Are you gonna get an electric car anytime soon? (Or do you already have one?)

[Buck Wilson]

I do kind of wonder what'll happen to the auto parts industry -- currently, our best selling items are filters and alternators/batteries, none of which will be needed for an EV.

EVs still have a 12v battery and use 12v for most everything, it’s safer and more cost effective than having the 360+v main battery and associated high voltage wiring running things like map lights and window motors.

I think that electric cars are cool but they aren't going to solve the main problem. A car weighs two tons. It takes a certain amount of energy to push a two-ton hunk of steel down the road, whether it be powered by gasoline, electricity or unicorn dust.

While that is true, it’s not exactly a fair comparison. Electric cars are far more efficient at doing that specific job than gasoline cars. If x is the amount of energy it takes to move the car from town a to town b, an electric car uses almost exactly x energy whereas a gasoline car uses x plus another 60% of x that is just wasted as heat. The engine in a gas car is a wildly inefficient way to convert an energy source into useful kinetic energy.

And how green are we really if we keep charing our EVs with electricity produced from coal, gas and oil?

Gasoline engines in cars are so inefficient that a EV charged on a 100% coal fired grid (which exists nowhere in the United States) is STILL more efficient. It certainly takes longer to ‘break even’ as it were, but EVs are indeed still more efficient, and that INCLUDES battery manufacture. Carbon output only goes down from there as you move to renewable energy.


Anyway, here's my personal experience and opinion on EVs.

I bought a 2011 Chevy Volt (plug-in hybrid with about 40 miles of EV range before engine ever kicks on)with 152,000 miles in April of 2020 for $5,250. I'll happily admit I got lucky as hell purchasing what I did, when I did. It was the bottom of the car market apparently.

It has EASILY been the best car I've ever owned. In the 2.5 years since, I have put 58,000 miles onto it (now has 211k)... almost all of which has been hard mileage; pizza delivery and rural newspaper delivery. I drive roughly 80 miles a day, on average 6 days a week. I essentially fully cycle the battery in it twice a day.

Costs... wow. This thing costs less to drive by HALF than the previous most efficient vehicle I ever owned- a Ford Festiva. I drive for about 5 cents a mile, and that includes everything; gas, electricity at home, and public charging. It'd be even cheaper if it were a full EV and I only charged at home. I have saved over $6000 in fuel over having kept my previous vehicle, a 4 cylinder Saturn Vue. That means the fuel savings alone have more than paid for the vehicle. I'd happily drop $7,500 on a new main battery for it, the car owes me NOTHING.

I have had ZERO repairs besides a seat belt buckle receiver that I accidentally broke. Only two oil changes in that time... roughly once a year.

Beyond that, drivability is massively improved. Instantaneous and nearly silent acceleration. No more dumb shifting automatics that are wildly annoying in regular driving let alone on a stop-and-go delivery route.

Plus, EVs have additional perks! I can get an inverter and power home essentials from my car for days if the power were to go out. Newer EVs can power an entire home for days. They're also awesome for camping. Throw a mattress in the back and have AC all night long without running an engine!

I am very excited for EVs and look forward to getting a full EV. Probably the Equinox when it comes out next year.

Edit to add- my cumulative total MPG over 58,373 miles is currently sitting pretty at 83.1. Also, I charge at home with a regular ass 120v outlet. Enough for a full charge while I sleep, and enough to mostly keep it topped off between jobs/errands. I do plan on upgrading at some point though.

[Bobby Henderson]

As of this morning a tentative deal has been reached to avert the rail workers strike (after more than 20 hours straight of negotiations). I didn't know these guys weren't getting basic things like any paid sick leave. Rail companies have shed thousands of workers and posted record profits, but it sounds like they've been treating their employees like cattle. The trucking industry is hardly any better at all. Long haul trucking is already a difficult enough job if you're an owner-operator. But it can be a really shitty job if you're a driver working for a trucking company. It is no accident why the trucking industry has a severe shortage of drivers. Many employees take the jobs and quit a short time later due to what turns out to be terrible pay and terrible/dangerous working conditions.

[Mike Blakesley]

It'll be a pain for everybody, if it happens. It'll lead to another round of supply chain issues, since most "container" freight these days gets to a hub via train and then travels the last distance by truck. I heard on the news yesterday that it would take something like 167,000 trucks to move the amount of stuff that trains move -- and there already aren't enough truck drivers. I'm not sure how many days that means, but anybody can see that one train can carry several hundred truckloads of stuff.

I have family and friends that are railroaders and their complaints are legit. My nephew took his family on a one-week vacation to a lake near here last summer -- but he only got to spend a total of two days there because he had to come back twice to work. They are literally on call 24/7 with almost no guaranteed days off, so they can't really plan anything, including holiday gatherings. He said he's cancelled more appointments this year than he's been able to keep -- doctor, dentist, haircuts, etc.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Louise and I took Amtrak from Denver CO to Emeryville CA and back. We had a sleeper car, and it was great! But it was just for fun, and we were not in a hurry. We went through the snow covered Rockies and Sierras during the day. I'm hearing that due to a possible freight train strike, Amtrak is cancelling long haul train service since they use freight rails. That's a pain for Amtrak travelers, but it could be a real pain for companies waiting for their freight.

Harold

[Bobby Henderson]

As someone that has lived in the Washington DC metro area my whole life and had family in New York (city)...most anyone that goes between those two cities knows that train is the way. You go from city-center to city-center.

That's one (of multiple) fatal flaws with high speed rail efforts in the United States. I think I said it before in this thread (or another one): it's going to be extremely difficult/costly to build new high speed rail stations in city centers. The stations alone would be a hard enough hurdle. Linking real high speed track directly to the stations would be even harder or just impossible.

The high speed project in California (when/if finished) will reduce trains to using conventional, shared, slow-speed tracks as they enter the far outskirts of the Los Angeles and SF Bay areas. And that doesn't take into account where the stations will be located. Passengers may be forced to transfer from other commuter/light-rail trains (or use other modes of transportation) to reach a high speed rail station. That ruins a lot of advantages over air travel. If the US could figure out how to build new tunnels without it absolutely destroying a budget going under the city centers could be an option. Elevated viaducts are less costly than tunnels, but lots of property owners really really don't like them.

I don't advise sleeping unless you are sure you have a fool proof way to get up...trains don't hang out at the stations long...where I get on, now is mostly in the BWI area...that train stops for something like 10 minutes...be prepared!

I was pretty nervous on one Amtrak trip I took from New York City to Jacksonville, FL. I was so worried I'd oversleep in my cabin, miss my stop and wake up well on the way to Miami. Thankfully I slept light enough to notice train stops when they were happening. When the train pulled into Jessup, GA I knew I needed to get dressed and get my stuff together for the next stop. There was what seemed like about an hour long lay-over in Washington for them to switch locomotive engines from overhead electric to diesel electric. They didn't have Acela service yet then. I imagine quite a few passengers on the Silver Star have to switch trains now.

It would probably be OK, but there are a lot of people who wouldn't go for it. Lots of scenery seekers want to do it on their own time, in their own way, at their own speed... which requires a car.

I don't know; I think it's pretty thrilling to look out a train window and see ground-level scenery whooshing by at well over 100mph. My family lived in Japan over 40 years ago; they had the Bullet Train back then. Landmarks like mountains would move by a lot faster than they would when viewing them from a car on a highway. That would be something for the American West where big mountains can be seen from 50-100 miles away. An American high speed rail line might not need quite as many tunnels as the Bullet Train has in Japan.

[Steve Guttag]

As someone that has lived in the Washington DC metro area my whole life and had family in New York (city)...most anyone that goes between those two cities knows that train is the way. You go from city-center to city-center. The boarding/un-boarding process is only a gazillion times faster on the train than a plane and, for NYC...the plane puts you on the outskirts of the city. There are those that may desire to drive in NYC or even through NYC...but I am not one of those people! Oh, I've done it, but I don't want to do it (nor park there). Furthermore, on a train, it is relatively peaceful and one can get some work (or reading) done. I don't advise sleeping unless you are sure you have a fool proof way to get up...trains don't hang out at the stations long...where I get on, now is mostly in the BWI area...that train stops for something like 10 minutes...be prepared!

[Mike Blakesley]

If the US could ever get a nation-wide high speed rail network off the ground any service in the more mountainous West could offer a serious tourism draw.

It would probably be OK, but there are a lot of people who wouldn't go for it. Lots of scenery seekers want to do it on their own time, in their own way, at their own speed... which requires a car. I would hate to be stuck on a train going through some scenic area and not be able to pull off the road and take a walk around. People are also picky about what time of day they travel. They want to see the mountains at sunrise or the ocean at sunset, for example, or drive through a wildlife area in the evening during the mating season for moose or elk, or get up close and personal with a buffalo jam (which is fun, if un-nerving).

I wouldn't mind a train ride if I had a fairly short journey with a long stay at a destination at the end of it, but if I'm going exploring in any way, I prefer to drive. Our "travel yardstick" has almost always been, if we can drive it in a day, we drive -- because it takes about a whole day to fly anywhere from where we live, thanks to us being 100 miles from the airport and 500-1000 miles from there to any of the "hub" cities. Driving is more entertaining, more comfortable, about a quarter of the cost, and takes about the same amount of time as flying for a journey anywhere up to about 500 miles.

[Bobby Henderson]

We do have a lot of significant cities between the coasts...but there is a LOT of space between those cities.

That really depends on the definition of "a lot." I don't consider a 200 mile or so jump from one big city to the next "a lot." From the I-35 corridor on Eastward the United States has dozens upon dozens of legit-size cities from the Deep South up to the Canadian border that have that kind of spacing frequency, if not closer. West of the I-35 corridor population centers are far more spread out. But there are still pretty significant clusters of cities. The Front Range region along the I-25 corridor from Pueblo, CO up to Cheyenne, WY is home to over 5 million people. The Western US may not have nearly as many major population centers, but it does offer a lot more in the way of scenery. If the US could ever get a nation-wide high speed rail network off the ground any service in the more mountainous West could offer a serious tourism draw.

[Steve Guttag]

We do have a lot of significant cities between the coasts...but there is a LOT of space between those cities. And, for each major cities there are often a lot of smaller cities...you could link those up with rail though I think you'll find that those in the middle of the country will tend towards neither rail or air travel. As you get towards the extreme north and south you are more likely to find those interested in air travel...probably less by rail...particularly where snow can impede travel by rail.

[Bobby Henderson]

Here are two issues. One: air travel already sucks pretty bad and is getting even worse. Two: the United States has a lot more major population centers than just the Northeastern Seaboard and Southern California. People who live on the coasts conveniently keep forgetting that.

The airline industry in the US has really been a shit-show this year. Despite the terrible quality service airfare prices are soaring. That's what happens when customers have no credible alternative.

I wouldn't expect someone to ride a high speed train a really long distance, like from New York to Los Angeles or Seattle to Miami unless the person was doing something like sight-seeing or making stop-overs along the way. But a rail trip like Oklahoma City to Houston should be do-able. The United States has a lot of major cities spread across the country. The existing Amtrak slow-speed network is very deficient at linking those cities. It's not hard to chart out a high speed rail network that has a big city stop at least every 200-400 miles with the exception of the Pacific Northwest. High speed rail in the US is made impossible by lots of other NIMBY legal/political-driven factors.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Rail works best, particularly when talking about long distances, for time-insensitive cargo, of which human travel rarely qualifies. Humans will want the travel to occur when they need it and to where they need it. In metropolitan areas, particularly with common work hours, this can be accommodated more easily. But as you expand the range of the rail service, particularly when are not in a "corridor" like between DC and say Boston where there are major cities along the route where you have many get-ons/get-offs but say going between the coasts, that becomes impractical. You'd need to really break it up so both the short-hop and the coastal travelers could make maximum use of it. And, to make it worthwhile, you'd need to get the cost/time to favorably compare to air travel (or even personal vehicle). I don't see that in the US...it's too big for what it is and who would use it. And, you'd still need to accommodate the better utilization of the tracks...the freight. They would constantly need to be able to get out of the way of a fast moving passenger train without significantly adding to the time it takes to move the freight. The logistics would be quite difficult.

Agreed! I have actually used Amtrack to send stuff that was in a hurry. And a few years back I even used Grethound Bus to send some freight. They were cheap 5 years ago to ship stuff...

[Steve Guttag]

Rail works best, particularly when talking about long distances, for time-insensitive cargo, of which human travel rarely qualifies. Humans will want the travel to occur when they need it and to where they need it. In metropolitan areas, particularly with common work hours, this can be accommodated more easily. But as you expand the range of the rail service, particularly when are not in a "corridor" like between DC and say Boston where there are major cities along the route where you have many get-ons/get-offs but say going between the coasts, that becomes impractical. You'd need to really break it up so both the short-hop and the coastal travelers could make maximum use of it. And, to make it worthwhile, you'd need to get the cost/time to favorably compare to air travel (or even personal vehicle). I don't see that in the US...it's too big for what it is and who would use it. And, you'd still need to accommodate the better utilization of the tracks...the freight. They would constantly need to be able to get out of the way of a fast moving passenger train without significantly adding to the time it takes to move the freight. The logistics would be quite difficult.

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed. The nations that do use high speed rail extensively (France and Japan spring to mind) have distances of around 100-400 miles between their major centers of population. Even over those sorts of distances, though, high speed rail is only viable with very large government subsidy. The longest inter-city high speed passenger rail link I can think of is Beijing-Shanghai (664 miles). Of the nations that are of comparable physical size to ours and have an extensive passenger railroad system (India and Russia strike me as the obvious examples), their long haul trains cruise at between 50-100mph. These lines exist because they were built before automobiles were mass produced, and then for a combination of economic and political reasons, a freeway network comparable to ours never followed them. Both leapfrogged the freeway (in the same way that some African countries leapfrogged landline infrastructure and went from nothing to cellular) and went straight to aviation for use cases where speed is more important than cost.

In our case, a typical coast to coast journey is in the ballpark of 3,000 miles. As a wild guess, I would speculate that you would be looking at the best part of a trillion to build a railroad capable of 250-300mph over that distance. The journey would then just be possible in one long day - likely 3-4 hours quicker than by air. If the cost of using it for passengers and time critical cargo were, say, 50% of the cost of air for only a 20% time hit, then maybe there would be a market for it. But if you're trying to recoup a half trillion dollar investment, I can't see how that would be possible.

[Lyle Romer]

I think it's pretty embarrassing how the United States, the so-called world's richest nation, doesn't have a real coast to coast high speed rail network. Our normal "slow speed" Amtrak network is mostly cobbled together on existing freight line track. A bunch of that service got upended today, thanks to a very likely rail workers strike by the end of this week. Just when I thought we were getting some good news with slowly falling fuel prices and what's happening in Ukraine, this rail strike may plunge us into yet another crisis. It's like we're living in a bad soap opera.

I can't wait to see what tickets are going to cost to ride California's high speed rail line from Bakersfield up to Fresno or Merced.

IIRC, the 2nd Avenue Subway project in Manhattan is the most expensive transportation related project in the country. The first phase (with 3 new subway stations on the Upper East Side) opened in 2017 and cost over $4.5 billion. The cost of Phase 2 (in progress) is estimated at $6 billion and won't open until 2027 at the earliest. Phases 3-4 aren't funded yet. The entire 8.5 mile line may cost well over $20 billion when or if it is finished.

Is there really a need for long range high speed rail service in the US? Beyond 500 miles or so, airplanes are a faster way to reach a destination (even with connecting flights) and you don't need to build out tens of thousands of miles of infrastructure.

High speed rail makes sense in the US for highly traveled, medium range regional markets like the northeast. It doesn't make sense to spend enormous amounts of money to create high speed rail from NY to LA when an airplane gets you there in less than 7.5 hours including the time dealing with getting to the airport and going through security.

If you are worried about the environmental impact of air travel, modern jets are very efficient and keep getting more efficient with each generation. An A320NEO series or 737MAX uses around 40% of the fuel that a 757 used for the same distance. If the point is reached where we've replaced all fossil fuels with "green" energy (which won't happen in our lifetimes), synthetic jet fuel can be made using "green" electricity. It's way more expensive than distilled oil right now but in 100 years I'm sure it will get cost competitive.

[Lyle Romer]

Very few local lawmakers have any balls at all to attempt putting a cap on housing prices or getting behind a housing development offering units affordable to middle or lower income workers. Same goes for politicians on the state level. There are few if any categories where the NIMBY factor is more intense than when well-off property owners mobilize against any projects related to affordable housing.

The people in the United States who determine where housing is built and what kind prefer building as much "R-1 zoned" single family unit stuff as possible. They prefer neighborhoods strictly separated by income class.

The lack of affordable housing, particularly smaller "starter" homes, is really going to bite the United States in the ass in the future thanks to what soaring living costs are doing to young adults now. Young people aren't that stupid. They know it costs an outrageous fortune to get married and/or have kids. A bunch of these people can't afford to move out on their own unless they do something like join the military or move to an entirely different region of the country. These trends will have a pretty negative impact on US generation demographics starting in the next 10-20 years. The "canary in the coalmine" moment will be when you start seeing school districts struggling to justify their existence due to a lack of new students.

An easy way to cap housing prices would be strict regulations that don't allow mortgages to be written if they monthly payment (principal+interest+taxes+insurance) will exceed a certain percentage of the income of the people taking out the mortgage. The prices will be capped because people will literally not be able to afford to pay more than a certain price based on their income and what they can pay for a down payment. However, politicians won't touch that with a 10 foot pole because it will be seen as discriminatory.