New car buyers are choosing hybrids over plug-in total electric cars

My older daughter has a 2018 Toyota Prius Hybrid, and it has been a pretty good car for her. I’ve driven it — we actually had it on the farm for nine months while she was deployed — and it’s pretty nice. Her car is named “Veronica,” while our younger daughter’s car is named “Betty.”

From Business Insider:

Hybrid cars now have ‘very few compromises’ says Ford executive — and sales are booming

by George Glover | Saturday, March 23, 2024 | 6:03 AM EDT

  • Sales growth for hybrid cars is outpacing growth for electric vehicles this year.

  • Ford is one automaker reaping the benefits, with demand for its Maverick truck spiking.

  • “Hybrids now have very few compromises compared to their gas alternatives,” Ford’s Andrew Frick said.

It’s shaping up to be a comeback year for hybrid cars — and that’s partly because they’re now nearly as good as their conventional vehicles, according to a Ford executive.

“Hybrids now have very few compromises compared to their gas alternatives,” Andrew Frick, head of Ford’s the Detroit automaker’s gas and hybrid vehicle division, told The Wall Street Journal this week.

If you have trouble accessing the Business Insider story, it is available for free here.

Hybrids have a traditional engine that charges batteries to power one or more electric motors, which makes them more efficient than gas-only vehicles. Many do not need to be plugged in like EVs, although some models can also be charged like one.

Frick’s comments come as demand for hybrid vehicles soars, partly due to drivers’ worries about charging electric cars. Those concerns have dented sales of EVs in recent months.

Another benefit of hybrids is that they’re a lot cheaper than their fully electric rivals. Buyers were paying $42,500 on average for hybrids in late 2023, according to data from Edmunds, compared with $60,500 for EVs and $47,500 for gas cars.

My daughter’s Prius gets about 49 MPG, which is pretty good, and she’s put a lot of miles on it, 163,000+ the last time I saw. No, it’s not zero emission, the way the global warming climate change activists, and the Biden Administration, are pushing, but it’s proven both economical and efficient. She can, if she chooses, run it in full electric mode, or leave it in normal operation, using the gasoline engine when the batteries need to be charged. Unlike some hybrids, her Prius does not have an exterior charging port, so she doesn’t have the option of using it as a straight electric vehicle, and plugging it in at night to recharge. That’s kind of a good thing, because it means that I don’t have to run a 220-volt, 50 ampere circuit to her garage to install a charging station. 🙂 But a plug-in option could be an advantage for many urban car buyers.

I already have full 200-amp service in my garage, so I could easily install a charging station here if I needed one.

My daughter’s Prius can easily make a several hundred mile journey, even a several thousand mile trip, and she doesn’t have to worry about needing to find a commercial charging station and spend an hour recharging every couple hundred miles. It’s a practical vehicle which gets great mileage and eliminates almost all of the concerns about fully electric vehicles. Just pull into a regular filling station, get a fresh tank of gasoline and a Wawa coffee, and back on the road in ten minutes.

Total electric vehicles are fine, for the right application: urban dwellers who will always be driving only around town, and who have garages or dedicated and secure parking areas in which they can safely install at-home vehicle chargers. But for many people, they simply are not practical, no matter what Joe Biden and the rest of the authoritarian climate activists say.

NIMBY! Don’t you dare build windmills where we can see them from the beach!

In November of 2020, the good people of the Garden State gave 2,608,400 votes, 57.34% of the total, to Joe Biden, and only 1,883,313, or 41.40%, to President Trump. One would think, then, that New Jerseyites must approve of Mr Biden’s plans to develop alternative sources of energy to generate electricity, right?

Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm in New Jersey would have 157 turbines and be 8.4 miles from shore

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will begin an environmental review of the Atlantic Shores project on Monday.

by Wayne Perry, Associated Press | The Ides of March 2024 | 1:39 PM EDT

ATLANTIC CITY — An offshore wind power project proposed for New Jersey would have 157 turbines and be located 8.4 miles from shore at its closest point, data released by the federal government Friday shows.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it will begin an environmental review Monday of the Atlantic Shores project. It released key details of the project in announcing the environmental review.

New Jersey energy regulators approved Atlantic Shores’ 1,510 megawatt project in 2021. It would generate enough electricity to power more than 700,000 homes.

The federal agency said the project’s operations plan proposes two potential export cable corridors that would make landfall in Sea Girt, N.J., with a second one either in Asbury Park or in the New York City area, possibly on Staten Island.

But naturally, there are plenty of people who are opposed, because, Heaven forfend!, they might be able to see the tops of some of the turbines, and the power cables running onto the shore, and sea birds might be killed, etc, etc, etc.

The groups Protect Our Coast New Jersey and Defend Brigantine Beach and Downbeach filed an appeal to the approval last week in state court, saying that power contracts granted to the project developers violate state law that mandates that any increase in rates for offshore wind must be exceeded by economic and environmental benefits to the state.

In 2020, New Jersey generated 65,060,636 MegaWatt hours of electricity, but used 74,442,735 MWh, meaning that the Garden State imported 14.42% of its total electricity consumption. With an average retail price of 14.80¢ per kWh, electricity was 19.74% higher than the national average of 12.36¢/kWh. Just as an economic calculation, one would think that the good, liberal voters of New Jersey would want this project. But no, they would prefer to import electricity from Pennsylvania, which exports 39.29% of the electricity it generates — primarily by burning natural gas — and West Virginia, which exports 41.79% of the electricity it generates, primarily by burning coal. Much better to do that than to possibly see the tops of the windmill blades from the beach!

Liberal New Jersey will need the electricity, too. As William Teach reported, the state plans to ban all fossil-fueled new car sales by 2035, the New Jersey Star-Ledger is demanding quicker action than that, and the majority of the voters in that heavily “blue” state just don’t want plug-in electric vehicles.

They will be made to comply, but they don’t want the sparktricity that they use generated anyplace where they can see it.

How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange The well-to-do sure love their gas appliances!

This article title, “How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange” is one we have used thrice previously. In the first, we noted the PBS television series This Old House and its renovation of the Seaside Victorian Cottage, in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Those wealthy New Englanders didn’t choose electric heat pumps, but warm, dependable gas heating for the cold, Rhode Island winters. Their HVAC system appears to allow the large, new exterior condensers to be used for heating as well, but the gas furnace is new and in place. The homeowners had a new, fairly sizable gas fireplace installed, an oversized Wolf gas range, and three gas-fired instant hot water heaters. More, they had a gas fireplace installed outside, on their backyard patio. The series was filmed following the panicdemic[1]This is not a typographical error, but spelled exactly as I saw the whole thing, an exercise in pure, unreasoning panic. restrictions of 2020. Continue reading

References

References
1 This is not a typographical error, but spelled exactly as I saw the whole thing, an exercise in pure, unreasoning panic.

There is a two word phrase to accurately describe the electric buses sold to transit agencies, and the first of those two words is “cluster”.

The Biden Administration and the global warming climate change activists want to force all new vehicles sold in the United States to be zero-emission come 2035, because they believe that our personal choices don’t matter, but even now they are pushing plug-in electrics, seemingly unconcerned with the possible drawbacks. From Fox Business:

Electric buses are sitting unused in cities across the US; here’s why

Cities coast-to-coast grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed

Continue reading

Why do you peons hate Mother Gaia? The Plebians are not doing what the Patricians have demanded!

Fresh off the stories of the demands at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the hoitiest and the toitiest get to use their private jets to take their mistresses to a very upscale Swiss ski resort and lecture us about global warming climate change, it seems that the people are just not doing what they’ve been told!

Ford cuts production of F-150 Lightning EV, adds jobs at Bronco and Ranger plant

  • Ford is increasing production of its Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup, while cutting production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning, the automaker said Friday.
  • The announced cut to Lightning production comes a month after CNBC and other media outlets reported Ford would slash planned production of the pickup roughly in half this year.
  • The automaker will be reducing production of the Lightning at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan to one production shift from two, impacting approximately 1,400 employees.

Continue reading

It was -4.1º Fahrenheit on the farm this morning.

When I arose, at 7:05 this morning, it was 14.1º Fahrenheit outside. No wind is showing, but there’s a possibility that the anemometer is frozen in place; I’ll tap it loose when I go outside.

I have previously noted that we have backup heat here on the farm, with a propane fireplace, something we installed during our 2018 remodeling project, because our primary heat is an electric heat pump. The thermostat for the fireplace was set at 64º F, so that it would come on if the primary heat failed overnight, but shouldn’t come on as long as the heat pump was engaged. Guess what: even though the primary heat was on and working, the fireplace still came on, which tells me that the heat pump was unable to keep up! Heat pumps work by extracting heat from the atmosphere around the outside condenser, but when there’s not a lot of heat to extract, they lose efficiency. Continue reading

St Greta of Thunberg must be appalled! I am wryly amused

Former Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John Kerry are surely weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth at the news, but the sensible among us see this as great! From CNN:

The United States is producing more oil than any country in history

By Matt Egan | Updated 5:00 PM EST | Tuesday, December 19, 2023

As the world grapples with the existential crisis of climate change, environmental activists want President Joe Biden to phase out the oil industry, and Republicans argue he’s already doing that. Meanwhile, the surprising reality is the United States is pumping oil at a blistering pace and is on track to produce more oil than any country has in history.

“The existential crisis of climate change”? So many reporters keep using that word; I do not think it means what they think it means. We may have some issues with which to deal with global warming climate change, but we’re not all going to die.

Remember: human beings are the most adaptable creatures on earth, and we live everywhere, from arctic wastelands to steaming jungles to bone dry deserts, and we have done so even prior to our modern, industrialized society.

The United States is set to produce a global record of 13.3 million barrels per day of crude and condensate during the fourth quarter of this year, according to a report published Tuesday by S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Last month, weekly US oil production hit 13.2 million barrels per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That’s just above the Donald Trump-era record of 13.1 million set in early 2020 just before the Covid-19 crisis sent output and prices crashing.

As the world’s largest oil producer, that means more American dollars stay in the United States rather than going to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, and some money from foreign countries comes to the United States. This enriches American companies and American workers, and that ought to be seen as a good thing for the American people.

The US is exporting roughly the same amounts of crude oil, refined fuels and liquid natural gas as Saudi Arabia and Russia. With the Saudi and Russian collusion, on which we have previously reported, to reduce OPEC’s production to raise prices, American production has helped keep those prices down.

“It’s a reminder that the US is endowed with enormous oil reserves. Our industry should never be underestimated,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group.

Record-shattering US production is helping to offset aggressive supply cuts meant to support high prices by OPEC+, mainly Saudi Arabia and Russia. Other non-OPEC oil producers including Canada and Brazil are also pumping more oil than ever before. (Brazil is set to join OPEC+ next year.)

Think about what this means. Russia’s economy is dependent upon oil and natural gas exports, and Vladimir Putin wanted to use western Europe’s dependence upon Russia oil and, especially, natural gas as a weapon against NATO countries which are supporting Ukraine with money and military equipment. Without Russian natural gas, a lot of western Europe countries, much of which are at latitudes higher than our lower 48-state border with Canada, the Europeans would have gotten awfully cold during the past two winters, but American production has prevented Russia from being able to effectively utilize their energy weapon.

The climate activists want us to cease oil production, thinking that that will somehow save the world, and perhaps we can eventually develop energy systems which can truly replace oil for energy production, but, right now, that day has not come. And the United States, with its oil, natural gas, and seriously underused coal reserves, has natural resources which can make Americans in general wealthier. The activists just don’t get it: doing what they want would make Americans poorer.

Then again, if liberals actually understood economics, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore.

You go, girl! Go ahead and hurt your own cause! Climate activist Greta Thunberg goes all out anti-Semitism

We have previously noted the definition of “intersectionality,” and how the perhaps less than genius thinkers on the left misuse it to tell us that all leftist causes are related, mixing together things which would curdle new milk. An interesting example is the mixing of feminism and transgenderism, hich leads to the amusing fact that, at least in some things, the best woman for the job is a man male.

Now, William Teach’s sort of favorite whipping girl, Greta “How dare you!” Thunberg, has hurt her own cause by mixing it with today’s oh-so-popular anti-Semitism. From The Times of Israel:

Climate activist Thunberg flogged for ‘crush Zionism’ chant

by Canaan Lidor | Tuesday, Kislev 15, 5784 | 6:23 PM Jerusalem Time

Footage showing climate activist Greta Thunberg chanting “crush Zionism” at a recent pro-Palestinian rally in Sweden is provoking harsh-worded criticism of her by prominent Jewish environmentalists.

If you can’t access the Times website, you can find the story here as well. You can see the original of the tweet here, which shows you the video, not just thye still in the screen capture I took ands used.

The actions by Thunberg, whom many regard as a symbol of the environmentalist movement, reflect how “large parts of ‘the left’ or ‘progressives’ have been intellectually captured by a naive, distorted and frankly bigoted anti-Zionism,” Nigel Savage, a UK-born environmental activist and founder of Jewish environmental nonprofit organization Hazon, tells The Times of Israel Tuesday.

Savage, whose Jerusalem-based group was established in 2000 and holds environmentally oriented bike rides in New York, adds: “It is a microcosm of a far larger and far greater challenge. It’s sad and disturbing.”

Now I will admit it: I can kind of see Miss Thunberg’s reasoning. In saying that Israel should be crushed, she is taking the side of poverty and savagery over prosperity and Western civilization, and if there’s one thing the global warming climate change activists hate, it’s prosperity and Western civilization, despite the fact that they are living with the benefits of prosperity and Western civilization.

I will admit to wondering how Miss Thunberg got from her native Sweden to Amsterdam without the use of fossil fuels, or from where the puffy coat and its insulation came without the use of petroleum, but I’m hardly the first person to point out her climapocrisy.

Miss Thunberg, of course, has the freedom of speech, and can say any fool thing she wishes, but I am amuse by the fact that she is hurting her own cause by siding against Israel and Jews, Jews who just might be the voters who put the Democrats over the top to control Congress and get the climate policies she wants enacted into law.

So, you go, girl! Go ahead and hurt your own cause.

 

Everything the climate activists want will cost you more money The wealthy activists just can't understand that not everyone can afford this stuff

As Reichsstatthalter Kathy Hochul (NSDAP-NY) seeks to ban new gas range installations in the Empire State, an ad for the ZLINE 48 in. Fingerprint Resistant Stainless Steel 6.0 cu.ft. 7 Gas Burner/Electric Oven Range (RAS-SN-48) showed up in my morning feed. We’re not in the market for a new range at all, and, at a sale price of $5039.96, marked down from $5,599.95 — “shipping calculated at checkout” — it was nothing we’d have bought anyway.

Experience Attainable Luxury® with the ZLINE 48″ DuraSnow® Dual Fuel Professional Range. ZLINE’s dual fuel range combines a high performance gas stovetop with an electric convection oven. Providing both professional aesthetics and functionality, this dual fuel stove provides the ultimate luxury experience for a fraction of the cost. ZLINE’s exclusive DuraSnow® finish features a timeless non-directional fingerprint-resistant finish, allowing you to easily combat everyday wear and tear. Achieve optimal results with cooktop cooking power from 4,200 up to 18,000 BTUs provided with sealed burners. Rely on precise and even heating for every homemade dish with an electric convection oven. Enjoy an ultra-deep oven capacity with a three-layered insulated glass oven for efficient cooking every use. With upgraded premium features such as SmoothSlide ball-bearing oven racks, dual lighting, and adjustable legs, this range is certain to wow both the chef and guests alike. Assembled with the highest quality materials on the market, this range offers a durable, scratch-resistant porcelain cooktop and ZLINE’s exclusive single piece cast iron grate. Cook with ease with StayPut Italian hinges, providing a safe baking environment to enjoy for years to come. ZLINE stands by the longevity and durability of their professional dual fuel stoves, while ensuring further protection and peace of mind with a worry-free warranty. The ZLINE Dual Fuel Range is packaged in multiple boxes and will ship out together next business day when in stock.

Of course, the Reichsstatthalter’s wealthy friends will have ways to get around New York’s ban on the installation of new gas service!

So, why did the ad appear in my feed in the first place? Noting William Teach’s story on a Washington Post article, “How fast do you have to buy EVs and heat pumps to avoid the worst effects of climate change?” and it’s first lines: Continue reading