I would probably be fine with an EV for 90% of my miles. But what do you do for the occasional trip of >800 miles? I’d have to rent an ICE. That’s not a terrible solution but that added cost has to be factored in.

you can recharge in about 30 mins
that 800 miles is about 14 hours driving ?
are you saying youd drive 14 hours without a stop for coffee / food every 3 or 4 hours ? thats 3 or 4 stops , my ev , as most range evs now do, does over 300 per charge ,
wheres the problem that needs us to burn carbon in an ice ?

 

But what do you do for the occasional trip of >800 miles?

If you travel along major highways, then most have EV rapid charging stations at convenient intervals.

Let the market decide.

The "market" is not always the best choice when it comes to saving planet earth (or the humans on it).
Do you really believe it is?
If it was, the big cities would be buried in smog from IC engine's emissions without their mandated catalytic converters (and I lived in LA area starting in the 60's so I know how bad it got. There were numerous days when my lungs hurt, making it literally painful to breathe.)
At the time, there was a big stink from many people who didn't want to pay the extra vehicle cost for that.
This also led to mandating unleaded fuel that incidentally helped prevent lead poisoning from the 232k tons of lead put into the air each year from ethyl fuel.

 

If you travel along major highways, then most have EV rapid charging stations at convenient intervals.
The "market" is not always the best choice when it comes to saving planet earth (or the humans on it).
Do you really believe it is?
If it was, the big cities would be buried in smog from IC engine's emissions without their mandated catalytic converters (and I lived in LA area starting in the 60's so I know how bad it got. There were numerous days when my lungs hurt, making it literally painful to breathe.)
At the time, there was a big stink from many people who didn't want to pay the extra vehicle cost for that.
This also led to mandating unleaded fuel that incidentally helped prevent lead poisoning from the 232k tons of lead put into the air each year from ethyl fuel.

I 100% agree The "market" (the market forces of horrible pollution in the Nixon era decreasing the value of living in the smog caused the switch to unleaded gas and lower-emission ICE cars) is not always the best choice but switching to EV's today is not really a matter of saving planet earth (or the humans on it) when we are just shifting the pollution from the tail pipe to somewhere else in a large number of cases.
Driving an EV makes the neighborhood around it cleaner, the neighborhood that generates electricity for that EV gets dirtier. I don't know if it's a net win today.

My 2008 car with ultra low "dept paid" emissions vs a new “in debt” EV. It will take maybe 5-6 years for that EV pay the debt in my case. When my current car needs to be replaced, then it's time to reevaluate.

I'll likely buy a used EV, with the emissions debt already paid, not new.

 

the neighborhood that generates electricity for that EV gets dirtier.

Obviously depends, of course, on how the electricity is generated.
If it's from the "clean coal, drill baby drill" crowd then yes, it will get dirtier.

 

Obviously depends, of course, on how the electricity is generated.
If it's from the "clean coal, drill baby drill" crowd then yes, it will get dirtier.

Maybe we can tap some of that AI data-center gas turbine power for EV's.

global electricity demand from data centers, which house the computing infrastructure to train and deploy AI models, will more than double by 2030, to around 945 terawatt-hours. While not all operations performed in a data center are AI-related, this total amount is slightly more than the energy consumption of Japan.
...
In the United States, power consumption by data centres is on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals. In advanced economies more broadly, data centres are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, putting the power sector in those economies back on a growth footing after years of stagnating or declining demand in many of them.

https://news.mit.edu/2025/responding-to-generative-ai-climate-impact-0930

 

Maybe we can tap some of that AI data-center gas turbine power for EV's.

Generates about half the CO2 per unit energy compared to coal but that's still a significant amount.

 

How Outdated Engineering Models Distort Today’s EV & Road Charges Debate

​

 

If you travel along major highways, then most have EV rapid charging stations at convenient intervals.

But that’s irrelevant. It’s not practical to stop that long for recharging during what is already a very long day. “Rapid” isn’t, compared to a gas fill up.

 

you can recharge in about 30 mins
that 800 miles is about 14 hours driving ?
are you saying youd drive 14 hours without a stop for coffee / food every 3 or 4 hours ? thats 3 or 4 stops , my ev , as most range evs now do, does over 300 per charge ,
wheres the problem that needs us to burn carbon in an ice ?

Depending on just how much past 800 miles I go, I would need as little as one fill for my Outback. That’s maybe 3 minutes plus another 5 to hit a drive-thru. A thirty minute break would be nice but not when it’s making the day longer, and especially not if you need more than one.

 

In many countries cars only need to go from work to home and back. You take the train on 800 mile trips. The US will never have 200mph trains. We will burn gas as long as big oil tells us to.

 

In many countries cars only need to go from work to home and back. You take the train on 800 mile trips. The US will never have 200mph trains. We will burn gas as long as big oil tells us to.

and be powering our spaceships with big oil from Titan.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/titans-surface-organics-surpass-oil-reserves-on-earth/

Saturn's moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
...
Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 billion tons, enough to provide 300 times the amount of energy the entire United States uses annually for residential heating, cooling and lighting. Dozens of Titan's lakes individually have the equivalent of at least this much energy in the form of methane and ethane.

 

and be powering our spaceships with big oil from Titan.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/titans-surface-organics-surpass-oil-reserves-on-earth/

That'll be the birth of Big Oxigen ...

 

In many countries cars only need to go from work to home and back. You take the train on 800 mile trips. The US will never have 200mph trains. We will burn gas as long as big oil tells us to.

What I can never understand is how, if "big oil" is so powerful and always gets their way, and is constantly price fixing energy prices in an anti-competitive way, why they are perennially unable to even have their products keep pace with inflation.

In 1972, when I first started mowing lawns, gasoline as 0.499/gallon. Adjusting for inflation, that's $3.89/gal today. I just got gas for $1.979/gal. In real dollars, gas is barely half the price it was nearly a half-century ago.

For comparison, full-time tuition in 1980 at the college I went to was $693/year. Adjusted for inflation to today, that would $2732/yr. Their current tuition is over $22,000/yr. I sure wish colleges had been as successful at price fixing as big oil has been! If they had, a four year degree today would cost well under $6k at a top-ranked public university, instead of nearly $90k.

I would have loved for my social security taxes to have kept up with inflation that way, too.

Other than electronics, I can't think of many other commodities that have gone down in price, in real terms, the way gasoline has.

 

What I can never understand is how, if "big oil" is so powerful and always gets their way, and is constantly price fixing

I don't think they can price fix much. There are so many players. It is clear the Middle East can turn off the flow and prices go up.
For "big oil", Trump has killed many of the solar and wind projects, the brakes have been applied to electric cars. It is like he is invested in coal and oil. Maybe his friends have invested.
I was working in solar, wind and cars. From a R&D standpoint I am out of work.

For comparison, full-time tuition in 1980 at the college I went to was $693/year.

In the 1970s I worked (+/-) full time and went to school. I paid cash for 6 years of school, housing, built a computer and got a new truck, had money left over. I was thinking school was 500 to 1000 a year by the end. A new truck was 6000. It seems like gas went from 0.50 to double if you could get it. I still own a house in that town. $10,000 I think and now the tax man thinks it is $300,000.
School was heavily tax subsidized. (not now) Wages have not gone up much. In 1978 I was 22 years old, in university, and probably making 1/2 as much as my two sons do now.
I looked at some wage charts from 1970 to 2015 things were flat.

 

I don't think they can price fix much. There are so many players. It is clear the Middle East can turn off the flow and prices go up.
For "big oil", Trump has killed many of the solar and wind projects, the brakes have been applied to electric cars. It is like he is invested in coal and oil. Maybe his friends have invested.
I was working in solar, wind and cars. From a R&D standpoint I am out of work.

In the 1970s I worked (+/-) full time and went to school. I paid cash for 6 years of school, housing, built a computer and got a new truck, had money left over. I was thinking school was 500 to 1000 a year by the end. A new truck was 6000. It seems like gas went from 0.50 to double if you could get it. I still own a house in that town. $10,000 I think and now the tax man thinks it is $300,000.
School was heavily tax subsidized. (not now) Wages have not gone up much. In 1978 I was 22 years old, in university, and probably making 1/2 as much as my two sons do now.
I looked at some wage charts from 1970 to 2015 things were flat.

I'm not sure what wage charts you were looking at. Where they in absolute dollars, or real dollars? You wouldn't expect to see huge increases in real dollars -- you would expect that someone working a particular job fifty years ago to work so many hours to be able to purchase various things and you would expect someone working that same job today to work roughly the same number of hours to be able to purchase most of those same things. Of course, some of those things would be much more expensive, relatively speaking, and some would be much less, over time. The whole idea behind CPI is to try to look at a representative basket of goods, even though no basket can be really representative of most subgroups, let alone individuals.

Federal minimum wage in 1970 was $1.60/hr. Today it is $9.50/hr (and many - most? - states have higher state minimum wages where few had them back in 1970). When I first stated working, it was $3.35/hr (and Colo had no higher state minimum). Today Colorado's is $14.81/hr (and in Denver it is $18.81/hr). My daughter is making more than 4.5x what I was making, doing the same kind of restaurant work. At the same time, CPI only increased by a factor of 3.3x. The Social Security Administration has data on average and median compensation going back to 1991. At that time average was $20.9k and median was $15.1k. In 2023 (last year they have data published for), the average was $63.9k and the median was $43.2k. If we adjust the 1991 numbers for inflation, which would increase by a factor of 2.4x over that span, then the average today would be $50.2 and the median $36.2k.

In 1971, my dad bought the house I grew up in for $23k, which was a bit below the U.S. median home price that year of $28k. In 1984, he sold it for $77k, which was actually above the median that year of $72k. I bought my first single-family home in 1998 for $132k (median was $114k) and sold it in 2013 for $160k (median was $162k). The present median is $223k (though not around here any more!).

In 1971, my dad made about $12k/yr (which was a bit above the $10k median -- we were pretty solidly middle middle-class blue collar), so the house was about 2x his income. Today, based on the medians, that factor is a lot harsher at 4.9x. That largely jives with my experience. My first home (a townhome) was right at 2x my income, my first single family home was about 3x, and our current home was 4x (and 5x was right at the upper end of what we were considering our doable price range).

But this just underscores an inevitable dichotomy of expectations. We expect homes to be, on average, a good investment, which means that we expect them to appreciate at considerably more than inflation. Yet we decry it when housing becomes increasingly less affordable. But the only way that the first is possible is if the ratio of home prices to wages also goes up and up over time. It's inherently unsustainable over the long haul -- as occasional significant corrections attest, but even those have, so far, been transient blips in the overall trend.

 

Depending on just how much past 800 miles I go, I would need as little as one fill for my Outback. That’s maybe 3 minutes plus another 5 to hit a drive-thru. A thirty minute break would be nice but not when it’s making the day longer, and especially not if you need more than one.

800 miles plus is well beyond my endurance for one day's driving, but I understand your concern about charge time, if that's how far you go.

 

800 miles plus is well beyond my endurance for one day's driving, but I understand your concern about charge time, if that's how far you go.

Somewhat to my surprise, I recently discovered that my one-day limit is still somewhat in excess of 1000 miles. When I do a long distance drive, my general routine is to stop and get gas, go visit the bathroom, and buy food for the road (if I don't already have it in a cooler). I very seldom stop and eat someplace as I don't want to give up that time making headway, especially on a long trip. That would make an EV a lot less attractive to me. Plus, since I can't count on there being a suitable charging station within any reasonably small section of road, I would have to stop and charge well short of my actual range to avoid the risk of getting stranded between stations. With gas, I can push much closer to my limits and usually get by with no more than one additional stop than had I driven to the limit of my range with the knowledge that gas would be available right there (in fact, usually it's the same number of stops -- it all depends on how much extra range I would have had at the end of the trip in the optimal case).

Now, having said that, the number-of-stops problem is one that would be expected to go away as more and more EV charging stations become common. At some point, I would be able to just drive until I got to about 1/4 charge and then start looking for a station. Right now, I'd have to either be ultra conservative, probably never going below half charge, or do a lot more careful planning ahead of time of where I would stop and charge.

Having said that, I remember my first long-distance trip in my old '75 Ford Bronco with a bad seat tank, which meant that I had a 12 gal tank in a truck that got 10 mpg (plus a 5 gal Jerry can). I went from Denver to Phoenix and knew that there would be long stretches with no services. I also knew that I didn't want to get gas in the Indian territories (what they were called back then) as they had a reputation for very high prices. So I spent hours carefully going over maps and planning exactly where I would stop and get fuel, something that was a lot harder to do back in 1984 that it would be today. I also almost got caught -- after I got through the reservation and into Arizona, my longest stretch, I pulled into the station, out in the middle of nowhere, only to discover that it was out of business. So I very carefully drove on to the next station, fully expecting to run out of fuel. As I was pulling off the highway into the station, the engine died and I was just able to coast up to the pump, needing only a slight tap on the brakes to stop. The only reason I made it was because my highway mileage turned out to be nearly 15 mpg. The point being that having to carefully consider fueling (recharging) stops is not something that is unique to EVs.

One thing that EV owners are enjoying now but that won't last much longer is the free ride on road taxes. A large share of road construction and maintenance funding comes from federal and state fuel taxes, which makes up a significant portion of the cost of gasoline and diesel (it averages right at $0.50/gal nationally, but varies quite a bit state to state, from around $0.30/gal to over $0.80/gal -- and note that the federal rate hasn't changed since 1993, so don't be surprise to see congress "correct" that at some point). As those revenues dry up, they will start demanding that EV owners "pay their fair share" (which is quite reasonable, since EVs cause at least as much wear and tear on the roads as their gas counterparts, being that they are typically quite a bit heavier). Since you can charge at home or via other standard electrical sources, the way that this will probably be done is by charging EV owners a per-mile tax. Quite a few states are already considering these and some have implemented them. The average combined national and state fuel tax works out to about 2.5 cents/mile. But state EV per-mile charge proposals tend to start there and go up (with exceptions). Hawaii's mandatory tax is 8 cents per mile (but there is an annual cap).

So expect the cost of operating an EV to get closer and closer to the cost of operating an ICEV -- gov't has long since figured out how to extra money from ICEV owners and are only now starting to figure out and implement ways to extract comparable amounts of money from EV owners -- and as long as it costs less to operate and EV, gov't will see that as being a price-inelastic taxing opportunity.

 

 

I love how Rep Susan Maclain refers to this as "the high math that we've been doing." That sure got a chuckle out of me. A more accurate description would have been something like, "The sixth grade math that we've barely been able to struggle through."

 

It is never the guys that know how to run the numbers (or what they really mean in the end) that get to make the significant decisions. It's always about politics, and seldom about science.