Mike Dell's world number 3 8 8 4.
November 1st, 2023. Nap Pod Pomo,
23. That sounded official, didn't it? .
Anyway, yes, I am doing nap pod Pomo again this year.
Uh, just, uh, got done with some, uh, surgery. So I'm, uh,
running left-handed here. had, uh, shoulder surgery, uh,
last Thursday, and I'm recovering quite well.
A little sore, but, uh, otherwise fine.
I'm gonna be in this sling for the next six weeks. So if, uh,
if I sound a little left-handed, that's why . Anyway, so I,
I've had this idea, not an idea.
I've had this subject matter on my mind for quite a while.
And of course, as you know, I'm not the king of consistency.
I am quite inconsistent. But, uh,
we're gonna change that at least for the next 30 days.
And so today I'm gonna talk about electric cars. The,
uh, mainly the difference, you know,
the pros and cons between full electric,
an EV or a plugin hybrid electric,
or pH ev or just a plain old hybrid. Uh,
so I, I got some stuff listed out. Uh, the list that I have, I didn't create,
uh, of pros and cons,
so I probably going to disagree with some of the ,
some of what they came up with here, but, uh, we'll see, we'll see. So, uh,
a little intro says, full electric cars, EVs,
and plugin hybrid electric cars each have their own set of advantages and
disadvantages. Hmm, that's what I just said, wasn't it? Anyway,
some of the pros of a full electric vehicle is number
1 0 0 emissions, and that's bss.
But there, I'll read what they said, and then I'm gonna read what I think,
not read what I think I'm gonna say, what I think. Anyway,
full electric cars produce no tailpipe emissions,
making them environmentally friendly. Well, yeah,
they have no tailpipe emissions, but where does that electricity come from?
You know, so something got burnt or something got reacted,
or something got heated to create that electricity,
regardless of whether it comes outta your tailpipe or not. You know, the,
the, the thing about electric, I think, you know, and, and not being a,
an engineer type, uh,
what I think about electric is, you know, it's gotta come from somewhere. So,
you know, that's, you know, yeah, you're not gonna,
not gonna have any tailpipe emissions. So I guess I can agree with that. Uh,
lower operating costs, electricity is generally cheaper than gasoline,
and EVs typically have fewer moving parts than traditional vehicles
resulting in a, potentially in, oh,
in potentially lower maintenance costs. Well, yes and no.
Yes, it, it can be cheaper to maintain an electric vehicle because, you know,
there's no oil changes,
and generally they're better on brakes because they do regenerative
braking and all that good stuff,
but electricity isn't always cheaper. In fact,
in a lot of places it's more expensive than gasoline. What was it?
The, uh, CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, not the Jim Farley from, uh,
from, uh, WhatsApp with that, that I used to do. In fact,
I'm gonna get him on here this month, hopefully, and, uh,
and maybe do one of those. That'd be fun. But anyway, uh, Jim Farley,
who is the, uh, CEO of Ford Motor Company,
took off in a, uh,
Ford Lightning and experienced some of the pitfalls
of driving an electric vehicle. Not necessarily the cost,
but he did, uh, you know, didn't,
didn't enjoy it as much as he thought he would, which I thought was,
you know, kind of funny. I, like I said, I have nothing against completely ev,
you know, complete EV vehicles,
but they're not for everybody. And, you know,
California's trying to force trying,
they've already passed a thing whereby 2030,
was it that, uh,
there's gonna be no more internal combustion engine vehicles sold
in the state of California. Okay?
That might work out okay, but they have enough trouble keeping their
power grid on as it is, you know, in the summertime, it, you know,
everybody's running AC and whatnot and, you know,
I just don't see how that's going to work for them or anyone really,
you know? And even up here, Northern Michigan, you know,
the EVs don't do as well in the cold as they do in, uh,
70 degree weather or a hundred degree weather. So we'll see,
we'll see. Quiet operation, yes, I agree with that 100%.
EVs are generally quieter than vehicles with internal combustion engines.
I just listened to, uh,
an episode of 20,000 Hertz where they talked about
the,
the noise that is now required of EVs in certain states.
They have to make a noise when they're at parking lot speeds.
And some of those noises are kind of, kind of funny, you know, if I,
if I got to pick the noise, I, I want the, uh,
George Jetson flying car noise, ,
I think that'd be fun anyway. But yes, the EVs are quiet,
instant torque, and that's, you know,
number four on the pros for the full ev uh, you know,
electric motors provide instant torque, which can lead to quick acceleration.
Yeah, they're fast. Uh, I guess that Tesla plaid is, uh,
is something else. Ludicrous mode.
And so that, that I guess would be an advantage,
except for when are you gonna use it? You know, it's,
it's like somebody buying a, a Lamborghini Huan or some, you know,
whatever the new Lamborghini is, uh, to go, you know, well,
it goes 200 miles an hour. I said, well, yeah, but where are you gonna use that?
Same thing with this instant acceleration. It's, it's cool,
it's a party trick. But I don't know if practically,
you know, I guess if you live in a, an area where there's a,
a lot of traffic and stuff, that could be pretty handy. I don't know.
Incentives, uh, that's another thing. Many governments,
uh, around the world, around the country offer tax breaks, rebates,
and other incentives for purchasing an electric vehicle. Yeah,
well, for now, but when all vehicles are electric, you know,
what, what are they gonna do that? Okay?
Reduce dependence on oil using EVs can reduce a country's dependence on
imported oil. Okay? Again,
the electricity's gotta come from somewhere, burning natural gas, coal,
nuke, if it's nuke, and then, okay, I am all for it. But, uh, you know,
a lot of people that are for electric cars are against nuke
and nuclear energy is probably the,
the one way that this would make sense to having, you know,
everybody be on an electric car. And some of the cons,
uh, limited range, some EVs have a limited driving range,
all have a limited driving range. Uh, not just some, uh,
but compared to gasoline vehicles, of course there's limited range. Now,
you know,
you get a fancy Tesla and you're in an area where there's a lot of Tesla
chargers or along, along your route,
there's a lot of Tesla chargers and they're not busy,
and they're all working and, and, and, you know,
you can drive cross country in a Tesla, you know,
and you spend an hour here, spend an hour there charging. And, you know,
it's not significantly different than driving a gasoline
powered vehicle, but tried doing that across Interstate 80. Uh,
I remember between, uh, Laramie, Wyoming, and, uh,
Ogden, Utah that chunked through there.
You can barely get there on one tank of gasoline. I,
I can't imagine an ev doing that, but could happen.
And that's been a long time since I've been out there.
So maybe there are more charging, uh, of course, another one,
another one of the cons is a longer refueling time. Of course,
charging an EV can take longer than filling up a guest. It can. Yeah, it does.
But again, you know,
think you're on our trip and you stop for lunch
or dinner or whatever, just to,
to walk around to hit the restroom, whatnot. Uh, you know,
it may not be significantly longer depending on how you do it, you know,
but when I'm, you know, when I'm on a road trip and I, I want to get somewhere,
you know,
I stop for fuel and while I'm getting fuel or I get
something to eat and I get to, you know, hit the bathroom and all that,
and I'm back in the vehicle, 15 minutes, something like that,
you know, a lot of these, uh, electric cars, you gotta spend, you know,
45 minutes to an hour just to get to the next charging station,
which you're going to do another 45 minutes to an hour of charging time
and fully charge the car could take 3, 4, 5 hours. So, hmm.
You know, uh,
another disadvantage is charging infrastructure while growing ev
charging infrastructure is not as widespread as
gasoline. Wow. I can't read with a crap today. That's okay.
But you get the point. The point is, they don't have it all built out yet.
And, you know, how long is it gonna take to completely build out the,
the charging stations and whatnot? So, you know,
it could be that you get in an area where there's four chargers,
here in Traverse City, I can think of three
electric charging stations, uh, one set of Meyer store,
which is, uh, kinda like a, a Walmart, but a Midwest thing. Uh,
there's some there, there's some at a Burger King here, uh, in town.
And I know there's one other, but I have, I'm not exactly sure where.
But the funny thing is, I go to the one, uh, you know,
go see, go drive by the one my Meyers there, and they have like four chargers,
maybe or six. And every once in a while I'll see a car there,
but I don't see a lot. And on this side of town at the Burger King,
uh, that's a blink charger. And uh,
I think they have four charging stations there.
And I don't see any,
I've never seen a car parked at the EV charger.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but you know, I've never seen it.
Now when I've gone to Columbus for work,
the hotel I stay at has Tesla chargers,
and usually there's at least one Tesla Park there at the hotel. Okay,
yeah. Maybe if I lived in Columbus, that would be a, a viable option.
But living around here, you know,
now I'd probably have a charger set up at home, which, you know,
would be much more convenient and probably would use it. But, uh, again,
you know, there's nothing particularly wrong about these things. It's just,
you know,
there's a particular mission that they work for and some that
not really, uh, let's see,
higher upfront costs. Yeah, that's true.
Although prices are coming down,
EVs can have a higher initial purchase price than a traditional vehicle.
They can, uh, depends, you know, but you know, if you're gonna buy a Tesla,
of course you're gonna, you're gonna pay a lot of extra money for a Tesla.
Tesla's obviously the best of the best, or maybe Rivian,
which is even more expensive. And you know,
I do see a bunch of Rivian around here and Teslas, so I don't, I don't know,
they must charge at home or something.
Or maybe I just don't know where the public chargers are since I'm not in that
market. But, uh, yes, they can be more expensive. Also,
battery degradation. Um, EVs,
you know, the batteries only last so many cycles. You know, it's like your,
you know, your phone, your iPhone or your Android, you know,
after a couple of years, it doesn't hold as much charge as it used to. And,
you know, to change a battery is like changing an engine in a car, you know,
in a gas powered car, you are gonna spend four or six, eight, $10,000 for that.
And, you know, is it worth it? So kind of throws it away.
And that kinda screws up the whole environmental thing too. I,
I read a study somewhere and I, I wish I had it. If I did, if I could find it,
I would put it in the links here. But they say that, uh,
an electric car say, say a Tesla model three
and you bought a brand new Mo Tesla model three,
and you bought a brand new Chevy Suburban with a 6.2 liter
V eight engine in it. Okay? And you bought both of them at the same,
same time. Both of them cost roughly the same amount of money,
maybe a little more for the Suburban, but over its lifetime.
Say you drive it a quarter million miles.
Now I've never heard of a Tesla going a quarter million miles,
but let's just for instance say it did.
And so you drive that Tesla a quarter million miles and you drive that suburban
a quarter million miles.
That Suburban is gonna put out less pollution in the atmosphere
than that Tesla. You know, 'cause you gotta mine the stuff,
probably gonna change the, uh, change the battery at least once, uh,
on the Tesla you may end up changing an engine on the, uh,
on the suburban. But the engine, you know,
doesn't take up specific significant amounts of, uh,
any raw materials other than some iron and and whatnot,
plastics. Uh, but the, the paraphrasing,
the study that the, uh,
suburban was definitely a cleaner choice than the Tesla
for a a quarter million mile lifespan. So, you know,
so a full electric vehicle in my particular case is probably not going
to be what I'm gonna get. Uh,
I would more go for the plugin hybrid or just the plain old hybrid,
probably a plugin. 'cause again,
I could plug it in at home for a lot of my missions.
I could definitely do all electric, you know,
like going to doctor's appointments and going shopping and going out to dinner
and, you know, all this stuff.
But then I would also have that choice if I wanted to go on a longer ride.
I could, you know, most plug-in hybrids, you know, go quite a ways.
I rented one, one time, it was a Ford. Uh,
I, yeah, they're midsize car, whatever that was. Fusion. So Ford Fusion,
plug it hybrid.
I rented one and the thing got 47 miles to
the gallon of gas
and I drove it to Columbus and back for work.
It was great. Uh, you know, and half the time the engine's not running.
You can't really tell 'cause they're super quiet, uh,
whether the engine's running or not. But it got 47 miles to the gallon.
It was quiet. And, you know, I could totally see that, you know,
and driving around in downtown Columbus, the thing was charged up.
'cause I'd been driving it on the highway. I didn't plug it in the whole time.
I, I had it, but you don't have to with those. But anyway,
here's some of the stuff that the, this list came up with. Uh,
flexibility plugin.
Hybrid electric vehicles can run on electricity for a short trip and
switch to gasoline for longer ones. Providing the best of both worlds.
Agree 100%. Much, uh, much more flexible,
reduced emissions while not zero emission when
using gasoline plugin hybrids generally emit less than traditional
vehicles.
And that's true 'cause the electric motor helps on acceleration and all that.
So tailpipe emissions are reduced. Uh, again, you still got that, uh,
battery problem, but not as much as with a full, uh,
full electric 'cause the batteries aren't as big on the plugins.
Uh, incentives, just like the EVs,
many governments can offer incentives for purchasing a plugin hybrid.
So yeah, that's, that's a thing. It may not always be a thing,
but it's a thing. Uh, let's see. Less ranging anxiety.
Gasoline engine can act as a backup when the batteries depleted. Yeah, I mean,
it's just a normal car, you know, in practicality,
it, it's just a normal car. So, you know,
and that goes for regular hybrids or plugin hybrids. It's, uh,
it's a great, uh, great thing. And infrastructure for charging.
Uh, you don't have to worry so much about that. Now, if you feel like doing it,
you could stop and plug in your uh, uh, you know, plug in hybrid,
but you don't have to. And that's the, the beauty of it.
And since they have a smaller battery,
you could plug it into just plain old 110, uh,
here in the states or two 20 everywhere else. Uh, you know,
class one charger would probably help, you know, if I had one,
I would probably plug the thing in. And when I got in the garage, you know,
every night, that'd be fine, you know,
and it would probably be just fine.
But you don't ever really have to plug them in either. So that's kind of a good,
good thing. So here's the cons they come up with on this list. Like I said,
this is a list that I didn't create ,
but thought it was a good subject matter. Uh,
one of the cons of a plugin hybrid is it still uses gasoline. Yeah,
duh. That's it. Advantage if you ask me. But that's a con here.
Listed complexity,
having both an electric motor and a gasoline engine can lead to more complex
maintenance and potential repairs. True. But again,
the electric side of that is much less maintenance than the
gasoline side. And since it is a plugin hybrid,
and you will be running in full EV mode once in a while or some of the time,
or even when you're not, it's less stress and strain on the engine.
'cause generally they have smaller engines. Uh, what is that? BMW.
There was ABMW model that I thought was pretty good. Plugin hybrid that,
uh, had a little three cylinder engine and
you know, plus the battery and the thing would go a hundred miles or so on,
on pure electric.
And basically the gasoline engine just charged the
battery. So it was actually running electric mode all the time.
Just sometimes the engine's running, sometimes it's not.
And I don't see why that's much more complicated than, uh,
than a regular gas car. So at a higher cost, of course,
higher up front cost. Uh, 'cause you're buying the battery in the,
in the second drive train, basically. So yeah, that makes sense. Uh,
limited electric range. Well, yeah,
'cause it's gonna have smaller batteries. Of course,
you could get a plug-in hybrid that has the full battery. I think there,
there's a couple of 'em out there where you can go 300 miles on,
on electric and, and it still has an engine. So that's kind of cool. And weight,
yes, they are heavy,
but when you live up here in the north where the snow flies heavy might not
be a bad thing. At least not for getting going,
sometimes for stopping . But, uh,
in summary,
the choice between a full EV and a plug-in hybrid depends on individual needs.
Driving habits and priorities.
Both options contribute to reducing greenhouse emissions.
I still don't believe that that was me interjecting while reading,
uh, compared to the traditional gasoline powered vehicles.
So yeah, my, the bottom line is, I,
I don't think I will go for a full electric vehicle now.
I could see maybe if it was a second car or
a third car, you know, uh,
I could see having something that's full electric. You know, if, say I, I,
I commuted, I don't commute. Well, my commute's 45 feet out the back door,
uh, to my office here.
But say I commuted like I used to when I worked at the print shop,
uh, I think I commuted two and a half miles, maybe three miles.
I could see having a full electric car for that, for that mission,
but it couldn't be my primary vehicle because I still,
you know,
would like the option to be able to go on long trips without having to worry
about it or without having to rent a car or whatever. Uh,
but you know, I could see that in, in that case, I could,
I could see a, a full electric, you know, if, if I was,
you know, say I was retired and all I did was go to doctor's appointments and,
and grocery shopping and, and whatever, yeah.
Doctor's appointments around my mind since I've been doing a lot of that lately.
But anyway, you get my drift. You know,
if you're not taking long trips, you're, you know,
just gonna be putzing around town. Yeah, might be fun. Um, but then again,
you could, uh, probably go, uh, get a, uh,
oh, what do you call it? Uh, get, get a, uh,
a golf cart for, you know, a lot of places. But anyway,
uh, so that, that's my gist. Uh, I don't know,
something just popped up on my screen here, uh, while recording,
so I don't know what that means. But, uh, it still seems to be recording,
so we'll just go with it. But, uh, yeah,
I could see myself driving a plugin hybrid, uh, for sure,
because there's no real compromise there. Now, you know,
you look at that, uh, Ford Lightning truck, it's a full size pickup truck.
If I was gonna buy something like that or say I bought something like that,
and I, you know, I'm towing things, well, towing things,
you're not gonna get the 300 miles or whatever out of it.
You're gonna get quarter of that. Uh, you know,
if you're just putzing around town, you don't need anything that big. It,
it just doesn't seem like a practical thing.
But if I had a hybrid full-sized truck where, you know,
the electric assist, uh, sometimes or just to help the,
the fuel mileage, that that'd be totally fine. Uh,
but like I said, don't buy into the thing that, that,
that it's better for the environment because they're really not those lithium
ion batteries and all the stuff they gotta do to mine it and manufacture it and
all of that stuff is not any better than, uh, you know,
the way gasoline or diesel engines are now. Uh, they're super clean.
Uh, my uncle's got a, uh, full-size Ford diesel truck. He gets,
uh, you know, probably 15, 20 miles to the gallon,
20 miles to the gallon on the highway 15. Otherwise. And,
but that tailpipe you, you could, you could eat off of that tailpipe.
It's just squeaky clean. No soot, no nothing. Uh, you know, gas cars,
same way. They're, they're very, very clean now. So, uh,
you know, I,
I don't see where the environmental side of it is that much of an advantage.
I I just don't, uh, but I could be wrong. Anyway,
yeah, all my episodes this month are not gonna be this long or,
or this red .
I just had this one in my craw for a long time, so I wanted to get it out. Uh,
going forward, it's just gonna be whatever, uh, whatever happens, happens.
And, uh, be sure to check out apod pomo.org. And, uh,
this year they're, they're really getting organized. We're having a daily live,
uh, you know, live shows over there. Uh,
Jennifer and, and her team over at, at Nap Pod Pomo are, are doing that.
We're doing some podcaster workshops, whether you're participating or not in,
in, you know, as a podcaster, uh, you can still, you know,
get in on those. Uh, they're just big giant Zoom calls and, uh,
we talk about stuff. Uh, blueberry,
the company I work for is a sponsor this year,
and we'll be participating in some of the live shows and all that.
And of course, if you don't already know, uh,
I'm the co-host of Podcast Insider that comes out every Thursday
over@blueberry.com or podcast insider.com.
So anyway, catch you tomorrow.