The oil industry gets no government help? The electric drive industry is in its infancy, its not fair to say that because its getting government help, that its a boondoggle. Its getting help to get off the ground and create the infrastructure the oil industry has enjoyed for decades.

 

First let me start this with I am only 30 years old, I will live to see the changes.

Tesla is the biggest scam in history, it gets millions in subsidies. We are all paying for it regardless of if we have a Tesla. It is like that for many of the electrics.

Second, what do us poor people who cannot afford housing with charge stations suppose to do? I have no way to charge an electric car. My houses electrical can't support charging and neither can the lines running to my neighborhood.

Infrastructure is not good despite what some have said. My housing has no charge stations, my work has no charge stations. Most housing and work facilities do not have facilities...and I work 15 minutes outside of Washington DC.

My thoughts are that full electrics will never be the future, my guess is that hybrids are the future if even that. Batteries will always have a short range and be heavy requiring a gas backup engine. Electric cars also have low top speeds and need a gas engine for higher speeds. Batteries require lots of rare heavy metals, which we have to import from...China and are in more limited supply than is oil. No wonder China is pushing for electric cars, follow the money they would get rich.

Man made Climate change is a joke with little to know evidence that there is significant changes outside what has already happened for millions of years. It is nothing but fear mongering to get people to buy green products which make people like Al Gore rich. Go ahead buy into the electric crazy and make other people rich, I'll keep my money.

As a millennial that's my thoughts.

One more thing: I keep an old cars that pre-dates the computer chip age of cars. If all computers are destroyed I will still be able to drive around. If 1984 happens I will have a car with no cameras and no ability for the government or hackers to spy on me. No one will be able to take control of my car or disable it on me.

 

You're wasting your time with Grandpa Simpson.
The only things he posts about:
1. C7s suck compared to his C6 Z06
2. C8 ME will suck compared to an FE
3. EV/Hybrids power sucks compared dead dino juice

I got tired of his yelling at clouds and put him on my Ignore List.

 

Oh and before I get accused of being old at mind resisting technology or a fossil that isn't keeping up with modern technology: I work in the Information Technology Security field. Every day I work on securing new technologies, I am very knowledgeable when it comes to the technology world.

 

Just curious about this comment. Isnt a 240V charging station the same as having a clothes dryer? Or electric stove?

 

I couldn't put him on my ignore list. He's too entertaining to watch.

And at 75 years old, going on 76, it is no mystery to me why he feels as he does.

It's a 240v 50A outlet. Or something less depending upon the vehicle.

 

It would be a major upgrade for me. Yes I have 240v lines, but I have limited space in my breaker box that would not allow any more. Also the house was wired with nickel wiring, not copper causing a problem. I do not own the parking areas, these are owned by the HOA and controlled by the county. Any wires would have to go across the sidewalk in front of my house. So even if I wanted a charge station the changes would have to start with the county and the HOA.

My provider Dominion Power often has outages in my area that last days. Happens at least once a year. A battery charge would not get me to and from work for an extended period of time in an outage. I would end up strained when ever the power is lost.

 

Residential electric master panels have a finite capacity. Just so many breakers and they have a capacity limit. Not that tough to upgrade to add a supplemental panel. Not a DIY mind you, but any competent 'real' electrician could do it. Given we are talking about $100K cars, it is a minor investment if an all electric car is your fancy.

Tesla is installing 'free' supercharger stations nationwide. Currently, you could drive a Model S from LA to Dallas using their infrastructure along the route. Its coming. Old folks look out.

 

What if you have to deviate from the route due to closures? What about people living in the mid west where there are towns where gas stations currently are 100-200+ miles apart?

 

I'm amazed seeing a technology guy with such a poor outlook on the future, but I think you are one of the tinfoil hat security guys I see a lot in our profession. Can't blame you, security guys are wired to be paranoid

 

Sounds about right. Most everyone I work with is critical of new technology and wearing tinfoil hats. We are suspicious of everything and plan a lot for when everything goes back to the stone age. All we see is what goes wrong with new technology not the benifit and when there is a breech we get the blame for not finding it and never credit for stopping an event.

 

Are you kidding, EV's have been around longer than the IC engine. The fastest car on the road in 1900 was a battery powered car, the very first autos were battery powered. This is no iPhone. We have seen all kinds of startups trying to promote EV's over the years. Still nothing is economic.

I spent 3 decades as a IT manager, my education never ended in technology. I took my first programming course in 1974, have worked with the most sophisticated networks in the world, rolled out networks and computer systems thru to 2008. I also have an MBA. I retired to manage my investments, didn't need to work, managing those investments means separating fact from fancy. Tesla with a market cap larger than General Motors, those folks are the one's living on a dream. GM built 10m cars last year , Tesla 84k and loses money on every one. Gov'ts wouldn't even have to think about banning IC engines if EV's could stand on their own. EV's are decades away from being mainstream.

 

It sounds like you were good at technology back then, hopefully you don't misread the market now and hurt your investments. Electric cars are not going away

100 years ago do you think horsless carriages running on gasoline engines could stand on their own? You must day trade and therefore have a very short window of analysis 🤔

 

Just today Rice University announced a breakthrough in battery charging technology that increases charging by twenty times. The Big Mistake people make is that they look around at the present state of the art and conclude, "It will never work." when, of course, it will. If Henry Ford had looked around at "the infrastructure" in place for ICE cars and concluded the same thing, he would never have built any cars. But he had the vision others did not.

Now, about Tesla being a scam, what utter nonsense. Tesla took ONE government loan and paid it back in full, with interest, so that the taxpayers made about $6 million on the deal. Pretty good decision, if you ask me. Solandra is the one you ought to bitch about. They took subsidies and went bankrupt and never paid the government back. Tesla did. Do you seriously have a problem with that?

The so-called subsidies that get attributed to Tesla are a result of public policy designed to give incentives to buyers. Tesla doesn't see a dime of that money. Consumers do. They may have the potential to sell more cars, but that isn't guaranteed. It's the same as when all you guys wait for an 'incentive' before you'll buy a Corvette. You want to get the best deal. We all do, and GM knows that if they dangle a few grand before your eyes then you'll jump for it when, really, that few grand makes little difference in the overall cost of you having a Corvette. Basically it gives you bragging rights. If you can do it, why can't a potential Tesla owner do it?

The overall point here is that some people don't like the idea so they find an excuse why it won't work for them and proclaim it won't work for anyone. I don't happen to believe your house can't handle a modification to install a plug-in for an EV. If it really can't, you're not up to code. Take a bus. Talk about subsidized! Public transit is heavily subsidized. If you had to pay the actual cost of taking a bus, you wouldn't do it. But taxpayers subsidize your ride, and you don't complain. Imagine that. People are relatively uninformed about battery technology and EVs. They believe many untruths about the issue. And they are currently encountering no pain, no down-side to driving big V-8s or any ICE. But when that pain increases, which is inevitable, people will jump to EV's in a heartbeat. We are ten years away from you having one in your garage. You may very well still have a Vette and a big honking SUV, but you will not be able to resist because by that time, everyone will be doing it.

 

This may be very 'californian' of me but there could also be realized zero-point (free) energy. No battery would be necessary except maybe a small one as a backup. Now, you'd either have to buy into one of the following :

 

Wrong, Tesla has seen all kinds of subsidies directly and indirectly some go right into their earnings. Fact is General Motors has to buy ZEV's - Zero Emission Vehicle credits to sell IC engine cars in California, guess who sells those, Tesla. Right to Tesla's bottom line, check out their quarterly earnings. Every other manufacturer does the same in California. All that cash goes directly to Tesla, from you and I added to the cost of IC engined cars. Thank Gerry Brown for that. You folks here are naive to reality.

Electric cars will be around, mostly a niche product, very small in scale in the big picture for the next 10-20 yrs. Hybrids will be more mainstream. Battery technology, always a bunch of hype around the subject. Billions upon billions invested in the Gigafactory , lithium batteries, nothing new, best there is. Always somebody claiming a revolution, just around the corner, wait and see, reminds me of the never ending promise of cold fusion lol ... who's wearing the tinfoil hat...


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...531-story.html

Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.

And he's built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.

Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.

"He definitely goes where there is government money," said Dan Dolev, an analyst at Jefferies Equity Research. "That's a great strategy, but the government will cut you off one day."

The figure compiled by The Times comprises a variety of government incentives, including grants, tax breaks, factory construction, discounted loans and environmental credits that Tesla can sell. It also includes tax credits and rebates to buyers of solar panels and electric cars.

 

1. Most houses in America are not up to code, even new ones. Houses go up fast and many things get missed and no inspectors don't always catch them. Older houses are under grandfather clauses unless there is new construction.

2. I wouldn't say no one complanes about public transit being subsidized. I've been complaining for years and pushing for privitization of public transit and cutting funding to public transit. I don't think I'm the only one am I?

3. I'll admit batteries are improving and are here to stay possibly. I'm pushing back on the idea that we will be full electric. I think it would be more accurate to say hybrid systems are the future. I expect the corvette to be more like the Lafarrari, 918, P1, and NSX in the future. Due to cost and materials I think batteries so have many obsticles that week keep them from replacing combustion in the low end affordable car market any time soon.

Lastly I will make the change the instant the benifit out weights the cost. Don't get me wrong I'm sceptical not stupid.

 

Don't worry, they will pump it through the speakers like they do on the EcoBoost Mustang.

 

I dunno. Have you heard about Elio?

 

I'm waiting on silver to reach $200/ounce so I can sell mine and make a fortune. Maybe by then, they will have batteries that can be charged in 5 minutes and run for 500 miles between charges. I'll spend the profit I'll make on selling my silver to buy that "wonderful" EV from Tesla. Win-Win. LOL

I know it will reach $200/ounce because that guy on TV is telling me it will.

Just because he is trying to sell me silver, doesn't mean it won't reach $200/ounce.....does it?

I just wish it would hurry up as I can't wait 200 years for it to reach $200/ounce.