About That Inevitable Transition to Electric Vehicles...

PJ Media ^ | 04/05/2024 | Stephen Green

[SeekAndFind]

A funny thing happened on the way to our all-electric future: reality.

I've written at length in recent weeks about Presidentish Joe Biden's hamfisted and wrongheaded EPA rules meant to force everybody into electric vehicles, whether EVs suit their needs or not. But maybe nothing compares to Oliver Price's headline on Wednesday, asking, "Is this the end of the EV?"

Well, no. But we're still far, far away from the end of dino-burning engines — and likely to stay that way for far longer than the grifters in the EV industry and the autocrats in Washington (and several states, too) would have you believe. 

After reading tens of thousands of words about our "necessary transition" to EVs and writing a few thousand of my own, I thought maybe I'd do some even deeper digging. Turns out, I was shocked by what I found.

In a good way. 

That Price headline I mentioned above goes on a bit longer. The rest of it reads, "As Tesla and BYD's car sales plummet and Apple pulls the plug on its e-car project, has the boom in electric vehicles finally short-circuited?" 

But there's a big difference between "slower growth," which is where EV sales have been for the last year or so, and "the end of the EV," which seems unlikely in the extreme. 

So what is the truth? What happens to EV sales in a market as big and as varied as the United States, with our widely different needs and wants, complicated by various federal and state mandates and incentives?

Would you believe that, even with Presidentish Joe Biden's Green New Deal Lite money and EPA mandates, EV adoption might top out at less than 30% of the new car market? Or that it could be as low as just 13%?

[Sirius Lee]

"These little electric faggot carts are a joke."

"Oh, but you look good in one."

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

[clearcarbon]

"A funny thing happened on the way to our all-electric future: reality."

[jonrick46]

I suspect the Green New Deal zealots never managed high school math and think electricity can be brought in with a kite. America cannot afford the total failure their policies will create.

This not equivalent to the automobile taking over the function of the horse. Apples to oranges.

[from occupied ga]

They think electricity comes from wall sockets. They don’t have the faintest idea of economics and being socialists refuse to accept it anyway. Engineering and the reality of the inviolate laws of thermodynamics are concepts they not only are profoundly ignorant of, but which they reject in their entirety because it contradicts their solar/wind fantasy.

“For the true believer no proof is necessary. “ and no disproof possible.

[linMcHlp]

Apparently, inflation is inevitable.

[jonrick46]

The batteries store power in watt energy. A typical EV battery will charge up with enough energy to run the typical home for two days. The Tesla Model S and Model X variants holds 100 kWh and with quick charge 220 VAC system, For the Model S Tesla, it only takes about one hour to charge to 100% if it were totally depleted (not the usual case). That means, enough power to run a home (30 kWh per day) for three days is consumed in the 1 hour to charge it. That will put a huge demand on the energy infrastructure necessary to support it. I can imagine the transmission lines will have wire conductors the thickness of three inches to carry the power and power transformers on every other drop.

All connections will have to be solid or the resistance will cause enough heat to melt the connectors.

[central_va]

Actaully, in the early days of the auto the propulsion war, it was: steam vs EV vs ICE.

[from occupied ga]

Great diagram. Here are a couple of voltages to go with it. Generators at the plant produce 18,000 volts. This is stepped up to typically 750,000 volts for the transmission lines. At the substation the 750,000 is stepped down to (typically) 23,000 volts for the distribution network, and the pole transformer steps the 23kv down to 220 volts that we have in our houses. The power loss from plant to house averages 8% although this can vary as you pointed out depending on the state of the transmission and distribution network and also on the current demand with heating due to high current slightly increasing the resistance of the system.

[Oldhunk]

Good analysis. I never considered the total amount of electrical energy that would have to be produced if all of our vehicles were battery powered.