Democrat's Outsized Campaign Spending and Electric Vehicle Battery Degradation With Age
What do you think about the spending? Did you know that EV batteries lose a significant portion of their capacity with age?
The question I have about the spending amounts is one I've seen asked in other contexts:
does the money spent here indicate thoughtlessness, a lack of faith that spending here would matter, or is it paying for something you want? Maybe something entirely different?
Let me start with a quote from the Sun article linked first below:
"The Colorado Democratic Party’s federal campaign committee spent $9.4 million in the 2022 election cycle, compared with the $3.3 million spent by its Republican counterpart. By comparison, the Democrats’ federal campaign committee spent $8.4 million in 2014 while the GOP committee spent $8.2 million that year."
Quite a discrepancy in the 2022 election and also when compared to the 2014 numbers.
There was a time, prior to the "Blueprint" (see the second link for a review of it that would give you context if you are not familiar), when this kind of discrepancy would have indicated incompetence. I.e. that the Republicans were foolish to either not raise enough or to not spend enough.
I don't know that you could claim that now. After all, why would any sane person sink a bunch of money into a state that has increasingly gone blue? Why would I donate to a group wanting to do same?
Additionally, why would Democrats drop what has so far shown itself to be a winning strategy--back a dumptruck full of money up to the state and start tilting the bed up?
I think the campaign finance numbers (and there are a lot more in the Sun article if you're interested) add to the picture that this state is either already, or headed toward, being blue. Not purple. Blue.
They also show that the Democrats have no intention in the near future to do different than what they've already been doing.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think this state has to stay permanently blue. I.e. I don't think there's anything inevitable about our current situation. I do think, however, that conservatives and Republicans in this state are in for a lot of work and delayed gratification to start to gain some power back. I do think that part of that effort will include getting people to put money into something that would appear to be a lost cause. In other words, we need a Redprint in this state if we're (conservatives and Republicans) gain back some measure of power.
I wish that we didn't live in a world where money trumped ideas, but here we are.
What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
https://coloradosun.com/2022/12/23/colorado-democrats-out-spend-republicans-in-2022-election/
https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p16079coll52/id/15
Electric Vehicles (EV) lose range as they age.
**Before anything else, I want to be clear about what you should expect out of this post. This is not an exhaustive study. From what I saw looking at a variety of cars, I feel confident saying that the general pattern of "as an EV ages it loses battery capacity " holds, but I will not claim that the numbers you see here hold in every single case. The patterns are, I believe, accurate across makes and models, but don't expect exact matches everywhere.
As part of researching what it would look like if I bought an EV, I noted something I don't think I thought of before: EV's lose range as they age (all other things being equal). I knew about how temperature and use affect EV range, but not this.
I get all the numbers below from the first link below, Xcel Energy's EV navigator. I won't claim it as the definitive source for info on EV's, but it seemed a reasonable choice (and you cannot accuse me of picking a source that hates EV's).
I set the EV search tool to the kind of car that I could afford (after incentives), a budget of about $5000 to $6000, and chose cars that roughly match my current little grocery-getter. This is in keeping with a future post on EV shopping (stay tuned). I took a screengrab of the settings on the search tool and attached as screenshot #1 if you wanted to check on my results (or follow).
Now, take a look at screenshot #2 attached. This is from the third link below off Xcel's site. Before talking numbers, I want you to note the part boxed in blue. This is what pops up on every used EV profile I could find. To quote: "To account for battery degradation, the range quoted here is an estimation based on the age of the vehicle and normal driving/charging patterns."
Now, let's go and find comparisons. I'm going to use Edmunds as my source for the ranges of these vehicles when they were new because they quote from the EPA and they had information for a wide range of vehicles on Xcel's list. This might introduce an error, but by staying with one source, the error would be (I hope) systematic and not random. I.e. all the error would be in the same direction.
Edmund's range for the Smart fortwo (from screenshot #2) when new is 68 miles. That means that the Smart fortwo lost 8 miles of range or about 8/68 = 11.8% of its capacity when new.
I did the calculation above for a variety of cars in my price range off Xcel's search tool and tabulated the results. I listed those in screenshot #2.
**Another quick note: take note that my search results were mixed between EV's and PHEV's (electric vehicles with only a battery and a motor, and "plug in hybrid" electric vehicles that have a battery which connects to an electric motor to move the car IN ADDITION to a gas engine that turns a generator to charge the battery). That's why the table headings list "battery-only" range. That was the only fair way to get an apples to apples comparison.
Note also the last row. That one was tossed in because it was very notable to me. The 2015 Chevrolet Volt Base PHEV has lost all its battery capacity and is now running as a gas-powered car (though, I would assume, nominally electric and eligible for a subsidy)!
There are a couple last things. First, I believe the ranges listed above (whether when new or current age) are all "average" ranges based on average energy consumption and battery capacity. To give you a sense of what I mean, I found one reference that listed the range of the 2016 Smart fortwo as between 43.5 and 99 miles depending on temp and usage. The EPA (through Edmunds) lists it as 68 which roughly corresponds to the average of 43.5 and 99. Following a general rule I've seen that you need about half the battery energy for heat on cold days, your range could drop by up to half of what is listed in the table.
Second, you need to remember that combustion-powered vehicles slow as they age too. I was really hoping to give you some comparisons or some reference but couldn't find anyone that provided an estimate of current mileage to compare to new. I did see a few articles saying that "experts say" the age doesn't affect mileage.
So, I'm going to end by just relating my own experience. I drive a 1997 Geo Prizm (try to contain your jealousy) with about 260K miles on it. I get about 31 - 34 mpg on the highway (admittedly I baby my car and don't go above about 65 mph) and about 24- 26 mpg around town. When I look up the official government estimates for mileage for my car (see third link), I see that my car got 23 city and 31 highway. Clearly, my car's efficiency hasn't dropped much in the past 26 years.
Got your own gas/diesel mpg's (new and old) to share? Please do!
https://ev.xcelenergy.com/vehicles
https://ev.xcelenergy.com/used-vehicles/Smart:fortwo:electric_drive_coupe
