Driftless SW Wisconsin | 1972RedNeck - 5/13/2024 20:00 Ed Boysun - 5/13/2024 16:03 How about hybrids. They seem to be a thing now but remember that the first ones were subsidized. Several things are here now because of pump-priming by the feds.
If not for a federal program that made folks with nothing but the shirt on their backs eligible for a "Seed Loan", back in the 30s, I doubt I would be farming today. Of course, the moneyed interests were against that too because they wanted the land for grazing at a ridiculously cheap rate. And then there is ethanol, and REA, and WPA, and hydro electric dam building, and land grant railroads. Some interesting comparisons. I chair an irrigation association that was funded by the WPA back in the '30's. It was completed in 1938. It cost us $495,000 for the project. We paid the full amount back, plus interest. Are all the subsidies for hybrids and EVs going to get paid back, plus interest? I think we all know the answer... Back in the day, the local power co-op, funded by the REA, ran 3 phase power several miles to my farm for my grandfather for his new irrigation system. According to co-op guys, those funds were also repaid. Current subsidies for "green" vehicles? Not so much... The BOR built an incredible number of dams back in the day. Early construction was funded by the tax payers via the federal government. Many of those dams earned the nickname of "cash register dams" because of the hydro electric and to a much lesser extent, irrigation revenues they brought to the BOR. And they are still on a repayment schedule if not paid off yet. Irrigation water from Canyon Ferry Reservoir costs $4.50 per acre foot for O&M, and another $70 for repayment. What's the repayment schedule look like for socialized automobiles? Railroads are a great example of why government should stay out of business in general. Railroads flourished in the late 1800, in part from the land grants. They got "too big" so the Feds forced them to divest and form smaller companies. Then in the 1980s things got tight and some of them went broke. Nowadays they are busier than ever and it would be great to have the dismantled rail lines back, but we know that will never happen. If the government would have stayed out of it, maybe the boom wouldn't have been as big, which would have led to a smaller bust, and resulted in a properly sized rail network today. We are seeing the exact same whiplash today with hybrids and EVs, and at a much faster pace. And speaking of railroads, there was a rail line in MT that ran through my back yard that was completely electric. In the '70s, the electric system was scrapped in favor of diesel electric hybrids. In other words, 100% EVs that didn't even have to have batteries failed in the mountainous part of the US where electricity is dirt cheap because of the aforementioned hydro electric dams. Hybrids came to the rescue and stood on their own merits, as they still do today. As I said before, I hope to be an owner of an EV in the near future when they get the bugs worked out. In no way, shape, or form am I against EVs. I just don't want YOU paying for MY car, or vice versa. Your logic on "hybrid" diesel-electric railroad locomotives is a bit off target. It had nothing to do with the availability of "cheap" western electric power but with the physics of starting a long train or going up a mountain. The electric motors used on locomotives have tremendous zero speed startup torque, as required to get a train moving or to climb a hill. But to do so requires incredible amount of electrical current. And as trains got larger the batteries and/or wires etc required to store or transmit that power got larger and larger. It made a lot of sense to put a large, diesel powered generator in each locomotive to generate the needed electricity rather than string more wires or 3rd rails or charging stations through the countryside. Then you could also add a second or third locomotive to a train without overloading the electrical transmission system or killing the batteries of the time. The weight of the large diesel engine and generator also added weight and traction to locomotives which was useful as train got longer and heavier especially in the mountains. Hybrid diesel-electric railroad locomotives have almost nothing to do with present day automotive gas-electric hybrid automobiles although the same diesel-electric hybrid concept may be useful in large over the road trucks in the future. |
Mother's Day trip in the EV
