OK but you can perhaps create a forum for a new 214 E class?

 

Tell that to the other lads too Wolfy

 

Thought that was a hint to everyone

 

Clearly not related to this thread but an important topic.
Due to upcoming changes there is/was a moratorium but several new models will be added shortly...

 

You can't separate politics out from this topic. They're intrinsically connected. I recall sitting at a rest area somewhere on I-65 between Nashville and Chicago I believe reading a sign about Eisenhower's National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Seems to me if the government could do that I'm sure they could put a few 50 kW chargers at every rest area in America too. So I wouldn't worry about socialism. It's Mussolini's book on the corporate state titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" you should really be worrying about. Governments should be "of the people, by the people and for the people" IMHO. They shouldn't exist of, by and for multinational corporations and international bankers.

 

I enjoy different opinions. @wolfman, yeah maybe close this out.

 

If you are going to start a thread about it not being time to get into EVs you have to expect people will discuss whether they agree or disagree and why they do so, just as the OP posted a video presumably showing some of the reasons why it might be a bad idea.

EVs are not the goal of the push to EVs, reduced net carbon is the goal. That being said when considering whether it is the time for EVs as the thread title suggests their ability to perform their actual purpose is not off-topic but rather particularly relevant.

Superswiss had it exactly. EVs cannot themselves create a net carbon reduction even with a green grid; the percentage of output from vehicles of all kinds is too low compared to the total carbon output from all sources. This is the first big carbon lie, that EVs can have that effect. They can't.

If we're going to say yes to EVs, to say it's time, we're also saying yes to doing everything else we need to do along with EVs to actually accomplish the goal which was never EVs. That means mass transit, fewer trips, less meat, more insulation, renewable cooling and heating, making cities more walkable, etc. They are part of the conversation because they and EVs are one and the same, a means to reduced carbon.

That's why I said the whole rhythm of a day is different over there and not relatable to Americans in general. I wasn't saying "Yay Europe, boo American" I was trying to point out that what's being asked is not an easy sell in the US. Most people have no experience with that life and what they know about mass transit here is usually that it sucks and in most respects, in most places, they're not wrong. A car is much more convenient in the US.

I'd say it is time for EVs but not the way we're doing it now. We need a global strategy from power generation to plug and further still; we have to do all the hard things.

What's the hardest thing? Going to the moon consumed near 5% of the economy at the peak of the Apollo program; that amount is trivial compared to the cost of converting the US to a green grid. Do we increase revenue or take the money from existing programs? Kneecap SS maybe? Massive defense cuts? Pay an extra 5 % a year except for the wealthy who will be exempt from the tax? I'm not suggesting any of these but I am suggesting that saying yes to EVs and their purpose means making hard choices in a country full of entitled people who believe sacrifice is for someone else and coincidentally managed to take 43 years to get a nuclear reactor online.

 

I'll get back on topic and with experience of the "old continent" and only a short (3 weeks visit) in North America (Canada and USA).
You are refering several times to the fact that Europe is less "car centered" or that cars are less necessary than in the US, even though I think it's true, I also think it's inacurate if you look further in detail.
Most very large cities in France have very good public transport, it's true and it can be a delight but it stops too short a distance from the city centers. As for city to city, we have much more capability by train but I still think they are vastly under used and could be much better.
For example, I live 27km from my workplace which is quite close to the "inner city" (and I guess it's next door by US standards) and I have absolutely no possibility to use public transport to get to work and back. However a coworker is luckier and has a 1 hour city train ride to work although he is farther from work. As for someone who asks why I live there, it's because of housing prices. I have a good situation but I needed to get farther than I wished because of prices and availability closer to work.
Also, we are very car centric. Even if it is possible to go on vacation without using your car, most of us don't and prefer taking it with us. The biggest hint of our "need" for a car, is parking space in city centers: even the locals are often having trouble finding a spot to park when they don't have a dedicated spot, Paris being the biggest offender despite the very efficient "Metro" system (underground or tube I don't remember the proper name in english, sorry).

As for my vision of the electric car? I think we're far from having a good all around solution. Charging, even though it could be very fast in the future, may bring other nasty problems with power delivery, requiring special structures or putting an unacceptable strain on the existing one.
However, for short distances, city dwelling etc. electric cars are very attractive and I wish we had small city cars with a reasonnable range that you can go to work with, eventually travel a short trip, and charge back at home. My main issue with it is the price and second hand buying. I'm not comfortable buying second hand because battery technology is still "obscure" and an issue with it is a huge, maybe car ditching, bill.

Development of a green grid country wide seems like a big challenge and may require to decentralise energy production even further to avoid the need for massive electric lines going very long distances using large amount of copper. I'm not informed enough to speculate on that but my opinion is that there's much more than simply putting stations here and there. But the solution may come by itself with the petrol loby investing in changing part of their location to electric chargers without the government to have to intervene?

 

Don't forget the EV is not a new thing and was already derailed/run off the road back in the 90's.

 

ON TOPIC or OFF TOPIC, I find the posts in this thread to be of great interest and I hope it is not closed. In these forums where drivers of relatively expensive cars live, I find there is great insight to the topic of electric vehicles vs ICE vehicles. Yes, we all know that there is an “OFF TOPIC” forum, but virtually NOBODY looks at that forum and the few times I have ventured there, I have found it to be—for the most part—a playground for truly meaningless topics and photos of scantily clad women.

I guess it would make sense for me to have an electric vehicle. I drive 4 miles from my home to my office, often coming home for lunch. So, I probably put about 16 miles a day on my car, weekdays. That said, does it make sense for me to have an electric vehicle AND an ICE? From a purely economic standpoint, probably not. So, I’m back to square one and will, most likely, just stay with one ICE daily driver for now.

 

Mr. Crab, I must say that I find your insight into this topic to be very interesting and I am truly impressed with the way you structure your analysis of the issue. If only such focused information could reach the masses without being distorted at every turn by politicians, bureaucrats and our hopelessly biased media, perhaps we could start moving in the right direction. As I have said previously, we need a modern day Robert Moses, with the power to actually make things happen in this country, without having to litigate every decision he or she makes.

 

I can fill up my gas car with fuel from 100 different companies from 100 different places. An EV is dependent on the power company, typically one per area and always heavily controlled by the government

I can drive at least 450 miles on a tank of gas and fill up anywhere in 5 minutes. An EV…you know.

I’m not taking the bus and im not going to live in a city. I’m also not going to buy into the idea that an EV is going to save the planet. Last I checked most electricity comes from fossil fuels. And the batteries are very harmful to the environment.

A car is the ultimate expression of freedom, and in America more so than Europe or Asia we value our freedom.

And no offense to some of the others who’ve posted…we are driving our 100k+ cars with big powerful motors but want others to take the bus to save the world. It’s elitist.

Enjoy your indulgence, I know I will

 

Please don't put words in other people's mouth. Nobody said they want others to take the bus but not themselves. Yes, I drive a big engine AMG, but I drive less than 5000 miles per year, because I have alternatives outside of the car. It's not necessarily about what you drive, but how you drive and specifically how much you drive. We could cut carbon emissions from cars in half, if everybody would cut their driving in half. See one can drive a Prius, but if they drive it 30,000 miles per year they have a larger carbon footprint than I do with my AMG. Everything in moderation as they say.

 

Can we please not obsess about threads remaining totally on topic? I post on another forum where it is that way and great threads get closed all the time which is a real shame. Conversations evolve...

As for me, I am seriously considering an EV next time. My only concern is travel, and I only really travel one place in my car and there are charging options. All other travel we take the family car which will remain ICE. For my day to day, an EV would be great.

America isn't Europe. This is a car based society, thats not going to change nor do Americans want it to change.

 

I'm not so sure Americans don't want it to change. It seems many people actually hate driving, but they have to. Being stuck in traffic everyday isn't exactly fun. It's increasingly escalating in road rage incidents. People are stressed and frustrated behind the wheel, but they have no other choice. If viable alternatives would be presented, I have a feeling that many would opt for them.

 

Conversations evolve or fall apart. There is no obsession to stay on topic or most threads here would have been closed already. Or even seen the light of day, as this one for example which has zero affiliation with the W223 to begin with...
There is a reason to find the middle-ground but politics have to stay off-topic.

 

Edit.... The Wolf ninja'ed me but I'm not going to edit the whole post.

I think the other thread was closed because it had become a free-for-all, in some cases without a tangential relationship to the thread topic, as it headed out toward however many pages it ended up being. I'm guilty myself; sometimes you should probably say nothing but that isn't as much fun.

You've got a lot wrapped up in the EV conversation because they're more than one of many choices. In years past, a question S class owners might have asked was whether they should they move over to the 7 series, A8, etc. Now you have ponder whether or when you want to go electric on their merits or because we're facing legislative mandates designed to propel wide-scale adoption. To me comparing EV/PHEV offerings most of us are driving now to EVs is no different from what it had been before when discussing the merits of the logical competition, other than now the competition is not all ICE, and EVs bring their carbon baggage with them to the conversation.

Again, I don't see it being off-topic discussing when it's time to move to EVs, it appears to me that it's a highly likely future we all face; want it or not, and some have already moved directly from this car to EVs. We are not looking into the future when we contemplate the question; it's here now.

Almost last: To be clear; For my part, I'm neither trying to evangelize EVs nor bash them. I'm only trying to point out there are immense hurdles to overcome should we continue to go toward green and EVs will not the beginning and end of it.

Last: As to driving less in the city; I think more people would do it if the infrastructure supported it. Not because they had to, because they wanted to do it. It's nice to be able to walk, take mass transit in some cases. No worries about parking, car damage while parked in some areas, you can have wine with dinner, etc. In Seattle I can take the bus into the downtown area faster than I can drive there, I don't have to find parking, pay for it. But like any American I think nothing of hopping in the car and driving 45 minutes to Costco. Because I can, Merica and all that. In my crystal ball I see cars sticking around for a good long time in some fashion.

 

Yep, that's essentially my point. The car is often referred to as the ultimate freedom, but I kinda object to that notion, because if its your only choice, is that really freedom? I can only really speak for myself, but I feel I have more freedom, because I have the choice not to drive if I don't want to. Like your examples, if I'm heading to San Francisco downtown, BART is actually faster and I don't have to find parking, pay for it and as you say risk my car being broken in, which is an increasing risk in SF unfortunately. However, I have no issue getting in my car to leave town for a weekend and have a nice road trip, but to get around for my daily needs I love not having to drive all the time.

 

I think EV's are a lame and trendy attempt at giving people what they think they want. Is burning coal better? Anyone?

 

Yep

 

I don't agree. For one, we don't have the public transit infrastructure that exists in Europe, and we have no ability or inclination to build any such infrastructure. I rode the Metro in DC last night for the first time in 5+ years, and I had forgotten how terrible it is. For one, Americans want to have and are accustomed to having transit on demand. We want to be able to get into our cars and drive where we want to go when we want to or need to.

We don't live where public transit is close by, Most Americans can't just walk down the street from their home to get on transit and then walk to their place of work.

Case in point. My office is a 12 minute drive from my home. I get into my car in my garage protected from the elements and get out of it in my garage at work, protected from the elements.

If I wanted to take transit to my office, I would need to walk 1/2 mile to a bus stop (which is way closer than it is for most people), take one bus, get off that bus and change busses, ride that bus, walk another half mile and the total transit time would be 1 hour 15 minutes. Why would I ever do that?!

And you can't just "build a train" because the whole area is developed and built and wasn't laid out for public transit. So You're never going to have a train that happens to be right next to my suburban home and has a stop right next to my slightly more urban suburban office.

Transit makes sense in european cities where the city was designed around the transit, but not in the US where everything has been designed for cars.

What I want and is coming is a car that can drive itself in traffic so I can work and that runs of electricity so I never have to get gas.

I agree that largely doesn't happen here, which is why I asked that we not obsess about it. I find the freedom of topic here refreshing and would like to see that continue.

 

I didn't say it was gonna be easy. I don't disagree with any of that. As I mentioned above, the USA has a $200 billion backlog when it comes to mass transit, because they've literally been asleep behind the wheel for decades. China built a high speed train network from the ground up while the USA was doing nothing to improve their infrastructure. Although, California is now building a high speed train as well and there's another one being built by a private company from LA to Las Vegas. Yes, you can just build a train, it's called eminent domain. BTW, that's how this nation's highway system was built in the first place. The government bulldozed poor neighborhoods in cities and replaced them with highways so that the suburbians could easily drive into the city, but I guess it's harder to bulldoze affluent neighborhoods for the public good.

 

The reason they have been asleep at the wheel is their constituents don't want mass transit, so there is no pressure on them. In Chna and elsewhere in Asia and Europe there is a demand for that. Sure you can build a train through eminent domain, but a train can't go everywhere through suburban/urban sprawl, thats the point. Even If there was a convenient train that ran down the highway I take to get to work, I would still need to get to that train, and get to my office from that train. Its not like in a city where I can just take a leisurely walk. High speed rail doesn't get me to work, might it keep me from driving somewhere on a trip? Sure.

On top of that, in Europe I can stop at the market on my way home, stop and get my kids from school, etc. The US isn't like that. I have to drive to entirely different places to go shopping, get my kids etc. So, being on transit just doesn't work for us.

If I lived in NYC, that you can do without a car but even DC where I live, the metro/subway design is not great and you have to use Ubers etc to get around without a car. I much prefer to drive into the city and park...

 

You are making my point. That's all correct, and that all needs to change. That's the point. You are arguing with the status quo. It's not just public transit, it's smarter living as a whole. First we need to abolish the R1 zoning law and start building mixed use neighborhoods even in the suburbs, so small grocery stores and other businesses are allowed to open where people actually live. Think bigger my friend.

As for commuting, we have to get smarter about that, too. Why do you think companies continue to have a tough time getting their employees back to the office? Because people got a taste of what live is like w/o a commute during the pandemic and many don't wanna go back to the status quo of wasting hours in traffic every day.

 

You're not going to change people's preferred way of life lol. Its just not going to happen.

You may as well be suggesting we all move to the moon. Nobody is abolishing R1 zoning lol. In America these things need to be voted into fruition and its just not going to happen.