December 20, 2023

In recent months it has become abundantly clear that electric vehicles are no more than rich men’s toys. Sometimes I think I must be having a dream, but I do not seem to be able to awaken from this nightmare.

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These vehicles are so expensive that only the very rich can afford them.  In fact, these are often secondary vehicles.

As a vehicle to drive from home to office and back home again, they are reasonably practical.  However, nothing beats a vehicle with an internal combustion engine.  You do not have to plug it in; just get in and drive it.  Five minutes is enough time to fill the gas tank and check the water and oil.  With an electric vehicle, you may have to spend two hours every 200 miles charging the battery.

Electric vehicles were tried in the early part of the twentieth century but were abandoned after gasoline-driven cars became available.  Here is the timeline of the development of electric vehicles.  Here is a picture of a woman charging her vehicle about 1912.

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One of the reasons these cars did not catch on at the time is that there were many places in America that still had no residential electricity.  Another is that these vehicles were fairly low-speed, with a maximum speed of only about 14 miles per hour.  Even a horse could beat that (almost).  Some of the cars that were actually built were luxury cars, with ornate  interiors and designs.

Today, electric cars are being built and sold to fight carbon dioxide.  This basic goal is simply madness.  Carbon dioxide is plant food.

One has to wonder if electric vehicles are actually reducing carbon dioxide.  In one demonstration, when a reporter asked about the power source, he was informed that they just plugged it into a socket on the side of the building.  At the same time, there was an official there from the utility company, and he pointed out that the local electricity was provided by a coal-fired power plant.  So you can see that absolutely nothing was accomplished, as the coal-fired power plant was still producing carbon dioxide.  (The above cartoon explains the truth of the matter.)

That does not even consider that many of the components of an electric vehicle are produced in places like China, which have few pollution control requirements.  Consider that the machinery used to mine the ore is producing carbon dioxide, and then the trucks that haul the ore to the refinery, and then the carbon dioxide produced by the refinery, and finally the factory to build the batteries and such, each stage using electricity.  In China, much of the electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants.  And the Chinese are building many more coal-fired power plants every week.  No CO2 here, but much produced in China.

Some states have stated that they want to be net zero by 2035.  They have no idea what they are talking about.  To do so would require blanketing much of the country with wind and solar.  And what about us?  We each produce about two pounds of carbon dioxide every day just by breathing.

One of the reasons that many people do not want electric vehicles is that they are very impractical for longer trips.  With a range of about 200 miles on a fully charged battery (not in winter, not in summer), few want to wait two hours while the battery is charged.  Some are finding that there is no charge station when they need one, or there are not enough units at an installation to provide charge for all who may want it.