There was an interesting story over the holiday about electric cars piled up at “fast” chargers . . . waiting in line for other EVs to finish “fast” charging. This brings up the problem of throughput – another of many EV problems not being reported by the general press as well as the car press (the latter being inexcusable).
It is a function of the EV’s much longer recharge time vs. a non-electric car’s time to refuel. Even in a best-case scenario – at what are hilariously (and depressingly) styled “fast” chargers – an EV takes at least five times as long (about 30 minutes) to recover a partial charge as it takes to fully refuel a non-electric car.
Consider what this means in terms of how many electric cars can recharge in one hour at a limited number of “pumps.”
A gas station that has say six gas pumps can refuel six cars in about five minutes but for the sake of discussion, call it ten each – to take into account people leaving their car at the pump for a couple of minutes longer than it takes to fill up to go inside to buy a soda, etc. The station’s throughput at that rate is six cars every ten minutes. Twelve cars in 20; 36 cars in an hour.
But six EV “fast” chargers can only charge six cars – partially – in 30 minutes. In the same one hour that it takes to refuel 36 cars, only 12 EVs are partially recharged. This being necessary at a “fast” charger, to avoid damaging the very expensive battery and shortening its already short useful life. The EV can only accept about 80 percent “fast” charge; the remainder has t be charged slowly. Well, even more slowly. The full charge takes an hour-plus – but let’s leave that problem aside for purposes of this discussion.
The EV leaves the “fast” charger with 80 percent charge.
Which means it’ll have to be recharged again, sooner.
That’s the best-case scenario, remember.
The only way to mitigate this – in terms of the number of EVs that can charge at the same time – would be to build at least three times as many “fast” chargers as there are gas pumps. But where will the money come from? And where will the space come from?
Six pumps fit easily on a small concrete pad. But it would take the equivalent of three times as much space to match the gas station’s throughput capacity with EV “fast” chargers. This means a tripling of real estate and construction costs to the owner of the “fast” charge” station. More waste, too – of concrete and steel and all the other material which go into building a gas – or EV – station.
What is the carbon footprint of all this, by the way?
Of course, ordinary parking spots could be converted to “fast” charging spots, thereby eliminating the problem of having to find three times the space for new EV charging stations.
But you’d still have to wait the 30 minutes vs. five or less.
And then parking throughput becomes a problem. Because there’s no getting around the limited number of parking spots – and places available to build new ones. The curbside real estate in most urban areas is already spoken for; finding a place to park in most such areas is often difficult as it is.
What happens when you need more than a place to park?
Your EV is running low on charge – but all the “fast” charging spots are full. And – unless the laws are changed – many of those cars occupying those “fast” curbside charging spots are also parked there. Their owners aren’t waiting to get back on the road again. They are eating dinner, shopping . . . or in for the night.
If you run out of charge before you find a place to recharge, your EV will brick – in the middle of a busy city street, perhaps. And when that happens, you will have to get your EV towed to a “fast” charger . . . when one becomes available. Kilowatt-hours not being transportable in a jerry can, like gasoline.
More waiting.
City traffic is already chaotic and stressful. Imagine what it will be like when thousands of EVs are jockeying for limited places to charge-park and regularly bricking in the middle of the road because someone ran out of juice before they could get more juice.
Imagine what it will be like when, in addition to circling the block over and over in the hope that a spot will open up, you have to sweat the needle – the battery charge needle.
It’s a non-worry for non-electric car owners. Even if they do run out of gas, getting back on the road is easy – and quick. Gasoline being transportable in a jerry can. 
No waiting.
Perhaps new multi-story EV parking/charging lots will be built. Less waiting . . . for the hook up, at least.
But who will pay for this? And who will pay for the efficiency cost? In terms of time wasted? A single multi-story “fast” charging building will only be convenient for a relative handful of people, those who happen to live/work/shop near it. Those who don’t will have to spend more time getting to where they need to be after they leave their EV.
If the distance is too far to be reasonably traversed on foot, then what? Will new train routes be added? EV buses built? Who will pay for all of that? And even if the money available were limitless – which EV people seem to believe it is – time is precious. More of it cannot be purchased, even with limitless funds.
This will be another price of our Electric Car Future.
Why anyone is interested in paying it escapes me.
. . .
Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet (pictured below) in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a sticker – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
My latest eBook is also available for your favorite price – free! Click here. If that fails, email me and I will send you a copy directly!
With all the hype about EVs, the thing I keep wondering is: What happened to hydrogen? Just a few years ago, hydrogen was supposed to be the future of the automobile. Several automakers had built limited-run hydrogen models. Most ran on (as I recall) fuel cells which converted the hydrogen to water, and used the energy output to power an electric motor. But I think BMW had a model of its gas engine that could burn hydrogen directly!
Of course there were lots of problems with hydrogen. It would take a lot of energy to create the hydrogen needed for these cars, and a huge infrastructure buildup for all the refueling stations that would be needed. But the advantage over pure electric was quick refueling. And while no doubt less efficient than gasoline, the energy loss to create hydrogen didn’t sound much worse than battery and transmission losses — maybe not as much.
Ultimately, of course, hydrogen was just another “solution” to the imaginary environmental crisis of global warming/change/whatever. But if we’re going to have these changes forced down our throats, hydrogen seemed an easier transition than electric.
Eric, do you know what happened?
You have to see this
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7755753/Chaos-California-Tesla-drivers-stranded-hours-half-mile-long-line-charge.html?ito=native_share_article-masthead
Makes me want to run right out and buy an EV, I love waiting in line.
And who will pay for the efficiency cost? In terms of time wasted?
One of many excellent points you make. A while back, some do-gooders in my office started pushing the idea of tearing out the paper towel dispensers in the bathrooms and replacing them with those horrible electric monstrosities. In my objection, I did not stress the electricity waste so much as the TIME waste. Several visits a day, multiplied by every employee, is non-trivial. Don’t know if my voice had anything to do with it, but the idea quietly died.
The other problem that I see, now that the Cybertruck is announced, is that they only mentioned an unladen range of 500 miles on the $70K version. That range will drop quite severely when towing 14K lbs.
Hi Habla,
Yup. I harp on this business relentlessly… chiefly because no one else will. EV fanbois tout all the performance/capability of electric motors – which is true. But they always fail to mention what happens if you use the capability more than briefly. If you need – or just want – sustained performance, whether in terms of “ludicrous” speed or pulling power – you do not want an EV.
A V8 Hellcat run like a raped ape will suck its tank dry in less than 200 miles. But, it can be refueled in less than 5 minutes. A Tesla S run like a raped ape will also run “dry” in short order – but will take much longer to get back on the road.
So, you have all this capability that you can’t use. It’s like a hot girlfriend who only lets you have sex with her once a month.
Added bonus, they both like to catch fire too.
Watched a video of that circus…. Saw several empty stalls. Maybe even though it had 40 stalls it couldn’t handle the current required for all 40. This was a video from Kettleman City California. I LMAO watching these idiots sitting there in their holier than thou EV’s.
https://tiremeetsroad.com/2019/12/02/line-at-kettleman-city-tesla-supercharger-station-45-teslas-long/
There was a huge line of 45 cars with some very upset people waiting.
I am simply amazed at the depths people will go to virtue seek. Greta the actress would have been proud of these numbskulls.
I couldn’t stop LMAO either. Sure, great to “Go Green” with an EV, huh people LOL?!
Oh, they’ll be “going green” alright…with envy as the rest of us sane folks whiz right pass them in our “dirty” IC cars. LMAO, indeed.
Soylent…
Heh Heh Heh…
That video has been pulled. I’m sure it’s just a technical issue. The fact that the problem arose after a short call from Elon to Marky Z is just a coincidence.
One thing you failed to mention is where all this power is going to come from. No gas station I have ever seen has the required power capacity. Fast chargers require high voltage. To get the power capacity to charge a handful of cars would certainly require an entire new power service, if yu try to use a transformer to increase the incoming voltage the current requirements are enormous, too much in fact. The only reasonable solution is to install a 5kv service. That ain’t cheap I can assure you. Hundreds of thousands of dollars not to mention specialized maintenance, spare fuses that cost a couple of grand each as well as a fenced barrier to keep people out.
All that is assuming:
1.The local utility substation has the capacity
2.The charging station has the available real estate to add the 5kv service.
480v 3 phase service would not be enough and most station don’t even have 220v 3 phase service.
Add up the amperage requirement to charge 8-10 cars at the “fast rate” and the requirement are enormous.
Of course if a station has the room they always can put in a diesel generator actually several. (Elon did this at Nurburgring to power his test car -(You know, the one that blew up halfway through the circuit)
or a large batteryto smooth peak power demands
a battery the size of Shea Stadium?
Last Sunday in SLC I saw a Tesla on the freeway in “limp” mode, doing about 40 in a 70 zone, with the emergency flashers intermittently working, the sap who bought it likely praying he’ll make it wherever before the thing dies, now that’s what I want in a means of conveyance!
The market will fix this like all things. These realities aren’t just on paper. There are many folks who drank the Kool Aid and now struggle with these realities daily. They may not but another EV even though they’ll tell you it’s all roses. We’ve not yet reached the end of the first generation of EVs and there are already cracks in the facade. These realities are coming to light and the true environmental and human costs pretty much negate the perceived advantages. The US just botched another coup attempt in Bolivia. Why? They have the largest lithium reserves in the world. How soon will the cry become ‘no wars for Lithium’? When EVs are guilty of the same crimes as gas cars, what will be the upside?
There is one as it turns out. While I don’t like EVs in general, there is no arguing that Tesla has made some spectacular vehicles with cutting edge tech. The primary tech being a 14kW battery system. That costs ~$13k. That’s $1k per kW (retail) for the most advanced battery system available today. Folks a 14kW battery bank is more than adequate to power an average home. Now go price a solar system. You’ll easily pay $40 k for the same 14kW batteries and they won’t be as good. Solar panels are radpidly declining in price and climbing in efficiency. I already have feelers out to local junkyards for salvage Tesla’s with still-good batteries. That attached to some cheap panels will give me free power that will actually pay for itself while I’m still alive. I’m no hippie green. And EVs don’t make sense to me for all the reasons Eric mentions. But the reverse is true for a house. Why would you not have your own ‘gas tank’ on your house? Why depend on some energy company who gets to write their own laws to jack up your prices while pushing wars and wrecking the environment. I’m not pushing solar per se, but any alternative power system that is self producing and pays back it’s install cost is a complete no brainer for a million and one reasons (the first being ‘security’. Eric’s favorite word lol) . I think this is the future of Tesla as a company. This is their real value proposition, not EV cars. Check the prices of 1995_2005 cars. Any decent make or model has seen a price jump. These cars are in demand because people want real throttles and steering columns and not sketchy drive by wire junk. EVs aren’t getting the traction they’d have you believe. And the subsidies haven’t even run out yet. When that day comes it’s effectively over. This is the market setting the record straight exactly the way it always does. Don’t lose faith.
The price difference is because the solar equipment manufacturer and the installer are making a normal profit margin for such a business. Tesla Motors has slim to negative profit margins.
TM uses standard format cells from major battery manufacturers like panasonic/sanyo. Their volume I am sure gives them very good pricing.
TM cuts engineering corners where there is enough information available for me to determine so so odds are they are cutting corners where I can’t.
The political forces behind battery EVs are the same ones that currently make self-serving laws, agitate for wars, and wreck the environment. Battery EVs are their next level of control to manage society.
Something I’ve noticed is that any time someone cares about the environment but develops their way of life in a manner that makes them independent results in them being stomped on. The technologies, laws, and so forth could be developed in the obvious ways that could allow people to be independent but generally are not.
Yup. Lots of places passing ‘grid-tie’ and ‘utility-tie’ laws. My favorite scam is the ones where even if you are fully independent, consuming nothing from their systems, you still have to be connected to the system or occupancy is illegal. Then you have to pay a monthly ‘service’ fee for being connected.
Here’s an idea. Since EVs are pretend zero emission (that electricity has to generated somewhere), why don’t we pretend all IC vehicles are EVs? We can even put EV sticker labels on our current vehicles. If my 2002 7.3L Powerstroke has an EV sticker on it, it must be zero emission. Sticker proves it – right? With this scheme the “fast charging” station problem has already been solved. We just won’t call them gas stations any more. I mean, if we’re going to use absurd logic, why not?
Like Clarcksonious once said, “I’m going to stick a 9volt in a Hummer and call it a hybrid”. Powerstoke would be another good choice.
Put a button on the dash to run the starter and a lockout defeat. Pick gear push button, truck moves without engine running. TA-DA! Hybrid. Not far of course. But has anyone seen any regulation that says how far a vehicle must travel on electricity only to qualify as a hybrid? I know of none.
“Since EVs are pretend zero emission (that electricity has to generated somewhere)”
To a first order about 20% of electricity in the US is generated by Nuclear, 20% by Hydro
and 20% by Wind/Solar. 20% is natgas and 20% is coal. So if you are in the Northwest
it’s all hydro, and if you are in Ohio, it’s mostly coal.
However the electrical sector is rapidly decarbonizing. I don’t expect coal to last another 2 years, that will
be offset by wind/solar/gas.
What is going to make this nonsense even worse is building thousands of new charging stations and running them with wind and solar. Remember, as we are forced by the Marxists to buy EVs, they will also be dismantling gas stations (who pays for that?) and shutting down hydrocarbon usage. It will take millions of tons of materials to build windmills and special materials for solar panels. Since windmills have a useful life of about 20 years, they also have to be torn down and the materials cannot be recycled all at the generous cost of over $500,000 apiece. Junk windmills are filling up landfills. And I thought the climate freaks were greenies also. What is especially so irksome is that the Greta led climate change hysteria is totally based on false and non-provable assumptions. The Marxists are creating massive inefficiencies replacing proven systems. Then again, they are specialists at doing that. Look at Russia in at the start of the 1900’s into the 1970’s.
“I work with someone that fell for the Tesla scam hook, line and sinker. When she told me she was buying one, I asked her why. Her immediate reply was “Well, for one reason, I won’t have to buy fuel . ” I responded ” Really ? You get free electricity ? ” I got a look from her similar to a brook trout.”
And, I just read an article about why Michelle will run (or not run) for President. Obviously, she will get one lady’s vote.
Hi Clay,
The original electric cars of 100-plus years ago also appealed to . . . women. The difference, today, is that men have been feminized.
All feminism has done is make a bunch of angry women into awful men and a bunch of weak men into awful women.
Well-said, Anonymous… right on the money… unfortunately.
Trouble is, fitting in with this as the social climate. Natural women have no place anymore. Same as men. This, I’ve found, leads to profound loneliness and isolation. Add any amount of self awareness and the intellect to understand what’s going on, and it really sets in how fucked up things have become. Emotional guards go WAY up, and the natural men and women are so guarded they can’t even see each other. Sad state. Makes me think of invasion of the body snatchers. You can’t tell who’s not snatched, and if you do anything to show you’re not, there’s a social take down.
Indeed.
The social enforcers are everywhere. Show you are not conditioned and they come out of the woodwork to attack.
You mean kind of like when I say something negative against bicycles?
Go troll someone else, Chuck.
A perceptive analysis. But take heart: those who you call natural men and women can still find each other with a little courage and a little effort. Social take-downs are effective against high-profile figures, but are much less so against millions of “nobodies” who speak truth to power.
eric, Everything has been feminized. It’s a big problem with fish. Years ago Texas was singled out as ONE of the states where every bit of water, ground water, streams, lakes, etc. was polluted with mainly Prozac and other psych drugs.
Now while it may not have as much effect on me(how would I know? Everything still works but doesn’t get a chance to perform)but it’s hell on fetus’s and children of every age doing the most damage to the youngest.
You want to know about the effects of a military jet running for an hour, you won’t be able to but you can find out things such as exposure to jet fuel exhaust kills more people by a long shot every year. India has an especially bad problem. It’s not flights in and out of India but North America and British flights travel 6,000 miles in the air so countries to the east are getting a real treat from all the jet fuel used in the US plus in countries worldwide.
Even civilian jet crews get sick from working too many hours. You’d think they’d have a save source of air but they don’t. They get their air(cabin air)from the intake off one of the engines. It contains atomized jet fuel too. Not only that, there is a psych drug, a truth serum, that is added to jet fuel.
It doesn’t have to be used but is. The manufacturers of civilian jetliners are just now starting to get their cabin air from a less polluted source.
https://www.steadyhealth.com/articles/the-surprising-effects-of-jet-fuel-toxins-on-bones-and-tissues/jet-fuel-toxins-more-of-a-problem-to-airfield-workers-than-to-travelers
https://www.steadyhealth.com/articles/the-surprising-effects-of-jet-fuel-toxins-on-bones-and-tissues?show_all=1
While jets use bleed air from the engines, it’s taken from the compressor sections; the compressors are ahead of the combustion chambers and exhaust. The bleed air is fine, but it’s heated after having been taken from the compressor sections.
MM, The air is NOT fine less the crews wouldn’t get sick when they’ve been on long missions. Even on long journeys the paying public has gotten sick. Time for the oxygen masks.
One of my morbid habits is watching air disaster videos. One that I saw recently, the crew smelled smoke but thought it was just the “normal” contamination from the engine bleed air – right up until all the alarms started going off. If I remember correctly, the plane burned up before they could land safely; everyone lost. I don’t remember the flight number.
Hi Anon,
If memory serves, it was a Swissair flight; the fire was started by overheated wiring (from the in-cabin entertainment system) and by the time the crew realized how bad it was, it was already too late.
All because people have become too lazy to read a book. A book involves mental exercise and that is worse to most people than physical exercise.
That sounds right. I watched about a hundred of those videos a few weeks or a month or so back, so they are all kind of fuzzy in my mind now – except for the one back in the 1970s where the plane flew into the swamp because the whole damn cockpit crew was fawking around with a burnt out light bulb 🙁
Mr(s) Obama will be the “perfect choice” for those incapable of critical thought.
hi motorists. All problems a E.V. may have is easily solved by pulling a trailer behind your E.V. with a diesel engine on it running, making electricity . All you do is run a wire from the trailer to your E.V. and you have all the juice you need until the next diesel fill up. The fuel tank for the diesel can be huge, say 300 to 500 gallons on the trailer next to the engine . You pass all stations of any kind laughing for a long time ,yet you are driving an E.V.
Excellent, Joe!
It’s worth a mention in this regard that such a system has already been deployed. Hybrid cars work on the same principle (albeit using gas rather than diesel to power the batteries). They actually work well; are practical and efficient.
Which of course is why they are being abandoned.
@Joe – Which EVs have trailer hitches? Put one of those receiver hitch cargo platforms on the back with the generator. Simple range extender. I thought of this way back.
However, a dozen different manufacturers proprietary onboard systems vary considerably. None that I know of will let the car charge while in motion. So back to being stationary for extended periods to charge.
Also, portable generators are not known for their fuel efficiency.
So, crazy idea I know, we could have a container in the car and maybe say put a volatile high energy liquid in it, to run a more efficient engine………. Nah, that’ll never work. 🙂
EVs. Keeping our engineers working hard on solving all the problems the ill-planned first solution created…
Joe, back in the 1990s I pulled a 1970s publication from the library shelves and it had the electric car solution in it. An electric car with a generator on trailer.
In the battery EV enthusiast world they will take a battery pack out of a wrecked version of their vehicle and build it into a trailer for extra range.
They did and they where called the Chevy ‘Volt’ & ‘Bolt’ but they killed it! To bad too as they are very popular in my area
I read somewhere that all the stated goals of the “clean” energy / EV crowd would be easily and simply surpassed if people would just keep their tires properly inflated. That’s something we old school drivers knew to do just as a matter of course. I can’t recall any of my nephews ever checking theirs, and when I break out the air compressor to do mine I always check family members’ tires, and they’re always low. Too simple a solution, I guess.
If the government would only time the traffic signals correctly and stop using stop signs for speed control there would be a good deal of energy savings. But the speed kills crowd won’t allow it.
Spot on Brent, around here they take pleasure in reducing the number of lanes in the roadway, and posting signs bragging that the “traffic lights are timed for frequent stops”. Just last week the local paper ran a series about how terrible the traffic is in Boston and somehow that wasn’t mentioned; the cognitive dissonance is amazing.
They removed two lanes from the Charles River Dam Road (the road that passes by the Museum of Science) to make room for two bicycle lanes. It’s added at least ten minutes to my commute.
That’s the new urbanists. They use bicycling to attack motoring. They will always favor whatever hurts motoring more over what helps bicycling the most.
True, but you still favor cycling over motoring even when it hurts motoring.
Vehicular bicycling does not hurt motoring.
Chuck, it is NOT the normal just wanting to get somewhere on my bike cyclist that promotes these abomincations. It is the ubran manural crowd, the green weenies, the holier than thou environannies, and, of course, the specialised construction companies that design and build these abominatioins to be as obn=oxious as possible. Witness developments over the past five years in and about Seattle. They have an YUUUUGE cycling club up there that hosts quite a number of great distance rides… the classic and best known one being the Seattle to Portland 200 mile ride. Done as either a one day double century or a two day back to back centuries. They’ve REALLY raised the entry fee, cut every corner they [ossibly can (the support food os so wretched I cannot eat that crap and ride, so I always bring my own) and they call for hundreds of volunteers to keep their costs to a minimum. Their profits are mostly spent on their management and leadership, who work overtime dreaming up obnoxious “bike projects” that on the surface look green, but are carefully designed to increase the misery of motorists. AND they also manage to figure out how to spend millions instead of tens of thousands. “We’re saving the planet one rider at a time, ain’t bicycling great?” I refuse to give them a nickel. Next time I feel inclined to ride the Seattle to Portland, I’ll just hop on my bike and follow their route……… I don’t eat their garbage rest stop food anyway, the water supplied is always from a publically funded source (school firehouse, park), I don’t need their road nannies flagging me on, nor the sag wagon. I think the first ime I rode it the reg fee was $65, and the food was quality and edible I actually ATE some of it. Next year Whole Foods was the purveyor, and it was terrible. I think the reg fee last year was $180. For WHAT, now?
Cascade Bicycle Club have morphed into a far left socialistic progressive Political Action Committee bent upon a UN Agenda 21/31 type outfite.
Americans burned 142 billion gal. of gas last year. Sen. Barack Obama now suggests that we can trim that thirst by making sure we keep our tires properly inflated. Is he right? Let’s do the math:
A single tire that’s underinflated by 10 psi costs about 3.3 percent of your fuel economy. So to keep the numbers round for the sake of our discussion, let’s say four tires underinflated by that same amount would increase our fuel consumption by around 10 percent.
How many cars have underinflated tires? A Department of Transportation study dating back to 2001 says that 60 to 80 percent of cars on the road are running tires underinflated by as much as 10 percent. Worse yet, they say that 20 to 50 percent of them are driving with tires down in pressure by as much as 20 percent. Want more? Well, 10 to 30 percent of these cars have tires with pressure as low as 30 percent of the recommended pressure. That’s bad, folks. And it means we’re costing ourselves much more than a few miles per gallon. It means we’re wearing out a lot of tires prematurely. And more important, it means there are quite a few cars on the road that have less-than-optimal control on wet pavement, under heavy braking or during evasive maneuvers. So underinflated tires may be causing untold accidents.
Bobster, I used to work for a company that almost exclusively hauled aggregate. The owner was so caught up in getting out of the yard he didn’t give you time to properly inflate his sorry-ass tires he bought.
We’d been working on a pad and a road on an oil lease for a couple weeks and I’d get a tire aired to 105 lbs every chance I could. One day there’s a breakdown loading so I got all but one tire that had 80 lbs, aired to 100 lbs each.
On the same run with the same load there was a few mile stretch that was level and to that day I had never reached over 62 mph on it. That day, with all but one tire having 100 lbs of air, I reached 72 on that stretch. That’s a lot of difference and a lot of fuel. If we got in the yard before he did. I’d use my truck’s air and if nobody else was airing their tires, I’d use two trucks to air tires. I could tell the difference in speed when they were all aired properly. The truck felt like it had gained at least 50 hp.
Interesting, you selected the Madonna Inn supercharger as some sort of ‘Island of Misery”.
That’s about a mile from the mall there.
Now it would seem that if that supercharger is backing up, either the inn could send a valet out to move the cars and for a minor fee, handle the charging and have people come into the inn for a nice bowl of soup
and some coffee while they wait or Tesla needs to optimize charger allocation. They are clearly using a First-come, First-serve queue, when they should use a shortest charge first optimization schema with the users bidding for charger time. There are some really interesting auction approaches to manage this.
The other major course of action is Tesla adds some more chargers at the mall. Lots of room for parking there and if the food court is open, the owners could go down there. Grab coffee, maybe do a bit of shopping while waiting.
The EV charging model is going to be different then gas stations. Gas stations try and lure people in with cheap gas and then sell a donut. With charging, the customers will be around for a bit, so, can they be sold on services like haircuts, or a chair massage, or a meal.
Who the hell has time for that nonsense? I sure don’t. If I’m driving somewhere I just want to get there and unless really out in the boondocks there are plenty of places on the way to tank up in just a few minutes.
There is simply no legitimate reason for pushing kind of bullshit that battery electric vehicles bring to the table.
I think here is the issue – electric cars are potentially good for congested city driving, particularly with short distances for single people / couples. Or a second car for a family, as long as there is a real car which can be relied upon when going somewhere far. Something like say the original Mini concept was.
The problem is all the electric cars we are having imposed on us are anything but that – they are big, heavy, and therefore quite inefficient. Furthermore they are very expensive…… Infact despite all our mandates and brainwashing in the west – the largest market for EVs is infact china…. simply because they are practical for the use there…. and they are sold (to a much greater extent) on the practicality, rather than say the virtue of having one as they are in the west…..
“The problem is all the electric cars we are having imposed on us are anything but that – they are big, heavy, and therefore quite inefficient.”\
you have to do some numbers here boss
Clover,
“Do some numbers”?
Ok, lets. The least expensive new EV is the $30,000 Nissan Leaf, which is sold at a net loss and goes 150 miles (maybe) on a charge. For less than half that sum, one could buy a new Versa that Nissan makes money selling that goes 400 miles (easily). The Versa will probably run reliably for 15-20 years before anything very expensive breaks. The Leaf will suffer battery degradation – dramatically reducing its range – long before then, necessitating thousands of dollars for a new battery.
The Leaf owner will need to spend $1,000 to rig a “fast” charger in his home. The Versa owner will need to spend zero. The Leaf will cost its owner time – waiting to recharge – and convenience. The Versa will save its owner time – and provide him with more convenience.
There’s some “numbers” for you.
https://www.plugincars.com/cars?sort_by=field_msrp_value&sort_order=DESC&field_isphev_value_many_to_one=pure+electric
Well you did some numbers. That’s good. And it appears you define expensive based on the lowest price econ box sold on the market.
The Porsche Panamera comes in at 90-160K and a 911 comes in at 97-120K, while the Taycan comes in at 150-180K, so definitely in family to the Panamera, with amazing performance
So to the performance vehicle world, the electrics are quite economical, especially in avoiding a lot of maintenance.
Which is what’s happening the new tech starts in the high end. All the good stuff started in Cadillac, but you should know that.
“the new tech starts in the high end. All the good stuff started in Cadillac,”
Are you serious?
Try S-class. First in almost everything. But you clearly did not know that.
or Volvo, or Lexus,
I was thinking originally of Hydromatic transmissions, air conditioning and automatic headlight control but, there were great innovations in Mercedes and Lexus and Infiniti.
Of course there were also interesting performance technology that came out of racing. Disk brakes, slotted rotors, superchargers, but these weren’t baseline products
“I was thinking”
Prove it.
And eric is right about you.
I work with someone that fell for the Tesla scam hook, line and sinker. When she told me she was buying one, I asked her why.
Her immediate reply was “Well, for one reason, I won’t have to buy fuel . ” I responded ” Really ? You get free electricity ? ” I got a look from her similar to a brook trout.
She just took her first long distance trip of around 600 miles and admitted that due to range limitations and charging, it took her almost 15 hours vs the usual 8 hours in her previous ICE car. Still, she LOVES the Tesla. The masses aren’t only asses, They are idiots.
Amen, Jason!
Can you imagine the reaction if people were told they will now have to wait 30-45 minutes at fast food restaurants to get a burger?
Yet – by some process of dementia whose etiology I have to fully elaborate – people like Pat not only accept but embrace exchanging a less-than-five-minute refuel (to full) almost anywhere, anytime for a minimum 30-45 minute partial recharge… in a car that costs them many thousands of dollars more to buy, that will cost them many thousands more, much sooner, to keep on the road.
It is quite literally insane.
Well, in fact, that’s PRECISELY what “sit down” burger joints like Nations, Red Robin, The Habit, Smashburger, and Five GUys have done…they’ve convinced their customers that it’s better to wait (but thankfully doesn’t often taken 30 minutes or longer) for your meal, supposedly freshly prepared and made to order, versus going to “fast food” burger places. You’re paying for the dining room “atmosphere” and a different selection, but enough folks must think it worthwhile, else how would these places remain in business? Where it came “Full Circle” some years ago was with CKE (Carl’s Jr in the West, Hardee’s in the Midwest and South) with their then “Six Dollar” burger, but normally priced (then) at FOUR bucks…the rationale being, you’re getting the same burger as the sit-down joints, but CHEAPER. Amazing what the buying public can be persuaded to part their simoleans for, P.T. Barnum is “somewhere”, laughing his ass off at we gullible fools!
“people like Pat not only accept but embrace exchanging a less-than-five-minute refuel (to full) almost anywhere, anytime for a minimum 30-45 minute partial recharge…”
Well, I don’t know about you, but, I drive long distance a couple times a year.
I find that I need to stop every 2-3 hours, hit the bathroom, get coffee, stretch my legs, do a few calisthenics. That’s typically 15-20 minutes for me, more if i stop and have a bowl of soup or eat something.
Now, I suppose for someone who is smoking crystal meth and doing a 72 hour run, sure, that sounds like purgatory, but to me, that’s just part of a road trip to Alabama.
Clover,
You “find that I need to stop every 2-3 hours, hit the bathroom, get coffee, stretch my legs, do a few calisthenics. That’s typically 15-20 minutes for me, more if i stop and have a bowl of soup or eat something.”
The point (again) is that other people have different needs – and we are fine with you buying the car which suits your needs. But we are not fine with “helping” you buy it and resent your insisting we be forced to buy it.
I’ll just put this here again,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-purchase_rationalization
“But we are not fine with “helping” you buy it and resent your insisting we be forced to buy it.”
Yet, somehow I am forced to help Oil companies and SUV
sales with special tax incentives for them?
Clover,
There are no “special tax incentives” for SUVs. Well, excepting The Model X Tesla.
Sec 179
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-a-way-for-small-business-to-save-on-taxes-buy-a-heavy-suv-or-pickup-2016-05-17
“The Section 179 deduction and bonus deprecation deals are only available for an SUV, pickup, or van with a manufacturer’s gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) above 6,000 pounds that is purchased (not leased).”
Clover,
You reference a deduction for heavy work trucks. Not mass-market SUVs or even half-ton/1500 series pick-ups. To qualify for the 6,000 lb. and up deduction, you’d need to be driving at least a 2500/3500 series pick-up. Do you know how much the biggest and heaviest mass-market SUV weighs, Clover? About 5,800 lbs. In other words, only a small handful of the very largest/heaviest vehicles – work vehicles – meet the requirement for the deduction.
Your post shows you know nothing about trucks – or vehicles, generally.
Either that or you’re incredibly dishonest – conflating the massive subsidization of every EV with a tax deduction available to a small handful of very heavy vehicles whose design makes them hugely impractical for A to B driving.
I would expect that new 1500 pickups have a GVWR of at least 6K# since they weigh almost or that much empty now. I’ve had two “half-ton” Suburbans with GVWRs of 6K# or more – the first was a 1977.
“I find that I need to stop every 2-3 hours”
So what?
I find I am much more alert driving at 80-100mph than at 55mph. But control freaks won’t raise the speed limits because of my preferences but they certainly will demand more laws to force me to live according to theirs. Why is that? What is so wrong with some people that they think how they live should be forced on everyone else?
I don’t care how you live. I really don’t. The only time how another person lives even gets my attention is when government force is applied such that it costs me something.
Thank you for that one, Brent – you said it perfectly, with just the right cut. Hat tip!
I agree Brent. Drove the autobahn back in 1998, got to a top speed of 180 kph. The Lancia wouldn’t go any faster. You have to be really alert at ALL times at those speeds. I spent most of my time in the slow lane. The fast lane was really fast. Didn’t see any accidents though.
On long trips we eat while driving. We stop where there is a rest area and a gas station same exit. Rest area first with the short walk car to potty being enough exercise, then over to the gas station for 3-5 minutes to fill up, using credit card at the pump without going inside to wait in line either at cashier or rest rooms. In between fuel stops we pull off at one of those truck parking areas just to switch drivers without even shutting off the engine.
We have to leave very early and drive-drive-drive 10-11 hours to beat the traffic jams at the other end. Any extra time spent and it would have to be a two day trip, with motel expense both ways and two extra days paid to take care of livestock at home.
I suppose it would be nice to just mosey along and spend half the time of the trip stopped somewhere. After all, truck stops and Walmarts are such nice places to just hang out 🙂
anon, they’re so great I avoid hell out of both. Funny thing, in a 4 wheeler the only time I stop is to fuel or pee(try to combine those). When it’s a big rig I can drive 15 hours and do nothing but stop to pee and bump tires. I often have no sustenance other than water. I find eating on the road tends to slow my reaction time and ad a bit of “tiredness” if you have a lot of carbohydrate like bread.
On that same note I had a boss once who inevitably stopped to eat at a Subway. I might have something salty like some chips but not that drugged feeling all that bread and poisonous stuff tends to do.
T/A’s really piss me off not having a credit card scan on the fuel island. It’s the sure way to get those discourteous drivers in there for half an hour. I wonder if they don’t see how much it cuts down on their bidness. If trucks are backed up half way to the street for fueling I’ll take the turn the other direction and go to Love’s……and half the time their damned printers don’t work so you have to go in.
Yep, liquid in and liquid out and GO! 🙂
We try to snack on jerky, cheese, and summer sausage; not so much sugar/carbs.
With a truck and/or trailer of any sort you can nearly always find a discreet place to take a break. Even in the car, I just open both doors on the passenger side and stand between them. Nothing out there on the 4th side but sagebrush and antelope.
Hi Eight, I also avoid Flying J since they make you go inside to get a receipt. Inevitably the truck in front of me just pulls forward (but not enough to get around him) and then, since he has to go inside anyways, takes a 30 min. dump and wanders around the store looking at crap. Makes me stabby.
dbb, I have NEVER fueled at a flying J because of the way their islands are arranged and the fact you pointed out. Plus most of their fuel islands are behind the main building and you can’t see the lines to the pumps. I like to hit the smaller truck stops without a restaurant or showers.
We’ve taken to stopping at gas stations in itty-bitty towns. There’s usually no wait at all and there is a rest area right across the street. Plus our patronage is helping out a rural business providing gas in a “remote” place. If not for one of those stations, there wouldn’t be gas for 130 miles. The other is in the middle of about a 70 mile stretch. The old station there burned down some years ago and now that a new station is finally open, we stop and buy 8 gallons or so, our usual half-tank. I don’t like to go much below that, which means any supposed battery range would automatically be half that for me.
I don’t like to let fuel get low. I dread it but I’m going to have to drop my tank and clean it. I was doing some back to back trips about 340 miles in my pickup and found out, just because I was there and didn’t want to drive a few blocks to fill up, I filled at Wally and got better mileage than I had been getting. So I got to doing it all the time. I was pretty low, probably only 10 gallons in the tank so I fueled up. There was a fuel truck just pulling away when I pulled up and then another moved up and began unloading. I got a load of crap that almost stopped the engine in less than 40 miles. I barely made it the next 5 miles and didn’t have enough power to get into the barn. I changed filters but every time I get on a rough road or take some curves fairly fast it tries to clog again.
I know it’s the sock around the pump. I found out by running a couple bottles of Heet every fill-up that some of it was water but not all. I dread the chore and probably won’t do it myself. I kept diddling around 30 years ago and never installed a 4 post lift so now I’m just a jack man. I don’t know I can get it out that close to the ground. I probably can but it’ll be a real pain. With 230,000 miles I’ll go ahead and install a new fuel pump too. I understand they normally don’t go the life of the engine. Of course that is affected by how low you normally let one get. I try to keep 6-7 gallons in it at the very least. I’m that guy who carries a spare fuel filter but even installing a new one doesn’t help getting that crap outta the tank.
You’re making the assumption no one is ahead of you at the charger, otherwise your “35-40 minutes and on your way” “fast” charge will be anything but. Did you not see the reference to a multi hours long backup at a California charging station? Good luck with that.
The mental gymnastics the Tesla fanbois go through to explain away every defect of Tesla products (and their beloved Elon). If a car bursts into flames spontaneously or crashes while “self-driving,” they’re like Office Barbrady on “South Park”: “Move along people! Nothing to see here!” And they reflexively excuse away complaints from customers who are ridiculously inconvenienced, reports of Yugo-style build quality issues, etc. These are the kinds of “useful idiots” that Stalin loved. If they had experienced the Soviet bread lines, they’d have rejoiced in being able to breathe in the crisp, fresh air while they waited, savoring the aroma of the bakery and anticipating the first taste from a loaf of the good, Soviet bread. It would do no good to point out that their frostbitten nose just fell off.
Wow, that’s some top level EV fanboy justification!
It’s pretty amazing just how twisted the reasoning of these EV fanatics gets. Sheer idiocy. (Just what the hell are they smoking?) It would be funny if guys like this didn’t have the backing of armed thugs who want to force this crap on the rest of us.
Hi Keith!
It’s fascinating, isn’t it? These EV fanbois will rationalize/evade/non-sequitur every problem – not unlike a woman who defends the man who beats her. Who attacks anyone who tries to stop him.
Typically, if a human makes a bad decision,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-purchase_rationalization
The rational learn from their mistakes. The rationalizing types don’t.
They want to rationalize being TAKEN. “De-Nile” is supposed to be a river in Africa…
I did 1,500 miles in 2 days over the weekend, with a total time to refuel of less than 45 minutes. I had a range of about 350 miles on a full tank at speeds of 75-80 mph. I also drove I-40 through Arizona where they had a blizzard and high winds the day before and never had to worry about being stuck in backed up traffic with a dead battery and no way to heat the SUV. The night before I went through there were jack knifed rigs that closed the roads for multiple hours; Imagine being stuck in the freezing cold with only lithium ions to warm your car and run the interior electronics while everyone else is toasty for the duration in their primitive gasoline and diesel powered relics.
I’ll keep my internal combustion, you can have your electrons.
“I did 1,500 miles in 2 days over the weekend, with a total time to refuel of less than 45 minutes.”
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20751975/ev-cannonball-run-record-broken-twice-2019
“In mid-July, a family from Switzerland broke the US record for fastest cross-country trip in an electric vehicle, completing the New York-to-California journey in a long-range Tesla Model 3 in just 48 hours and 10 minutes.
,,,
Thomsen said he had two goals throughout the run: not to break the speed limit; and only pull over to recharge the battery when it was practically depleted. They averaged 58.9 miles per hour over the 2,800-mile trip, with 19 total stops at Tesla’s Supercharger stations.
”
So a couple of cheese eating eurotrash while swilling champagne went twice as far in the same time.
From the article
“Thomsen said he had two goals throughout the run: not to break the speed limit; and only pull over to recharge the battery **when it was practically depleted**. They averaged 58.9 miles per hour over the 2,800-mile trip, with 19 total stops at Tesla’s Supercharger stations.”
2800/19=147.4 miles between refills. (Tesla webshite claim, 322 mile range.)
And a bit more math assuming 65mph average when driving, suggests 20-25 minutes stops to ‘refill'(ish). So 2 hours driving actually takes roughly 2.5 hours in a Model S.
Progress……
Sorry, Model 3 not S.
Same shit, different pile.
I have to admit that is impressive for an electric. It would really be impressive if they could compete with real cars in the Cannonball Baker Memorial Trophy Dash. Maybe with another 50 years of development…
Probably no more then 10 years and the Cannonball run will be losing hard to EVs. 350 KW chargers are coming online, 1 MW chargers are not that far away, and as the market shifts, gas stations will become scarcer.
pat, no shit. Soon gasoline will be as out of date as horse manure. We’ll be using cars like Fred Flintstone. Of course my 120 gallon nurse tank full of red diesel will keep me going for 3,000 miles or so. I’m always so worried I can’t find a station. In my part of the country if a station is closed, it’s probably due to a power outage(rare) but if one is closed, there are 3 more at the intersection. I lie awake and worry about needing fuel every night.
Years ago I considered an enclosed trailer to haul 3 cars at a time. Blacked out windows for every car and they could pay me to deliver them to their destination and get great gas mileage…..since they wouldn’t have had their engine running. No telling how much safer the roads would be.
Yep, there’s going to be a miraculous breakthrough in battery technology any day now. And real car technology is static- as an example the 200mph barrier still hasn’t been breached, much less 250 and probably never will be. /s
Tomorrow. Always tomorrow.
I want a contact list of these people as their gullibility and apparent lack of understanding of history suggests that they might be OK with giving me a very large unsecured loan to develop my amazing battery technology.
I’ll pay you back, tomorrow. Always a day away.
interesting enough, someone just ran the Cannonball the week before Thanksgiving, three man team in a Mercedes AMG in 27 hours with
4 fueling stops.
However, they also averaged 109 MPH and were pushing 193 across the midwest.
not exactly legal or safe
Clover,
As I’ve already pointed out countless times, if the metric is speed/quickness then the government should buy me a Porsche – using money ripped from your hide, ideally.
” if the metric is speed/quickness ”
Of course, if the metric is really speed/quickness of recharge, Tesla demonstrated a battery swap that could pop a battery off a Model S and replace it in 45 seconds. They had it in service in california for two years but pulled it because it wasn’t meeting their revenue goals. The europeans also run battery swap.
It would be kind of amusing for someone to try running the Cannonball if they could stick a few helpers with swappable packs out in fly-over country.
Clover,
No one – not even Tesla – has a battery swap regime in the pipeline. So this is another of your pie-in-the-sky evasions, used to avoid discussing the facts about EVs as they are… as opposed to how you wish/feel/hope they may be at some point in the vaguely-defined “future.”
Battery swaps are not feasible on the retail/consumer/mass-market level for technical/economic reasons which I’ve already gone into at length but suffice to say it isn’t like swapping out propane cylinders for your barbecue. And even that entails more time than it takes to gas up a car, because the old tank has to be looked at by a human attendant to assure it’s not damaged before the customer walks away with a new tank.
Got anything else?
Pat,
Your disingenuousness is staggering. Whatever Guerrero managed is a non sequitur as regards what an IC car is capable of (in terms of covering distance) vs. an EV.
A quick example will suffice to clear the air of your bullshit.
A 2015 VW Golf TDI has a highway range on a full tank of about 700 miles. It can be refueled to full in less than five minutes. No EV approaches that capability. Even a gas-engined car like a new Corolla can travel at least 400 miles on a tank and refuels in the same less than five minutes.
It is gut-busting laughable to even attempt to argue equivalent capability out of an EV.
“Even a gas-engined car like a new Corolla can travel at least 400 miles on a tank and refuels in the same less than five minutes.”
Not just quicker, anywhere too, if you have a couple of gas cans.
Anyone do Route 66 in an electric yet? I think there may be a few gaps in the charging grid.
> Anyone do Route 66 in an electric yet? I think there may be a few gaps in the charging grid.
https://www.thetravelmagazine.net/revealed-the-best-road-trips-to-take-in-an-electric-vehicle-ev.html
Route: The iconic 2,015-mile route from Chicago to Los Angeles via I-80 W – also known as Route 66 – will take about 30 hours. You’ll get to pass through Iowa, Denver, Utah Memphis, Mississippi and Las Vegas.
Charging: You will need four charges for this trip. This route has around 137 charging points.
Mr. anonymous made a funny with the Route 66 comment. I blew some beer through my nose.
Why did you have to ruin my humor with that garfed up post of yours?
Besides, who would drive from Chicago to LA by way of Iowa to Denver to Utah to Memphis to Biloxi to Las Vegas and never even make it to LA?
Consult any map to trace your trip on Route 66.
Also that doctor on the old Emergency TV show wrote the song.– Bobby Troup.
That zig-zagging path is about what I would expect from just following the Tesla GPS – LOL!
it must really bother you that some cheese eating, wine swilling eurotrash did better then your buddy.
It really doesn’t matter that a corolla refuels in 5 minutes. People don’t.
Real humans, not on meth, stop and have lunch, take rest breaks, showers. So i’m sure, some hopped up speed freaks may do a 35 hour cross country run with 500 gallons of fuel in drums in the back of an ambulance, but, that’s not going to mean much, to people covering real road trips.
If you had a clue as to what truckers do, you’d shut up.
If he had a clue how stupid that last post was he would shut up.
Shhh. They don’t know they are stupid. Lets not spoil it.
There’s a stupid rule that at least half of the people have to be stupid. It’s one of life’s great lessons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwfyeSEDqqc&feature=emb_logo
Carlin did say, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
IQ wise, this here speakeasy of Eric’s is a pretty high site. I tested close to 160 myself, years ago before I drank and aged away 20 points. There is a very good book called “Curse of the high IQ” By Aaron Clarey which made it clear to me a few years back- I never understood how stupid people are and how their minds work.
His point is an average normal 100 IQ relates with condescension, or loathing, or anything but respect to the poor retarded bastards in the 60-70 range. Which is why really smart folks have such a hard time grokking what and why average 100 or even 120 IQ types are the way they are. They are almost different species.
“I never understood how stupid people are and how their minds work.”
Yup. But pity the stupid. While you can at least begin to understand their ‘stupid’ actions in context, they can’t. Ever.
Stupidity is invisible to the stupid.
Yes, don’t feed the troll, feed it sh*t. It’s more fun…
How about a 5 hour drive? Not crazy long. Salmon Arm to Vancouver.
My aunt did this for several years in a Jetta TDI to visit family, about once a month. Not your average drive but also not possible for an EV non stop.
I have also done it non stop one way, and return, did stop for lunch, in one day. Same tank, no refill after leaving Salmon arm, no meth.
*BTW*
The 2001(era) TDI Jetta was one of the best cars ever made in my humble opinion. There may have been some issues, but as a functional machine, as designed, they were near perfect mobility solutions.
Hi Anon,
I would advise not debating Clover (Pat) on the merits of EVs but rather on the ugly fact that EVs are being forced on the market by regulations and subsidized by the force of government. These two facts are inarguable – and speak volumes about the merits of EVs, without even having to.
Give it another 2-3 years.
EVs will be cheaper and better then new gas cars, and then you will be whinging about
recharge time.
Then?
So gas cars will be cheaper and better right after EVs?
Well eric, not really possible to debate when one side still needs to learn the words used.
“So gas cars will be cheaper and better right after EVs?”
What’s the price/performance/ time curve for gas cars?
Clover,
How many times, o’ Lord?
You can buy a nicely equipped new IC compact sedan/hatchback for less than $20,000 that will last 15-20 years. No EV can touch that. The only thing the EV can do better is accelerate more quickly – briefly, with the loss of range another price you pay.
Seems Pats comprehension is about what one would expect…..
Apparently can’t even understand what it wrote itself.
Yes, Clover… always in the future… the “breakthrough” is right around the corner…. and up the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Stick to the facts – and today. How about it?
Should that be true, I say fine and good, just don’t make me pay for the fuckers when they’d be useless to me.
I changed oil and filter today with 16,000 miles on the old stuff (5W-30 Amsoil Premiun).
I was going to grease it too but the underside is so cruded up with mud and dirt from our winter storms I decided to wash the underside tomorrow and get the brakes and wheel(inside)clean too as well as underhood. I notice the front skid plate had taken a noticeable hit. People drive their cars on these same roads(well, most of the roads). The possibility of a battery explosion underneath me doesn’t make me want a so-called, EV pickup.
Pat,
The article doesn’t mention how much time was spent at the charger. A best case scenario of 20 minutes per charge would come out to 65 mph average. The story and the math doesn’t work.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20751975/ev-cannonball-run-record-broken-twice-2019
well given it was broken twice in one month, you can probably work it out
They set out from New York City on July 31st, and arrived in Los Angeles 45 hours and 16 minutes later. Like the Thomsens, Conner and Davis drove a Tesla Model 3 long-range RWD, but with a few modifications, like lowering the car for better aerodynamics. Unlike the Thomsens, Conner and Davis eschewed Autopilot except for a few instances of bumper-to-bumper traffic — nor did they adhere to the speed limit (which helps explain why they didn’t use Autopilot; the system is speed capped at 90 mph).
Did the car’s cameras record how many flipped fingers they got on the trek? Some car full of anuses doing 55 clogging a lane all of the way across the country.
Hi Erie,
Pat/Clover and EV propagandists do anything to avoid dealing with the inarguable fact that EVs – as they are, not fantasy conjecture about what they might be at some point in the future – cannot exist as mass-market vehicles absent mandates and subsidies. So they barf up non sequiturs about how quick they are or that so-and-so drove one across the country.
Yeah, that’ll be just great when I’m trying to get to my parent’s bedside 700 miles away. We’ll all just lounge about getting mani-pedi’s and sipping lattes with no concern at all for whether the extra hours may have been the ones in which her last breath was taken. Or if I’m trying to get my family out of the path of a hurricane, when thousands of other people are trying to do the same.
Or I guess we could buy plane tickets like good proles, without regard to the exorbitant expense. Hey! Then the damned EV could charge at the airport the entire time we’re gone. I’m sure those kind airlines wouldn’t add any sort of surcharge or anything.
Electric cars, at this point, are utterly absurd.
Pat,
You reduce me to stuttering, almost. At a gas station, I can choose to run inside and grab a doughnut. But I can be back on the road in less than 5 minutes. At an EV charge station, I am forced to wander inside and occupy myself for the 30-45 minutes it will take for my EV to partially recharge. Assuming I don’t have to wait for the EV ahead of me to recharge.
You rationalize time wastage. People – most people – haven’t got time to waste, as you appear to have. Would you wait half an hour for a burger at a drive-thru window?
EVs regress mobility and decrease convenience. It’s ridiculous.
And think about it, time is our most precious resource. What is the true cost of a car that you spend 3 months of your precious life waiting for it to charge? I’ll just buy my own gas thanks. I could learn to paint like a master in those 3 months. Or learn Spanish. Or have a whirlwind romance. Or follow a band for a whole summer. Or whatever.
Sounds way better than hanging around the charging station with a bunch of uppity dupes talking about climate change.
I do like the idea of a diesel generator in a trailer for highway cruising for an EV, but that would lay bare the complete LIE about them being “clean” and certainly not “efficient”. Yes, leave the trailer at home (or at least secured) when just putting around town, within range of a convenient charge, but you need it to keep rolling.
“At an EV charge station, I am forced to wander inside and occupy myself for the 30-45 minutes it will take for my EV to partially recharge.”
This suggests to me that the general population is living in a 2 minute window. Nothing 1 minute ago was, nothing 1 minute from now will be.
How else can you explain people who will lose their shit if a webpage takes more than 2 seconds to load, have attention spans measured in seconds, crave constant stimulation, touting a 30-45 minute partial recharge as a feature? I’m guessing 30-45 minutes is not something their brains can really comprehend as there are only events for them. This happened, that happened, the next thing happened.
“But I can be back on the road in less than 5 minutes.”
I routinely swing by the Costco and notice people waiting in line for 20 minutes to get gas. I’ve been to the NJ Turnpike and seen cars backed up almost to the exit.
As for the time loss, I figure when I upgrade to a Bolt, or a Kia EV, it’s going to be a nice wash. I never have to get gas when i’m in town, and it takes about 30 seconds to plug in the car, so, I figure at a minimum i’m saving about 20 minutes a week not driving to the gas station and waiting in line for gas.
however to me the real saving is the 4 cents a mile ops cost vs the 12 cents per mile for gas. I always like the sound of shafting a bunch of oil state terrorists out of money,
but, I guess you like supporting the murderous house of saud.
Guess what Pat. The last two years, Texas alone has out-produced any nation on earth. The Permian is still producing like crazy, more than ever. Kinder Morgan built a new fleet of tankers 5 years ago and as soon as Trump was in, and the law barring US oil to be exported was a done deal, those tankers were headed to Europe as fast as they could go.
Of course the house of Saud upped it’s output to make up for it but they needed the money and we didn’t need to pay more. So far, so good.
I have an old college friend who hates diesels for reasons only he understands. He’s obviously never used one or he’d change his tune. I like the fact you can use gasoline and gearlube in a pinch whereas a gas powered vehicle requires gasoline. I learned that little lesson 50 years ago when truck stops stopped selling diesel to out of state trucks. I got home anyway and that Detroit never missed a beat.
Popcorn oil, old heating oil, used motor oil, a decent diesel will eat it. Rudolph Diesel originally designed them to run on coal dust. The one time the gestapo demanded to know why the red colored stuff was in my old Benz, is smiled sweetly and answered,” why sir, I burn old transmission fluid” and his head almost exploded.
Had a tenant in my house for a year, the heat was a stinky leaky old jet-fired fuel oil burner , plenum and squirrel cage fan. Made an awful racket. Part of the deal was HE bought the heating oil (I know his Wife, from New England, liked her house hot.. 72 was normal for her).
I had scoped out the house before they moved in with me, and had located the brick lined chimney behind the cheap living room panelling. The day after they mvoed out, I sounded the 400 gallon oil tank. Hmm.. 3/4 full. Thanks, Jack!!!! I cut a hole in that cheap panelling, dragged my Vermont Castings wood burner into the livingroom, dug out some six inch stovepipe and an Ell, and fitted that stove. Wood is easy to scrounge around here, in thirty years I’ve never paid a nickel for fiirewood.
In those days I drove an old Mercedes 300 D, bit 20 gallon tank, so I scrounged up an old electric fuel pump, tapped the drain line from that big stove oil tank, pumped the car’s tank full, and did not buy a drop of fuel for at lease six months. Ran fine. I found a Racor 500 series big rig fuel filter, replaced the tenth litre bubble fuel filter ahead of the lift pump with tthat litre and a half monster, then even began dumping a gallon of used drain oil into the tank as I was pumping the stove oil. Five percent motor oil won’t even be noticed.
Ive burned last year’s left over peanut oil from deep frying the Thanksgiving turkey, and it was REALLY rancid… screened it to get the big chunks out, let the Racor deal with the rest. Smelled kinda funny, but that was back there so why worry? Every time I’d rebuild, or do a pan service, on an automatic gearbox, the red ATF woild go into that tank, too. I’d run that up to fifty fifty diesel, no problems,.
and yeah, once in a while i find some cast off red dyed off road fuel no one else wants… toss that in, as well, If I ever get bustd for the red stuff, if the copper writes in spite of my explanation,I’ll simply bring into th courtroom some road diesel and some used ATF, and blend them together and let the judge see what colour the mix is.
Pat, also, do you think the Saud’s have ever come remotely close to murdering as the US does regardless of who’s in the WH? If you know your history, you know they didn’t/haven’t/don’t have the ability.
“do you think the Saud’s have ever come remotely close to murdering as the US does”
Ask the Yemeni.
Ask the Yemeni? Seriously? Ask the whole damned world about US murdering. Ask the Japanese and the entire middle east, plus Africa and S. America. Are you kidding?
And Mr. Prick signs a law disallowing you to do to animals much more humane things than his “military” does to women and children all over the world. What hypocrisy.
Ernie, I call a couple new bottles of transmission fluid in the fuel filters a tune-up in a bottle. They seem to run better for a while after that.
I spent a while in Mexico in my Turbo Diesel with my cousin. We were toodling along…..about 95, and coming up slowly on a some big rigs. Buddy said “damn, why am I smelling Kerosene all the time?”. Because they run #1 fuel here I told him. That Mexican diesel was just one of the better things they had. I won’t get into the other subjects.
Tranny fluid is good stuff even if it is (sadly) the same color as the revenooers’ red dye. Must be the lubricity making up for the lack of sulfur in the new fuel. Always found Mexico entertaining- Hee Haw…
Back when the manufactured fuel “crisis” was foisted upon us, they used the fuel scarcity and imagined economy of driving slower to force the Double Nickel SHuffle upon the nation. Nevada and Montana dragged their feet, refusing to reduce the limits in their states. Uncle Stupid took them out behind the federal woodshed and threatened to withhold their federal highway tax money, which should be illegal. That tax was collected from buyers wihtin those states, and thus a solid connexioin between fuel sold and road wear whould be direct. Big stink now that Trump alledgedly (but not in reality) withheld money designated for the Ukraine…. but back then it was OK I guess?
I learned back then that there was one entity that pushed the double nickle shuffle… the hotel and motel association. They thought, rightly, that if the speed were reduced to 55, the main thing kept alive would be their members, as long trips would require more overnight stays in temporary lodging. Funny thing, ALL the cars I owned and drove in those days got far better mileage at 80 mph than they did at 55 mph That is documented over tens of thousands of high speed higway miles I drove, watching those twin five signs flying past, about fifteen every ten miles, instead of 9. On a three thousand mille trip that is a LOT of time and fuel saved.
A friend wiht a Volt (the hybrid electric version) claims he gets about 42 mpg on highway driving. SLow on the hills, cruises at the 65 or 70 posted. My old Volvos (544, 122 140 series, all with B 18 or B 20 pushrod engines fed by a pair of SU carburetters, manual gearboxes, some wiht overdrive) all returned 42 miles per gallon cruising at 80 and 85 mph. Better than his “super green” Volt.
Hi T,
Your point in the feds using the threat of withheld funds to get the states to bend knee – and what the Orange Man stands accused of – is spot on. Money always comes with string attached; though in the case f the Orange Man, the Ukrainians weren’t getting their own money back (with strings attached)!
This EV horseshit has never been about a cleaner environment or saving anything. It was, is and always shall be about the almighty State controlling you movement, your range and your choices. Step out of line and they will shut off your glorified golf cart, lock you in and hold you still until the AGWs arrive to take you away.
Buyer beware!
I can see where one day “classic cars” are banned from the public roads and highways on the ostensible grounds of not being “clean” and for “S-A-A-A-A-F-T-E-E-E-E”, when the real motive is simple: unlike modern vehicles, which can be REMOTELY controlled (i.e., shut down at whim by our “betters” including AGWs) against the operator’s wishes, something like that ’66 Fury that #1 son and I are restoring just goes wherever we’re willing to take it, and save the AGWs do the “pit” maneuver or lay down the tack strip, they can’t stop that 3,900 lb. beast from its appointed rounds, and THAT they can’t TOLERATE, despite their self-description as the epitome of “tolerance”.
I don’t know why any of the major food chains haven’t installed chargers. Park your EV, plug it in, and go inside and get a Grande coffee or a McRib.
That’s an easy one, there is no market demand for it. It’s a good bet that at least 99% of the food chains’ customers are not driving electric vehicles.
And if they are, after paying for the overpriced slot car, they won’t be able to buy lunch.
It is very expensive, that’s why. And people will treat the charging stations like the free air that used to exist. Well that will happen if and when the general public uses them.
There is one grocery store in my area that does have a charging station in the lot; it can hold four vehicles and is generally in use by at least two vehicles every time I am there. The store is a chain but the only one in the region that has it installed, and in one of the pricier neighborhoods certainly not the ghetto areas. The electricity is not free. It’s been there for at least a year and no other store has installed one so it can’t be turning enough profit to justify the installation.
McDonalds in Europe is installing chargers. They realized that a typical mcdonalds stand alone restaurant
has a lot of unused grid capacity.
Hi Pat,
And now “fast” food will become slow food, too.
PS: None of this is happening organically, which is a fact you studiously evade – as all EV Cultists do. “Fast” chargers are going up for the same reason there are statues of the Dear Leader all over North Korea.
None of the conversion to gasoline happened organically either. It just happened before you were born. Horses were the primary transport pre-gas and FDR
paid to build most of the pipelines and refineries.
Even railroads needed monster land grants and subsidies per mile to be built.
It’s typical public sector intervention to build up initial market transition.
The internet was all public sector stimulus the first 15 years.
ARPANET, NSFNET, NYSERNET, the big nets were all public dollars for years.
I fully expect the transition away from subsidy to complete the next 24 months
Pat,
Nonsense. The change from horses to cars (and from electric to gas) happened because IC-powered cars were more practical, versatile and inexpensive. Their success was market-driven, not mandated and subsidized.
And what was the Public sector stimulus for ARPANET
and NSFNET? Rural telecom is entirely supported with
federal dollars. You would be using as 1200 baud modem
if it wasn’t for Billions in rural telecom support.
Clover,
Have I ever advocated the use of government force for … anything? You attempt to validate your support for the use of government force by pointing at some other thing created by government force which I never defended or advocated.
Knife . . . gun fight.
The pipelines were built by Rockefeller and Standard Oil in response to increasing costs to transport oil by rail.
When Rockefeller was unsuccessful in buying a railroad, he experimented with pipelines bought rights of way and at one time controlled 80% of all oil transported in the United States.
What FDR did was quite different. At first he attempted to stabilize prices at the higher 1927 levels.
When that was judged unconstitutional, he tried to keep prices artificially high by limiting the total amount of oil storage. He limited refiners access to crude until a bureaucrat determined supplies were inadequate. Refiners were required to maintain the same price for a full 24 hours.
He broke the country up into refining districts and recommended inventory/sales ratios.
He and his cronies did everything they could to limit supply. He did the opposite of build pipelines
The Big Inch and Little Inch were built by FDR
The Big Inch and Little Big Inch, collectively known as the Inch pipelines, are petroleum pipelines extending from Texas to New Jersey, built between 1942 and 1944 as emergency war measures in the U.S. Before World War II, petroleum products were transported from the oil fields of Texas to the north-eastern states by sea by oil tankers. After the United States entered the war on 1 January 1942, this vital link was attacked by German submarines in the Operation Paukenschlag, threatening both the oil supplies to the north-east and its onward transshipment to Great Britain. The Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, championed the pipeline project as a way of transporting petroleum by the more-secure, interior route.
The pipelines were government financed and owned, but were built and operated by the War Emergency Pipelines company, a non-profit corporation backed by a consortium of the largest American oil companies. It was the longest, biggest and heaviest project of its type then undertaken; the Big and Little Big Inch pipelines were 1,254 and 1,475 miles (2,018 and 2,374 kilometres) long respectively, with 35 pumping stations along their routes. The project required 16,000 people and 725,000 short tons (658,000 t) of materials. It was praised as an example of private-public sector cooperation and featured extensively in US government propaganda.
Clover,
Like every EV propagandist, you always avoid the fundamental point. Which is that while IC cars have benefitted to some degree from various subsidies, they were not mandated into existence and do not depend for their economic viability on subsidies. EVs cannot survive without subsidies – except as high-cost curiosities – and would be made in very small numbers absent the regulations and mandates that are currently forcing their manufacture.
You keep bringing a knife to a gunfight.
“EVs cannot survive without subsidies – except as high-cost curiosities – and would be made in very small numbers absent the regulations and mandates that are currently forcing their manufacture.”
Well, GM exhausted their tax credits for the Volt/Bolt and Tesla is exhausting their credits for the Model 3 this quarter.
Let’s see what happens next year..
Clover,
Let’s see what’s already happened. Chevy dropped the Volt; Tesla deliveries are falling – precisely because the cost of the cars is rising.
And it’d be really interesting to see what would happen if the regulations and mandates that are forcing the manufacture of EVs were rescinded.
No one is forced to build – or buy – a non-electric car. How about that same standard be applied generally?
>Chevy dropped the Volt.
Yep…
Chevy is also selling the bolt and GM announced an electric pickup
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/21/cars/gm-electric-pickup/index.html
Clover,
Do you know whey GM and other car companies are making EVs? It is not because of market demand. It is because they are being forced to make them … in order to comply with “zero emissions” and CAFE regs.
It’s not debatable.
“Even railroads needed monster land grants and subsidies per mile to be built.”
Great Northern Railroad, James J. Hill, say otherwise.
However, most of them were in fact crony capitalists like Elon, though and did make great use of legislative capture, eminent domain, and taxpayer subsidy.
Yeah, Hill is the one who brought in all the sodbusters to MT a couple decades before the dust bowl.
That said, the abstract for the house we used to own in town went back to one of the many sections granted to the Jawbone RR by the feral gubbermint.
Pat, you’re so full of shit. The Underwriters’ Producing and Refining Company’s Texas and Pacific Abrams No. 1 resulted in the first well in west Texas just west of Westbrook. The second, more famous well was the Santa Rita near Big Lake by the Texon Oil and Land Company. Govt. played no role in either well nor subsequent wells.
And like I said before, Texas produced more oil last year than any other country in the world.
I’ve worked off and on in the patch for over 50 years. I’ve seen companies struggle and die and struggle and survive. None of them were on any type of govt. dole.
I’d still be working there if it weren’t for insurance companies illegal age related policies.
If you think the movie “Giant” is some lore with no substance you’d be very wrong.
Halliburton seemed to exist solely because Cheney was VP
McDonalds Sweden is adding fast chargers at every store.
McDonalds Netherlands is doing the same thing.
WaWa is making a strategic partnership with Tesla
Clover,
These chargers are being erected because of government force… take away the regs requiring that EVs be manufactured and the subsidies used to support them and their infrastructure and the EV “market” collapses overnight. You are like Stalin, building the Volga canal… using as many people (and lives) as it takes to finance your vanity project.
Here; you’ll enjoy this:https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2019/12/10/reader-question-is-it-crazy-to-buy-a-non-electric-car/
The idea, as you already know, is to make driving as miserable as possible so the smartphone-addicted sheep don’t object when it (or personal car ownership, for that matter) eventually becomes outlawed. The “con-venience” of automated driving will make it painless. Until, of course, an emergency arises and the sheep suddenly realize that they’re SOL when no “rideshares” are available.
I don’t think that direct outlawing of personal transport will go over as smoothly as people expect. Personally, I can put up with quite a lot, but, take away my car, and it’s not going to go down nicely. I don’t think I’m alone.
But I bet you are over 40. If so, you are not the demographic they will target first. A very large number of 18-25s don’t even have a license.
By 1980, all the conditioning mechanisms were in place, the psychology data computed and the scenarios run. TPTB knew what buttons to push and when. Most born after that have been conditioned to accept whatever UncleGov says is best. The schools did exactly what they were meant to do. Make unquestioning robots loyal to the State.
If little a F.A.S.-recitetron teenager can be their hero…… says a lot.
Ask a millennial if they think it would be OK for the government to decide ‘X’ being outlawed would improve society. For any value of ‘X’, if it is framed as a social improvement, most will say ‘yes’, without consideration of any kind other than social status of signalling virtue.
YMMV (I hope)
“Most born after that have been conditioned to accept whatever UncleGov says is best. The schools did exactly what they were meant to do. Make unquestioning robots loyal to the State.”
Exactly! To undo all of that would mean having to become responsible for oneself; hence why most folks (not just millennials) actually prefer being enslaved. The less responsibilities, the better.
Actually, I probably should’ve said that most people nowadays prefer being enslaved so as not to have to put down those damned smartphones for like 2 seconds!
Prefer being enslaved, and are subconsciously horrified by the slavery they prefer. To reject their slavery would involve sacrifice in all aspects of life, except those already destroyed by the Sociopaths In Charge. The west has become a completely insane institution, demonically attacking anyone demonstrating sanity.
Hi JWK,
Yes. It is often difficult for me to even get behind the keyboard these days; the constant insanity is no longer funny. I am beginning to feel that the only solution involves disinfectant, as it were.
Yes, I am 55. (I hate that number, by the way). I was a kid during the tail end of the first Muscle Car era. What was to follow was pretty awful. We had cars that took a calendar year to accelerate to 60 mph and cars with a top speed of about 95-100 mph on average. Almost overnight cars got gimped by government mandated fuel economy and emissions control. People did scream a little about the tepid performance of even European branded and the fastest American cars on the road at the time. All that said, people still looked forward to getting into a car and going somewhere. Many enjoyed traveling faster than the then 55 mph national maximum disgraceful speed limit. Although people did vote with their feet, they largely did nothing to change it. The big elephant in the room got no notice and a collective apathetic yawn from most people from all walks of life. It took a very small, but determined band of drivers from all walks of life to change that law. After a false start in 1987, when limits were raised to 65 on rural interstates, we got full repeal in 1995. Because of the collective apathy of the then younger generations, it took 21 years to get rid of the most violated law since prohibition. The achievement was possible, however, because there was a semblance of critical though at the right time. I’m not so sure that it would be possible with this group that seems to take everything they hear from their classroom and spit it back out in front of a TV camera. This generation now is collectively and arrogantly wrong in their indoctrinated activism. It will be interesting to watch these people squirm when their material comforts are stripped from them. I suspect that if some of them think, they won’t know what hit them. Unfortunately, I will.
“I was a kid during the tail end of the first Muscle Car era. What was to follow was pretty awful.”
I don’t know, I liked not having daily ozone alerts and smog alerts.
I liked the idea that breathing the air wasn’t like a two pack a day smoking habit.
Nonsense. It was never like that. And, the so-called pollution problem was solved the vehicles being built in 1980, which emitted about 1/10ths of the HC, CO and NOX so called pollutants from vehicle tailpipes compared with 1970 models. Like hundreds of thousands of children, I played outside and the biggest danger was from being hit by a baseball or some other flying object.
>Nonsense. It was never like that
Reality disagrees
https://timeline.com/la-smog-pollution-4ca4bc0cc95d
“Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1963. A little over a decade later, national laws requiring catalytic converters for new automobiles were introduced. The new laws helped roll back the L.A. haze, but the legislation came too late for the millions of people who had grown up under oppressive smog. By 1987, an estimated 27 percent of Angelenos were living with “severely damaged” lungs”
Who made that estimate? Of course, it was likely CARB, the people in charge of mandating ever stricter limits that will eventually make automobile travel impossible. After the CAA of 1970, yes, the air did get “cleaner” if you don’t count emissions of Sulfur Dioxide, the byproduct of the catalytic converter use. The LA basin was referred to as the Valley of the Smoke by native Americans because of the tendency of dirty air to hover in the basin between mountainous regions long before Ford made the first model T. What percentage had bad lungs then? The people of Okinawa, Japan had 1/4 the lung cancer rate of people in the US despite the fact they smoked and lived in the most polluted city in the far east. Air pollution is overrated as a cause of disability and death. Bad diet and lack of exercise is a much larger problem
I suppose you’re right about that. But seeing how the majority of my generation (millennials) would rather upload “selfies” to FakeBook or Insta-crap than to be responsible adults, I do tend to have my doubt sometimes.
I just don’t get why so many people are willing to be taken in by these cons……
As the late George Carlin said, think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are stupider than that.
Also goes to my personal Motto, Slipknot was right (People = Shit)
I always loved the way my Dad used to put it: “The masses are asses”. Ain’t that just the truth?
Mind if I borrow that, that’s excellent!
I think more than the space, where on earth will you get the kind of power wires you need for say 10×22 kww….
Heres the future – a bunch of pickup trucks with those large 20kw diesel generators on the back. wherever theres a buildup of these, or a soy boy runs out of power the pickup with a generator can reach…. and charge “quickly” in 40 minutes……. see how long the holier than thought righteous eco warrior hipster is willing to wait before he gives into the temptation of a diesel generator…. Add an app, think of an infantile name and im sure theres a winner…..
I bet they’d rather walk than use dirty power like that. Given their affection for Communism, the clean Soviet solution from way back. https://englishrussia.com/2009/03/17/russian-mobile-nuclear-power-plants/
“Given their affection for Communism, the clean Soviet solution from way back.”
Yep. And we all know how well that worked out.
Ahh…but the comeback for all that Socialist/Communist nonsense is: “we can MAKE it work THIS TIME”.
I seem to recall that a great definition of insanity is, upon trying something and being dissatisfied with the result, to double down on the effort and repeat.
then fire the genny wiht propane. Cheap, clean burning, efficient, no smell… and sort of “green” friendly.
Ackshully that’s a GREAT idea. Have to do a bit of research on power requriements. One good place to set up shop might be the roadside rests, except that many of them have recharge stations set up already. Maybe four stations from the ones I’ve seen. Most times that’s fine. But what about Thanksgiving Weekend, when 27,000 people are wanting to get from Portland to Seattle, a trip I can easily make round trip with no fillup in my car, those four slots will be full. Waiting. But I’ve little doubt some gummit uffishul will decide that no one can provide power to recharge in those places….. we ALL know gummit don’t like any competition.
Stilll, that emergency power rescue service could be a viable service. One would have to charge signficantly, though….. my time is worth at least fifty bux an hour, and a genny big enough to recharge, say, for EV’s at once would use some signficant fuel.
One thing that did make me mad when, out of boredom I rtead all the labels on the EV charge stations at the roadside rests….. the price of the juice is about half what I pay per kW/Hr for my own house…. WHO is buying that difference? WHY are gummit subsidising THEIR travel and not MINE?
Still, whining aside, I can stop for ten minutes and put enough fuel into my vehicle to run over five hundred miles…… and it has been running that 500 miles on a fillup for fifteen years and a quarter million miles and has not demanded the replacement of any part costing more than a hundred bucks. I’m sure an EV of the same mileage use will have demanded I fork over half the price of my entire vehicle already, and likely be nearing time to do it again. In other words, for the price of the two batteries a Tesla would have worn out in that quarter million miles, my van is free and is STILL showing no signs of needing anything signficant in engine or gearbox. And it had 130K on it when I bought it. So, the car would be on its third battery getting lined up to demand number four……..
“One thing that did make me mad when, out of boredom I rtead all the labels on the EV charge stations at the roadside rests….. the price of the juice is about half what I pay per kW/Hr for my own house…. WHO is buying that difference? WHY are gummit subsidising THEIR travel and not MINE?”
I suspect they are getting wholesale power. When you represent a significant
future market you get to buy wholesale
Teslas charge at 150kW on the super charger – that’s how you can get to 80% in half an hour. If you want to charge 10 of them, you need 1.5MW. Which also is how much power it takes to charge a single Tesla semi truck, which they’re pushing hard as well. It takes an awful lot of power, and enough to destabilize the already barely stable grid like in CA.
Not just California, the grid pretty much anywhere is at capacity; I worked for the local electric utility for 42 years and every summer they have to urge people not crank up the a/c too much when there’s a heat wave. If that isn’t bad enough the greenies fight any attempt to get reliable base load generation built (no nukes!) and the nimbys fight any transmission line proposals. Can’t have that cheap (and pollution free) Canadian hydropower here now can we? These morons would rather pay twice the national average price for their kilowatts. Can’t fix stupid.
It’s funny that the battery EV true believers think this can be fixed with more charging stations.
You can’t parallel fix this problem because that means more current is required. A lot more current. More than any given site or several sites will be able to get without considerable expense. And maybe not even then since generation capability is also under attack by the same forces that are pushing battery EVs on us all.
Yet that’s the other unspoken problem with electric cars. There just isn’t enough electric generated to be adding anything let alone a bunch of cars. Most power companies barely keep the lights on a hot day.
Plus the problem of distribution too, there isn’t enough of that too, and its too prone to breaking down. There was a single car crash last night that took out a power pole nearby that been causing flicking and brownouts for hours OVER THE WHOLE COUNTY! Yes, even the power company admitted it even. I recently had a 30 hour outage (that probably should have been 2 hours max) that would have meant missing work the second day because an electric car would have run out of power to get there.
“You can’t parallel fix this problem because that means more current is required. A lot more current. More than any given site or several sites will be able to get without considerable expense.”
Depends where you are and how loaded the grid is.
Fortunately there are people called Grid Engineers who work on these kinds of problems
You haven’t a clue, that’s for sure.
What sort of upgraded service do you think say a single condo building with 100 parking spaces in its garage would need to charge those cars every night? Just a slow ten hour charge. It’s pretty staggering when you do the math.
7kW*100 = 700kW. 700,000W / 120V = 5833 Amps.
Now maybe we do that as 220V service. So 3182 Amps. Per car that’s 32 amps.
At least every two parking spots is going to need the equal of a new residential service.
can’t remember it and I[m too tired/llazy to go find it, bit I know there is a direct linear conversioni factor to convert horsepower into kilowatts. For any given car, the horespower demanded to push that car at any given speed, considering all load factors. Thus your Tesla demands a certain number of horsepower to cruise at, say, 70 mph on dry level pavenemt with a normal payload. Mulitply this number times the conversioni factor to get kilowatts needed to do that work. Multiply that by the number of hours your trip will take. Now you have the number of kWHrs needed to make that trip, not counting the ever present loss in conversin of energy from one from to anotyer, eg mains current to charged battery, then charged battery to kinteic energy in the motor.
The actual number of kWHrs in mains current to operate that Tesla on a 200 mile road trip at 70 mph is staggering.
About five years ago I read someone’s workup regarding conversion to all electric vehicles. The conclusion was that when TEN PERCENT of the automotive fleet (not incuding highway trucks) needed electricity to recharge their batteries for the daily commutes done today the entire electric grid nationwide would collapse. I don;t think much improvement has been done on the grid since then. WHY has that study crawled down the rabbit hole?
“dry level pavement”
Don’t see that very often 😉
Hi Tionico, I vaguely remember from physics class (something these EV fanbois could use) that 1 horsepower = 700 watts; also too lazy to look it up 😆
It’s just a unit conversion. I like this site for quick conversions: http://www.onlineconversion.com/
1hp = 746W
kWh is energy. Kind of an odd unit that is essentially joules. 1kWh = 3,600,000 joule (or 1000(k) *3600 seconds which is one hour)
Since lots of engines are rated in kWh’s, I use the rule of thumb of 1 HP hour=.750KWH. You won’t see the kWh rating often in US equipment but it’s the most common rating fairly much in the rest of the world.
The rest of the world thinks lb. ft. or torque is something we use for ballistics of a bullet but it used to be the only rating you’d see on a diesel. Nowdays you see a kWh rating and try to keep in mind the figure of .00000038.
I’m old school. If the thing makes 1400 lb ft then show it and forget it. And yes, the first thing you have to figure is to convert it to joules and the only thing I can think of in terms of joules in my every day life is the power of a fence charger.
30 years ago fence chargers began being sold with a book thicker than the one sold with a chainsaw. The first 20 pages say, in one way or the other, Danger, do not use this device. After 20 pages of that you get it. Lawyers are employed to CYA when selling a lethal product.
H Brent,
Clover (Pat) is ineducable. He/she beeeeelieves. And for a beeeeliever fact are (to corrupt a saying) not stubborn things!
Brent, since the 70’s and for certain in the 80’s, residential services are 200 amps. I installed many of them starting in 1980. To set up service for a condo building it would need a 200 amp service for every 6 chargers at your rate. I’m not arguing with the 32 amps but I have read many places you need a 50 amp breaker for each one which leads me to believe they’re going to be pulling close to 50 amps.
I can assure you the cost for outfitting a condo with this much service would be very expensive. Somewhere in there, you’ll need a meter for each charger or either have the each charger powered off the same service your bill comes from.
eightman, breakers come in 20, 25, 30, and 50 amp ratings. Need 32 amps You have to then buy a fifty amp breaker. And code DEMANDS that if you fit a 50 amp breaker, you have to use the correct wire guage for the full 50 even if you KNOW you’ll”never” pull more than 32 amps from it.
Most effiient and fair system would be for each metered iving unit to have their own 50 amp circuit to charge their own EV. I bought an air compressor tht draws max 35 amps so ran a new 50 amp circuitl I can run quite a few things on that when the comressor is off but also run the compressor and a number of other things… all on one circuit. It ain’t alll that hard to do.
Maybe in Texas 200amps is standard. And maybe modern codes force 200Amp service just to make everything more expensive but there are a lot of old buildings out there and smaller homes and condos won’t have 200amp service as a rule. But it really doesn’t matter. We are looking at 50amps for every parking space minimum. That’s going to be expensive. And keep in mind that’s for an overnight charger, not a fast charger.
200 amp service with 2/0 wire has been the norm in Texas since the 70’s. I’ve worked on many houses that had 100 amp services(and even less)with #6 or even #8 feeding them. I’m always amazed since the owners will be running a big a/c and all sorts of high amp equipment such as a water heater(50 amp service). How they don’t burn down always amazes me.
“7kW*100 = 700kW. 700,000W / 120V = 5833 Amps.”
The average daily commute is about 25 miles,
a typical EV gets 4 miles/KWH.
So the typical electric car is going to need about 6 KWH per night
A typical 110 outlet at 15 amps is providing 1500 watts for 4 hours,
Some cars will travel further and pull more power but with a little bit of smart load balancing, on average, you can figure 70% of the slots pulling 5 amps at night and 20% pulling 6KW (50 amps and 10% pulling 10 KW (100 Amps)
So figure more like 2300 amps but most of this is at night when load demand is low. It will add some load to the building but, it’s an engineering excercise.
Clever people will figure it out.
Clover,
You keep trying (and failing) to defend EVs on their economic/practical merits; but if you had a case, then it wouldn’t be necessary to mandate their manufacturer and subsidize their purchase.
This is the bottom line about EVs – and it’s no wonder you will do anything to avoid discussing it.
You can’t run a 110V 15A circuit at full tilt for 4 hours. It will trip the breaker long before then.
Apparently you also don’t understand the difference between KW and KWh. One is power, the other is energy. It doesn’t matter that you only need X kWh of energy when designing the installation. You design the installation based on the power requirements. It doesn’t matter if you use that power for one second or 12 hours. So the average person doesn’t use the full charge every day. So what? Everyone living in the building comes home, plugs in, and their cars start using power at the rates I gave. Again, the expense of the system is determined by the current flowing through at max usage.
You also don’t understand the difference between power generation and load capacity of circuits. Again two different things. The higher the amperage the more expensive the installation is going to be. It doesn’t matter if there is excess night capacity at the power generation facility or not. This is basic engineering and you’re completely ignorant of it.
See Pat, one of those “clever people” is me. I’ve done battery chargers among the wide variety of products I’ve worked on in my career. I understand the problems involved. I’ve hit some of them with chargers much smaller than what is required for the battery EV utopia.
Morning, Brent!
Thank you for explaining that to Pat/Clover – and to everyone reading this. I think part of the reason EV pushers have been so successful is that most people don’t understand that charging a battery is not like filling up a car. Pouring fluid into a container via gravity or a pump with a rate of flow/pressure that can be varied across a fairly wide range is pretty simple and easy to understand. “Pouring” electricity into a battery is a more mysterious thing – one can’t even see it happening – so it’s easier to fool people or just play on their ignorance about the difficulties you lay out.
It’s frightening that these are not being talked about publicly except in a few redoubts (as here). Because it indicates something pretty malevolent is in the works.
I have been running two 15 amp heaters for days on their own 15 amp circuit. These circuits with 15 amp breakers were already set up by someone else. I use 20 amp breakers on 120V circuits in the barn and breezeway. Evidently, the house breakers didn’t get the memo. If you were here I could prove with my amp clamp those heaters pull 15 amps.
I’ve popped breakers with 15Amp devices by running them too hard for too long.
And yes, your heaters are likely not drawing a constant 15Amps. The 15Amps is the max they can draw, but they aren’t doing that all day long. You can’t design something that runs at exactly a maximum all the time. The world doesn’t work that way. There’s a tolerance depending on a variety of factors including the tolerance stack of all the parts inside. If they really are drawing 15Amps all day long you have to use breakers designed for that, which have headroom above their rating.
Anyway, here’s an explanation that seems good enough:
https://blog.se.com/datacenter/power-and-cooling/2014/06/12/clearing-confusion-80-vs-100-rated-circuit-breakers/
The summary is that if you want to run at 15Amps all day long you need to purchase different more expensive breakers that are designed to run at their rating all day long. Otherwise expect the breakers to pop after a couple three hours max.
I’m a Square D man. Their breakers will hold when lesser brands don’t. I had to work on the control on one heater. I has a 6 amp setting and a 9 amp setting so you can use both. I stuck my amp/clamp on there and it was showing 15 amps.
Then again, the smallest wire I use is #12. I have circuits in the barn that are #10 wire and 30 amp breakers and some with @8 and 50 amp breakers.
I found out when using a Wildcat 7″ grinder for a long time the 15 amp breakers would trip. That was the ONLY 15 amp breaker in the barn 200 amp load center which is no more. I have so many circuits I had to use some piggy-backed breakers. Tied together, they’re great for things like an air compressor that runs a bit less than 20 amps on 240V circuits. Just make sure to tie them together so they both trip if one does.
Years ago I had a 31′ travel trailer and though it was a good brand, it was sorely underwired. The a/c wasn’t the original and was larger since it needed to be. I ran a #10 circuit from the outside to the roof so it wouldn’t be overloading that shitty little load center. I had to use a 50 amp supply which isn’t the norm in trailer parks or didn’t used to be. Old ones would be 30amp, not nearly enough. New ones would be 50 amp. I use my Ugly’s book when in doubt.
Since I don’t build planes, my rule of thumb is “When in doubt, make it stout”. I use that same rule when doing electrical work.
Brent, and EightMan a 15 amp breaker WILL carry fifteen amps actual for any indefinite period of time. Else they could not be rated at fifteen amps. A device rated at 15 amps MAX should not draw more than that current. . If you olugged in one fifteen amp draw device ona circuit and it popped the breaker, one of two thisgs hings happened: most likely that was not the ONLY device connected at the time. Even a light bulb in addition to the 15 amp device could throw the braker. The other, common with the long discontinued (and rightly so) Zinsco devices, they DO wear and lose their capacity rating. They have a hisotryof tripping signficntly below the rated current. Better, though, than not tripping soon enough.
EIghtSouth, your hose breakers are amost certainly wired wiht 14 guage wires, where the ones in the shop/barn are wired with 12 guage. 12 guage wire can ONLY carry up to 2o amps without overheating. 14 uage can only carry 15 amps. DO NOT get any funny ideas aobut swappping the fifteens in the house for twenties without CHECKING to see those curcuits were run with12 guage, not 14 guage We here don’t want to be reading about a nasty house fire somewhere out in Texas oil ocuntry. As any system, the whole thing MUST be designed with theproper size components You’d not try and couple the main driveline coming out of the gerabox on yur truck with 5/16 grade 5 bolts, now, would yo? You;d be fine for running empty, but put a big jag on that and you’ll shear all those toy bolt, won’t you? That’s why that driveline likely uses four 7/16 or 1/2 inch grade eight bolts. THEY can stand p to the max torque your engine can develop thourgh that set of gears.. Same idea.
I”m well aware of the wiring size in the house, the very reason it has 15 amp breakers.
I only have 4 receptacles in the barn that are 15 amp although they’re wired with #12 and have 20 amp breakers. I use those for low-draw appliances and lighting.
The rest are 20 amp receptacles so you can imagine how many extension cords I’ve made with 3/12 wire and 20 amp cord caps.
Your common 15Amp breaker is 15Amps for peak non-continuous load. It’s continuous load rating is 80% of that. If you want 15Amps continuous you need a 100% 15A breaker. That will cost you more.
It’s the reason I use Square D. Most electrical equipment has ratings starting at 1.0, 1.15, 1.25, etc. Motors for commercial use have ratings often as high as 1.5. Cotton gins come to mind since start-up loads can run so high and many of the motors are DC.
It’s very easy to fix most of these recharging issues, at least on an individual basis. All you need is to be Extremely Rich. I’m not making up any of the following.
I know a guy who simply installed his own recharging bay in his big garage. He just parks and plugs in his Tesla every night….and bingo, each morning he’s good to go.
True, one full recharge won’t provide sufficient range for even a medium long road trip. But for those, he flies; either in his family’s corporate jet, or in a charter for longer journeys.
For those rare times when his travel agenda may not fit the above options, he’s got a gas Benz SUV in the garage, too. But it really doesn’t get used much.
So there….all electro-cart throughput problems solved! No thanks needed. Always a pleasure to be of service. 🙂
Hi Mike,
You’ve hit the nail o the head! The whole point is to Sovietize transportation; to herd the proletariat – that’s us – into collectivized/controlled forms of transport while the rich and connected continue to enjoy autonomous transpo.
Stalin had his Zil…
What will be interesting is the public reaction to being herded into the soviet grid. It will be interesting to see how they react when they realize what they have lost through their inaction, ignorance and apathy. This is the only corner of the internet that understands what the endgame really is.
Not to mention separating us from our hooved children 😉
Sad but true . . .
Saw a Fox body on the way home from the Devil’s vs Rangers game on Saturday, looked clean in black and just couldn’t stop staring
Any advice when it comes to those, Chief?
Hi Zane,
Indeed I do… get one! Those Fox-body Mustangs are kind of like the Universal Japanese Motorcycles of the ’70s and ’80s. Excelent stock, even better modded – and easy to mod.
I’d love to have one myself!
You would have loved to of seen this one. I mean, I like them, but this was Car show fresh from what I saw.
If I weren’t keeping up with Traffic on the Turnpike, would of taken a pic, but yeah, now I know what I want.
Gonna start figuring out the build now.
My ’92 Mustang GT 5.0 (stick, of course) is still unbelievably tight after all these years, and I’ve never had to do a single major thing to it. Well, AC compressor was pretty expensive, but what almost 30 year old anything doesn’t need something done to it now and then? And she’s due for a paint job. Still, they sure built ’em right back then.
My story, one of my characters has a Hatchback Fox.
Hey, a beast that Uncle can’t really mess with, paying a premium on the compressor and a paint job is a small price to pay for such luxury
Simplicity is now the new luxury.
But… the electric cars are faaaaaaaaaast. They are quiiiiiiiiiiet. Ghey are greeeeeeen. No Poooluuuuuuution. Everything’s greaaaaaaaaat. Because today’s cars are so diiiiiiiiiiiirty, electric is the fuuuuuuuture.
The youngsters have been conned into thinking that modern ICE vehicles are dirty. There haven’t been new cars that put out any considerable pollution since the 1970s. They’ve never experienced pollution of that order but they are conned into thinking things are so horrible. On my wall I have picture taken from aircraft over NYC in 1939. The pollution over the city is thick in the photograph. I remember the 1970s which while not that bad I could at least smell it in various places in Chicago. Today the only place it gets like that is the tunnels of McCormick place where the neglected diesel buses idle. And if they weren’t neglected probably not even there. Automobile pollution was solved 25 years ago or more.
If people want to deal with pollution they need to get places like China and India to implement what is now old and cheap technology. That’s where there is bang for the buck. Spending a lot in the west going after tiny amounts is not going to even matter so long those places continue not to bother.
Not all youngsters thankfully, my nephew got himself an ’85 Rebel (Idiotic though as our family and bikes don’t mix) and my friends kid brother (21 in a week) has built a JK for off roading and has 2 civics he’s working on (Del Sol and ’95 Coupe, Actually rebuilt the D block as he figured it’d be cheaper than a swap, and is gonna possibly swap it into his Del Sol)
Fortunately, my ’13 nephew I can influence as well, just gotta take him to a school parking lot so I can teach him stick while I have my Audi (As I do wanna replace that rather than my Ram)
I remember NYC in the 1970s as I grew up in CT and we made our way in once in a while. It was pretty dirty, but definitely not unbearable. I kind of miss the brown air myself. It was a sign that we were moving along and weren’t obsessed with cleaning up every little thing. I believe that deaths from polluuuuuuuuuution were largely exaggerated. In Okinawa Japan, once an industrial city, for instance, the cancer rate was about 1/4 of what it is in the US as a whole. Why? They eat correctly there. They exercise. People are not a bunch of fat slobs like in the US. I only aspire to be as fit as the average Japanese. Automobile pollution was solved over 25 years ago. The Clean Air Act of 1970 and its subsequent amendments required Catalytic converters and forced fuel injection onto cars. By 1980, over 90 percent of CO, HC and 78% of NOX were removed from new vehicle tailpipes. It came with a tremendous cost, but at least you could see the results. Conversely, the 1990 air act was a trillion dollar boondoggle that cost Americans their independence by mandating oxygenated fuels (which actually increased fuel consumption) and ratcheting up diesel emissions standards to nearly impossible standards (by making them meet the same standards as gas powered cars). Additionally, diesel standards forced refiners to create a new classification of low sulfur diesel to operate in the more complex emissions choked engines. The only good thing to come from the 1990 clean air act was the implementation of OBD2, which standardized the engine fault codes (while adding 4 times as many engine sensors) and the requirements that stores take used oil back from their customers without charge (or they would be forced to handle it as a hazardous waste). That could have been handled with a small amendment, not the crap we are forced to deal with now.
Even a well-tuned 1960s vehicle is “clean”…the hell of it is KEEPING it that way! The fine art of gapping plugs, setting point gap and then ignition timing, fiddling with the idle mixture until you max out the idle vacuum…it wasn’t THAT hard to learn, and once you did, you could restore a car to “tune” in a few hours on a Saturday morning! Even rebuilding a carburetor wasn’t really all that HARD, it was just a matter of being patient and following instruction on the kit.
But today’s “maintenance-free” vehicles are a product of another societal change…that of a huge number, if not, unfortunately, the majority of boys being raised without daily supervision from their FATHERS. E.G., most kids these days are being raised in a female-headed household, usually the “Baby Momma”, and the role of what would have been her wage-earning HUSBAND is now, at least financially, assumed by the almighty state in the form of welfare payments or, where the “Baby Daddy” has a pocket to be picked, child support. Certainly these lads don’t spend some of their time helping “Pop” with doing a tune-up on the “Family Truckster”, or assisting in him fixing a leaky faucet. It was both a “positive” male role model, and that (toxic, in the purview of feminists) “male bonding”, and maybe even the teaching of practical skills. Which is why the hot rod culture is dying out, not only are even twenty year old rides almost unfixable, the men whom can teach the mechanical arts are like me, in their SIXTIES, a gaggle of geezers and old farts. Most young lads are too preoccupied with those goddamned video games anyway to notice something from the REAL world.
When I was daily driving my ’73 and still had to take it to emissions testing I would get it tuned just perfectly. Somewhere I probably still have an emissions test output sheet showing I had it complying with then newish car standards for the state test at least. All it has is PCV, EGR, and charcoal canister. But yeah it doesn’t stay that way for long.
Damned quiet EV driver almost ran me over in my gym’s parking lot the other day. I was walking in and the a-hole backed out of his spot while looking at his sail fawn. I didn’t hear a thing and barely got out of the way before he tapped me. Man, was I p—-d!
Hi Bill,
Yup… and yet another problem with EVs. Many of them, in addition to being silent, have an “autopark” or some degree of self-driving tech that puts your life in the hands of its software (and sensors). EVs overtly encourage addled driving, which would be a sssssssssssssssssssssssssssaaaaaaaaaaafety issue… except that doesn’t apply when it comes to EVs. Because EVs are holy totems and can do no wrong.
I read somewhere that the EV manufacturers will be required to add “noisemakers” to alert pedestrians of their approach. Interesting, isn’t it? First, IC vehicles were “too noisy”; now EV’s are “too quiet”.
I’m betting that eventually, some dildo (perhaps London or other ULEZ/ZEZ cities) will then complain about EV’s being “too clean”. After all, how else will they make money if they can’t hit anyone with “congestion charges”? Heck, they may even lobby to ban them.
I got my fingers crossed…