Republicans Say the Darndest Things!

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Exactly. This is the overwhelming issue in this year’s election (and, unfortunately, in a number of future elections).

I used to think about other issues. Now, this is the only one for me.

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If only those who regularly vote Republican would realize the importance of that issue. (Those who regularly vote Democratic should also realize its importance, but they’ll probably vote well even if they don’t well for the most important reason.

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I’m not even talking about completely eliminating fossil fuels. That’s a very long way off if it’s even feasible. My point is that we are reasonably close to having enough infrastructure so that most transportation can be electric. For shipping and rail it will take a bigger investment but for personal transportation I think we are getting there pretty quickly.

I put a big asterisk on all of those who voted to impeach as they left office.

Liz Cheney on the other hand is one that I respect.

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The internet seems to agree with you. It’s “easy” if we get variable electric pricing at the residential level and smart chargers in cars and the grid has excess capacity overnight, and we get a “modest” increase in overall capacity.

My gut feel just doesn’t take the poor energy efficiency of IC engines into account. For the same miles traveled, the electricity delivered to the car can contain only 20% of the energy in the gasoline delivered. Most of the electricity energy losses are in generation/transmission, things that are completed before we plug in.

So, when I think about the amount of extra kwh I’ll consume in a month, I don’t really have to replace all that gasoline. FWIW, we currently use about 9,000 kwh/year. Driving an electric car for 15,000 miles might use 4,500 kwh, but residential use is only 40% of current total electrical use.

No, I already said

False. The technology isn’t there either.

Say I want to tow my 20,000 lb RV on a 1,000 mile road trip. This is a pretty normal thing that people do. What’s the range on an EV towing that kind of vehicle?

Or maybe I use my Ford F-150 to carry 3,000 lbs of payload for my business. The EV version isn’t capable of that.

Right. So keep using your IC vehicle until the technology gets there. Nobody expects this stuff to happen overnight.

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I’m going to guess that less than 1% of car/truck owners pull 20,000 pound RVs.

I get about 100,000 new fifth wheel trailers compared to 15 million new cars/trucks sold in 2021. I’m using that ratio as my estimate.

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I was merely disputing your assertion that infrastructure was the “only real argument against EVs”.

If you are withdrawing that assertion then fine.

RVs last longer than cars generally, and between hauling many varieties of cargo and hauling trailers of some kind, I think that’s a lot more than your ratio of new sales would suggest.

It’s not clear how much a Romney denouncement would accomplish, although I don’t think he’s a fan.

I’m not sure if makes sense for Romney to say much more than that given the non-trivial chance that Walker wins. I don’t think Romney has a lot of sway with Georgia Republicans to actually have an effect on that race.

I haven’t done an exhaustive search of the ~500 congressional candidates plus all of the ones for state offices, no. Not even the 435 house races as originally asked.

This says that 9 Trump-endorsed candidates lost their primaries. I’m guessing some of the ones that defeated Trump-backed candidates are ok. There’s probably others too as Trump didn’t weigh in on a lot of races. (Or infamously endorsed both in one… I’m not even sure how that was counted.)

If a non-big-lie Republican was running in an unopposed primary, for example, I presume Trump simply wouldn’t get involved.

Is my “low double digits” wild guess too high? Conceivably. I’m not willing to put in the effort to get a better number. The point is they are few and far between.

According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être —once a year or less.

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One more to add to the discussion

The Maryland Transportation Institute analyzed “an anonymized national panel of mobile device data from multiple sources,” and found that, in 2021, 52% of all trips in the US, using all modes of transportation, were for distances of less than three miles. Some 28% of trips were for less than one mile, and just 2% were for greater than 50 miles.

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So… 65% of truck owners are hauling stuff in the truck bed? That’s actually higher than I would have guessed, but with the “once a year” qualifier, maybe.

I’m not going to argue that many F-150 drivers would get by just fine with a Ford Escape instead.

But a lot of people do at least sometimes use their vehicles to transport a lot of stuff … whether in the truck bed or the trunk or in a trailer or wherever. And EVs struggle with that.

What is the point of your quote?

To agree with me that Romney is too spineless to denounce Walker because he is unwilling to have a moral compass?

Or are you just making more excuses for him?
Or are you still trying to claim he is a one of the “good ones” despite not taking any actions to support your claim?

Ford Lightning has entered the chat.

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That’s not something to be dismissed though.

I bought a station wagon for the 2% of times I need the space. If you’re going to tell me that I can’t have that, that makes my life measurably worse.

When I owned a boat, yeah, I rarely transported it. But if it was illegal to buy a vehicle capable of moving it… that’s huge.