What will it take to make you seriously consider an EV?

This is funny - I never knew this:

However Elon Musk has already refuted that particular point, killing any chance that the car would be called the Model 2. Not that it was particularly likely, should Tesla stick with the naming conventions of its previous cars. After, all Elon Musk deliberately named the Model S through Y because the letters spelled out the word ‘Sexy’.

Or Tesla would have done if Ford didn’t own the rights to the name ‘Model E’, which forced Tesla to substitute the number 3 instead.

 

T3SLA.

 

Avoid Nissan Leaf until they come with active cooling.

Great car but passive cooling kills the battery life in that car.

 

Solar panel installers are all scammers.

They make a lot and I mean a LOT of money.

Equipment costs are negligible.

And like you said, they jack up the price to get that federal tax credit to themselves.

Install panels yourself and then hire a licensed electrician to do all the electric work. A lot of solar installers do exactly that, hire an electrician to do all the wiring.

 

5kw worth of grid tie string inverter run about $800 fwiw. $1200 for the same power worth of microinverter, $1500 for hybrid. If you happen to have 3 phase power, you can get 50,000w worth of grid tie string for $3k. Problem is my power company will never send me a dime in cash, no matter how much power I send them. Credits only, so a giant 3 phase setup would never be worth it unless I was mining bitcoin or something.

 

If you're in the South, yeah its awful. Do a quick charge and then drive around in 100 degree weather and the car literally can't cool the battery down enough to run properly.

But if you live in a northern cold weather climate, its not so bad. There are relatively few hot days to worry about and while winters will reduce range, that range loss isn't permanent. Given the lower cost compared to any other EV with decent range, I think it makes some sense in colder regions.

 

In June, Ford sold 4,353 EVs, a jump of 76.6% from June of 2021. 1,837 of those were the F-150 Lightning. There's more Lightning inventory now than ever before, so expect sales to increase in July and August.

Of course, Ford also sold 66,683 ICE pickups and 60,894 ICE SUVs, both records. I guess folks are really concerned about those gas prices, huh?

 

Until they have more and easy access to the charging stations, that’s a hard pass for me. I was in California a couple months ago, passed by a few charging stations, the lines of cars waiting to be charged definitely not a pretty sight.

 

Jokes on you. They are towing gallons of gas they bought for cheap a year ago in the truck beds.

 

Not very far.

 

Just fully charged the Mach-E and it's telling me my range is 341 miles. That's the highest I've seen so far and well above the Ford rating of 305. We've been in the optimum temp range lately of 65-85 degrees which definitely has an influence. I expect range to drop down a bit as we get hotter weather, but even when we were in the high 90s a few days ago, it was showing 320-325.

Still quite happy with the car. So much so that it feels odd driving ICE rigs.

 

White House: Tesla to expand its US Supercharger network to other EVs in late 2022

 

North Carolina Looks to Remove Public EV Chargers, Probably to the Trash

A bill currently in the works in the North Carolina legislature would allocate $50,000 to get rid of free public EV chargers unless free gas pumps are built alongside.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a40543385/north-carolina-wants-remove-free-public-ev-chargers/

 

Mark my words--there will be some conspiracy theory that leads people to start busting up EV chargers.

 

When I saw Arkansas was proposing putting EV chargers every 50 miles on their highways, I joked with my friend from there that they're going to use them for target practice. lol.

I already see some backlash on sites like Nextdoor against EV's. I posted the following article, which is a really neat read, to poke fun at the people screaming they'd never buy an EV because (insert some really wild reasons here). It's an article from around 1930 (though the article says 1915 at the start, I think) that was reprinted in 2017. The article was written by Alexander Winton who is considered by many to be the first person to build/sell an American car in the US as well as the father of the car dealership. He details the backlash and ridicule he received when he tried to convince people to buy a gas-powered vehicle to replace horses. It cracked me up when I found they churned out something like 4 of their first car in the first year.

I also included the first known automobile ad from Scientific American that they put out back around 1898 :


Get A Horse! America’s Skepticism Toward the First Automobiles

 

Electric aircraft severely damaged in test flight over Cranfield

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-62086128

excerpt:

An electrically powered aircraft had to carry out a forced landing after its battery was switched off as part of a flight test, a report said.

The modified Piper PA-46-350P was undertaking "experimental" tests when it "suffered a loss of power to the electrical motors", the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said.

It had to land near Cranfield Airport in Bedfordshire on 29 April 2021.

The aircraft was "severely damaged" in the landing, the AAIB said.

The plane was part of an experimental programme to provide aircraft propulsion systems with zero emissions and lower noise.
​

more at the link

 

9,000-Pound Electric Hummer Shows We Can’t Ignore Efficiency of EVs
June 21, 2022
ACEEE

Electric vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions, unlike their gasoline-combusting counterparts, but they are still responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. As EV sales surge, policymakers and advocates should explore ways to increase their efficiency and reduce the cars’ environmental impact.

Fully electric vehicles with no gasoline engine (which we will refer to as EVs) get their power from the electric grid. And in the United States, about 60% of electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Until the grid is completely carbon-free, there will be emissions from generating the electricity to run EVs, known as upstream emissions.

Emissions per mile driven are lower for EVs than for similarly sized gasoline-powered cars, but they are not zero. The Chevy Bolt EV is responsible for about 92 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per mile when accounting for emissions from the electric grid. (The CO2 calculations are based on the national average, but electric grid emissions vary considerably across the country.) The gasoline-powered Chevy Malibu causes over 320 grams per mile. Comparing larger vehicles, the original Hummer H1 emits 889 grams of CO2 per mile and the new Hummer EV causes 341 grams, demonstrating that behemoth EVs can still be worse for the environment than smaller, conventional vehicles.

The environmental impact of EVs isn’t just about the electricity generated to power each mile. The manufacturing process also causes the release of greenhouse gases at several stages, known as the embodied emissions of the vehicle. EVs in particular—with heavy battery packs—use minerals that need to be mined, processed, and turned into batteries. The pursuit of greater driving range and larger vehicles require increasing battery size, also increasing embodied emissions. Mining the minerals used for batteries has a significant impact on the environment and can have negative social impacts, including the well-documented human rights abuses surrounding the mining of cobalt, an important mineral for many EV batteries. More-efficient EVs need less battery to have the same range, which means fewer emissions and fewer of the problems associated with mining the minerals.

Regulators Must Address EV Efficiency

Most drivers have a good sense of how fuel efficient their gasoline-powered vehicle is, and policymakers have recently required greater efficiency in new vehicles. But the efficiency of EVs is often forgotten. As EVs proliferate, their efficiency should be a priority for policymakers. Just as efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles has numerous benefits for the environment and consumers, greater EV efficiency does too. The less electricity needed to drive a mile, the fewer the emissions from electricity generation, and the more money saved by drivers. Greater efficiency can also mean that automakers could reduce battery size to achieve the same range, leading to less mining and fewer embodied emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency should explore ways to factor EV efficiency into fuel-efficiency and greenhouse gas standards, starting with accounting for EVs’ upstream emissions. At the moment, regulators calculate the emissions from gasoline vehicles and set requirements for automakers, but EVs are counted as causing no CO2 emissions. This means the sale of an EV Hummer can offset the sale of a highly polluting gasoline vehicle and increase emissions overall. Accounting for upstream emissions would mean that the sale of a more efficient EV would be more advantageous for automakers to meet their regulatory requirements. All EVs do not have the same impact on the environment, and our vehicle regulations should reflect that.

Continued . . .

 

My wife and I went on some test drives this weekend to look for her next car. Unfortunately with the car shortage, most dealerships didn't even have a demo car to test. We went to Toyota, Kia, Hyundai, Ford, and Volkwagen intending to test hybrid cars and the ID4. The only cars available to test was a base Hyundai Tucson and a RWD ID4. We also sat in a Kia Sportage mid-trim. Really silly that dealerships don't even keep a tester around.

The Tucson was fine, but the base interior and engine was very meh. The hybrid is likely to be much better. Kia Sportage looked awesome on the inside. The dealer also had $2000 mandatory dealer add on. I thought the ID4 drove well. The 200hp RWD was absolutely enough for normal driving. However, my wife hated the UI of the infotainment, gloss black plastic everyhere, and she strongly dislike the 'large tablet glued on dash' look that most cars have these days. Trunk space is also noticeably less than the Sportage and Tucson.

I like the ID4 because of the EV and tech factor, but she couldn't care less about the tech or the instant torque. Maybe she'll come around on the ID4, but we're leaning towards the Sportage. Hopefully the PHEV version comes soon. I'm also very curious about the 2024 Chevy Equinox EV. Maybe we'll wait another year to get a different EV. Hopefully the Ioniq5 won't have a huge markup still next year.