Tags
Barack Obama. GM, Chevy Bolt, Chevy Volt, electric vehicles, gas taxes, Mike Bloomberg, natural gas, solar plants, SUVs, Tesla, windmills
It’s time once again, gentle readers, to review the state of Electric vehicles, particularly in light of the 2020 election. First, however, let’s visit Arstechnica.com for a sort of update on the current state of EVs, post-Chevy Volt. As regular readers may recall, I wrote about the demise of the Volt, the brave new harbinger of inevitable change, on 11-30-18.
The last Volt ever made rolled off the assembly line on February 19, 2019. The advent of the Volt forecast only its demise.
The end of 2019 saw a bunch of headlines proclaiming that it was a huge year for the electric vehicle. Yet more declare that actually, 2020 will be the year the EV really takes off. It’s true there are now more EVs; plug-in hybrid ones, battery ones, and even hydrogen fuel cell EVs in a range of shapes, sizes, and prices, and five of them made it into my list of the 10 best things I drove last year. When the numbers for 2019’s plug-in EV sales are complete, we expect more EVs to have been sold in 2019 than any year before, even if total new car sales in the UShave dropped.
Sound exciting? Brave new, shining future? Not so much.
Still, let’s not get ahead of ourselves; EVs might be outselling manual transmissions by nearly 2:1, but they still account for little more than a rounding error in the context of ~17 million new car and truck sales. If that has you depressed, take heart that the trend for EV sales is moving in the right direction. And it’s a trend that is starting to worry some of the states. That’s because the US has traditionally paid for the upkeep of its roads via direct taxation of gasoline and diesel fuel, which means that as our fleet becomes more fuel-efficient, that revenue will drop in relation to the total number of vehicle miles traveled each year.
Indeed. Whenever we fill our gas tanks, we’re paying taxes that supposedly go to upkeep of road and bridge networks. That’s more of less the case most places, but certainly not in California, for instance.
As a result, some states are starting to grapple with the problem of how to get drivers to pay for the roads they use in cars that use less or even no gas per mile. At the start of this year, Utah has begun a pilot Road Usage Charge program, coupled to an increase in registration fees for alternative fuel vehicles. Assuming a state gas tax of 30c/gallon and 15,542 miles/year driven, Utah says it collects $777 a year from a 6mpg heavy truck, $311 from a pickup getting 15mpg, $187 from a 25mpg sedan, $93 from a 50mpg hybrid, and nothing from anyone driving a battery EV.
So in 2020, Utah is increasing vehicle registration fees. In 2019, registering a BEV in Utah would cost $60; in 2020 that will be $90, increasing to $120 in 2021. PHEV fees were $26 in 2019, increasing to $39 this year and $52 in 2021, and not-plug-in hybrid fees have gone from $10 to $15, increasing to $20 next year. An extra $30 a year—or even $60 a year—is pretty small in the grand scheme of things, particularly considering how much cheaper an EV is to run.
But Utahns with EVs have an alternative. Instead of paying that flat fee, they can enroll in the pilot program that involves fitting a telematics device to the car. The device tracks the actual number of miles driven on Utah’s roads. These are billed at a rate of 1.5c/mile, but only until the total equals whatever that year’s registration fee for the vehicle would have been; participating in the pilot means you could pay less than you would otherwise, but Utah’s Department of Transportation says that participants would not ever be charged more than that year’s registration fee. The data will be collected by a contractor called Emovis, which operates toll roads around the US.
I’m sure we all want government devices tracking our every movement, don’t we? Isn’t this a small price to pay for EV virtue? Arstechnica appears to be of the opinion that the complete replacement of gas-powered vehicles with EVs is an inevitable and very good thing, and on the near horizon, so we’d better get our tax revenue ducks in a row!
A variety of EV boosters are also claiming that EVs are inevitable because battery packs are now cheaper and provide greater range. Chevrolet is claiming more than 200 miles per charge on their subcompact Bolt. What this probably means, if experience is a guide, is one can count on about half that range under normal driving conditions, and while charging times do appear to have declined somewhat, full charges with “superchargers” are still measured in hours. Another factor is that the federal EV tax subsidy, once as high as $7000, is currently no higher than about $1800, and will soon be entirely phased out. But all this should make EVS much cheaper, right? Not so much, as the header graphic from Chevy’s Bolt website reveals.
So a minimally equipped Bolt is about $37,000 and a reasonably well-equipped model is over $41,000? But that’s MSRP! Actual prices are always lower! Not so. GM lost money—surely much more than the cost of building each vehicle—on the Volt. There is no reason to believe they’re making a profit on the Bolt. Historically, dealers—those that accepted EVs in the first place—virtually never discounted Volts, getting full MSRP, and in some cases, substantially more, from those desperately seeking greenie street cred. Those high prices are offset only marginally by the federal tax credit remaining—for now. Better-appointed gas powered subcompacts cost considerably less, and so do compacts, and even many SUVs. Historically, EVs have been purchased only by the top 7% of US wage earners. They’re vanity purchases, toys, rolling virtue signals for people who can afford a variety of conventionally powered vehicles, and who can certainly afford to fly for trips of any duration. Most Americans can’t afford toys of that type.
GM never sold more than about 20,000 Volts in their best year. By comparison, in 2016, GM sold more than 40,000 Corvettes. The comparison is more apt than one might think. Both are niche vehicles catering to a small portion of the motoring public. Despite costing more than a Volt, the Corvette remains in production despite sales numbers far below those of other GM offerings, and presumably, the Corvette is profitable..
Now, gentle readers, let’s examine the bold new EV future, according to Mike Bloomberg.
Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg called for a requirement that all new vehicles sold in America be carbon-free by 2035.
Bloomberg’s proposal released Friday targets the transportation sector, the largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, as part of his overall goal of cutting emissions economy-wide 50% by 2030 in order to fully decarbonize before midcentury.
Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, is trying to distinguish himself in the Democratic field by promoting his philanthropic success working with environmental groups to shut down more than half the nation’s coal plants.
Promising to wipe out the coal industry didn’t work so well for Hillary Clinton, but she wasn’t willing to spend billions of her own money on her campaign. Bloomberg has reportedly already spent more than $200 million. Bloomberg is also after natural gas:
He’s pledged to stop the construction of new natural gas plants to achieve 80% clean electricity by 2028.
Earlier this week, he released a plan to make all new buildings zero-carbon by 2025 and retrofit old ones by phasing out natural gas appliances, through federal incentives and standards.
Bloomberg would use a similar formula to cut emissions from transportation, a tough task considering the lack of viable alternatives to gas-based vehicles, ingrained driving habits, and a shortage of charging infrastructure.
Electric vehicles are declining in price because of cheaper batteries, but represent only about 2% of sales.
Piffle. What does any of that matter when, like Barack Obama, you have a pen and a phone?
The Bloomberg adviser said a president could ‘go far’ using executive authority to mandate that new vehicles be emissions-free. His plan would also force 15% of new trucks and buses to be emissions-free by 2030.
And people think Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have insanely costly, absolutely ludicrous ideas. He’s apparently following the California model of compiling so many costly building regulations that virtually no one can afford to build anything, and no one can afford to buy whatever is built. Imagine an entire nation of Californias. Bloomberg is also going to reinstate federal EV subsidies:
To lower the cost of EVs, he would expand tax credits for buyers and allow low- and moderate-income people to trade in their gas-based vehicles for electric ones, or instead receive vouchers they can use on transit.
Transit. Right. Bloomberg apparently thinks everywhere is New York City. For much of the nation, there is no “transit.” That’s not only because Americans prefer and need personal vehicles. In many parts of the nation public transportation is not remotely self-sustaining, nor does it make the least bit of sense. This is particularly good:
He’d also expand federal grants for school districts and transit agencies to buy zero-emissions buses, collaborate with ride-share and taxi companies to convert their fleets to EVs, and build a network of charging stations along highways using tax credits and ‘low-cost financing,’ aiming to place a station every 50 miles.
Oh my. Charging stations every 50 miles. The cost of land—unless he simply intends to declare eminent domain on a heretofore unheard of scale—would be astronomical, and they’d better be damned big charging stations, because if everyone had EVs, they’d be constantly full, with long lines of power depleted vehicles. That would be a bit inconvenient in winter. People freezing to death waiting to charge their EVs might also be a bit inconvenient. Let us, just for the fun of it, ignore the almost complete incompatibility of EVs with cold climates.
When everyone has one or two EVs in their garages, from where will the electricity necessary to charge them come? If there is no more natural gas or coal, or fuel oil or propane, how do people heat their homes? How do they air condition them in summer months?
What Bloomberg apparently doesn’t know, or more likely, doesn’t care about, is fleets of electric busses have to be at least twice, likely three to four times, the size of conventionally powered fleets. Because they have to operate 24/7/365, busses can’t be out of operation for hours while charging. There must be charged replacements ready for each route at a moment’s notice. The kind of stop and go, constant-on heating and air conditioning, such fleets require would dramatically reduce EV range, and would inevitably strand passengers at bus stops as busses trundled off to recharging stations at unpredictable times. No one could ever be certain of bus schedules, so the economic and social disruptions would be immense and never-ending. This is really good too:
Bloomberg called to jump-start the dormant U.S. high-speed rail system by working with states to build at least one new high-speed rail corridor, or network, by 2025.
The United States has only 54 miles of high-speed rail, compared with countries, such as Spain, Japan, and Germany, that have more than 3,000 miles each.
Golly. We’re America. We can build at least 3000 miles of high-speed rail, can’t we? No we can’t. Google California’s high-speed-rail-to- nowhere boondoggle to see how that would work out. But first, examine these maps of America, Spain, Germany and Japan:
The point? America’s population is about 327 million. Japan: about 126 million. Germany: about 83 million. Spain: about 47 million. To build a high-speed rail network proportionate to those of Spain, Germany and Japan would require not just 3000 miles, but many times 3000 miles. All three countries would fit into the boundaries of the US many times over—not counting Alaska (they’d all easily fit there) and Hawaii–and such calculations do not account for the many portions of the nation that due to adverse terrain, can never support high-speed rail. But the federal government could do it much more cheaply and efficiently than California! Sure they could, because nothing is more efficient than a D/S/C ruled federal government.
What about Alaska? How many high-speed rail lines do we build to Alaska, and from which states? Does Canada have any say in the matter? And what about Hawaii? Electric 747s? Or do we just write off Hawaii? And by the way, what’s powering these high speed trains?
Bloomberg also seems unaware that electricity—absent lightning—doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Solar and wind sources provide only a tiny portion of our electrical needs, and both must be backed up by fossil-fueled plants when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, which is 50% of the time and more. Where will the factories that are going to build all these EVS get their power? What will power the machinery necessary to build the high-speed rail networks and the engines and passenger coaches? Where will the steel factories making the rails and everything else made of steel get their power? And what will power the public charging stations? Unicorn farts and fairy dust?
Consider the economic displacement of everyone whose jobs come, in at least some way, from the production of fossil fuels. It’s not just roughnecks and oil company employees. What happens when long haul truckers that bring us every necessity of modern life can’t keep to schedules, or those schedules are greatly lengthened? How much more will everything cost when trucking companies must field three times the vehicles and employ three times the drivers? Twenty-dollar Big Macs, when a local McDonald’s can get delivery of the makings? Will just-in-time businesses like McDonalds even exist? What happens to air transport, or will jets be reserved only for the self-imagined elite? Will there be enough of them vacationing to keep Hawaii afloat? What about solar or wind-powered ships? What happens when ambulances run out of power on the way to a call, or on the way to a hospital?
And what about endangered species about which D/S/Cs claim to care so much? Their habitats will be displaced by high-speed rail lines, solar plants, windmill farms and charging stations. Wilderness will be despoiled. Solar plants and windmills will slice, dice and flash fry billions of birds—species that will quickly become endangered if they’re not already–out of the sky.
If Bloomberg gets his way, gentle readers, we’re heading backward in time—way, way back. Of course, Bloomberg and other self-imaged elites won’t have to make such sacrifices. They’ll need every modern convenience to enable them to properly rule us. And no, you don’t get to keep any guns for hunting. Remember, this is Michael Bloomberg we’re talking about, the man funding Virginia’s gun grab. Your shiny, new Chevy Bolt will primarily gather dust in the garage—if you’re allowed to have a garage or a Bolt–in the vain hope of finding power to charge it.
Bloomberg is indeed unique, but he joins the ranks of the other D/S/C candidates who would not only bankrupt the nation, but impoverish, even kill, innumerable Americans while taking their liberty in the process of building a glorious, socialist utopia. Long live the green revolution!
By coincidence I follow both SMcDM and ArsTechnica =`*:*^p
Dear John Treankler:
What a happy coincidence, and thanks for patronizing this scruffy little blog!
You sound like some old fart that just wants to go back to the good-old-days, Mike. Oh.. wait… you’re a Trumpian Conservative!
While you’re lamenting the demise of gas guzzling I’d be a little more worried about this 5G technology smacking our society right between the eyes. I’m an electronics/radio guy and I gotta tell ya.. there’s so much unknown about the radio frequency spectrum this tech is going to use… something in the super-microwave range… 64ghz. The medical aberrations will be limitless with humans and everything else organic. It also makes the introduction of a “Skynet” all that more possible and gawd knows what kind of abuse due to commercial exploitation without some sort of regulation.
Doug, I don’t think Mike is ‘geezing’ so much as pointing out the absolute f**king impossibility of financing, much less fueling, EV cars and fleets. Especially if the only power sources are ‘green’ (Nukes need not apply). If Bloomberg thinks his scheme will work, he’s an idiot. I don’t think he’s an idiot, which is even scarier.
Agree with you on 5G Tech, especially the Huawei version. The commercial exploitation dangers are bad enough; the potential for government misuse makes Orwell’s Big Brother look like a jolly old gentleman. In fact under that sort of surveillance regime the central story behind 1984 couldn’t have happened, because the Thought Police would have picked up Winston and Julia during their first outing. I know little about how 5G might affect medical issues, but hundreds of thousands of people live near overhead transmission lines without apparent ill effect. IMO they’re more in danger from the herbicides used to keep vegetation down than the electric fields generated by the lines.
There’s some interesting websites suggesting with photo “evidence” of foliage already dying around existing conventional 4g cell towers.. and we’re not talking about close up control to keep towers themselves cleared for maintenance access. The suggestion is that the the RF power is affecting organic growth. All one has to understand is how radiation works against a human body to understand the constant bombardment of electromagnetic microwave radiation or organic cells. Now.. logic dictates that whether the alarm is true or not, certainly more research is needed.
Regarding the “big brother” thing.. I am not into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.. even if the proponents declare they are not unsubstantiated. Generally speaking, I’m a research guy… show me some research that makes sense.. make your hypothesis, publish your conclusions… and get your peers to agree. Science consensus rules. Politically… historically government has been reactive to exploiting technology to benefit (or not) the population. My cautionary tale about the science of 5g affecting us medically… there’s no question the unknown uses and advances in exploiting 5g technology may have an across-the-board social ramification to our freedoms. But remember… the Constitution does NOT guarantee privacy.. and Conservatives are going to have to come to grips with the idea that our 18th century-worded Constitution is a dynamic document by design of the framers and that it’s not a static bible for democracy.
Dear Doug:
Not if we’re going to keep a representative republic we won’t.
Dear TarTarkas:
Thanks. That’s what I’m saying. As to the dangers of 5g, I suspect we need a bit more research on that one…
Dear Doug:
Nope. I’m a constitutionalist. I merely appreciate Trump because he’s not damaging the Constitution. I’d feel the same way about any president that did the same. Nor am I “lamenting the demise of gas guzzling.” As soon as we have a viable technology that can more cheaply and efficiently replace fossil fuels, that’s another story, but we don’t, and there is no indication of any such breakthrough on the near or far horizon.
You appreciate Trump because he’s not damaging the Constitution?? I unappreciate Trump because he’s doing just that.. more so than any other President in my lifetime… hence he got himself impeached for doing so. But that’s the great divide, is it not?
Dear Doug:
Such accusations are easy to make and are as common as air, but actually proving any such thing is elusive.
I dunno that it’s so much in the “proving” as it is in what it takes to objectively believe.
I work in the public transit industry (commercial supplier, not for a transit agency). CDTA in Albany New York (Capital District Transit Authority) recently purchased 4 electric buses and had four charging stations installed in their depot to support them.
https://www.cdta.org/news/electric-buses-roll-out
They tell you in the story that the 4 charging stations cost $121k each to install and that they had to upgrade their lighting to LED and upgrade their electrical service in their depot to support it.
What they don’t mention (that we were informed of when we toured the facility last year) is that only two of the charging stations are even turned on and they can only run those two at half power right now because they pull so much power the local infrastructure and power generation capacity can’t support it.
That’s with only four buses and four charging stations. What does that scale up to if they go to full fleet electric (somewhere around 300 vehicles)? They’ll need their own power plant just to recharge their buses without killing the lights for half the city.
How many windmills would it take to power New York state if MTA New York (almost 6000 buses) went full electric?
That’s just the two biggest transit agencies; add to that all the other public, corporate and private vehicles that would need to be charged every day (multiple times per day most likely).
This is flat insane.
Sounds like an example of poor planning in implementing some change like that. In the least.. like most things… there’s poor communication as to what the goals are in the short and long term.. before investing in the infrastructure. In other words, if we accept your illustration of the windmills… seems someone better ascertain if the windmills needed down the road will be practical to manage the electrical demand.. and if the windmills themselves.. or any number of solar farms…. would not be a detriment to the communities.
On the other hand… if some company somewhere down the line manages to develop a single solar panel able to power and entire city the size of Albany… well, seems our power generation problems would be a thing of the past. Perhaps 5g will lead the way. We will just have to tolerate wearing the Faraday Cage jock straps a while longer.
Dear Sailorcurt:
Quite so.
Guys, from everything I am reading here, the bottom line is “we are not there yet” with EV’s. My neighbor owns a Volt and has constant problems. It barely gets 100 miles on a charge and will discharge without warning. I cant imagine owning one until the range and quality increases. The 5G thing worries me more. Having our brains cooked slowly is damn scary.
You echo a lot of concerns, Mr. Phil. But when you look back at each advancement in technology, whether it was an invention of some profit-motivated corporation, in a chemist’s lab in Sweden on an idea, conceived in some bike shop in Dayton… or in a garage by a couple guys in a California neighborhood… advancements almost always precede their need to be regulated in some form for society’s protection… against some potential for abuse, in some form. We are currently struggling to determine how to deal with social media technology as a society and that hasn’t even been figured out yet after nearly two decades… with new applications being invented each year.
Yep.. damn scary. Yet.. it’s a matter of perspective. If you are a fellow Boomer you might recall all the warnings that came with introduction of the TV. Children’s minds were going to slump away. Social norms and morals will vanish into chaos. The reason the first televisions had doors on the front that you could close to hide the screen.. people thought it was a way for unscrupulous enemies could gaze into their living rooms. When you shut off the TV the image on the screen compressed to a little dot.. and kids would get up close to the inside the dot.. “and fry their eyeballs”. My own mother told me to never sit close to the TV… because.. “you just never know.”
I guess we collectively end up fearing what we desire.
Dear Doug:
Perhaps we ought to most fear the incessant urge to regulate everything and anything.
You’re the Constitutionalist, Mike. Regulation is the name of the game to make sure no rights get violated. Although I suspect you’re presuming government is over-regulating… and that regulation itself is defiance of the Constitution. I guess one person’s regulation to retain rights is another person’s violation of rights.
Dear Doug:
It is not regulations that protect our rights, but the Constitution and the law. Virtually always, regulations are about raw power and political advantage. They strangle innovation and lawful commerce, and deprive Americans of their rights. I need not presume overregulation. That it exists is plain fact.
Spoken like a true cynic.
Dear Doug:
Nah. Just a realist.
Makes sense. Give them another year and see where we are. I remeber my grandparents were afraid of the TV for those very reasons. Thanks for joggin this memory. There is not enough out there on 5G yet, except the doom and gloom.
I am not aware of any agency that has a sole responsibility for reviewing all emerging technologies.. but I’ve been suggesting this for a while.. we need a cabinet position agency (yep.. yet another one to create the importance and priority) that explores all new emerging technologies across the board in all industries and formal applications of science, medicine, electronics, agriculture, environment.. everything.. and reviews it for social repercussions. With science and tech advancing so rapidly and the commercial exploitation of said advancements.. from dabbling with the brain… to screwing with DNA with little or no consideration for unknown outcomes. Presumably this agency would then make the public, through the lawmakers, aware of real and perceived human jeopardies not with the intent to regulate.. that would be up to Congress and the president… but with the intent to advise based on research beyond just the science. Things.. fields of study.. are advancing so fast we just can’t afford to just throw new ideas out there with reckless abandon because on the surface it might seem like a good idea. Conversely, we can’t bottleneck the process to assure competitive markets and free trade. This agency could also review continued development and application along the way once a project passed their initial scrutiny. Another bureaucracy? Yep. This is what happens when technology meets humanity.
Engineering is the art of the possible. Or, as the old saying goes, “when It’s time to railroad, you railroad and not before”. I’ve got 42 years of experience as an engineer. Electric motors are truly neat. They have a flat torque curve from 0 RPM to max RPM. That’s why diesel electric locomotives exist. The flat torque curve means the locomotive can exert max torque from stop and get the train moving. No giant and heavy transmission, just a direct connection form the motor to the wheels.The power source is a big, heavy, and expensive diesel engine and alternator. That type of power train would make your car weigh about 6000 pounds or more. A Tesla substitutes the diesel engine with a 30,000.00 battery pack. Tesla advertises the battery pack life at about 100K. Just image you go in one day to the Tesla shop and they present you with a bill for 30,000.00! I drive a BMW 535 sport – which is a pretty high performance car. Even if I blew the engine, there is no way I would be paying 30K to repair it.
Some day, we may very well have an electric power source that will be cost effective to replace gas. Today we don’t have that.
Notice, I have not talked about the relatively long re-charge times. That’s another problem. My time at the pump runs about 5 minutes. An EV’s time, even in the best of worlds, is much longer.
Do I think we will get there eventually, sure. What will it be? My experience in the world of engineering tells me we have no idea.
I appreciate people of science… and folks as yourself who can apply physical laws to make our lives easier and more efficient. The problem becomes one of human nature, I’m afraid.
Dear Doug:
So it ever is.
Dear Phil:
Indeed. That’s why making present and future policy without the technology necessary to sustain it is very much putting the cart before the horse.
I’m pretty sure in the case of Tesla, it’s an ends justify the means situation. Climate change will destroy the world, hence we must get rid of internal combustion vehicles. They also believe some kind of new battery will emerge that will solve the cost and charing issues.
There is a Tesla Charging station local to where I work.
Ten stations if I recall correctly.
I was wondering why the station put them in when it occurred to me that the Tesla owner was stuck there for 15 minutes to an hour and they would most likely wander into the store/fast food joint and spend even more money!
Dear Randy:
My all time favorite photo of a Tesla charging station was one powered by a diesel generator.
Pingback: Electric Vehicles: Out Of Juice? | Stately McDaniel Manor