Chuck Schumer Wants To Replace Every Gas Car in America With an Electric Vehicle (theverge.com) 713
With the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill signed into law, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is ready to tackle the next major challenge: President Joe Biden's call for a massive infrastructure bill. As part of that package, Schumer said he plans to include his ambitious proposal to get every American to swap their gas-guzzling car for an electric one. From a report: "It's a bold new plan designed to accelerate America's transition to all electric vehicles on the road, to developing a charging infrastructure, and to grow American jobs through clean manufacturing," Schumer told The Verge in a brief interview this week. "And the ultimate goal is to have every car manufactured in America be electric by 2030, and every car on the road be clean by 2040."
The top-line details of the "cash for clunkers"-style plan haven't changed much since Schumer first proposed it in an op-ed in The New York Times in late 2019. But the political landscape has certainly shifted in favor of the Democrats, breathing new life into the idea. Under the proposal, anyone who trades in their gas car for an electric one would get a "substantial" point-of-sale discount, Schumer says. He wouldn't say how much of a discount, only that it would be "deep." A spokesperson later confirmed they are eyeing rebates that are "more generous" than the current $7,500 federal EV tax credit. He also wants to provide direct incentives to auto manufacturers to phase out their production of internal combustion engine vehicles and tax breaks for property owners to install EV chargers at their homes or apartment buildings. Lastly, he proposes to send direct subsidies to local governments to improve and expand the nation's network of EV charging stations. Schumer would deploy $45 billion in grants to upgrade the nation's charging infrastructure and $17 billion to encourage manufacturers to retrofit their facilities for EV production.
The top-line details of the "cash for clunkers"-style plan haven't changed much since Schumer first proposed it in an op-ed in The New York Times in late 2019. But the political landscape has certainly shifted in favor of the Democrats, breathing new life into the idea. Under the proposal, anyone who trades in their gas car for an electric one would get a "substantial" point-of-sale discount, Schumer says. He wouldn't say how much of a discount, only that it would be "deep." A spokesperson later confirmed they are eyeing rebates that are "more generous" than the current $7,500 federal EV tax credit. He also wants to provide direct incentives to auto manufacturers to phase out their production of internal combustion engine vehicles and tax breaks for property owners to install EV chargers at their homes or apartment buildings. Lastly, he proposes to send direct subsidies to local governments to improve and expand the nation's network of EV charging stations. Schumer would deploy $45 billion in grants to upgrade the nation's charging infrastructure and $17 billion to encourage manufacturers to retrofit their facilities for EV production.
I'd love an EV (Score:5, Insightful)
Charging at stores (Score:4, Informative)
Anything at the stores you frequent? The newest Tesla Supercharger in the Houston area was installed in the parking lot of an HEB grocery store [tesla.com]. While I usually charge at home, I stopped there to charge on the way back from a trip and noticed quite a few people bringing groceries back to their Tesla. I've also used Volta chargers while shopping at various malls around Houston. [voltacharging.com]
Same is happening in San Antonio, the Leon Springs [tesla.com] and the Schertz [tesla.com] locations are also at HEBs.
Re:Charging at stores (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything at the stores you frequent? The newest Tesla Supercharger in the Houston area was installed in the parking lot of an HEB grocery store [tesla.com].
Yeah, it's nice to live in a big city isn't it? I live in a town of ~10,000. There's no way in hell we'll be getting a charge station in the local Brookshire's within the next decade or so.
Re:Charging at stores (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think anyone with a yard measured in acres is crying foul about not having a charging station they don't need for a vehicle they don't want. A vehicle with a refill time measured in hours, that a person isn't allowed to fix themselves, is neither a convenience now a luxury.
I'll keep my 2004 Civics, 1994 Suburban, 1978 K10 pickup, and my 51 acres, thanks.
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... with his teeth.
Re: Charging at stores (Score:5, Informative)
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You were shopping at the wrong places. Ethnic markets routinely carry meat at prices which are lower than vegetables, per pound.
Just bought a whole bunch of chicken thighs for $0.79/lb. Bell peppers ran 99c EACH.
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You were shopping at the wrong places. Ethnic markets routinely carry meat at prices which are lower than vegetables, per pound.
That was not in the US. And while you can have meat cheaper than some expensive vegetables (like tomatoes or bell peppers), you won't have meat that is cheaper than staples (peas, rice, potatoes). There's a reason why poor countries have cuisine that uses meat mostly for sauces or for flavor, not as the main component of a dish.
Just bought a whole bunch of chicken thighs for $0.79/lb. Bell peppers ran 99c EACH.
For that $0.79 we could have bought several kilos of potatoes.
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Well the subject is the US and while I strongly suspect even if you shop very carefully you cannot obtain the equivalent number of calories and nutrient mix per dollar restricting yourself to a vegetarian diet, let alone a vegan one.
Not even close. A 25kg bag of rice is $20 in Costco. Dry rice has 400 calories per 100g, so that provides you around 100000 calories, or enough food to last for 50 days. Even the cheapest meat will not come close at that cost. Beans cost about the same per kg and provide comparable energy.
Keep in mind, that a lot of el-cheapo meat in the US is sold as a byproduct of making more expensive meat, and in a poor country the quantity of these byproducts will be limited because not many people can afford to buy
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Oh come on, even the "grocery stores" in tiny towns in the Westfjörds have produce.
It wasn't tiny towns that were the issue, in fact they came up quite well. The studies on "food deserts" identified the issues mainly in the poorer areas of larger cities where grocery stories overwhelmingly favour ready made, processed, or cheap products over fresh produce.
Certainly my limited experience visiting the USA even in large cities in well off areas the amount of fresh produce available at whatever random supermarkets I walked into off the street was absolutely abysmal compared to what I've seen
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You don't even need a 50A plug. Most EVs on the market will fully recharge evenin-to-morning one a easy to install 20A 240V circuit with 12GA wire and ~$40 in parts (breaker, wall box, 6-20 plug and cover)
Re:Charging at stores (Score:5, Informative)
In a small town:
Public transport infrastructure is less likely to be available and usable than a big city.
Less facilities will be available, increasing the likelihood that you will need to drive to a different town.
Chargers are chicken and egg. Without widely available chargers, noone will buy electric cars. Without users, noone would bother installing chargers. Something needs to kickstart the process.
If chargers were installed and became too congested, more would be installed.
Texas has also been hit by power outages recently. Storing gas is easy and cheap, storing power for an electric car is expensive. Burning gas to charge an electric car defeats the whole point of having an electric car in the first place.
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That would be really popular down here near New Orleans. You know, that place where 35C is a cool Summer day. And Summer is 9 months of the year.
Never mind the 90%+ humidity, which just makes the 35C feel hotter.
Re:Charging at stores (Score:5, Insightful)
"Don't make trips" is your answer?
This is literally the main problem with progressive advocacy. We should be promoting EV vehicles and a lot of other things, but when people question the advocacy the response boils down to "you shouldn't be making trips" or some other major and ultimately naive "you're doing it wrong" statement the advocacy just comes off as arrogant and ill informed.
I'm pretty sure the parent poster is not making any trips they think are unnecessary, who the fuck are you to judge whether they are or aren't? It's as dumb as some religious conservative saying the solution to unplanned pregnancy is "don't have sex".
Re:Charging at stores (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that you asked the question proves you have never lived in a small town, let alone a rural area.
You have no idea how 90% of the country lives. I wonder if Schumer is any more knowledgeable?
We drive so much because there are no viable alternatives.
Re:Charging at stores (Score:5, Insightful)
> You have no idea how 90% of the country lives
Roughly 83% of Americans live in urban areas [statista.com] so I don't think AlexHilbertRyan is the one who doesn't understand this country's demographics.
=Smidge=
Re:Charging at stores (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two charging stations at one of the supermarkets I go to.
One of them was installed broken. It took them over two years but they finally fixed it. Maybe. I'm actually not sure. It sort of doesn't matter because now that the broken one has been fixed, the plug on the one that used to work is now broken, and that hasn't been fixed for months.
The other thing is that public charging stations tend to either be free (the supermarket ones are ad supported) or charge hilariously high amounts for power. Most of the charging stations around here that aren't free charge $0.50/kWh for level 2 charging. That's easily more expensive per mile than gas. (Level 1 is "plug into your wall," level 2 is the "220V/40A" AC charging that will take hours to charge a Tesla to full.)
Oh, and that's the other thing, most of the chargers I've seen are the level 2, "technically will charge but will take forever" types. They're perfect for home use (where you can let the car sit overnight) but worthless for charging on the go.
But the major problem is that even where there are chargers, you have to contend with there not being anywhere near enough for everyone to drive an EV and the fact that there's no money being spent on maintaining them. All the money is being spent on building new ones, because everyone loves new things being installed. Once they're there, they're left to rot.
Where I work used to have car chargers that were installed as part of a big "we're going green!" initiative that also installed solar panels. Despite the fact that they charged $0.50/kWh, they were frequently used, until eventually, they broke. Then, after years of them being left broken, they finally removed them rather than fix them. (All this was pre-COVID if you're wondering.)
So while I'm all for going electric (no, really, electric cars are a lot of fun to drive), the infrastructure not only isn't there yet, there are no plans to maintain the infrastructure that is.
Re:Charging at stores (Score:5, Informative)
That's disappointing.
Yeah, I've noticed the non-Tesla chargers tend to be pricy, and much slower. Going from Houston to Wisconsin cost me $40.47 [twitter.com] using Tesla's superchargers and free charging at hotels. Most charging occurred while eating or sleeping, the few times we had to wait added about 30 minutes, comparable to the time I spent standing next to the pump on prior trips
Using A Better Routine Planner they current show a trip to my brother's in my Model 3 [abetterrouteplanner.com] would cost $51 to charge with total trip time of 23:35; while a Chevy Bolt [abetterrouteplanner.com] would cost $100 and at 29:43 the trip would take over 6 hours longer.
Re:Charging at stores (Score:4, Insightful)
better yet, how long with that last, when a hotel has 50 guests that all want to charge for FREE while they are there. Obviously hotels and stores will not be able to sustain this for long, they will either not be able to afford additional chargers to keep up with demand, or they will have to charge, either directly to those using it, or raise all prices for a night at the hotel to cover the cost of charge stations and electricity.
Re:Charging at stores (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what I don't get. You can't fill up gas for free at a hotel, so why should you get subsidised by all the other hotel guests so that you can plug in and charge your car for free?
better yet, how long with that last, when a hotel has 50 guests that all want to charge for FREE while they are there. Obviously hotels and stores will not be able to sustain this for long, they will either not be able to afford additional chargers to keep up with demand, or they will have to charge, either directly to those using it, or raise all prices for a night at the hotel to cover the cost of charge stations and electricity.
Do they raise prices for the housekeeping or the cable TV?
It's not a subsidy for EV drivers, it's a promo that attracts EV driving guests.
The hotel isn't a charity, in the short term the hotels with free EV charging stations probably make money off the extra business.
Long term it's yet another thing that's baked into the price of your hotel stay.
Hydrogen might do that (Score:3)
But not today. Across the US there are:
47 Hydrogen Fueling Stations [energy.gov] of which 45 are in California
44,652 Charging Stations [energy.gov]
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Re:I'd love an EV (Score:5, Informative)
"He also wants to provide [...] tax breaks for property owners to install EV chargers at their homes or apartment buildings. Lastly, he proposes to send direct subsidies to local governments to improve and expand the nation's network of EV charging stations. Schumer would deploy $45 billion in grants to upgrade the nation's charging infrastructure "
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Re:I'd love an EV (Score:4, Informative)
City: no, it's not going to be free, and by the way, if you want to get a permit for anything at all, we are going to insist that you install EVSEs (what people commonly, but inaccurately refer to as EV chargers).
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:5, Informative)
Prices are high because of demand, that's it. Everything else is buried by that factor.
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:4, Insightful)
I know the image of the landlord is close to the little Monopoly guy, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Most landlords are Mom and Pops who are just scraping by.
Adding chargers to parking lots could easily cost millions what with tearing up and resurfacing the lot, buying the equipment, burying lines, probably adding capacity, and the charging systems themselves - which would also become a maintenance burden. Why would a landlord do that when it would likely bankrupt him??
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:4, Informative)
Why would a landlord do that when it would likely bankrupt him??
As a property owner myself, why would a landlord attempt to meet minimum expectations? The answer is to make rent. If you're providing low income housing you may be very right, but me I'm counting down the days before my tenants ask me to install a charging station and I start making a calculated decision as to whether I comply or I'm forced to lower rent as potential tenants move elsewhere.
The world is changing. The question isn't why would a landlord install a charging point. The question is when. Depending on where you live, that could be within a couple of decades, or it could be 50 years from now.
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I am no longer a land but I agree it is a question of when. However I suspect we are no where near the lower rent point yet (at least not based on EV chargers being provided).
The question I'd ask is when will I no longer be able to find prospective tenants who don't care about EV chargers. Right now the market is such that you can probably charge a slight premium if you offer EV charging, but that will quickly evaporate. I suspect fairly shortly in most markets you will have a bifurcated group of renters -
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Re:I'd love an EV (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems more likely that they will need to wire a few hundred parking spaces to a given (albeit still huge) power supply and then rotate through them. Maybe people will be able to pay extra to get priority or something. While I think they can eventually get all of this worked out, and people will get used to paying more for their mobility, I am betting there will be a point at which it's like 1973 all over again, with a bunch of sad people lined up around the block waiting to charge.
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I do worry about evacuations, such as from a hurricane. My nightmare scenario is a hurricane headed for New Orleans, people evacuate to Houston, then the hurricane suddenly turns toward Houston, and kills a lot of people while they wait in line to charge. (At Houston or halfway in-between.)
Of course, that's a lot of people's nightmare scenario without EVs. But I think EVs make it worse.
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No, but it takes three minutes at most to fill your tank, and then you can drive for about 500 miles.
How many EV's can manage 500 miles on a charge? And recharge in five minutes or so?
Yes, I've had to evac from a hurricane or three. Not fun, even in a regular car.
Mind you, that'll change once the infrastructure for EV's is everywhere. It's the transition that'll be the problem - fewer and fewer gas pumps, more charge points for EV's, But until the charge points have completely replaced the gas pumps,
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But there's no charging at my apartment or work.
As we go from 1% EVs to 100% EVs, perhaps sometime during the transition more chargers will be installed.
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:5, Insightful)
If only you had read the summary:
He also wants to provide ... tax breaks for property owners to install EV chargers at their homes or apartment buildings.
It's almost like someone came up with solutions to your complaints before you had them. Isn't that convenient?
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:5, Insightful)
My car is 8 years old with less than 25K miles on it. My wife's is 15 years old with a rebuilt engine installed 3 years ago. Our plan is to drive them until they die, hopefully not long before we do. Because we will not have anywhere near enough income to make car payments.
The problem with this plan seems to be that Schumer assumes anyone with a car can afford the payments (of course, if you give me an EV for free, I might take it. But I live in a manufactured home park and even though I have a driveway, getting a charging circuit may be simply impossible).
Of course the government may just deem that people like me should just take the bus (we don't have bus service where I live), walk (which assumes an older person has this capability) or if nothing else, just die (that, I can do - but not fond of doing so for the sake of the government - or even the environment).
Sigh...
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And I asked the office and apartment managers when they plan to install chargers - their answer (both) "Never".
Once these numpties realise they can arbitrage the cost of gasoline and electricity by sticking a cheap low power overnight charge port in each car parking space, they will change their tune. If you are a rent seeking landlord, having your tenants basically forced to either use your 'gas station' at usurious prices, or stand around in a remote carpark for 2 hours, is a gift horse.
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:5, Interesting)
Seattle is pushing for new apartment/condo construction to be zero parking. To encourage the use of mass transit. A few new buildings went in near some friends of mine. The result? The competition for on street parking is becoming a circus. Chairs and traffic cones are being used to reserve choice spots. I anticipate fights breaking out when someone moves someone elses lawn chair soon.
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:4, Insightful)
Charge a market price for on-street parking, rather than providing it for free as a public subsidy, and there will immediately be available parking.
Re:I'd love an EV (Score:4, Informative)
Chicken v egg problem.
They are not interested in installing chargers because there is not sufficient demand for chargers.
-When the landlords are having difficulty filling the apartments with tenants because the prospective tenants are unwilling to pay the asking price for an apartment without EV charging they will install chargers.
-When desirable employees are turning down employment offers because the competition offered a parking place with free charging as a perk the company will install EV chargers.
It takes time to reach a tipping point where things like this happen often enough to matter. This timespan can be shortened by government action. Action such as the proposed legislation.
Fewer cars (Score:4, Insightful)
How about we stop subsidizing cars, period?
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Republicans: I hate all government subsidies. Let the free market decide!
Also Republicans: I need a $60,000 tax credit to buy my "commercial" truck.
Re:Fewer cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans: I hate all government subsidies. Let the free market decide!
Also Republicans: I need a $60,000 tax credit to buy my "commercial" truck.
I'm not letting Republicans off the hook, they are absolutely guilty of meddling in the economy despite claims of being about free market.
However, I can't resist the temptation to point out that a tax credit is not the same thing as a handout / subsidy. Not taking your money in the first place is very different from giving you money that was taken from someone else.
A tax credit IS a handout, same as food stamps (Score:4, Informative)
However, I can't resist the temptation to point out that a tax credit is not the same thing as a handout / subsidy. Not taking your money in the first place is very different from giving you money that was taken from someone else.
Not taking YOUR money? Fuck off with the attitude pally. You use government services. You owe the government a certain amount of money for existing within its borders and consuming its benefits. You use the roads, you rely on the gov, they probably paid for your education...even if somehow you levitate across the earth, not touching any roads and are immune to crime, invasion, and fire through mystical powers, you depend on a lot of people who do use gov services.
You can say "the gov is taking MY money," but you'd not have the capacity to earn what you did without them. Your customers rely on them...their customers/employers rely on them. It's all interconnected. You're much less independent from gov spending than you think. I have a private sector job, but all I have to do is look through my employer's customer list and I quickly find companies that get a lot of money from gov subsidies directly or indirectly.
Addressing your point, it's no different than staying at a hotel. Whether the hotel hands you $20 or takes $20 off your bill, it's the same in the end. A tax break is a handout. It's no more righteous than a subsidy or welfare....it's just unlike welfare, which gives great returns on investments, tax breaks, particularly to the wealthy are piss poor investments as the wealthy tend to save money (they're good at it, that's why they're wealthy) or get invested overseas or in all sorts of stupid things. Poor people take handouts and pay off existing debts or immediately spend in the local community, a huge portion of which ends up right back in the gov coffers as savings on police dealing with crime or evicting people as well as direct tax revenue from all the local businesses getting increased sales.
A dollar given to Jeff Bezos is likely lost. A dollar given to one of his warehouse employees will be spent immediately, most likely in the local economy.
A handout is a handout....you can call it a tax break, a subsidy, gov assistance, or even SNAP/foodstamps....they're ALL the same. Don't fool yourself...taking a tax cut is no different than collecting food stamps.
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I don't see that your argument makes any difference. His point still stands: a tax credit is not the same thing as a handout/subsidy.
A few issues (Score:2)
In principle I like the idea, but 2030 is far too ambitious.
1) Most manufacturers don't offer 300+ between charges vehicles
2) Long trips are still a consideration
I also worry that this is simply a way to move money around that can then be skimmed at each step.
How about real choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about some real choice. Like redesign our infrastructure to accommodate and encourage safe walking and bicycling and moped'ing and motorcyclinging.
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You should see my city (in California). Most of the streets have a bike lane which is demarcated from car traffic by a 2 or 3 ft hatched area. After marking the bike lanes, the hatched areas now have plastic posts preventing cars going into the bike lanes. Also, major intersections were modified to make them safer for bikes.
The physics don't work for me (Score:4, Insightful)
The average gas pump pumps 10 gallons per minute, which means I can go from empty to full on my 20-gallon tank in 2 minutes.
Electric cars cannot recharge from zero to full in 2 minutes. It's simply not possible.
As I tend to take a lot of road trips, it is important that refuel or recharge happen in a reasonable amount of time. Reasonable to me is under 5 minutes from zero to full.
Add to this the fact that there are often lines to use the gas pump. Think how bad that will be when you transition from a 2 minute refuel to a 2 hour charge. There simply isn't enough real estate to accommodate such a scenario. I mean sure, you could possibly charge at home, but that doesn't do you much good when you're not home.
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Electric cars cannot recharge from zero to full in 2 minutes. It's simply not possible.
As I tend to take a lot of road trips, it is important that refuel or recharge happen in a reasonable amount of time. Reasonable to me is under 5 minutes from zero to full.
Not yet, but they are working on it. 20 years ago the fastest a EV charged was overnight http://www.evchargernews.com/C... [evchargernews.com] . 10 years ago, the fastest a EV charged was 3.5 hours https://saxton.org/tom_saxton/... [saxton.org] . Today, a EV can charge to 80% in 15 minutes https://www.chargepoint.com/bl... [chargepoint.com] . So it’s gotten much better. I would bet by 2031 we will have EVs that can give equivalent range for the amount of time it has charged, about a 200-300 mile range with just 1 minute of charging.
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There is always at least one snowflake that shows up in EV discussions to say how EVs won't work for him or her.
But let's look at your specific complaint. Apparently, you never stop for coffee or bathroom breaks while on a long trip. 5 minutes is the minimum, best case time to fill up and get back on the road when filling gas into a tank.
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A mid price EV will do 3 hours of driving on the motorway before you need to charge, and then charge in about 30 minutes. By the time you have taken a comfort break and stretched your legs the car is ready to go again.
Of course bigger batteries are available and getting cheaper all the time.
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That's a BIG "No thank you".
Sure, but what about the grid? (Score:4, Informative)
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There is exactly zero chance of anything like this proposal of becoming law. It's just a tactic to weaponize the politics of division and blame the other side when nothing comes of it.
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You need serious investment into infrastructure before all-electric car future can become reality.
Not really. Most charging is done in the middle of the night when there is plenty of spare capacity.
By spreading out demand, EVs make more effective use of the infrastructure we already have.
My EV is programmed to start charging at 2 AM.
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In this world, most people will plug their car in when they get home from work
Are you really so clueless about how EVs work?
They have devices in the called "computers". They are programmable. They have touchscreens. You tap on them to set your charging time.
I plug in my car when I get home from work. Then I forget about it.
At 2 AM, the computer in the car activates the charger.
Chucky also wants to control the price of cereal (Score:4, Insightful)
This was the first I'd heard of Chuck, and I haven't heard anything to change my opinion of him since. Overrated blowhard.
The grid at 6pm (Score:4, Insightful)
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The economy will collapse first.
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add right to repair and no forced subscription fee (Score:2)
add right to repair and no forced subscription fees to it.
And where is this electrical energy coming from? (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric wouldn't come anywhere near the capacity needed to power that many electric cars. So what's the plan, burn fossil fuels to generate the power, lose some of the efficiency at the charging station, lose more efficiency in the batteries, lose more efficiency in the motors. So now we're burning more fossil fuel than ever before.
And that doesn't even take into consideration the enormous costs involved in simply replacing your car with an EV. Is the government going to pay for that? Tell me again where the government gets its money from? They produce nothing so... oh yea, they take it from the citizens. So now, for honestly no good reason, my taxes explode because perfectly good low pollution ICE vehicles have fallen out of favor with a small group of politicians who happened to have huge stock investments in Tesla and other EV producers.
Look, the only way this would even stand a chance is if we turned right now towards nuclear power, and I mean big time. That's the ONLY way you will get sufficient non co2 producing electrical energy in the long run. And you will have to find a way to retrofit existing ICE vehicles with electric. The insane amounts of waste that would be produced if you just trashed existing cars would be yet another environmental disaster.
And of course, you have to convince people that waiting 12 hours to "fill your tank" when it used to take five minutes is in their best interest. God help you if you're driving across the country to visit relatives or on business - instead of stopping for gas and then continuing, you'll have to stop for the day.
This kind of lunacy only comes from people and politicians who are completely and utterly detached from the real world.
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Oh please
Heart in right place... (Score:2)
This Proposal Hurts the Poor and Moderate Income (Score:3)
The people who buy new cars aren't driving old junkers on their last legs before their new car purchase; they are driving cars with a lot of miles left on them. So sending these types cars to the junkyard means there will be a substantial decline in good used cars for purchase by the poor and moderate income--resulting in a substantial increase in price for used cars.
And no, the poor and moderate income can't afford to pay $25,000 for a new EV even after a $10,000 discount.
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38 Million Teslas (Score:2)
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When did /. become Home of the luddites? (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years back I visited my mother in Manitoba, I noticed at the airport that there was an AC outlet in front of every parking space, for block heaters. If they can do it for an entire airport parking structure, they can do it for your work parking, and your apartment.
The second the owners clue in that it is a revenue stream that they are missing out on. The electricians will be working 24/7 installing outlets.
This again. So an EV won't work for you? So? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not about you. It's about most of the people most of the time. Everyone can point to an outlier situation and say, "See! It won't work!" And you are correct. For those people who drive 1,000 miles a day, indeed, it won't work. For those people "forced" to use public charging stations, it will at least be inconvenient if not downright frustrating. OK. We get that. It won't work for you so I'm guessing an EV is not in your future in the next couple of years. Nobody but Schumer cares.
However, the average commute is 40 miles a day. The average EV gets well over 200 miles a charge. Most all of them are closing in on 300 miles and a new Cybertruck clocks in at 500 miles--on a single charge. I think it is fair to say that's enough for a week's worth of commuting and a few grocery runs. and at least the way I commute is fill it up once a week. And it's the same with your average EV, charge it once per week, overnight when rates are low, for about 120 mpg equivalent.
So for every one of you who claims such a situation won't work for you, there are a dozen of me who say that sounds pretty good. And with gas prices going up (Nearly $5.00 in SoCal I hear?) people will begin to do the math, and when they finally figure it out, they'll be moving over in droves. It's an economic decision. We do not need Schumer to make this work. It's going to work anyway. With or without you.
Are any EVs not calling home? (Score:2)
"Cash for clunkers" is a terrible policy (Score:3)
"Cash for clunkers" is a terrible policy. It subsidizes people who can already afford cars, while simultaneously making it harder for poorer people to afford used cars.
FFS, Pols Need to Stop Specifying The Solutions (Score:4, Interesting)
Wont work. (Score:4, Informative)
What happens to the old ICE vehicles? (Score:3)
Huge disconnect between Washington and Reality (Score:3)
This is so typical of Washington and technologists who live in major cities. They have no clue how things work in the rest of the country. No, you're not going to find a charging station in BFE, Nebraska. Nobody is going to have a spare battery in their trunk to put in your EV when it runs out of fairy-farts in the middle of nowhere. Oh, and people are going to be pissed when they discover that they have to replace a rather expensive battery in a few years.
Just curious (Score:3, Insightful)
When will politicians stop offering us 'free' things by having our children pay for it?
The promised rapid succession of Trillion dollar spending bills will do little more than use our children's money to buy Democrat votes today.
Cash for clunkers took perfectly serviceable vehicles off the road, replacing them with new vehicles that were produced in polluting factories - the net impact of the Cash for Clunkers program was a hit to the environment, but hey - it sold a lot of cars, subsidized with deficit spending.
Green Jobs Is a Joke (Score:3)
The whole reason manufacturers are interested in "working with the government" to push electric vehicles is that they are ultimately less labor intensive to manufacture. GM won't hire anyone to make electric motors in the USA. They'll just buy the motors from China and slap them in their vehicles. Meanwhile, everyone in Mexico and the USA working on 4 cylinder to 8 cylinder engines is going to be given the pink slip and Progressives working in banks and universities for a living casting everyone who is angry about this as some sort of a racist who should be ideally just going for the welfare program.
Re:The February Freeze (Score:5, Insightful)
The Texas blackouts were caused by a failure to winterize ALL types of power generation. The biggest portion of generation that went offline was the natural gas plants. Coal went offline as well due to frozen feedstock stored in non-weatherproof locations.
There is nothing inherent about wind energy that is more vulnerable to cold weather. They use wind turbines for power in Antarctica (and no, there is no need for helicopters to de-ice them as a viral misinformation meme falsely claimed). The Texas facilities simply cheaped out and did not use weatherized turbines because they thought they didn't need them.
Nuclear power is abundant and reliable, but cheap it is not. If it were, you'd see nuclear plants being built left and right. But a new nuke is a $10 billion proposition that produces power at a higher cost than wind and solar. If you are a business in it to make money, you aren't building nuclear.
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Yes but like was commented on at that time is there is no way for texas to convert to all wind or solar power
Texas can expand wind and solar if they also connect to the national grid.
Calm or cloudy days are a local problem. If they are connected to the national grid, then on cloudy, windless days they can tap into sunshine power in Florida and California, and wind power from North Dakota.
The key to reliable renewables is geographical dispersion.
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Under Schumer's plan we can just plug in all our cars to heat our homes during the next calm cloudy day.
During the Great Texas Freeze, many EV owners folded down their car seats, placed a futon pad over them, and slept in their car with the heater running.
Re: The February Freeze (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, for about a day after which they could no longer move their cars.
My EV has an 80 kwh battery. The seat heaters use 500 W. So that is 160 hours. If I run the heat for 8 hours each night, it is good for 20 nights. If I run the air heater instead at 1kw, it is good for 10 nights.
Of course, I could extend that time by putting a blanket over the windshield and roof.
failure was with natural gas supplies (Score:5, Informative)
Natural Gas is the biggest source of heat and electricity here in Texas. It failed miserably. Natural Gas Weekly Update: February 18, 2021 [eia.gov] - check the almost 50% drop in natural gas production in Texas in the graph.
The decline in natural gas production is primarily because of freeze-offs, which occur when water and other liquids found in produced raw natural gas freeze at the wellhead and/or potentially in natural gas gathering lines near production activities, resulting in flow blockage. A large portion of the decrease in natural gas production was from declines in Texas, which fell over 10 Bcf/d during the February 8–17 period. Unlike natural gas production infrastructure in northern areas of the country where below-freezing temperatures are more common and infrastructure is generally winterized, wellheads, gathering lines, and even processing facilities in Texas are more susceptible to freeze-offs during periods of extremely cold weather.
Despite some frozen turbines, Wind Power actually generated more power than expected. Texas’ power grid crumples under the cold [arstechnica.com]
wind in Texas generally tends to produce less during winter, there's no way that the grid operators would have planned for getting 30GW from wind generation; in fact, a chart at ERCOT indicates that wind is producing significantly more than forecast.
Despite being covered in snow and ice, the solar panels on my roof kept my home going [twitter.com] on the day I was without power. The rest of the week they generated more than I used [twitter.com], so helped with the grid recovery.
Forgot to mention nuclear (Score:3)
One of the two reactors of the South Texas Nuclear Power Station in Matagorda County shut down, knocking out about half of its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity. On Monday, Unit 1 went offline cold weather-related issues in the plant’s feedwater system, said Vicki Rowland, lead of internal communications at STP Nuclear Operating Co.
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how dare you ask a relevant and thoughtful question. quick, moderate this into oblivion!
The electrical grid (and not just TX) can barely handle current usage patterns. What could possibly go wrong with adding millions of EV's.
In the sun belt in particular, what would happen if around 5:30-6:30 PM people get home from work and
a) turn on their AC
b) start charging their schumer-mobile?
Call me old fashioned, but I don't think it's the federal govts responsibility to pick winner and losers. The economics and v
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speaking of winter, i wonder how those electric car's batteries would do when parked outside over night on those cold cold winter nights when you get near zero temps (sometimes colder than that)
Tesla's use (some of the) heat from the motor to keep the batteries in an optimal temperature range in cold weather when operating.
Some of the capacity is temporarily unavailable (Score:4, Informative)
The battery will display the "frozen" capacity in blue with a snowflake until the battery warms up enough. You can see an example of that in photos of this tweet of mine [twitter.com].
You do use more energy in the winter as there's no waste heat to warm up the cabin. During my winter trip from Houston to Wisconsin [atariage.com] in 2019 we averaged 297 Wh/mi for the trip, which was 22% more than the 243 Wh/mi we used during a similar trip in the summer [atariage.com].
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dealer only service is not needed! (Score:2)
dealer only service is not needed!
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