Battery based electric vehicles of today and tomorrow.

[Gale Hawkins]

FedEx gets first of 500 electric trucks from GM's EV unit in a major advance for green logistics

Sounds like GM getting into EVs.

 

[Agvg]

FedEx gets first of 500 electric trucks from GM's EV unit in a major advance for green logistics

Sounds like GM getting into EVs.

A lot of middle of the road EVs are on its way, if you not are pushing battery technology you can make a mediocre EV and it good enough for a large base of customers, problem comes to make money on them.

 

[Hay Dude]

FedEx gets first of 500 electric trucks from GM's EV unit in a major advance for green logistics

Sounds like GM getting into EVs.

Thats great. Let FedEx guinea pig the electric trucks so the great unwashed don’t have to. Maybe they’ll be available after my Ram gets old enough to trade.

 

[3930dave]

Yeah, well, here’s a chance to buck that trend. Why make poor people subsidize rich people’s toys of virtue
Its wrong.

I don't disagree. I'm pretty sure that the surgeons that ur works with could have afforded to buy their Teslas and PV arrays on their own.... just one example.....

Integrity/Morals..... key requirements to make it onto my Personal Friend list. While I'm not an elitist about many things.... this requirement tends to keep my list short - which I'm quite OK with....

Real World..... I had to learn to pay more attention to "Them That Have the Gold, Make the Rules".....

Later extended to .... "Or, Get to Ignore the Rules When Convenient"....

While I don't agree with the above, I found ignoring the Golden Rule enhanced Pain Level when picking battles... leading to me hearing Will Rogers in my head again..... .

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

FedEx gets first of 500 electric trucks from GM's EV unit in a major advance for green logistics

Sounds like GM getting into EVs.

Adoption can be readily justified for certain business usage.

A) Local drive patterns make sense.

B) Adequate Time and Space to Recharge is available. Upgrading utility wiring/Adding High Speed Chargers is likely a write-off.

C) Many businesses write-off (as in dispose of) new vehicles in not much more than 5 years.

As a personal vehicle, I don't get any of the tax advantages above. In my view, "C" is a particularly big deal, since that also means the corporate owner is ditching the vehicle before HV battery replacement time....

Yet another example ^ of the Golden Rule.....

Rgds, D.

 

[Lee Robinson]

The only way EVs will end up being good is if they eventually are charged by solar power. If they are on the grid, they don't really save enough to justify the conversion. That is why Elon Musk made solar panels for roofs. They have to eventually get away from the grid.

 

[PuffyC]

But your dancing around my question.
Why should low income income earning Americans, barely able to afford an old ICEV, have to subsidize EVs for rich people?

If it helps, the bottom 61% of Americans pay no federal income tax, so it’s really ‘rich’ people subsidizing other ‘rich’ people. Unless it’s someone in the bottom 61% buying that EV of course.

 

[aczlan]

Modern refineries take a grade and refine it into a more valuable grade. One example was when Valero was the first to refine Venezuelan heavy crude, nearly tar, into gasoline and more usable products. Their investment in new technology gave them an advantage for a while. I expect future petroleum refining will adjust to whatever the market wants to buy. That refining may cost a lot of the energy input to process the feedstock, making the output more expensive, but I don't think refinery output is locked into the fixed proportions we might expect.

As I understand it, the refineries are locked to a particular type and grade of crude oil. They can probbaly decrease the "high end" output a little and increase the "low end output" to compensate but there are limits to how much they can do without taking the plant apart and replumbing it ($$$,$$$,$$$).

Aaron Z

 

[Hay Dude]

If it helps, the bottom 61% of Americans pay no federal income tax, so it’s really ‘rich’ people subsidizing other ‘rich’ people. Unless it’s someone in the bottom 61% buying that EV of course.

Even though the bottom 61% pay no fed income tax, I’m not sure where the EV subsidy is resourced from.
Federal taxes on gas & diesel is 18.4 and 24.4 cents per gallon respectively. If the EV subsidy comes from federal fuel taxes, then the poor DO subsidize EVs
Also,I wouldn’t call people in the 39th percentile “rich”, either.

 

[California]

As I understand it, the refineries are locked to a particular type and grade of crude oil. They can probbaly decrease the "high end" output a little and increase the "low end output" to compensate but there are limits to how much they can do without taking the plant apart and replumbing it ($$$,$$$,$$$).

Aaron Z

Yes, that was my point. At the time a few years ago, Valero was the first refiner to pour big bucks into new refining technology to meet future specs. It gave them a competitive advantage until the big guys followed their example. Thinking some more about what they did, I think their refinery upgrades also included measures for separating the sulphur out of raw feedstock. This let them buy, cheap with little competition, Venezuelan oil with so much sulphur that no one else had the technology to refine it into usable product.

My perspective here is kinda unique. I've more or less followed the decline of the oil industry of Venezuela (and the crash of their economy) ever since I lived there for a couple of years, long ago when it was a prosperous democracy. They have huge petroleum resources but its all so low grade that it became unmarketable, one of the causes for their economy crash. (Then a demagogue told them he could save them with socialism but that just meant jobs for his buddies, replacing the oil managers and techs who knew what the were doing). So the industry collapsed to near zero output and the economy got even worse. While the insiders stole everything. Just as bad as Zimbabwe.

I happened to watch a related video on YouTube recently. Indigo Traveller visited the huge barrio in Caracas where I lived for a while. Relevant here, he found fuel in the gas stations is free, after the government backed down on riots over fuel prices. You pay only a decent tip to the attendant if you wish, that's his income. He says there is gasoline only in Caracas, if you need gas elsewhere you need to take it there yourself. Everything is surreal.

The free gas station description starts at about the 4 minute point in this video.