Electric Cars and Rainbow Unicorns

“It’s logical to assume that something within this zone absorbs all forms of energy whether mechanically or biologically produced. Whatever it is, it would seem to be the same thing which drew all the energy out of an entire solar system and the Intrepid.” – Star Trek, TOS

Electric cars owners should never go down a dead end street – there’s no outlet.

As I have written time and time again, the future of energy is the future of humanity.  Cheap, safe, limitless energy is the dream, and that energy is one component of a future that is not nasty, brutish, and short, like George Soros.  Because the Leftists have tried to propagandize the subject, they’ve done a great job at muddling the thoughts on what in the end is actually the engineering question that drives the economic engines of the world.

Let’s remove the confusion on the term “energy source”.  Electricity, for instance, isn’t an energy source, since it has to be created in some fashion, such as by windmill or coal-fired power plant, nuclear power plant, or tiny faeries hooked up to electrodes while being chained to beds in the basement of Disney® . . . oh, I’ve said too much.

I heard a fairy tale about politics once.  It was Grimm.

Electric cars, then, are dependent upon getting their electricity from somewhere upstream.  Electricity is an energy carrier, not a source.

On the other hand, crude oil is an energy source.  The refining process doesn’t take up too much energy, and the sweet, sweet hydrocarbon molecules in a gallon of gasoline were there (mostly, some have been rearranged a tiny bit) in the refining process.

So, let’s define energy sources as energy, in crude, raw, or potential form that can be manipulated for use and that we get more energy out than we put into it.  So, crude oil is definitely an energy source in most conventional and fracking situations, producing up to (depending on how you count it) sixteen times as much energy as used to get it out of the ground and turn it into 89 octane.  I will say if we converted the entire economy to biofuels emissions would go down and we could starve at the same time!

Biofuels are entirely questionable, and most of them are poor when compared to gasoline as an alternative, returning just a little bit over break even for both biodiesel and corn ethanol.  These products exist as fuels primarily because Lefties like ruining the economy and the RINOs know that farmers vote.  Thus, there are tax incentives in place to force the use of biofuels.

“But we could make houses out of it.”  “No, you have to bury it.”  “But we could make furniture out of it.”  “No, you have to bury it.”  “But we could heat houses with it.”  “No, you have to bury it.”  “I’m beginning to think you don’t like people.”

The dream of the Left (at least this version, Arthur Sido has another one here: LINK), then is to get rid of all of the cars to replace them with “clean” electric vehicles.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) wants to get electric cars and trucks (EVs) to 45% of the vehicles on the road by 2050 according to their Net Zero Scenario.  45%!  The insanity doesn’t stop there – the IEA expects that alternative vehicles will reduce gas and diesel use by 30% by 2030 – seven years into the future.

That’s a stunning number, because the average age of a car in the United States is 12.2 years.  I guess I’m pretty close to average, because the average Wilder fleet ages is 11.5 years.  That means that the 30% of the car and stock in existence today needs to be replaced by 2030 with electric and hydrogen vehicles.  I have no idea where the IEA is getting its dope, but they must get really good stuff.

>Be forest.
>Exist.  Die.  Kill mankind by raising temperature 0.0001°F.
>Wonder why this didn’t happen 100,000,000 years ago.

That would mean, though, that conventional vehicles that run on sweet, sweet oil and diesel will have to be phased out starting very soon.  Further, the remainder of the vehicles the IEA are hydrogen-powered.  Now the Hindenburg wasn’t hydrogen powered . . . .

Now, checking back to energy sources versus energy carriers, hydrogen is just an energy carrier.  It has to be generated somewhere.

One of the first problems is that EVs are wickedly expensive compared to actual cars since they require massive amounts of material to replace the empty gasoline tank of an internal combustion car.  The question is, where do those materials come from?  If, all of a sudden, millions of EVs need to be made, the prices for the materials that go into them will go up, too.

>Be forest.
>Burn.  Kill mankind by melting 200 gallons of ice.
>Wonder why this didn’t happen 200,000 years ago.

According to the IEA itself, demand for lithium alone will be 4,000% greater in 2050 than it is today.  Cobalt increases would be 2,000%.  The increase in availability alone is questionable.  Resources show up in clumps – I can’t go in my front yard and look for gold, it is where it is.  And when Leftists dream of this wonderful economy that they’re creating, they ignore the environmental costs waste of mining all this stuff – how much will that create in greenhouse gasses plant food?

It’s clear, once again, that these plans aren’t serious.  China is producing a stunning 30% of greenhouse gasesCO2, while the United States produces about 15% of human made CO2.  Why do we fixate on the United States?

First, Leftists have to pretend, really hard, that global warming climate change has replaced what real humans call weather.

Second?  The Chinese are already communist, so let them do whatever.  The people who have to have their economy ruined while they chase unicorns and rainbows rather than actual engineering solutions to actual engineering problems will have their economy destroyed.

Or maybe they’ll just buy beachfront property at a discount?

Or was that the plan all along?

At the beginning of this, I said the future of energy is the future of humanity.  That’s just a bit inaccurate – the future of energy is the future of free humans and our economy.  Me?  I have my own plans.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

38 thoughts on “Electric Cars and Rainbow Unicorns”

  1. Cheap, safe, limitless energy! Dayum, if folks had THAT . . . they would destroy each other — and the world — even faster than they do now.

    This place wouldn’t last a week.

    Energy is not the problem. Human nature is the problem. Energy is not the future of humanity, Christ is, and He is fully renewable. There will be no oil refineries in the Kingdom of God. (Sorry about your Hummers and Dodge trucks!)

  2. Saving the planet ain’t cheap. Down here in South Texas you can buy the usual corn-fed gas containing 15% ethanol for what is, by national standards, a relative bargain. But you will pay $1 per gallon extra for gasoline without the corn. Yes, you pay a premium to buy gas without the planet-sparing, engine-wrecking additive. Even here in oil-rich Texas.

    Then again, why would you need a personal vehicle at all in your shiny, new 15-minute city, where all your needs will be met by cheerful, state-controlled AI borgs? We are being dragged and drugged into that brave new world one lost freedom at a time. The bugs await.

    1. And that “ethanol free” can have up to 5% ethanol that they don’t have to disclose.

      So, the answer is, “stay in your 15 minute city, drone . . . “?

  3. “China is producing a stunning 30% of greenhouse gasesCO2, while the United States produces about 15% of human made CO2.  Why do we fixate on the United States?”

    Because MMCC, and pretty much all Leftist fairy tales, are about blaming all of the world’s problems on Western (White) countries.

  4. You are missing the big picture they only need electric vehicles for the 500 million survivors.

    The Joker meme I DON’T TAKE HEALTH ADVICE FROM PEOPLE THAT WANT POPULATION REDUCTION
    is spot on.

    We need to delete or be deleted

    Note: population reduction is ALWAYS an easy sell because everybody thinks it can’t mean themselves.

  5. Here’s the reality:

    https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-09/Energy_2021_United-States.pdf

    See that tiny 0.02 quad yellow line feeding into the 26.9 quad pink transportation block? That’s electric vehicles in the US.

    So 0.02/26.9 = 0.075% or LESS THAN ONE PART IN A THOUSAND of the US Transportation sector has “gone electric”.

    More reality: A US Transportation sector based on electricity Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.

    https://manhattan.institute/article/electric-vehicles-for-everyone-the-impossible-dream

  6. WTF has happened to “Forbes”??? Recommending tax shelters to bury trees? And how deep do you have to bury them to reduce CO2? Oh, wait…a Cat D8 burns diesel? Cat has to start a crash program to build electric D8s. Immediately.

    The lunacy will continue until the SHTF. Whenever that will occur, who knows.

  7. They found the replacement’s bootleg weed grow in the forest after hacking down all the trees? (s/)
    Comrade Lefty is easily dissected, power and control during more for them and less for us with Baizuo Karen virtue signal nonstop.
    You’ll own nothing and like it comrade, property is theft unless they seek to appropriate and redistribute said property.
    When you suffer the delusion of being chosen or enlightened and destined to rule over the deplorable kulak untermenschen scum because you have all the money and own all quisling traitor governments, these things happen.
    We are the carbon based life forms they seek to reduce and they can eat tree bark.

    1. Also, it’s been said that firewood warms you three times, but I would say it warms me five times: 1) Cutting the tree down 2) digging the hole to bury the environmentalist that was in the tree “protecting” it, 3) Filling that hole with lye and dirt 4) cutting and splitting the firewood and 5) sitting by a warm fire in winter with a nice Irish Whiskey laughing at stupid environmentalists.

  10. A good education is needed for people to understand energy, how it’s produced, and the costs. That, and a basic understanding of how plants require CO2 to live. At this point, I’m thinking a 2×4 between the eyes is all the education many really need, and I’m finding more people willing to be teachers.

    2. I’ll help, brother. I have the 2×4, and some time available.
      Original Grandpa

  11. “New car inventory on dealer lots is sitting at about a 54 days’ supply, according to Cox Automotive. But for electric vehicles, that number is almost two times as much, with 92.2 days’ supply at dealerships — up 343% from a year ago….”It’s not just that these vehicles are expensive — which they are. We’re talking about a much more nuanced lifestyle change,” said Sam Fiorani, the vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions. He pointed to differences in the EV ownership experience, including charging and range anxiety, as stoppers for many buyers. “It’s hard for the average customer to make that leap while spending an extra $10,000,” Fiorani said.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/dealers-turning-away-evs-velectric-cars-demand-cools-inventory-2023-8#

    1. EVs are not a good deal, and take a lot of miles to make up the difference. And wait until they do a mileage-based road tax.

      1. Hey, not selling petroleum fuels, so not collecting highway taxes!

        Gotta pay for them roads somehow. 😉

        (And… they’ll require ‘trackers’ to keep track of the miles driven. Side benefit (for tptb) is that they’ll then know EXACTLY where you’ve been driving. prove me wrong).

  12. Burying trees worked really well, millions of years ago, when they would just fall all over each other and turn to coal. But that was before fungi discovered how to consume them. Now, we’d need to cut them down (needs diesel), dig a hole (needs diesel), drop them into the hole (needs diesel), and cover it over with a few feet of dirt (needs diesel). But… maybe that makes more sense than growing plantations of trees, harvesting them (diesel), chopping, drying, and forming them into pellets (electricity, from somewhere), and shipping them to Europe (with diesel), then truck or train to a power plant to burn as “renewable generation”. Who are they fooling?

    1. Again, if we made furniture, it would (at worst case) end up in a landfill. Or houses, which would help people. They hate humanity.

  13. Ivory tower crackpots lead the parade and pave the road to iron-fisted tinpots, because their crackpipe-feuled napkin-math plans are always Ponzi schemes, requiring the elimination of 95% of the existing population, after acquiring 495% of all existing planetary reserves of a given mineral or minerals in order to “work”, for any values of that last word.

    I.e.: “We could run the entire planet (of no more than 2 million people) forever simply by building a giant Solar Coagulator, if we simply obtained 400 quadrillion metric fucktons of gold and platinum for the collecter, and then worked the surplus eaters to death using them to beat it with tack hammers it into a giant dish the size of Australia, and digging sub-oceanic power transmission tunnels from there to homes in Malibu and the Cote d’Azure!” – every scientific scheme ever promulgated by under-educated and over-degreed idiots, and then adopted and foisted on the planet by political opportunists, who all imagine they’ll be in that 2M person Chosen Few, rather than in the gulag camps. (Rachel Carson, Greta FetalAlcoholSyndome, Paul Ehrlich, and Al Gore, call your offices.)

    Invariably, the best solution is to burn those socialist bastards at the stake on sight, as this releases less carbon than destroying the entire human race.
    And it’s a solution that is funnier, more satisfying, and far more elegantly economical.

    It should have started long ago. We have some catching up to do.

  14. When people talk about EVs, I wish they’d also mention all the child-slave deaths. Even as a funny meme. If we were a civilized species, that issue would be higher up the list.
    If aliens do contact us, it will be a world-ending event. They won’t be treating us as equals, I ‘spect.

Comments are closed.