Text and images by Richard Bartholomew –
I like electric cars, I still drive an internal combustion engine powered vehicle but my next car may just be electric, especially if I could get a certain little number for a good price.
Two years ago, come October, I had a story here on My Car Quest lauding electric cars and calling for robot controlled golf cars basically that would smartly and cleanly get people to where they need to go and then go charge themselves on their own until called upon again. I still see this world coming and maybe robot busses for the masses are also viable, high speed trains too and alternative clean fuels even other advances that I can’t even imagine.
Ford Mustang Mach-E
To be clear: simply having electric drone delivery, maybe just short trips from the mother ship (electric van) to your porch can get a lot of cars off of the streets. The idea is to allow travel without a million people sitting in rush hour burning oil while just sitting. The idea is also to not have ANY out of tune cars, trucks and commercial trucks spewing clouds of fumes day and night across the country and across the world.
Maybe some of it is political, not wanting foreign and also domestic oil companies the ability to overly influence or dictate energy policy in this country. Every time the price of gas spikes the oil companies cite the same reasons and the state government here pledges to investigate price gouging and nothing ever comes of it.
And thus it seems despite misgivings from some of us the auto industry is moving out of the internal combustion engine business. Like they say in the movies “you can take it the easy way or the hard way”. One easy way in my opinion is to understand that Ford and now Chevy have agreed to make the Tesla charging network the nations standard is a good thing. I think there are benefits for all, even the consumer. It seems to me early on now there won’t be the VHS vs. Beta video tape conundrum that we had in the early 1980s.
The change is coming and eventually they will need to make a good quality low priced version. Pictured here are my renderings of a pony car electric car, a Mustang Mach-E that I photographed in southern California the other day channeled into a NON SUV model for the younger generation. Don’t young people need a little two seat runabout? My version also shows hints of the Mustang II from the 1970s but with electric power hopefully it won’t be the dog that that car was. They even had this orange color scheme on the old Mach II, I know because my Dad bought one from my uncle and I drove it around a bit in the 80s.
Modified Ford Mustang Mach-E by Richard Bartholomew
Summing up: I am an optimist and still expect any and all problems with the electric conveyance industry to be solved in the coming decades which is why I didn’t address any of the anti electric crowds usual issues.
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
Richard Bartholomew is an artist and photographer based in Southern California. Visit his Facebook page here. He is open to interesting consignments and can be reached at zeroagenow@aol.com
Modified Ford Mustang Mach-E by Richard Bartholomew
In Australia , electricity prices have gone through the roof since Russia invaded Ukraine and from July 1st electricity prices , depending who your provider is are going to rise again from 30% to 82% . We send most of our coal to China and China has bought almost all of the Congo’s cobalt mines . Electricity is manufactured by coal , uranium , diesel generators or petrol powered factories . So EV’s are not as green as the greenies and governments are ramming down our throats .
Well put Wayne
Thank you to Wayne and Byron. In a recent interview on TV a Fire Chief in PA told a story about responding to an EV fire on the PA Turnpike. “It takes about 500 gallons of water to put out a fully engulfed ICE fire. We put a couple thousand gallons of water on this car and due to thermal overload of the EV battery cells it was still igniting. We had to call in a 4,000 gallon tanker to extinguish the blaze.”
All this water contained chemicals from the burning batteries that include Cobalt which is a known carcinogen. The run off goes into storm drains, retention ponds, nearby streams, and then what?
China controls many of the rare earth minerals needed to support the EV business, and here we are trying to reduce our dependency on a fuel source that is right here in America, and once again turning to our greatest enemy in the world for our transportation and solar energy needs. I guess it’s all ok as long as there is 10% for the big guy.
On another note, Richard Bartholomew is a talented artist and I enjoy seeing his renderings.
Robert, thank you for the compliment on my artwork.
Regarding the fire chief’s story: there was a bad train derailment not very long ago so we better stop using trains?
The switch to electric cars is being made by people other than myself and I love the idea of switching away from burning oil.
I see more and more Teslas driving around all the time and Audis seem to hide that they are electric cars by having fake plastic grills. Maybe other makers will do that at first.
A look back at automotive history is ripe with the promise of electric-powered vehicles. In fact, the land speed record was held by electric’s from 1898 until 1904, when a steam-powered vehicle bested it. Shortly thereafter, William K. Vanderbilt went to France with a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine vehicle which held the records until jet-powered vehicles came on the scene.
Henry Ford’s wife drove an electric. In 1900, of the 2,370 cars on the streets of Boston, Chicago, and New York cities, 800 of them were fully electric with just 400 being gasoline-powered, while the other 1,170 were steam-powered and there were fleets of electric taxi’s in the big cities.
GMC offered a full line of electric trucks—“operated by Edison current”—in 1913. In 1909 GM inherited its first electric truck line when it acquired the Rapid Motor Truck Co. of Pontiac, Michigan, founded in 1902 by Max and Morris Grabowski. Rapid produced a complete line of both gasoline and electric trucks, and when GM consolidated its truck operations into one organization in 1911. GMC built around 500 electric trucks between 1912 and 1916, in what turned out to be an ever-shrinking portion of the truck division’s total production volume. As gasoline engines continued to improve, the demand for battery-powered commercial vehicles dried up, and at the end of ’16, the GMC electric truck line was dropped.
In the end, while performance was often times cited as the reason for the downfall, it was the much higher cost of electric vehicles coupled with battery-life / vehicle range and the lack of supporting infrastructure beyond the large urban cities. So, if you were wealthy, lived in the city and made your longer travels via train, and electric car was a good option. However, if you lived on a farm or other rural areas, being able to go to the pharmacy or hardware store to pick up a few 5-gallon cans of gasoline — the same place you went to get your heating oil — was far more practical than waiting for ‘someone’ to create larger, regional power-grids.
So, where are we today with those limiting factors and have we collectively learned the lessons of history and come up with the solutions to the long-term sustainability of a world dependent upon electric powered vehicles? I mean, I get why the automakers have jumped on the popularity of electric vehicles: automakers exist to make profits and drive up stock value for shareholders, not to ‘fix’ the environment and will sell whatever consumers are eager to buy while the market is hot. And, if electric turns out to be a bust… the automakers will move on to the next hot product offering. The folks who invested in the move to electric will be in the same place many were a hundred years ago.
Mark: Thank you for your story. History always repeats itself somehow. I have worked in truck sales for over 40 years including 12 years with GMC. Like all truck manufacturers, the current brand I sell has an EV offering. Single axle truck, CDL configured, it costs about 125K more than a comparable diesel version. Range is about 135 to 150 miles depending on the season. Batteries are estimated to last 8 years and at today’s prices, the replacement battery pack is quoting at 65K. I can install a new diesel engine for half that money. I don’t understand the value equation.
Richard: The train derailment in East Palestine has been an absolute HORROR SHOW for the people that live there. Only time will tell what type of cancer people get from exposure to some of the most carcinogenic chemicals known. The controlled burn left a nasty plume that permeated the air for miles. Rumors state the train was too long. Facts state the train was on fire from overheated axle bearings long before the train derailed. It has been suggested that the system that monitors axle bearing temperatures was possibly malfunctioning. Hearings about the train wreck are underway right now to determine what went wrong. Would you consider moving your family to East Palestine right now? I hear houses are selling cheap.
In the town I live in I am very friendly with the Fire Marshall. Just a few weeks ago he attended a fire training session to learn how to put out EV fires. The instructor informed the class that it would be a good idea to contain the water runoff from extinguishing an EV fire. My friend asked him how to do that. The instructor’s reply was “we haven’t figured that out yet.”
I still think you do great work.
Here is a great article regarding the electric car movement. The cost to the planet to mine the rare minerals, mostly owned by China coupled with the use of young kids to do the mining make it a horrible alternative. I’m not going into all the details, suffice it to say it’s not the miracle the green cult, government, and mainstream media make it out to be, similar to the windmill environmental (blades & birds) fiasco.
https://mycarquest.com/2023/02/opinion-a-dose-of-reality-for-the-electric-vehicle-business.html
Bruce: Thank you very much for putting this story front and center.
I mentioned in my last post above that I am very friendly with my township Fire Marshall. I also have a life long friend in the Fire & Rescue supply industry. He informed me a few months ago how they currently combat EV fires in Europe. A roll off truck with a crane between the cab and hoist is dispatched with a 20 yard water tight container. The car is lifted into the box and then filled with water. The car sits for 3 days in the box until thermal over run of the batteries is over. The car is removed and the contaminated water is dispatched to a proper facility. We are only at 6% EV’S in United States. What happens if government is successful in obtaining 30% or more?
I new it was difficult but I wasn’t aware of the extreme difficulty in combating a fire in an EV.. With Southern Commiefornia’s crowded freeways it would be an unbelievable disaster if someone crashed during rush hour, even worse if two Tesla’s crashed into each other. Even worse yet if it was under an overpass, something we’ve witnessed recently.
Robert thanks for your input.
Mike has some brilliant readers to his blog, myself excluded.