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barack obama, Chevy Bolt, Chevy Volt, climate change, CRT, fast chargers, fundamental transformation, General Motors, Hummer EV, joe biden, LGBTQWERTY, spontaneous combustion, The Party Of Science, Ultium batteries, white supremacy
As regular readers know, I’ve been debunking Electric vehicle cheerleaders for years. My primary principle in this area is simple: government has no business using taxpayer money to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. When the Chevy Volt was all the rage during the Age of Obama, the “Lightworker” visited a Volt plant for a photo op and proclaimed his desire to buy one as soon as he left the White House. I predicted two things: (1) because it was losing truckloads of money on every Volt it built, when Obama left the White House, GM would wait a decent interval and cease Volt production, and (2) Barack Obama would never buy a Volt.
You’ll never guess what happened, gentle readers! OK, you guessed: GM ceased Volt production in March of 2019 and Barack Obama never bought one. Of course we’ve known since a few days after the dawn of the Age of Obama all his promises have expiration dates.
For the moment, GM only produces the diminutive Bolt—go here to see how they’re on fire–and I don’t mean sales, and the Hummer EV. I wrote about that one in Your Biden EV Future, where I wrote this:
Only $112,595? Why, Joe Normal American will buy seven, one for each day of the week, and change them like underwear. That way he can be pretty sure he’ll always have one charged up. Maybe after he spends another $2000 or so for a home fast charger, then there’s installation…
That’s right, gentle readers, the Hummer EV will retail for only $112,595! What Normal American wouldn’t immediately rush to the nearest GM dealer to snap up at least two of those? I ended that article thus:
D/S/Cs are, you see gentle readers, The Party of Science. The problem is, they’re going to mandate virtue first, and if the science doesn’t actually exist to make their virtue reality, that’s too damned bad for Deplorables–and the economy–and the country–and the world. You don’t really think they’re going to limit themselves to EVs, do you? They’re going to be very busy saving the planet on our behalf, so what’s a little inconvenience to Deplorables? As Barack Obama used to say, we ought to be thanking them.
It’s not nearly enough, no, for Biden—actually his puppeteers—to mandate we peasants drive EVS by a date certain. Now he’s mandating it for our military, and GM is responding:
The Hummer H1 was based on a military truck, and now it appears GM is ready to return the favor. GM Defense president Steve duMont told CNBC the company planned to build a military vehicle prototype based on the upcoming Hummer EV. The eLRV, or electric Light Reconnaissance Vehicle, would modify the Hummer’s frame, motors and Ultium batteries to suit US military requirements.
And what, pray tell, might an Ultium battery be?
The success of an electric car frequently revolves around its batteries, and GM is determined to have some of the best. It just revealed new Ultium batteries that it claims will deliver the range and performance to make EVs practical for ‘nearly every customer.’ Their pouch-like cells can be stacked both horizontally and vertically, allowing GM to cram more storage into a given space and accommodate a wide range of vehicles. The batteries can range from 50kWh to 200kWh, or enough to deliver as much as 400 miles of range and 0-60MPH in 3 seconds — conveniently, the same acceleration as the upcoming Hummer EV.
Ultium batteries will normally support up to 200kW fast charging (slower than Tesla’s 250kW Supercharger V3, if still quick), but there will be 800-volt packs for trucks that will handle 350kW charging. They’ll be low-cobalt designs that are both cheaper than before (under $100 per kWh) and should raise fewer concerns about the labor required. Between the lower costs of the batteries themselves, the reuse of existing facilities and simpler car designs, GM expects its next wave of EVs to be ‘profitable’ — it’ll have an incentive to sell them like any other car.
Note the cheerleading last sentence, which admits GM’s EVs have not, to this point, been profitable. In other words, GM shareholders have been left holding the bag on every EV GM has manufactured, as have US taxpayers in the form of tax incentives for the top 7% of the population, which is that part that has actually been buying EVs.
What is GM going to do? Reduce the purchase price of an EV from more than $112 thousand dollars to say, $90 thousand? Sign me up for at least three of those!
We should also note the “as much as 400 miles of range,” teaser. Beginning with the Volt, GM’s range figures have been taken not with a grain, but a block of salt. Real world mileage has consistently been about half of the quoted mileage, which might be obtainable under absolutely ideal climate and road conditions, with absolutely no electric power drawing accessories–like radio, lights, heater, AC–activated, carrying nothing more than a driver with very old lady-like driving habits. In the real world, those kinds of range figures have been revealed to be unicorn farts and fairy dust. But let’s get back to EVs for our military:
The prototype should be ready sometime in 2022. There’s no guarantee American armed forces will use the eLRV, however. The Army is still exploring the viability of EVs like this, and GM will have to meet formal requirements (along with a rival manufacturer) if and when they exist. A choice is due sometime in the mid-2020s.
I’m sure a military far more concerned about CRT and LGBTQWERTY indoctrination than operational effectiveness—and the lives of its troops–will be more than happy to go electric. This is particularly bubble-headed cheerleading:
EVs generally require less maintenance due to fewer moving parts. And their quiet operation could be extremely useful for recon and stealth missions where conventional rides would be too noisy. The challenge is to make the most of these advantages while minimizing drawbacks that could hurt operational speeds.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the batteries. Contemporary battery technology requires volatile chemicals that must be kept separated. Even a pinhole is enough to spark spontaneous, and often explosive, combustion. Military vehicles have to be extraordinarily rugged; they’re not going to be driven on highways, and filling-rattling jolts are the norm rather than the exception. There are no known batteries of sufficient robustness for military applications.
The kind of quietness cited is illusory. Reconnaissance missions work because troops can keep at a safe distance from the enemy, yet still detect them, a mission currently being increasingly done with small, stealthy flying drones. Such missions are not dependent on silent vehicles. That kind of recon requires highly trained, stealthy warriors on foot, not vehicles that can’t get nearly that close without being seen, regardless of their power source.
Military vehicles are also prone to be hit with projectiles of all kinds. Even a pistol round or bit of shrapnel in the battery pack would be sufficient to destroy the entire vehicle, again, potentially beginning with a fiery explosion. Adding armor for a battery pack increases weight, which decreases range. It takes little imagination to envision what would happen to an EV hit with any kind of explosive round. “Secondary explosion” might be inadequate to explain. Certainly, gas or diesel powered vehicles can catch fire when hit by hostile fire, but not by design.
And how, pray tell, would a military EV recharge in the field? Let’s say manufacturers develop ultra, mega, super-duper, Omicron fast chargers that can recharge a battery pack to 80% in 30 minutes. That means a vehicle sitting in one spot for at least that long—assuming a charging vehicle with generator can get there–greatly increasing its sitting duck target time. Actually, the sitting duck charging time of the vehicle to be charged, the generator, and the vehicle towing it. And what, pray tell, will be charging this EV? Why, a diesel powered generator towed by another electric EV? An EV that will require the charger it tows to charge it? The generator, chugging merrily along, producing vast amounts of heat, will also be a prime target for the enemy’s thermal imagers. It’s an issue I’ve previously addressed:
D/S/Cs know we get electricity from power plants, but they’re not quite so tuned into where the power plants get electricity, probably from, you know, electric stuff. I mean, there’s lightning in the sky, and that’s electric, right? So it’s like, ORGANIC! That’s the approach that has worked so well for California, which is pretty much out of electricity, and at the most inconvenient times, like when people really need it. Just wait until everyone has to drive electric vehicles! We’ll just get electricity from the electric plants, which will get it from, you know, organic electric stuff, which is probably gluten free too!
Such towed chargers aren’t going to be ultra, mega, super-duper Omicron fast chargers. They’d be too large, so charging/come and shoot me charging times are surely going to be larger, unless, of course, we can miniaturize fission reactors, which are also going to have an enormous heat signature. There’s always the possibility of cracking cold fusion, and making fusion powerplants sufficiently small. I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that one. Maybe Tony Stark will license his Arc Reactor technology?
But OK, let’s play along. Will the military have at least one EV pulling a diesel generator for every operational EV? If not, there’s going to be a long line of operational EVs waiting for charging from a few diesel generators somewhere out there in the field, waiting not only for their turn at charging, but for enemy artillery or missiles to stop by for an enlightening visit. And whatever mechanical efficiencies are realized from so-called savings due to “fewer moving parts” in vehicles will be lost to the huge numbers of diesel generators necessary to charge them. Besides, electronic components don’t last forever either.
There will also have to be EV tanker trucks hauling the diesel for the generators. So instead of merely transferring diesel fuel directly and rapidly from a tanker into the tanks of diesel-powered vehicles, soldiers will have to use it to fill generators, which will produce electricity to charge EVs and the EV tanker trucks, which will haul diesel to fill generators, which will produce electricity to charge EVs and EV tanker trucks, which…
Our enemies won’t have to bother destroying our war fighting machines. They’ll just have to target the generators, which won’t take expensive missiles, only a few bucks worth of .50 caliber, or its metric equivalent, ammunition. Still, our enemies will enjoy shooting up our EVs because the resulting explosions will be so pretty.
But EVs will reduce emissions and save the planet! Climate Change! Somehow I don’t think young American soldiers, particularly those in a war zone, will have that priority, and if they know they’ll be going into a military with vehicles particularly prone to spontaneous combustion, or running out of fuel with no way to very rapidly fuel up, there are going to be a lot fewer young Americans willing to reduce emissions and save the planet.
Our military will be wasting money necessary for training, which includes vehicles and ammunition, which means fewer vehicles, lagging technology, and much less ammunition. Our enemies, who do not buy into climate change hysteria, will not.
What about battery powered military trucks, tanks, and other armored vehicles? Absent the fusion breakthrough I previously mentioned, that’s not happening. A Hummer-sized military EV traversing bad terrain in all weather conditions, carrying a load of equipment-laden troops with all of their gear and spare ammo is going to have only a fraction of the cheerleader range GM and federal bureaucrats claim. Armored vehicles—armor weighs a very great deal–and trucks carrying heavy loads will have to be followed by EV trucks with massive generators to recharge them, and the EV trucks that haul the generators, every 100 miles, or less—very likely much less, because weight dramatically reduces EV range.
As I’ve previously written, the kind of “fundamental transformation” of the way we drive, travel and haul goods envisioned by D/S/Cs is not only impossible in terms of raw materials and cost, it’s a particularly stupid, and deadly, idea for military vehicles. Of course if the military’s priority is stamping out non-existent white supremacy…
As I’ve also previously written, you don’t think our intellectually and morally superior self-imagined elite are going to limit themselves to the capabilities of electric vehicles, do you? We’ll just have to take up their planet-saving slack, won’t we?
As you know, I bought a Tesla model Y in early August. It’s mid December. How has it been? Where shall I begin? As an engineer, it’s a lot of fun. Joe, everyman American will pull his hair out of his head. Operating a touch screen, I.E., tapping an icon to change A/C temp, turn the seat warmer on/off, etc. while rolling down the road is a PIA. That’s a technical term for WTF, over, what were you thinking engineers? We had a couple of software updates, after the first one the driver’s side window broke – twice. You see, being really trendy, Tesla engineers did not put a door frame around the windows. Instead to open the door, the windows has to drop about 1/2 inch to open and close when the door is closed. This means the electric window system has to work to get out of the car. Anyone ever have a window regulator go? Guess what happens when the window does not drop and you open the door? The window breaks. The first time Tesla fixed it quickly, the second time we had to wait for a month. To be fair, other regular cars use the same mechanism. However, if I were as smart as Tesla, I would probably eliminate anything that would complicate the roll out of our new tech such as drop to open windows. Then, I cleaned the touch screen with Windex. It looked like the car had been possessed. It took on a life of it’s own until I rebooted the car. And last, but not least, we used to have one touch roll down and roll up windows. Now I have to hold the window control. Still, it’s cheap to operate here in the People’s Republic and it’s very fast. Would I buy another one? Ask me in 3 years.
One other note. I experimented with drones a few years ago. We had a crash and stair stepped a 20Amp Hour Lithium battery. The battery still worked, but I wanted to re-stack the cells. I happened to nick one cell with an xacto knife. I had about 15 seconds to get it to the safety sandbox before it burst into salmon colored flames. I piled sand high on top of the pack and it stayed hot to the touch for 8 hours. That was a battery the size of a brick.
Dear Phil:
Good luck with the Tesla, and thanks for your informative comment.
I have spent time in the online meme wars trying to do my part to hold back the attack-of-the-EVs, sometimes even in this noble assembly. But I am becoming more open to EVs
Nowadays specialized high voltage recharging equipment can already add hundreds of miles to your battery while you have a leisurely lunch. Not fully charged, {going all the way to full is mostly pointless anyway if you are close enough to the next recharging station.}
The sharp end of all 1st world militaries are droning up {air and land} like they mean it. Battery electric power systems make them capable of dramatically outperforming ICE systems, at least for their battery life.
If worse comes to worst, and remote recharging becomes necessary, field generators could be high speed Diesels with high voltage generator systems that already exist and could keep a column moving by being able to charge mobile units faster than their discharge rate and perhaps top them up when there is a halt.
Dear Rum:
The problem is running the enormous number of diesel generators necessary to recharge enormous numbers of vehicles, paints a hot target on the heads of troops involved. As I’ve often written, I have no problem with people buying EVs if they meet their needs. I do have a problem with government forcing them on people whose needs they don’t meet, spending public money to promote them, and now, forcing them on our military, when they clearly won’t meet their needs, and will actually endanger them.
“The First World War awakened the United States Army, as well as the rest of the western world, to the demands of industrialized warfare. The weapons of the industrial revolution forced military thinkers to make significant change in the way they approached military operations. Just as new machines in manufacturing had created a demand for trained engineers and managers, so too had the increasingly complex machines of war forced armies to create new bureaucracies to keep them functioning. Perhaps no area better reveals the difficulty American commanders had with the transition from the old infantry-cavalry-artillery army to the modern age of warfare than the use of motor vehicles.”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26061868
In the Mexican Punitive Expedition of 1916 a Major John F, Madden was assigned as the Quartermaster General for the expedition.
Though Major Madden constantly struggled with vehicles designed for civilian use, poor roads, and parts shortages, he enthusiastically supported incorporating trucks as a means of delivering supplies to forward deployed elements. Patton biographer Martin Blumenson describes Patton’s exposure to both technology and the central role of logistics during his first operational campaign: “He had become acquainted with the primitive motor vehicles used by the U. S. Army and employed them for the first time in extended operations and become aware of the importance of logistics as he studied the supply system.”
Click to access decker.pdf
The point…..
Every new technology has to start somewhere.. and as always, necessity is the mother of invention. The military, via that “villain” called the military industrial complex, is almost always at the forefront of civilian tech advances. I’m sure back in the day there was someone like you, Mike… telling the world that no internal combustion engine was going to replace horse cavalry.
Dear Doug:
What a specious comparison. I point out only the lunacy of replacing effective and useful vehicles with vehicles that not only are not an improvement, but are actually far more likely to get our troops killed, and all in the cause of climate virtue signaling.
Not specious at all. Of course every single concern you brought up, pretty much common sense by the way as it relates to potential military shortcomings of the current tech limitations of EV’s, is in fact a here-and-now ..”lunacy”… and not necessarily what might evolve down the line. My point is that technological progress has to begin somewhere and evolve to a practical acceptance… or not. Seems you are judging.. criticizing without the benefit of visionary progress. based on past technological changes… of the example of going from horse to car. But you are politically biased because the reasons for social adaptation to EV’s is based on some interpretation of global warming.. which you do not support. I’ve got a helluva number of questions regarding EV’s in applications across the board… both practically, socially, and politically. Most can’t even be answered yet… and may not until I am too long gone to worry about it.
I dislike smart phones as a practical instrument for my needs. I much prefer an old style flip phone to grab and make a quick call.. and not this swish-crap of smart phones, not to mention you have to hold the damn things without touching the sides and pressing other buttons. No wonder people drop them. Also, the screens are all too small. When I need wifi I use a laptop. I understand that most, if not all, the new EV’s have touch screens that control all dashboard functions. Cool tech, yes (I did use to be a gadget guy in the past) but ridiculous while driving and keeping eyes on the road… although that’s going to be solved with auto-pilot functions. Change is inevitable regardless of your politics.
Dear Doug:
Understood. And when and if EV technology advances to the point it is appropriate for military applications, I’ll have nothing to say against it. Oh, and global warming is irrelevant. I speak only of the political wrong of spending taxpayer money to promote a consumer product at the expense of like products, and of the realities of current technology. Change is fine, as long as it’s not politically motivated, and is actually beneficial.
You have a valid point regarding the spending of tax dollars in favor of a competing tech. Then again, it is emerging tech which the government does have a record of stimulating with tax money. I admit I am not up to date on the details in the what and why in how government is contributing to EV. You’re ahead of me there.
Dear Doug:
Biden has practice in the Obama Administration, which threw semi trailer loads of taxpayer cash on green boondoggles, including tax incentives for EVs.
I am very sure there is context to all that, Mike.. there always is. But until then I accept whatever it is you are suggesting.
Assuming we live in a perfect world and all government cash goes precisely where it was intended (a big stretch, I know), who decides what funded project becomes a boondoggle?
Dear Doug:
Among them would be companies like Solyndra, who took huge piles of cash for green transformations and went bankrupt, blowing it all.
Electric cars are not “emerging tech”. They’ve been around as long as gasoline-powered cars. Batteries, like photovoltaic solar panels, are very mature products. We will most likely continue to see tiny incremental gains, but nothing that would significantly close the gap with fossil fuels.
If you say so.
Dear The other Phil:
Yes.
The fastest air breathing jet was built in the 1960s, because we had reached practical limits of physics and the materials available on earth. We went around the problem by going into orbit, but we never “solved” the problems.
Lots of smart people have spent lots of time and money trying to improve solar panels and batteries, especially since the 1970s oil crunch, with little progress to show for it.
Just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it so. But I suppose that’s one of the fundamental differences between the left and right. The left sees the world for how they want it to be. The right sees it as it is.
But sure, let’s try your plan, and spend taxpayer money that we don’t have chasing a dream because we really want it to be true. And one that’s already being pursued with private money like Tesla that has a greater chance of success than another wasteful government program.
~A report on the changing climate:
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are
growing scarcer and in some places the seals
are finding the water too hot, according to a report
to the Commerce Department yesterday from
Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers
all point to a radical change in climate conditions and
hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice
has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf
stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been
replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report
continued, while at many points well known glaciers
have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern
Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have
never before ventured so far north, are being encountered
in the old seal fishing grounds.
~The Washington Post, Nov 2, 1922
The general public, with the collusive help of a politicized
media, has a very short memory. There is very big–no, a
sinfully huge amount of money made in “emerging green
technology”–as long as it is subsidized:
— Wind and solar are about 70% subsidized in the case of
utility scale installations, but residential rooftop solar, is
actually subsidized in excess of 90%. These huge subsidies
are rooted in the fact that intermittent green energy’s only
real economic contribution is the reduction of fuel consumption
in the backup plants required to maintain continuity of supply.
The general catastrophe–power shortages and outages–in
Texas during the last winter was a direct, though unspoken,
result of increasing the percentage of energy from wind and
solar, accompanied by taking coal plants off-line. When solar
power efficiency decreased as winter daylight shortened and
the temperature dropped, and as the wind turbines stopped
turning and then froze, there was nothing to replace the lost
energy because it was no longer there.
Mike’s point is valid.
Samuel
Mike, I’ll go even farther. The Vikings had dairy farms in Greenland about 500 years ago proving that the earth has been much warmer than now and we survived just fine. Also Scotch became a crop in Scotland because it became too cold for wine.
I’m all for spending money to study the climate, measure temperature over decades and so on, but trying to say we are doomed is pure power grabbing and the fact that supposedly smart people believe it and a bunch of our population as well, is truly symptomatic of serious problems in our culture.
Dear Phil:
Not only do we not understand the mechanisms of the planetary climate, we don’t have anything approaching the technology necessary to change it even if we did.
Actually, it was 985AD for 400 years that the Vikings dairy farmed in Greenland.
https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/did-medieval-warm-period-welcome-vikings-greenland/
Seems the warm/colder thing about Greenland at that time is under debate.
By whom? The experts that brought us global warming? The people that wrote “Slent Spring”. Not buying it.
I’d not worry, Phil. I am sure all this global warming will go by way of Covid.. it will all wrap up in about two weeks.
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