Divemedic ain’t having any of that EV bushwa.
This is why I won’t buy an electric pickup (or any electric vehicle): the new electric F-150 only has a 100 mile range when towing.
Actually, I’m shocked that it’s even capable of towing at all, whether for 300 miles or 300 feet.
Part of owning a vehicle of any type, what makes it such an American experience is that owning a vehicle is freedom. Freedom to go where you want. Electric vehicles with 300 miles or less of range take that from you, tethering you to a short distance from your home. The quintessential American road trip will cease to exist if electric cars become the norm. A part of America will die with the automobile.
That’s the whole idea, natch. At the end of the day, the shitlibs’ determination to hang the EV albatros around American necks isn’t about efficiency, pollution, Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”), saving Gaia, or anything else. It’s about freedom, see—they hate it like the cancer, can’t abide the thought of anybody having any, and will go to any and every conceivable length to put a stop to it forever.
“Actually, I’m shocked that it’s even capable of towing at all, whether for 300 miles or 300 feet.”
You are in the majority that does not understand electric vehicles at all. Torque, lots of it, and 100% at zero speed. That’s what an electric motor gets you. The ICE can’t even come close, requiring multiple gears just to try and get the torque up at slow speed. The electric vehicle is a superior towing machine while the electricity is flowing.
The electric motor doesn’t even require a gearbox.
The problem with electric vehicles is the battery: large, heavy, and too low an energy density. For now.
Or they close the charging station at your next required stop.
I’ve been through closed and restricted purchase gas stations multiple times in my life.
As an occasional alternative to fossil fuel vehicles, an EV can be a fine thing. If one only commutes a few miles each day, or merely needs a vehicle for short errands around town, with plenty of time to recharge, it can be a daily driver until the battery commits electrical seppuku, in about a decade or so. Then it becomes an expensive planter or paperweight.
And in an eventuality where fossil fuels cannot be had for love nor metric buttloads of money, well, the EV that goes 100 miles a day on solar charges is far superior for the combustion engine that goes 0, every day, endlessly.
But as a 1:1 replacement for gasoline or diesel combustion engines? The idea is so ludicrous and recockulous as to be unworthy of further exploration and discussion.
Mad Max did not patrol the Wasteland in a Prius nor anything like, FFS, and neither will you.
And when you need to drive from one coast to the other in 3½ days, combustion is the only way to go, and nothing else comes close.
Exactly.
A cheap(er), 600 mile battery changes that equation for cars.
I did the calculations a few months ago on charging a Tesla by solar for 50 miles a day:
50 miles is 13.5Kw. A normal 4 hour charging window would require roughly 20 solar cells of the 200 watt variety. 4000 watts x 4 hours = 16kw charge.
You will need batteries to store the charge for charging the Tesla battery after the sun goes down.
Used solar cells, 15kw of Lifepo4 batteries, charge controllers and misc in a do it yourself job is just under $10K.
5 year payback at 2 gallons/day (5 day workweek) of $4 buck per gallon gas.
So, if you are wealthy and can afford a toy at $75K+ to get around town, have at it. Until the 600 mile battery comes along at a lower price it will never work as anything more than a novelty or as a specialty item.
Battery, battery, battery. That is the only real problem.