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General discussion

Electric Cars are Evil.

Mar 27, 2018 1:24PM PDT

Discussion is locked

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You failed to mention
Mar 27, 2018 2:23PM PDT

...that you also live in California with Governor Moonbeam and all his high fuel oil and gasoline taxes.

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We also had The Governator
Mar 27, 2018 2:52PM PDT

But that series ended. As to gas prices, last year I was in British Columbia and it's higher there. My buddy went to Germany and it's even higher.

Back on topic. Buggy whips and horse feed suppliers suffered too.

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We wimpy Yanks don't know what taxes are.
Mar 27, 2018 3:52PM PDT

Try mostly Socialist Europe for gas and other taxes. In Britain you buy a license to listen to radio or TV. Gotta say, the Beeb is worth it.

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"Auntie BEEB".
Mar 27, 2018 4:13PM PDT

BBC is great. But if you don't have a license, expect a knock on the door. Then a man will ask for ID and ask to come in. Even if your TV is off, he will ask you to turn it on. When the picture comes up you get fined. Several offences means jail.
Luckily I don't have this problem as it's direct debit.
Dafydd.

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Some years ago I subbed for a week
Mar 28, 2018 9:47AM PDT

for a teacher. Her class was one for pregnant girls and new mothers. Just me and half a dozen hormonal girls. They were supposed to learn child care, nutrition and such. I set them up on the BBC website, which has all kinds of stuff for families. No problems.

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Remember California's
Mar 28, 2018 4:57AM PDT

song and dance man Senator?

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Reagan?
Mar 28, 2018 7:49AM PDT

Barely. Mostly when he was the President.

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Man named George Murphy, an old friend
Mar 28, 2018 9:57AM PDT

of Reagan's. Politicians & actors have similar smiles, and Murphy was still well-known.
May have given Ron the idea to run for Governor.
Side story. Reagan was past his romantic lead days but still wanted to work. He got a role as a bad guy who hired Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager to kill someone for him. He got good reviews for a risky venture. Just after that he was tapped for the host of Death Valley Days, replacing an old prospector type who had died. Popular wisdom says if he had become a successful heavy he wouldn't have been electable later.

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How often do you see someone
Mar 27, 2018 2:34PM PDT

walking back to their car on the freeway with a gasoline can that probably weighs 5-6 pounds? Can you imagine trying to do the same with a battery weighing 400-500 lbs? I can see an electric for short commutes right now but not for vacationing or traversing through the mountains. One thing I'm fairly certain of is that the reported "eco-friendly" nature of electrics is greatly overstated.

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So far I've yet to see that.
Mar 27, 2018 2:53PM PDT

Trips are right now well planned out. Mountains actually work out nicely since with the regeneration I get most of my miles back on the return trip.

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But, as the old saying goes
Mar 27, 2018 3:15PM PDT
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The LONG PIPE discussion.
Mar 27, 2018 3:24PM PDT
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I think it was the Hyundai piece, which I saw,
Mar 27, 2018 4:00PM PDT

that mentioned the rising cost of nickel and cobalt. Also the social cost, since they and lithium come often from the third world; we never see the miners in the new car ads.

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Lithium may soon come from desalination.
Mar 27, 2018 4:09PM PDT

The news is that desalination will be a big source soon and Tesla is getting the lithium from Nevada's Silver Peak brine deposits and the Sonora Lithium Project in Northern Mexico.

I take it many consider Nevada to be a third world area today.

The social costs of oil today is staggering. Wars and more.

Note: Edited title for grammar.

Post was last edited on March 27, 2018 4:17 PM PDT

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The social costs of being in a hurry.
Mar 27, 2018 11:54PM PDT

In other parts of the world, lithium is a blood mineral, along with others and diamonds.
Don't know about Nevada, but New Mexico certainly is. Happy

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When wind farms can produce all of the energy
Mar 27, 2018 4:49PM PDT

it takes to produce more wind farms and still have energy left to distribute, let me know. As well, we should start thinking that wind isn't energy that's being wasted. It's just being used by mom nature for her own purposes. Take to much of it from her and she'll retaliate.

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I've heard that as well.
Mar 27, 2018 4:53PM PDT

Neighbors complaining that solar panels are sucking up their sunlight is a really good one too.

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Good one.
Mar 29, 2018 6:52AM PDT

Panels do now figure in trade balance problems, which have nothing to do with energy.
Windmill farms have ecological problems. Killing birds and bats, noise pollution. There's a configuration of vertical vanes that addresses both and produces power at lower wind levels , but not being developed as fast. Don't know why. Capital costs?

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The short answer is "the money."
Mar 29, 2018 9:33AM PDT

I could go into longer reasons but topic is about the union calling out the EVcar as the disruptor it is.

As to the KILLING BIRDS and such, Solar isn't immune. I detest the Ivanpah design which at last reading gets a bird kill every 15 to 30 minutes.

Ivanpah didn't meet it's design goals and a look at the money seems to say that classic flat solar panels would have been a better investment.

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Windmill farms, no matter how slight,
Mar 29, 2018 9:45AM PDT

will cause a disruption in air movement from one place to another. That movement redistributes and stabilizes the various gasses that are vital to life. It also carries pollen that's needed to keep plantlife healthy and reproducing. This is very much like how water is recycled. It done by evaporation that allows it to be carried aloft to higher altitudes where it condenses and becomes rain. Wind is created by the heating and cooling cycles. We can't steal from any of these natural processes with their having some affect no matter how small and undetectable now. This is a lesson we should already have learned. I'm not saying that we shouldn't use solar and wind power but I think we should understand that it's not a free and unlimited supply of energy. Let's be smart about this rather than bulling ahead without thinking.

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Thurber wrote of an aunt in Columbus
Mar 29, 2018 6:54AM PDT

who went around the house turning off light switches that had no bulbs in their sockets. Didn't want electricity flowing out into the room.

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We need to improve our energy efficiency.
Mar 27, 2018 4:59PM PDT

For example for ICEcars the energy you put in uses about only about 14% – 30% of the fuel put into a car to move it done the road, by comparison its 74%-94% for EVs.

The real problems are economic. There are trillions of dollars of business to be done in the gas and oil industries. Don't you dare get in their way to the bank.

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When I think about it
Mar 28, 2018 1:45AM PDT

being able to drive my 2+ ton car more than 400 miles on a 15 gallon tank is amazing. If that's using less than 30% of the available energy, it's even more amazing. Gasoline is, essentially, captured and stored solar energy. How much solar panel space would be needed and how long would it take to capture the equivalent energy of the fuel in my tank? A rhetorical question, of course. I only say this as it seems too easy to toss around alternative solutions to our ever growing energy needs due largely to population growth and the bring of more of the worlds people into the "modern" age. One could speculate that, with the reported age of the earth, it's been in this condition before and mom nature took action back then. If not true at all, it might at least be worth something as science-fiction.

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(NT) Petro fuels are sometimes called fossil sunlight.
Mar 28, 2018 4:59AM PDT
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Re: energy
Mar 28, 2018 5:13AM PDT

A normal mid-size European electric car (1000-1200 kg) drives 6 to 7 km on 1 kWh. That's 6 to 7 * 250 km is, say, 1625 km on the yearly yield of an average panel (250 kWh from 1.6 square meters) in our average climate (sunny and cloudy, summer and winter).

I assume you can do the calculations with miles and gallons yourself now. What's the outcome? How many miles do you think you could drive with the energy from your own panels if you covered the whole roof of your house with solar panels? Would that be feasible?
Nothing rhetorical, just basic math.

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The plan here is for a 10KW roof system.
Mar 28, 2018 7:56AM PDT

It's sized for the future. The install will get two outlets in the garage for chargers and the math I used gets me leftover for some electric heat.

The 2014 Leaf IRL (in real life) gets 4.0 miles per KWH. Which hits your 6 to 7 at 6.43.
Even with using expensive power from the grid it's less than 6 cents a mile to operate.
Our 2016 Prius on gas today is 7 cents a mile and the old Honda Odyssey comes in at 14 cents a mile for fuel.

Other savings on the EVcar are no oil changes, no smog checks and long 15K mile servicing.

Waiting for folk to tell me to get a horse.

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Everyone needs to do the math
Mar 28, 2018 11:30AM PDT

What is the cost of the solar install?
Add in a battery storage system.
If you have an EV do you have an area to install a charger?

Once the numbers are on paper you figure out the pay back time.

My electric bill for the house is about $30 per month.
I go to the gas station once a month.....$20.
Oil change and inspection....$60 a year.

Solar did not work out for me.

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A scientist once wondered how long the first
Mar 28, 2018 10:01AM PDT

successful fusion reactor would have to generate, to make up for all the kilowatts put into research so far.

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Yup
Mar 28, 2018 2:02AM PDT

The EV will continue to take a higher % of the market.

As charging stations expand the EV will become more practical.

Green power will continue to take a higher % of the grid power.

Even my small city has installed a solar farm.

Now they are working on building a 2nd farm.

Will this all go bust as some new tech comes out?.......beats me.