Electric Vehicles on the horizon? Do your homework

[C-Bag]

I read this a few weeks ago.

1 in 5 electric vehicle owners in California switched back to gas because charging their cars is a hassle, research shows

Roughly 20% of electric vehicle owners in California replaced their cars with gas ones, a recent study shows.

www.businessinsider.com

I think that there are very few people that an electric car would be an ideal primary source of transportation. I could see it for a second car or if you have a reserved parking spot at your job with a charging station.
I am hoping for a breakthrough with hydrogen extraction technology. Getting fuel directly from water. We could have hydrogen generators in our homes first. Then, when it could be small enough to do it on board that would be the new normal. The shipping industry would benefit tremendously. Ships could extract fuel right from the ocean. I don't think we are ready to drive 200mi and wait for over an hour to keep going when you can spend just 5 minutes at a gas pump and then go another 300-400 miles.
This would be me, except the generator would be running in the trunk while I am driving down the road.
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Great thread Jeff!

Do you get that Big Oil won’t let that happen? The plans for hydrogen is for it to be extracted from petroleum NOT water.

A great read is Alcohol is a Gas. He goes over all the angles because he’s trying to get us to go that direction for over decades. First thing is it’s simple mod to any late model car and most already can run on it. It puts out only CO2 and water. And because the various plants you can make alcohol from absorb CO2 when growing it’s a zero CO2 gain. His best idea was to use the many abandoned oil platforms in the Gulf to grow seaweed and use it to make alcohol while it eats the millions of tons of ag fertilizer that washes down the Mississippi. Making it the biggest dead zone in the world.

One time he was testing running jet engines on alcohol for the DOD and they were using smog test machine to see what was coming out of the exhaust. He thought the machine was broken because the needles didn’t move. He moved it to the intake and the needles went up. What was coming out of the exhaust was cleaner than the LA air going in.


Remember when there was that crazy commodity spike and they went through the roof and all the sudden that phrase “no food for fuel” was being echoed by every talking head? That started by the API(American Petroleum Institute) and about that time it was discovered they were manipulating the commodity futures. Of course nothing was done to them but commoditys went back down to normal.

 

[Shootymacshootface]

Do you get that Big Oil won’t let that happen? The plans for hydrogen is for it to be extracted from petroleum NOT water.

Absolutely I do. I also plan on riding the oil wave as long as possible. There's not much you or I can do about politics or big business. Things won't change much until they can't find oil anymore.
Here is a list of things I have that love to use petroleum.
2007 Chevy Aveo
2002 Acura tl
1997 GMC Suburban 6.5L turbo diesel
1978 Corvette
1980 Chris Craft with (2) 260hp Mercruisers
1980 Hydrostream with a 2 stroke carborated V6
I also heat my 2600sf house with oil.

Looking at this list makes me want to buy stocks in oil.

Not thread hijacking. This is all relevant to the topic of transportation.

 

[C-Bag]

Looking at this list makes me want to buy stocks in oil.

Not thread hijacking. This is all relevant to the topic of transportation.

You of course are free to do as you wish. I was not free to do as I wished because your favorite form of energy with the help of D.C. destroyed all competition while also polluting the air, earth and water. Even when forced by whacky California to make electric cars they would NOT sell them, only lease. Biding their time until there was a regime change so they could deep six the tech. Even though everybody would have bought them. How is that supposed freedom? How is that actually capitalism or even real business sense? Smells of dictators to me.

My kids were born in the 80’s, in the decade where all you had to do was look up to see what pollution was doing. Mountains I could clearly see every day since a child disappeared into a brown haze. When coming down from a backpacking trip even though it was a bright day you could look across the San Joaquin valley and it was a sea of brown haze. Being in clear air I’d come back down and smell the dinge what I call cow butt air. I was working in a Shell station with all my certifications as a smog tech too. And saw first hand how badly Big Auto did when trying to clean up their act. Notice you don’t see too many 80’s American cars around? They would have had to be 100x’s better to only be awful. But bringing my kids into this s##*storm made me realize I didn’t want to maintain this mess. So I bailed on auto’s and went to packing machinery where I had an influence on the stupid designs and could actually fix things instead swaping black boxes.

It was a total fluke I spent decades being a mech. All I ever wanted to do was go through life and leave the place like I found it for my kids. Who would have known there would be industries dedicated to denying they were destroying the joint even though their internal research proved they were culpable?

I see my Volt as a practical stepping stone along with the solar array as a step in the right direction as I see it.

There is an ancient Taoist teaching that says “want to change the world, change yourself first.”

 

[ErichKeane]

So I saw this and thought it was interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/o78mgw

Someone drove LA to Washington DC in an electric car (the same kind my wife has!) and it is a pretty good account for what long-distance travel looks like in one of these. She seems to have a bit of a seat-of-the-pants approach to it, so she often stops to charge for only a few minutes at a time to get a few tens-of-percent to make it to his next point. She skipped overnight charging a few times, which would have made her charging story easier. I suspect with a little planning, she could have reduced his total time by a bit.

Overall, shedid the trip in 6 days instead of his normal 4 (from a previous ICE trip), and seemed to have a reasonable itinerary. Some interesting tidbits:
- (for one of the evenings in Kansas): Barely slept that night bercause i started getting some SERIOUS range anxiety.
-Each Electrify America station that I encountered had between 4-8 stations. Most had 4
-I only had to wait for a charger once during the entire trip. It was at a single charge station in Las Vegas
-The highest number of vehicles I encountered at a station was two in addition to me. This was in Frisco, Colorado
-My fiancé started from Vegas on the same day I did and arrived around 2pm on the same day, so I arrived about 10 hours later than he did.
-I hadn’t shopped in a Walmart in many years but situating the EVs with Walmart was frankly really smart. They are ubiquitous and often contain food (either groceries or subway) as well as Wifi, a pharmacy, restrooms, etc. Many but not all were 24 hour wal marts.
-Obviously, I hope that the density of DC Fast chargers will increase, especially in central Illinois and the west. It would be nice if somebody would pair with Loves gas station since they are super common out west. A higher density of chargers would mean fewer stops to charge and more choices of where to stop.

And her conclusion:
I barely planned this trip at all, made a significant last-minute route change, and everything was fine. I'd say it went better than I expected, partially because weather was so nice. Walmart got boring. I wouldn't mind doing it again, especially as the EV charging network continues to mature. The trip would be more efficient with more DC fast stations.

 

[jbolt]

More often then not when we take road trips it is always in areas off the beaten path where the most interesting parts of the world are. Planning sometimes may involve hotel reservations but we also camp a lot. We like to make it up as we go with no set destinations. On more than a few occasions I have had anxiety over just finding fuel.

 

[ErichKeane]

More often then not when we take road trips it is always in areas off the beaten path where the most interesting parts of the world are. Planning sometimes may involve hotel reservations but we also camp a lot. We like to make it up as we go with no set destinations. On more than a few occasions I have had anxiety over just finding fuel.

I never have for gas, but I definitely have for Diesel. It seems that in some areas that don't expect that many visitors all the stations are gas-only. Presumably truckers either can drive through in a single run, or can do Pacific Pride/etc.

 

[Shootymacshootface]

 

[Aaron_W]

Do you get that Big Oil won’t let that happen? The plans for hydrogen is for it to be extracted from petroleum NOT water.

A great read is Alcohol is a Gas. He goes over all the angles because he’s trying to get us to go that direction for over decades. First thing is it’s simple mod to any late model car and most already can run on it. It puts out only CO2 and water. And because the various plants you can make alcohol from absorb CO2 when growing it’s a zero CO2 gain. His best idea was to use the many abandoned oil platforms in the Gulf to grow seaweed and use it to make alcohol while it eats the millions of tons of ag fertilizer that washes down the Mississippi. Making it the biggest dead zone in the world.

One time he was testing running jet engines on alcohol for the DOD and they were using smog test machine to see what was coming out of the exhaust. He thought the machine was broken because the needles didn’t move. He moved it to the intake and the needles went up. What was coming out of the exhaust was cleaner than the LA air going in.


Remember when there was that crazy commodity spike and they went through the roof and all the sudden that phrase “no food for fuel” was being echoed by every talking head? That started by the API(American Petroleum Institute) and about that time it was discovered they were manipulating the commodity futures. Of course nothing was done to them but commoditys went back down to normal.

Brazil went to an ethanol / gasoline blend in 1976, initially a 10% blend and currently 27%. They have had cars running on pure ethanol since 2003. These cars can also run on the ethanol / gasoline blended fuels which eliminates the issue of finding the right fuel.

Brazil uses sugar cane to produce ethanol which is far more suitable than corn. Corn to ethanol is actually a net negative energy process requiring more energy to produce that it offsets. Corn is actually known to be one of the worst options to make ethanol from, but the corn lobby is the USA large and powerful.

Sugar cane on the other hand is a net positive, creating more energy than it uses to grow and convert to ethanol. Brazil has developed its use very efficiently, and have even developed uses for the "waste" material.


I like electric cars as one of several options, but don't see the switch to all electric as sustainable. Hybrids seem to be the best near term option as they have most of the benefits of conventional cars and electric. They can also be built to run on any number of fuels. They use diesel hybrid buses in many of the National Parks. They have the power of diesel but they don't have the usual belch of black smoke diesel is known for as the electric motors allow the engine to run at a constant speed at its most efficient rpm.

 

[Aaron_W]

Also to add, electric vehicles have helped to drive a great improvement in battery technology which will benefit many industries in the long term, even if electric cars are not the answer. Tesla's Power Wall as backup power or paired with solar as one example.

 

[koenbro]

The financial aspect of EV ownership.
EV's come with a 115AC charger. It will not fully charge the battery overnight assuming it was down to a low state of charge. A high capacity charger is available but must (in most cases) be installed by an electrician. We installed two at the dealership at a cost of $1,100 each (charger and labor).
Know the costs!



Range anxiety
You planned your trip, you know there is a high capacity charging station 175 miles into your journey. Hopefully when you get there the chargers are available. Another thing about Lithium-Ion batteries, they don't like heat. Hot climates and level 3 fast charging stations can diminish battery lifespan. It has been determined that regular use of level 3 high rate chargers will cause the batteries to fail (will not hold 70% of the original capacity) prematurely.

I bought my wife a Tesla model 3 extended range (3 motors) with no additional upgrades a little over a year ago. The purchase price is quite a bit LOWER than what the typical American buyer ends up paying for a new pick-up truck -- so there is no affordability issue really.

For a basic model, it is a spectacular car. It accelerates better than my Porsche 911 4S, and it handles like a mid-engined sports car (the center of mass is low and central as the batteries are in the floor). Needs no maintenance. The interior is quiet, and the sound system is good. One feels this car was thought through from a blank slate, not just shoving a new powerplant unto a conventional ICE platform.

CHARGING. She charges it about once a week with a 240 V/30A charger in the garage, put in by an electrician for a few hundred dollars (nothing close to your example where other variables come into play perhaps) and it does charge overnight easily. I can't imagine anyone getting a Tesla sticking to 120V/15A charging -- provided they park in their own garage or have the ability to add an outlet. The suggestion that this is some hidden cost one has to carefully consider is risible.

RANGE ANXIETY. There is no range anxiety when you drive a Tesla. The on-board computer will direct you how to time your charges en route. Real-life experience. Of course we are not taking it to forrest roads in the boonies, but 99% of mega pick-ups are also never taken off paved roads. For the typical long range travel, the Tesla stations do the job. Not sure about other brands.

Again, the Tesla is an absolutely phenomenal car.