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Government will have to find another way to fund road infrastructure maintenance, but the fact of the matter is, the current gas tax has already been inadequate for a long while as there is a lot of crumbling road infrastructure in the US.
It's a bit different for Norway though because they are a major oil exporting nation where that resource is publicly held and with a lot of domestic electricity generation that's generally harder to export than oil. Norway switching to EVs does mean not having that money from fees and taxes they would have otherwise received from gas vehicles, but it's economically been a very good move for them as not domestically consuming oil they produce means having more for export. At this point, their two sovereign wealth funds originally stemming from oil exports are absolutely massive and shrewd investment has meant that in recent times, the returns on the sovereign wealth fund have even been larger than the profits derived from oil sales.
Yep, EVs are exploding in popularity sometimes faster than charging stations are being put up. That happened on some Californian routes as well. As there's a pretty good profit incentive in selling charging and long lines means time when money isn't being made, market forces went into effect and more charging stations opened up. We should probably expect that to happen as more EVs are sold likely at rates faster than most people expect and so there will need to be a faster pace for putting in public chargers.
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Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Government will have to find another way to fund road infrastructure maintenance, but the fact of the matter is, the current gas tax has already been inadequate for a long while as there is a lot of crumbling road infrastructure in the US.
It's a bit different for Norway though because they are a major oil exporting nation where that resource is publicly held and with a lot of domestic electricity generation that's generally harder to export than oil. Norway switching to EVs does mean not having that money from fees and taxes they would have otherwise received from gas vehicles, but it's economically been a very good move for them as not domestically consuming oil they produce means having more for export. At this point, their two sovereign wealth funds originally stemming from oil exports are absolutely massive and shrewd investment has meant that in recent times, the returns on the sovereign wealth fund have even been larger than the profits derived from oil sales.
Yep, EVs are exploding in popularity sometimes faster than charging stations are being put up. That happened on some Californian routes as well. As there's a pretty good profit incentive in selling charging and long lines means time when money isn't being made, market forces went into effect and more charging stations opened up. We should probably expect that to happen as more EVs are sold likely at rates faster than most people expect and so there will need to be a faster pace for putting in public chargers.
You will also see a rapid increase in the amounts charged to use them, as demand goes up. The electric providers are rubbing their hands together in delight as this potential big new source of revenue develops. Even here where our cheap hydro power averages $0.11/kWh you can bet that when office building, apartment, and parking lot owners install chargers, they are going to mark it up significantly, plus service charges. Eventually, charging an EV could cost as much as filling with gas.
You will also see a rapid increase in the amounts charged to use them, as demand goes up. The electric providers are rubbing their hands together in delight as this potential big new source of revenue develops. Even here where our cheap hydro power averages $0.11/kWh you can bet that when office building, apartment, and parking lot owners install chargers, they are going to mark it up significantly, plus service charges. Eventually, charging an EV could cost as much as filling with gas.
I'm generally fine with that as the prices are lower than gasoline or diesel for the most part for equivalent usable energy, there are multiple pathways to generating electricity, and that there's even a pathway to generating a lot of electricity for your own use at home. That's not the case for gas or diesel as even biodiesel requires quite a bit of work. In the macroeconomic sense that also works. Providers for electricity or people selling things that generate electricity in situ want to make more money. They don't care that it means you spend less money at the pump or sending it to oil companies than you would have paid otherwise--they care more about maximizing their own profits and not the net expenditure you spent or the loss that the oil companies and gas stations take. The gas stations are only important to them in the sense of competition and wanting to see if they can maximize their own profits since you've already signaled a willingness to pay high prices for gas, so they'll try to see if they can get as much. The problem is they probably can't since they can't fully ascertain how much of that electricity went into the vehicles and larger electricity price hikes for something used in much larger number of contexts means that they get more eyes on them when they do it than a gas station would *and* there are a significant number of clientele who have alternatives like in situ generation or price arbitrage via storage.
And yea, the service providers will mark it up significantly for installing fast chargers. I think that's fine generally as long as the market remains relatively free as then they can compete against each other *as well as* against residential rate. There is a far smaller number of sources to generate usable fuel for your vehicle (you can't even put diesel or biodiesel in your gasoline vehicle without mucking it up!) and limited to no opportunity to generate any of it in situ at your home. Unfortunately, EVs still mostly have a larger price premium than their ICE equivalents and right now it really follows the dictum that it takes money to make money. Hopefully that changes, but it's possible that never comes to pass or at least not any time soon.
You're both forgetting that power companies do not compete in a free market situation, They are heavily regulated by the govt and prices are set by determining operting costs + a regulated per cent of those costs as profit....If you check the stock market quotes, it's easy to see that the prices of shares don't change much and are a lousy investment for the speculators, but they usually pay a very good dividend compared to their price and it's paid regularly, making it a good investment for the older, conservsative investor.
Once again, let's repeat that EVs are a solution to certain niches in the transportation market. Govt interference in the market to insist they fill all niches in a short time span is a folly-- vehicular tech still inadequate, not enough materials, not enough power without fossil fuels qnd not enough money to get it done in a mandated time span of just a few years.
The fossil fuel supply won't be depleted for centuries. We should use that time wisley to prepare for the inevitable change in an efficient manner.
It would have been pretty stupid in 1804 when the first steam locomotive went into service for President Jefferson to mandate that no more horse & wagons would be sllowed after 1814....How is that any different than an EV mandate now?
You're both forgetting that power companies do not compete in a free market situation, They are heavily regulated by the govt and prices are set by determining operting costs + a regulated per cent of those costs as profit....If you check the stock market quotes, it's easy to see that the prices of shares don't change much and are a lousy investment for the speculators, but they usually pay a very good dividend compared to their price and it's paid regularly, making it a good investment for the older, conservsative investor.
Once again, let's repeat that EVs are a solution to certain niches in the transportation market. Govt interference in the market to insist they fill all niches in a short time span is a folly-- vehicular tech still inadequate, not enough materials, not enough power without fossil fuels qnd not enough money to get it done in a mandated time span of just a few years.
The fossil fuel supply won't be depleted for centuries. We should use that time wisley to prepare for the inevitable change in an efficient manner.
It would have been pretty stupid in 1804 when the first steam locomotive went into service for President Jefferson to mandate that no more horse & wagons would be sllowed after 1814....How is that any different than an EV mandate now?
I didn't forget that, it's just really hard to say what the effects of it are since there are also publicly owned utilities and the pricing structur for those can be cheaper and still operationally in the black such as the one in Austin. There are a lot of different factors, so it's hard to really say exactly how the local monopolies affect the price therefore talking about it doesn't do a huge amount of good as it's difficult to say what its effects are. What I did mention though is that for a large segment of people, there's the potential to actually produce a lot of the electricity yourself with capital investments and maybe some financing where it's possible to have savings and price stability over a longer period of time, so there is competition on that level. Note that the petroleum industry in the US also does not operate in the free market as there are alarge number of supports for the industry and globally does not operate on a free market basis as there are very high-level adjustments from OPEC+ that can and do dramatically change prices though I guess we should be happy that it is *other governments's* radical interference in the free market rather than our own's.
EVs fulfill certain niches in the transportation market, but they are very, very large niches. They're so far proving capable in most consumer passenger vehicle usage in most cases except for sustained extreme cold weather and long-distance towing of heavy loads. This also has been extending to passenger and freight trains as well as large industrial truck shipping for drayage, local, and regional usage. They have also are making waves in ferry services. That does miss quite a few things, notably flight and long distance trucking, but it is still a very broad base of transportation usage that is covered and given the pace of battery improvements we've been seeing over the last several decades including in the previous decade, there's a decent chance within this decade we start seeing commercial short distance flight and long haul trucking and maritime shipping.
The tech is improving pretty quickly and is great for use now, none of the base materials are actually in short supply as far as resources but only in the market having setting up production since it's apparent that EV adoption has gone much faster than most expected, source of power is quite flexible and far more flexible than gasoline or diesel (which have tried and true pathways for conversion into electricity) while emitting less per mile even if you used petroleum to generate the power, and there is certainly enough money to do so as other countries have been able to move far faster with lower per capita wealth.
People didn't move away from horses because we were running out of horses or feed for horses. EVs are simply a better and more efficient technology. This is on a base engineering and physics level in regards to efficiency and energy recovery, and as far as infrastructure, much lower cost of transmission and distribution of usable power than other alternatives.
However, I do agree that we shouldn't be banning them. We should price in negative externalities as we should have a long time ago and we can get rid of some pretty curious subsidies and do both of these gradually. I do not think we should do outright bans or even at this point heavily subsidize consumer electric vehicle ownership. I also think it's pretty much unnecessary since as it looks likely that battery improvements will be making similarly large improvements this decade as they have in the previous one and so they'll even without this ban likely become dominant in new vehicle market share anyways.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-19-2022 at 09:15 AM..
Norway is a country 1/1000th the area of the US with 1/60th our population. Their electric power comes almost exclusiely from hydo- (essentially free after the facilities are built)...while a gallon of gas cost ~$8 there...
How much brains does it take to figure out the EV has a niche to fill there?
Here, EVs account for 1 out of every 50 vehicles sold each year...If people wanted them, they could get them, but apparently they don't want them, even with the unfair govt incentives encouraging their sale....and 90% (I bet) of those that are bought are done so merely to signal virtue. THAT is dumb.
Loss of revenue from falling fuel sales as EVs become more prominent in the mix will be recouped by additional taxes elsewhere...I understand that with this new socialism bill the House just passed, with it's half billion dollar incease in IRS funding, also provides for a new, simple Form 1040--It will have just two lines on it-- "How much money did you make last year?"..and.."Send it to us."
I agree that if you're buying an EV to virtue signal, or even if you think you're "saving the planet"-you're an idiot. Now, if you are doing so because you want much cheaper, more convenient fueling and don't want to support foreign countries that don't like us very much, and want a car that is much simpler and requires nearly no maintenance, it's another story. Now-in this country, people "aren't buying" EVs because the manufacturers can't build them fast enough. Tesla alone has a 6 month or longer backlog on their Y and 3 Models. They have over a million pre-orders for the Cybertruck (coming "next" year). EV6 and Ionic 5s are sold out. Ford has 2 years worth of orders for the Lightning pickup and is sold out of Mach-Es. And this at a time when there is a significant cost penalty for EVs.
UK sold more EV's in March 2022 than in all of 2019.
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