Road Trip With An Electric Vehicle. Didn't See This Coming.

[33 IMP]

It's heresy, I know, but I kinda like the concept of a plug in hybrid. Problem is, they stopped development when all-electrics became popular. The range under electric suffers with a hybrid.
I like the idea of making my ten or twelve mile round trip into town on juice, but still being able to put some gasoline in it and drive from Arizona to California without stopping, or getting stranded in the middle of the desert with no juice, and no charging stations for 50-75 (or more)miles.

 

[eldubb440]

The problem with them being city cars is where to plug them in. Run thousands of extension cords across the sidewalk, dig up the streets and sidewalks and plant charging stations, or find a huge parking lot somewhere to put up an electric sub-station to power charging stations in the lot.

see post 31....... if any of it was even possible, how do they stop the hood rats from taking the copper?

 

[Detective D]

The problem with them being city cars is where to plug them in. Run thousands of extension cords across the sidewalk, dig up the streets and sidewalks and plant charging stations, or find a huge parking lot somewhere to put up an electric sub-station to power charging stations in the lot.

You are pointing out a problem to an issue that the WEF has already planned around.
You see, you won't own your own car.
The big guy said it himself, "charging stations on every corner".
You will ask permission to travel. When it is granted, you will be allowed a scheduled use of a provided self driving pod from that corner lot.
In the 15 minute town you won't need a car for anything else.
"Where is the 15 minute town?" You may ask....
Well, we can't build it until we bankrupt and destroy utterly the existing ones. See: Portland. Oakland is on it's way. San Fran is working hard at it as well. When it gets so outrageously broken down that even area conservatives think maybe they should ask the government to step in, THAT is when they will roll out the blueprints for the largest, most grand scaled gov't housing project in history. A project so big it encompasses 80% or more of the entire city.

THEN YOU GET TO PAY FOR IT. I GET TO PAY FOR IT.

TA_DAH! No problems here!
And the planet will be one step closer to being saved!

 

[Richard Cranium]

August 17, 2023

Those EV Shortcomings Aren’t Shortcomings at All​

Wherever we drive nowadays, we see electric vehicles (EVs) amid the normal internal combustion cars and hybrids.

Maybe one in ten, maybe one in twenty, maybe one in a hundred. It all depends on where we live and where we go.

They are no longer the noticeable rarity they were just a few years ago; you no longer turn your head in surprise when you see that Tesla logo beside you.

The modern Left has a dream – that soon, very soon, every vehicle in the world will be electric, running on a heavy, cobalt-laden, lithium battery that needs to be charged up somewhere with electricity derived from an out-of-sight coal plant.

Every few trips, we old-fashioned ICE-drivers stop at a gas station for a quick fill-up. It takes two or three minutes, maybe five or six if we need to go into the store for a soda or a coffee; then we’re back on the road.

We rarely see the EVs charging up while we fill our normal cars with fuel. It takes too long, so they don’t usually do it at the gas station.

The EV’s current average, we are told, is eight hours to a “full charge,” whatever that means. It might be a couple hundred miles, maybe less, maybe more. Some chargers charge faster, some vehicles take longer. If it’s like any other kind of rechargeable battery (and they’re too new to be sure, but it makes sense), then as each battery ages, it will take longer and longer to charge up, and the mileage per charge will slowly decrease. That’s just how batteries work.

The EV advocates are legion. You see them in politics and newsmedia, at work and at school, singing the praises of their clean cars that never break down and meet all their needs perfectly.

Having installed a charging station at home, and/or working at a job that has a charging station just for them, their day-to-day lives are perfectly convenient. The challenge of the daily routine, in which we have to seek out an affordable gas station in the age of Joe Biden’s daily attacks on the oil industry, has been completely conquered.

Park the car and plug it in, and it’s fully charged for another normal day.

But… what about days that aren’t normal?

It’s summertime… for most of us, an exception to the routine. Let’s study a few typical summer days for a typical American family.

Many of us – hundreds of thousands of us, certainly, maybe millions – visit a cottage of our own, or a brother’s or cousin’s place, somewhere in the country, maybe on a lake, maybe on a river. There might be no electricity there, but that’s okay; the oven works on an oil generator or a propane tank. Great place to spend the weekend, doing some fishing, swimming, camping, waterskiing, or jet-skiing.

If this cabin is a hundred miles away, or a couple hundred, how do you get out of there, when you’ve run your EV out of power on the way in?

Many of us – hundreds of thousands, maybe millions – take city vacations too. We’ll take a weekend off, or a whole week, and visit the sites of New England, or drive up the Pacific coast, or hit the lakeshore towns of the Great Lakes, or any other such multi-stop vacation. The EV acolytes have an answer for this; “your hotel will have charger stations so you can charge up every night.” But will it? These systems are awfully expensive. And they take up space.

Hotels have never needed to be in the power business before. Now they’ll have to add a charger outside, essentially, for every single room. The fifty-room hotel will now need fifty chargers in its parking lot. The 200-room hotel will need 200 of them. Will the local electric grid support that draw? Is there room in the hotel’s parking lot for all those cars? If not, is there more land for the hotel to acquire to facilitate an EV-forced expansion?

Perhaps it’s time to say goodbye to the cheap hotel, the Expedia or PriceLine deal, the room that becomes affordable with your AAA or AMAC discount. If every hotel has to rip up every parking lot to install these chargers at a few grand apiece, they’re going to have far fewer parking spaces, and they’re going to have to charge you a lot more for your room.

Many of us, millions every year – visit amusement parks from Six Flags to DisneyLand. The range is wild; Cedar Point draws about 20,000 visitors per day, while DisneyWorld draws some 160,000 per day. The same goes for trips to great downtown centers like Chicago, New York, Boston and St Louis, where millions drive in for a day or a weekend of museums and zoos, theatres and restaurants.

Many stay in a hotel, many others drive in early in the morning, park at the event, and expect to drive home that night. There’s no place to charge during the day; if you hoped for that trip to be same-day, you’re out of luck. You won’t be able to recharge on that day trip, so you will need a (now expensive) hotel whether you like it or not. From the perspective of anyone over 1.5 hours away from your destination, the days of the “day trip” are over.

Perhaps you have relatives to stay with when on vacation. We’ve all spent a night or two with brothers or sisters, or cousins or uncles. Maybe they will eventually install a charger of their own, which they’ll need for their own EVs. Can your car hook up to it simultaneously, or will one of you have to face the morning without a charge?

Countless millions of Americans visit their state fair every year (your friendly correspondent went twice this year!). Let’s look at the Wisconsin State Fair as an example. About 100,000 attend each day, up to double that on the weekends if the weather cooperates. Attendees come from as little as a mile away or from as far as 400 miles away, because the fair is at the far southeast corner of a large state. It’s a day trip for those of us in northeast Illinois; it’s a multi-day commitment at least for exhibitors and attendees from Wausau, Eau Claire, Superior or Ashland.

People park at State Fairs on lawns or fields; there isn’t even a parking lot to wire for charging stations. Hundreds of homeowners in West Allis, WI rent out spaces to fairgoers on their own front lawns. Restaurants and clubs close for the day and rent out their parking lots; it can be more lucrative than their usual business.

How are most people going to do state fair in the age of the EV?

We’ve only scratched the surface, of course. Summertime in America is filled with special occasions – music festivals and sporting events, neighborhood festivals and church parties, each of which draw thousands, even tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of attendees. Country Thunder, Summer Camp, Wander Down – a host of new multi-act events crop up every year. They take place in fields, state parks, even on working farms between harvests.

Where are these rock, alternative, and country music fans supposed to charge their EVs for eight hours, or even get a “quick charge” in three or four, so they can go home when it’s over?

There is an answer to all this. Don’t worry. They haven’t forgotten all these things.

The elites who advocate the sole production of EVs have an answer for this: You just won’t be able to do these things anymore. That’s all.
They don’t believe you need to do these things. They want you to watch your entertainment on your smart TV or your laptop, on your streaming service, from the comfort of your apartment. If you want to attend a live performance, you can take public transportation to the nearest official venue, staffed by union members, ticketed by Ticketmaster.

You don’t need to go visit a river or lake, or travel to explore American heritage through Civil War or Revolutionary War sites. You don’t need fishing trips, hunting trips, road trips for baseball or football, college tours, family bonding drives.

Stay home. Stay safe. Stay still. Stay where we can watch you.

The conclusion is inescapable: In the final analysis, the EV pushers don’t see any gaps or contradictions. All the needs you have that EVs simply don’t meet, can’t meet, will never meet – well, these aren’t really needs at all.

You’re wrong to want to gather in groups of thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. All those EV shortcomings aren’t really shortcomings at all. Freedom of assembly, as described in the obsolete First Amendment, is dangerous, don’t you see, from the perspective of your betters.

 

[Budnicks]

The conclusion is inescapable: In the final analysis, the EV pushers don’t see any gaps or contradictions. All the needs you have that EVs simply don’t meet, can’t meet, will never meet – well, these aren’t really needs at all.

that right there is all you need to see or hear...

 

[BSB67]

When I go to the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, where no one has a garage or even a driveway, and the cars are lined up on the streets as far as the eye can see and you cannot park in front of your own place, I wonder how that is gonna work.

 

[Richard Cranium]

When I go to the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, where no one has a garage or even a driveway, and the cars are lined up on the streets as far as the eye can see and you cannot park in front of your own place, I wonder how that is gonna work

It’s not going to work. That’s the plan.

 

[Detective D]

When I go to the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, where no one has a garage or even a driveway, and the cars are lined up on the streets as far as the eye can see and you cannot park in front of your own place, I wonder how that is gonna work.

Big Man said it himself "a charging station on every corner."
I posted it above RC's big comment.
They are saying the quiet parts out loud now because no one is stopping them from doing it anymore. People can't wrap their heads around the concepts, they are so alien to America, so they deny it and apologize for what their leaders tell them.

 

[Richard Cranium]

Notice that the latest journalistic fad is to rent an EV and then write how bad it is.


I Rented A Tesla For A Week And Am Totally Sold On Gas-Powered Cars
BY: STELLA MORABITO
AUGUST 21, 2023

IMAGE CREDITMARCO VERCH/FLICKR/CROPPED/CC BY 2.0
After test-driving one for an entire week, we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any electric vehicle as long as we have the option of gas-powered cars or even hybrids.

STELLA MORABITO

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While planning a week-long trip to the Seattle area recently, I wondered aloud to my husband if we should rent a Tesla. Neither of us had ever driven an electric vehicle before. The price difference between the long-range Tesla Model 3 and a standard mid-size gas-fueled vehicle was pretty negligible.
We agreed it would be an interesting learning experience despite our objections to the eco-agenda to phase out gas-powered vehicles. We also don’t believe EVs are particularly environmentally friendly since they need batteries that require the strip-mining of rare earth minerals such as lithium and cobalt. The World Economic Forum knows this very well and is likely looking for heavy limits on EV mobility after eliminating gas-powered vehicles.


But more people like us are also finding some very practical reasons to object to Teslas. There’s a glut of them on the market now despite subsidies and price reductions. After test-driving one for an entire week (instead of just 30 minutes,) we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any EV as long as we have the option of gas-powered vehicles or even hybrids. Read on for seven big reasons why. (Yes, “mileage may vary.”)

1. Battery Drainage Is Stress-Inducing
In the Tesla, stress is a given. The battery drains faster than you might think. Our Model 3 had an advertised range of about 300 miles, but that’s if you charge it to 100 percent (which no one does) and run it to 0 percent (which no one does). So the practical range is about 150-200 miles. We felt compelled to recharge after going just 150 miles versus refueling after about 450 miles in our Honda Accord. The battery even drained 10 percent just sitting in the driveway for about a day. Granted, we covered some distances in Washington state during our travels. But that confirms EVs are a poor choice for road trips unless you enjoy the risk of being stranded.

2. Few Charging Station Locations and Length of Time There
Yes, there are now more than 1,500 “supercharger” stations across the U.S. Regular chargers can be found at hotels, where guests at least have a room to stay in while charging for three to six hours. We plugged into a Tesla charger at a hotel for nearly three hours to get the battery up to 85 percent from about 30. Compare that with about 150,000 gas stations where we could fill up in less than five minutes and be on our way, ready for the next 500 miles. Even at a supercharger, we had to wait about 30 minutes to up the battery charge by 50 percent. And it’s all a matter of luck if there are amenities close by, especially if you need a charge when it’s late at night.

3. Personal Safety at Charging Locations Can Feel Dicey
It’s a good idea to plan the times at which you charge your vehicle. We had to stop on a Sunday evening at a supercharger located in an Ikea parking lot. Ikea was closed, and there were no walkable amenities around it. Ditto for our visit to another Tesla supercharger located across from a pawn shop. I got the uneasy feeling that many of these unsupervised locations — and the length of time required to be there — were crime scenes waiting to happen. Sure you can stop charging and be on your way. But on your way to where? To another supercharger.

4. Texting While Driving Is Required
Texting while driving is considered dangerous and mostly illegal. How ironic that in a Tesla, you are dependent upon the touch screen that sits between the driver and passenger seat like a big laptop. The interface is not intuitive, and autopilot is too new and unpredictable to use safely.
Luckily for us, there was always a passenger available to cope with the screen. We had to be in motion in order to check for a charging station nearby. There’s nothing intuitive about the air conditioning. Ditto for the radio, which we could only “turn off” by reducing the volume. The windshield wipers are supposed to be automatic, but when it started raining, we realized they were “turned off.” After fishing around the screen, we finally pulled over to consult YouTube to get them working again.

5. No Convenient Manual to Consult While Renting
Our Tesla rental was proudly “paperless.” It would have been worthwhile to have a hard copy manual on hand that didn’t put us at the mercy of a satellite signal. Hertz at the Seattle airport could provide no support in answering our questions about the vehicle. When I was able to flag employees down (twice), they were unable to help. We hoped to get a clue from a manual in the glove compartment, but what glove compartment? The employee at the checkout kiosk explained that the glove compartment was permanently locked shut. There’s no spare tire either, by the way.

6. How to Lock the Car?
This was not clear, not even with the Hertz tutorials on renting a Tesla. The key card operates like a hotel-room “smart” key, but (per YouTube) we discovered we needed to find the “sweet spot” by the window on the driver’s side, apparently the only place to lock the car. There are ways to lock from the inside as well, but it all depends on your tech-savviness, and willingness to risk locking yourself in, I suppose.

7. Don’t Expect the Cost of a Battery Charge to Always Be Lower than Gasoline
There are so many variables in fuel/charging costs, it’s hard to know if you’re getting a deal. When we tapped the “lightning bolt” image on the Tesla’s touch screen, we got a list of superchargers in the region as well as the cost per kilowatt hour, which varied from about 18 cents to about 50 cents. Our cheapest total charge was around $7 and ranged up to $25. We generally didn’t put more than a 50 percent charge into the car at any one time, and given the miles driven, the $25 charge was about the same as we would have paid for gas. Since there are government subsidies both for purchasing an EV and for charging, I would expect those prices to rise if everyone gets with the program and demand is up.

But pigs will fly before I buy an EV based on my Tesla experience/experiment. This conclusion is not based on a one-hour test drive but on an entire week of driving in an EV-friendly part of the country.

Granted, there are some moments of fun when driving a Tesla. “Regenerative braking” is a system that recharges the battery. So once your foot is off the accelerator, the car slows down quickly. We rarely needed to use the brake at all, even at red lights. And once you accelerate, expect a fast pick-up! The tinted glass roof was kind of cool. The seats were comfortable enough. But all in all, it was too much hassle and too much anxiety. I’m now totally sold on gas-powered vehicles.

 

[beanhead]

Dang when I saw the article was written by "Stella Morabito" all I could think about was this:

 

[Detective D]

Notice that the latest journalistic fad is to rent an EV and then write how bad it is.


I Rented A Tesla For A Week And Am Totally Sold On Gas-Powered Cars
BY: STELLA MORABITO
AUGUST 21, 2023

View attachment 1513321
IMAGE CREDITMARCO VERCH/FLICKR/CROPPED/CC BY 2.0
After test-driving one for an entire week, we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any electric vehicle as long as we have the option of gas-powered cars or even hybrids.
View attachment 1513322
STELLA MORABITO

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• Share Article via Email

While planning a week-long trip to the Seattle area recently, I wondered aloud to my husband if we should rent a Tesla. Neither of us had ever driven an electric vehicle before. The price difference between the long-range Tesla Model 3 and a standard mid-size gas-fueled vehicle was pretty negligible.
We agreed it would be an interesting learning experience despite our objections to the eco-agenda to phase out gas-powered vehicles. We also don’t believe EVs are particularly environmentally friendly since they need batteries that require the strip-mining of rare earth minerals such as lithium and cobalt. The World Economic Forum knows this very well and is likely looking for heavy limits on EV mobility after eliminating gas-powered vehicles.


But more people like us are also finding some very practical reasons to object to Teslas. There’s a glut of them on the market now despite subsidies and price reductions. After test-driving one for an entire week (instead of just 30 minutes,) we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any EV as long as we have the option of gas-powered vehicles or even hybrids. Read on for seven big reasons why. (Yes, “mileage may vary.”)

1. Battery Drainage Is Stress-Inducing
In the Tesla, stress is a given. The battery drains faster than you might think. Our Model 3 had an advertised range of about 300 miles, but that’s if you charge it to 100 percent (which no one does) and run it to 0 percent (which no one does). So the practical range is about 150-200 miles. We felt compelled to recharge after going just 150 miles versus refueling after about 450 miles in our Honda Accord. The battery even drained 10 percent just sitting in the driveway for about a day. Granted, we covered some distances in Washington state during our travels. But that confirms EVs are a poor choice for road trips unless you enjoy the risk of being stranded.

2. Few Charging Station Locations and Length of Time There
Yes, there are now more than 1,500 “supercharger” stations across the U.S. Regular chargers can be found at hotels, where guests at least have a room to stay in while charging for three to six hours. We plugged into a Tesla charger at a hotel for nearly three hours to get the battery up to 85 percent from about 30. Compare that with about 150,000 gas stations where we could fill up in less than five minutes and be on our way, ready for the next 500 miles. Even at a supercharger, we had to wait about 30 minutes to up the battery charge by 50 percent. And it’s all a matter of luck if there are amenities close by, especially if you need a charge when it’s late at night.

3. Personal Safety at Charging Locations Can Feel Dicey
It’s a good idea to plan the times at which you charge your vehicle. We had to stop on a Sunday evening at a supercharger located in an Ikea parking lot. Ikea was closed, and there were no walkable amenities around it. Ditto for our visit to another Tesla supercharger located across from a pawn shop. I got the uneasy feeling that many of these unsupervised locations — and the length of time required to be there — were crime scenes waiting to happen. Sure you can stop charging and be on your way. But on your way to where? To another supercharger.

4. Texting While Driving Is Required
Texting while driving is considered dangerous and mostly illegal. How ironic that in a Tesla, you are dependent upon the touch screen that sits between the driver and passenger seat like a big laptop. The interface is not intuitive, and autopilot is too new and unpredictable to use safely.
Luckily for us, there was always a passenger available to cope with the screen. We had to be in motion in order to check for a charging station nearby. There’s nothing intuitive about the air conditioning. Ditto for the radio, which we could only “turn off” by reducing the volume. The windshield wipers are supposed to be automatic, but when it started raining, we realized they were “turned off.” After fishing around the screen, we finally pulled over to consult YouTube to get them working again.

5. No Convenient Manual to Consult While Renting
Our Tesla rental was proudly “paperless.” It would have been worthwhile to have a hard copy manual on hand that didn’t put us at the mercy of a satellite signal. Hertz at the Seattle airport could provide no support in answering our questions about the vehicle. When I was able to flag employees down (twice), they were unable to help. We hoped to get a clue from a manual in the glove compartment, but what glove compartment? The employee at the checkout kiosk explained that the glove compartment was permanently locked shut. There’s no spare tire either, by the way.

6. How to Lock the Car?
This was not clear, not even with the Hertz tutorials on renting a Tesla. The key card operates like a hotel-room “smart” key, but (per YouTube) we discovered we needed to find the “sweet spot” by the window on the driver’s side, apparently the only place to lock the car. There are ways to lock from the inside as well, but it all depends on your tech-savviness, and willingness to risk locking yourself in, I suppose.

7. Don’t Expect the Cost of a Battery Charge to Always Be Lower than Gasoline
There are so many variables in fuel/charging costs, it’s hard to know if you’re getting a deal. When we tapped the “lightning bolt” image on the Tesla’s touch screen, we got a list of superchargers in the region as well as the cost per kilowatt hour, which varied from about 18 cents to about 50 cents. Our cheapest total charge was around $7 and ranged up to $25. We generally didn’t put more than a 50 percent charge into the car at any one time, and given the miles driven, the $25 charge was about the same as we would have paid for gas. Since there are government subsidies both for purchasing an EV and for charging, I would expect those prices to rise if everyone gets with the program and demand is up.

But pigs will fly before I buy an EV based on my Tesla experience/experiment. This conclusion is not based on a one-hour test drive but on an entire week of driving in an EV-friendly part of the country.

Granted, there are some moments of fun when driving a Tesla. “Regenerative braking” is a system that recharges the battery. So once your foot is off the accelerator, the car slows down quickly. We rarely needed to use the brake at all, even at red lights. And once you accelerate, expect a fast pick-up! The tinted glass roof was kind of cool. The seats were comfortable enough. But all in all, it was too much hassle and too much anxiety. I’m now totally sold on gas-powered vehicles.

No spare tire? HA! Why would they put a spare tire in? The computer probably pulls itself over or drives itself to a dealer if it detects low tire pressure.
Plus, as if a rental place would trust someone to put a jack under a 6000lb car. Improper lift would probably stress the battery case, and we know what happens then.....

 

[hdwrench]

funny stuff ! some day maybe the rest of the world will realize that ev are not currently sustainable. AND i was just reading how fragile our electrical grid is , they’re saying now cold weather or a storm during the winter is to much draw on the grid . i wonder if adding 200 zillion cars recharging every 200 miles will help us …

 

[Under Pressure]

 

[Tony Tee]

EV 's in the cold Canadian climate do way worse.
I live in Florida and will never buy one. LOL!
We will probably turn into the Cuban automobile lifestyle repairing our old gold cars till we die.

 

[toolmanmike]

View attachment 1588724

Yep! http://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/hertz-tesla-selling/index.html#:~:text=Hertz, which has made a,purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

 

[Kern Dog]

View attachment 1588724

 

[Photon440]

Gas-powered cars are still far more reliable, it seems

 

[GetX'd]

August 17, 2023

Those EV Shortcomings Aren’t Shortcomings at All​

Wherever we drive nowadays, we see electric vehicles (EVs) amid the normal internal combustion cars and hybrids.

Maybe one in ten, maybe one in twenty, maybe one in a hundred. It all depends on where we live and where we go.

They are no longer the noticeable rarity they were just a few years ago; you no longer turn your head in surprise when you see that Tesla logo beside you.

The modern Left has a dream – that soon, very soon, every vehicle in the world will be electric, running on a heavy, cobalt-laden, lithium battery that needs to be charged up somewhere with electricity derived from an out-of-sight coal plant.

Every few trips, we old-fashioned ICE-drivers stop at a gas station for a quick fill-up. It takes two or three minutes, maybe five or six if we need to go into the store for a soda or a coffee; then we’re back on the road.

We rarely see the EVs charging up while we fill our normal cars with fuel. It takes too long, so they don’t usually do it at the gas station.

The EV’s current average, we are told, is eight hours to a “full charge,” whatever that means. It might be a couple hundred miles, maybe less, maybe more. Some chargers charge faster, some vehicles take longer. If it’s like any other kind of rechargeable battery (and they’re too new to be sure, but it makes sense), then as each battery ages, it will take longer and longer to charge up, and the mileage per charge will slowly decrease. That’s just how batteries work.

The EV advocates are legion. You see them in politics and newsmedia, at work and at school, singing the praises of their clean cars that never break down and meet all their needs perfectly.

Having installed a charging station at home, and/or working at a job that has a charging station just for them, their day-to-day lives are perfectly convenient. The challenge of the daily routine, in which we have to seek out an affordable gas station in the age of Joe Biden’s daily attacks on the oil industry, has been completely conquered.

Park the car and plug it in, and it’s fully charged for another normal day.

But… what about days that aren’t normal?

It’s summertime… for most of us, an exception to the routine. Let’s study a few typical summer days for a typical American family.

Many of us – hundreds of thousands of us, certainly, maybe millions – visit a cottage of our own, or a brother’s or cousin’s place, somewhere in the country, maybe on a lake, maybe on a river. There might be no electricity there, but that’s okay; the oven works on an oil generator or a propane tank. Great place to spend the weekend, doing some fishing, swimming, camping, waterskiing, or jet-skiing.

If this cabin is a hundred miles away, or a couple hundred, how do you get out of there, when you’ve run your EV out of power on the way in?

Many of us – hundreds of thousands, maybe millions – take city vacations too. We’ll take a weekend off, or a whole week, and visit the sites of New England, or drive up the Pacific coast, or hit the lakeshore towns of the Great Lakes, or any other such multi-stop vacation. The EV acolytes have an answer for this; “your hotel will have charger stations so you can charge up every night.” But will it? These systems are awfully expensive. And they take up space.

Hotels have never needed to be in the power business before. Now they’ll have to add a charger outside, essentially, for every single room. The fifty-room hotel will now need fifty chargers in its parking lot. The 200-room hotel will need 200 of them. Will the local electric grid support that draw? Is there room in the hotel’s parking lot for all those cars? If not, is there more land for the hotel to acquire to facilitate an EV-forced expansion?

Perhaps it’s time to say goodbye to the cheap hotel, the Expedia or PriceLine deal, the room that becomes affordable with your AAA or AMAC discount. If every hotel has to rip up every parking lot to install these chargers at a few grand apiece, they’re going to have far fewer parking spaces, and they’re going to have to charge you a lot more for your room.

Many of us, millions every year – visit amusement parks from Six Flags to DisneyLand. The range is wild; Cedar Point draws about 20,000 visitors per day, while DisneyWorld draws some 160,000 per day. The same goes for trips to great downtown centers like Chicago, New York, Boston and St Louis, where millions drive in for a day or a weekend of museums and zoos, theatres and restaurants.

Many stay in a hotel, many others drive in early in the morning, park at the event, and expect to drive home that night. There’s no place to charge during the day; if you hoped for that trip to be same-day, you’re out of luck. You won’t be able to recharge on that day trip, so you will need a (now expensive) hotel whether you like it or not. From the perspective of anyone over 1.5 hours away from your destination, the days of the “day trip” are over.

Perhaps you have relatives to stay with when on vacation. We’ve all spent a night or two with brothers or sisters, or cousins or uncles. Maybe they will eventually install a charger of their own, which they’ll need for their own EVs. Can your car hook up to it simultaneously, or will one of you have to face the morning without a charge?

Countless millions of Americans visit their state fair every year (your friendly correspondent went twice this year!). Let’s look at the Wisconsin State Fair as an example. About 100,000 attend each day, up to double that on the weekends if the weather cooperates. Attendees come from as little as a mile away or from as far as 400 miles away, because the fair is at the far southeast corner of a large state. It’s a day trip for those of us in northeast Illinois; it’s a multi-day commitment at least for exhibitors and attendees from Wausau, Eau Claire, Superior or Ashland.

People park at State Fairs on lawns or fields; there isn’t even a parking lot to wire for charging stations. Hundreds of homeowners in West Allis, WI rent out spaces to fairgoers on their own front lawns. Restaurants and clubs close for the day and rent out their parking lots; it can be more lucrative than their usual business.

How are most people going to do state fair in the age of the EV?

We’ve only scratched the surface, of course. Summertime in America is filled with special occasions – music festivals and sporting events, neighborhood festivals and church parties, each of which draw thousands, even tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of attendees. Country Thunder, Summer Camp, Wander Down – a host of new multi-act events crop up every year. They take place in fields, state parks, even on working farms between harvests.

Where are these rock, alternative, and country music fans supposed to charge their EVs for eight hours, or even get a “quick charge” in three or four, so they can go home when it’s over?

There is an answer to all this. Don’t worry. They haven’t forgotten all these things.

The elites who advocate the sole production of EVs have an answer for this: You just won’t be able to do these things anymore. That’s all.
They don’t believe you need to do these things. They want you to watch your entertainment on your smart TV or your laptop, on your streaming service, from the comfort of your apartment. If you want to attend a live performance, you can take public transportation to the nearest official venue, staffed by union members, ticketed by Ticketmaster.

You don’t need to go visit a river or lake, or travel to explore American heritage through Civil War or Revolutionary War sites. You don’t need fishing trips, hunting trips, road trips for baseball or football, college tours, family bonding drives.

Stay home. Stay safe. Stay still. Stay where we can watch you.

The conclusion is inescapable: In the final analysis, the EV pushers don’t see any gaps or contradictions. All the needs you have that EVs simply don’t meet, can’t meet, will never meet – well, these aren’t really needs at all.

You’re wrong to want to gather in groups of thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. All those EV shortcomings aren’t really shortcomings at all. Freedom of assembly, as described in the obsolete First Amendment, is dangerous, don’t you see, from the perspective of your betters.

What I wonder is should they continue down this disparate road to nowhere - those of us with GCE vehicles - how much will they likely force us to pay for fossil fuel? Will it even be made widely available or will the cabal choke off our access?

My nephew recently graduated and is now a bonafide software engineer. His new employer - a unicorn co with locations around the US - He chose Seattle. They slobber all over these young grads. Lots of $$ and stock options plus ridiculously pampered by other Bennie’s. He’s a car lover - unfortunately Ford is his preferred ride - but as an immigrant I kind of go with him because he insists on buying American. Got to love that. Anyway He’s Asian and his work location is next to a huge Microsoft campus - he says in his and the Softie garage are lines and lines of Teslas Parked there. Not his thing but is certainly the thing of a high percentage of his gen 24-27ish. Heavy on the Chinese flavor and other Asian youngsters.
Forgive them Father for they know not what they do…… Or are getting stuck with…