When all our energy plants are either solar or nuclear, sure. But if our plants are coal fired or gas fired, we're still polluting too much and now we're asking the plants to support our driving which still uses fossil fuels.
Natural gas burns pretty clean and we can produce it domestically. Solar power is too undependable and nuclear would be okay but the company would cut corners to save money and cause a meltdown. I saw our local nuclear power plant up close and a lot of what we see Homer Simpson do really happens.
Solar and wind power combined are a good pair. As long as there are battery units to store solar, esepcially in the South, it's very dependable. Maybe in Seattle and San Francisco or in the far north it's less so, but that's where wind takes up some slack.
Gas is only clean if offgassing of fuel is recycled and used to generate heat/turn turbines. It is NOT used this way today. Ever seen refineries where they turn oil into gasoline and other byproducts? What's that giant flame burning from one of the towers? Wasted energy and carbon offgassing.
And though nuclear is clean, per se, the wastes from nuclear power are the dirtiest yet with a 1000 year half life. That problem hasn't been solved either.
I really do not know that much about the charging stations. I usually keep keep vehicles for 12-15 years. I figure by the time I need a new truck, electric cars will be mainstream.
I like the sound of engines, but I think this is coming one way or another. It's probably what the old timers felt when they moved from horse to model T... mis those old rides, but there's advantages to the new ones. I almost got an e motorcycle... that may be our first foray into it. Will look at cars more next year, I think we have some prep work to do... like solar panels... our electric is pricy.
So I'm looking forward to the fun of change. I wouldn't do it unless so forced... I seriously doubt it has that much benefit to the planet and wonder what it does to the economy long term.
I think a lot of the fun is in these companies... creating and innovating all kinds of fun contraptions.
I'm a lot more excited about flying vehicles that are coming... not fast enough. We NEED one of those now. Fly over the crazy traffic and get to work in 1/2 the time, on auto pilot? yea... as long as the school would allow us to land on the rooftop.
The little man we're raising... she's raising, I watch a lot, just might be crunching the numbers for such vehicles in the future.
@lightbulb27 My wife and I looked at hybrid vehicles. It was a nice ride, however with two powerplants it had twice as many points of failure and the expensive Ford dealership was the only place that would know how to fix it. Also I was concerned about recycling the battery.
yes, so much to be worked out with this. I gotta believe these things are designed like the friges we have... to expire. "I'm sorry sir, but your electric motor just went out... gonna cost $40,000 to replace it... But a new one is only $45,000? Yea, you can talk to sales...". Whole thing goes to recycling centers in China or India, etc..
They don't have the range and the batteries are very expensive to replace. Because of that their resale value will not be high. If everyone went to electric vehicles just where is all this electricity going to come from seeing as hydro electric generators are shutting down because of low water levels? When on a trip where are you going to "fill up" at and how long will you be sitting there while your batteries recharge? I can't see big trucks carrying 80,000 pounds running on batteries for very far and therefore the cost of shipping will be much more expensive. In California there will be no gas vehicles by 2035. These people coming up with these laws are bonkers as they aren't giving viable alternatives to fossil fueled vehicles. They are just creating new problems.
What happens when you run out of juice.The only truck that will be able to be powered by batteries.
Yes, the technology is not ready for prime time yet but it has been improving steadily over the last 20 years. I can see a day in the not to distant future where these will be a feasible means of transportation for most people.
For short trips to the store it will be fine. But taking a long trip will take a lot more time - recharging time - and trying to find a charging station.
Meh, electric cars aren't that safe compared to fuel competitors, you're driving in car with a giant battery attached to it essentially, so once you hit something you go up in flames, Sure it can happen to cars that use fuel, but the risks are 100 times greater in an electric car such as a tesla.
Tesla Model X
In my opinion Electric cars with Autopilot are just dumb, People are using it while being distracted or sleeping, which has also ended up tragically in the past...
People that praise electric cars don't understand that they are creating more harm than good for our environments, The amount of hazards that is used to mine lithium is mind-blowing, its extremely dangerous. Lithium extraction harms the soil and causes air contamination. Makes no sense to praise something as being a "better alternative", when its not...
The lithium extraction process uses a lot of water around 500,000 gallons per metric ton of lithium... To extract lithium, miners drill a hole in salt flats and pump salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface. After several months the water evaporates, leaving a mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and lithium salts which is then filtered and placed into another evaporation pool. After between 12 and 18 months of this process, the mixture is filtered sufficiently that lithium carbonate can be extracted.
South America’s Lithium Triangle, which covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, holds more than half the world’s supply of the metal beneath its salt flats. But it is also one of the driest places on earth. In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining activities consumed 65 percent of the region’s water, which is having a large impact on local farmers to the point that some communities have to get water elsewhere.
As in Tibet, there is the potential for toxic chemicals to leak from the evaporation pools into the water supply including hydrochloric acid, which is used in the processing of lithium, and waste products that are filtered out of the brine. In Australia and North America, lithium is mined from rock using chemicals to extract it into a useful form. In Nevada, researchers found impacts on fish as far as 150 miles downstream from a lithium processing operation.
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I'd like them better if companies weren't going out of their way to make them hideously ugly.
Years ago, one of the Japanese brands attempted to sell electric cars that were aesthetically identical to their gas-powered counterparts, but they floundered miserably in sales. The reason was almost entirely because the people buying electric cars at the time only wanted them to virtue signal to everybody else how much they care about the environment, and the cheap and ugly look of an EV was more important to them than the electric motor itself. It still stands today that the mass majority of people buying electric cars don't know or care much about the technology, but they want to feel like they're doing their part, and want everyone else to acknowledge them for it.
The F150 isn't the worst example, but Ford deserves to go under for what they're doing to the Mustang, or rather that disgusting abomination that is carrying the Mustang name despite looking nothing like one.
By the way for what it's worth, the technology exists to keep combustion-engine cars running on a new synthetic fuel with net-zero emissions, but despite this, several western countries including the United States are looking to force non-electric vehicles into obsoletion in the next couple decades. Ironic given the heavy toll lithium mining takes on the environment to make EVs possible, but that's another topic. There's billions of dollars being passed around to make sure this happens, one way or another.
No way. They don't have the range of gas-powered cars and recharging takes WAY more time than filling up a gas tank, so you are very limited on the kinds of trips you can take. Electric cars are computer controlled, overly complex, and have a bunch of computers. If there is a computer glitch, it cascades to the other computers and tells your car to stop running. Repairs are expensive.
If you run out of electricity, you can't just walk down and get a can of it to put in your car so that you can get to the gas station.
Battery power is worse for the environment than fuel-powered. Think of mining and processing the minerals for batteries. Disposal of batteries. And where does electric power ultimately come from? Fossil fuel power plants.
Electric vehicles are okay for local driving, especially if you have solar electric at your home.
I think the electric car thing is a scam. It's about corporate profit and controlling people's activities.
I'm more in favor of cars getting better gas mileage, cleaner fuel, and methods of removing emissions from car exhaust. CO2 is NOT harming the atmosphere. Our planet eats CO2. Maybe we should stop cutting down rainforests instead of blaming everyday citizens for excess CO2.
Nope. And this a golden age for electric cars right now. With electric being objectively worse than gasoline (limited range, slow charging, unproven battery lifespan, etc) the only way manufacturers can get people to buy them is by using government subsidies and their own money (since the profit margins are lower on electric cars) to lower the cost and make them competitive in other ways (eg. higher performance).
As soon as people don't have the choice of buying a gasoline fuelled vehicle any more, the subsidies will disappear, the competition will disappear, and prices will go up. People think in the future everyone will be able to replace their VW Golf with something like a Tesla - the reality is that it's more likely you'll have to replace your VW Golf with something like a shitty Nissan Leaf.
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Maybe down the road (pun intended) when the charging infrastructure is much bigger to support electric vehicles. In the US in 2021, there is a gas station, on average, within 10 miles of wherever you are, while there is a charging station, on average, within 50 miles.
Interesting trivia: there is no charging station between Dallas and Denver, and that distance is farther than the range of the best electric vehicle, so (until they build more charging stations), an electric vehicle cannot go from Dallas to Denver.
Not really. Where is all this electricity going to come from? We have charging stations where I live, but they are not attached to solar or wind power.
This is a good question. However, in an internal combustion engine less than 20% of the energy derived from burning gasoline is used to drive the wheels. The rest is dissipated as heat through the radiator. With an electric vehicle over 90% of the electricity stored in the batteries is used to drive the wheels. Having one big powerplant that runs on natural gas to power everyone's vehicles will eventually be much more efficient and cleaner that thousands of internal combustions engines burning gasoline or diesel fuel.
Personally I could care less about them. All electric world is more harmful than fossil fuels. The harm for the environment disposing of old solar and battery packs is just as bad as nuclear waist. Plus the mining for lithium for all the batteries is worse than mining for oil. These are things they don't tell you about. I think electric is good because it gives us a choice. Balance of both will be good so there is a choice and hopefully it will keep gas and electric lower. Global warming has always been and will always be. It has occurred since the earth was conceived. Even with no people on the earth it will still happen.
@Smashingdoozy I hope you were not hurt. I looked at a hybrid a few years ago. It was a Mercury Mariner. It was a nice vehicle and when it ran on battery power it was silent. When I popped the hood I saw a lot of stuff under there that just looked like it would fail over time and I knew the local garage would not be able to fix it correctly. We went with the gas powered Mariner instead.
Nope. Nada. Never. I'm a diehard fan of the Internal Combustion Engine. You just need to hear the sound of a Turbo with no bypass valve surging and you'll never want to hear the whine of a Nissan Leaf ever again. Also, the batteries that those stupid EVs use are about as horrendous for the environment (in both production and waste) as the fumes from Petrol. Personally I think the future is in diesel additives, which is the less spoken alternative to Hybrids and EVs
Nope, I like my steel trucks that can carry over a ton of weight. I saw that Ford your talking about. It freaking as a aluminum bed. How is that going to hold up to a front end loader dumping a load of rocks in the bed.
I know my steel bed can and it does without a computer and without WiFi.
Like my 1974 Chevy K30 1 ton out pulled my sons 2015 Ford F350 in tag a war like it was in was in park.
And another thing that Ford could not even handle pulling a 30 trailer and the 1906 Case Steam tractor up a hill.
I had to go get his ass because the Ford could not pulled the weight
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They use electricity for power, in order to get the electricity, coal needs to be burned. How is that any better for the environment? I'd rather get one that runs on water! The run-off from that engine is water which you can put right back into the tank and use again! A tank full of water can keep you on the road for weeks or months before you'd need to fill up again.
Electric cars are a scam, they will never reach mass adoption. They are too expensive for many to afford, we would need twice the amount of electricity in our electric grid to handle the demand. They cause as much pollution as fossil fuel vehicles from cobalt mining, nuclear waste, Battery manufacturing and disposal. As well as depending on many countries with human rights abuses like Child slave labor.
I know exactly what you mean although I don't even like the sound of a turbo. I have a Porsche with a flat 6 engine that has a very unique sound has to all Porsche engines and I would never want to trade it in for a newer Porsche that has a turbo and it doesn't sound right to me. That being said, having an electric vehicle as a basic Transportation car for everyday use would be great.
I plan on buying one when they come out with a midsized truck. Low maintenance and the vehicle will last a long time. Better to charge it at home and not have to worry about going to the gas station where everyone takes the gas during a shortage. By the way how was that new electric F-150?
According to which car you buy. The higher the pricetag, the more miles you can drive, or better and bigger battery storage. There's a 21 Nissan that has 226 mpc. My 2006 Civic gets 297 miles per a full 11 gallon tank.
The big issue at this point in time is ONLY where will you charge the car? There aren't many public car chargers except at Whole Foods, as far as I know. If you're visiting a friend who doesn't have a car charge at their house, how will you recharge your car. There just isn't much access.
For now, only hybrid vehicles are simple to own/use. In five years, I'm guessing the environment will be completely different: It will probably be equally easy to have an electric car as a gas vehicle. And there will likely be incentives to turn in your gas baby.
Oh, the comment about stopping to get gas. Yes, but you stop, get gas in 10 minutes and you go again. If you stop to charge, you have to charge for several hours. They will ALSO have to create fast charging vehicles too. Those don't exist yet either.
@EnglishEuropean Honey, by the time you're 65, if you can't come up with a few good points, it's time to order your coffin and check yourself out! Ha ha!!!
I have a hybrid and the gas mileage alone is worth it. I fill up about once a month if that and thing is quick and agile. $30,000 price tag 0%apr on the loan…come on just perfect
@captain_voidwalker Once these things get popular there will be discarded batteries all over the place unless the government buys them back from people.
this is where your government need to act... most of Europe has the infrastructure now and even boris has just announced a huge investment in funding charging stations.
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