talkin' about electric cars, while not buying them

[kanzeon_2040]

Last year fewer than 2% of the cars sold in the US were electric.  There's been a lot of talk on the Left about switching over to electric cars, a lot of hype in the stock market about Tesla, and several strategic announcements by other car companies that by a certain future date (usually > 10 years from now) they'll fully switch over to electric

Comments

[anais_pf]

I would never buy an electric car until such time as I move somewhere where electricity is less expensive. We pay a fortune just to run a few appliances and lights here.

[kanzeon_2040]

That too!

But we could also use government to change the incentives, by making gasoline more expensive, or electricity less expensive. Right now there are subsidies for buying electric cars but they are limited by numeric quotas (200,000 cars per manufacturer, total, not per year), so it is all-but guaranteed that electric cars will remain the choice of <2%.

[matrixmann]

And you'll run into other practical problems such as extreme heat and cold.
I would have liked to hear them say something on the media about that as there were such extremely cold temperatures in Central Europe about a month ago.
Gasoline cars are already hard to get running at -20°C, but you can still make it - and if you got your car on, do it like the people in Siberia, don't turn it off. So that the cold can't make it unable to get it on again.
Electric cars, compared against that, they don't create enough heat themselves in order to create an environment to get the engine on. Also, electronics in general don't like heat and extreme cold. They've got a span which temperatures they work correctly in, and outside of that everything's mere luck, probably even harmful to the electronics.

So these cars are totally unusable in areas where it can get very hot or very cold. (And think about it, every old school harddisks with mechanics start to run too hot from temperatures above 40°C. That's not quite a lot...)

[anais_pf]

I think hybrids may be a good solution to that problem.

[matrixmann]

I've thought about that option too.
Even though hybrid cars were being treated so much as... superfluous as they emerged.

[spacefem]

I’m all for electric cars but my priority is always buying cheap used cars, I’m not going to drop $40K on a car just so I can have an electric one. I always buy what I can find.

I’m also not convinced that battery chemicals are all green and consequence-free. Maybe they’re better, I’m no expert, it’s just a question in my head.

[kanzeon_2040]

Overall electric cars are not a 100% green solution, because of the manufacturing process, the battery ingredient mining process, and the mix of fuels used to produce electricity in the US. They're only marginally better for the environment if you drive them a lot. I don't drive enough miles to make an electric car a better choice for me.

Yes, buying used cars is better than buying new!