A number of factors could explain this. For starters, it seems as though range anxiety remains a serious cause for concern among consumers. In addition, electric vehicles remain more expensive than their ICE-powered rivals and with some of the government’s generous subsidies ending for many of the market’s best-selling EVs, buyers are feeling the pinch. What’s more, gas prices remain low and stable.
Get the whole story at WUWT
…women and children hardest hit!
If engineers could devise way for the vehicle too recharge itself while driving, they would be more appealing.
Now would be the time to bid GM adieu after its announcement today.
Only way an electric car makes sense is if it’s a hybrid, but then that doesn’t make sense because of the added complexity. If it was a good idea to buy one, the government wouldn’t need to subsidize it.
I’ll continue driving my 16 yr old beater and park it as close as possible to goofs that occupy 4 spots with their Tesla.
I’ve been actively looking at new cars for years. A few things catch my eye and I get excited. Then I stew on it for a few days and conclude it’s a waste of money. Besides, I already blew enough cash on 3 motorcycles the past 3 years.
Come to think of it, I do have a hybrid. It burns gas and oil. The environmental impact of manufacturing has already been amortized over 16 years. I would do great harm to Earth by purchasing an electric vehicle.
By strictly owning beaters I am saving the energy required to manufacture a new hot off the press, impress your neighbors, vehicle and forgoing the costs of unneeded extras they like to squeeze a few extra bucks out of. Born poor, kept poor by my governments wasteful spending.
MJA – Is that your car? Has your name on the side of it.
I want an electric car that costs $70,000 or $80,000 so I can only drive 200 miles in a day and then have to replace the dead battery pack every 2 years for $10,000 a pop
I’d be interested in how many of these sales went to government entities….
I,d be interested in knowing how many of these cars were bought by government entities…..
As they used to say beaters are neater. I had just had my brother at his garage tune up my 91 Honda Civic AWD station wagon yesterday. It has 243,000 miles on it and runs like new. It’s a great little car that I will keep driving for quite awhile yet. I’d like to have a newer vehicle but at this point I’m happy with what I’m driving, it gets good mileage per gallon (about 25 mpg or a little better) and my car insurance is cheap and best of all I have no car payment. And it’s a great Winter car with a its fulltime AWD, what more could I ask for. And since I’m single I don’t have to impress anybody with the kind of car that I drive.
Extirpates January 28, 2020 at 2:50 pm
“If engineers could devise way for the vehicle too recharge itself while driving, they would be more appealing.”
…they actually kind of do. There’s a thing called regenerative braking, where the dissipation of energy to stop the car is, in part, captured and used to recharge the battery somewhat every time the car stops.
Unfortunately, unless you two-foot, this is only a small amount of the time, and even then you can’t capture all of the energy as you lose some to the actual stopping action, friction, heat dissipation, etc., so your net trend is still energy loss, just slower energy loss.
You’re biggest problem with electric cars is energy storage. There’s no nice way to do it without toxic and dangerous chemicals and rare earths, and these are also heavy so you waste a ton of energy just lugging your energy storage around.
I’ve worked with automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in a factory setting for many years and several iterations, and I can tell you from experience that battery manufacturers get bored making this or that battery, and it gets ever more costly to make the one that fits your specific vehicle, and eventually they quit making it altogether.
And it’s very specific to the vehicle. Being a major source of the vehicle’s overall weight, it has to conform in mass and shape to fit the vehicle designed around it, as any changes beyond certain parameters may affect the vehicle’s traction, center of gravity, and other handling characteristics. You also need to deal with the fact that charging them produces explosive gases, that they can leak unpleasant things that can melt your face off, and that you need to be careful about how you charge them as – depending on the SPECIFIC chemistry of your battery, if it’s lead acid, nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydride, lithium ion, etc., it may produce a “memory” and SHARPLY reduce your range if you don’t completely deplete the battery before the next charge.
How they die can vary too, with Lithium Ion being the worst. A good lithium battery will keep at full voltage until it dies all at once, so volt meters do not work to monitor them properly, you simply know they are dead when your vehicle abruptly powers down. Other types may gradually lose power over time, which is easier to monitor but may start making your electronics act wiggy as they don’t have full power and start to work incorrectly as a result.
And this is INDUSTRIAL vehicles. It’s WORSE in CONSUMER vehicles, because the car is basically built around the battery package, which makes it muy difficil to replace if, say, a single plate separates and makes the whole thing fail, as can happen because IT’S IN A MOVING VEHICLE, and ONLY the OEM will be able to do that for you, so they can pretty much name their price. Also, it has to be pretty, which isn’t efficient, not blow up in a residential garage, which limits your charging options, and at least give you a chance of not dying of toxic gases in the cabin, so your vehicle sealing and venting is going to be an issue as it ages and a bit more critical than in a gasoline engine.
Plus, they’ve been known to burst into flames in an accident.
I remember more than once being at an accident scene as a responder and forcing the hood on a smoldering car open, only to find the top post battery for starting the car had both posts touch the hood as a result of the collision, and welded itself to the hood, which makes it pretty heavy and dangerous to open, plus it’s probably in flames at this point.
And that’s the old-school, 12v batteries that are only slightly bigger than a toaster.
Now make that the width of the vehicle, sit on top of it, and have someone slam into your side to see what happens THEN.
ESPECIALLY entertaining if you have cool features like retractable door handles that don’t work when your electrical system is damaged, so no one can get you out as you slowly start to roast, as has actually happened…
And that’s BEFORE you get into mood swings in people who make the CHARGERS.
…so, for these and many other reasons, I’m not a fan. I haven’t even gotten into the range issues and time you have to be at your destination to charge, but as I tend to do, this is again already too long, so that’s a different subject for another time…
They suck that’s all. Great technology whose time has not come yet. Maybe someday, but not yet.
They suck that’s all. Great technology whose time has not come. Maybe someday, but not yet.
The biggest problem with electric cars is the batteries. We are not even close to a battery worth using. the electric car companies hide battery failure by “giving” you the first replacement set in the warranty. the second set is so expensive that you will sell the car as it is worthless.
Gasoline & diesel are fuels so high in energy density that the Market decided LONG AGO they were the way to go. We could build lighter/smaller/safer cars, if we were serious about doing better.
Dumb to fight the free market. Obozo and his fellow criminals in Congress were simply greedy enough and selfish enough to foist this on us. And then hector us on being mindful of the Environment.
Before I die, I want to shove 100 twist CFL lightbulbs up AlGore’s ass. Oopsies, if they break up there.
Give me my old GEO Metro and I’ll race a Tesla coast to coast. Bet I’ll win and get 50 mpg.
Electric cars are like all green ideas. You’re supposed to ignore the obvious problems or you’re smeared as a bad person.
1. It takes too long to repower the vehicles. I can fill up my gas tank in less than a minute. It takes hours to recharge an EC.
2. I sometimes like to go on really long trips requiring multiple refuelings in a day. The nice thing about my gas powered car is a) it refuels fast and b) I know there is always going to be a place to refuel. You can’t drive an EC through Bumblefuck, Nowhere because if you go dead, you stay dead until you’re hauled out by a flat bed.
3. Ultimately, you’re not cutting down on pollution because electrical plants produce it and battery production produces a lot of it.
Someone should invent a green vehicle that runs on mechanical power supplied by a human operating foot pedals….
…also, since electric cars have a different torque curve than reciprocating engines, they use a constantly variable transmission (CVT) that shifts smoothly up and down instead of fixed gear ratios, which means they don’t have rigidly defined, user selectable shift points, causing the biggest car sin of all.
They are NO FUN.
SNS,
So you work part time as a salesman for electric vehicles?
As a proud resident of “Bumblefuck, Nowhere” I’d like to point out that we do have ‘lectricity.
Hell, we don’t even keep it stored in big glass jars anymore.
Pretty sure we use high tech ceramic jars now.
…oh, I forgot to mention that the batteries I’ve seen that welded to the hoods during accidents would get quite hot even if they DIDN’T burst into flames and swell from the boiling hot sulphuric acid, which would more often than not force a seam open in the casing and use the opening to jet superheated battery acid all over everyone in the vicinity, so there’s that…
…so, will that be cash or credit, @Anonymous JANUARY 28, 2020 AT 6:52 PM?
Coal powered vehicles should have ended with the steam locomotives.
Lucifer loves his Chevy VOLT 2. When it catches fire, he just laughs and laughs…until he pee’s and puts it out.
He has his eye on a 2021 electric Ford Mach-E Mustang.
Red, of course.
“Only scams need subsidies.”
Most politicians only skill is hiding costs from voters, so they can throw money at supporters.
“If politics is exciting, you are doing it wrong” – If the govt has too much power and money to throw around, of course crooked aholes will squabble viciously over politics .
At the current level of battery technology, much like Solar & Photovoltaic, it’s just not cost-effective.
Unless it’s .gov subsidized, of course.