When do you plan to switch to an EV?

[Scott5114]

This post is so thoroughly incorrect and so divorced with reality, it's hard to even know where to start with replying to it.

For one thing, science has nothing to do with the price of anything.

Then please send me a gold making machine, such that the price per ounce is reduced to three cents.

The very purpose of science is to prove what IS TRUE.  We are now learning that electric cars cannot exist, absent subsidy.  Science.

Science has nothing to do with the price of anything. The price of my house has increased $40,000 since I bought it. That has jack shit to do with science; I'm not in here enriching uranium or whatever the hell you think scientists do to magically influence the market.

Since the rest of your post proceeds from a false claim, it's not worth the effort to even bother reading in its entirety. Ciao!

[kalvado]

This post is so thoroughly incorrect and so divorced with reality, it's hard to even know where to start with replying to it.

For one thing, science has nothing to do with the price of anything.

Then please send me a gold making machine, such that the price per ounce is reduced to three cents.

The very purpose of science is to prove what IS TRUE.  We are now learning that electric cars cannot exist, absent subsidy.  Science.

Science has nothing to do with the price of anything. The price of my house has increased $40,000 since I bought it. That has jack shit to do with science; I'm not in here enriching uranium or whatever the hell you think scientists do to magically influence the market.

Since the rest of your post proceeds from a false claim, it's not worth the effort to even bother reading in its entirety. Ciao!

One can argue that there is some scientific justification for some prices.  Element abundance pretty clearly shows why gold and platinum are expensive, and copper is more expensive than steel or aluminum

[J N Winkler]

As someone who generally (though not always) leans conservative, I think part of the issue may relate to concern about the best appropriate means to tax EVs. The gas tax is flawed, no question about it, and it obviously doesn't account adequately for EVs. But I think many, perhaps most, conservatives have a serious beef with the idea of GPS logging for purposes of a miles-driven tax, which is one of the primary alternatives you see recommended, because many conservatives abhor the idea of having their location being monitored in that fashion. I'm mildly surprised that more liberals don't oppose that sort of taxation concept for a different reason–racial disparity and the concern of misuse of location data (example: a burglary takes place in a wealthy white neighborhood and the GPS logging shows that a black man was there at the time, so he immediately becomes the prime suspect regardless of the reason why he was there–surely that sort of scenario ought to be problematic to most reasonable people).

I don't want to go further with that discussion because I'm concerned it would derail the thread into a political war that would end with it being locked.

My own view, as a person who generally identifies as liberal, is that attitudes toward automated mass surveillance tend to run crosswise to the liberal/conservative divide as usually defined.  There are plenty of elements in the liberal coalition that have reason to distrust the ever-seeing, ever-remembering eye that can never be held accountable--e.g., supporters of abortion rights.

There have been proposals to finesse the EV taxation issue short of resorting to always-on GPS logging.  For example, several years ago Oregon DOT was working on a scheme that would have relied on a network of roadside receivers to measure the amount of travel a vehicle does annually.  The privacy impact of this would be more comparable to E-ZPass than 100% logging because travel between nodes in the network would not be recorded.

As the technology evolves, I expect two things to be true.  First, in some cases it will be necessary to trade off privacy to realize some gains:  for example, if you want to reduce your time lost in congestion by allowing your vehicle to join an automated platoon, you will likely give up a measure of anonymity to do so since your vehicle will be more readily identifiable.  And second, people will be more willing to entertain these tradeoffs if they have ironclad legal protections (comparable to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and the doctrine of fruit of the poisoned tree, but extended to private as well as state actors; Big Tech is just as much of a potential threat as the government) against any information thus gained being used to their disadvantage.

Roger McNamee's Zucked (arguing for users' ownership of the data they generate) and Jon Fasman's We See It All (describing how private and law enforcement use of mass surveillance tools has grown) both have pointers on how to negotiate the permissible use of data-gathering technologies as they continue to evolve.  Key themes are to regulate monopolies and demand democratic accountability.

[Scott5114]

One can argue that there is some scientific justification for some prices.  Element abundance pretty clearly shows why gold and platinum are expensive, and copper is more expensive than steel or aluminum

Well, yes, but it's a leap across the Grand Canyon from "some elements are rare in nature" to "Science Says™ a complex consumer product made of a dozen different types of material can NEVER be made less expensive".

[kalvado]

One can argue that there is some scientific justification for some prices.  Element abundance pretty clearly shows why gold and platinum are expensive, and copper is more expensive than steel or aluminum

Well, yes, but it's a leap across the Grand Canyon from "some elements are rare in nature" to "Science Says™ a complex consumer product made of a dozen different types of material can NEVER be made less expensive".

Oh, come on. "zis iz sajens" mob successfully taken over any logic. Science is becoming a new religion - often preached by those  with high school diploma at most.

[Scott5114]

One can argue that there is some scientific justification for some prices.  Element abundance pretty clearly shows why gold and platinum are expensive, and copper is more expensive than steel or aluminum

Well, yes, but it's a leap across the Grand Canyon from "some elements are rare in nature" to "Science Says™ a complex consumer product made of a dozen different types of material can NEVER be made less expensive".

Oh, come on. "zis iz sajens" mob successfully taken over any logic. Science is becoming a new religion - often preached by those  with high school diploma at most.

This is such a non-sequitur, I'm not sure whether you're agreeing with me, SP Cook, both, or neither.

[kalvado]

One can argue that there is some scientific justification for some prices.  Element abundance pretty clearly shows why gold and platinum are expensive, and copper is more expensive than steel or aluminum

Well, yes, but it's a leap across the Grand Canyon from "some elements are rare in nature" to "Science Says™ a complex consumer product made of a dozen different types of material can NEVER be made less expensive".

Oh, come on. "zis iz sajens" mob successfully taken over any logic. Science is becoming a new religion - often preached by those  with high school diploma at most.

This is such a non-sequitur, I'm not sure whether you're agreeing with me, SP Cook, both, or neither.

Something like this mob:

For me these are a symbol of religious mob rule under the color of science
Signed:
Kalvado, PhD, research scientist.

[Scott5114]

What does that have to do with anything we were talking about, though? I'm not following the chain of logic.

[kalvado]

What does that have to do with anything we were talking about, though? I'm not following the chain of logic.

I am talking about "Science proves  that!" and similar arguments being a clear sign that there is nothing beyond some religious beliefs behind that statement for the person saying that. Such belief can be right, wrong, or totally irrelevant - either way it is still just a religious belief.

[Scott5114]

What does that have to do with anything we were talking about, though? I'm not following the chain of logic.

I am talking about "Science proves  that!" and similar arguments being a clear sign that there is nothing beyond some religious beliefs behind that statement for the person saying that. Such belief can be right, wrong, or totally irrelevant - either way it is still just a religious belief.

I think it's more nuanced than that. Generally stating a belief in "trusting the science" or similar is merely stating that decisions should be made by taking into account the data currently available to science, and the current understanding of the state of the world and how it works derived from the data available. What trips people up is that the best data available will necessarily change, due to technological advancement, previous data suggesting a new area of inquiry that was overlooked before, or even just straight up conditions on the ground changing. That means that "what science says" can sometimes differ substantially from "what science said" a year ago. And that's a good thing–it means our understanding of what is being studied is being continually refined and updated with the best information available to us. A true willingness to believe in science, then, must therefore also be accompanied by a willingness to throw out what you believed to be true a year ago and reassess things.

A religion, on the other hand, is generally based on unchanging, foundational beliefs. Christianity, for instance, is based on a belief that there is a God who created the universe, Jesus was the son of said God, etc. These beliefs do not change because if they did it wouldn't be Christianity any longer, it would be some other belief system. Further, religions are a matter of faith, rather than acting on measurable data. You will not ever hear the Pope come out on the balcony and say "We have new data that proves that God is thirteen feet tall and exclusively wears orange T-shirts", because that's not how religions work.

Some people do unfortunately latch on to certain scientific data or theories as unshakable dogma, and that misses the point of science entirely. These people are fools, because inevitably this data or these theories will be refined or replaced by something that is more accurate. Science is as much about disproving old ideas as it is proving new ones.

[hbelkins]

I certainly don't favor some sort of blanket tax on electricity to fund roads.

Why not? Suppose the average household pays $W in gas taxes every year and drives X miles, an electric car uses Y kWh to go X miles, and the average household uses Z kWh per year. Couldn't you use those four values to compute an acceptable per-kWh amount that would be equal to the amount they pay now? (This would also mean that crypto farms would actually contribute something to society by funding infrastructure, so we'd actually get more infrastructure funding by this model than we do now.)

Possible, but consider this. Your electricity bill is $X in a month. You buy an EV and the applicable charging equipment. All things being equal (no temperature extremes requiring excessive use of AC or electric heat, no excessive use of electricity for anything else, your electric bill goes up to $X plus $100. It's pretty easy to assume that the extra $100 went to charge the vehicle. But then say you make drastic cutbacks in your use of electricity to make up the difference - you turn your thermostat up in the summer or down in the winter, you do less laundry, you shower less often requiring less water to be heated, you turn off lights, you turn off the TV, etc.) to get your electricity bill back down to $X. You've effectively cut your tax bill back to what it was, but you're wearing out the roads with an EV that isn't paying anything extra.

True, you pay gas tax when you fill up the cans for your lawn mower, but the bulk of your gas purchases are for your vehicles which use the roads. With electricity, the bulk of your use is NOT going to highway usage.

The compromise would be a mileage tax on EVs, but that won't fly for the same reasons so many are opposed to it for gas and diesel vehicles.The other compromise is higher annual licensing fees, and there's going to be a pretty intense lobbying effort against that if it costs you $26 to license/register your Chevy Gasomatic each year, but $260 to license/register your Chevy Kilowatt.

[kalvado]

I certainly don't favor some sort of blanket tax on electricity to fund roads.

Why not? Suppose the average household pays $W in gas taxes every year and drives X miles, an electric car uses Y kWh to go X miles, and the average household uses Z kWh per year. Couldn't you use those four values to compute an acceptable per-kWh amount that would be equal to the amount they pay now? (This would also mean that crypto farms would actually contribute something to society by funding infrastructure, so we'd actually get more infrastructure funding by this model than we do now.)

Possible, but consider this. Your electricity bill is $X in a month. You buy an EV and the applicable charging equipment. All things being equal (no temperature extremes requiring excessive use of AC or electric heat, no excessive use of electricity for anything else, your electric bill goes up to $X plus $100. It's pretty easy to assume that the extra $100 went to charge the vehicle. But then say you make drastic cutbacks in your use of electricity to make up the difference - you turn your thermostat up in the summer or down in the winter, you do less laundry, you shower less often requiring less water to be heated, you turn off lights, you turn off the TV, etc.) to get your electricity bill back down to $X. You've effectively cut your tax bill back to what it was, but you're wearing out the roads with an EV that isn't paying anything extra.

True, you pay gas tax when you fill up the cans for your lawn mower, but the bulk of your gas purchases are for your vehicles which use the roads. With electricity, the bulk of your use is NOT going to highway usage.

The compromise would be a mileage tax on EVs, but that won't fly for the same reasons so many are opposed to it for gas and diesel vehicles.The other compromise is higher annual licensing fees, and there's going to be a pretty intense lobbying effort against that if it costs you $26 to license/register your Chevy Gasomatic each year, but $260 to license/register your Chevy Kilowatt.

Your last argument can easily be countered by reducing gas tax and making all regs $300.
But then someone using a clunker to (barely) make it to work pays as much as long haul recreational driver of a luxury car.
Things are so much easier if they were settled before we were born!

[Scott5114]

I certainly don't favor some sort of blanket tax on electricity to fund roads.

Why not? Suppose the average household pays $W in gas taxes every year and drives X miles, an electric car uses Y kWh to go X miles, and the average household uses Z kWh per year. Couldn't you use those four values to compute an acceptable per-kWh amount that would be equal to the amount they pay now? (This would also mean that crypto farms would actually contribute something to society by funding infrastructure, so we'd actually get more infrastructure funding by this model than we do now.)

Possible, but consider this. Your electricity bill is $X in a month. You buy an EV and the applicable charging equipment. All things being equal (no temperature extremes requiring excessive use of AC or electric heat, no excessive use of electricity for anything else, your electric bill goes up to $X plus $100. It's pretty easy to assume that the extra $100 went to charge the vehicle. But then say you make drastic cutbacks in your use of electricity to make up the difference - you turn your thermostat up in the summer or down in the winter, you do less laundry, you shower less often requiring less water to be heated, you turn off lights, you turn off the TV, etc.) to get your electricity bill back down to $X. You've effectively cut your tax bill back to what it was, but you're wearing out the roads with an EV that isn't paying anything extra.

This is a good point, but
1. For most people, there is a baseline level of electrical consumption beyond which it is very unpleasant to cut back. Sure, you can save some money by dropping the thermostat from 72° to 70° in the winter. But if that's not enough to offset your car's electrical usage, are you willing to cut it back to 68°? 65°? 60°? At some point, my wife is going to set the thermostat back to something reasonable when I'm not looking. And a great deal of electrical usage is non-discretionary, anyway–I use the Internet in the course of my job, so I basically have to draw power to run the computer, modem, and router no matter how much I'd like to save electricity.
2. Some would argue this isn't actually a problem at all, since reducing energy consumption of any kind has desirable effects of reducing environmental impact and allowing the unused energy to be allocated elsewhere, thus easing demands on electricity infrastructure. It makes no functional difference if someone makes that for altruistic reasons or if they have a financial incentive.
3. Home users intentionally cutting back on power usage to save would be more than offset by the same tax applying to much larger energy consumers that benefit from public roads but don't actually pay for their upkeep. A casino, for example, pays no gas tax except when on backup generator power, yet uses a tremendous amount of electricity to power thousands of slot machines 24/7. (I am not sure how true it is, but I remember hearing when I was in the industry that the casinos I worked in tended to have a monthly power bill of over $100,000.) Of course, a casino does benefit from the existence of public roads, as that is how nearly every one of their customers will arrive.

The biggest problem an electricity tax would present, in my estimation, would be its impact on those people who do use electricity but truly don't use the public road system at all, because they walk or take a subway. A rebate of some kind would be the ideal solution, but how do you prove that someone doesn't touch a public road with so much as a bike? And of course those people do benefit second-hand from the public road system (the shops they're walking to are probably stocked by truck).

[kalvado]

I certainly don't favor some sort of blanket tax on electricity to fund roads.

Why not? Suppose the average household pays $W in gas taxes every year and drives X miles, an electric car uses Y kWh to go X miles, and the average household uses Z kWh per year. Couldn't you use those four values to compute an acceptable per-kWh amount that would be equal to the amount they pay now? (This would also mean that crypto farms would actually contribute something to society by funding infrastructure, so we'd actually get more infrastructure funding by this model than we do now.)

Possible, but consider this. Your electricity bill is $X in a month. You buy an EV and the applicable charging equipment. All things being equal (no temperature extremes requiring excessive use of AC or electric heat, no excessive use of electricity for anything else, your electric bill goes up to $X plus $100. It's pretty easy to assume that the extra $100 went to charge the vehicle. But then say you make drastic cutbacks in your use of electricity to make up the difference - you turn your thermostat up in the summer or down in the winter, you do less laundry, you shower less often requiring less water to be heated, you turn off lights, you turn off the TV, etc.) to get your electricity bill back down to $X. You've effectively cut your tax bill back to what it was, but you're wearing out the roads with an EV that isn't paying anything extra.

This is a good point, but
1. For most people, there is a baseline level of electrical consumption beyond which it is very unpleasant to cut back. Sure, you can save some money by dropping the thermostat from 72° to 70° in the winter. But if that's not enough to offset your car's electrical usage, are you willing to cut it back to 68°? 65°? 60°? At some point, my wife is going to set the thermostat back to something reasonable when I'm not looking. And a great deal of electrical usage is non-discretionary, anyway–I use the Internet in the course of my job, so I basically have to draw power to run the computer, modem, and router no matter how much I'd like to save electricity.
2. Some would argue this isn't actually a problem at all, since reducing energy consumption of any kind has desirable effects of reducing environmental impact and allowing the unused energy to be allocated elsewhere, thus easing demands on electricity infrastructure. It makes no functional difference if someone makes that for altruistic reasons or if they have a financial incentive.
3. Home users intentionally cutting back on power usage to save would be more than offset by the same tax applying to much larger energy consumers that benefit from public roads but don't actually pay for their upkeep. A casino, for example, pays no gas tax except when on backup generator power, yet uses a tremendous amount of electricity to power thousands of slot machines 24/7. (I am not sure how true it is, but I remember hearing when I was in the industry that the casinos I worked in tended to have a monthly power bill of over $100,000.) Of course, a casino does benefit from the existence of public roads, as that is how nearly every one of their customers will arrive.

Another can of worms is replacing dedicated traffic related tax with a more generic one. I believe raiding gas tax for non road purposes does happen, but electric one would go straight to the general fund anyway.

[Scott5114]

I believe raiding gas tax for non road purposes does happen, but electric one would go straight to the general fund anyway.

Ha, in Oklahoma it happens in broad daylight. Our last gas tax increase was explicitly directed into the education fund.

[vdeane]

Same in New York.  Our gas tax goes straight to the general fund.

I have no issues with an electricity tax to replace the gas tax.  Sure, not all electricity is used for charging, but we really need to modernize the grid and make it more resilient, so simply estimate the proportion of the energy that's used for charging, treat that portion of the tax the same way as the gas tax is treated, and send the rest into a new fund to upgrade and improve the grid.

I'm not in here enriching uranium or whatever the hell you think scientists do to magically influence the market.

Blood sacrifice (2:34):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yar3x6tyh3M

Cognito Inc. is clearly not friendly with Alanland.

[SP Cook]

That means that "what science says" can sometimes differ substantially from "what science said" a year ago.

Which is why basing public policy, any public policy, on some faith that something just IS going to be invented is foolish.  Likewise, so is basing public policy on theories about the future state of the earth.

[1995hoo]

Which is why basing public policy, any public policy, on some faith that something just IS going to be invented is foolish.  Likewise, so is basing public policy on theories about the future state of the earth.

I detect about a dozen kernals of truth in that first sentence. 

[Max Rockatansky]

Did someone say enriched Uranium?

[MikeTheActuary]

I'm intrigued by EVs, and tend to consider enviornmental impact on certain decisions. 

However, my pre-pandemic commute was roughly 300 miles, and when I take periodic road trips, I want the option to spend the daylight hours driving (but-for brief bio-breaks, of course).

I'm not interested in having two vehicles (an "around the town" one, and a "long distance" one).  I have no desire to maintain and insure two vehicles.

I'll consider an EV as a next vehicle when my needs become more modest, when EV ranges are reliably long enough to do my commute with a comfortable margin, or when rapid charging requiring not much longer than a bio-break is sufficiently common.

[epzik8]

If I ever have enough money

[Rothman]

That means that "what science says" can sometimes differ substantially from "what science said" a year ago.

Which is why basing public policy, any public policy, on some faith that something just IS going to be invented is foolish.  Likewise, so is basing public policy on theories about the future state of the earth.

In terms of climate change, keep in mind that the scientific theories are based upon the analysis of the evidence at hand rather than being just ideas that still need to be tested.

[kalvado]

That means that "what science says" can sometimes differ substantially from "what science said" a year ago.

Which is why basing public policy, any public policy, on some faith that something just IS going to be invented is foolish.  Likewise, so is basing public policy on theories about the future state of the earth.

In terms of climate change, keep in mind that the scientific theories are based upon the analysis of the evidence at hand rather than being just ideas that still need to be tested.

So you're using Roger Bacon definition of science, rather than more modern one from Karl Popper?

[Max Rockatansky]

Apparently some dude thought it was more cost effective to dynamite his 2013 Model S rather than replace the motor (apparently $20,000 Euros if the post is accurate):

https://fb.watch/a4CAXCg0cW/

[Rothman]

That means that "what science says" can sometimes differ substantially from "what science said" a year ago.

Which is why basing public policy, any public policy, on some faith that something just IS going to be invented is foolish.  Likewise, so is basing public policy on theories about the future state of the earth.

In terms of climate change, keep in mind that the scientific theories are based upon the analysis of the evidence at hand rather than being just ideas that still need to be tested.

So you're using Roger Bacon definition of science, rather than more modern one from Karl Popper?

I am using the generally accepted definition of a scientific theory.