Electric Car Sales Keep Increasing in California, Despite 'Negative Hype' (eastbaytimes.com) 209
This week the Washington Post reported that Americans "are more hesitant to buy EVs now than they were a year ago, according to a March Gallup poll, which found that just 44 percent of American adults say they'd consider buying an EV in the future, down from 55 percent last year. High prices and charging worries consistently rank as the biggest roadblocks for electric vehicles," they write, noting the concerns coincide with a slowdown in electric car and truck sales, while hybrids are increasing their market share.
But something else happened this week. The chair of California's Air Resource Board and the chair of the state's Energy Commission teamed up for an op-ed piece arguing that "despite negative hype," electric cars are their state's future: When California's electric vehicle sales dipped at the end of last year, critics predicted the start of a new downward trend that would doom the industry and the state's broader effort to clean up the transportation sector, the single largest source of greenhouse gases and air pollution. But the latest numbers show that's not the case. Californians purchased 108,372 new zero-emission vehicles in the first three months of 2024 — nearly 7,000 more than the same time last year and the highest-ever first-quarter sales.
Today, one in four new cars sold in the Golden State is electric, up from just 8% in 2020...
California is now home to 56 manufacturers of zero-emission vehicles and related products, making our state a hub for cutting-edge automotive technology. Soon even raw materials will be sourced in-state, paving the way for domestic battery production...
Challenges persist, and chief among them is the need for more widely available charging options. Many more charging stations need to be built as fast as possible to keep up with EV adoption. To address this, California is investing $4 billion over six years to rapidly build out the EV refueling network, on top of billions in investment by utilities. Equally essential is improved reliability of the EV charging network. Too many drivers today encounter faulty charging stations, which is why the California Energy Commission is developing the strongest charging reliability standards in the country and will require companies to be transparent with the public about their performance.
They also point out that California "now boasts more EV chargers in the state than gasoline nozzles."
And that it's become the first U.S. state whose best-selling car is electric.
But something else happened this week. The chair of California's Air Resource Board and the chair of the state's Energy Commission teamed up for an op-ed piece arguing that "despite negative hype," electric cars are their state's future: When California's electric vehicle sales dipped at the end of last year, critics predicted the start of a new downward trend that would doom the industry and the state's broader effort to clean up the transportation sector, the single largest source of greenhouse gases and air pollution. But the latest numbers show that's not the case. Californians purchased 108,372 new zero-emission vehicles in the first three months of 2024 — nearly 7,000 more than the same time last year and the highest-ever first-quarter sales.
Today, one in four new cars sold in the Golden State is electric, up from just 8% in 2020...
California is now home to 56 manufacturers of zero-emission vehicles and related products, making our state a hub for cutting-edge automotive technology. Soon even raw materials will be sourced in-state, paving the way for domestic battery production...
Challenges persist, and chief among them is the need for more widely available charging options. Many more charging stations need to be built as fast as possible to keep up with EV adoption. To address this, California is investing $4 billion over six years to rapidly build out the EV refueling network, on top of billions in investment by utilities. Equally essential is improved reliability of the EV charging network. Too many drivers today encounter faulty charging stations, which is why the California Energy Commission is developing the strongest charging reliability standards in the country and will require companies to be transparent with the public about their performance.
They also point out that California "now boasts more EV chargers in the state than gasoline nozzles."
And that it's become the first U.S. state whose best-selling car is electric.
"Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now." (Score:5, Interesting)
In an A-B test between gas and electric, people will choose electric. The only thing really holding them back is charging options.
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China has proven it is doable.
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What's the road traffic accident death rate in India?
Re: "Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now (Score:5, Funny)
Re: "Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now (Score:2)
Spec out how much it would cost to import one of those vehicles and make it street legal and you'll likely have your answer.
Re: "Nobody wants these cars that everyone has no (Score:2)
That only applies to China though, right? Aren't we talking about India?
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It's doable if you don't mind sacrificing safety. If you have a death wish then by all means purchase a Chinese EV.
Re:"Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now. (Score:5, Informative)
For $25K, look at this BYD Seal.
https://www.byd.com/eu/car/sea... [byd.com]
Here is the Euro NCAP evaluation (crash test):
https://cdn.euroncap.com/media... [euroncap.com]
It scores about the same as the Honda Civic
https://cdn.euroncap.com/media... [euroncap.com]
China is getting this done. BYD is the largest electric car maker in the world. Burying our heads in the sand and saying it can't be done while they are doing it is going to end badly.
Tesla seemed to be our answer but it has driven itself into a ditch.
Re:"Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Until we have 100% fully automated EV production lines (iron ore loaded in one side of the factory, EV popping out the other), BYD will be ahead of us. The reason is wages in China are 15x lower than the US (BYD median wage of factory worker is $410 a month) .. plus --and this may be more important: you can't sue for millions of dollars for the slightest thing or go on strike easily. How are we to compete with that? Automation and universal basic income is the only hope.
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I'm not quite sure if that makes this disparity better or worse, how much is due to tariffs etc, but it's a big disparity.
Re: "Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now (Score:2)
Tariffs. Same as Biden is about to implement.
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Automation and universal basic income is the only hope.
Automation will obviously help.
But how is UBI relevant to reducing manufacturing costs?
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Do you want a bunch of people rioting and breaking the factories? How much does it cost to rebuild a factory?
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Do you want a bunch of people rioting and breaking the factories?
Two generations ago, 30% of Americans worked in manufacturing.
Today, 9% do.
The first 21% that lost their jobs didn't riot, so there is no reason the remaining workers will either.
Just like last time, retirees and job-hoppers will not be replaced. Some people will be laid off, but the attrition will be incremental, and they'll find other jobs.
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But how is UBI relevant to reducing manufacturing costs?
Because if you automate all the blue collar jobs out of existence, you will get a class war. I'm not against class warfare, but if it's forced via this route, a lot of people will suffer unnecessarily.
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Arguing about Chinese wages vs those in the US misses the point.
Take a look at production line for the Xiaomi SU7 which produces one car every 72 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Now tell me just how many workers you saw...
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What I saw in those cherry-picked clips was no much more automation than Ford has in their assembly factories. They left out a lot, such as interior assembly .. dashboard .. wiring harnesses .. seats .. door paneling .. part to installer loading .. things like that.
Some of us don't like massive EV-SUVs (Score:3)
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We really need to increase our efforts to compete with Chinese car manufacturers. In 3 years they went from also-rans to the world's biggest automotive exporters.
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It's doable if you don't mind sacrificing safety. If you have a death wish then by all means purchase a Chinese EV.
Chinese EVs meet European safety standards and are widely sold in Europe.
Europe's safety standards are just as strict as America's.
You can't buy a sub-$30k EV because Joe Biden prioritized the profits of American carmakers over addressing climate change.
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>Chinese EVs meet European safety standards and are widely sold in Europe.
Chinese EVs sold in Europe also cost roughly twice as much as they do in China.
And I don't think that's Biden's fault...
=Smidge=
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Chinese EVs in Europe are SOLD for those prices. That's not what they cost to produce.
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Chinese EVs meet European safety standards
Barely. The test results use descriptors like "Adequate" and "Acceptable".
These are 2-3 star equivalent ratings. Not 5 star safety ratings.
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You can't buy a sub-$30k EV because Joe Biden prioritized the profits of American carmakers over addressing climate change.
Yes, Chinese factories are efficient with lower workers costs. However, let's not ignore massive government subsidies. How much cheaper would US EV cars be with a few extra hundreds of billion dollars in free money? The Chinese government made EV exports a national priority, and the US government didn't.
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I wouldn't look to China for proof of anything to be honest. In this particular case there can be a lot of things going on, e.g. slave labor for at least some of the parts, government subsidies intended to flood international markets, unreliable safety mechanisms (saw photos once of a few EVs in a pileup somewhere in China, and the only car to actually deploy its airbags was a Tesla Model X.)
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Re: "Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now (Score:2)
My Nissan Versa has MSRP under 20$ thousand, has a range of 400 miles and takes 5 minutes to refuel.
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Re: "Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now (Score:5, Insightful)
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My great granpappy George (but we called him great granpappy George, you can, too) invented an engine e that went 80 miles on a gallon of tap water but then the big oil and car companies came in and hid it from the people to keep their profits up!
Yessirree! Big oil done crushed n hid the tap water engine!
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BYD
Tesla Inc.
VW Group (about 2/3 of Tesla)
GM
Stellantis (Fiat, Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group)
Hyundai Motor
BMW Group
That list includes some major legacy car manufacturers.
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The new electric SUV's that are coming out now like the AWD Kia EV9 start with a $65,000 price tag. That isn't "fake anti-EV propaganda", it's an actual fact. Go look it up yourself.
When you can get an similarly sized and optioned ICE SUV like the Kia Telluride for just $45,000, it makes the EV option a really tough sell.
EV battery packs still need to come down in price by a significant amount before these vehicles will become practical for the typical US family.
Re:"Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now. (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing holding people back is generally the unknown more than charging options. I have two people at my neighborhood starbucks asking me periodically about my Y directly, and a handful of others that ask more indirect questions. They may ask about charging, but what they are really concerned about is how it is different than what they are used to.
My general response to people is "how much do you spend on gas a year? My charging plus home electrical use is only $300/year." I live on an island though, and to use up a full 300-mile charge in a day would not be an easy task.
Other people that have more complicated situations than me still get by; an Uber driver I was talking to almost exclusively supercharges, but sometimes he will unplug the dryer in his garage and hook up the portable charging cable at his rental home. He drives about 200 miles per day minimum.
The thing that really holds most people back is having bought a new ICE car recently and despite hating it, suffer from sunk-cost fallacy. Once those cars time out for their owners they will 100% get an EV next.
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"The thing that really holds most people back is having bought a new ICE car recently..."
This. I bought an Outback primarily to help make the many roadtrips needed to ferry my stepson to and from college for semesters, vacations, and so on. No good EV solutions existed at the time and--to be fair--I'm not sure there's anything suitable today as it was an 700 mile trip both ways. Could do it in a day with my wife and I switching off, but not if we also would have needed to stop for an extra couple of hours f
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We needed a family/road tripping car at that point and that's what we bought. Boy has since graduated and is on his own.
Regardless, car was just paid off last year, which again points to the general pace of vehicle replacement.
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If you just dropped 50k on an ice it is not a fallacy to say you're gunna get killed if you sell it and buy an EV.
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Day one, it is a rational decision. After a year it becomes more complicated. If you spent $50k on a car that costs $4k/year in gas then there is a point where it makes sense to upgrade. Keeping the new ICE for 7-10 years is generally a poor financial decision, although individual circumstances will dictate that crossover point.
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Most people can't afford to drop 50k then drop another 50k 2-3 years later. Most car buyers do their math based on their monthly rate and don't have a 6 figure income.
Even if the long term was better ROI on the EV they don't have the money to do it.
Same reason people carry credit card debt. They can 'afford' to pay something off over 36 months at twice the price but can't buy it now in cash. For unimportant goods this is a bad math idea but it's how people do things. And for important things like a car
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$3k/year gas savings is equal to $250/month in car payments. Factor in the tax credit and trade-in of the old car, and many people will come out ahead. I know many people don't do their math that way, but that doesn't make it right. I know... the right way to do it is an NPV analysis, but that is way beyond most people.
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Re:"Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now. (Score:5, Informative)
The thing that really holds most people back is having bought a new ICE car recently and despite hating it, suffer from sunk-cost fallacy. Once those cars time out for their owners they will 100% get an EV next.
Sometimes, it's far more mundane things. Five years ago, I was convinced, that my next car will be electric. I was just borrowing a friend's car from time to time. Finally, I bought it, and drove it until it fell apart. Then my wife bought another used car, because our car just broke down. I would really like to go electric, and I am member of a car sharing company which offers electric cars. But I can't charge at home, because the garage to our flat lies below the flood level of a nearby river, so fort safety reasons, it dies not have any electric outlets, only light from the ceiling. My wife works in a small town, which has exactly one 22 kW charger, and that's the only one for the next 10 miles. She has a small apartment there, but only road side parking. Her daily drive would be ideal for a small electric car, but she can neither charge at home nor at work.
I myself don't have a need for a daily drive. I am working from home, and for shopping, I have five grocery stores at walking distance. So I am using my bicycle.
When we are driving, it's mainly long distances, like 400 miles to my parents, and with one exception (my sister-in-law) all our relatives have roadside parking only.
The big selling point for electric vehicles, the cheaply to operate daily drive, does not apply to me.
Re:"Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now. (Score:4, Insightful)
because the garage to our flat lies below the flood level of a nearby river, so fort safety reasons, it dies not have any electric outlets, only light from the ceiling.
Put the power socket in the ceiling next to the light :)
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The flooding issue could be solved with a float switch. I'm guessing that local electrical regs don't allow it.
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There is always the drop-cord approach for the wall connector. The wall connector has GFCI protection built in.
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The thing that really holds most people back is having bought a new ICE car recently and despite hating it, suffer from sunk-cost fallacy. Once those cars time out for their owners they will 100% get an EV next.
Sorry, but no one is “hating” their new(ish) ICE purchase. And the fact the brand new ICE sales still outpace EVs by a large margin means that people are actually content with their purchase. Even happy about it.
The people who “hate” owning a perfectly functioning ICE vehicle, “hate” being white for the same reason; because someone told them to feel that way, and they believed them. I 100% don’t feel we should acknowledge that ignorance.
...and cost (Score:2)
Re: "Nobody wants these cars that everyone has now (Score:3)
You're ridiculous. Ask working class people on a median salary and they'll you the uncomfortable truth you don't want to hear. Cost and reliability is everything. I'd never spend anything over 6k on a car, and I need at least 400 miles on a single tank. Most households, at least in the UK, will struggle with having electric charging at home, too. Think flats and terraced houses, so prevailent here.
Meaning providing charging is unprofitable? (Score:2)
Or that effective charging can't be set up because the electricity infrastructure won't support it? And it's "too expensive" to solve with our old tools and methods.
I'm not an electric car owner, and haven't researched them since I have no chance of buying one today. I do know a tiny bit about power, electronics, etc. Enough to realize factors that get in the way often.
I always kind of liked the swap battery idea. Instead of forcing charging to happen when the customer decides to show up, it can happen
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Gas Prices (Score:2)
Re:Gas Prices (Score:5, Insightful)
The state of California has a plan for that. We're suppose to be raising gas tax soon and then again next year. As you said, the higher the state pushes the gas tax, the more expensive it will be to own an ICEV. Since the people most affected by this are low income, those folks won't be affording an EV any time soon either. Basically pushes car ownership further and further away from the little guy.
Exactly what California wants.
Re: Gas Prices (Score:3)
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Make CA walkable then... (Score:3)
I think the old dream of personal vehicle ownership, and the towns/cities that make that a requirement, needs to change.
No, I don't love the idea of living in NYC or London either, but can't there be a middle ground?
Nothing is going to happen overnight. And I'm sure we're going to get the recipe wrong the first time or two. That makes me hope for a few practice sessions, with data collection, and we try to reuse what seemed to work.
Perhaps step 1 is just to start asking 'why' everyone is driving in the fi
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monotonically increasing (Score:2)
Journalists and politicians do not understand the principle of perpetual monotonic increase to an asymptote.
Right tool for the job (Score:3)
Most driving is local. If you have a spouse, one may drive an EV and the other an ICE. When they go on long trips, use the ICE.
The wealthier have 2 cars, such as a gas car for Vegas trips, and the electric for daily commute. If you charge at home, you almost never have to visit a public charging station.
And as EV's expand, remote charging options will expand, but even now, if you circumstances are right, the long-trip issue isn't an issue.
Re:Right tool for the job [typos] (Score:2)
Let me redo the last sentence:
And as EV's expand, remote charging options will expand. But even now, if your circumstances are right, the long-trip issue isn't an issue.
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That's exactly what we have going on.
Except we're too far to drive to Vegas, the rest applies.
Dispite all the negative press... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have an Acura RDX that gets maybe 23mpg and requires premium fuel. A fill-up will cost me $50 and get me just over 300 miles. So by your metric a 400 mile round trip would be around $65-$70. A Honda CRV which is basically the same size but less powerful engine could do that trip for about $50.
Your friend's small SUV is either getting about 10mpg, you're paying $6/gal, or you're making up numbers. Right now the average
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...*and* cheaper to drive. It costs me $40 round trip to drive my big EV truck 400 miles. It costs my friend $120 to drive the exact same distance in their small SUV.
It really depends on where you live. Where I'm at electricity costs $0.36/kWh ($0.18/kWh + approximately the same cost in "delivery fees"). The savings from the EV at that rate aren't all that they are cracked up to be. 1 gal of gas = 33.7 kWh of energy. That 33.7 kWh costs me $12.13. With an EV efficiency of 3.5 mi / kWh, that 33.7 kWh @ $12.77 will take me ~42.5 mi.
The average rate for for gas in my state is ~$4/gal. So that same $12 will buy me ~3 gal of gas. Assuming a middle of the road sedan @
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A Case Of Yogi Berra for the party! (Score:3)
California and EVs in general have developed a strong case of Yogi Berra: "Nobody goes there any more. It's too popular!"
That said, we *do* need many more charging plugs than gas pump nozzles. Throughput of vehicles at gas stations is 3 or more times greater than with EV charging. Gas pump occupancy ranges from 3-10 minutes for a fill. DC charging plug occupancy is probably a minimum of 20 minutes and for most EVs more like 30+ minutes (to as much as an hour) for a 20-80% charge. So in principle you need 2-5 times as many plugs. Of course, many of those plugs might be at home: I used a DC charger about 1/2 dozen times in the 4 years I've been driving one (4 of those on one longish trip); the rest of the time has been at home, usually overnight to get the discount power rates. It's hard to figure the adjustment for that because there just aren't any good data. Still, for any more than local and commute driving, DC charging is necessary and ultimately needs to follow more or less the gas station model.(with some destination and longer-stop installations) to support road trips. Concentrating on *ONLY* the gas station model is a mistake, though, since EVs don't have gas fumes when charging and it can be done anywhere convenient. Basically, we need more, everywhere, and better reliability.
I love my Tesla Model Y (Score:2)
Best car ever
Only one complaint...They Don't Sell Parts!
We need strong right to repair laws
How many fewer ICE cars were sold (Score:2)
What reduces emissions is people NOT burning gas in an ICE car. So the question is how many fewer ICE cars are on the road in California or are at least being driven less. Buying an electric car may replace an ICE car or it may simply add to the number of vehicles on the road. Most people don't junk their ICE car when they buy a gas car. While it is clearly better than someone buy a new electric car than a new ICE car, it would be better yet if they drove their existing car into the road.
The assumption that
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Even if there is a second ICE car in my driveway that doesn't mean it's gonna "add to the number of vehicles". I can only drive one vehicle at a time. I think...
tldr electric for 99% of trips. ICE for 1% of road trips.
Re: How many fewer ICE cars were sold (Score:2)
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"I always drive two cars at the same time.
No you don't. So if you park the ICE vehicle and never use it again then you have done the world a favor and its an even bigger favor if you don't buy a EV to replace it. But very few people do that. When they buy an EV, most people turn their existing ICE car over to someone else who uses it to burn gas and create emissions. Until that car has been junked there is no reduction in emissions. But the added emissions from producing that new EV are out there.
The point is not that EV's are bad. The point is
Good for them! (Score:2)
The more EVs California has, the less of an issue ICE vehicles will be. So, fewer new regulations on fuel types, taxation, etc. And less opportunity for the lemming states like Washington to adopt new regs blindly. Because "California".
Well duh (Score:2)
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The market will not necessarily provide affordable electric cars for the masses. The question is what produces the most revenue and profits, fewer cars at a higher price or more cars at a lower price. Its not impossible that the American market will eventually force more affordable cars onto the market, but its not impossible it will do the opposite and provide a limited number of cars for those who can afford them.
China is already producing more affordable electric cars and our reaction has been to protec
Too expensive (Score:2)
I would love an EV. I'd buy an Arcimoto FUV or equivalent if they came with full doors and were available in Canada.
The only EVs in our market cost over $40K, and I'm not paying that while I can still pick up a used ICE with a cost (excluding insurance and fuel) in the $1500/year range. They will have to get a lot less expensive before I can look at the long term savings over the initial investment. Right now I'm looking at break-even when it's time to send it to the scrap yard, if I'm lucky. No thanks.
Big picture - privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
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Unfortunately ICE cars are every bit as bad if you buy a new one.
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I do not, and cannot, understand how a supposedly tech-savy site like slashdot (obviously not what it once was) misses this point in every discussion of the subject. For some people, the issue isn't charging, or range, or quality, or any such thing. There is the major issue of privacy.
No, there is not.
EVs are not worse for privacy than ICEVs.
New cars are worse for privacy than old cars, on average. But even lots of old cars (GMs for many years, Subarus for fewer but still plenty of years, etc.) have spying features. They come with OnStar, which is connected whether you've paid a subscription fee or not. The very oldest cars actually aren't connected any more because they depended on 2G which is shut off almost everywhere, but they were. And every single one was connected, because you cou
Sometimes the "spin" is pretty funny... (Score:3)
"They also point out that California "now boasts more EV chargers in the state than gasoline nozzles."" - This SOUNDS great, but in reality it is meaningless. If you have twice the chargers, but charging takes three times longer than pumping a tank of gas, then you effectively still have too few chargers.
The number of chargers only is an apples-to-apples thing with gas pumps if both things take about the same amount of time to restore FULL RANGE to their respective vehicle operators.
EVs would have taken over years ago, had EV designers not make a single stupid design decision: The EV battery pack should have been standardized modules, mounted UNDER the car and robotically changeable, with the batteries RENTED out in a full-charged state and exchanged empty at the charge stations (like welding gas cylinders or gas grill tanks). A vehicle would pull into a charge station, the station computer would chat with the car computer to get the number and location of modules, then robotically remove them from under the car and attach new fully-charged ones and the car would depart almost immediately fully-charged. It would have possibly been much faster than filling up with gas. Charge stations would have a large number of modules on chargers. It would have supported all sorts of vehicles and all manufacturers and even mom&pop independent charge station operators. It also would mean that EVs would not take a massive hit in value on the used market from having built-in hyper-expensive battery packs that the new (and usually not wealthy) buyers would need to replace.
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There are also meteorlogical and transportation infrastructure reasons for California to have a higher concern about air pollution than most other states. If you look at the cities in the US with the worst air pollution by various metrics, usually California cities hold four of the five worst spots. So California is more affected by auto emissions than most states, and has enough scale to have clout with automakers.
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Fuck I hope not. If you've never lived in this state then you have no idea just how broken it really is. We literally channel storm water directly into the ocean, then complain that we don't have enough fresh water. We're literally building a 100 billion dollar bullet train to nowhere, and it won't even meet the time requirements the voters approved at a much lower cost. The legislature was well aware that the state couldn't afford a $25 minimum wage for health care workers before it did it anyways, and now
ah, but that model breaks down when... (Score:2)
California bans something other states do not.
When California mandated certain emissions standards for car makers, the car makers, recognizing the huge portion of their market that was CA, simply made all the cars compliant with the CA standards. California has now, however, banned the sale of new gas powered cars after a particular year, effectively removing the state from the ICE car marketplace. This removes any influence CA has on ICE cars. If Ford (random example) cannot sell any gas-powered cars in CA
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Except when the "trend' is a petroleum industry astro-turfing exercise and people are shown to ignore it and continue to adopt EVs
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Oh, there you are [wikipedia.org] I have not missed your inane trolling. You really are a testament to the shortcomings of home schooling
Here are some links where the gentle reader may educate themselves:
https://jtalliance.org/2023/07... [jtalliance.org]
https://futurism.com/the-byte/... [futurism.com]
https://www.ucsusa.org/resourc... [ucsusa.org]
https://www.transportenvironme... [transportenvironment.org]
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Especially a state with ideal EV climate. It doesn't get that cold in most of California and we're pretty high density along the coast where most the people live. EVs make sense for a commuter car in a big city.
EVs make a lot less sense in significantly colder climates or where you have to commute a long distance often, which is more likely for rural folks.
Unfortunately, it's also gotten very political and California is already deep blue so of course you will continue to see EV adoption in California. EVs m
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My buddy has had a Tesla for years and had no problems with it. He lives in Edmonton. You know what the weather's like there? LOL.
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EVs make a lot less sense in significantly colder climates or where you have to commute a long distance often, which is more likely for rural folks.
I live in Boston, MA and regularly travel to nowhere, Maine to for ski trips in the dead of winter in 0-15F weather in my EV - no problem. I usually top off at a fast charging station before getting off the interstate since chargers are thin on the ground in rural ME, but then again, I'm not driving that far once I get to my destination and plugging into the 120V external outlet on the ski cabin is enough to keep me topped off. The cold isn't really too bad. It's definitely not for everyone, but as L2 an
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"A trend nationally against EVs is irrelevant to adoption in one state."
What trend, again?
"For every sign of an EV slowdown, another suggests an adolescent industry on the verge of its next growth spurt. In fact, for most automakers, even the first quarter was a blockbuster. Six of the 10 biggest EV makers in the US saw sales grow at a scorching pace compared to a year ago — up anywhere from 56% at Hyundai-Kia to 86% at Ford."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
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Do you have a pet grizzly bear too?
And you pick magic healing herbs from the forest as your health care plan?
And you sew your own clothes made from the wool of your sheep flock?
Sound great, how do I subscribe to your newsletter?
Re: (Score:2)
The only hygeine product you actually need is soap. If you have a source of wood ash and fat you can make that.
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Re: Future is clearly electric (Score:2)
Raise rabbit and chickens. Chickens or ducks will clean your garden of pests. Feed the veggies to the rabbits. And eat potatoes and rabbit stew. Maybe beg for few dollars a month for salt and pepper and flour.