No lemons, and I'm an Electrical Engineer who has pondered making my own hybrid since 1970.
My point is that electric cars are not all the same. If you simply buy electric, you stand the same chance of being screwed as simply buying gasoline. A friend of mine loves his fancy BMW. He spends $3,000 a year on scheduled maintenance. I s…
No lemons, and I'm an Electrical Engineer who has pondered making my own hybrid since 1970.
My point is that electric cars are not all the same. If you simply buy electric, you stand the same chance of being screwed as simply buying gasoline. A friend of mine loves his fancy BMW. He spends $3,000 a year on scheduled maintenance. I spend $150 on my American cars. I always choose my purchase specifically from the cars with lots of data showing low ownership cost. He pays $20 to fill his tires with 95% nitrogen, I fill my tires with 70% nitrogen (air) for free. Yeah, I do have to add air when it gets cold, which I also do with free 70% nitrogen that exists wherever I can breathe. I check my tires monthly to look for damage, so adding air once a year is trivial.
He was ecstatic when he drove over a muffler, destroyed one of his special run-flat tires, and found a used tire for only $700 and got it mounted and balanced and filled with 100% nitrogen for another $150. I get a flat or two a year because I live in the forest down miles of gravel roads, so far nothing I couldn't plug for 25 cents, but if I shred one of my tires, I'll buy a new one for $150, balanced and installed. I also only buy cars that use tires many cars use, because that drives cost down.
My experience with Nissans is one car that I couldn't figure out the radio even with the manual. For a living, they fly me first class all over the world to get automated systems losing $400 a minute back running, so I'm not tech-dumb. My wife is, she's "immune to technology" and struggles to use anything complex, but she's far from alone.
My point is, electric isn't automatically good. Personally, I wouldn't buy a Tesla, not after I saw them put the batteries in the floor. I drive a lot in mountains and other areas that are heavily salted. The Prius battery pack I disassembled was under the hood, safe from salt spray. You say your Honda's pack is under the seat, also safe, but a battery pack that mounts to the floor from BELOW - I cannot count the times I've replaced equipment the seals failed to keep salt water out of.
OK< while on this rant, let's look at efficiency and cost. Cost matters. The world has more methane than it can ever consume, and methane is being made all the time. Exxon Mobil says that their Exmouth gas field is so large and dry that it's essentially zero cost methane. With solar power, we can strip the carbon from methane and have nearly zero cost fuel. The carbon we remove is the reason chemical farming destroys soil. In 60 years, almost all farmland will no longer be able to grow crops. We are ignoring this because it's agribusiness, we have no leverage, but they just walk away and buy elsewhere, maybe burn down a forest. This carbon can go into that soil and make it black and friable again. Carbon "sucks up" minerals and holds them where plant roots can get to them, we WANT black soil. If you read the excellent book "1491", they've found patches of land in the Amazon that are incredibly fertile, remember Amazon land has all nutrients leached out. Some local folks thousands of years ago tilled charcoal into their soil, and it's still fertile today. We can have zero emissions almost free fuel that also recovers our farmland. Electric is great, but I really like free zero emissions fuel that saves agriculture.
No lemons, and I'm an Electrical Engineer who has pondered making my own hybrid since 1970.
My point is that electric cars are not all the same. If you simply buy electric, you stand the same chance of being screwed as simply buying gasoline. A friend of mine loves his fancy BMW. He spends $3,000 a year on scheduled maintenance. I spend $150 on my American cars. I always choose my purchase specifically from the cars with lots of data showing low ownership cost. He pays $20 to fill his tires with 95% nitrogen, I fill my tires with 70% nitrogen (air) for free. Yeah, I do have to add air when it gets cold, which I also do with free 70% nitrogen that exists wherever I can breathe. I check my tires monthly to look for damage, so adding air once a year is trivial.
He was ecstatic when he drove over a muffler, destroyed one of his special run-flat tires, and found a used tire for only $700 and got it mounted and balanced and filled with 100% nitrogen for another $150. I get a flat or two a year because I live in the forest down miles of gravel roads, so far nothing I couldn't plug for 25 cents, but if I shred one of my tires, I'll buy a new one for $150, balanced and installed. I also only buy cars that use tires many cars use, because that drives cost down.
My experience with Nissans is one car that I couldn't figure out the radio even with the manual. For a living, they fly me first class all over the world to get automated systems losing $400 a minute back running, so I'm not tech-dumb. My wife is, she's "immune to technology" and struggles to use anything complex, but she's far from alone.
My point is, electric isn't automatically good. Personally, I wouldn't buy a Tesla, not after I saw them put the batteries in the floor. I drive a lot in mountains and other areas that are heavily salted. The Prius battery pack I disassembled was under the hood, safe from salt spray. You say your Honda's pack is under the seat, also safe, but a battery pack that mounts to the floor from BELOW - I cannot count the times I've replaced equipment the seals failed to keep salt water out of.
OK< while on this rant, let's look at efficiency and cost. Cost matters. The world has more methane than it can ever consume, and methane is being made all the time. Exxon Mobil says that their Exmouth gas field is so large and dry that it's essentially zero cost methane. With solar power, we can strip the carbon from methane and have nearly zero cost fuel. The carbon we remove is the reason chemical farming destroys soil. In 60 years, almost all farmland will no longer be able to grow crops. We are ignoring this because it's agribusiness, we have no leverage, but they just walk away and buy elsewhere, maybe burn down a forest. This carbon can go into that soil and make it black and friable again. Carbon "sucks up" minerals and holds them where plant roots can get to them, we WANT black soil. If you read the excellent book "1491", they've found patches of land in the Amazon that are incredibly fertile, remember Amazon land has all nutrients leached out. Some local folks thousands of years ago tilled charcoal into their soil, and it's still fertile today. We can have zero emissions almost free fuel that also recovers our farmland. Electric is great, but I really like free zero emissions fuel that saves agriculture.