Last edited Sun Sep 6, 2015, 03:08 PM - Edit history (1)

But I know people who brag about the lousy fuel economy of their big pickup trucks. My cousin recently bought a new Dodge, all chromed up and tricked out. He was very pleased it got worse mileage than the pickup he had before.

--freedom to shit in the reservoir.

We have guys out here who rig their Diesels to roar and smoke, bunch of frigging idiots, My wife and I decided to get an RV and when the research was done I bought a pull behind with a dodge ram 4X4 crew cab with the 6 cylinder ECO diesel on it. Thirty mile to the gallon at 55-65 MPH, with the trailer 15 MPH which beats any thing else out there. I couldn't believe I was getting better mileage then my Element. Just so everyone knows I live in the mountains in Idaho and spend a lot of time on some very poor roads, my Brother in law is a photographer and dose some wonderful stuff, so I get to drag him up a lot of cool places, I can't get him to enter any contests though. Our other car is a 2007 Prius, the second one we have owned. We bought our first in 2001. This is our main cars when the weather is good. My wife can't wait until the Teslas get reasonable.

I thought to myself, yes, yes it should and hoped he had pain.

I think that phrase is very racist...

and safest car available. I'd LOVE to be able to buy one! It's not only safe & fuel efficient, but it looks GREAT too! TS if the righties don't like the idea. They wouldn't know what a great car is! The only cars lots of them are familiar with are 10+ years old, dinged all around, and most likely a pickem-up truck!

Cars in general started out being way more expensive than they are now.

I'm looking for electric & hybred cars to pick up sales rather quickly, as they are able to go farther distances between charges, and more people enter the market to replace their existing ride.

20 years ago I bought my first computer. $2100 for a 1 gig hard drive, 8 megs of RAM, and a clunky CRT monitor. My thoroughly obsolete iPhone 3G has massive multiples of the power of that old desktop and I bought it from a friend for $50 when my old phone died early last year. He'd upgraded twice since this phone and thought getting fifty bucks for it was a hell of a deal..

are part of the liberal agenda to get us safer, more efficient cars

if I can go a little off topic.... I live in an apartment. I'd love to have an electric vehicle but.......... if I did, how could I charge it? don't you need a charging station? I live on the second floor so I don't think they'd like me running an extension cord.

--credit cards. Problem being thqt you have to live near one.

There are several spots at the parks nearby where you can charge for free. Several spots at my work and more. I charge up at the park while going to swim laps. Perhaps there are similar spots nearby?

found a spot less than a mile from my apartment........

thanks to everyone else who replied too

um........... just actually need to buy an electric car now...

It takes overnight to get a full charge (41-44 mi.) but I'm putting in a 240v charging station that will do the trick under 2 hrs.

Talk to your management about it, however extension cords are not recommended.

They're relatively inexpensive and would make the property more attractive for renters.

Yes, it's a bit of chicken-and-egg now. But that was also true with gasoline cars. There weren't a lot of gas stations, and there were plenty of places to feed and water your horse.

closing in.

That is what I want for my next car. I was in Reno a couple months ago and that's all everybody was talking about there.

I got a great deal on a new Chevy Volt 4 months ago. A charge is good for about 43 miles. I drive less than 40 mile per day, and in that 4 month period I have used less than 6 gallons of gas. And the last couple of gallons I burned on purpose, because I didn't want the gas going bad.

I had a Prius, and I still have a Ford C-max. There's better things to do with your money than spend it on gas.

- Dick Cheney

They've been blowing terrorists and communists for years now, so I don't see why this is a surprise.

... it's among the right-wingers that you have the hobby of "rolling coal"--that is, modifying their pickup trucks to belch soot into the air as an act of defiance--preferably while in front of a Toyota Prius. I see yahoos like this on the road every day in SE Pennsylvania.

The first time I have heard of "coal rolling" was on the Stephen Colbert show. It's an incredibly stupid hobby that's also expensive and highly illegal in most states. They have filters on diesel trucks for a reason.

that belonged to a former colleague moving to Singapore, but I just couldn't justify it even though they were basically asking half what they paid for it. We took it out on a closed runway and it was just fucking insane the way it accelerated.

Based on current US power generation an electric vehicle, in terms of the CO2 released during electricity generation, is roughly equivalent to a gasoline vehicle that gets around 40mpg in terms of carbon footprint.

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions

(NB that a broad switch to electric vehicles would place more demand on the electric power grid, necessitating more generating capacity and probably increasing emissions from electrical generation since the USA seems to be locked into gas and coal in preference to renewables)

... about a car that you state is roughly equivalent to 40 mpg, when the average mpg for cars in the U.S. is currently 24 mpg.

Electric motors are hugely more efficient than internal combustion, don't emit directly, and can be powered by renewable sources. That's plenty to make them a vastly better alternative to gas and diesel vehicles.

No one is confused about the fact the power still needs to be generated as the grumpy little contrarians seem to believe.

I remember when the same folks were hawking the idea that early EVs were worthless because the batteries would pollute everything and blah and blah. They conveniently assumed we'd be shipping nickel-metal hydride batteries halfway across the world forever, and that a Humvee (which was claimed to have the same environmental impact as a Prius) had a 200,000 mile expected lifespan.

You might want to dismiss it, but it's important in the calculations. Are you are simply trading one dirty fuel for another? In the end, does it change your carbon footprint if your gasoline usage drops to zero but your consumption from the power grid doubles? I'm sure someone has done the math on this.

If I am going to go out of my way and overspend for a "eco-friendly car" it better make a dent in the overall carbon footprint. Otherwise, what's so eco-friendly about it?

I'm not saying the technology shouldnt be developed since someday we may have more renewable electric. But right now this is more of a luxury option for someone with a lot of extra money to spend. Sure Tesla is developing a model that is in the 35k range. But then you have to add in how much the electric will cost vs gasoline. Oil is getting to be pretty cheap right now and with the way demand is crashing in China...it will probably stay cheap for awhile.

To me the appeal of the emergence of EVs is that it's an efficient technology with a lot going for it and and the potential to be hugely useful. And as a car enthusiast, I find instant torque and quiet operation and fueling at home desirable.

Electric vehicles are cool, period. And the bottom line is that they do have the potential to be extremely environmentally beneficial, probably more so than any other current technology.

So someone "reminding" us all that EVs aren't magic energy-free perpetual motion machines doesn't seem that helpful. It assumes that people who like EVs think that, and I don't think they do.

And as far as that goes, electric motors are more than twice as efficient as internal combustion, they don't emit directly, and they can be powered by renewables. That's more than enough to make them a good idea, and all current information points to an easy net benefit in using EVs as far as energy consumption and pollution are concerned.

And respectfully, a lot of this, "But electricity still comes from fossil fuels for now" feels like bad-faith nonsense from people either automatically opposed to anything that smacks of green technology, which they seem to fear will be forced on them, or from pedants who revel in "debunking" potential radical advances of any kind.

And lest you think I'm making that up, I've read Car and Driver for years, and I distinctly remember Brock Yates and the other dirt-track era gear heads there whining that electrics were boring and slow and were being pushed by hair-shirt environmentalists out to spoil everyone's good time.

When the Tesla Roadster smashed the magazine's long-standing top gear 50-70mph acceleration stat -- a great measure of useable real world performance -- Car and Driver admitted it was amazed, but felt compelled to whine, "We still wouldn't want one."

And remember Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear, who ran down a Tesla's battery deliberately, and then claimed it crapped out on the track, dramatically pushing it back to the paddock? When Tesla sued, the show said it was just entertainment, and it was entitled to dramatize what a real battery failure would've looked like, if it had actually happened. Because Clarkson, a British libertarian whose sense of humor includes things like racist comments and punching a co-worker for not getting his dinner, has a childish hatred of electric vehicles.

And so on.

I think it's fine, if you stumble on someone confused about why they like electric vehicles to point out that they're not a compromise-free instant solution to the world's energy and pollution problems. Nothing is, so that's pretty hard to contradict. I'm just not sure there's a problem with people thinking that.

I am a bit of a gear head. I love old iron- my dream car is a 66 GTO convertible. I used to love going to drag races, especially the top fuel. But this year head has to sit in wonder at what Tesla is doing. Like has been said, nothing accelerates like an electric motor.

You are still burning fossil fuels to provide the electricity unless your power company's main source is wind or solar. Nuclear would probably be a decent alternative if you find a better way to dispose of the spent fuel.

i'm going to hold out for a fully robot assembled electric car, preferably with a carbon scrubber on the roof to offset my personal carbon footprint. until then, i'll continue driving a truck that gets 12mpg.

... why even bother with anything, really?

Silly greenies with their "incremental improvements" and "belief in advancing technologies."

No reason not to keep heating our homes with dung fires and eating deep-fried bald eagle meat until we at least have a sub-orbital solar power transmission station and induction-ready ceramic-composite autonomous roadways in place. Now THAT would be an improvement worth recognizing.

Or nuclear, of course. I have heard it's perfectly safe if you're not scared of a little catastrophic meltdown here and there.

That's not available for gasoline-powered cars.

I never can find any analysis of how much natural gas (that's what we generate electricity with in Texas) it takes to provide X miles per gallon of gas, of watts of electricity. That power has to come from someplace. It just goes through more stages when it's electric.

couldn't possibly have a roof full of solar cells. Hell, even a republican co-worker generates 80% of his electrical use (oh, and his wife drives a Prius, too)

...namely, anything that fails to cheerlead conservative policies and talking points, or fails to treat liberals and anything associated with them as fools and knaves, or frauds.

And it's been that way since they coined that phrase back in the 50s or 60s.

The right wing family members, friends, co-workers in my life all sift everything through a tribal "team player" filter. Whenever I try to engage them in discussion, it always boils down sticking it to the enemy, rather than the relative merits/demerits of an issue.

No shades of gray allowed. It's not even enough for something to be not overtly leftist in any way manner shape or form: If it's not overtly conservative in the way their pea brains process their worldview; it's to be sneered and lampooned at.

Cars/trucks, movies, music, locations: Doesn't matter.