So, I’m driving - on my way to somewhere - and the “low battery” light comes on. It’s the first time I forgot to fully charge my car. After a few miles the thing refuses to go any more. I sit on the side of the road thinking that if I still had my gas burning car I could call AAA to bring me some gas.
It doesn’t take much contemplation to fast forward a few years and realize that the fight among the several manufacturers to use their design for the universal emergency battery slot is so similar to the struggle for a universal standard for VCR tape machines; there can be only one winner. Of course I will have my car retrofitted for that emergency battery slot as soon as I get back home and my dealer gets the parts, once they do decide on the standard.
One has to wonder why quickly replaceable batteries were not part of the original design concept. I imagine my car having 6 or maybe 8 slots for 50-mile replaceable batteries. I imagine the vending machine with the replaceable batteries replacing the gas pump at my Quick Stop. And since I didn’t have a private parking place at my apartment or at work I didn’t have the expense of installing a charging station. The electric car thing may actually work after all.
How much did it set you back? My husband and others say they are very expensive, but I’m wondering how much more they cost than a gas eater. Of course, when the TV came out back in the 30s or 40s, only the rich had them with maybe one or two channels. Then the price came down eventually and by the 50s many more people had a TV with at least 3 channels. By the 70s, almost everyone had a TV with more channels in big cities (we had 7 channels), even if it was a Black and White TV. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a TV in the 70s, except maybe kids starting out on their own and even then they could by a portable that had a tiny screen. I’m expecting electric cars to go the same way price wise.
It seems you need to hang on to them for a longer period of time to get your money’s worth out of it.
Not just buying a new one every 2-4 years like some people like to do.
Then there’s this: (From Dec 2021)
I’m still driving my '07 Lincoln (78k miles) and '08 Chevy (160k miles). Both have been paid off for more than 10 years. Minimal repairs, though I imagine I’ll need to replace one before too long.
What would be great, is if all the costs, disposal, resource extraction, all up and down line, could all be factored in to some sort of “environment per mile” number.
I don’t think it will happen soon though, because it would expose the externalized costs that our system is currently trying to hide.
Yeah, I’ve wonder about that a lot also. I mean I love wind energy but we then look at those incredible windmill structures and machining, and transportation and wonder how much energy was consumed and how much CO2 produced, and how much does it really save in the end. But all sides are too scared to talk about it, seems to me.
It’s like the logic of building ‘bigger and better’ to fix problems that are being caused by yesterday’s ‘bigger and better’ never did sink in with me.
All because everyone on every side of this issue - has never wanted to face the fundamental reality of Earth’s biosphere, human over-population and creating a sustainable future. We need to power down and do more with less. It was all that simple. Less can be beautiful, but only if you are willing.
Although that transition needed to start in the '70s, or '80s, or '90s when the living was easy and we hadn’t yet burned up so much of our emergency runway.
Small changes in attitude and living and business, would have made profound differences. But, instead we pretty near totally squandered the past half century obsessing over yet more and more bigger and better and ‘too much never being enough’ has made the haves greedier and more vicious than ever.
Sadly only one way left to go from here. Especially since we’ve doubled down on gratuitous human grandstanding, billionaires and space tourism, squandering more million on colonizing Mars, a fools errand if there ever was one.
In a weird demonically poetic way, perhaps society is simply mirroring the trumpster-delusion-syndrome - with the prognosis being equally dark for both.
Couldn’t agree more CC. some call it The Progress trap. Always needing to improve when what we have is working. Instead of looking how to care for the hungry, we create a new diet, lie about the health benefits of organics, and make a better tasting apple.
I’d call it the greedy capitalist pig trap. Can’t make money staying the same.
True story - I heard about an engineer at GE, from years ago, who was sent out to garbage dumps to find GE refrigerators. You think, oh wow, they want to see what broke. Wrong. His job was to see what was NOT broken so they could cut back on the quality of those parts.
A solar generator usually includes solar panels and a backup battery power station. The solar panels collect the sun’s rays and convert it into energy, which is then stored in the backup battery power station. The backup battery power station supplies electricity to other devices and appliances via the standard AC output (120V) and various DC outputs (USB-A, USB-C, car outlet) when power is needed.
Geneverse’s SolarPower Series solar panels offers 50% higher solar power conversion efficiency, allowing you to harness and convert the sun’s rays in less time. Paired with our HomePower Series backup battery power station, you have the ability to power a wide range of home appliances and devices. What Is A Solar Generator? - Geneverse
For about 2000 you can get a pretty HD infinite powersupply system.
Given the new climate reality our national power grid will be less and less feasible. I mean when those huge transmission-line towers start toppling, replacing them will be an increasingly impossible challenge. Weakest links in the chains and such. When major mountain glaciers run dry and snow and rain is a fraction of what we’re used and our major rivers and reservoirs start running dry and the heat waves increase, . . .
Seems to me local and regional production and transmission is where it’s going to be at so far as future electricity.
It’s incredible after a half century of determined efforts to educate, cheap trick and lies and slander was all it took for humanity to turn its back on the future and wrap themselves in willful ignorance. Our Faustian bargain is coming due, it’s no wonder most just as soon not know a thing.
Hear, hear. It’s nice to know that sunlight can be converted for use in refrigerators and airconditioners.
There intense research in efficient electrical storage devices that can be charged with just daylight .
The idea that each home can have its own solar generator or that communities can pool and network a small local grid is promising. It is the future, finally arriving.
Quiet and clean and FREE!
$5000.00 will get you 3 generators and 2 panels. Keep 1 running, 2 charging , With reasonable energy conservation you might just be able to survive for a long time and get your investment back in about 2 years. From then you save your monthly electrical costs and be independent of the public grid completely.
The thing is that in this wasteful society, it is easy to simplify and reduce your footprint altogether and live smartly as nature intended you to live.
Actually I don’t own an electric vehicle and I don’t think I ever will. My post was just a bit of daydreaming about solving the problem of running out of juice out there on the road.
I expect the electric vehicle notion will fizzle out in just a few years. Way too many problems and way too little benefit for vehicle owners.
So, California will allow only sales of electric vehicles in a few years but you will be able to keep your gas car. Great news for the auto repair shops and parts manufacturers. Prediction #1: sales of gas cars in California will skyrocket in the months before the law takes effect. Prediction #2: As the electric vehicle notion fades California will have an environmental crisis disposing of lithium batteries.
