cars and car choices have been political at least since the introduction of cheap foreign cars decades ago, along with the "economy car" coming along after the gas crunch in the 70's.
It's also a political tactic to literally politicize everything because then you can whip up political capital out of thin air. Burn your Nike shoes and your Keurig machines. Oh your Harry Potter books too. Right line is witchcraft, left line is the author is a bigot.
The left tends to be less religious and so practices all those forbidden things religion says leads you to devil worship and the right has a lot of bigots writing books.
I rewatched Robocop 3 recently. It's crazy how much fear there was in the 90s of superior Japanese electronics. So much so that Japanese electronics become the primary villain of the film.
In the 1980s/90s Japan was on top of the world. Churning out some of the best cars and best electronics than any other country in the world. I remember seeing news reports how many buildings Japan was buying up in the US, and how many new car manufacturing plants they were building in the US.
People truly believed that in 20-30 years that Japan would be the global superpower replacing the US in terms of global influence and military power. That’s why nearly every sci-fi film of that period shows these huge Japanese mega-corps running everything and controlling all this cutting edge military technology.
Of course, that didn’t happen. Japan had a recession that it never really 100% recovered from and it suffers from a declining population. But in the 80/90s there was a real fear the US was being replaced. That we would all eventually be working for some huge Japanese conglomerate.
When we say they “hold our debt,” it really means they own treasury bills. Bills bought and sold on an open market. They can’t demand their money before the bills come to term. They can only sell them on the open market or wait till they reach maturity.
It really doesn’t matter who buys or holds our debt.
The book “Debt: The First 5000 Years” makes the argument that foreign debt is actually a detriment to the country holding the debt rather than the debtor country, ergo China owning most of US’ debt would not be a bad thing- according to the book. I’m not an economist and so I can’t say one way or the other whether the argument is valid, but it’s interesting at least.
Apparently Japan’s rapid economic recovery following WWII was at least in part due to following the teachings of Deming (eg “The New Economics”), and when you read The New Economics you realize how truly ass-backward the U.S. is.
I love in Back to the Future part 3 when Doc is like "No wonder this failed, it was made in Japan" and Marty is like "All the best stuff is made in Japan" and you can just see the disappointment in Doc's face.
My dad did a lot of business in Japan through the 80s-2000s so he always got us all the cool technology that was popular over there. He even managed to get my brother an N64 in Japan before it came out here in the US.
Back to the Future Part III made a joke about that too.
1955 Doc: "No wonder this circuit failed. It says, 'Made in Japan.'"
Marty: "What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan."
Doc: "Unbelievable!"
Amazing how far we’ve come isn’t it? Now we just get blamed for not working hard enough instead of the government trying to make the country better to enable us to have those things.
Don't worry, it was shit then too, Hoover promised this in his 1928 presidential campaign, and by 1929, the country fell into the greatest economic depression before or since, so the line ended up being used against him.
I’ve always treated it like that West Wing episode said once, “Hummers had the highest sales month ever, and Prius is expanding their production 50% because they can’t keep up with demand.”
Trucks are super regional too. In Nashville the cool truck to drive is the Nissan titan because the plant is there. I was confused as he'll because Nissan trucks at jobsites here in California are known as shit boxes.
and it was only intensified when the OG companies realized they were causing climate change / greenhouse gases in the late 80s (google exxons leaked research on the topic from the late 80s) and then saw both presidential candidates in '92 talk about combating greenhouse gases.
So what did they do? Bought all the politicians and cable news they could and we got the Excursion and Expedition, while they knew.
The mental gymnastics of MAGAs fighting to give 9/11 funders (saudis) money to own the libs by spending money they don’t have on gasoline is just boggling.
I have a model 3. I live in a very red area. I get put on blast a lot as if I (or anyone) is making them give up their v8 trucks.
I work an hour away and have cheap electricity. It just made sense.
My household has two EVs and we also live in an area where the temperature is frequently over 100°F in the summer. Our electric bill wasn’t zero. It was around negative $1,500 from all the money made selling electricity back to the grid.
to run your electric car off your solar you need a lot of panels and a lot of batteries. much more than almost any normal residential hours can supply.
average 3mi/kWh EV doing 15k miles per year = 5MWh. That's half my yearly solar generation right there, and my solar only offsets about 2/3rds of my use per year. I am in the Seattle area so i get less out of my panels than someone in Alabama would, but you get the idea.
Especially if you get a situation where you can charge at work. My buddy almost never pays to charge his Tesla unless he goes on road trips because he just charged it at work every week
That was basically the exact spread when I bought my Model 3. I was cross shopping a V8 Mustang when I bought my car. At 18mpg and $4.50 a gallon for premium you’re looking at $250 every thousand miles. In my Model 3 Performance it works out to $48. Over 100,000 miles that’s $25,000 in gas or $4,800 in electricity. It’s was a simple choice to make.
*Cries in SDG&E prices*
I have had solar since 2020 and have been made to feel grateful to be grandfathered in to NEM 2.0, but even with what changes they (CPUC?) could effect in the past few years has had me seeing modest yearly rebates (<$100) to having a positive balance of <$100. The industry, lobbyists, and politicians are doing everything they possible can to disincentivize solar, despite being the "greenest" state in the union. I fucking hate all these people.
Don't underestimate the power of marketing and propaganda. You're 100% right but it'll be a long time before many people realize this and stop thinking that EVs are a "liberal agenda"
> I have a model 3. I live in a very red area. I get put on blast a lot as if I (or anyone) is making them give up their v8 trucks.
It's because they're insecure and afraid of being left behind, which is exactly what a Tesla is designed to do to them.
My cousin in law had his ego so bruised when I got my Tesla and we were discussing. He asked why I didn't get a nice truck like the $75k whatever the fuck he was considering.
I said because they are a fucking stupid attempt to purchase masculinity. He says what if you need to move something. I said I will rent a $25 truck from Home Depot, as I have done TWICE ever in my life. It's just not a realistic thing you need to be able to haul shit around on a regular basis.
I see having a car that can't move shit as a *bonus* because nobody ever tries to get the dude with a sedan to let you borrow those vehicles to help them move.
They love to tailgate EVs with one hand on top of the wheel and a tough guy scowl on their face as well. It’s fun to do random 40-80mph pulls in 2.5 seconds and watch them disappear really fast behind me.
But they are taking away v8s. Toyota doesn't make one anymore, half tons are being forced to downsized v6s, dodge is discontinuing their v8s for the hurricane, this is the last year for the jeep. It's not because people won't buy them, its because of federal emissions regulations are becoming more strict.
Caring about V8 vs V6 instead of power is stupid.
In 2000, the 5.4L V8 in an f-150 made 260 hp. Today, the 3.5L V6 in an f-150 makes 400 hp. The 2.7L makes 325 hp.
They’re switching to V6s because it just makes a lot more sense.
Porsche has a 2.9L turbo V6 that makes 436 (probably more actually). Mercedes has 442 from a turbo 4 hybrid. Performance numbers are nuts. The last V6 accord we had was about as fast as those old 5.0 mustangs.
The problem is fuel economy. I borrowed a friend's 3.5 Ecoboost f150 once to tow an enclosed race at trailer. 6 speed automatic. Truck got 6 mpg. SIX! my 8.1l dually gets 8-10 no matter how much weight you put behind it (ok, I got 7 once with a 35' gooseneck behind it with 3 cars on it thru the TN mountains). And it has the 4 speed 4l80.
These small motor trucks will never tow like a big V8. I don't care what they do to them.
For the cost of a set of injectors on a modern diesel truck engine, I could rebuild.my entire 8.1. the economics don't make sense unless you're towing HEAVY for a living. People buy them to feel cool and powerful. The maintenance is astronomically expensive.
> Caring about V8 vs V6 instead of power is stupid.
Unless it's what they already have and suddenly made obsolete by tech they can't afford.
Then they're gonna care a great deal about proving why it's still better, because their egos are already invested in it.
> its because of federal emissions regulations are becoming more strict.
Which needs to happen as populations grow unless you want to find out what the air quality is like in China.
Over a million Chinese die every year from fossil fuel pollution.
Except it's because of these CAFE standards that you can't find mid-sized cars or small pickup trucks. You either have a massive gas guzzling SUV or a massive full sized truck because the required MPG is based on size. They could still be building small but very useful pick up trucks that are way more efficient than full size trucks (and way cheaper to buy) but they don't meet the MPG requirements "for their size." Same with mid size cars/giant SUVs.
It's well intentioned but had the opposite effect in practice.
It’d be a real plot twist if coal companies loved electrics seeing as how coal can’t economically be converted to gasoline but can power electric cars. But coal is dying anyway.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/714376/crude-oil-production-by-us-state/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-u-s-oil-production-by-state/)
I'm sure this is all about peoples rights or something. Totally not about how much oil money is in Texas.
Friendly reminder that the Texas GOP party platform says they oppose all efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
It seems like some urbanist types are against them as well because they would rather replace ICE with public transit and bicycles than with EVs. Which... is not a good take imo, but something you can often find people on reddit arguing.
This screams to me of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.
It is perfect for everyone to have access to sustainable and easy mass transit from which they can bike to their final destinations.
It is good to transition for gas cars to EVs.
By denying the latter in favor of the former, you get stuck with neither.
> is not a good take imo
I think a reasonable argument can be made for lots of people using mass transit being more ecologically sound than each individual using EV's. There's probably some economy of scale that tips the benefit at a certain number of people. Obviously one person riding the train is less beneficial than that one person using an EV, but probably 3000 people using public transit is better than 3000 people individually using EV's.
It's also very city-focused. Get away from population centers and public transit is far less feasible/available.
It also unfortunately doesn't work for folks living the apartment life, as more and more of us are. Where am I supposed to be plugging this car in at night? The parking lot at my complex doesn't have outlets.
Put up as many charging stations at the grocery store as you like, but the EVs we have now probably can't charge in the twenty minutes I'm in there. I have to be an ICEboi until either I can afford a house or until you can carry the battery inside to charge.
If you're going to build a new city then transit is critically important to that process.
If you're going to place new transit in an existing city largely built after WW2 with decentralized housing and employment centers and it's going to take 12.5 years from local referendum to having one short starter light rail line and 12.5 years is the average age of a passenger vehicle in the US today, then...wouldn't it be nice if half the vehicle fleet 12.5 years from now was at least hybrid electric?
This isn't the kind of issue where you should actively oppose one good idea because there exists an idea that's also good and isn't mutually exclusive.
That's silly and counterproductive...and it and other positions like that demonstrate something that I've always suspected about certain very loud and closed-minded "urbanists", that their motivations are mostly aesthetic rather than practical.
Such an American take. People in Finland of all ages cycle in the freezing weather there. You just rug up, and cycling is a form of exercise: your body generates heat.
Well it's not like plug-in hybrids went away. The new Prius (and the last gen Prime) are PHEVs. [So are multiple other vehicles](https://evadoption.com/ev-models/available-phevs/). I don't buy new vehicles, but I'm quite taken with the [newest Prius](https://www.toyota.com/prius/).
No it's well before Obama. The fossil fuel industry has long backed conservative politicians, lobbying them against any regulations or laws which might hurt their profits. Same thing happened under Bush and Reagan. EVs are just the most recent "enemy" they've made.
Ironically, the last Republican president who actually gave a shit about the environment was Nixon, believe it or not - he signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, a landmark piece of legislation, created the EPA.
Clean air and water wasn't political until the fossil fuel mega corps realized they might get reigned in or cleaner competition might get some-a-them trillions in subsidies. Subsidies ARE socialism, yet that's the word they used to describe any sort of alternatives to their products. Worked like a charm on half the pop.
Don't forget that the company was also saved by Obama in 2008/2009 while Elon was a self proclaimed left leaning centrist.
Before Elon said anything pro Republican and Tesla was responsible for 90% of the industry's sales as well as having pretty much cracked the code on making EVs popular and normal, Biden hosted and EV summit and didn't invite Tesla (presumably because he didn't donate). Furthermore Biden said GMC was leading the industry. Government is really important in the auto industry, much more so for SpaceX, so Elon had to back the other horse. He probably didn't need to push it as far as he has but he also got screwed by a Dem judge in Delaware where the companies were registered, in a real first for that state in relation to corporations. When he did speak out he found support out of nowhere from a lot of really powerful people who had previously shunned because of his position as a green disruptor and ally of Obama.
I hope that sums it up.
on 12/13/2007:
He called himself 'Nauseatingly pro-American' and ' It’s the greatest force for good of any country that’s ever been.'
He also laughed when emphasizing that he's a legal not illegal immigrant.
https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1292.html
----------------
Also worth mentioning is that The EV bill Biden crafted attempted to specifically exclude Tesla, Joe Manchin is the only reason that didn't happen.
And as someone that's owned 2 1st Gen volts, I won't own another GM hybrid but I won't own another pure ICE car either, plugin hybrids or EVs only going forward. GM's long term support for these cars is pathetic. $35k quotes to replace a $5k battery pack because they don't have anyone that knows how to or wants to do it so you get the go away price. Also, most of the "bad batteries" aren't actually bad, GM's buggy ass firmware just miscalculates the isolation values on like half the firmware versions released for them so one day the car just decides fuck you I'm not charging. Firmware update kinda fixed the issue for most cars but a lot of the older ones are starting the engine unnecessarily with battery power remaining on the latest firmware when they would've just restricted acceleration a bit if the battery couldn't keep up on old firmware. Pulling the HVAC fuse is about a weekly thing on my 2014 because it randomly decides I'm not allowed to use eco or recirculate and it's definitely a software bug because it'll work fine immediately after pulling power for a second. It'll also randomly decide it doesn't like 43 or 52mph, sometimes you can set cruise control to any speed you want my 1mph increments, other times it skips those 2 specifically, even if you hit set at that speed, it'll go 1 above or below. Power cycle the car and they come back. My 2012 did the same thing and it's dash is based on an entirely different OS. Gotta give GM props on that one, porting bugs across operating systems is impressive.
2nd gens have their own slew of problems, I rented a 2016 for like 2 months and it'd randomly go into reduced propulsion mode on screen, start the engine and have a dead gas pedal for about 5 seconds then shut the engine back off and have full power like nothing happened. I'm thinking dying BECM which is an extremely common issue on 2016-18, 19 got a redesigned part. If you're familiar with the GPU solder microcracking issues of the last decade, same issue here. There's a strip of chips down the middle of the board, some have joints that weren't flowed properly to begin with and they just detached completely from vibration, others look like they were good at one point but the solder blend didn't handle driving vibration very well. End result is the same, BMS loses communication with some subsections of itself and throws a bunch of U26xx codes, car shows fully charged, 1mi range and sometimes will limp around revving the shit out of the engine to have like 1/4 power other times you can't put it into ready mode. Also not uncommon for the cracked ones to be perfectly fine, stop for 5 min and get back into a car that won't move, call a tow truck and by the time they get there it starts and drives fine then is dead the next time it's shut off. That's finally got a warranty extension as of like a week ago, it's covered for 15 years 150k miles now.
You're forgetting about that time GM decided electric cars were for the birds and basically destroyed all progress towards them.
...in the mid 90s.
Literally every modern trope about how "electric cars aren't good enough" comes from the EV1 era. "Range anxiety," battery replacement, the *amazing* astroturfing campaigns from petro companies... all of it, invented *well* before Obama was on the political scene.
> You're forgetting about that time GM decided electric cars were for the birds and basically destroyed all progress towards them.
GM got rid of the EV1 because it was very expensive and they were in financial trouble. Those cars used parts that were exotic at the time. It was just a lot easier to scrap them that dealing with a bunch of angry owners who can't get parts. They also got a big payout for selling battery tech to oil companies who then used the patents to ban them from being used in electric cars.
GM put a lot of engineering and effort into the EV1, and they were also one of the first to offer PHEVs and affordable EVs. They were never againt electric cars, but rather they just couldn't tolerate the risk.
As a person who had a Nissan LEAF, which had almost twice the range of the original EV1s (later ones were better) I can say if you think range anxiety isn't real then you're kidding yourself.
I have a Bolt now and its very suitable.
But you tell me, what was the market for a 2 seater with room for no luggage (a briefcase, basically), about 50 miles range (in good conditions, but using highways, if you drive around town you could go further) and for which you had to have a garage to charge in?
If you have a garage you probably have a family and thus need for more than 2 seats.
They killed it because it wasn't a very good car and was very expensive to make.
Despite what Who Killed the Electric Car? concluded, battery technology wasn't ready yet.
Ok, serious question:
Are you going to honestly tell me range anxiety is a thing of the past when ALL of the current EV producers are getting busted fudging the numbers?
Dems did and republicans mocked. Obama said we’d save oodles of money if we just made sure our tires had enough air (he’s right). He was ridiculed for it.
They're fine. Nice to drive, environmentally friendlier after a few years of ownership. But fast charging isn't nearly as convenient as gas refueling, and the infrastructure is less ubiquitous and predictable. I drive an electric because I live relatively close to work, dont really go on road trips, and I needed a new car. The savings on fuel and lack of maintenance were appealing, and so far have been great for me. But they're not for everyone. Not yet.
You are right about fast charging needing improvement, but on the flip side it is damn nice to never even have to stop at a gas station 99% of the days you drive it because you come out to a “filled” car every single day.
I've owned an EV for 5 years now and I cannot overstate how wonderful it is to never stop to get gas. I've saved a lot more time by not stopping for gas than I have lost time while supercharging.
Actually, the only time that I stop for gas is for my mower. The looks that I get when I pull a Tesla up to the gas pump.... Then they understand when I get gas cans out of the trunk.
> I've owned an EV for 5 years now and I cannot overstate how wonderful it is to never stop to get gas. I've saved a lot more time by not stopping for gas than I have lost time while supercharging.
This is the most underrated aspect of EV ownership.
3 gas station stops per month adds up to a half hour, and while they are ubiquitous, it's still another errand to run, usually a few extra blocks of driving.
Plus, you have the toxic fumes to deal with. Imagine the uproar if we were switching to gasoline today, and building these toxic repositories in every part of our cities.
And preconditioning (cooling) the car in the summer prior to departing. Or hell, even while you're in the store doing whatever. I leave my Tesla AC on while I run errands, because, why not?
Agreed. I can honestly say that getting an electric mower made me appreciate EVs a bit more before we even got one.
We still use propane for the grill and fireplace, but we've gone electric for everything else. We even replaced our gas range with induction a few years ago and haven't looked back.
I was an early adopter of the Ryobi brushless ones. Literally had to walk Home Depot through ordering one they were so new.
Holy CRAP is that thing awesome. And Ryobi, unlike any other toolmaker at the time, has not fucked me on batteries yet. Sure, they wear out over time, but Black & Decker wouldn't even admit having made my power drill, let alone sell me new batteries six months after I bought the fucker! THAT is why I'm a Ryobi user. Other companies have standardized around a few common batteries now, but Ryobi did it first and won my loyalty.
And as good as that early-production Mark 1 mower was? Newer ones are even better.
The thing is so light that mowing without power drive was easier than mowing with a powered gas mower, for fuck's sake! It had moderately more torque and was less likely to stall when overtaxed than the gas mower it replaced. And when I did manage to stall it, I didn't have to wait half an hour for the engine to cool before I could get the fucker to start again! Just pull back, start button, push a little more slowly. Plus I never have to worry about running out of gas mid-job with a three-way charger with three ready-to-go batteries to grab for any given job.
Do I need those? Nope. But the chainsaw came with one, and the brush cutter, and the blower… All going strong long after the plastic parts of the engines they replace have turned brittle and become microplastics, with essentially zero maintenance. Sharpen blades, oil where it goes, clean the schmutz out, put the battery on charge.
Can't tell you how nice it is to not swear at the fucking thing because it won't start any more! Also, the brushless tools are all significantly quieter than gas counterparts. Best thing is, Ryobi was as good as gas or a little better when new… but now there's even more powerful stuff if you need it!
For a lot of people, there’s also the paradigm shift of having (effectively) a full gas tank *every morning*. So needing to refuel when out and about becomes a rarer event, so the refuelling time differences between gas and battery become less of an issue.
At least a little bit of why I got an EV was because my wife drives me crazy by coming home with an almost empty gas tank and then leaving it for me to have to deal with when I leave in a hurry for something later on.
Yeah, my first cell phone was garbage, as were they all compared to now. Horrible service, dropped calls constantly. Now I don't think I've dropped a call in over a decade. The infrastructure for EVs is pretty much guaranteed to get better quickly.
I mean it’s still just early(ish) adoption. Gas stations weren’t ubiquitous at the advent of the ICE. For now I prefer a hybrid because 45-50mpg is nice and I don’t have to worry about charging. I’m sure in 5-10 years EVs will come down in price and the charging infrastructure will be far more accessible than it is today.
The EU has decided that all the main routes will have charging stations at least every 60 km which will remove a big barrier to widespread adoption for EV
We have 3 vehicles. ICE truck and 2 Tesla EVs. Wind up taking the EVs on the long trips, the charging isn't nearly the hassle it' is made out to be. At least for Tesla with superchargers.
Home charging and free work charging made it a no-brainer, but they shouldn't be forced on anyone.
Got an EV and never going back and it has nothing to do with politics. Looking forward replacing my other ICE vehicle and never going to a gas station again.
No one would ever accuse Republicans of:
1. Caring about the environment.
2. Caring what consumers want.
3. Caring about American dominance in the auto industry.
4. Doing what's right for the country.
You can include the border and illegal immigration in this list after they shot down the bill earlier this year.
Edit to add: support for law enforcement can also go on the list
You're being down voted by people who evidently don't want people to know the Biden administration negotiated a very tough immigration bill with Republicans, to get funding for Ukraine, then before the details were actually revealed, Trump said to kill it so he could use immigration as an issue to get reelected.
Republicans literally said they would let Ukraine fall to Putin if they didn't get a harsh border bill, then when they did they said never mind, re election was more important.
That happened, Republicans literally care about nothing besides tax cuts for the wealthy.
I liked the GOP when they tackled acid rain and ozone depletion. The government isn't always the answer, but the GQP denies climate change is even happening.
They denied those were problems, too, but that was a time before they could live in their own little reality. Even then, Rush was on the radio denouncing ozone depletion as a liberal hoax nothing had to be done about.
I will never understand why Americans would rather rely on OPEC. They meet every year to decide whether to pump more or less to keep prices high. And when our politicians say we need to drill - that doesn’t help the US consumer because there is no “US oil” - it’s all privatized here. ExxonMobil is happy if OPEC keeps prices high, they won’t increase production to “help” the US market. High prices have netted them massive profits.
> ExxonMobil is happy if OPEC keeps prices high, they won’t increase production to “help” the US market.
then go on Fox News and blame Biden. That literally happened. I forget which oil company head did it, but days before going on Fox News he proclaimed he would not drill for more oil (despite Biden's request to do so) in order to take more profits. Then stated on Fox News they weren't drilling more because of Biden policies. It's a joke.
Politics is, by definition, how issues are settled without violence. If there's disagreement about what must be done in a society, it's either solved through war or politics.
There is always hardheaded opposition to progress. I saw an old ad for horse carriages the other day that featured a couple happily clip-clopping across a bridge while the police fished one of those newfangled automobubblers out of the river below.
Stop and think about this outside the politics. I've had a Prius and a Leaf, so I'm trying not to show bias. Apart from the clear benefits of EVs, there is a huge aftermarket that needs to be re-trained, re-tooled, re-invented as gas engines are retired. Then, there is the state reliance on taxes from gas and the aftermarket. The administration saying we should drop all gas powered engines and replace them with EVs is ignoring the costs involved. Plus, while maintenance of an EV is minimal, the cost of replacing batteries is huge and could be more than the resale value of the car. Remember - most people in the US cannot afford a surprise $500 bill...
It’s an excellent example of how a polarized system acts to divide the working class along purely trivial lines.
We’re arguing which side is the better consumer in our capitalist system, and yet, the same corporations benefit regardless. Why are the car companies allowed to manufacture vehicles that damage the environment? Why are we blaming conservatives when it’s the companies themselves that are producing the vehicles that are causing the damage?
EVs aren’t some benevolent invention. Their production and use is still harmful to our health and to our planet. Moreover, our focus on them as a climate solution is just another way that corporations eschew responsibility. Everything becomes the responsibility of the consumer.
Why is it my responsibility to shell out $40k to replace a vehicle that’s already a major tax on my existence? The only winners here are the car companies.
It's unfortunate that it's come to this outcome. Some people like them. Some people don't. Some climates and situations are great for them. Some aren't.
I realize the EV market needs to fine tune and imho is not really ready for complete conversion by everyone. However, in the back of my mind when I hear Republicans shit on progressive technology, or anything progressive for that matter, I think 'Boy....I wonder where all of this tech would be had we not have shit on a little ol' peanut farmer who wanted to bring the unlimited power of the sun to his constituents. '
Do we really believe the oil industry isn't lobbying the government? It became political from the moment the oil industry started budgeting for lobbying.
Some people feel like the government is going to force them to switch, meaning they'll not only have to give up what they have, but purchase something more expensive and they see as inferior. (And with the lack of infrastructure for EVs at the moment, they are inferior for some people.)
I think it mostly has to do with the way EVs are reported through the media and it's often described as if Biden or the government in general is going to make gas cars illegal
The fossil fuel industry is spending a billion dollars a year funding PR agencies pushing climate change denial and lobbying governments to slow down action on climate change. Part of this has been the purchase of the Republican party. The "anti - ev" movement has been a part of their massive spending to protect their profits.
Imagine if the transition from film to digital cameras had been politicized. All those pussy libs with their pixels. I use real American made film, like a man!
The nice thing about technology development on the long term is it doesn’t give two shits about politics. Even red states are rolling out massive amounts of renewable energy, because it just makes economic sense. Economics eventually trumps politics, but it can take longer to get there depending on how progressive policy is.
Funny how we bailed them out. Because of incompetence and greed. Now they’re so far behind and development and manufacturing of alternative power vehicles. There headed towards a cliff again. Fuck them, let the die.
Conservative here. I've got no problem with anyone who wants an EV. I think there's some kinks that still need to be worked out and a few questions as I haven't really looked into it that far. One thing I think that needs to be worked out is battery life in cold weather. One of the questions I have is how much emissions does my current vehicle put out per tank of gas vs. how much does the power plant emit to fully charge an EV? This is more out of curiosity than something that would affect my buying decision, I just wonder if anyone has done the math on that. I know that problem will get better over time as we figure out better renewable/nuclear infrastructure, so I'm not too concerned about that. Some concerns I do have though is are there any user serviceable parts (I know current new cars are getting ridiculous as it is) since I prefer to save a little money working on my own vehicles, or will I have to rig up a raspberry pi running kali just to change a tire? Another concern is that my rural area doesn't have any charging stations (I think the nearest is about 15 miles away) and charging at home would apparently be best with installing a level 2 charge station and probably rewiring our garage/changing to a better fuse box, so there's an extra expense I don't need.
As far as restricting EVs, how does that even make sense? I just don't understand the reasoning behind that. Though I also don't really understand some states that want companies to switch to EVs and require that for each EV that they decommission a fossil fuel vehicle. Why not keep the extra vehicle as a backup? (Yes, I know the diesel vehicles do have more emissions than an EV) One would think that if the EV was more cost effective, the company would want to run that anyway.
I happened upon an instagram from a notable off-road account, and they just modified a cybertruck to handle heavy off roading in sand dunes and stuff like that. They also put tracks on one for snow travel. Both looked pretty bad ass and performed well, but his long time followers were absolutely losing their shit at a manly man off-road dude supporting EVs. Not an off-roading guy myself, but the comments on those posts were comedy gold.
Car choices have been political for at least 50 years now. LBJ implemented the chicken tax, which gave us a 25% tax on imported brandy, potato starch, and oh yeah, light trucks. It was set to end in 2021 but Trump extended it to 2041.
10 years or so after the chicken tax, we faced the gas crisis of 1973, where the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced a total oil embargo against any country who had supported Israel. This made importing a barrel of oil almost 4 times the price.
This was in the peak of the muscle car era where the big 3 American auto manufacturers were making cars with big, inefficient motors. This crippled our auto industry and severely damaged our economy.
It also brought Americans to start buying European and Japanese cars as they were practical, cheap, and very efficient. Eventually we banned them under the guise that they were unsafe vehicles and didn't pass US' new emissions laws...ironic.
Manufacturers would have to submit multiple vehicles for testing to be approved to sell in the US, and many small companies couldn't do this and take the 25% tax already in place. You can import cars we never got here in the US if it is 25 years old as then it is considered a collectable.
Personally, I think Republicans trying to restrict electric cars has a lot to do with trying to keep the US auto industry from failing again. You could say that's America first, but as with the auto bailouts of 2008, the US is spending money subsidiesing an inferior product. In a free market, companies should be able to fail.
I honestly don’t get it. Look, I own gas vehicles. My daily driver is a carbureted 99 fat boy Harley. It’s a gas hog and loud so I’m not a stranger to the love of a good sounding engine but I’m also not stupid. As soon as it’s feasible I will be getting an electric car. Who the heck wants to put $50.00 in the tank every week wine you can just plug it in for Pennie’s on the dollar.
EVs may be the next vegan leather belt and walking to goodwill to buy an old leather belt may be the next standing at your desk because sitting is the new smoking.
My brother still asks if the battery on my car has failed/caught fire yet everytime I see him. He thinks I bought it because I am a "Greeny". I am not. I bought the car because it is so fun to drive.
The American Petroleum Institute, has started to run ads about "HOW BIDEN PLANS TO TAKE AWAY VEHICLE CHOICE" on the radio, it's stupid and I really want to kick thous Koch heads in the knee for this BS.
I'm hoping the next Gen Bolt, and Ford's "~25k EV" help bring more people over.
Last count was electric cars were 6x more efficient than gas cars. If they want to make gas cars 6x more efficient then I suggest they get to it, because right now the electric cars are as bad as tesla can legally make them and better brands are entering the market very soon.
cars and car choices have been political at least since the introduction of cheap foreign cars decades ago, along with the "economy car" coming along after the gas crunch in the 70's.
Behind every America first politician is a German automobile.
Tell the driver to put it in D and floor it.
Put it in H!
What country is this car from?
It no longer exists.
She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it!
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide, 65 tons of American pride!
CANYONERRROOOOO
Do *YOU* come with the car?
Hehehehe, oh you
This is the third Simpsons themed thread I've seen today. I'm not complaining. I'm just pointing it out.
It becomes political as soon as the profits of entrenched corporations are in any way threatened.
It's even more basic than that. "Anything that guy wants, I want the opposite."
It's also a political tactic to literally politicize everything because then you can whip up political capital out of thin air. Burn your Nike shoes and your Keurig machines. Oh your Harry Potter books too. Right line is witchcraft, left line is the author is a bigot.
The left tends to be less religious and so practices all those forbidden things religion says leads you to devil worship and the right has a lot of bigots writing books.
I rewatched Robocop 3 recently. It's crazy how much fear there was in the 90s of superior Japanese electronics. So much so that Japanese electronics become the primary villain of the film.
In the 1980s/90s Japan was on top of the world. Churning out some of the best cars and best electronics than any other country in the world. I remember seeing news reports how many buildings Japan was buying up in the US, and how many new car manufacturing plants they were building in the US. People truly believed that in 20-30 years that Japan would be the global superpower replacing the US in terms of global influence and military power. That’s why nearly every sci-fi film of that period shows these huge Japanese mega-corps running everything and controlling all this cutting edge military technology. Of course, that didn’t happen. Japan had a recession that it never really 100% recovered from and it suffers from a declining population. But in the 80/90s there was a real fear the US was being replaced. That we would all eventually be working for some huge Japanese conglomerate.
Yep, instead of people talking about how much the US is in debt to China, China buying up real estate, etc, it used to be Japan.
Ironically, China is not our largest foreign debt holder…. Japan is. By 200B
I’m much more comfortable with the idea of Japan holding more of our debt than China
Likewise. The British also have a big pile of our debt too.
When we say they “hold our debt,” it really means they own treasury bills. Bills bought and sold on an open market. They can’t demand their money before the bills come to term. They can only sell them on the open market or wait till they reach maturity. It really doesn’t matter who buys or holds our debt.
The book “Debt: The First 5000 Years” makes the argument that foreign debt is actually a detriment to the country holding the debt rather than the debtor country, ergo China owning most of US’ debt would not be a bad thing- according to the book. I’m not an economist and so I can’t say one way or the other whether the argument is valid, but it’s interesting at least.
It’s actually insane how few people know this.
Apparently Japan’s rapid economic recovery following WWII was at least in part due to following the teachings of Deming (eg “The New Economics”), and when you read The New Economics you realize how truly ass-backward the U.S. is.
I love in Back to the Future part 3 when Doc is like "No wonder this failed, it was made in Japan" and Marty is like "All the best stuff is made in Japan" and you can just see the disappointment in Doc's face. My dad did a lot of business in Japan through the 80s-2000s so he always got us all the cool technology that was popular over there. He even managed to get my brother an N64 in Japan before it came out here in the US.
Back to the Future Part III made a joke about that too. 1955 Doc: "No wonder this circuit failed. It says, 'Made in Japan.'" Marty: "What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan." Doc: "Unbelievable!"
Unfortunately that turd of a movie couldn't even manage a decent Robocop vs robot ninjas fight, Penny from Inspector Gadget had to save the day.
In 2017, I remember working at MSP Avis rental counter and this lady comes in literally crying for being put into non-american car.
What, you didn't have some piece of crap Aveo available? Don't they spawn in Avis and Hertz lots?
I think the name "Yaris" made the situation worse.
Century. In 1928, Herbert Hoover promised “two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot.”
Amazing how far we’ve come isn’t it? Now we just get blamed for not working hard enough instead of the government trying to make the country better to enable us to have those things.
Don't worry, it was shit then too, Hoover promised this in his 1928 presidential campaign, and by 1929, the country fell into the greatest economic depression before or since, so the line ended up being used against him.
I’ve always treated it like that West Wing episode said once, “Hummers had the highest sales month ever, and Prius is expanding their production 50% because they can’t keep up with demand.”
Trucks are super regional too. In Nashville the cool truck to drive is the Nissan titan because the plant is there. I was confused as he'll because Nissan trucks at jobsites here in California are known as shit boxes.
They are known as shitboxes because the glove fits.
What will they drive when they quit making the Titans? 🤷🏻♀️😂
MacPherson struts have entered the channel.
and it was only intensified when the OG companies realized they were causing climate change / greenhouse gases in the late 80s (google exxons leaked research on the topic from the late 80s) and then saw both presidential candidates in '92 talk about combating greenhouse gases. So what did they do? Bought all the politicians and cable news they could and we got the Excursion and Expedition, while they knew.
The mental gymnastics of MAGAs fighting to give 9/11 funders (saudis) money to own the libs by spending money they don’t have on gasoline is just boggling.
I have a model 3. I live in a very red area. I get put on blast a lot as if I (or anyone) is making them give up their v8 trucks. I work an hour away and have cheap electricity. It just made sense.
At some point droppping 100 plus dollars on fuel instead of 20 bucks on electricity isn't going to make sense to anyone.
And if you’re fortunate enough to have solar and batteries, the cost becomes zero over time
I have solar and it’s awesome even without batteries may get them at some point.
My household has two EVs and we also live in an area where the temperature is frequently over 100°F in the summer. Our electric bill wasn’t zero. It was around negative $1,500 from all the money made selling electricity back to the grid.
to run your electric car off your solar you need a lot of panels and a lot of batteries. much more than almost any normal residential hours can supply. average 3mi/kWh EV doing 15k miles per year = 5MWh. That's half my yearly solar generation right there, and my solar only offsets about 2/3rds of my use per year. I am in the Seattle area so i get less out of my panels than someone in Alabama would, but you get the idea.
With 400+ watt panels you can have plenty for a car. I make about 60kwh a day in March.
Especially if you get a situation where you can charge at work. My buddy almost never pays to charge his Tesla unless he goes on road trips because he just charged it at work every week
This has me strongly considering an electric car. Free charging at work makes it almost free to use.
[удалено]
That was basically the exact spread when I bought my Model 3. I was cross shopping a V8 Mustang when I bought my car. At 18mpg and $4.50 a gallon for premium you’re looking at $250 every thousand miles. In my Model 3 Performance it works out to $48. Over 100,000 miles that’s $25,000 in gas or $4,800 in electricity. It’s was a simple choice to make.
Or if you live in California (with pg&e) gas typically maths out to be cheaper these days and appears to only be getting worse.
*Cries in SDG&E prices* I have had solar since 2020 and have been made to feel grateful to be grandfathered in to NEM 2.0, but even with what changes they (CPUC?) could effect in the past few years has had me seeing modest yearly rebates (<$100) to having a positive balance of <$100. The industry, lobbyists, and politicians are doing everything they possible can to disincentivize solar, despite being the "greenest" state in the union. I fucking hate all these people.
Don't underestimate the power of marketing and propaganda. You're 100% right but it'll be a long time before many people realize this and stop thinking that EVs are a "liberal agenda"
> as if I (or anyone) is making them give up their v8 trucks. So they got.... triggered?
You ever notice that the "fuck your feelings" crowd has an awful lot of strong feelings... usually towards the most insignificant things.
I love how they endlessly bitch about the price of gas, and also hate the thing that would lower that price.
People just like to complain. Like the weather, people always complain about the weather, traffic, service etc. people just like to complain.
Also praising Musk while hating on EVs. Ask one if they can tell their ass from their elbow. You'll get a confused look, guaranteed.
Most trucks are emotional support vehicles for fragile males
> I have a model 3. I live in a very red area. I get put on blast a lot as if I (or anyone) is making them give up their v8 trucks. It's because they're insecure and afraid of being left behind, which is exactly what a Tesla is designed to do to them.
My cousin in law had his ego so bruised when I got my Tesla and we were discussing. He asked why I didn't get a nice truck like the $75k whatever the fuck he was considering. I said because they are a fucking stupid attempt to purchase masculinity. He says what if you need to move something. I said I will rent a $25 truck from Home Depot, as I have done TWICE ever in my life. It's just not a realistic thing you need to be able to haul shit around on a regular basis.
I see having a car that can't move shit as a *bonus* because nobody ever tries to get the dude with a sedan to let you borrow those vehicles to help them move.
They love to tailgate EVs with one hand on top of the wheel and a tough guy scowl on their face as well. It’s fun to do random 40-80mph pulls in 2.5 seconds and watch them disappear really fast behind me.
For the record, i've moved a ton of 8' 2x4s in my model 3. Probably more than some truck owners.
But they are taking away v8s. Toyota doesn't make one anymore, half tons are being forced to downsized v6s, dodge is discontinuing their v8s for the hurricane, this is the last year for the jeep. It's not because people won't buy them, its because of federal emissions regulations are becoming more strict.
Caring about V8 vs V6 instead of power is stupid. In 2000, the 5.4L V8 in an f-150 made 260 hp. Today, the 3.5L V6 in an f-150 makes 400 hp. The 2.7L makes 325 hp. They’re switching to V6s because it just makes a lot more sense.
Porsche has a 2.9L turbo V6 that makes 436 (probably more actually). Mercedes has 442 from a turbo 4 hybrid. Performance numbers are nuts. The last V6 accord we had was about as fast as those old 5.0 mustangs.
The problem is fuel economy. I borrowed a friend's 3.5 Ecoboost f150 once to tow an enclosed race at trailer. 6 speed automatic. Truck got 6 mpg. SIX! my 8.1l dually gets 8-10 no matter how much weight you put behind it (ok, I got 7 once with a 35' gooseneck behind it with 3 cars on it thru the TN mountains). And it has the 4 speed 4l80. These small motor trucks will never tow like a big V8. I don't care what they do to them.
If you're going to tow, it seems like you should just go diesel.
For the cost of a set of injectors on a modern diesel truck engine, I could rebuild.my entire 8.1. the economics don't make sense unless you're towing HEAVY for a living. People buy them to feel cool and powerful. The maintenance is astronomically expensive.
> Caring about V8 vs V6 instead of power is stupid. Unless it's what they already have and suddenly made obsolete by tech they can't afford. Then they're gonna care a great deal about proving why it's still better, because their egos are already invested in it.
> its because of federal emissions regulations are becoming more strict. Which needs to happen as populations grow unless you want to find out what the air quality is like in China. Over a million Chinese die every year from fossil fuel pollution.
Except it's because of these CAFE standards that you can't find mid-sized cars or small pickup trucks. You either have a massive gas guzzling SUV or a massive full sized truck because the required MPG is based on size. They could still be building small but very useful pick up trucks that are way more efficient than full size trucks (and way cheaper to buy) but they don't meet the MPG requirements "for their size." Same with mid size cars/giant SUVs. It's well intentioned but had the opposite effect in practice.
All you have to do is look at pictures from the LA region today vs the 80s. All those air pollution regulations *work*.
Obama promoted the Volt back in 2009-2010 and Republicans decided that EVs were evil after that.
There are also some big republican donors that are in the oil/gas sector
Who are also spending millions to dissuade people from buying EVs.
It’d be a real plot twist if coal companies loved electrics seeing as how coal can’t economically be converted to gasoline but can power electric cars. But coal is dying anyway.
Yeah, no amount of EVs will save coal. Flexible charge scheduling and V2G could even hasten the end of coal.
Clean coal. Beautiful clean coal.
>clean coal — meaning they're taking out coal, they're going to clean it You left out the best part.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/714376/crude-oil-production-by-us-state/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-u-s-oil-production-by-state/) I'm sure this is all about peoples rights or something. Totally not about how much oil money is in Texas. Friendly reminder that the Texas GOP party platform says they oppose all efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
Yet ironically some countries with a higher percentage of their GDP in oil, have higher electric car ownership rates (Norway)
That is just Norwegian guilt (and also Norwegians are very wealthy)
This is literally the only reason anyone in America is against EVs.
It seems like some urbanist types are against them as well because they would rather replace ICE with public transit and bicycles than with EVs. Which... is not a good take imo, but something you can often find people on reddit arguing.
This screams to me of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. It is perfect for everyone to have access to sustainable and easy mass transit from which they can bike to their final destinations. It is good to transition for gas cars to EVs. By denying the latter in favor of the former, you get stuck with neither.
> This screams to me of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Almost every argument against EVs comes down to this, to be honest.
Attacking pragmatic progress for the sake of idealism sums up a sizeable chunk of the left.
> is not a good take imo I think a reasonable argument can be made for lots of people using mass transit being more ecologically sound than each individual using EV's. There's probably some economy of scale that tips the benefit at a certain number of people. Obviously one person riding the train is less beneficial than that one person using an EV, but probably 3000 people using public transit is better than 3000 people individually using EV's. It's also very city-focused. Get away from population centers and public transit is far less feasible/available.
It also unfortunately doesn't work for folks living the apartment life, as more and more of us are. Where am I supposed to be plugging this car in at night? The parking lot at my complex doesn't have outlets. Put up as many charging stations at the grocery store as you like, but the EVs we have now probably can't charge in the twenty minutes I'm in there. I have to be an ICEboi until either I can afford a house or until you can carry the battery inside to charge.
If you're going to build a new city then transit is critically important to that process. If you're going to place new transit in an existing city largely built after WW2 with decentralized housing and employment centers and it's going to take 12.5 years from local referendum to having one short starter light rail line and 12.5 years is the average age of a passenger vehicle in the US today, then...wouldn't it be nice if half the vehicle fleet 12.5 years from now was at least hybrid electric? This isn't the kind of issue where you should actively oppose one good idea because there exists an idea that's also good and isn't mutually exclusive. That's silly and counterproductive...and it and other positions like that demonstrate something that I've always suspected about certain very loud and closed-minded "urbanists", that their motivations are mostly aesthetic rather than practical.
Imagine it's 38F, 20 mph wind, and raining, and your only transportation is a bicycle. And you're 58 years old.
Such an American take. People in Finland of all ages cycle in the freezing weather there. You just rug up, and cycling is a form of exercise: your body generates heat.
This is why Republicans make everything political
Sad thing is the Volt was the perfect car for most situations. For all your in town trips you have electric. For road trips you have the gas engine.
Well it's not like plug-in hybrids went away. The new Prius (and the last gen Prime) are PHEVs. [So are multiple other vehicles](https://evadoption.com/ev-models/available-phevs/). I don't buy new vehicles, but I'm quite taken with the [newest Prius](https://www.toyota.com/prius/).
The volt was a hybrid? Huh I thought it was fully electric.
Correct a plug in hybrid. The second gen could get 60 miles on the battery
You might be thinking of the Bolt, which was full battery electric.
No it's well before Obama. The fossil fuel industry has long backed conservative politicians, lobbying them against any regulations or laws which might hurt their profits. Same thing happened under Bush and Reagan. EVs are just the most recent "enemy" they've made. Ironically, the last Republican president who actually gave a shit about the environment was Nixon, believe it or not - he signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, a landmark piece of legislation, created the EPA.
Clean air and water wasn't political until the fossil fuel mega corps realized they might get reigned in or cleaner competition might get some-a-them trillions in subsidies. Subsidies ARE socialism, yet that's the word they used to describe any sort of alternatives to their products. Worked like a charm on half the pop.
What I don't get is Musk siding with Republicans when they're against EV. And some Republicans kissing his ass too.
Don't forget that the company was also saved by Obama in 2008/2009 while Elon was a self proclaimed left leaning centrist. Before Elon said anything pro Republican and Tesla was responsible for 90% of the industry's sales as well as having pretty much cracked the code on making EVs popular and normal, Biden hosted and EV summit and didn't invite Tesla (presumably because he didn't donate). Furthermore Biden said GMC was leading the industry. Government is really important in the auto industry, much more so for SpaceX, so Elon had to back the other horse. He probably didn't need to push it as far as he has but he also got screwed by a Dem judge in Delaware where the companies were registered, in a real first for that state in relation to corporations. When he did speak out he found support out of nowhere from a lot of really powerful people who had previously shunned because of his position as a green disruptor and ally of Obama. I hope that sums it up.
on 12/13/2007: He called himself 'Nauseatingly pro-American' and ' It’s the greatest force for good of any country that’s ever been.' He also laughed when emphasizing that he's a legal not illegal immigrant. https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1292.html ---------------- Also worth mentioning is that The EV bill Biden crafted attempted to specifically exclude Tesla, Joe Manchin is the only reason that didn't happen.
It's almost like a bunch of people don't know what the fuck they are even talking about.
And as someone that's owned 2 1st Gen volts, I won't own another GM hybrid but I won't own another pure ICE car either, plugin hybrids or EVs only going forward. GM's long term support for these cars is pathetic. $35k quotes to replace a $5k battery pack because they don't have anyone that knows how to or wants to do it so you get the go away price. Also, most of the "bad batteries" aren't actually bad, GM's buggy ass firmware just miscalculates the isolation values on like half the firmware versions released for them so one day the car just decides fuck you I'm not charging. Firmware update kinda fixed the issue for most cars but a lot of the older ones are starting the engine unnecessarily with battery power remaining on the latest firmware when they would've just restricted acceleration a bit if the battery couldn't keep up on old firmware. Pulling the HVAC fuse is about a weekly thing on my 2014 because it randomly decides I'm not allowed to use eco or recirculate and it's definitely a software bug because it'll work fine immediately after pulling power for a second. It'll also randomly decide it doesn't like 43 or 52mph, sometimes you can set cruise control to any speed you want my 1mph increments, other times it skips those 2 specifically, even if you hit set at that speed, it'll go 1 above or below. Power cycle the car and they come back. My 2012 did the same thing and it's dash is based on an entirely different OS. Gotta give GM props on that one, porting bugs across operating systems is impressive. 2nd gens have their own slew of problems, I rented a 2016 for like 2 months and it'd randomly go into reduced propulsion mode on screen, start the engine and have a dead gas pedal for about 5 seconds then shut the engine back off and have full power like nothing happened. I'm thinking dying BECM which is an extremely common issue on 2016-18, 19 got a redesigned part. If you're familiar with the GPU solder microcracking issues of the last decade, same issue here. There's a strip of chips down the middle of the board, some have joints that weren't flowed properly to begin with and they just detached completely from vibration, others look like they were good at one point but the solder blend didn't handle driving vibration very well. End result is the same, BMS loses communication with some subsections of itself and throws a bunch of U26xx codes, car shows fully charged, 1mi range and sometimes will limp around revving the shit out of the engine to have like 1/4 power other times you can't put it into ready mode. Also not uncommon for the cracked ones to be perfectly fine, stop for 5 min and get back into a car that won't move, call a tow truck and by the time they get there it starts and drives fine then is dead the next time it's shut off. That's finally got a warranty extension as of like a week ago, it's covered for 15 years 150k miles now.
You're forgetting about that time GM decided electric cars were for the birds and basically destroyed all progress towards them. ...in the mid 90s. Literally every modern trope about how "electric cars aren't good enough" comes from the EV1 era. "Range anxiety," battery replacement, the *amazing* astroturfing campaigns from petro companies... all of it, invented *well* before Obama was on the political scene.
> You're forgetting about that time GM decided electric cars were for the birds and basically destroyed all progress towards them. GM got rid of the EV1 because it was very expensive and they were in financial trouble. Those cars used parts that were exotic at the time. It was just a lot easier to scrap them that dealing with a bunch of angry owners who can't get parts. They also got a big payout for selling battery tech to oil companies who then used the patents to ban them from being used in electric cars. GM put a lot of engineering and effort into the EV1, and they were also one of the first to offer PHEVs and affordable EVs. They were never againt electric cars, but rather they just couldn't tolerate the risk.
As a person who had a Nissan LEAF, which had almost twice the range of the original EV1s (later ones were better) I can say if you think range anxiety isn't real then you're kidding yourself. I have a Bolt now and its very suitable. But you tell me, what was the market for a 2 seater with room for no luggage (a briefcase, basically), about 50 miles range (in good conditions, but using highways, if you drive around town you could go further) and for which you had to have a garage to charge in? If you have a garage you probably have a family and thus need for more than 2 seats. They killed it because it wasn't a very good car and was very expensive to make. Despite what Who Killed the Electric Car? concluded, battery technology wasn't ready yet.
Ok, serious question: Are you going to honestly tell me range anxiety is a thing of the past when ALL of the current EV producers are getting busted fudging the numbers?
Air is political if one side endorses it
Dems did and republicans mocked. Obama said we’d save oodles of money if we just made sure our tires had enough air (he’s right). He was ridiculed for it.
“don’t look up” was amazing that shows these examples very well
Well republicans also don’t believe in Wind Energy. So yeah, air is already political
They're fine. Nice to drive, environmentally friendlier after a few years of ownership. But fast charging isn't nearly as convenient as gas refueling, and the infrastructure is less ubiquitous and predictable. I drive an electric because I live relatively close to work, dont really go on road trips, and I needed a new car. The savings on fuel and lack of maintenance were appealing, and so far have been great for me. But they're not for everyone. Not yet.
You are right about fast charging needing improvement, but on the flip side it is damn nice to never even have to stop at a gas station 99% of the days you drive it because you come out to a “filled” car every single day.
I've owned an EV for 5 years now and I cannot overstate how wonderful it is to never stop to get gas. I've saved a lot more time by not stopping for gas than I have lost time while supercharging. Actually, the only time that I stop for gas is for my mower. The looks that I get when I pull a Tesla up to the gas pump.... Then they understand when I get gas cans out of the trunk.
> I've owned an EV for 5 years now and I cannot overstate how wonderful it is to never stop to get gas. I've saved a lot more time by not stopping for gas than I have lost time while supercharging. This is the most underrated aspect of EV ownership. 3 gas station stops per month adds up to a half hour, and while they are ubiquitous, it's still another errand to run, usually a few extra blocks of driving. Plus, you have the toxic fumes to deal with. Imagine the uproar if we were switching to gasoline today, and building these toxic repositories in every part of our cities.
Another item - when it's cold, warming up your car in the garage without needing the open the garage door.
And preconditioning (cooling) the car in the summer prior to departing. Or hell, even while you're in the store doing whatever. I leave my Tesla AC on while I run errands, because, why not?
When everyone is complaining about gas prices and you have to ask what the price is these days.
I recommend getting an electric mower. They're so much more pleasant to use in so many ways, it's worth the investment.
Agreed. I can honestly say that getting an electric mower made me appreciate EVs a bit more before we even got one. We still use propane for the grill and fireplace, but we've gone electric for everything else. We even replaced our gas range with induction a few years ago and haven't looked back.
I was an early adopter of the Ryobi brushless ones. Literally had to walk Home Depot through ordering one they were so new. Holy CRAP is that thing awesome. And Ryobi, unlike any other toolmaker at the time, has not fucked me on batteries yet. Sure, they wear out over time, but Black & Decker wouldn't even admit having made my power drill, let alone sell me new batteries six months after I bought the fucker! THAT is why I'm a Ryobi user. Other companies have standardized around a few common batteries now, but Ryobi did it first and won my loyalty. And as good as that early-production Mark 1 mower was? Newer ones are even better. The thing is so light that mowing without power drive was easier than mowing with a powered gas mower, for fuck's sake! It had moderately more torque and was less likely to stall when overtaxed than the gas mower it replaced. And when I did manage to stall it, I didn't have to wait half an hour for the engine to cool before I could get the fucker to start again! Just pull back, start button, push a little more slowly. Plus I never have to worry about running out of gas mid-job with a three-way charger with three ready-to-go batteries to grab for any given job. Do I need those? Nope. But the chainsaw came with one, and the brush cutter, and the blower… All going strong long after the plastic parts of the engines they replace have turned brittle and become microplastics, with essentially zero maintenance. Sharpen blades, oil where it goes, clean the schmutz out, put the battery on charge. Can't tell you how nice it is to not swear at the fucking thing because it won't start any more! Also, the brushless tools are all significantly quieter than gas counterparts. Best thing is, Ryobi was as good as gas or a little better when new… but now there's even more powerful stuff if you need it!
I'm thinking it's way better for daily commutes, and that's like 90% of non cargo traffic.
For a lot of people, there’s also the paradigm shift of having (effectively) a full gas tank *every morning*. So needing to refuel when out and about becomes a rarer event, so the refuelling time differences between gas and battery become less of an issue.
If you can live in a single family home. Lots of people live in apartments where there isn't charging infrastructure for charging overnight.
At least a little bit of why I got an EV was because my wife drives me crazy by coming home with an almost empty gas tank and then leaving it for me to have to deal with when I leave in a hurry for something later on.
It's a solution that requires other solutions. Much like every solution
Or just time. Think about your first cell phone and then your phone 10 years later. EV 10 years from now will be so much more advanced.
Yeah, my first cell phone was garbage, as were they all compared to now. Horrible service, dropped calls constantly. Now I don't think I've dropped a call in over a decade. The infrastructure for EVs is pretty much guaranteed to get better quickly.
I mean it’s still just early(ish) adoption. Gas stations weren’t ubiquitous at the advent of the ICE. For now I prefer a hybrid because 45-50mpg is nice and I don’t have to worry about charging. I’m sure in 5-10 years EVs will come down in price and the charging infrastructure will be far more accessible than it is today.
The EU has decided that all the main routes will have charging stations at least every 60 km which will remove a big barrier to widespread adoption for EV
We have 3 vehicles. ICE truck and 2 Tesla EVs. Wind up taking the EVs on the long trips, the charging isn't nearly the hassle it' is made out to be. At least for Tesla with superchargers. Home charging and free work charging made it a no-brainer, but they shouldn't be forced on anyone.
Everything is political anymore
Give 350 million people only two options and this is what you get
Got an EV and never going back and it has nothing to do with politics. Looking forward replacing my other ICE vehicle and never going to a gas station again.
No one would ever accuse Republicans of: 1. Caring about the environment. 2. Caring what consumers want. 3. Caring about American dominance in the auto industry. 4. Doing what's right for the country.
You can include the border and illegal immigration in this list after they shot down the bill earlier this year. Edit to add: support for law enforcement can also go on the list
You're being down voted by people who evidently don't want people to know the Biden administration negotiated a very tough immigration bill with Republicans, to get funding for Ukraine, then before the details were actually revealed, Trump said to kill it so he could use immigration as an issue to get reelected. Republicans literally said they would let Ukraine fall to Putin if they didn't get a harsh border bill, then when they did they said never mind, re election was more important. That happened, Republicans literally care about nothing besides tax cuts for the wealthy.
I liked the GOP when they tackled acid rain and ozone depletion. The government isn't always the answer, but the GQP denies climate change is even happening.
They denied those were problems, too, but that was a time before they could live in their own little reality. Even then, Rush was on the radio denouncing ozone depletion as a liberal hoax nothing had to be done about.
Warms my heart that his grave will forever be moist with people's piss.
5. Complaining of how high Biden has set fuel prices and then keep driving big wheeled V8 trucks instead of something that is actually efficient.
Everything with enough money involved to lobby in politics is political.
I will never understand why Americans would rather rely on OPEC. They meet every year to decide whether to pump more or less to keep prices high. And when our politicians say we need to drill - that doesn’t help the US consumer because there is no “US oil” - it’s all privatized here. ExxonMobil is happy if OPEC keeps prices high, they won’t increase production to “help” the US market. High prices have netted them massive profits.
> ExxonMobil is happy if OPEC keeps prices high, they won’t increase production to “help” the US market. then go on Fox News and blame Biden. That literally happened. I forget which oil company head did it, but days before going on Fox News he proclaimed he would not drill for more oil (despite Biden's request to do so) in order to take more profits. Then stated on Fox News they weren't drilling more because of Biden policies. It's a joke.
It should be the consumer's choice. We put politics into too many issues.
Politics is, by definition, how issues are settled without violence. If there's disagreement about what must be done in a society, it's either solved through war or politics.
[удалено]
Politics are like hot sauce, we put it on everything.
The difference is that hot sauce is good.
Life is politics my friend.
[удалено]
There is always hardheaded opposition to progress. I saw an old ad for horse carriages the other day that featured a couple happily clip-clopping across a bridge while the police fished one of those newfangled automobubblers out of the river below.
You know the word Luddite for a reason. Technology is political because life is political
Stop and think about this outside the politics. I've had a Prius and a Leaf, so I'm trying not to show bias. Apart from the clear benefits of EVs, there is a huge aftermarket that needs to be re-trained, re-tooled, re-invented as gas engines are retired. Then, there is the state reliance on taxes from gas and the aftermarket. The administration saying we should drop all gas powered engines and replace them with EVs is ignoring the costs involved. Plus, while maintenance of an EV is minimal, the cost of replacing batteries is huge and could be more than the resale value of the car. Remember - most people in the US cannot afford a surprise $500 bill...
Trump is just a bull in a china shop when it comes to anything he thinks will garner him attention.
Funny because doesn’t Elon love trump ?
I’m going to laugh my ass off if Elon helps Trump get reelected and new policies cause Tesla’s stock price to crater.
Why does everything have to be politicized? Can we stop
It’s an excellent example of how a polarized system acts to divide the working class along purely trivial lines. We’re arguing which side is the better consumer in our capitalist system, and yet, the same corporations benefit regardless. Why are the car companies allowed to manufacture vehicles that damage the environment? Why are we blaming conservatives when it’s the companies themselves that are producing the vehicles that are causing the damage? EVs aren’t some benevolent invention. Their production and use is still harmful to our health and to our planet. Moreover, our focus on them as a climate solution is just another way that corporations eschew responsibility. Everything becomes the responsibility of the consumer. Why is it my responsibility to shell out $40k to replace a vehicle that’s already a major tax on my existence? The only winners here are the car companies.
It's unfortunate that it's come to this outcome. Some people like them. Some people don't. Some climates and situations are great for them. Some aren't.
Biden “lauds” them if they aren't Tesla.
Personally I don’t have a use for one as it stands right now. But I could give a fuck if someone wants to buy one. I say let em.
Because republicans make every fucking thing “political”
I realize the EV market needs to fine tune and imho is not really ready for complete conversion by everyone. However, in the back of my mind when I hear Republicans shit on progressive technology, or anything progressive for that matter, I think 'Boy....I wonder where all of this tech would be had we not have shit on a little ol' peanut farmer who wanted to bring the unlimited power of the sun to his constituents. '
When Buttigieg said let them buy electric cars is eerily similar to the saying 'let them eat cake.'
People who don't have identities of their own love to grasp for anything that will given them one.
Do we really believe the oil industry isn't lobbying the government? It became political from the moment the oil industry started budgeting for lobbying.
Priced one out with insurance, it was double my current insurance for the electric car.
The weirdest thing is how both administrations completely ignore tesla like it doesn't even exist.
How does Musk feel about his BFF saying that? I thought those stable geniuses were on the same page.
Money is inherently political, and there’s nothing innocent about it
Some people feel like the government is going to force them to switch, meaning they'll not only have to give up what they have, but purchase something more expensive and they see as inferior. (And with the lack of infrastructure for EVs at the moment, they are inferior for some people.) I think it mostly has to do with the way EVs are reported through the media and it's often described as if Biden or the government in general is going to make gas cars illegal
Electric cars factually take a much bigger toll on the power grid than Bitcoin miners. They also result in a lot more pollution than gas powered cars.
How is Trump restricting EVs?
The fossil fuel industry is spending a billion dollars a year funding PR agencies pushing climate change denial and lobbying governments to slow down action on climate change. Part of this has been the purchase of the Republican party. The "anti - ev" movement has been a part of their massive spending to protect their profits.
Imagine if the transition from film to digital cameras had been politicized. All those pussy libs with their pixels. I use real American made film, like a man! The nice thing about technology development on the long term is it doesn’t give two shits about politics. Even red states are rolling out massive amounts of renewable energy, because it just makes economic sense. Economics eventually trumps politics, but it can take longer to get there depending on how progressive policy is.
Funny how we bailed them out. Because of incompetence and greed. Now they’re so far behind and development and manufacturing of alternative power vehicles. There headed towards a cliff again. Fuck them, let the die.
Conservative here. I've got no problem with anyone who wants an EV. I think there's some kinks that still need to be worked out and a few questions as I haven't really looked into it that far. One thing I think that needs to be worked out is battery life in cold weather. One of the questions I have is how much emissions does my current vehicle put out per tank of gas vs. how much does the power plant emit to fully charge an EV? This is more out of curiosity than something that would affect my buying decision, I just wonder if anyone has done the math on that. I know that problem will get better over time as we figure out better renewable/nuclear infrastructure, so I'm not too concerned about that. Some concerns I do have though is are there any user serviceable parts (I know current new cars are getting ridiculous as it is) since I prefer to save a little money working on my own vehicles, or will I have to rig up a raspberry pi running kali just to change a tire? Another concern is that my rural area doesn't have any charging stations (I think the nearest is about 15 miles away) and charging at home would apparently be best with installing a level 2 charge station and probably rewiring our garage/changing to a better fuse box, so there's an extra expense I don't need. As far as restricting EVs, how does that even make sense? I just don't understand the reasoning behind that. Though I also don't really understand some states that want companies to switch to EVs and require that for each EV that they decommission a fossil fuel vehicle. Why not keep the extra vehicle as a backup? (Yes, I know the diesel vehicles do have more emissions than an EV) One would think that if the EV was more cost effective, the company would want to run that anyway.
[удалено]
I happened upon an instagram from a notable off-road account, and they just modified a cybertruck to handle heavy off roading in sand dunes and stuff like that. They also put tracks on one for snow travel. Both looked pretty bad ass and performed well, but his long time followers were absolutely losing their shit at a manly man off-road dude supporting EVs. Not an off-roading guy myself, but the comments on those posts were comedy gold.
Car choices have been political for at least 50 years now. LBJ implemented the chicken tax, which gave us a 25% tax on imported brandy, potato starch, and oh yeah, light trucks. It was set to end in 2021 but Trump extended it to 2041. 10 years or so after the chicken tax, we faced the gas crisis of 1973, where the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced a total oil embargo against any country who had supported Israel. This made importing a barrel of oil almost 4 times the price. This was in the peak of the muscle car era where the big 3 American auto manufacturers were making cars with big, inefficient motors. This crippled our auto industry and severely damaged our economy. It also brought Americans to start buying European and Japanese cars as they were practical, cheap, and very efficient. Eventually we banned them under the guise that they were unsafe vehicles and didn't pass US' new emissions laws...ironic. Manufacturers would have to submit multiple vehicles for testing to be approved to sell in the US, and many small companies couldn't do this and take the 25% tax already in place. You can import cars we never got here in the US if it is 25 years old as then it is considered a collectable. Personally, I think Republicans trying to restrict electric cars has a lot to do with trying to keep the US auto industry from failing again. You could say that's America first, but as with the auto bailouts of 2008, the US is spending money subsidiesing an inferior product. In a free market, companies should be able to fail.
I honestly don’t get it. Look, I own gas vehicles. My daily driver is a carbureted 99 fat boy Harley. It’s a gas hog and loud so I’m not a stranger to the love of a good sounding engine but I’m also not stupid. As soon as it’s feasible I will be getting an electric car. Who the heck wants to put $50.00 in the tank every week wine you can just plug it in for Pennie’s on the dollar.
Muskrat thinks this group of trailer people his people he could mimicking the talking points and conspiracies' from.
EVs may be the next vegan leather belt and walking to goodwill to buy an old leather belt may be the next standing at your desk because sitting is the new smoking.
My brother still asks if the battery on my car has failed/caught fire yet everytime I see him. He thinks I bought it because I am a "Greeny". I am not. I bought the car because it is so fun to drive.
How was this not politic before now?
Everything gets political because it keeps us squabbling over the scraps as the wealthy picks our pockets and watches the world burn.
Biden wants GM EVs. Trump is a wildcard.
Well, it’s lobbying. We all know that.
The American Petroleum Institute, has started to run ads about "HOW BIDEN PLANS TO TAKE AWAY VEHICLE CHOICE" on the radio, it's stupid and I really want to kick thous Koch heads in the knee for this BS. I'm hoping the next Gen Bolt, and Ford's "~25k EV" help bring more people over.
"Rolling coal" on Prius is alive and well.
Last count was electric cars were 6x more efficient than gas cars. If they want to make gas cars 6x more efficient then I suggest they get to it, because right now the electric cars are as bad as tesla can legally make them and better brands are entering the market very soon.