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I decided a few years ago that I was sick of standing in the snow at a gas station waiting for the person inside the building to finish selling that lottery ticket and turn the pump on so I can stand there some more babysitting it while it fills up and I freeze. The answer, of course, was to buy a car that didn't need gasoline, one I could plug into the house and go inside where it's warm.
I'm not a rich man, I'm a pensioner who is still paying a mortgage, so I looked for an affordable EV. Used ones are almost nonexistent, and I found out why when I finally bought one: it has a ten year warranty. They haven't been making them much longer than that.
I swore off new cars decades ago when my month old VW stranded me ninety miles from home with a bad alternator, but if you want an EV, new is your only choice. I kept seeing the Chevy Bolt advertised, but could never find one for sale at all. Then I found that they had stopped making them two years earlier.
Why? Well, battery problems, they claimed. Why just the not so expensive one, $30,000? GM is still selling electric Cadillacs and Corvettes, why no cheap cars?
I discovered after buying an EV that the only two advantages of a piston car to an electric one are the lack of infrastructure for long trips, and the high purchase price of the vehicle. Why high? Because only their flagship autos have electric motors, the ones that formerly had V8s.
My car cost $40,000. It's absolutely the nicest, roomiest (except for the minivans) car I ever owned. My Dad had a Checker when I was about ten, they no longer make them. They were designed for taxicabs and I've never seen more back seat leg room than in one. My new Hyundai has more leg room except Dad's Checker than any other car I've ever seen, and although the '74 LeMans was a much bigger car, my new EV is much roomier. It's a lot roomier than the '02 Concorde that was the same size as my new car on the outside. Why aren't the auto companies advertising how roomy EVs are? I never realized how much space engines, transmissions, and gas tanks take up.
I started trying to buy one when I realized that you don't have to babysit them when you're charging. I didn't want to stand there in the snow filling a gas tank, but judging from most Facebook comments I've seen, I must be the only one who realized that. People seem to think you have to stand there when they charge. Why aren't they advertising this benefit?
Why aren't they telling you that your car can now heat your garage, unlike a piston car? Why aren't they advertising the fact that rather than the heat coming on when you get to where you're going, you have heat before you're out of the driveway?
Why aren't they telling you how well EVs handle, thanks to its crazy low center of gravity? Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?
Why aren't they advertising the fact that electricity is five times cheaper than gasoline and diesel? The only way I found out was by buying one.
Why aren't they advertising all the advantages of EVs?
Why are only the top of the line autos like the Mustang or Cadillac EVs? That's an easy question to answer. The automakers are under laws from our and other governments that their fuel mileage average of all the vehicles they sell has to be under a certain number. The easiest way to do that is to make the expensive cars, the ones with big V-8s, electric. When your fastest car doesn't use traditional fuel...
But this, of course, begs a second question: why only the expensive ones? Because they don't want to make electric cars at all. The obvious reason is that they hate EVs. But why do they hate them and love the incredibly inefficient (my car will go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline), obsolete Rube Goldberg device with thousands of moving parts to wear and break?
EVs threaten their business model. The businesses are set up so that GM makes almost as much profit from aftermarket parts, like spark plugs, belts, hoses, pumps, and so forth as they do on the cars themselves.
Gasoline and diesel vehicles all need periodic maintenance. They're needy things, expensive to maintain, and the car company gets a cut of every repair of every car they sell. The drive train is a Rube Goldberg mess with thousands of moving, interlocking parts, any one of which fails can cripple the vehicle. A bad fuel pump stranded me in the bad part of town last year, and the repair was nearly $900 not counting the towing charge. The repair shop got half, Pontiac and other companies got the rest.
My new car doesn't have a fuel pump. Or spark plugs, or belts, or fuel injectors, or any of the other moving parts all the other cars I've owned since 1968 had and needed replacing. The motor's shaft IS its drive train! When was the last time your ceiling fan needed servicing?
More than likely that new 1976 Vega that cost $3,000 garnered more than that for GM in aftermarket parts. There may still be some on the road still earning money for GM. An EV has few aftermarket parts; tires, brake pads, windshield wiper blades are all I can think of. Hyundai won't make any more money from my new EV like they would if it had a big six cylinder piston engine.
Which is a shame, because electric motors are all far, far superior to piston engines and transmissions in every way. But the nearly zero cost of maintenance is why the thieving billionaire car companies don't want to sell affordable EVs. In fact, they want to sell as few EVs as possible. If it wasn't for fuel mileage restrictions, Tesla and the Chinese would likely be the only electric cars you could buy.
But isn't this just a conspiracy theory? No, there was never a conspiracy, nothing needed to be said. Those people aren't moral, but they're not stupid, either. Ford and Chevy aren't making cars for a hobby, nor are they charitable organizations. All they care about is profit, and EVs threaten their gravy train.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:27PM (11 children)
I mean, there's already social stratification in transport. Currently, there are approximately 3 tiers:
Bottom: Can't afford to own a car or can't drive (e.g. has a seizure disorder, or under 16). Gets around mostly on foot, on bikes, or on public transit, with the occasional ride share. Because of the way public transit systems are designed and managed, it is likely that there are places this person can't reasonably get to, at all, and other places where they can only get there at particular times of day.
As an example of a location that they often try to avoid making it possible to get to: Convention centers. By avoiding any public transit to that facility, they keep the poors out, you see. Ditto for certain neighborhoods or entire municipalities trying to keep their area "nice" by keeping the undesirables out.
As an example of a location where you can only get to it at certain times of day: Malls. They'll have 2-3 buses a day to get the workers there, but because of the length of time between each bus showing up it's not a viable option for most shoppers. Again, to keep the poors out unless they're there to do the often-low-paid often-menial jobs available at the mall.
This is more manageable in countries that didn't tear up most of their public transit infrastructure in the 20th century, like Japan and the UK.
Middle: Has a car to get around. Can get pretty much anywhere locally, with the occasional road trip further away. May decide to use intercity bus, rail, or commercial plane to go longer distances, and will probably rely on either a rental car or a friend or ride share once they get to that other city.
American cities are largely built to accommodate these people, so this isn't too terribly bad, but does have problems. For starters, there's the problem of where to put the car when it's not going anywhere - street parking has capacity problems, parking lots are ugly, parking garages are ugly and inconvenient. And then there's the twice-daily ritual of rush hour, where there's dice roles involved about (a) whether you get where you're going at all, and (b) how long it takes for you to get there. Yes, there are things you can do to change your odds, but ultimately there's always a luck element.
Top: Has access to a private jet, and may also use helicopters to get them around major cities. Sometimes has to slum it on the roads in a car or limo, although typically somebody else will be doing the driving for them while they lounge around in the back.
It's worth noting that despite being largely insulated from any of the problems we have with transit, these people are the ones that keep on proposing solutions to fix our transit problems once and for all. I for one don't think they should be listened to all that much, because again they have no clue what the problems actually are.
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EVs would sit somewhere around the high end of the middle tier. But you're right that to address transport of humans at scale, it's likely that a lot of the people currently in the middle tier will end up in the bottom tier. Which is part of why there are lots of people out there trying to make the bottom tier suck less.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Funny) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:50PM (1 child)
I modded you up, but
parking lots are ugly, parking garages are ugly and inconvenient.
One of many disadvantages of an apartment or a condo.
And then there's the twice-daily ritual of rush hour, where there's dice roles involved about (a) whether you get where you're going at all, and (b) how long it takes for you to get there.
Dew knot truss yore spill checker.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday December 07 2023, @05:36PM
This isn't just a question of where the car is parked when it's at home though, it's also about where it's parked when you're at work, out shopping, at a restaurant, enjoying some live entertainment, visiting friends, etc etc. Go to Google Maps in pretty much any office park in America, look at the satellite view, and you'll see what I mean - it's not uncommon for there to be more parking lot than building.
Thank you for the spelling correction - whoopsie, I missed that. That doesn't change the point I was making.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:37PM
There's a lot of froth in those levels...
>Why aren't the auto companies advertising how roomy EVs are?
Good point. Our most recent auto selection was a 2002 Mercedes S430, in 2018 with 44,000 miles on it for $12,000 - that's an example of the top tier product becoming available to the middle tier - if you are lucky or patient enough to find a good one used. We have two sons (with autism) who are currently 6'1" and 6'4" and unlikely to be leaving home anytime soon, so backseat space is important, and the S-Class is as big as our full-sized pickup truck on the outside, but the car trunk is half the size of the truck bed and that space goes into the passenger compartment. Not quite enough room for a 3rd row of seats, but close, and all given to the two rows of seats it has. Rear wheel drive means there's a tunnel making a 5th passenger somewhat uncomfortable in the middle of the back, but with 4 passengers it's humongous.
The S-Class is a rare beast among sedans. These days most people who want that kind of room end up getting a 3 (or 4) row SUV and removing some of the seats. The $12K price for a low miles car that originally sold for $80K+ all came down to FUD. The big German V8s of that era had a nasty reputation for maintenance costs - and it's true, in the ensuing 100K miles we have put over $8K in maintenance, but I'm still happy with the car at an all-in cost of $20K for 100K miles of air-suspension comfort, V8 power, ultra luxury quiet ride, an AC system that can handle the Saharan desert... YMMV, but we like ours.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @06:03AM (7 children)
One of the hidden costs of this sort of thing. In a rational world, we'd be trying to get more people into the middle tier rather than figuring out how to make the sacrifice of dubious choices sting a little less in the bottom tier.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 08 2023, @12:06PM (6 children)
No we wouldn't. There's nothing rational about our love of cars and trucks.
When moving stuff, the way to minimize the cost of moving them is to minimize the size, mass, and speed of the thing being moved until you reach acceptable numbers, because that's how Newtonian physics works. When you're talking about moving a single person and a bit of stuff they can fairly easily carry, that means the most cost-efficient ways to move them are, in approximate order:
1. Walking there. (0 pounds extra for the vehicle)
2. Bicycles, skateboards, scooters, etc that are all on average very cheap to make and maintain, anywhere from 10-40 pounds.
3. A 55-pound e-bike or e-scooter that's more expensive to make than a bicycle, but still way cheaper than the next options.
4. A 500-pound motorcycle. These things easily get 50 mpg without any of that mucking about with hybrid batteries, for example.
5. A car from the smallest possible (so-called "smart cars" that seat only 2 people) to the largest. (1500-4000 pounds)
6. An SUV or pickup, again from the smallest to the largest. (3500-6000 pounds)
7. A box truck or similarly sized vehicle. (12500-33000 pounds.)
8. A semi or bus. (25000-35000 pounds.)
9. A train. (30000 pounds per car, so easily 120000-180000 pounds)
10. An airplane. (337,000-485,000 pounds)
For any of the vehicles in question, you can make them more efficient by either (a) moving more people in each one, or (b) using them more continuously rather than making 1 trip and parking them, e.g. an Uber handling a bunch of passengers in an hour is more efficient than each passenger driving their own car. That's why public transit can be so efficient if people are actually using it: For example, the train can move 100 people per car, so dividing that 30,000 pounds of train car by the 100 people is now 300 pounds per person.
TL;DR: For solving the problem of transportation for a whole lot of people, putting everybody in their individual car isn't even close to the most efficient solution. As anybody who has ever had to deal with rush hour traffic should know full well.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @12:26PM (5 children)
Aside from point to point travel being the best form of travel? I suggest you think about it.
Only if not moving stuff is your goal.
And when you're not, then the rest of your post is a waste of time. We get this same stilted thinking all the time. For example:
Why is your goal merely making transportation more efficient? This is bike shed [wikipedia.org] effect. Understanding the complexity of transportation and why people do it is hard. But saving a small amount of fuel is easy to understand and thus, an obsession to minimize near trivial parts of society develop.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 08 2023, @01:11PM (2 children)
How are you measuring "best", exactly?
There have been times when I've had a car in good condition, and opted not to take it to work. Why? Because there was public transit going from approximately 50' from my front door to within 400' from my office, and the public transit pass cost about 1/3 of what a parking pass would have cost, plus I could read a book while on transit.
I guess I wasn't clear: Yes, if you need to move a semi's worth of stuff, you're going to have to put it in a semi or something bigger like a train or cargo plane or split the load among a bunch of different vehicles. My point is that if you're using a semi to move a suburbanite from their home to an office park, that's not a very efficient use of resources, because you're doing the transit equivalent of using an industrial metal press to open a pistachio, which will work for 1 person who really wants to do that but is a problem as you start scaling.
Because I want as many people as possible to get to where they want to go using a finite pile of resources (including their available time) to do it.
You obviously want to drive your car or truck and feel good about it. And maybe you really are hauling a bunch of stuff every day, say you work construction and have a bunch of materials and tools in the back. OK, fine. But wouldn't you rather have as many other people as possible off the roads so they aren't in your way? And the way you do that is provide them with viable alternatives to hopping in their car to get where they're going, and then some of those people will choose those alternatives because they're cheaper, easier, faster, etc. Optimizing for "maximum number of people in cars" makes sense only if you're benefiting from selling and fixing cars or building and repairing roads.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @01:15PM
So multiple modes of transportation, when one mode will do? And it's not much of a problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 09 2023, @06:50PM
I'll note also for that specific case, public transit was almost point to point. The rub comes in when you have to start hopping multiple transport modes because something isn't close to either your start or destination, or has low enough frequency that it's constraining your schedule. For example, when I worked on my PhD at UC Davis and worked daily in the office, I had to walk about half a mile to the bus station and ride in the 10 miles on the hourly bus. UC Davis helped make that a viable choice by making parking ridiculously expensive.
Anyway, there were times when I missed the last bus back home (absent minded quite a bit). So I'd stay overnight and just return the next day. How many people can do that? With a car, gas or EV, you have the power to decide when you come and go, not some bus schedule. And because the car is an enclosed environment, you can go in weather that would be hard to do with a bike (another point to point system). For example, one day it was raining strongly with 60 MPH winds. I decided to eat the cost and drive in rather than walk to the bus station. No drama aside from slower than usual traffic.
You can treat a car as an irrational object, or you can choose to recognize the power and flexibility it gives you.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:47AM (1 child)
You made the same mistake the Drake equation makes; Fermi's "paradox" isn't real, the Drake equation is missing variables and correct values for some of the existing variables, in your case missing the cost of fuel. My EV weighs twice what a comparable sized piston car weighs, has more room, and costs two dollars worth of electricity to go from Springfield, IL to St Louis, when a gasoline car costs ten.
It's the classic spherical cow in a vacuum.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:37AM
Your EV is point to point and thus, part of my category.