Hate Mask and Vaccine Mandates? Just Wait For The Electric Cars

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K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
48,077
37,268
136
Just no place to plug it in at the condo I am currently at. My ideas to change that were rejected.

Some states already have right to charge laws and more likely will in the coming years. My last condo they were like sure whatever just use our preferred under the table electrical contractor...
 

repoman0

Diamond Member
Jun 17, 2010
4,701
3,727
136
Battery capacity goes down but ICE efficiency does as well.

While it’s warming up, yeah. After it’s up to operating temp, efficiency slightly increases in the cold due to denser easier to pump air.
 

K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
48,077
37,268
136
While it’s warming up, yeah. After it’s up to operating temp, efficiency slightly increases in the cold due to denser easier to pump air.

Yes, warm up is where they take the hit. Conversely if you have a plugged in EV you can climatize it without any range penalty and cheaper than running remote start on an ICE.
 

Paratus

Lifer
Jun 4, 2004
17,117
14,484
146
I do not see myself buying a pure electric car for many years to come.

Just no place to plug it in at the condo I am currently at. My ideas to change that were rejected.


Electric rates appear to be more expensive then gas for people going to quick chargers. Gas is still cheaper, quicker, and less annoying for people who are unable to charge at home.
Tesla superchargers for example are about $0.25 / kWh. My lead foot gets about 4 miles / kWh. So about $0.06 / mile

we’ve got $3/gallon gas right now. The SUV gets about 18mpg. So that’s $0.167/ mile

At best our 4cyl compact gets almost 40mpg.
@ $3/gallon that’s $0.075/mile.

Charging at home with our $0.10 / kWh electricity works out to be $0.025 / mile.

It’s almost impossible for gas to be cheaper
 
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vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,483
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Bi-directional charging is going to be a game changer, especially in rural areas or places that have issues with power outages. Imagine having a 150kWh generator sitting in your garage that you can run for a couple days with zero emissions and keep your house running. And once power is back up it just charges back up again and you drive to work.

Imagine solar and wind generating power for these and then using the car batteries in peak hours to reduce the load on the grid. Eventually we are going to be at a place where the cars are actually buffers for the grid and *HELP* the grid instead of draw from it.

Oh and once Ricky Redneck realizes a F150 lightning for 40k can snap his neck with acceleration for a fraction of the cost to do it over gas/diesel to bury the accelerator he'll be in. Sure he can't blow a noxious black cloud of emissions and diesel turbo whistling as a final fuck you, but I digress. He can drive home and plug in and refuel for about 1/3-1/2 of what he would pay for traditional fuel.

EV's actually get more sustainable year over year as electric companies improve. We're on 100% sustainable energy in Oregon (wind, solar and water) and as more plants move to cleaner and more sustainable sources of renewable energy that juice to your home gets cleaner and more sustainable with it. EV's only get better over time. A gas engine remains the same as the day you bought it.
 
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brycejones

Lifer
Oct 18, 2005
27,649
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Bi-directional charging is going to be a game changer, especially in rural areas or places that have issues with power outages. Imagine having a 150kWh generator sitting in your garage that you can run for a couple days with zero emissions and keep your house running. And once power is back up it just charges back up again and you drive to work.

Imagine solar and wind generating power for these and then using the car batteries in peak hours to reduce the load on the grid. Eventually we are going to be at a place where the cars are actually buffers for the grid and *HELP* the grid instead of draw from it.

Oh and once Ricky Redneck realizes a F150 lightning for 40k can snap his neck with acceleration for a fraction of the cost to do it over gas/diesel to bury the accelerator he'll be in. Sure he can't blow a noxious black cloud of emissions and diesel turbo whistling as a final fuck you, but I digress. He can drive home and plug in and refuel for about 1/3-1/2 of what he would pay for traditional fuel.

EV's actually get more sustainable year over year as electric companies improve. We're on 100% sustainable energy in Oregon (wind, solar and water) and as more plants move to cleaner and more sustainable sources of renewable energy that juice to your home gets cleaner and more sustainable with it. EV's only get better over time. A gas engine remains the same as the day you bought it.
We are looking for a house/land to build on in a rural area and suitability for solar is key to us for this very reason. I want to use a ground source heat pump for hvac and have solar and bidirectional EVs.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,483
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Yep, I'm looking a few years out for cheap recreation space and dropping a cargo box house on it for weekend stuff. Sure would be nice to be able to drive out there and just run power off a vehicle for the weekend. Un plug, hit a charging station on the highway on the way home, and not worry about much else.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
59,239
13,840
136
Bi-directional charging is going to be a game changer, especially in rural areas or places that have issues with power outages. Imagine having a 150kWh generator sitting in your garage that you can run for a couple days with zero emissions and keep your house running. And once power is back up it just charges back up again and you drive to work.

Imagine solar and wind generating power for these and then using the car batteries in peak hours to reduce the load on the grid. Eventually we are going to be at a place where the cars are actually buffers for the grid and *HELP* the grid instead of draw from it.

Oh and once Ricky Redneck realizes a F150 lightning for 40k can snap his neck with acceleration for a fraction of the cost to do it over gas/diesel to bury the accelerator he'll be in. Sure he can't blow a noxious black cloud of emissions and diesel turbo whistling as a final fuck you, but I digress. He can drive home and plug in and refuel for about 1/3-1/2 of what he would pay for traditional fuel.

EV's actually get more sustainable year over year as electric companies improve. We're on 100% sustainable energy in Oregon (wind, solar and water) and as more plants move to cleaner and more sustainable sources of renewable energy that juice to your home gets cleaner and more sustainable with it. EV's only get better over time. A gas engine remains the same as the day you bought it.
I will be utterly unsurprised when they offer an EV aftermarket add-on kit to give you a button-push coal roller option, stacks and all...
 
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Zorba

Lifer
Oct 22, 1999
15,244
10,817
136
There will be a few that refuse to give up their brodozers, but not enough to matter. Electrics are good enough now for most people, improvements in battery's, charging, and infrastructure are still needed, but the tech is there.
The simple reality is operating cost for an electric is way lower than an ICE.
My only real gripe with electrics is the tendency to load them with gadgets. I don't need a Bluetooth washer fluid monitor, I don't need cabin mood lighting, or a howitzer sound system.
As the cost comes down through scale, I'm sure less fancy models with fewer "upgrades" will be offered. Right now they are basically burying the higher R&D and battery costs in the "luxury" packaging.

I'm hoping as electrics become more common, there becomes good rental options for the corner cases. For example, in Tulsa we have a copy that will actually rent trucks for towing at a fairly reasonable price. If these types of options became more common, I think that would remove a lot of resistance to the crowd that needs a truck a couple times a year.
 

UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
24,937
9,220
136
I honestly don’t think we’ll ever get past 80% electrification of private transportation. The ICE (or some form of it) will be available for at least another 50-60 years.

I tried to convince my sister to buy a new electric crossover vs. the Escape Hybrid she ended up with. She said it was the only feasible option because her condo building has no plug in parking available. Multiply that by the millions of people in larger urban and suburban markets who don’t live in a home with charging infrastructure and are unserved/underserved by adequate public transportation. That will take a lot longer to change than switching up the new car lineup on the lot.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
59,239
13,840
136
Little electric heater, bituminous coal hopper, you could make that happen pretty easily.

I have a business idea.
I already had the idea, you're just co-opting it
7G3zITG.png
 
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sportage

Lifer
Feb 1, 2008
11,492
3,161
136
In the short term at least the gird will be perfectly fine.

Well... just don't get caught down in Texas needing a charge.

Ok, I admit my thread was a bit nutty, and true I do not own an electric car, but what I was saying, basically, that for many Americans the electric car is just too elitist. I see this becoming yet another source for further political discourse. And we know there are plenty of Donald Trump's out there who take advantage of political discourse.

Pete Buttigieg was speaking about peoples fear concerning RANGE ANXIETY with owning a car that runs on batteries and needs charging. Convince me that range anxiety will not be a huge factor when making the jump from gas to electric.
Im all for the EV's. And if I drove more, rather than being driven around, I would want an EV. But what we really need are major improvements with the battery itself. We need advances with the battery, and a national effort with major investments. This should not be left up to China....

And we could have that advanced battery technology today, if America had not become mentally absorbed with the old fossil fuel mindset. Thanks, United States congress. One could have ptedicted our readiness for going battery with how we treated solar. Every roof top in America should be collecting rays of the sun and converting into power. But the fossil fuels kept us dumb, and the lobbyist kept our technology stuck in the 1800's. So no wonder America is mentally ill with both solar AND with battery technology.
Shit... do we need to wait for the space aliens to get us up to speed with battery technology?
Wouldn't YOU just love a smart watch that lasts six months on a single charge? Or an iPhone that only needs charging once a year? This could be our reality today if we had more dreamers and fewer Donald Trump's.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
59,239
13,840
136
I mean, people are working on better battery tech, we can't just "make it go" by wanting it hard enough.
 
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vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,483
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126
Well... just don't get caught down in Texas needing a charge.

Pete Buttigieg was speaking about peoples fear concerning RANGE ANXIETY with owning a car that runs on batteries and needs charging. Convince me that range anxiety will not be a huge factor when making the jump from gas to electric.
Im all for the EV's. And if I drove more, rather than being driven around, I would want an EV. But what we really need are major improvements with the battery itself. We need advances with the battery, and a national effort with major investments. This should not be left up to China....

This is where we need to sit down and have real conversations and not hysterics.

Really, rural people *ARE* the ideal candidates for EV's. If you are driving 40-60 miles a day round trip from bumfuck wherever to your work/errands an EV is ideal. You have *more* than enough range, even in worst of conditions and you come home and charge. Done. Now look on a calendar and tell me how many days a year a typical family drives more than that.

It's a handful. This is where actual infrastructure is important. We *DO* need more high speed chargers, and they *HAVE* to be reliable. That's where the range anxiety comes into play. It's knowing that you have 40 miles of range left, the next charging center is 30 miles. Cool. Get there and 3/4 Electrify America chargers are down or they are acting squirrely and only giving you 15kWh of charging speed instead of 100+ . And there's a line 3 cars deep. Hope you have two hours to sit and wait. We do need gas stations to be incentivized to convert. We do need more accessible charging. We do need more reliable charging. But this isn't a daily anxiety. It's only a handful of times a year for *most* families.

For those trips you do need to plan your route. Or we just fall back on dino oil and you rent something more conventional for a week.
 
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Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
I've had a Tesla Model 3 or around 3.5 years now, and I try to be quite clear about what I think are the downsides. Personally, if someone wanted to go green, I would suggest a plug-in hybrid over an EV unless they were heavily invested on the idea of an EV. My only complaint about any sort of hybrid setup is that you're mixing propulsion systems, which is effectively adding extra complexity. (I see additional complexity as just more things to break and more cost in the end.)

My biggest qualm with EVs is that the range you see quoted is just not what you should expect to see in real world use. As others have noted, you should only charge up to 80% unless you're going on a trip. If I'm going on a trip, I try to avoid charging up to 100%, because that will disable regenerative braking until there's enough lost capacity to enable it. (I usually go to 95%.) However, there are still other aspects to EVs that make them not as effective on longer trips. One of the biggest problems is that the vast majority of EVs have a fixed gear ratio per motor. In my RWD Model 3, I see a severe hit to efficiency if I'm heavily utilizing high-speed interstates (70 MPH+).

A few years back, I took a trip that was 130 miles in each direction, and I decided to take the simpler more relaxing route, which was almost all interstate. Even though my car is rated for 330 miles at full charge (or ~315 at 95%), I couldn't make the 260-mile round trip without recharging. (This was also in December, so it was probably around 40-50F.) The real kicker is that there were two Supercharging stations on my way back, but only one of them was working, and I was worried that I'd even make it there. The malfunctioning one was even at the "local" Tesla Service Center.

I also took a 900-mile (per way) round trip back in 2019, and I didn't have a very good time overall. I ran into a few issues with chargers not working well with no indication of their significantly reduced capability on the car's navigation. Also -- and this is arguably devolving more into my numerous complaints about Tesla -- the fact that I can't suggest a minimum state of charge is infuriating. The sheer idea that it wanted me to arrive at destinations with 10% or less charge is ludicrous given that its estimation is based upon previous usage, which cannot account for vastly different terrain. For example, traveling over the interstate in Virginia involves a lot of hills, which aren't great for efficiency.

There's also just the little things that eat away at you. For the past few days, my back-up camera has been stuttering and freezing, which rendered it nearly useless. It got really bad this morning as my audio subsystem started messing up too as the audio would randomly cut out, and come back in with maybe one speaker playing the music. I had to REBOOT MY CAR to fix the problem. As I've grown older, there is one thing that became very apparent to me... sometimes in life, you care about certain items in your life being reliable and having them just work. I don't need to tell my boss I'm going to be a few minutes late because my car needed to reboot.

Ultimately, what I dislike about Tesla can be summed up with this opinion... I don't think Tesla drives their own cars. There's no way someone could consider the user experience in that car to be acceptable if they actually had to use it every day. (I know Tesla people do actually drive the cars; it's meant to be slight hyperbole.)
 

Paratus

Lifer
Jun 4, 2004
17,117
14,484
146
Well... just don't get caught down in Texas needing a charge.

Ok, I admit my thread was a bit nutty, and true I do not own an electric car, but what I was saying, basically, that for many Americans the electric car is just too elitist. I see this becoming yet another source for further political discourse. And we know there are plenty of Donald Trump's out there who take advantage of political discourse.

Pete Buttigieg was speaking about peoples fear concerning RANGE ANXIETY with owning a car that runs on batteries and needs charging. Convince me that range anxiety will not be a huge factor when making the jump from gas to electric.
Im all for the EV's. And if I drove more, rather than being driven around, I would want an EV. But what we really need are major improvements with the battery itself. We need advances with the battery, and a national effort with major investments. This should not be left up to China....

And we could have that advanced battery technology today, if America had not become mentally absorbed with the old fossil fuel mindset. Thanks, United States congress. One could have ptedicted our readiness for going battery with how we treated solar. Every roof top in America should be collecting rays of the sun and converting into power. But the fossil fuels kept us dumb, and the lobbyist kept our technology stuck in the 1800's. So no wonder America is mentally ill with both solar AND with battery technology.
Shit... do we need to wait for the space aliens to get us up to speed with battery technology?
Wouldn't YOU just love a smart watch that lasts six months on a single charge? Or an iPhone that only needs charging once a year? This could be our reality today if we had more dreamers and fewer Donald Trump's.
The batteries are basically good enough today.

EVs are different from gas vehicles but not worse, (if you have overnight charging at home - I understand not everyone does). I never leave the house with less than 160 miles of real world range with my charging scheme. There's no worry that I need to stop by the gas station before work or I need to leave work early to fill up before picking up a a kid from school. If I wanted I could easily always have ~300 miles of range leaving my garage in the morning every day.

For long distance trips it's no different if you can reach the destination on a single charge (~300 miles) and have charging available there. No extra time required (in fact you save yourself the time of a fill up)

Longer trips require charging stops that do take longer. Depending on the rating of a DC fast charger you can put around 10 miles/minute into the battery from 10%-80%, (over 80% charging slows down just like your phone). So more frequent shorter charging stops is the best way to go.

Here's an example trip from Houston to Orlando and back.
  • 33h 34m total travel time (1963miles round trip)
  • 30h 8m driving
  • 3h 25min charging
  • 6 stops each way
If you drove that in an ICE you are probably looking at about an hour - hour 30 of gas stops total. So an extra 2-2.5 hours of charging. However if you include stops to eat and sleeping then eating while charging and a stop at one of the many hotels with a level 2 charger will reduce that extra 2-2.5 hours probably down below an hours difference.03DCCC09-EE48-45CE-8DCD-D5CEC3CB2754.jpeg
 

brycejones

Lifer
Oct 18, 2005
27,649
26,748
136
I've had a Tesla Model 3 or around 3.5 years now, and I try to be quite clear about what I think are the downsides. Personally, if someone wanted to go green, I would suggest a plug-in hybrid over an EV unless they were heavily invested on the idea of an EV. My only complaint about any sort of hybrid setup is that you're mixing propulsion systems, which is effectively adding extra complexity. (I see additional complexity as just more things to break and more cost in the end.)

My biggest qualm with EVs is that the range you see quoted is just not what you should expect to see in real world use. As others have noted, you should only charge up to 80% unless you're going on a trip. If I'm going on a trip, I try to avoid charging up to 100%, because that will disable regenerative braking until there's enough lost capacity to enable it. (I usually go to 95%.) However, there are still other aspects to EVs that make them not as effective on longer trips. One of the biggest problems is that the vast majority of EVs have a fixed gear ratio per motor. In my RWD Model 3, I see a severe hit to efficiency if I'm heavily utilizing high-speed interstates (70 MPH+).

A few years back, I took a trip that was 130 miles in each direction, and I decided to take the simpler more relaxing route, which was almost all interstate. Even though my car is rated for 330 miles at full charge (or ~315 at 95%), I couldn't make the 260-mile round trip without recharging. (This was also in December, so it was probably around 40-50F.) The real kicker is that there were two Supercharging stations on my way back, but only one of them was working, and I was worried that I'd even make it there. The malfunctioning one was even at the "local" Tesla Service Center.

I also took a 900-mile (per way) round trip back in 2019, and I didn't have a very good time overall. I ran into a few issues with chargers not working well with no indication of their significantly reduced capability on the car's navigation. Also -- and this is arguably devolving more into my numerous complaints about Tesla -- the fact that I can't suggest a minimum state of charge is infuriating. The sheer idea that it wanted me to arrive at destinations with 10% or less charge is ludicrous given that its estimation is based upon previous usage, which cannot account for vastly different terrain. For example, traveling over the interstate in Virginia involves a lot of hills, which aren't great for efficiency.

There's also just the little things that eat away at you. For the past few days, my back-up camera has been stuttering and freezing, which rendered it nearly useless. It got really bad this morning as my audio subsystem started messing up too as the audio would randomly cut out, and come back in with maybe one speaker playing the music. I had to REBOOT MY CAR to fix the problem. As I've grown older, there is one thing that became very apparent to me... sometimes in life, you care about certain items in your life being reliable and having them just work. I don't need to tell my boss I'm going to be a few minutes late because my car needed to reboot.

Ultimately, what I dislike about Tesla can be summed up with this opinion... I don't think Tesla drives their own cars. There's no way someone could consider the user experience in that car to be acceptable if they actually had to use it every day. (I know Tesla people do actually drive the cars; it's meant to be slight hyperbole.)
Tesla has accomplished amazing things making EVs mainstream but I won't personally buy one because of their body quality issues, the user experience items you've mentioned and frankly just a lack of maturity as a car company. We are getting close to needing to replace one of our cars and I keep going back and forth between getting an EV or a hybrid. It will probably depend on if we've bought a new house before we have to buy the car.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,483
8,344
126
Yeah there's a lot of things that soured me on the Model Y over my Mach-E. One, I just don't like Elon. Two it just wasn't as nice of an overall car. Ford fit and finish and ride was better. I have actual buttons for a lot of things. And frankly rabid Tesla owners sort of turn me off on the brand too. Oh and Tesla is out of Federal credits which is significant. I think the Mach-E looks better and drives better even though it slower and in theory has a shorter range. It's also got lower overall passenger and cargo space. But it's a better transition vehicle for me moving from a hybrid.

I love the Rivian truck but there's things there that I find simply unnecessary. I *HATE* that you have to go to a touch screen to drag an icon around to move a tiny motor in the vent itself. It's just not something anyone wanted and it's backwards in function. You are taking my eyes off the road. Same with basic functions trying to turn off heated seats or change radio stations. Stuff is just burried in a clunky menu. I want more physical controls/nobs over high use functions. Not consolidating everything to a touch screen. I also don't want to have to go to a touch screen to control the steering wheel and mirrors. Uhg.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
59,239
13,840
136
Yeah there's a lot of things that soured me on the Model Y over my Mach-E. One, I just don't like Elon. Two it just wasn't as nice of an overall car. Ford fit and finish and ride was better. I have actual buttons for a lot of things.
That's an important thing to me, the notion of operating everything through a giant tablet on the dash is appalling. Simple tactile controls, please.
 
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K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
48,077
37,268
136
That's an important thing to me, the notion of operating everything through a giant tablet on the dash is appalling. Simple tactile controls, please.

My husband has a Tesla and this is his chief complaint especially since things move in the interface...

He plans to sell it eventually and get something else as more options come to market. My kingdom for a Golf sized EV hot hatch from VW with good range but everybody here wants SUVs and trucks.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,483
8,344
126
No shit, I'm in a discord with a Ford business analyst and I was bitching about so much stuff going to a touch screen and how it's taking my eyes off the road. His response "Well you should just pull over if you need to adjust things"

My eyes couldn't roll into the back of my head hard enough.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,483
8,344
126
My husband has a Tesla and this is his chief complaint especially since things move in the interface...

He plans to sell it eventually and get something else as more options come to market. My kingdom for a Golf sized EV hot hatch from VW with good range but everybody here wants SUVs and trucks.

Kia EV6 looks pretty sharp. Probably still too big though.
 
Dec 10, 2005
25,054
8,333
136
I honestly don’t think we’ll ever get past 80% electrification of private transportation. The ICE (or some form of it) will be available for at least another 50-60 years.

I tried to convince my sister to buy a new electric crossover vs. the Escape Hybrid she ended up with. She said it was the only feasible option because her condo building has no plug in parking available. Multiply that by the millions of people in larger urban and suburban markets who don’t live in a home with charging infrastructure and are unserved/underserved by adequate public transportation. That will take a lot longer to change than switching up the new car lineup on the lot.
We should have long ago closed loopholes in CAFE that encouraged manufacturers to make larger vehicles so that they could conform with lower fuel economy, and also hit people in the pocketbook with substantial gas guzzler taxes.

There are a number of hybrid (not PHEV) and non-hybrid vehicles that get >30 mpg combined. We could have drastically reduced our dependence on oil by "encouraging" the purchase of such vehicles instead of going from monster ICE pickup to monster EV pickup.

No shit, I'm in a discord with a Ford business analyst and I was bitching about so much stuff going to a touch screen and how it's taking my eyes off the road. His response "Well you should just pull over if you need to adjust things"

My eyes couldn't roll into the back of my head hard enough.
Wtf kind of business analyst is that? That's the kind of stupid answer someone would give to just keep the company from being sued because they buried stuff in menus that led to distracted drivers get into crashes.