This is why I won’t buy an electric pickup (or any electric vehicle): the new electric F-150 only has a 100 mile range when towing.
Part of owning a vehicle of any type, what makes it such an American experience is that owning a vehicle is freedom. Freedom to go where you want. Electric vehicles with 300 miles or less of range take that from you, tethering you to a short distance from your home. The quintessential American road trip will cease to exist if electric cars become the norm. A part of America will die with the automobile.
16 Comments
Steve S · July 6, 2022 at 8:01 am
All that plus… Look up how often your replace the batteries, and the cost of that. Hard pass.
Also while being told to not run your house a/c so much to avoid rolling blackouts (varies by location).
Toastrider · July 6, 2022 at 9:38 am
Yup.
Look, maybe someday electric vehicles will become the preferred option as opposed to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. But today is not that day.
G-man · July 6, 2022 at 10:14 am
Once I can manage to get some land, and put in a large solar array and battery bank, I’d love to have one. As a farm truck. Doesn’t drive very far, only tows to take cattle to the butcher or the kids animals to the county 4-H fair, and otherwise is just a local runabout. Fits GREAT in that use case. Here’s an idea, Ford: Offer it in XL or XLT trim without all the power-sapping electronic bells and whistles, in a Crew Cab 8-foot bed configuration (read: bigger battery) and it’d be an awesome farm truck. But they wont’ do that, because reasons.
For long RV trips I’d still much rather have a diesel 250/350.
EN2 SS · July 6, 2022 at 10:14 am
Until the eggheads get cold fusion shrunk to vehicle sixe, electric vehicles are for anything other than a trip to work/store/school and back. And then only one of those per day.
EN2 SS · July 6, 2022 at 10:15 am
Aren’t. damn.
Big Ruckus D · July 6, 2022 at 11:20 am
Nothing about electric cars pencils out economically, or makes and sense within the current paradigm. The upfront cost, the range, the reliability (see Ford’s preesent misadventures with the Mach E and electric Bronco just for example), the cost to charge (which will skyrocket as electric per kWh rates do the same, and is happening now, incidentally), the impact of extreme cold on batteries, the environmental impact of making the batteries, as well as of generating the power to charge them, and the issues surrounding disposal of batteries at EOL.
The range sucks except for use strictly as an urban/suburban commuter car. The time to recharge also makes them impractical for long range use like road trips, to say nothing of the lack of recharging infrasturcture being available everywhere it is needed. Don’t forget it also destroys the used car market, as the cost of replacement batteries makes the resale of old EV’s completely impractical beyond the useful life of their original battery systems.
You then can consider the large scale intractable problems inherent to the entire notion that we will be a nation based on electric vehicles: the limitations of the power grid with regard to both distribution (already wholly inadequte to meet the demands for going even to 10% EV saturation nationwide) and generating capacity which is barely sufficient for power needs now, and rapidly getting worse as coal plants and older nuke plants get decommissioned with no replacements being brought online, and planning and building any new power plant is a njghtmare of govt interference to wade through.
Finally, there is the inescapable fact that EV’s are the golden calf-like idol of a presently popular religious movement; and that is exactly what the worship of EV’s and all the magical thinking and proselytizing over how they will become the only avaialble vehicles within a short time span really is. For the typical EV owner, ownership has been way to signify their “membership” in the club of right-thinking progressivism. Most EV owners are just image obsessed douchebags who have adopted the popular thing because it makes them look good to other believers in the cause, and because the early adopters were able to take advantage of subsidies that came out everyone else’s pockets.
For corporations and govt shills, it is just the current thing on which to be focused, and ICE vehicles have to be demonized in turn, in order that the inevitability of EV’s can be sold to a public that largely knows it’s all bullshit. It has the added benefit of leaving the owners of EV’s under the thumb of corporate and govt power (and the inevitable abuse of same) as the cost and availability of electric power is a control mechansm, along with the limited range of such vehichles. Ones ability to recharge an EV as needed will be increasingly subject to the influence of petty tyrants, and that is by design.
Anonymous · July 6, 2022 at 4:43 pm
Well said.
Jeff · July 6, 2022 at 11:45 am
Talk to any engineer with experience and they will tell you that electric vehicles are actually a big net negative for the environment, then throw in the exhausting experience of trying to use one for anything but a daily commuter where you have a dedicated charge station. They are okay for virtue signaling milk wagons, but utterly useless for anything else.
The real future will be hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. They already exist and are used in California. They take no longer to fill up than a regular liquid fueled vehicle, and have similar range. When geothermal takes off, and I’m pretty sure that will be the game changer (not solar and wind), hydrogen will be the fuel of choice.
Slow Joe Crow · July 6, 2022 at 11:50 am
Yeah, my last trip with a trailer was 130 miles and no nearby chargers that I saw. Dino juice is more expensive but the savings from not financing $50k truck buys a lot of gasoline.
Don Curton · July 6, 2022 at 12:05 pm
I go RV camping 6 to 8 times a year. Typical distance from home is 250 to 300 miles. Given my standard half-ton gas pickup, towing range is slightly less than 200 miles. But towing means I can’t just pull into any little gas station, so I usually opt for the bigger stations and truck stops along the highway. Which means I stop early to avoid issues, so at least 2 gas stops each way for my 300 mile trip. Each stop allows us to stretch our legs a little, so figure 2 stops adds 20-30 minutes to the trip each way.
Now electric? What’s a quick charge, 4+ hrs? And that only gets you to 80%? And that’s good for how many miles? So at least 3 stops, 12+ hrs of waiting for a normal 5 hr drive? Complete non-starter.
And what’s more, there is no incremental improvement to fix that. It would have to be an order of magnitude improvement to see any real change. And that ain’t going happen anytime soon.
The Freeholder · July 6, 2022 at 12:49 pm
“A part of America will die with the automobile.”
For these people, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Matthew · July 6, 2022 at 1:36 pm
The left knows very well that EV fuel is mostly coal, that there are children working and dying in slave conditions in mines that are ecological disasters in order to produce the batteries and solar panels, that when the typical EV wears out it’s battery it’s basically worthless, that the disposal of EVs is yet another environmental hell waiting to happen and that the current state of technologies for EVs, solar panels and wind generators is not ready for market and has zero chance of producing even the energy that it takes to produce them during their service life. None of this has ever made any sense and they know it so it’s not about making sense, is it?
Big Ruckus D · July 6, 2022 at 2:23 pm
No, it clearly isn’t. But as ususal, large scale public uptake of the finer points of the matter is poor, at best. The real root of the problem is the vast number of people who are true believers in the notion it can actually work. It really is a religious cult. Without them, there would be insufficient critical mass to move the idea along. All that would be left are some high profile ruling class jerkoffs, and without so many functionaries to promulgate their agenda, it’d be dead on arrival.
As with all such debates undertaken in bad faith and conducted by charlatans, resolution will eventually come by way of violence.
TRX · July 7, 2022 at 9:16 pm
I’ve had a couple of motorcycles with a range of about 120 miles, ridden conservatively at the speed limit. Much less when ridden hard. High-strung sportbike engines are thirsty, and exaggerated manga styling makes for small fuel tanks.
It’s manageable when you know the area and where fuel is available. But I went on a few long distance rides where I was sure I’d have to walk to civilization… I kept forgetting that there are large swathes of my state where there are no gas pumps operating after 5 PM, and practically none on Sundays. And no cellular service, either. And pay phones mostly vanished back in the 20th century.
Bear Claw Chris Lapp · July 9, 2022 at 11:06 am
SoCal and Vegas gonna be fun soon with Lake Mead and Powell about to dry up and stop the ability of the hydro generators from doing their thing. Still stocking up on popcorn.
greggBC · July 9, 2022 at 1:34 pm
If you are going to build COAL powered vehicles do it right. Put a steam engine in it and burn the coal in the truck. Stop pretending that it is clean energy just because the power plant is out of sight
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