Originally Posted By abacus
Originally Posted By sparky589
Money does talk. We've had recent past presidents whose families money came from Texas oil, and others in the past as well. The switchover to electric vehicle is happening much slower than it should be as big oil money to politicians , and from investors, keeps the electric transportation industry from reaching its full potential. Politicians supported by oil companies will never vote for bills to add charging stations to highways from DOT funds so your electric car can't take you far. And somebody's got to supply that power. Maybe the electric utility companies can take on the oil companies for the market share of fuel/power supply. Of course whomever has more money will win that influence fight..


Nothing to do with the oil company's, the 2 main obstacles to electric car development (Besides the public who are very suspicious of them) are batteries (Manufactures cannot get enough of them as it takes time to ramp up production and build new factory's) as an example Mercedes has had to halve its intended production of the ECQ model due to not enough batteries available, plus it also takes time to build up the fast charging infrastructure so that people can charge up their cars when they go on a run. (Remember the ICE car has been around for over 100 years so garages are plentiful)
BTW. Texas is one of the biggest oil states, yet next to California it has one of the largest investments in renewable energy.
Also since 1990 the amount of CO2 produced by the US has only increased by 0.4%.

Bill



There are still many problems connected with e cars. They are only useful if the electricity for them is produced in a sustainable way. Speaking of Germany, there is still quite a resistance to even more wind turbines (there are already thousands meanwhile -> edit: currently approx. 29,000 onshore windmills in Germany), disputes about their minimum distance to houses, but a further problem is we need lots of devices to store this uneven type of energy (e.g. pump-storage power plants). Local initiatives to block such things paralyze everything (ironically sometimes lead by green party members).
Another problem specifically in Germany is the grim outlook for the many thousands of employees in the automotive sector. Manufacturing electric cars just doesn‘t require all the skills and workforce used for combustion engine production.
There are also safety risks, recently a Tesla immediately burst into flames due to an accident in Austria, the fire brigade was unable to extinguish the fire for hours, and for weeks nobody was willing to dispose the battery.
Some parties think an open technology approach is wise, hydrogen cars might become interesting at some stage, but there‘s lots of problems to be solved...


Edited by Crossover (01/23/20 01:00 PM)