You’re right that cold winters in northern latitudes present additional system constraints. But that doesn’t mean the renewables + storage strategy is flawed, it means we need more transmission and more storage, and gas backup will linger longer in such areas than it does in warmer areas. We’re still early in the transition and have a ton of low hanging fruit to capture before we need to really focus on the remaining 20%.

Clearly EVs aren’t there yet for the very bottom of the market. This market will buy used for another decade and then all the sudden will start buying cheap used EVs. Used EV prices are dropping and will continue to drop, but it takes time. In the meantime, wealthy people that were already planning on spending a lot of money on cars will increasingly buy expensive electric cars and prices will come down. Pretty much every manufacturer is targeting a $10k drop in price for the next generation.

And to answer your question about where are the affordable EVs - China.

Same, I’m a low mileage driver and when I do drive it’s road trips and camping mostly. The economics of a new EV vs my long paid off outback are terrible when you drive 5k a year. Waiting for a native NACS plug is the obvious decision for us (along with the rest of the reasons to wait).

Right, but I also think there is room to talk about where public investments in charging should go. I am a huge EV proponent but also I love bikes and transit and car free spaces, and I’m cautious about further enshrining parking in our public spaces by building charging infrastructure. I don’t think it’s as simple as any and all charging infrastructure is good, there’s room for that discussion here.

The reality is many new car buyers stretch their budgets a lot more than you and I would be comfortable doing. Lots of cultural conditioning, cars as a status symbol, etc mean lots of poor financial decisions.

This whole post is about GM’s ultium issues, which are very much real. You’re the one bringing up Tesla unnecessarily and attacking the source. This may be uncomfortable for you, but GM and Ms Barra herself talk about Tesla all the time, and it’s not surprising that EV news blogs also talk about Tesla a lot - they are the elephant in the room (at least in the US). The article also mentions Honda, and Kia-Hyundai too. Is that a sign of horrific bias too? It’s a long and detailed article that barely mentions Tesla, and only in relevant ways - GM has stated they will pass Tesla by 2025 (ok sure) and the talent comment. Your entire bias argument rests on the word 'Tesla" being in the article twice, not anything of substance, and that’s not even what we’re here to discuss.

I don’t even like Tesla personally and won’t consider buying one unless Elon is long gone and they make some design changes. But I won’t buy an ultium car for quite sometime either, because it’s a hot mess.

It’s more complicated than private network = more sales, because otherwise why would they open it at all? As a public corporation, the default assumption is that they think they’ll make more money opening the network than keeping it closed. There’s NEVI money, there is whatever backroom deals with the other automakers, there is brand prestige with NACS, there is marketing effect of getting drivers of other brands EVs to engage with their network, there is the long term view that their market share can only shrink and it’s better to ensure their customers have access to every charger, etc. I think time will show that open access is more profitable for everyone.

Nonsense. It’s plainly obvious Ultium has been a mess, and this article describes how based on quotes from Ms Barra herself acknowledging issues. There isn’t even a mention of Tesla beyond saying that GM has been reluctant to poach talent from them and preferring to use their own experience and supply chains. GM has a mystery contractor that’s clearly failing on module and pack assembly, in addition to software issues. If anything, this article praises the Chinese manufacturers that are producing “ultium” vehicles since they have more experience assembling packs.

The key here is that it’s a vote for the most popular of the 2 candidates based on the votes of who bothered to vote for them specifically, then further butchered via the EC. It’s a smaller, different pool of people that may elect someone that the actual majority prefer less, because part of the actual majority decided to play a different game entirely.

Well said. A vote for Biden is a vote for his entire administration, including all the judges and secretaries and people behind the scenes. These have proven to be overwhelmingly competent people and the roles are absolutely critical. Trump has openly said he’ll purge the entire federal government and replace them with lackeys. It’s about more than just the man.

What a shit show. Nothing but bullshit, second guessing, and mistiming from GM. Ultium is proving to be a disaster, Bolt program was great but they ruined that, they killed the volt and other hybrids but now want to bring back hybrids as if a random piecemeal strategy for power train development is remotely practical, all while focusing on big ass dangerous vehicles exclusively. As much as I’d love to buy a union made homegrown EV their portfolio is just awful. Godspeed Mary.

Capacity and generation are two different things. Grid operators have capacity markets that ensure peak load can be met, and incude generations assets, demand response, energy efficiency, etc. Batteries absolutely coumt as capacity so long as they are managed to do so.

I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I advocate for every policy that will reduce carbon emissions, and I will celebrate both a denied permit and a carbon tax instead of demonizing one of them. Maybe if otherwise likeminded folks like yourself didn’t spend so much time dumping on carbon taxes in favor of your “ideal” policy, we’d have slightly higher support.

What an odd revisionist characterization. Schultz was active in many administrations, including Regan’s. You’re both elevating his relevance to the movement (one which your own link at the Volt describes as left leaning grassroots campaigners) and mischaracterizing the entire approach. Reaganomics is synonymous with tax cuts, deregulation, and “trickle down”. A carbon fee and dividend is not a tax cut, it’s not deregulation, and it’s the opposite of trickle down. Schultz was also a key part of Montreal protocol, literally the most effective international policy of all time. Is the Montreal protocol “Reaganomics” as well?

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/about-ccl/advisory-board/george-p-shultz/

There are many, many more people involved in CCL than you’re attempting to characterize here, including a wide mix of academics. That’s because they promote good policy.

As to the Volt article you linked, while interesting, all it says is that support tends to be static for the first few years in two countries. It should surprise anyone that conservatives in Alberta are still against a carbon tax a few years later. This isn’t even the right success metric - what matters is effectiveness over time. Public perception needs to be high enough to avoid a repeal, and not higher. You still haven’t addressed your original claim that the fossil fuels lobby is behind a carbon tax, which they so obviously are not.

Your “solutions” are a fine a slow way to transform one sector of the economy - electricity generation. That’s not enough, and it’s not fast enough. I’m not saying don’t do those things too - I love the IRA and I love federal efficiency standards and gas bans and all that good stuff, but no reason to argue against some rocket fuel to accelerate carbon reductions (and touch the rest of the economy).

Pretty sure if e.g. the US manages to pass a carbon fee, Greta herself wouldn’t say that fossil lobby won, she’d probably say great, now also do XYZ and raise the carbon price higher while you’re at it. That’s a much more mainstream attitude.

You can’t just call any market based solution “Reaganomics”, but ok. It’s logically inconsistent to say that carbon taxes are favored by industry and neoliberals, when those very people aren’t actually pushing for carbon taxes. Since neoliberals and industry have a stranglehold on policy and they haven’t done it, I must conclude you’re wrong. Why don’t you cite some of the voices "in the climate movement " that are against carbon taxes? I’m not seeing them. What I see is trust the science, and the desire to build political momentum that will results in the science based solutions coming into effect. Things like ending fossil fuels subsidies, requiring utilities switch to renewables, increasing vehicle emissions standards, incentives for electrification, and yes, carbon taxes.

I’m really curious what your actual solution is here. How are you going to get everyone to leave the oil and gas in the ground? A white whale is something you can’t actually find - seems like destroying capitalism or whatever your vague idea is fits that description much better than pricing in externalities via a tax, something that can very simply be layered in to our market structures with our current institutions (and something that is actually happening in dozens of countries, but is somehow impossible according to you).

Then why does CCL actively promote carbon fee and dividend as its most beneficial policy? Your logic doesn’t even make sense - you’re saying the fossil lobby would love to be taxed further? Nonsense. If that were true, we’d have a carbon fee enacted decades ago. It’s not innately regressive, and your reasoning doesn’t even make sense because your entire premise rests on complexity = bad, not any actual logic. This isn’t to say it’s politically feasible, but you haven’t offered a politically feasible method for just stopping drilling altogether. All a carbon fee does is offer a revenue neutral way to slowly and surely shift everyone’s behavior by pricing in externalities. It’s very much viable and equitable, and if you think it’s somehow harder than banning fuel and banning capitalism you’re simply not being serious. We have a market mechanism to prevent bad behavior - taxes and fees. Let’s use them. Feel free to ban extraction too, but that’s not where I’ll be focusing my personal lobbying efforts.

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/

They weren’t talking about how long EVs have been around, but for anyone curious EVs generally predate ICE cars and were quite popular around 1900. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle

We had 3 days of -10 to 0 ish in Colorado over MLK Jr weekend, my H2i kept 68F in the house no problem. It dropped to 67 a few times during defrost cycles, since I have no backup. It works great, im sure your house did just fine unless is severely undersized.

You added an extra 1000 lbs to the heaviest version, then rounded up. The whole entire point of standard weights is so numbskulls don’t just make up numbers for how much things weigh, like you are. The leaf is 350-3900 lbs, not 4900 lbs, not 5000 lbs. Please go back to elementary school.

A leaf is 3500-3900 lbs, not almost 5k lbs