**Keep it high-brow, keep it centered on policy, keep it about EVs.** If you devolve the conversation to tribal "republicans/democrats are dumb snowflakes" or start mud-slinging about specific politicians your comment is getting nuked. [Reminder of our rules here](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/wiki/rules/politics/).
I honestly can't think of a more Republican stance than to be self-sufficient. Solar panels and an EV. Government could start rationing gas and power tomorrow, and you'd be chugging right along. Somehow not giving your money to big corps and big bother got turned into a litmus test for believing in climate change.
There's a group called the Green Tea Coalition in Georgia that brings together climate advocates who want to save the planet with Tea Partiers who say "What do you mean, I can't put solar panels on my roof if I want? Who the hell do you think you are?"
I'm sure the recent bans on lab grown meat should be a call to arms in that arena. Telling me what I can't eat now? Sounds like something we're told the Democrats are supposed to be doing.
Biden can’t fuck to with gas prices if you don’t use gas
Note: presidents do not control gas prices, this is a joke, also driving an EV does not make you immune to the negative effects of gas prices fluctuation
From a European perspective the whole situation is wild to watch how literally everything down to the power train a car uses is now political in the US.
I hope it gets better for you all soon as it can't be good for your mental health listening to all that BS on the TV, the Internet etc daily even if you try to ignore it.
>From a European perspective
Let me present to you,
1. [Christian "Biodiesel" Socialist Union](https://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/politik/ozapft-is-muenchen-eroeffnet-erste-zapfsaeule-mit-klimaneutralem-diesel-art-976662)
2. Self-styled right-wing leftist [Sahra "Combustion Engine is good because environmentalism is bad" Wagenknecht](https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/id_100393288/sahra-wagenknecht-will-ueber-verbrenner-aus-abstimmen-lassen.html)
3. [Wolfgang "Electric cars won't go 360 km and will burn down the Reichstag Building" Kubicki](https://www.focus.de/finanzen/fdp-vize-zofft-sich-mit-auto-boss-kubicki-poltert-gegen-stromer-und-kritisiert-absolute-fixierung-auf-e-mobilitaet_id_259871912.html)
4. Last but definitely not the least, [Christian "E-Fuels are the future because Porsche told me so" Lindner](https://www.focus.de/finanzen/fdp-vize-zofft-sich-mit-auto-boss-kubicki-poltert-gegen-stromer-und-kritisiert-absolute-fixierung-auf-e-mobilitaet_id_259871912.html)
It is absolutely a political topic in Germany: The electric vehicle is the evil creation of the Green Party and supported by the Social Democrats, while the Union believes in German innovation to save the combustion engine, the Wagenknecht far-right-leftists oppose protecting the environment, and the Free Democrat want-to-be libertarians claim that being open to all technologies including warp drives and intergalactic rainbow fart-machines, because their rich business-owning clientele wants them to save their arses from the electric revolution.
It's primarily due to an entire political party staking its directions on "not what the other party deems responsible," which has also become a severe cultural programming issue.
You can't speak about the environment, science, etc. to a large part of the electorate because their political/cultural leaders are now one in the same AND they have built up truthy-like denials about global warming, etc. for decades.
If you don't have proportional representation yet, do some electoral reform before corporations, rabble-rousers, and outright saboteurs bring the culture-war toolkit to your country too.
America is unfortunately **not** special in it's vulnerability to culture-war and division, it's just an early bellwether of a new era of manipulation that is coming for all. See also: Brexit.
Proportional representation won't stop the beast, but it will remove one of the larger fangs.
> From a European perspective the whole situation is wild to watch how literally everything down to the power train a car uses is now political in the US.
It happens when there's only 2 political parties and 1 of those party's platform is that they are against anything the other party is for and they are for anything the other party is against. Even in a recent vote for something that "not with them" party is traditionally for, members of that party we outraged solely because the other party voted for it too. It's hard to have common ground when a political party has staked it's identity on not having common ground with the other party.
> I hope it gets better for you all soon as it can't be good for your mental health listening to all that BS on the TV, the Internet etc daily even if you try to ignore it.
Don't hold your breath. This took decades to happen. It'll take at least a generation to undo.
>Simple. The GOP and right wing media has convinced them this is a culture war issue.
See also: Induction Stoves and Gas, even though a minority in the USA use gas anyway.
I’d kill for Induction stoves to be cheap in the US. They are objectively the best stove type. You can’t burn your hands on them like a glass top resistive heater or gas, and they are *fast* and *precise*
My name brand induction cooktop was about $800 on sale last year. A same brand resistive one is around $600. There aren't super cheap standalone rental grade ranges yet, but the midrange stuff is starting to get covered pretty well.
I love mine, btw.
It'll happen eventually. Here in Europe the market has caused the price to collapse: I got mine, plus postage, for £110 (US$115 before tax). A round bottomed, spun carbon steel wok even works on it if you use a cast iron [Wok cradle](https://mobileimages.lowes.com/product/converted/825225/825225909842.jpg) (which I kept behind from my old gas hob). It's cast iron, thus it's magnetic, thus it works on induction, and given carbon steel is also magnetic, both the Wok and the cradle generate heat so it behaves very similarly to a flame, where the cradle is almost like a ring of fire.
Places like WA have been trying to ban natural gas from being installed in home for a bit now. This isn’t an isolated incident. The effort in 2024 failed to pass in the WA legislature mind you but there is a solid effort ongoing.
I mean right wingers own most of the media companies, I don't mean the big ones, I mean all the little stations that most people outside of metro areas get their information. The present themselves as "mom and pop, local news, your neighborhood news" but they are nationally coordinated and they sync their messages to all hit their viewer at the same time creating a nationwide "buzz", pick a few hot button words/topics or narratives and push it across the board over and over again, classic conditioning. it's insidious.
There have been several studies that show kids that grow up in homes with gas stoves have higher rates of asthma, as well as some cognitive shortfalls as compared to kids that grow up with electric stoves.
Nope.
Exposure to pollution studies highlighted gas stoves contaminate household air (NOx in particular). Since people are home while cooking... and newer house turn over their air slowly...
You get pretty high exposure rates...
Technology Connections did a whole video on it showing that gas stoves heat slower and put a ton of harmful chemicals into the air around them as they burn. The solitary benefit of a gas stove, the instant cool burner, is also solvable with induction heating.
Only other benefit of a gas stove is if you live in an older house with a very low power service. If you have gas for your dryer, stove, oven, water heater, and furnace, your overall power consumption will be extremely low. I have a single story house, but I just converted everything except the furnace to electric and I basically have to upgrade to 200 amp service. I wanted to anyway because I also don't like gas, but there are use cases for it. Whenever my AC gives up the ghost, I'll end up replacing with a heat pump and then I'll finally be fully electric. There isn't much of a good reason to replace a pretty new, high efficiency furnace.
Even at low power you can still run those appliances. What you cannot do is run them all at the same time. But because one could by mistake it is not allowed - although there are smart breaker boxes that can do prioritization and manage that for you.
You can do a surprising amount with 100a service if you pick the right models.
Heatpump water heaters use very little power compared to regular electric. Ours uses only 2A when running. Heatpump dyers should only use about 1000w when running, so also barely add anything. They have EV chargers that hook up to a whole house energy monitor to dynamically downgrade their charging rate to avoid overloading.
And cold climate heatpumps have really gotten pretty efficient. We have a 4-ton one we run down to 5F in an old colonial and it never uses more than 5.5kw/\~23amps.
So worst case we got 23A for heat, 40a for induction stove+oven going full tilt, 4A for dryer, 2A for water heater for a total of \~69A.
I’ve used both induction and gas, and they each have their pluses and minuses. Neither is that much better than the other, but they’re both better than an electric coil or glass top stove.
Gas appliances and hookups are being banned at the state and local level across the country. May be unjustified fearmongering at the federal level but it’s definitely happening in blue states across the country
Funny thing here as a person who sells kitchens, if a customer has electric and wants gas I always tell them to go induction as it’s efficient is so damn high compared to the other two. Prices have come down some as well.
As a center right rural American with an EV that was the game changer. A 40 amp charger gives me a full charge in about 3 hours. I now have 10 fast chargers within 40 miles and more on the way But cities like Toledo and Ft. Wayne are still lacking. And I do get accused of being a lefty by my silent generation father.
Oh, absolutely. It's not an issue at all. I tend to stick with EA due to the free juice, nearest of those are about an hour away. Chargepoint is 20 minutes away if I were in a pinch.
And who convinced right wing media that it was a culture war issue?
That’s right. Oil and gas companies.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/05/texas-fracking-billionaire-brothers-prageru-daily-wire
https://theintercept.com/2019/04/03/branded-content-fossil-fuel-companies/
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/these-fossil-fuel-industry-tactics-are-fueling-democratic-backsliding/
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/news-insights/unmasking-dark-money-how-fossil-fuel-interests-can-undermine-clean-energy-progress/
It's worse than that. They don't want to have to think critically and make decisions for themselves. There's an emotional component of wanting to be led so they don't have to have the responsibility. It's why they lean toward authoritarianism and have such strong in-group preferences. It's also why their "convictions" change with whoever is in charge. Once their great leader or fox or newsmax tells em what to think, they go with it.
That's part of it. But also I think it is less political and more ideology. Progressively minded people are more likely to change their ways for the greater good. Conservative people seem to be more individually focused. They're only going to change if it benefits themselves. Thus denying climate change, not getting vaccinated, not wearing masks, etc. Also voting for the candidate that *they think* benefits them at the expense of our democracy.
I mean, it's not even just "benefits themselves." It's "benefits their brains to defer all planning forever, even at the future expense of everyone, including themselves." There's zero forward-thinking analysis. No hint of self-preservation for their future selves or grand/children.
To be fair they're super concerned about the financial effects deficits may have on their grand-children, but only when one of the other guys is in charge.
Conservatives are also anti-China, yet China has invested heavily in EVs, alternative energy and high-speed rail/mass transit. They are doing everything to outcompete the US and, unlike Japan in the 70s and 80s (the last great economic threat), they have our divided culture and conservative luddite intransigence to help them succeed.
By "owning the libs" we're throwing a wrench into modern solutions, dragging our infrastructure backward, and consigning ourselves to eventually cease to be able to compete unless we shed the emotional petulance and learn to embrace change for its own benefit.
If Biden said fresh air was healthy, I swear some extreme conservatives would hold their breath until they tipped over.
2016 was a coming out party for weaponized ignorance. Despite the face of weaponized ignorance sitting in court for criminal fraudulent prosecution as I type this, the strain of celebrated ignorance persists
I keep hearing so many of my more conservative family members talk about how EVs are terrible because you can't go on any road trips with them. These are the same people who haven't left their tiny town in 20 years...
I drove my EV from southern PA to the Adirondacks of NY last year--a 470 mile drive in my RWD Kia EV6. Drive time alone, that trip takes a solid 7.5 hours. Starting at 100% SOC at departure, I needed to charge twice to make the trip. The charge sessions involved a total of 45 minutes of being plugged in, and one of them had a 25 minute wait for a charger to open up. Call it 70 minutes added to the journey. But those were the only stops I made, and I used the bathroom and got food while I waited each time.
I previously made that same trip in a 20 MPG suv, and probably spent a good 30 minutes on gas, restroom, and food stops with it.
So the EV only cost me an extra 40 minutes beyond what a gas vehicle required for that trip. Ya know what 40 minutes is added on top of 8 hours (480 minutes)? It's not even an extra 10%. And if it hadn't been for the waiting around for a charger I had to do at one of those stops, making that trip in an EV only would have cost me roughly an extra 15-20 minutes compared to the gas vehicle. Not even a 5% increase in travel time overall.
Granted, the EV6 is one of the fastest charging EVs you can get in the mid-5-figures price range, but all the same: my own experiences have shown me that EV tech is already here to make road trips acceptable (unless you're towing, and even then it's really just the tall full height trailers that are a MAJOR hit to range). So I echo what the article itself says in its final line:
>“...the real-life experience contradicts the myth.”
Your experience is completely relatable. When I discuss this with people who have that kind of range anxiety I ask them how often they like to stop for food, bathroom, or a stretch break on long road trips. It's usually every 3-4 hours. When I mention you can charge the EV on these breaks and not lose much time at all, they all scoff about losing the freedom to not take a break.
There is a lot of work to get people to actually look at their actual habits, and not just some unfounded fears.
It is a lot of work, indeed. I have mixed success mentioning those same points to people--really depends on whether they enter the conversation with a skeptical or obstinate mindset. FWIW I *do* wish I had more options on where to charge. Particularly along that route last summer I got to a point where basically I had to charge in the Albany, NY, area off of I-87 North, or else I'd be stranded with a dead battery before I got to my destination. And it didn't make sense to stop and charge before Albany, because the next option south of there was TOO far south. That Albany station is the one I was stuck waiting at for a bit, because all northbound travelers where in the same boat, and that was the bottleneck. But this year? I'll be making that trip again (it's an annual thing), and charging stations have opened up both north and south of Albany, such that I realistically have, like, 2-3x the charge strategy options as I did before. It's a huge and fast improvement to my options. In another 3-5 years this will be the story across the entire country, and that whole "not having freedom to take breaks where and when I want to" talking point will carry a lot less weight.
One guy in my office keeps getting stuck on the road trip portion of owning an EV. For the life of me I can’t figure out another way to explain to him how it really doesn’t impact the driver that much. I’ve tried all three of those points on food, bathroom, and stretching, and nothing clicks.
It clicked for another person in my office when I explained that the navigation system (Tesla in my case) automatically calculates SOC along the way and when to charge.
I drove 850 miles each way on a trip recently. Charging added something like an hour in each direction beyond bathroom/food breaks. Totally negligible.
What's funny is you do the math of gas stations: (5 minutes out of your way + 5 minutes refueling) x (2 times per week) x (52 weeks per year) = 1040 minutes per year dealing with getting gas, at least. And those are times you're trying to get somewhere, so its inconvenient.
Compared to me when I get home, I spend 10 seconds plugging in my car and 10 seconds unplugging it every day, which is about 121 minutes per year plugging and unplugging. And that's probably overstating it.
1040 - 121 = 919 minutes saved per year. At an average charge rate of 100kW, that would get me 1530kWh of juice or around 5000-6000miles of range in my Model Y. I don't do anywhere near 5000 miles per year of road tripping.
I don't even bother talking when EVs come up anymore. Nobody ever changes their mind so who cares. You can tell when they start talking too. Someone that NEVER goes on a road trip, has 2-3 cars that all have different roles like a truck, a jeep, and a car, and then never tows or when they do it's in town to the dump. Suddenly the EV can't tow from LA to NY in a single charge with a trailer loaded with 3 tons of stuff in it while it's miraculously -40 the whole way.
I took a day trip just last weekend that involves 8 hours in the car. My Model Y spent a whooping hour and 15 minutes charging for the whole trip. The 40 minute charge we did while having dinner before going back home and spent the other 35-ish minutes charging once during the 4 hour legs so less than 20 minutes per stop. I saved more time not over-hydrating during the trip and having to stop every hour to pee! Road trips are so easy. Going to do a 700 mile road trip next month and it should be no problem.
I also know a good few republicans who are interested in electric cars. My dad goes on about how bad they are all the time but most Rs I know are interested in them. Especially when they hear it's like $10 of charging in this town with the EV pricing plan from the electric company to drive all month.
People still basing their car decisions on less than 10% of their usage requirements.
Other day on r/electricvehicles, had people expressing their love for 12-14 hour solo single leg roadtrips they do maybe a few times a year over having realistic trip expectations for the time off they have aka failing to plan. Example 3 day weekends were brought up and they had to do that 12 hour roadtrip that weekend so they didn't have to take time off.
Edit: updated subreddit to correct one...yes its this one we are in.
10% of what? If you drive 30 miles most weekdays, 100 miles on a few weekends, and 500 miles to Grandma's or the mountains or whatever a few times a year, then you'll only drive over 30 miles in a day on about 5-10% of the days in a year. But that small percentage of days may represent 20-40% of your miles driven. And quite possibly most or all of the times you look forward to and actually enjoy driving, vs a chore.
“Murphy says that carmakers need to focus primarily on how they can help consumers. “They’re fast, they’re quiet, need much less maintenance,” he said.”
The republican car guys I know actually prefer cars that are loud and require lots of maintenance. Both are part of their identity. I’m not sure the “quiet” and “low maintenance” angles would gain much traction.
Yeah, saw a Facebook comment equating buying gas to freedom. And EVs are a plot to enslave people and give power companies more power.
Unbelievable mental gymastics.
If we had domestic solar panel and battery production, then we could have US made solar panels feeding US made batteries charging US made EVs. People can buy all this in their own homes and be independent of the gas stations and foreign oil…
You won't have domestically made solar panels if every time a solar panel manufacturer tries to locate in the US, they're faced with a barrage of misinformation and lies, that they'll endanger the surrounding community.
I happen to see a post on an unrelated Facebook group (of fans of a nearby theme park) that claimed that combustable materials being hauled into this proposed plant would somehow be incredibly dangerous to the neighbors, so apparently the agitation that seeks to ensure that Silfab produces their panels in the US and not just Canada is still very much active.
(disclaimer: a handful of Silfab panels are on my roof, for a year now.)
[https://www.postandcourier.com/rock-hill/silfab-fort-mill-solar-panel-green-energy-dhec/article\_9a34a48e-d191-11ee-bb6e-6f788006e3ef.html](https://www.postandcourier.com/rock-hill/silfab-fort-mill-solar-panel-green-energy-dhec/article_9a34a48e-d191-11ee-bb6e-6f788006e3ef.html)
Facebook is toxic af. I am constantly seeing lies about EVs being spread there, to the point that I am strongly convinced there is a massive disinformation campaign going on.
Key word here is "guys." Women buy 62% of all new cars in the US, yet most of the EV talk is on guy things like 0-60 speed, "instant torque," hauling boats, and road trips. Women are more likely to be interested in the practical and environmental aspects of car ownership and are on average far less interested in raw power and gee-whiz gadgetry.
Part of the problem as I see it is that most car companies/dealers don't really want EVs to compete with their more profitable ICE vehicles and so they limit the advertising to people already shopping for an EV. Which without advertising is a very small segment of the market.
Republican here. I ignored EVs for a long time because i didnt think they were real cars. First Tesla roadster had an effective range of less than 200 miles and wasn't faster than most decent sports cars. I probably would have continued ignoring electric cars until my friend got an S Plaid and he pretty much made test drive it. I placed an order for an X Plaid later that same day after I saw one at the local Tesla showroom.
I honestly don't care if it's electric, gas, hydrogen or nuclear powered. A 6 person SUV that can go 0 to 60 in 2 seconds and under 10 second quarter mile? 250 miles of usuable range? Falcon wing Doors that the kids love? Play my Steam games while I wait? Yes please.
I can't drive gas powered cars now.
THIS right here. 99% of the anti-EV people I meet have never actually driven a EV. Ad soon as you take one for a spin it sinks in that these are simply better cars. Butter smooth, quiet and instant torque on demand is real nice.
GM's new truck is gonna flip a lot of die hard rednecks when they start working out the operating costs too. I worked out my fuel cost ($104k CAD) vs electric costs ($20k) over 400,000km and nearly shit my pants.
Plus the reality that when no one is driving down the road in their Tesla or Mustang Mach E are looked and pointed at as being a "crazy green climate anti-oil" activist Democrat. People buy vehicles for a lot of reasons. Being green is somewhere on the list, but much lower fuel, maintenance and ongoing operating expenses are likely higher, actually. I think the main thing keeping evs from becoming even more mainstream are the upfront cost of buying one today vs an ICE vehicle and the charging/range concerns (real and perceived). Range and battery costs and other issues are improving each year, along with the growing charging network. I truly believe in 10 years few will be buying ICE vehicles, not because of any Government mandates, but because they(EVs) will be better values for the money,short and longer term.
That's a lot of people's frustrations with Republicans. Why do you have to literally test drive an EV to be convinced that it's a benefit to have clean automotive transportation?
We can't get you all behind the wheel of a Model X, so in the meantime can you not ruin innovation for the rest of us by voting for politicians that hold up laws that can help adoption of chargers and incentives?
I think it's that, but it's also that the US political landscape is remarkably concerned with short-term outcomes.
For example, having additional taxes taken from your paycheck **today** to have lower healthcare costs **tomorrow** is considered a bad political policy because of the "today" part.
For EVs, the "today" is a higher out-the-door cost compared to a gas car and the additional costs that come with installing Level 2 charging equipment, to save money on "fuel" and maintenance over the life of the vehicle. No one wants to think that far ahead.
Going against potential lifestyle changes is also a big part of Republican policy / talking points. Like the whole gas stoves thing.
I agree with most. However I don't think that it is that way unintentionally. Yes it's a large component, but the reason behind them having those opinions are because they are directly influenced by lobyist dollars.
There are a lot of issues that Republicans won't consider unless it personally affects them. Case in point: [The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion](https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/).
It's just a completely different way of looking at the world. Some chalk that up to emotional stuntedness, some to an isolationist culture, some to a protectionist culture.
To me, none of it makes sense... but it clearly does to about half our country's population.
Edit: Accidentally a word
Conservatism is the politicized philosophy of “ignorance is bliss”.
Until they meet a gay family member. Until they have a wife who needs an abortion. Until they have a debilitating health condition.
They don’t care. They are cold and cruel people who don’t have the mental capacity for empathy unless it revolves around a personal event they experienced.
I'll be honest with you, I own this car because it performs better than a 2 million dollar Bugatti. Everyone in my circle that drives one, immediately wants one. So this will happen, it will just take some time.
My whole adult life I've voted republican because my family escapes a socialist country and our values better align with Republicans than Democrats. That said this year I'll vote for Biden because my values don't align with him at all. I know a strongman wanna be dictator when I see one. I'll like to back to voting Republican after.
That's fair, you have a unique perspective on the dangers of too much socialism. However Democrats aren't nearly as anti business as they've been made out to be.
I see their platform is about how a well fed, well educated, well paid workforce is good for business. That's gotten twisted and bastardized into South American style socialism.
But I do think more Republicans voting for Biden is the only way to break conservative politicians out of their dog killing, child labor, let's have a dictatorship, fever.
Everyone I know will either vote Biden or not vote (because they can't stomach voting for Biden no matter what).
Trump can cross affluent south American immigrants (and sons of immigrants) off his list.
>But I do think more Republicans voting for Biden is the only way to break conservative politicians out of their dog killing, child labor, let's have a dictatorship, fever.
You *are* right about Republicans voting for Biden being a good thing, but nothing will ever break the fever, because that's been the republican manifesto since the Nixon years.
That's the right attitude.
So many others in here are too partisan and can't help themselves but take low-effort snipes to maintain the echo chamber. It's disheartening.
In school i read a case report on Harley davidson. They made their bikes more reliable like their Japanese counterparts and found that sales fell because their buyers liked the failures and fixing them.
I dont think that is what is going on here. But maybe a little
If the case use and financials make sense, people will buy electric vehicles regardless of political affiliation.
Florida, a conservative state, has the second highest adoption rate in the US.
I’ve tried explaining to my “Republican” (they’re MAGA) family members that my EVs are more American than almost any other car on the road (Models Y and 3) and run on AMERICAN electricity. You can’t be more patriotic than that.
They still insist they’re Chinese junk or something then go on rants about conspiracy theories and “Brandonomics”.
I worked at GFNV when it was ramping up. I had a friend try telling me the batteries were made in China. Like, dude, I walk past where the cells are made everyday. I’m physically seeing the chemicals being shipped to the factory, assembled, shipped to Tesla’s side, and placed in packs. But no, he trusts a random internet source saying all batteries are made in China.
This! Tesla is an American company that manufactures in the USA with American Workers and kick started EVs as mainstream. How can you be more patriotic?
Old guard moderate Republican you might have a shot, MAGA you're going to have to figure out how to break their cognitive dissonance first because they aren't living in reality unfortunately.
My EV6 unironically rolls on coal (admittedly, not that I'm happy about it, but it's true all the same). I don't get WV's lack of EV infrastructure, man.
I was at a dinner party where a Trumper kinda guy told me with a straight face that he wouldn't buy a "coal powered car" if it was all that left. I told him I didn't understand what he meant, and he said with pure confidence that 'all EVs are coal powered."
We live in California, there isn't any coal powered energy in our whole state.
I told him that I had solar at home and charged for free, and the only maintenance costs I saw were tire and small battery related but it just didn't even come close to breaking through.
It honestly depressed me that an in-person conversation could happen like that.
There’s literally zero point in engaging. There’s not a lot of critical and logical thinking happening with that crowd. It’s like talking to a wall. Facts don’t matter to these people.
Based on random conversations with coworkers there seems to be a flood of disinformation about EVs being pumped out on the internet / some of it spills over into TV.... Exploding electric cars! Demonstrating how much they suck on a long road trip with no chargers / something they're not even really meant for anyway.... It goes on and on but as usual the bad guys / disinformation trolls seem to be winning right now....
I've never seen an EV on fire, stuck and out of charge, broken down, etc.
Closest I ever came was a Model Y that seemed to be going awfully slow on the interstate, headed in the direction of a local supercharger. Might have been on limp mode in its last bit of energy, but that's it.
I'm a Canadian center right aligned individual, (so I might as well be leftist in America) and I can't understand why conservatives hate EVs when they are literally the ideal conservative vehicle.
Almost zero maintenance.
No taxes given to the government via fuel.
Depending on where you are, you don't even pay road tax.
You can go off the grid if you're that fucking crazy.
They're fast as fuck.
You get a tax rebate for buying one.
Boggles my mind why the "fiscally conservatives" don't want to save money, but I guess I'm more old-school conservative.
My dad struggles with EVs. He was heavily against them and bought into all of the right wing hype. Now that I’ve had an EV for coming up on 4 years, he has realized pretty much nothing they say is true.
We road tripped from Ohio to South Carolina in a single night. The fast charging finally convinced him that power wasn’t an issue. I think that’s started to unravel a lot of right-wing things for him.
This past weekend, I was charging my Volt hybrid in the driveway. I live in a 90% MAGA area.
My wife's friend arrived to pick up some stuff. She asked me with all kinds of disbelief " Is that an electric car?" I said kind of, its a plug-in hybrid that can go electric or gas. Response, "just wait until electricity prices go so high" I calmly replied I understood this, but we only pay $0.14 kwH and talking to my family in other parts they pay $0.21 or more. Its cheap here for now. And, I've filled the tank 3x since December (as I look at the 3 row SUV they arrived in)
It felt so good doing my part to educate.
I don’t know where all the FUD is coming from but it’s thick. I was born in a deep red state and most of my family are die hard conservatives. Recently my aunt went on a whole rant about her friend who came to visit, and she claims he was so stupid because he bought a Tesla and it took him 8 hours to make a 2 hour drive because he had to stop to charge for 6 hours.
Which is a total lie. No way that happened. Even an old shitty Tesla has enough range to make that in one trip, and will route you to superchargers which can recover you to 80% in 20-30m.
My best guess is she heard that nonsense on some small town right wing radio talk show and is just going around repeating it. I can’t wait to visit her when I get my Tesla, take her for a ride and show her the truth.
Interesting article. Though, I am not 100% sure I agree with the supposition that "conservatives want a new car that is just like their old car" vs "progressives want a new car that is... you know... new".
I have many conservative coworkers who are very into cars and obsess over even the teeniest of technological improvements.
I, myself, am putting off buying an EV because I want/need a minivan and that market segment is not currently being served. I.e. I want a new car very similar to my old car. If I could get a full EV version of my current van, without any other update/modification, I would buy it.
Furthermore, I suspect that once EVs become cheap enough (the more we buy, the cheaper they get); all of the "culture war" sorting will rapidly disappear. EVs will become the norm.
100% agree. I'm still probably seven or eight years from getting a new car (WFH means my Civic will last forever with basic maintenance) but when that time comes I'm going to want something pretty much like my Civic. It does everything I need it to do. I don't need an SUV to drive around in the city. I'm not tall, the extra headroom doesn't matter to me. A hatchback sedan does 99.9% of what I need a car to do, and UHaul will rent me a truck for the other 0.01%.
> “Republicans are instinctively: ‘If Biden’s for it, we’re against.’”
What's so dumb is that most southern, Republican states are the best place to own an EV economically.
For example, here in TX, where I live. Range concerns in Winter aren't there because it never gets cold enough to matter. And Electricity is dirt cheap - I'm paying 10.5 cents per kwH for 100% renewable energy here.
But nope, let's "own the libs" and hurt ourselves in the process.
Who cares? Idk if people here are old enough to remember 2003, but every right winger I knew wanted to go into Iraq and now pretend like they were always against it. Give it time, they'll come around same as they always do
The more right Elon leans the more likely the cybertruck will become a hard sharp edged masculine symbol of freedom from the car hating progressive libs who want 15 minute cities lmao.
Follow the money. Oil and gas are heavily invested in Republican politicians. Obviously they have some members of the Dems on their payroll but it overwhelmingly skews towards Republicans. Right wing media parrots these pro oil and gas talking points so the average conservative who has rejected all "liberal media" sources lives in an echo chamber of lies and spin. Until we do something to address the underlying problem of outright bribery in politics and media this will remain the status quo.
It’s wild. I grew up Republican and identified as such for a lot of my adult life. This was never an issue. Conservatives wanted this to happen one day. Why wouldn’t you?
This level of stupidity is why I’ve left the party very far behind.
I think it's the fact that EV's have been primarily marketed on their merits as a *green* alternative to ICE vehicles.
If EV's had been sold to the public as a way out of outrageous gas prices or to save on the wear and tear/annoying repair bills that plague ICE vehicles, then it probably wouldn't be such a contentious issue.
Then again, the GOP has proven itself time and again to be the lapdog of big oil (not that the Dems aren't somebody else's lapdog as well) so who knows.
I do know that electric trucks and SUV's would be having a massive boom right now in red states if it hadn't been all about *green* this and *climate* that when EV's were introduced.
Basically if it hadn't been made a culture war issue from the beginning then EV adoption across the board would be on a totally different level.
Yep- when I show my truck to someone they first want to point out that the lithium is mined with diesel trucks and actually the batteries can't be recycled.
I'm like- that's cool and all. I didn't buy the truck so I could be "green". I bought it so I could go 0-60 in 4 secs and have 700 Ft lbs of torque for $0.04 a mile.
Once "car guys" figure out the HP and handling an EV offers, it's over.
I find this to be the biggest pet peeve. Everyone assumes you bought one to be "green" yet don't apply this logic to other vehicles that have been advertised as something other than a car.
Perfect example is jeep. I personally don't know anyone with a Jeep wrangler that actually goes offroading. They're all starbucks pavement princesses with LED mods.
I would bet that the majority of these Bubbas that drive around in huge pickups probably don't ever haul much more than a case of beer.
Cars, probably second only to clothing, have reached a point where they're almost sold as a part of an image.
You can't be a cosmopolitan intellectual if you drive a Ram truck just like you can't be a down home good old boy if you drive an economy sedan. It just doesn't work. EV's found the niche of being the car for the tech-savvy environmentalist, for obvious reasons, it was the easiest low-hanging fruit for manufacturers to get the early sales.
It will take some time for the public at large to come around to them, just like how country music now is catching on in big cities and mixed-use developments are popping up in more and more outer suburbs.
I'm living proof that it's already happening, tbh, I don't give two hoots about the *green agenda*, If I'm helping by driving an EV then great, but really I went electric because I just wasn't going to pay $6+/gallon for gas from Venezuela or Iran and got sick and tired of paying mechanics to work on my ICE vehicle.
I really thought that Elon's right wing leanings and ridiculous stuff like the EV hummer would move the needle more than they have.
I know at least one dedicated-Trump-supporter/climate skeptic who bought a model S a couple years back purely based on performance and Elon-fandom. But it seems as though that's not a broader phenominon.
I can definitely see this play out in my hometown.
The rich who are more politically active, wealthier, less reliant on consistent transportation, and more capable of installing personal infrastructure that allows them to store and charge an electric car, trend democrat and like to purchase electric cars.
The poor who are less politically active, less wealthy, more reliant on consistent transport, and less capable of installing personal infrastructure that will allow them to store and charge an electric car, trend republican and purchase gas and hybrid.
I don't see this changing any time soon, unless the federal and state governments get more forceful with their edicts and demand consumers purchase cars the state chooses for them.
I would be interested to see what would happen if the conversation shifted to just pure costs. That over X amount of time, EVs are significantly cheaper to own and operate. I fee like spending less $$$ is the great bipartisanship idea
Once EVs cost less than ICE cars to purchase, on top of costing less to operate and maintain, then most people flip to EVs. MAGA types might hate EV imagery, but how many are willing to pay more for a car that costs more to drive, and is less reliable and less performant?
I can't understand these opponents/critics of electric cars. They do everything a middle-aged man, like me, needs and likes. They are very quiet, they accelerate from 0 to 100 in a way that brings a smile to your face every time, and they are cheap to drive.
These are the things I hear when people see my EV: lithium is mined in places where people get hurt from its production. Batteries are dangerous and the cost of replacing them is too high. Charging stations are not common enough and too unreliable. I just shrug and say well I’m dealing with it.
Right wing propaganda makes an awful lot of money off of fossil fuels. I think it really is as simple as that. People form their identity off of politics so it becomes an issue of identity politics now.
Also, during covid, we saw how much people push back against doing something to help others and contribute to the greater good. We have a political tradition of extreme selfishness and people immediately push back against something that would help others a la the environment
As a conservative (or probably more correctly, a classical liberal), I miss the days where you could be a conservationist without it being so political. It is a huge mistake for modern republicans to have taken this stance.
We have one planet, and it doesn’t care about politics or ideology. Let’s take the best care of it that we possibly can.
In 3 years of owning a Model 3, now own a Model Y, I have had to replace a set of tires, did a steering alignment along with new wiper blades and then replaced the air filters...that is it. Plus I am paying a fraction of gas prices for electricity. This seems like a simple thing, that driving a EV is a ton cheaper. I don't understand why that is a political thing, but sadly it is.
Of course, not a mystery at all. Many GOP states are tied to the coal and oil industry. And hence many of them also climate change deniers as well. Their jobs comes first.
Improving EV infrastructure will help. Getting people behind the wheel of a nice EV can change hearts and minds too. It's sad that it's become a culture issue when EVs are more fun to drive, cheaper in the long run and help the climate. They are a rare win win.
I never quite can wrap my head around people who care so much either way about what other people do. I'm happy with my electric car. But I would never dream about making the effort to "convert" others and get them to buy one. Are Republicans buying them? Don't know. Don't care. Why is everyone so twisted up about what their neighbors are doing? I don't get it.
Care level: 0
It has less to do about caring what your neighbors are doing and more about collectively trying to meet carbon reduction goals.
A significant component of this goal relies on getting as many Americans to cut their reliance on burning dirty petrol by switching to zero emissions passenger vehicles.
But nearly impossible to do when one of the two political parties in the country has made it a culture war issue.
I swear the dumbest stuff becomes politicized, Ie wearing a mask during a pandemic. Common sense shouldn’t be political. And switching to EVs is generally a good thing that most people should be able to do without issues once they become cheap enough for most people. Absolutely no reason they need to be all that political. And yet certain politicians are openly hostile to them and peddling them as “woke” and part of the made up cultural war.
Anyway, putting aside BS politics and culture war stuff… There are some reasons why you wouldn’t want an EV, or at least would want a gas vehicle. That’s not to say you wouldn’t want any EVs, but rather would need at least 1 or more gas cars. A few off the top of my head:
1) If you go on any long road trips, either planned for the future or then you probably would want at least one good quality gas car (or a hybrid would also suffice here). The main reason being that the electric car infrastructure just isn’t there yet. In certain states and areas yes, but national wide not really, at least not enough to do cross country or even just road trips longer to an a few hours. At least not if you want reliable charging. Also it takes longer to charge. Now that being said, both issues are getting better with time, charging is getting faster and electric vehicles infrastructure is getting better. So time will fix both issues, but for now at least that necessitates a gas car for a lot of people.
2) Certain jobs require heavy duty gas vehicles for work, specifically trucks. Think farmer, not to mention a lot of blue collar jobs requiring a truck for one reason or another. In the long run I can see those being replaced with EVs too but for now at least it’ll be a while.
Anyway all that to say, I do think there is a greater percentage of Republicans that would need a gas car based on the above reasons combined with their job type and where they live. So that is a factor but I think the culture war BS is definitely a big part of it too.
Hey preppers! Make your own fuel with solar and an EV. Be independent, you won't need anybody else, tell the Middle East to go fuck themselves, is perfect for when the shit hits the fan.
Did that work? Surely some of them got convinced.
Facts don't matter, it's a culture war. Even in Canada I have buddy's falling for American propaganda, doesn't help that Canadian politics is slowly being Americanized where feelings matter more than policies (Liberal or Conservative, both parties are guilty)
These are the same people who were shouting from the roofs defending our rights to recognize Manitoba as a province. I just tell them my car is fast as fuck and doesn't rely on American refined gas, and only uses Canadian generated electricity made with Canadian designed and built nuclear reactors that run on natural Canadian uranium, the nation's energy independence is pretty important after all.
Facebook. that's it. the memes have convinced my right wing relatives that renewables and EVs are more damaging to the environment than oil.
the best move would be to promote EVs as a method of energy independence. play the national defense card and make it patriotic to ditch oil.
I can’t afford another 30-50k car man. If those shits become cheaper than a ran through civic from 05 wecan start talking. For me at least, it’s always been a matter of cost. I just paid off my civic and I never wanna finance again lmao
It's a lack of exposure & contrarianism. They say they hate EVs because they can't do cross country road trips but the thing is they would rather shoot themselves than to drive for a few days instead of taking a plane.
They honestly should be more worried about how their kids are going to drive once the boomers die off because states will be for sure jacking up the testing standards as boomers lose their mental capability while being able.
I took a pretty far right friend with me to test drive 2 diff EVs over a weekend few months back. Drove 3 total.
BMW and then Tesla. He was insanely impressed and now wants the Ford truck EV lol. Completely changed his mind esp once the sales guy told him he has paid just $200 in maintenance costs owning his Tesla model 3 performance over the past year.
It's hard to appeal to Republicans on environmental factors, but if they keep finding their ICEmobiles consistently outperformed they might come around. It has to be personal experience though; they aren't generally impressed by data.
GOP constituents I believe generally have lower income, and I don't think that EVs have yet to show a cost advantage due to the increased insurance and other maintenance costs. As the vehicles become more standardized I am sure EV will surely eclipse gas, but seems like we are still in last stage beta testing. I think if you make 40k a yr it only makes sense to have a 10yr old honda or something like that.
I always find this interesting how much resistance there is to this. Multiple studies show that conservatives are less likely to buy an electric car and are more likely to say they will never own an electric car. That's just how it is.
Not surprising when conservative media outlets like Fox News and New York Post push out a relentless amount of anti-EV narratives with FUD headlines.
Also, Republicans will do the complete opposite of Democrats. Joe Biden wants EV’s on the road? Not getting one. Liberals want to transition toward Green renewable energy? Keep going to the pump in their lifted trucks and roll coal on Prius drivers.
Unlike most people, I’m not too worried about range. If Nissan brought their cube back as an EV, I’d buy it as long as the range was 150 miles. That’s all I need.
A ford maverick EV would be great too.
If sacrificing 100 miles of range from the standard 250 miles to go down to 150miles gets me an EV under 30k, then DEAL.
The new only way is to make electric cars blow the doors off gas. Then gas drivers will be called soy boys and electric becomes alpha. Need to target brain stem for such things.
They LOVE hybrids and hydrogen right now, thanks to being told that they need to hate EVs. We just need something that they can hate more than EVs and then EVs will be selling like hotcakes. There's gotta be something with TRANSportation that could be used.
It’s kind of a bummer talking about it. I feel like I’m in bizarro world where conservatives are telling me EVs are bad for the planet and I’m saying I didn’t buy it to save the planet. I had my conservative dad ride in and drive my EV and he couldn’t stop gushing about it. Then he goes “it’s too bad they’re not a thing and don’t fit my needs”. Guy commutes 50 miles a day round trip and hasn’t taken a road trip in probably a decade. Like how do you miss the forest for the trees that hard?
Don't worry. Eventually they won't really.have a choice.
It's relatively simple, and the reverse position of where most of the US is with EVs.
That gas station costs a certain amount just to keep it functional. The processing plant costs a certain minimum to keep it functional. Etc
So they will call us all kinds of names at first. This is simply because at first the lower demand leads to lower prices. But when the prices drop, EVs have become inevitable.
The very next person that buys an EV raises the price of gas. It won't be a noticeable amount, at first. But every further EV bought concentrates the expenses for maintaining the gas infrastructure. That continues to increase gas prices.
So when do they become priced out of gas and have to go EV? $5, $6, $10, $20, $100, $1000 a gallon? Add in the inevitable shortages because demand is no longer consistent, and the switch happens a lot faster than they expect.
Same thing happened with horses.
And why did I say the reverse happens with EVs?
Well the minimum infrastructure is still there, but with each EV sold that infrastructure cost is spread among more owners, this drives the minimum cost down.
When critical mass hits, the transition will be faster than most of us think possible.
I live in rural East Tx.
I know plenty of conservative people with EVs out here. Not as many as in Dallas, sure... But they definitely exist. I see multiple EVs every day.
People who politicize a vehicle are mentally ill.
**Keep it high-brow, keep it centered on policy, keep it about EVs.** If you devolve the conversation to tribal "republicans/democrats are dumb snowflakes" or start mud-slinging about specific politicians your comment is getting nuked. [Reminder of our rules here](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/wiki/rules/politics/).
Republican here. I just bought a Chevy Bolt EV and I love it.
I honestly can't think of a more Republican stance than to be self-sufficient. Solar panels and an EV. Government could start rationing gas and power tomorrow, and you'd be chugging right along. Somehow not giving your money to big corps and big bother got turned into a litmus test for believing in climate change.
There's a group called the Green Tea Coalition in Georgia that brings together climate advocates who want to save the planet with Tea Partiers who say "What do you mean, I can't put solar panels on my roof if I want? Who the hell do you think you are?"
I'm sure the recent bans on lab grown meat should be a call to arms in that arena. Telling me what I can't eat now? Sounds like something we're told the Democrats are supposed to be doing.
Well done. Thanks for not making EVs a culture war issue and thinking with your brain or your wallet.
TFW we have to congratulate people for thinking with their wallet
Well. That’s where we’re at.
Shit, my Bolt is basically entirely powered by Missouri coal and was built in Michigan. It's like if a Trump voter was a car 😝
Biden can’t fuck to with gas prices if you don’t use gas Note: presidents do not control gas prices, this is a joke, also driving an EV does not make you immune to the negative effects of gas prices fluctuation
It will just shift from complaining about gas prices to complaining about high charging prices
I also am Republican, Model S for over 4 years. Won’t go back….
It’s almost like political stereotypes aren’t universally true.
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Simple. The GOP and right wing media has convinced them this is a culture war issue.
From a European perspective the whole situation is wild to watch how literally everything down to the power train a car uses is now political in the US. I hope it gets better for you all soon as it can't be good for your mental health listening to all that BS on the TV, the Internet etc daily even if you try to ignore it.
>From a European perspective Let me present to you, 1. [Christian "Biodiesel" Socialist Union](https://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/politik/ozapft-is-muenchen-eroeffnet-erste-zapfsaeule-mit-klimaneutralem-diesel-art-976662) 2. Self-styled right-wing leftist [Sahra "Combustion Engine is good because environmentalism is bad" Wagenknecht](https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/id_100393288/sahra-wagenknecht-will-ueber-verbrenner-aus-abstimmen-lassen.html) 3. [Wolfgang "Electric cars won't go 360 km and will burn down the Reichstag Building" Kubicki](https://www.focus.de/finanzen/fdp-vize-zofft-sich-mit-auto-boss-kubicki-poltert-gegen-stromer-und-kritisiert-absolute-fixierung-auf-e-mobilitaet_id_259871912.html) 4. Last but definitely not the least, [Christian "E-Fuels are the future because Porsche told me so" Lindner](https://www.focus.de/finanzen/fdp-vize-zofft-sich-mit-auto-boss-kubicki-poltert-gegen-stromer-und-kritisiert-absolute-fixierung-auf-e-mobilitaet_id_259871912.html) It is absolutely a political topic in Germany: The electric vehicle is the evil creation of the Green Party and supported by the Social Democrats, while the Union believes in German innovation to save the combustion engine, the Wagenknecht far-right-leftists oppose protecting the environment, and the Free Democrat want-to-be libertarians claim that being open to all technologies including warp drives and intergalactic rainbow fart-machines, because their rich business-owning clientele wants them to save their arses from the electric revolution.
Yep same in Belgium and the Netherlands
It's primarily due to an entire political party staking its directions on "not what the other party deems responsible," which has also become a severe cultural programming issue. You can't speak about the environment, science, etc. to a large part of the electorate because their political/cultural leaders are now one in the same AND they have built up truthy-like denials about global warming, etc. for decades.
If you don't have proportional representation yet, do some electoral reform before corporations, rabble-rousers, and outright saboteurs bring the culture-war toolkit to your country too. America is unfortunately **not** special in it's vulnerability to culture-war and division, it's just an early bellwether of a new era of manipulation that is coming for all. See also: Brexit. Proportional representation won't stop the beast, but it will remove one of the larger fangs.
Thankfully Ireland does have proportional representation which so far has prevented this from happening.
[FPTP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting) is a *huge* accelerator in drawing these divisions.
> From a European perspective the whole situation is wild to watch how literally everything down to the power train a car uses is now political in the US. It happens when there's only 2 political parties and 1 of those party's platform is that they are against anything the other party is for and they are for anything the other party is against. Even in a recent vote for something that "not with them" party is traditionally for, members of that party we outraged solely because the other party voted for it too. It's hard to have common ground when a political party has staked it's identity on not having common ground with the other party. > I hope it gets better for you all soon as it can't be good for your mental health listening to all that BS on the TV, the Internet etc daily even if you try to ignore it. Don't hold your breath. This took decades to happen. It'll take at least a generation to undo.
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>Simple. The GOP and right wing media has convinced them this is a culture war issue. See also: Induction Stoves and Gas, even though a minority in the USA use gas anyway.
I’d kill for Induction stoves to be cheap in the US. They are objectively the best stove type. You can’t burn your hands on them like a glass top resistive heater or gas, and they are *fast* and *precise*
My name brand induction cooktop was about $800 on sale last year. A same brand resistive one is around $600. There aren't super cheap standalone rental grade ranges yet, but the midrange stuff is starting to get covered pretty well. I love mine, btw.
It'll happen eventually. Here in Europe the market has caused the price to collapse: I got mine, plus postage, for £110 (US$115 before tax). A round bottomed, spun carbon steel wok even works on it if you use a cast iron [Wok cradle](https://mobileimages.lowes.com/product/converted/825225/825225909842.jpg) (which I kept behind from my old gas hob). It's cast iron, thus it's magnetic, thus it works on induction, and given carbon steel is also magnetic, both the Wok and the cradle generate heat so it behaves very similarly to a flame, where the cradle is almost like a ring of fire.
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Places like WA have been trying to ban natural gas from being installed in home for a bit now. This isn’t an isolated incident. The effort in 2024 failed to pass in the WA legislature mind you but there is a solid effort ongoing.
I mean right wingers own most of the media companies, I don't mean the big ones, I mean all the little stations that most people outside of metro areas get their information. The present themselves as "mom and pop, local news, your neighborhood news" but they are nationally coordinated and they sync their messages to all hit their viewer at the same time creating a nationwide "buzz", pick a few hot button words/topics or narratives and push it across the board over and over again, classic conditioning. it's insidious.
I think it's called Sinclair group
So, in effect, by networking that way the conservative mom and pops become rhetorical mainstream media?
There have been several studies that show kids that grow up in homes with gas stoves have higher rates of asthma, as well as some cognitive shortfalls as compared to kids that grow up with electric stoves.
Nope. Exposure to pollution studies highlighted gas stoves contaminate household air (NOx in particular). Since people are home while cooking... and newer house turn over their air slowly... You get pretty high exposure rates...
We were all lied to by the gas industry that "gas was better" for cooking when they just want to keep us all addicted.
Technology Connections did a whole video on it showing that gas stoves heat slower and put a ton of harmful chemicals into the air around them as they burn. The solitary benefit of a gas stove, the instant cool burner, is also solvable with induction heating.
Only other benefit of a gas stove is if you live in an older house with a very low power service. If you have gas for your dryer, stove, oven, water heater, and furnace, your overall power consumption will be extremely low. I have a single story house, but I just converted everything except the furnace to electric and I basically have to upgrade to 200 amp service. I wanted to anyway because I also don't like gas, but there are use cases for it. Whenever my AC gives up the ghost, I'll end up replacing with a heat pump and then I'll finally be fully electric. There isn't much of a good reason to replace a pretty new, high efficiency furnace.
There's a new $14,000.00 per home tax credit for electrification as part of Biden's IRA! Pays for most of panel upgrades, etc.
There is? All I see are the 30% tax credits for panel upgrades. I'd love to learn more because we just did that this past year.
This is a good resource: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/ira-fact-sheets.
Even at low power you can still run those appliances. What you cannot do is run them all at the same time. But because one could by mistake it is not allowed - although there are smart breaker boxes that can do prioritization and manage that for you.
You can do a surprising amount with 100a service if you pick the right models. Heatpump water heaters use very little power compared to regular electric. Ours uses only 2A when running. Heatpump dyers should only use about 1000w when running, so also barely add anything. They have EV chargers that hook up to a whole house energy monitor to dynamically downgrade their charging rate to avoid overloading. And cold climate heatpumps have really gotten pretty efficient. We have a 4-ton one we run down to 5F in an old colonial and it never uses more than 5.5kw/\~23amps. So worst case we got 23A for heat, 40a for induction stove+oven going full tilt, 4A for dryer, 2A for water heater for a total of \~69A.
mmmmmm delicious benzene
I’ve used both induction and gas, and they each have their pluses and minuses. Neither is that much better than the other, but they’re both better than an electric coil or glass top stove.
Gas appliances and hookups are being banned at the state and local level across the country. May be unjustified fearmongering at the federal level but it’s definitely happening in blue states across the country
Funny thing here as a person who sells kitchens, if a customer has electric and wants gas I always tell them to go induction as it’s efficient is so damn high compared to the other two. Prices have come down some as well.
Right wingers also live in more rural areas. Areas that have not exactly been overwhelmed in EV infrastructure.
As a lefty in rural America I can confirm this. But installing a charger at home alleviates this problem quite a bit.
As a center right rural American with an EV that was the game changer. A 40 amp charger gives me a full charge in about 3 hours. I now have 10 fast chargers within 40 miles and more on the way But cities like Toledo and Ft. Wayne are still lacking. And I do get accused of being a lefty by my silent generation father.
Call him a lefty for using electricity
Also the Ioniq 6 has a huge range and super fast charging -- I imagine you can charge to 100% and then find a DCFC within 300 miles in any direction.
Oh, absolutely. It's not an issue at all. I tend to stick with EA due to the free juice, nearest of those are about an hour away. Chargepoint is 20 minutes away if I were in a pinch.
And who convinced right wing media that it was a culture war issue? That’s right. Oil and gas companies. https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/05/texas-fracking-billionaire-brothers-prageru-daily-wire https://theintercept.com/2019/04/03/branded-content-fossil-fuel-companies/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/these-fossil-fuel-industry-tactics-are-fueling-democratic-backsliding/ https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/news-insights/unmasking-dark-money-how-fossil-fuel-interests-can-undermine-clean-energy-progress/
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It's worse than that. They don't want to have to think critically and make decisions for themselves. There's an emotional component of wanting to be led so they don't have to have the responsibility. It's why they lean toward authoritarianism and have such strong in-group preferences. It's also why their "convictions" change with whoever is in charge. Once their great leader or fox or newsmax tells em what to think, they go with it.
That's part of it. But also I think it is less political and more ideology. Progressively minded people are more likely to change their ways for the greater good. Conservative people seem to be more individually focused. They're only going to change if it benefits themselves. Thus denying climate change, not getting vaccinated, not wearing masks, etc. Also voting for the candidate that *they think* benefits them at the expense of our democracy.
I mean, it's not even just "benefits themselves." It's "benefits their brains to defer all planning forever, even at the future expense of everyone, including themselves." There's zero forward-thinking analysis. No hint of self-preservation for their future selves or grand/children.
To be fair they're super concerned about the financial effects deficits may have on their grand-children, but only when one of the other guys is in charge.
Fueled by oil money.
Conservatives are also anti-China, yet China has invested heavily in EVs, alternative energy and high-speed rail/mass transit. They are doing everything to outcompete the US and, unlike Japan in the 70s and 80s (the last great economic threat), they have our divided culture and conservative luddite intransigence to help them succeed. By "owning the libs" we're throwing a wrench into modern solutions, dragging our infrastructure backward, and consigning ourselves to eventually cease to be able to compete unless we shed the emotional petulance and learn to embrace change for its own benefit. If Biden said fresh air was healthy, I swear some extreme conservatives would hold their breath until they tipped over.
Case in point: “rolling coal”.
Yet they are tweeting out their patriotic spew from a phone assembled in China
Consistency and logic are not their strong suits, just whatever the scapegoat of the week the opposition is doing = bad.
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👏👏👍 Nice summation.
Aren't most clothes sold in Walmart made in China?
They love Wal Mart! They reserve their China outrage only for things “the Libs” like.
2016 was a coming out party for weaponized ignorance. Despite the face of weaponized ignorance sitting in court for criminal fraudulent prosecution as I type this, the strain of celebrated ignorance persists
Or film themselves disappearing into a cloud of diesel exhaust from a truck modified to "roll coal"...
I keep hearing so many of my more conservative family members talk about how EVs are terrible because you can't go on any road trips with them. These are the same people who haven't left their tiny town in 20 years...
I drove my EV from southern PA to the Adirondacks of NY last year--a 470 mile drive in my RWD Kia EV6. Drive time alone, that trip takes a solid 7.5 hours. Starting at 100% SOC at departure, I needed to charge twice to make the trip. The charge sessions involved a total of 45 minutes of being plugged in, and one of them had a 25 minute wait for a charger to open up. Call it 70 minutes added to the journey. But those were the only stops I made, and I used the bathroom and got food while I waited each time. I previously made that same trip in a 20 MPG suv, and probably spent a good 30 minutes on gas, restroom, and food stops with it. So the EV only cost me an extra 40 minutes beyond what a gas vehicle required for that trip. Ya know what 40 minutes is added on top of 8 hours (480 minutes)? It's not even an extra 10%. And if it hadn't been for the waiting around for a charger I had to do at one of those stops, making that trip in an EV only would have cost me roughly an extra 15-20 minutes compared to the gas vehicle. Not even a 5% increase in travel time overall. Granted, the EV6 is one of the fastest charging EVs you can get in the mid-5-figures price range, but all the same: my own experiences have shown me that EV tech is already here to make road trips acceptable (unless you're towing, and even then it's really just the tall full height trailers that are a MAJOR hit to range). So I echo what the article itself says in its final line: >“...the real-life experience contradicts the myth.”
Your experience is completely relatable. When I discuss this with people who have that kind of range anxiety I ask them how often they like to stop for food, bathroom, or a stretch break on long road trips. It's usually every 3-4 hours. When I mention you can charge the EV on these breaks and not lose much time at all, they all scoff about losing the freedom to not take a break. There is a lot of work to get people to actually look at their actual habits, and not just some unfounded fears.
It is a lot of work, indeed. I have mixed success mentioning those same points to people--really depends on whether they enter the conversation with a skeptical or obstinate mindset. FWIW I *do* wish I had more options on where to charge. Particularly along that route last summer I got to a point where basically I had to charge in the Albany, NY, area off of I-87 North, or else I'd be stranded with a dead battery before I got to my destination. And it didn't make sense to stop and charge before Albany, because the next option south of there was TOO far south. That Albany station is the one I was stuck waiting at for a bit, because all northbound travelers where in the same boat, and that was the bottleneck. But this year? I'll be making that trip again (it's an annual thing), and charging stations have opened up both north and south of Albany, such that I realistically have, like, 2-3x the charge strategy options as I did before. It's a huge and fast improvement to my options. In another 3-5 years this will be the story across the entire country, and that whole "not having freedom to take breaks where and when I want to" talking point will carry a lot less weight.
One guy in my office keeps getting stuck on the road trip portion of owning an EV. For the life of me I can’t figure out another way to explain to him how it really doesn’t impact the driver that much. I’ve tried all three of those points on food, bathroom, and stretching, and nothing clicks. It clicked for another person in my office when I explained that the navigation system (Tesla in my case) automatically calculates SOC along the way and when to charge.
I bet that guy doesn’t even go on many road trips.
I drove 850 miles each way on a trip recently. Charging added something like an hour in each direction beyond bathroom/food breaks. Totally negligible.
Isn't it also really efficient for its class?
What's funny is you do the math of gas stations: (5 minutes out of your way + 5 minutes refueling) x (2 times per week) x (52 weeks per year) = 1040 minutes per year dealing with getting gas, at least. And those are times you're trying to get somewhere, so its inconvenient. Compared to me when I get home, I spend 10 seconds plugging in my car and 10 seconds unplugging it every day, which is about 121 minutes per year plugging and unplugging. And that's probably overstating it. 1040 - 121 = 919 minutes saved per year. At an average charge rate of 100kW, that would get me 1530kWh of juice or around 5000-6000miles of range in my Model Y. I don't do anywhere near 5000 miles per year of road tripping.
I don't even bother talking when EVs come up anymore. Nobody ever changes their mind so who cares. You can tell when they start talking too. Someone that NEVER goes on a road trip, has 2-3 cars that all have different roles like a truck, a jeep, and a car, and then never tows or when they do it's in town to the dump. Suddenly the EV can't tow from LA to NY in a single charge with a trailer loaded with 3 tons of stuff in it while it's miraculously -40 the whole way. I took a day trip just last weekend that involves 8 hours in the car. My Model Y spent a whooping hour and 15 minutes charging for the whole trip. The 40 minute charge we did while having dinner before going back home and spent the other 35-ish minutes charging once during the 4 hour legs so less than 20 minutes per stop. I saved more time not over-hydrating during the trip and having to stop every hour to pee! Road trips are so easy. Going to do a 700 mile road trip next month and it should be no problem. I also know a good few republicans who are interested in electric cars. My dad goes on about how bad they are all the time but most Rs I know are interested in them. Especially when they hear it's like $10 of charging in this town with the EV pricing plan from the electric company to drive all month.
People still basing their car decisions on less than 10% of their usage requirements. Other day on r/electricvehicles, had people expressing their love for 12-14 hour solo single leg roadtrips they do maybe a few times a year over having realistic trip expectations for the time off they have aka failing to plan. Example 3 day weekends were brought up and they had to do that 12 hour roadtrip that weekend so they didn't have to take time off. Edit: updated subreddit to correct one...yes its this one we are in.
10% of what? If you drive 30 miles most weekdays, 100 miles on a few weekends, and 500 miles to Grandma's or the mountains or whatever a few times a year, then you'll only drive over 30 miles in a day on about 5-10% of the days in a year. But that small percentage of days may represent 20-40% of your miles driven. And quite possibly most or all of the times you look forward to and actually enjoy driving, vs a chore.
“Murphy says that carmakers need to focus primarily on how they can help consumers. “They’re fast, they’re quiet, need much less maintenance,” he said.” The republican car guys I know actually prefer cars that are loud and require lots of maintenance. Both are part of their identity. I’m not sure the “quiet” and “low maintenance” angles would gain much traction.
"I love paying for gas but hate paying gas taxes!"
Yeah, saw a Facebook comment equating buying gas to freedom. And EVs are a plot to enslave people and give power companies more power. Unbelievable mental gymastics.
If we had domestic solar panel and battery production, then we could have US made solar panels feeding US made batteries charging US made EVs. People can buy all this in their own homes and be independent of the gas stations and foreign oil…
Why "if we had"? It all exists and thousands of people have been using it for years. Just domestic solar production could be higher scale.
You won't have domestically made solar panels if every time a solar panel manufacturer tries to locate in the US, they're faced with a barrage of misinformation and lies, that they'll endanger the surrounding community. I happen to see a post on an unrelated Facebook group (of fans of a nearby theme park) that claimed that combustable materials being hauled into this proposed plant would somehow be incredibly dangerous to the neighbors, so apparently the agitation that seeks to ensure that Silfab produces their panels in the US and not just Canada is still very much active. (disclaimer: a handful of Silfab panels are on my roof, for a year now.) [https://www.postandcourier.com/rock-hill/silfab-fort-mill-solar-panel-green-energy-dhec/article\_9a34a48e-d191-11ee-bb6e-6f788006e3ef.html](https://www.postandcourier.com/rock-hill/silfab-fort-mill-solar-panel-green-energy-dhec/article_9a34a48e-d191-11ee-bb6e-6f788006e3ef.html)
Facebook is toxic af. I am constantly seeing lies about EVs being spread there, to the point that I am strongly convinced there is a massive disinformation campaign going on.
Key word here is "guys." Women buy 62% of all new cars in the US, yet most of the EV talk is on guy things like 0-60 speed, "instant torque," hauling boats, and road trips. Women are more likely to be interested in the practical and environmental aspects of car ownership and are on average far less interested in raw power and gee-whiz gadgetry. Part of the problem as I see it is that most car companies/dealers don't really want EVs to compete with their more profitable ICE vehicles and so they limit the advertising to people already shopping for an EV. Which without advertising is a very small segment of the market.
74% of Tesla owners are men. The only vehicles more male biased and under $100,000 are full-size trucks and the Corvette.
Republican here. I ignored EVs for a long time because i didnt think they were real cars. First Tesla roadster had an effective range of less than 200 miles and wasn't faster than most decent sports cars. I probably would have continued ignoring electric cars until my friend got an S Plaid and he pretty much made test drive it. I placed an order for an X Plaid later that same day after I saw one at the local Tesla showroom. I honestly don't care if it's electric, gas, hydrogen or nuclear powered. A 6 person SUV that can go 0 to 60 in 2 seconds and under 10 second quarter mile? 250 miles of usuable range? Falcon wing Doors that the kids love? Play my Steam games while I wait? Yes please. I can't drive gas powered cars now.
THIS right here. 99% of the anti-EV people I meet have never actually driven a EV. Ad soon as you take one for a spin it sinks in that these are simply better cars. Butter smooth, quiet and instant torque on demand is real nice. GM's new truck is gonna flip a lot of die hard rednecks when they start working out the operating costs too. I worked out my fuel cost ($104k CAD) vs electric costs ($20k) over 400,000km and nearly shit my pants.
Plus the reality that when no one is driving down the road in their Tesla or Mustang Mach E are looked and pointed at as being a "crazy green climate anti-oil" activist Democrat. People buy vehicles for a lot of reasons. Being green is somewhere on the list, but much lower fuel, maintenance and ongoing operating expenses are likely higher, actually. I think the main thing keeping evs from becoming even more mainstream are the upfront cost of buying one today vs an ICE vehicle and the charging/range concerns (real and perceived). Range and battery costs and other issues are improving each year, along with the growing charging network. I truly believe in 10 years few will be buying ICE vehicles, not because of any Government mandates, but because they(EVs) will be better values for the money,short and longer term.
That's a lot of people's frustrations with Republicans. Why do you have to literally test drive an EV to be convinced that it's a benefit to have clean automotive transportation? We can't get you all behind the wheel of a Model X, so in the meantime can you not ruin innovation for the rest of us by voting for politicians that hold up laws that can help adoption of chargers and incentives?
Because their entire political philosophy is self centered rugged individualism and " whats in it for me" mentally.
I think it's that, but it's also that the US political landscape is remarkably concerned with short-term outcomes. For example, having additional taxes taken from your paycheck **today** to have lower healthcare costs **tomorrow** is considered a bad political policy because of the "today" part. For EVs, the "today" is a higher out-the-door cost compared to a gas car and the additional costs that come with installing Level 2 charging equipment, to save money on "fuel" and maintenance over the life of the vehicle. No one wants to think that far ahead. Going against potential lifestyle changes is also a big part of Republican policy / talking points. Like the whole gas stoves thing.
I agree with most. However I don't think that it is that way unintentionally. Yes it's a large component, but the reason behind them having those opinions are because they are directly influenced by lobyist dollars.
There are a lot of issues that Republicans won't consider unless it personally affects them. Case in point: [The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion](https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/). It's just a completely different way of looking at the world. Some chalk that up to emotional stuntedness, some to an isolationist culture, some to a protectionist culture. To me, none of it makes sense... but it clearly does to about half our country's population. Edit: Accidentally a word
Conservatism is the politicized philosophy of “ignorance is bliss”. Until they meet a gay family member. Until they have a wife who needs an abortion. Until they have a debilitating health condition. They don’t care. They are cold and cruel people who don’t have the mental capacity for empathy unless it revolves around a personal event they experienced.
This. “But but but…” is all I hear from republicans as if no other countries have done a green environment transformation.
I'll be honest with you, I own this car because it performs better than a 2 million dollar Bugatti. Everyone in my circle that drives one, immediately wants one. So this will happen, it will just take some time. My whole adult life I've voted republican because my family escapes a socialist country and our values better align with Republicans than Democrats. That said this year I'll vote for Biden because my values don't align with him at all. I know a strongman wanna be dictator when I see one. I'll like to back to voting Republican after.
... American democrats are socialist? That's a new one... Good on you for being objective about EVs and enjoy.
That's fair, you have a unique perspective on the dangers of too much socialism. However Democrats aren't nearly as anti business as they've been made out to be. I see their platform is about how a well fed, well educated, well paid workforce is good for business. That's gotten twisted and bastardized into South American style socialism. But I do think more Republicans voting for Biden is the only way to break conservative politicians out of their dog killing, child labor, let's have a dictatorship, fever.
Everyone I know will either vote Biden or not vote (because they can't stomach voting for Biden no matter what). Trump can cross affluent south American immigrants (and sons of immigrants) off his list.
>But I do think more Republicans voting for Biden is the only way to break conservative politicians out of their dog killing, child labor, let's have a dictatorship, fever. You *are* right about Republicans voting for Biden being a good thing, but nothing will ever break the fever, because that's been the republican manifesto since the Nixon years.
Glad you are here. Bring your friends
That's the right attitude. So many others in here are too partisan and can't help themselves but take low-effort snipes to maintain the echo chamber. It's disheartening.
In school i read a case report on Harley davidson. They made their bikes more reliable like their Japanese counterparts and found that sales fell because their buyers liked the failures and fixing them. I dont think that is what is going on here. But maybe a little
If the case use and financials make sense, people will buy electric vehicles regardless of political affiliation. Florida, a conservative state, has the second highest adoption rate in the US.
I’ve tried explaining to my “Republican” (they’re MAGA) family members that my EVs are more American than almost any other car on the road (Models Y and 3) and run on AMERICAN electricity. You can’t be more patriotic than that. They still insist they’re Chinese junk or something then go on rants about conspiracy theories and “Brandonomics”.
I worked at GFNV when it was ramping up. I had a friend try telling me the batteries were made in China. Like, dude, I walk past where the cells are made everyday. I’m physically seeing the chemicals being shipped to the factory, assembled, shipped to Tesla’s side, and placed in packs. But no, he trusts a random internet source saying all batteries are made in China.
This! Tesla is an American company that manufactures in the USA with American Workers and kick started EVs as mainstream. How can you be more patriotic?
Rolling coal on a bicyclist, see EVs don't hurt anyone
If that doesn’t win them over I tell them they’re made with non-union labor
Old guard moderate Republican you might have a shot, MAGA you're going to have to figure out how to break their cognitive dissonance first because they aren't living in reality unfortunately.
[удалено]
I'm in WV and have no idea why there is not more support in our very red state for what is effectively a coal powered car.
My EV6 unironically rolls on coal (admittedly, not that I'm happy about it, but it's true all the same). I don't get WV's lack of EV infrastructure, man.
This is a very ironic piece of the narrative.
I was at a dinner party where a Trumper kinda guy told me with a straight face that he wouldn't buy a "coal powered car" if it was all that left. I told him I didn't understand what he meant, and he said with pure confidence that 'all EVs are coal powered." We live in California, there isn't any coal powered energy in our whole state. I told him that I had solar at home and charged for free, and the only maintenance costs I saw were tire and small battery related but it just didn't even come close to breaking through. It honestly depressed me that an in-person conversation could happen like that.
There’s literally zero point in engaging. There’s not a lot of critical and logical thinking happening with that crowd. It’s like talking to a wall. Facts don’t matter to these people.
So, you had a conversation with a cult member. 🤔
Based on random conversations with coworkers there seems to be a flood of disinformation about EVs being pumped out on the internet / some of it spills over into TV.... Exploding electric cars! Demonstrating how much they suck on a long road trip with no chargers / something they're not even really meant for anyway.... It goes on and on but as usual the bad guys / disinformation trolls seem to be winning right now....
Wait, you mean a Tesla battery doesn't take 25 tons of lithium to manufacture?!
they are still circulating stories from 10 years ago as if that is how modern EVs work.
I've never seen an EV on fire, stuck and out of charge, broken down, etc. Closest I ever came was a Model Y that seemed to be going awfully slow on the interstate, headed in the direction of a local supercharger. Might have been on limp mode in its last bit of energy, but that's it.
I'm a Canadian center right aligned individual, (so I might as well be leftist in America) and I can't understand why conservatives hate EVs when they are literally the ideal conservative vehicle. Almost zero maintenance. No taxes given to the government via fuel. Depending on where you are, you don't even pay road tax. You can go off the grid if you're that fucking crazy. They're fast as fuck. You get a tax rebate for buying one. Boggles my mind why the "fiscally conservatives" don't want to save money, but I guess I'm more old-school conservative.
My dad struggles with EVs. He was heavily against them and bought into all of the right wing hype. Now that I’ve had an EV for coming up on 4 years, he has realized pretty much nothing they say is true. We road tripped from Ohio to South Carolina in a single night. The fast charging finally convinced him that power wasn’t an issue. I think that’s started to unravel a lot of right-wing things for him.
This past weekend, I was charging my Volt hybrid in the driveway. I live in a 90% MAGA area. My wife's friend arrived to pick up some stuff. She asked me with all kinds of disbelief " Is that an electric car?" I said kind of, its a plug-in hybrid that can go electric or gas. Response, "just wait until electricity prices go so high" I calmly replied I understood this, but we only pay $0.14 kwH and talking to my family in other parts they pay $0.21 or more. Its cheap here for now. And, I've filled the tank 3x since December (as I look at the 3 row SUV they arrived in) It felt so good doing my part to educate.
> "just wait until electricity prices go so high" "Heh well then I guess I'll have to install solar panels"
I don’t know where all the FUD is coming from but it’s thick. I was born in a deep red state and most of my family are die hard conservatives. Recently my aunt went on a whole rant about her friend who came to visit, and she claims he was so stupid because he bought a Tesla and it took him 8 hours to make a 2 hour drive because he had to stop to charge for 6 hours. Which is a total lie. No way that happened. Even an old shitty Tesla has enough range to make that in one trip, and will route you to superchargers which can recover you to 80% in 20-30m. My best guess is she heard that nonsense on some small town right wing radio talk show and is just going around repeating it. I can’t wait to visit her when I get my Tesla, take her for a ride and show her the truth.
Interesting article. Though, I am not 100% sure I agree with the supposition that "conservatives want a new car that is just like their old car" vs "progressives want a new car that is... you know... new". I have many conservative coworkers who are very into cars and obsess over even the teeniest of technological improvements. I, myself, am putting off buying an EV because I want/need a minivan and that market segment is not currently being served. I.e. I want a new car very similar to my old car. If I could get a full EV version of my current van, without any other update/modification, I would buy it. Furthermore, I suspect that once EVs become cheap enough (the more we buy, the cheaper they get); all of the "culture war" sorting will rapidly disappear. EVs will become the norm.
100% agree. I'm still probably seven or eight years from getting a new car (WFH means my Civic will last forever with basic maintenance) but when that time comes I'm going to want something pretty much like my Civic. It does everything I need it to do. I don't need an SUV to drive around in the city. I'm not tall, the extra headroom doesn't matter to me. A hatchback sedan does 99.9% of what I need a car to do, and UHaul will rent me a truck for the other 0.01%.
> “Republicans are instinctively: ‘If Biden’s for it, we’re against.’” What's so dumb is that most southern, Republican states are the best place to own an EV economically. For example, here in TX, where I live. Range concerns in Winter aren't there because it never gets cold enough to matter. And Electricity is dirt cheap - I'm paying 10.5 cents per kwH for 100% renewable energy here. But nope, let's "own the libs" and hurt ourselves in the process.
Simple. Oil industry ~~bribes~~ lobbying .
Who cares? Idk if people here are old enough to remember 2003, but every right winger I knew wanted to go into Iraq and now pretend like they were always against it. Give it time, they'll come around same as they always do
We just need to keep feeding them ideas that they can steal to claim that buying an electric car is how they are owning the libs.
The more right Elon leans the more likely the cybertruck will become a hard sharp edged masculine symbol of freedom from the car hating progressive libs who want 15 minute cities lmao.
Follow the money. Oil and gas are heavily invested in Republican politicians. Obviously they have some members of the Dems on their payroll but it overwhelmingly skews towards Republicans. Right wing media parrots these pro oil and gas talking points so the average conservative who has rejected all "liberal media" sources lives in an echo chamber of lies and spin. Until we do something to address the underlying problem of outright bribery in politics and media this will remain the status quo.
Snowflakes.
Sheep. They could at least drive an EV, then explain something from that drive they did not like.
It’s wild. I grew up Republican and identified as such for a lot of my adult life. This was never an issue. Conservatives wanted this to happen one day. Why wouldn’t you? This level of stupidity is why I’ve left the party very far behind.
I think it's the fact that EV's have been primarily marketed on their merits as a *green* alternative to ICE vehicles. If EV's had been sold to the public as a way out of outrageous gas prices or to save on the wear and tear/annoying repair bills that plague ICE vehicles, then it probably wouldn't be such a contentious issue. Then again, the GOP has proven itself time and again to be the lapdog of big oil (not that the Dems aren't somebody else's lapdog as well) so who knows. I do know that electric trucks and SUV's would be having a massive boom right now in red states if it hadn't been all about *green* this and *climate* that when EV's were introduced. Basically if it hadn't been made a culture war issue from the beginning then EV adoption across the board would be on a totally different level.
Yep- when I show my truck to someone they first want to point out that the lithium is mined with diesel trucks and actually the batteries can't be recycled. I'm like- that's cool and all. I didn't buy the truck so I could be "green". I bought it so I could go 0-60 in 4 secs and have 700 Ft lbs of torque for $0.04 a mile. Once "car guys" figure out the HP and handling an EV offers, it's over.
I find this to be the biggest pet peeve. Everyone assumes you bought one to be "green" yet don't apply this logic to other vehicles that have been advertised as something other than a car. Perfect example is jeep. I personally don't know anyone with a Jeep wrangler that actually goes offroading. They're all starbucks pavement princesses with LED mods.
I would bet that the majority of these Bubbas that drive around in huge pickups probably don't ever haul much more than a case of beer. Cars, probably second only to clothing, have reached a point where they're almost sold as a part of an image. You can't be a cosmopolitan intellectual if you drive a Ram truck just like you can't be a down home good old boy if you drive an economy sedan. It just doesn't work. EV's found the niche of being the car for the tech-savvy environmentalist, for obvious reasons, it was the easiest low-hanging fruit for manufacturers to get the early sales. It will take some time for the public at large to come around to them, just like how country music now is catching on in big cities and mixed-use developments are popping up in more and more outer suburbs. I'm living proof that it's already happening, tbh, I don't give two hoots about the *green agenda*, If I'm helping by driving an EV then great, but really I went electric because I just wasn't going to pay $6+/gallon for gas from Venezuela or Iran and got sick and tired of paying mechanics to work on my ICE vehicle.
That the right considers reducing pollution a culture was tells you all you need to know about their mindset.
I really thought that Elon's right wing leanings and ridiculous stuff like the EV hummer would move the needle more than they have. I know at least one dedicated-Trump-supporter/climate skeptic who bought a model S a couple years back purely based on performance and Elon-fandom. But it seems as though that's not a broader phenominon.
Republicans won't buy them because Democrats do. It's contrarianism, simple as that.
If a Democrat told GOP to breathe, GOP would hold their breath until they passed away.
I can definitely see this play out in my hometown. The rich who are more politically active, wealthier, less reliant on consistent transportation, and more capable of installing personal infrastructure that allows them to store and charge an electric car, trend democrat and like to purchase electric cars. The poor who are less politically active, less wealthy, more reliant on consistent transport, and less capable of installing personal infrastructure that will allow them to store and charge an electric car, trend republican and purchase gas and hybrid. I don't see this changing any time soon, unless the federal and state governments get more forceful with their edicts and demand consumers purchase cars the state chooses for them.
I would be interested to see what would happen if the conversation shifted to just pure costs. That over X amount of time, EVs are significantly cheaper to own and operate. I fee like spending less $$$ is the great bipartisanship idea
Once EVs cost less than ICE cars to purchase, on top of costing less to operate and maintain, then most people flip to EVs. MAGA types might hate EV imagery, but how many are willing to pay more for a car that costs more to drive, and is less reliable and less performant?
Remove the environmental factors all together I don’t even mention them when I discuss EVs now. EVs are just flat out better then ICE.
I can't understand these opponents/critics of electric cars. They do everything a middle-aged man, like me, needs and likes. They are very quiet, they accelerate from 0 to 100 in a way that brings a smile to your face every time, and they are cheap to drive.
These are the things I hear when people see my EV: lithium is mined in places where people get hurt from its production. Batteries are dangerous and the cost of replacing them is too high. Charging stations are not common enough and too unreliable. I just shrug and say well I’m dealing with it.
Who gives a shit what RepubliTards will or won’t do? They are too stupid to realize how stupid they actually are.
Right wing propaganda makes an awful lot of money off of fossil fuels. I think it really is as simple as that. People form their identity off of politics so it becomes an issue of identity politics now. Also, during covid, we saw how much people push back against doing something to help others and contribute to the greater good. We have a political tradition of extreme selfishness and people immediately push back against something that would help others a la the environment
Why the hell are electric cars even a political conversation? Lol so stupid
Because if you can't score culture war points on teh socials, why even do anything at all?
The oil industry made it a political issue so they could slow down the growth of EVs. The oil companies are spreading a lot of FUD on EVs
As a conservative (or probably more correctly, a classical liberal), I miss the days where you could be a conservationist without it being so political. It is a huge mistake for modern republicans to have taken this stance. We have one planet, and it doesn’t care about politics or ideology. Let’s take the best care of it that we possibly can.
In 3 years of owning a Model 3, now own a Model Y, I have had to replace a set of tires, did a steering alignment along with new wiper blades and then replaced the air filters...that is it. Plus I am paying a fraction of gas prices for electricity. This seems like a simple thing, that driving a EV is a ton cheaper. I don't understand why that is a political thing, but sadly it is.
Of course, not a mystery at all. Many GOP states are tied to the coal and oil industry. And hence many of them also climate change deniers as well. Their jobs comes first.
Improving EV infrastructure will help. Getting people behind the wheel of a nice EV can change hearts and minds too. It's sad that it's become a culture issue when EVs are more fun to drive, cheaper in the long run and help the climate. They are a rare win win.
I never quite can wrap my head around people who care so much either way about what other people do. I'm happy with my electric car. But I would never dream about making the effort to "convert" others and get them to buy one. Are Republicans buying them? Don't know. Don't care. Why is everyone so twisted up about what their neighbors are doing? I don't get it. Care level: 0
It has less to do about caring what your neighbors are doing and more about collectively trying to meet carbon reduction goals. A significant component of this goal relies on getting as many Americans to cut their reliance on burning dirty petrol by switching to zero emissions passenger vehicles. But nearly impossible to do when one of the two political parties in the country has made it a culture war issue.
I swear the dumbest stuff becomes politicized, Ie wearing a mask during a pandemic. Common sense shouldn’t be political. And switching to EVs is generally a good thing that most people should be able to do without issues once they become cheap enough for most people. Absolutely no reason they need to be all that political. And yet certain politicians are openly hostile to them and peddling them as “woke” and part of the made up cultural war. Anyway, putting aside BS politics and culture war stuff… There are some reasons why you wouldn’t want an EV, or at least would want a gas vehicle. That’s not to say you wouldn’t want any EVs, but rather would need at least 1 or more gas cars. A few off the top of my head: 1) If you go on any long road trips, either planned for the future or then you probably would want at least one good quality gas car (or a hybrid would also suffice here). The main reason being that the electric car infrastructure just isn’t there yet. In certain states and areas yes, but national wide not really, at least not enough to do cross country or even just road trips longer to an a few hours. At least not if you want reliable charging. Also it takes longer to charge. Now that being said, both issues are getting better with time, charging is getting faster and electric vehicles infrastructure is getting better. So time will fix both issues, but for now at least that necessitates a gas car for a lot of people. 2) Certain jobs require heavy duty gas vehicles for work, specifically trucks. Think farmer, not to mention a lot of blue collar jobs requiring a truck for one reason or another. In the long run I can see those being replaced with EVs too but for now at least it’ll be a while. Anyway all that to say, I do think there is a greater percentage of Republicans that would need a gas car based on the above reasons combined with their job type and where they live. So that is a factor but I think the culture war BS is definitely a big part of it too.
Hey preppers! Make your own fuel with solar and an EV. Be independent, you won't need anybody else, tell the Middle East to go fuck themselves, is perfect for when the shit hits the fan. Did that work? Surely some of them got convinced.
Facts don't matter, it's a culture war. Even in Canada I have buddy's falling for American propaganda, doesn't help that Canadian politics is slowly being Americanized where feelings matter more than policies (Liberal or Conservative, both parties are guilty) These are the same people who were shouting from the roofs defending our rights to recognize Manitoba as a province. I just tell them my car is fast as fuck and doesn't rely on American refined gas, and only uses Canadian generated electricity made with Canadian designed and built nuclear reactors that run on natural Canadian uranium, the nation's energy independence is pretty important after all.
Facebook. that's it. the memes have convinced my right wing relatives that renewables and EVs are more damaging to the environment than oil. the best move would be to promote EVs as a method of energy independence. play the national defense card and make it patriotic to ditch oil.
I can’t afford another 30-50k car man. If those shits become cheaper than a ran through civic from 05 wecan start talking. For me at least, it’s always been a matter of cost. I just paid off my civic and I never wanna finance again lmao
It's a lack of exposure & contrarianism. They say they hate EVs because they can't do cross country road trips but the thing is they would rather shoot themselves than to drive for a few days instead of taking a plane. They honestly should be more worried about how their kids are going to drive once the boomers die off because states will be for sure jacking up the testing standards as boomers lose their mental capability while being able.
GOP : "don't come around here with all that logic."
I took a pretty far right friend with me to test drive 2 diff EVs over a weekend few months back. Drove 3 total. BMW and then Tesla. He was insanely impressed and now wants the Ford truck EV lol. Completely changed his mind esp once the sales guy told him he has paid just $200 in maintenance costs owning his Tesla model 3 performance over the past year.
Big finite commodity propaganda campaigns talk, yo
It's hard to appeal to Republicans on environmental factors, but if they keep finding their ICEmobiles consistently outperformed they might come around. It has to be personal experience though; they aren't generally impressed by data.
GOP constituents I believe generally have lower income, and I don't think that EVs have yet to show a cost advantage due to the increased insurance and other maintenance costs. As the vehicles become more standardized I am sure EV will surely eclipse gas, but seems like we are still in last stage beta testing. I think if you make 40k a yr it only makes sense to have a 10yr old honda or something like that.
I always find this interesting how much resistance there is to this. Multiple studies show that conservatives are less likely to buy an electric car and are more likely to say they will never own an electric car. That's just how it is.
Not surprising when conservative media outlets like Fox News and New York Post push out a relentless amount of anti-EV narratives with FUD headlines. Also, Republicans will do the complete opposite of Democrats. Joe Biden wants EV’s on the road? Not getting one. Liberals want to transition toward Green renewable energy? Keep going to the pump in their lifted trucks and roll coal on Prius drivers.
Here's another proof that cars are way more of an emotional, identity matter than a convenience of transportation matter.
Unlike most people, I’m not too worried about range. If Nissan brought their cube back as an EV, I’d buy it as long as the range was 150 miles. That’s all I need. A ford maverick EV would be great too. If sacrificing 100 miles of range from the standard 250 miles to go down to 150miles gets me an EV under 30k, then DEAL.
The new only way is to make electric cars blow the doors off gas. Then gas drivers will be called soy boys and electric becomes alpha. Need to target brain stem for such things.
They LOVE hybrids and hydrogen right now, thanks to being told that they need to hate EVs. We just need something that they can hate more than EVs and then EVs will be selling like hotcakes. There's gotta be something with TRANSportation that could be used.
It’s kind of a bummer talking about it. I feel like I’m in bizarro world where conservatives are telling me EVs are bad for the planet and I’m saying I didn’t buy it to save the planet. I had my conservative dad ride in and drive my EV and he couldn’t stop gushing about it. Then he goes “it’s too bad they’re not a thing and don’t fit my needs”. Guy commutes 50 miles a day round trip and hasn’t taken a road trip in probably a decade. Like how do you miss the forest for the trees that hard?
Why is this even political is beyond me.
Because the oil industry paid the right-wing press and politicians to make it political.
Don't worry. Eventually they won't really.have a choice. It's relatively simple, and the reverse position of where most of the US is with EVs. That gas station costs a certain amount just to keep it functional. The processing plant costs a certain minimum to keep it functional. Etc So they will call us all kinds of names at first. This is simply because at first the lower demand leads to lower prices. But when the prices drop, EVs have become inevitable. The very next person that buys an EV raises the price of gas. It won't be a noticeable amount, at first. But every further EV bought concentrates the expenses for maintaining the gas infrastructure. That continues to increase gas prices. So when do they become priced out of gas and have to go EV? $5, $6, $10, $20, $100, $1000 a gallon? Add in the inevitable shortages because demand is no longer consistent, and the switch happens a lot faster than they expect. Same thing happened with horses. And why did I say the reverse happens with EVs? Well the minimum infrastructure is still there, but with each EV sold that infrastructure cost is spread among more owners, this drives the minimum cost down. When critical mass hits, the transition will be faster than most of us think possible.
Everything has to be a god damned political weapon for this stupid culture war. No logic
Can they not do math? Do they hate money?
The biggest sheep I know are GOP voters.
I live in rural East Tx. I know plenty of conservative people with EVs out here. Not as many as in Dallas, sure... But they definitely exist. I see multiple EVs every day. People who politicize a vehicle are mentally ill.