The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: alfsauve on June 29, 2020, 10:34:09 AM
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I looked at the Nikola line of electric vehicles. Tesla went after the rich crowd, but Nikola is concentrating on trucking. As in semi-tractor trucks. Hydrogen/Electric hybrids.
They have a pickup, The Badger. ~600mile range. Looked promising. Today starts where you can put down a refundable $250 deposit to get on the list. I was thinking about it, except they came out with the prices. $60,000 gets you the 300 mile range battery version. $80,000 for the hydrogen hybrid and the 600 mile range. I'll pass.
Middle son has a reservation on the Tesla Cybertruck. If they ever start shipping. Ugly thing but could be quite functional for urban usage.
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Whats the range towing 10k # ? thats the number that is important. That will actually tell you what you want to know. A truck that can not be used as a truck is worthless
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I don't know Alf.
I know people buying F 150's, and Ram's paying just as much, so the $ isn't much of a factor, and the average gas tank, 10 gal, 30 MPG ?
When you mentioned the name before, I just assumed it was a Tesla, the last Nikola was darn it. ;D
I would be interested in hearing more about how they work out.
What about battery disposal ?
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Out here in the desert Southwest I don't see them catching on. Or in the frigid north, because of temperature extremes. Both high and low temps are hard on batteries. And they reduce performance, as well as battery life significantly. Also as was mentioned, what can they tow, and what is the range when doing it? Nowhere near enough to compete with gas and Diesel's.
Here it is 200 miles to Phoenix, and 150 to Las Vegas. And 300 miles to L.A. Without much in between but desert. Another thing is recharge times. If it takes 8 hours for a full recharge, or even 6, that's going to hurt. Especially when you can refill a tank in 5 minutes and be on your way. I think sales of these things will always lag behind gas and diesel trucks.
At least until they can come up with replaceable batteries that can be swapped out in a couple of minutes, like a cordless driver / drill, for the same or less than a tank full of gas. And building a nationwide network like that will cost billions, and is years, if not decades away. A semi that has to recharge for 8 hours every 400 miles is worthless. If it was carrying fresh produce from the Imperial Valley, it would be rotten by the time it reached the East Coast.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars or trucks will never be productive. Because Hydrogen requires more energy to make, than it provides. That doesn't matter on a Moon mission, paid for by the taxpayers. But it does for a family of 4 driving to grandma's on dad's salary. While they can and do offer a limited alternative for city dwellers for bopping around town. They will never provide a full blown replacement for fossil fueled vehicles.
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They will never provide a full blown replacement for fossil fueled vehicles.
I tend to agree, but keep holding out hope.
Looking at the Nikola specs on their trucks, they just fall a tad short of being useful.
Talking with the Disney people last year about why the boat launches aren't electric and they said the recharge time is the killer. Said they're working with industry to figure a way to replace large battery packs, safely and quickly, while at the dock. They don't want to have to cycle a boat out of service every time the pack needs changing.
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Bill's missing a point, If he runs out of gas he's screwed. if his battery gets to low he can spread out a solar panel.
Slow ?
Not as slow as waiting for gas to condense from the air.
Maxim was selling machine guns well before propellent technology could support the mechanism,
Da Vinci built an airplane saying then that it would need some type of engine, and his weight allowance was fairly close.
Same thing here.
The need for this or that improvement will give research a direction, after that it's only a matter of time.
I have nothing but disdain for humanities morals, politics, or intelligence, but their ingenuity is amazing.
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I like electric cars. The environmental friendliness of the electric car is its huge advantage. Another advantage is that the car is very quiet and does not require large maintenance costs. But there are big downsides. The new car is quite expensive. And even if you have already bought such a car, you need to charge it somewhere. And it seems to me that this is the biggest problem, because we do not have a well-developed infrastructure of charging stations. I think over time it will all improve and develop, but personally I will wait with such a purchase.
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I like electric cars. The environmental friendliness of the electric car is its huge advantage. Another advantage is that the car is very quiet and does not require large maintenance costs. But there are big downsides. The new car is quite expensive. And even if you have already bought such a car, you need to charge it somewhere. And it seems to me that this is the biggest problem, because we do not have a well-developed infrastructure of charging stations. I think over time it will all improve and develop, but personally I will wait with such a purchase.
All of this "clean / green energy" simply isn't there yet. From both an infrastructure and / or technology standpoint. Until electric cars can compete with gas and diesel powered vehicles in a load / pulling power, (semi truck transportation), and a distance before recharging, and most importantly, TIME to recharge, they are not going to be acceptable replacements. About all they amount to presently, is an impressive toy for the progressive movement. That make them feel good about themselves, and what they want.
It's no different with wind and solar replacing fossil fuel for home and industrial use. We saw a glimpse of that reality with the all but total failure of the Texas power grid this past Winter. The fact of the matter is, the wind doesn't blow all the time, and the Sun doesn't shine all the time. And battery technology is nowhere near where it needs to be, in order to make up for the rest through electrical storage.
Bill Gates, (love him or hate him), commissioned a study on battery power. It found that all of the batteries presently existing on the planet today fully charged, would only supply enough electricity to last the world 7 minutes. That is nowhere near enough to compensate for the energy that wind and solar cannot provide.
Solar panel technology has improved to around 90% to 95%. Meaning solar panels are about as developed as they can be. Now, or in the future. Wind has it's own issues and problems in regards to cost, maintenance, as well as longevity. In order for it to either break even, or else pay off. Problems with delamination and damage of the fiberglass blades is occurring much sooner, and is far worse than was originally anticipated. This is becoming a massively expensive problem. And most importantly, until the entire world, (think China), is on the exact same page as we are in all of this, none of it is going to matter in the least. At this point all we're doing is blowing smoke up each others collective asses.
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Middle son has a reservation on the Tesla Cybertruck. If they ever start shipping. Ugly thing but could be quite functional for urban usage.
And having bullet-proof glass doesn't hurt!!!! ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)
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Very green indeed.
Pffft.
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I wish they would get their crap together and make them practical.
I like the idea of getting fuel from wind and sunlight.
Solar and wind might not be practical on a large scale, but I'm not large scale. ;D
Like sail, all you need is time, and maybe a sacrificial chicken. ;D ;D
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I like electric cars. The environmental friendliness of the electric car is its huge advantage. Another advantage is that the car is very quiet and does not require large maintenance costs. But there are big downsides.
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I like electric cars. The environmental friendliness of the electric car is its huge advantage. Another advantage is that the car is very quiet and does not require large maintenance costs. But there are big downsides.
Enviromental friendliness ?
They sure have you conned.
Where do the get the Rare Earth materials for the battery ?
Strip mines.
Where does that toxic battery go when it needs replacing ?
The landfill.
A diesel 18 wheeler doesn't pollute as much as one of those little shitboxes.
Big down sides ?
Yes, I would consider potential acid spills to be a bit of a downside.
Doesn't ANYBODY think any more ?
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Besides the manufacturing cost on the environment, the biggest down side is the limited range.
I owned a Leaf for 2 years, thanks to Federal and State rebates plus charging it at work most days I actually made money. But the anxiety of the recharge is a big downer and the time to recharge is a killer. I have a friend that use to drive from ATL to Huntsville every month. She had it planned out so she stopped at a dealer in Rome, GA, go a snack while they did a 3phase 240volt recharge in 30minutes. Then stopped again outside Ft Payne, AL and repeated.
Saw an ad for an all electric twin engine general aviation aircraft. Seats 4 I believe and had a range of.... wait for it, 375miles. Taking away 10% for emergency that would get you from ATL to Lake City, FL where you would then wait to "refuel" before you could proceed. You wouldn't be able to make Miami or Key West without an additional stop over.
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Yes.
For now they are just feel good toys for Yuppie's.
Let that Pleasanton company get a 25,000 year battery though...
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Save your money. Electric cars are like Covid. 99% bull$h!t, and they get far more press than either one deserve. And it's only because both are being pushed by liberals.
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Olive00 is a bot.
Electric cars will be great for the oil and gas industry. By the time you generate the power and transmit the power to your home/wherever you've lost any of the efficiencies they talk about. Until electricity is transmitted on lines made of room temperature superconductors the savings are a fraud. First, you generate the electricity....next you have to get it from the generator station to your home. Once it is in your house you can lose several % through your own internal wiring. Then you have to charge the battery and wait for it....you also lose when you discharge the battery!
http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/ (http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544217303730 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544217303730)
I hope the idiots running the country into the ground keep pushing the electric car farce.
If there was such a thing as transmission lines and home wiring made of room temperature superconductors (OK...they exist you can't afford them) and batteries with no internal resistance it may be different. But it's not.
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Olive00 is a bot.
10 Posts ?
I'm beginning to think he may just be non-American/ non-English speaking.
The last couple of his posts I've seen were awkward, but on Topic.
That's more than you can say for the rest of us. ;D ;D
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The federal infrastructure bill is pushing electric vehicle charging stations. Seems as though there is federal money available with some in the form of grants.
I just might get into that business. I have some property well situated for that on one of the routes that they want chargers.....
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The federal infrastructure bill is pushing electric vehicle charging stations. Seems as though there is federal money available with some in the form of grants.
This brings up a question. When you "fill up" with gas it only takes a few moments. How long does it take to charge your car and are people willing to wait that long? I was under the assumption that charging cars took some time.
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This brings up a question. When you "fill up" with gas it only takes a few moments. How long does it take to charge your car and are people willing to wait that long? I was under the assumption that charging cars took some time.
As I understand it, it does take a long time.
However, there is a company in Pleasanton Ca. making batteries that last 25000 years.
They work on the radioactive decay of diamond dust.
Currently they are being used in computer chips, but it's just a matter of scale.
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My experience from the LEAF charging when it was down to 10%
120Vac charger: 14hours
240Vac 1Phase charger: 6hours
480Vac 3Phase charger: 30minutes
The later are what dealers have and of course can only be installed were you have 3Ph 480V service. Not at home obviously.
The commercial charger sounds not too bad, except you may get to a dealer and find there are 3 or 4 cars in line ahead of yours. That means a one to two hour wait just to get your turn.
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Tesla model 3 at a super charge station its up to 15 miles a minute. At home with 220 its about 30 miles am hour. 110 is about 10 miles an hour.
At least thats what I hear from people that own them.
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the US needs to come up with a front end ion to replace Li+ or we will be in the same political/economic hostage situation as middle eastern oil
NH4+ compounds?
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There is something now or on the drawing board that will charge 80% in 15 minutes.
Going all electric won't save pollution unless they build a lot more dams, harness a lot more wind, build more nuke plants and get solar cell efficiency to a very high % along with some affordable room temperature superconductors. But I guess that doesn't matter...so I'm thinking if we collectively jump off into the deep end on this we're going to have a "game changer" for shopping.
15 to 20 minutes to charge. What are you going to do? Gas and diesel you had time to grab a snack and go...now you can actually shop some. I can see the future on retail with boutique shops around charging stations along with stores like Dollar General. Charging stations are going to take up a lot of real estate. I have a 12-1/2 acre long rectangular plot of ground north of Tulsa adjacent to a bedroom community. If I go through with the charging stations I'm going to leave places for stores.
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the US needs to come up with a front end ion to replace Li+ or we will be in the same political/economic hostage situation as middle eastern oil
NH4+ compounds?
Using "Rare earth" elements is a poor idea for a mass market item in the first place .
They are called rare for a reason.
Get the effect you want, then find how to do it with common materials.
For example, there really must be something cheaper than Platinum that will work in catalytic converters.
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The rapid (30 - 60 minutes) is what they are installing in the shopping malls and businesses around here. Some are free if you shop (like the old validated parking), and others are pay per charge only.
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Except for the dealers I haven't seen any free ones. Plus if someone else is already there you have to wait until they finish shopping.
I asked, and received permission, to charge at work and to charge at my gun club. While both were 120Vac it helped even if I was only at the club for 2-3 hours. I thought about making a Y cable to use at the club to get 240 off of two outlets on different sides of the buss, but all the outlets were CFI and they would have tripped. At work, since I was the house electrician, I could have put me a 240Vac anywhere I wanted, there already were one or two outside anyway, just not convient. But, I knew I was retiring in the near future, plus the Leaf lease was only for 2 years.
By the by. A local dad of a high schooler got charged with theft by taking for charging his car at an outlet by the tennis court.
REST OF THE STORY: Actually the HS and the County School Board didn't really mind the use of the outlet, but this dad had become a nuisance around the tennis court interfering with the coaches during practice. This provided a quick and dirty way to get a restraining order against him without involving the coach and the students. When he protested it was just a miniscule amount of electricity, they compared it to stealing gas out of a school bus. The amount wasn't the issue except as to whether it was to be treated as a misdemeanor or a felony. He got a convicted, fined a $1, and ordered to stay off campus.
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They are the logical next step.
Remember, most early garages were repurposed stables, so it won't happen over night.
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"Free" charging stations all over the place was one of the things the proponents were talking about, but the few free stations that were installed around here—in a movie theater parking lot—have been removed. Not sure why, but I suspect that (1) nobody was using them with the cinema slump, or (2) people started using them a lot, and the owners figured out how much they were spending!
Dirty Bob
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"Free" charging stations all over the place was one of the things the proponents were talking about, but the few free stations that were installed around here—in a movie theater parking lot—have been removed. Not sure why, but I suspect that (1) nobody was using them with the cinema slump, or (2) people started using them a lot, and the owners figured out how much they were spending!
Dirty Bob
Every one was using them, but no one was going to the movies to pay for it. ;D
There is a lesson there. ;D
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The local library has 2 of those free charging stations. Right next door is a dentist office. Guess who uses the charging stations?
When I brought it up to the head of the library ( not the branch as they knew about it) I got a text from her a couple weeks later of the tesla being impounded. ;D
Yeah, I could have minded my own business, but they were stealing my tax dollars. Come to find out there were several people that had complained about not being able to use the spaces... I just happened to be the only one with the home number of the library director.
Its not what you know, its who.
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"Free" charging stations all over the place was one of the things the proponents were talking about, but the few free stations that were installed around here—in a movie theater parking lot—have been removed. Not sure why, but I suspect that (1) nobody was using them with the cinema slump, or (2) people started using them a lot, and the owners figured out how much they were spending!
Dirty Bob
I suspect "free" only lasts so long.
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I suspect "free" only lasts so long.
Abso-frickin-lutely right!
The whole electric car push is fraudulent. They're trying to get everyone to accept something that would be totally awesome for a small percentage of the population, who do short distance driving and almost never need to make a long trip. I think of the golf carts I see in use in some neighborhoods as equivalent.
For the rest of us, electric cars are not the best choice.
- Long trip? It'll take days instead of hours, due to charging times and the locations of chargers.
- Low cost? Sure, at first, while the gummint subsidizes electric cars and public chargers. Later, the high relative cost of electricity will bite frequent drivers on the posterior, and vehicle costs will soar when competition has been reduced.
- Safe? Nah! Electrics carry around heavy batteries full of fun, toxic chemicals. Flip an electric car for the bonus round, with heavy objects flying and toxic chemicals potentially leaking and maybe even catching fire! Woohoo!
- Green? Only in the sense that we move the carbon footprint to wherever the power is generated, but there's still pollution.
- By the way, with the war on energy, there won't be enough available electricity to charge all those electric vehicles, unless rolling blackouts and brownouts are OK.
I suspect that the current war on energy—especially petroleum—is meant in part to help make electrics look cheap to operate as gas prices climb. Once enough people are wedded to electric transport, the prices can soar, and people can stop most travelling—especially long trips—altogether.
</rant>
Dirty Bob
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All great points, DB!
Without nuclear power, electric vehicles will fail! Somewhere on the inter webs is an actual photograph of a EV charging station being powered by a diesel generator! The irony…
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The problem with high amperage, rapid charging is it is very hard on batteries. Even Tesla mentions not to give their batteries a steady diet of these type of charges. IT cuts into battery life. This was as true with lead acid batteries 50 years ago, as it is today with the modern Lithium / Ion batteries. Slow and steady is always better. The problem is it eats up a lot of time when you have to get somewhere.
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I might need to get into the battery replacement business too......
If our clueless, self-interest driven leaders are hell bent on pushing the mindless masses towards the farce of "green" electricity to consolidate their own wealth and power then why shouldn't I make a buck on the mindless masses?
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Did any one else stop to think that the only way this drive for all electric, one world govt crap makes sense is in dealing with other worlds.
Just like the colonies uniting in the face of outside nations.
Otherwise who are groups like the UN showing a unified face to ? ::)
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I suspect "free" only lasts so long.
There is no such thing as free. You pay for it somewhere/somehow. If it is like validated parking, every customer is paying like they will be using it, and only the few will actually use what they paid for. Biden's program is about putting free stations in, but while we are all paying for it in taxes, they will slowly remove the free part. Those using them will pay, and we will continue to be taxed for it.
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There is no such thing as free. You pay for it somewhere/somehow. If it is like validated parking, every customer is paying like they will be using it, and only the few will actually use what they paid for. Biden's program is about putting free stations in, but while we are all paying for it in taxes, they will slowly remove the free part. Those using them will pay, and we will continue to be taxed for it.
It's a similar situation with the Illinois Toll Road System. They were only supposed to be a "toll road", until the bonds were paid off. They were first opened in 1958. That was 63 years ago. But they're still paying, and ALWAYS will be paying. They keep increasing the toll most every couple of years. Today they receive over $800,000 A DAY from over 1.2 MILLION motorists.
There is no way they will ever take their hands out of pockets that deep. Especially in a socialist state like Illinois, that is falling apart economically as it is.
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Local Toll Road in the ATL, GA 400 was same deal. Toll from the Perimeter to downtown UNTIL PAID OFF.
Guess what? It got paid off and there was an election coming up. The public held the politicians feet to the fire. At news conferences the question was, are you going to keep the promise to drop the toll. Lot's of posturing about "Oh we need the money" but in the end they removed the toll. Of course it cost them a pretty penny to remove and redo the toll plaza, but the people won on that one. Small battle I know.
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We've heard the same thing in Oklahoma....the tolls will go away.
NOT
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We've heard the same thing in Oklahoma....the tolls will go away.
NOT
;D Shit.
You're still paying a surcharge on landline phones that was put in place to pay Western Union for their service in the War with Spain.