True cost of electric cars

At that price, you should buy Bill’s…
https://www.k-bid.com/auction/21637/item/1?offset=1

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I was trying to do something unique just because it was my 94 yr old Dad’s truck. It only has 34000 miles on it.

Yes Chris, someone will get a great deal on this truck.
This is a pretty unique truck itself because it is OEM and they got rid of most of them. Plus this has electric windows, locks and mirrors whereas most of them didn’t.

Bill,
Could you PM me for a nearby price indication ? i would love to get that one over here ( and build a charcoal charger for it )

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Here is some very knowledgeable confirmation on Billy Norths original conclusion - from the head of Toyota’s decision NOT to invest in developing all electric plug-in cars . . .
He said it would crash their Japan electrical grid in summer AC use time; require multiple billions to expand their Grid. Resulting in greater carbon emissions for coal and natural gas electrical generating plants.
“Here’s Why Toyota is Refusing to Make Electric Cars”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh3eL3l5Dkk&t=3l5s
Skip ahead and only watch from 8:40 to hear this.
Early on in the video Scotty Kilmer mixes up president Bush with president Clinton.
And he does not address the new full safety recalls of the Chevrolet Bolts for fires. Only quoting 2015-17 Bolt information’s.

Noodling along waiting for the dew to burn off my outside firewood to be brought in from drying stations to full shed blowing rainy protection.
Regards
Steve Unruh

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I really don’t understand the management choice at Toyota. What they have done is remove themselves from markets in Europe which are determined to become EV markets. Norway is something like 90% of all new passenger cars are EV the gaps in their new cars market are for lack of commercially available EV in that space not for lack of interest so Toyota had effectively eliminated themselves from that country and in the future most of Europe.

Pretty easy to follow Toyota’s thinking DanA.
For decades they have crafted them selves to be the quality World vehicle supplier.
Look at their markets in Africa, the Middle East, the Asia’s, Micronesia, Central and South America. Australia.
They know they will only ever get a smallish piece of the Chinese and India markets.
And they will still get the market with their hybrids in the majority of the eastern European countries. As they have for the last 20 years.
All areas that will not Grid build electrify easily.
Ha! The American SW ainta’ gonna support electric vehicles either.
Not all of the US is dense east and west coasts.
Not all of Europe is Norwegian Hydro; Dutch and Danish Wind.
S.U.

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Interesting video. If you listen to what they say, the narrator says that they estimated the cost to support an all electric society in Japan was 135 to 358 billion dollars. For a country with about a 5 trillion dollar GDP, that is at most about 7%. Since renewable sources of power are now cheaper than most other sources, what I am hearing is: 7% of GDP is too much to switch to a cleaner power source.

Maybe after a few more major climate disasters strike, that 7% is going to start to sound better. Either way, I think electric vehicles are going to take over eventually. There is going to be a tipping point, where the cost, engineering, and charging infrastructure are suddenly going to make people wonder, why didnt we switch to electric decades ago? Hopefully it will not be too late?

Anyway, out of curiosity, I computed how much my electric truck costs to run. I came up with about .03$/mile if you pay for electricity at .09$/kwh. I figured it would cost .17$/mile if i was still burning gas in that little S10 at 22mpg and 3.75/gallon. But dont get me wrong, my goal was not to save money. I strongly discourage anyone from thinking that they can save a buck by switching to electric! Woodgas wins hands down I think on the cheapest way to power your own vehicle. I think I will have to drive around 100,000 miles to recoup my conversion expenses! But, it was an interesting project, and I learned a lot, which was my main motivation.

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We have our Model 3 almost two years now.33833 km/21000 miles, it has an average 179 Wh/km 288 Wh/mile. We drive normal, I know and experienced his topspeed/ acceleration etc, but most of the time we drive normal, still first set of tires. A little flat but that makes corners very interesting. Because we have a lot of solarpanels we dont pay but get payed for electricity. Panels are all older then five years, so payed for themselves. ROI is less then five years over here. The first cars were electric and not a won race for petrol. Big companies took over and we are all adicted to oil now. With electricity it is a different game. Lots of ways to make your own. Woodgas is one, and perfect for wintertime.

So, we dont pay anything for our transport, but if we had to it would be around 6 ct per MILE, and no oil change, no sparks, etc…

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Yeah folks over here in the US take for granted our ease of access to energy in general. Most here I dont think have an understanding of what its like outside of the US.

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Yes, almost 2 euro/liter for gas, 8 dollar/gallon???

And the question how topic started. What are the cost of an electric car? Then start with an electric, not hybrid. It is fossile or electric. Turn left or right, but you cant have both. Like tools. Some of them can do this and that. In real life they cant both.

Sorry, too late got to work tomorrow.

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You just reminded me of a funny experience. About 15 years ago I guess I spent about 18 months in Tiawan. I was working as a controls engineer installing some production lines. When I was first riding around with the owner of the company there who hired us the first day I looked at the fuel price on the sign and quickly converted it to US dollars and said that would be almost identical to the price on the pump in the USA so that isn’t bad I am impressed I thought you had high fuel costs. The looked shocked having been to the USA just a month earlier then he started laughing and said that is per liter not gallon. I just said oh that is really bad than… we both laughed at how funny it was that I overlooked the difference volume after converting the price. But it stuck with me because I needed to remember from that point forward that not only do I need to think in currency exchange but I had to make sure I understood what I was actually paying for while I was there.
Yes most Americans have no idea how cheap our ff is. When it hits $3 per gallon people scream bloody murder which is crazy cheap on a global scale which explains why we drive big wasteful cars crazy distances.

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Japan has some relatively unique energy challenges. For starters it doesn’t have material fossil fuel resources. It doesn’t have flat uninhabited areas for solar or wind. Offshore wind is tricky due to low wind speeds and deep water. They won’t do nuclear for obvious reasons. Right now Japan is a massive importer of fuel, so they have a big incentive to invest in domestic energy production. They just don’t have many options.

In terms of grid capacity… it’s not hard to charge cars at night when the grid is otherwise not strained and few people drain the battery completely most days. In any case, Japan has far fewer cars per person since they are so dense and well served by mass transit. Charging locations might be the bigger issue?

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You can’t own a vehicle in Japan if you do not own or have proof of places to park it. It is a tolal different world over there. High density of people.
Bob

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Hi All,
I put up this Toyota statement link because my only concern as a thrifty American is what in coming down the pike as used, best affordable, depreciated.

I’ve made sub-par brands and models work in the past. AMC, IHC, MG’s. Ha! It’s a lot of w-o-r-k.
And I’ve cherry picked from the Big-Three American companies. Much better solution. But a fellow has to be rigid, strict. The Chrysler mini-vans it was o-n-l-y the 99 and 2000 model years. Wife’s current Ford Edge it is o-n-l-y the 2014 year model.

So now today buying a used all electric vehicle in America is would only be a Nissan Leaf. And ONLY a 2013, 2016 model year.

Not any Tesla from a company that will not release service information. Demands you stay literally plugged into to them for service, parts and “updates”. That arrogance is from Elon on down.
Not any Chevrolet/GM electric car product. They always been arrogant as a corporation. Then drift as a corporation to cheap’ing out and Opps! fail. With some critical plastic usage as the culprit. Then they lie and obfuscate, lawyering about it.
Not a 1-3 year limited production electric BMW, Ford, or other woo-woo eye candy. Here today. Gone tomorrow. With then no parts support.

Here again. Too many of you insist on being world problem saviors.

Save your self first. Learn your lessons. Take your lumps learning.
GM, Ford and Chrysler sucked up to the Obama/Gore hog-trough in the 1990’s and produced nothing to show for $100’s of million’s except for a charging port standard.
They failed because then 80 mpg equivalent was then technologically just not possible. The Top-Down dictates showed the stupidity of that approach.

Toyota and Honda did not hog trough swill. Used their own products sold; earned developments moneys. For their own purposes. They the ones came out with electric powered cars as actual production vehicles in their hybrids.

And before I’d ever buy a used toad-ugly (made in China) Nissan Leaf I’d buy a used Toyota standard model Prius, any year. Or any year Prius V.
Want plug-in capability? Get the proper equipped 2016 and on Prius.
Steve Unruh

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Thanks, I will remember the years. Used for sale here too, and with the batteries still ok. Another misunderstanding with electric cars. Batteries are doing better then expected. Kids growing up and almost driving a car.

Most important lesson. If you want to save the world, save yourself first.

Surprised by Bill Schillers Ford, didn’t know that one. No over the air updates. I think this one will drive forever? As long as the batteries are ok.

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I would think off shore wind would be very good in Japan the bombers in WWII overshot their targets from the high wind speeds there. It was how the USA learned about the jet stream no one knew it even existed out side of the Japanese who know very well because they had to deal with it going directly over the country. I was reading something about that just the other day.
Japan has also done a ton of work with floating solar power. There is also a underground cable in the design stages to run high voltage from Australia to Asia as part of their plans for solar farms.
I suspect the issue with Toyota is the same thing we saw with Sony in the Bata Max vs VHS wars. The Japanese government licenses technology to certain companies and pushes them to develop it. I suspect in the future we will learn that is why Toyota is all in on hydrogen and not on board with batteries and EV technology. They keep talking about a yet un developed solid state battery but that seems like a simple delay tactic. I suspect lifepo4 and the new sodium battery that was recently announced I can’t remember the company right now will be the future of transportation. No fire risk and the sodium battery isn’t supposed to suffer from the typical dendrites that kill other batteries.

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The problems with Nissan leaf batteries tend to all come from hot climates and their air cooled batteries getting over heated. Unless you buy a southern car imported you should be ok I would think. IIRC you don’t live in a hot climate for say.

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No, sea climate. Only wet, all day every day. The Leaf you can buy for reasonable money overhere. A friend of mine has one for his restaurant/cook and is driving a small bus himself. Very happy with it, the only thing is, he spend a lot of money on new/extra batteries for extra range and better charging. He wants to make trips from Holland to Czech republic, 1000 km and more. After first time charging, the pack is overheated, next stop less charge etc. 8 hour trip took him more then 18, now with extra batteries 10 to 12 hours. New business are starting now , who would think of that 10 years ago?

https://www.muxsan.com/Nederlands/index.html

This is the guy that upgraded his Nissan.

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I dont think that’s what’s going on as far as GM, Ford adopting the EV. It is a forced situation that will not ever be made public. Conspiracy? Maybe but from what i know that is coming from credible sources I dont think it is far off. We hit peak oil well over a decade ago, (easy to get oil is gone!) that is for real, what most dont consider is population growth and that projected to projected global oil production is not jiving. We are out of middle east oil not because we wanted to be energy independent we were forced out. If the truth were told we immediately go into global meltdown today!!

Better embrace those EV’s because they are coming regardless if you like them or not or if your infrastructure can handle. If you think gas prices are high now you wait!! This is cheap right now it will get much worse in just few short years you mark my words.

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