How Long is Long Enough?

Rupert wrote: In reply to Bobzilla:I hope you are wrong. I don't expect to live long enough to see it, but I believe battery changing stations will eventually be everywhere. Unless we skip batteries altogether and go to Hydrogen, which is probably a better option anyway.

I dunno about you guys, but electricity transmission lines are f&%king expensive to build up here. And the current system can't support 50% of automobiles being electric.

I drove a Volt for two years, and I had the VoltDC app that showed me my EV to gas mile ratio, and let me compare to other VoltDC users. I had the gassiest Volt in Louisiana.

Why was this?

For road trips that didn't demand some specific quality in the car, I chose the car with the best economy and infotainment. The Volt would get ~40MPG in steady interstate driving, with XM, MP3, or while hooked up to a phone. With OnStar navigation going too, the 4Runner was left behind.

My commute to work each day is about 1.5 miles each way on mostly 25MPH roads, with no traffic lights. Shopping is mostly within 3 miles. My wife works 2.5 miles away. Eve with me going home for lunch, a GEM could do the drive year round. Aside from Enterprise rental cars moving where they can only be accessed via a 45MPH road last year, if I was forced, I could probably do quite well with a 2-door GEM and an Enterprise rental discount card. Heck, the new location is only a few hundred feet down that road.

But, a GEM is a death trap. And, as good as my town is for having a 35MPH speed limit on most main roads, and having most main roads backed by a 25MPH grid system, I can't get everywhere when faster roads are lava. I can't go to the vet's office, the hospital, or my doctor's office. I can go to the mall, Target and Albertsons, but not Winn Dixie and Wal-Mart.

So, I need to have my whole town available. The gas vehicle, my wife's 4Runner, would have to be on road trip duty, and if only one of us was headed out of town, the remaining vehicle needs to be able to access everything in town.

A Leaf or i-MiEV would certainly open up my entire little town. Driven carefully, my nearest major cities, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, would become accessible. A CHAdeMO public station in either city would turn these places into carefree drives that could be taken on the interstate. With only 220V level 2 stations, it's an exercise in dressing for the weather with modest hypermiling. With about 10KWh usable battery in the Volt, I've tried making the trip for the fun of it. I rolled into the Nissan dealership with about 5 miles remaining. An attempt at making a round trip in the Volt using only electricity showed me that I just don't have the patience to hang around a public charging station. I had breakfast in Whole Foods, walked around the Books A Million, bought a book and read a good chunk of it over coffee, briefly had a security guard in a golf cart follow me as I had the audacity to walk through the yuppie parking lot, and finally gave up and drove home, running out of EV and switching to gas on the outskirts of my town.

Under the same conditions, a Leaf would have about 2.5 times the usable battery, and the right spec would give me a 220v charger that is twice as fast as the Volt. That would turn the next major town into a viable destination if the interstate was avoided.

I think that's the point where I could say that I'd be able to get by.

I think I could get by with a Leaf equipped with a 6.6kw charger. I probably wouldn't even need any more than the 110v EVSE, except that Nissan recommends that 110v be used only for occasional charging in the 2013-up manual.

But, what about getting the range that would make me want to own a BEV?

Well, that means one more drive has to be supported. Visiting family.

My mother and sister live half way across the state. I might be able to plug in 110v there for four hours or so when I visit. Round trip is 245 miles. The interstate speeds for most of the trip mean my only real choice is an upgraded Tesla Roadster 3.0. The Model S would still force me to hypermile. A supercharger is not on my route, nor is one planned. If I change my route, I could possibly hit the Supercharger coming in in 2015 or so. If that happens, a Model S 85 could make the run, and I'd be ready to kick the gas habit.

Or, I could just drive a Volt, ELR, i3 with range extender, i8, Panamera Plug-in, Fusion Energi, C-Maxx Energi, or some other car that gives me a meaningful EV range, but backs it up with a gas generator. Louisiana has no public charging infrastructure to speak of, so I need gas as a backup.

Honestly, I'm hoping the i8 depreciates. If values act like an SL600 AMG, then I'm good. If values act like a Z8, I'll never own one, and that will be a shame.

Where do you live in Louisiana? I am in the process of moving from Covington.

I'll likely never be interested in an all-electric car. I like to drive out in the middle of nowhere, where I may not find a charging station or even an outlet, and won't want to sit around overnight to charge. This is unless, of course, one can find a charging station as frequently as a gas station, and it can charge the car fully to a 400-mile range in 15 minutes. Then I would reconsider. My time is worth more to me than what I pay in gas. I don't want to have to charge overnight or stop every hour of driving.

I would consider a hybrid if they made one that is actually fun and fast and handles well.

I don't want a "commuting car" though - I want a car that I can commute in and also do long road trips in. My commute is 40 miles round-trip so well within the range of a Volt or whatever. But then I'd need a second car to do everything else. And that (with the cost of a second car + insurance + maintenance) is just a money-loser in the end.

I'd much prefer some of the sporty diesels that Europe and the rest of the world gets. There's no shortage of them out there. Just not here.

Hal wrote:

SVreX wrote: Pay-at-the-pump allows me to start the pump, walk inside and take a piss, buy something, and hop in the truck and go.

Do that around here and you may come back to find out the attendant inside turned off the pump as soon as you walked away from the car. "Safety Issue" I've been told.

They don't even want me jamming the handle on with a tennis ball. In supposed to be squeezing the handle at all tomes.

Wally wrote:

Hal wrote:

SVreX wrote: Pay-at-the-pump allows me to start the pump, walk inside and take a piss, buy something, and hop in the truck and go.

Do that around here and you may come back to find out the attendant inside turned off the pump as soon as you walked away from the car. "Safety Issue" I've been told.

They don't even want me jamming the handle on with a tennis ball. In supposed to be squeezing the handle at all tomes.

Use a tube of ChapStick. It's the perfect length to hold the handle fully depressed and much less obvious than a tennis ball.

I've never set foot inside any of the gas stations I fill up at between here & work. I just stand there waiting for the pump to finish, wasting time.

Alright... This is the problem. People run out of gas all the time. Now... let them forget to plug the car in... and try to not be late to work.

Then you have to "fill" it up on the side of the road.

People will get shot blocking up rush hour traffic.

irish44j wrote: I'll likely never be interested in an all-electric car. I like to drive out in the middle of nowhere, where I may not find a charging station or even an outlet, and won't want to sit around overnight to charge. This is unless, of course, one can find a charging station as frequently as a gas station, and it can charge the car fully to a 400-mile range in 15 minutes. Then I would reconsider. My time is worth more to me than what I pay in gas. I don't want to have to charge overnight or stop every hour of driving. I would consider a hybrid if they made one that is actually fun and fast and handles well. I don't want a "commuting car" though - I want a car that I can commute in and also do long road trips in. My commute is 40 miles round-trip so well within the range of a Volt or whatever. But then I'd need a second car to do everything else. And that (with the cost of a second car + insurance + maintenance) is just a money-loser in the end. I'd much prefer some of the sporty diesels that Europe and the rest of the world gets. There's no shortage of them out there. Just not here.

For a Leaf, maybe, but I'm not sure what about a Volt would require you to have a second car. I've unplugged mine in the morning, and driven around town all day without touching gasoline, but I've also unplugged it, loaded it up with luggage and driven it from southeast Louisiana to Chattanooga. I drove to see Rock City, where i plugged it in to a free charging station just for the heck of it. I left town next and then up into the mountains, and into a state park in rural Tennessee. While there, I bought some OnStar phone minutes because there was no cell service. Then, I visited some Mennonite tourist traps to buy sorghum, drove back to Chattanooga during rush hour. I inched my way to a Target that happened to be near a charging station that I didn't have time to visit, then hopped back on the interstate and drove home. Once home, I plugged back in.

I have no idea how many miles I drove, but only about sixty ended up being electric. Everything else was at freeway speeds on gasoline.

I think the poor engine was working a bit as it screamed up one of the mountains at what sounded like about six grand, but nothing was an actual problem. I'd have gone to the Tail of The Dragon if we hadn't discovered the twisty mountain roads messed with the missus' motion sickness.

Flip side, I drove around once for a month with the low fuel light on. I didn't feel like going to a gas station, and I left the house with 40 miles to work with on top of whatever gas I had, so I never really had reason to care.

I could tell the same story about weekends to Galveston and then Houston, or a vacation to Austin, through Texas wine country to Lukenbach, and then on to San Antonio and back, or to Mobile, Alabama to take in the finish of The Great Race.

In each case, I just drive the Volt and keep it in gasoline, and it takes care of everything else. If I see a charging station in the parking lot of a place, and it's free, I'll plug in, but otherwise, I'll just burn the dino juice.

Flight Service wrote: Where do you live in Louisiana? I am in the process of moving from Covington.

I'm down the road in Hammond. We took one of the dogs down to Mandeville to walk the trails at Fontainebleau earlier today. We're in the area regularly.

While in theory an EV might work for us. In practice, maybe not so much.

My wife has a short commute (6-8 miles round trip) and rarely does more than the occasional lunch hour errand. Her 2004 car only has about 57,000 miles on it, and that's with us using it for all weekend travel and most road trips. So an EV would work for her, except it would force the long-trip miles onto my car, using it up faster. With her short commute, too, the EV would never pay for itself.

OTOH, my commute is about 25 miles round trip. An EV would handle that, too, except that a couple times a month I may have to make a 100-180 mile trip, with no warning. It can't always be planned ahead in time to drive an IC car that day. I put about 11,000 a year on my car, which would go up to about 16k if I absorbed the long trip miles from my wife's EV. Still not killer, but it means I replca my car every 10 years instead of who knows when.

GameboyRMH wrote: All the EV pessimists and hydrogen fans are both in for a big shock in the next few years. Some of those ridiculous requests of EV technology will be fulfilled, and hydrogen will still be extremely hard to contain and transport, mostly fossil-sourced and roughly as expensive as gasoline. EVs don't advance at the geological pace of ICE technology. They advance at the speed of battery technology. Electric RC planes were a sad joke 20 years ago, and now they're zipping around doing crazy flips, carrying heavy cameras for the better part of an hour and breaking the 400kph mark...do the math.

For your first prediction, I won't hold my breath. Not due to capability, but due to the current materials that are used. Ignoring all other problems, I see the material issue of the worst. Where will enough be found?

As for your second part of the glacial progress of the ICE, well, in appearance, it's not much from when I started 22 years ago. But in operation, the change has been very dramatic. For a car guy to miss that is kinda surprising.

More power, more efficient, cleaner, and much cheaper to make. Just in 22 years I've seen it first hand. And it will continue to progress as best as I see it.