Its not just Ford that wants to become a mobility company. GM is doing the same thing. That has been Tesla's goal from the beginning. Autonomous driving vehicles has also been the main goal for Uber and Lyft. Its one reason that those 2 companies have been burning through cash for years.

As far as the hybrid Bronco, it makes business sense. People want higher seating and decent mileage. Ford has also been working on hybrid and electric F150s. Not really seeing an issue with a hybrid SUV/Crossover.

 

Careful - he's been Assimilated. And your IP has been recorded.

 

Not an insult brother. If you subscribe to the author's theories then that's fine, I don't.

 

From the link:

Why are electric cars being pushed so hard given all their many disadvantages? The market isn’t clamoring for electric cars; electric cars are being foisted on the market. Why?

Actually, no. Manufacturers can't keep up with demand for hybrids and plug-in electrics. People are buying them in unprecedented numbers. I haven't heard stories of people having guns held to their heads, but maybe those stories don't get out.

Gas is cheap – and abundant.

For the moment. Historically, not so much. Gas prices fluctuate every time Iran rattles a saber or a refinery goes offline. Our refineries are more archaic than our power grid, and worse, nobody is building new ones (that's another discussion).

Exhaust emissions have been reduced to near nil (and in the aggregate, are no worse than those produced by electric cars).

Actually, no. If you don't believe me, lock yourself in your garage with your engine running and get back to me in a couple hours on how harmless those emissions are. Things are way better than they were, but it's still poison - internal cumbustion engines take in clean air and transform it into a gas that will not support oxygen-breathers. On the other hand, nuclear makes for pretty clean power, but unfortunately there's a whole slew of folks against that also.



So… why?

It makes no sense – unless the purpose is exactly what you’ve described: To get mobility under control so as to more effectively control the population.

Tinfoil hat nonsense. This cat is just plain off the rails. Totalitarian cabals don't control mobility by manipulating the passenger car market toward vehicles that "limit" automotive travel to 300+ miles at a charge, they implement security zones "for everyone's safety". And contrary to the author's misguided musings, governments can more effectively control populations that are dispersed and/or displaced, not in close communities where they can build coalitions and underground networks to form an effective resistance. The theory that electric cars are coming to further enslave us is good for a hysterical laugh, though.

Once you see and understand this, everything else about the bizarre rush-rush-rush toward The Electric Car Future makes perfect sense.

The rush-rush-rush toward The Electric Car Future is driven by guilt-wracked snowflakes who mistakenly think they're doing the right (and popular) thing for the planet - and the corporations that do what they do best, taking as much money from your wallet as possible. Corporate virtue-signalling is the effect, not the cause. Musk might be different, I think he genuinely and naively envisions a distributed grid that puts power in the hands of the people... though I'm sure he won't mind the billions he'll make in the process.

None of it is going very far (literally and figuratively) until the batteries have at least 2x the capacity of the best they have now, and more importantly, can very quickly recharge. It would help if all our processes, from raw materials, through manufacturing, lifecycle, and recycle/disposal aren't at least as toxic than our current fossil fuel alternatives. This will all improve over time, as technology invariably does.

An objective examination might come to the conclusion that the nutjob author would be in favor of electric motive power; with the right private infrastructure it can provide sufficiency that is largely independent of governments and global corporations. Make electrons with your roof panels or with the hydrogen separator/generator in your backyard - the ultimate libertarian concept, nobody can interfere with your power.

 

Green cars wreak havoc on the 3rd world. https://www.rt.com/news/466028-clean...-dirty-mining/

Recycling their highly toxic components will be difficult. NOBODY is buying crashed Teslas. Look at the low prices https://weatherinternal.com/when-tes...e-for-auction/

Germany has lost firefighters in EV fires, now has special procedures. I was a French fireman. We had no EV/Hybrid lithium battery fire equipment. Our instructions were to cool the perimeter with water, watch it burn, stay out of the smoke, and wait for the big city crews to come, hopefully within an hour. https://jalopnik.com/watch-volunteer...-fi-1819665352

EVs and Hybrids crash poorly, above a certain threshold. https://www.videonet111.com/video/wh...-tesla-model-3

It's all a scam driven by green Maobama dollars and tax breaks trickled down into the sticker. Hybrids are excessively complex and only reliable due to consuming huge amounts of engineering that could have instead have improved our dino-fueled vehicles significantly.

I dispute their popularity. I know a great number of people. Only one drives a hybrid, due to company policy. Post stats to support your position plz.

 

Those are all great arguments, but not a single one of them defends the assertion that a hybrid Bronco is the path to some unnamed malevolent force controlling our mobility. You've completely changed your argument, because it isn't even remotely defensible. Your new arguments show only bias against hybrids and PEVs - and curiously, you seem to be making the argument that hybrids and PEVs shouldn't be available as a choice - taking away resources from third-world countries, stealing engineers to work on their development. That doesn't sound very Libertarian of you.

You know a great number of people? That's your evidence? Dispute the popularity of EVs all you want. But by 2040, Bloomberg estimates that electrics will comprise 57% of the passenger car market, and 56% of the light commercial vehicle market. Last year, EV sales shot up by a staggering 81% over 2017.

When talking about Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs), Tesla is it. Nothing else comes close in terms of range or sales. Of course, I can easily find a website that supports the opposite position, but here are a few right off the top:

https://insideevs.com/news/357565/ev...ard-june-2019/

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesl...problem-2018-2

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/70087...-electric-cars

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ctric-vehicles

Older article, but Tesla wait times haven't improved dramatically.
https://www.automobilemag.com/news/d...o-four-months/

Keep in mind that supply/demand thing: just because they can't keep them on lots doesn't mean the streets are awash with them. An 81% increase in sales of a handful of cars still results in less than 2 handfuls of cars. But electric cars are hardly being "foisted on the market". They are in demand. Tesla sold over 83,000 units between January and June (they sell every car that rolls off their line, and have since production began). This is from a very small company when compared with the likes of GM, Ford, and Toyota. And a company that, a little over seven years ago, hadn't ever sold a car.

As for hybrids, when I traded my RX400h in last year, they were all over it. Lexus was not allocating enough new units to dealers to keep up with demand. Sales manager had a waiting list for new ones, and a waiting list for lease turn-ins and trade-ins. I'd have another one again, if the price was right. It took off like a rocket, was super quiet, and solid.

If EVs are being foisted on the market, we'd be seeing tons of leftover inventory at huge discounts. I'm certainly not seeing that in the Phoenix area - though I'm not looking for stuff like Priuses.

I have zero argument with most of your points, especially toxicity and total cost including raw materials acquisition and production - but to say a hybrid Bronco is the harbinger of totalitarian control over our lives, I would say that is reading into the script a little too much. And I'd add that there are many other areas in which that train has already left the station.

 

Bloomberg is not a credible source, it's a propaganda service. The future is uncertain, they are merely attempting to steer it. Hillary Clinton had a 98% chance of winning, remember?

 

You can turn the stop start feature off.

 

Hey these are "Hybrids".

1. Porsche 918 Spyder.
2. Jaguar C-X75.
3. Ferrari 599 Hy-Kers.
4. Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid.
5. Audi e-tron Spyder.

 

I’m out!!

 

But RT, that's solid reporting.

 

This thread is hilarious.

When do we get to the racist snowflakes?

 

This thread has run it's course. This forum is for tech discussions about the 2021 (or whatever) Bronco.

If you want to discuss conspiracy theories, we have the Club for that.