Electric vehicles?

[MtnMax/Magniac]

[FONT=&quot]Wow, can this be true?? The 75 amp circuit is a real concern. Does Jerry Brown know any of this? [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]St[/FONT][FONT=&quot]ill want an electric vehicle ????[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]As a "joke", my Chev dealer gave me a Volt as a loaner while my full-size pick-up was getting some attention. He thought it was funny to give his energy company CEO this thing here on Vancouver Island![/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I live 30 kms outside of Victoria near Sidney. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The battery was dead - later he admitted they almost never charged it. While the car was "ok", on gasoline, it was pretty anemic. So for the extra money, even taking into account Chev rebates and Provincial incentives, you get an under-powered, heavy car that felt "too small" for its actual size (battery has to go somewhere).[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Now the kicker: at a neighborhood bbq, I was talking to a Neighbour, a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approx 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than 3 houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles ... Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials ram this nonsense down our collective throats, not only are we being forced to buy the damn things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an oops and a shrug.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]If you want to argue with a “green” person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the below:
Note: However, if you ARE the green person, read it anyway. Enlightening.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors...and he writes...For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.
Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9 gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]It will take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery.
$18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The gasoline powered car costs about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000.........So the American Government wants proud and loyal Americans not to do the math, but simply pay 3 times as much for a car, that costs more than 7 times as much to run, and takes 3 times longer to drive across the country.....
Still wonder why Trump won?
Where do I sign ? [/FONT]

 

[Tex85]

The math didn't add up for me either. Then again I own a Vmax, emissions are not really something I worry about.

 

[caseyjones955]

As battery and solar tech move forward it makes more and more sense. The best Model S I guess can go over 300mi per charge and if you live in the sun and have a few bucks to throw at it you can charge it with a solar station. It's nice to see electric vehicles one would actually want to drive instead of leafs, volts and stuff like that. I'm pretty sure within my lifetime not only will autonomous cars be commercially available but some of them being fully electric is also not to many years away. Even though I'm going to keep my polluters I welcome this tech.

This is sort of slick. Really like this stuff and it gets better all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nAgNm3CS7E

 

[Kronx]

I think the Teslas are pretty badass. I just watched a video recently of autopilot on the Tesla and it's impressive. And whats cool about what they're doing with Tesla is as their tech improves its just a firmware/software update for previous Tesla owners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG68SKoG7vE

 

[[email protected]]

I'm pretty sure within my lifetime not only will autonomous cars be commercially available

They are nearly there now.
Uber has placed some self driving cars in the Pittsburgh area.

I took my boss out to look at some new vehicles last week. He has owned 3 separate ford Sport Trac's over the years. Ford no longer offers them so we looked at a Honda Ridgeline and a Chevy Colorado as replacement options.

While looking at the Honda, the salesman stated that their high end trims have auto correction and side cameras. When on the highway, the car can see the road markings and keep you between the lines automatically. It is not made to drive itself per say but does a pretty good job of keeping you in line.

 

[tothemax93]

I just heard on a car radio show that, If your sell more than 2000 cars a year, you are required to carry (offer) an electric vehicle, by the government. I still have serious doubts about self driving cars. I've done roadwork for 16 yrs, setting work zones on major highways. I can think of a dozen reasons, without any effort, of things going wrong. Technology has created more dangerous situations for us, at work, than anything. "The GPS told me to be in this lane"

 

[BorgBiker]

While no "tree hugger" I have been checking on the electric car world, and became fully invested a few years back:

Since I work 3 miles from my home and usually ride my Max, my wife had been driving my 300C SRT8 to work which added up to almost $300 a month in gas. That 6.1 Hemi (with a few choice mods) can get 22mpg on the highway, but since the highway is usually clogged here in LA, it hovers around 10-11mpg.This added up to almost $300 a month.

We figure out that with all the rebates, promotions etc...leasing a new Volt would cost about the same as that monthly gas bill, and I could have my car back (2 birds with one stone, anyone?). So we leased a 2014 Chevy Volt about 2 1/2 years ago.

Now here's the great thing. Since she works 13 miles from the house, that's a 26 mile round trip. She can charge at our house overnight, drive to and from work and not use any gas. She has driven far enough to use gas a few times, but in 2 1/2 years she hasn't used 2 tanks of gas. She was concerned the gas would go bad before she used it.

The electric motor is rated at 150 hp, which is more than adequate for average driving. It will do 60 in about 7.5 seconds. The torque surge from a dead stop makes it feel like it's going to start rocketing forward, but it doesn't, just nice smoot and liner acceleration. It only seats 4, but we bought it as work transportation for her, so not a big deal.

I liked it enough that I leased a 2015 Chevy Spark EV (tiny little car) for my daughter. It had great crash reviews, low price and no gas ever! It has almost 400 ft/lbs of torque! While no rocket, it hits 60 in less than 7 seconds and usually gets 90 miles per charge. Magazines have said that it is the essentially a "Spark SS"

A 3 year lease cost us less than $200 a month, and with California's $2500 rebate, we actually netted $1000 after paying the 'due at signing' amount. It does take all night to charge at 120v, but it has a fast charge ability that when connected to certain charge stations can charge 80% in 30 minutes. She has a charge plan that cost $14 a month and that gives 10 cents a minute charging - so 30 minutes to charge cost $3 for about 70 miles of recharge. so far the most I've had to pay in a month on this plan was $45 and she drove about 1000 miles that month.

All that said, I completely agree that unless the grid is upgraded significantly, there will come a time when electric vehicles start to take atoll on the current electrical infrastructure. California offers big rebates on solar, so we're doing that too. I will have a double 240v charger (for both cars)and it is rated at 50 amps, but it's not a Tesla charger (that is the wife's NEXT car, so she says). We will save approximately $250 to $300 a month on average with the solar panels installed. LA Power is banking on the fact that a house with solar will feed more into the system than we use, so we (and every other solar paneled house) in essence are boosting the grid's capacity.

The electric cars and solar panels in my mind help to offset my insatiable need for gas guzzling, hydrocarbon spewing monster machines such as my Hemi and the Mighty V-max!

 

[caseyjones955]

I think the Teslas are pretty badass. I just watched a video recently of autopilot on the Tesla and it's impressive. And whats cool about what they're doing with Tesla is as their tech improves its just a firmware/software update for previous Tesla owners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG68SKoG7vE

That is VERY badass! I would have me a Model S in a second. There have been a couple accidents already with people treating this very cool feature as more of a self driving thing.

I'm very anxious for completely automated cars and I'll bet Tesla will be some of the first to make it available and relatively affordable.

 

[MtnMax/Magniac]

Tesla is the only one I would consider, but they're way out of my price range.