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I decided a few years ago that I was sick of standing in the snow at a gas station waiting for the person inside the building to finish selling that lottery ticket and turn the pump on so I can stand there some more babysitting it while it fills up and I freeze. The answer, of course, was to buy a car that didn't need gasoline, one I could plug into the house and go inside where it's warm.
I'm not a rich man, I'm a pensioner who is still paying a mortgage, so I looked for an affordable EV. Used ones are almost nonexistent, and I found out why when I finally bought one: it has a ten year warranty. They haven't been making them much longer than that.
I swore off new cars decades ago when my month old VW stranded me ninety miles from home with a bad alternator, but if you want an EV, new is your only choice. I kept seeing the Chevy Bolt advertised, but could never find one for sale at all. Then I found that they had stopped making them two years earlier.
Why? Well, battery problems, they claimed. Why just the not so expensive one, $30,000? GM is still selling electric Cadillacs and Corvettes, why no cheap cars?
I discovered after buying an EV that the only two advantages of a piston car to an electric one are the lack of infrastructure for long trips, and the high purchase price of the vehicle. Why high? Because only their flagship autos have electric motors, the ones that formerly had V8s.
My car cost $40,000. It's absolutely the nicest, roomiest (except for the minivans) car I ever owned. My Dad had a Checker when I was about ten, they no longer make them. They were designed for taxicabs and I've never seen more back seat leg room than in one. My new Hyundai has more leg room except Dad's Checker than any other car I've ever seen, and although the '74 LeMans was a much bigger car, my new EV is much roomier. It's a lot roomier than the '02 Concorde that was the same size as my new car on the outside. Why aren't the auto companies advertising how roomy EVs are? I never realized how much space engines, transmissions, and gas tanks take up.
I started trying to buy one when I realized that you don't have to babysit them when you're charging. I didn't want to stand there in the snow filling a gas tank, but judging from most Facebook comments I've seen, I must be the only one who realized that. People seem to think you have to stand there when they charge. Why aren't they advertising this benefit?
Why aren't they telling you that your car can now heat your garage, unlike a piston car? Why aren't they advertising the fact that rather than the heat coming on when you get to where you're going, you have heat before you're out of the driveway?
Why aren't they telling you how well EVs handle, thanks to its crazy low center of gravity? Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?
Why aren't they advertising the fact that electricity is five times cheaper than gasoline and diesel? The only way I found out was by buying one.
Why aren't they advertising all the advantages of EVs?
Why are only the top of the line autos like the Mustang or Cadillac EVs? That's an easy question to answer. The automakers are under laws from our and other governments that their fuel mileage average of all the vehicles they sell has to be under a certain number. The easiest way to do that is to make the expensive cars, the ones with big V-8s, electric. When your fastest car doesn't use traditional fuel...
But this, of course, begs a second question: why only the expensive ones? Because they don't want to make electric cars at all. The obvious reason is that they hate EVs. But why do they hate them and love the incredibly inefficient (my car will go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline), obsolete Rube Goldberg device with thousands of moving parts to wear and break?
EVs threaten their business model. The businesses are set up so that GM makes almost as much profit from aftermarket parts, like spark plugs, belts, hoses, pumps, and so forth as they do on the cars themselves.
Gasoline and diesel vehicles all need periodic maintenance. They're needy things, expensive to maintain, and the car company gets a cut of every repair of every car they sell. The drive train is a Rube Goldberg mess with thousands of moving, interlocking parts, any one of which fails can cripple the vehicle. A bad fuel pump stranded me in the bad part of town last year, and the repair was nearly $900 not counting the towing charge. The repair shop got half, Pontiac and other companies got the rest.
My new car doesn't have a fuel pump. Or spark plugs, or belts, or fuel injectors, or any of the other moving parts all the other cars I've owned since 1968 had and needed replacing. The motor's shaft IS its drive train! When was the last time your ceiling fan needed servicing?
More than likely that new 1976 Vega that cost $3,000 garnered more than that for GM in aftermarket parts. There may still be some on the road still earning money for GM. An EV has few aftermarket parts; tires, brake pads, windshield wiper blades are all I can think of. Hyundai won't make any more money from my new EV like they would if it had a big six cylinder piston engine.
Which is a shame, because electric motors are all far, far superior to piston engines and transmissions in every way. But the nearly zero cost of maintenance is why the thieving billionaire car companies don't want to sell affordable EVs. In fact, they want to sell as few EVs as possible. If it wasn't for fuel mileage restrictions, Tesla and the Chinese would likely be the only electric cars you could buy.
But isn't this just a conspiracy theory? No, there was never a conspiracy, nothing needed to be said. Those people aren't moral, but they're not stupid, either. Ford and Chevy aren't making cars for a hobby, nor are they charitable organizations. All they care about is profit, and EVs threaten their gravy train.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:38AM (39 children)
This is by (political) design. It is not possible to produce enough electricity out there necessary for all the EVs replacement needed for classic cars in current use.
So, it comes to new social stratification again: it is imperative the low income population must be deprived of deliberately using EV cars. That's neofeudalism.
Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 07 2023, @12:54PM (15 children)
> It is not possible to produce enough electricity
This is a quite extraordinary statement. What is your evidence to support this?
(Score: 1, Troll) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:11PM (8 children)
Do a little research... start with the gasoline equivalent of kWh that would be required to replace the whole US personal vehicle fleet today.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:23PM (1 child)
If they used gasoline as the source of electricity they'd already be well ahead of the current status quo, more efficient.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:34PM
Yes, but... you've got to build out the gasoline generation capacity, the distribution infrastructure, etc.
In round numbers, EVs are 4x more energy efficient (take 25% of the energy) of ICE vehicles. All we need is $21T worth of electric grid overhaul (and ramped up lithium mining capabilities, and a few other things) to get that efficiency. Thing is, (in the US) we're only consuming about 135 billion gallons of gasoline per year, call that $500B in gasoline, so the electric grid overhaul has a 40 year ROI even if the additional electricity for EVs were produced for free, closer to 55-60 years if you're going to simply power the grid with gasoline (or whatever is being used to make the gasoline) for the higher EV efficiency.
Yes, it would be worth it "for the future" - but 50 years ago was the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, it will take that long again for the switchover to start paying off. Maybe a little less, if population keeps growing...
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday December 07 2023, @07:54PM (3 children)
Do a little research yourself.
EVs are far more efficient than ICE cars: those 130+ eMPG figures are based on equivalent energy of gallons of gasoline.
So your "start with the gasoline equivalent of kWh" is ridiculous and simply shows your ignorance.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @08:12PM (2 children)
Look further down the thread - when I ran the numbers the basic conclusions were this:
EVs are indeed more efficient than ICE vehicles, roughly 4.5x as efficient on average - that's great.
The current US appetite for motor vehicle gasoline is roughly energy equivalent to the current US electrical energy generation capacity - that's not so great, this indicates that a roughly 25% capacity increase in electrical generation (and delivery) capacity will be required to fully accommodate EV needs if we are to get to a 100% EV fleet. Such estimates are highly dependent on assumptions, but the cost to upgrade the US electrical grid is bandied about in the $21T region, that's $60K per person, which sounds high, until you consider the cost of millions of miles of high voltage electrical wires, 25% more generation capacity than we currently have, etc. Also, consider my neighbors who put in a $90K solar system on their home - which only meets about 30% of their total electric power needs for 2 adults, three children, two yappy dogs and 0 EVs.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Thursday December 07 2023, @09:57PM (1 child)
You ignore the time of day factor.
Much EV charging is done at night, when there is typically spare capacity.
I have no idea how your neighbors were able to spend so much on a solar system. My system cost about $16k and, averaged out, covers about 80-90% of our electricity usage. We don't have children in the house, but our electricity usage wasn't significantly higher when we did.
Your example is an anecdote that describes a case that is clearly outside normal bounds.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:09PM
>describes a case that is clearly outside normal bounds.
Granted, Florida is clearly outside normal bounds, but: Air Conditioning - if you don't use it much, then you can't relate to our electric consumption patterns. Their house is a bit bigger than average, and their base bill averages in the $400 per month range before the solar system was added.
When it's 95 outside and 72 inside of your 4000 square foot Mini McMansion with those fabulous floor to ceiling windows... that takes some kWh to maintain, even with a modern heat pump.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:29AM (1 child)
Do a little research
Next time you jump to a conclusion you might want to at least ask Google. You would find that my EV will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline. The only infrastructure problem is chargers for traveling.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:10AM
>You would find that my EV will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline.
You're missing the bigger picture. Yeah, so you can go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline - I'll give you that one.
Where is that electricity that's being used to produce our gasoline currently available? Not in Montana.
The current gasoline burning motor vehicle fleet in the US consumes as much energy from gasoline as we produce in electrical generation, that's what Google told me.
Now, even if the new EV fleet that replaces it just magically appeared tomorrow, with efficiency 5x better than gasoline (in MPGe), we'd need 20% additional generation and distribution capacity at the points where the EVs are being charged. 20% is significant. Maybe there's some time-slice chicanery (night charging) that takes the actual infrastructure upgrade need down to 10% - do you know what 10% of the US electric grid, built with broad government subsidies over the last 100+ years, costs? They're throwing around numbers like $21T for the cost to upgrade the US grid - those numbers are going to be wildly variable depending on a whole pile of assumptions, but $21T is around 4 years of the total federal budget - even if they've blown up their numbers by 10x what we actually need, $2.1T would be $6000 per capita for every US citizen of every age - that's more than our annual military spending (of $1.5T).
Yeah, your EV that you toodle into town once a month in doesn't raise your electric bill, I get that. My neighbors with teenage kids are putting 60K miles on their family vehicles per year with mom, dad, and now one or two kids spending several hours a day each on the road going here, there, wherever - it all seems very important, to them. Even if they get 120MPGe, they'll be consuming 500 "electric gallons" (33.7kWh) per year, which is 16.8 megawatt hours per year, 1400 kWh per month which will be boosting their electric bill by about $200 per month. That's a great deal, they currently buy around 200 gallons of gas per month costing them about triple that, but... their current electric bill is around $300 per month, so this will be a 66% increase in the average demand they're putting on the grid.
Our family? We drive big old V8s that ping if you don't feed them premium fuel, because we just don't drive that much to care about the cost of fuel - the cost of replacing the vehicles with something more efficient would buy all our gasoline for years to come, much more than the savings of the more efficient vehicle (though, I must confess, we went from a 5.9 liter V8 in the 1999 truck down to a (more powerful) 3.6 liter V6 in the 2019, and while they both get around 12mpg in town, the V6 will get 25mpg on the highway where the V8 was doing good to get 16mpg, and the new V6 doesn't pout when you give it regular gas - so that's a big savings there too.) If we switched to EVs, I think we might notice a 10-20% increase in our electric bill, tops... but we're not exactly typical.
Oh, and I'm building a carport for the 2019 pickup (+ our family sedan) so the 2019 doesn't get as stinky as the 1999 that lived under the big oak tree for the past 10 years. All in slab and structure will be less than $20K. I very diligently looked at putting solar panels on the roof of that carport and no matter which way I sliced it, the structure to hold a roof full of panels was going to cost $10K EXTRA over and above what the complete structure that doesn't hold all that would. A big kink was single slope facing south vs traditional gable that half faces north. The higher price options includes those bare frames that hold panels as the roof. Not to mention the added hassle of getting something weird like a solar carport approved by the local zoning board. Then, if those solar panels would do anything other than charge an EV (that we don't have yet), there would be another $5K in buried cable and power transfer equipment to get the solar power back to the house, $20K+ for the panels and inverters and maybe batteries thrown in on that too for another $10K. All that buys a LOT of kWh from the local utility at current rates.
Another fun figure I ran lately is the LiFePO4 pack + inverter by Anker I recently bought for $700. It holds roughly 1kWh of charge, and is rated for 3000 cycles. That's 3000kWh of capacity, and give the battery pack credit for only being $500 of the total cost. $500 / 3000kWh is $0.16/kWh for power that is stored and released by that battery pack - as compared to our electric rates that vary between $0.11 and $0.14 / kWh from the grid. Even if the pack gets charged for free, I'll be paying more for using the battery than electric power is currently costing from the grid. I imagine the same is true of electric vehicle battery packs, so take that 120MPGe and roughly cut it in half for your TCO when you start paying for the cost of the batteries you're using.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:06PM (5 children)
The average house uses on the order of 20 kwh per day. A "tank" full for an EV is about 80 kwh. The average use case would see the EV use that "tank" every few days.
To a reasonable approximation, converting to EV's would see domestic electricity power usage double. (This is increased by houses averaging more than one car, but reduced by second and third cars generally seeing less mileage.)
You could do a similar calculation for industry, but I don't know even approximate amounts for electric power vs fuel usage for that.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday December 07 2023, @07:48PM (1 child)
Bullshit. You're telling me the average person uses an entire tank of gasoline every "few days"?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @11:20PM
No you moron. Read it again. An EV needs the equivalent of a full charge every few day. Four days in the example above. Seems about right. Look at it another way. EV's get less about 200 miles on a charge, most people use their cars for 15 to 20 thousand miles a year, that means they need to charge them about 75 to 100 times a year. Approx twice a week.
Wow, math checks out.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:35AM (2 children)
Sorry, bud, but experience trumps books, as much as I hate to say that as anauthor. You're simply ignorant. I charge my car every couple of weeks when it goes below half full. My 110 volt charger pulls 1.8 amps, roughly a couple hundred watts. My countertop dishwasher pulls 700 watts, microwave a thousand.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @01:35AM
Somebody or something is lying to you. At 200 watts it would take 400 hours to charge a 80kwh battery. That's sixteen days continuous charging.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @10:43PM
Putting it together from the bits of info you drop in various posts, your charger puts out 1.8 amps into the battery at 800 volts.
That's about 1.5 KW it's drawing from the house circuit. At 110 volts, somewhere between 13 and 14 amps. That also matches up with the charging times you give.
Some basic E facts:
Power = Voltage * Current
Energy = Power * Time
It is pointless and confusing to keep referring to Power as Current without specifying the Voltage.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:27PM (11 children)
I mean, there's already social stratification in transport. Currently, there are approximately 3 tiers:
Bottom: Can't afford to own a car or can't drive (e.g. has a seizure disorder, or under 16). Gets around mostly on foot, on bikes, or on public transit, with the occasional ride share. Because of the way public transit systems are designed and managed, it is likely that there are places this person can't reasonably get to, at all, and other places where they can only get there at particular times of day.
As an example of a location that they often try to avoid making it possible to get to: Convention centers. By avoiding any public transit to that facility, they keep the poors out, you see. Ditto for certain neighborhoods or entire municipalities trying to keep their area "nice" by keeping the undesirables out.
As an example of a location where you can only get to it at certain times of day: Malls. They'll have 2-3 buses a day to get the workers there, but because of the length of time between each bus showing up it's not a viable option for most shoppers. Again, to keep the poors out unless they're there to do the often-low-paid often-menial jobs available at the mall.
This is more manageable in countries that didn't tear up most of their public transit infrastructure in the 20th century, like Japan and the UK.
Middle: Has a car to get around. Can get pretty much anywhere locally, with the occasional road trip further away. May decide to use intercity bus, rail, or commercial plane to go longer distances, and will probably rely on either a rental car or a friend or ride share once they get to that other city.
American cities are largely built to accommodate these people, so this isn't too terribly bad, but does have problems. For starters, there's the problem of where to put the car when it's not going anywhere - street parking has capacity problems, parking lots are ugly, parking garages are ugly and inconvenient. And then there's the twice-daily ritual of rush hour, where there's dice roles involved about (a) whether you get where you're going at all, and (b) how long it takes for you to get there. Yes, there are things you can do to change your odds, but ultimately there's always a luck element.
Top: Has access to a private jet, and may also use helicopters to get them around major cities. Sometimes has to slum it on the roads in a car or limo, although typically somebody else will be doing the driving for them while they lounge around in the back.
It's worth noting that despite being largely insulated from any of the problems we have with transit, these people are the ones that keep on proposing solutions to fix our transit problems once and for all. I for one don't think they should be listened to all that much, because again they have no clue what the problems actually are.
--
EVs would sit somewhere around the high end of the middle tier. But you're right that to address transport of humans at scale, it's likely that a lot of the people currently in the middle tier will end up in the bottom tier. Which is part of why there are lots of people out there trying to make the bottom tier suck less.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Funny) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:50PM (1 child)
I modded you up, but
parking lots are ugly, parking garages are ugly and inconvenient.
One of many disadvantages of an apartment or a condo.
And then there's the twice-daily ritual of rush hour, where there's dice roles involved about (a) whether you get where you're going at all, and (b) how long it takes for you to get there.
Dew knot truss yore spill checker.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday December 07 2023, @05:36PM
This isn't just a question of where the car is parked when it's at home though, it's also about where it's parked when you're at work, out shopping, at a restaurant, enjoying some live entertainment, visiting friends, etc etc. Go to Google Maps in pretty much any office park in America, look at the satellite view, and you'll see what I mean - it's not uncommon for there to be more parking lot than building.
Thank you for the spelling correction - whoopsie, I missed that. That doesn't change the point I was making.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:37PM
There's a lot of froth in those levels...
>Why aren't the auto companies advertising how roomy EVs are?
Good point. Our most recent auto selection was a 2002 Mercedes S430, in 2018 with 44,000 miles on it for $12,000 - that's an example of the top tier product becoming available to the middle tier - if you are lucky or patient enough to find a good one used. We have two sons (with autism) who are currently 6'1" and 6'4" and unlikely to be leaving home anytime soon, so backseat space is important, and the S-Class is as big as our full-sized pickup truck on the outside, but the car trunk is half the size of the truck bed and that space goes into the passenger compartment. Not quite enough room for a 3rd row of seats, but close, and all given to the two rows of seats it has. Rear wheel drive means there's a tunnel making a 5th passenger somewhat uncomfortable in the middle of the back, but with 4 passengers it's humongous.
The S-Class is a rare beast among sedans. These days most people who want that kind of room end up getting a 3 (or 4) row SUV and removing some of the seats. The $12K price for a low miles car that originally sold for $80K+ all came down to FUD. The big German V8s of that era had a nasty reputation for maintenance costs - and it's true, in the ensuing 100K miles we have put over $8K in maintenance, but I'm still happy with the car at an all-in cost of $20K for 100K miles of air-suspension comfort, V8 power, ultra luxury quiet ride, an AC system that can handle the Saharan desert... YMMV, but we like ours.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @06:03AM (7 children)
One of the hidden costs of this sort of thing. In a rational world, we'd be trying to get more people into the middle tier rather than figuring out how to make the sacrifice of dubious choices sting a little less in the bottom tier.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 08 2023, @12:06PM (6 children)
No we wouldn't. There's nothing rational about our love of cars and trucks.
When moving stuff, the way to minimize the cost of moving them is to minimize the size, mass, and speed of the thing being moved until you reach acceptable numbers, because that's how Newtonian physics works. When you're talking about moving a single person and a bit of stuff they can fairly easily carry, that means the most cost-efficient ways to move them are, in approximate order:
1. Walking there. (0 pounds extra for the vehicle)
2. Bicycles, skateboards, scooters, etc that are all on average very cheap to make and maintain, anywhere from 10-40 pounds.
3. A 55-pound e-bike or e-scooter that's more expensive to make than a bicycle, but still way cheaper than the next options.
4. A 500-pound motorcycle. These things easily get 50 mpg without any of that mucking about with hybrid batteries, for example.
5. A car from the smallest possible (so-called "smart cars" that seat only 2 people) to the largest. (1500-4000 pounds)
6. An SUV or pickup, again from the smallest to the largest. (3500-6000 pounds)
7. A box truck or similarly sized vehicle. (12500-33000 pounds.)
8. A semi or bus. (25000-35000 pounds.)
9. A train. (30000 pounds per car, so easily 120000-180000 pounds)
10. An airplane. (337,000-485,000 pounds)
For any of the vehicles in question, you can make them more efficient by either (a) moving more people in each one, or (b) using them more continuously rather than making 1 trip and parking them, e.g. an Uber handling a bunch of passengers in an hour is more efficient than each passenger driving their own car. That's why public transit can be so efficient if people are actually using it: For example, the train can move 100 people per car, so dividing that 30,000 pounds of train car by the 100 people is now 300 pounds per person.
TL;DR: For solving the problem of transportation for a whole lot of people, putting everybody in their individual car isn't even close to the most efficient solution. As anybody who has ever had to deal with rush hour traffic should know full well.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @12:26PM (5 children)
Aside from point to point travel being the best form of travel? I suggest you think about it.
Only if not moving stuff is your goal.
And when you're not, then the rest of your post is a waste of time. We get this same stilted thinking all the time. For example:
Why is your goal merely making transportation more efficient? This is bike shed [wikipedia.org] effect. Understanding the complexity of transportation and why people do it is hard. But saving a small amount of fuel is easy to understand and thus, an obsession to minimize near trivial parts of society develop.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 08 2023, @01:11PM (2 children)
How are you measuring "best", exactly?
There have been times when I've had a car in good condition, and opted not to take it to work. Why? Because there was public transit going from approximately 50' from my front door to within 400' from my office, and the public transit pass cost about 1/3 of what a parking pass would have cost, plus I could read a book while on transit.
I guess I wasn't clear: Yes, if you need to move a semi's worth of stuff, you're going to have to put it in a semi or something bigger like a train or cargo plane or split the load among a bunch of different vehicles. My point is that if you're using a semi to move a suburbanite from their home to an office park, that's not a very efficient use of resources, because you're doing the transit equivalent of using an industrial metal press to open a pistachio, which will work for 1 person who really wants to do that but is a problem as you start scaling.
Because I want as many people as possible to get to where they want to go using a finite pile of resources (including their available time) to do it.
You obviously want to drive your car or truck and feel good about it. And maybe you really are hauling a bunch of stuff every day, say you work construction and have a bunch of materials and tools in the back. OK, fine. But wouldn't you rather have as many other people as possible off the roads so they aren't in your way? And the way you do that is provide them with viable alternatives to hopping in their car to get where they're going, and then some of those people will choose those alternatives because they're cheaper, easier, faster, etc. Optimizing for "maximum number of people in cars" makes sense only if you're benefiting from selling and fixing cars or building and repairing roads.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @01:15PM
So multiple modes of transportation, when one mode will do? And it's not much of a problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 09 2023, @06:50PM
I'll note also for that specific case, public transit was almost point to point. The rub comes in when you have to start hopping multiple transport modes because something isn't close to either your start or destination, or has low enough frequency that it's constraining your schedule. For example, when I worked on my PhD at UC Davis and worked daily in the office, I had to walk about half a mile to the bus station and ride in the 10 miles on the hourly bus. UC Davis helped make that a viable choice by making parking ridiculously expensive.
Anyway, there were times when I missed the last bus back home (absent minded quite a bit). So I'd stay overnight and just return the next day. How many people can do that? With a car, gas or EV, you have the power to decide when you come and go, not some bus schedule. And because the car is an enclosed environment, you can go in weather that would be hard to do with a bike (another point to point system). For example, one day it was raining strongly with 60 MPH winds. I decided to eat the cost and drive in rather than walk to the bus station. No drama aside from slower than usual traffic.
You can treat a car as an irrational object, or you can choose to recognize the power and flexibility it gives you.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:47AM (1 child)
You made the same mistake the Drake equation makes; Fermi's "paradox" isn't real, the Drake equation is missing variables and correct values for some of the existing variables, in your case missing the cost of fuel. My EV weighs twice what a comparable sized piston car weighs, has more room, and costs two dollars worth of electricity to go from Springfield, IL to St Louis, when a gasoline car costs ten.
It's the classic spherical cow in a vacuum.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:37AM
Your EV is point to point and thus, part of my category.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:41PM (10 children)
It is not possible to produce enough electricity out there necessary for all the EVs replacement needed for classic cars in current use.
Nonsense spewed by EV opponents like mechanics and oil executives who certainly know better. My car will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline, so that big Dodge crew cab's gasoline uses more electricity than my car does.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:16PM (7 children)
>My car will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline
Yes, but that refining capacity is in-place (and making profits) whereas redirecting that energy to make it available to end-users across the country would require significant infrastructure investment with a long ROI horizon.
Our generation capacity is at-limit in places (like California) so those would have to be built up, and distribution of all the currently used gasoline energy as electricity to all the homes in the burbs will require a lot more conductor and transformer capacity than most places have.
It's a good project, long term. Short term, plenty of powerful people would rather party on their current profits than play the long game in which they'll be dead before payoffs come around.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:40PM (6 children)
My charger pulls 1.8 amps, roughly 190 watts. My countertop dishwasher pulls 700 watts, my microwave a thousand.
When I bought the dishwasher I noticed an increase in my electric bill, but not after buying the car.
The grid will be fine. Well, maybe not in Texas but that has nothing to do with EVs.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @03:20PM (5 children)
>The grid will be fine.
Not if we continue to drive like we (collectively) do... easy math:
>In 2022, about 135.06 billion gallons (or about 3.22 billion barrels)1 of finished motor gasoline were consumed in the United States, an average of about 370 million gallons per day
>EPA's formula, in which 33.7 kilowatt hours of electricity is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline
So, we will need, roughly, 12.5 billion kWh additional generation capacity per day, 520 million kW (neglecting things like peak load, which commuter recharging will have in spades...)
>In 2022, about 4,231 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or about 4.23 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States.
O.K. they want to play in kWh per year, so 12.5 * 365.25 = roughly 4.5 trillion kWh, just to replace the gasoline energy with electricity, at the EPA's conversion rate of 33.7 kWh per gallon - which, to be honest, sounds a little suspiciously high - at $0.11 per kWh that's $3.70 for an "electric gallon of gas" - O.K. what's missing here is the higher mpgE efficiency of EVs. at 1:1 efficiency, we would need to double the current US electric generation capacity. Yes, some savings would be had in Texas and other places where fuel is refined, but you can't just magically transport that energy from Houston to Bozeman, unless it's in a petroleum pipeline...
Trying again:
>(EPA) shows the average 2021 model year new vehicle fuel economy was 25.4 miles per gallon, which was the same result as in 2020
vs
>The average electric vehicle (EV) gets 114 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe).
so that 4.5 trillion kWh of annual electric capacity generation increase comes down to 4500*25.4/114 = 1 trillion kWh to feed EVs the same amount of miles worth of energy as our ICE fleet currently drives (assuming most gasoline sold in the US is used in ICE vehicles...) That's still a 25% increase over current generation output - we certainly don't have 125% generation capacity in all areas, and even in the places where we do, that will need beefing up to handle peak loads.
>My charger pulls 1.8 amps, roughly 190 watts. My countertop dishwasher pulls 700 watts, my microwave a thousand. When I bought the dishwasher I noticed an increase in my electric bill, but not after buying the car.
Have you considered that your ratio of microwave dinners and dishes washed to miles driven is considerably higher than the average American commuter lemming?
>Another working day has ended
>Only the rush hour hell to face
>Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
>Contestants in a suicidal race
Synchronicity - released in 1983, and today even more of us are still doing it.
>As of 2023, 12.7% of full-time employees work from home, while 28.2% work a hybrid model.
>the United States 2023 population is estimated at 339,996,563 / The estimated population of the United States on March 1, 1983 was 233,567,000
a 45% increase, fully nullifying any work from home or hybrid work reductions in commuter trips per year.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:14PM (4 children)
He's also wrong about that 1.8 amps. He's stated it before and also given charging times and basic electric calculations show he is out by a factor of about 10. Personally, I think he is mis-reading 1.8 kw as 1.8 amps.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:53AM (3 children)
Closer to 200 amps. Let me get my calculator, my brain is analog... 198. Close enough approximation. The 1.8 amp figure comes from the car's dash.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @01:25AM (2 children)
Yeah, you aren't pulling 200 amps through a house socket either.
Given the figures on charge time you posted last time this discussion came up, the most likely scenario is that your charger is pulling 1.8 KW. If it's on 110 volts that's about 16 amps. Do-able on a heavy circuit. If it's on the 220 volt circuit it's only 8 amps and is what the 220 volt circuits are for.
The other possibility is that your car has a 480 volt battery and that 1.8 amps is at the battery and means nearly 900 watts from the wall. In that case though, you were overly optimistic in your charge times.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @01:34AM (1 child)
I think you are close when you mention the current into the battery (DC). I believe that the submitter has a Hyundai Ioniq 5 with a nominal 800 volt battery, see https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/eco/ioniq5/technology [hyundai.com] From that page:
> IONIQ 5 is one of the first production vehicles with an 800 V battery system. It charges ultra-fast, performs consistently high, and is optimized for weight and space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @06:15AM
You nailed it. Two posts up he says the 1.8 amps comes from the car dash.
1440 watts + efficiency loss from the wall socket. Conversion is pretty efficient these days so I would guess his charger is drawing about 1.5 KW.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday December 07 2023, @05:48PM (1 child)
So let's say for the sake of argument that the 20 miles = 5 kwH of electrical usage = 1 gallon of gasoline refining is true. I'll note that you're parroting pretty much word for word a claim made by an EV car manufacturer CEO who is known for being loose with the truth, so that equation is dubious at best, but let's pretend it's true.
The average car gets 25 mpg, and often more than that (e.g. my fairly cheap used Ford Taurus almost 20 years ago got around 30 mpg). Which means that the only way you get the EV to be better than the ICE car is if you can come up with another 1-2.5 khH of electrical usage per gallon or so: Not necessarily impossible due to things like pipeline pumping and running gas stations, but also not a slam-dunk case just because you introduced math into the discussion. Plus it's not like creating an EV and especially the associated batteries is free from electrical usage either.
Of course, the bigger problem is that if you're drawing that electricity ultimately from power plants that are burning oil and coal, that's not really helping the environmental issue EVs allegedly address, it's just moving the cost from your vehicle to somewhere else and making it Somebody Else's Problem.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:06AM
I'll note that you're parroting pretty much word for word a claim made by an EV car manufacturer
Entirely possible, Google gave no citation.
Of course, the bigger problem is that if you're drawing that electricity ultimately from power plants that are burning oil and coal, that's not really helping the environmental issue EVs allegedly address
I make no environmental claims, I've said that the environment is the least of the EV's many advantages.
Let me tell you about math. Figures don't lie but liars figure. The EPA claims my car will travel 340 miles on a charge, it does good doing 240. Another spherical cow in a vacuum disregarding necessary variables. When I get home from my friend's house, a 215 mile trip, it tells me my average mileage in m/kwh and how much electricity the trip used. The math is really easy since my electricity is a dime point something a kwh. It costs me four dollars in electricity to get 215 miles, it took twenty bucks worth of gas in my old four cylinder.
I'm reminded of a Dilbert cartoon I saw years ago, about PHB asking about massaging the numbers. Massaging the numbers is a bad idea at NASA, I'm sure.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?