Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation, says a “silent majority” in the auto industry fears speaking against “the trend” toward replacing all internal combustion engines with electric motors.
“Because the right answer is still unclear, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to just one option,” says Toyoda. Why would rich, powerful, corporations be afraid to say what they know to be true? What’s the risk if they don’t speak up?
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38 replies on “Big Car Boss Confesses Fear Among ‘Silent Majority’ Drives Industry’s Electric Vehicle Frenzy”
It reminds me of the push for LED lights instead of incandescent and low flow shower heads and toilets. Instead of mandating that we use them, why not let us decide which we would prefer? If I want a toilet that uses five gallons to empty the bowl, I should be able to buy it.
We’re always told we need to save electricity and save water. I am curious to know how much water and electricity we have saved over the years and what we’re saving it for? When you use less, the company supplying it must raise the price to make a profit, so what are we saving? Certainly not money.
I don’t know about what we are saving for in the aggregate, but I replace(d) almost every incandescent bulb with LED.
Why? Takes less energy to run, and my electric bill is lower.(not by much) Also LEDs last a lot longer than incandescent. Done the math. Even though LEDs are more expensive, I spend less overall.
My choice. Free market in charge.
But government interference?
Never works well.
My LEDs seem to burn out in about two years when they are guaranteed for five. And the worst lights are the integrated LEDs. Those have bulbs that are not replaceable, so when they burn out you have to replace the entire light fixture. How does that save anything?
I don’t buy the integrated LEDs because in the long run they are more expensive.
My most recently Installed LEDs have been in at least 2 years.
I have about 10 going on ten years, and about six going on five. Six of my ten year ones get turned on every day for hours on end.
Most of my less than ten years lights have replaced burned out incandescent or florescent.
Not sure what is the reason yours burn out more quickly.
I started replacing my halogen bulbs ( I had some fancy fixtures in my kitchen and hallway) five years ago with LED. The one in the kitchen had 4 50W Halogen bulbs right over my head when cooking. Nice looking and good light, but HOT. How do I know it was 5 years. Because a week before Thanksgiving one of the LED bulbs burned out and when I went to order more it was almost exactly 5 years earlier. That one fixture is on more than any other light in the house (5+ hr per day) and burned 200W. Now it burns 20W and the bulbs are less expensive than Halogen and much cooler. I probably save more than $30.00 per year on the electricity and the blubs were $8 for five of them.
As I need new bulbs, I use LED. None lasted less than 5 years so far.
Susan – if your LED are only lasting 2 years, check the voltage in your system. Also, all LED are not compatibe with dimmable circuits.
LED should definitely be lasting more than 2 years.
Would you believe that 6 LEDs that are 10 years old are on a dimmer? (But I tend to keep them on full, and they were dimmable .) More expensive than most, but ten years so far?
Note that this is in a fixture that is ten years old. Basically a chandelier. (8 bulbs) One bulb burned out two years ago and has been replaced. Another bulb burned out about 8 months ago. Yet to be replaced. Don’t need it for the light, but looks wrong without it.
On my never ending “to do” list.
Took a while to comment and probably no member will read this, but here goes.
I have an electric car. In fact, as I’ve stated before here at BW, I have an electric SMART. And I’ve had 2. A lease from 2015 to 2018. And another lease from 2018 to 2022. Jan of 22 I bought out the lease and now I own my 2018 Smart EQ outright.
Some points on this:
It’s my 2nd car. I also have a 2017 Ford F-150. Own a home? have a yard? Gotta have a longbed pickup. IMHO
I have a 6 mile commute to work. I live and work in the same town on the California central coast. I can afford a short range (70 miles) and I charge at home.About that charge at home, it’s called an EVSE and guess what? Californians are stupid enough to vote for people who make regulations as stupid as this one I took full advantage of…. Buy an at home charger (EVSE) and you’re getting a rebate from PG&E (which is heavily regulated by the knuckleheads in Sacramento). Most rebates are less than the thing you’re going to buy but not here in California! PG&E stated that the rebate would be $660 in late 2017. I was about to buy one and apply for the rebate, but a quick talk with a customer service person at the power utility said….”No , wait for January before you buy, and you’ll get a rebate increase to $800″. So PG&E gave me $800 for a $450.00 home charger, and the install from a local electrician was $150. California not only paid for the charger and installation, I gave me 200 bucks extra to blow on whatever. Go figure. Soooo California….
Those leases by Mercedes Benz….$134.00 per month for a car with 4 wheels, windshield wipers (and a windshield too!), a heater, radio, bluetooth, an extra seat for a passenger! Both with seatbelts and 8 airbags! The dealer confided in me that MB doesn’t give a crap about SMART cars. California dictates that electric SMARTS are compliance cars. Sell an electric, get to sell more gas cars (at significantly higher markups and profits) So MB was happy to lease me a SMART at such a low price.
I can’t make it to the dealership (In San Francisco) in 1 charge! I have to stop over in Silicon Valley to get a quick shot of juice while I’m sipping a coffee and listening to R/A Backstage.
I charge between Midnight and 5am when the rates are lowest, and when I last did the math, the savings over gas (and that was when it was $3.40 per gal) made E “fill-ups” cost more like $1.00 of electricity got me 23 miles down the road, versus $1.00 of gas got me 5 miles down the road.
Yes, I am fully aware of the dangers of driving a small car. My first car was a 1970 Triumph spitfire convertible. You know, the red sports car with electronics by Lucas (Prince of Darkness).
All of this to say that E cars are a nice luxury if you can afford to have 2 cars. But Mr. Toyoda is right, California is not acting rationally, or even following the science or engineering on this one. Only reacting emotionally. Toyoda’s suggesting of an all-in approach is the best possible outcome for the most amount of people. Our Man-Child Governor Newsom should take heed.
Well … At least one other person and myself read your post. One of the nice things about BWC apart from the lack of censorship is you can say anything anytime you want and while you may not get every eyeball on the site you get the ones that count. 😉
You are precisely the niche market that EVs really shine for. If I were in your position I’d do exactly what you’re doing. (With an exception I’ll get to in a minute.) It makes a lot of economic sense and the way you’re doing it saves a lot of empty, useless miles on your hydrocarbon powered vehicle.
I have a buddy that owns a beautiful Ford F-150 King Ranch. The one with the baseball-glove leather upholstery. He hates driving it to work and putting all those miles on it so he also owns a very old Toyota Celica convertible. Even though he owns that nice King Ranch he drives an aging Celica to work to avoid putting a lot of miles on the King Ranch.
Mostly everyone here, out in the country where I live, owns a pickup of some sort or another. The only exception I’m aware of is a widow lady who moved here from Kalifornia to be closer to her daughter who owns a farm with her husband.
The exception I mentioned earlier was that I don’t think I’ve have bought that EV outright. All batteries degrade over time and now you’re responsible for the battery complex in your own EV. I would have probably, at that price, just kept leasing an EV from the dealership. If that were an option, I see that Mercedes-Benz discontinued the SMART EQ (the four seater anyway) in 2021. So for a relatively cheap EV to begin with your choices might be the smarter ones for now.
ACTS,
First, thank you for reading and more importantly, commenting.
Secondly, your friends King Ranch…..leather seats… I wish…
When I went my local Ford dealership and picked out my truck, the salesman, trying to be chatty and cute, said “oh, you want to buy a ‘stripper’!” I had picked out the base-est of base models. Hand crank windows. Radio. Heater and A.C. …yup I guess it was a stripped down model. Leather seats? I was happy to get seats!
You’re correct. Had to buy, because Mercedes reduced the amount of USA dealerships to…none in 2020. Had no choice. On year 4, I’m down to 97% battery capacity. Fortunately San Francisco MB will continue services for another 15 years. Loved that little rocket since I saw it in its debut years ago.
My post tried to highlight Toyoda has it right and Governor Newsom has it wrong…and if things don’t change in California, the chaos and pain are going to get really really much worse than anyone can imagine.
Yeah, I really, really hate California and think it has coming every bit of the misery it is inflicting on itself. But then there’s the matter of folks like you who still live there too.
I was fortunate enough (I personally prefer the concept of ‘blessed’ rather than ‘lucky’ but ‘fortunate’ covers both) to make my escape from California ten years ago this coming April.
Prior to that point there was just no way for me to leave California due to work and family constraints. I left some family there even so but they’re idiots who think California is paradise on Earth just because of the bland weather.
I’m seriously amused by people who think California is so wonderful because of the weather that they very rarely go out into for more than a few minutes. Most people I knew in California went from air conditioned home to air conditioned car to air conditioned shopping or work and then reversed the process hardly spending any time in any weather at all. But I digress, sorry.
Then we get people like Bill Whittle who for some strange reason claims he has to live in the sewer to let us know what’s happening in the sewer. Bill really should leave, there are much better places with far more interesting but still mild weather within a few hours drive from the California border. Anywhere along the top of the Mogollon (pronounced ‘muhgi-yawn’ by the natives for some reason I’ve never discovered, and ‘mah-gull-un’ by everyone else) rim in Arizona is beautiful. Williams and Prescott are two of my favorites and if you absolutely have to be in Los Angeles you can get back there by car in about the same amount of time it takes to get to Las Vegas from Los Angeles.
For conservatives like you, California is a much bigger nightmare than it was when I left 10 years ago and the decline is accelerating rapidly.
Basically what we’re seeing in California is the result of spoiling children then guilt tripping them for having it so good. This causes psychiatric strain and cognitive disconnects. It really is a form of mass psychosis, one that could maybe have been avoided but now has reached critical mass.
Of course when you do that you end up with full grown adults who are still developmentally children, they never learn to mature into adult human beings. So they never learn to make adult decisions and choices. They simply don’t have to do that.
I fear greatly that the only thing that will bring about change for the better in California is a widespread disaster. Nothing focuses the mind so sharply as facing your own mortality.
That disaster might come in the form of something natural like a massive earthquake but that hasn’t really seemed to be much of an impetus so far. There was a 5.4 north of you a few days ago and people mostly ignore that sort of thing.
I think the only thing that is going to turn California around is a collapse brought on by piss poor policies and politicians but … The People of California will have done that to themselves.
The worst of it is that California is so prosperous with so many resources that the political cadre can draw out the situation and put off collapse for quite a while. Which we see them doing even now and which will make the fall all that much more horrible when it comes.
That collapse is coming if all else remains the same so my advice to you and every other conservative in California is to get the hell out of there. If you can’t leave and I absolutely understand because I was in that position myself, be certain you have a reliable and applicable bug-out plan in place.
The ‘frog killed by slowly heating water to a boil’ thing is a myth, frogs just aren’t that stupid but people can be. If you can’t get out of there for whatever reason, then make sure you have means to leave when the time comes that you must do so anyway.
Bill Whittle can get out if he can just get to the airport where his plane is kept. I think he should leave anyway but that’s my personal opinion and Bill is no dummy.
The other day I saw some nematode commenting on a YouTube video to the effect that “the rest of you (us) would all live in California if we were like him and could afford it.”
Since I left California I live way, way better on a lot less money. So the question is really “Is living in California worth the price you pay to do so?” It’s not a matter of if you can afford to live there, it’s a matter of if you can afford to get out of there.
You only get one life and now in my old age I’m acutely aware of how quickly it goes by. The 15 years of misery I wasted in California is my greatest regret and I have lots and lots of lesser regrets.
I can’t properly reply to this would a proper keyboard. Your post was too good and on point. I’m feeling a bit like Jon Malkovich right now as if you crawled through my ear canal and landed in my brain. A proper reply forthcoming.
ACTS, you left California, so you know there are so many different Californias it’s really hard to believe 1 state has:
Massive desert region – San Bernadino/Riverside/Imperial counties
The Sierra Nevada – From Tehachapi to Lassen, thousands of square miles of forest, snow, mountains, lakes and lots of fun
The Central Valleys (Sac and San Joaquin)…you know, were we get our food
The Salinas Valley if you enjoy lettuce and spinach,
Mendocino and the Redwood Coasts, where we get redwood for our decks and used to get weed…
The laughable, perpetual “State of Jefferson” from Mt. Shasta to the Oregon border,
The Bay Area, The LA Basin, and San Diego.
So many ‘Californias’, yet all of those people have their lives dominated by those in San Francisco/San Jose and Santa Monica/Hollywood.
By the way, as you know, every one of those regions has it’s own climate or weather. Most only refer to the hot arid LA basin with it’s palm trees, beaches, bikinis and stolen water.
In the county where I live on the central CA coast, a 100 deg day is rare, as in 1 or 2 every 3-4 years. Summer for us usually means down parkas because of the marine layer.
Not many folks outside of California understand the size and length and varied climates. I love the climate I’m living in, and also love to travel to other climates and yet still not have to travel far.
As to Bill, yeah, I heard his annoyed rant about “move to….” and the last one was Florida. Hoo-boy, that was a stemwinder of a rant about bugs and heat and sweat and flat and…… I learned a lesson on that Stratosphere Lounge…Bill loves Natasha, and moving means he’s one of 2 votes. I admire him for that.
California being the result of spoiled children you say? Oh, I can think of one spoiled nephew(ish) of Nancy Pelosi, our spoiled man-child of a Manditorian, Gavin Newsome. Can you imagine any better example of being spoiled than that dinner with medical friends at French Laundry in the wine country of Napa/Sonoma?
Disasters didn’t bring change to this progressive movement either. Oct 17, 1989 at 5:04 pm, 5 miles away from my house, all hell broke loose at the epicenter of the Loma Prieta Earthquake. While Santa Cruz crumbled under the 7.0 shock, we lost one life, but it was the Bay Area that took the massive hit. Houses sunk into the mud through liquefaction, the miles long cypress structure bi-level Interstate 880 pancake collapsed, dozens crushed and killed, and a massive section of the Bay Bridge just fell. Fell onto the traffic below, and there’s still video of cars on top just driving off into the air. Candlestick Park, full of 50,000 World Series fans, was evacuated and the world series delayed. As horrible as that day was and it was gastly and frightening even for me, an experienced earthquake survivor, it was really located only in a relatively small section of the huge California. Yes, LA got their own with the Northridge quake, but again, localized. The rest of the state was unaffected.
Even the recent spate of fires didn’t bring us together. Manditorian Newsome used the fires for pushing global climate change, electric cars, and mocking a sitting president for having the gall to suggest that better forest management might have prevented devastating wildfires.
California is not coming together due to natural disasters. You’re right in that it’ll take a complete economic collapse to get moderate center lefts to not vote for their brand. Unless, we can get them to understand that it was “their brand” which brought on the collapse. I can add another random theory for salvation, and it’ll come in the form of immigrants voting against “the brand”. Texas may have led the way. School “weirdness”, cultural “weirdness”, and bizarre mandates from a well to do wealthy white man-child that every immigrant has to give up their cars to go into hock for Teslas and Rivian trucks. Just not sure how that’s going to fly outside Santa Monica and the Bay Area, where people NEED trucks to like,…move stuff from here to there. Like moving arugula from Salinas to the French Laundry.
I admire you ACTS. I was born here, and while my business has taken me to every continent except for South America and Antarctica, and has also taken me to nearly every state in the US, my roots are here. My older sister is just down the road, all 3 of my children live within 5 miles of me, the graves of my parents and my oldest brother are here, and I now live in the house I grew up in, having inherited it when my Dad passed several years ago. At times, I want to leave. My wife, a native of Fresno, has no roots on the coast, and keeps saying “Let’s just go and get out of here, Idaho, Hamilton MO, Flagstaff…”. But I have a lot of reasons to stick it out. Memories, family, and yeah, the weather. I live vicariously through those who had the courage to just drop it all and move to better digs.
I think Bill should move himself and Natasha to Destin, FL or near there. If he wants fancier, then Naples. But yea, get the heck out of K-K-Kali.
We like the rolling hills of SWVA, but the beach does have appeal.
RR – If I had your commute I would consider the type of arrangement you have. My round trip is 50 miles so I never found one that would reliably get me the round trip and be able to deal with the crazies at high speed on the interstate. Though I agree with ACTS, having to buy it rather than lease it may not work out in the long run, but I think you are closer to retiring than I am so it may not matter.
Good economic analysis, though. A Good Home Economics lesson. You should write it up and give it to a HS teacher to use in class.
It shows the extra stupidity on behalf of the State Government. Kids always need to see that.
RSAE – I always like to think of Ron as a rocket scientist….
The economics of that little car only got better and better as gas in our county climbed to 6 bucks a gallon! My earlier calculation was based on $3.40 per gallon.
Ron, I’m not a rocket surgeon 😉 but kind of like in Bill’s “Eat the Rich” using genius Iowahawk’s calculations, doing the calc for seeing the benefit of a 5x gain by driving my E-Smart car was as simple as thinking about it and putting some numbers and simple algebraic formulae into a spreadsheet and watching the magic happen.
It seems so simple to me, and probably to you and the rest of the members of BWDC. But I do honestly worry about kids in high school not even understanding the idea of asking a question, let alone the methods and simple math to figure it out. Instead, we get “hey Siri, how much more efficient is my friend’s dads E-Smart car versus his F-150″……
Siri: ” You want an electric car to save the planet. You don’t want an electric car because of child slaves mining cobalt for your batteries…….help me Dr. Daystrom!”*
*See what I did there? Nice Dr. Daystrom M5 computer Star Trek TOS (The Only Series) reference…..
I would have gone “Norman, coordinate!” but that is just a matter of preference.
Yea, the climate change people don’t look at the environmental cost of materials for batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. Nor the disposal of them. Those giant wind turbine blades made of CARBON graphite fiber just get buried in the ground. Or at least they used to. No way to recycle those. Solar panels take a lot of energy to make.
Michael Shellenberger is the only former self-described environmentalist who has red pilled and now says loudly to all who will listen (not many since he is off the reservation) fossil fuels and nuclear are the best for the environment, even if one believes in AGW.
He has actually looked at the total cost of alternative energy, including dead birds by the millions, and found it very bad for the environment.
RSAE, is Shellenberger the same as one of the Twitter disclosure reporters?
Regarding true costs of batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. If there’s one thing I know, that would be composite structures. I’m wondering if anyone has factored in the costs in capital, time, energy and natural resources on those turbine blades and towers? First, epoxy doesn’t come out of the ground like a bubblin’ crude, sorry Jed. It’s a bi product not of magic fairy dust but of , ugh, petroleum. The cost to pump it. Transport it. Refine it, and then use really smart and accurate mixtures of goodies in order to get a resin and a hardener. And all of those constituents have to be made, refined, kettle cooked, stored in tanks, transported, etc. Like Thomas Sowell said in his Basic Economics, ‘the combinations and permutations’…… Making the constituents, then formulating the epoxies, and the cost to make equipment and molds on a size scale rarely done to get these turbine blades molded….then the costs to create the glass and carbon, as well as the cost, time and energy to weave the fabrics, transport to the molding facility and then costs and heat to actually mold the blades. Then transport them from Nantong or Shanghai to Long Beach or ports east. All to generate electricity only when the wind blows, and when the gearboxes aren’t blown out.
All that to say I doubt anyone has done this complete cost calculation for wind turbines alone. Not to mention solar panels. If someone has, I’d love to see how they would spin those costs into a ‘positive’.
But if anyone could spin that one, it would be…..(remember, say it as a single word with no pauses….) Corrinejeanpierre!
THEY don’t care because THEY. the uber left politicians, will have ready access to chargers. Who are They kidding…? Oh yeah the stupid wokists.
Glad to hear that at least one person is bucking the narrative.
You’re harder to control if you’re mobile. That’s why they’re pushing so hard. The WEF recently commented that we shouldn’t cars at all.
The arrogance of the people trying to shove electric vehicles down our throats really ticks me off. Because they appear to assume that everyone lives in some sort of urban hive, drives less than an hour per day, and never has any legitimate reason to travel further than a very limited battery will take them before needing to renew the power source that moves their vehicle.
If you have a gasoline or diesel powered vehicle you can go anywhere you want any time you want. I have a son that lives on the opposite coast from me, and one that lives almost exactly half way between us. If I want to I can hop in my vehicle and drive to their houses for a visit. If I had to rely on an electric powered vehicle that option is no longer available. Instead of a nice leisurely drive across country I can go as far as an electric vehicle’s battery will take me and then I might as well stop for the day because it’s going to take a significant portion of that day to recharge it. If I can even find a place to plug it in when it gets low on charge.
I have a buddy that has a nice log home (‘cabin’) in the Blue Ridge mountains about 5 hours from my home. I go up there several times a year. It’s very nice of him to invite me or let me use his place if he’s not got it otherwise engaged and there’s a great private bass pond on the property. So am I supposed to presume upon his generosity by making him foot the bill for recharging my electric vehicle? Most EVs would make it there but they sure as heck won’t make it back again without a recharge.
Same goes for visiting my sons. Do I drop the electric car off where it can be recharged and have them pick me up or do I go to their house and plug it in making them carry the cost of my recharge on their next electric bill?
What about all the people who will inevitably either overestimate how far they can go or think “My EV has enough charge and I’ll be fine.” then are not. There’s going to be a lot of EVs sitting at the side of every road in America that won’t be moved until they can be towed and recharged. Virtually everyone is going to have to get some sort of towing insurance like AAA.
I can see where an electric vehicle might be a very good fit and a sound economic choice for some people. It will be a very small number of households that can rely solely on an EV. Many if not most would have to have multiple vehicles, an EV and a petroleum powered vehicle for when the EV isn’t going to cut it. The cost of added licensing and insurance for a spare vehicle is going to be prohibitive for most households and eat up the savings gained by owning an EV.
So I’m not buying this idea that electric vehicles are economical and an environmental necessity. I think they’re a mechanism to strip us of much of the independence Americans now enjoy and really nothing more than that.
I’ve moved to Rabun County, Ga. If you need specialty medical care – other than me – it’s an hour drive. If you need department stores, big box pet stores, clothing, etc. – it’s an hour drive. Great restaurants, considering, great mountain lakes, great people (?350 registered Dems in the county, and some of them aren’t as stupid as the city Dems), great Rotary Club, etc. EV mandates would be a joke.
Exactly so. It’s like the people making these declarations about forcing everyone to switch to electric vehicles don’t know you and the rest of the rural population in places like Rabun County, GA, Chickasaw County, IA or Cheyenne County NB even exist.
At the other end of the spectrum are the people living in uptown high-rise human hives that have little to no need for any personal vehicle at all. That kind of person gets on a bus, a subway car or calls a taxi, uses that transportation to get to work or to a railroad or airway hub and then can go anywhere but …
This is a big frickin’ country. Public transportation and electric vehicles are just not viable options for a lot of people in a lot of places … and they will never be viable options for many Americans.
I can personally think of dozens of lifestyles, right off the top of my head, that will become untenable if electric vehicles are mandated and only electric vehicles can be purchased after WXYZ date. Most of those lifestyles are pretty independent minded situations.
So who’s running this dog-and-pony show? Why is the obvious lie that “we all need to make sacrifices or the planet will become uninhabitable in a handful of years” so popular with so many people who WANT to believe that and who is pushing this rot to them?
It seems pretty clear that “climate change” is actually just a euphemism for “irresistible tyranny”. An irresistible tyranny that only appeals to a minority of Americans.
Being as “climate change” doesn’t really add up if you pull the unjustified underpinnings of pseudoscience out from under it, I’ve long suspected that there was skulduggery involved but now we’re seeing the actual mechanisms exposed to view.
‘Saving the Earth’ isn’t really about ecology and conservation at all. It’s about creating a collapse by forced implementation of unscientific, unsupportable systems replacing systems we all know work.
This crap is a recipe for disaster and collapse not the formula for a Gaian Utopia.
We may get respites that set back this assault on liberty and prosperity through electing a man like Donald Trump but that’s a temporary thing. If we’re going to stop this it takes a lot broader political base than a single man to do so. Any single man. It’s too easy to target and take out any single individual. Even if that single individual is as exceptional as Donald Trump. We need a cadre of Donald Trump minded people across the entire nation or we are doomed.
Regarding the EV’s, they are worse than anything that you’ve previously described. Many of us live in very cold climates, and the energy storage/recovery of batteries is especially reduced when the weather turns chilly. I realize the same reduced efficiency also affects internal combustion engines, but the effect is not as significant as that for batteries. In fact, the lithium ion technology that current EV’s rely upon have a fairly small sweet spot for optimal operation:
too cold … no juice,too hot … FIRE!
You are absolutely correct that the “climate change” agenda has nothing to do with saving the planet’s ecology. It is nothing more than a rebranding of the old global warming trope pushed by the so-called environmentalists who have proven themselves in recent decades to be nothing more than anti-humanists. Forced human population reduction is the underlying agenda of the environmentalist movement. That has been apparent to me for 30+ years when I’ve considered the extreme resistance to clean energy production solutions like commercial nuclear power. In expensive energy production is the key to human prosperity, and the elimination of such cheap power is nothing more than a push backward to a much smaller human footprint.
All of which makes me wonder if fusion power generation hasn’t been stumped, stymied and suppressed to a greater or lesser degree also.
The recent milestone at Lawrence Livermore was a scientific first but it wasn’t anything to get excited about as far as fusion energy production goes.
The ITER tokamak project seems to me more like scientific makework, toy/tool and capital dump than anything likely to become an electrical power generation system. I really hope there’s another way to get to fusion power generation because the cost of building tokamak reactors all over the place is prohibitive.
So far there is only one real prospect I’ve been able to find that holds out any hope for a fusion generator that produces enough power to run its own systems and have surplus left over to sell. That start up company claims they’re going to have working fusion power generation by 2024. That system doesn’t use steam turbines to generate electrical power except for secondary waste heat and takes it’s electrical generation directly off the fusion reaction. I hope that’s so but … We’ll see what we’ll see.
If you and I and everyone else who sees this situation the way we do are right, and of course I think we are, then cheap, plentiful fusion power is anathema to our ideological and political enemies.
With enough cheap and plentiful electrical power the globe changes dramatically and things like desalination plants will make deserts into food production areas. Which means the planet will support even more people comfortably and in ever increasing prosperity.
Which makes fusion power a bugaboo to be squashed by the powers that are currently trying to clip the human population down to what they see as closer to ideal.
So I’m not holding my breath that we’re going to see any realistic fusion power system come online in our lifetimes. I hope I’m wrong about that.
Yeah. That Helion Energy design is quite impressive. I really appreciated the design’s improved efficiency by eliminating the steam loop from the plant’s energy cycle. The projected cycle time on the fusion reaction is also very impressive.
Due to the growing opposition to human life and prosperity that permeates the so-called enlightened world, I’m also not holding my breath.
We are bribing them with money we don’t have.
Don’t forget that fast charging is very hard on the battery, and seriously shortens its service life. The battery is most of the cost of an electric vehicle!
Is oil a fossil fuel? Listening over many years to Oil industry Engineers talking I was led to believe it isnt. The label fossil was given in order make it as a finate product more valuable.
One snarky comment I read but makes a great point: If oil is dinosaur remains aren’t they the ultimate rnewables?
The gasoline vs electric debate was had, in this country and in Europe, more than 100 years ago. Gasoline won, resoundingly. Now, battery-powered cars are being pushed by the same politicians who want everyone to ride in trains.
Charging time is one problem. But if engineers can reduce charging time such that your Tesla can accept a full charge in 10 minutes, that brings another problem: charging system capacity. To charge a 100 KWH battery in ten minutes, one has to provide 100 KWH of energy IN TEN MINUTES. That’s orders of magnitude beyond current capabilities. “The Grid” can’t handle that kind of power load. Generating stations can’t handle that kind of load. This country can’t handle that kind of load.
Expanding a bit: 100 KWH energy in ten minutes requires (ignoring losses) a 600 KW source for ten minutes.Now, imagine a typical Costco refilling operation, with 16 pumps. Converted to EV use, 16 multiplied by 600 KW gives us 9600 KW capacity, that needs to be available about 12 hours a day. If the voltage being used is 480 VDC, that’s a mere 20,000 amps at the charging point(s); If the supply voltage is 240, then the requirement is 9600/240, only a 40,000-amp supply is needed.
That’s a lot of juice. And let’s remember, there’s a Circle K just up the street with 8 pumps, and a Shell with 6, and the Fry’s Supermarket has 8, and on and on.
I’m about to turn 68 years old. I’m overweight and diabetic, which means I probably don’t have a lot of years left, which, the way politicians are taking this world, means I’m checking out of this mess before it gets much worse. And it will continue to get worse unless there are major uprisings around the world to eliminate the evil that has taken hold. I feel very sorry for those who will have to continue to live with this craziness if nothing is done to stop it.
Thank you to Bill, Scott and Steve for continuing to expose the corruption and greed of the left. Good work, Gentlemen.
The EV is a solution looking for a problem. The total amount of carbon released by the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) is 8% of all carbon released in the world. And that % is DECREASING. So politicians are going to great lengths to solve a problem that is already solving itself. It would be noteworthy for Bill/Scott/Steven to mention this fact and point what a red herring this whole EV thing is, not to mention the points they made regarding the inferior technology.
Thank you, John. This type of data is important and needs to be pointed out frequently. Even if you “grant the premise” as Bill is fond of saying, if you were to eliminate all ICE, you are only scratching the surface.
One of the journalists doing the Twitter dump reporting is Michael Schnellenberger, who is a self-described Environmentalist. He goes back a long way and used to work for one of Soros’ groups. He has been beating the drum for years now that if one is truly an Environmentalist, then Wind, Solar and EV are not the correct solutions, as they are terrible for the Environment when analyzed from cradle to grave.
He became a Fossil Fuel and Nuclear power advocate because, if you believe we should be good stewards of the Environment (different from Saviors) then these are the best tools in our tool belt for doing so. He includes the mining of battery materials, disposal of them, the power cost for making solar panels, the cost to make wind turbine blades, the disposal of them and also includes the millions of dead birds and other animals from Wind and Solar farms.
Really interesting to see his conversion from WInd/Solar anti Fossil Fuel going 180 degrees.
Electric cars aren’t intended as any kind of transportation “solution”. If there was, any single person on The Radical Left would have given us straight talk as to how much electricity we’d need, how it would be generated (whether by solar, nuclear, coal, wind, etc), and where those power sources would be located. The fact that they haven’t says everything.
The purpose of electric cars is to limit people’s ability to move freely, and give the govt. the ability to simply turn off the power on any car whose owner has an insufficiently low credit score.
And I genuinely miss the days when what I just wrote would be laughed out of the room as tinfoil hattery. Now they’re all but proclaiming it at World Economic Forum meetings
On that cheery note, Merry Christmas, and Happy Hannukah, everybody!