One of the better articles i have seen on EV's....have they read this in New York ? Not all of this is gospel but some of the points made seem very logical...... THE PINEHURST PRESS NEWS & VIEWS Interesting Take on Electric cars As an engineer I love the electric vehicle technology. However, I have been troubled for a longtime by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid and that means more power generation and a huge increase in the distribution infrastructure Whether generated from coal, gas, oil, wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited. A friend sent me the following that says it very well. You should all take a look at this short article. IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE! In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car: Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it . This is the first article I've ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to. Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things yet they're being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper. At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro Executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had 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 our small street (approximately 25 homes), The electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla, each. For 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. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS...!' and a shrug. If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It's enlightening. 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. 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. 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 , so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I 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. The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs $46,000 plus. So the American Government wants loyal Americans not to do the math, but simply pay twice 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. Just food for thought here. Peace WildBill
I didn't read this "law", but I have a question that may or may not have been answered. So they outlaw the sale of IC powered vehicles, but not the registering or owning, correct? So what is to stop someone from crossing state lines, buying one, then titling it in NY?
Pinehurst North Carolina...yeah....the figure quoted is very wrong. I was looking more at the infrastructure problems and did not pay attention to the figures in that article. Peace WildBill
Residential electricity prices in Pinehurst, NC in May 2021 averaged approximately 11.83 cents per kilowatthour (¢/kWh), which was about 14% less than the national average rate of 13.71 ¢/kWh (May 2021).
There is a lot of misinformation in that Pinehurst Press article. I'm going to touch on just a couple items. This makes no sense. They are talking about a Chevy Volt. If you run out of electric, the gas engine kicks in. If you run out of gas, you stop at a gas station and refill. Why are they adding 10 hours??? Car can be recharged after the trip is done. As mentioned the cost per kWh is ku-ku crazy. A fully loaded, top of the line Volt costs around $46k. The $25k would be for some stripper/low end car. Not exactly a fair comparison.
They probably wont let you title it in the state and not allow you to register or insure it out of state if you live in NY. I had to pay NY state tax on my Buick when I titled it in NY after buying it in PA. They get you one way or another.
I want to see how the electricity generating system will be upgraded first. Manitoba has a decent supply of hydro-electric capacity, when there's enough water available. That's the good side. Here's one of the bad ones. Back in the early seventies, Manitoba Hydro diverted a major northern river, the Churchill, into the Nelson River to increase its flow with the aim to increase hydro power generation capacity. Sounds great eh. Well, not for the South Indian Lake indigenous peoples whose territorial lands were flooded as part of the diversion. It took decades for them to receive proper compensation. It also destroyed the Churchill River watershed downstream from the new diversion channel. It's highly unlikely such an environmentally destructive project could be approved in 2021. Something for the "eco freaks" to seriously ponder. Electricity so far doesn't magically appear from thin air. I'm not completely against EV's. I do want to see more wide reaching R & D prior to them being shoved down our throats. Canada's extreme temperature swings can wreak havoc on any mechanical equipment. It's not unusual to see up to 140° F changes from summer to winter.
I miss the smells of diesel trucks, oil burning beater cars, carbs running rich....... the smell of the '70s Driving today is very bland
Thats funny because I can always tell when driving around when there is a 60/70's car near by because you can smell the exhaust.... Its kind of a unique smell. I remember seeing clouds of white smoke at traffic lights when the beater cars ( I called them crop dusters) would take off.... dont see that too often now.
https://www.businessinsider.com/bolt-ev-recall-fire-chevrolet-gm-owners-parking-50-feet-2021-9 Don’t park within 50 feet .
I was just thinking about this the other day. There was something magical about driving with my dad in our 62 Old 98 upstate NY to our summer place on Rt 17 towards Sullivan County...... I was so enthralled with the plumes of diesel exhaust shooting from the stacks of the old detroit diesel Brockways, GMC cracker boxes and Astro 95's and all the other fantastic time machine trucks that were still on the road from the 40's and 50's still, as it was only the mid 70's. The road was FAR MORE exciting than it is today. Way more variety. The road today is so boring and crowded with absolute cookie cutter yawn worthy designs. I long for the days when we would pass a 58 Olds with dual exhaust or a heavily patina'd 59 Caddy.
Ya, for sure..and along those lines, I am not at all a EV hater... I consider my daily driver the same as my refrigerator..it just needs to work, every day, without fail. I really don't worry about what it looks like. Any skepticism from me stems from the fact the technology and infrastructure are not there yet. For the record, I like electric golf carts, they are much easier to deal with than often cranky gas ones... and electric mowers, chainsaws and most other garden and shop tools. Because I don't depend on my electric chainsaw to keep me alive, when it's -25 out, and I took a wrong turn and got lost, in the middle of nowhere.. or when the battery is frozen solid, and output is a fraction of what is available at 70*. Not to mention that all the juice guzzling devices are in play when it's cold out. EVs are not a reliable transportation method for many of us in the Northern States, year round.. But the cold issue is one they have to overcome, and it's big, it reduces real world range as much as 50% for most vehicles, even more for some. What I worry about with EV's, is that once the switch is made, how much longer till we have the "motor laws" that Getty Lee sung about in Rush's "Red Barchetta". I predict that everyone over 40 reading this, will be long gone before this happens, but protecting our children's rights to our sport and hobby should be something we are all interested in. JW
I long held that the dystopian future of "Red Barchetta" was looming in the future. My nephew has a Mustang 4-banger turbo. He just put a bigger intercooler on it with a fresh tune the guy emailed him. At least there are some that still care. My daughter could care less as long as it starts and her dog will fit inside. I have to constantly point out things that need to be done and maintained. At least she finally learned that tires need rotating and engines need oil changes. Wipers only get replaced when she can't see for the rubber falling off and the cabin air filter when the defroster won't clear the windshield very well.
Wild Bill's post has some good information, but I will take issue with one statement: "Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things." One can trot out resistance electric heating systems as a seriously inefficient way to heat a house, but I can counter with Whale oil lamps vs LED lighting. Another consideration is that in recent years there has been a switch from incandescent to (mostly) LED home lighting. This has reduced electric demand significantly. Ten years ago our house was illuminated (except the basement) exclusively by incandescent bulbs. When we moved from MA to Florida the house we bought was about 50/50 fluorescent (CFL and a few tubes). There are now precisely five incandescent bulbs in it - two in rarely used rear doors which have lights only because building code requires them. Neither has been illuminated since I tested them two years ago. Two are in our garage door opener; they burn for about five minutes at a whack and the incandescents stand up better to power on and off cycling then anything else. One in in our microwave under hood for the stove. It's low wattage; I'm not sure how well an LED would stand up to the heat and humidity. Our water heater is a hybrid that so far has only run on heat pump. Our stove is an induction unit. The removal of the Jacuzzi was a condition of our purchase - a real energy hog that I would never use. A EV Charger would not bring us close to where this house was in terms of energy use with the previous owner.
I'm just wondering where SEMA is on all this. They are the NRA of this hobby and probably our only hope.
I'm with Jim on this, by the time EV's become mainstream, we will all be pushing up daisies. As for efficiency? Are you guys kidding me? Electric motors are way more efficient than internal combustion engines. Most of the energy in a gallon of gas goes right out the tail pipe, and is dissipated by the engine cooling system in the form of heat. Electric motors convert over 85% of electrical energy into mechanical energy or motion compared to less than 40% for a gasoline combustion engine. Given the minimal moving parts, electric motors are highly reliable, and require little to no maintenance. Their simplicity means that almost no energy is lost in friction between moving parts. Battery technology, availability, and infrastructure to support it all are big sticking points, RIGHT NOW. Technology and research marches on, whether we like it or not. You can go with it, or get run over by it. I don't understand why you guys are threatened by this. Our hobby is safe for a long while I think. I'll be in a wheelchair or taking the dirt nap by the time our cars are nothing but museum pieces. When it makes sense to me, I will buy an EV when I think they have enough of the problems worked out. It makes sense for the amount of utility driving I do currently. I look forward to many years driving my GS. One thing is for certain, an EV with a motor at each wheel and all the associated electronics will hand you your butt at a traffic light encounter. It will hook and go faster than you can hit the gas. Even the Hybrids today are incredibly quick. I was shocked at how fast the Transit Authority vehicle I drove for the last 3 years of my career was. It was a Toyota Camry 4cyl Hybrid. It got mid 20'2 MPG in stop and go city driving, and like I said, I was shocked the first time I floored it. That was a full 10+ years ago to boot.
Hehe that's due to electric motors having instant max torque available. Electric vehicles have their down-sides but they do have up-sides too.
Notwithstanding the fact that I agree internal combustion engines aren't going away for a very long time, New York is certainly not on the leading edge of countries or states around the world with announced bans on the sale of new ICE cars by 2035 or 2040... it's a pretty long list already!
It will be interesting to see how the "ban" laws are written. Just last weekend I saw 5 tour busses and multiple escort vehicles for our NYS Governor when they were visiting our area. This is the second time in 3 weeks that I saw this same grouping. Why she needs 5 buses and so much "protection" I will never understand but will the ICE ban have loop holes for "necessary" government vehicles? I bet it will. I will get an EV for a daily driver when the bugs have been worked out and infrastructure is available. So I guess that means I may never own one in my life time.
