Coal rollers are the worst. Should be an immediate impounding of the vehicle, tazing the driver, and a requirement that all future vehicles owned would exhaust directly into the passenger cabin.

Might finally get the point across.

Far, far higher.

Dig the well, extract oil, build the pipeline, fill the barrels, load and transport to refinery, process oil, fill delivery trucks, drive to every gas station across America, fill station reservoir, sell gas to customers, and then finally burn it up in cars. Not counting spillage at every connection point. Just… damn.

Electric? Nuclear goes to high voltage grid to your house. Plug in, recharge, go.

Obviously much more to it than this, but clearly no comparison to extracting and processing volatile flammable liquid and trucking it to every end of the earth, every day of the week.

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Encouraging! Maybe we should change this thread title to: “I’m actually OK with the global logistical shift toward electrification, even on a personal level”

So anyway... I wonder how many pins this sexy number would fit?

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VW ID. Buzz

Was never a fan of VW due to their less than stellar reliability, but since electric eschews all the liquid/cooling/grease/gear/fuel haberdashery under the hood, would consider again for round two.

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Looks like an electric shaver. But, an improvement over the bulbous original design. Trends are going edgy lately.

Ah, Stossel. Reliable arbiter of truth. His little TV program makes a good argument against electrification, doesn’t it?

Actually, not at all. Let’s dig a little deeper into this whataboutism:

1. 300 million electric cars = only 10% oil reduction. Whatabout planes, buses, and trucks?

Electric planes, buses, and trucks are in development. Meanwhile, a big percentage of these vehicles are used for transporting fossil fuel. D’oh! How much would it go down further without having to do this?

Here’s a whatabout for ya… where the hell are all the trains? Electric trains are the most efficient way to move people and things. Why are we not building them like crazy?

2. Where does the electricity come from? People don’t even know!

Maybe the problem is with… the people? I’ve been buying 100% renewable power since 2004. Most power companies have a green option by now… are customers opting in? Or do they expect their green car to be their single unilateral statement of renewable action? Either way, it’s not the CAR, it’s the consumer.

BTW, have you made the switch yet?

3. Mining is wasteful and cruel? Yes, but good lord so is every damn thing else we do/wear/buy from overseas including the device we type this answer on. Unbelievably hypocritical to blame battery mining for all of society’s ills while doing absolutely nothing about any other infraction whatsoever. Shall we also open a discussion about plastic waste? Textile factories? Diamond mines? Let’s talk solutions here… pointing out all the ills of other countries is going to take a very long time unfortunately.

4. 10-20 tons of co2 baked in to every electric car? Again, hypocrisy. Everything we buy arrives on a carbon-spewing container ship too. The entire logistics chain is carbon-driven. That’s the problem!

The average ICE car generates 5 tons of carbon a year alone? *ahem* and how about the entire level of infrastructure bringing that car into existence? Clever to count it for the electric car, but not the ICE, eh? Same container-shipping the parts, etc, PLUS the entire fossil fuel infrastructure, PLUS spillage and transport to all of the gas stations before we even begin to burn it up individually. And now where are we? Heaven forbid we count the armada of hulking vehicles people have been buying since the late 90’s.

Thus, green cars do make a difference, they can be powered cleanly, we should choose green power whenever possible (nuclear too), and we should advocate for child labor everywhere in the world and choose less wasteful ways of living while we’re at it.

And build more friggin’ trains already!

“Accepting the facts”?!?

Have to be trolling at this point. Facts have been repeatedly presented, all repeatedly dismissed, and then here comes the FUD all over again as if nobody said anything whatsoever in the first place.

Do you see how ridiculously invalid your argument is against mining EV components “because it takes fossil fuel machinery” (for which we do not yet have a substitute)?

Have to start somewhere, folks! *facepalm*

Oh forget it. I’m going to donate $50 today to furthering sustainable energy research and education. Maybe that will at least nudge the progress needle forward one iota. So, I guess, thank you for the inspiration which I'll accept as the fact of the day.

I realize the infrastructure doesn't exist for this idea, but wouldn't it be interesting to have a power rail along major interstates which could keep EV's, buses, trucks, etc. topped off and thus utilitze smaller batteries? Would leverage the hybrid advantage without the need for ICE... and no stopping/starting for charging.

I saw a similar idea years ago... the "flying train": https://evtol.news/dahir-insaat-mauve-rail

Don't like it for safety reasons and weather unpredictability (too little correction time). But the power rail... now that's interesting. Run 'em along the interstates and we got something.

A hybrid is like having an early 80’s Bally solid-state you can play for 30 minutes before it switches over to a parallel EM control system.

A good idea when all we had were gas guzzlers, but EV’s have advanced to the point where less is more.

Hybrids do not have unlimited range. They need gas. Gas comes from refineries. Refineries need oil. Oil extraction is incredibly wasteful and dirty.

Electric cars need electricity. Electricity can come from the sun.

Water is wet.

It is regrettable the extraordinary number of people who refuse to change... even when it is free, even when it is easy to do, even when it saves money, even when it lightens their environmental load, even when it helps their neighbors, even when it requires less maintenance, even when loads of statistics and research indicate we should, even when it is the right thing to do, even when it espouses what they say they believe in (but do not personally follow).

American hypocrisy has reached such an un-freaking-believably-insane level of madness it makes me question whether merely anti-intellectual laziness is the culprit, or whether a far greater swath of Americans are actually mentally ill than we have ever acknowledged before.

Indeed.

I’ve noticed a growing number of political interviews where hot-topic discussions always derail at the EXACT INSTANT someone replies with…

“I believe…”

“Belief” is the most overused Get Out Of Logic Free card in the deck. It basically says, “I realize we are having a rational debate right now. I realize the facts are being presented by hundreds of diverse people with expert-level knowledge. I realize that real Americans will be negatively impacted and I should answer to that…

BUT, I believe…”

The end.

It’s a powerful way of negating the entire debate while simultaneously placing oneself at the center of discussion - like an English magistrate from the 17th century suddenly materializing out of thin air…

“I, King Interviewee, hath decreed all which has been placed before me as null and void, per my belief in my head, which we shall now spend the rest of the discussion elaborating upon.”

Actually, especially online, it’s more like this…

I really don’t care what people believe. People believe all sorts of wild goofy things. Belief has no checks and balances. No facts and figures. No degree required. No questions asked. You want it? You got it. *boom* here’s my ticket to the finish line.

When people talk about “America going in the wrong direction”… too much belief, too little knowledge.

40% of container ships haul coal, gas, and oil to be burned elsewhere. Meanwhile, glass panels can be constructed to get energy from the sky.

The world is heading in the latter direction. The faster, the better.

Maersk just announced at COP27 to add 8-19 emission-free container ships to their fleet. Good move… let’s see more of this.

Another issue is fuel security. Europe is currently reeling from Russia having weaponized their gas supply… whereas turning off another country’s wind, nuclear reactors, geothermal wells, and sunlight wouldn’t be possible.

Best to use the “fire in the sky” rather than digging up, transporting, fighting over, and burning up fuel on the surface.

Surely the downfall of civilization will be marked with the phrase, “I only sees what I want to sees.”

The ability to think critically and hold opposites is vanishingly rare nowadays.

Too much belief, not enough knowledge.

Another weakness of ICE infrastructure…

Keep doing the Lord’s work, sir. An eternally thankless but essential component of sustaining an informed citizenry capable of, if barely, governing itself.

"Nevermind that man behind the curtain..."

On a parallel note, a friend of mine is spending his best years chasing political red herrings down an infinite number of dead ends. I can't seem to detour him even gently back to a path of living and enjoying his actual life. He spends a huge amount of time listening to hostile news/podcasts and attacking the overblown phantoms he believes are destroying America and the children and the freedomses and all that.

Talented, creative, intelligent fella... no joke. But he's not changing course. That 1000-yard stare is deeply baked into his bones. I wish there was something I could do or say but nothing is getting through no matter how sincere. Which is a little bit frightening, actually. It's like the person inside is half-gone. Between topics I'm quietly counting the seconds before the discussion inevitably boomerangs to Here's The Problem With The Other People again. It just goes on and on and on.

The Main Thing with all this is usually something deep within the self. An unresolved conflict revolving around a lack of self-acceptance and perhaps a lack of love... the most difficult of all battles to overcome. It is the basis for much of our empty-headed political quarrels when you get right down to it.

Finding these types of solutions is bigger than simply presenting the facts. It's a problem of being able to *see*... like in a grand metaphorical sense. A big challenge for 'Merica. We're so grimly fixated on old superstitions and cultural resentments and insecurities it's probably going to take a whole new awareness movement to ease us up into second gear... will it come soon enough? Will it be a pivot in the right direction? Or a return to tribal zero-sum misery?

Oh hey... it's the EV thread. I'm not getting my hopes up for a electrified Palisade, so my eyes are on the Ioniq 7. Sure hope it has at least 30.5" vertical cargo clearance!

Not EV-related, but parallel to some...

My electric 1980's water heater exceeded 175 degrees sometime over the past few days. Could replace the thermostat, but decided to get a HYBRID water heater instead.

Hybrid. Water. Heater? Yep. It’s basically a heat pump on top of a water tank. The surrounding basement air gets sucked into the compressor, the heat is extracted into the water, and the cold air goes out. Just like a minisplit HVAC system.

A bonus? It also dehumidifies the air! Perfect for the basement.

Another bonus? Huge energy savings! Massive! Most electric water heaters use $450-$650 in electricity per year alone. About 25% of your annual electric bill… ouch. But a hybrid only uses $100-$150 per year… a paltry 6% of the total.

My electric provider just raised rates, but after this gets installed I won’t even notice.

If you need or will soon need a water heater, you'd better hurry because there isn't much time left to get the tax credit.

UPDATE: The 65 and 80 gallon models just went on sale at Home Depot this morning (12/26) until the end of the year.

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Yes and if you vent the cold return air into your house in summer, a bit of free AC too.

Heat pumps can squeeze a surprising amount of heat from ambient room temps without much impact. It might temporarily drop your room temp by about five degrees while it runs. Depends upon the room size of course.

My situation is perfect: Unfinished basement location near a gas boiler pumping hot water to house radiators. Basement stays about 70-75 degrees year-round. Lots of excess heat... might as well put it to good use.

Thinking I might place the exhaust air on a shutoff valve leading into the kitchen. During the summer it's like free AC.

Heat pumps control and move heat very efficiently. A crucial technology for humanity's future.

"I hate progress and new ideas!"

I’m leery of tankless systems. Friend had one and it took several minutes of running water before it got hot. Factor in water quality and potential high mineralization and some units would need expensive service intervals more quickly than others. Also not a good idea for water-scarce locations if they heat slowly. Seems like more of a luxury item too… as the potential to save $100 a year off heating costs might be lost from everyone taking longer showers/baths anyway.

Have you peeled off the cover of one of these gizmos? Woo wee… looks like a lot of components and connection points rapidly heating/cooling many thousands of times each year.

Then again, compared to a pinball machine, maybe it’s more or less the same except with water flowing throughout it.

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I could, but I’d rather not if other solutions are significantly more energy efficient and less complex.

Amusing, but the more complicated fluid-pumping ICE platform would be the example for your comparison, not EV’s.

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Might not be seeing as many vanity plates lately…

Whoa. So utterly screwed up.

Sometimes it’s worth it to pay the deductible…