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Poll: Only 25% of Americans Think Electric Cars Are Practical | CNSNews

Posted by $ AJAshinoff 3 years, 2 months ago to Culture
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As-if this is any surprise. How can any country having rolling blackouts in its states expect to reliably power and recharge millions of vehicles, particularly in winter.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm all for new tech solutions. But the waste involved in making just the batteries and the demand on our infrastructure as they phase to anemic and paltry solar is destined to be nothing more than another money-pit were politicians and corporations will get richer AND the American people will be force into public transportation and all the restrictions associated with it.
SOURCE URL: https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/cnsnewscom-staff-writer/poll-only-25-americans-think-electric-cars-are-practical


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    Posted by DrZarkov99 3 years, 2 months ago
    Lots of ways to respond to this one:

    1. Current infrastructure can't handle more than a few 50 amp EV chargers in a neighborhood at a time. Expect lots of blown transformers.

    2. The price of new EVs puts them out of the reach of most people, and no one is looking forward to buying a used one with depleted batteries.

    3. The charging station problem, with long recharge times isn't going to be solved anytime soon.

    4. The same people pushing for mandated EVs are the ones pushing wind and solar as the only acceptable clean energy solution. Not only are they horrified at fossil fuel energy, but they shrink from nuclear, and don't want to hear about geothermal or hydroelectric energy sources (the DOE estimates that with the use of fracking, geothermal energy could meet 80% of our power needs; there are 6,000 flood control dams the Corps of Engineers think could be outfitted with hydroelectric generators). Of course the fact that China is the primary source of wind and solar power equipment wouldn't have anything to do with that (sarc).
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    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
      Transformers are not going to blow up from load within their rating, and they are protected by breakers. Transformers blow up when the cooling/insulating oil leaks out. Infrastructure surely does need investment, but EVs aren't going to drive this for a while.
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    • Posted by mspalding 3 years, 2 months ago
      EVs are currently less than 2% of all cars in the US. It will be a long time before they reach significant levels.
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      • Posted by $ 3 years, 2 months ago
        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.
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  • Posted by coaldigger 3 years, 2 months ago
    How many EV's would be manufactured and sold without government subsidies? How many fossil fuel cars are manufactured and sold despite having to support every tax governments dare to charge and every regulation they can imagine to enact? My answer lies in the answers.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 3 years, 2 months ago
    A few years ago I'd have been surprised that the brainwashing reached 25%. I suspect a large portion are people who are confusing full electric with hybrid. Of course that is what wikipedia and the other liars want. Wikipedia calls the Prius "full hybrid" to brainwash the morons who are susceptible. Contemptible slime.
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    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
      I just found that. What a joke. Not only is "full hybrid" the worst technobabble, the Prius is a Rube-Goldberg series-parallel mess. The Volt was far superior in every way, but GM couldn't be allowed to have a good vehicle, and it died.
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  • Posted by $ 25n56il4 3 years, 2 months ago
    B.S. Just you wait until folks have to start replacing those stupid batteries. What would happen to one if you had to drive through our flooded streets on the Texas Gulf Coast when we have one of our many storms?
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    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
      The idea that EVs have a bigger challenge than ICE cars in driving through water is a fallacious. Most of the electric motors we make can run underwater without any issue, and we make ones a LOT bigger than car motors. The batteries similarly don't care. However, your ICE air intake REALLY CARES. Just pour a two cups of water in your intake while the engine is running and see what happens.
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      • Posted by term2 3 years, 2 months ago
        Well, what about cooling the batteries. Doesnt that require air to cool?
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        • Posted by Steven-Wells 3 years, 2 months ago
          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.
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          • Posted by term2 3 years, 2 months ago
            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.
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    • Posted by CaptainKirk 3 years, 2 months ago
      What will happen to MANY of them when they sit in a LOT in a flooded region in TX or LA after a hurricane. Flooded gasoline cars (not driven) can be cleaned and still used. I doubt the flooded battery cars will be worth squat.

      My last few cars were 200k + miles. My current has 75k and I feel I have 10yrs to go with it. Imagine trying to get that kind of mileage from one of these vehicles (without replacing the batteries 4 times)
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      • Posted by term2 3 years, 2 months ago
        Just remember that leftists just want ideology, not results. If electric cars arent practical, it will be blamed on the mfrs and up to them to fix things if they want to stay in business (and we consumers pay for the r and d to fix things.)
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      • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
        You are kidding right? Easier to recover an ICE from flooding than an EV? Not a chance. Again though, this is a corner case, not mainstream practicality.

        200K miles is another thing. No doubt you are right, the batteries won't last. However, a majority of people don't keep their cars that long.

        Another thing missing from this discussion is that people don't really want to drive anymore. Driverless cars are coming, and will displace a majority of transportation. Once this happens, $/mile will be far more important than car life, and charging will be irrelevant. Cars will just go charge (or fill up) between rides.
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        • Posted by term2 11 months, 2 weeks ago
          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
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          • Posted by $ Thoritsu 11 months, 2 weeks ago
            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.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 3 years, 2 months ago
    Title jogged my memory. A neighbor had an electric car up until about a year ago. After he traded it in for a car with an internal combustion engine, he told me he "wanted something more practical."
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    • Posted by term2 3 years, 2 months ago
      I can understand that. the electric cars arent practical for americans who like to travel large distances basically whenever they want. I cant go from Las Vegas to Phoenix currently, even with a Tesla without being very careful to plan out when I recharge.
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    • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 2 months ago
      Hydrogen that you can create right in the car (just add water), would be the best vehicle for the future...no computers either...carry an extra set of points just in case!
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  • Posted by term2 3 years, 2 months ago
    My thoughts exactly. This is another solyndra debacle in the making. When they are practical and consumers want them, they will appear without government handouts and regulations.
    The media and government are pounding on us to change over to electric cars. I feel it, and for that reason alone I wont buy one.
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  • Posted by CaptainKirk 3 years, 2 months ago
    Look, with the current situation of working at home, I drive my vehicle so little, that slow charging is an option.
    Downside... I also live in FL where my electric bill is one of my larger monthly expenses. Eclipsing my fuel purchases, normally.

    And let me mention Batteries do NOT LIKE HEAT...
    in FL, I went to sears to buy a 5yr battery (circa 1992) from Sears.
    The first thing they did was took 2yrs off the warranty. I SCREAMED a bit.
    WTF? The whole purpose of getting a 5yr battery was to get 5yrs of battery life.

    He explained: In FL, it gets > 170 degrees under the hood of the car for many hours in the day. You drive to work, and the car sits in the sun. The battery never cools down. The excess heat destroys the battery. We simply cannot honor 5 years in this environment. And sure enough, the battery didn't even make 3yrs, they pro-rated my battery life and applied it to the new battery. What an eye-opener!

    Now imagine a vehicle that LIVES on the most expensive replacement battery known to consumers... What is that heat going to do there? Jut erode it faster.

    But that's okay, because they get you when you COME BACK more often.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
    Does one really seek to use public opinion to justify a technical position? Come on! Look at the COVID response.

    >90% of households can readily be supported with an EV. Changing ALL cars to EVs increases grid consumption by <50%. EVs reduce fuel consumption by at least 50% over ICE cars.

    EVs work fine. They don't need subsidies (and none should have them). If I bought another car today, I would probably get an EV. They are fast, and low maintenance. I do not have a concern for the minor cost increase. I have aggressive cars anyway.

    We should bristle at the forced subsidy, the CO2 nonsciencesence, and value signalling. EVs are not the issue, nor are they useless. Force is the issue.
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    • Posted by term2 3 years, 2 months ago
      I would like to NOT have to be concerned about running out of electricity and having to wait in line and for a long charge time to get moving again. With IC cars, I dont have that issue- the infrastructure is already there and filling up with fuel takes minutes , and before biden, gas was under $2 a gallon. Electric propulsion is ok for gold carts, maybe forklifts, and maybe low power electric bicycles. Not for cars and trucks unless you have a small IC engine/generator to make up for the charging and infrastructure lacking today.
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  • Posted by Aurum79 3 years, 2 months ago
    I think, maybe in 10 years time, I may get an EV, made by Toyota. The batteries need to be higher capacity yet, the vehicles should have integrated solar panels, and more people should have solar panels at home, lessening the burden on the grid. Then we'll see.
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    • Posted by ohiocrossroads 3 years, 2 months ago
      "Batteries need to be higher capacity"
      EV advocates have been saying that for 100 years. Hasn't happened yet.

      Integrated solar panels covering every horizontal surface of the average family car would provide enough power to run a small fan to circulate fresh air in the passenger compartment. It would only be a drop in the bucket for recharging a main propulsion battery.
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      • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
        Be careful.

        Battery ratings have increased a factor of three and price has dropped a factor of five in the last 10 years. This is why hand tools have almost fully transitioned from cords to batteries, even many pneumatics.

        There is a clear technical path and investment appetite to further improvements.
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        • Posted by ohiocrossroads 3 years, 2 months ago
          Batteries are still orders of magnitude away from where they need to be to supplant hydrocarbons for energy storage for mobile applications. I just checked it out last weekend. Current state of the art energy storage density on a mass basis is 5.4MJ in a 36kg battery pack: so .15MJ/kg. Energy storage density of gasoline is 43MJ/kg. This is 287 times (43/.15) what state of the art Lithium Ion batteries can do. I'll grant that an EV can go 2.5 times as far on a given quantity of stored energy as a combustion car, but that still leaves the effective energy storage off by a factor of 115. EV advocates are always saying how much batteries have improved, but they always leave out the energy density comparison to technology that we know works.
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          • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
            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.
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            • Posted by ohiocrossroads 3 years, 2 months ago
              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.
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              • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
                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.
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                • Posted by ohiocrossroads 3 years, 2 months ago
                  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.
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                  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 2 months ago
                    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.
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      • Posted by Aurum79 3 years, 2 months ago
        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.
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  • Posted by Beatlemicah 3 years, 2 months ago
    I've more than doubled my money on Tesla stock. They must be doing something right.
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    • Posted by $ 3 years, 2 months ago
      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.
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 3 years, 2 months ago
    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.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 3 years, 2 months ago
    I don't understand how they're practical, but fortunately everyone doesn't have to use the same transportation. I'm surprised how many I see plugged into the charging stations at work and in other locations.

    I travel by bike or bus primarily, but a few times I've been in an electric-powered taxi, they seemed to have amazing acceleration. I think one driver had "ludicrous mode" enabled.

    It seems like most cabs here are Telsas. I don't know how they keep them charged. It seems like it would be impractical.
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