This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1385397
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1385397
I dislike the charging station maps like this, because it treats EV charging like gas stations.
In reality, wherever you have a plug, you can charge your EV, so the true map is wherever there is electricity.
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EV transportation. Remember 20% of electrical production in the US is nuclear and nuclear is 50% of the carbon free total.
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True that electric vehicles do have an infrastructure problem. And, all new fuel technologies that could combat climate change have an infrastructure problem.
But, the EV has an infrastructure advantage too. Electricity is available almost everywhere. Distribution is solved except for porting of the fuel into the battery.
The EV technology wins if for that reason alone.
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Yeah, but only sorta. Range Anxiety isn’t going to be cured by an extension cord that charges you at 5mph. The charging stations are what allows people to travel from Omaha to Jefferson City.
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I suspect that the government will remain controlled by the fossil fuel industry for the coming decade.
In the background, however, there are new much smaller and safer nuclear systems that are going to supplement wind and solar power, which are coming on strong. Coal is dead as a power source for new plants.
The biggest push for electric vehicles is coming from traditional car manufacturers. GM is about to come out with a plethora of new electric models. Ford, Toyota, Honda and several of the European brands are selling electrics. In addition new companies like Tesla are beginning to have a real impact. Those manufacturers will drive the infrastructure changes.
I just hope the politicians who are still taking money from the old technology are smart enough to realize the fossil fuel era is about over.
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I think that part of the problem is not so much availability of charging stations (although that needs to improve), but the time it takes to charge an EV. To take the example of the Reno to Salt Lake City trip, who wants to sit in a convenience store for an hour or more waiting for a charge that will permit completion of the trip when it takes less than five minutes to fill the gas tank? The most important task at this point is to improve battery and charging technology. Once that’s accomplished, the charging stations will follow.
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As a guy that monitors electric vehicle uptake as part of my job I’ll tell you this – the curve has flattened in my state with Covid. But I think that’s for a good reason – people are simply driving less and don’t need to worry about efficiency as much. Their commute is via Verizon. Most people in the northeast are using electric vehicles as commuters since they can charge at their own home overnight for 10 hours.
Distance travel is going to be a struggle with batteries. As it stands I don’t see a solution for it short of a revolution (the biggest in history) in how Americans live. I’m all in on this stuff and have no plans to buy a gas powered anything ever again. I plan to keep my current minivan for the next 20 years to use for the long trips.
But that option isn’t going to be available to everyone. We need liquid fuel that’s carbon-neutral. That requires a fully renewable/zero-emission power network with excess capacity for the synthesizing of liquid fuels from raw materials. Nothing else unpaints us from this corner.
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One of the things we tend to forget is how much government subsidy – both direct investment and tax preferences went into making fossil fuels the energy source of choice.
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True to a point but what it costs to create, as an example, a home station in my loft condo building, is about $25 Thou 
and you have to have an underground parking spot that costs about the same now. So not viable for most people.
True, but I think we’ll find that range anxiety isn’t the barrier we think it is. From back in 2012:
5mph for an overnight charge gets you 40-60 miles per day (8-12 hours charging), which covers the vast majority of trips by Americans.
In my view, the two big barriers towards widespread EV adoption are:
- Upfront price (even the cheapest EVs are still at luxury car prices)
- Home/overnight charging access (still difficult for people who live in apartments, park on streets, etc. to find safe ways to charge)
Solve these two issues and I suspect you’d start seeing exponential EV adoption.
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Yeah, but it’s cultural as well.
Last night I dragged my trash cans and my recycling cans out to the curb for Monday morning pickup. I stood there and thought to myself “two sets of diesel trucks covering every inch of America every week.” More or less at any rate. Question – what’s the bigger crisis? Landfill space, or climate change? Recycling is energy-intensive (and dirty, but that’s for another thread) and requires an entire second set of transportation. We’ve culturally decided that big flashy containers for products that require a second set of trucks to burn diesel each week picking them up separately is a good choice. Bigger packaging because, you know, freedom, and all the energy-work involved in keeping them out of our landfills is a cultural decision.
How many of your tree-hugging neighbors are on board with abolishing recycling to save the planet?
There are BIG cultural decisions to make unless poof we magically figure out how to turn all of transportation carbon-neutral. Right now we’ve opted in favor of landfill instead of greenhouse gas.
I’d wager there’s 1000 similar decisions to make that we aren’t considering at the moment.
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Well said, but in 2012 the number of people telecommuting daily (I was one of them) was miniscule. Most of those 95% of trips were commuter, including the attached photo. You don’t solve that problem by getting an electric, you solve it by working from home.
As I mentioned above, EV uptake has waned with Covid because a lot of people simply don’t need a new car at all. They’re not driving as often.
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Hmm. In my neck of the woods the waste-hauling companies made the choice to have just one truck pick up both. (And they’re planning to convert to electric, since short fixed-route trucks are pretty much the perfect case for electrics, and the low-speed torque of electrics matches well with what we demand of diesels.)
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I’d be curious where you live. Most of rural America is out of reach of that business decision.
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Charging stations at restaurants, rest stops, shopping centers-outlet malls for instance. That’d be helpful. Places where people are already going to be at for a while.
Now I’m brainstorming! Libraries, hospitals, care facilities-anywhere where people are planning on staying a while to visit…
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Or some entrepreneural type converts this to the “propane tank” model - you pull up, the attendant drops your dead battery, loads a charged one and you’re on you way.
Make the royalty cheques out to “Rowlf Enterprises”, I’ll have the incorporation sorted out by the time the batteries are ready to go…
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I wonder how effective a program that put a fee on all combustion vehicles sold in the US to cover a combustion vehicle collective service that would be available to EV owners who wanted to take a vehicle journey on long trips? Thus, “travel anxiety” around having to wait around for hours in obscure places to get more juice into an EV vehicle could be offset by simply providing a vehicle-as-a-service solution for long distance travel until the charging infrastructure was more in place. Obviously, another proposed incentive is to simply increase the cost of gasoline high enough to make the inconvenience of lack of EV charging infrastructure a lower bar to adoption of EV vehicles, etc.
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What I think is more likely is that the “propane tank” model is an actual propane tank or something similar, where the fuel inside is synthesized from carbon-neutral sources and electricity generated from a carbon neutral source. Yep, that’s pie-in-the-sky stuff, but I think the internal combustion engine can still play a role, and that it will be an easier transition.
The question is how to generate that fuel, and what that fuel is.
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This is called “renting a car”. Honestly, it’s killer for vacations. I recommend it for everyone with young kids. Drive your stinkin SUV around town if your ego can’t deal with owning a minivan. But when it’s time to head to Disney, rent the van. You will love it.
Truth be told we should all be renting more or joining ownership collectives for the occasion when we need one more vehicle, or a bigger vehicle. We own more cars than we need.
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