This I don’t understand. That have mountains in CA. Which means they can create energy/water storage batteries. Heck, they might be able to make a 2-fer out of it and desalinate sea water if there’s a fresh water shortage.
Summer AC is one of the better scenarios for the grid, because like you said the consumption and production line up. It’s not so great for example in cold climates during the winter where the solar goes off right before everyone heads home and turns on their electric heat and does their laundry and takes a hot bath and cooks dinner on their electric stoves (it’s a bit of an extreme example, but it was also the hoped-for fully electric future in California; many new dwellings were already being built as electric only). Then all of a sudden you have a drastic reversing of production and consumption.
Hey, you don’t have to convince me! Take the governor out on a fancy dinner and bring Musk along and let’s see how it goes?
California has mountains. It also has a lot of flat land. The population centers and generation tend to be closer to the flatter areas. The mountains are often owned by rich people and governments that don’t necessarily want to see their estates and parks turned into utility ponds. They have a lot of money too, but it’s not all set aside for massive geo-engineering projects (too bad, right?)
I mean, it all seems to work fine when I plan it out in Cities Skylines, but I guess the real California is a little less responsive to random Doper whims 
Huh. I test drove one and hated it.
The qualifications necessary to be a politician are somewhat sparse. .
What went wrong??
Oops sorry I just read your other response.
Pretty sure the ones being sold here (LA) are built in Japan. Here’s one
https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2026/vin/JN1AZ2EB2TM301322/?radius=25
You tested the low trim cheaper model, priced probably 10 to 15 K less than the Countryman you bought. The fair apples apples would have been the Platinum plus. Not defending the vehicle right now though. Very aggravated with it.
Looking though I’m not seeing any my wife will love. The Volvo EX30 interface is apparently awful. She dislikes the Countryman’s look intensely. She does want a heated steering wheel and apparently the Ioniq5 (good size good reviews) only has that on a top level trim. Still likely the least poor option. Most others are too big for her taste.
Coincidentally, CNBC just put out this video earlier today:
The Fall of US Automakers - CNBC
It’s about the downfall of the US automakers in general, not just limited to BEVs but also including them, alongside many of the other things we discussed here… tariffs, policies, Chinese capabilities, COVID, etc.
If there ever came to be a politician who spent more time playing Cities Skylines than lying on TV, they’d get my immediate and lifelong vote 
It would be nice to see more engineers and urban planner types in leadership rather than lawyers. If only government had more of a “hire from within” culture.
What could go wrong when you have reality TV stars setting national energy policy?
I got an Ioniq 5 back in August–and, a few issues with buying a used car aside, I freaking love it. It’s the first time in my life I’ve had a car that made me enjoy driving. It’s not quite SUV, but it’s called a “crossover SUV”. Put down the back seat, and the trunk is really big, almost certainly big enough for a couple of dogs and their gear; I plan to go camping next summer and putting an inflatable mattress in that back area.
Fast charging takes about 20 minutes: we stop at Jersey Mikes and get a meal, take it to the charging station, and eat while it charges. One fast-charge is good for a little over 200 miles (and that’s in Appalachia, almost certainly more if you live somewhere flatter). I charge at home about once a week, and with a medium charger it’s fully charged overnight.
It’s such a positive experience that it’s hard for me to understand the cultural hesitation. Like, just try it, conservatives! It’s so good!
When the “popular sentiment” is flat out wrong, I think we should refrain from repeating it. I know lots of folks that believe EV’s are nothing more than golf carts, but I don’t repeat this, because it’s idiotic.
Personally, I’d rather have a car that is TWENTY TIMES less likely to burst into flames. eg. An EV.
Dontcha know EVs are the gateway drug to the liberal agenda?! First it’s your car, then you stop cooking with gas, then you start liking Musk more than Jesus again, and before long you’re letting your hair grow past your ears and waving a rainbow flag from the top of a redwood tree. There’s no coming back from that first charge.
Hyundai is making some really good EV cars these days. For my wife’s car, a 1st-gen Leaf, we may replace it soon and Hyundai is at the top of our list.
As for if EVs are dead in the US, while EVs are waning they are definitely the wave of the future. EVs will remain strong in the SFBA CA, and in other select places (mostly urban), until the charging infrastructure and fast charging batteries prevail and then they’ll be more widely adopted.
It’s produced both in the Sunderland UK plant and the Tochigi Japan plant for delivery to North American market. I suspect the high end grade is produced in Japan.
I mean, I don’t cook with gas, and I definitely like Jesus (and for that matter Jesse Helms and puppy-kickers) more than Elon Musk, but my hair grows down to my butt, and I have a definitely history in my youth of protesting for the redwoods, so you’re not completely off.
My only concern is that there’s a significant failure rate of some part called the ICCU. The overwhelming majority of Ioniqs don’t have the problem, but I’ve seen numbers anywhere from 1-10%, and that’s a pretty high failure rate for a critical part. I would check into that before buying.
I haven’t had that problem, though, and I love it. I genuinely think that if everyone test-drove an EV, purchase rates would skyrocket.
Note that Europeans drive only about twice as many electric cars as the USA does. True, their new vehicle registrations are higher, but
So it is not like the EU is 90% EV or anything. They are more EV friendly, sure. But change is hard, the world over. We are all humans. Mostly, anyway 
Given that cars are fairly durable goods, any statistic about “X% of the cars on the road today are IC / Diesel / EV” is not useful as a prediction of the future.
Which is what this thread is about. If EVs are ~2% of current EU vehicles but 20 or 40% of new vehicle registrations, and increasing every year, the complete turnover will still take a couple decades. But the momentum is all EV, and so is the future. Conversely if EVs are ~2% of all US vehicles but in 2026 are 1% of new registrations, we’re going nowhere.
It was the only one i could find to test drive. And what i didn’t like was probably the same across models. Like that it wasn’t very perky to drive, and the interface was confusing.
Also, i didn’t buy the countryman, i bought the KIA Niro, which is very similar to the Hyundai Kona.
I misremembered!
Tell me about the Niro!
Surprised that you didn’t feel the Leafs was perky. The Niro feels peppy? Reviews give me a different impression. It’s the right size … What’s the infotainment interface like?
The infotainment interface has one huge problem and one annoyance. The huge problem is that it is all touch buttons (not physical buttons) and it used the same real estate for infotainment and hvac, with a touch button to toggle between those two. So if you are in hvac mode, you can’t see or touch any of the infotainment buttons, and vice versa. It has a physical dial to turn the radio on and change the volume, but if you are in hvac mode, that same dial changes the temperature instead of the volume, and pushing it does nothing. (Or maybe turns the heat on? Not sure.)
The annoyance is that the interface for Android Auto requires a physical connection via a cable, and isn’t well integrated. They really want you to use Kia connect, which i believe becomes a subscription service after a year.
That being said, once you realize you need to toggle between the two modes, everything is well labeled and intuitive to use. I successfully used the car’s built in navigation when i got lost during the test drive.
The range sucks, especially at highway speeds and in the winter. I started with a nearly full charge yesterday, drove about 85 miles, and got home with only about 85 miles of range left. That being said, we also have an ICE car with a huge range, and that 170 miles is more than enough for basically everything i do, except three road trips a year. (The claimed range is more like 250. And that’s plausible at 40mph in the summer.)
It handles nicely on dry and wet pavement. It’s not as good in snow as my Subaru, but it’s not terrible. The seating is comfortable. The rear visibility is terrible, which seems to be true of most new cars, but the camera is decent, and it has good electronic warnings. The settings give you a lot of flexibility. Do you want the lane departure warning to beep? Vibrate the steering wheel? Both? Neither? You get to choose. Do you want full one pedal driving? Something that feels like an ICE? (It still mostly does regenerative braking, but only when you press the brake pedal.) Something in between? Your choice. And it remembers those choices.
And it has some handy physical buttons on the steering wheel, including one that you can set. So i use the buttons on the steering wheel to change the radio station, and the radio volume, and set the “star” button to turn the radio on and off. So usually, i can ignore those touch buttons.
It also has physical buttons to turn on the heated seats and the heated steering wheel. I’ve never had a heated steering wheel before, and love it. (I don’t love heated seats.)
The headlights are okay. The windshield wipers are pretty good. The rear wiper is also pretty good, but there’s no way to squirt windshield wiper fluid on the rear window.
It has a little “heads up” display showing the speed limit, your actual speed, whether you are in a school zone, or a few other items, and i really like that. Your have some choices about what it displays on the dash, but I’m happy with whatever i picked, which shows both a bar of “how full is the battery” and the car’s estimate of miles remaining, along with your speed, the odometer, and … Probably some other stuff. Maybe the external temperature? The time is over on the infotainment panel, not the “dash”, but it’s okay.
Anyway, i can’t say that i love my Niro, but I’m satisfied. It meets my needs, and does what i expected it to do.
It’s possible my ride in the Leaf was atypical. When i started the test drive, there was a giant warning that it was almost out of power, and the salesman didn’t know how to turn that off. (Half way through the test drive i turned off that warning, but it took me several minutes poking at things on the parking lot before i figured out how to do that. But the warning covered a lot of the controls, and was really annoying.) Maybe it was sluggish because it was in power-saving mode or something.
Stacking the deck much? Try the same distance but going into Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas. It becomes a much different and much more inconvenient trip.
Maybe not, but those who do, often take long trips, and it’s a pain in the butt to center your trip around where you can recharge.
That’s the biggest stumbling block for me; that I have to be primarily concerned with where I can charge up on my route, versus just filling up with gas. It’s a huge pain in the butt- it limits where you can stay, where you go, where you eat lunch, and just about everything else on a road trip.
Just looking at my most recent long trip (Dallas - Carlsbad, NM), assuming my EV could get me to Abilene, I’ve got a choice of 3-4 single port chargers that are more or less on the interstate, but nowhere near food (we typically have stopped to eat in Abilene), so we’d have to charge then eat. PITA.
There are charging stations elsewhere like Sweetwater, but again, I’m having to plan my trip around charging. That sucks and most people aren’t going to bother if there’s a considerably more convenient and not more expensive option.