Joe Biden has a love affair with the Electric Vehicles. As a tried and true believer that automobiles are one of the major causes of climate change, and totally not buying into the fact that climate does indeed change (it’s what defines it as climate in the first place), Biden is convinced that we need to get rid of fossil fuels at every and any turn. He recently announced that his administration was going to insist that some 500,000 EV charging stations be set up across the US by 2030, a scant 7 years away.
Meanwhile, Tesla, which is probably the leading EV automaker in the world, is boasting some 36,000 charging stations. Now, in order to use a Tesla charging station, you have to have an app on your phone that allows you access. Oh, and you have to be driving a Tesla. If you’re driving something else, you’re out of luck. But Tesla says they will try to open up to the rest of the EV community by the end of 2024.
So, Biden is all excited about EV’s. And while that may be the future for automobiles, not just in this country but around the world, here in the US there are several problems that have yet to be solved.
First and foremost is the buyers remorse that occurs when people buy an electric car and then find out they are limited as to where they can go because of a lack of nationwide charging stations. There are currently 1.4 million gas pumps located at about 175,000 gas stations around the country. Currently, there are 41,000 charging stations, with only about 5,000 of them being the “fast charging stations” that can charge most cars in 30 minutes or so. The “level 2” chargers take much longer, up to four hours to charge. That’s like half a driving day.
So finding a charging station can be a nightmare, and is causing a lot of original buyers to stay close to home, where they can plug in at home, or go on some search escapade, since there currently isn’t an app that shows where the charging stations are.
Now we move on to other areas of note. Batteries in these new EV’s aren’t quite caught up with fossil fuels yet. A battery may last up to 10 years, if you live in an area like San Diego, where the temperature doesn’t get too cold (like the upper midwest and New England), or too hot (like Arizona and Nevada), which drain batteries very quickly. Now, I’m sure that the engineers and smarter minds than me are already working on this problem, but in truth, the current structure of a battery is not a very efficient energy storage system.
Another problem is the cost of replacing batteries, that are supposed to last up to 200,000 miles. Tesla is looking at unveiling a battery that can last a million miles. But the cost? It can be as much as $18,000. So, let’s say you live in Arizona or Minnesota and get only about five years of battery life. That means every five years you own your vehicle, you’re going to be paying $18 grand to replace it. Keep a car for ten years (the length of the estimated battery life), and you could be looking at about another 50% of the cost of the car just to keep it running. Not efficient as of today.
What about what happens to the batteries when they are spent? Can you imagine what would happen if the 248 million cars on the road today where to be EV’s and need new batteries? First of all, what are you doing with the old batteries? That’s a LOT of toxic batteries you have to try and do something with, and to date, there is no viable way to recycle them. That causes a lot more pollution than what the current fossil fuel vehicles use.
And then there is the safety issue. First responders are saying they hate trying to rescue someone that’s been in an accident in an EV because there is the distinct possibility of the car erupting in flames due to it’s battery being damaged. In fact, in some areas, fire departments have already warned EV users that if they get in an accident, they will not be able to save them due to this fear. And the car makers have no real plan to solve this dilemma.
Electric vehicles may be the way of the future…but we are still decades away from that occurring regardless what Joe Biden wants. By the time there is an EV in every garage in this country, Joe will be dead and buried for years.
Carry on world…you’re dismissed!
The Lone Cactus 
And don’t forget about the electric power grid! Some states (California) are telling EV owners NOT to charge their cars because, at times, it puts too much of a strain on the power grid!
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I can’t remember where I read it, but I read that in order to do what Biden wants, we need to DOUBLE the power grid in this nation (it’s already being taxed to the limit without 248 million EV’s!) I think the cost was somewhere between 3 and 5 TRILLION to do that. Biden doesn’t talk about that, does he?
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Some people claim that I have a mean streak. I don’t think that’s true at all. I simply think that everyone who buys an E.V. deserves one. More than that, I think anyone who buys an E.V. should buy one for the wife, too. As the Gunny says, “Keep it moving, people.”
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You don’t have a mean streak that I’ve seen. I don’t think I’d ever want to cross you…I believe that would be bad, but you’re not mean. You’re truthful. There IS a huge difference!
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I recently heard on a drive-time conservative radio station that Biden has been quietly putting more funds into nuclear power. Therefore, the South Texas Nuclear plant (which I think they said would provide as much electricity as 500K wind turbines and never freeze over and all of Texas’s solar panels and still produce power at night) was getting a 10% boost in federal money. Still, that hardly makes up for Bidenflation in my view.
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Well, I would give Biden credit for FINALLY realizing that nuclear power is actually cleaner than fossil fuels and much more efficient than the garbage that he is pushing. You can’t use wind everywhere without killing off the avian population, and you can’t use solar everywhere except maybe here in the desert (where putting solar on my house was the first thing I did when we moved here!) I’d give him credit for finally getting on board on that one. Not a ton, just a little. Of course, I came from an area where we had not one but TWO nuclear power plants within a 20 mile radius of our home. Never had a problem.
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The only place that there is more wind (and, for that matter, gas) is the White House loo.
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Potato, pot-aa-to. It seems Biden is shunting $1.2 billion to some 14 nuclear plants across America that the liberal Democrats needlessly almost killed off. Considering that the spend uranium is now needed for munitions and tank armor, maybe the war hawks in the Democrat party overcame the peaceniks with a little cash.
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