Do you own a Tesla? Or would you want to own one in the future?

@Ozuye502 So do lawnmowers but I wouldn't want to travel very far on any of them, especially in bad weather!

@ninalanyon well you can bring back old tech holly is still making the quadrajet

@ninalanyon and actually i prefer the old tech because 1 you don't need a computer to fix it and 2 i can fix it on the road or with basic tools. Nascar may still be running a carb not sure if they moved away from that but teams in the NHRA are running carbs on engines running in the 6s (thats 6 second 1/4 mile at 200+ miles per hour) so dont sleep on the old tech hell i think the world took notice at the 24 hr of Le Mans with the Garage 56 car. And honestly if the British made transmission didn’t go out they would have made a lot bigger of statement especially if they were running a carb on that v8.

@SW-User right there with you

@Ozuye502 I think we will have to come up with something…
Using a rare element as a power supply isn’t the answer.

@SW-User The only actually rare element used in EV batteries is cobalt and that can be avoided if you can accept a slightly lower energy density. Tesla uses lithium iron phosphate in the cars it produces in China.

And all of the material in a lithium battery is recyclable anyway. Recycling is already done in Norway.

@rfhh1959 where did you see that statement? I'd love to see it. I would like to see the comparisons to an ICE, oh, wait, it can never reach carbon neutrality.

@samueltyler2 I am not finding the article I read but here is one that supports the position

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/08/when-buying-an-ev-increases-your-carbon-footprint/

Also remember this an ev is never truly carbon neutral as long as it's pulling electricity off the grid that has been created with fossil fuel.

@rfhh1959 that is an amazingly interesting article. It contains not actual data, only summarizes. It leaves more unanswered questions than it answers. For example saying an EV parked more than driven takes a certain time to become carbon neutral and that is related the number of miles driven may be true, i have to see the data, but during that same period the ICE vehicle's carbon n footprint starting with it's manufacture, than use of gasoline, oil, antifreeze, etc, is increasing, not decreasing. In areas, which use coal the generate electricity, you are correct about the carbon use for generation of electricity, but that has been calculated as still less than ICE using gasoline which requires carbon to produce and then use in the vehicle. The use of coal has drastically decreased over the past few decades, because it actually became less economical.

For those of us who breath air though, the EV puts out no pollutants while the ICE continues to put out a host of dangerous chemicals, the diesels in trucks and buses are really travelling carcinogen spreaders.

The situation though, climate change, is an existential one. Unless we Don's method NG now, asap, we will never get clean air, never stop the rise in temperatures that are precipitating more frequent and stronger storms, floods, you name it.

@Adogslife A base line Model 3 is less expensive than a Toyota Corolla.

@IronHamster To own or buy? A Corolla LE is about $22/23k. The cheaper 3 is about $38/53k. Even after a tax credit, if you qualify ($7,500) , you’re still way above the Corolla… even the Corolla Hybrid which is about $28k.

@Adogslife No. The Tesla is cheaper. You are getting about 125mpg equivalent in the Tesla, with no oil changes. The Teslas are not entirely maintenance free, though. At a million miles you need to pull the motors and replace the bearings.

@Crazywaterspring i would not trust that Chinese build quality is genuine hot garbage

@Ozuye502 affordable genuine hot garbage 😂

@Jexie idk everything that i worked on that was made in China either never ran right after simple repairs or you couldn't get the parts to make it run right again so best of luck

@WillaKissing apparently, the greenies expect farmers to trade in their diesel powered tractors that can pull 12+ bottoms for e-tractors that cost three times as much that can't even run a bushhog...

@thisguy20 Likewise. There are now solid alternatives to Tesla from many manufacturers. My wife and I expect to buy a full electric in the next few years, but we don't want our dollars to endorse Elon Musk's crazy right-wing notions.

@ElwoodBlues I hear that. The fact that many (if not all) of the electric cars available (new) now; lack actual keys (metal blade goes into a hole and turn), have a screen instead of gauges, don't have spare tires, and aren't available as soft-top convertibles isn't exactly helping the overall image of electric cars

@Patriot96 I can though I don't live in an area where very cold Winters with blizzards are common. Even here in mild Southern England, a friend told me when he and his wife travel anywhere more than a short distance from home in very cold (by our standards) weather they wrap up warm rather than risk using the heater in their battery car.

@Patriot96 do you want to know the facts about electric cars, heater and all, or are you already against EVs?

@Patriot96 ChiCongo? I don't even want to be stuck at OHare between flights.

@fun4us2b have a buddy that's a utilities/power engineer, he figured we'd need a solar farm the size of new mexico just to replace existing fossil fuel energy production; and that isn't even accounting for extra space needed for power storage/batteries (let alone the cost). And due to the degradation of solar panels (which is far more than advertised), they'd all need to be replaced every 3-5 years...

@justanothername Not in all countries, and those who use hydropower may not be generating all of their electricity that way.

@fun4us2b 95% efficiency in national grid distribution - I'd have said that is very good indeed.

You don't say what is being measured. It may be overall from fuel, turbine or solar array to customers, or simply in the electricity from alternator and solar-array outputs to local distribution points. Nevertheless I think you should credit the system's designers, builders and operators for it having such high efficiency.

It is impossibly to make any engineering system that does not have losses, and though the amount lost in the USA's system seems staggeringly high in linear terms, it is only 5% of the electricity generated.

I would be very surprised if any country's equivalent exceeds 95% overall efficiency continuously throughout the year. (It may vary by season, especially on a continent that experiences very wide climates and daylight times. )

@SlaveEt Likewise, and I don't think using an electric car is ever going to be feasible for me, nor for enormous numbers of other people!

@Spoiledbrat Might have won on the National Lottery, had a savings plan mature or received a bequest! Had I come into the money like that I would not spend it on an electric car though.

@Morrigan I really didn't haha

@sunsporter1649 they're called batteries

@SW-User wow. Projection. How original. You think that up all on your own Cletus?

You are not outliving anyone and having your brave new world. You'll catch some undiscovered virus at the glory hole