million, taking 19% of the global car market.” “For reference, in 2022, more than 10 million new passenger plug-in electric cars were registered globally for the very first time. This result will be significantly improved upon in 2023, to more than 13 million units.” https://insideevs.com/news/704040/global-ev-sales-november-2023/

With respect to charging costs, electric cars are far cheaper than gasoline powered cars. https://insideevs.com/news/605644/us-ev-annual-fuel-cost-2022/ While there are certainly some teething problems with the charging network, other than the Tesla superchargers, those issues are overstated and nonexistent for the majority of electric car owners, who charge at home. https://insideevs.com/features/698568/flo-ev-myths-debunked/
With respect to reliability, that varies widely with different models, just like in gas powered cars. Tesla, for example, is more reliable than any other American car except Buick. https://insideevs.com/news/698277/ev-reliability-2023-consumer-reports/
With respect to repair costs, it is true that repair costs are about $900 more on average than for gas and diesel powered cars. https://insideevs.com/news/692356/tesla-repairs-cost-more-than-gas-cars/. However, the few reported cases of astronomical costs of repair are not typical and again are sensational reporting rather than factual and fair. The reported $55,000 for a Hyundai battery was what one Canadian dealer said it would charge, probably because it did not want the work. This is more misleading sensational reporting.
With respect to battery life, they are usually warranted for 8 years or 100,000 miles, vastly exceeding the time and mileage usually experienced by most new car owners. With respect to battery cost replacement, the $55,000 figure quoted was what one dealer in Canada would charge on one car and is not representative. In fact, battery replacement costs between $5000 and $20,000. https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/costs-ev-battery-replacement. While not cheap, this is somewhat comparable to replacement of the engine on a gas powered car, which car range from $4000 to more than $20,000. For example replacing an Audi A4 engine ranges from $6000 to $20,000. https://www.jegs.com/tech-articles/rebuilding-vs-replacing-your-audi-engine-everything-you-need-to-know/

I do not sell electric cars and have no financial interest in any company that makes or sells electric cars. However, I have had a BMWi3 electric car since 2015 and have had no repairs or problems with it at all. I also now have a Tesla Model 3, have had no problems, and love it. Both electric cars have saved me thousands of dollars in fuel costs over the Mercedes and Audi cars that they replaced. Plus, for me, they are simply better cars to drive.

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

EVs seem only useful for city life and short commutes - but even then gas is easier. But for longer trips they are not practical, imo.

As for solutions, the answer I think is more mass transit. The culture of using cars exclusively, and owning multiple cars, is what is unsustainable (says me, who has a 3 cars right now!!)

Ruthlessrider

I don't know anyone who has had to change a battery, and I know people who have put 200,000 mile on their vehicle.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Certainly part of the problem. I had been a 2-car family since 1966. (sometimes one of them was a truck). A couple months ago my wife's car got totaled. We're in between houses and I'm retired so we're limping along on one car because with current house prices it's difficult to have the capital required to get a house, so the replacement of the car has been put on hold. It's a real pain not having a car after 60 years of having one, even in an urban area. I'm lucky that there exists some public transportation but I'm so used to the convenience of having my own. It requires planning to do anything that involves even simple things like shopping. Tough to buy a 50lb bag of cat litter and drag it onto a bus, then carry it from the bus stop to the apartment. (The smaller containers of cat litter are much more expensive). With the car we get 2 or 3 bags at a time. Uber will do the job but it's much more expensive than the public transportation. When we get a house we'll be able to budget another car. The current car is a hybrid and I expect the next car will probably also be hybrid. Not EV.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Consumer Reports has user survey information on most cars and light trucks...

Ruthlessrider

The only reason

Ruthlessrider

The only reason China is number one is because of their population numbers. You want to know who is number one per capita? Look no further than the US.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Using Quote Reply works wonders for continuity.

Dikdik Loc: Winnipeg, Canada

There will be a lot of research in battery types in the near future, I suspect. EVs are in their infancy.

Bayou

AND because they were being wrecked more than the conventional/gas cars in the fleet.

Having driven a friend's Tesla for about a dozen hours on a recent trip, it's not hard to imagine why inexperienced renters have had more accidents. Two things...the controls are mostly accessed via a huge touchscreen that requires too much focus (eyes off the road) to figure out, especially for an unfamiliar driver.

Reason two, these cars are so over powered, as fast as an exotic sports car. A tiger by the tail that may be too much for the casual renter to handle. CRASH!

Dikdik Loc: Winnipeg, Canada

"Achieving air quality improvements requires cooperation from all countries, the chief polluter of which is China."

You have to take that into context. China's population is 5x that of the US. If you account for 'per capita' carbon footprint, the US is Number One by nearly a factor of two.

Bayou

Indeed. I once observed a small laptop battery explode into flames (an outdoor experiment involving a pellet rifle and an already swollen battery).

The fire was astonishing.

rcarol

you mention that charging at home is very economical. If yoou live in one of California's many apartment complexes, you don't have that option.