DL Open Thread: Saturday, January 30, 2021
Stolen Election Hardliner Refuses Audit–Of Her Own Election. This Arizona Rethuglican Party is self-destructing. Bigly. Keep it up.
‘Everybody Has A Plan Until They’re Punched In The Mouth’. Iron Mike might as well have been talking about the vaccine shit show the Biden Administration has inherited. Including 20 mill ‘missing’ doses of vaccine.
Report: Andrew Cuomo Significantly Undercounted Covid Nursing Home Deaths. Y’know, at first, I found his press conferences refreshing as an antidote to the Trump Show. Until it became obvious that they were all about him. It now turns out that, like Trump, he was lying his ass off.
Adam Kinzinger–Betraying His Party And His Church? Must be on the side of the Angels. An excellent read from The Atlantic.
Biden’s Climate Plan: An End To The Era Of Denialism? Well, GM seems convinced:
The days of the internal combustion engine are numbered.
General Motors said Thursday that it would phase out petroleum-powered cars and trucks and sell only vehicles that have zero tailpipe emissions by 2035, a seismic shift by one of the world’s largest automakers that makes billions of dollars today from gas-guzzling pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.
The announcement is likely to put pressure on automakers around the world to make similar commitments. It could also embolden President Biden and other elected officials to push for even more aggressive policies to fight climate change. Leaders could point to G.M.’s decision as evidence that even big businesses have decided that it is time for the world to begin to transition away from fossil fuels that have powered the global economy for more than a century.
What do you want to talk about?
“The days of the internal combustion engine are numbered.”
It depends on whether the industry can produce a reliable crossover-class family car (mini-SUV) at the $25-30K price point. Also depends on order-of-magnitude drops in battery costs.
Not sure how many working-class people with insecure incomes will be able to buy a >$35K EC just to get to work. A reliable used ICE car can now be had for <$10K. It will take a long time for EC "total cost of ownership" to overcome the current premium over a used ICE.
It remains to be seen whether used ECs will be as affordable. They will need thousands of dollars worth of new batteries, although other maintenance should be less).
Just because they stop producing them doesn’t mean there won’t be any on the roads. Even if everyone stopped making them by 2035, which is unlikely, they’ll still be around in 2050.
True. And over time the cost of legacy used ICEs will go up.
To avoid raising expenses for regular-income people, the price point for a reliable used EC ( including new batteries) needs to be <$10K (or whatever the future inflation-adjusted equivalent is),
True ‘dat. However, logic dictates that there will be a much higher percentage of electric cars on the road by 2035. Logic also dictates that prices for the batteries will fall as developmental technology improves.
That is true. Electric vehicles are cool and exciting. Unless you can’t afford one, then they are another symbol of class division. So the national policy should be to make ECs affordable.
Not likely. There’s never been a program to make anybody’s personal vehicles affordable, and you’re going to have an extremely hard time convincing anyone there should be.
We have a Fiat 500E & love it. The range is terrible if you are driving to San Deigo, but plenty for around town errands. It was (kinda) a beta test. Only sold new in Cali and Oregon.
The next gen models will have a 200 mile range.
I think replaceable batteries makes sense for long hauls. Battery replacement stations rather than gas or recharge stations. Batteries would have to be standardized as well as their location in EVs but that is no different than ICEs now.