Drive your car now, says Car and Driver

[Longitude Zero]

Drive them like you stole them.

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[shogun32]

Just wait until Apple juice is the new fuel replacement... just you wait...

what do you mean, wait? It already is. Apple turned all their services OFF this morning to save the planet a tremendous amount of power and triple American productivity. I noticed my McDonalds order was done in half the time and it was actually still hot when they handed it to me. And I could even understand the drive-thru girl.

 

[JoeSpeed]

Excellent. And then what do we do for the next 7 to 8 billion years until the sun explodes and incinerates all of humanity?

not my problem at that point

 

[hotjava66]

No offense intended, but your politics may be getting in the way of the facts. (Despite where I live, I am firmly moderate on the political spectrum.) Solar is now the cheapest form of energy production. Solar combined with energy storage facilities like the real options I mentioned can work as baseload. Solar + wind + wave + hydro + geothermal + nuclear + storage is totally viable. You can then still use natural gas for surge demand.

https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/cheap-renewable-energy-vs-fossil-fuels/

Politics has nothing to do with it IMHO, it’s all about numbers. We are currently at roughly 8% renewable power nationwide. That has taken 15 years or so, and (at least in my area) windmills and solar have been built at a pretty rapid rate. I have engineer friends that work in the power industry, some heavily involved in solar and wind integration. They told me with current technology you need enough solar panels to cover the state of Nebraska just to match our current needs. If you also want to use this energy to fill storage devices for off service hours you need to double that. Wind is a similar deal, need 1.3 million windmills or 2.6 million if filling storage devices. And the real kicker is that many base load coal power stations are scheduled to be shutdown in the next 5 years, while other sources are not being built fast enough to make up for the lost energy.

50% of our energy is now gas fired, and that will increase as coal drops offline. Obviously natural gas comes from drilling/fracking and is transported by pipelines, all of which are being shut down or curtailed. Prices for NG will rise, driving up electricity cost and heating costs for us up north.

This above is all without adding the load of electric cars on the grid, every 10% of cars that switch to electricity will add 50-80000 megawatts of load to the grid.

And where are most of these solar panels made? In China, where they now produce 70% of the world’s electricity using over 1000 coal fired power plants with no environmental controls.

Im all for cheaper/better/cleaner but it’s going to take more than 10 years to get there without completely wrecking our economy with shortages and increased cost from putting the cart ahead of the horse. And the people it will hurt the worst are those who can least afford it.

 

[Baugustine]

The US vehicle "fleet" replacement rate is 7% which equates to replacing effectively all the vehicles every 15 years. (Yes, there's always a long tail.) You could absolutely see EVs be the majority of new-car sales in 10 years or less and the majority of cars on the road in 20 years or less.

I’m a proponent of buy the vehicle you want not the one some gov’t bureaucrat tells you have to have. That is a foundational principal of communism and has been quite a failure since the end of WWII. With that being said, your statistics above are not exactly accurate in the big picture. The average vehicle on the road today (2022) is over 11 YO, mainly because of better corrosion protection and better overall quality from most of the brands that are sold here. Industry estimates are putting a much longer cycle on them. If you take COVID out of the mix in the last 20 months, there averages close to 17M new vehicles sold annually in NA. The disposal rate does not match that number, so the total car park continues to increase annually. Drive in any major city at 7am and you get the real vibe.

The success of EVs depends on many things: availability of lithium, availability of L2 240V chargers, range anxiety fears being allayed to just to name a few. The current electrical grid is not able to accommodate even a 15% car park of EVs. There is a lot of work to be done.

 

[Hennessey"R"]

what do you mean, wait? It already is. Apple turned all their services OFF this morning to save the planet a tremendous amount of power and triple American productivity. I noticed my McDonalds order was done in half the time and it was actually still hot when they handed it to me. And I could even understand the drive-thru girl.

now that’s funny, but sadly probably true about people actually having to do their job !

 

[460Fred]

The US vehicle "fleet" replacement rate is 7% which equates to replacing effectively all the vehicles every 15 years. (Yes, there's always a long tail.) You could absolutely see EVs be the majority of new-car sales in 10 years or less and the majority of cars on the road in 20 years or less.

I‘ll assume your math includes “everyone” who replaces their car/truck, does so with electric. If not your math doesn’t work.

 

[mrbillwot]

I wouldn’t bet on it. There’s that old saying. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Then there were the horse & buggy whip guys 110 years ago....they were confident too.

 

[shogun32]

Then there were the horse & buggy whip guys 110 years ago....they were confident too.

back then they hadn't invented NIMBY, OSHA, EPA yet, or for that matter stupidity. Ignorance, yes but stupidity is an invention of modern man and arises from mis-education.

 

[Mr. Maboomba]

I‘ll assume your math includes “everyone” who replaces their car/truck, does so with electric. If not your math doesn’t work.

Not everyone... here's a scenario that gets to 50% of the fleet being EV in 20 years.

 

[mrbillwot]

I have engineer friends that work in the power industry, some heavily involved in solar and wind integration. They told me with current technology you need enough solar panels to cover the state of Nebraska just to match our current needs.

To be kind, they might be wrong.
Musk in 2017:
“If you wanted to power the entire U.S. with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said. “The batteries you need to store the energy, to make sure you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile. That’s it.”

Distributed longitudinally to improve point of load storage & sun rise & set times its of course a much smaller area per site. And related tech has advanced since he pointed this out (both bulk storage tech and PV conversion efficiency).

Going to have to power up that 2025 neck snapping torque Ford Perf Mach-Shelby somehow and coal just doesn't make sense anymore.

Source: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tell...ciation-how-we-could-power-the-u-s-with-solar

 

[Polski]

OK so I have a unique perspective on this.....

1. Because I just sold my original 67 GT500 a year or two ago (that and my 428CJ powered 56 Ford Victoria)

Special cars have cycles- popular when new then again when people age and want to relive their youth- 50s car used to be all the rage but when I went to sell my 56 Victoria (had a 4 page spread in Street Rodder magazine- so this car was done right) I didnt get a call from anyone under 80 years old it felt like

Or now that one generation is older- they want to buy the car they always dreamed of having as a kid

Same thing with Fox Body prices today- people my age want to relive their youth and are buying fox bodies (I did the same and bought a low mileage 5 speed LX car but sold after a year because it wasnt as great as I remembered lol)

I also drove a 19GT PP1 for a few years-

So this is my OPINION

1. My GT350R feels just as special as my 67 GT500 did when I drive it around (I attribute that to the Voodoo- and I can go into more detail if anyone cares- my daughters like the GT350R more)
2. My GT350R feels more special than my GT did (not that my GT didnt feel special- I loved that car too and loved driving it )
3. Life is short- enjoy your cars - 3 years ago I went in for a normal check up- no symptoms- just regular visit and a week later was diagnosed with incurable bone marrow cancer and about 15-20 ish years to live (I was 44 years old when diagnosed)

I am one of the few lucky but unlucky ones to know potentially when I will die and how - unlucky because Ill die relatively young- but lucky because it has helped me to change my priorities and enjoy life - drive my cars- spend less time working and more time with family and friends- slow down once in a while

I can honestly say I dont really care what my car will be worth 25 years from now because I probably wont be here- but nothing can take back all the memories I am making driving it

If you want to adopt me,

Not everyone... here's a scenario that gets to 50% of the fleet being EV in 20 years.

With the prices of EV's now, I can't see the sales number as high as you predict.

 

[shogun32]

here's a scenario that gets to 50% of the fleet being EV in 20 years

sure, except column 2 should have a MUCH shallower growth rate.

 

[shogun32]

Musk in 2017:

musk is not an engineer. He's pontificating blowhard angling for political points or upvotes. He STILL can't make money building cars. That said, his efforts do serve a purpose much like Howard Hughes. Mankind needs slightly crazy mavericks to do things more sane men wisely know is a colossal waste of time and effort when measured on a rational return basis.

I'll take Musk seriously when he can figure out how to put out a damn LiOn battery fire.

 

[Mr. Maboomba]

sure, except column 2 should have a MUCH shallower growth rate.

My numbers align with industry forecasts (30% by 2030).
Anyway, at this point it's a religious argument. You either believe it or you don't.
We'll see.
For now, I'll go drive my manual-transmission NA V8 sports car. And invest in Tesla.

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