Biden electric car plan ‘unstable’ at best
Been reading a number of articles lately on electrification of cars. First off, I’m all over the idea: as long as the transition is painless. My needs are simple – point A to point B, most trips not exceeding 100 miles in a day, occasional jaunts elsewhere probably (but possibly) not exceeding 600 miles a day for multiple days. Probably 1-2 passengers, not much towing, minimal reasonable amenities (A/C, cruise, windows/locks, sound system. Other than the folks here where I live who really USE trucks, and the idiots who feel like they need the world’s largest penis vehicle when they drive, I think that is a reasonable description of most folks’ needs? More pax for families, of course. One would think a reasonably priced vehicle would be easy enough. So why are most electric cars $40K and up? (for that matter, why are almost all passenger vehicles over $20K?)
OK, let’s loop back to “painless.” Ignorance abounds – HOAs and apartment buildings outlawing electric cars for fear of fires – the rate that they burn is really low., Happen? Sure. Too, I own a Korean import and the company advised we park it outside temporarily as an esoteric corrosion malfunction (of which there had been 3) could occur. Three? I’ll park the car inside, thanks. I am a lot more worried about Texas sun than Korean fires. But say I buy an electric car…I have 220V in my garage. Many, if not most, don’t. Second – as mentioned above, I live in the Free State of Texas which, for all it’s plusses, does not have the best power grid around. Been a helluva hot summer and so far it has coped…but what if there were 200,000 electric cars on the road adding to the load? Probably not happening. Biden’s proposed 2/3 electric mandate by 2032 projects 200 million electric cars by then – noting there are about 3 million now. We need to DOUBLE our power generation by then according to Elon Musk. How many power plants have you seen open lately?
Second, even the Biden administration itself admitted in May that such an expansion of the grid will require at least 47,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission capacity. Telegraph
Let’s think about that…the TransWest high-voltage transmission line project took EIGHTEEN YEARS to secure all the needed permitting and was approved in June. One, single, 732-mile project. 18 years – and it addresses .01557 of the needed total. How many other transmission projects do you see coming up? Enough to handle 60 times that – in half the time? And note, that is just permitting, not building. Or the current four-year lead time for high-voltage transformers… hmm.
Hopefully I may never have to buy another car in my life time. But seeing what I see now, gas or electric? I am probably going to continue to worry about the price of gas.
Category: None
Keep it simple
Backblast area clear!
Roasted Chestnuts over an open Flame…
I saw somewhere recently that there is only one new car (not electric) for under $20 grand (by the time you get to the final price; see https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/08/21/new-cars-under-20000/70641428007/).
That single sub-$20k car is a real winner. One of my son’s friends bought one a few years ago, and I rented a 2021 model for a TDY trip to Bragg. It was nice compared to the ragged out 2006 Mountaineer I normally drove, but only because it was a new car and had a few modern features. Underpowered, small, and something I wouldn’t personally buy.
Pretty much like this with racing stripes:
The power companies have collected billions in monthly connection fees which are to improve the grid. On top of that state and Fed gov have given them billions.
So other than paying dividends every year and bonuses why have they not improved the grid?
One thing that would help is if more homes had solar and battery back ups. This would allow “micro grids” to kick in when power outages happened, reduce the load demand and transmission needs.
Yet utilities are fighting home solar. Trying to make it so unaffordable people won’t get it.
They want to control the power and have the ability to turn it off at will. Government likes that idea it gives them another point of control.
With the given range of current electric vehicles, it forces the buyers to not stray to far from large population centers.
And with talk of a cashless society, businesses or govt can shut you down at will anytime.
I don’t know what other type of info my GMC Truck records or sends out, but once a month I get an email from GM that gives if service is due, oil life left, tire air pressure and current mileage. No, I do not subscribe to on star, this is just a “service provided”.
Newfangled vehicles are scary. My GMC is a 2006, with 317k miles and currently stored at my sister’s place. I need to get it eventually. I both like and dislike that it’s the last year where such trucks had kind of old school (by today’s standards) technology. Mine is SLT trim, so it came with leather heated seats, Bose with rear radio controls, and other non-Denali trim level features. I bought it used, but it came with the original window sticker showing it cost $43k new.
Newer higher trim packages include all the sensors, wifi capabilities, communication with who know what, and even sonar. Occasionally, I’ll price out a truck on gmc.com and building one similar to mine but with modern amenities brings it to the $80k-plus range.
I make it a habit to carry a little cash at all times, because systems go down, and a lot of smaller businesses have started charging a 4% fee for using a card down here. Then too, there’s the deceptive gas prices, where the sign shows a cash price about $0.10 cheaper than if you use a card.
GMC has been teasing about bringing back the syclone, supposedly based on the canyon. It looks like a full size to me and the specs read out as a gear heads dream.
I wouldn’t want to pay what they’ll be asking or getting but it looks good in black or red.
Da, comrade, is whole idea! Peoples’ glorious asset managers own everything else for rich Democrats… er, vanguard of “social justice” proletariat!
No idea if it’s the extreme heat or what, but recently the power has randomly cut off down here in South Louisiana. I was at work earlier this week and my wife got to experience the power turning off for a few minutes about 5-6 times throughout the day. A couple of weeks ago it was out for a couple of hours, during which time the inside temperature rose to over 80 degrees. Good thing I have a few Ryobi and Ridgid cordless fans and a fair number of batteries.
According to my neighbor, who moved here from California 30 years ago, the power service has always been outstanding. Outages after a typical hurricane are usually no more than a day or two, though I think he was without power for a week after one of the major storms (Gustav, perhaps?). So, it’s odd that we’re in the middle of a dry spell with nothing that should be interrupting our service.
I have a lot of roof space, with the pitch seeming to be ideal for panels. No idea as to the cost or feasibility, but I think I’m about halfway through the projected life of my current roof, and may explore a metal roof and perhaps some supplemental solar power in another 10-15 years. Maybe prices will drop, maybe we’ll all be stranded in our federally mandated electric cars when cities are forced to have daily blackouts.
I would buy a gas-powered generator.
I plan to. Our store-branded ones fall under the 50% employee discount, so I’ll likely get a couple of the 5k ones. Unfortunately, I had to give away most of my gas cans during the move, but I plan to buy more and rotate out at least 25 gallons on a regular basis (figure I’ll top off the car and refill at least one can a month to avoid it going stale).
A whole house generator run off propane if possible.
Is it wrong of me to consider a dual fuel one, that uses unleaded mogas or propane.
There is an easy way to bypass the power company by running a separate fuse box with lines to your solar power. The power company gets zilch since you don’t connect to them.
They, whoever “they” are, recently tore down a coal fired power plant in my area. No plans to replace it either. The land is for sale for light industrial.
Kind of ironic that they are willing to trade 1 kind of light industry for another.
The EPA isn’t going to issue a permit for anything that emits anywhere near the pollution that a coal fired plant does.
Coal is far too useful, plenty, and freaking cheap to continue to ‘allow’ it.
A couple hundred years worth in the ground, just sitting there.
Our Masters™ want to kill us on their terms, and have been doing just that with ever-increasing intensity.
Make Coal Great Again!!!
When men were men….:
If Peabody only knew a hundred years later the masses would be cheering him on….
I saw an article in my news feeds earlier that they are looking to put solar farms on site of old coal plants to repurpose the existing power lines/connetions to the grid.
That isn’t a terrible idea, provided the solar potential exists. There are likely better forms of production though.
Cheapest most efficient way to make AC power is to create
steam and spin an alternator. Period. End of story.
How you create that steam is a whole different matter.
I would like to suggest boiling water.
This hasn’t been true for many years. Wind is by far cheaper and has been since at least 2010. Grid solar has been cheaper for a couple of years as well.
Both wind and solar are DC.
No. Utility windmills are nearly all AC. Some micro kit you buy on Amazon might be DC. But you can even get an AC windmills on Amazon these days. Since it costs nothing to spin it’s worlds cheaper than building a fire.
Yes, solar creates DC that is then inverted to AC. Still cheaper than building a fire.
Sorry, windfarms are DC and the output is collected
on site then shipped to the nearest AC grid where it is
converted (inverted) and synchronized to the 60Hz.
Nope and sort of. Maybe some reading will help? Try reading these:
https://www.energy.gov/articles/how-wind-turbine-works
https://actionrenewables.co.uk/news/how-does-a-wind-turbine-work/
Getting the right frequency is a whole other ball of wax. But the generators themselves are AC and use a gearing system to generate proper voltage AC power as noted in the above articles. This is one of the reasons that the operating ranges of windmills are limited. They can only operate within the range of the gearing system. Too slow or too fast it shuts down.
To “ship” (transmit) DC power over long range to the nearest AC grid as you put it would require wires the size of tanker trucks and submarines.
I think what you (and 26 Limabeans) are trying to say is: In order to transmit power it needs to be AC (otherwise see above). For this reason the big wind turbines output AC, which makes them inefficient to use (see above about operating range).
Solar and Wind home versions output DC (cheaper to build) and then convert to AC in a central location.
This was all fought over by Edison and Tesla…guess who won?! (Hint: We all knew his name better until a caucaian african built a car)
No. They are not inefficient to use. They have lots of gears and the operate in the range of normal wind speeds for the site with a few SDs beyond the norm built in. But like most things building out past five SDs doesn’t really make economic sense, even though those conditions will occur at some point.
At that point however they do pose a danger by operating at too of high speed, kind of like when you run a motor or an automobile too fast. Physics start to work against you.
Most smaller kits that people get for homes, cabins, RVs and boats are DC. They charge batteries that run both DC and AC appliances, lights, etc. These tend to be pretty inefficient by comparison, unless you are running mostly DC, such as an RV or boat, which most of the time, the appliances go both ways. The difference with a DC motor is that it doesn’t need a transmission and unless you are in a hurricane you won’t be able to run it too fast.
It’s all good. Only on this site can you get down voted for posting facts with citations and up voted for posting easily provable falsehoods. I’m just pleasantly surprised it’s not worse 😀
The steam idea is great but if the govt is reading the comments on this site and sees yours, they will most likely get steamed up upon reading it and figuring out that they will get jipped out of losing money with your idea. Well all I have to say is full steam ahead for anyone using steam to generate electricity. By the way, how long is a short circuit??? See you later Alligator.
I am in the middle of riding back and forth across Texas. So far I counted around 20k new powerplants in the form of windmills. I might be low in that count. Crews appeared to building more.
They won’t help much in the winter when they are, for the most part, shut down but most of the time peak power draw is during the summer months. This has and will continued to increase with record high demand every year.
The bigger problem with the winter storm was lack of winterization of the conventional plants. A lot of them weren’t equipped to run in extreme cold weather and without wind to back up the abnormal high power draw there were cascade failures.
After the storm winterization was mandated and they are making some improvements there. As you noted a power company life cycle is measured in decades instead of months.
In the summer the problem is high load and heat. Heat that causes the transformers to blow or overheat and trip. Vast distance make the power lines vulnerable and waste a bit of power with transmission.
Math. On average an electric car is going to use less than 16kwh of electricity a day (50 miles a day). Texas has 7.5 million autos registered. If half were electric… I come up with 52Gwh per day, which is a lot of electricity. However, Texas produces 1.2 Twh per day, so a little less than about 5% of the total. While 5% is quite a lot, it isn’t too much to build, unless you believe that the planet is indeed getting hotter, in which case there will never be enough, because the summer demand will continue to climb to infinity.
Not to mention modern windmills are expensive to build/destroy, totally non-recyclable and still use a buttload of fossil fuel products as lubricants… and don’t even grind grain or pump water. And, that’s when they’re not catching on fire, killing endangered or otherwise protected wildlife or otherwise failing in a spectacular manner.
Looking at the ones burning, I thought “you CAN smell a video”
Smell the one I posted. You can almost feel the radiation entering your body.
So you are saying we should get rid of power plants because of equipment failures? Because I have some really bad news for you.
https://youtu.be/-h6p6M8i5sY?feature=shared
WOW, Holy Moly, those videos knocked the wind out of me watching them. Thank God for all the tea in China, their are none of those wind farms where I live.
It’s crazy dangerous, you could be like the first non-employee killed from not falling off of one. Of course the only safer form of power generation per TWh is solar. But if you stared at one from just the right angle for hours you could go blind, so there is that.
It’s so weird, until just the other day only windmills caught on fire. And now there is this crazy refinery fire. Who even knew that was possible?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/25/us/louisiana-marathon-petroleum-refinery-fire/index.html
The grid for the nation is not capable of handling the numbers of EVs that the administration wants to foist upon us. The PDRK (peepuls demokratik repugnant of kaliphornya) already proved that when they directed folks refrain from charging their vehicles in the last year during times when the grid was already faltering. There are not a lot of new power plants being made to supply said power either.
One of my questions is, just where does the constitution say the president has the authority to mandate a switch to a product like EVs or even lightbulbs and enforce it? Why is everyone accepting the mandates as legal and binding? Smacks of a dictatorship to me.
Commisar unavailable for comment on this thread as he is busy on another thread trying to get peoples heads to explode.
Especially about the dictator part of your statement.
Everything about prezzy sniffy creepy xiden the (s)elected poopy pants puppet is unstable. And his handlers are making sure that he continues to make these States United as unstable as possible. Prepare.
All that being said, EVs have a place and work well for some. Just as other ways of generating power have a place. I personally think that technology for both needs to advance a little further. Lots of unanswered questions including what to do with all of the toxic materials generated in the making and disposal of the various components. Mr. Murphy’s and the Law of Unintended Consequences can and will rear their ugly heads…eventually if not sooner.
In my 20 years of doing Outside Plant Line Construction for Ma Bell, I worked a lot of storm damage jobs. It was a cast iron bitch, working with the Power Company Boys having to rebuild, from scratch, an entire section of the grid. Delays from lack of help and a shortage of replacement parts could make it even worse. Oddly, not a single phone or power company construction vehicle (the big bucket trucks) were or will be electric. Let that sink in.
Three years ago we were a net exporter of oil, natty gas was in plentiful supply, and regular unleaded gasoline was averaging $1.60 a gallon. FJB!
Assuming FJB, doesn’t screw up more things we should be a net exporter again by the end of the year. This would not have happened if the war with Russia had not kicked off. Even his handlers were smart enough to realize that gasoline at $8 a gallon was going to be a non-starter for the midterms.
Being a bit of a Technologist I have really wanted to get an EV. I almost bought a Volt, but my needs were more for an SUV or Pickup…so I waited. Was really hyped about the Bollinger B1…until I saw the price, ten the Hummer came out and after talking it over with my sister who used to work for GM I put in a reservation for one…but cancelled it when I saw the numbers (too big, can’t haul enough…not quite what I needed, pricey). About the same time the Rivian made its debut, I didn’t like the front headlights, seemed like a California/Colorado Granola eater’s truck…then they announced the specs…well maybe I could live with the lights or even change them. Ford and GM announced true pick-ups. Put in a reservation for a Rivian with the Extra large battery (wanted at least 400miles range). Ford introduced the Lightning, GM announced the Silverado. Ford came in below the required towing requirement, and range was pitiful. The Silverado also sucked at towing, liked the Avalanche style removable rear window, and new tailgate…but once again the only thing with 10,000lbs towing was a non-existent Fleet only with no removable rear window (fixed bed length) or configurable tailgate. My Rivian order gets changed to a Duel Motor configuration because the Max Battery will not be offered in the Quad Motor…ok…except I live in South Carolina (which does not allow manufacture owned sales)…so now I have to decide if I want to visit my sister in Atlanta every time I need service on a new truck! Good thing I planned to use it mostly on the farm (pulling a small tractor is why I needed over 10,000lbs towing), and have 20kW of solar charging batteries to charge it up….except no one offers a DC-DC charger for the home yet, they all want me to convert it to AC to then convert it back to DC to put in car…which loses about 30% not to mention slows the charge. I just saw a company out of California is making a home DC-DC charger, sure hope… Read more »
It hertz to read stories like this. I’m thunderstruck (AC/DC, get it?!?) that these problems haven’t been solved. Instead of blowing a fuse over the situation we have to be grounded in approach and find proper outlets for our frustrations.
These puns are all my fault… I’ll see myself out.
So many puns, not enough chuckles. Plenty of eye rolls though.
Sister? Tell us more… 😍
Lol, just say you want to see pics or she doesn’t exist.