Posted on 06/03/2021 8:28:22 AM PDT by mylife
OK - All modesty aside, I’m not “genius level”, but I’m pretty stinking good. I’m a common-sense Mechanical Engineer (that should be redundant, but often is not...) who’s been screaming what your relative has been saying for as many years as I can remember.
I had a professor who looked at an idea I had one time and said (paraphrased), “If your idea does something that’s already being done, but it’s more complicated and costs more, it’s a BAD idea.”
Funny I saw this thread today. Earlier in the day, a friend asked me as an engineer, what I thought of electrics. Here’s what I told him:
How many Jiffy Lubes are out there? Ready-made infrastructure! If you had a standardized battery pack or fuel cell unit that connected to your car’s undercarriage, you could pull over the pit, have them remove the dead battery(ies), and replace it with a charged one. You are gone in 20 minutes.
After 4+ hours of driving, taking 30 minutes to grab a bite to eat, go to the bathroom, and walk around before getting back in the car for another 4 hours sounds about normal anyway. Regardless of whether I can fill my car’s tank in 5 minutes at the gas pump, my tank still needs something in it and my knees will explode if stuck in a car for that long without a stretch.
When I get out of a car after four hours, sometimes I can barely stand.
That's not too bad, these things will be the norm in 25 years. Pretty soon there will be a collectors market for gas powered vehicles I imagine.
The shortages we've witnessed just months into JoeBlow’s admin are just the beginning. They are assured under socialism and will only get worse.
The internal combustion engine and affordable gas represent unacceptable freedom, freedom that must come under state control.
When EV become the predominant feature of our transportation, rationing of electricity is guaranteed. Just as the Soviets made life less bad in Moscow and miserable in the country, count on more or less sufficient electricity in rat cities and extreme poverty in rural America due to electricity shortages.
That’s HoJo fried clams. I got sick as hell from eating them once. Three days of absolute misery.
They’ve dropped charging time by about 50% in the past 10 years. Another 10 years and it’ll probably close to halve again. Most of the challenges are just around preventing overheating in the batteries, so some clever tricks with cooling could probably drop that quite a bit.
Meanwhile, the top end Tesla has an EPA rating of 412 miles on a charge. I can see that reaching >500 miles easily within the next 10 years. Combine that with a fully functioning autopilot (and 10+ years additional development, I can see that), and your road trips probably have mom, dad, and the kids playing Monopoly together while the car deals with the traffic and navigation. Whole different world.
I’ll hang on to my fun gas cars until I’m dead though. Even if they start restricting where I can drive them, I like fast cars and engine noise. Probably get an electric car at some point as a daily driver.
You just wait when a charging station breaks down, and travelers cannot get back on the road for days or a week! Let the “protesting” begin.
More aptly—StuckEE!
“You would think that all the braniacs out there creating things that need infrastructure would be thinking about that.”
There’s been much talk of building the chargers into or along the highway, so that power coupling occurs while you drive. I bet that’s in Bidet’s Infrastructure bill.
Would charged roads lead to more road kill? Then you could take your pickings to the Tesla restaurant and get it cooked up “your way”. Sounds like a win win win!
The guy in the video linked below decided to see if he could drive 1000 miles in a day in a Tesla Model 3. He averaged 24 minutes per charging stop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxA8Y69R6uM
He says he traveled 973 miles in 16.5 hours. (He stopped at his hotel instead of finishing the 1,000 miles.) That was divided into 14 hours 6 minutes of actual driving and 2 hours 24 minutes of charging. He kept the battery between 20% and 80% charged. He made six stops to charge, averaging 24 minutes each.
He says the actual practical range of the car for non-urban driving is about 250 miles, not 310 as claimed.
Total cost of electricity for the trip: $88.72.
No, because the road itself would not be electrified. It would be some form of inductive charging, like how a wireless phone charger works or how an electric toothbrush charges. It requires proximity between the device being charged and the platform or surface doing the charging, but no cables and no risk of electrocution like a subway “third rail”.
‘Hot Shoppes’, call them Spark Shoppes.
If’n ya like yer roadkill extra crispy well done.
Great. Now the interstates will be like driving 70’s slot cars when I was a kid.
Yes, but what about the infrastructure to deliver all of that juice?
He averaged ~59 mph, which is probably better than I would have, given that I’m a slow driver.
I would have had to refill 3-4 times but it wouldn’t have taken 24 minutes even with a visit to rest room. Of course he could have hit the john and eaten a snack while waiting to charge, which I can’t do when filling the tank.
Depending on the location, my gas would have cost about the same as his electricity.
Overall, his trip was easily comparable to same thing in my poor ol’ Hyundai.
Your poor ol' highly efficient Hyundai. Matching that efficiency with a 500HP car is not easy.
It won't win me friends on FR, but I was impressed with the Tesla's performance. Like you, I thought it took much longer to charge.
Audi, VW, Hyundai / KIA and Porsche all currently support 800v super chargers and 1000v 400 amp is on the way in 5 years or less not 25. 800v are 250 to 300 kw charging rates that’s under 10 min for a 5 to 80% of a 60kWh pack.
https://electricrevs.com/2018/03/21/j1772-updated-to-400a-dc-at-1000v/
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