Electric cars are NOT the future -- they were tried 100 years ago

New York City NY

Description

Electric cars were tried and failed over 100 years ago. The same reasons that prevented electric cars from becoming mainstream then, are still with us today. Inconvenient. Unreliable. Costly. Limited range. Limited life span. My buddy and I bought brand-new trucks a few months ago. I bought a regular gasoline truck, a Ford F-150, and my buddy bought the newest, latest, greatest electric truck, the Ford Lightning. First off, his electric truck cost approximately $30,000 more than mine did. That $30K buys a lot of gasoline. Secondly, I can fill my gas tank anytime I want because there's a gas station every 2 miles it seems. My buddy worries about being able to find a charging station, and if they're spread out every 50 miles, he could be in big trouble. We have travel trailers of similar size and weight. Last month, we took our families on a camping trip and pulled our trailers about 115 miles to our favorite camp site. On the way up, my friend had to stop at 86 miles and recharge his batteries, because he was down to 8% battery life. He was starting to freak out, because he only had a about 7 miles of range to find the next charging station, which are few and far between. As he stopped to charge up, I went on to the camp site, set up camp and was drinking a beer when my friend finally showed up 2 hours later. Coming back, the same thing happened: After getting a full charge at the campsite, my buddy had to stop at about 92 miles to recharge on the way home. I made it home about an hour ahead of him, had my trailer cleaned out, put away, relaxing on the porch when he showed up. I had a total of about 4 hours on the road and used almost one tank of gas -- I never had to fill up during the weekend. My buddy spent about 7 hours on the road, and he had to recharge his batteries a total of three times over the weekend. We decided that electric trucks are NOT meant for pulling trailers, and they are also not very good for long highway trips. Now we call his pickup the "Town Rig", because he says he'll never leave the city with it again. These are the same problems electric cars faced over 100 years ago and it's why they never became mainstream. Even the newest electric vehicles are severely limited on range, and especially when the weather gets cold. EV batteries are optimum when they're at 70 degrees. In cold temps they charge very slowly and they can lose up to 50% of their advertised range. Temperatures for EV's need to be almost perfect: If you run your heater in cold weather, or A/C in the summer, your range suffers drastically. Electrics are "Fair weather vehicles" at best. -- Definitely not suited for people who live in the frigid north, or hot south. Electric vehicles might be OK for some, but most people prefer gasoline vehicles when they really need to get shit done, besides posing.