It's amusing to watch people argue against facts and inevitability.

There is no debate that the petroleum/gas, automotive, and related industries have received incredible subsidies, PPPs, and low interest loans over the years, from bailouts to cash for clunkers to outright giving them money. We've gone to war at least once over oil. The cost of Solyndra versus bombing the daylights out of Iraq (pun totally intended) is 300 million versus 300 billion. I hate corporate welfare in all its forms but what the electric car business is getting is a fraction of what we've historically spent.

There is no debate electric cars are coming. In some form, in some way, some significant portion of cars will be electric. For certain applications it makes economic sense, such as high torque applications (towing for example). For others it's convenient, such as that crossover used to commute to work that's charged inside a garage. I know a lot of people who drive Teslas and they all seem to enjoy them.

Gasoline cars aren't going away any time soon, probably not in our lifetimes. Cars are incredibly long-lasting investments. You'll be able to buy and maintain a gas engine easily for the next 100 years, just like you can buy parts for your 100 year old Luger, your 100 year old house, or 100 year old watch.

Of course there will be failed technologies and companies. Just like in every industry. The automotive world is littered with failure. When's the last time you saw a Packard, a DeSoto, or a Cord? Heck, it's been a while since I've seen an Oldsmobile, a Mercury, or a Plymouth.

Yes, we will have to make investments in our electrical grid. But we've been doing this for a hundred years and pretty good at it. Production of energy at scale roughly 2-3x more efficient than production in an internal combustion engine. And public utilities are required in most places to keep up with demand and service customers. And just like I don't care what powers my car, I don't care how the power gets to my outlet or where it came from. Just as long as it doesn't pollute the air or water, make my city into a Superfund site, or create a nuclear waste site.

And if we truly, actually, seriously have widespread impacts to the electrical grid like some of you scardycats are suggesting, we'll be riding horses and bicycles and not cars. That's some apocalyptic-level nonsense because if it were to come true there is no amount of planning or preparation any of us could do to make a meaningful difference. You aren't going to stockpile a lifetime supply of car parts and gasoline in the backyard of your suburban single family home.


So what's the debate here? Some of you are painfully uncomfortable electric cars are coming. I think there's a medicated ointment for that. GM saying they'll do something in 15 years? Fine. Whatever. Corporate planning beyond 10 years is a crapshoot because that's about the length of a modern product development lifecycle, and most investments are made on a 2-5 year scale. I do technology strategic planning and when someone comes to me with a "Big Grand Plan" and no product I don't take them seriously. I'll believe something GM says about EVs when they can consistently demonstrate building something interesting and massively profitable that isn't body-on-frame or a Corvette.

By the way, the hybrid or electric Corvette is coming. Likely in 2-3 years. The chassis of the C8 is very clearly set up to accept a battery pack where the tunnel used to be. So stock up on that medicated ointment.

They will be able to change their corporate name to General Electric.

Caneau, using present value/future value numbers, in a competitive setting with foreign sources of oil and alternate domestic sources of energy, could you provide a comparative cost/benefit analysis of "subsidies" for the petroleum industry vs "subsidies" of the electrical industry?

And I assume that if (when) the gov't fully controls the electrical energy grid in the US, you will have full confidence that such power will be economical and reliable.

quote:

Originally posted by caneau:
It's amusing to watch people argue against facts and inevitability...
...So what's the debate here? Some of you are painfully uncomfortable electric cars are coming...

I for one don't have a problem with evolving technology. Make it better than existing technology and you won't have to shove it down people's throats.

Example: Banning incandescent light bulbs to force people to use florescent, which no one liked.
However, when LED tech started getting good, you didn't have to force people to buy them. They put out excellent light, use very little energy and last a lot longer than standard incandescent bulbs. Oh, and they don't create a lot of heat. I love 'em.

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:
Caneau, using present value/future value numbers, in a competitive setting with foreign sources of oil and alternate domestic sources of energy, could you provide a comparative cost/benefit analysis of "subsidies" for the petroleum industry vs "subsidies" of the electrical industry?

And I assume that if (when) the gov't fully controls the electrical energy grid in the US, you will have full confidence that such power will be economical and reliable.

You pose three questions in one so let me take them one at a time:

1) Present value vs. future value -- if I knew that, I'd be on GoldPlatedMP5Forum.com not SigForum.com. Kidding aside, that's communicated through market capitalization. The market cap on Tesla exceeds that of GM despite making far fewer vehicles and reaching far fewer markets. So the market as a whole predicts that investing one dollar into an electric car company will likely yield a higher return than investing that same dollar into a gas car company.

2) A competitive setting with foreign oil - I think that's basically the cost of gas, no? If you want to get a little more sophisticated, it's the total cost of ownership of a vehicle per year. Edmunds.com has (or had?) a good calculator and you could use it to compare the cost of ownership of a gas car versus a hybrid versus a Tesla. It's not perfect but the cost of owning a Tesla appears to be less than the cost of owning a similarly priced S-Class or 7-Series. But most of that is in depreciation and maintenance, not gas.

3) As for the amount of subsidies, based on my back of the napkin math, it appears that the US federal government has funded in total over the last decade about $10 billion to electric vehicle development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...in_the_United_States, so about a billion a year.

That's compared to about $20 billion (at least) for oil and gas subsidies and tax breaks every year. (https://grist.org/politics/bid...e-cant-end-them-all/
My numbers could be off by a few billion because it's obviously not even close. We spend a lot of tax money propping up multi-billion dollar oil and gas corporations.

As far as subsidies of the electrical industry, I could write a dissertation on that -- everything from REA to TVA to decades of DOE programs. But the point was never really transportation, it was to spread electricity across the country as a public utility.


Here's where facts stop and my opinion begins.

I hate corporate welfare and I would love nothing more than to end subsidizing for-profit energy production. Either run as a non-profit utility or complete in the free market.

Also, I think the biggest benefit of electric vehicles is the hope of leaving the Middle East alone. We would have no interests there if it wasn't for oil. No need to go to war, no need to send plane loads of money, no need to sell weapons to the Saudis so they can duke it out with Iran. That alone would pay for every energy grid improvement we could imagine. A 20% reduction in DoD, State, and other related spending would amount to something like $150 billion per year (assuming a $750B DoD + State budget). That's a lot of power plants.

quote:

Originally posted by caneau:
It's amusing to watch people argue against facts and inevitability...
...So what's the debate here? Some of you are painfully uncomfortable electric cars are coming...

It's even more amusing watching the EV supporters twist themselves into a knot with pretzel logic trying to justify the gov't mandates and the corporate virtue-signaling to shove a product down people's throats before it's ready. If it's so great and affordable, that wouldn't be necessary. Saying we're going to make everyone use EV's by an arbitrary date, with an electrical infrastructure that is not even remotely capable of supporting it is the equivalent of everyone shooting their horse in the head before the IC automobile was perfected and the petroleum industry had sufficiently developed the refining and distribution systems necessary to support them.

I don't think Henry Ford and the Wright brothers has subsidies or tax breaks to develop their far more significant technological breakthroughs, so why is this necessary for EV manufacturers and users? It's Crony Capitalism. The EV true believers and fellow travelers should put their money where their mouth is and invest their money, not the taxpayers.

quote:

Originally posted by caneau:

Also, I think the biggest benefit of electric vehicles is the hope of leaving the Middle East alone. We would have no interests there if it wasn't for oil. No need to go to war, no need to send plane loads of money, no need to sell weapons to the Saudis so they can duke it out with Iran. That alone would pay for every energy grid improvement we could imagine. A 20% reduction in DoD, State, and other related spending would amount to something like $150 billion per year (assuming a $750B DoD + State budget). That's a lot of power plants.

We don't need EVs to leave the Middle East alone. We can develop our own energy supplies but politics and special interests want to prevent that (think XL pipeline and fracking). We're a net exporter right now, for the moment. We also send planeloads of money around the world to a lot more countries than just those in the Middle East (recall the latest "COVID relief bill"). We also sell plenty of weapons to other countries that have no oil interests, based on other security issues.... Korea, Japan, Australia, Western Europe, Central and South America, etc. So developing EVs isn't going to change any of that one bit. In fact, you're likely just to trade conflict in one area of the world for another. Where do all the strategic materials come from to make the EV batteries... not from our country.

It's also pretty funny if you think a gov't agency, especially a federal one, would ever see a budget reduction. That's never going to happen. All those fiefdoms and bureaucracies would fight to the death.

quote:

Originally posted by JoseyWales2:

quote:

Originally posted by caneau:
It's amusing to watch people argue against facts and inevitability...
...So what's the debate here? Some of you are painfully uncomfortable electric cars are coming...

It's even more amusing watching the EV supporters twist themselves into a knot with pretzel logic trying to justify the gov't mandates and the corporate virtue-signaling to shove a product down people's throats before it's ready. If it's so great and affordable, that wouldn't be necessary. Saying we're going to make everyone use EV's by an arbitrary date, with an electrical infrastructure that is not even remotely capable of supporting it is the equivalent of everyone shooting their horse in the head before the IC automobile was perfected and the petroleum industry had sufficiently developed the refining and distribution systems necessary to support them.

I don't think Henry Ford and the Wright brothers has subsidies or tax breaks to develop their far more significant technological breakthroughs, so why is this necessary for EV manufacturers and users? It's Crony Capitalism. The EV true believers and fellow travelers should put their money where their mouth is and invest their money, not the taxpayers.

For what I see the only reason we are in the Middle East is to protect upwards of 16 Billion in arms sales annually. Saudi and Israel at the top of the lists

Only reason I got an EV was to use my new vehicle reimbursement system as a profit center and not a break even/ slightly loose money scenario with my 4 runner

There are so many issues with going to EV over ICEV that it isn’t even realistic. Let’s start with batteries. If there is a decent substitute for Lithium batteries out there, why aren’t we seeing them in electronics? Because they don’t exist.

Electric infrastructure is in most cases decades old. Are we going to replace and upgrade a century’s worth of transmission & distribution? If so, where are we going to get the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of miles of wire, towers, poles, insulators, transformers? How about the construction crews to install them? You can’t hire unskilled labor to do that job, replicating an effort that has taken us about 100 years in 15!

You don’t like corporate welfare (a BS term from the far Left for not taxing us as much as they would like)? Wait until you have to double the generation capacity in this country, again in 15 years or so. That would be 400 new nuclear plants or 800 new fossil plants. We don’t have the ability to build the equipment needed to build those plants.

You think your power bills are high now, wait until the electric industry needs to raise their rates to cover all that capital investment and all those workers to build and maintain their systems.

EVs fall into the same category as solar/wind/fusion power/interplanetary travel. Cool, but not practical.

The biochem geek in me likes the idea of hydrogen fuel cells, but thinks storing energy in the form of hydrogen is a bad idea. (The closer we get to the Kreb’s cycle, the more efficient we are, probably.)

With that said, heavy vehicles have been hybrid drive trains for some time now - locomotives, ships, large dump trucks, etc.

I’m fairly certain almost all cars will be electric drive trains, with either batteries or generators, in the near future.

I think if we had more straightforward diesel regulations, many cars would already be there.

What exactly is so retarded about this direction? Considering the advancements already made in e-powered propulsion, the handwriting's been scorched on the proverbial stone tablets for some time for the demise of the petrolhead. The younglings that are--like it or not--taking over this Earth are by and large plainly tired of fossil fuel and its perceived impacts--whether proven or not--upon this planet that THEY will be the caretakers of. For us of the older generations, our time has long past. Most of us here are not of the 18-35 demographic that companies and businesses covet and pander to. GM is only among the latest to finally acknowledge this.

Drive a Tesla and experience its instant-on torque. Just as instant will your addiction be, less-than-sterling build quality overlooked. There's some serious teeth to this evolution.

You guys have like a couple arguments that you keep coming back to. I currently look out the window as the snow falls. Going 0-60 in 3 seconds holds no appeal. Many of us, perhaps most of us, drive cars because it is necessary. The whole this thing is so fast argument doesn’t really drive my car buying. At all. Save the planet? You guys aren’t even beating that drum because you know the math doesn't hold up. Infrastructure? You guys are just confident the change will come quick. And painless. Because right now ICE infrastructure is both quick and painless. Range? The new battery will be great and just around the corner. Trust me. Charging speed? Fast as filling your tank. Umm, when is all this going to happen? Soon. Right around the corner. It’s the next big thing.

The next big thing sells itself. Always has. This ain’t selling itself. I didn’t even hit all the hard questions yet to be answered.

As for subsidies, the mental gymnastics necessary to compare tax breaks and outright subsidies is comical. We have added corporate tax code to your math to make it work. Tell you what. Give the average gas powered Corolla buyer 7500 bucks tax credit if he buys an ICE powered Corolla and see how well they sell. Nobody had to put a subsidy on an iPad or a Android phone or a tulip. They sold themselves because it filled a need and worked and made sense. Except for the tulip.

It’s coming, on that we agree. Where we disagree is that it’s coming because it’s getting rammed down your throat, rationality or sense be damned. Oh but drive it once and you’ll be hooked. Fuck me.

I agree that electric vehicles have a place, if I commuted in a major city, think chicago or new york, I would lease one.

but until the technology and infrastructure matures I would not own one.

I think an electric version of my current car, a tuned GTI), would be a blast. Instant torque is fun and since I seldom ( yes officer...seldom ;-) )drive the car flat out for long periods it might work.

but since I also can drive several hundred miles ( sometimes in the same day) for work I don't think an EV is practical...

when they can produce a 4x4 that can do 600 miles a day and charge in less than an hour I will consider investing in one.


All that being said I still would not buy a GM product, IMHO 99% of their designs suck and their QC still lags behind most brands.

1) ICE cars won't be gone by 2035. GM isn't saying "We won't support ICE cars in 14 years." They're saying their corporate target is to not make any new ones. ICE cars will be around widely easily into the second half of the 21st century. Cars last an incredibly long time and on average people are owning their vehicles for a decade.

Pun intended -- it's not going to be a flip of the switch.

Put another way, nobody on this forum will ever have to buy an electric car in your lifetime. You'll have ICE options for decades to come, likely with performance vehicles, support for classic cars, and niche applications like off-road vehicles designed to operate "off grid." Your F-150 will be available with a gas engine for years to come.

2) No corporate subsidies for Ford or the Wright Brothers? Oh brother, let's go over some transportation history.
After the Civil War the dominant form of transportation for 50 years was the train. We trained tens of thousands of people on how to run and build railroads to resupply the front lines. After the war they bought they bought as surplus the equipment they used (or just kept it), and went on to build the rail network. But all that "seed funding" as we know it today was from Uncle Sam.

Rail continued to be the dominant form of transportation until the 1920s and 30s when cars and planes started to become increasingly prevalent. The government invested billions of dollars in roads, airfields, and a slew of new technologies through various War Department contracts. WWI spurred that on. But so did corruption. The GM streetcar scandal is a case study. But corruption aside, if you're a railroad owner in the 1920s and 1930s watching the government spend billions of dollars on roads, bridges, and airports the arguments you're making sounds a lot like what we're hearing now. "It's unproven technology!" "No car can ever replace the capacity of a train!" "A train is the most efficient form of transportation per mile possible!" "We have spent billions on a rail network!" All these statement are somewhat true but have some underlying fallacies, from sunk costs fallacies to a lack of total cost accounting.

Then WWII came around which was pretty much the definition of corporate welfare. Contracts awarded to anyone who could weld and rivet two plates together. Government showing up to Ford, GM, Chrysler, Curtiss-Wright, Lockheed, Grumman, and all the other usual suspects with wheelbarrows full of cash asking them to boost production by an order of magnitude. 1942 must have been an interesting time in government spending. And at the end they got to keep it all. Ford didn't have to give back the massive factories they used to make bombers. They turned around and started making millions of cars.

It's no surprise that by the 1970s most railroads were bankrupt. They couldn't compete when the government had just spent abstractly large amounts of money on their transportation sector rivals. And no, I'm not here to lament or defend rail. It was a dying technology for mass consumer transport and its efficiency is subject to large batch sizes and inflexibility in error handling which are two staples that makes or breaks any industrial or logistics process. The point is, government spending diminished rail at the benefit of aviation, cars, and trucks much faster than it would have on the open market.

3) A few of you are saying "electric cars are unproven tech" and "when will I see my fast charging cars with 400 mile ranges." Toyota introduced the first mass-market hybrid that looked and functioned like a car in 2000. Yes, I know the Honda Insight was first but that wasn't a practical vehicle. So in 22 years we went from having hybrid cars go from niche to commodity. And probably the only reason they haven't been even more widespread is because the technologies of a hybrid trickled into ICE cars such as cylinder deactivation, turning off the engine at stoplights, 7+ gear ratio automatic transmissions, high efficiency tires, and significantly improved aerodynamics.

If we compare like-for-like and look at the trajectory to that of electric cars, we're halfway along the curve with the Model S's introduction in 2012. In that time we've roughly doubled the range, halved the cost, and cut charging time from "overnight" to "an hour." That's pretty solid progress. If it keeps pace for another 8 or 10 years I don't see any reason why we can't be in the same place as we are currently with hybrids, which is to say a "slightly premium but widespread product."


So what's the issue here besides a general discomfort with anything new? GM should rightfully be concerned because heavy duty vehicles with high-torque applications are their bread and butter. GM could make nothing more than the Silverado and its offshoots and still be an incredibly successful car company. What they're facing is that electric cars are perfect for heavy duty, high torque applications. Ford and GM aren't worried about the Model S. They're worried about a Cybertruck 3.0 with a 1000 mile range and 1200 ft lbs. of torque. They're concerned that if they don't start making investments now, Tesla or others will start making pickup trucks that eat into their cash cows by offering better performance and lower costs to operate. And based on the way things are going, they have every right to be scared.

SCREW GM!
Good Riddance to this un American democrat party Lap Dog.
No thanks to ANY GM product!

To be honest, I dropped any consideration of a newer GM vehicle after they decided to drop the GTO after 2006.

I was really hoping to have replacement parts for my 04.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
To be honest, I dropped any consideration of a newer GM vehicle after they decided to drop the GTO after 2006.

I was really hoping to have replacement parts for my 04.

Would have been a great car had they not put the fuel tank in the trunk. Complete deal breaker. But likely what killed it was the boring styling. It didn't look like a 400 hp car. And looks sell far more cars than 0-60 times.

Thoughts for caneau.

1. Present value/future value recognizes that $1Billion 50 yrs ago is worth quite a bit more than $1B today, and adjusts for such.

2. Re Edmunds. What might the annual cost for owning a gas vs electric car be before any and all subsidies, ie, different preferential treatments? As I mentioned before, allowing a tax ded for foreign taxes paid or for intangible expenses is not a "subsidy" as liberals would claim.

3. I looked at your grist.org website. The first three tabs are "climate" "justice" "politics". They are an environmental non profit in Seattle. I have zero confidence they would present a fair and balanced picture of oil subsidies.

I don't know if you remember the OPEC/Arab oil embargo. The US was importing significant amounts of foreign oil. OPEC wanted to significantly raise the cost of energy to the US (they had somewhat of a strangle hold on us). Might some of the socalled "subsidies" have helped the US work toward energy independence? The US is notably more energy independent these days due to increased domestic production. Is the avg American in better position today than they would be if we still got a significant portion of our energy from overseas (at 2x or 3x the cost of domestic oil??)

As to electric power, do you really trust the gov't to (oversee, regulate) efficient, economic, and reliable electrical power? I spent roughly 4 decades in CA where the gov't has notable control over "regulated" utilities. I have been through the CA power blackouts, a consequence of their enviro policies. Seems to me the liberal push for EV's has more to do with control than with economics or the environment.

I think most of the people vehemently apposed to Electric power are that way because they see it as the lefty tree huggers pushing it on them. No amount of facts or even the reality of actually driving one will ever change that. My concern is that if this is shown to be far superior in the future then the lefties have one more feather in their cap if we are giving them credit for it.

GM is just following the market and making a smart business decision. We tend to think we are the leaders of the world in most things but we are behind the EV curve as compared to all of GM’s target audience.

GM sold about 8 million cars last year.
Less than 3 million where sold in the US.

They would have to be dumb to not focus on their core audience, especially when they know the US will be in the same position in the near future.

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:
I think most of the people vehemently apposed to Electric power are that way because they see it as the lefty tree huggers pushing it on them. No amount of facts or even the reality of actually driving one will ever change that. My concern is that if this is shown to be far superior in the future then the lefties have one more feather in their cap if we are giving them credit for it.

GM is just following the market and making a smart business decision. We tend to think we are the leaders of the world in most things but we are behind the EV curve as compared to all of GM’s target audience.

GM sold about 8 million cars last year.
Less than 3 million where sold in the US.

They would have to be dumb to not focus on their core audience, especially when they know the US will be in the same position in the near future.

I lived in Silicon Valley for close to 40 years, worked in high tech, also taught business in college, we studied Tesla every year. I had neighbors that worked in Tesla mgmt. My concern is that when stripping out all gov't incentives on both sides, electric vehicles are not economically or environmentally superior to gas vehicles. Plus, it is much easier/more efficient to store energy using carbon based energy than electric battery based energy. And as I have posted, I don't have confidence in the heavily gov't regulated electricity industry.

So if the majority of the market wants EV's, that's free enterprise/capitalism. And that's fine. But if the gov't tells me that I can't own a gas powered vehicle, and that same gov't controls the electricity market, I am concerned.