Electric cars: worse than Hitler
Among the very oddest things about the Washington Post editorial page is Charles Lane’s obsessive hatred of electric cars. The Washington Post search feature only lets you go back 60 days, but I estimate he’s complained about them at least five times out of his past 12 blog posts and opinion pieces (the others were bashing Seymour Hersh, arguing that HCR is unconstitutional, and bashing unions, etc.). The latest contains such authoritative pronouncements as this:
Plenty of motorists ran out of fuel in Wednesday night’s mega-jam. But my hunch is that electrics would faced similar problems or worse.
Are electric cars such a threat that the Washington Post editorial board should assign one of its members to write exclusively about and against them?
January 31, 2011 6:00 pm
Posted in: Our Failed Media Experiment
159 Comments
159 Responses
schrodinger's cat - January 31, 2011 | 6:03 pm · Link
DougJ @ top
I have a suggestion, for our next book club selection, we should read a book about a mathematician or a scientist, preferably a physicist. I think it will be more uplifting and cause less heartburn.
ETA: Charles Lane is an idiot.
General Stuck - January 31, 2011 | 6:06 pm · Link
My personal fav is this one
Some cult. This Obot has received no electric car, and the plastic unicorns don’t have wheels, not to mention a plug in.
ruemara - January 31, 2011 | 6:07 pm · Link
How about a open thread on shelby county alabama’s attempt to overturn the voting rights act?
http://www.cbs42.com/content/l.....TkIOA.cspx
A Writer At Balloon-Juice - January 31, 2011 | 6:07 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat:
Are there any good ones? I normally hate all popular science writing.
kdaug - January 31, 2011 | 6:09 pm · Link
George Will’s Sunday column was also about electric cars. It’s a veritable war against EVs at WaPo. One suspects that Kaplan has some financial stake in oil companies.
Ash Can - January 31, 2011 | 6:09 pm · Link
If all this poor clown is doing in the service of the oil industry is writing columns in the Wipe-O, he must have an awfully low price.
Villago Delenda Est - January 31, 2011 | 6:10 pm · Link
Electric cars are a danger to Dick Cheney and is Awl Bidness buddies.
That’s all you need to know about them.
David - January 31, 2011 | 6:11 pm · Link
The Chinese company, BYD, which Warren Buffett has invested in, is going >FULL-STEAM-AHEAD-> with electric cars and has orders for fleets of cars and buses.
“BYD has become the fastest-growing Chinese auto brand. One of BYD’s sedan models – the F3, hit a record sales of 290,963 units in 2009 and became the best-selling model of the 2009 model year. It is also the only model that has beaten the monthly sales record of 30,000 units for six successive months. With the reputation of the F3, BYD’s B-segment model—the F6 and the mini-compact model—the F0, became widely popular when they entered the Chinese auto market. ”
http://www.byd.com/press.php?id=112
cathyx - January 31, 2011 | 6:12 pm · Link
I hate Hummers. I think that evens it out a little.
Nick - January 31, 2011 | 6:13 pm · Link
Well, Clearly if Obama used the bully pulpit.
Dennis SGMM - January 31, 2011 | 6:13 pm · Link
It was ever thus. I remember when the first Hondas and Datsuns started appearing in the US in substantial numbers and there all sorts of Op-Eds decrying them for being too small, too slow, unsafe, tinny, ad nauseum. Remind me how that worked out.
BGinCHI - January 31, 2011 | 6:14 pm · Link
Maybe they’re mad because their parent only bought them Hot Wheels when they were kids and not those fancier electric ones that went faster.
I’m still a little touchy about that.
schrodinger's cat - January 31, 2011 | 6:14 pm · Link
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: I like Feynman’s books, he was quite a character. I have read two
‘What do you care what other people think” and I think the other one was, “Surely you are joking Mr Feynman”. I don’t know may not be everyone’s cup of tea though.
evinfuilt - January 31, 2011 | 6:14 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat:
Go with Phil Plaits end of the universe book “Death from the Skies”, reading about the inevitable oblivion has to be more uplifting then reading about how the Southern strategy actually worked.
Warren Terra - January 31, 2011 | 6:15 pm · Link
If you use the “site” argument to limit your Google to the Washington post, and search for “charles lane”+electric+car, you get about 149 posts (“charles lane” instead of charles+lane is very important).
If you then limit that search to the least year (which I don’t know how to hyperlink properly; do it with the “More Search Tools” at the left), you get 47 posts.
Note that either of those searches also get discussion of Charles Lane’s posts at the Kaplan Times, links to his rss feed, etcetera. If you further restrict the search to “By Charles Lane”, you get 26 hits, 14 in the past year. I think those last are the right numbers.
Chyron HR - January 31, 2011 | 6:15 pm · Link
“Electric Cars: Not Perfect in Every Way”
Is there such a thing as praising with faint damns?
Craig - January 31, 2011 | 6:15 pm · Link
@kdaug: Perhaps they are Stone Cutters.
jl - January 31, 2011 | 6:15 pm · Link
“Call me a curmudgeon”
Agreed.
I don’t even wonder anymore whether corporate or some other interest group money, or favors, or ads, or bennies of some kind are driving WaPo editorials and a good chunk of their columnists.
I have just assumed it for quite awhile.
I may have misinformed myself. I admit that. But cannot see how right now.
Edit: I was going to raise the ante to ‘dolt’ but I have made a resolution to be civil, and my understanding is that BJ is a family blog (knitting posts have been slim lately, though). Lane writes like he is afraid of a dingity danged gwarshdarnitall ‘lectric car mandate (curmodgeons talk like that, in case you wonder what language that is).
We he be absorbed into the Tea Peoples soon? Obama coming to take my gas car, and sew me into one o them infernal ‘lectric care is gonna kill me in a blizzard, gwarshgummit.
pdoege - January 31, 2011 | 6:16 pm · Link
A Prius consumes .1 gallons per hour at idle. So a 3 hour traffic jam is .3 gallons. Notice that this allows for 10 days (or so) of idling assuming a full tank. I have no idea if a Prius qualifies as an electric car for the purposes of this rant.
BGinCHI - January 31, 2011 | 6:18 pm · Link
Electric cars, how do they work?
For these guys it’s about emasculation, which tells you all you need to know about their masculinity.
Violet - January 31, 2011 | 6:18 pm · Link
@David:
The Washington Post is in full support of America falling behind China in innovation.
Davis X. Machina - January 31, 2011 | 6:18 pm · Link
They are a reminder of of the threat posed by anthropogenic global warming, every bit as much as the wireless electrical smart meters in the thread downstairs.
And so they have to go.
Dennis SGMM - January 31, 2011 | 6:19 pm · Link
Of course any conventional vehicle drivers who managed to limp home would find that, absent electricity, it’s hard to fill up.
Tool.
Joe Buck - January 31, 2011 | 6:19 pm · Link
If a hybrid car is stuck in a traffic jam, the engine turns off, and it uses electric power only for the short stops and goes. The situation’s similar with an electric car: a vehicle with a gasoline engine will burn fuel while idling, while a hybrid or an electric won’t. So if you’ve got to be stuck, you’re not in danger from the electric car’s short range, it will just take you longer to get home or to work.
Warren Terra - January 31, 2011 | 6:20 pm · Link
More substantively, your highlight is amusing:
An idling or slow-moving gasoline-powered car is literally burning away its fuel to no purpose. An idling or slow-moving electric car doesn’t have this problem. Such a car could still use up its battery in a traffic jam (especially if it was powering a climate-control system, i.e. heating or air conditioning), but it should actually outperform a gasoline-powered car in terms of ability to handle start-stop traffic.
Jay C - January 31, 2011 | 6:20 pm · Link
Yeah, but unfortunately, the usual Godwinized response to inane op-ed fulminations like this, i.e.:
“You know who else wanted his people to drive around in electric cars….???”
Doesn’t quite fit the circumstances: though, its inverse:
“You know who else wanted his people to drive around in gasoline-powered cars….???
just might.
schrodinger's cat - January 31, 2011 | 6:22 pm · Link
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: BTW did the writer at Atlantic ever apologize to you?
jl - January 31, 2011 | 6:23 pm · Link
From reading Lane, he could not take this stand on guns, since that would be vulgar and low class. Something the ‘lesser people’ do.
But auto mobiles, that is a nice balance between the elite and a right thinking middle class place to take a stand.
What does Lane drive? Did he say?
joes527 - January 31, 2011 | 6:24 pm · Link
@David:
But we, as a nation, have learned from the original Sputnik moment that if we stick our collective fingers into our collective ears, close our collective eyes, and sing in unison: “LALALALALALALALALALA I CAN”T HEAR YOU” then this will not impact us.
At least that’s what the orange man seems to be saying.
BGinCHI - January 31, 2011 | 6:24 pm · Link
@jl: Just guessing, but prolly a Pontiac Aztek.
Warren Terra - January 31, 2011 | 6:24 pm · Link
You really want to start a Godwin discussion in a thread whose title is “Electric cars: worse than Hitler”?
Although there must be a joke in there somewhere about the Elektrischbahn …
jl - January 31, 2011 | 6:24 pm · Link
If your gas car runs out of gas, and you freeze in the cold, at least you have died like an American Male, gwarshdingitall.
chopper - January 31, 2011 | 6:25 pm · Link
he sounds like homer simpson calling into a radio sports talk show to complain about flanders. jesus, did an electric car kill his mom or something?
Tonal Crow - January 31, 2011 | 6:26 pm · Link
Electric cars remind Republicans that anthropogenic climate change is real, and is a serious threat to such trivial things as our food supply.
That makes them go into full-metal denial mode, which results in lashing out at anything and anyone that’s in any way associated with the truth about climate change.
GOP them. GOP them to an overheated cell in the basement of a war crimes tribunal, where the food is scare, the rats are huge, aggressive, and multitudinous, and the guards couldn’t care less.
Calouste - January 31, 2011 | 6:26 pm · Link
“My hunch”. I don’t give a sh1t about people’s hunches unless they are actually experts in the specific field they have the hunch about. And being a journalist pretty much precludes you from being an expert in anything.
Mnemosyne - January 31, 2011 | 6:29 pm · Link
@Joe Buck:
@Warren Terra:
Oddly, this reminds me of the current wingnut obsession with bringing DDT back to battle the bedbug menace even though bedbugs have been immune to it since the 1940s.
Facts? Logic? Why use those when you feel something is correct? Even better when the thing you feel is correct can be used to put those whiny environmentalists in their place.
Arclite - January 31, 2011 | 6:30 pm · Link
Given that oil is a finite resource that will become scarce and expensive in the next decade or sooner, what does he think the alternatives are if not electric? Certainly not biofuels. Right now, the world uses in oil 7 times the caloric production of all farms in the world combined. Even if we stopped feeding everyone and switched all the fields to sugarcane (ethanol) or jojoba (bio diesel) we still couldn’t grow enough to replace what we use in oil. It’s just not sustainable.
Electricity is the best option currently. You can produce it in a multitude of ways, and lithium battery tech continues to improve year after year. And if it makes cars too expensive, then invest in trains and in overhead lines with electric buses connected via transoms. For anyone who has spent some time looking into it (which I would assume if you wrote a bunch of articles about it) the solutions are pretty obvious.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice - January 31, 2011 | 6:30 pm · Link
@Warren Terra:
Thanks
PurpleGirl - January 31, 2011 | 6:31 pm · Link
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character). Stories about Richard P. Feynman (1918-88), American Nobel-prize winning physicist; a real smartalecky but quite smart scientist.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice - January 31, 2011 | 6:32 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat:
No, I didn’t expect him too.
pragmatism - January 31, 2011 | 6:33 pm · Link
chait had a good take on george will’s portion of the wapo campaign against electric cars. http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonath.....c-cars-lot
mk3872 - January 31, 2011 | 6:33 pm · Link
An electric car doesn’t need to idle. The engine just shuts off when still. So , no , it would not be as bad or “worse”. BTW, how could you do “worse” than running out of fuel?
MikeJ - January 31, 2011 | 6:33 pm · Link
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: There’s a pretty whacky book about Isaac Newton chasing down counterfeiters.
Alex S. - January 31, 2011 | 6:35 pm · Link
Why should I buy an electric car if it can’t save me from the Last Judgment?
Cris - January 31, 2011 | 6:36 pm · Link
No shit. This guy is a pro straw-man wrestler. “Hey, you hippies who claim electric cars would have prevented the blizzard! You were wrong!”
chopper - January 31, 2011 | 6:37 pm · Link
@mk3872:
yeah, i was wondering that myself. “yeah, i just ran out of gas sitting in a 13-hour-long traffic jam and it’s cold as balls out, but at least i’m not in some faggy electric car!”
joe from Lowell - January 31, 2011 | 6:38 pm · Link
In the interest of promoting civility in our discourse, I’d like to point out that Lane has only accused electric cars of being as bad as Hitler.
It’s no different from Reason’s obsessive hatred of farmer’s markets: purely tribal.
Electric cars are something he equates with liberals, so he hates them. Both Villagers and libertarians may pretend to be above the left-right fray, but their need to single out stereotypical “liberal” accessories for scorn, in a way they’d never single out their conservative equivalents, is a huge tell.
Cris - January 31, 2011 | 6:38 pm · Link
Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up.
Now, I know some of you are going to say, “I did look it up, and that’s not true.” That’s because you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works.
JPL - January 31, 2011 | 6:40 pm · Link
I’d rather support gashogs and Saudi Arabia because in the next hundred years or so they will support the feminist movement. Change doesn’t happen over night you know.
JenJen - January 31, 2011 | 6:41 pm · Link
@Dennis SGMM:
Exactly! I literally LOL’d when I read the paragraph that elicited your response.
F’n gas pumps!! How do they work?
trizzlor - January 31, 2011 | 6:41 pm · Link
And of course he buries the lede:
“Indeed, the Volt comes equipped with a backup internal combustion engine, so you need never fear … Nissan is designing a “cold weather package” of options.”
Oh, so the extreme boundary scenario you’re describing has already been addressed…
Warren Terra - January 31, 2011 | 6:43 pm · Link
Hey DougJ, since you’re reading this thread, whaddaya think of Megan McArdle (PKA “Jane Galt”), saying “I’m most definitely no Rand fan”?
JPL - January 31, 2011 | 6:44 pm · Link
Netanyahu is concerned about Egypt because of Islamic extremism and their position on Human Rights.
hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhha
Davis X. Machina - January 31, 2011 | 6:44 pm · Link
@MikeJ: Written by a front-pager here, BTW.
me - January 31, 2011 | 6:45 pm · Link
@Joe Buck: You might have to run the heater or AC depending on the season and that may drain the battery but all hybrids have a gasoline engine if they run out of power anyway.
MikeJ - January 31, 2011 | 6:45 pm · Link
@Davis X. Machina: I was trying to be subtle.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ - January 31, 2011 | 6:46 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat:
Edward Teller it is then…
Oh, wait.
Nerull - January 31, 2011 | 6:46 pm · Link
Our new wonderful Governor (Scott Walker – Damn you WI. I finally move to a blue state and you turn red on me.), who keeps talking about jobs, made one of his first actions adding new regulation (So much for free market) making the construction of wind farms far more difficult. Companies prepared to fund billions of dollars worth of new construction and thousands of jobs that would have been here are now looking at other states.
And, of course, the whole thing with the train.
Calouste - January 31, 2011 | 6:47 pm · Link
@JenJen:
When do you think the last time was a WaPo editorial board member got his hands dirty filling up rather than having the chauffeur do it? It probably was when gas pumps were still mechanical.
cmorenc - January 31, 2011 | 6:49 pm · Link
@Warren Terra:
Don’t get me wrong – I have a hybrid auto that I love (Ford Escape Hybrid) and plan to someday be a return customer, that is if and when I ever manage to wear this one out (2005, over 120k miles on it and not a blip of a problem beyond routine maintainence thats actually cheaper than a gas car). However, if you live in a warm summertime climate like North Carolina, the A/C in a Ford Escape Hybrid ceases to effectively work at idle speed, and the interior heats up quickly toward ambient temperature. I suffer this willingly, but there’s many an otherwise well-intentioned Ford Escape Hybrid owner across the southern US who gives in to the guilty pleasure of switching it over to “brown” mode (using as much gas as it takes to run the AC effectively) in slow city traffic, which also defeats the exact kind of hybrid mix that makes the Escape Hybrid more efficient in city traffic than on the open highway, the complete reverse of gas cars (it still gets at least equal-good mileage on longer trips).
Redshift - January 31, 2011 | 6:49 pm · Link
@Dennis SGMM: Yeah, it’s hilarious to hear them recycle the exact same talking points that they used for fuel-efficient cars thirty years ago. They go on about how they’re not safe, and underpowered, and any number of other “complaints” that make it clear that they’ve never driven one or read anything real about them, they just know they don’t want to give up their manly metal compensation.
Redshift - January 31, 2011 | 6:52 pm · Link
Also, this thread needs more They Might Be Giants.
Davis X. Machina - January 31, 2011 | 6:54 pm · Link
@Nerull: Wind farms suggest there’s something wrong with burning fossil fuels indiscriminately, so they have to go. With the electric cars. And the smart meters.
The veneer of respectability necessary to make these moves look bipartisan will be provided by various otherwise left-leaning environmental actors, varying depending on which AGW reminder needs to be attacked—Kennedys for Cape wind-farming, e.g.
Someone will always come forward.
cmorenc - January 31, 2011 | 6:54 pm · Link
Notice how so many right-wingers so readily find reasons to hate EVERY technology designed to have a greener impact – whether it’s newer stuff like hybrid or electric cars or revamping older stuff like railroads to high-speed intercity or light-rail intracity commuting. The only technologies they seem to love are manly gasoline-powered ones or nuclear-powered ones. Unless they’re from Iowa, and then biofuels are all right too, so long as they’re corn-based ethanol.
Cris - January 31, 2011 | 6:56 pm · Link
I was really impressed when a conservative colleague of mine openly admitted that he didn’t want to buy a Subaru because he thought it would make him look like a liberal. Self-awareness is kind of a virtue.
(He drives a Prius now.)
lol - January 31, 2011 | 6:57 pm · Link
@Warren Terra:
IIRC, hybrids get their best mileage in stop and go traffic.
Nerull - January 31, 2011 | 6:58 pm · Link
I should add that the stated reason for stricter controls on wind farm construction is that some people don’t like living near them.
Stricter controls on dumping pollutants into our water is socialism, though.
Two of his other actions were to appoint someone to head the state DNR who wants to run it “More like the chamber of commerce” because environmental concerns should not hold up commercial interests, and dissolve the state commerce department – which regulates businesses – and replace it with a privatized organization with no regulatory power.
Davis X. Machina - January 31, 2011 | 6:59 pm · Link
@Cris: He’s an idiot. If you drive a Sube, you’re declaring yourself to be a lesbian. Everyone knows that.
cathyx - January 31, 2011 | 7:02 pm · Link
@Davis X. Machina:I always heard you were a “granola” which I think is a hippy.
MikeJ - January 31, 2011 | 7:03 pm · Link
@lol: Which is exactly why Top Gear tested it in non-stop driving on a track against a 5 litre car of some sort, and then declared there to be no savings.
me - January 31, 2011 | 7:04 pm · Link
@cmorenc: Jesus will blow on the planet cooling it down.
MobiusKlein - January 31, 2011 | 7:05 pm · Link
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: Popular science writing – try “To Engineer is Human” about all sorts of engineering failures, and what to learn from them.
Hubble Wars also.
MikeJ - January 31, 2011 | 7:07 pm · Link
To add another sciencey book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is loaded on my reader but I haven’t started it yet.
Comrade Mary - January 31, 2011 | 7:07 pm · Link
@Davis X. Machina: Holy fucking shit, he’s THAT Tom Levenson?
Right. I’ve got an Indigo gift card, and I know how to use it. (I haven’t bought a book for sheer pleasure since 2007. Time to break the streak.)
Gravenstone - January 31, 2011 | 7:08 pm · Link
Perhaps Mr. Lane misses the opportunity to huff some more of those sweet, sweet exhaust fumes. By all means Charles, knock yourself out and spare us your useless maunderings.
Jay C - January 31, 2011 | 7:09 pm · Link
@MikeJ:
Well, if it was Top Gear, I would have expected Jeremy Clarkson to have tested the hybrid against a Bugatti Veyron, or a Lamborghini Gallardo, and then snarked on for ten minutes straight about how their performance just simply didn’t match up; and the future was going to belong to the horsepower-hogs, come what may…
Corner Stone - January 31, 2011 | 7:09 pm · Link
@cathyx:
Nobody hates hummers.
KG - January 31, 2011 | 7:11 pm · Link
follow the money, folks… electric cars means less gas and less ethanol, which means less revenue for oil companies and agribusiness.
Personally, as much as I like the idea of electric cars, the issue for me is long distance driving and recharging. I like to drive from LA to San Diego or Las Vegas; and then usually around those towns. Five minutes to refuel vs seven hours to recharge.
The question that I wonder about will be how we convert existing cars to alternative energy sources. I’m mainly thinking about the idea that I still want to get me a ‘66 Mustang.
Corner Stone - January 31, 2011 | 7:11 pm · Link
@MikeJ: A BMW M3 IIRC. And their takeaway was, “it depends on how you drive” or some such tomfoolery.
I love Top Gear but I knew before that segment started we were in for some bullshit.
Gravenstone - January 31, 2011 | 7:12 pm · Link
@Nerull: What’s particularly stupid about Scotty’s idiocy re. wind farms is, we already have them here. Hell, there’s a big one not 30 miles from where I live. Plus, the local tech school has a fucking degree program built around installing and servicing the damned things.
Once again, Scott Walker did not start out being a clueless fuckhead, but he certainly seems to be warming to the role.
KG - January 31, 2011 | 7:15 pm · Link
@Jay C: They did test a Tesla Roadster and it came in at 1:27.2 (mildly moist track) which is good enough for 86 on the list currently.
ETA: list of Top Gear test track times
MoeLarryAndJesus - January 31, 2011 | 7:17 pm · Link
Some guy in an electric car rolled down his window and told Sally Quinn her ass looked fat. That was 6 years ago, and she hasn’t had a day since where she didn’t think about revenge.
Sko Hayes - January 31, 2011 | 7:18 pm · Link
@Nerull:
Holy crap, and I thought Sam Brownback was a horror (new governor of Kansas). Brownback wants to slash education funding by $100 million (and my school taxes just went up 25% last year), eliminate all arts funding and all state funding for public radio, and close the state mental institution. And that’s just for starters.
I feel your pain.
Mnemosyne - January 31, 2011 | 7:20 pm · Link
@Nerull:
But you see, he’s saving the people of your state from having to take morally questionable jobs in green energy and mass transportation, so really he’s saving your immortal souls by having people stay unemployed rather than allowing them to work for evil liberal environmentalists.
It’s so simple when you look at it the right way.
/snark
Davis X. Machina - January 31, 2011 | 7:20 pm · Link
@Gravenstone:
They should all bloody well move to North Dakota and be roughnecks in the gas patch, then.
Real Americans hate schools, and burn hydrocarbons. And when the hydrocarbons run out, they burn schools.
Alan - January 31, 2011 | 7:20 pm · Link
I’m not masochistic enough to check, but can I safely assume these folks were big backers of Bush’s hydrogen car push, and are REALLY pissed they can’t lie it into a success Iraq style?
PanAmerican - January 31, 2011 | 7:24 pm · Link
So when did the Post fall under editorial control of T. Herman Zweibel?
srv - January 31, 2011 | 7:24 pm · Link
The industry that gains the most from the electric car will be the same one that gained the most from anti-nuke hysteria: American Coal.
Librarian - January 31, 2011 | 7:26 pm · Link
Charles Lane? You mean the character actor who always played a grumpy old man? I can see him writing for the Wapo, he’d fit in perfectly.
MikeJ - January 31, 2011 | 7:28 pm · Link
@srv: After you get Hanford and Rocky Flats cleaned up you can tell me all about anti-nuke hysteria.
Nerull - January 31, 2011 | 7:34 pm · Link
Coal plants release way more radioactive waste into the environment that nuclear power ever has, and those living near them are subject to considerably higher doses than those living near nuke plants.
Blogreeder - January 31, 2011 | 7:35 pm · Link
@pdoege:
Funny. The op-ed is about electric cars. No, a Prius doesn’t count.
Villago Delenda Est - January 31, 2011 | 7:36 pm · Link
@Corner Stone:
As someone who was a professional user of a HMMWV back in the day, I loved them. Just not on pavement.
Which is why civilian ones are stupid beyond belief.
gnomedad - January 31, 2011 | 7:37 pm · Link
@Tonal Crow:
That, and they perceive that liberals like them, and anything that liberals like, even if it doesn’t involve politics, must be scorned.
Emma - January 31, 2011 | 7:37 pm · Link
Comrade Mary: Go for it. I got it as an audio book for commuting pleasure and I highly recommend it!
stuckinred - January 31, 2011 | 7:37 pm · Link
@Villago Delenda Est: I loved my M35A1 too!
Arclite - January 31, 2011 | 7:39 pm · Link
Way to go Google. They created a way to tweet using a standard phone line so Egyptians cut off from the Internet can still get messages out.
Southern Beale - January 31, 2011 | 7:43 pm · Link
Yes. That’s correct.
I’m getting a Nissan Leaf this year … sometime in the next 4 to 7 mos when the little fucker makes its way here from Japan … but anyhoo I realized how revolutionary these cars are when the whole “no internal combustion engine” thing really sank it. Think about it: no oil changes. No gas. No gas stations. No convenience store stops. No QuikLube stops. On top of which there’s all this socialisticky infrastructure and incentive stuff like, the $7,500 tax credit and how here in Nashville I can get a $10 one year pass to recharge my car at a city EV charging station. So basically my fuel costs for the entire year could be $10.
You KNOW that chaps some conservatives’ asses.
I have to say, being an EV buyer is extremely unsettling in Tennessee as our newly minted (Republican) governor is the owner of Pilot Oil, a chain of truck stops and convenience stores around the state. And while he said he won’t use his office to help the family business, early signs are not encouraging. I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled the plug on as much of this EV stuff as he could—at least, that stuff he has control over.
Blogreeder - January 31, 2011 | 7:44 pm · Link
@Joe Buck:
The short range is caused by the amount of power the batteries have, you understand. The energy density of batteries is far less than that of gasoline. In a traffic jam you wouldn’t be driving but you would be using the heater which will draw from the same batteries.
Southern Beale - January 31, 2011 | 7:44 pm · Link
Hmm … my comment has been embargoed so let me try it again:
Yes. That’s correct.
I’m getting a Nissan Leaf this year … sometime in the next 4 to 7 mos when the little fucker makes its way here from Japan … but anyhoo I realized how revolutionary these cars are when the whole “no internal combustion engine” thing really sank it. Think about it: no oil changes. No gas. No gas stations. No convenience store stops. No QuikLube stops. On top of which there’s all this soshal1sticky infrastructure and incentive stuff like, the $7,500 tax credit and how here in Nashville I can get a $10 one year pass to recharge my car at a city EV charging station. So basically my fuel costs for the entire year could be $10.
You KNOW that chaps some conservatives’ asses.
I have to say, being an EV buyer is extremely unsettling in Tennessee as our newly minted (Republican) governor is the owner of Pilot Oil, a chain of truck stops and convenience stores around the state. And while he said he won’t use his office to help the family business, early signs are not encouraging. I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled the plug on as much of this EV stuff as he could—at least, that stuff he has control over.
Southern Beale - January 31, 2011 | 7:46 pm · Link
@Nerull:
Speaking of coal plants, I read today that Chevron is getting out of the coal business and is looking to sell off its coal operations in Wyoming and other states.
J - January 31, 2011 | 7:49 pm · Link
If God had had meant for human beings to drive electric cars, he wouldn’t have put all the oil in the earth but would have created electricity instead… Oh wait!
Nerull - January 31, 2011 | 7:50 pm · Link
The UW Heating Plant – which I used to live next to – is tearing out it’s coal-fired boilers and switching to natural gas. They were also going to put in two biofuel boilers, but Scott Walker killed those too.
kdaug - January 31, 2011 | 7:52 pm · Link
This is the exact mindset that Reagan took when he removed the solar panels from the White House roof. It’s an attitude, a relic from the culture wars of the 60’s, that’s been around since DFHs started bitching about poison water and air. (Never mind that Nixon started the EPA).
They hate it only because the long-hairs were for it a half-century ago.
Soon their generation will die off, and I will have a little sadz. A very little one.
So much for “Conservatism”.
Corner Stone - January 31, 2011 | 7:52 pm · Link
@Villago Delenda Est: Well to be honest, I’m a big fan of the professional variety myself. Also too.
Martin - January 31, 2011 | 7:53 pm · Link
@Blogreeder: Yes, but electric vehicle owners get laid more by hippies, so you’d keep warm that way allowing the engine to stay off.
ppcli - January 31, 2011 | 7:54 pm · Link
@JenJen:
I’ll see your LOL and raise you a “whatta maroon”.
At the beginning of the big blackout that covered the whole east coast, and much of the midwest and central Canada I was driving up to my parents’ home way up in the Northern Ontario bush. Sat waiting for nearly 24 hours with a hundred other stranded motorists in a closed highway service centre, waiting for the electricity to make the pumps functional.
But I’m sure it would have been much worse if I had an electric car. I just have a moron’s hunch.
Jager - January 31, 2011 | 7:54 pm · Link
This is just a different conservative take on the rants they did about the EPA setting mileage standards. The pay off for us that virtually every car built is more efficient and most get great MPG. They were bitching then that we wouldn’t drive high MPG, itty bitty cars, rant, rant, rant. Ever notice the size of a Honda Accord or a Camry? They are as big as a 70’s era gas pig and get 30 mpg. For daily commutes, electrics are ideal.
And then there’s the moron engineers who work for backward companies like BMW, Mercedes, VW-Porsche, etc in that backwoods, unskilled, low tech country of Germany. Those fools are spending milions upon millions developing various hybrid and all electric powerplants. They must be nuts and haven’t learned a thing in the years since they took the American designed ABS system for aircraft brakes and hung it on their shit box cars!
Blogreeder - January 31, 2011 | 8:00 pm · Link
@Southern Beale:
Cool. The only thing I’m wondering is since the range of the Leaf is advertised to be between 47 and 138 what your’s will end up being. From what I remember, Tennesee is pretty hilly.
Blogreeder - January 31, 2011 | 8:02 pm · Link
@Martin:
A new metric: MPF.
JPL - January 31, 2011 | 8:03 pm · Link
Where’s my Chuck open thread….............
Once again boss fail
Southern Beale - January 31, 2011 | 8:04 pm · Link
@Blogreeder:
Parts of Tennessee are hilly, other parts are not. We’ve been told a range of 100 miles. Since 99% of my driving is in town, grocery shopping and errands and trips to hockey games and such, it will work fine. Not many hills in our ‘hood. We have another car my husband will use for day to day, and we will use it for those longer trips to visit family in Kentucky,
Although Tennessee, because of TVA, is setting up charging stations across the state. Ideally when they have it all established I could drive anywhere and charge while I’m on the road.
stuckinred - January 31, 2011 | 8:05 pm · Link
@JPL: This is a seriously dead thread.
Jager - January 31, 2011 | 8:07 pm · Link
@Davis X. Machina:
No, No! Saabs are the lesbian car of choice or is that the upscale lesbian car of choice or are they the lipstick lesbian car of choice? (Saab has done marketing studies on their lesbian buyers.) Maybe Subes are the flannel shirt lesbian cars of choice, I’ll e-mail our our lesbian nieghbors in Boston since one of them drove a dark green Saab convertible with ‘biscuit” leather inerior.
kdaug - January 31, 2011 | 8:07 pm · Link
@Arclite:
Yeah, saw that earlier too. Starting to feel like a totalitarian cascading failure. Not to go all M_C, but there may be a serious problem for dictatorships with the internet.
Barry - January 31, 2011 | 8:08 pm · Link
Um, Charles? There’s this really old concept called INSULATION. You might have heard of it? It’s what allows this other electric vehicle you might have heard of, THE MARS ROVER, to operate in temps that are a bit cooler than what we see in D.C.—or anywhere else on this planet.
kdaug - January 31, 2011 | 8:09 pm · Link
@stuckinred:
Bitch finding a parking space, though.
Southern Beale - January 31, 2011 | 8:11 pm · Link
@kdaug:
Yeah, favorite quote from an artist I interviewed last year: “We’re all in the ladder business now. As fast as they build walls, we’re building ladders.” I love that.
LongHairedWeirdo - January 31, 2011 | 8:12 pm · Link
Electric cars do really well in traffic jams. They don’t idle. Hybrids try to shut off the gasoline engine rather than idle, so they tend to do well. I405North in rush hour here in Washington, and a good hybrid gets hundreds of miles a gallon, because of the lack of need to idle, and the regenerative breaking. (But to get that, you have to be on I405N during rush hour. People have been known to gnaw off their arms to escape that fate.)
iriedc - January 31, 2011 | 8:12 pm · Link
Meh. I generally don’t read the editorial page of my hometown paper, their kneejerk hostility to anything “green” is one of many reasons why. But at least Gene Weingarten actually drove a Volt before writing an opinion. And well, he liked it…
MikeJ - January 31, 2011 | 8:12 pm · Link
@kdaug: Back in ye olden dayes we used to say the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
stuckinred - January 31, 2011 | 8:13 pm · Link
@LongHairedWeirdo: What about AC and heat?
sloan - January 31, 2011 | 8:14 pm · Link
@cmorenc: Oh hell yeah. My wingnut co-worker gleefully informs me whenever there is some little setback on any environmental thing, because I voted for Obama, which means I’m an Al Gore disciple of course. So he refuses to use any green technology to the point of being a dick about it. Public transit is for liberals. Recycling is for liberals. Those new light bulbs are for liberals.
It’s like anything that would make our air or water slightly cleaner must be rejected. Dems want it, so real conservatives must oppose it. I remember when it was easy to mock environmentalists. But something has changed over the last 20 years and the skeptics realize they’re on the wrong side of this thing but there is no way in hell they’ll admit it.
It reminds me a lot of the same way conservatives have boxed themselves in on gay rights and immigration reform. They know they have to change, but they’re dug in so deep with these anti-environment, anti-gay and anti-immigrant positions that they haven’t left themselves a way out. Their pride won’t let them admit they were wrong, so they keep on being proudly, defiantly wrong, knowing full damn well that their position will hurt them in the end.
You know when you’re arguing with someone and you realize in mid sentence that they were right all along? I think a lot of conservatives are finding themselves in that position right now. They have two choices: stand firm and make fools of themselves by yelling louder or be an adult about it and say “Oh, hey, I was wrong” and get on with their lives. And right now they’ve decided the hell with it and they’re standing firm. Don’t retreat, reload!
Omnes Omnibus - January 31, 2011 | 8:14 pm · Link
@Jager: Subie Foresters are flannel-clad lesbian vehicles. Saabs are owned by weirdos of whatever stripe.*
(*) Why yes, I do own a Saab. Why do you ask?
stuckinred - January 31, 2011 | 8:15 pm · Link
@kdaug: We still had these in Korea in 66. M211 Automatic and gas engine!
jrg - January 31, 2011 | 8:18 pm · Link
If there’s one thing I know about fucktard Luddite “conservatives”, it’s that they’re not just good at visualizing the future, they’re also great at making shit happen.
That’s why Silicon Valley is located squarely in rural Oklahoma, and the first thing engineers at Google are taught is how to pray at a computer to get software intelligently designed.
kdaug - January 31, 2011 | 8:22 pm · Link
@stuckinred: I’m working on it…
Violet - January 31, 2011 | 8:23 pm · Link
@JPL:
This is the second week in a row without a Chuck Open Thread. This is serious boss fail. Has Tunch kidnapped John and held him for tuna ransom or something? Perhaps Rosie has tied him up so completely in her leash that he can’t reach the keyboard.
Jager - January 31, 2011 | 8:23 pm · Link
@Omnes Omnibus:
Do Saabs still have the ignition switch in between the seats? Pefect target for coffee spills!
BTW, One of Mrs J’s straight friends has a Saab drop top and she always gets big warm smiles from female Subaru drivers as well as ladies motoring in their Saabs
mclaren - January 31, 2011 | 8:26 pm · Link
Since bicycles are apparently a communist-social-UN plot, I guess it makes sense that electric cars would be the focus of evil in the modern world.
JGabriel - January 31, 2011 | 8:31 pm · Link
Jon Huntsman has officially resigned.
I’m assuming Huntsman will spend the next few months trash-talking the Obama administration as a former insider on Glenn Beck to purge the libtaint for teahadi votes.
.
kdaug - January 31, 2011 | 8:33 pm · Link
@sloan:
Do you think they do know, or are counting on their personal exceptionalism?
Southern Beale - January 31, 2011 | 8:43 pm · Link
@jrg:
SMACK!
Judas Escargot - January 31, 2011 | 8:43 pm · Link
The first time I see an old Caddy with a “PALIN 2012” sticker parked in an EV-only spot at the mall… it will truly be the 21st century.
Omnes Omnibus - January 31, 2011 | 8:51 pm · Link
@Jager: Still between the seats.
Chris - January 31, 2011 | 9:18 pm · Link
@sloan: Get some fake dog poop, put it on his desk, and tell him: “I know you like all that pollution and stuff, so I took a dump on your desk.”
jonas - January 31, 2011 | 9:18 pm · Link
Is there a way for progressives to all coordinate and pretend like we hate electric cars, renewable energy, and not punching ourselves in the groin repeatedly each night?
Davis X. Machina - January 31, 2011 | 9:23 pm · Link
@Omnes Omnibus: Up heah in Maine it’s Subes, Saabs and clapped-out Volvos. Everything else is a truck.
PIGL - January 31, 2011 | 9:33 pm · Link
@Alan: Bush’s Hydrogen Car push? That was right up there with a trip to Mars and Karl Rove taking charge of New Orleans relief.
Americans is sooooo stupid.
PIGL - January 31, 2011 | 9:37 pm · Link
@Arclite: this used to be called USENET.
Jager - January 31, 2011 | 9:37 pm · Link
@Davis X. Machina:
In Santa Cruz, Subes, Saabs, clapped out Volvos, Toyotas, old Benz and GM diesels converted to bio diesel. You have to drive up the hill towards SJ or south to Carmel, before the cars get shiny again and aren’t covered with stickers of all kinds.
Mark B - January 31, 2011 | 9:47 pm · Link
Electric cars don’t run out of fuel if they aren’t moving. Of course, gasoline powered ones won’t either, if you turn off the engine while you’re stopped. Not that most motorists will do that.
S. cerevisiae - January 31, 2011 | 9:51 pm · Link
If you are still looking for a great popular science book that addresses this whole thread I suggest “Merchants of Doubt” by Oreskes and Conway (2010). You will learn more than you want to know about the free-market fundamentalists working against any government regulation for the last fifty years.
Dennis SGMM - January 31, 2011 | 9:56 pm · Link
@Jager:
Too funny. I lived on Branciforte Drive outside of Cruz during the 60’s and it was thrashed VW’s and run-down Volvo 544’s with a sprinkling of Morris Minors, Hillman Minxes, and the odd bug-eyed Sprite.
Jager - January 31, 2011 | 10:50 pm · Link
@Dennis SGMM:
My oldest girl lives in the Cruz, drives a Nissan Pickup (v-6, stick, no air)the entire tailgate is covered with stickers, the back bumper is covered with stickers and now she is working on the areas of the cab around the back window! The best sticker “Ouiet women, don’t make history”
junebug - January 31, 2011 | 10:56 pm · Link
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice:
Too drunk to find it now, but I will, damn it!
J. Michael Neal - January 31, 2011 | 11:23 pm · Link
@JGabriel:
I’m assuming that he campaigns as the sane Republican, knowing full well that he’s going to get killed in the 2012 primaries, but positioning himself for 2016.
Dennis SGMM - January 31, 2011 | 11:37 pm · Link
@Jager: @Jager:
Excellent! Good to hear that some things haven’t changed. Haven’t been there in years: the last time I visited the place was so built up that I just drove around for a while and then split.
trollhattan - January 31, 2011 | 11:41 pm · Link
@Omnes Omnibus:
Me too, but you probably already figgrd that out. Damned if I’m not wearing a plaid shirt, not even ironically.
Corner Stone - January 31, 2011 | 11:47 pm · Link
@trollhattan:
Outside of a low budget, largely unseen indy film, how exactly would one wear a plaid shirt “ironically”?
trollhattan - January 31, 2011 | 11:48 pm · Link
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice:
Timothy Ferris? “The Whole Shebang” was a good read.
Fax Paladin - February 1, 2011 | 12:39 am · Link
I’m rather partial to “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman” by James Gleick.
As for Top Gear: Wasn’t there some hubbub about Clarkson testing an electric car (may have been that Tesla segment) where they showed it as having run out of juice when it hadn’t? (IIRC, they’d calculated that it would run out of power, so rather than run the test all the way and see if it did, they filmed it as if it had.)
blogreeder - February 1, 2011 | 2:30 am · Link
@Southern Beale:
Oh, with the Tennessee Valley Authority power your electricity is green too. I visited Clarksville and thought that area was hilly. Of course, being from around Chicago my idea in this regard might be different than yours. We’re bereft of real hills around here.
blogreeder - February 1, 2011 | 2:39 am · Link
@LongHairedWeirdo:
I feel like I’m losing my mind. The Washington Post piece was about how well they do in the cold. Does anyone know how much power they have to draw to heat the interior?
maskling - February 1, 2011 | 6:11 am · Link
a hubcap diamond star halo…
Special One - February 1, 2011 | 10:48 am · Link
You can’t recharge if you don’t have electricity …
As opposed to the magical gasoline pump which runs on fucking fairy juice right?
And where’s the complaints about combustion efficiency dropping like a rock in hot weather? Or at altitude? Electric motor doesn’t care about air density.
twiffer - February 1, 2011 | 12:39 pm · Link
@Redshift: every thread could use more TMBG.
and everyone should have “here comes science”, even if they don’t have kids. where else are you going to learn that the sun is not, in fact, a mass of incandescent gas, but the sun is actually a miasma of incandecscent plasma?
Greenjeans - February 1, 2011 | 1:19 pm · Link
The WaPo continues to devolve. Hasten its bankruptcy by avoiding it completely.
twiffer - February 1, 2011 | 2:11 pm · Link
@Davis X. Machina: i’m a lesbian? cause i love my forester. particularly this winter.