Aren't we energy independent now? I just read that we were a net oil exporter in 2020 and 2021, for the first time since the 60s. We made it!

Sure, but then you just pony up $1500 for a 240v line and a fast charger. If you’re doing constant long-haul road trips I’d still lean toward a conventional or hybrid, but modern electrics seem fine for most use cases.

Is this a "Where's Waldo" thing? Find Bill Gates peeping from the bushes or something?

God bless Pinside!

It's a Corvette, maybe bob_e will allow it.

People gripe about the US legal system for plenty of good reasons, but product safety lawsuits against the auto industry have played an important role in design improvements -- flaming Pintos and SUV roll-overs leap to mind. And they'll presumably do the same in the EV era (unless Musk cranks up those political donations and buys himself some tort-reform exemption).

That’s how I bought my last two cars as well, price and all details were settled before I left I my house. I can’t imagine doing otherwise - you can research, compare prices, and respond to emails on your own timeframe.

Buying online doesn't mean you're paying sticker. You're still weighing the different dealership's offers against each other, and at least in more buyer-friendly times you can even do some negotiation (though in my experience they tend to cut pretty close to bottom line with online offers since they know you're getting numbers from other dealers at the same time). It's just from the comfort of your couch where you can research all of the angles online at your leisure, instead of sitting at the dealership all Saturday negotiating with the three stooges.

A low point in any thread.

I'm sure they age like fine wine.

Is that a screenshot of Post #280 from this thread?!? Same joke but the image quality is apparently degrading over time.

My takeaway from the last few pages is you guys need to look into street parking. This eliminates the possibility of your EV/ICE burning down your house. And frees up valuable space for more pinball machines.

Or just buy a bicycle. I was going to google "pedal-power spontaneous combustion" but I don't want to trigger razorsedge, so I'll just assume it's pretty low risk.

Nice try, but that'll never handle the Michigan roads ...

Can’t believe Tesla beat the Fast & Furious franchise into space …

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The line between "critical thinking" and "unintelligible blather" is apparently a little blurry ...

Probably not the average Stern pinball owner ...

Hell of an impulse buy! For my part I bought a PowerBall ticket this afternoon. We'll see who made the better investment in a year or two.

Noted. Not sure why Dawson (or you for that matter) would want to visit your step-son in Toledo, but I'm sure he'll factor that in.

Just a little trash-talk. Plus I enjoyed bob_e's request that we "note" his trips to Toledo, and thought I'd call it out. No offense intended to him or his step-son. I guess some offense intended to Toledo, but I'm sure they can take it.

But that’s not the way you’re using them. You blew your cover with the “modern day self-ascribed liberal people” bit at the end, which made it perfectly clear you’re talking politics.

We’ve got a liberal on our hands here, folks!

This can be a real issue with battery-powered tools. I've still got my 11 year old B&D blower and edger set humming along with cheap replacement off-brand batteries I ordered through Amazon or maybe AliExpress. And I'd bet China will continue to make replacements batteries for most tools that sold decently well, though you may have to sniff around to find them. But if I had a bigger yard I'd want either gas or corded-electric for the run time since the blower tears through batteries. I've got a corded-electric mower that I've been happy with, though it also wouldn't be practical on a multi-acre property.

Is this now a Beat Poetry thread? Very stream of consciousness, man.

What’s the scenario in which self-driving cars wouldn’t greatly reduce accidents? I’m not saying computers will ever be perfect, but they don’t need to be very good at all to drive more safely than the average human.

I’ll need a computer to translate this one.

No doubt. But you don't need perfection, just less people dying than under the current arrangement (in the US that's 46k deaths/year, plus 4.4 million hospitalizations). The bar is loooooooow.

I certainly agree with you on the legal front -- humans have a strong preference for things we know and are comfortable with, so self-driving cars will be held to a far higher safety standard than human drivers. On the one hand this will push development of ever-safer self-driving technology, which is a good thing. On the other hand technologies that could save many lives (and lots of money through more efficient driving) will be delayed or shelved in pursuit of perfection, while people continue to die in human-caused accidents. I'd imagine that people adapting to accept self-driving technology will slow things down as much or more than the remaining technical hurdles (which are real and numerous but also surmountable).

Did the Big Gulp originate in your car? Just a hunch ...

F-150’s got a letter in it …

As you say it's not an immediate problem, but it will eventually become one. I would guess most states will eventually go to a personal property/ownership tax of some kind on the vehicle itself (you pay a small % of the vehicle's estimated value each year as an annual tax, diminishes as the vehicle gets older). Colorado and some other states already do this, so it's workable. Alternately they could come up with some kind of monitoring system based on how much electricity you use charging your EV (which would roughly correlate to how much you're using it on the roads, the way a gas tax does) but that seems like a hassle to administer and people don't like visible signs that the government is tracking their behavior. So I'm guessing most states will go the ownership tax route.

True re: road wear. I never looked into it but I assume Colorado decreases the ownership tax as your vehicle ages to make it more progressive (so poor people with crappy old cars pay less). But you could also do a flat tax per vehicle regardless of age. Or somehow scale for miles driven (though then you’re back to it being a hassle to administer).

Picking mine up today. I’m a pretty perfect use case, 3 miles to the office but a sizable hill makes it a serious time commitment to bike home. I’m hoping the ebike will speed me up those hills a bit so I can bike to work and still make it home in time for dinner.

I take your point, but it’s a little creepy that you know how much his wife weighs.

Having just gone through a side-wall flat and discovering that Honda had innovated away the spare tire in my new Accord Hybrid and replaced it with Fix-a-Flat spray, I would argue that this particular effort at weight savings sucks for consumers. I had to have my car towed (for a flat freaking tire!) and ended up spending $350 to buy myself a spare for next time. Luckily the Accord body is still designed to hold a spare so it dropped right into place in the trunk.

Total weight of the spare and related equipment was probably less than 50 lbs.

If the cyanide doesn't get you, the sugar will ...

You missed the point he was making. Which is that given his use patterns (he’s not sitting there watching his car charge) he’s not “spending” any of his time charging the car beyond the time to plug/unplug it, which is probably less than the few minutes he’d spend standing around waiting for his tank to fill every few days. It’s true that it takes hours for his battery to recharge. But that has no impact on his life because it all happens during a time when his car would just be sitting in his garage anyway.

In other words, he’s talking human time/attention required to accomplish recharge/refuel, while you want to argue that electric and ISE time to recharge/refuel from empty aren’t comparable (and of course they’re not, which is why no one raised that argument).

So you’re saying he’d have to change his approach if he didn’t need to sleep and wanted to drive his car around 24 hours a day?

Yeah, didn't you see Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

RR (resized).jpg

There is? If it wasn’t covered by Indiana Jones or Monty Python then I question its legitimacy.

A new Malibu, eh?

Ah, that makes more sense then.

Sounds like a classic EV hate-crime to me.

You just need to drop more acid before reading his posts. They’re 100% coherent.

I’m getting more of a stone tablet vibe.

If the US is now second rate, what are the current first rate countries? Who do we need to knock off to regain top rank?

Interesting! Key quote from the article: "The aircraft is fondly know as 'the flying bum.' "

From the 40s-70s, which many people still consider a golden age for the American worker in terms of wages and job security, income tax rates for top earners were astronomical by today’s standards. As in 70-90% for the very top tier. Given today’s global economy you couldn’t just snap those rates back into place. But the US seems to have muddled through OK with them for decades so I’m not convinced that approach to taxation is inherently catastrophic.

My my, things got pretty pissy in here the last 24 hours or so.

Without jumping into the mud pit, I have to agree that if you're intentionally blocking an EV charger with your ICE vehicle because you enjoy messing up a stranger's day, you're being a douche. Not as much of a douche as if you took a handicap space. But on par with someone that leaves their car at the pump at a busy gas station for 20 minutes to peruse the candy selection and take a long dump. So if the handicap spot stealer is an extra strength douche, the EV charger blocker is "island splash" scented.

I think everyone understands your position -- you wouldn't block a handicap spot but would go out of your way to block an EV charger.

People will laugh at a lot of things. Doesn't mean you're being less of a douche just because someone thinks it's funny.

I don't see that anyone's calling you the face of evil for mankind. Just pointing out that you're being a douche for the "purposely dick move" you're directing toward "0.0000000000000000001% of the population." Is it just that you want to be called a dick instead of a douche? I'm OK with that.

Sounds like your issue is with the owner of the parking lot who decided where to install the charger. I don't have an EV, and don't care if all lots have chargers or what part of the lot they're in. But if there's a charger there, for whatever reason, it's kind of douchey to block it if you're not going to use it.

If you're talking to me here, at what point did I get "heavy"? All I said is it's a douche move to intentionally block a charger that you're not going to use. Like parking your stroller in front of the water fountain at the airport. You're not breaking any laws, but why go out of your way to inconvenience people you don't even know when you could move over five feet and everyone goes about their business?

I hope "posture child" makes its way into the Pinside lexicon.

Well his solution to the West’s long-running drought is pretty good. So long as you’re cool drinking your own urine out of a soda bottle …

1) Your solar panels should be good for extra electricity, so long as they don't create too much extra drag or add too much extra weight. That seems like more of a cost/durability issue than anything.

2) Your turbines and windmills should be able to capture some ambient wind power when the car is parked outdoors, so that could generate extra electricity too.

3) The problem arises if you're trying to increase your total battery charge by driving around (i.e. you want perpetual motion). The key difference is that you are the one generating the "wind" that will power your turbines, by moving your car through the air. You're spending energy to "create" that wind, not just passively capturing wind that Mother Earth has thoughtfully generated for you. And your wind turbines and windmills intentionally create drag/wind resistance in order to generate electricity -- that's precisely what they're designed to do. You "create" the wind by moving your car through the air, they "resist" the wind with their blades, and that resistance causes the blades to spin and generate electricity. If you "streamline" them to reduce the wind resistance, you'll also be reducing the amount of energy they can generate (because they need wind resistance to function). None of this matters for a stationary windmill where you aren't spending energy to "create" the wind and therefore don't have to worry about the drag effect your windmill has on the system. But on a moving vehicle they'll always cost you more in drag-related energy loses than they can generate in electricity.

4) I don't see the value in the second battery -- it doesn't solve your perpetual motion problem, and it would seem about as useful as an auxiliary gas tank. Which was great for the absent-minded in its day, but is no longer necessary since your car can now literally yell at you when it's time to refill/charge your car.

Only if they refuse to report to the office for 40 hours of in-person work a week. Elon was very clear about the consequences for that ...

In less than a day he's gone from intentionally blocking EV charging stations with his Silverado to inventing a perpetual motion machine. I'd say we're making progress.

Let us know how it pans out when you block her charging station in your garage with your truck. A man has to stand on his principles, after all, and that "happy wife happy life" stuff is all nonsense anyway.

Street parking is surprisingly safe in many parts of most major cities. Bigger problem than car theft is usually vagrants smashing a window to find out what’s in your glovebox.

Yep. But there's also no enforcement mechanism -- there's no legal consequence for anyone making or selling ICE vehicles in California after that date, and no requirement that any state agencies do anything to hamper sales if they're ongoing by that date. So it seems like more of an aspiration target than a serious prohibition at this point.

Which doesn't mean this law isn't a sign of things to come, aspirations sometimes lead somewhere. But I wouldn't look at this law and conclude that all ICE sales will terminate in California by 2035, since it includes nothing that could actually make that happen.

I never really got Pinside's "don't post about ignores" policy, but this thread is getting a little tedious with all of the posts about ignores ...

Hopefully they're not rotating the filters as well.

No, but I think he's cracking ...

Guy’s arguing with himself!

Before you rule it out, check if he’s got some of those windmills installed. That plus a second battery and he’ll never even need to plug it in …

It will be interesting to see how different states handle this challenge. A few possible approaches off the top:

• Flat state tax for anyone that owns an EV. Easiest to administer but you lose the intuitive fairness of taxing people for road upkeep based on how much they use the roads.
• Annual state tax based on the age/book value of the EV (same way CO currently imposes property tax on cars), so people with new and expensive EVs pay more (based on a "tax the rich" theory rather than a "tax by use" theory).
• Collect tolls for all use of state roads with an ExpressToll / EZPass type system (this could apply to both EV and ICE cars)
• State tax based on mileage driven. Easy to administer if you take odometer readings each Jan 1 (or have the car report its own over WiFi). But there could be legal challenges to a state collecting taxes for miles driven in other states.

Have you learned nothing from mrm_4? It’s all in the fans.

So you’re hyping a self-imposed ICE traffic jam in which the bumper-to-bumper action will eliminate the EV acceleration advantage? What’s the selling point? Come out and maybe someone will throw a Slurpie at your Tesla while you breath their idling exhaust?

Makes perfect sense. I imagine the ICE rally will do wonders for your gas mileage as well, keep us posted!

As more EVs are sold, wouldn't you expect to see more public charging stations come online too? I don't think we'll see batteries that fully charge in minutes anytime soon, so the ICE tank-up will always be significantly faster. But if EVs continue to capture market share I would expect the market (and baring that, EV-sponsoring governments) to respond by providing chargers to service them.

Also, most Americans complete a total of zero cross-country drives per year. And I'd guess the average American probably doesn't drive more than 600 or 700 miles in one day at any point during their year. If that can be done with one 45-minute charge on the road, you're looking at more of an adjustment than a deal breaker for most people. All IMO, of course.

Maroon 5

Don’t flatter yourself! You’ve got dues to pay if you want to achieve “blockable” status.

Do you think that's how it worked with ICE infrastructure? The US didn't have interstate highways until the 1950s, decades after cars had widely replaced the horse and buggy. Pretty much any other infrastructure-heavy market you look at (cell phones, internet) works the same way. Yes you need a certain minimal amount of infrastructure to make the system work at all and to entice early adopters. But from their the demand for more infrastructure from users is what justifies (and repays) the cost of expansion.

In other words, as there are more EVs out there, demand for charges will rise, charges will be installed to meet that demand, and the proliferation of chargers will make EVs more attractive to more drivers. Government incentives/mandates (even if they're just for EV cars and not infrastructure) will speed that process. You don't have to agree that promoting EVs is a good use of taxpayer money. But this picture of an apocalyptic near-future where we've all been forced to purchase EVs but have nowhere to charge them is a bit much.

Is this your round-about way of confessing you drive a PT Cruiser?

Are you concerned that you won't be able to buy a new ICE vehicle over the next decade? That's plenty of time to beef up the charger network to handle all the additional users, and hopefully to develop longer-range batteries to address your use-case.

Got any examples from this thread? Claiming that EVs work for everyone is just as stupid as claiming that EVs work for no one, and I think most posters here have shied away from making either argument. What the EV boosters in this thread have argued is that EVs are a solid option right now for the great majority of drivers. Which seems legit to me, though the squeegee factor is a great counter-point.

I wasn't trying to tell you that public EV charger capacity is OK because it was a pain in the ass to get gas for your ICE 100 years ago. Just that it's silly to expect EV to follow a completely different path from every other infrastructure-heavy technology that humans have ever adopted. Railroads, cars, cell phones ... they all started with a skeletal infrastructure setup, then expanded as demand increases. You seem to want the charging grid of 2030 in place today, before anyone buys another EV. That's not realistic.

You're literally misusing the word "literally"!

This thread is great, first perpetual motion and now it looks like we've solved the housing crisis!

See, @pinballizfun, even in Cali you'll have 11 years to keep buying new ICEs. Nothing to worry about!

Re-check that long-term forecast, California's slated for mega-drought and wildfires, not flooding.

Humans are hypocrites. Always have been, always will be, it's in our nature. Accordingly, people's behavior often tracks poorly with what their honestly-held beliefs are. So the fact that John Kerry loves his private jet tells us nothing about whether human behavior is driving the (undeniable) changes we are now seeing in our climate. Only that John Kerry is a hypocrite.

Maybe so, but billions of people do it every day! If we had more Jameses the world would be a better place, or at least a more consistent one.

I'd guess when the tech and infrastructure are at a point that EV is the better way to go. Defense vehicles, like emergency response vehicles, have specialized requirements and we generally cut them plenty of regulatory slack so I imagine they may keep using fossil fuels longer than civilian vehicles. But so what? However many billion gallons the US Army uses a year it can't be more than a small fraction of total gallons used by US consumers. Or are you just opposed to incrementalism in general?

If you're starting from the POV that there's no benefit to reducing emissions from burning fossil fuels then incremental moves toward electric vehicles will probably seem like "change for change's sake."

That aside though, I don't think anyone in here was advocating that the Army should go 100% electric in five years or the like. You can be gung-ho about EVs in general and still recognize that there need to be exceptions for sectors like defense and emergency responders, at the very least until the tech and infrastructure are more developed.

So the Nazis lost WWII because the Russians strategically parked in front of all the charging ports? And all this time I thought it was war on two fronts that doomed them …

Common misconception. The elite EV Panzer Corps fought on for another two years. Until their batteries died.

Things are tough all over.

How is the problem they are describing being caused by mandates? Or do you consider tax incentives to be mandates?

Don't forget the bumper stickers.

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Unless it was mrm_4’s Silverado …

Is that Will Ferrell?

You were correct right up to the "for several years" part. Probably best to avoid used cars from any east coast state, ever. Northeast offers salt corrosion, Southeast its floodwater damage and water moccasins in the glovebox. When it comes to used cars, west is the best!

That’s a euphemism, Vid. Roll your window back up ASAP.

I just replaced my water heater and was tempted by a hybrid but had the same concern in my finished basement - I want it at 68-70 down there in the winter, so not thrilled at the idea of the water heater stealing air my furnace just heated. Might work out better in the summer but from what I’ve read it’s not an ideal option if the water heater is located in finished space.

It’s cool tech and I’m definitely not opposed to one in the future. And maybe I could even have engineered a good solution for my current setup, but didn’t have the time or energy to research it so I went conventional. I imagine they’ll have it all worked out by the time I’m in the market for another water heater.

Hey OP, time to retitle the thread. We’ve changed course!

All three with running water?

Dude, he buys Porsches.

Or ED technology, for that matter.

Hey Pinplayer, you wouldn’t happen to be a Chicago Bears fan, would you?

Shh, it’s a trap …

Impressive. He may burn through tires even faster than zaphX.

I mean, we are on a pinball website …

Remember, he's reading the Australian version.

Put her in touch with razorsedge, he'll turn her around in no time.

Haven't heard of this one but it sounds promising. What's the elevator pitch?

This guy’s on quaaludes.

Easy now boys, The Onion is a recognized hard news source in Australia.

No gassy chicks in Marblehead, eh? I don’t buy it …

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