Posted on 01/17/2024 5:07:22 PM PST by Rummyfan
Many people don’t realize that electric cars have been around for more than 100 years. One might think that the fact they have never caught on is more than a coincidence.
Yesterday, Robert Bryce provided testimony on electric vehicles to the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. His testimony is reproduced at his Substack site. It is all worth reading; here is an excerpt:
The history of the EV is a century of failure tailgating failure. In 1901, in an article headlined “Edison’s New Storage Battery,” the Los Angeles Times declared, “The electric automobile will quickly and easily take precedence over all other” types of motor vehicles. It said, “If the claims which Mr. Edison makes for his new battery be not overstated, there is not much doubt that it will make a fortune for somebody.”[ii] The media hype continued for the next 100 years:
* In 1911, the New York Times reported that the electric car “has long been recognized as the ideal solution” because it “is cleaner and quieter” and “much more economical.”[iii]
...
The facts show something different. The ICE vehicle isn’t “toast.” ICE automobiles continue their overwhelming dominance in the marketplace. In 2023, EVs accounted for about 9% of all new car sales in the U.S. While that percentage has increased significantly over the past few years, and EV sales are growing, it is also clear that EVs face substantial resistance from automobile buyers.
As a result, Robert goes on to note, automobile companies are losing staggering amounts of money on their electric vehicles. And resistance to the technology, which has repeatedly proved inferior to internal combustion vehicles for over a century, is growing, not receding. As, for example, in Hertz’s announcement that it is selling one-third of the EV fleet in which it made a massive investment.
And then, of course, we have the spectacle of Teslas dying when the weather gets cold:
Desperate Tesla owners in and around Chicago were seen trying to charge their vehicles with no luck amid frigid temperatures that have gripped the Midwest.
Ah, but see how things can appear different when the government steps in with vast subsidies (economic redistribution), virtue-signaling posturing, and market-distorting regulation.
Temperatures in Tijuana are in the 50s right now and 70s in Mexico City. Just sayin’...
Knowledge and technology of the early 1900s was much more able to perfect the ICE than electric car.
TVA sent out an alert this morning not to run much electricity in your home because their system was at maximum capacity.
One thing they suggested was unplugging electric vehicles.
So once every vehicle is electric including ambulances and fire trucks will the fire department tell people their heart attack, broken leg, burning house, etc. will just have to wait until TVA is carrying less of a load?
This is slightly off topic, but in 1911, gas cars WERE noisy and horribly smelly. It took another 45 years for scientists to understand the photochemical reactions leading to smog in urban areas.
The first emission control, the PCV valve, wasn’t added until 1964. Most people today do not remember how stinky cars were back then. That valve alone greatly reduced car emissions.
It took decades for researchers and engineers to improve seals and emission controls to get to the clean ICE cars we are used to today.
Happened to watch a few minutes of news where several people in soundbites talked briefly about having to wait in line for EV charges. A furious black man said he waited for 6 hours in the line of cars and was told the charge would take a long time instead of the promised “quick charge.” Cold temperatures changed the game.
Imagine all those people waiting in line in those cold wind chills and considering someday whether to buy another EV.
fuhhhhhhhgggeddddaboutit.
LA still has bad smog during the summer; so do a lot of eastern cities. Has to be something else.
There was also the switchover from steam to diesel on the railroads en masse after WWII. Steam locomotives, apart from a few exceptions that had condensers, had open exhaust pipes (the smokestack).
And of course, all that pesky manufacturing was shifted over to Red China. You know, the very thing that causes a country to be wealthy in the first place . . .
I remember steam trains…..filthy things .
…….
I see a lot of Teslas where I live. Sort of figured that was just wealthy people’s “drive around town car” that was luxurious and trendy, but they had a real car for taking long trips, bad weather, etc.
Surely people don’t buy electric cars as their only vehicle? Why?
“The first emission control, the PCV valve, wasn’t added until 1964. Most people today do not remember how stinky cars were back then.”
I’m one that does remember. Crankcases had a breather tube as a vent to the atmosphere. When piston rings became excessively worn the combustion blowing past the rings entered the crankcase, vaporized some of the oil fling around and it all went out that tube as a blue smoke.
Mechanics of the era could easily tell if an engine needed a ring job if the engine was “breathing”.
PCV valves may have been installed on commercial vehicles in 1964, however they were on military vehicles long before that as part of the snorkeling equipment. I know as I replaced the PCV valve on my 1952 Dodge M37.
Also those early ICE engines poured blue smoke out the exhaust and engines were typically toast at around 100,000 miles. Thanks to modern oils, fuels and engineering, that’s long gone and a properly maintained ICE can now last 300,000 miles.
I went on a fan trip back in 1997 behind the Chesapeake & Ohio’s #614, a 4-8-4 meant for both passenger and freight service. The dirtiest things got from the exhaust was a steady stream of cold cinders that would get in your eyes if you passed an open window on the train. Of course, put them on all the trains and that adds up quite a bit. One major advantage that steam has, though is that it’s fully mechanical and would be unaffected by EMP attacks.
Side note. We all discuss “Teslas” again and again. How many of the GM and other brand EVs are around and how do the suckers, I mean owners, like them?
Maybe someone here gave a gas car ride to the owner stranded by the roadside and talked to them.
They’ll be museum pieces...the ones that escape the crusher,
“I remember steam trains…..filthy things .”
As a kid in the 40’s, I loved them!
True,,,all the old trains and cars would be needed .
…
Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout (1910). Range of 400 miles and a top speed of 100 mph (on dirt and gravel roads). Been a while since I read it, but I think I recall that he re-charged it for free by stealing from a trolley wire. So bring back trolleys and we can out-do Tesla.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/950
Since you asked about GM, in the Dallas area Hertz is selling a Bolt for $21,255, and a Tesla Model 3 Base for $31,495. Tesla has just over 40k miles on it, the Bolt 32587.
The passenger railroads in China were still using them in the mid 70s. I rode thousands of miles on them. Yes, extremely filthy.
Hi, old-timer!
Yep, crankcase breathers were invented so military gas and diesel engines could run under water. They originally vented downward to let the natural vacuum under the vehicle draw the vapors out of the crankcase. Then the oil filler cap became a “breather” cap to let air into the valve cover and down to the crankcase via the oil galleries. But that just dumped the blowby into the air.
Every now and then I get behind a 1950 to 1960 car and I can tell IMMEDIATELY. I cannot move fast enough to put my ventilation system on recirc to keep that stinky crud out of my cabin.
Don’t forget the huge improvement in materials and designs of piston rings and cylinder liners. Those materials controlled the wear that used to kill engines by 100k.
When I moved to Silicon Valley in 1978, we had smog so intense that you could not see across the bay for the brown layer of crud. A combination of auto emission controls, factory emission controls and industry moving out of this high priced region cleared the air up. Now it is very rare to have a smoggy summer day.
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