Everything GM built in the late '70s was garbage.
Confession of a TESLA Owner
- Thread starter DesertIguana
- Start date
I think electric cars are here to stay. I’d bet that most of us on this thread are, umm “vintage”? The younger generations are hell bent on green energy and electric cars. Once they take over, assuming they leave their parents basements and get real jobs, the ICE will start to fade away. Once the infrastructure, battery life, battery size, battery cost, and the ability to swap batteries becomes more common so will electric cars. I don’t see this happening in the next 5-10yrs but 15-20yrs from now, sure.
The electric cars drivetrain and electric motors are also much less complex than the ICE.
The electric cars drivetrain and electric motors are also much less complex than the ICE.
The battery lifespan is always a concern when it comes to EVs. Here is the ironic thing as well. If we are out and about with your EV and need a charge. We want it charged really fast, because who wants to be at a charge station longer than necessary. The faster you charge a lithium battery the shorter life it will have. This is just the nature of lithium batteries in general.
Oh I think you are correct in that EVs are here to stay. Yes we may be "vintage" or "experienced", as I like to call it, but I think we can see the whole picture a bit clearer. Personally I work with power utilities everyday, designing power grid equipment. The grid is nowhere close to being ready to supply the massive increase in electric power usage that a mass EV deployment would demand. Also power utilities are notoriously slow to implement changes. The grid updates needed for this easily is in the 15-20 years or more. Then you have to deal with the power generation part. Massive amount of additional power needs to be generated. Renewables are not going to be anywhere close to what is needed.
Being in the field that I am I would thought that I would see actions towards increasing the power handling of the grid, but I see no movement and large investments in that arena. This is another reason why I am very skeptical and that this is not going to be a quick switch to EVs. It is going to be many many years.
Those who have houses might think that I just need to put up solar panels on the roof and I can charge from them and you can. Two issues I see. Solar panels are made up of the same material as LEDs. These materials are referred to rare-earth metals and as the name states, they are not common. There is not enough of this material to make the solar panels needed. The second issue is that many many people live in cities and do not have their own roof to put solar panels. They will always be dependent on the grid and the electric generation on it.
Do I think that EVs are here to stay yes. Do I think that forcing EVs and mandating EV usage is foolish and a setup for disaster? Yes absolutely! Let the development of the technology mature, power generation increase, infrastructure expand, battery technology/cost/replacement come naturally, instead of forcing it. Let it happen organically instead.
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I've run into more and more of them in recent years. Many of them have a hard time distinguishing between reality and cartoons. They think that if we just spend enough of other people's money, they'll all be driving like the Jetsons.
Some are starting to slowly percolate up into positions of real power. And when you see how things have been going recently, it wouldn't surprise me if many of them wind up in these instead ...
I'm skeptical that when they reach our age, they may not even have lawns to throw people off of.
This, this, a thousand times this.
EV’s are heavy. The Electric GMC Hummer will weigh more than 9,000 pounds. The unfortunate side effect of heavier vehicles is roads will wear down faster eat into air pollution improvements and you really don’t want to get in the way of one.
On the environmental front the EV’s are much better that ICE Vehicles even when factoring the manufacturing impacts.
Electric vehicles still pollute largely because they weigh so much. What they call road dust suspension like brake wear, road wear and tire wear.
I am off to put in a new cam shaft. I’m hoping for a couple tenths off my ¼ mile time.
On the environmental front the EV’s are much better that ICE Vehicles even when factoring the manufacturing impacts.
Electric vehicles still pollute largely because they weigh so much. What they call road dust suspension like brake wear, road wear and tire wear.
I am off to put in a new cam shaft. I’m hoping for a couple tenths off my ¼ mile time.
I fear that some may take my position as anti Electric Car. I am not. Not by any means.
I am for Electric Cars (or at least for alternatives to petroleum Internal Combustion Engine cars which will operate on fuels such as Hydrogen) and believe they will be prevalent in the future.
I just believe that the infrastructure MUST develop first. You can't push EV's and hope everyone catches up with generation and distribution, that's a disaster waiting to happen.
We are already in a position regarding Generation and Distribution that sees many states in rolling brown outs or outright blackouts.
I can categorically say that power outages in the last 10 to 15 years have been much more frequent and of longer duration than they were when I was an older child and young adult.
The state of the electrical generation and distribution system in the U.S. is disgraceful.
I am for Electric Cars (or at least for alternatives to petroleum Internal Combustion Engine cars which will operate on fuels such as Hydrogen) and believe they will be prevalent in the future.
I just believe that the infrastructure MUST develop first. You can't push EV's and hope everyone catches up with generation and distribution, that's a disaster waiting to happen.
We are already in a position regarding Generation and Distribution that sees many states in rolling brown outs or outright blackouts.
I can categorically say that power outages in the last 10 to 15 years have been much more frequent and of longer duration than they were when I was an older child and young adult.
The state of the electrical generation and distribution system in the U.S. is disgraceful.
Seems the only time anything gets upgraded is after the 80-90yr old poles spark and start a massive fire.
I personally think that solar will become the most used energy source in the future. The earth gets enough energy from the sun about every 3hrs to power the worlds yearly energy needs. The issue is ,and probably will be for a long long time, how to harness and store the energy.
This 100%OK, I need details here, as I'll be getting my 67 'stang back on the road in the near future. It has a stroked 351 Windsor with Dart heads and an Isky camshaft. Has run 11:80's @ 114 mph in the 1/4 in full street trim. No power adders either.
~doug~
This is why you need an EV. There are at least 10 models that will flat out beat your times.
Decades ago I had clients in the grid industry who were complaining about the infrastructure then. It is just a continuing fact of life in that industry. As you add people and electricity-gobbling standards of living every year, the demand bar grows ever higher. Their industry is one of perpetual catch-up. And it always will be.
The long-term solution then was nuclear. But TMI, Jane Fonda, and later Chernobyl scared everyone off of it. I was not that far from TMI when it went down; It does have it's risks.
IMO, as it stands now, the prevailing generation, transmission, and storage technologies do not make battery powered vehicles particularly efficient, or even beneficial to the environment. The environmental costs of manufacturing, recycling and disposing of the batteries alone are staggering. And that does not even include the energy losses from transmission grids, and what the source of the electricity is in the first place.
Most battery powered cars today are in fact powered by coal. And there are significant power losses in getting the kilowatts from the power plant turbines to the battery. In some cases, the electrons are traveling hundreds of miles. Not all of them arrive.
Local IC-powered charging stations burn so much fuel recharging a vehicle battery that the converted MPG of the battery-powered vehicle is dramatically less than an efficient IC vehicle.
I would rather operate a mature, modern IC emissions system if I wanted to save the environment.
Don't get me started on all the green tech. Most of it has frightening hidden costs and concealed environmental burdens. Like windmills that regularly require thousands of gallons of oil to operate, slaughter thousands of birds, produce insufficient electricity, sporadically, and cannot be easily recycled when they wear out.
Or the solar panels that numb skulls in the far northeast plant on their roofs, that only generate meaningful power for 6 months of the year, and wear out before their generation value reaches the break-even point on the equipment cost.
Or lithium cell assemblies that cost more to replace than the vehicle is worth.
And so little of it is made here in the US.
The infrastructure to support what amounts to the hungriest home electrical appliances in many decades does not include just the power plants and high tension distribution grid. A lot of American homes still barely have 100 amp service drops, particularly in urban areas.
I posted the above text from nearly 120 years ago to show how little the essential battery powered car technology has really changed. Endlessly subsidizing Elon Musk with tax dollars is not necessarily going to change the essential SOTA. We've managed to add some miles to the range, and plenty of toys inside to play with. But the fundamental hurdles and drawbacks now are basically still the same as they were in 1904.
Lithium cells are not the solution. They're a harder environmental load than the old lead-acid cells. I've never seen a lead acid battery burn down a car at thousands of degrees.
The auto insurance companies are still struggling to peg a final underwriting cost on these vehicles. But so far, the trajectory has only been upward. Are we going to subsidize State Farm and Progressive too?
Perfect cold fusion and more revolutionary storage battery technologies, and all this goes away. But that requires real science, and not the cultish nonsense that now goes around masquerading as such. It's also a long way off still.
More importantly, let the marketplace, of both economics and free thinking innovation, primarily guide the progress. My experience is that governments are historically not particularly adept at those things, or efficiency in general. But they do excel at spending money. My money, and my grandchildren's money.
It also requires people to get off their keisters, and go to work, and pursue serious things again. We have a big shortage of that nowadays, and that's the biggest energy crisis of all.
The long-term solution then was nuclear. But TMI, Jane Fonda, and later Chernobyl scared everyone off of it. I was not that far from TMI when it went down; It does have it's risks.
IMO, as it stands now, the prevailing generation, transmission, and storage technologies do not make battery powered vehicles particularly efficient, or even beneficial to the environment. The environmental costs of manufacturing, recycling and disposing of the batteries alone are staggering. And that does not even include the energy losses from transmission grids, and what the source of the electricity is in the first place.
Most battery powered cars today are in fact powered by coal. And there are significant power losses in getting the kilowatts from the power plant turbines to the battery. In some cases, the electrons are traveling hundreds of miles. Not all of them arrive.
Local IC-powered charging stations burn so much fuel recharging a vehicle battery that the converted MPG of the battery-powered vehicle is dramatically less than an efficient IC vehicle.
I would rather operate a mature, modern IC emissions system if I wanted to save the environment.
Don't get me started on all the green tech. Most of it has frightening hidden costs and concealed environmental burdens. Like windmills that regularly require thousands of gallons of oil to operate, slaughter thousands of birds, produce insufficient electricity, sporadically, and cannot be easily recycled when they wear out.
Or the solar panels that numb skulls in the far northeast plant on their roofs, that only generate meaningful power for 6 months of the year, and wear out before their generation value reaches the break-even point on the equipment cost.
Or lithium cell assemblies that cost more to replace than the vehicle is worth.
And so little of it is made here in the US.
The infrastructure to support what amounts to the hungriest home electrical appliances in many decades does not include just the power plants and high tension distribution grid. A lot of American homes still barely have 100 amp service drops, particularly in urban areas.
I posted the above text from nearly 120 years ago to show how little the essential battery powered car technology has really changed. Endlessly subsidizing Elon Musk with tax dollars is not necessarily going to change the essential SOTA. We've managed to add some miles to the range, and plenty of toys inside to play with. But the fundamental hurdles and drawbacks now are basically still the same as they were in 1904.
Lithium cells are not the solution. They're a harder environmental load than the old lead-acid cells. I've never seen a lead acid battery burn down a car at thousands of degrees.
The auto insurance companies are still struggling to peg a final underwriting cost on these vehicles. But so far, the trajectory has only been upward. Are we going to subsidize State Farm and Progressive too?
Perfect cold fusion and more revolutionary storage battery technologies, and all this goes away. But that requires real science, and not the cultish nonsense that now goes around masquerading as such. It's also a long way off still.
More importantly, let the marketplace, of both economics and free thinking innovation, primarily guide the progress. My experience is that governments are historically not particularly adept at those things, or efficiency in general. But they do excel at spending money. My money, and my grandchildren's money.
It also requires people to get off their keisters, and go to work, and pursue serious things again. We have a big shortage of that nowadays, and that's the biggest energy crisis of all.
As long as the electricity is created in the old fashioned way by burning fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil etc) it makes no sense to me to push electric cars. True, where they are driven they have not much if any environmental impact, this just happens somewhere else. I also miss incentives for the development of alternatives, like Hydrogen operated engines. We had buses in Germany some 30 years ago operating with these types of engines, not sure what the status there is now, as I am here so long now.
This is why you need an EV. There are at least 10 models that will flat out beat your times.
Yea, but that Mustang is going to look better and sound better in the 1/4 mile.
Brings to mind a line from Billy Crystal, "It is better to look good than to feel good."
That is going to depend on your stance on noise pollution.
The 'stang is equipped with a full 3" exhaust system, over the axle and out the back, I like a quiet drag car, helps to hear your competitors better...That is going to depend on your stance on noise pollution.
~doug~
I noticed a plug in hybrid advertised as all electric around town and gas for long trips. That makes good sense and could be a workable alternative to two cars, although I'd rather have a BMW X3 and a used i3.
This is my biggest issue. Green is a marketing term, not reality. I took a course called Energy Utilization in my undergrad studies, not very long ago - I was one of the oldest individuals in the class. The overall environmental impact is not very "green" at all. Neither is oil. I have nothing against either, just pick the one that meets your needs. Just don't lie to yourself and call it green.
OK, I need details here, as I'll be getting my 67 'stang back on the road in the near future. It has a stroked 351 Windsor with Dart heads and an Isky camshaft. Has run 11:80's @ 114 mph in the 1/4 in full street trim. No power adders either.
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~doug~
Minor hijack here but this is a relative of mine back in the day so yea, am partial to Mustangs because of him.
Don't miss the license plate...
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