Toyota Warns (Again) About Electrifying All Autos.

If we left everything up to the market, how many more people would have died from unsafe vehicles until auto makers started making basic safety features like seatbelts and airbags standard?

The free market needs a little nudge here and there to move it along, what’s in some corporate exec’s best interest doesn’t necessarily trickle down to everyone else.

But yeah, we can all see that the infrastructure isn’t there yet. You can’t be asking people to avoid using microwaves and air conditioners on one hand and demand they get an electric vehicle on the other.

We’d also need to find another way to fund road repairs aside from the gasoline tax.

 

A whole house gen would be rad. We lose power here in SoCal so frequently, I really need to get this on my list of priorities. I'm not sure I'm in a position to go all out right now (new pool install) but a small gas generator grabbing a single circuit through a hand transfer switch would at least allow us to power critical devices. We're fighting two giants over here, demand and fires. Even if we're producing alright, PG&E and SCE will open their distribution if the fires are getting out of control. I'm not sure if you do something similar or if you even have those problems but I believe its a result of the ridiculous lawsuits that they lost a couple years back.

 

The grid can't handle summer brown outs and many other problems...if every driver has an electric vehicle charging them would cripple it.
We are way better off improving gas engines.
They could try making them last longer that would ease the waste problem.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about the government's ability to fund itself. That little nudge they gave us in California by mandating Solar on new residential construction, they're currently lobbying a proposition to tax its energy production, funny how that works. Mandate, then tax. Additionally, they're working with CPUC to pass NEM 3.0, which will reduce the amount reimbursed by utilities for self-generation by anywhere from 50-75%. So the financial incentive for solar will leave but it won't matter because they mandate its installation. Sorry if I don't trust the government's good intentions. I've met a lot of genuinely good people in my life, none of them are politicians.

 

We won't have enough electricity available on a consistent basis for all cars to run on it for at least ten years, and probably twenty. That additional electricity will come from new technology nuclear power plants.

 

I'm less concerned about "the grid" than I am the long term use of batteries, mining, conflict minerals, disposal. When a vehicle's worth is related to the age of the battery then either the batteries need to be cheaper and easier to replace or the cost of the vehicle needs to come down. Which, neither will happen.

 

Whole house would be sweet, for now I wired in a 100A Gen panel with essential circuits.

Edit for electrical porn:

 

evening all, recently bought a 21 Highlander for my better half to drive. Entertained the Hybrid option. Was told by the dealership that the Hybrid option would charge the batteries at hwy speed and the batteries would be warrantied to 100k. After that it would be 6-7 K just to replace the batteries. So now they have no provisions to dispose of the batteries and the end cost of 6-7 k at 100k miles made it counter productive to not do ICE and that is the direction we went. The dealer had a total EV Camry but no way to charge it, because they didn't have electric plug or capability to charge it.