Austin Eviscerates EV’s
This week saw frigid temperatures across the US and with it came some rather difficult “Green energy” issues. Austin had a lot to say about it:
Austin: I am laughing out loud at all the electric vehicles that are stuck in the ice, in the snow. I mean, I hope nobody’s gotten injured or hurt. I would also advise you lovely people to go see that movie that was on Netflix. It was released a few weeks ago. “The end of us — we’re all screwed” or whatever.
Michelle: I saw a picture this morning of someplace in Chicago where they’re just lined up with all these dead batteries.
Austin: And the electric chargers aren’t working right.
Michelle: Yeah, they’re lined up at the chargers. But the chargers aren’t working so everything, all of it…all just dead.
Firsthand knowledge
Austin: I’m telling you if I had not just rented one of these things I wouldn’t know. When I got in that car I fussed like a son of a gun. And because it was a football weekend in Seattle, they didn’t have other vehicles. That was it. You know, I had to take what they had. Dad gum it.
Well, number one, I felt like I was driving a golf cart. I told the story about me eating a hamburger, and I had it plugged in for almost a full hour and it charged maybe 5 to 10%. You can’t…most normal people cannot give up 2 or 3 hours of their life to hang out with their car as it recharges. And these vehicles are distinctly, inhospitable to car rental, customers. I mean, why in the hell would you do this? Unless you’ve got somebody that’s got an in city rental they are expecting put low miles on it and it’s in the city. Okay, that makes sense. And with no expectations of recharging it while they are out, which they can do, you know, because they’ve got all the equipment and whatnot at home. And indoors, no less. But it’s really crazy.
I did some research on it after I left Seattle because I was curious how many places like, Walgreen’s had the free plug ins. And there are a number of them, particularly in the states like Washington state and Oregon and all that where they’re pushing these things hard. But what’s really fascinating is, a lot of them are the cheapest possible versions that charge as slowly as possible.
And just like I mentioned to you, you and I talked about this the other day, we were talking about pharmacies and how the big chain pharmacies will not give you large quantities at once, if they can possibly avoid it because they want you coming back in to refill prescriptions. They do the same damn thing with their chargers, right? They don’t want it going fast. That’s how they get that. They want you to come back. And if I lived in that neighborhood and had one of those vehicles or a friend or relative, I’d say, hey, yeah, go park at the Walgreens. And they’ll they even have a sign up but who shops at Walgreens for two hours anyway?
Anyway, I say that to say this. When one of these days we are going to have…and God, I hope it’s not in my lifetime, my child’s lifetime, my grandchildren’s lifetime. We are going to have some type of event, whether it’s manmade or natural, and I watch enough documentaries to see what large asteroids can do to the Earth, and the fact that all these extinction level events that we’ve had several of over the past, you know, million years or so, it can happen. And one of the things that happens almost immediately, it’s instant death for anyone within, you know, x number of miles, hundreds of miles, or even thousands of miles from the impact. But it’s not mass death.
Immediately on the other side of the Earth, it’s death caused by starvation, usually because the sun goes dark. I mean, that could very easily happen here. And I’m not I’m not saying that it can’t, but we’re screwed if we depend on solar power and battery power. With absolutely no infrastructure to take care of gasoline engines and things of that nature. And we need to we need to understand that.
Now, I’m not saying again that the technology should be banned. And I hope and pray that they perfect the hell out of it, but it ain’t there yet. And they should not be putting motorists on the road in these vehicles when they’re so easily disabled. At a time when getting out and walking can kill you. Can kill you.
It’s not like these things are going dead when it’s 65 degrees outside and the bluebirds are out singing in it. It’s minus ten and the wind is blowing and your car has gone dead and there ain’t no place to charge it. If you couldn’t get to a charger, what are you going to do?
Michelle: It drives me crazy just trying to keep my phone charged. I can’t imagine trying to keep a car charged.
The technology just isn’t ready
Austin: I am all for technology, taking us to better places and delivering us from inconveniences, whatnot, so on, etc. etc. but we love to take things to the edge. We are so, committed as a society, sadly, and the politically correct people. Don’t even get me started with them. They want us to improve yesterday and we got to start acting like it right now. Zip bang boom.
Oh, brand new vaccine. I better get it. Has it been tested? I’m not gonna get it. And you know, it’s funny they said that Trump was going to be the totalitarian. He was going to be the dictator. He’s going to be the one that forced us to do things that we didn’t want to do. No, that was Mr. Biden. That was Mr. Biden, Mr. Biden’s people.
And this business with EVs. You know, the state of Georgia is making these vehicles. And, you know, again, I’m not for banning them. I’m not for mandating. But I’m here to tell you, if you are a consumer and you have to depend on one vehicle, you’re nuts if you’ve got an electric vehicle. And you also better be rich in case something goes wrong with it, because working on it…that’s tough.
I need to get Aaron Clements on to talk about the expense of that right now from our buddy over at C and C Automotive.
But back to my point. So they want us to do this, the state of Georgia making all these or, commitments to EV factories and whatnot, continue to perfect it whatever. But again, have an electric vehicle as a lark and maybe as an in-town money saving thing, but don’t depend on it.
You know, we have to two serious vehicles and one fun vehicle in our family. When my son becomes driving age, we’re probably going to get something just for him to drive. So we have an extra vehicle in case you know something goes wrong. But I will be damned if any of us will ever depend on an EV for anything other than driving around a golf course. I mean, not until the technology is far greater than it is right now.
And, you know, again, the state of Georgia wants to make those things more power to them. You know, people are buying them. I would be very cautious about federal tax incentives. And keep in mind the to my knowledge, the Georgia tax incentives that are going their way are all about the employees, not about what they’re making.
In other words, if they were making salt and pepper shakers and they were hiring as many people as they’re hiring, paying them what they’re paying them, they would qualify for the same tax breaks, federal tax breaks that come in, and federal grants and all of any other are specifically targeted to this imperfect technology, not to developing the technology to make it better, but to mass produce the mediocre technology that fails you when it gets too damn cold. And think about the money we’ve wasted on solar investment. The same way, trying to force feed it.
There are horror stories about these old people who are being conned into these solar panels on their roofs that they’re going to sell back energy like you’re getting the best deal. And I didn’t talk about it too much at the time, because I didn’t want everybody to run down there and steal my steal my place and ruin it. But when I lived in Enterprise Mill, our electricity was subsidized by the canal, by the power, generation devices that were once hooked up to running Enterprise Mill. The whole reason Enterprise Mill was built on the canal was that all of their machines were running off of hydropower. And so I never paid, I don’t think more than $30 for an electric bill in an enterprise mill.
That’s proven technology. That’s technology that you can, you know, depend on. Again, you have to be kind of careful because in real cold weather, canals freeze just like lakes and ponds do. So you had to be careful about that. But that was, again, technology that was dependable. I’m not opposed to that. I’m not opposed to it at all. But do not force feed this stuff on people, particularly when you do it with federally, subsidized taxpayer programs that just throwing good money after bad.
