We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy Roadkill 56 Comments

All in all*, they’re just another brick on the road.

The owner of a 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat with an extended-range battery regrets buying the electric truck after attempting a road trip, only to abandon it and finish the drive with a gas-powered rental vehicle.

Dalbir Bala of La Salle, Man., left the truck in Minnesota last month after he said he tried unsuccessfully to charge the battery at two different charging stations.

“It was really a nightmare frustration for us,” Bala said.

He bought the truck — which is advertised as having a range of 515 kilometres — for $115,000 in January. He spent an additional $16,000 installing chargers at his home and his trucking business, and upgrading his residential electrical panel.

Bala, his wife and three kids left on a trip to visit Wisconsin Dells, Wis., and Chicago for business, on July 27. The truck was fully charged when they left their home just south of Winnipeg, and Bala had plans to stop at level 3 charging stations, which provide faster charges, located along the planned route.

56 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars”

  1. Try posting anything other than can content and you will be kicked in the nuts . Thanks Trudope you fu#%-ing moron . Civil war is the only way out .

  2. The question I have is: Why are so many chargers … Teslas included … always offline or malfunctioning? It’s a wall outlet … right? What’s so difficult to maintain with that? I suspect it’s something else … such as shutting them down during HIGH PRICE spikes in the power grid. It’s a wall outlet! A 50amp wall outlet! I have FOUR of those in my home … and they’re NEVER offline.

    Something else is going on here …

    1. Saw a Tesla SUV at a charging station in Golden, B.C. a few weeks ago…..the guy was sitting there looking bored and opened up the back of the car and sitting there was a gas generator. Too funny. I filled up my car, grabbed a coffee and headed on my way. He still sat there.

  3. Meet me halfway.. No hybrids, full EV with a small gas generator in the trunk.. Give me the range, convenience and options I need to live a normal life with this thing..

    A no brainer.. Build it properly so I don’t need to plug it in.. Solar panel, gas generator and some sort of heat / steam contraption to charge that battery.. Plug it in to top it up on the weekend..

    As it is .. The early adopters are getting tapped out and you gotta bring value to the table.. Make it a no brainer..

    3. I want my atomic car. I was told they’d be atomic cars in the future. And here we are with stupid battery-powered abortions being crammed down our throats (car makers included). To save the planet? Just manufacturing the bloody thing is worse than emissions.

  5. How did this story, which points out the cracks in the green narrative, ever see the light of day on the CBC?

    1. I noticed that comments are verboten on this article.
      They have to tell you or get accused of censorship, but people expressing an opinion will not be permitted, lest someone point out that EV’s are a scam and only suckers fall for it.

      1. That’s the other thing that bothers me about the article. The EV pickup* owner lives in or near Winnipeg, one of the coldest places in Canada in the winter. How did he think the EV would do in winter? The guy’s also apparently in the trucking business, so he must have been aware of the limitations of EVs. So why’d he buy the thing and try a long distance trip with it? Is he stupid? Or originally from Ontario?

        * All EVs are pickups — they all eventually get picked up somewhere after running out of coal squeezin’s.

        1. Read the name of the guy again. Winnipeg is a popular immigrating spot for certain demographics that have no idea what cold is. And that are into trucking. Until they spend a couple of winters in Winnipeg, they will wise up. It’s also around that area that illegals entered Canada and froze to death.

  6. You could build the electric engines to run purposefully hot and use that heat to create some soft of steam to turn some sort of turbine to create energy to charge the battery.. The heat would be a FREE BYPRODUCT that could be tapped to extend range especially on the highway..

    No.. Steam is so 1880s it isn’t even funny.. Lets stick with the windmills and solar panels.. and the huge hydro bills that go along with it.. THINK?.. What adding a solar panel would do to that.. THINK what a small gas generator would add to both of them..

    The people running the show are not interested in bringing value.. They want war.. Because of that they need to be FIRED..

    1. and you could stick a wind turbine on the top and drive and collect the power right.????? you havent a clue about thermodynamics have you ??????

      1. Take a little pellet of the right stuff and you could generate steam to drive a small turbine for 20 years.

    2. “You could build the electric engines to run purposefully hot and use that heat to create some soft of steam ”

      You could, but unfortunately heat is the enemy of everything electrical…you’d be shortening the lifespan of the motor considerably.

      1. Interesting useless fact: The USS Lexington, a WW2 aircraft carrier had turbo- electric propulsion. Then it caught a Japanese torpedo and flooded. That didn’t end well.

    3. Ha Ha …. hopefully this is SARCASM or else Kate needs to have a Dunce of the Day award to hand out to these nitwit posts … TOO FUNNY. I would add more but CAL2 below nails it!!!

  7. Father of the year blows $130,000 on plastic toy truck, forces family to go on vacation to Chicago.

    The Wisconsin dells are cool, but not really worth an international trip for some waterparks and and a duck ride past neat rocks. You have much more scenic rivers in Canada.

    1. Did that road trip. In a AWD Hemi Charger. Kids in the back with an entertainment system. Why would you drive one of these electrical shiboxes?

  9. Hmmm…My Hemi Ram (98L tank) went 550Km yesterday. Shows 150 Km to empty right now.

      2. “My GMC Savana 1ton 6.0 is getting over 18mpg US. Over 800 km on a fill.”

        Because you wisely bought a van with the big motor and taller gearing, and you obviously drive with a light foot whenever possible… but you still have all that torque (and towing power) at your disposal should you need it

      3. Just filled up my F159 with a 2.7 l engine and 10 speed transmission. I won’t need to fill it again for 1300 kms combined city highway. If I were wanting to tick everyone else on the highway off I could drive at 50 mph and get almost 40 mpg. Or about 1000 miles per tank.

  10. I am just guessing, but he likely has all his boosters and has a mask with him at all times – living the safe and effective, and saving the planet. The only thing worse than getting duped is finding out you were duped. Poor bugger.

  12. Why didn’t he just install solar power? They also have a negative return in Manitoba. Or try the turdoo fix, just tax the damn thing.

    1. He was spending $1000-$1500 a month on gas? WTF? To go hunting? Or whatever. I know it’s Canada, but who spends that kind of $$ on fuel?

      1. JSBachLover**: “[…] but who spends that kind of $$ on fuel?”

        Must have traded in his 1970 Monte Carlo with the big block. Those got about 6 mpg. Gas was around 30¢ per gallon then, and Monte Carlo owners bitched about fuel costs… and range. I think the small blocks got around 9.5 mpg. ;o)

        **Me too, distant relative. They didn’t call him Papa Bach for nothing!

  13. The article didn’t mention if he paid 56.00 US or Canadian for the 350kms he drove but either way that is not any cheaper than an equivalent gasoline F150. He would spend anywhere from 1.20-1.60 a litre Canadian on his travels and many new F150’s can get around 11L/100km on the highway without too much trouble. By my calculations he’s either paying more to change his truck than the equivalent gas truck or at best the same amount.
    A 115k F150 with the major inconvenience of having to stop and charge is a bad deal any way you look at it.
    Even if he does the majority of his charging at home the savings he’s getting will take a long time to be recouped when he needed to spend 16k to outfit his home and business.

    1. A friend has a new F150 4×4 and if he keeps his foot out of it, he gets about 10L/100. Therefore 350km should be 35L or roughly $60 at the prices I see around Winnipeg today. Of course, with a gas F150, he’d have made the run to Wisconson Dells on about one tank and would have been able to take his pick of dozens of functioning gas stations along the way with a refueling time of roughly 5 minutes.
      I suspect that the roadside price for electricity is 3 or 4x the cost of getting it at home.
      I recently picked up a plug in hybrid and my cost to fill the battery at home is about $0.82. That gets me about 30KM around town.
      Much less on the highway. Compared to the old hybrid I was driving, I figure it costs roughly 1/3 to go those first 30KM vs going with my previous hybrid that averaged about 5.5L/100KM.
      I’m blown away by the mileage I’m getting from this buggy at this point. I’ve only had it for 700KM but I’m averaging 1.4L/100 for those 700KM. The average would be better but I had to take a pair of 100KM road trips that were obviously mostly done on gas vs battery.
      This seems to be the way to fly for me as the milage I’m experiencing is on par with a scooter and yet I have the added bonus of being able to survive an accident and no bugs in my teeth.
      I’ll be holding out for a long time before I get a full electric car, if ever.

  15. Every Ford dealership should allow owners free access to charging stations at any dealership in North America.

    3. “Whatever happened to Elon Musk’s Electric Semi-truck?”

      It’s out there. It only has a range of about 500 miles, though…so only good for fixed deliveries between point A and point B. Your average long-haul trucker can do as much as 600-650 miles per day, I’m told. Also, the weight of the two 9000 lb batteries must be deducted from the allowable cargo weight, I believe.

    1. Saw that one day and wondered what kind of … advertizing strategy it was to sell a vehicle by associating it with a totally different kinda vehicle. Redneck long-haired biker types? But its probaly because Fords are as reliable as Harleys.

  20. There are just slightly fewer than twelve thousand retail fuel stations in Canada.

    Estimates for the Canadian charging network required to convert passenger car and light trucks to EV are about one million public chargers and about 10 million home/ private chargers.

    1. Nah. The plan is that you dont get to travel outside your 15 minute city. Unless of course, you have special privilege.

  21. My guess is that the vast, VAST majority of these electric trucks are bought by governments….with taxpayer dollars. After all, virtue signalling is important!

    1. Remember the natural gas-powered vehicles the government bought? Didn’t work in winter either. Hell, I am old enought to remember when the gubmit bought… Gremlins. I shit you not.

      1. I am currently driving a Tucson. Good cars good mileage. The main problem is the company reduced the size of the gas tank to reduce the overall weight. It has a range of about 600km. We have an older Elantra that has a range of between 800 and 1000 km depending on conditions, bigger tank same mileage.

  22. I often see EV drivers eating and texting while charging, and since it takes 3 or 4 charge stops to go from Montreal to Toronto, that’s an additional 2 – 3 hours for the trip.
    Between the “range anxiety” and the extra “carb loading” one could make the case that…..
    EV’s are bad for your health.

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