2/10/10 cars

[Billy's Little Trip]

Countdown to another dumb BLT innuendo starting.... now.

Your face is a dumb innuendo.

Damn, I must have been too into what he was actually saying because I wanted a Mopar back in the 90s and bought a 97 Grand Cherokee that I traded in because of electrical problems I didn't want to deal with.

So in the future, feel free to speak for me, fluff. [BLT]Hi. I'm BLT. Here's another dumb BLT innuendo[/BLT] So the world doesn't miss out in le future. ....that's French for the future.

@hillbilly. Nice bike! Love the V-twins. I had one in my Springer Sportster. But you should lose the windscreen and embrace the bugs.

[hillbilly]

Billy---- it's big, fat, loud and heavy. luv it

[fluffy]

Electric cars are only good for the planet if you completely ignore the massive environmental impact caused by the manufacture and disposal of batteries. Hybrids are also pretty bad about that. In the future, it might be good, but for now, electric car technology is really more about saving immediate fuel costs for the consumer rather than actually being good for the planet (but of course they're being marketed as good for the planet by only focusing on the "uses less gas" aspect). It's not sustainable.

Personally, I'm betting that in the long term we'll see more diesel/biodiesel, or maybe cellulosic ethanol (if that ever gets out of the lab and into real production). Fuel cell technology is also pretty exciting, but it seems to have many more hurdles to overcome. Power sources that eventually come from plants (and thus the sun) are MUCH more sustainable than things that rely on mining non-renewable resources.

This is no longer the case, BTW (and hasn't been for a few years). Today's electric cars are a net positive on the planet compared to gas cars, even in areas that use fossil fuels for their power generation. They're also way better in terms of maintenance since they don't require periodic oil changes, and their regenerative braking is so good that their brakes generally last WAY longer than in a traditional fuel car (although that also applies to hybrids).

There's still a valid concern about the refinement of lithium as required by the battery packs but the battery chemistry is changing for the better; for example, most electric cars now use Li-NMC batteries which use substantially less lithium than older battery chemistries, and the actual mining of the lithium has improved by leaps and bounds as well, as I understand it. There's also some interesting chemistry under development which might improve things even more, although as usual that's not likely to hit the market any time soon (although Toyota has committed to releasing hybrids with solid-state chemistry in 2025 as a test for future higher-density cells).

It's a shame that cellulosic ethanol never materialized though. It seemed like it was going to be the Next Big Thing back in 2010, but it's still stuck in the lab due primarily to shitty economic pressures and the market's inability to think long term.

Oh and I also lost the bet about diesel/biodiesel. Thanks, VW, for completely shitting the cat's bed on that one.

[Caravan Ray]

Yes. I got an EV in October. They will replace the old petrol things very quickly.

Over 3 years I went from paying $120 a tank for a 6-cyl Holden. To $50 a tank for a Corolla hybrid. To….NOTHING!!!!

Ok - when I charge my car I am missing out on the 9c/kWh feed-in-tariff I would normally get for my excess solar power - so taking that into a account - a “ full tank” for my BYD Atto3 gives me a range of 450km for $4.50. Not bad.

(AUD$1.00 = USD$0.70)

I have my car on a 2 year lease. I am expecting that when the lease is up I will be able to replace it with a car with vehicle-to-grid capability (not available here yet) and have my car as back-up power for my house at times the sun isn’t shining.

[Lunkhead]

I live somewhere with not much charging infrastructure, and, the most common longer-distance driving I would do would be driving between here and San Francisco, 500 miles away, and there isn't very good charging infrastructure for the northern 200 mile stretch of that. Not that I have any real need to change cars any time soon but I was thinking that if I do I might look at plug-in hybrids, to see if we could find something that a) has four/all wheel drive for better driving around here and b) could cover all our in-town driving in electric-only mode. Do y'all have any thoughts about plug-in hybrids...?

[fluffy]

Plug-in hybrids are better than a pure-ICE car but they're not going to be as efficient as a BEV. I haven't really kept up with them though, so I don't know if there's any serial PHEVs worth looking at (Chevy Volt was the big one for a while but it's been discontinued). I believe the Prius is still a parallel hybrid, and they also discontinued the plugin version I think?

Mazda's current BEV plans appear to be having short/mid-range BEVs with optional fuel-based range extenders, making it essentially a serial PHEV. The MX-30 is by all accounts an awful buy but I'm interested to see where they're going with the platform.

But also before writing off pure BEVs entirely, check out things like A Better Routeplanner. The reason I ended up necroposting on this thread is that I was looking for where I was mentioning that my Leaf would make it difficult to get to Bend if SFL is there, but I'd actually found out via ABRP that a Leaf drive between Seattle and Bend is actually feasible (and then I got distracted by seeing my very outdated post on this thread).

I just checked to see San Francisco to Bend in the Leaf and it's possible, although would require 9 charging stops for a total of 5.5 hours (and that charge time would be pretty typical for any car limited 50kW charging like the Chevy Volt). But in something like an Ioniq 5 (which is the best rapid-charging BEV on the market right now) the same trip would only need 1:42 in charge time, with 4 stops along the way.

Also there's a lot more charging infrastructure out there than you'd think, especially along the left coast. It doesn't seem quite possible to do a Leaf drive from Seattle to Albuquerque, but a car with higher capacity certainly can.

[fluffy]

I just looked at some routes with the MX-30 (which has a more limited range than the Leaf, but also has CCS charging) and there are two problematic sections, both in Central Oregon. It looks like 120 miles of range is the bare minimum for that, and the MX-30 just barely gets 100. But most BEVs are more than sufficient for that, even the base model Leaf, at least in terms of range. Charge time is another matter entirely though and you'll definitely want something with at least 150kW charging (like the upcoming Chevy Equinox EV). Having to wait 1 hour to refuel every 90 miles isn't my idea of a good time.