That is a good point. Vegetable oil runs just fine in a diesel engine.

I was just commenting on the flooding. Not pushing EVs.

However, they work fine for most people. Range anxiety is excessive. I have several cars as well. If I need to drive real far, I would just use another one, or rent one. Easy.

We need to dissociate hatred for the use of government force for EVs, from the EVs themselves.

I dont know why they call them fossil fuels. They should be called burnable fuels, since its the heat generated that is converted into mechanical or electrical energy.

what about people wont want to take a driverless car that is old and work out. Also what if you want to go from las vegas to LA? how is that going to work. charging will be an issue

jealous I am

While I am at it I should clarify my position on this issue and in the world. I am not one of those green lefty tree-hugging pricks. Obviously I tend toward individualist/Objectivist and I hate Marxism/collectivism et al. I am a technophile, cheapskate and Toyota fanboy. I think where there is a will, there is a way and people will hammer out all the challenges associated with EVs. Come to think of it, I would absolutely love to drive an EV with excellent torque, speed, acceleration etc. equal to my modest Camry. That would be tre cool.

unless this manufactured 'shortage' of chips is intended to drive up fossil fuel vehicles to the point where the release of EV's alternative looks reasonable to most people. A 2003 2WD truck with 280K miles on it is not worth $5500 in any fantasy world nor any jeep worth $80K regardless of year or mileage.

EVs are currently less than 2% of all cars in the US. It will be a long time before they reach significant levels.

A recent addition in the garage is a Toyota Camry hybrid. 47 mpg and It doesn’t plug in. I find it very economical for our needs.

In the past, I have posted about my experience with a Nissan Leaf I had and the correspondences between two Nissan dealerships and Nissan Corp in replacing a depleted battery pack. The stupid Green New Deal congresspeople have no clue about electric cars and the eventual replacement of depleted battery packs. I far as I have read on the internet that Tesla is the only company that is recycling its depleted packs. As stated in the comments here that charging a lot of electric cars in particular regions could cause massive grid failures. I trade the leaf in for a newer Nissan Sentra with an Eco engine management system which works quite well.

Considering Tesla is not long term profitable company, I'd say the monetary gains are due to hype and eco-driven public perception.

The stock is severely overvalued with an inflated PE (price to earnings) well over the S&P 500. Bear in mind Tesla has only been profitable for 2 years out of 18 (2003). I'd say ride the wave and step off before the inevitable crash.

I've more than doubled my money on Tesla stock. They must be doing something right.

oh, so they would effectively have a radiator system with a cooling pump between the radiator and the battery. They would then rely on the radiator to transfer the heat to the air.

"Our jobs go the other way." And apparently our freedom.

Exactly right re China. It is so indicative of progressive hypocrisy to cow-tow to China, while putting massive environmental and social restrictions on US companies.

Trains are far more efficient than trucks. Railroads back in the 1950's were trying desperately to compete because trucking and airlines were eating into their business. They pointed out that the government was subsidizing building of highways and airports, yet was taxing railroads on every mile of road that they had built at their own expense, basically forcing them to pay for their competitors plants. We all know that passenger railroading died in 1970 with the formation of AMtrak. Freight railroading has come back strong in the last 30 years, but the continuous stream of containerized freight from our western ports really bugs me. The goods come in from China. Our jobs go the other way.

This past winter, it got too cold for the windmills in Texas and the grid went down. Try tripling the load permanently with electric cars and see what happens to the grid.
There are brownouts in parts of California with no special loads. Add 20 million electric vehicles sucking on the grid and see what happens.

Quick experiment
1. Go to your. kitchen, open your freezer, and wave your hand around for 30 seconds in some section where there is frigid air (below 32°F).
2. Get a large bowl or perhaps a 2 quart pot. Fill it a quarter of the way with ice and add water to come close to filling it, leaving room to insert your hand. Stir a little with a spoon until its at 32°F in equilibrium. Stick your hand into the ice water for 30 seconds. Or at least try.
3. After about 5 seconds when you yank your hand out, you can conclude that water cooling is tremendously more effective than air cooling.

Can't argue for that.

That is cool. EVs have no place in trucking for a long time, nor do we need them to. Diesel work great there. Trains work even better.

Interested in your view of trains vs long-haul trucking. They are clearly more efficient. Seems to me something (subsidies and government intrusion) killed them.

make america lesser . go back in time

we get to go to the coin laundry while the leftists go to the french laundry

this country is doomed. too many people who dont think, but just vote for mob rule

There you start getting into the details of what duty cycle is the car being run on. Granting your 5x number, that only improves the factor to 58. The EPA rates driving range of EV's based on the FTP75 Fuel Economy Drive cycle, which is 44 minutes long, at an average speed of 29 mph. I used to test V8 truck engines at GM on the same cycle, and the engine only had to average 13 HP output over the 44 minutes to complete the cycle. Prior to the EV craze and government cramdown, nobody cared about the driving range of gasoline cars, because they knew the car had enough fuel that they could drive for a week (300 miles for normal people commuting to work.) Doesn't matter if you haven't driven 200 miles in a day in years. When I was trucking, I was driving 500 miles a day in a loaded vehicle 200 days a year. Different people have different needs.

We have a lot more oil than they do in the Bakken Oil Play of North Dakota. I used to truck across US2 in ND. At night, I could see a continuous string of natural gas flares from the oil wells. When I stayed in Williston, ND overnight, I couldn't sleep because of the continuous traffic outside. Temporary workers housing camps were all over the place, and not a hotel room could be had in the whole town. Think "Wyatt Junction" in Atlas Shrugged. Williston impressed me like that.

Largely right. But I believe the correct ratio is: an EV can go about 4-5 times as far as an ICE on the same energy due to the thermodynamic efficiency of the gasoline engine va EV power train(~20% to ~95%). However, it is not necessary for batteries to equal thermodynamic energy storage. I haven't driven 200 miles in years, and many EVs can do this today. The cost of electricity vs gasoline is considerably less as well.

For energy storage on the grid, I am a big advocate for pumped hydro and compressed air. These work fine, and are a lot better than wasteful hydrogen. Batteries are not a good utility scale energy storage mechanism. Also, get ethanol out of gas, and use the vegetable oil (if you have to keep the ridiculous subsidy) for diesels. This is many times as efficient. In all these cases (and in big pharma) we are not working on solutions. We we brokering power from need (real of believed).

What support I have for EVs (aside from the are fucking fast) and renewables is not CO2. It is to take all the fiscal strength from our enemies, Russia, middle east, et al. If their natural resources are not needed, they become irrelevant. We could have made a much more significant dent in the middle east by nationalistic effort to reduce oil import than by our wasted military action.