Various jurisdictions are homing in on that issue. The general approach seems to be to levy the road tax equivalent that would have been charged on the gasoline. Bureaucratic heaven. If wood fell in the focus of the powers that be, expect the same.
Yup Garry we live in the free world where noting is actually free. Your probably right. The two things you can depend on in life are death and taxes.
It is just too cold here to do anything today high was 10 F and crazy wind all day long. I have a mess to clean out of the driveway but decided it will have to wait till tomorrow when it will be in the 20 s and no wind. Even if I have to work in some snow tomorrow it will be better then the wind. My allis chalmers d15 does a great job but she has no cab so you get to share the weather with her. I will have to DOW her just to get the heat off the burner. Lol. Actually I just swapped out the hydraulic pump from a 30 gpm to a 15 gpm which is the right size for it partly because it was under powered with the 30 and partly with the hope that this summer I will find I have reduced the load enough I can DOW it. But with all the weight I put on it to handle my hay grapple I am not sure. Really need a d17 for that job or a d19. Same issue with my d17 she is working for all she is worth with the monster baler and accumulator I have. Oh well i will figure something out.
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The way our taxes affect the gasoline price has one advantage - the price changes very little. +/-15% at the most.
Back in 2008, before recession, was all time high. 15% higher than now - in our currency. But of cource USD was low at that time. 1 US gallon of gasoline was actually 10 USD.
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If gas was 5 dollars a gallon in the US, you would see a -massive- change to EVs. However, you need to be able to have the standards fights and agree on ways to implement stuff, as well as develop all the necessary technology and drive down prices. The US Clean Power Plan actually implements it slowly. It avoids a seriously messy situation of massively deploying 1st or 2nd gen technology at a high cost then having to go back and correct the mistakes.
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Sean in my experience rushing and going back to fix your mistakes after you win first to market is how business likes to function. If we didn’t rush it out the door half right management felt it took too long. Of course they always came back and asked why it needed to be fixed on site when they forced shipment 9 months into a 18 month project. 
I don’t miss those days in the least. I had more then one in counter with people several layers of management above me that I thought would end with me walking out the door because I would tell them like it was trying to get the time we needed.
Washington state has put a $100 /year surcharge on EV,s and is working on a mileage tax in addition to the $0.20/gallon state tax on top of the $0.10 Fed tax for ALL VEHICLES no matter what fuel is used
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There’s multiple reasons for me to keep any future on road gasification in stealth mode, and that’s one of them. But, I highly doubt we’re going to see many dow’ers out there. It’s just too big of a commitment for most folks - a good thing for us! 
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Exactly. Then you add several companies and ideally you can get them to agree on a standard for stupid thing like charge plugs. And data communications.
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I’ll say again, I don’t think there will ever be a massive rollout of EV’s. The electrical grid is many times too small. Besides, the auto manufacturers and oil industry make incredible profits from business as usual, and will quash any challenge to their business model. I believe it’s more likely that the EV’s will continue to occupy their current niche, luxury and sport vehicle. When petroleum becomes truly scarce, the EV’s will occupy the same niche as early gasoline vehicles, conveyances for the wealthy, the peons will get by on foot or pedal bike, electric scooter if lucky.
Gary they are comming out now. The chevy bolt is the first ev that is practical for the avg person.
MSRP: From $36,620
Range: 238 mi battery-only
Considering it is still new technology that is cheaper then most of the pickup trucks avg Americans find a way to budget.
I like the bolt, better than tesla 3, and it actually got built, and built without taxpayer input. What I want to see, is real world range after charging 10 hours outside at -25 deg C, then operating at -25 deg C , driving through 6" of snow, heater and defrost at full blast the whole time. I’m still a sceptic for real world applications in all climates. What’s the range under these conditions without putting the battery below 20%? That will be a test I can have faith in.
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It’s nice, but I feel the wrong application for the technology. To recapitulate the heydays of the age of oil and coal won’t lead to good ends on a realistic energy budget and system. We will have to see how it rolls out. Let’s hope this green electric dream isn’t based on FF generators, the efficiency of that means coal would be better burnt in modern day Stanley steamers.
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Will that is time in service. You have to remember you are looking at it from the perspective of someone who uses a gas vehicle with over 100 years of engineering behind it. The early gas cars a decade or 2 in weren’t as nice as the electric we have now.
If it gets too cold I have to heat my diesel or she won’t start about -10 F with no wind and running it within the last 12 hours or the glow plugs just are not enough and you at plugging her in. My point is yes we might have to heat batteries or keep the car in a moderately warm space for example below ground where the ground temp keeps it above freezing around here. But there are answers. If your car has to function in extreme cold it will probably need range extender batteries and extra insulation to and maybe heaters to keep them warm. We do simular things to winterize diesel vehicles and the fuel for them now. If you question that just fill up down south and drive back up north this time of year. Maybe an 18 wheelers driver learns that one the hard way.
Gary I am not saying we can keep our wasteful ways just that there are other means of transportation beside ff which will allow us to not have to go back to horses. Which is good because we would need to raise a boat load of horses for our current population. Lol
The one thing I like about electric powered devices is that it allows you to run it on anything. We can make electricity from wind solar hydro wood other bio mass waves. And then all the yucky stuff as well. The point being simply that in a future of alternative energy you can make the power with some locally available resource but big auto can still market the cars everywhere regardless of it you are in a solar or wind or hydro power region.
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Actually to replace all the gas vehicles in the US, it is going to be around a 50% increase in grid use. You gain quite a bit of efficiency with the electrics. I don’t know about diesel. Right now it isn’t about making sure you get every oddball case. Even if Tesla gets it’s semi into production, you aren’t going to see it on ice road truckers anytime soon.
The Bolts/Volts and Tesla’s along with I would guess anything with lion batteries have temperature control for the battery packs as well as AC and heating for the cabin. It cuts down on range but it is there already. For the Bolt you get a pedal to the floor range at top speed of 93 mph is 160 miles.
Oh man you had to go and tell everyone that it only goes 93 mph now no one will buy it because it isn’t the fastest car in the crowd who wants a slow car??? LMAO I don’t know if anyone watches the grand tour on amazon or not but the last episode where they raced the electric car compared to the gas was soo funny and so stupid at the same time. Captain Slow kicked Jeremy butt all the way up to about 100 but since the kept the race going to a speed you can’t drive on any road in the usa (atleast without risking running into a blue light special) they claimed that the electric car was slower. When for Any practical speed it was crazy faster with all that torque of the electric motor.
I was thinking it saids something that they can sell a car in Europe with a shorter range though. Here I drove about 45 miles to work everyday 90 miles round trip and I always figured I needed twice that range to be able to go somewhere after work and still get home. We really do live spread out lives in the usa but in our economy here there isn’t a good way around it that I can see. Unless you live in a city but I tried that it just isn’t me.
Sean I did know that there are battery heaters in the Tesla I didn’t mention them being there only because I wounder how much power or range it will suck back this time of year while you are at work for 10 hours. I know no company I worked for would provide an outside outlet for you to plug in. I have actually gone out at night and not been sure my duramax would actually start because it was soo cold. And before someone asks yes it had good batteries just gets that cold here at times.
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I agree. Physics seems to say that isn’t going to happen with any degree of efficiency. Keeping windows free of frost in a vehicle is a necessity, apart from keeping the passengers alive and comfortable. FF burning results in so much waste energy, that function is a free gift. For an electric, whole different story. Then the dilemma of keeping the batteries heated at minus 25 or colder. If battery power is expected to heat the batteries, the system efficiency is gone, and standby capacity would probably be in the range of a day or two before full depletion. Obviously an active heating system plugged into the grid would be much more efficient, but still very costly, and needing standalone backup on board. As for cabin heating, I believe a propane or natural gas auxiliary system would be far more efficient. Charcoal might be pressed into service.
Granted, these challenges become less critical the further south you go, but windows have to be frost free, and pushing tires through snow uses way more power.
Given that the north American electrical grid is powered generally by coal and natural gas, crunching the numbers leaving aside cabin and battery heating it soon becomes clear it’s more efficient to just burn the natural gas in a conventional vehicle. The real world efficiency gains are to be had by reducing curb weight, wind resistance, and rolling resistance. Easily enough gains are available there that the president could, with a stroke of a pen, mandate efficient vehicles to the degree that the US would cease to import foreign oil.
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A look at this link might help:
Tesla uses the waste heat from the cars electronics, motor and battery charge discharge to run cabin heat. Ac would be a draw of course. Ev are a philosophical change. We have been buying FF all our life and letting the waste energy generated at the well head, refinery, and distribution end go unnoticed except as price. We only notice EVs limits and costs because we are having to build the infrastructure from scratch in the 21st century where costs are more obvious, labour is expensive and regulation prevents the kind of reckless development that brought the car FF industry about. Having said all that I’m not ready to jump on board the Ev wagon yet. I would be that farmer in his field with his team seeing all the steam tractors appear at his neighbours saying “not yet” until one day the ford n series appears and then aha off to the glue factory no looking back.
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I agree but having a background in industrial controls I am more excited about it. Atleast here on the farm where I am never that far from home.
I keep wondering how to make a multi use system solar home electric with an electric tractor that doubles for extra battery storage come winter. I have an advantage in that I have summer only loads and usage of a tractor. I keep thinking of all the times I fire up my truck or tractor to simply move hay between two barns or some other job that doesn’t let the motor even warm up and think if it was a wood gas system that would be even worse of a hit to do an easy job. But it wood gas powers my genorator in the winter I could do this with an EV and only burn the little fuel it takes to do the job. In the end you have to remember life is all about trade offs. No system is perfect.
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Don’t get me wrong, I’d love an electric for a work commuter and errands. Car would be simple and should be reliable. Easy to own. They’re not there yet, maybe in Florida, but not up here. Even then, you won’t be doing any long hauls, or any work with them either, so you’ll still need a gas burner. The way government has been cranking the costs to own: register, certify, plate, insure, and license drivers and vehicles for the road, the minute I can downsize to just one vehicle, I will. That means an electric will have to be more than a one trick pony before I’ll own one. We are decades away from that event, in fact; for a rural guy like me paying .25/kwhr off the pole, it probably won’t happen in my lifetime.
The way I see it, they’ll need to drop the price to 25K CAD, have a 600km range minimum even through a -25 snowstorm, and carry 4 people plus cargo no problem. Then the government will need to allow charging at .05/kWh. Short of all of the above, it’s not worth it for anyone outside an urban area. My current 18 year old beater I paid $1300.00 for does all this and more, what little savings there are feuling off the grid won’t make up for all the shortfalls.