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Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

timharford.com

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Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#201

Post by danielheath »

bruce511 wrote: post #198
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most" We have a name for them - Bus Drivers! Why is all the discussion is focused on personal cars, they sit idle 90% of the time. First vehicles to go electric should be bussed, light delivery vans, taxis and all other service vehicles that are in motion over 10 hours a day, 365 days a week. Today 95% of all electric busses are in China…

I could not agree with you more, except for the small problem of range. I'm not sure batteries will support vehicles being in motion 10 consecutive hours. And in some categories (busses, delivery bikes) it will be as lot more than 10 hours a day. Maybe a 3 on, 1 off schedule would work (leaving it some time to charge) and that will have some capital implications (more actual vehicles in the fleet) But I concur with t…

For vehicles which are in nearly continuous use, the capital costs are essentially irrelevant next to fuel and maintenance, both of which are far cheaper for EVs. It might take a few years to pay for replacements.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#202

Post by human »

Sorry, but none of this works - although it’s a fun thought experiment. It’s very hard to predict human behaviour and it’s impossible to know how things will unfold over time.

Closing coal mines without having an alternative power source would only create shortages and price hikes.

Only 2-3% of new car sales are EVs. You not getting an EV to leave it to someone else is not going to get that number up.

The line thing would exasperate people and everyone would leave. Actually, seeing long lines and impatient customers is probably the best way to accelerate service by stressing out the staff.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#203

Post by ianai »

danielheath wrote: post #201
bruce511 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not agree with you more, except for the small problem of range. I'm not sure batteries will support vehicles being in motion 10 consecutive hours. And in some categories (busses, delivery bikes) it will be as lot more than 10 hours a day. Maybe a 3 on, 1 off schedule would work (leaving it some time to charge) and that will have some capital implications (more actual vehicles in the fleet) But I concur with t…

For vehicles which are in nearly continuous use, the capital costs are essentially irrelevant next to fuel and maintenance, both of which are far cheaper for EVs. It might take a few years to pay for replacements.

Right, electrics can be optimized to a usage. Some buses could have capacitor banks recharged at every stop. That sort of tactic would be nonsense for a daily driver.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#205

Post by ThunderSizzle »

nine_k wrote: post #41
Syonyk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And having been "grad school broke" during that era, it absolutely destroyed a decade's worth of cheap "runs and drives" grade cars that I drove and most of my friends drove. $100 cars were suddenly $1000 cars in a few months, which was fine if you owned one, bad if you were looking for another backyard project you could limp home and work on for a while. "Destroying the long tail of cheap resources for political poi…

On one hand, it's cheap transportation for less well-off. On the other hand, it's one of the worst pollutants, per person-mile traveled. A lot if America was built on a presumption of cheap car transportation, when the exhaust was considered free. Now we are starting to pay the price of it, and such places start to look less and less sustainable. But a lot of people lives there, and won't easily move to a metro area…

Metro areas aren't magically sustainable. If anything, metro areas are very unsustainable whenever there's a supply chain issue, which is whenever there's an election to be won now.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#206

Post by gorgoiler »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…

"To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most" We have a name for them - Bus Drivers! Why is all the discussion is focused on personal cars, they sit idle 90% of the time. First vehicles to go electric should be bussed, light delivery vans, taxis and all other service vehicles that are in motion over 10 hours a day, 365 days a week. Today 95% of all electric busses are in China…

How heavy is an EV bus? Battery-electric cars are already pretty hefty for their class. Would a bus be even more so, to the point of being dangerously massive?

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#207

Post by pksebben »

nojs wrote: post #179

> Each new person who joins a queue goes to the front, standing immediately behind the person being served. This is, of course, an outrage against reason, intuition and natural justice. It is also highly efficient. If you’re next in line to be served, but someone shows up and shoehorns herself into position in front of you, you walk away. The line is only going to get longer, and you’re always going to be at the back…

I hope my ignorance can be forgiven, but every time I see economist lit it comes off as incredibly reductive. There's always something (like the secondary fight-night line you mention) that seems intuitively obvious to me but gets glossed over. Am I just ignorant?

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#208

Post by TrevorAustin »

willcipriano wrote: post #66
gpm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug in electric hybrids strike me as insanely complex machines compared to Ev's. It strikes me as highly unlikely that from an environmental standpoint our (societies) time is better spent building them, than it is spent increasing the rate at which we can build batteries.

I'd expect EVs to be cheaper if they are actually simpler, last time I looked that wasn't really the case outside of cars produced in China that most western customers wouldn't buy.

I’m actually in the market for an EV or PHEV that seats 6 or more, and my search started with the Model X. But I’ll probably wind up getting a Volvo XC90. It’s around $30K cheaper, which is nice, and more importantly, if I ordered a Model X tomorrow, the expected delivery date is January 2023.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#209

Post by hellbannedguy »

lh7777 wrote: post #152
sokoloff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the incentives taking the price of a Bolt that low? My LEAF just turned 7 and I'd probably buy a Bolt immediately if I could get one in the $11K range. (The LEAF has been great all around, but only being able to count on 75 miles is annoying from time to time.)

I'd like to know this too -- have had my eye on the Bolt for some time. The 2022 Bolt base price is $31k and it is no longer eligible for federal tax credits. In my state, EVs are partially exempt from state sales tax, but that just means the total price is something like $32k including tax (instead of $33.5k). If Build Back Better passed, the Bolt would be eligible for a $12.5k federal credit, so I'd be looking at $…

No post body was provided.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#210

Post by fanick »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…

"To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most" We have a name for them - Bus Drivers! Why is all the discussion is focused on personal cars, they sit idle 90% of the time. First vehicles to go electric should be bussed, light delivery vans, taxis and all other service vehicles that are in motion over 10 hours a day, 365 days a week. Today 95% of all electric busses are in China…

If we omit the batteries, there have been electric buses since forever - trolley buses. They come also in hybrid variants too to serve more distant bus stops.
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