If it was 25 or 30 years ago, I’d say “NO,” but today, we’ve become reliant on technology more than ever. In a way, it’s kinda hard NOT to rely on today’s technology: I mean, look at it. We pretty much do EVERYTHING technologically, with the possible exception of thinking for ourselves: and even THAT could be robotisized eventually! Let’s face it, we built and put ourselves in a technological box, with maybe little hope of getting out. We didn’t outgrow technology, technology outgrew us!! In a way, science fiction writers foretold this happening, but most, if not all of us, ignored it, and called it speculative fiction, saying to ourselves this would NEVER happen to US!! Well, it seems like that is where we are heading, and woe unto us, if it EVER gets to the TERMINATOR stage!!
I think a lot of charging angst is really the fear (rational or not) that an EV cannot be refuelled in five minutes, whereas a petrol/diesel car can. For most folks it is possible to rearrange their routines to charge up each night or at pit-stops, but we’ve grown accustomed to being able to refuel on the fly, so no need to remember end-of-day chores. In the days before cars, horse riders knew they had to tend to their horses before knocking off for the night, and just accepted it…
Now, if an EV came with a solar-panel roof and bonnet so it could recharge in daylight without driver input, that might go some way to reducing the angst!
One of my favorite episodes. 
Enjoying the discussion. Some thoughts come to mind:
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There’s an old saying: “Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics.”
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On several occasions one of my troops would ask me why I and several of my peers relied on a map more often than GPS. Because a GPS with a shrapnel hole in it is a piece of junk. And a map with a shrapnel hole in it is a map.
Technology on the battlefield, no matter how robust, is often overcome by simple things like mud and dust, or a seagull in the engine inlet.
Although technology and the skills to use it in combat are critical assets, you always need to be able to fall back on tools and techniques that do not rely on technology.
3, Technology on the battlefield degrades with time. Sooner or later, the battlefield will devolve into a scene from “The Walking Dead”. No matter how much cool gear they give you, you still need to know how to use a knife and your fists.
Range anxiety is a factor that puts me off electric cars even though I live in Ireland where 400km in any direction will leave needing a boat for the final part of the journey. But I was recently in Switzerland heading for the Gotthard tunnel when it was blocked by an incident so we were all redirected over the top of the Alps into the snow line and heavy cloud. I commented to my wife that I was glad the hire car wasn’t electric because there weren’t many charging stations up there, if any.
But on the way into Switzerland there was an example of being over reliant on technology. The car’s GPS sent us up a very scenic route but it turned out to be closed by the authorities for whatever reason. So back down hill we went and ended up seeing rather more of Switzerland than we needed to. It would never have happened if I’d used a good old fashioned map.
I think we’re already over reliant on technology. I use my phone for everything. I hardly ever have cash and even my bank card rarely leaves my pocket. My holiday was booked on the phone, car rental, the flight, insurance, meals tolls etc etc. I brought a €20 note with me and it remained in my pocket for the entire trip. I consider myself old fashioned but I’ve bought into technology big time. I’m writing this on my phone BTW. I have a laptop somewhere but it’s not as convenient as this thing.
I’m dubious about AI but it’s here and we’ll figure it out.
But we are more vulnerable than we think. The internet is very vulnerable to a bad actor dragging an anchor through the undersea cables or a few well placed charges via submarine.
Humans are always more dangerous than robots. After all didn’t Skynet find that out the hard way?
It’s been tried. It’s just not efficient enough. Unless you want to drive something like this, that a high school in my town built for a competition back in 2015:
True - it can’t run the car. But if constant trickle-charging meant you topped up during lunch even when there was no available charger to plug into it might mean less stress. And as most cars spend hours and hours parked while folks are at work etc, that can make the difference for the home-bound commute. But all of these technologies are improving all the time, so we may be surprised by the capabilities in another 10 or 20 years.
It might be feasible for an EV, but it would be cost prohibitive. I looked it up when I bought my Hybrid Maverick. (Thanks to TacFireGuru by the way) It’ll do the job if you give it enough time, but the juice is not worth the squeeze. As the Maverick generates more electricity than it needs when running in “gas” mode, the battery charges up very quickly.
Now that’s not bad for a vehicle rated at 31 Highway and 41 City.
Basic fieldcraft 101.
Sure EVs aren’t exactly new. But heres a perfect example of technology having to compete in the market. The first automobiles were not all powered by gas. There were actually three options. There were steam powered cars, gasoline powered cars and electrics. The steam car took advantage of old steam engine technology which was already proven. But they took a long time to warm up, before they could run. Gas was well known but difficult to operate and downright dangerous. The owner of an early gas powered car had to understand how to choke the carb and adjust the ignition in order to get it started and make it run. He also had to crank the engine by hand, and if the engine backfired, could easily break his arm. Electric cars were the easiest vehicles to operate, but not very useful outside a city, since electrification wasn’t readily available in the country, during the early twentieth century. The gas engine would see numerous improvements which made operating a gas powered vehicle almost as easy to operate as an electric vehicle, and gas was more efficient than steam, and eventually gas would win out.
Now we are about 100 yrs later and there have been many attempts for electric cars to compete against gas, and gas has always sold more than electric. The reason has never changed. Gas engines have a number of advantages over electric. Namely greater range, an ability to haul loads over a greater range, and ease of refueling.
Now if we had Terminator robots, with real life battery technology. They would only operate for a couple of hours, if that.
Edro
Theres much more to it than just range anxiety. Imagine if you had a gas powered car that had the exact same disadvantages as an electric vehicle…. Would you buy a car that recommended in the owner’s manual that you should only fuel it up to 80%, or on cold days some of your fuel disappeared. Or that it would take about 30 minutes to fill the tank, or after 5 yrs you had to replace the tank at considerable cost because it degrades over time. Would that be the kind of car you’d want to own?
Edro
I own a gas (petrol) car,
my brother owns a Tesla, the type that has
an unholy acceleration …
Taking 5 minutes to pump a full tank of fuel is convenient. Taking 30 minutes at a fast charger is quite inconvenient, especially if you have to wait in a line.
Sure! You could have a solar panel on the roof, but solar panels are low yielding. To rely on solar panels to charge in a reasonable amount of time, you’d need an acre of solar panels and unfortunately, there isn’t enough real estate on the roof of your car. Now if you can wait about a week to recharge, that might be doable
Edro
Those with their own houses will most likely be charging at home, over night.
With the electric grid having more wind and solar power there will be issues
keeping a steady voltage and frequency, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is being
promoted as one of many solutions to balance the grid.
Charge the vehicles when there is too much power in the grid and siphon off
when the grid is underpowered. This balancing “service” is being traded at
“auctions” and the grid owners/operators pay for the service. Large consumers
like industries can “sell” a promise to cut their own power usage.
Large “battery farms” can sell consumption and “production”, a couple of
thousand of EV’s acting as one is a substantial battery farm, especially since
they can react at very short notice, starting a gas turbine takes time …
There was a similar scheme involving solar panels. The pitch went like this. The solar panels would supplement electricity to your home, but during times when your power usage was low and your solar panels were producing excess electricity, the power company would buy back your excess electricity and either credit your account or cut you a check…. It was a scam. No one could be credited for excess energy because solar panels are low yielding sources of electricity, unless you had a few acres of panels.
Charging during off peak hours only makes sense if you don’t have millions of cars plugged into the system at the same time. If they did, off peak hours would suddenly become peak hours and the grid would have to come alive when everyone is asleep. And you won’t have the supplemental power from solar, since solar doesn’t work at night.
Edro
This can be a way to charge drones, robots, and droids remotely.
Here in the UK the national grid copes with sudden demands with a special facility in Wales. Power stations take a few minutes to crank up, so to fill the gap in demand, they have a lake on a hilltop with pipes leading to a lake at the bottom, and turbines in the pipe. When demand peaks they open the sluice and power is almost instant! After the main stations are running they syphon off some juice to pump the water back up hill, ready for the next spike in demand.
But I cannot see electric cars filling that role - they’d have to be plugged in at the right time to be syphoned. That means draining them at night, when they are meant to be charging up! More hydro-electric is needed so power can be made at night when it is needed for all these cars of the future. We are looking at decades of government investment that is needed, at a time when everyone is trying to replace gas with electric cars NOW - rather than letting the change of cars follow the natural timeline of development and thus market demand. I suspect our children will be using mostly electric or hydrogen cars, but most of us on this forum should expect to see gas cars for the rest of our driving careers.
They could also be charging on the parking lot at the workplace …
Load spikes also occur when “everyone” is cooking dinner
or making breakfast.
We have two Tesla’s and also have the charger at home as well as solar panels at home, so we basically pay nothing to charge at home. and traveling can be a little weird, but the car navigation routes you thru the chargers that you need to hit to make it where you are going and with my hip/back issues I do not mind walking around to recover a little.
The thing you need to bring into the discussion is that technology continues to evolve and advance. What you say we are safe from because tech can’t do that…may be true today. However tech continues to advance and will reach the point you fear in time. AI is the same. I believe it was Amazon’s CEO that said AI will be making big changes for them (future layoffs) in the future. Fewer employees needed. What are we going to do with people who no longer will have a job. Idel hands make for trouble. Well we could take those unemployed tech workers and start putting then involuntarily into those jobs the deported migrants have. The irony to go from a top tier job to a bottom tier job. 