Big losses for Honda and Ford vehicle divisions

[Gander Hawk]

Your not serious, are you? Certainly was.

No, there never was a federal mandate. https://www.wired.com/story/trump-says-he-ended-the-ev-mandate-what-does-that-mean/

 

[Seth53]

Google Search

 

[Westernhawk]

I wonder what we are going to do if the world is 80% EV and have to get rid of the vehicles when they expire. IMO, that right there presents a huge issue as you can't just throw in a dump. There is always a downfall to any kind of energy.

What city are you living in and who is the group that provided the data or numbers? I wouldn't be surprised if it's a group that promotes EV, whether for social reasons or an interest in the investment. I have a difficult time believing that in the short time that EV's have been on in our lives that they could have data to support that claim. Typically, research takes years to look for trends (long term data) and many research projects at least for special studies such as for health conditions need thousands of study cases.

I looked up several more sources and it's more like the single digits, so I did overstate based on what I read. Sorry abou that. Most sources say single digit changes thus far in really large cities that have a significant uptake of EVs. That definitely ain't true in Ioway, as a much lower percentage of rural folk own EVS (understandably).

People tend to forget that climate change is a massive problem for humanity, but there's a pretty big propaganda machine telling you not to believe your own eyes.

You are right that batteries are a problem. They just aren't the same kind of problem as CO2. People are the root cause of the problem. Lots of people who consume limited resources on our planet.

 

[Westernhawk]

EVs are somewhat logical if they're used for circular patterns....bus routes, post office, FedEx...where the vehicles can return to home base to recharge.

Or, if you have a home charger.

But try mapping out a trip, say a rural trip, for 500-1000 miles and see how much of a hassle it would be.

And as Fry has accurately pointed out, coal makes up a majority of electrical supply, so re-charging uses the same methodology to "get your juice" as your home/business. No advantage. Zero sum game.

Will EVs eventually out number ICE vehicles...maybe. Once the grid can sustain all the demand, once charging can go from 20%-100% in ten minutes, once people figure out what to do with the batteries, once the product doesn't horribly depreciate, once the true range of EVs can accurately match ICE range (especially in cold weather), once the "new technology bugs" can be worked out, on and on. Lots of hurdles to overcome.

Wind supplies something like 64% of Iowa's total energy. Agree that EVs work best in large cities for daily commutes (most of the driving in big cities). In rural places and for long trips, they seem to make less sense to me. BTW I do not own an EV.

 

[BryceC]

Nothing sets you farther back than car and student loans. People who have car loans their entire life deserve it. People don't realize how much they are spending for those things.

I was talking to my boss today, my son has been out of day care for a bit. She’s got two very young kids in day care.

Pays 820/wk.

That’s 3,280/mo.

You could probably drive two porche’s for that.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

I was talking to my boss today, my son has been out of day care for a bit. She’s got two very young kids in day care.

Pays 820/wk.

That’s 3,280/mo.

You could probably drive two porche’s for that.

No chit. I remember when my son's were in daycare 19 or so years ago and it seemed outrageous then. I actually was wondering the other day what the hell it costs these days. Funny you mention it. That is unreal.

 

[BigD]

No chit. I remember when my son's were in daycare 19 or so years ago and it seemed outrageous then. I actually was wondering the other day what the hell it costs these days. Funny you mention it. That is unreal.

Day care cost are outrageous. My son and his wife are taking advantage of their grand father program better known as BigD babysitting program. Rates are cheap “free”. I could go without getting up at 700 AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but in another way I have enjoyed my time with my one year old grand son over the last eight months.

I also enjoyed reading through everyone’s comments on this thread. Some really good points on EV’s. Both for and against them. I guess I am a little old fashion and prefer checking for gas stations on I-80 East or West, though things get a little dicey through Wyoming and Western Nebraska. A waste land that only husker fans would deserve.

 

[Gander Hawk]

Wind supplies something like 64% of Iowa's total energy. Agree that EVs work best in large cities for daily commutes (most of the driving in big cities). In rural places and for long trips, they seem to make less sense to me. BTW I do not own an EV.

For a second car, even in a rural area, you could do a lot worse than a used $11K Chevy Bolt. As long as you have a place to plug it in every night. You can easily replace 50 miles a night using a 110 and fully charge with a 220. That gives you 200 miles when fully charged, maybe a bit more than half of that in the dead of winter. I drive a plug in with about 40 miles of electric range and I save a lot of money on gas.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

For a second car, even in a rural area, you could do a lot worse than a used $11K Chevy Bolt. As long as you have a place to plug it in every night. You can easily replace 50 miles a night using a 110 and fully charge with a 220. That gives you 200 miles when fully charged, maybe a bit more than half of that in the dead of winter. I drive a plug in with about 40 miles of electric range and I save a lot of money on gas.

I could see having an EV for a city/urban car zipping around and use like you say.

 

[Gander Hawk]

I could see having an EV for a city/urban car zipping around and use like you say.

They work in rural areas for the same purpose. I put on more daily commuting miles living in the burbs than I would in the small town where I grew up where everything was within a mile.

 

[Chickenlounge]

EVs themselves are a cleaner form of transportation, but creating them and the systems that support them are not. And not by a LONG shot is all the electricity that goes into charging EV batteries comeing from renewables. The vast majority of it comes from burned coal.

This seems to say otherwise doesn't it? I'm far from an expert, and maybe i'm reading this wrong, but it seems other sources produce more electricity than coal.

U.S. energy facts - data and statistics - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Annual data and statistics for U.S. energy production and consumption.

www.eia.gov

 

[Chickenlounge]

I was talking to my boss today, my son has been out of day care for a bit. She’s got two very young kids in day care.

Pays 820/wk.

That’s 3,280/mo.

You could probably drive two porche’s for that.

Yeah, it's insane. We did the math 20 years ago and it made way more sense for my wife to quit her job and raise the kids until they were school-aged, than it did for her to work and us to pay childcare. Plus they get the benefit of being raised by a parent.

 

[Grady]

The folks that run Big Auto are idiots.

It makes sense to transition from fossil fuel ICE vehicles to EV over time, for numerous environmental reasons. But the pace with which Big Auto anticipated that transition was ridiculous.

Let's see, almost all cars on the road in the US are ICE cars. Within 30 years, all cars will be EV. So, rather than think intelligently about the transition, they think everyone is just automatically going to switch to EV -- especially in the 88% of the (mostly rural) US counties which voted for Trump? I mean, how disconnected from reality ARE these folks?

What would have made sense would have been to invest heavily in R&D to develop reliable plug-in hybrid cars -- cars that get 40-50 miles (or more) on EV but also have IC engines to run on regular gas. I currently have a 2018 Honda Clarity, which is just that. Very few people in the US drive more than 40-50 miles/day, but like me when I drive to CO or WY or IL or Wisconsin I don't want to have to hassle with charging on the road. The transition to a plug-in hybrid has been smooth and it couldn't be easier or more economical -- I just plug it into the 110 outlet in my garage overnight and drive on EV most days -- I'm currently over 600 miles since I last used any gas. And the solar panels on my garage are more than enough to charge my car every night and cover all my house electrical costs.

The reason Big Auto didn't want to build more plug-in hybrid (PHEV) cars is because they're relatively expensive to build compared to strictly EVs, so they just wanted to skip the plug-in hybrid step. Honda only produced the Clarity for 3 years, then quit. PHEV's are also the most complicated cars that will ever be produced, as an engineer friend of mine explained to me. So Big Auto has their reasons to not produce them, but man, my ride is sweet and like I said, I have the advantage of having a gas engine if I need it, but I haven't paid a penny for gas for months. And when the traction battery runs out, you can't even tell when the car shifts over to gas.

And the demand for PHEVs is there, with the incredible demand for the RAV4 PHEV as proof. The warranty for the traction battery on the Clarity is 8 years/100,000 miles (in Iowa). When I bought it in 2018 I figured I'd trade it in at the 8-year mark, and have a wide variety of 2026 PHEVs to choose from. Nope.

 

[Westernhawk]

There is not even CLOSE to enough electrical capacity in the United States’ grid to support even 25% nation-wide EV usage. And that’s 25% of non-commercial vehicles. Take 25% of non-commercial vehicles and switch them to EVs, and the entire nation goes black instantly. Less than that actually. But “we’ll worry about that later because it needs to happen…”

It’s like California’s ridiculous plan to go to rail travel. Sounded like a great idea, nobody even remotely planned it (they just said they were going to do it to get votes…”we’ll worry about how later,” and then it failed in the most epic, embarrassingly hilarious way possible. Newsome will tout how they’re laying track and blah blah blah, but if you look at their plans the major part of it has flopped and fallen by the wayside. That’s what they do to get votes. Over promise, under deliver. And by under deliver I mean effectively scrap the entire thing.

Instead of 2020 it’s now estimated (by the politicians who promised it) at 2038 before even a tiny, minuscule portion gets completed, with a fraction of the capacity that even that small portion was promised. $200 billion in cost for that, which is $5,000 per resident. Not taxpayer, RESIDENT. Man woman and child. People living on the Oregon border who’ll never use it. Net loss financially, almost no emissions reduction because it’s been scaled down so far, and when was the last time a politician hit a date they said they would? 2038 will turn into 2048, then 2058, and on and on. Sinking billions and billions and billions of dollars into something they just said to get votes and will do nothing to solve any real problems.

For the record I am not a republican, not a MAGA, not anything. I hate both sides equally for anyone out there thinking I’m just spewing hate at lefties.

I personally think there needs to be a development of regional strategies with regard to electricity production and distribution. Some areas in the US have over 300 days of sunlight. This can certainly augment standard methods of (dirty) power production. I believe California (most populous state) gets over 30% of it's electricity on an annual basis from solar, and higher amounts on peak days. If solar tech continues to cheapen, housetop (as well as standard desert) configurations could really produce a huge amount of power.

Caveat: I'm not super knowledgeable in this area, but clinging to coal and petrol-based solutions is okay if you don't care about future generations. I don't see this as a left v right issue. I also support more nuclear plants but they aren't a free pass and take decades.

People who are quick to downplay alternative energy never really want to discuss climate change, which knows no party. Floriday and California already live it.

 

[Westernhawk]

The folks that run Big Auto are idiots.

It makes sense to transition from fossil fuel ICE vehicles to EV over time, for numerous environmental reasons. But the pace with which Big Auto anticipated that transition was ridiculous.

Let's see, almost all cars on the road in the US are ICE cars. Within 30 years, all cars will be EV. So, rather than think intelligently about the transition, they think everyone is just automatically going to switch to EV -- especially in the 88% of the (mostly rural) US counties which voted for Trump? I mean, how disconnected from reality ARE these folks?

What would have made sense would have been to invest heavily in R&D to develop reliable plug-in hybrid cars -- cars that get 40-50 miles (or more) on EV but also have IC engines to run on regular gas. I currently have a 2018 Honda Clarity, which is just that. Very few people in the US drive more than 40-50 miles/day, but like me when I drive to CO or WY or IL or Wisconsin I don't want to have to hassle with charging on the road. The transition to a plug-in hybrid has been smooth and it couldn't be easier or more economical -- I just plug it into the 110 outlet in my garage overnight and drive on EV most days -- I'm currently over 600 miles since I last used any gas. And the solar panels on my garage are more than enough to charge my car every night and cover all my house electrical costs.

The reason Big Auto didn't want to build more plug-in hybrid (PHEV) cars is because they're relatively expensive to build compared to strictly EVs, so they just wanted to skip the plug-in hybrid step. Honda only produced the Clarity for 3 years, then quit. PHEV's are also the most complicated cars that will ever be produced, as an engineer friend of mine explained to me. So Big Auto has their reasons to not produce them, but man, my ride is sweet and like I said, I have the advantage of having a gas engine if I need it, but I haven't paid a penny for gas for months. And when the traction battery runs out, you can't even tell when the car shifts over to gas.

And the demand for PHEVs is there, with the incredible demand for the RAV4 PHEV as proof. The warranty for the traction battery on the Clarity is 8 years/100,000 miles (in Iowa). When I bought it in 2018 I figured I'd trade it in at the 8-year mark, and have a wide variety of 2026 PHEVs to choose from. Nope.

Love this post. I would strongly consider a plug in hybrid for my next car, as I live in an urban area with a short (by mileage!) commute.

 

[tampabayhawk]

MSN

Good bye Ford Escape.

GM/Chevy have announced discontinuing GM Express and Savana chassis. Excuse me........select wheelbases going away. Not the products.

 

[Grady]

I personally think there needs to be a development of regional strategies with regard to electricity production and distribution. Some areas in the US have over 300 days of sunlight. This can certainly augment standard methods of (dirty) power production. I believe California (most populous state) gets over 30% of it's electricity on an annual basis from solar, and higher amounts on peak days. If solar tech continues to cheapen, housetop (as well as standard desert) configurations could really produce a huge amount of power.

Caveat: I'm not super knowledgeable in this area, but clinging to coal and petrol-based solutions is okay if you don't care about future generations. I don't see this as a left v right issue. I also support more nuclear plants but they aren't a free pass and take decades.

People who are quick to downplay alternative energy never really want to discuss climate change, which knows no party. Floriday and California already live it.

I'm no expert, but I believe coordination of electric access is overseen by regional compacts, which operate somewhat independently. The Federal Energy Commission oversees it all. A good friend of mine was 1 of 5 appointed FEC commissioners during the Obama Administration. He said there was lots of room for improvement in the national electric grid. Currently another friend is Iowa's representative to the Midwest regional organization (RTO) Iowa is connected with.

(AI generated) Key facts about federal electric grid regulation:

• Jurisdiction: FERC regulates interstate transmission, wholesale power sales, and hydropower projects.
• Reliability: FERC oversees mandatory, enforceable reliability standards for the bulk power system (the "grid"), which are developed by NERC.
• Market Oversight: FERC regulates Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs) that manage day-to-day grid operations in many U.S. regions.
• Limitations: FERC does not regulate local, retail electricity sales (which are handled by state/local regulators) and does not own or operate physical grid infrastructure.

 

[Grady]

I'll support nuclear power when someone shows me a written offer by a private insurance company or conglomerate to insure a nuclear power plant in the U.S.

Will never happen. Ever.

Remember that, the next time someone touts how 'safe' nuclear power plants are.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

Another issue right now with EV and charging is some individuals in large cities or urban areas only have off-street parking and finding a place to charge is an issue. It's really not an issue where we live, although may be in our larger metro cities, but in NY City, Chitown etc. it would be an issue when people park on the street. Most of us either have a garage or a driveway where we live but not the case for many in cities.

I think they have some designated spots on blocks but I'm sure they are always taken and hard to find.

 

[Grady]

Another issue right now with EV and charging is some individuals in large cities or urban areas only have off-street parking and finding a place to charge is an issue. It's really not an issue where we live, although may be in our larger metro cities, but in NY City, Chitown etc. it would be an issue when people park on the street. Most of us either have a garage or a driveway where we live but not the case for many in cities.

I think they have some designated spots on blocks but I'm sure they are always taken and hard to find.

Yeah, the EV market for folks who live in apts is small, the only exception being if they work on-site and have charging stations at their place of employment. That said, many apt dwellers in large cities use public transit or Lyft/Uber exclusively and don't even have a car.