Essay by Eric Worrall
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t curse these silly electric cars under my breath once or twice.”
‘Brutal:’ EV Road Trip Features Bundling Up in Winter Clothes to Avoid Running Heater
ALANA MASTRANGELO
17 Apr 202311A Business Insider reporter learned how “brutal” a road trip in an electric vehicle (EV) can be when he was forced to bundle up instead of using the heater in his car to try to maximize his range. After the trip he commented, “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t curse these silly electric cars under my breath once or twice.”
Business Insider’s Tim Levin drove the new Toyota bZ4X electric SUV from New York City to Washington, DC and back, and discovered that he was forced to spend roughly a quarter of his time charging his electric vehicle. But it got worse from there.
“I hit the road back to New York on a chilly morning with 176 miles of range. When I went to turn on the heat, the indicated range plummeted to 125 miles,” Levin wrote.
Therefore, Levin had to make a decision: stay warm and charge twice, or turn off the heat — given the effect that it has on the vehicle’s battery life and range — and deal with the cold. He chose the latter.
…
Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/04/17/brutal-ev-road-trip-features-bundling-up-in-winter-clothes-to-avoid-running-heater/
What a miserable experience.
Australian drivers also experienced their share of EV woes recently;
In Australia EV owners were forced to queue at Gundagai, while returning from an Easter holiday;Easter weekend photo sparks concern over Australia’s electric vehicle future
10/04/2023
A lengthy queue at an electric vehicle charging hub in Gundagai on Good Friday has given a glimpse into Australia’s EV future “unless we get some urgent planning underway”.
Matthew Bailes, who was driving from Melbourne to Sydney in his Tesla, snapped a photo of the situation.
“It was a 15 minute wait,” he told Tony Jones, filling in for Neil Mitchell.
…
Read more (includes a radio interview): https://www.3aw.com.au/easter-weekend-photo-shows-australias-ev-future-unless-we-get-urgent-planning-underway/
At least Gundagai wasn’t a freezing cold trail of misery like Tim Levin’s New York to Washington DC trip, that comes later in the season in Gundagai.
What can I say? The only way to make EVs work in a remote town like Gundagai without massive wait time inconvenience is large subsidies, to fund enough chargers to prevent queues during busy periods like holiday peaks. And probably onsite diesel generators to provide the electricity, if EVs ever become a significant presence on the roads.
Or maybe EVs could tow a diesel generator on a trailer, to provide a continuous popup charge during long trips.
Tom Nelson’s interview with journalist Kevin Killough, who told a similar story about traveling by EV in Wyoming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRpKyknCLPc
You do not want to trust your family to a wintertime EV trip across Wyoming. It is cold and remote. They want you huddling in your 15 minute city, anyway.
And all the beneficiaries of the 15 minute city will have a second home in Wyoming or Montana.
And yet, in their 2023 IRP PacifiCorp hints at helping ratepayers purchase EVs. Electric schoolbus too. Now what did little children do to deserve that?
School buses were already uncomfortable and unsafe. Adding dependency on lithium battery charging on an inadequate generation/distribution system is just asking for trouble. Put them in the Northern Tier (and concentrate your risk anaylysis and mitigation on hot weather), and we are looking at real trouble.
Just the Left-wing nutters’ way of aborting the little ones that got away.
PacifiCorp puts it in their rate base coming and going.
Super Long Range Tesla
ROFL 🙂
Don’t know if I’d like to be involved if that got rearended whilst charging
You’ll have to ask U.S. Transportation Secretary for the answer to that.
I bet it adds like 50 miles before you have to stop and fill the generator tank and wait for it to charge again.
I love that image of a practical solution to a self imposed problem. (:
You know what, with a bit of engineering and design, do you think the charger and fuel cans could be incorporated ‘within’ the vehicles design? Maybe reduce the size of the running battery a little bit, you know, just to fit it all in. Hey I can even suggest a name for the range extender option. Let’s call it a ‘Hybrid’
Reminds me strongly of cars with wood burning “gas” fuelled contraptions on the roof/in the boot – funny how technology doesn’t always “advance” …
Like this?
Nice. I had never heard of that before.
I think I’ll stick with gasoline, though diesel is easier to make for the doit yourselfer.
Great link!
And these! COAL AND WOOD BURNING VEHICLES OF WWII (robertsarmory.com)
None produced the Hp achieved with gasoline. But any car is better than no car I guess, even if you have to push it up a hill.
Wow! I thought I had seen everything. That’s a new one to me.
Much thanks! I learned something new.
Good photo of a Reality Check. I was in Reno, Nevada during the last “Burning Man” event on the desert north of town by about 100 miles. EVERY EV returning from Burning Man (you could tell by the coating of alkali dust) had the support in the back loaded with gas containers and a generator.
Burning man? Is that a customer of a Chinese EV? 🙂
The generators were for power while they were at the gathering in the desert. There are no facilities there.
Then why didn’t ANY of the ICE cars have the same?
The EV drivers have grown accustomed to a higher quality of life than the simpleton ICE drivers. 🙂
The generator in the picture appears to be woefully inadequate. Tesla currently brags of 100 kW-h batteries. If you needed a rechange after 4 hours (less if you used your heater). That would take a 25 kW generator and would require about 20 gallons of fuel. The one in the picture is but a pittance of that. Maybe it could run your electric shaver after a night on the side of the road (if you caught it before it ran out of gas).
With 15 min cities, you just need a very long extension lead!
In a few years you might be seeing a lot of that in California….much to Gov. Gruesome’s chagrin!
Not likely, Newsom is already outlawing the sale of gasoline powered generators in CA. Diesel and propane generators are sure to follow.
HAS already outlawed them, effective real soon now.
Nevada is real close.
Close is relative. Nevada is not as close for an EV owner as it is for an ICE owner.
I keep asking people what an electric car is. Is it one?
Generally speaking, think Golf Cart…Guilded Golf Cart
thieves stealing charging cables worth £700
‘It’s a bit of a rip-off’:
potentially hazardous‘ EV charging cables
Companies in China’s key lithium-producing hub have moved to reduce lithium output following the recent price collapse amid weak demand for electric vehicles (EVs),
No subsidies no subsidies no subsidies period they are the problem not the solution. If we stopped the subsidies the whole renewable fiasco would collapse. Don’t do anything to prolong the lie. The sooner it fails the better.
Single women here get somewhere on the order of $1000/month for each child. One wonders why there are so many children living in fatherless households.
A professor at Duke seems to feel that a $14T reparations program that he is pushing, will solve that problem.
Electric cars at their current state of development are NOT suitable for road trips. As a 2nd and commuter car and other local trips oh yeah, but you don’t need a four door sedan for that. Use your gas car for road trips and more than one passenger.
You going to pony up and buy my second car? I’m on a retired guy’s budget.
We taxpayers already have, it is electric! And that is 100% wrong.
When I see that stylized “T” it has the same effect on me as a Vote For Biden bumper sticker.
You wouldn’t like driving around Boulder.
Boulder is a federal government town, what with the USGS and NCAR being there.
I didn’t say anyone should be required to own one, or that gas cars should be outlawed. I merely pointed out that as a 2nd car electrics have some desirable features.
Plug in hybrids in a low cost electric market where your daily commute round trip is less than the battery range would appeal to me back when I was a working fool. My range to/from work was under 10 miles for most of my last 24 years of work. I was in Vegas and could have ridden a bike for many of those years if I didn’t care about getting killed on the Vegas roads.
Now retired, I have no use for such a car.
No, all you have demonstrated is that electric cars are not totally useless.
All of the features you mention can be provided more cheaply and more conveniently by a small ICE vehicle.
Yes BEVs have a place in modern society – on a golf course.
In Britain until recently electric milk floats were used for delivering milk to the doorstep. That and as golf caddies are all EV’s good for.
Can an electric golf cart out-run an alligator?
Is the alligator electric or ICE?
I think the ones at the back of the queue will be waiting a lot more than 15 minutes.
The answer is a hybrid. Friends of mine have one, and it uses its ICE engine to charge its batteries. It can go around town as an electric vehicle, then the rest of the time it runs very efficiently on petrol. And of course when it’s on petrol it recharges the battery.
What this means, of course, is that it is 100% petrol-powered (no plug-in). Now to my mind, it would be way cheaper to simply build an ICE car with the extra efficiencies, and the difference in cost is the price of virtue-signalling.
And of course, if you don’t care about the virtue-signalling, then the answer isn’t a hybrid at all, it’s a normal vehicle.
Hybrids make economic sense and add convenience by needing fewer visits for refuelling. In many driving situations they use about half the fuel for distance covered of a standard ICE vehicle of similar size. The small price premium is more than offset in fuel savings and lower maintenance costs over a few years.
If my trusty diesel sedan ever gives up, I will be looking for a hybrid.
Im not a scientist but I just do not “get” why a KERS type ICE, diesel preferably with a very highly efficient BMW type engine, with updated/uprated Cat, has not gained traction – trillions of infrastructure spending not needed? Please educate me why this has not happened from a scientific POV? (I I would love to see the CO2 offset from such vehicle – not Nut Zero but potentially more “sensible”?)
Am I dreaming here ?
No. The exhaust of the 2015 Freight Liner I was driving having a Detroit Diesel was cleaner than the air quality in most big cities in the US.
From a scientific POV, CO2 is the only air molecule plants use to live and grow. The fallacy is demonization of the only method plants have to collect Carbon, make sugar, and grow. Scientifically, CO2 density so low some plant life struggles. CO2 is massively beneficial, but only marginally detrimental. The dumbest, and I do mean dumb, indoor pot grower I know understands this relationship. He installed a propane burning CO2 generator in his grow house which substantially improved yield. He found it on ebay. See for yourself, just search “co2 generator greenhouse” on ebay or amazon. You’ll see dozens of choices.
You do not need to be a scientist to see this as a preposterous claim. Everyone learned this in 8th grade Biology. CO2 allows the Carbon cycle to return to plants the Carbon in the sugar animals consumed.
I guess we could call it the sugar cycle if that’s easier.
When asked, several greenies have told me that the ideal level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0ppm.
I recently replaced an ICE Rav4 with a new hybrid Rav4. Got about 25 mpg with the old Rav and about 38 mpg with hybrid version – 33 mpg in winter 42 in summer. I priced out the cost difference between a new ICE only and Hybird based on $3.00/gal fuel and my annual driving distance and should break even in about 6 years. So far I think hybrid is a good option but I’ll never consider a BEV.
My wife recently replaced a 15 yo Nissan Versa, with a brand new one. Both are gasoline powered.
I don’t remember exactly what the old and new mileage was, but the difference was easily noticeable.
Under government pressure, car mileage has been increasing for all cars.
The UK be banning hybrids as well as normal vehicles leaving only the battery option.
As Dave Fair said above, “They want you huddling in 15 minute cities.”
You know if you removed the battery and electric motor your car would weigh less and the ICE would be more effective at moving it around.
Just saying.
Some data. I have owned a Ford AWD Escape hybrid since 2007. Battery still going strong. Comparable vehicle was the V6 Escape—both have about 206HP and class 1 tow. Downsized hybrid engine to I4, engine cycle from Otto to Atkinson. Lost torque made up by electric machine. Hybrid price premium over V6 was $3000, made up on day one by that years hybrid tax credit. Hybrid gets 32 city/28 Hwy at 70mph. V6 gets 18 city/22 Hwy. Hybrid uses regular, V6 uses premium. Price difference here is over $1/ gallon. The hybrid gas cost saving to date are over $10k. No brainer.
On the flip side, my son’s 2007 Escape hybrid was plagued by electrical problems all revolving around the battery. And finding a mechanic to work on it was practically impossible, we always had to go to a dealer. It had so many problems we finally had to replace it. Any gas savings we might have had were eaten up by maintenance costs.
Not to mention your time, which is worth money. Without competition for repair work, you probably paid top dollar for the repairs.
Subsidized primarily by taxpayers who don’t own EVs. If Biden gets his way, that tax pie will have to be divided up equally by everyone at the party, not just the early adopters. I question the economic viability without tax subsidies.
A problem with a vast exansion of EV chargepoints is presumably that they will stand idle most of the time, and therefore not be cost effective. In other words it only works if there is free money on offer.
OPM only lasts long enough for the grifters to get out of town.
“A problem with a vast exansion of EV chargepoints is presumably that they will stand idle most of the time…”
If only there was a way to recharge automobiles so quickly a small number of chargers could service lots of vehicles in a reasonable time.
I remember reading somewhere that back in the early days of Henry Ford, electric cars had a battery pack that could be “easily” replaced. Just slide out the empty one and slide in a fully charged replacement. Took just a few minutes, just like returning an empty crate of beer and getting a new one. Today’s EVs are too over-engineered, with the batteries totally integrated into the car body.
If you think a charging infrastructure is a problem, developing the infrastructure for each charging station to change these batteries safely will make your eyes water.
Then there’s the problem of having dozens, if not hundreds of batteries made for each charging station, on charge, waiting for the Easter/Christmas rush when everyone wants to travel.
Bad enough finding the minerals to make every vehicle on the planet electric, but making mountains of batteries to sit waiting to be used is just not possible.
Chinese car manufacturer Nio has developed a ‘smart battery swap out system’ and is planning to open 1000 of these in China this year. It has recently opened one in Norway and is planning expansion into the US in 2025.
It still isn’t a gamechanger for EVs and not as convenient as filling up at a petrol station. I’m no fan of EVs but we need to stay aware of developments on that front.
I’ve seen lots of “good” ideas flounder when they try for mass production.
I’ll wait until there are a few 10’s of thousand of these things operating for several years in the real world, before calling them a success.
Tesla has built a worldwide network of chargers. In the US I don’t think there are any places you can’t get to using the SuperCharger network.
YOu may be able to get there, but how about getting back?
AND?
That doesn’t change the fact that you will need to sit and wait to get a charger when busy, and also while charging.
Had breakfast with a still sharp 95 yo. Sharp being relative since he is a liberal. He was talking up EVs, “they charge in 15 minutes”. But he didn’t know that was a 40% charge, if it was a supercharger, and that every “supercharge” shortened the life of the battery. The propaganda is effective.
He wants a new car and I did suggest a plug in hybrid because he rarely goes more than 20 miles in a day. He could probably get by with a plain, compact plug in only EV because since he never does any long distance driving anymore.
Word to the wise:
He said he planned for his retirement but NOW, at 95, he does not have the excess cash he had in the past. He just didn’t plan to live so long.
We have planned to live forever, only use “profits” from our investments when needed and leave the nest egg to our kids, grandkids after we pass. At least that is the plan. With Brandon’s inflationary plans, who knows.
Well, I “know”…. Funds have lost a ‘ton’ since he entered the WH ‘annex’.
Supercharging still takes 20 minutes, and it’s murder on the batteries life expectancy.
Not a solution.
Not likely, given how heavy lead acid batteries are and how little charge they hold.
The batteries are integrated into the car because they are part of the frame.
Make them replaceable and you will have to beef up the frame to replace the support now provided by the battery pack. This will make already heavier electrics, even heavier.
Empty beer crates don’t wear out. Batteries do.
Empty beer crates only way a couple of pounds, your battery pack could weigh 1000 pounds or more.
“Empty beer crates don’t wear out. Batteries do.”
Nonsense, Entropy affects everything, even beer crates, Mark. So yes, beer crates can and do wear out.
I’m no fan of EVs, and whilst I agree with you on many things, there are occasions, such as this, when you let your biases blind you into speaking a load of rubbish. Nio has over 1300 powerswap stations in operation right now and have been operating such stations for 5 straight,years without fail! Nio’s cars aren’t much heavier than other EVs as far as I can determine. All your claims about battery swapping being an impossibility don’t stand up to the reality of what Nio has managed to do. This has been pointed out to you before and yet you insist on spouting the same nonsense each time the subject comes up. Sad to say, but when reality so easily counters what you are saying, it doesn’t reflect well on you.
I never said it would be impossible, I said it would never be economic.
Most problems can be solved by throwing enough money at it. That doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.
Pretty much the same thing. You keep inventing all these “reasons” why battery swap can’t happen, (the latest being that they would need a design that would cause the cars to be even heavier than existing EV designs) and yet the real-world example of Nio shows that every one of your so-called reasons aren’t the game stopper you image them to be (the latest real-world counter being that there’s no indication that Nio’s cars are noticeably heavier than any other comparable EV)
Again, don’t get me wrong. I’m right with you in not being a fan of EVs, but imagining “problems” that the real-world has proven to not be the problem you think they are doesn’t help anybody.
BTW, Though Tesla seems to have abandoned the idea of battery swapping (largely due to lack of demand vs charging at the one facility that they’d set up for it), the Tesla Model S, like the Nio, was designed for it and doesn’t seem to be all that heavier than any other comparable EV as far as I’ve been able to determine.
In short, and contrary to your beliefs, it is entirely possible to make a car/battery swap system on a mass market scale (the proof is in Nio actually doing it) but it requires first designing the cars and batteries with such in mind, which is not how most existing US EVs were designed, which is why you’ll never see it take off in the US
Even if they were designed for it, there are other reasons why it might not catch on in the US marketplace. just because something is possible to do, doesn’t mean it’s something that the market would necessarily want. Which is why this government driven push for EVs hasn’t managed to lift EVs beyond a niche in the market (and why wherever subsidies end, even that niche-level demand drops significantly) short of outright banning ICE, likely never will. The market isn’t demanding expensive EVs that have massive short-comings compared to their ICE equivalents (in many areas, but price, range, and refueling times are some of the biggies and they’re the same reasons ICE took over the market from EVs a century ago despite EVs having come to market *first*).
At the moment, it seems that fast charging shortens the life of the battery, so you end up paying more long-term for the convenience of not having to spend as much time charging, or waiting to charge.
Well time is money. Which would you rather do: wait longer or pay more?
My answer: Neither, give me a good old ICE where I don’t have to trade off time for money like that.
Anyone died in a snowdrift yet? Won’t wait for an answer as i’m suffering range anxiety – only 60 miles left and must nip down to the gas station for five minutes.
Difficult to have sympathy for those with ev woes . .
Virtue signalling has its drawbacks.
No EV is a universal plug-and-play 100 percent replacement for a petroleum-powered vehicle. Maybe someday but not today.
This should not be news.
Tesla is closest because Elon knew the importance of a reliable high-speed dedicated charging network.
AND the endless profits they will provide him for years to come. When McDs allowed him to use their parking spaces, probably for free, it was a win/win.
Elon mastered the art of collecting funds from the incumbent OEMs penalties. A charging network is much more fun to install if someone else is paying for it.
Clearly no EV can perform as well as ICE vehicles when towing, travelling out of town, providing reliable, comfortable (survivable) travel through winter, an affordable insurance rate, or a method to extinguish the fire.
Who can name a revolutionary, transformational product that displaced a superior incumbent by legislation?
“Waste heat” from an ICE or even from incandescent light bulbs isn’t “waste heat” in winter.
So depending on where one lives, and what season it is, as Einstein would say: the “losses” or “inefficiencies” are relative.
There was a mid rise building outside of DC that used the lighting to heat the building in the winter. It was built al least 30 years ago, I think as a gimmick.
I made a number of ferry trips during the Easter Triduum. On one there was a tourist’s Tesla that would not move, that all the other vehicles had to maneuver around.
The US and EU are seeking to impose renewables on South Africa which has huge coal reserves. They believe EVs will help solve the problems. However, the regular theft of electricity cables and recently the collapse of 12 steel electricity pylons – after some of the lower steel bars were stolen – means that the supply of electricity is regularly being cut off from homes and industry and rail transport. No amount of renewables will solve the problem of theft and sabotage. Of course the bright sparks in Western countries are clueless.
The lack of charging points is not the problem because once you have installed all of them where is the electricity going to come from?
No worries mate. I know several folks in the electrical generation business. They will be happy to serve you all the electricity you can pay for.
But only in the daytime?
I think the idea of pulling a trailer with a diesel generator is the key. With some development it could be called a hybrid and might be a valuable part of the car market. Then the market would provide insight about an option of a plug in cable for additional charging.
Maybe marketeers could come up with a name like Prius. In my experience they drive quite well and are economic on petrol consumption. And I admit to feeling suitably smug taking off from a standing start.
Then parking places will have to be lengthened, repainted, and result in not being able to serve as many people.
Here is a simple but overlooked fact, running the heater on an ICE vehicle technically makes it more efficient.
Heating uses what would otherwise be wasted energy. In real terms turning the heater on is not going to improve your fuel use, but are now no longer wasting the heat, so… technically more efficient.
Using an electric vehicle to heat your vehicle and what are you using? Energy that would otherwise be used to give the vehicle motion?
Muse on that EV fans.
And, there have been times when my engine started to overheat pulling a load uphill in the Summer, and I was able to get extra cooling from turning on the heat and rolling down the windows.
Waiting to charge the EV won’t worry these folks. Gives them more time to contemplate how, by driving the vehicle, they are helping all of humanity by directly reducing severe, deadly weather events caused by vehicle emissions that — drive — “climate change”.
Yet, they will never “contemplate” just HOW their EV came into existence… and the ‘costs’ thereby. It is called Critical Thinking, and they have none.
Correct — There is nothing green about EV’s..
I note from the Gundagai photo, that the dark silver car (next to the last car), has back-up transportation on its roof.
Somehow the Petrol car (joined later by diesel) beat off steam and electric powered cars in the race to replace the horse 1900 onwards. No subsidies required and few if any objections to making all those horses redundant. With no subsidies the Electric car would never take off, it is a technological dead end that has already lost the battle once.
“maybe EVs could tow a diesel generator on a trailer, to provide a continuous popup charge during long trips.”
Let’s put some numbers on this. The average speed (miles driven/time driving) in the US is about 35 mph. At that speed, the dominant loss is tire rolling resistance. Rolling resistance is about 1% of the weight on the tires. In order to propel the vehicle without battery discharge, and also keep the occupants warm and entertained, the diesel engine would have to weigh about the same as the one in a diesel-powered car. It would also require about the same amount of fuel, too. That means you would be adding 2 more tires to the rolling resistance losses, each with about the same as the ones on the car. You would also be adding about the same aerodynamic losses as half a car. In other words, you would experience about a 50% increase in total fuel losses, compared with a diesel-powered car.
“tow a diesel generator” or perhaps install one in the car. Even better, bypass the middle man and use the diesel generator as an engine. You never know, that just might work. 🤣
Come on you know that would be evil and wrong, because then it would be an internal combustion engine vehicle! 🙂
Liberals are quite comfortable with re-defining words to advance their agenda. They do it all the time!
Using the heater reduces the battery life and range.
What about in hot weather, how much will the use of the air conditioner reduce the battery life and range?
Will we be seeing naked EV owners in the summer to extend their range?
On I 15 between Vegas and Cedar City I see many Teslas. I must say that very few of the drivers would be more appealing to look at sans clothing.
I’m reminded of the time I drove to Vegas in July in my 4WD Scout, which didn’t have air conditioning. While in Death Valley, I stopped briefly in the park headquarters to get some cold drinking water and cool down before getting back on the road. I was surprised to see what appeared to be a German couple walking around in what looked like their underwear.
AC is more of a wash, since running the AC reduces the range of an ICE vehicle as well.
On the other hand heat reduces the amount of charge a battery is able to deliver, while having no impact on the amount of energy in a gallon of gas.
“forced to bundle up instead of using the heater in his car to try to maximize his range”
and that was this month? try it again in January on a much colder day
I have yet to see any drivers in rural Colorado, Wyoming or Nebraska in their cars sitting at the charger who look like they are enjoying the roadtrip or ownership.
Technology moves by fits and starts. Something that looks like a great idea often, after being put into use, proves to be impractical. An example is the rotary Wankel engine which powered some Mazda RX-7 sports models from the late ’80s until being dropped in 2002. Various manufacturers produced chain saws and other small tools powered by the Wankel engine but the technology never caught on and isn’t offered to consumers today. Naturally, there are efforts being made to revive the product, not in the market place but through government grants and subsidies.
Some kind of Wankel-like failure occurred. Another link.
Good point, technology and science are littered with false starts, wrong “avenues” etc.
The problem, will be, how long before they realize, and how much will it have cost us?
Rotaries were from the 70s. Metallurgy improvements could probably make a Wankel longer lasting, but ultimately efficiency was always the major drawback.
Easy solution here. Duh!
Its been suggested, but everyone knows what happens when you put two cars on the same track!
In a recent trip, we stopped at a fast food establishment. They had 6 charging stations. Evidently so you could recharge the vehicle and your self at the same time.
Except that if it takes a half hour to order and eat a cheeseburger and fries, the car is only about 10% charged or less.
If the food was delivered at the speed of the charging, it couldn’t be called fast food anymore.
Apart from the range, and battery charging issues. Have any of these people considered the future with EVs? In the UK, there are about 30M+ cars, and around 2-3M HGVs. Imagine, if by 2050, they were all BEVs (I know, impossible). Charging at 10KW/vehicle (cars), and who knows what for an HGV. At some point, every vehicle could be plugged in and charging, that’s going to be somewhere around 400GWs.
Wonder where they’ll get the leccy from?
Also, when their beloved Teslamobile coughs its last, where will they get a replacement from?
“Sorry sir, Lithium, is no longer available, will NiCad do?”
The UK gets through about 100,000 tonnes of motor fuels per day on average. The usage is remarkably even across the year normally, with only quite modest peaks for extra miles at holiday times, and less mileage at weekends. As an order of magnitude it’s about 4PJ a day, but if we allow for the greater motor efficiency of electric power offset partly by higher vehicle weight it might require ~1.5PJ a day of electricity, or over 0.4TWh. On the basis of overnight charging for 8 hours that would use 50GW. Reality is that only a fraction of the vehicle population would continue to run, much of it in taxi mode. That’s probably why the CCC scenarios only allow for about 100TWh a year for transport.
Don’t forget that 50% of the energy is lost in a battery charge/discharge cycle, so double your estimate of electric power generation capacity needed. Or realize that, since the government and watermelons aren’t pushing for increased generation capacity, it’s only a small fraction of the vehicle population that would continue to run, without any electricity left over to run taxis for the masses. The elites get large cars, taxis, and air travel – probably by exempting themselves from the fossil fuel bans. You get rickshaws and trains, but _your_ trains will only run when there’s sun or wind to supply them with electricity.
Well, he could always put a little propane tree stand heater in there like the Amish sometimes use to keep their buggies warm in winter!
That sounds like verboten technology to me!
For the amish? no, propane heaters are not verboten technology.
For the green zealots of the church of man-made global warming? yeah, that would be very much verboten
One the coldest most miserable trips I ever took was a 15 hour drive from Chico Ca to San Diego during a winter cold snap. The vehicle was a 1961 Datsun Pickup with a cruising speed of 55mph, and no it had no heater.
I’m not a fan of EVs, though I can see the attraction for city dwellers. I do ride motorcycles, and I know what cold is – even on a pleasant spring day in the low 60’s a long motorcycle ride can be miserable. No matter how much windproof gear and insulation I wear, the rush of wind slowly but surely bleed my core bodily warmth till I’m verging on hypothermia, and then I have to stop and drink vast amounts of hot tea and coffee at one hour intervals.
Electrically heated garments are a game changer for me. I use an electric vest, connected via a pigtail to the bike, that pulls 40W on its highest setting. I usually have it on the medium 25W setting, and even my tiny Yamaha Wr250 has the excess generator capacity to run it easily. Now I stay out all day even when the high might be in the 40’s. Basically, I can ride all year in some degree of comfort and safety.
I would think EV folks would use simple electric garments. Instead of heating the large interior volume of the cab to something like comfort, a simple electric vest under a light sweater or jacket would make the situation comfortable enough to not have to run the cab heater. Pigtailed garments for motorcycling aren’t cheap, and you’d need a beefier connection than a USB. But you can buy relatively effective battery powered vests for under one hundred dollars – I have one I use for my stargazing late at night.
In the motorcycle touring world there is a fairly vast array of garments and controllers (Trollers). I wonder when Tesla and the others will see the opportunity to extend profits by marketing their own heated garments with the Troller being a phone app? Or has this already happened?
I have the same on my XT250..100watt vest and 10 watt gloves.Would not be able to ride most months otherwise.
However, I think the point of an enclosed cab in a car is you don’t have to bundle up. Sometimes I don’t want to bother with all my protective gear, jacket boots pants helmet earplugs and just jump in the truck in my shorts instead.
Hey, with electrically heated garments, even riding a horse in Winter could be comfortable. We all can go back to riding horses or mules. They know how to find their way home even in darkness or poor visibility. That is the epitome of sustainable transportation.
And think of all the jobs created to shovel the mountains of manure!
What happens when there is a shutdown on an Interstate and there is a 50 mile line of EVs depleting their batteries? How in the world would you ever recover from this?? Or how long and how many people freeze to death if in the winter?
Or, people are trying to evacuate southern Florida with an approaching hurricane and there is a queue at the charging stations, and time is of the essence.
Or evacuating from any natural disaster situation anywhere (Floods, Forest fires, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, “super-storms”, Massive snow storms, etc.) that also happens to knock out the power lines that supplies the electricity to the charging stations? and your EV currently only has a few miles worth of charge left? It’s possible to get gasoline out of a gas stations tanks without electricity. It’s impossible to get electricity out of a charging station without electricity!
Salute!
The south Florida evacuation is already a nightmare, but with too many EV’s it would be armageddon! Think road rage x ten! Or worse.
It would not be temperature killing folks, it would be actual physical violence.
Gums sends…
Imagine if the situation were reversed.
What if Henry Ford and his pal Tom Edison were successful in making BEVs the standard for the last 100 years and the nation was now experiencing the driver inconveniences and the devastating impact on our electric grid from a national fleet of mainly electric vehicles
Then someone announced that they had dug out Damiler’s designs for an ICE and made remarkable improvements that would relieve the nation of the problems being experienced with BEVs.
Would governments subsidize the more favorable alternative?
Nobody selected the “standard”. There was vicious competition, meaning EVERYONE selected the standard propulsion by purchasing their preference. The EVs were preferred by women because they didn’t like the hand crank starter. Once electric starters were added to ICE cars, EV sales plummeted. EVs were still built, and bought, just not to the masses. No legislation prohibited or limited EVs.
The grid impact is exaggerated. Most EVs would charge at homes overnight. It’s super easy to program them to begin charging 8PM, or any time. Grid power load typically dips overnight; and wind energy peaks. This seems like a complementary arrangement to me. This would also help us reduce load variances thus increasing base load. I know it’s counter intuitive, but I expect this effect would be beneficial.
I see the “problems” with BEVs is people entering situations incompatible with the operational characteristics of their vehicle. Burning Man attendees felt very virtuous when they arrived riding their EVs. That feeling may have recoiled just a bit on the way home.
For those who ventured through frozen, desolate tundra, I suggest Darwin is watching. The fittest amongst us know battery discharge energy is substantially reduced with temperature. Even more fit people would know the human and other heating systems require much more energy to power as the temperature drops. The fittest of all would have known these issues would have an exponential relationship to range. Those smart enough would not be caught in the very uncomfortable position, where your very survival is a risk. Perhaps it’s time to cull a few.
Nobody selected the “standard”.
That’s the point I was trying to make.
The “selection” today is purely political and does not stand up economically, or to rational science re Global Warming.
“Nobody selected the “standard””.
That’s the point, “nobody” selected it because “everybody” (ie the market) choose their preferences and the overwhelming majority chose ICE over EV for all the same reasons that still exist today (range, cost, refueling time, etc). Forget everything else you wrote after that opening line, as the opener says it all. But now, the government is trying to select the standard, rather than letting the market decide. That’s the whole point.
large subsidies, to fund enough chargers
Make sure that those subsidies come exclusively from taxes on earnings of the legislative dingbats who’ve been Promising and Guaranteeing us a heavenly nirvana of all-electric power, and are playing Genghis Khan in the ‘retirement’ of all our reliable power sources.
It’s ironic that the eight charging stations in the photo at the top could have taken care of all those vehicles if they were gas pumps and the cars ICE or hybrid vehicles and done so in only a few minutes for each vehicle.
One of the definite downsides to EVs – you need a hell of a lot more charging stations to ‘fuel’ the equivalent number of ICE/hybrid vehicles on a small number of gas pumps.
This is really a great little story. I think it’s also interesting that the “problems” solving is also another tale of the LEFT that will eventually eat their own.
“You, know the thing… ” Where they divide people into groups (sexual identification, color, race etc) until they have all these groups competing with each other to be the group de jur.
Well now, EVs need energy… and when the LEFT succeed in getting the EV side of the equation to engulf the fossil fuel drivers while attacking energy, the energy paucity problem will affect them too.
EVs are city cars, period. Well suited for that application but not for travel beyond a single charge.
OMG, he had to wait 15 minutes to charge. How long did it take to charge.
Here in urban Southern California, I see people regularly queuing for 30 minutes or more at the Costco gas station to save money on the gas. But, of course, once they get to the pump, it takes less than 5 minutes to fill up. And people regularly queue up at the Tesla charging station in a local shopping center. And it has about 20 chargers.
I haven’t had to do that since the Arab Oil Embargo and we could only fill up on alternate days. It is a distinct possibility that if the demand exceeds the supply of electricity, some sort of similar controls will be imposed.
I’ll buy a nice mid-size ICE pickup truck before the new EPA fantasy fuel milage rules kick in. Hopefully, that will be never if the Republican party can ever get its act together for more than 15 minutes.
I live in a rural area. I can’t imagine the expense of rewiring the countryside to accommodate EV charging and other net-zero demands. Many truck owners in this area drive pickup trucks because of need. None of them are interested in EV trucks. They simply can’t haul anything for an reasonable difference.
Second pass, Rich’s semi-comic video about picking up a Rivian and driving it long distance (to avoid dealer markup) home on the heavily populated East Coast (where charging stations are said to be common) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eosf7CeSGyA
Rich is the same guy who brought the Chevy LS-powered Tesla conversion to the world.
Do not forget that all of those people in the queue are likely getting hot charges, which radically diminishes battery life, by up to 50%. Yeah, all good if you do not mind replacing the battery every 3 to 4 years. My Mazda RX-2 gasoline Wankel engine went 250,000 miles and the engine was fine, just the body falling apart. We have million-mile diesel engines in our buses and they want us to use EV buses that cannot do an entire bus route without charging. This means you would need four or five times the bus fleet because most of them would be charging (if not burning in place) at any given time.
I keep reading about not using the heater in an EV to save power, but what about the air-conditioning? How about driving an EV in the southeast US in August?
Very few cars had A/C when I was a child. Maybe that becomes a thing again?
The reason A/C isn’t mentioned is because it’s a moot point. A/C draws power from the engine thus reducing milage, it doesn’t matter if the car is ICE or EV the reduction happens in either case.
In a modern ICE vehicle, running A/C doesn’t meaningfully reduce mileage.
On the other hand:
In an EV, A/C greatly reduces mileage/range (cabin heating in the winter and A/C cooling in summer inflict an enormous draw on precious battery capacity.. https://www.sae.org/news/2018/05/new-bev-thermal-optimization-studies ).
Re: “Can you save gas by driving without A/C?”
“As much as we’d like to deliver a definite “yes!” or even a “no!” to this question, it’s more complicated than that. That’s because you need to consider your vehicle’s specific configuration and the type of AC compressor it uses.
“At a very high level, there may be a slight gas savings with the AC off and windows up,” Bennett says. “However, the savings would be minor and not realized by most consumers.”
(Source: https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/does-car-air-conditioner-save-gas-fact-or-fiction/ )
— ICE vehicles made and will keep America (and everywhere) GREAT!
— EV’s are inefficient, not-fit-for-purpose, JUNK. The End.
At least while he waited he could have gone and seen the dog on the tuckerbox!
Would a car with two batteries, one connected to the generator, the other to the motor, automatically switched at full charge, count as an EV wrt EU law?
A local town just bought a EV street sweeper for $650K, paid
with a $500K grant from DEQ which was from the VW emissions settlement.
Their old diesel unit was an ’06 and was said to be in good shape. They might want
to keep the old unit around for a while IMO, just in case. I bet they could have
bought a couple of new ICE units for the price of this one.
I’m waiting for the EV power boat regs to come out, should be amusing to see how
they say to charge an off shore boat 100 miles out.
If EVs suffer decreased ranges by running their heaters in the relatively benign winter conditions between New York and Washington, can anyone imagine what the figures would be in the Upper Midwest or almost any place in Canada when temperatures hover around highs of zero F. or lower? And what sort of of range reduction would be experienced when driving with the A/C running at 90F? It’s becoming increasingly evident that EVs may be suitable essentially for little more than short range urban commuting, while long hauling is reserved for gas/diesel types.
“Or maybe EVs could tow a diesel generator on a trailer, to provide a continuous popup charge during long trips” Or, maybe, forget the electric motor vehicle and just drive a diesel car. Why is this so hard to figure out?
Indexes of progress that have been used frequently for our quality of life, are labor-saving devices that save us time and make things more convenient. It would seem that EVs fail on both points.
The way to deal with charging is to make standard removable batteries so that a discharged battery can be removed by a machine and a charged battery can be inserted. An alternative that nobody is talking about is the boron car where boron is burned in a turbine car, the ash is saved and then put near a nuclear reactor to drive off the oxygen and turn it back into boron. Burning boron requires a high oxygen concentration but oxygen is the only triplet atmospheric gas so it is preferentially attracted to a transition metal like cobalt in a ceramic or polymer which would concentrate the oxygen in the air. Since cobalt is in short supply, other transition metals could be tried.
It was a 15 minute wait? With a “long queue”, I would expect much more than 15 minutes. That’s about the time it takes one car on a very fast charger.
Any motorcyclist can testify to how fast vehicles, including motorcycles, lose heat to wind chill temperatures at highway speeds.
Business Insider reporter was lucky to not have inclement weather, weather that requires heating the vehicle’s glass to prevent ice buildup or fogging.
A sleet/freezing rain storm would’ve immobilized them.
If they’d tried the drive in areas that experience seriously cold weather, they’d be harshly crippled for time and warmth as more heat requires greater draw on the battery.
Waiting inside the car during charging likely requires heating the car while charging.