Saturday weather, or climate, or something
Well, let’s start by beating up on EVs a little. Almost too easy. But we’re going to look at a different aspect first – tire pollution.
Not disposing of used tires, but the particular stuff that gets ground off tires. This is directly proportional to softness of the compounds used in the tires, the weights of the vehicles, and how hard they can be driven. It is common knowledge by now that EVs are HEAVY – a small one can weigh as much as a porker Dodge Charger, and the EV version of a Hummer hits the scales at a reputed 9,000+ pounds. Call it three F100s from the old days. They are seriously fast, too, with 0-60 times as low as the sub-3-second bracket. Note one intrepid Cyber truck driver who just parked his truck on the front lawn of a Hollywood hotel – Elon Musk’s explanation is that people just aren’t used to handling that level of power. I hear echoes of “hold my beer” in the distance…
Get used to more potholes with all those heavy vehicles, more idiots showing them off, and possibly more tire wear more pollution. Probably not the “1000X” that a recent study suggests, but when the lifespan of an EV tire is quoted at around 15,000 miles for a premium tire vs. 45-50,000 for an equivalent car tire…yer gonna buy tires. Of course, they could just make them from a really hard compound, which would minimize rolling resistance (as well as handling grip – oops.) It ain’t an easy subject. We will ignore the sky-high insurance caused by excessive repair costs, especially if you break the battery.
Moving on, my second favorite story of the day is the Jaguar EV that suddenly decided it had a mind of its own and carried its owner at speed of almost 100 miles an hour on the motorway. No brakes, unable to shut it off, had to wait for its charge to deplete (per the Telegraph).
Police cars swarmed the M62 to save a driver after their electric car suffered an ‘electrical fault’ stopping it from being able to brake.
Officers from Merseyside Police and Greater Manchester Police (GMP) used specialist tactics to ram the Jaguar car and block it between a number of police vehicles, to eventually bring the car to a stop.
All lanes were closed for a short while and traffic was stopped as police responded to the incident. itv
Sounds like a thriller where the bad guy takes over your car, eh? (That day will comes, I am sure.)
The great part: The Telegraph says this happened to his car BEFORE! Jaguar checked the car over and aid nothing was wrong. The Telegraph The driver seems to have lost his faith, though, and says he will not be a repeat customer of Jaguar or the dealership. Wonder why.
And let’s close out with a quote from our erstwhile beloved (okay, a little sarcasm maybe) Climate Czar John Kerry. Seems the Ukraine war is a POLLUTION issue.
Outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry claimed that people would “feel better” about the ongoing war in Ukraine if Russia would “make a greater effort to reduce emissions.”
“If Russia wanted to show good faith, they could go out and announce what their reductions are going to be and make a greater effort to reduce emissions now,” …”Maybe that would open up the door for people to feel better about what Russia is choosing to do at this point in time,” he said. Fox News
I’m sure that would make everything all better, like kissing the owie of an severed torso. What a maroon.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", EVs
You post an article about problems with a Jaguar? Too easy. An investigation as to (see what Hack did there?) where they fault lies will most likely point to faulty Red Hat Software sold by a proud but humble woman owned company formerly located on Wilson Lane in Bethesda, Maryland.
Is it just Jaguar who used lucas electrical systems, aka the prince of darkness, or is that the electrical system on all European cars.
And the lead photo reminds me I get to cough up $1200 for tires in the next month or so.
It would be interesting to know the carbon footprint for manufacturing an electrical vehicle tire versus the manufacture of an internal combustion engine vehicle’s tire.
Note to Joe Biden, John Kerry and Greta Thunberg, there is no such thing as a Zero Emission Vehicle. The carbon footprint for manufacturing the materials needed to make an electric vehicle will never be offset by using an EV, and the environmental impact by an EV involved in a collision or fire immediately negates any positive benefits. Have you ever tried to legally dispose of a standard car battery? How are local governments supposed to handle all of the batteries from EV’s when they reach end of life? If you think people illegally dumping used car tires under the Interstate is bad, just wait until you have hundreds or thousands of EV batteries randomly dumped on public roads, with the inevitable fires.
That is an excellent question Hack. The EV has the higher initial cost and It doesn’t achieve parity with the ICE until about one year or 15,000 mi into the product life cycle.
https://www.cotes.com/blog/greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-ev-vs-ice-vehicles
What some people fail the realize is that producing electricity and transmitting it to your house from a power plant is many times more efficient, cheaper and cleaner than running your car engine.
If your car engine were cheaper and more efficient, then everybody would have a home generator and nobody would use the power plant electricity. I don’t know why there is such a logical disconnect there but it seems to be prevalent among people that are not mechanically inclined or understand how electricity works.
I wouldn’t worry about battery dumping. The materials used in the batteries are so expensive that recyclers pay good money for them. They are much more expensive than lead acid batteries, which are practically all recycled as you can get $5 to $20 for one at a scrap yard. If, a meth head found a lithium battery on the side of the road, He would consider that a major score. and it would be gone as soon as it was spotted.
How many battery recyclers are there in the US? I recall a video of a newscast from PHX AZ. (IIRC) that indicated it was one of 2 in the country that could recycle rechargeable batteries. They recovered about 80+% which is remarkable but they only serviced a small area.
I don’t know when the article came out but obviously it’s been a minute. Just about everything You would want to know about battery recycling is at the below link.
https://theicct.org/us-ev-battery-recycling-end-of-life-batteries-sept23/
Once again your information is dated. EVs essentially have the same insurance rates as ICE vehicles. When there are two versions of the same car, the EV version is going to be more expensive. Therefore the insurance rates are going to be higher. But when you compare dollar for $1 for the vehicle it’s about the same.
https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/auto/electric-vehicle-insurance-costs/
Tesla insurance rates are high. Teslas are also very expensive. My car, which is not an EV, was also expensive, and it costs more to insure it than every other vehicle I own (a late model truck and two newish nice motorcycles) combined.
It’s also important to note the Tesla drivers are some of the worst drivers on the road. This has nothing to do with the car in of itself.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/tesla-drivers-had-highest-accident-rate-bmw-drivers-most-duis-study.html
But why is the question? Most owners are Gen X. They also tend to have the highest fatality rate on motorcycles which is a bit odd. This has followed their age group since they learned to drive. I can’t think of a reasonable explanation for it.
“But why is the question? Most owners are Gen X. They also tend to have the highest fatality rate on motorcycles which is a bit odd. This has followed their age group since they learned to drive. I can’t think of a reasonable explanation for it.”
GTA and video games are not educational driving simulators is my first thought. Second thought has something to do with everyone getting a trophy for not winning or accomplishing anything, and the consequent not having learned any consequences for their own behavior.
Gen X wasn’t the trophy/GTA generation. That is more of a millennial/ Gen Y thing.
Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law drove her Tesla X accidentally into a pond and died last month. There doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with the car. She was also a Gen X. As a billionaire she didn’t really have to live with the consequences of most dumb things she did over life. But physics, physics doesn’t play.
EVs are a single system that’s essential a PC with wheels and not a family of related systems that keep working if one them fails. If it locks you out and needs to be rebooted while doing 60 on the highway or you can’t even get in to get your registration because the battery died, too bad. Techies’ car sense sucks.
Hell, try driving a modern-day semi-truck, there are an INSANE number of computers on them. For instance, one of the Company mechanics told me that the KW T600 I was driving had TWELVE, and one bad line of code in just one sidelined the truck, another reason why I HATE software updates with a triple passion.
I can remember when an update meant you got laid
after taking her out to dinner.
Anybody ever heard of “circuit breakers”
Open up your residential electrical panel and you will find many
examples of the “circuit breaker”.
Go back a few decades and you will find “fuses”.
In any case, either item would have prevented what is an
obvious safety concern.
How about an emergency shutoff breaker on the dash?
Too sensible. The dashboard, even, has to be considated into a single 13-inch touchscreen about where the radio or heater control used to be and needs complicated, multiscreen procedures with slight time lag that require your eyes off the road for almost a minute to do anything like turn on the headlights or listen to the radio now. You’ll have to have a certified mechanic remove it so you can access the emergency shutoff breaker underneath it.
Remember when they had cigarette lighters on the dash?
Next to the ashtray. Probably drew near as much power
as the starter motor.
Hack Stone is still wondering why the Ford Motor Company decided that the “rumble seat” in the backseat of a 1968 Country Squire Station Wagon would need an ashtray. Back in those days, Momma Stone said that we were too young to handle matches, so we just chewed the tobacco.
Ash trays in 3rd row seating on station wagons is/was the precursor to cup holders.
You get a cup holder, you get a cup holder…..
Could you open a window to spit?
Spit?
OK, vomit?
You don’t have to use the interface screen.
Tesla uses voice commands for most of their control features. For example, If you say; “My balls are cold”, It will turn on the seat heater. Voice command isn’t exactly new. My 9-year-old Nissan had it.
What if the command is “fuck joe Biden”?
The vehicle self drives to nearest polling place, establishes a wifi connection with the machine and erases all the fraudulent and imaginary voters from the rolls. That is boring though, who would want to do that?
But if you command “Ho, Ho Ho” it will play Run, Run Rudolph by Chuck Barry.
Things that make you say hmmmmm 🤔
Voice Command has been around since at least 1987. That is when Hack Stone married his lovely bride Rosetta, and she introduced him to Voice Commands such “Get your ass out of bad and cut the damn lawn”, or “I want to go to the mall”.
Can Rosetta Stone also say it in Portuguese? JIC you are ever in Brazil.
One of those big, 3” diameter bright red “EMERGENCY STOP” buttons in the dash. Wired to the main feed, kills DC to the motors. Sounds simple enough!
I’m sure everyone has seen the charts showing how much raw material has to mined to make the components of an EV. ‘specially the batt-ree. Tonnage. And the amount of diesel fuel the big earth movers use to get to it. EVs have a place in the transportation tool box, but I doubt very seriously that 50 years from now someone’s going to get excited over a barn find Tesla.
Still waiting on the Country song about a self driving truck leaving a Good Ol’ Boy…and for j0hN $kErRy to STFU!
IDK. It seems likely that a 50-year-old Tesla will still be on the road. The battery should be viable at 25 years and 500,000 miles so that would be about one battery change. If it was kept in warm weather It might last longer. If it was driven up north, much less likely. The cold is hard on batteries and the salt on the roads destroys vehicles quickly compared to the south.
Warranty void in Canada. 🥴🙄
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/families-shocked-when-battery-replacement-for-electric-vehicle-tops-20-000-1.6116679
HOW ABOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS when common sense prevailed? It used to be that the Owner’s Manual of a new car or truck would tell you how to adjust the valves in the engine while today it tells you NOT TO drink the contents of the radiator or battery. I MISS the old ’89 F150 I once had with the srtaight-6 engine and a manual transmission, loved that truck, fiving the headlight switch meant a ten minute job, the worst was having to crawl under the dash, ditto with the windshield wiper switch, had the floor switch for high beam headlights, … NOWADAYS fixing any of those means major disassembly to replace an expensive module that you’ll pay an arm and a leg for!
I don’t think an auto engine has been made by a major manufacturer in 25 years that requires valve adjustments. I prefer it that way myself. In fact I wouldn’t even buy a Harley until after the M8 engine came out and they no longer required adjustment.
The manual tells you not to drink motor oil because… well, because “some guy” did it and then he or his idiot kids then sued the car company. It’s why we have instructions on toothpicks. The lawyers are trying to keep the company from getting sued. It doesn’t mean there isn’t common sense, it means that lawyers are trying to nerf the world.
On EV’s: I’ve read articles where fire departments struggle to extinguish EV car battery fires, and some just let them burn out. I’ve also read that some fire departments deplete their sources of water because it isn’t enough to extinguish the flames. When an EV car fire starts in a residential garage or public garage, all they can do is attempt to move the car to a safe distance from other vehicles and property, and use water in areas they know can be put out. The fire industry has adapted by introducing new ways to fight these fires (e.g., specialized fire blankets). I’ve also read that after an accident, some EV’s are known to shut down all electronic components, which makes it bad for occupants because they’re unable to lock the door, becoming trapped in the car. If the battery catches fire, the EV becomes a death trap. (EV car manufacturers may have resolved that issue by now.)
Separately, the outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate can EABOD and FOAD.