The current flash trend to love electric cars is very close to the unfortunate trend of catching COVID-19. Will they both fizz out soon? If so, I’d rather the virus lose the race. Electric cars will eat themselves with time. Although they make a lot of sense they are still a bit too far ahead of their time. The ability to generate power is far behind the world’s capacity to make electric cars. Most likely we will see millions of EV’s sitting in garages waiting for the grid to catch up.
We have actually seen electric cars in the US since 1954. They cruise the golf courses and senior communities daily. They began life as electric and now most are gas powered. These handy little autos are populous as all hell in places like Arizona and some cities in California. By now the boom has extended to Nevada and Utah as well.
Last week I saw a story from California that electric car owners should charge their cars at specified times of the day to keep from over loading the grid during the peak load times of day. There is no doubt in my mind that the capitalist system will address the need for more power as it occurs. The cost of expanding power plants to get the energy cars will need to run them will most likely be hydro-carbon in nature. The bottom line is that the carbon load we save by going to electric vehicles will be exchanged with coal or natural gas. Both of these sources are readily available in abundance whereas the green alternative of solar and wind are only figments of the imagination. By law California must provide ten percent of its power from wind and solar. During my last trip to the sunny state I saw way too many wind mills blocking my view of the natural landscape. To get from ten to twenty percent they will have to double the number of windmills and that will ruin the scenery every where. Most likely they will legislate that all home owners will have to use solar and windmills to power their homes. A later Tesla model will feature a solar arrayed body with a huge fan atop the roof.
The automotive world is rushing toward electric car production once again, this time by converting their entire line of vehicles to electric within five years. The only gas cars available will be used. It seems they didn’t learn from their escapades in 2008 when Obama talked them into having electric cars. They all had at least one electric model available. By 2019 all of the companies who had offered the electrics quit making them, the demand was not there, how many Chevy Volts have you seen on the road?
Then comes Elon Musk with the Tesla car. Since he introduced his car he has become a billionaire. I see more and more Tesla’s on the interstate roads everyday doing sixty and higher. Each time I wonder if I will pass them alongside the road with their batteries smoking and out of energy. No such luck, I have not seen one broken down yet. That doesn’t mean they don’t break down, it just means I haven’t seen any. Last week I read an article about a Finnish Tesla owner who was told his car needed a new battery. The replacement cost was $22,000. He chose to blow the car up rather buy a new battery. He obviously was not a satisfied owner.
One of my posts was written about electric cars of old. It dealt with battery problems of the early nineteen hundreds. At the time, I was not aware of the battery developments that have allowed Tesla to succeed. I concede that I was wrong about batteries not being capable, but I am still right that they will never be able to replace the convenience of adding gas to a car. Eventually, batteries will succeed and we need this current experiment with electrics to take us another baby step closer to a complete turnover. When I begin to see electric ports at gasoline stations ready to recharge electrics I will begin to believe the era of electrics is here. Right now all I see is the under used electric power charging station in the parking lot near the restaurant district of Frankfort. This power station is six feet away from another station used for airing up bicycle tires. The airing station is used 100 times more than the electric power charger.
Filed under: Conservative, family, politics, Technology | Tagged: battery life, COVID, Electric Cars |
Imagine what would happen to all the cars and their occupants in the recent Virginia snow disaster if they were electric. How could they get charged ?
You make a great point. I never thought of that type of disaster on the road.
Often the day’s fashion does not take into account the hidden cost, like you have neatly articulated by describing the windmills in California. There is always a down side. Electric cars, I believe, do not reduce emissions. The emissions will be in a less populated area where the coal is being burned to produce power for these cars.
You are absolutely correct. I love birds, but the idea of giant bird swatters batting them out of flight disturbs me.