Electric cars are the future, but …
...the future’s not yet here.
Electric cars are the future, no doubt. Unfortunately, the future’s not here yet.
I recently discovered both their joys and frustrations when I rented one as I visited my daughter at college.
If you admire amazing vehicles, you can’t get much better than the Tesla S. It’s a marvel that drove like an earth-bound rocketship. This machine jumps from 0 to 60 in a seat-pinning 2.4 seconds. That’s “laugh at Ferraris” acceleration, in a quiet, beautiful sedan that easily seats 5, with air-conditioned seats, and a near-magical self-driving mode.
For car lovers, driving a Tesla is a thrill you shouldn’t miss. Just don’t buy one without some serious research first.
Unfortunately for electric cars, they need electricity, something that’s not always easily accessible. The small town I visited had only one, slow electric charger at a hotel across town, where I needed to leave the car for hours. Then, I needed to charge again on the way home, forcing me to wait around for over an hour. My rocket ship was a pain in the rear.
I don’t want to plan my vacations around the locations of electric-vehicle charging stations. No one does, and we’re seeing those frustrations play out across the country, as overenthusiasm for all-electric cars clashes with reality.
A year ago, Hertz announced that it would buy 100,000 Teslas, then upped the ante by pledging to buy another 240,000 electric vehicles. They hired quarterback Tom Brady as a spokesman, who told us, “Knowing Hertz is leading the way with their electric fleet speaks to how the world is changing and the way companies are approaching being environmentally and socially conscious.”
Last week, Hertz reversed course, announcing it would sell roughly a third of its EV fleet and replace them with gasoline-powered cars. Low demand and high repair prices collided head-on with the company’s overenthusiasm. It's a story repeated across the EV industry, with some startups seeing their value crash by 90%.
The frigid weather throughout the country brought another wakeup for EV owners who discovered that batteries don’t like the cold. “Charging stations have essentially turned into car graveyards in recent days as temperatures have dropped to the negative double digits,” Fox Chicago reported.
I’d love a Tesla as my third car, but they’re more of a luxury than a practical choice for the average American right now. Someday, we’ll be ready for them. They’ll be good for us and good for our environment. You don’t need to be an environmental zealot to recognize the dirtiness of gasoline and the toxic fumes it produces.
Until then, governments need to slow down efforts to ban gasoline cars. And let’s give credit where it’s due – to hybrid vehicles. They're emerging as a practical, more immediate solution, shining quietly in the shadows of their all-electric cousins.
– Ken
I wish Leon Musk would have just come up with SpaceX. Buying an electric car which requires a 1000 lbs battery consisting of cobalt, much of it mined at the lower level of the supply chain in the Peoples Republic of the Congo, is more than a point of interest. It’s like buying a cotton shirt with slave labor which originated in the southern United States in the middle of the 19th century. Another irony is these huge batteries need a lot of graphite. Guess how we get that? It only comes in volume from coal mines. These are just a couple inconvenient facts you don’t hear in the main stream media. A modern internal combustion engine (ICE) when it’s entire resource cycle is considered, is much easier on the environment and with much less CO2 emissions than an electronic vehicle (EV). About the only thing coming out of a modern day ICE car is CO2. And you can recycle most of an ICE car when done with it, but the 1000 lbs battery can’t currently be economically recycled. Where do those leeching toxic things go? EVs, like wind turbines and solar panels are, from a physics stand point, a dead end, a long expensive detour to to the end of a cul-de-sac. The green wall. And just another point; CO2 is not a poison, allowing the marketplace to move to more dense energies coal - natural gas - nuclear, will emit far less CO2 than forcing the use of renewables, and forcing people people to use or purchase EVs. Wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars will probably go down as the biggest boondoggles of the 21st., century. The math does not work.
My husband rented one in Texas, got stranded because he couldn’t get to a charger. Most tow companies won’t tow them because they get damaged so easily. He missed meeting while he spent days trying to get picked up. It was a nightmare. He used to always comment on how cool they were when we passed one in our gas powered oversized SUV, not any more, silence would be golden if only I could stop laughing when that happens.