Better consider this.

Snow, Traffic Jams and Electric Cars - has anyone thought about it?

If all cars were electric ... and were caught up in a three hour traffic jam…
With dead batteries - then what?

[]

Not to mention, that there is virtually no heating in an electric vehicle.

And if you get stuck on the road all night, no battery, no heating !!!

You can try calling 911 to bring woman and children to safety!

But they can not even come to help you since all roads are blocked !!!!

And when the roads become unblocked no one can move!

How do you charge the thousands of cars from the traffic jam?

Same problem during summer vacation departures with miles of traffic jams.

This will make cars run out of “fuel” and cause never ending traffic jams.

But that will never happen – eh - ?


I'll stick with my old fashioned internal combustion auto.

L.W.

The day will come that there will be smaller, much more powerful batteries that are not adversely affected by cold. MAYBE when that happens, electric cars will be feasible. Right now, not so much.

My wife has always wanted a Toyota Prius...so I finally got her one and its been great. Its the best of both electrical and gas. The best benefit that I like is having saved on gas money... it lets me send it on something else that I like better ...

At least some electric cars have heaters, after a fashion. The Nisson Leaf has a heat pump. Of course it runs on the battery and sucks power. If you're stuck in a cold weather traffic jam, I'm sure it will pull down the batteries after a while.

On a related note I heard that Volkswagen will be introducing a new totally electric vehicle. To be called the "Voltswagen".

My son has a Prius hybrid. He gets 50 mpg on the highway. It's been totally reliable in the 6 or 7 years he's had it. The ability to use gas makes a big difference as it has a real heater and alternator.

It’s interesting....there’s this continuum of attitude we have about new technology. Some mindlessly embrace it wholeheartedly while others dig their heels in and (just as mindlessly) say, “It’ll never work.”

If we examine the last couple of hundred years of technological advancement we see a lot of examples. Hell, cartridge firearms and smokeless powder weren’t widely accepted at first, and look at the early history of internal combustion powered automobiles. I’m not about to go out and buy an electric car, but I’ve no doubt I will if I live long enough. I’ve also no doubt my grandkids will be telling their grandkids stories about learning to drive with gasoline powered cars that you needed to know something beyond the name of your destination to operate.

Self driving vehicles are right around the corner. My guess is they’ll be able to run a lot faster than driver operated vehicles reducing congestion and making traffic jams a thing of the past.

We have so much of our identity wrapped up in the vehicles we drive that we will struggle desperately to retain the status quo, but eventually progress will triumph again.

Biggest scam since global warming.

Lots of death right around the corner too.

Are taxpayers still subsidizing the purchase of electric cars?

I thought about it when I lived in town. But with the deep snow and cold we have to deal with here I decided it wouldn't be beneficial. No electric power stations in the breaks or mountains

We had an electric car for about 5 years and finally got tired of it last year. Good thing is that it held its value enough to allow for an even up swap for a new hybrid. EVs are simply not ready for prime time for most people, but hybrids are fantastic. We get close to 50 mpg in the city in our car (BMW 530e) and the all-electric range is enough to run errands in town (I think it's about 20 miles of range before the gas engine kicks in). There's a lot to say for a car that will turn braking/coasting into additional range, rather than wasted heat. I'm far from an environmental lunatic, but I do like saving money, and this car was actually no more expensive than the gas version.

Perhaps we’ll see widespread use of small and highly efficient turbine engines to heat, run accessories, and extend the range of electric vehicles?

No. I want to burn up my share of the oil

They will probably become mainstream someday, but I'm not sure when. I'm old enough to recall stories I heard from old people back in the 1950's about the early gasoline powered vehicles. Back when folks used to yell; "Get a Horse !" at the early motorists, and the "experts" predicted that those cars were just too expensive and too unreliable to ever see commonplace, everyday, usage. Thinking about those stories now I guess they were the late 19th / early 20th century version of "fake news".

What happens when the power grid goes out for a week? No charging. ..In fact I can tell you after being a electric lineman for 39 years(retired)the electric infrastructure is over loaded now.What in the hell will it be like when the car charging begins..

More electric vehicles where sold this year than were vehicles with a manual transmissions.

Click Here

Electric vehicle tax incentives were passed by congress and apply to the first 200,000 electric vehicles sold by each manufacturer, with incentives declining after than number is reached. Keep in mind that hybrid vehicles purchased a decade ago also received federal tax credits.

Yes, I want an electric vehicle and I'll likely own one soon. I can also read a weather forecast and if they weather is going to be bad and I'm forced to drive, I'll be in my FORD TRUCK. It's really not that complicated, is it?.

How is the power grid at night, when most people with electric vehicles are charging them at home?

Overtaxed,because god only knows folks don't have the power on at night like home air conditioner, heating and such.Don,t forget factorys don't shut down at night.Hope that answered your question.

A hybrid is a much better choice than an electric but from what I've seen, they're too expensive to ever recover the added cost. This summer we bought a Toyota Highlander. We looked at a hybrid just out of interest, no intention of buying one. In steady city driving, it MIGHT pay for itself in 10 years but out here in the country, it would never pay for itself. We'd be running on gas all the time.

Electric vehicles are clearly not ideal or suitable for all conditions. This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. They probably do work well in moderate climates for people living in urban areas, who don't have to travel far. Just because they don't work well in one set of conditions doesn't mean they don't work well in any conditions....I'm not sure why this seems to be such a difficult concept for some people to grasp. Imagine if everyone was riding motorcycles,in a blizzard and also a traffic jam, how terrible would that be? Obviously motorcycles are stupid and should never be purchased by anyone!

No. I have been looking at an electric side by side ATV. EZ Go makes them now, the absence of engine noise sounds inviting.

This ^^^. I drove a first-generation hybrid as a loaner car for a while back in 2005. I was impressed with the mileage and decided to calculate the savings over the life of the car (I drive minimum 35K miles a year).

Even with the rebates and fuel savings, I would never recover the extra cost to purchase it. How does the average person who drives only 20K a year or less do?

The greatest advantage of new EV’s and hybrids at this point is to give smug greenies something to pat themselves on the back for.

At this point, there are enough used ones on the market that my next vehicle will probably be a hybrid. With the amount I drive I need reliability and longevity more than I need virtue-signalling. Someone else can pay the depreciation.

Boomers will never learn.

What really attracts me to the electric vehicle (work or personal) is the simplicity. Modern IC engines are marvels of engineering, but still add 1,000 parts or more to a vehicle. You still deal with a highly flammable liquid, exhaust (incredibly complicated system in diesels today), coolant, vibrations, etc, etc. IC engines are terribly complicated things.

How I would love to have a feed vehicle on the farm I don't have to fuel, check oil, check transmission fluid, check transfer case, fix coolant leaks. Just pull it into it's parking spot at night and plug it in. Cab nice and warm when I get in in the morning, and go to work. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

The day they make a ECONOMY focused feed truck, I'll be in line for it. After they work the bugs out..... Unfortunately, they seem to have discovered the greenies have more money than sense... A fool and his money, and all that.

They're getting there. I have a neighbour that has a 200 mile round trip commute. Yes 200 mile, crazy. He did it with a Prius for a few years but had the mileage racked up pretty high so traded it in on an all electric Hyundai. Kona I think? He makes it with 50 plus miles spare on a charge. Got a station put in at his house. As far as being stuck in a traffic jam, not an issue they don't burn anything at a stand still.

Heat though is an issue without killing range, and range needs to get up more period before I'd be thinking about it plus the prices are pretty high. It'll come I have no doubt everyones getting in to the game. 2021 fully electric F 150 on schedule last I heard be interesting to see what the specs and numbers work out to. They say they've spend lots of effort on cold climate use, we shall see I guess.

I've lived off the grid for 15 years

how is battery powered farm machinery going to function at sub zero temps/

About as well as I do, I suppose? Minimum required effort and back in front of the heater.....

Sorry about the grid thing. I did notice you didn't say without electricity....

I think the "dial 911 for any sort of abnormal situation" is more a Y-baby thing. Boomers grew up without such convenience after all.

Electric automobiles are a means for the government to enslave you by limiting your distance to travel, forcing tighter population densities and control the length of time you are in one place while waiting for a re-charge.

Secondly, and the deal breaker, the infrastructure from the service on homes to the power plants are not designed to carry the additional loads recharging would place on our already maxed out grid.

Third, the disposal of the non-recyclable used batteries is a pollution nightmare the communists don’t even talk about. That alone is another ALL STOP.

These sorta threads sure prove the lack of knowledge on a topic is overwhelmingly compensated for with opinion.