Electric Cars in Blizzards

Just put the EU 2200 Honda in the trunk and charge as you drive

big_g wrote:

They are literally asking folks in Cali not to charge their vehicles… it is overwhelming the grid. Can you imagine even 30% of ice vehicles replaced with electric ???

This..
Electric cars are a fantasy that will never work with our current power supply. It’s a great idea in theory but we’d need many many more power plants nationwide to handle the increased demand.
Between new power plants and more factories making highly toxic and extremely expensive batteries it definitely will not be a “green” alternative to traditional ICE vehicles.

big_g wrote:

I have no issue with a blizzard in the burbs… but when you have an power supplier(they sell power) asking you not to buy their product (power) red flags should go up… no ?

biggill wrote:

Are you planning to move to CA and buy an EV sometime soon G? Didn’t think so.

We may not have to move to CA in order to experience that scenario since they are trying to adopt a lot of the same standards here in MN. To be clear, I have no issue with the idea of electric vehicles. I haven’t touched the gas Jiffy since I started using the electric drill setup. As soon as a truck is available, affordable (without subsidies), and capable of what I need it to do, I’d buy it in second. I’m just not a big fan of the gubment forcing this on us. Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think there were any mandates forcing Strikemaster to produce their electric augers. Let the market figure it out.

What exactly are they trying to adopt that’s preventing people from charging their cars?

biggill wrote:

Where in the world are you getting the idea that green energy was the cause the TX power outage? Tucker Carlson? Wind contributed to only 13% of the power outages and was mainly due to failure to winterize their wind turbines. Ironically enough it was mainly failure to winterize their power plants and well heads. Places like Iowa seem to have little issue with their wind turbines.

You been under a rock? Their fossil fuel grids were largely taken down due to yearly maintenance. The green energy grid could not support all the demand. This is widely known. It happened once before in 2018 and they had time to address the issue but they didnt. They cannot take down the dirty systems in the summer because of the demand since the clean energy cannot even remotely come close to meeting it. When the demand was peaking the grid was showing signs that serious damage to the system was going to happen so they took some of them had to be taken offline to avoid catastrophic failure.

biggill wrote:

Are you planning to move to CA and buy an EV sometime soon G? Didn’t think so.

Actually I did move to Maui… lots of EV’s there… power grid is adequate, lots of solar panels. At Chrysler dealerships, that sell hybrids, you have to have a charging station in your parking lot, for customer or general public use. Two salesman at our Ford store had EV’s, my parts manager had a Chevy Volt and one of my customers with a Pacifica would constantly battle, bitch and complain about whoever happened to get plugged in first… they thought I was in charge of it, but I was not. They all cried about the price of power on Maui (it’s not cheap) Long story short, one day the cord was stretched to a couple spaces away from the charger and laid over a 1 ton Rams receiver hitch… he drove away and took the cord and outlet right off the salesman’s Ford EV… I never repaired it !!!

So I guess I should Always leave home with a full tank of gas or a full charge… think about it if you run out of gas in a car/truck in every day driving or get caught in blizzard in a gasser no big deal someone brings you a can a gas and your on your way, till they can give some one a quick charge alongside the highway in a reasonable amount of time, which they probably will. The infrastructure isn’t there yet to support this green push.
I get the electric auger debate,but I don’t believe anyone has been stranded by there electric auger maybe missed fishing opportunities. Ev’s have there place don’t get me wrong, but there’s a hell of a lot of energy in a gallon of gas or diesel and is readily available across the us.

Ironically I am watching shark tank right now and two guys are pitching a mobile charger for EV’s. They are currently selling to AAA and other such companies. Currently sold 1 million worth of these chargers in 6 months. They say they can charge 1 mile in 45 seconds. Dunno they just got a deal with two sharks.

x2 on letting the market sort it out. We don’t need heavy subsidies and legislation to switch. I really don’t care what powers my vehicle if it’s reliable, can do what I want, and is affordable to my expectations. For now the ICE is taking that cake for the foreseeable future. I do think change is coming…but it doesn’t mean it will be overnight or meet my expectations as a consumer the day it is widely available.

I’d wager that ~15 years or so from now is the likely sweet spot where the electric technology, infrastructure, and economics start to make logical sense for the masses.

grubson wrote:

This..
Electric cars are a fantasy that will never work with our current power supply. It’s a great idea in theory but we’d need many many more power plants nationwide to handle the increased demand.
Between new power plants and more factories making highly toxic and extremely expensive batteries it definitely will not be a “green” alternative to traditional ICE vehicles.

Exactly. Most new homes built today have a 200 Amp service. At 240 volts that is only 48KW. My neighbor has a new Tesla and the battery is 82KW. A number of houses are serviced by a transformer that is designed to power an average Kw. If each house now has a fast charger the grid could not keep up as to charge a completely dead battery would use the full power available for at least 2 hours. The promise of charging a 82Kw battery in 5 minutes means that somewhere there would need to source close to a megawatt for the 5 minutes. The Honda EU2200 would work with an extended tank option, it could power the heat pump for an extended period of time but would only provide power for about 8 miles per hour. That Tesla takes about 250W to go 1 mile or counting loses, about 16,000W/hour (32,000W at the power plant). To make all of this work we would need a smart grid to provide the power where it is needed, not assuming that we will average the power throughout the grid like it is set up today.

David Anderson wrote:

If each house now has a fast charger the grid could not keep up as to charge a completely dead battery would use the full power available for at least 2 hours.

YEP^^^^^

Where your located on the grid plays a huge part into what you can have. As above, most new homes are 200 amp service and 2 to 6 homes off a ped. X amount of ped on the line…..and only 10-15% or so buffer in engineering for a development.

Looking at the range of charging systems, your 240V @ 30 to 50 amps draw. Most “quick Charge” system are 42-55 amp draw. When I asked my electrician for a couple perspective clients with electric cars, he right away wanted to know exactly what charge system they wanted because he would need to drop in a 60 to 75 amp circuit to the charger. Also he obviously needs to run that into the house calc for new service and often said he would need at least 320 amp service to house. Then he laughed and added “If the feed ped can handle it” meaning that if other people have additional service like an added 100 or 150 amp to a garage or shop, its possible to be told not available.

The future

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Not even close to having the infrastructure in place or even invented yet but they will torture us to give up oil.

I certainly hope you guys aren’t suggesting we need to upgrade our infrastructure. That’s costs money. Imagine what upgrading our infrastructure would do to the economy.

biggill wrote:

I certainly hope you guys aren’t suggesting we need to upgrade our infrastructure. That’s costs money. Imagine what upgrading our infrastructure would do to the economy.

Its precisely what they must do and the writing has been on the wall and the legislators have been warned about our fragile and aging grid for decades yet our elected officials sit on their hands and devise mandates that put further strain on it. I am seriously considering getting a backup generator.

biggill wrote:

I certainly hope you guys aren’t suggesting we need to upgrade our infrastructure. That’s costs money. Imagine what upgrading our infrastructure would do to the economy.

Yes, it’s a good thing that there was a gas station on every corner and all the oil refining and pipelines were all in place BEFORE the gasoline-powered automobile was even invented. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had the infrastructure to allow us to all own cars.

The only saving grace is we have ice vehicles now… so we can wean off them as the infrastructure is built. To think it will be a “clean” process is naive… everybody see the pics of burying the windmill blades that do not decompose ? Yeah that’s cool.

Just take an electric blanket and plug it in if you get stranded

big_g wrote:

They are literally asking folks in Cali not to charge their vehicles… it is overwhelming the grid. Can you imagine even 30% of ice vehicles replaced with electric ???

Hmmm….can you imagine if we reviewed our priorities as a nation and stopped spending more on “defense” than the next 7 industrialized nations combined, and instead invested that money into updating/upgrading our infrastructure? Nah, an aging electric grid will pose no problems down the road. Shoot, should probably just get rid of all those pesky “regulations” so the rest of us can have what they do in Texas….of course should probably have a travel agent on speed dial like Cancun Ted did.

munchy wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>3rdtryguy wrote:</div>
5 hour traffic jam on the east coast, do the electrics just run out of juice from running a heater and sit there dead?

Mine’s never ran out of juice

Is that standard equipment or is it an option.

That’s the Extended Range Arctic Adventurer option. Gives you 2000 mile range or 20 days of idling in one charge.

Just watched a you tube video. Guy blew up his Tesla with a butt load of dynamite. After getting a bid of $22,600 to replace the batteries.

Brent Siebenaler wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>big_g wrote:</div>
They are literally asking folks in Cali not to charge their vehicles… it is overwhelming the grid. Can you imagine even 30% of ice vehicles replaced with electric ???

Hmmm….can you imagine if we reviewed our priorities as a nation and stopped spending more on “defense” than the next 7 industrialized nations combined, and instead invested that money into updating/upgrading our infrastructure? Nah, an aging electric grid will pose no problems down the road. Shoot, should probably just get rid of all those pesky “regulations” so the rest of us can have what they do in Texas….of course should probably have a travel agent on speed dial like Cancun Ted did.

Ummmm what ??? Why are you quoting me ?

Brent Siebenaler wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>big_g wrote:</div>
They are literally asking folks in Cali not to charge their vehicles… it is overwhelming the grid. Can you imagine even 30% of ice vehicles replaced with electric ???

Hmmm….can you imagine if we reviewed our priorities as a nation and stopped spending more on “defense” than the next 7 industrialized nations combined, and instead invested that money into updating/upgrading our infrastructure? Nah, an aging electric grid will pose no problems down the road. Shoot, should probably just get rid of all those pesky “regulations” so the rest of us can have what they do in Texas….of course should probably have a travel agent on speed dial like Cancun Ted did.

Ummmm what ??? Why are you quoting me ? I see your point about defense… the prior administration tried to get the next 7 nations and more to pay their fair share too. They had little support.

Seems there is a time and place where evs make sense. The issue is they are being marketed as a consumer product and pitched as ice vehicles will be a thing of the past. If you talk with anyone that works in the power industry either it’s not possible or the capabilities need to improve unrealistically to provide enough power on the grid. Weather can be an issue like last week with the traffic jam, but doomsday wise also had me thinking if the majority of citizens drove evs and another country knocked out the power whether through hacking, attack, etc then what? Granted gas pumps need to be on also but feel like gas on hand could be quicker than a bunch of evs stranded everywhere.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Matt Wodziak wrote:</div>
Where in the world are you getting the idea that green energy was the cause the TX power outage? Tucker Carlson? Wind contributed to only 13% of the power outages and was mainly due to failure to winterize their wind turbines. Ironically enough it was mainly failure to winterize their power plants and well heads. Places like Iowa seem to have little issue with their wind turbines.

You been under a rock? Their fossil fuel grids were largely taken down due to yearly maintenance. The green energy grid could not support all the demand. This is widely known. It happened once before in 2018 and they had time to address the issue but they didnt. They cannot take down the dirty systems in the summer because of the demand since the clean energy cannot even remotely come close to meeting it. When the demand was peaking the grid was showing signs that serious damage to the system was going to happen so they took some of them had to be taken offline to avoid catastrophic failure.

‘Yearly Maintenance?’ They had been warned their grid wouldn’t stand up to cold temperatures after the Groundhog day blizzard in 2011. And they…didn’t really do anything about it. And they made it even worse by cutting themselves off the national grid, making it difficult to import energy from outside the state. At least their homegrown grid saves everyone money though*!

*Except when the state grid goes down and energy costs go up to $9000/Megawatt hour because they don’t maintain/take necessary precautions.

I don’t think anyone, anywhere, has ever suggested that their green energy grid is large enough to support everything on it’s own today. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t someday. And also has no bearing on the blackout issues they had. They cut themselves off from the national grid, neglected their existing infrastructure:

Gov. Abbott’s appointees to the Public Utility Commission of Texas ended a contract with the Texas Reliability Entity in November 2020, reducing oversight of the grid.[48] In July, Abbott’s comissioners disbanded its Oversight and Enforcement Division, dropping pending cases that ensure reliability.[49] While not a direct cause, the Commission’s minimal oversight of utility companies, limited budget, and voluntary standards restricted its ability to secure consistent performance.[49]

and paid the price for it. It was a failure of state government, hundreds died as a result, and their governor tried to use ‘green energy’ as scapegoat. Likely because his pockets are lined by oil and natural gas billionaires from the great state of Texas.

At least Ted Cruz got a nice vacation in to Mexico while his constituents died waiting for water and power to come back on! Yay Texas!