DawgTalkers.net Forums Thread Like Summary - What a pain in the butt

https://www.businessinsider.com/toyota-bz4x-electric-car-road-trip-charging-time-range-2023-4?amp

I wont be buying an EV until the tech matures. This sounds like a complete pain in the butt. Who wants to plan their life around charging a car?

Manufacturing in the US in general needs to make a huge comeback in every sector.

Those conditions will prob be met sooner than you might think.

We've already passed the tipping point for this tech trend, and we're not going to go backwards. Now, market forces will take over, and you'll see exponential growth the same way we did with internal combustion 100 years ago, and computer tech 50 years ago at the dawn of the semiconductor era. (When I was in HS, Texas Instruments calculators were the modern-day game-changer. Now, smart phones have more computing capacity than the room full of fridge-sized NASA computers that got us to the moon & back).

Two big reasons for my bold predix just happened in the last few months: the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Those two new laws are already influencing the day-to-day growth of both national infrastructure and the supporting tech that will fuel the new usages. End result: cars will quickly get better, more efficient and cheaper because market competition always works that way. The speed at which the market propels growth in the private sector will necessitate analogous growth in infrastructure, so gov't will have to keep up. (Win/win for us consumers)

Already, the Big 3 Detroit makers are committing to re-tooling their fleets to embrace E-tech, with plans to go full-on electric within the next decade.

A couple years back, we had this same EV discussion, wherein I laid out a basic plan for establishing infrastructure. My approach was simple:
STEP ONE: retrofit every turnpike comfort center to include the same number of fast-charging stations as gasoline pumps.
STEP TWO: install fast-charging charging stations at all Interstate rest areas.
STEP THREE: provide incentives for local municipalities and their private energy suppliers to extend the infrastructure to exurb and rural communities. In other words, infiltrate/piggyback the existing infrastructure, and hit the ground running. We then only have to graft new tech onto an already-existing grid, not needing to re-invent the wheel.

_________________________

I've been all over this since the days when I was branded a 'tree-hugger' at my most previous job- more than 40 years ago.

The things I predicted back then are now coming to pass- in spades. Back then, I was a lowly union-backed hourly employee at our local oil refinery, when top SOHIO brass from CLE sent out a corporate-wide, multi-topic questionnaire. On it, we dirty, grime-covered oilers were asked: "What would you like to see from our company, moving forward?" I knew what they wanted: they wanted to know how hourly employees' working conditions could be changed to make things better. I took a totally different approach. I still remember what I told them, when I was a 22 year-old OM&S ('Oil Movement and Storage') "Pumper":

"I want to see Standard Oil diversify its R&D to employ solar, nuclear, and geothermal energy. I want to see this company become 'Standard Energy,' instead of just 'Standard Oil.' "

Crickets.
That was back in 1979.

They didn't listen to me back then, and I don't really expect most folks to hear to me even now.
After almost a half-century of being ignored, I'm pretty much resigned to it.

But here we are.

Clemdawg's predix:
I'm not the smartest mf in the world. I'm not even the smartest mf on this tiny little corner of the internet. But I am old. Old enough to have been witness to 4 generations of Human Behavior Patterns. And I'm telling us all: Elec car tech is gonna overwhelm America's heel-draggers, simply because they are heel-draggers... and not in-tune with how fast this (r)evolution is happening.

___________________________

I'm OK with The New, so long as I can still buy/restore/drive the first car I ever owned outright, and drive her on the same roads that support a majority of electric vehicles in the future.
I'm OK with being that gray-haired Dinosaur who gets the looks on the roads, for as long as it's legal. And yes, I'll consent to drive her with a current-gen catalytic converter, even though cats were a huge political wedge issue of the times. And I'll rider her in public for as long as she+me be legal.

Because no modern electric car is ever gonna look, feel, sound, respond to my touch, or smell like My Girl.
I will ride her until the law takes her away from me.





just sayin',
Clemdawg.

I also see there is a 30% tax credit to offset the cost of hardware and installation in your own home, up to $1,000.

There's still hope, GM. Besides, we all know that anything that tries to kill you is only going to die tryin'!

I'm probably out of yarn for the day now.

jc

Another thing that needs to change: the current builder of ev batteries is China. That gives them way too much power over us. The usa needs to start producing these.

Something we can agree on.

Those are the things to focus on.