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I feel like writers of such a study have spent exactly 0 days in rural America (which is a very, very large portion of America.) How much does it cost to repla

I feel like writers of such a study have spent exactly 0 days in rural America (which is a very, very large portion of America.) How much does it cost to replace the gasoline infrastructure with charging in North Dakota? How many people living in rural America, driving gasoline trucks and using them on the job are going to "suddenly stop driving them", pay to get rid of them, and switch to an all-electric truck? And who is covering the costs of blanketing those rural areas with charging stations that are fast enough to remove the pain of waiting to charge a truck that needs enough power to haul a fifth wheel?

badosu 9y ago
I'm all for it (EV replacement), but that's an overly pretentious claim.
FussyZeus 9y ago
The big issue for a lot of people in my area is power. You get an impressive yield of it out of EVs and the cost savings is a no brainer, but the battery life gets absolutely destroyed when you work the motors the way you work a gas engine when doing things like pulling equipment or snow/earth moving.
funkyy 9y ago
Nice clickbait though. I remember seeing those headlines about flying cars - "In 2020 most cars will be flying!" a decade or so ago. Such a writers are detached from reality, or their reality is based on their very closed and hermetical environment.
- smhenderson 9y ago
  They've been saying that about flying cars since the 1950's!
- Isamu 9y ago
  Yes, perhaps such writers are not so detached from reality - their reality being the pressure to grab eyeballs. I remember the predictions from long ago that clothing would get smaller and smaller until it would be a mixture of body paint and a few scraps.
  - zentiggr 9y ago
    Have you seen the Black Tape Project?
- hannob 9y ago
  > I remember seeing those headlines about flying cars - "In > 2020 most cars will be flying!" a decade or so ago. Can you provide some links? Because I can't remember any such headlines. (Pretty much all the articles I remember about flying cars had the tone that "it's much more complicated than science fiction movies make us believe".)
  - funkyy 9y ago
    Ugh, tried to found some, but Google is not helping. Those were paper based papers about science and gizmos. I think I have seen some in old Playboy magazine once as well. We are talking here about 10+ years ago, so web was not everywhere yet.
gnrlist 9y ago
Generally speaking you're spot on and I think the 'report' is unrealistic. The one wild card I could see accelerating EV in the heartland is wind power. If you look at wind speed maps of America (http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp ) there is huge generating capacity going right through the Dakota's. With the decline in manufacturing jobs, politicians there may soon see investing in wind energy jobs as the future. That doesn't solve the problem of making an electric truck that meets the needs of rural America, but it does put a lot of cheap energy in their backyard waiting to charge giant truck batteries.
RijilV 9y ago
"NoDak" is a bad example - that state is fairly well off and organized. Years ago they got it their head that having 100% cell coverage was a good idea so they did it. New federal recommendations for shoulder width so they went and redid their roads. The /tiny/ ILEC that serves my family farm years ago ripped out all of their copper and only runs fiber. If someone got it in their head that non-gas cars were what they should be doing in North Dakota, it would happen. I think poorer states with more conflicted interest would have a harder time. (Sorry for the OT NoDak rant)
- neogodless 9y ago
  Thanks for clarifying! I thought about population density, but of course there are lots of other variables!
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  Doesn't NoDak, a state with a relatively small population, get a large percentage of its cash from oil revenues?
  - protomyth 9y ago
    To a point, but a lot of it goes in the future fund. North Dakota is still a farming state and #1 honey producer of the USA. Oil will probably last quite a while given the costs keep dropping as the technology progresses, but the state is mindful of a bust since its happened before.
- pythonaut_16 9y ago
  Are you saying that NoDak has generally available fiber internet at reasonable prices?
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Yep. Rural electrics, local telephone companies, and some cable companies have fiber. It probably is a function of most places now having multiple providers. [edit: examples] https://www.bektel.com/products-amp-services/bekfiber/ https://www.bektel.com/products-amp-services/bekfiber/ https://www.gondtc.com/internet_services.html https://www.gondtc.com/internet_services.html ignore the 90's style websites
exelius 9y ago
Agree; the "charging problem" is a huge obstacle for the electric vehicle industry. We're going from a world where vehicles need to "recharge" (refuel) once every week or so for about a minute and a half to a world where they will need to recharge nearly every day for several hours. Nevermind what happens to the electric grid when all this energy that was formerly being moved in tanker trucks in the form of gasoline now has to be moved over the grid and down to consumer homes. I'm all for electric vehicles, but they have enough problems that any switch will be long and slow because we as a society will have to change the way we build and live in cities to deal with those problems (just as we did when gasoline vehicles replaced horses, so there's precedent).
- jackmott 9y ago
  As long as the work truck daily cycle can be done in 1 charge then there isn't a problem at all. Top it off every night. For long trips, ie 18 wheelers, yeah it is kind of a no go without quick-swap batteries. Which isn't that huge of an obstacle imho. But, all that said, no of course fossil fuel cars aren't going away in 8 years
  - mikeash 9y ago
    This is something I think a lot of people fail to understand. For daily use, EV charging is a convenience, not an inconvenience. It only takes me five seconds to plug in my car in the evening. It may take several hours to charge, but that happens while I'm eating dinner or sleeping or whatever. When you drive more than the car's range in a single day, then it flips, of course. For me, and I think for most people, this is rare enough that it's still a net win. It also flips if you can't plug in at home. For a lot of people that's easy, but for many it's tough. Thankfully installing a charger is pretty easy, so it comes down to convincing the powers that be to do it, or at least allow it, which gets easier all the time. Agree with the conclusion. Eight years?! The average car on American roads today is 11.5 years old. Average. Cars just don't get cycled out that quickly.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
jessaustin 9y ago
How much does it cost to replace the gasoline infrastructure with charging in [rural USA]? If wind and solar keep improving, eventually they'll have such a price advantage over fossil fuel that everyone in rural areas will just convert their gas engines to liquid anhydrous ammonia. Many rural areas already have distribution infrastructure in place, and with cheap enough power it can be made from water and air with fairly minimal manufacturing facilities.
fooker 9y ago
Are you accounting for the possibility that rural America is not big and rich enough to uphold the world's gasoline infrastructure all by itself? Cheap gasoline, as an industry relies on the economies of scale to a large extent. That is what this article is talking about. If the demand drops, the price goes up, leading to a further drop in demand, which drives up the prices, which... At some point, it becomes more costly to continue supporting gas.
- jstanley 9y ago
  > If the demand drops, the price goes up, leading to a further drop in demand, which drives up the prices, which... And yet markets converge on price equilibria all the time without descending into runaway chaos.
  - fooker 9y ago
    Not when a new technology is already there to eat its lunch.
- ianferrel 9y ago
  >If the demand drops, the price goes up, leading to a further drop in demand, which drives up the prices This is nonsense. A drop in demand reduces prices. Yes, there are economies of scale in oil production/refinement, but they are dwarfed by the marginal cost of extracting the last barrel, which is what drives the global price of oil.
  - uoaei 9y ago
    This is a typical refrain, but doesn't account for second-order effects. At first, the price will drop. But the ongoing supply will pile up and need to be stored somewhere. Storing stuff is generally more expensive than not producing it. So production downsizes, and the little amount of product that ends up being produced costs more per unit than the larger-scale production process, and so prices go up. Also, prices will go up at the end of this transition due to scarcity and an ability to weasel money out of people who will pay more to hold on to what they're used to.
6d6b73 9y ago
"How much does it cost to replace the gasoline infrastructure with charging in North Dakota?" Virtually every home in ND is already equipped with infrastructure that allows electric cars to charge.

badosu 9y ago

I'm all for it (EV replacement), but that's an overly pretentious claim.

FussyZeus 9y ago

The big issue for a lot of people in my area is power. You get an impressive yield of it out of EVs and the cost savings is a no brainer, but the battery life gets absolutely destroyed when you work the motors the way you work a gas engine when doing things like pulling equipment or snow/earth moving.

funkyy 9y ago

Nice clickbait though. I remember seeing those headlines about flying cars - "In 2020 most cars will be flying!" a decade or so ago. Such a writers are detached from reality, or their reality is based on their very closed and hermetical environment.

smhenderson 9y ago
They've been saying that about flying cars since the 1950's!
Isamu 9y ago
Yes, perhaps such writers are not so detached from reality - their reality being the pressure to grab eyeballs. I remember the predictions from long ago that clothing would get smaller and smaller until it would be a mixture of body paint and a few scraps.
- zentiggr 9y ago
  Have you seen the Black Tape Project?
hannob 9y ago
> I remember seeing those headlines about flying cars - "In > 2020 most cars will be flying!" a decade or so ago. Can you provide some links? Because I can't remember any such headlines. (Pretty much all the articles I remember about flying cars had the tone that "it's much more complicated than science fiction movies make us believe".)
- funkyy 9y ago
  Ugh, tried to found some, but Google is not helping. Those were paper based papers about science and gizmos. I think I have seen some in old Playboy magazine once as well. We are talking here about 10+ years ago, so web was not everywhere yet.

gnrlist 9y ago

Generally speaking you're spot on and I think the 'report' is unrealistic. The one wild card I could see accelerating EV in the heartland is wind power. If you look at wind speed maps of America (http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp ) there is huge generating capacity going right through the Dakota's. With the decline in manufacturing jobs, politicians there may soon see investing in wind energy jobs as the future. That doesn't solve the problem of making an electric truck that meets the needs of rural America, but it does put a lot of cheap energy in their backyard waiting to charge giant truck batteries.

RijilV 9y ago

"NoDak" is a bad example - that state is fairly well off and organized. Years ago they got it their head that having 100% cell coverage was a good idea so they did it. New federal recommendations for shoulder width so they went and redid their roads. The /tiny/ ILEC that serves my family farm years ago ripped out all of their copper and only runs fiber. If someone got it in their head that non-gas cars were what they should be doing in North Dakota, it would happen. I think poorer states with more conflicted interest would have a harder time. (Sorry for the OT NoDak rant)

neogodless 9y ago
Thanks for clarifying! I thought about population density, but of course there are lots of other variables!
HillaryBriss 9y ago
Doesn't NoDak, a state with a relatively small population, get a large percentage of its cash from oil revenues?
- protomyth 9y ago
  To a point, but a lot of it goes in the future fund. North Dakota is still a farming state and #1 honey producer of the USA. Oil will probably last quite a while given the costs keep dropping as the technology progresses, but the state is mindful of a bust since its happened before.
pythonaut_16 9y ago
Are you saying that NoDak has generally available fiber internet at reasonable prices?
- protomyth 9y ago
  Yep. Rural electrics, local telephone companies, and some cable companies have fiber. It probably is a function of most places now having multiple providers. [edit: examples] https://www.bektel.com/products-amp-services/bekfiber/ https://www.bektel.com/products-amp-services/bekfiber/ https://www.gondtc.com/internet_services.html https://www.gondtc.com/internet_services.html ignore the 90's style websites

exelius 9y ago

Agree; the "charging problem" is a huge obstacle for the electric vehicle industry. We're going from a world where vehicles need to "recharge" (refuel) once every week or so for about a minute and a half to a world where they will need to recharge nearly every day for several hours. Nevermind what happens to the electric grid when all this energy that was formerly being moved in tanker trucks in the form of gasoline now has to be moved over the grid and down to consumer homes. I'm all for electric vehicles, but they have enough problems that any switch will be long and slow because we as a society will have to change the way we build and live in cities to deal with those problems (just as we did when gasoline vehicles replaced horses, so there's precedent).

jackmott 9y ago
As long as the work truck daily cycle can be done in 1 charge then there isn't a problem at all. Top it off every night. For long trips, ie 18 wheelers, yeah it is kind of a no go without quick-swap batteries. Which isn't that huge of an obstacle imho. But, all that said, no of course fossil fuel cars aren't going away in 8 years
- mikeash 9y ago
  This is something I think a lot of people fail to understand. For daily use, EV charging is a convenience, not an inconvenience. It only takes me five seconds to plug in my car in the evening. It may take several hours to charge, but that happens while I'm eating dinner or sleeping or whatever. When you drive more than the car's range in a single day, then it flips, of course. For me, and I think for most people, this is rare enough that it's still a net win. It also flips if you can't plug in at home. For a lot of people that's easy, but for many it's tough. Thankfully installing a charger is pretty easy, so it comes down to convincing the powers that be to do it, or at least allow it, which gets easier all the time. Agree with the conclusion. Eight years?! The average car on American roads today is 11.5 years old. Average. Cars just don't get cycled out that quickly.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago

jessaustin 9y ago

How much does it cost to replace the gasoline infrastructure with charging in [rural USA]? If wind and solar keep improving, eventually they'll have such a price advantage over fossil fuel that everyone in rural areas will just convert their gas engines to liquid anhydrous ammonia. Many rural areas already have distribution infrastructure in place, and with cheap enough power it can be made from water and air with fairly minimal manufacturing facilities.

fooker 9y ago

Are you accounting for the possibility that rural America is not big and rich enough to uphold the world's gasoline infrastructure all by itself? Cheap gasoline, as an industry relies on the economies of scale to a large extent. That is what this article is talking about. If the demand drops, the price goes up, leading to a further drop in demand, which drives up the prices, which... At some point, it becomes more costly to continue supporting gas.

jstanley 9y ago
> If the demand drops, the price goes up, leading to a further drop in demand, which drives up the prices, which... And yet markets converge on price equilibria all the time without descending into runaway chaos.
- fooker 9y ago
  Not when a new technology is already there to eat its lunch.
ianferrel 9y ago
>If the demand drops, the price goes up, leading to a further drop in demand, which drives up the prices This is nonsense. A drop in demand reduces prices. Yes, there are economies of scale in oil production/refinement, but they are dwarfed by the marginal cost of extracting the last barrel, which is what drives the global price of oil.
- uoaei 9y ago
  This is a typical refrain, but doesn't account for second-order effects. At first, the price will drop. But the ongoing supply will pile up and need to be stored somewhere. Storing stuff is generally more expensive than not producing it. So production downsizes, and the little amount of product that ends up being produced costs more per unit than the larger-scale production process, and so prices go up. Also, prices will go up at the end of this transition due to scarcity and an ability to weasel money out of people who will pay more to hold on to what they're used to.

6d6b73 9y ago

"How much does it cost to replace the gasoline infrastructure with charging in North Dakota?" Virtually every home in ND is already equipped with infrastructure that allows electric cars to charge.