Backing away from all the Electric Car hype…?

Your last sentence nailed it . The auto market has always been dictated by consumer spending. The EV mandates and then ultimately the mandates getting changed have screwed the auto industry in ways never imagined.  New models take 3 to 5 years behind  the scene before anything starts getting built. They all scrambled to go down the EV road reluctantly only to turn and run hard in the opposite direction.  We have a few stamping die castings at work that we literally got the email to halt all operations the very first day we started machining on them. 

No doubt the range /battery tech needs to improve before people would widely accept I think. I think it needs to be better then 5-700+ miles a charge

What ever happened to Elon’s semi?

700+?

What passenger car can do that, and still haul a couple buddies and their golf clubs?

I think that hybrid will be the best answer for the next couple of decades. Great efficiency around town with the ability to alleviate range anxiety for longer trips. 

For trucking, electric could potentially be a great thing but it would be difficult to implement because it would need to have a large, critical mass of units all at once to be viable. The range claimed by some is decent given the current hours/rest regulations, but ultimately you’d probably need to have an ‘auxiliary’ battery located in the trailer in order to stretch the range and the reduced cargo trade off for the weight of the battery probably makes that not feasible currently. If big weight savings in battery tech can shave the weight enough, that could change the equation. Either way it’ll be interesting to see if trucking will evolve into more and more hybrid power units. 

With self driving technology advancing so rapidly, I could see the not so distant future featuring trucks that are ‘linked’ on freeways that are basically driven together to increase their efficiency, essentially using ‘drafting’ for the trucks behind the leader. They may end up with small separations from time to time but networked together they could sync up relatively easily and still be programmed to exit freeways at different locations so not all the trucks on the network would have to go to the same final destination. Basically a train type of thing without the physical links between the units and not having to stop to decouple some cars every stop along the route. 

That’s kinda of my point actually. It needs to surpass the range of gas to incentivize people. Build a better mouse trap if you will. 

Our current fueling infrastructure is built around gas and long distance trips in electric cars doesn’t make sense a lot of the time because of a lack of places to ‘refuel’ and time required to do so. 

The length of the ‘fill up’ is why most people would want a longer range from an EV than from a ‘conventional’ vehicle. And it’s understandable for long distance trips, but probably a non-issue for a local commute. I know a guy who bought an older Nissan Leaf for dirt cheap. I mean CHEAP, as the battery efficiency was down to 75% or something like that. He bought it out of town and had to trailer it home. The range is somewhere between 60-75 miles if I remember correctly. I wouldn’t/couldn’t get away with that car very well as I often drive more than that in a day, and I don’t drive nearly as many miles as some people do. But for him, with his 6-7 mile work commute, it’s been pretty much perfect and at only $0.03 kWh he’s been driving (to work at least) practically for free for the past 7 years. 

The CA EV law was so stupidly written (shocker). It mandated that a certain number of cars that are sold be EVs. This completely ignores the fact that the consumer dictates what is bought, not the seller or the state government. Of course these people have never been economic wizards.

The 10 year timelines were always ridiculous, maybe by 2100 we'll have everything electric, there's simply not enough generation and transmission available and the US is way too slow in making those improvements. 

My sister in law has a plug in hybrid that gets about 40 miles to a charge, that's actually pretty useful for daily driving as they use mostly electric and can get a full charge on a tier 2 charger overnight at their house which doesn't require a huge upgrade to electrical service. Then on a trip you just fill up and drive. 

I knew another girl that had a mach e, it was cutting it too close to drive home to her parents house which was only 3 hours. Having to stop and charge on a 3 hour drive sucks, she didn't keep it too long.  

The smoothness of an electric drivetrain is sweet. 

3 county PUDs in central Washington are right around that. Chela County PUD is $0.023 per kWh for the electricity and delivery. The monthly ‘account fee’ makes the average true cost a little bit closer to $0.03, which is crazy low. Chelan, Douglas, and Grant County PUDs are all 3 among the lowest rates in the nation. There may be a few that are in the same range, but at least a few years ago, they were all in the top 5 lowest rates in the country. 

You're super duper close ,motovan guys will be pumped as well...

We have an E-Transit at work. One of our guys took it with a fresh charge less than five minutes away, when he went to come back the thing wouldn't turn on, it was throwing an error because of the cold. In the summer, with a skid of batteries in the back it wouldn't make a 100 mile drive to deliver them, the driver had to stop and charge about 3/4 of the way to the destination. Someone parked a Mach-E on the service road out front, it won't turn on now to brought onto the lot for a charge. It'll have to be towed the 200' and probably thawn out inside to get it to charge at all. The now discontinued Lighting lost all its range with a kleenex box in the bed, plus they're always broken. Electric cars are okay in the sun belt as a commuter/glorified golf cart but for the rest of us, they aren't ready for prime time. 

Honestly, if they'd make simple hybrids with a small NiMH battery good for maybe a 30 mile range that would cover 95% of people's driving without the huge weight penalty. 

42 years ago I had one of these for a work truck. If you “tried” it would get 45 mpg loaded with tools and parts. There’s no reason that couldn’t have been refined to get 60 mpg in 42 years of development. The powers that be don’t give a shit about making long lasting super fuel efficient clean running vehicles. You can’t tell me that if they used that as a base and put 42 years of research and refinement they couldn’t get a very clean burning 60 mpg mini truck that would go 300,000 miles. But why would they ? That won’t pay for any yachts will it ? The whole “efficient” vehicle hoopla is a bad joke. It’s about $. “Green vehicles” = Green in peoples pockets.  It’s a load of shit. Just my not so humble opinion. 

Where’s the Prius based work truck ? Fucking Tacomas get shittier mileage than a full size truck with a V-8. Prove me wrong 😛

Thought this was going to be about Ford bailing on the giant plant that's not even finished yet in Kentucky. Ton of tax breaks and investment from the state to basically build a small town south of Louisville, now the fraction of projected workers that have been hired will be laid off and they're going to try to convert the plant into batteries for data storage and other uses. 

https://amp.kentucky.com/news/business/article313745343.html

Diesel escalade did 650 on a tank quite comfortably and takes 5 minutes to fill up and do it again. 

Great vehicle when you could keep it on the road, but covid build and GM quality control meant it spent way too much time in the shop so got rid of it. 

.03kw!!!! Damn.  I pay $.39-.48kw!

Got myself a tesla before the tax credits expired, 

My work is really close to where I live, and my work has free charging. 

I barely use 3% each day but I keep it charged at around 60% for battery health and incase I need to do a 100/150 mile round trip before work then I'll have enough to do that. 

But the day before I'm off for 2 days I'll charge to around 95% and that's all I need for that weekend, 

I have no range anxiety, the tesla has been handling the snowy and icy roads better than my Subaru did. The range loss in winter is barely noticeable except for using precondition to get the interior, windshields etc warmed up before I leave. 

My only complaint so far this winter is there's no engine heat to melt the snow on the hood 🤣. 

They are a lot better now then they were. But yea your not wrong. 

Some family friends were looking to get a used car for their daughter, and asked what we thought they should get her. 

Said they can't go wrong with an older Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, or something similar, just for reliability. They were thinking around $15k budget. 

The daughter (bit of a tree hugger), talked them into getting an electric car for her. And they went with a used Chevy Volt (worst choice even among electric vehicles).

A couple weeks after she got it, she took it to the Grand Canyon for a weekend trip (about 4 hours from Phoenix). It was dead when they tried to leave (fully charged at the hotel, just would not start/run). 

They called AAA, who could not figure it out so they had to tow it. Flagstaff is the nearest big city, about 100+ miles away. AAA only included something like 20 miles, and $10 a mile over that base. So they ended up paying almost $1,000 to get it towed to a shop in Flagstaff. Shop told them the battery was shot, and it would be $10,000+ to replace the battery. Oops. 

And just a private party purchase, so no limited dealer warranty or anything to go back on so they basically now own a scrap parts car. 

I'm with ya on this.  Add in the Chevy luvs and the smaller rangers and Toyota's of the 80's and 90's.  Not just trucks.  I had an 83' Nissan 280ZX that got 28 mpg and ran like a scalded ass ape.  I, to this day have not had a faster car than that 280ZX.  35mph out of 1st, 65 mph out of 2nd, and sling through the speedometer that stopped at 95mph in 3rd with 2 more gears to go.  Young and dumb I've pulled 3rd gear power slides in parking lots in the thing. And the car talked to you....1983.  

If Volkswagen made that electric van in gas power too. I’d probably buy one , those things are cool looking.😎

The RAV4 hybrid drivetrain is proven, I can't believe they never put it in a Tacoma.

The one thing is that batteries aren't a great idea to put in off-road vehicles and they might be worried people with take it through water could end badly.

SF power outage leaves autonomous vehicles stranded in traffic because the signal lights went down. That is hilarious 😂. 

When I was with Ford they required us to do a complete remodel of the service department to allow charging stations, upgrade in shop equipment computers, and ports etc in order to sell the F150  Lightning, and the E sedans. It cost $1million roughly for the construction at the dealerships expense. 

Fast forward 8 months construction is done and we had 300 of the Lightning F150 sitting on the lot. Hardly any were sold and it was a complete flop and failure. The sales department was pissed, and the GM was ultra pissed off with heads rolling. Luckily for us we were a large dealership in Austin and tied with an automotive group who could eat the added costs.

Today Ford is about to take a $20 billion hit on the EV sector. 

Our son had the option, better financing on a brand new twin turbo Tacoma with no track record, or a 3rd generation proven, (albeit less gas mileage / power) TRD. He got a ‘22 with 16k miles. Bulletproof so far. And he hasn’t been nice to it 😂 Luckily Pops has 50 gallons of water and a pump on his trailer to get the big chunks off lol.

Hmmmm....tax credits and free charging. About the only way to get most people into an EV. I never agreed with the tax credit scheme. 

As for your work offering free charging, that's their deal. If I had an employer do that I'd demand they pay for my gasoline, and when they refused I'd sue them for unequal treatment. 

Yeah that's true, but it's worked out for me. 

A few coworkers have complained about that to, 

It is unfair to them.