dbd33

The gobsmacking awfulness of their lyrics jams them in your head. They're like a Canadian Joe Dolce.

Partially discharged

Wrong Rush song That's Spirit of Radio, apparently a homage to CFNY a station that I don't associate with Rush too much. The 'mighty Q 107' is more of a Rush station.

2112 by Rush is rather tedious.

dbd33

Back with cars. it says here:

New Renault 5 electric car targets £18,500 price tag | Auto Express

that the Clio may now be "a car solely for markets where combustion engines are still allowed". Suggesting that, already, manufacturers are thinking in terms of non-electric cars being a secondary market that can be served by aging models.

Piff Poff

Haha 1936 saw a heatwave in Ontario and Manitoba where Temps were 40c people died.

I do wonder how much emissions will be reduced, the vehicles still need powering. The raw resources will still need to be mined. And then how about the disposal of spent vehicles. 10 years is the supposed life span of the batteries and the replacement costs are prohibitive. The safety of the technicians is also compromised, will that see workshop costs rise?

dbd33

How is the safety of the technicians compromised?

Atlantic Xpat

Climate change denial, right. Not worth arguing about EV's then.
Technicians will have different work than on ICE vehicles. Dealers will have a lesser ongoing service revenue stream. Given that Canadian vehicle manufacturers service schedules are laughably designed to maximise revenue for the dealer, rather than assure the functionality of the the vehicle, that's no bad thing.

Shard

Would production and disposal of batteries become an environmental issue?

dbd33

Yes. But it's less of an issue than pollution from conventional engines and there are a lot of bright minds and corporate resources focused on resolving these problems. We're really at a similar point to when a massive volume of horse shit from delivery vehicles threatened the environment, the problem went away with the shift to petrol engines but they added to the greenhouse gas problem, EVs improve on that but now there's a new problem. C'est la vie, innit?

christmasoompa

More than the batteries in petrol/diesel cars? Which from my vague recollection (we've had electric vehicles for years now) needed replacing quite often.

Piff Poff

at my hubby's workplaceat the moment, if a tech is working on a ev, they are supposed to have a cordon around them and a big rubber pole to push/pull the tech out the way in the event of electrocution.

They are not expecting big sales of EVs in Red Deer. I think they have had one of the new mustang things in, just sitting gathering dust.

Until there are emissions being tested, then I can't see much changing in Alberta.

Piff Poff

The batteries in a ev are huge compared to a car battery in a petrol vehicle.

christmasoompa

Getting smaller all the time though and no worse to dispose of, especially with so many being recycled.

Piff Poff

Here is an article that addresses some of my concerns: cultura.org/evbatteries

I agree there needs to be a shift. I'm just not sold that we are ready for full transition just yet. I dive a small engined manual vehicle. I regularly see huge diesel trucks puffing out smelly black smoke. Until that stops there will be resistance to EVs.

Atlantic Xpat

EV's have not reached inflection point as yet. Currently they are niche - too expensive and lack range for majority of users. That will change. As has been pointed out, no-one builds cars for Canada. So when the greater market (in our case the US) moves to majority of EV's then Canada, even Alberta will have no choice but to follow. I like my gas engined toys & run a large SUV but really wanted to go EV for our second car a couple of years back. The numbers just didn't work out plus local dealers had little interest in supplying even when their brands were promoting EVs. That is changing - partly through government intervention - and partly due to market demand. I think the F150 Lightning is going to be a game changer, much more so than Mr Musk's Cybertruck.

christmasoompa

EV trucks then, they're already out there. The article isn't loading for me, there's lots of misinformation about EV batteries and production out there though so hopefully it's accurate.

I have no idea what the infrastructure is like in Canada (I'm guessing not good if you couldn't go to Calgary and back in an EV), in the UK it's easy and so much cheaper to run. It was an easy choice for us to switch to electric about 7 years ago, although my husband had to have one for his job (he's in the EV industry). I wouldn't go back to a normal car now, even if my husband wasn't Mr EV.