The Right Side of the News

I hadn't thought of that. Granted, in SoCalif it's not much of an issue, but I'm also a veteran of 5 North Dakota winters and I remember how even with the heat turned up all the way it was still too cold.The heat for the heater in a gasoline car comes from the engine coolant, so it's practically a free by-product of driving. In an all-electric car, you wouldn't have that so you would have to use some of the battery energy to generate heat (and in the Northern Tier a considerable amount of heat would need to be generated, plus a cold battery doesn't work as well). I have a hybrid in which a gas engine turns on to recharge the battery, so there's no constant supply of heat -- I'd never given it any thought, but I must be getting my heat mainly from the battery too.

yeah it was -37C this morning. I'm thinking of getting an electric motorcycle for the spring/summer but the winters will be strictly internal combustion vehicles.

We had a hybrid Prius and it was great for heat. Now have Subaru Legacy because we really should have AWD. Prius has an AWD now, but brand new last year so leery. Also, on no trim level is satellite radio available on the AWD Prius. Seemed kinda dumb.

This is the "Everyone else is throwing their thrash on the ground, so I will, too" argument. This argument reflects such a profound lack of math proficiency that there would be no point attempting a remedy. Same thing.The ultimate endpoint of your argument is that China should set a goal of releasing no more pollutants than Lichtenstein. The absurdity of this might help you see that your argument requires a little work.--Percy

As in all cases (winter or not) what works depends on your range requirements. A LR Tesla M3 will give you something like 280 miles of a range under good conditions. You'll lose about 100 miles in really cold weather.I'm sure there is a small percentage of people who need more than 150 miles of range in a day but it isn't a large number. Of course, you're only going to keep the car warm not heat it up with the car heater since you'll tell it to be warm for you before you use it.

Just out of curiosity, how do the electric vehicles do at the other temperature extreme? What about cooling? Temps outside today will push 90F/32C and even after one of our major cold snaps like is coming next week it will only drop into the 60s or 70s. Let a car sit out in the sun in the dead of winter down here while you eat lunch and you'll get out to find an oven waiting for you.

The battery is much, much less effected by high temperatures when well regulated (unlike a Nissan Leaf). Good EVs control the battery temperature well. However, use of A/C will obviously have an impact but I don't know how much. More if you use dog mode for a long time obviously.
I did a little looking around and it seems A/C has much less effect than heating. And again you'd cool the car before you unplugged and headed out.The big problem with EVs is that many people don't live in circumstances where it is easy to plug in. Fortunately we put in building codes here a few years ago that all new buildings (home, condos) have to have charging places. Another hit to our freedoms according to Marc I guess. We should be forcing and subsidizing retrofits now also.

AC is a year round fact of life here and will be increasingly a factor for the foreseeable future.Here is an image of the public auto charging stations somewhat near me; within a 20 mile or so radius. And it's about 150 miles to Corpus Christi, near 250 to San Antonio, 350 to Houston and over 500 to Dallas. We simply don't have general access to charging stations and certainly not enough to make it practical to even go from the Valley to any of the other larger population areas in the state. We also have almost no rail service between population centers in Texas and none even in the planning stages.That's why we are so much further ahead of Nations like Canada and the UK and France and Germany and Belgium and ...

This is true. For example, the Charles and Hudson Rivers (Boston and New York City) used to be so polluted as to be unswimmable, but they are both much cleaner now. But while we've made progress much remains to be done. Under Trump we do not continue to "do it." Trump is rolling back environmental regulations wherever he can. It isn't the "Left's political ends." It is reacting to what the science is telling us by trying to slow and reverse our damage to the environment. It is always best to do something right the first time than to do it over or fix it later. For example, it is always much cheaper to not pollute groundwater in the first place instead of polluting the groundwater, which is a very cheap way to dispose of waste chemicals, and then paying to fix it later, which is much more costly.Most polluting companies get out from under their responsibilities to clean up their environmental messes by going bankrupt or tying things up in court for years. The officers of such companies are never held personally responsible. They go on to other companies to continue their polluting ways.Perhaps you remember Love Canal, one of the first Superfund sites. During the 1940s the site was used as a chemical dumping ground. The chemicals eventually found their way into groundwater, affecting the health of hundreds. Cleanup cost $400 million and took 21 years.Love Canal was typical. It was easier to dump the chemicals into the ground instead of disposing of them responsibly, and it would have cost much less than $400 million. The closest analog today is West Virginia (which I keep mentioning) where Trump has rolled back environmental regulations so that coal mining companies can continue polluting groundwater with impunity. It will cost a great deal to clean up the environmental disaster they are creating. We're all in this together, left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican. Neither group is trying to destroy America because this is where we live. China is still signatory to the Paris Climate Accord. As of when the two year required notice expires shortly, we will no longer be signatory to the Accord.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typos.

A few years ago, somebody did a practical experiment by driving across the USA twice, first in the south and back again in the north, in an all-electric car (a Leaf, as I seem to recall). I caught one of his reports on NPR as he was crossing North Dakota on the return leg of the trip and on one of the few dry stretches, so he was having to watch his speed in order to make it across. Basically, he had had little trouble finding where to plug in. So even then it turned out to be doable.Since I have a hybrid, I haven't had to think about this, but how long does it take to recharge a plug-in all-electric car? If you're on a cross-country drive where you're trying to make time, how long is the downtime for recharging? Also, as more people go electric, there will be increasing demand on charging stations such that existing charging stations may prove inadequate.Funny story: While stationed in North Dakota (in the cold part, Grand Forks, subject to those arctic air masses coming down from Canada), we had block heaters installed in our cars. For the sake of others (I had never heard of it before), a car engine has a cooling jacket through which the coolant flows to cool down the engine and which has a number of freeze plugs which will pop out in case the coolant freezes so that the engine won't be cracked by that freezing (if freezing water can tear mountains apart, so will it do to your car engine). A block heater replaces one of the freeze plugs with a heating coil that is powered by an extension cord that usually sticks out of the front grill. Many businesses and hotels/motels in North Dakota have power outlets in their parking lots.When we returned to Southern California, people would see that power cord sticking out the the front grill and ask me if that was an electric car.

Do you not have access to an outlet near where you'd park? I'm lucky I have 220 - 30 amp in the garage so no problem at all.
With my driving habits (not much) I'd be fine with a 110V outlet anyway.

I do have electricity in my garage but away from the house is an issue. No outlets really near any place I generally go.

These are road trips away for more than a day? There are options.
One guy realized he could rent power from RV parks that often have 220 V outlets in each place is an example.

GAO says Trump administration broke law by withholding Ukraine aid | Fox NewsFox News.

Trump set to gut water protections - POLITICO

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The administration has not disclosed the exact timing or content of its revised water rule, but the version it proposed in 2018 would according to the agency’s own analyses remove environmental protections for roughly half the country’s wetlands and millions of miles of streams. Those include the vast majority of waterways in arid states like Arizona and Nevada.

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How the Trump Administration Plans to Gut Our Nation’s Bedrock Environmental Law - Union of Concerned Scientists

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Some of the most egregious proposed revisions would:

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• Redefine what constitutes a major federal action, thus narrowing the scope of what projects require environmental review.
• Eliminate the requirement to evaluate cumulative effects, and collapse the distinction between direct and indirect effects.
• Allow companies to conduct their own environmental review (under supervision of an agency).
• Set arbitrary timelines and page limits for environmental impact assessments.
• Hamper the ability for communities to engage meaningfully with the NEPA process.

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