They will overcome practical hurdles. Just as cars did. Government is more hands on than it was at the turn of the century. Of course its hands off policies led to the Great Depression.
The great political polarity reversal
- Thread starter CO. Hoosier
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Demand will spark supply, and like new technologies, they get cheaper before settling in, adjusting for inflation. Someone will soon figure out how to produce them more cheaply. Again, just as happened with other technologies.
The auto industry just was for the well off until the enterprising capitalist and risk taker
Henry Ford came along. He put ordinary Americans in cars, not the government. Joe and Kamala don’t look like Henry Ford to me.
You're right. It was non-responsive.
I'll assume he was speaking of DC polliticians. I agree with him. We would do better picking names out of a phone book to choose our congressmen.
small urban gas powered vehicles are fine for running errands around town, but the idea of coast to coast driving with "gas stations" all over the place is obsessively crazy.
actually, the govt enabled Ford to make affordable cars when he was other wised barred from doing so, when it took the patent away from ALAM. (FACT).
patent holders have way too many rights today for way too long, and are as big an obstacle to economic growth and an affordable standard of living as there is.
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You left out 'pollutes more, is impractical, cannot be supported by current and future electricity grids, supports child-exploitation , creates catastrophic fire hazards, chronically underperformes claims'...
..but. yeah, cell phones and electric toothbrushes.....
Roads and the interstate were paid for almost entirely by user fees and user excise taxes. There were no subsidies similar to electric vehicles.
Many engineers are of the view we are nearing the limit of battery capability. New tech will be required. But super-conductivity would be a game changer if we can ever get it.
My bet is hydrogen with limited full electric as a supplemental. But we will still need a lot of electricity to produce hydrogen. I think we will be kicking ourselves for wasting all this money on electric vehicles and infrastructure.
Hydrogen Portal | Los Alamos National Laboratory
Scaling up emerging technologies to enable a low-carbon future.
collaboration.lanl.gov
Yes, it was. But you just can’t tell the difference anymore.
You have helped build the Bridge over the River Kwai.
When the iPhone came out, it didn't have an App Store.
It didn't have a physical keyboard, which a lot of people felt was a deal breaker.
The OS was remedial. It didn't even have Cut/Copy/Paste until iOS 3. (That was a deal breaker for me.)
I'm not fully sure it had wifi connectivity as an option.
The first car was sold in 1888. It was viewed as a luxury item. The elite of the elite. 20 years later, the Model T was born. That wasn't adding new technology for the consumer. It was just more accessible.
That's the difference between government paying directly for something or government helping businesses pay for something. Bottom line, it's tax dollars.
Roads and the interstate were paid for almost entirely by user fees and user excise taxes. There were no subsidies similar to electric vehicles.
Many engineers are of the view we are nearing the limit of battery capability. New tech will be required. But super-conductivity would be a game changer if we can ever get it.
My bet is hydrogen with limited full electric as a supplemental. But we will still need a lot of electricity to produce hydrogen. I think we will be kicking ourselves for wasting all this money on electric vehicles and infrastructure.
Hydrogen Portal | Los Alamos National Laboratory
Scaling up emerging technologies to enable a low-carbon future.collaboration.lanl.gov
Seriously what is the deal with the obsession of the combustion engine and oil? Is your retirement all in on oil stocks?
When the automobile came out there was massive concerns about putting thousands of buggy makers out of business.
I could actually argue that the expansion of the car destroyed our downtowns and bankrupted our cities (there's a suburban ponzi scheme where new development has access to that sweet govt cash but not for repairs, that has to come from local taxes. Car infrastructure is insanely expensive and lasts -20 to 30 years before it needs serious repairs. How do cities afford it...they develop more suburbs and use part of that govt development cash to help pay for the older development. Suburbs are not dense enough to pay for themselves. Tax density from cities, that the automobile devastated, pays for a big chunk of the suburbs bills).
Past city planning for the automobile sucked and it turned the country into a bland cookie cutter, car dependent wasteland while costing us zillions in car infrastructure upkeep and leaving giant, ugly ass parking lots in place of prime real estate that could be making money but no, it's a giant, free parking lot.
It could be argued that the oil industry and the car industry devastated our cities (parking lots and flight), isolated our citizenry (again flight to suburbs into residential areas that have no social center to go to or is accessable without a damn car, so we hole up in our man caves), turned our smaller towns into bland, charmless, cookie cutter, fast food hells, monopolized access as it's pretty hostile to get anywhere without a damn car because of car infrastructure, made us dependent on foreign adversaries (Middle East and Russia) and if you believe in it, excessively polluted our planet.
That's quite the legacy.
EV's are much quieter, much less polluted, much more efficient especially for short trips (approximately 85% of our trips are less than ten miles), much cheaper and efficient than gas (as it comes from a larger and more efficient mass power plant), can refuel from home and is a developing industry....meaning it will become more efficient.
Toyota is talking about a 900 mile range solid state battery that can charge in less than 15 minutes.
Being in retail my entire professional life...emerging technology is where the money is at. Think about technology evolution. From music to video games. It's all evolving and when it does it revitalizes the industry.
Hell even basic boring lightbulbs went through a crazy profitable technology transformation. I was with GE during the incandescent to CFL to LED technology change. There was some old guard in the beginning fighting like hell to keep the incandescent going, even though our margins were paper thin but, incandescent was the dominant bulb.
The government, starting in California started restricting the incandescent and GE started making money hand over fist as people switched to CFL. Ave basket ring went from $1.50 to $8. CFL'S were much more efficient so the consumer did save four times in energy costs alone, plus the life was much longer so you didn't have to buy and replace the same socket every year or so.
They quickly discovered that we're talking about insane amounts of scale. There are so many sockets out there that if you can get someone to change just two to a more expensive bulb, the increases are insane. The fear was CFL's last 8 times as long....all those sockets will fill up!!!! The truth was it will take 30 some years to replace every socket and by then we can do it again as LED rolled out.
Moral of the story, there is so much fu$king money to be made. So many jobs to be created. More opportunities to dominate a global industry. It's the chance for an old industry to remake itself. Plus it's happening regardless so either we become market leaders of the new auto age or let other countries lead while we keep on with leading technology of the 20th century.
I want American companies to be the leading EV market setters. That gives us a chance to take a foreign car off the road and replace it with an American car. It gives us a chance to rebuild brand loyalty and possibly create affinity (which is the magic sauce of brand management).
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Wrong.Yes, it was. But you just can’t tell the difference anymore.
You have helped build the Bridge over the River Kwai.
His response “no comment.” That’s shameful.
Leaders lead, and his ass should have been on a plane already. He’s not capable and that’s shameful. Embarrassing
It’s not a good comparison. Toyota & a few other smaller players are betting on hydrogen cell ICE technology, that seems much more feasible than electric imo, particularly for over the road, farming, etc.
I thought Wal-Mart was responsible for the demise of downtown shopping areas.
And, by the way, those curlicue lightbulbs absolutely did not last four times as long, at least not at my house. They were an overpriced ripoff.
They were also an environmental hazard since they were full of mercury.
Yeah, but has he thrown paper towels at people impacted by the Maui fires and tweeted about how he’s done more than any other president would have done yet?
Difficult to believe the sheer mendacity of the EV-enthralled wokesters.
Point out the myriad issues and physical IMPOSSIBILITY of powering even 20% of the US transportation vehicles required to support the economy, and the jerkoff response is tinfoil hat memes.
Pathetic.
Stop it, no they weren't 'full' of mercury.
They had a pindrop of mercury. You actually eat more mercury than what is in a cfl.
That was misinformation spread by those (yes, predominantly conservatives) that were pissed about the incandescent that was being phased out.
Yeah, Walmart took up huge real estate, dedicated much of that real estate to a flat parking lot, sucked the town dry than if they closed the store the town was left (since Walmart focused on small town in the beginning) with a dead property that couldn't adjust like an efficient social downtown area (where if one business failed it was much easier to find clients to fill back as well as there were other open businesses around it keeping the property generating money).
Look I don't have an issue with cars or big box stores (hell that was my career). My bitch is how we let the auto industry make the car the overly dominant mode of transportation. We built infrastructure that is naturally, insanely expensive to repair. We tailored our lives around the damn car (razed buildings because we need parking spaces). Made it damn near hostile for any other mode (biking or walking), shamed and stigmatized public transportation (while also building car infrastructure that discouraged the use of public transportation), dirtied the air that we breathe (remember LA in the late 80's covered in dense smog every morning), retrofitted crazy dangerous stroads (taking a street and turning it into a wannabe highway, but keeping all of the stops and 90 degree turns. Yeah the stroad is the major reason why our traffic death and injury rates are way above the rest of the developed world) Pretty much every town now has a stroad....it's just too over the top and too dominant.
We spend a huge chunk of our lives stuck in traffic in the damn car. We have always doubled down and added lanes thinking that will solve congestion. No it always encourages/induces more car traffic.
You're seeing cities start to better develop their accessibility. Biking is going to be huge with the growing popularity of the ebike. An ebike let's you go anywhere and eliminates hills so you don't have to be Lance Armstrong to go long distances.
Cities are the bulk of the environmental concern. I'm not concerned about rural areas and their carbon footprint. It's about making cities multi transportational, cleaner and safer. Currently 80% of the country's population is in a city cluster (which only accounts for 3% of the total land mass)...that's only expected to grow and get denser.
To your CFL question, as a GE guy I would like to say something like 'you probably bought a cheap bulb from China' but, most of all the CFL were produced in China, including GE's. I haven't had any issues but they, like LEDs, slowly lose brightness over time (vs an incandescent or halogen that pop). The main thing about CFLs is the use 1/4 of the power needed for an incandescent standard brightness. So a 26W CFL is as bright as a 100 watt incandescent.
The problem is the ballast sizes. The higher wattage CFLs need larger ballasts. A 3-way CFL was a monstrosity.
We sold it as they are great bulbs for spaces that are hard to get to like an attic or a storage closet where you want to set and forget it.
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Baby steps.
Do you need a diesel powered, ramped up 4x4 truck to go get milk, a loaf of bread and a stick of butter? Do you need it for your ten mile commute to work?
I see a lot of expensive, gorgeous looking gas guzzling trucks on the roads....I hardly see them actually hauling anything.
How many families have two gas cars? Can we take that second car and make it an EV? How about an ebike (their fun as hell if you haven't tried one)?
Again if you live in a sparsely populated area it's not as concerning. Cities are growing denser and that's where the big impacts can be made.
You don’t know what an obsession is. I have and do criticize the mindless push towards anything electric away from any combustion. Mist, and maybe all, of our federal decision makers, simply don’t know what they are talking about, or they gaslight all of us. Even money on which it is.
I have never read that. I think you made it up.
90% wrong.
That sounds like something you would argue. The fact is many factors affect the life of a city. The personal transportation offered by vehicles cut a number of ways, some good, some bad.
That would be great. Tell this to Biden so he would quit yapping about all the charging stations he wants to build.
Good. EV’s are not an emerging technology. They have been around for 100 years. There are reasons why ICE rose to the top, good reasons.
Agree. I am 100% LED. But it is my choice.
Agree with all of this. Turn loose the private sector and the changes capitalism offers. Tell government to butt out. All mandates and regulations do is distort markets and impede real progress. No government ever built a successful, enduring economic system. Only free markets, entrepreneurs, and risk takers do that.
First off appreciate the response to my insanely long post.
I don't have the time to rebuttal all of your rebuttals, but the buggy whip business that was pulverized by Ford when he made a cheap auto is many times example one of not recognizing and adapting to a changing business climate.
Here's some blurbs on the buggy industry numbers (I'm not able to link anymore for reasons I have no idea).
Summary of the copy texts: There were up to 13,000 buggy companies in the late 1800's. Buggy's were much easier to drive (compared to actually riding a horse) so it allowed access to pretty much everyone. It was also affordable and could go on any flattened terrain. Most companies were small, local companies.
1. Let’s start with the poster child of disruption, buggy whip manufacturers. In the late 19th century there were some 13,000 companies involved in the horse-drawn carriage (buggy) industry. Most failed to recognize that the era of raw horsepower was giving way to that of internal combustion engines and the automobile. Buggy whips, once a proud, artisan craft, essentially became relegated to S&M purveyors. Read Theodore Levitt’s influential 1960 book Marketing Myopia for a more detailed look.
2. Horsemanship tended to be an aristocratic skill of larger American and British landowners, North American western pioneers, the military and scouts. Buggies required at least crudely graded main roadways, where horses could go almost anywhere. The growing use of buggies for local travel expanded, along with stage lines and railroads for longer trips. In cities and towns, horse-drawn railed vehicles gave carriage to poor workers and the lower middle class. The upper middle class used buggies, as did farmers, while the rich had the more elegant 4-wheel carriages for local use. In the late 19th century, bicycles became another factor in urban personal transport.
Until mass production of the automobile brought its price within the reach of the working class, horse-drawn conveyances were the most common means of local transport in towns and nearby countryside. Buggies cost around $25 to $50, and could easily be hitched and driven by untrained men, women, or children. In the United States, hundreds of small companies produced buggies, and their wide use helped to encourage the grading and graveling of main rural roads and actual paving in towns. This provided all-weather passage within and between larger towns.
In another post you pointed out that EV tech would be great for vehicles always driven less than (say) 100 miles every day. That seems to fit school busses to a T. Probably can up that to 200 miles, even.
Plus the every day driving schedule is set, and so every night charging (times when pressure on the grid is low) is always available. It wouldn't be convenient for busses used on long field trips, but day-to-day kid-hauling would seem to fit it to a T, though you are right that it requires a substantial battery size due to vehicle weight. But there are EV Hummvees and outher SUVs now, so it is apparently doable.
This thread has gone from small town country music politics, to electric cars, to government planning of cities and rural areas, to light bulbs, to the private and public expenditures of transportation by auto, to Heaven knows what will be next.
As is often the case ,the elephant in the room being global warming and the use of fossil fuels.
To all this, would like to introduce an article on the topic of city planning and the difference between the sprawl of U.S. cities and the density of cities as found in Europe. What I find interesting is how the mere fact the United states has more space and a less dense population shapes our thinking about governmental planning. In a way this gets us back to how the rural small town approach to life and urban big city thinking differ.
The article should be of interest to say both CoH and Tommy Cracker as it deals with subjects important to both of them such as how state, local, and federal governments all influence land use planning.
As is often the case ,the elephant in the room being global warming and the use of fossil fuels.
To all this, would like to introduce an article on the topic of city planning and the difference between the sprawl of U.S. cities and the density of cities as found in Europe. What I find interesting is how the mere fact the United states has more space and a less dense population shapes our thinking about governmental planning. In a way this gets us back to how the rural small town approach to life and urban big city thinking differ.
The article should be of interest to say both CoH and Tommy Cracker as it deals with subjects important to both of them such as how state, local, and federal governments all influence land use planning.
There are parts of this post that I agree with (the battery size required, for example), but I think you are a bit misinformed about current bus driver schedules. Perhaps I am biased by the school district that I live in / my kids got to, but those bus drivers arrive at the depot at 6am and begin their route shortly thereafter. 6:30 start HS pick-up routes, drop off by 7:10. 7:15 start elementary school pick-up routes, drop off by 8:10. 8:20 start middle school pick-up routes, drop off by 9:15. 9:45 HS kids get bussed over to the OSU remote campus for college credit classes). Some other HS kids get bussed from one HS to the other (for example, the band kids meet at one school and then get bussed to the other school for their classes after band which is 1st period).
I think they get a lunch break around 11 - 12. From there, half day kindergartners are bussed home and afternoon session kids are picked up. HS kids start getting out at 1:45, followed by grade school kids at 2:45, followed by middle school kids at 3:30.
The point being, most of the bus drivers I know are working 6:30 to 4:30, 5 days a week with very little time where there isn't at least a few kids on the bus. There is admittedly the 3 month down-time in the summer, but those bus drivers put in plenty of miles during the school year. I don't know if that is enough to justify EV technology, but it's not as far-fetched as you would imagine.
Where is the part where the buggy business with which you are so enamored is paid huge taxpayer-funded subsidies?
That is the crux.
Private vs. Public subsidies.
The grift involved in the public subsidies is epic.
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I said
“I think there is a use for EV’s—which is small urban vehicles for running errands of 100 miles a day or so..”
No it's not. It sucks for sure but it's at least an actual song while Aldeans is nothing but a rube grift dressed in too tight jeans and a cowboy hat.. The first is someone's creative work, sure it's not that creative, the second though is a phoney manufactured product meant for consumption by clueless idiots ..
He’s responded multiple times. The time for a President to visit is not immediately after. Especially in a tiny place like Lahaina. There is ONE road in and out . His secret service and entourage would totally block the road for hours. Stop looking for ridiculous things to complain about. He’ll be there eventually and I’ll bet he’s doing more than throwing paper towels at them.
The tech exists for small urban vehicles going 400 miles on a charge and also for much larger urban vehicles going a lesser distance, but well over 100 miles, on a charge.
And I may be underselling it. The GMC Hummer has an estimated EV range of 329 miles in its top package. This is a vehicle weighing over 9,000 pounds. A school bus is in that range on the low end and maybe double that on the high end. Greyhound buses get can upwards of 25,000 pounds fully loaded, but that includes a lot more luggage allowance than school backpacks and junior's french horn.
that's an out and out lie, told by those who's business plan isn't to compete better, but rather to insure they don't ever have to compete for consumers or workers.
free markets are the polar opposite of, and destroyer of, competitive markets.
absent govt and govt regulation, there can be no "competitive" markets.
and don't let conservative propagandist liars hood wink you that "free markets" equals "competitive" markets.
"free markets" are the polar opposite of competitive markets, and precisely what enables unregulated monopolies/oligopolies, of which there is nothing worse for the consumer, the taxpayer, the worker, and 99% of entrepreneurs.
what work well are competitive markets and well regulated monopolies/oligopolies, and what are total disasters for everyone other than the one tenth of one percenters, are "free markets", which means no rules or constraints at all for ownership, but sells well to idiots who never think out what that really means, by liars and thieves who grasp EXACTLY what it means..
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anon_6hv78pr714xta
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I'm not sure we've ever seen a successful free market system in an anarchic society. The State is necessary to provide the safety, security, rules, court system, roads, etc. to make free markets and capitalism work.
I think it more accurate to say a well-functioning State is necessary but not sufficient for a society to build a successful and enduring economic system.
all fossil fuels are very limited in how much of them there is, and they ain't makin any more of them.
with wind, solar, and hydro, electricity is the power supply that's unlimited and renewable.
charging station infrastructure is far more easily doable and cheaper than gas station infrastructure. (though i think swap out stations with leased batteries are an alternative that isn't given proper hearing, and they would solve many of the issues EVs now have, including range, battery life, charging time, initial cost of new vehicle, and cost of used vehicles).
electricity won't work in all uses, (such as air travel), so we need to use electric where ever we can, and save some oil/fossil fuels for future generations for uses electric won't work for.
that said, i realize conservatives will never grasp the concept of any sacrifice by them today, for future generations.
they only grasp "what most benefits ME now", "ME ME ME ME ME ME ME", which is much of what defines them as conservatives and differentiats them from liberals.
No.. Wind and solar are not dispatchable sources. They physically won’t ever meet baseload demand. We will need coal, gas, or nukes for the next century or more.
Vehicle batteries are not like swapping batteries in your cordless drill. Batteries weigh thousands of pounds.
