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Posted on 11/11/2011 4:51:26 AM PST by Libloather
Duke Energy urges electric car owners to stop using charging stations after fire
Updated: 1:37 pm EST November 9, 2011
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Duke Energy officials are asking customers who own the company's electric car charging stations to stop using the product after a house fire in Mooresville last month.
A representative from the company has confirmed to Channel 9 that an email was sent to about 125 customers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Indiana who have the same type of charging station installed in their homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsoctv.com ...
I know a number of people who drive hybrids, and your assessment is spot on for all of them.
Frankly, I don't care about what they drive. Their choice. What I dislike is the smug lectures, and (even more so) the mental gymnastics they do to justify their (poor) choices. One coworker drives a Honda Hybrid - he once told me, very sincerely and earnestly, that his car was rated to 30 mpg, but "It gets much more than that because it shuts of at stoplights".
He was just so plaintive that I didn't have the heart to tell him that if you put 10 gallons of gas in, and go 300 miles, then you're getting 30 miles per gallon. Completely regardless of when your car shuts off instead of idling.
"The only thing cooler than Tyrannosaurs is........ TYRANNOSAURS in F-14's!!!!!"
(Obscure Calvin and Hobbes reference. But appropriate, as libs operate at about a 6-year-old level.)
Come on now, “everyone” knows electricity is generated inside the wall of your home by the combination of steel nails and chinese drywall.
***So electric cars increase global warming?***
They produce, not smog but SMUG!
Flintstone car - but not sure what the carbon footprint is for the shoe-leather traction and brakes.
If libs really understood science, math, and common sense,
they wouldn’t be libs. I commend you on your self restraint. I would have “had the heart” to call him a dummass.
Somewhere a few months ago, I saw the estimated price of a replacement battery for an automobile....~~$8,000...just wow!
We had 440 service on several facilities where I retired...only thing was this service came with a nice little “Demand” charge which made each KWH much more expensive than the more usual 120-220 meters.
Duke Energy is paying a hefty portion of the costs of the coming Dem convention in Charlotte. The head is a bigtime lefty.
Exactly right. The strongest argument in years past for EVs was you could power them with central power stations which had the most modern environmental controls. The theory was it was easier and more cost-effective to apply the controls to a few central stations rather than to millions of automobiles. In effect, you were moving the pollution sources out of the dense cities to remote power plants.
But that argument has gone completely out the window because the tremendous technical advances in automotive emission controls and fuels have gotten cleaner as well. So there really isn’t any sane justification for EVs any more.
Everybody has lost sight of the original justification and why it no longer fits today’s conditions. If you ask the average person about the advantages of EVs, you won’t get a cogent (or even sane) answer. But there are HUGE disadvantages from poor range, long recharge times, extremely shortened range if you run your heater or AC, high consumption rates of rare earth minerals, toxic waste, high capital cost, high cost of replacing battery packs, etc.
Really, they are nothing but a badge for liberals to brag “I care more than you.”
More significant than the energy consumption of the battery rechargers, is the tier rate hike for the rest of your normal household energy demand. Current estimates indicated that once the additional battery recharging loads applied to the average consumption rates, each household with a battery charger would escalate their regular power costs by around $300/mo, independent of the charger consumption rates.
Ahhh yes. The Toyota Pious crowd as I call them.
A big selling point of hybrids is regenerative braking where your car’s kinetic energy is converted back to potential energy (stored in the battery) when you apply the brakes. But, of course, that comes at a huge increase in capital cost and an efficiency penalty because you have to accelerate all the extra mass of the redundant electric system (battery, electric motor and modified transmission).
It is FAR better to optimize transportation infrastructure around liquid fuels. They store huge amounts of energy, are easy to transport, easy to refuel a vehicle, no waste from spent batteries, and provide heat for the occupants. It makes much more sense to concentrate on alternative liquid fuels (eg, oil from algae) rather than changing out the vehicle motive system. Of course, the green kooks will prohibit liquid fuels (cf., Keystone XL) as much as they prohibit electric generating plants (cf., nuclear and coal).
We are all doomed if we can’t get the green kooks under control. This is a tyranny of an extremely small minority. Unfortunately, the new crop of executives at all energy companies are under their sway.
Absolutely.
A 2500 sq ft household with a/c & exterior lighting, etc, can run up a $400 a month bill under normal circumstances. How about an $800 bill???
Also— if you are self employed & use your car for your business, how do you capture your travel expenses? Gas receipts worked very well for dozens of years. Now what do you record???
How long before every business & apartment building is REQUIRED to have free plug ins?
That would cost a small mint for an apartment complex, not to mention a business.
This is going to backfire, IMO.
“If your house is made of any vinyl or plastic then no. A house made of only wood and wood products and it burned would be a carbon neutral event.”
Actually, assuming oil is all biotic, then burning vinyl or plastic is carbon neutral also, if you look at it on a long-enough timescale.
I drive a hybrid (2007 Honda Accord Hybrid) and it’s not because I’m a greenie. I want to give less money to the Jihadiis.
I want to see the electric power produced in nuclear plants.
I have a Honda Hybrid. The fuel consumption on the highway is outstanding (40+ mpg), but, in the city, it’s only about 21 mpg.
The brakes actually recharge the batteries so that is not an issue.
Electric cars are twice the complexity as all of them have to have gas power anyway. So with twice the complexity to get done the same job maintenance is twice as much.
I have seen many studies that show the extra you pay for electric is never returned in fuel savings in the life of the car. Part of that is becasue fuel efficiency is directly related to the weight you are hauling around. So with the extra weight of batteries you end up not getting as much back as you would hope. For example look at the hybrid vs non hybrid ford excape. You can pick up 4 miles per gallon going hybrid on a 28 mpg car. Not exciting really.
So electric cars are for hobbyists. Not quite practical. Run out of gas, get a soda bottle full to get to the gas station, Run out of battery, get a tow truck to get you back to your charger.
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