e-cars

[Mike_J]

https://www.ampbooks.com/mobile/amplifier-calculators/long-tailed-pair/calculator/

Thank you so much for the calculator. Next thing is figuring out what the results it gives me mean. On my list today.



Trying  to avoid frostbite now. Started visiting one of my daughters in Houston a few days ago and we haven’t had heat for days due to an arctic front that came through. Called my wife in south Florida who told me she had the doors open with a lovely breeze blowing through and oh I just saw a butterfly. Meantime it is about 30 degrees in my daughters house in what is supposed to be the energy capital of the world.

[shooter]

what is supposed to be the energy capital of the world.

EDIT: what WAS the energy capital of the world.

[thetragichero]

yup 70s/80s here in central florida

[Mike_J]

what is supposed to be the energy capital of the world.

EDIT: what WAS the energy capital of the world.

I have an EE question my CPA brain can’t quite get wrapped around. A friend of mine called me from Florida yesterday. He had come across a man charging his new Audi electric car. Being curious he inquired about the car. The man was very disgruntled because the location had the only quick charge stations within 50 miles.


Apparently the Audi salesman told the guy with the car he could charge his car anywhere. Apparently not if you want a quick charge. As you would expect the guy blamed his wife for the purchase of the car as well as $30K reduction of the purchase price from federal and local government incentives I am paying for. As a retired CPA this is an area I can speak to.


Now a quick charge station allows you to charge your car in 45 minutes. This is related to why I need the assistance of an EE. Apparently there are restaurants next to the charging stations. If husband and wife are spending so much time in restaurants waiting for their car to charge they may each become 600 pounds. How detrimental will the weight gain be to the distance between charges? Of course if it is significant it will exacerbate the weight issue and impact a calculation of equivalent miles per gallon which will fall in my territory.

[Mike_J]

Now something I can help clarify. The man says his car needs to be recharged every 160 miles at a cost of $70 per recharge. While your math will be impacted by the fuel efficiency of the car you are comparing it to in my case it is the cost equivalence of a gasoline fueled car getting four miles to the gallon.


Now I wouldn’t normally go on a rant like this if I hadn’t spent the past two days in 30 degree temperature in my daughter’s house in Houston. This is happening ostensibly because the wind turbines that replaced fossil fuel plants froze up due to complications from moisture that accompanied the arctic blast that is causing the misery I am experiencing. Can’t imagine how many of my tax dollars have been wasted on this boondoggle.


Am willing to listen to an argument from an EE with an opinion contrary to my own.

[thetragichero]

this is getting quite a bit off topic but there are wind turbines generating electricity in antarctica right now. this whole texas mess is caused by the state's insistence on not being connected to large energy grids to avoid federal regulation. the majority of the issue is with legacy power plants running off of natural gas not taking proper winterization steps because there's nothing forcing them to do so. anything else is just propaganda

[shooter]

assistance of an EE.

F = M*A
i did "ballpark" math on Ecars, my conclusion;
it take 2X the amount of earth to make over a gas equivalent
>70% of the "charge energy" used, needs converting from a currently used fuel
you have to calc car$/mile, or some equivalent to compare apples and oranges, I got bored, flew my drone, battery powered, charged by Natural gas, Nuclear, and a smidge of coal

[Mike_J]

It is amazing to me that there are that many people who think electricity is going to magically appear at the outlet their car is plugged into. That solar energy and wind turbines will replace fossil fuels as the most economically viable way of powering their vehicles. They don’t realize how much more they will have to pay to run their car on electricity.


While I am on this rant the last time I checked every battery I use be it in a computer or a phone reduces in utility over a few years to the point it must be replaced. Electric car batteries are terribly expensive and will make many vehicles valueless in a short period of time. Anyone remember the Yugo?


The guy is starting out with a charge that will get him 160 miles. How long will it be until he can’t get 100 miles on a charge? How mindless and I am expected to subsidize this insanity.

[Mike_J]

this is getting quite a bit off topic but there are wind turbines generating electricity in antarctica right now. this whole texas mess is caused by the state's insistence on not being connected to large energy grids to avoid federal regulation. the majority of the issue is with legacy power plants running off of natural gas not taking proper winterization steps because there's nothing forcing them to do so. anything else is just propaganda

Which is why I said ostensibly. I have no idea what is making me so cold but I do know the prevailing opinion of the people I am talking to in Texas is the wind turbines are causing the problem. I don’t really care as long as I am not subsidizing it. At home in Florida we use nuclear power. Rates are reasonable and the air is clean.

[PRR]

> every 160 miles at a cost of $70 per recharge.

50 KW charger "near" me (170 miles, 3 hours) is $0.35 per minute.

Actually the charger at the hippie school has been free for years.

Priuses hold their value even with very old batteries. I assume battery-only won't be a heap worse. Battery wear-out is real but also affected by how nice you treat the cells. Ryobi has no incentive to treat my $29 drill battery nice. Costly cars with long warranties hoping to not-fail in the new century have more reason to care.

[PRR]

> his car needs to be recharged every 160 miles at a cost of $70 per recharge.

Using false data:

e-car can run 200 miles on a charge? 4 hours at 50MPH? Modern sedan does 50MPH with 20 horsepower? Which is 15kW? So a charge is 60kWH?

50 KW charger is $0.35 per minute. To get 60kWH takes 1.2 hours but add 20% loss and say 1.5 hours. 90 minutes. This is $32 not $70. Maybe he found a very bad deal. If this is the only jack in the county, it probably is a bad deal.

It may make sense to DIY. Buy your own charger and run it on your own electric meter. Hmmmm... 50kW at 240V is over 200 Amps. My 95A feeder won't stand that, and I estimate a fatter feeder is over $10,000 before buying the DC wall gizmo and car-plug. Once invested, I can buy that 60kWH from Hydro for $11; there may even be deals available. (Until the main line overheats and they have to reinvest.)

Your home charger *can* be a slow-charge (overnight). If I commit to 12 hours plugged-in each day then the charge is more like 5kW, very much like a clothes dryer. Does not change the 'fuel' cost but  may dodge a wire upgrade, and will be a smaller wall-box.

My fire-engine sedan will run 200 miles on <8 gallons of gasoline. Today that is $18.

Coin-op charge: $70??
Coin-op charge: $32
Home charge: $11 (plus installation)
4-banger beater: $18 plus smog

AND... some of the cost of gasoline is Road Tax. So far e-cars have slipped under the radar, but very soon the tax law will catch-up. They could tax at the charger, at least public chargers which can be inspected. But the whole idea of taxing fuel to pay for roads is a mess. We should put vehicle weight and miles traveled, maybe speed, in a formula to determine road-wear and bill accordingly. This could be done by mandating car-makers to transmit data. Yes there is a privacy issue, and nobody will like it, and that's often a sign of good policy.

[DummyLoad]

Now something I can help clarify. The man says his car needs to be recharged every 160 miles at a cost of $70 per recharge. While your math will be impacted by the fuel efficiency of the car you are comparing it to in my case it is the cost equivalence of a gasoline fueled car getting four miles to the gallon.


Now I wouldn’t normally go on a rant like this if I hadn’t spent the past two days in 30 degree temperature in my daughter’s house in Houston. This is happening ostensibly because the wind turbines that replaced fossil fuel plants froze up due to complications from moisture that accompanied the arctic blast that is causing the misery I am experiencing. Can’t imagine how many of my tax dollars have been wasted on this boondoggle.


Am willing to listen to an argument from an EE with an opinion contrary to my own.

so sorry to read that you had to endure that with your family. i truly hope you are all ok now.

to expand on your statement, the lions share of the ≈35-40GW shortfall was from natural gas and coal fired plants that went off-line due to laxed regulation by a 501(c) that's self serving by it's members: the power generating community of corporations that operate under the regulations set forth by that same 501(c) - ERCOT.

while some plants did prepare for deep-freeze operation, some did not. those plants that didn't went off-line as supply processing stations froze and instrumentation froze. of the two nukes that supply about 10% of the energy to the ERCOT grid, one went off-line because it also did not prepare for deep-freeze operation. some of the wind farms were not built with anti-icing systems, so about half of that production went off-line. photovoltaic production was reduced significantly as well for obvious reasons.

this will turn into a political witch hunt in the coming weeks. maybe we'll get some regulation that will help, maybe not, however, it seems like whomever has the deepest pockets gets their way these days, so i remain skeptical.

i got lucky - i live in an older neighborhood about 1.2 miles from a major hospital and we are supplied by the same infrastructure. i did not lose power, internet, gas, or water - the water pressure was weak yesterday, but nearly back to normal today. some of my colleagues had no power from 2AM monday with most regaining power thursday morning, one still has no power or water. several friends who live outside of the city are also without power and water. luckily, most were able to stay with friends or family that did, or they have a fireplace. some had to boil melted snow for drinking water.     

--pete

[shooter]

this will turn into a political witch hunt

already has
I was pondering, say a 30MW wind plant that you put a new transmission and motor on an just stick them in neighborhoods  The generator don't care who spins the crank.  the ERCOT data showed wind was only 40% effective from "predictive models".  I gotta think a gas fired, ground based set-up could be at 80% easy enough.  Run for a year, Then you can compare real with real.  now you have a truly de-centralized grid

[Mike_J]

> his car needs to be recharged every 160 miles at a cost of $70 per recharge.

Using false data:

e-car can run 200 miles on a charge? 4 hours at 50MPH? Modern sedan does 50MPH with 20 horsepower? Which is 15kW? So a charge is 60kWH?

50 KW charger is $0.35 per minute. To get 60kWH takes 1.2 hours but add 20% loss and say 1.5 hours. 90 minutes. This is $32 not $70. Maybe he found a very bad deal. If this is the only jack in the county, it probably is a bad deal.

It may make sense to DIY. Buy your own charger and run it on your own electric meter. Hmmmm... 50kW at 240V is over 200 Amps. My 95A feeder won't stand that, and I estimate a fatter feeder is over $10,000 before buying the DC wall gizmo and car-plug. Once invested, I can buy that 60kWH from Hydro for $11; there may even be deals available. (Until the main line overheats and they have to reinvest.)

Your home charger *can* be a slow-charge (overnight). If I commit to 12 hours plugged-in each day then the charge is more like 5kW, very much like a clothes dryer. Does not change the 'fuel' cost but  may dodge a wire upgrade, and will be a smaller wall-box.

My fire-engine sedan will run 200 miles on <8 gallons of gasoline. Today that is $18.

Coin-op charge: $70??
Coin-op charge: $32
Home charge: $11 (plus installation)
4-banger beater: $18 plus smog

AND... some of the cost of gasoline is Road Tax. So far e-cars have slipped under the radar, but very soon the tax law will catch-up. They could tax at the charger, at least public chargers which can be inspected. But the whole idea of taxing fuel to pay for roads is a mess. We should put vehicle weight and miles traveled, maybe speed, in a formula to determine road-wear and bill accordingly. This could be done by mandating car-makers to transmit data. Yes there is a privacy issue, and nobody will like it, and that's often a sign of good policy.

I like a man that thinks like me. The same friend who told me about the Audi experience also told me about what you are saying. He knows someone who bought an electric car, may have been a Tesla. Salesman didn’t tell him he would need to spend another $5K plus to bring enough power to his garage so the car would charge in a reasonable amount of time.


So I immediately started imagining all these people getting home at 6:00pm, plugging their cars in and watching the power lines melt. You can’t imagine how much it annoys me when I realize how little people understand about electricity.


My friend and I are thinking about building and marketing our own outlet box for people that buy electric cars. Will be a metal outlet box with a plug on it so they can plug their car into it. Absolutely nothing in the box. Price only $1,999.99.

[Mike_J]

You may ask me why I think I can get away with this. Well when a large segment of our population is stuck with these disasters they will be desperate for a way to power them, especially on long trips. We are going to market ours by informing our customers they can drag their outlet boxes out of the back of the car as they roll on down the highway. It will be bounce proof.You may ask how do I know my idea will work. Well for those of you who recall the Arab oil embargo. You may recall the long line of cars stretching down the street waiting to get to the pump to get the few gallons we were allowed to buy at one time. As I recall it was just about the amount we used while we were in line to get the gasoline so we had to go back to the end of the line again and start the process all over.Well the gas lines explanation is just a way to set up what I experienced at the time. My father was a physician in the small town I grew up in. It was common for people to come to him with investment ideas. Well we end up at this fellows house for dinner. After dinner he was going to show us how he was able convert his trash into energy. In fact he was powering his house with it and generating fuel he could use to run his car on. Well we are in Michigan and it is winter. So we head out to this mess of a pile of trash that is his miracle energy machine. The guy takes a tall kitchen trash bag and dumps it into this mess and explains how the trash in that bag would power his home for a day. The pile of trash even had a spigot on it which we of course got to see him open to watch the fuel come out of that he used to fuel his car. I looked at my father and he looked at me and we politely told him there was some emergency and we had to leave.Now for the best part. This guy manages to get on the Today Show and 60 minutes as well spouting his pitch about his miracle pile of junk. Worked well enough for him to get five million dollars from some company in Texas. Only problem was when you dug into the pile of junk there was a small propane tank and a small tank connected to the spigot with gasoline in it. I seem to recall he got some prison time for that whole fiasco.You were probably wondering why did we decide on the price of $1,999.99 given we know there may be legal consequences related to our device. But think about it. We are getting fleeced the same way by having our tax dollars taken from us to fund this pile of garbage.

[Mike_J]

How does the saying go? Let me try to recall. Oh yes, there are 330 million poor suckers who were born and there are 535 to take them.

[acheld]

Well, good luck to you, and to the rest of us trying not to get iced in by nasty winter weather.

I'm glad I'm not in Texas.

[Mike_J]

Well, good luck to you, and to the rest of us trying not to get iced in by nasty winter weather.

I'm glad I'm not in Texas.

Well I am in Texas. Got power and water back yesterday. Happy about that but the trauma of the experience is still causing me to rant. Leaving to go back to south Florida tomorrow. Love my daughter but I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. No offense to any Texans out there. You are wonderful people but this recent experience has made me permanently scarred. Having lived in the Houston area for 25 years at one time I know it will probably be in the 70s starting the minute my plane leaves the ground.

[shooter]

I spent 4 years going to So. FL, this year I went to TX, I found way more folk like me in 5 weeks then I did anywhere in FL, except the panhandle, there I felt at home.  I'll leave geo-poli to the kids from Yale, give me someone that can pick a Yale in 30 seconds any day 

[Mike_J]

I spent 4 years going to So. FL, this year I went to TX, I found way more folk like me in 5 weeks then I did anywhere in FL, except the panhandle, there I felt at home.  I'll leave geo-poli to the kids from Yale, give me someone that can pick a Yale in 30 seconds any day 

Can’t disagree at all. Have come to the conclusion that drivers from New York City are rude. Once you get to know them they are somewhat agreeable. Some I even like. However, from my sample of three New York City drivers I have determined that a nutsackectomy must come with every circumcision in New York City. I am about 99.9% sure of it based on my sample size and I studied statistics while at university.


On two occasions the drivers honked at me while the light was red and I am in the left turn lane. To make it even worse I had a daughter with me in the car. They obviously wanted my little girls dead. I went from happy to very irritated in the blink of an eye.


Of course when they do this I must put my car in park and get out and investigate. There may be an emergency I can help with. So I am headed to the car and Mrs. No Nutsack, pardon me Ms. No Nutsack is already screaming and has locked their car doors. She is from New York City so we must call her Ms. Wouldn’t want to offend her you know.


Anyway Mr. No Nutsack is scared. He is now thinking his horn has written a check the rest of him can’t cash. Of course there is about three inches of room between my back bumper and his front bumper and the car behind him is pretty close as well.


Each wife is yells it’s a crazy man get us out of here which of course is impossible. All I am trying to do is find out if they have an emergency or they want my little girl dead. Well as you can imagine apologies start flowing my way and I figure my point was made so I go back back to my car and leave.

[Mike_J]

I spent 4 years going to So. FL, this year I went to TX, I found way more folk like me in 5 weeks then I did anywhere in FL, except the panhandle, there I felt at home.  I'll leave geo-poli to the kids from Yale, give me someone that can pick a Yale in 30 seconds any day 

Do not try the above in Texas. You will be dodging bullets before you get your second foot on the ground.

[silverfox]

they can drag their outlet boxes out of the back of the car as they roll on down the highway.

That won't make any difference @ $9000/ kw. Enter Enron 2.0 A Hunt brothers style run up in electricity. This is starting to look like:  buy a cheap genny. But right now, good luck on that. I've got an old school Onan 6.x kw, 1800 RPM, generator that I'd sell for $400, plus shipping. Just trying to help you out.


give me someone that can pick a Yale in 30 seconds any day

I might be able to. What are they paying per pound?


silverfox.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/outages-morph-outrage-texans-slapped-mind-blowing-power-bills


silverfox.

[silverfox]

this will turn into a political witch hunt

already has
I was pondering, say a 30MW wind plant that you put a new transmission and motor on an just stick them in neighborhoods  The generator don't care who spins the crank.  the ERCOT data showed wind was only 40% effective from "predictive models".  I gotta think a gas fired, ground based set-up could be at 80% easy enough.  Run for a year, Then you can compare real with real.  now you have a truly de-centralized grid

Shooter, are you familiar with gasifiers? They've been around since WWII. Having studied them rather extensively, I believe, due to the emergent milage driving taxes being spouted again, that this sort of Mad Max solution's time may finally have come. The tech is rather mature now. The problem is, they only seem to work on the older vehicles as there won't be an easy way to patch one into a newer computerized vehicle.


Some ideas that run the gamete from crazy to cool-

silverfox.


 Youtube search =gasifier+truck

[shooter]

seen a few tubers, liked the one on a bike!!


I stopped In Leavy TX at a bait/ammo/real-estate store.  Was asked if they could help me, I replied "looking for miracles"
NO land in my $ range, No bullets in my Caliber, bought Worms, went river fishing   

[shooter]

quick look;


Electric 1977 K5 Blazer shows off Chevy's drop-n-drive eCrate package (newatlas.com)

[Mike_J]

> every 160 miles at a cost of $70 per recharge.

50 KW charger "near" me (170 miles, 3 hours) is $0.35 per minute.

Actually the charger at the hippie school has been free for years.

Priuses hold their value even with very old batteries. I assume battery-only won't be a heap worse. Battery wear-out is real but also affected by how nice you treat the cells. Ryobi has no incentive to treat my $29 drill battery nice. Costly cars with long warranties hoping to not-fail in the new century have more reason to care.

They are certainly going to need more than six charging stations every 50 miles or they can charge whatever they want. Desperation has a way of opening the pocket book.

[shooter]

Priuses hold their value

Prius bumper sticker;
"With the money I save on gas, I buy more bullets"