The most powerful nation in the world has been defeated in Vietnam, sent home packing in Somalia, defeated in Afghanistan, bled dry in Iraq... Shall I continue?
We weren't really trying and none of those nations were bombing US cities...
We could have turned all of North Vietnam into a glass-floored, self-lighting parking lot...
It's bad enough when some military base thousands of kilometers again is bombed, but seeing your own cities rocked by explosions, the lights going out for days, death out of the blue, seemingly at random... Not so nice when it happens to you, whaddaya think?
I think the United States of America has the most powerful military in the world, along with several thousand nuclear weapons.
If another nation-state started to bomb our cities, the "war" wouldn't last very long...
I would say that I did not buy a recurring license, so why should I not have the right to continue to enjoy the benefits of the license I paid for, same as I can use a book or any other copyrighted material for as long as I want once I've paid my license.
Who is stopping you from using them?
Windows XP still works, in fact it was updated for far longer than planned and has far more features then when launched.
Your car and your software are under very different parts of the law...
That being said, in general I agree with you, I think EULAs have more power than they should...
However there is a difference between asking for activation to be removed and asking for source code. It is likely that a lot of source in Windows doesn't actually belong to MS, they have licenced it from other people and they don't have permission to release it. In addition, lots of code is shared between various versions of Windows, releasing parts that are still current could be an issue as well.
Being able to repair stuff you buy vs stuff that you licence would be an interesting legal discussion, sadly it isn't one that likely is going to happen any time soon.
So the price of a new EV comes between $20k for a Leaf (after incentives, etc) to $35k for the Model 3.
Those are very small compact cars, you can't compare them to a large vehicle.
According to this site, your truck ranges between 12 & 16 miles to the gallon, so lets take the middle range & say you pay ($2.13/14) $0.15/mile. Engine maintenance seems to hover around $0.10/mile & depreciation reportedly averages 20% per year, or 60% of its total value after 5 years.
Engine maintenance is exactly zero. Nothing is required before 100k miles other than oil changes once a year, and my dealership provides those for free, so it is gas only for me.
Depreciation depends on when you buy it, at 5 years, I expect it will be worth closer to 60% of what I actually paid for it since it won't get a redesign by then.
In any case...
*sigh*
What YOU fail to understand is that you're trying to compare a small compact car with a large truck in terms of costs...
Run the numbers again with a $16K Ford Fusion and you'll find the EVs do much worse. But what you have done is exactly what I have said many people do. Fudge the numbers to justify their emotional purchase they have already decided to make.
Perhaps they make a bit more sense in the UK with your gas prices, but you are kidding yourself... If lots of people switched to EVs, the government would just have to tax EVs per mile to make up for the loss of funding.
I agree with a lot you said. Elon Musk had the right idea of building a desirable EV. There are a ton of them around here. I see at least 10 every day. I think that as people get to ride in them, experience the acceleration and lack of engine noise, I think more and more people will consider them. They won't walk into a showroom and be talked into one, but if they ride in a friend/relative's EV they might start considering one. I'm beginning to hate driving the ICE car in the city (with stop and go traffic). Even with a start/stop system, it doesn't feel right to be stopping and starting that ICE engine. The BEV just feels much more suited to that kind of driving.
I've driven a Tesla Model S, while it is nice, it isn't $100K nice... Frankly I wouldn't buy one for $50K, but that's me...
Maybe $35K I'd consider it...
The Model X? $45K...
Offer me up an EV version of my Yukon, I'll think about it, but consider how far off that really is...
I don't think we'll get to 5 minutes anytime soon. 15 probably. 10... not so sure... 5... probably never. That's a lot of current! I don't think an EV has to recharge in the same time it takes to fill a gas tank. There are other ways to address the range issues. If whenever I park the car leaves to go recharge itself and comes back when I call it with 100% charge, then having to wait 20 minutes to recharge when I'm on a road trip will probably be okay.
The recharge time is more emotional than anything else... People need to feel comfortable. Using facts to convince people of anything is a waste of time.
Consider the current election, Clinton pulled ahead in the polls as soon as she stopped using facts and reason and switched to "Trump is risky and dangerous". Trump's most effective moves have been "Lying Ted", "Low Energy Bush", and "Crooked Hillary". Neither one is going to win based on facts or reason.
People aren't interested in facts and details, most people are almost entirely emotional creatures...
Just ask my wife, any time we've talked about an EV, her concern is range. No amount of "but it is fine, it has enough, recharging isn't that bad, just plug it in" gets her over "but it is another thing to worry and think about". She doesn't want another job, another worry, another thing to think about. She isn't alone either...
Let me put this another way... What is the reason to switch and even think about it? Even if EVs drop in price to be equal to gas cars, so what? Why buy the EV when the gas car has none of those issues? To "save the planet?" Yea, if that was REALLY a big concern, we'd switch off the air conditioning.:) Since we aren't, most people don't *really* care as much as they claim to, or they do care, but only when it doesn't impact their life.
It's been a great 2nd car for me.
And that is why I said 30% of the could be swapped for EVs fairly easily, as a second car they are fine. As a primary, it really takes someone who WANTS it... and that isn't most people...
SPIFR 206L3, and R66 + R44's in a school environment. Started with R22s and Enstroms. Never did GOM although did think about it back in 2008 for a bit. The commute (from Boston) seems like it would get old quick.
I live in Dallas, TX and have for a long time, so the commute wasn't so bad, an easy day's drive (I worked out of Galveston, TX 90% of the time.
I've got about 40 hours in the R44, but never taught in it, mostly tours and photo work... Love it much more than the terrible R22:) I've got a thousand very painful hours in that R22, I'm 6 feet tall and the R44 is so much nicer! As is the S300.
Longranger? I've got exactly 1.5 hours in one!:) Nice helicopter, but I don't know enough about it to compare it to anything else... The AS350 is better than everything I've flown, but since the EC-120 was my first turbine, it is my first love! I also have about a thousand hours in it, so I know (or knew) it better than anything else, it has been 10 years since I've flown one.
You know what really drove me nuts in the gulf? Being the lowest paid person in the helicopter. For all the skills and all the requirements to fly them, most of the time everyone I flew to the rigs was paid more than me. Even the groceries that I flew out were worth more than I was being paid! Blah...
For more money, I probably would have kept doing it, but the pay isn't THAT great and being away from your family is rough. Workover hurts because of the day of travel on each end, I was 14 on, 14 off, so a week of workover left me 21 on, 7 off, but 2 days of driving meant it was 23 days gone and 5 days really home.
With a 6 month old baby? Screw that... Even with all the bonus pay, $80K a year isn't worth that... not to me anyway... (base was $48K, but lots of bonus and workover money) That, and the job honestly got boring really fast... I flew mostly to the same 8 platforms over and over and over... Didn't even have to plan much after the first month, you memories it all really fast... Take off with 65% fuel and 3 pax, fly heading 120 for 20 minutes, there is the first of your stops for the day, drop one person off, take off and fly another 10 minutes, stop for an hour or two, then take one person to go do pollution checks at a dozen unmanned platforms... Be sure to take lunch!:)
Maps become useless fast once you've learned "your area", it all just becomes headings and time. At 120kts, it is easy math, 20nm is 10 minutes fight time, 50nm is 25 minutes, and so on... Since it was all VFR, if you couldn't see the platforms, you weren't flying anyway. At least it was a newish helicopter so I didn't have concerns over crappy equipment, plus it was air conditioned!:)
I had a nice GPS in the panel as well as a handheld backup and quickly discovered that unless I was going somewhere new, I never used them. Mark 1 Eyeball, Compass, and stopwatch...
Second, £90/day is not "cheap", rent that for a week vacation and you've made a monthly car payment...
Third, I highly doubt that is the "nice version" of that vehicle, and that is one of the key problems with rentals, they rarely have the "nice version"... Once you have a nice car (such as a Tesla), renting just sucks because none of them are up to standard...
It might have been a different story if you used some shitty rentals company in the 90s, but I'm afraid I've never shared your experience.
You aren't in the US, car rental companies here are pretty shitty... maybe your service in the UK is nice, if so, good for you. But then you don't know what a big car is anyway.:)
Keep in mind that my Yukon XL is an $80K truck, nothing the normal rental companies offer even comes close. I can afford a Tesla, they remain a horrible value for the money...
If I found myself in the situation where I had to drive, then I could just rent (be it just grabbing something from the Street Car bay 10 mins down the road
Great, let me know what it costs to rent a vehicle to haul yourself, your wife, three kids, and a week of gear...
Make it something nice and comfortable to drive on the road for 8 hours, and let me know if you can pick one up with a few days notice...
Oh, and after you've reserved it, show up and find out that it smells inside, or was rented 10 minutes ago, or has a flat tire...
The idea of renting cars from time to time sounds easy to someone who already drives an average basic car and doesn't take much with them...
If I was a young person with only a single car, I'd probably get a Volt or BMW i3 or something similar, i.e. something with a range extender.
Those are nice, but all very small cars... Of course I live in Texas, so my view of cars is different than yours, but to me my Ford Taurus is a "small car":)
My Yukon XL is a normal sized car!
Why do I have a Taurus in Texas? Because I only need one "big truck" for moving the family and *stuff*, the other vehicle spends 95% of its time with one person in it. So why not something smaller than a Taurus (which is actually a full size car these days)? Because I don't want to drive "small cars", I want a big car, something with a nice ride, room in the back seat, a nice trunk, and comfortable seats.
I've driven a Volt, it doesn't hold a candle to my Taurus in the comfort department and it costs more!
When I see the F-150 pickup come in an EV version, I'll know they have arrived.
3) ICE people overestimate the pain of charging the vehicle (at least for those of us with home chargers). I maybe charge away from home once or twice a month, the rest of the time I just plug in when I get home and the car is ready by the time I need to use it next.
Are you married with kids? Imagine this conversation with the wife "honey, you need to go pickup Timmy from school, he is sick, take him to the doctor please". She goes out and discovers that she forgot to plug the car in last night...
Crap, now what?
Yea, thanks but no thanks... How many times does that happen? Not matter, but ask a mother how many times it HAS to happen before she says "get rid of this crap"? Sure, early adopters today will do this less, but when the "mass market" takes off, it becomes an issue.
All the logical reasoning in the world will not get past that issue. Right now, my wife has a truck or car she can go drive any time she wants, if it is low on fuel, it still has 50 miles of range, refueling takes 5 minutes...
4) A common complaint by ICE people is that they need to travel long distances, and thus an EV won't suit their needs.
Most people don't need to drive very far very often, that is true... But it happens, from time to time... What is the option, rent a car? That is a pain in the neck and not cheap for everyone... and the cars you can rent cheap are often not very nice... Thanks, but I like my air-conditioned seats in both my cars, I'm not going to rent a base model pile of crap to drive long distance.
If the cost is the same, you end up with this:
Car A costs X dollars and drives both long and short distances Car B costs X dollars and drives only short distances and you have to rent a car for long distances.
Really, how many people are going to pick B?
We keep arguing about the convenience of being able to just fill the tank with gas, but we're not accounting for the inconvenience that global warming is going to be causing.
The average person cares enough to tell someone taking a survey that they care, but not enough to turn their life upside down.
Want to really make a difference to global warming? Turn off the air conditioning... Let me know how well you think that'll go over...:)
Normal people don't think or plan that far ahead, people won't be willing to change their lives until it is far too late...
$10/gallon of gas seems like a good start
You would destroy the economy and crush poor people who can't afford it... I can afford it, it wouldn't change my behavior, but the person driving the 10 year old Honda Civic who works for $10/hr would be totally fucked...
I know lots of people are still denying global warming, but I'm of the opinion that we should assume it's real and do something about it, rather than find out the hard way it's real and then really be screwe
BTW, I'm a helicopter pilot, but it has very little to do with this posting. Just saying!
What do you fly?
I used to teach in S300 and R22s, then I flew in the GOM for awhile in EC-120 and AS-350... once I had kids, the long weeks away killed that!
EV cars are much more prime time than many ICE people think, but they're not as prime time as many EV people think!
EVs are logically ready for prime time in *some* use cases, but emotionally we're a long way from mass adoption...
I think 30% of the vehicle fleet could fairly easily be swapped for EVs, in terms of range and charge time issues, but people will not emotionally adjust that quickly to the change of mind set, and the price has to come down to a similar cost for gas cars, WITHOUT government money (since 30% of car sales are not going to be $7,500 rebated)
The idea that *most* cars could be replaced by EVs is much further off, and this might be where people talk past each other. Far more cars today COULD be EVs, but not a majority of them. People living in apartments, who park on the street, who are single car households, etc. For people who live in a house with a garage and have two cars, one could be an EV tomorrow fairly easily in most cases.
1) EV driving takes some planning. This is not something that ICE people have had to do for like... 75 years? As a helicopter pilot, I plan every flight. I figure out how much fuel I'll need, plus a comfortable reserve. Driving the EV feels similar. I have to think about where I'll be going, and how much charge it will take to get there. I may even modify my driving in order to arrive with more charge. This will feel very foreign to an ICE driver. We are used to just driving until the gauge reads "E" and then getting a quick top off. I doubt EVs will offer that experience anytime soon, if ever.
^ This right here, is that emotional part...
Even if the EV is CHEAPER than the gas car, the above seems to be a step backwards to the average person. With gas cars, thinking about fuel and range are just not issues. When the fuel low warning light goes off on my car, I have about 50 miles of driving left and I'll pass 100 gas stations while doing it, and it takes 5 minutes to add another 300 miles of range.
When I flew in the gulf, I almost never had more than one way fuel. Flying an EC-120 100 miles off shore with 130 miles of fuel and the platform I'm landing on *doesn't* have fuel, I have to land 10 miles west of that one to get fuel, is an experience I accept as a pilot, but not one that normal people are going to accept.
For EVs to really go mainstream, that problem has to go away, not just logically, but emotionally. 5-10 minute charge times from empty to full... And THAT is further off than most EV people want to believe.
If nothing else, fossil fuels are a limited resource.
They are, but they aren't as limited as you'd think... How many times have we been "running out of oil"? There are more reserves today than there were 30 years ago. The "proven reserves" number keeps going up each year, not down...
IMO we have better uses for fossil fuels (like plastics) than just burning them to power vehicles
I agree, but plastics should be made with vegetable oil, it degrades better and is better for human contact...
Not to mention that our atmosphere and oceans can only absorb so much carbon before their character changes. Obviously life will go on, the Earth will survive, but life will start to suck a lot more at that point.
Yes, that is true... no one seems to want to point out the easiest solution... Reduced population... If we could get the planets population down to 1 billion, we'd ALL be much better off...
This goes beyond man-made climate change (which I believe is real), it goes to food and water supplies, it goes to land use, and other natural resources. No one talks about copper use, but we are using copper at a rapid rate, but it gets no press... and it is just as critical to our modern society as oil is. Yes, it can be recycled, but we don't do it enough, we dump it in landfills.
I've not heard that expressed by mainstream climate scientists
No, and you won't either, because it kills the point of their jobs, it is too scary to even consider, and it isn't the message that everyone wants to hear...
But do the math, look at the number of people, cars, power plants, etc... Then look at the CO2 numbers, how much the oceans can absorb and have absorbed, then ask how rapidly we're going to cut it...
I actually bothered to read the POTUS report on climate change last year... holy fuck... we more or less have to cut our carbon emissions by 80% and have to do it by 2050 to even have a 50/50 chance of stopping runaway CO2 by 2100... It was on something like page 29 of a 120 page report that no one reads... Ok, I didn't read the WHOLE thing, but I skimmed it and more or less we're well and totally screwed, because we are not going to take the actions required to change it...
Let me put this another way... Could we stop it? Sure... The whole planet, on average, needs to cut 60% CO2 output by 2050, and we have to start last year, going at several % per year. The US and China have to cut 80%, other nations like Brazil have to cut closer to 40%.
There is exactly ZERO chance that will happen, because human beings are human beings... We'd have to turn off the air conditioners, stop driving, stop buying half the stuff we buy, it would change our lives completely. It just isn't going to happen...
There is no point where "permanent damage" is done.
Not to the planet, no... but to humans, yes... We don't live on the planet's time scale...
The only reasonable solution is population control, if you don't address that, nothing else really matters... Any cuts are just offset by more people... If in 2100 we have 15 trillion people and have cut 50% of our CO2 per person, then nothing has changed.
To be honest, I'd be happy to just see the year 2100, and yes, I'd see gas cars being sold new then as well. I just see them as being special purpose at that point, and they might be biofueled rather than petrol.
Biofuel is stupid, you're consuming your food supply to drive cars, don't even get me started on Ethanol which is the dumbest idea ever...
I'm willing to bet that more than 50% of all new cars and light trucks in 2100 are still gas powered... You brush off the problems of going beyond that much too easily...
We aren't going to stop global warming, we're going to have to change and adapt to it, we're probably 30 years past the point of no return there. All the hand waving about stopping it is just to keep politicians in office and make everyone feel better.
You're getting a lot of exercise hauling those goalposts around.
0.6% to 0.5% to 0.4% is not moving the goalposts, those are rounding errors...
They do replace gas car sales, just not at a significant rate right now.
Not by enough to matter...
However, if you keep improving range and reducing cost by about 2% a year, we'll start seeing EVs ramping up.
Less than you think... You seem to think that EV sales just waiting to burst as soon as they cost a bit less and go a bit further... I think you'll find that you are mistaken there... Even at the same price of gas cars, even if they had 500 miles of range, a majority of people still won't buy them...
Charging time is a huge issue, one that is being ignored and won't be overcome without something completely new in the battery department...
Yea, yea, Superchargers, normal people don't care, until you can say that it will go from zero charge to full charge in 15 minutes, it won't matter, and current batteries can't do that, you'll destroy them too quickly trying. You can probably get a 50% charge in 15 minutes, but people don't want to hear that. You can oversize the batteries to make it appear to be 15 minutes to full, but then you've ruined the weight and cost.
Too many EV fans forget that human beings are human beings, and don't give a crap about your rational arguments. Want proof? Look at the 600,000+ F-150 pickup trucks sold each year, more than half to people who don't need a pickup truck whatsoever...
Goalpost shift. I said they sell better. I didn't say compared to what else, so it's compared to themselves, not up against gasoline vehicles.
No, it isn't... And FEWER were sold in 2015 than in 2014... Not a lot fewer, but it was fewer...
If you don't replace gas car sales, then who gives a crap about EVs? The whole damm point is to stop burning gas, if you don't do that, EVs don't mean anything.
Not really. Just 1 thing needs to change: Cheap oil, and therefore cheap gasoline/diesel. That's it. Improved and cheaper batteries have helped.
Gas prices could triple and it won't change the numbers much... Gas prices are ALREADY triple in many countries, and most of those counties are at about 1% EV sales.
Which most people won't need on a routine basis if they can charge at home and/or work.
Yea, but that requires people change their habits, and I think you'll find that is harder than you think... Sure, the current half of a percent buying EVs are the early adopters willing to do whatever, but most people are not them and don't care that much...
I fully expect in the year 2100 we will still see gas cars being sold new. I think the problem is much, much bigger than you think it is...
It's clearly the future, but the future may not be here yet.
Is it? Everyone seems to be so convinced that it MUST be the future...
A lot of things have to happen to make that future a reality, and there is no assurance those things will happen.
300m or more battery capacity
That exists today, it is just bloody expensive. That brings us to the price problem. But it is possible that problem can be solved given time.
And it still has to be chargeable from 0 - full in under half an hour.
This is the problem that is MUCH harder to solve than the price problem. All existing battery technologies just don't support this, you'll ruin the cells trying to charge them this fast.
It might be solved in the future, but it isn't a matter of just making batteries cheaper, you have to make them better, and this is a slow process.
This requires an incredible amount of electrical infrastructure, but if we plan on eliminating fossil fuels in the future, the electrical grid will need to be much more powerful and efficient.
You might want to start with the coal and natural gas fired power plants before you get too excited...
Yea, yea, wind and solar... you can't have a 100% wind and solar power grid, for many reasons, so you have the option of nuclear or coal/natural gas...
Yes, those power plants are "better" in some ways than millions of small gas engines in cars, but if your goal is to stop global warming, they aren't "better enough".
When you do the math on global warming, assuming the CO2 numbers are a problem, we are in serious trouble, because there is no realistic way to stop it at this point, or even slow it down all that much, we're decades too late...
I'm not sure if it's a primarily -emotional- decision. I think people can see what the consumption of fossil fuels does to the environment and come to a purely rational decision to buy one.
I understand that thinking, but it is STILL an emotional decision...
Why?
Because the decision to spend more money buying an EV today doesn't do anything to the consumption of fossil fuels. Not enough to move the needle, not enough to be more than a rounding error.
It is spending money without accomplishing anything, because the outcome won't change. You'd have to start selling 5 to 10 million EVs a year to start to move the needle, and even then it would only be a small move.
My son-in-law has a Prius. We have compared them side by side. You and the Prius fail.
The Prius is pretty damm stupid as well... but lots of people like to pretend they are green and it is trendy...
A Ford Fusion has a lower total cost of ownership over 5 years than either the Prius or Volt, it also outsells both of them combined by several times over...
I'd love to own an EV, I own two cards, I could easily have one of them be an EV, and yes I've driven them...
But they make ZERO economic sense, anyone who thinks they do have fudged the numbers to justify the purchase they have already decided to make. They aren't even close, not even if gas is twice the current price.
Because EVs are very close to being cost effective
No, they really aren't... people just tell themselves that to feel better about the emotional purchase they have already decided to make...
I own two cars, the second an EV makes economic sense, I promise you I'll own one, I'd love to own one, I've driven them and they are NICE... Instant torque, no noise, new technology, no gas smell...
But they are too expensive, they just don't make any economic sense. One day they might, but that isn't today...
Slashdot Mirror
The most powerful nation in the world has been defeated in Vietnam, sent home packing in Somalia, defeated in Afghanistan, bled dry in Iraq... Shall I continue?
We weren't really trying and none of those nations were bombing US cities...
We could have turned all of North Vietnam into a glass-floored, self-lighting parking lot...
It's bad enough when some military base thousands of kilometers again is bombed, but seeing your own cities rocked by explosions, the lights going out for days, death out of the blue, seemingly at random... Not so nice when it happens to you, whaddaya think?
I think the United States of America has the most powerful military in the world, along with several thousand nuclear weapons.
If another nation-state started to bomb our cities, the "war" wouldn't last very long...
Based on what I see first hand, automation will kill a lot of jobs, but it will also require a bunch of new, different types of skills to manage.
Do you think that a billion uneducated people are suddenly going to be robot repair people?
Do you think that we need a 1:1 ratio of people in these new jobs?
Go back and watch the video again, you missed something the first time.
Didn't we already have this argument in the 18th century?
Yes, but if you watch the video, you'll note that he addresses that point...
You think we've been here before, but we haven't, this time is different...
This isn't replacing some manual labor with mechanical labor, this is replacing our brains... There isn't anything to move to...
Humans moved from mechanical tasks to mental tasks... When the mental tasks get replaced by computers, there isn't anything for humans to do...
https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
The idea that technology will find new things for everyone to do is insane...
We will need a new economic model...
I would say that I did not buy a recurring license, so why should I not have the right to continue to enjoy the benefits of the license I paid for, same as I can use a book or any other copyrighted material for as long as I want once I've paid my license.
Who is stopping you from using them?
Windows XP still works, in fact it was updated for far longer than planned and has far more features then when launched.
You can keep using it...
Your car and your software are under very different parts of the law...
That being said, in general I agree with you, I think EULAs have more power than they should...
However there is a difference between asking for activation to be removed and asking for source code. It is likely that a lot of source in Windows doesn't actually belong to MS, they have licenced it from other people and they don't have permission to release it. In addition, lots of code is shared between various versions of Windows, releasing parts that are still current could be an issue as well.
Being able to repair stuff you buy vs stuff that you licence would be an interesting legal discussion, sadly it isn't one that likely is going to happen any time soon.
Found the M$ Shill....
Anyone who types M$ is a moron who is unable to form a rational thought...
If MS won't, they should lose the copyright and be forced to to release the Source Code.
I'm sure you think you're cute saying that, but it shows you don't know what you're talking about...
So the price of a new EV comes between $20k for a Leaf (after incentives, etc) to $35k for the Model 3.
Those are very small compact cars, you can't compare them to a large vehicle.
According to this site, your truck ranges between 12 & 16 miles to the gallon, so lets take the middle range & say you pay ($2.13/14) $0.15/mile. Engine maintenance seems to hover around $0.10/mile & depreciation reportedly averages 20% per year, or 60% of its total value after 5 years.
Engine maintenance is exactly zero. Nothing is required before 100k miles other than oil changes once a year, and my dealership provides those for free, so it is gas only for me.
Depreciation depends on when you buy it, at 5 years, I expect it will be worth closer to 60% of what I actually paid for it since it won't get a redesign by then.
In any case...
*sigh*
What YOU fail to understand is that you're trying to compare a small compact car with a large truck in terms of costs...
Run the numbers again with a $16K Ford Fusion and you'll find the EVs do much worse. But what you have done is exactly what I have said many people do. Fudge the numbers to justify their emotional purchase they have already decided to make.
Perhaps they make a bit more sense in the UK with your gas prices, but you are kidding yourself... If lots of people switched to EVs, the government would just have to tax EVs per mile to make up for the loss of funding.
I agree with a lot you said. Elon Musk had the right idea of building a desirable EV. There are a ton of them around here. I see at least 10 every day. I think that as people get to ride in them, experience the acceleration and lack of engine noise, I think more and more people will consider them. They won't walk into a showroom and be talked into one, but if they ride in a friend/relative's EV they might start considering one. I'm beginning to hate driving the ICE car in the city (with stop and go traffic). Even with a start/stop system, it doesn't feel right to be stopping and starting that ICE engine. The BEV just feels much more suited to that kind of driving.
I've driven a Tesla Model S, while it is nice, it isn't $100K nice... Frankly I wouldn't buy one for $50K, but that's me...
Maybe $35K I'd consider it...
The Model X? $45K...
Offer me up an EV version of my Yukon, I'll think about it, but consider how far off that really is...
I don't think we'll get to 5 minutes anytime soon. 15 probably. 10... not so sure... 5... probably never. That's a lot of current! I don't think an EV has to recharge in the same time it takes to fill a gas tank. There are other ways to address the range issues. If whenever I park the car leaves to go recharge itself and comes back when I call it with 100% charge, then having to wait 20 minutes to recharge when I'm on a road trip will probably be okay.
The recharge time is more emotional than anything else... People need to feel comfortable. Using facts to convince people of anything is a waste of time.
Consider the current election, Clinton pulled ahead in the polls as soon as she stopped using facts and reason and switched to "Trump is risky and dangerous". Trump's most effective moves have been "Lying Ted", "Low Energy Bush", and "Crooked Hillary". Neither one is going to win based on facts or reason.
People aren't interested in facts and details, most people are almost entirely emotional creatures...
Just ask my wife, any time we've talked about an EV, her concern is range. No amount of "but it is fine, it has enough, recharging isn't that bad, just plug it in" gets her over "but it is another thing to worry and think about". She doesn't want another job, another worry, another thing to think about. She isn't alone either...
Let me put this another way... What is the reason to switch and even think about it? Even if EVs drop in price to be equal to gas cars, so what? Why buy the EV when the gas car has none of those issues? To "save the planet?" Yea, if that was REALLY a big concern, we'd switch off the air conditioning. :) Since we aren't, most people don't *really* care as much as they claim to, or they do care, but only when it doesn't impact their life.
It's been a great 2nd car for me.
And that is why I said 30% of the could be swapped for EVs fairly easily, as a second car they are fine. As a primary, it really takes someone who WANTS it... and that isn't most people...
SPIFR 206L3, and R66 + R44's in a school environment. Started with R22s and Enstroms. Never did GOM although did think about it back in 2008 for a bit. The commute (from Boston) seems like it would get old quick.
I live in Dallas, TX and have for a long time, so the commute wasn't so bad, an easy day's drive (I worked out of Galveston, TX 90% of the time.
I've got about 40 hours in the R44, but never taught in it, mostly tours and photo work... Love it much more than the terrible R22 :) I've got a thousand very painful hours in that R22, I'm 6 feet tall and the R44 is so much nicer! As is the S300.
Longranger? I've got exactly 1.5 hours in one! :) Nice helicopter, but I don't know enough about it to compare it to anything else... The AS350 is better than everything I've flown, but since the EC-120 was my first turbine, it is my first love! I also have about a thousand hours in it, so I know (or knew) it better than anything else, it has been 10 years since I've flown one.
You know what really drove me nuts in the gulf? Being the lowest paid person in the helicopter. For all the skills and all the requirements to fly them, most of the time everyone I flew to the rigs was paid more than me. Even the groceries that I flew out were worth more than I was being paid! Blah...
For more money, I probably would have kept doing it, but the pay isn't THAT great and being away from your family is rough. Workover hurts because of the day of travel on each end, I was 14 on, 14 off, so a week of workover left me 21 on, 7 off, but 2 days of driving meant it was 23 days gone and 5 days really home.
With a 6 month old baby? Screw that... Even with all the bonus pay, $80K a year isn't worth that... not to me anyway... (base was $48K, but lots of bonus and workover money) That, and the job honestly got boring really fast... I flew mostly to the same 8 platforms over and over and over... Didn't even have to plan much after the first month, you memories it all really fast... Take off with 65% fuel and 3 pax, fly heading 120 for 20 minutes, there is the first of your stops for the day, drop one person off, take off and fly another 10 minutes, stop for an hour or two, then take one person to go do pollution checks at a dozen unmanned platforms... Be sure to take lunch! :)
Maps become useless fast once you've learned "your area", it all just becomes headings and time. At 120kts, it is easy math, 20nm is 10 minutes fight time, 50nm is 25 minutes, and so on... Since it was all VFR, if you couldn't see the platforms, you weren't flying anyway. At least it was a newish helicopter so I didn't have concerns over crappy equipment, plus it was air conditioned! :)
I had a nice GPS in the panel as well as a handheld backup and quickly discovered that unless I was going somewhere new, I never used them. Mark 1 Eyeball, Compass, and stopwatch...
Following your requirements, you can get a nice spacious Ford C-Max Grand for £90/day.
First, that is not a "spacious" car... :)
This is a spacious car: http://bit.ly/2blzHmN
Second, £90/day is not "cheap", rent that for a week vacation and you've made a monthly car payment...
Third, I highly doubt that is the "nice version" of that vehicle, and that is one of the key problems with rentals, they rarely have the "nice version"... Once you have a nice car (such as a Tesla), renting just sucks because none of them are up to standard...
It might have been a different story if you used some shitty rentals company in the 90s, but I'm afraid I've never shared your experience.
You aren't in the US, car rental companies here are pretty shitty... maybe your service in the UK is nice, if so, good for you. But then you don't know what a big car is anyway. :)
Keep in mind that my Yukon XL is an $80K truck, nothing the normal rental companies offer even comes close. I can afford a Tesla, they remain a horrible value for the money...
If I found myself in the situation where I had to drive, then I could just rent (be it just grabbing something from the Street Car bay 10 mins down the road
Great, let me know what it costs to rent a vehicle to haul yourself, your wife, three kids, and a week of gear...
Make it something nice and comfortable to drive on the road for 8 hours, and let me know if you can pick one up with a few days notice...
Oh, and after you've reserved it, show up and find out that it smells inside, or was rented 10 minutes ago, or has a flat tire...
The idea of renting cars from time to time sounds easy to someone who already drives an average basic car and doesn't take much with them...
Am I the the only one that's noticed the use of "...." repeatedly is a good indicator of a less-than-average intelligence?
Since you can't refute my points, attack the person?
I'll take that as an admission that you're wrong and I'm right, thanks...
If I was a young person with only a single car, I'd probably get a Volt or BMW i3 or something similar, i.e. something with a range extender.
Those are nice, but all very small cars... Of course I live in Texas, so my view of cars is different than yours, but to me my Ford Taurus is a "small car" :)
My Yukon XL is a normal sized car!
Why do I have a Taurus in Texas? Because I only need one "big truck" for moving the family and *stuff*, the other vehicle spends 95% of its time with one person in it. So why not something smaller than a Taurus (which is actually a full size car these days)? Because I don't want to drive "small cars", I want a big car, something with a nice ride, room in the back seat, a nice trunk, and comfortable seats.
I've driven a Volt, it doesn't hold a candle to my Taurus in the comfort department and it costs more!
When I see the F-150 pickup come in an EV version, I'll know they have arrived.
3) ICE people overestimate the pain of charging the vehicle (at least for those of us with home chargers). I maybe charge away from home once or twice a month, the rest of the time I just plug in when I get home and the car is ready by the time I need to use it next.
Are you married with kids? Imagine this conversation with the wife "honey, you need to go pickup Timmy from school, he is sick, take him to the doctor please". She goes out and discovers that she forgot to plug the car in last night...
Crap, now what?
Yea, thanks but no thanks... How many times does that happen? Not matter, but ask a mother how many times it HAS to happen before she says "get rid of this crap"? Sure, early adopters today will do this less, but when the "mass market" takes off, it becomes an issue.
All the logical reasoning in the world will not get past that issue. Right now, my wife has a truck or car she can go drive any time she wants, if it is low on fuel, it still has 50 miles of range, refueling takes 5 minutes...
4) A common complaint by ICE people is that they need to travel long distances, and thus an EV won't suit their needs.
Most people don't need to drive very far very often, that is true... But it happens, from time to time... What is the option, rent a car? That is a pain in the neck and not cheap for everyone... and the cars you can rent cheap are often not very nice... Thanks, but I like my air-conditioned seats in both my cars, I'm not going to rent a base model pile of crap to drive long distance.
If the cost is the same, you end up with this:
Car A costs X dollars and drives both long and short distances
Car B costs X dollars and drives only short distances and you have to rent a car for long distances.
Really, how many people are going to pick B?
We keep arguing about the convenience of being able to just fill the tank with gas, but we're not accounting for the inconvenience that global warming is going to be causing.
The average person cares enough to tell someone taking a survey that they care, but not enough to turn their life upside down.
Want to really make a difference to global warming? Turn off the air conditioning... Let me know how well you think that'll go over... :)
Normal people don't think or plan that far ahead, people won't be willing to change their lives until it is far too late...
$10/gallon of gas seems like a good start
You would destroy the economy and crush poor people who can't afford it... I can afford it, it wouldn't change my behavior, but the person driving the 10 year old Honda Civic who works for $10/hr would be totally fucked...
I know lots of people are still denying global warming, but I'm of the opinion that we should assume it's real and do something about it, rather than find out the hard way it's real and then really be screwe
BTW, I'm a helicopter pilot, but it has very little to do with this posting. Just saying!
What do you fly?
I used to teach in S300 and R22s, then I flew in the GOM for awhile in EC-120 and AS-350... once I had kids, the long weeks away killed that!
EV cars are much more prime time than many ICE people think, but they're not as prime time as many EV people think!
EVs are logically ready for prime time in *some* use cases, but emotionally we're a long way from mass adoption...
I think 30% of the vehicle fleet could fairly easily be swapped for EVs, in terms of range and charge time issues, but people will not emotionally adjust that quickly to the change of mind set, and the price has to come down to a similar cost for gas cars, WITHOUT government money (since 30% of car sales are not going to be $7,500 rebated)
The idea that *most* cars could be replaced by EVs is much further off, and this might be where people talk past each other. Far more cars today COULD be EVs, but not a majority of them. People living in apartments, who park on the street, who are single car households, etc. For people who live in a house with a garage and have two cars, one could be an EV tomorrow fairly easily in most cases.
1) EV driving takes some planning. This is not something that ICE people have had to do for like... 75 years? As a helicopter pilot, I plan every flight. I figure out how much fuel I'll need, plus a comfortable reserve. Driving the EV feels similar. I have to think about where I'll be going, and how much charge it will take to get there. I may even modify my driving in order to arrive with more charge. This will feel very foreign to an ICE driver. We are used to just driving until the gauge reads "E" and then getting a quick top off. I doubt EVs will offer that experience anytime soon, if ever.
^ This right here, is that emotional part...
Even if the EV is CHEAPER than the gas car, the above seems to be a step backwards to the average person. With gas cars, thinking about fuel and range are just not issues. When the fuel low warning light goes off on my car, I have about 50 miles of driving left and I'll pass 100 gas stations while doing it, and it takes 5 minutes to add another 300 miles of range.
When I flew in the gulf, I almost never had more than one way fuel. Flying an EC-120 100 miles off shore with 130 miles of fuel and the platform I'm landing on *doesn't* have fuel, I have to land 10 miles west of that one to get fuel, is an experience I accept as a pilot, but not one that normal people are going to accept.
For EVs to really go mainstream, that problem has to go away, not just logically, but emotionally. 5-10 minute charge times from empty to full... And THAT is further off than most EV people want to believe.
If nothing else, fossil fuels are a limited resource.
They are, but they aren't as limited as you'd think... How many times have we been "running out of oil"? There are more reserves today than there were 30 years ago. The "proven reserves" number keeps going up each year, not down...
IMO we have better uses for fossil fuels (like plastics) than just burning them to power vehicles
I agree, but plastics should be made with vegetable oil, it degrades better and is better for human contact...
Not to mention that our atmosphere and oceans can only absorb so much carbon before their character changes. Obviously life will go on, the Earth will survive, but life will start to suck a lot more at that point.
Yes, that is true... no one seems to want to point out the easiest solution... Reduced population... If we could get the planets population down to 1 billion, we'd ALL be much better off...
This goes beyond man-made climate change (which I believe is real), it goes to food and water supplies, it goes to land use, and other natural resources. No one talks about copper use, but we are using copper at a rapid rate, but it gets no press... and it is just as critical to our modern society as oil is. Yes, it can be recycled, but we don't do it enough, we dump it in landfills.
I've not heard that expressed by mainstream climate scientists
No, and you won't either, because it kills the point of their jobs, it is too scary to even consider, and it isn't the message that everyone wants to hear...
But do the math, look at the number of people, cars, power plants, etc... Then look at the CO2 numbers, how much the oceans can absorb and have absorbed, then ask how rapidly we're going to cut it...
I actually bothered to read the POTUS report on climate change last year... holy fuck... we more or less have to cut our carbon emissions by 80% and have to do it by 2050 to even have a 50/50 chance of stopping runaway CO2 by 2100... It was on something like page 29 of a 120 page report that no one reads... Ok, I didn't read the WHOLE thing, but I skimmed it and more or less we're well and totally screwed, because we are not going to take the actions required to change it...
Let me put this another way... Could we stop it? Sure... The whole planet, on average, needs to cut 60% CO2 output by 2050, and we have to start last year, going at several % per year. The US and China have to cut 80%, other nations like Brazil have to cut closer to 40%.
There is exactly ZERO chance that will happen, because human beings are human beings... We'd have to turn off the air conditioners, stop driving, stop buying half the stuff we buy, it would change our lives completely. It just isn't going to happen...
There is no point where "permanent damage" is done.
Not to the planet, no... but to humans, yes... We don't live on the planet's time scale...
The only reasonable solution is population control, if you don't address that, nothing else really matters... Any cuts are just offset by more people... If in 2100 we have 15 trillion people and have cut 50% of our CO2 per person, then nothing has changed.
To be honest, I'd be happy to just see the year 2100, and yes, I'd see gas cars being sold new then as well. I just see them as being special purpose at that point, and they might be biofueled rather than petrol.
Biofuel is stupid, you're consuming your food supply to drive cars, don't even get me started on Ethanol which is the dumbest idea ever...
I'm willing to bet that more than 50% of all new cars and light trucks in 2100 are still gas powered... You brush off the problems of going beyond that much too easily...
We aren't going to stop global warming, we're going to have to change and adapt to it, we're probably 30 years past the point of no return there. All the hand waving about stopping it is just to keep politicians in office and make everyone feel better.
You're getting a lot of exercise hauling those goalposts around.
0.6% to 0.5% to 0.4% is not moving the goalposts, those are rounding errors...
They do replace gas car sales, just not at a significant rate right now.
Not by enough to matter...
However, if you keep improving range and reducing cost by about 2% a year, we'll start seeing EVs ramping up.
Less than you think... You seem to think that EV sales just waiting to burst as soon as they cost a bit less and go a bit further... I think you'll find that you are mistaken there... Even at the same price of gas cars, even if they had 500 miles of range, a majority of people still won't buy them...
Charging time is a huge issue, one that is being ignored and won't be overcome without something completely new in the battery department...
Yea, yea, Superchargers, normal people don't care, until you can say that it will go from zero charge to full charge in 15 minutes, it won't matter, and current batteries can't do that, you'll destroy them too quickly trying. You can probably get a 50% charge in 15 minutes, but people don't want to hear that. You can oversize the batteries to make it appear to be 15 minutes to full, but then you've ruined the weight and cost.
Too many EV fans forget that human beings are human beings, and don't give a crap about your rational arguments. Want proof? Look at the 600,000+ F-150 pickup trucks sold each year, more than half to people who don't need a pickup truck whatsoever...
Goalpost shift. I said they sell better. I didn't say compared to what else, so it's compared to themselves, not up against gasoline vehicles.
No, it isn't... And FEWER were sold in 2015 than in 2014... Not a lot fewer, but it was fewer...
If you don't replace gas car sales, then who gives a crap about EVs? The whole damm point is to stop burning gas, if you don't do that, EVs don't mean anything.
Not really. Just 1 thing needs to change: Cheap oil, and therefore cheap gasoline/diesel. That's it. Improved and cheaper batteries have helped.
Gas prices could triple and it won't change the numbers much... Gas prices are ALREADY triple in many countries, and most of those counties are at about 1% EV sales.
Which most people won't need on a routine basis if they can charge at home and/or work.
Yea, but that requires people change their habits, and I think you'll find that is harder than you think... Sure, the current half of a percent buying EVs are the early adopters willing to do whatever, but most people are not them and don't care that much...
I fully expect in the year 2100 we will still see gas cars being sold new. I think the problem is much, much bigger than you think it is...
It's clearly the future, but the future may not be here yet.
Is it? Everyone seems to be so convinced that it MUST be the future...
A lot of things have to happen to make that future a reality, and there is no assurance those things will happen.
300m or more battery capacity
That exists today, it is just bloody expensive. That brings us to the price problem. But it is possible that problem can be solved given time.
And it still has to be chargeable from 0 - full in under half an hour.
This is the problem that is MUCH harder to solve than the price problem. All existing battery technologies just don't support this, you'll ruin the cells trying to charge them this fast.
It might be solved in the future, but it isn't a matter of just making batteries cheaper, you have to make them better, and this is a slow process.
This requires an incredible amount of electrical infrastructure, but if we plan on eliminating fossil fuels in the future, the electrical grid will need to be much more powerful and efficient.
You might want to start with the coal and natural gas fired power plants before you get too excited...
Yea, yea, wind and solar... you can't have a 100% wind and solar power grid, for many reasons, so you have the option of nuclear or coal/natural gas...
Yes, those power plants are "better" in some ways than millions of small gas engines in cars, but if your goal is to stop global warming, they aren't "better enough".
When you do the math on global warming, assuming the CO2 numbers are a problem, we are in serious trouble, because there is no realistic way to stop it at this point, or even slow it down all that much, we're decades too late...
I'm not sure if it's a primarily -emotional- decision. I think people can see what the consumption of fossil fuels does to the environment and come to a purely rational decision to buy one.
I understand that thinking, but it is STILL an emotional decision...
Why?
Because the decision to spend more money buying an EV today doesn't do anything to the consumption of fossil fuels. Not enough to move the needle, not enough to be more than a rounding error.
It is spending money without accomplishing anything, because the outcome won't change. You'd have to start selling 5 to 10 million EVs a year to start to move the needle, and even then it would only be a small move.
My son-in-law has a Prius. We have compared them side by side. You and the Prius fail.
The Prius is pretty damm stupid as well... but lots of people like to pretend they are green and it is trendy...
A Ford Fusion has a lower total cost of ownership over 5 years than either the Prius or Volt, it also outsells both of them combined by several times over...
I'd love to own an EV, I own two cards, I could easily have one of them be an EV, and yes I've driven them...
But they make ZERO economic sense, anyone who thinks they do have fudged the numbers to justify the purchase they have already decided to make. They aren't even close, not even if gas is twice the current price.
Because EVs are very close to being cost effective
No, they really aren't... people just tell themselves that to feel better about the emotional purchase they have already decided to make...
I own two cars, the second an EV makes economic sense, I promise you I'll own one, I'd love to own one, I've driven them and they are NICE... Instant torque, no noise, new technology, no gas smell...
But they are too expensive, they just don't make any economic sense. One day they might, but that isn't today...