From Eric Peters, on a guest post on theburningplatform.com:
Imagine that the government decided to tax you to finance a step ladder project to the Moon.
In a very real way, that’s exactly what’s happening. In California right now – and probably soon, other states as well.
The “moon shot” in question is a $22 million project (just for openers) to build thousands of electric vehicle charging stations at $15,000 a piece in the Los Angeles area to support electric cars … which can’t get very far without an electric umbilical cord.
Electric cars like the Nissan Leaf and the electric version of the VW Golf have a full-charge range of about 80 miles under ideal conditions. Less, if it’s very cold – or very hot – outside. The efficiency of electric batteries decreases with temperature extremes as well as use of accessories such as headlights and air conditioning and heaters.
Leaving aside the luxury-car price tag of electric cars (the Leaf and electric Golf, which both list for about $30,000, are the “cheapies” of the bunch; a Tesla starts at about $70k), their limited radius of action makes them useless for other than short trips – under ideal conditions – and when there’s a place to plug in at each end.
And even when there is a place to plug in, the wait is Soviet.
It takes at least 30-45 minutes to recharge an electric car using a high-capacity “super” charging system like the ones being pushed (for you to pay for) by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and being implemented in California.
Who is going to queue up to wait 30-45 minutes to recharge their $30,000 electric car so they can travel maybe another 80 miles before having to stop for another 30-45 minutes? Keep in mind, this assumes ideal conditions. Sunny and warm (but not too warm). If you have to use the headlights or the air conditioning or the heater, your mileage will vary. It’s also necessary – if you want to get where you are going – to drive at a Prius-esque pace. Sustained speeds higher than about 50 MPH dramatically reduce the electric car’s range, as does anything more than the gentlest acceleration.
Meanwhile, the humblest new economy car that costs half as much – and which doesn’t require thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded bribes to induce people to buy one – can travel 300-400 miles at 75 MPH on a tank of gas. And when the tank runs dry, it can be refilled in five minutes … for about $20.
You do the math.
To continue reading: Paying for Electric Cars…Twice
130 years ago the first electric car could do 40 miles on a charge./ Can we make a wild guess as to why that has not gotten better?
A fairly astounding bit of technical trivia: The power equivalent, ie, time rate of transfer of energy, of filling your car from an ordinary gasoline pump is on the order of 15 MEGAwatts. To put that in perspective, if we assume, for the sake of round numbers, that the average home draws, on average, 1500 watts, that’s 10,000 average homes worth of power.