With 400 miles of range on $6 of electricity who wouldn't love it! But my old Promaster with a Colorado camper van now must go. Cheap.
![Image]()
I switched to a Brightdrop Zevo 600 electric van
JohnForde
161 - 180 of 729 Posts
Joined
·
9,558 Posts
COAL
In economic terms in personal finance, when people are in financial trouble the financial gurus will want an audit of their debts and loan rates ,,, get rid of the highest interest rate loans first ,,, I susspect that is in electrical grid speak COAL.
So if we are in dire straits, why not get rid of Coal right now !!
The relationship of Coal and electricity and EVs grid use and what the grid use would be if all people today traded in their ICE to EVs and the required electricity to fuel EVs & the carbon footprint to bring up the grid ,,, ya know there is no carbon footprint free construction tech out there. There is a carbon cost ,,, none of it is environmentally free.
Then there is the thought that is just a relationship of coal and EVs.
In Canada we are largely hydro electric and do not use coal much or at all. Our coal contribution is export ,,, so we feel good not burning it ourselves 😁👍 ,,, at least we feel good about ourselves. I live in an area of Canada where I see with my own eyes the coal export "Pacific Side". There is a VFR waypoint actually named "The Coal Pile". I assume it goes to China so I can get inexpensive products shipped back to me 😁;
![Image]()
![Image]()
I see "Massive Long Trains Loads" of Coal ,,, All the time
EVs and Coal ,,, might just be a drop in the ocean
"Vancouver Terminal I'm @ The Coal Pile @ 2500'" staring at a huge black train,,,,
In economic terms in personal finance, when people are in financial trouble the financial gurus will want an audit of their debts and loan rates ,,, get rid of the highest interest rate loans first ,,, I susspect that is in electrical grid speak COAL.
So if we are in dire straits, why not get rid of Coal right now !!
The relationship of Coal and electricity and EVs grid use and what the grid use would be if all people today traded in their ICE to EVs and the required electricity to fuel EVs & the carbon footprint to bring up the grid ,,, ya know there is no carbon footprint free construction tech out there. There is a carbon cost ,,, none of it is environmentally free.
Then there is the thought that is just a relationship of coal and EVs.
In Canada we are largely hydro electric and do not use coal much or at all. Our coal contribution is export ,,, so we feel good not burning it ourselves 😁👍 ,,, at least we feel good about ourselves. I live in an area of Canada where I see with my own eyes the coal export "Pacific Side". There is a VFR waypoint actually named "The Coal Pile". I assume it goes to China so I can get inexpensive products shipped back to me 😁;
I see "Massive Long Trains Loads" of Coal ,,, All the time
EVs and Coal ,,, might just be a drop in the ocean
"Vancouver Terminal I'm @ The Coal Pile @ 2500'" staring at a huge black train,,,,
Joined
·
21 Posts
self driving cars are taking longer than i had hoped for. about 15 years ago, i decided it would be ok to mock 'old' drivers because i figured by the time i got 'old' i would have a self-driving car, however, now it is starting look like it might not happen in time.
Joined
·
54 Posts
$88k is the killer. And that just gets you a can.
I am a big fan of electric power / motors but they all price these things way out of my league.
Hard to achieve the goal of cleaner air when the masses can't afford the product.
Brightdrop 600
or
A brand new Promaster and 460 full tanks of gas $88k +-
I am a big fan of electric power / motors but they all price these things way out of my league.
Hard to achieve the goal of cleaner air when the masses can't afford the product.
Brightdrop 600
or
A brand new Promaster and 460 full tanks of gas $88k +-
Ya, for all but the enthusiast early adopters, there will be a delay until the math works out better.
When it becomes cheaper, for the same performance (including range and charging infrastructure) people will make the change.
I will research tat and get back to you. I should be able to get it all done in two weeks.
Joined
·
21 Posts
i agree, the 120-150 mile range e-transit starts at $55k and the 300 mile range e-sprinter starts at $71k but even that is too much, i'm hoping that will drop in the next couple of years, ironically Mercedes was just complaining that nobody is buying their inflated-priced EVs
Hi,
I guess you are saying that with a power outage you won't be able to refill your EV battery and that's the problem? You lose transportation?
On the other hand if we have our EV in the garage with 80% charge (which is typical), we have 64 KWH in the battery - for just trips around town to the grocery store and back that can be a couple weeks of driving.
If more of the EV makers supported running your house off your EV battery (eg the Ford Lighting pickup) this could be backup power for your house for quite a few days.
We are in a rural area and have a backup propane generator. Its sized big enough to run the essentials like the well pump and furnace. I could also use it to charge the EV in a pinch, but don't really see that happening. We have a big propane tank because our heat is propane, so we could go many weeks without grid power. As a practical matter, in 23 years of living here, we have never had a power outage lasting more than a couple hours. About the time I start getting the generator hooked up, the power comes back
Gary
Joined
·
481 Posts
An EV that is engineered to run 0-60 in less than 4 seconds is by definition not an environmentally friendly vehicle. A fun vehicle, for sure, but not environmentally friendly.
Hi RV,
Here is a blurb about this from Panasonic...
"The results demonstrate the clear relationship between electric vehicles and solar power with over 38% of EVs being charged by a combination of home and public photovoltaic charging systems. Natural gas is used to charge 21.96% of EVs, hydropower is 11.88%, and nuclear is 6.07%. "
They don't give a lot of detail on where the numbers come from, but Panasonic seems like a pretty credible source.
Gary
Joined
·
1,669 Posts
Im sure it will be fine, the power will return in a few days, mean while the perfect excuse to not go to work, everything with battery is dead, and the Govt Im sure will compensate everyone for their hardships. Hahahaha😁
Hi,
Short zero to 60 times mostly have to do with the characteristics of electric motors - full torque at zero rpm.
People forget how ill suited IC engines are for moving things with their narrow torque band.
Gary
Joined
·
1,697 Posts
You have perfected your EVs usage . In your situation it makes sense . Others it doesn'tHi,
I guess you are saying that with a power outage you won't be able to refill your EV battery and that's the problem? You lose transportation?
On the other hand if we have our EV in the garage with 80% charge (which is typical), we have 64 KWH in the battery - for just trips around town to the grocery store and back that can be a couple weeks of driving.
If more of the EV makers supported running your house off your EV battery (eg the Ford Lighting pickup) this could be backup power for your house for quite a few days.
We are in a rural area and have a backup propane generator. Its sized big enough to run the essentials like the well pump and furnace. I could also use it to charge the EV in a pinch, but don't really see that happening. We have a big propane tank because our heat is propane, so we could go many weeks without grid power. As a practical matter, in 23 years of living here, we have never had a power outage lasting more than a couple hours. About the time I start getting the generator hooked up, the power comes back
Gary
Right! Another donation to the puppet master 🤪
More so than my 71 440 charger. It was fun too.
Hi,
I don't see how I've perfected anything.
We get back to the house with the car and I plug it in - 5 seconds.
It charges overnight automatically.
What could be simpler?
Same as more than a million other EV owners.
I agree that right now its not great for people who don't have a place to charge at home and have to use fast DC chargers, but this will change as renters start putting a high priority on being able to charge an EV.
Gary
As @GaryBIS noted, the super-fast 0-60 times are more about that being easy to do in electric car design, rather than that being the end goal.
First off, do not think of an EV as a car. Think of it as a big-*ssed battery pack that allows you to come along for the ride.
That fat-bottomed battery pack is the limiting factor on EVs. There has been a ton of engineering, development, and research put into making that battery pack store copious amounts of energy and charge quickly while staying relatively cool. The side effect is that you end up with a wonderful electricity source that has tiny resistance. Think of the kind of currents you could get with 100 car batteries . . . that will get you in the right frame of mind for what is available instantly from a modern EV battery pack.
So now the electric motor. You need to pick a motor that can create enough torque at highway speeds to execute a reasonable pass. Remember how that battery is heavy? So the motor needs to be able to produce enough torque to accelerate that massive battery. EV motors also need to be very efficient - heat is wasting the precious juice that the dearly priced battery is holding.
Here is where the blistering 0-60 times for family SUVs come in. All you need to do is short this near-perfect battery pack to that near-perfect motor and you are off like a scalded cat.
In fact, the designers must intentionally design in traction control so the EV does not burn rubber off of every stop sign. Or if you have the right car, maybe you can disable traction control and drift, do burnouts, or maybe a quick sub-12s drag race.
Woah, sorry, I kinda drifted off there for a bit.
The upshot is, that you pretty much get great 0-60 times for free in a modern EV. And if you are a car geek, that can be a selling point. And I disagree with you, a 4-sec EV still has lower long-term environmental penalty than a poky ICE Camry
As @GaryBIS said, EVs give instant full torque at 0 RPM. An ICE has to get a lot of RPM before it has a lot of torque - that takes a lot of time - hence crap 0-60 times even for hot rods.
The real question is: Why does it take a "supercar" ICE vehicle to get great 0-60 times?
Peace.
Joined
·
481 Posts
I wasn’t defending ICE cars in anyway. I think people should buy what they want to buy
But I’ll bet there is an engineering trade-off between designing a battery to allow for repeated rapid electric discharge versus a more restrained and constant discharge. And unnecessary rapid changes to a battery’s state of charge degrade a battery unnecessarily.
the weight of the extra motor affects the energy needed to move the vehicle
Performance tires will have higher rolling resistance. And they will need to be replaced more often
I’d have the same criticism for a 9000 lbs EV that will be used to carry a single passenger most of the time
I’m just about sure my next vehicle will be an EV. I’ll have solar and will use the car as a backup electric source since I don’t have a FF generator
the environmental consolation I have for my current ICE vehicle is that it does not consume much energy while it sits motionless 95% of the time.
Joined
·
481 Posts
And I disagree with you, a 4-sec EV still has lower long-term environmental penalty than a poky ICE Camry
[/QUOTE]
I did not and would not call an ICE environmentally friendly. I was commenting on a subset of the universe of EV’s.
I would make the same comment about a 9000 pound personal-use EV.
[/QUOTE]
I did not and would not call an ICE environmentally friendly. I was commenting on a subset of the universe of EV’s.
I would make the same comment about a 9000 pound personal-use EV.
Ha! Many of the power companies around here have cheap (in the $0.06/kWh range) power, but they thwart DC Fast Chargers with something called a Demand Charge:
![Image]()
So even though the electricity is only 6¢, if you for instance owned a charging station that had 4x 350 KW DC fast chargers, lets's say each one draws 400 KW at full tilt. If 4 cars charged at the same time just once in any given month then your peak demand would be 1600KW. The demand charge for that month would be 1600*$12.23 = $19,568 (or only %13,040 in the summer).That is on top of the actual energy you use.
Kind of an anti-incentive on the way to a better fast charging network.
So even though the electricity is only 6¢, if you for instance owned a charging station that had 4x 350 KW DC fast chargers, lets's say each one draws 400 KW at full tilt. If 4 cars charged at the same time just once in any given month then your peak demand would be 1600KW. The demand charge for that month would be 1600*$12.23 = $19,568 (or only %13,040 in the summer).That is on top of the actual energy you use.
Kind of an anti-incentive on the way to a better fast charging network.
But its so close
I tried the Full Self Driving Beta test on my Tesla, which you can rent for $190 a month.
I have to say its amazing in many ways. You can tell it to "Navigate to the Safeway", and it will do everything - makes turns, stop at traffic lights, avoid other cars, pedestrians, bikes.
It will pull on the freeway and merge, pass cars automatically, and exit at the right exit.
After the first drive I felt like I did back in the 80's when I first saw the Internet - you just knew it was going to be amazing.
The frustrating thing is that every once in a while it does something dumb. Something not even a student driver would do.
You think - how can you possibly do all this really hard stuff and then mess up some simple thing.
I decided not to do any more than the 1 month. It seems odd to pay Tesla to be in the beta test program helping them find the bugs - seems like they should be paying the testers?
Its so close that I think they will get there, but we will see. Hope they get it working before I'm too old to drive
Gary
161 - 180 of 729 Posts
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
