The (near) Future is Not Electric

[soylentgreen]

I work in the industry and have worked on the technical aspects of componentry in the 2022 Lightning. My jobs depends (somewhat) on the implementation of EVs. However, I have no desire to own one. I picked up a 6.2L Escalade as my daily driver this year. LOL. There have been a ton of good comments here. My thoughts on the drive toward EV are as follows...

1. Yes, it's certainly about control. How, when, where you charge will be controlled eventually. I bet cars connected to the grid will even have their batteries used as a "reserve" of power to avoid brown outs (if it's not being done already). To heck with you if you were expecting a full charge by a certain time.
2. EVs are putting up great performance numbers that, going forward, ICE will not be able to compete with on a 0-60 basis.
3. Right now, EVs are a status symbol for the upper middle class and beyond. Essentially, we are subsidizing wealthy people so they can feel superior to everyone else that they're "saving the earth".
4. A 500hp electric motor uses the same amount of energy as a 500hp gas motor. The only difference is it doesn't use any energy when it's stopped and probably uses less while cruising than a gas engine. A gas engine is sending a lot of energy in waste heat out the radiator and exhaust. The point is, if you're looking to save energy, making these super fast EVs is going in the wrong direction.
5. The push for the adoption of EVs in the industry is about "growth". It's a growth market! Nobody is content with the same old parts with an annual growth of 3-5% (or sometimes even a decline). They want the shiny new object that grows at 10-15% even if it's still a small percentage of the total vehicles built. EVs have fewer parts and will eventually be cheaper to build (if they're not already). The automakers don't plan on passing those savings on to the consumer, btw.
6. Self-driving cars will be upon us soon...and then...you won't care how fast your EV is because you're not driving it anyway! What was that about control that I was saying? Imagine a day when you say something non-PC on social media and your self-driving car takes you to the police station in the morning instead of to work and you're disappeared.
7. Once self-driving cars appear, how long before you'll be outlawed from driving your own car on public roads? Of course, they'll cite "safety" at the main motivation. Maybe insurance rates for driving your own car will become prohibitive.
8. If you have a self-driving car, why would you even care if it's a Ford, Toyota, or Chevy? It's just a toaster. Styling won't matter either. Who cares what color it is? In fact, why even own one? Just have a self-driving Uber show up at your house everyday at the same time to take you to work and another to take you home.
9. EVs will destroy the car culture. Nobody will go to a car show to look at a Pruis.
10. I see this all as the wet dream of do-gooders who believe "saving the earth" is more important than individual choices and freedom.
11. Halo cars like Corvette will die when the self-driving revolution comes. No reason to have one.

Sorry to be such a downer. I'm an engineer and I'm usually enthused by new technology. But, I think I see where this is going and I don't like it. In my short lifetime I've seen a lot of freedom stripped from society and it's mostly due to technology and people being too willing to adopt change without thinking about the consequences. If a government official...or worse, some international consortium...says it's the way to go, I'm automatically skeptical. We've been lied to way too frequently.

 

[Olivethefet]

Bravo!! Don't feel bad.

 

[General karthief]

I'll likely be gone by the time y'all have to park you're dino mobiles.
And it's hard not to bring politics into almost any conversation.
I could go on but what's the point?
I feel sorry for future generation(s)
Right now I just keep my gun loaded, my fuel tank full and I try to keep my mouth closed.
That last one is hard to do.

 

[Noobz347]

and somewhere, somebody asked not to turn this into a political thing,…..
And the along comes The head admin….

So now, facts are political?

Interesting.

This is what people resort to when they can't rebut what is written.

 

[Noobz347]

I work in the industry and have worked on the technical aspects of componentry in the 2022 Lightning. My jobs depends (somewhat) on the implementation of EVs. However, I have no desire to own one. I picked up a 6.2L Escalade as my daily driver this year. LOL. There have been a ton of good comments here. My thoughts on the drive toward EV are as follows...

1. Yes, it's certainly about control. How, when, where you charge will be controlled eventually. I bet cars connected to the grid will even have their batteries used as a "reserve" of power to avoid brown outs (if it's not being done already). To heck with you if you were expecting a full charge by a certain time.
2. EVs are putting up great performance numbers that, going forward, ICE will not be able to compete with on a 0-60 basis.
3. Right now, EVs are a status symbol for the upper middle class and beyond. Essentially, we are subsidizing wealthy people so they can feel superior to everyone else that they're "saving the earth".
4. A 500hp electric motor uses the same amount of energy as a 500hp gas motor. The only difference is it doesn't use any energy when it's stopped and probably uses less while cruising than a gas engine. A gas engine is sending a lot of energy in waste heat out the radiator and exhaust. The point is, if you're looking to save energy, making these super fast EVs is going in the wrong direction.
5. The push for the adoption of EVs in the industry is about "growth". It's a growth market! Nobody is content with the same old parts with an annual growth of 3-5% (or sometimes even a decline). They want the shiny new object that grows at 10-15% even if it's still a small percentage of the total vehicles built. EVs have fewer parts and will eventually be cheaper to build (if they're not already). The automakers don't plan on passing those savings on to the consumer, btw.
6. Self-driving cars will be upon us soon...and then...you won't care how fast your EV is because you're not driving it anyway! What was that about control that I was saying? Imagine a day when you say something non-PC on social media and your self-driving car takes you to the police station in the morning instead of to work and you're disappeared.
7. Once self-driving cars appear, how long before you'll be outlawed from driving your own car on public roads? Of course, they'll cite "safety" at the main motivation. Maybe insurance rates for driving your own car will become prohibitive.
8. If you have a self-driving car, why would you even care if it's a Ford, Toyota, or Chevy? It's just a toaster. Styling won't matter either. Who cares what color it is? In fact, why even own one? Just have a self-driving Uber show up at your house everyday at the same time to take you to work and another to take you home.
9. EVs will destroy the car culture. Nobody will go to a car show to look at a Pruis.
10. I see this all as the wet dream of do-gooders who believe "saving the earth" is more important than individual choices and freedom.
11. Halo cars like Corvette will die when the self-driving revolution comes. No reason to have one.

Sorry to be such a downer. I'm an engineer and I'm usually enthused by new technology. But, I think I see where this is going and I don't like it. In my short lifetime I've seen a lot of freedom stripped from society and it's mostly due to technology and people being too willing to adopt change without thinking about the consequences. If a government official...or worse, some international consortium...says it's the way to go, I'm automatically skeptical. We've been lied to way too frequently.

It's not a matter of like or dislike, It's a matter of what the market and technology will support.

All the more reason why it belongs in research and development and not 'pushed' to the mainstream before the technology is ready to support it.

I also think you undervalue the things that made cars great, to begin with. Sure, there will be some sector of electric vehicles in the rest of my lifetime. I don't think the end is as near as you think it is.

I'd still like to know where all of the generated power is going to be apparated from. It takes 21, 400 watt solar panels a bit over 6 hours to charge a typical EV.

 

[General karthief]

So now, facts are political?

Interesting.

This is what people resort to when they can't rebut what is written.

Yeah, I read that three times and found nothing political.
Now where's my cookie?
tank U

 

[Noobz347]

Now where's my cookie?

Did you see it that time?

Yikes, it's later than I thought. Bad video game!

 

[General karthief]

Did you see it that time?

Yikes, it's later than I thought. Bad video game!

I said 'tank U'
And now it's early

 

[CarMichael Angelo]

So now, facts are political?

Interesting.

This is what people resort to when they can't rebut what is written.

Your “ facts“ are your opinion,and that alone does not make them a fact. As divided as the country is, opinions on topics like the push to convert over to electric, and (just about ever other freakin thing….vaccines, virus, guns, minimum wage, etc.) can be construed as political.
There‘s your rebuttal.

 

[WindsorPenchant]

I'm convinced performance and enthusiast driving is set for its existential crisis with the encroaching near limitless torque possibilities from 0 RPM if we keep banging on this battery powered door..

It's not the destination, it's the journey.. seems aptly pertinent in this discussion. Hot-rodding or whatever you want to call pushing motor engineering farther than has been established as reliably possible? That chase took us (I believe) to the 98% limit of traction on what is sanely possible on road rubber.

So now we have electric and now we have established that <2 seconds to 60mph is what's considered serious quick.

Ok. What do we do now? That figure is attainable for any EV that wish attain it. You're spinning wheels or just building crazy machines or I don't even know what if you're going to decide to put a car into production with <1~ 0-60mph. Do you start chasing Sub 2.8s 0-100mph? I just don't see the point in making cars lethally fast..? Especially given the general lack of interest anyone has in being a driver's driver (Trying not to balls it up) these days. What's this one pedal driving all about if we're going down that avenue! How very engaged one must feel!


I am interested in this synthetic fuel that Porsche are partnering with some others on developing. Supposedly carbon neutral.

Porsche has gone down a different and much cleaner route, creating a synthetic petrol from a combination of green hydrogen and pure carbon drawn through atmospheric carbon capture processes. The raw fuel created (eMethanol) from this process is then easily converted into high-octane fuels that are capable of being used in most petrol combustion engines now.

This really is the pragmatic sort of a solution we need to dial in on as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Noobz347]

Your “ facts“ are your opinion,and that alone does not make them a fact. As divided as the country is, opinions on topics like the push to convert over to electric, and (just about ever other freakin thing….vaccines, virus, guns, minimum wage, etc.) can be construed as political.
There‘s your rebuttal.

What you could have done was look them up and rebut them. You chose postulate without any relevant data whatsoever and instead, theorize that politics somehow changes the physical properties of a battery, or a solar cell, or what is required in order to magically create the 85+kWh for 15+ Million vehicles in California alone. That's 1.2 BILLION (with a B) kilowatt-hours or 1,275,000 MWh. They are [already] importing 71 Million MWh in addition to what they can produce within the state.

Otherwise, the only politician I've seen in this thread so far is you. I bring up the mechanical and financial limitations you want to relate those real-world limitations to

vaccines, virus, guns, minimum wage, etc.

and

There‘s your rebuttal.

Well, you've solved it all then. I'm convinced by your thorough technical specification and genius yet again. If you can't convince them with facts; Dazzle them with eh... whatever.

Welcome to exile once again. You just don't learn. I suppose that I don't either if I consider that you're still here.

I'm finished watching you turn each and every post you don't like into your list of pet peeves.

Best of luck with whatever you do Mike.

 

[Bree]

Ok,,, Let's take a step back a minute. Ya-all acting like you expect to wake up in the morning, and POOF!!! Everything is electric. No, it is not going to happen that way. New tech never does. As EV's become more popular infrastructure to support it will grow around it, just like it did for gas cars.
Take TV for example. Back when TV first became a thing, do you think we had a network of TV stations adequate to blanket the nation in signal? No. I started in the bigger cities fist, then eventually small towns like Zanesville (current pop around 25K) began to get stations. Then came the switch to color. Did that happen over night? No! Although color came about in what, the late 50's early 60's, a lot of people still had black and white sets well into the 70's! Look how long it took us to go from the 4:3 aspect ratio to the 16:9HD. It came out in the mid to late 90's (the analog to digital shift started sooner than that) but some parts of the world are still working on HD. WHIZ TV (We're Here In Zanesville) didn't start making the conversion from analog to digital (the first step in switching from 4:3 to 16:9HD) until the end of 2020. When I left in '05 we still hadn't gone HD yet. I'm fuzzy on the exact year, but I think it was around 2010 before we finally went HD.
Just to go digital we had to buy all new cameras, edit bays, a new switcher and playback units for master control. We had to buy a new transmitter and antenna. And because we also had to continue to broadcast in analog and digital at the same time, we also had to build a new tower for the new antenna. However, it should be noted, that we were due for a new tower anyway, so.... And to feed the new antenna we had to have a digital transmitter, for which, we had to build an additional building to accommodate because there wasn't enough space in the old building for 2 transmitters.
So why 2 of everything you may ask? Because when making the sift from analog to digital, FCC mandates all stations must continue to provide analog service for as long as market demand dictates it to be necessary. I'm not what sure what year the old Klystrons were finally shut down for good, but they were still humming strong when I left. I'll grant, dual band antennas were an option, if you had the means. But we were/are a small station in a small town with limited rescorces, and like I mentioned before, we had a lot of things that were due for replacement anyway.
So, invention of B&W > color > digital > HD... All these transitions took the industry a number of years. And as these changes happened we all had to alter our infrastructure to accommodate. And the same can be said of other tech. The brick phones we had in the 80's that only got service in major cities, to pagers to flip phones to the smart phones we have today. Computers the size of an entire room in the 70's with less computing power than today's pocket calculator, to PC explosion in the 90's to an I-pad that bows the 90's PC's out of the water.

Now, there is the probability that the shift from gas to electric cars could happen a little more quickly than some of the transitions I mentioned; thanks to a little something called Moore's Law. (Google Gordon Moore) Whereas EV's rely heavily on the little bits and pieces that fall under Moore's Law. and with the computer industry having already paved the way EV's do have a little bit of a jump start on some of the other industries a-fore mentioned.

Moore's Law: What it Means, How it Works, Implications

Understand the groundbreaking implications of Moore's Law on the economic health of several industries, including semiconductors and nanotechnology.

www.investopedia.com

 

[Bullitt347]

I'll likely be gone by the time y'all have to park you're dino mobiles.
And it's hard not to bring politics into almost any conversation.
I could go on but what's the point?
I feel sorry for future generation(s)
Right now I just keep my gun loaded, my fuel tank full and I try to keep my mouth closed.
That last one is hard to do.

I brought those exact same points up on another Forum and got banned for a month because I brought "politics" into the thread. Some people have adverse reactions to anything they perceive that is against their world view and call it "politics".

 

[Ryuk]

Ok,,, Let's take a step back a minute. Ya-all acting like you expect to wake up in the morning, and POOF!!! Everything is electric. No, it is not going to happen that way. New tech never does. As EV's become more popular infrastructure to support it will grow around it, just like it did for gas cars.
Take TV for example. Back when TV first became a thing, do you think we had a network of TV stations adequate to blanket the nation in signal? No. I started in the bigger cities fist, then eventually small towns like Zanesville (current pop around 25K) began to get stations. Then came the switch to color. Did that happen over night? No! Although color came about in what, the late 50's early 60's, a lot of people still had black and white sets well into the 70's! Look how long it took us to go from the 4:3 aspect ratio to the 16:9HD. It came out in the mid to late 90's (the analog to digital shift started sooner than that) but some parts of the world are still working on HD. WHIZ TV (We're Here In Zanesville) didn't start making the conversion from analog to digital (the first step in switching from 4:3 to 16:9HD) until the end of 2020. When I left in '05 we still hadn't gone HD yet. I'm fuzzy on the exact year, but I think it was around 2010 before we finally went HD.
Just to go digital we had to buy all new cameras, edit bays, a new switcher and playback units for master control. We had to buy a new transmitter and antenna. And because we also had to continue to broadcast in analog and digital at the same time, we also had to build a new tower for the new antenna. However, it should be noted, that we were due for a new tower anyway, so.... And to feed the new antenna we had to have a digital transmitter, for which, we had to build an additional building to accommodate because there wasn't enough space in the old building for 2 transmitters.
So why 2 of everything you may ask? Because when making the sift from analog to digital, FCC mandates all stations must continue to provide analog service for as long as market demand dictates it to be necessary. I'm not what sure what year the old Klystrons were finally shut down for good, but they were still humming strong when I left. I'll grant, dual band antennas were an option, if you had the means. But we were/are a small station in a small town with limited rescorces, and like I mentioned before, we had a lot of things that were due for replacement anyway.
So, invention of B&W > color > digital > HD... All these transitions took the industry a number of years. And as these changes happened we all had to alter our infrastructure to accommodate. And the same can be said of other tech. The brick phones we had in the 80's that only got service in major cities, to pagers to flip phones to the smart phones we have today. Computers the size of an entire room in the 70's with less computing power than today's pocket calculator, to PC explosion in the 90's to an I-pad that bows the 90's PC's out of the water.

Now, there is the probability that the shift from gas to electric cars could happen a little more quickly than some of the transitions I mentioned; thanks to a little something called Moore's Law. (Google Gordon Moore) Whereas EV's rely heavily on the little bits and pieces that fall under Moore's Law. and with the computer industry having already paved the way EV's do have a little bit of a jump start on some of the other industries a-fore mentioned.

Moore's Law: What it Means, How it Works, Implications

Understand the groundbreaking implications of Moore's Law on the economic health of several industries, including semiconductors and nanotechnology.

www.investopedia.com

I see where you're going with this, but it fails to account for two factors.

1. People don't rely on television to go to work, take kids to school, and buy groceries for their family.
2. Television's acceptance was organic. Government didn't need to hand out tax incentives to encourage people or raise the price of radio to get people to switch.

 

[2000xp8]

Let's be clear, this entire post was meant to be political, it's click bait.
The posts intention was to spark a debate, please don't be fooled into thinking it was anything else.
Nobody is taking your internal combustion engine.
Nobody is making you buy an electric car.

So if picturing whoring is your thing, a simple "Out for Drive" title would have sufficed.

You guys can complain about things getting political, but i have more than my share of hobbies, belong to plenty of forums and groups.
Only one type of forum do i see it happen...

 

[Bree]

I see where you're going with this, but it fails to account for two factors.

1. People don't rely on television to go to work, take kids to school, and buy groceries for their family.
2. Television's acceptance was organic. Government didn't need to hand out tax incentives to encourage people or raise the price of radio to get people to switch.

1. You're missing the point of my post. Just like with cell phones, and yes my TV example, market demand will drive development of infrastructure, so by the time EV's have reached a point to where we have become dependent on them the support structure will be there. And again, it is important to remember, it's not going to happen overnight. The inferastucture will develop with the ever increasing demand. Yes, we will probably see some groing pains along the way, but that's true with all new developments.

2. While the development of early TV was indeed organic, the conversion to digital was in fact FCC mandated and fines were to be imposed for non-compliance. You didn't feel a pinch as a consumer because broadcast TV and radio are free to the consumer. The advertising we sell is what pays our bills/salary. Also, with a lot TV being provided via a cable or satalite box, this also offed a buffer to the end user. If you were still there sitting with nothing but a set of rabbit ears, and an old analog TV set, you would be getting nothing but snow right now, as per FCC mandates.

 

[Ryuk]

1. You're missing the point of my post. Just like with cell phones, and yes my TV example, market demand will drive development of infrastructure, so by the time EV's have reached a point to where we have become dependent on them the support structure will be there. And again, it is important to remember, it's not going to happen overnight. The inferastucture will develop with the ever increasing demand. Yes, we will probably see some groing pains along the way, but that's true with all new developments.

2. While the development of early TV was indeed organic, the conversion to digital was in fact FCC mandated and fines were to be imposed for non-compliance. You didn't feel a pinch as a consumer because broadcast TV and radio are free to the consumer. The advertising we sell is what pays our bills/salary. Also, with a lot TV being provided via a cable or satalite box, this also offed a buffer to the end user. If you were still there sitting with nothing but a set of rabbit ears, and an old analog TV set, you would be getting nothing but snow right now, as per FCC mandates.

I do get your point. But my point is that it's not market driven when the government gives huge tax breaks to purchase them and takes actions to harm the status quo competition.

 

[Bullitt347]

If the Government and the car companies were serious about Green Energy, they would have spent their time and energies on Hydrogen power. GM had a Hydrogen powered car and killed it. This happened only a year or so ago.
Profits rule everything.

 

[Bree]

One still has the option to pass on tax breaks to buy a gas powered car. If gas is truly what the majority of consumers want, tax breaks or not, then gas is what they will buy, and via market demand gas will win out.
But, with electric being more powerful, and faster, market demand will eventually swing in the favor of EV's, tax breaks or no tax breaks. Also, electric is renewable, gas is in limited supply. one day we won't have a choice.

Perhaps GM abandoned the hydrogen research because they found it to be to impractical with today's technology.

 

[Noobz347]

[Still] working out the kinks.