Propane works pretty well. In Brazil many cars run on propane .They dont use exchange tank. The tank is in the car and they go to a station that fills their own tank. Looks like gas stations of the U.S. Hope this crap doesnt happen in my lifetime ,I LOVE THE SMELL OF GASOLINE

 

Is this where I get to bust out my, "The future is now, old man" quote?

EVs are coming. It's inevitable.

Automation is coming. It's inevitable.

Innovate or die. Either aspire to be a part of the future, or continue to flail your arms in a futile fight against inevitability.

Whew, this thread really went places...

 

Thanks, I'm not entirely sure about generational differences, I believe people can be effected by the time in which they were raised. All periods of time have a unique set of challenges and different types of social pressures applied to them. Not to get philosophical on a corvette forum, but the pressures on kids today seem to have way more implications, and reaction, than I could ever remember having. Some times life's easier when your working hard, and feel tired at the end of the day, perhaps even less anxiety. But whatever the reason, hiring a stock boy that will actually work today? is getting harder than it should be.

 

It is especially odd to see owners of a performance car complain about tech that clearly has massive performance benefits.

 

I don't consider "adding massive expense" and taking away personal property ownership a solution. Especially when there already much more promising tech like biofuels and synthetic gas that don't require stopgap.
​​​​
As far as what we do with old batteries, we throw them in landfills, like everything else that's new and replaceable, and to a lesser extent "green".

Add in the fact that it's gonna be increased fossil fuels to make the electricity, massively polluting overseas supply chains to produce them, and that 1st world cars are far cleaner than people realize... It's a waste. In fact, there's a lot of data out there showing that that heavy transport (planes, ships, trucks) are far lower hanging fruit for emissions and pollute far more than cars...

 

Hydrogen gas isn't the ideal way to store the fuel. You've pointed out something very key. When an inept government gets involved, and convinces people that "this is the solution", it screws everything up.

Bottom line, we will never see widespread adoption of battery EVs until the batties can last 25 years without degradation and refill fully in 5 minutes. Otherwise, they simply don't work as a replacement

​​​​​​That said, there are smart ways to use them with their limitations. Use them in semi trucks where the amount of time a driver can drive is regulated (though tandem driving teams won't be able to use them). Ise them for busses where they spend a lot of time sitting at bus stops that they can pick up some charge each stop. Use them for school busses that sit for the entire day and sole purpose is to ferry kids around for a couple hours. Plus, big vehicles like this are much easier to have a standardized battery pack that utility vehicles would all use, because they're not privately owned and the vehicles aren't designed with space efficiency in mind.

Don't get me wrong, battery EVs certainly can work for some people. But they don't work at all for a lot of people, and for most families they can only be one of two (plus) cars.

 

I mean, it also has massive performance drawbacks. They weigh aot, don't last very long, and really only do well with acceleration. I did a track day and watched a fastish driver of a model s p90d get absolutely trounced by a stock grand marquis. He also only got in the first and 3rd session of the day, because charging.

 

And this is where you separate the flyshit from the pepper. You can do as you say OR, you can recognize the future and capitalize on it. Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, to name a few, would now be bagging groceries at the Piggly Wiggly if they had the "that will never work" attitude. Case in point - my previous question about Maxwell's "shoephone". I will give you another more personal example.

Back in the day, well before internet, fiber optics, cell phones etc., TV satellite dishes came into existence. They were massive and ugly and the general consensus was "Who would want that monstrosity in their back yard"? I was a struggling electrical contractor at the time. I seen the potential and secured marketing rights from one of the venders. I sold them by the truckload at a massive profit margin. Plus I got paid to install the majority of them. This venture put me on the road to a very, very lucrative lifetime in the business.

 

...

 

Solar and wind? Seriously? Maybe for the 400 people that live in Canada, but for the 300 million people in the US, we would have to cover entire states with solar panels and wind farms to go off fossil fuels. And that doesn't even factor in the extreme danger of switching to energy generation largely manufactured by our most bitter enemy, China. Plus, if we stop buying fossil fuels, Canada goes under other than being a convenient staging point for Chinese goods being dumped into the US.

EV share will grow as prices go down. But they simply can't take over. There are far too many people who are apartment dwellers with no overnight charging, people who routinely drive long distance, or people who are further down the expendable incomes level and won't be able to afford a very used EV, when it reaches 15 years old and it's battery is worn out.

Chevy had the right setup with the volt. Electric motors, decent battery, gasoline generator. If they had put that setup in an escalade for 100k they'd have sold like hotcakes. Make it something that looked and drove like a normal escalade. Would have sold great, because it makes sense. But they wanted to out prius Toyota, and failed.

At the end of the day, ICE cars will continue to outnumber EVs until probably 2070 at a minimum. Assuming we all live that long, which frankly, seems unlikely. We will likely find some reason to cancel culture ourselves out of greatness, or the Chinese will start an actual war, or there will be a cyber attack that shuts down our power generation and society falls apart before then anyways.

 

I cannot wait to quote this post back to you in 15 years. Thank you for bringing a smile to my face on this lovely Easter morning.

 

Boy Hoss. You really have a problem comprehending the written word. I SAID, CHARGING the standby batteries could be done with solar or wind. READ and COMPREHEND. At what point did I even get close to saying "get rid of fossil fuels" and switch to wind and solar? Have you ever travelled the Alameda hills of California? What did you see? Have you ever travelled I-15 East of Las Vegas? What did you see? You can always tell when someone gets owned when they start to rely on childish retorts. "Maybe for the 400 people that live in Canada". " Plus, if we stop buying fossil fuels, Canada goes under..."(your dumbest statement here yet). Canada was certainly good enough for the people like yourself when you had to land a multitude of planes on our territory because someone decided to fly a bunch of aircraft into your buildings.(funny, Canada has never had that problem) Or, when our ambassidor put his and his families safety on the line when he hid out a group of your diplomats in his home and arranged to sneak them out of the country.(and then your Hollywood has the gaul to make a movie and give the credit to the CIA LOL) I have said before that I will debate anyone with truthful facts and data. But you have supplied none of that, only rhetoric. You are pulling a clump of **** out of your *** and trying to market it as Belgian chocolate without producing the ingredient list. I'm done with this BS.

 

Wow, testy huh?

If we get rid of ICE cars, and we're to switch to BEVs, we would have to charge them. If we charge them using oil, coal, gas, etc... We haven't really helped anything. Sure, we can offset some of this with renewable power. But reality is, a diversified power grid is the only way forward since people are afraid of nuclear power.

​​​All that we would have accomplished doing that is building a bunch of disposable cars, building a bunch of new power plants we wouldn't have needed, and given technocrats something to feel superior about.

BEVs can't even decide on a charging standard in the US. We think they're going to standardize a whole Battery Swapping process that's fast and automated? I don't think so.

 

Ludicrous mode P90d's run 10's.

2015 Tesla Model S P90D w/Ludicrous Upgrade First Test Review (motortrend.com)

Freaking 10's.

The only way a stock Grand Marquis runs a 10 is if you drop it from orbit.

 

times change things change. Change with the times or get passed by. I like the current and the future. If you like living in the past and enjoy driving or playing with old outdated stuff fine. Enjoy your past era technology. I understand it, appreciate it but just can't be bothered.

 

You seemed to miss that he was referring to a track day. I know maybe some Corvette people seem to think that "track" means "dragstrip," but cars can go in other directions than just straight yanno. Sometimes for minutes at a time!

 

Older tech is important for the simple reason that it may be helpful to know how we got here. Beyond that, I stay with it because I can't justify the cost of the newer tech. Once I can, it's dumped. I think it’s fair to say that I appreciate new tech until it gets old. Then the lust cycle begins again for the new stuff. I am grateful that there are those who appreciate older tech. Makes it easier to sell the older stuff for an upgrade.

 

probably send this thread to the model T forum guys, see what there take is on it.

 

Probably that the cars today are all posers. The real cars stooped after May 26, 1927

 

Sure for the minority that track their cars but on the street where most people drive it’s not even close