Why the big push to eliminate ICEs?

[PandaBear]

Yea sure. And in the 50's the automakers said everybody in the 70's will be driving flying cars. How well did that work out? Or back in the 90's when hydrogen was the latest fad. I'm still waiting to buy my nuclear powered ride. Refuel every 100,000 miles.

I think the realistic expectation is small modular reactor dunk into the bottom of the ocean with server containers, then attached to the rest of the internet through either fiber or starlinks.

Free cooling, close enough distance to the customer nearby, no need for large infrastructure, or if you want to you can dunk a mini nuke in the ocean and run a desalination plant with it, then pump the fresh water back to shore.

 

[555]

Marketing. Elon caught auto manufacturers with their pants down. Now it's about market share and everyone is late to the party. Electric cars bum me out with their straight line speed but are still heavy, so some relief there.
Manufacturer's have marketing AND accounting departments. It's an interesting time. If you find yourself in an argument about electric cars it's still considered a plus for marketing. Not saying there are no benefits or detriments to electric cars but this is "business as usual"

 

[PimTac]

All of these deadlines that the automakers and government are putting out there are not feasible and will be eventually pushed back. Society prefers a peaceful and easy transition versus the disruption that many are pushing. Check the sources and money of the disrupters. There is the answer.

Another problem is that many city dwellers nowadays have no idea how vast the US is. A battery car with a 200 mile range might work in Silicon Valley or the Northeast but not in the wide open spaces in between.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

Marketing. Elon caught auto manufacturers with their pants down. Now it's about market share and everyone is late to the party. Electric cars bum me out with their straight line speed but are still heavy, so some relief there.
Manufacturer's have marketing AND accounting departments. It's an interesting time. If you find yourself in an argument about electric cars it's still considered a plus for marketing. Not saying there are no benefits or detriments to electric cars but this is "business as usual"

The big money is coming from ESG investors so an automaker who doesn't develop a BEV segment will be limited to the amount of capital is can generate via product sales rather than from selling shares (ie. stock).

Elon didn't catch automakers with their pants down. Elon was afforded the better part of a decade of losses to develop a BEV. There's no legacy automaker in the world who would've been given that amount of leeway. Not one.

 

[ryster]

Just because new ICE cars may leave the market, doesn't mean all of the gasoline stations will instantly close. Drivers of "old fashioned" ICE cars will still be able to purchase fuel. It will take decades for all of the ICE cars to disappear, and in the meantime gas will still be sold (albeit pricing will probably rise.)

 

[Rmay635703]

Here is a quick rundown on gasoline tax in California. Just using the California Excise tax, 12,000 miles per year and 25 miles per gain would result in $240 per year in lost tax. Multiply by a million EV’s and it’s 24 million in lost tax. Doesn’t seem like much in a world where deficits are measured in Billions and Trillions of dollars.

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last year I burned a tad under $200 of fuel in my Honda, ridiculous to think someone pays that on tax alone.

Nobody who owns an EV was likely getting 25mpg before ownership nor were they cross shopping EVs with mini vans
Also BEVs drive far fewer annual miles than a gas burner.
Per Wisdot BEVs statewide average under 5000 miles per year

Most current EV owners came either from a luxury car or Honda/Prius

Being in Wisconsin and driving 8000 miles a year I’ve never paid more than $25 in gas tax with my Honda,
my previous Cobalt XFE was around $37 annually for gas tax

If/When more than a compliance number of EV Pickups are available for sale you might have a point for EV pickups but if we really need to run down the rabbit hole of high registration fees
said fee should ACTUALLY REPRESENT A SIMILAR VEHICLE WITH SIMILAR MILES AND ECONOMY.

That said the first thing people stop paying when broke/unemployed is registration followed by insurance

When they raised the rates here my uncle drove without registration for at least a decade.
Up north I see plate free rigs everywhere, even down here the guy across the street from me hasn’t had a valid plate in the 5 years I’ve been here and it seems to be a trend on the uptick nationwide this last 1.5 years

In Wisconsin peak registrations was a little over 8million, after changing fee structures we are down to about 6.x million registrations

As costs go up I expect more of the same

 

[Rhymingmechanic]

No different than any other mine.

Tar Sands Canada

Coal Mine Canada

West Virginia Coal Mines

MOAB Uranium Mine UTAH... (Notice the stream which is doused with radioactive run off)

Story about abandoned oil wells in Texas and here's a map of other areas of the US which have a similar problem.

Thanks for posting the Moab photo--it made me follow up and learn something today.

That "stream" is actually the Colorado River, and the site is not a mine, but an area where uranium tailings were dumped, in the 100-year floodplain. The town of Moab is in the top left corner, to the south. Arches National Park would be at your back if you had taken the photo.

The tailings are in the process of being moved to another site, as explained here: https://www.grandcountyutah.net/257/Moab-UMTRA-Project
Last time I was there, the area pictured looked like a man-made mesa. This and the rest of you post are good examples of the need to extract resources in a sensible way, no matter what they power.

I grew up in a very rural area, and have often wondered about EV use there myself. Hybrids seem like a better solution in places where the next one-stoplight town is 35 miles away. But what do I know--Last time I talked to my dad, he said there was a charging station and a few EVs in town already.

 

[Jetronic]

Just because new ICE cars may leave the market, doesn't mean all of the gasoline stations will instantly close. Drivers of "old fashioned" ICE cars will still be able to purchase fuel. It will take decades for all of the ICE cars to disappear, and in the meantime gas will still be sold (albeit pricing will probably rise.)

semis will still be diesel.... so diesel cars and trucks could demand a premium as the fuel will be readily available

 

[ZeeOSix]

I just heard recently that an EV owner was charged 3-4 times the going rate for their plate renewal. They looked into it and were told it was because they didn’t pay road taxes that are on fuel. So some states are starting to think about that.

Yep, as more and more EVs materialize the owners will eventually lose the benifits of using the roads for free as the states realize the increasing loss in road tax revenue.

They might also end up paying more for the electricity used to charge their EV even at home, through a dedicated metered charger. I don't see how it would be fair to increase electric rates for everyone to cover the increased use of electricity by a minority of EVs on the road.

 

[Kuato]

I understand the push to bring more electrics online, but I don't understand the push to eliminate ICEs so quickly. People are not going to convert overnight. The transformation will take decades, and some people will still want ICE powered vehicles. Why can't we have both?

Thank you.

 

[Rmay635703]

semis will still be diesel.... so diesel cars and trucks could demand a premium as the fuel will be readily available

The letter of the law in California is that newly purchased privately held cars need to “plug in” and have an adequately sized battery

AKA Existing cars aren’t affected and vehicles like the Chevy Volt comply with the actual 2030 law.

I find it amusing that 20 years ago the road fund was just as unfunded as it is today and literally no one cared.
Now everyone cares even though road funding tax hikes never seem to affect road quality.
Last time a large road tax increase occurred several highway projects literally stopped for a decade directly after the increase passed, lovely how that works

 

[carviewsonic]

For me to own an EV, it would have to make sense from both a financial and a practical viewpoint. Very few consumers would buy an EV for a perceived environmental benefit alone.
As far as manufacturers are concerned, 555 said it well; "Manufacturer's have marketing AND accounting departments".

 

[MNgopher]

At the end of the day, its all about trying to clean up what is becoming an ever larger share of the air pollution puzzle. At least in the US, factory emissions have been tightened up and we reap the rewards of that, and automotive emissions are now the next big pie piece.

Yes, until our energy mix is tilted further to renewables and nuclear, we are shifting deck chairs a bit in regards to emissions.

I read all about how EV's can't do this, or that, so they don't work or won't work for this case and that case... But what about the cases it does work? My work fleet is one case the lighting F150 will work for many of the units we have. They are already looking at them... Can it tow a trailer for 300+ miles in a shot? No. But that is not what our units are doing today for the vast majority of them.

I'll draw my airline analogy here... Boeing made the 757 - and it was a workhorse and could cover a huge variety of missions - being well powered, able to handle shorter and high performance runways, able to handle long routes that couldn't fill a widebody, etc... A very, very versatile airframe...

At the end of the day though, they became a dinosaur in many respects, and the orderbook dried up. Why? Because they cost more per seat mile to fly than newer competition that covered 90% of the flights that the 757 did...

EV's will be like that - they have a role, and honestly will fill a lot of roles and do it well. Just because they can't do everything, doesn't mean they are a failure and won't replace some substantial portion of cars...

I see my family moving to a 1 EV and 1 ICE setup at some point in what is not longer the far out future, but somewhere in the mid range...

 

[PandaBear]

semis will still be diesel.... so diesel cars and trucks could demand a premium as the fuel will be readily available

Assuming newer emission rule doesn't make them harder to deal with. Those DPF regeneration cycles really annoys the heck out of drivers and reduce their reliability, increase cost, etc. The smaller trucks are switching to gas to work around that.

 

[Job]

If people start to like full electric cars then there will more of them. One thing about people generally if you tell them to do something they won't, and tell them not to do something and they will go to no ends to do it.

I think the realistic expectation is small modular reactor dunk into the bottom of the ocean with server containers, then attached to the rest of the internet through either fiber or starlinks.

Free cooling, close enough distance to the customer nearby, no need for large infrastructure, or if you want to you can dunk a mini nuke in the ocean and run a desalination plant with it, then pump the fresh water back to shore.

All species have a life span to extinction or replacement. That sounds like the beginning of ours IMO. When we are extinct I think the earth's crust will be a better place for the species left to inhabit.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

Thanks for posting the Moab photo--it made me follow up and learn something today.

That "stream" is actually the Colorado River, and the site is not a mine, but an area where uranium tailings were dumped, in the 100-year floodplain. The town of Moab is in the top left corner, to the south. Arches National Park would be at your back if you had taken the photo.

The tailings are in the process of being moved to another site, as explained here: https://www.grandcountyutah.net/257/Moab-UMTRA-Project
Last time I was there, the area pictured looked like a man-made mesa. This and the rest of you post are good examples of the need to extract resources in a sensible way, no matter what they power.

I grew up in a very rural area, and have often wondered about EV use there myself. Hybrids seem like a better solution in places where the next one-stoplight town is 35 miles away. But what do I know--Last time I talked to my dad, he said there was a charging station and a few EVs in town already.

Ya I should've been more explicit about uranium tailings.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

At the end of the day, its all about trying to clean up what is becoming an ever larger share of the air pollution puzzle. At least in the US, factory emissions have been tightened up and we reap the rewards of that, and automotive emissions are now the next big pie piece.

Yes, until our energy mix is tilted further to renewables and nuclear, we are shifting deck chairs a bit in regards to emissions.

I read all about how EV's can't do this, or that, so they don't work or won't work for this case and that case... But what about the cases it does work? My work fleet is one case the lighting F150 will work for many of the units we have. They are already looking at them... Can it tow a trailer for 300+ miles in a shot? No. But that is not what our units are doing today for the vast majority of them.

I'll draw my airline analogy here... Boeing made the 757 - and it was a workhorse and could cover a huge variety of missions - being well powered, able to handle shorter and high performance runways, able to handle long routes that couldn't fill a widebody, etc... A very, very versatile airframe...

At the end of the day though, they became a dinosaur in many respects, and the orderbook dried up. Why? Because they cost more per seat mile to fly than newer competition that covered 90% of the flights that the 757 did...

EV's will be like that - they have a role, and honestly will fill a lot of roles and do it well. Just because they can't do everything, doesn't mean they are a failure and won't replace some substantial portion of cars...

I see my family moving to a 1 EV and 1 ICE setup at some point in what is not longer the far out future, but somewhere in the mid range...

I'm trying to convince my wife to buy a hybrid. She's a perfect candidate because she's so hard on vehicles during the warm up phase (no such think in her mind). Unfortunately we can't do BEV because we wouldn't be able to park her car in the garage to charge it.

 

[ZeeOSix]

I find it amusing that 20 years ago the road fund was just as unfunded as it is today and literally no one cared.
Now everyone cares even though road funding tax hikes never seem to affect road quality.
Last time a large road tax increase occurred several highway projects literally stopped for a decade directly after the increase passed, lovely how that works

A typical ploy to get into everyone's pocket and then not use the revenue for what it should be used for. There should be laws against that happening.

 

[PimTac]

A typical ploy to get into everyone's pocket and then not use the revenue for what it should be used for. There should be laws against that happening.

Exactly and when a state passes a nickel a gallon tax that is solely for roads and then squanders it as in the case of WA state many years ago it sets off a reaction among smarter voters.

 

[grampi]

At the end of the day, its all about trying to clean up what is becoming an ever larger share of the air pollution puzzle. At least in the US, factory emissions have been tightened up and we reap the rewards of that, and automotive emissions are now the next big pie piece.

Yes, until our energy mix is tilted further to renewables and nuclear, we are shifting deck chairs a bit in regards to emissions.

I read all about how EV's can't do this, or that, so they don't work or won't work for this case and that case... But what about the cases it does work? My work fleet is one case the lighting F150 will work for many of the units we have. They are already looking at them... Can it tow a trailer for 300+ miles in a shot? No. But that is not what our units are doing today for the vast majority of them.

I'll draw my airline analogy here... Boeing made the 757 - and it was a workhorse and could cover a huge variety of missions - being well powered, able to handle shorter and high performance runways, able to handle long routes that couldn't fill a widebody, etc... A very, very versatile airframe...

At the end of the day though, they became a dinosaur in many respects, and the orderbook dried up. Why? Because they cost more per seat mile to fly than newer competition that covered 90% of the flights that the 757 did...

EV's will be like that - they have a role, and honestly will fill a lot of roles and do it well. Just because they can't do everything, doesn't mean they are a failure and won't replace some substantial portion of cars...

I see my family moving to a 1 EV and 1 ICE setup at some point in what is not longer the far out future, but somewhere in the mid range...

EV's won't reduce air pollution, they just change where it's coming from...