Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Bolt?

 

This is a really revealing look at the real-life circumstances of EV driving...just imagine what happens if 20% of vehicles require charging!

Commentary: I'm ready to trade in my electric car. Here's why

 

To make more electric trucks.

 

I have always thought the best future of the electric car is as the family's second vehicle.

You use the all-electric car for the standard short trips around town, the daily errands, taking kids to school, grocery store, stuff like that.

You have the gas/hybrid car for long trips, vacations, etc.

You don't totally eliminate your need for gas. But you substantially reduce it. A reduction of even 30% of gas consumption in this country would totally eliminate the need for OPEC oil.

 

That would be fine. Although some people might not like EVs or want to buy one, I think most people don't have a fundamental problem with them being a part of the American fleet if there are other people who like them and want to buy them.
The problem is that within 10 years, and maybe as little as five, EVs will be all you can buy. Most manufacturers are starting to phase out ICE vehicles and the government (federal as well as several states like California and Washington) is giving them a very hard push over that cliff. The laws and regulations they're passing aren't giving automakers any choice in the matter. Some of the laws and regulations that have been passed will start being noticeable to consumers as early as 2025. It's not because the cars are better, it's because the government is telling you that you must buy them. That's where a lot of the pushback flows from.

But putting aside the philosophical issues with that, the real insanity comes when you try to turn this into practice and the mandate is coupled with wishful thinking.
Even if the cars themselves are starting to get to where they're a more viable alternative to ICE cars, the infrastructure to support them is nowhere near ready and certainly won't be for a while. Especially when you throw on top of it the efforts to reduce fossil fuel use at power plants. The push toward wind and solar will cut our generating capacity at a time when demand for electricity will obviously be higher than ever. In California last year, when they were having this problem, they were telling people not to charge at certain peak times. OK, but if everybody charges at what were off-peak hours, won't that just spike demand at every hour? And won't it spike electric prices as well? It's trying to make 2+2 equal 900 and insisting the math will work out.

Oh, and no one ever mentions that if you want to charge at home (often a big selling point) you can't exactly pop a two-prong plug in the wall like you can a blender. You need to have your house rewired, a new breaker installed and an extra connection to the street. It's a several thousand dollar project that pretty much wipes out the long-term savings you're told to expect from buying an EV. I also predict that in a few years we'll see a wave of house fires caused by people trying to charge EVs at houses with shitty or old wiring that can't handle the loads.

All of that is to say, very soon we're going to reach a point where we have all of the worst problems of EVs and none of the solutions. We're foolishly burning the bridges on a proven, widely-used and largely safe technology with 150 years of R&D attached to it, in favor of a developing technology that the powers that be want to elevate to the industry standard by wishing it into existence. Anybody with half a brain who spends 10 minutes looking at the world and thinking about it can see it's a recipe for epic disaster, but the Mensa members running the show can't or won't do that.
And the worst part of it is that, in about 2030 (the target date for all of these proposals), all of these assholes — assuming we haven't all been wiped out by the other assholes working on AI — will take a victory lap about how they made 75 percent of the American passenger car fleet electric, completely ignoring the heavy-handed tactics that they used to do it and the societal wreckage they left on the road as they went 100 mph in a 25 mph zone to get there.

 

Don't worry the government will either b(a) pass some exemption or (b) pay for it.

 

My town doesn't even have a golf course (yet), but golf carts are a big player for small family excursions in the city center on weekends. See them all the time in my neighborhood.

 

(a) The government won't have to pass an exemption, and even if they do it won't matter. Automakers are killing the ICE vehicles on their own in favor of EVs. The current generation of cars is probably the last that will have internal combustion engines. That was one of the points of that whole rant, is that not only are we plunging headlong into relatively unproven technology we don't have a solid infrastructure for — and it's not limited to vehicles; green energy production as a whole falls into this as well — we're destroying the stuff we do have a good handle on as we move forward. We're jumping headfirst into the pool, and it's filled with jagged rocks six inches below the surface.

(b) When the government pays for it, WE ALL pay for it. That's taxes, and fees, and a hundred other expenses that eventually get passed on to the common consumer.
I know a couple of million dollars in subsidies is nothing in government terms. But if you stop and think about how every dime you pay in taxes in your entire life, essentially your entire life's work as a responsible citizen, goes to subsidize one windmill in Kansas, or to help a couple hundred people buy Teslas, or to pay for another piece of high speed rail track that has yet to be built, it's maddening.

 

Damn, I squinted and you sound like a reasonable conservative.

 

This is our household plan. We have a hybrid SUV that I’m getting 40 mpg with . We’ll buy a small plug-in when my Civic goes kaput. I figure we’ll need to buy gas once a month.