A dip into the old email bag brings us another angry anti-government missive, this time also attacking electric cars. Shall we take a look? I’ll intersperse commentary:
The following article deals with realities involved with electric cars. Similarly, if we all go to solar electric panels, and are “selling” electricity back to the grid, at what point will the owners of the grid demand payment for us to be hooked up to their grid?!?
Well, as Gomer Pyle would have said, “SURPRISE, SURPRISE!!” I guess some people’s idea of efficiency is a bit different than mine.
It seems unlikely, seeing as the grid is highly regulated by the federal government.
Canadian Comments On Electric Powered Vehicles For USA People – INTERESTING !!
IT WOULD SEEM THAT IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN YOUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE! Keep in mind the California Legislature is considering placing a mileage tax on motor vehicles.
Interestingly enough, this is the most valid point in the email – and I’ve seen proposals like the cited California proposal before. But let’s take this a little further than this guy did: the gasoline tax functions as a proxy for road usage, now doesn’t it? But it’s a bad proxy in and of itself, because vehicles have a wide range of gasoline consumption rates, from the big rigs who have very poor ratings, to little ol’ SmartCars and, now, the hybrids.
My real point here is that we’re not talking about catastrophe for funding road maintenance because of electric cars, but instead we’re making the mistake, and have for a while, of using a dedicated tax to fund the construction and maintenance of roads.
Why is this a mistake?
Because there’s a hidden assumption. That assumption is that only people who have cars and use the roads benefit from those roads. That, in fact, is the entire idea behind dedicated taxes. But that’s a bad assumption. Think of the shut-in who gets groceries delivered from the store – they benefit from roads, too. The bicyclist benefits not only because they have a place to bike, but they, too, benefit from the groceries – or the furniture truck that delivers furniture to the stores, and from the stores to the home of the bicyclist. I trust my point is clear – having a car is not a prerequisite for benefiting from the roads. They provide a way to bring in all sorts of supplies that all of us benefit from.
Thus, the gas tax should be repealed and roads should be funded from general taxation.
Electric cars merely point up the problem in how we fund roads, they are not the problem itself.
Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile has never been discussed. All you ever hear is the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity.
Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power cars, yet it is being shoved down your throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.
A British Columbia Hydro executive supposedly said: If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, you have to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On a small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a Tesla. If even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.
This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Your residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as your genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are you being urged to buy these things and replace your reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but you will also have to renovate your entire delivery system! This latter “investment” will not be revealed until you’re so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an ‘OOPS!’ and a shrug.
I’m not an electrical expert, but I thought someone else must have looked into this. And, indeed, here’s someone who gave it some thought and, ah, disagreed. Just one point he (I presume) makes:
My 145 year old house is 100 amps… but I just use less than 12 amps off of a regular 110 outlet to charge my car… the same outlet you use for a hair dryer or refrigerator etc.etc.
This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles … Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load.
We all use that much with 110 outlets regularly (your refrig.. A hair dryer..etc) As such it would NOT overload your home or the neighborhood grid. And most people charge at night while sleeping when the car is not in use and the electrical grid is not being taxed as much (more on that below)
If you’re beginning to suspect our correspondent isn’t interested in actually analyzing the problem, you’re not alone. But now onwards …
A man named Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, “For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.” Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.
Yes, that sounds about correct for the Volt – it’s advertised to be a short range hybrid, good for in-town driving. As the technology ramps up, stories like these will become historical curiosities, not warnings. The Teslas have a 200+ mile range, as I understand it. The Volt should be used for in-town driving where your mileage is less than 25 miles and, in fact, you can charge it up overnight and end up not running the motor much at all.
It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.
Unless, of course, you happen to use a Tesla charging station. While not yet common, such installations – and it doesn’t have to be Tesla – can become as common as gas stations. How do we know this? Because gas stations exist.
And electric charging stations don’t require expensive tanker visits.
But how long? According to the cited web site, it’ll take about 30 minutes. Go ahead, click on the link and scroll down a bit. There’s a helpful map showing current and planned stations. And some helpful pics of Tesla cars 🙂
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned. If you pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.
This is misdirection, as well as misinformation (see above comment concerning time)! It entirely ignores the point, which is emissions. Say it with me, emissions are making the planet hotter. They’re ruining crops, driving up food costs and air-conditioning costs (but maybe lowering snow-plowing costs :).
Additionally, electricity costs are going down. You’ll notice the author conveniently ignores the possibility that you have a solar power harvesting strategy, from your house’s roof-top to a Tesla solar power panel dedicated to your car – you pop it on the roof of the garage, it goes into a battery, and you plug that into your Tesla car. In this case, you have one up-front cost and then … no cost.
The math is bad because the variables are far more extensive than this biased author wants you to think about, and the important variables – the cost of fossil fuels in both $$s and in cost to the health of you and your children, are rising, while the cost of electricity generated without fossil fuels is falling. Beware bad math.
The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000-plus. It looks like the “Greenies” in the American Government want loyal Americans NOT to do the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.
Say What…….?
And you have to love how he prices a gasoline powered car at $20K. Most folks don’t buy cars priced at that – they’re getting SUVs at $50K, Porsches at $60K, BMWs at $80K. Even the famously inexpensive Mini-Cooper’s price is going up. I bought a basic one for more than $20K back in 2005. I’ll bet I can’t get one for that now.
For comparison, the new Tesla 3, base model with no frills, is about $35K – and, yes, I and my wife are on the list to get one. Although, given our condtions, we may get an add-on package so we can have heated seats.
But notice how the author is blaming “government greenies,” which is both funny, as I doubt there are any such efforts going on at the moment in the current Trump “Clean Coal” Administration, and wrong – it’s all about the markets, baby, and the markets are slowly moving towards electric cars. We know Trump’s Administration won’t push this particular initiative, so trying to stir up anti-government indignation is deeply, deeply intellectually fraudulent.
Unless this guy is trying to reference foreign governments that are pushing for electric vehicles. But why would he care?
So, in case you bought into this little slickster’s presentation, you should ask yourself – how credulous am I? If you could confront him, he might argue he was only yelling about hybrids, but that’s not in the least clear here. Of course, hybrids will be a niche market, as I see it, for those vehicles going where there are no electric stations – and those areas will always exist. They often don’t have gas stations, either, but given the greater energy density of gas compared to batteries, gas makes more sense for specific situations.
But that’s a tiny fraction compared to most of our driving. If we want to continue to drive (and reportedly Millenials just aren’t all that interested) without destroying the environment on which we all depend, we’ll be moving towards electric cars.
