The FORD Lounge

Cnet states (in part)  "EPA estimates have officially made the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range-Plus the most efficient electric car on sale in the US today.

 The EPA uses a rating called miles per gallon equivalent to show how efficient electric cars and plug-in hybrids are, since they (obviously) don't drink fossil fuels, or drink them part time in a plug-in's case. It's the distance a car can travel electrically on the amount of energy contained in one gallon of gasoline.

 The EPA estimates the Model 3 will return 141 mpge combined.

If you're a little lost in the mpge talk, let me make it super simple: The Tesla Model 3 will go an estimated 141 miles on the amount of energy a single gallon of gas contains. Thats, quite frankly, incredible to think about as most sedans will do a few dozen miles per gallon."

They put in Tesla charging stations at a Fred Meyer store here, I scoffed, who has one around here!

Next time I was in the area there was a Tesla charging. But, that’s the only one I’ve seen around these parts!

ArdWrknTrk wrote

So, are you calling it virtue signalng'

Or, are you saying these engineers recognize the advantages, and are willing to pay the price for them?

Im not calling it virtue signaling. I thought you were.

Anyway, Tesla cars look hideous to me. Look like every other jelly bean car out there. Whats more aerodynamic than a jelly bean? Apparently nothing. Next time your stuck in traffic look around, jelly beans everywhere. Jelly beans with mean looking faces and souless drones driving them, just doing the same thing everyone else is doing. Im a rebel at heart. Thats why I grow a beard, drive crappy vehicles, and dont follow what everyone else is doing.

Now...an all electric bullnose ford.....that I might go for.

Ray Cecil wrote

Anyway, Tesla cars look hideous to me. Look like every other jelly bean car out there. Whats more aerodynamic than a jelly bean? Apparently nothing. Next time your stuck in traffic look around, jelly beans everywhere. Jelly beans with mean looking faces and souless drones driving them, just doing the same thing everyone else is doing. Im a rebel at heart. Thats why I grow a beard, drive crappy vehicles, and dont follow what everyone else is doing.

Thought this was written by me for a second. haha.

Guppy face = a 0.22 drag coefficient....
That beats out every other car, including past champ (and object of hatred) the Toyota Prius.

Tell me again what the figure is for a bullnose?

Ludicrous+ mode = 2.27550 second 0-60 times!
Quicker that any other production car, including the Porsche 918 and the LaFerrari.

That's not soul sucking,  that's heart stopping!

There's a whole American based grassroots industry of body kits for the Teslas.
Don't care about how much power you use at speed? (because friction and air resistance are where the power goes)
You can get a nose and tail to radically change the look.

Teslas have their issues:
Model S 100PD fit and finish aren't on the level of other $120k cars like Mercedes and Audi, but the Model 3 is definitely on par with a similarly priced domestic car.
Serialized components bring up right to repair issues (but, just like Apple, this gets cracked and patched weekly)
At 250 miles I wouldn't have any range anxiety, and these Superchargers can get you to 80% in under a half hour.
If I needed to get to Florida fast I could buy round trip airfare on JetBlue for the price of the tolls I'd have to drive through.
Or, I could do a rental if I was smuggling something....

I just don't see a lot of downside

ArdWrknTrk wrote

At 250 miles I wouldn't have any range anxiety, and these Superchargers can get you to 80% in under a half hour.
If I needed to get to Florida fast I could buy round trip airfare on JetBlue for the price of the tolls I'd have to drive through.
Or, I could do a rental if I was smuggling something....

I just don't see a lot of downside

A few weeks ago Janey and I took a trip down through southeast Oklahoma to see the trees changing and enjoy the "mountains" on our way to New Orleans.  We had no reservations for the night and ultimately wound up in Monroe, LA.

But looking at the map just now I see that we drove over 250 miles while going SE in Oklahoma, but looking on the list of Tesla superchargers I see there are none down that way.  Does that mean we couldn't have gone there?

Janey gets really nervous when the fuel gauge gets below 1/4 tank, so "just making it" is not an option with her.

Ray Cecil wrote

Im not calling it virtue signaling. I thought you were.

Now...an all electric bullnose ford.....that I might go for.

Ok, I failed to address these..

A) Around here -Fairfield county, CT- it is a way for people to show they are being virtuous (without any sacrifice on their part)
A car that comes when you call it, and will park and -practically- drive itself.
You never need to get your hands stinky at the pump, or wait in line.
Little down time due to oil changes, filter and plug tuneups, brake jobs, exhaust work, etc...

B) The whole roller skate body swap is a thing now.
No, it doesn't have a 133" (or 117") wheelbase.
But that may be coming.
Meanwhile, lots of people are swapping Tesla drivelines and in some cases just putting a new body on the skate.
Because of integration the body swap is tough, but look at the Rich Rebuilds YouTube channel for where it is going.

Tesla is building out their network all the time. (see above)

They also control how deep the batteries can be discharged.
Note: They increased range for people close to the California wildfires...
Having that control allows them to guarantee the life of the battery pack, but it also limits available range, just like if you never let your phone go below 15% or over 85%.

Matthew is absolutely right about energy density.
New chemistries are promising faster charges (sulphur) and using less questionable elements like cobalt.
As I said before, there are billions of years of solar energy refined into every gallon of gasoline.
It's going to take time for scientists to meet or exceed that. (but it IS coming IMO)

Right now, the idea of a fuel cell hybrid is a viable idea, and needs no more infrastructure than a propane fill station.
You could fill up in seconds, or plug it in when you got a chance.

I hope to see more OTR trucks using this in the near future.
The advantage of 100% torque is almost overwhelming for semis.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of electric vehicles.  But currently the infrastructure doesn't support the kind of driving I do.  That list is supposedly the latest from Tesla and I can't get out of Oklahoma to the southeast.  And similarly, a few years ago we took the back roads out of Oklahoma to the west, and we couldn't have done that even today with a Tesla.  That's a show-stopper for me.

I had this exact conversation with a friend yesterday, who called to ask what vehicle he should buy in six months or so.  We discussed the driving he does, which originates in SE Oklahoma or NE Texas, and came to the realization that an all-electric vehicle currently won't cut it.

Having said that, the time may be coming when electric vehicles can do it given the work being done on new battery tech.  On the other hand, the fuel cell may beat them out.  Much has to be done to make either happen, but the fuel cell might be the easier one for which to build out the infrastructure.  Last I knew there was no standardization of charging systems for electric vehicles, but that should be an easy thing to do for fuel cells.

If there's one thing that intrigues me about electric vehicles, it's the long term. I wasn't there, but we all know about the oil crisis in the 70s and how people were scrambling for smaller, more fuel efficient cars. Fifteen years later, we started to see soccer moms driving big gas guzzling Suburbans, and Excursions. The majority of the cars in the 90's were less than fuel efficient, and nobody seemed to care.

Anybody remember the EV programs from the 90s? Heck, even the Ford Ranger had an EV variant. But what happened to all of those EV cars? With exception to a few escapees, they were all crushed. Why did it take another ten years for EV vehicles to really lift off again in the US? Lobbyists. Corporate Oil. US Government.

This is gonna be a fun show to watch long term based off of society's previous history.  

ArdWrknTrk wrote

TheScatch wrote

I read an article that said all these people dumping there cars for electric to be more environmentally friendly were actually hurting the environment, that the it was more efficient, and more environmentally friendly to buy an older vehicle and repair it due to the pollution from scrapping and new manufacturing and the supply system of new vehicles.

As with everything there are 50 shades of grey between that black and white.

I, for example, have held onto my truck for 32 years. It's a gross polluter and barely makes double digit fuel mileage.
Its cost of production and delivery were ameliorated years ago, and if I went out and bought a new $50k truck it would be a net positive for the planet.
But, then I'd be saddled with the banks vig every month, pay much more in taxes and insurance, and take less pleasure in fixing simple things.

Buying a lightly used car that's off lease and three years old with under 40k on the clock is a good thing, but I don't see myself doing that either...

But that's what I'm saying, there are a lot of articles and studies on this that say this is not true. Heck maintaining and re powering a vehicle with more efficient cleaner power plants may be a net positive. People are dumping their cars and running to Teslas to save the planet, you have all that pollution that has already been created, and then more to come in the logistics of the new Tesla. Then if you want to address the 1000# Gorilla in the room lol, how often do those batteries need to be replaced and how bad is that for the environment. Its pretty horrible, take a look around for the battery recycling plants (most will be in Mexico) its pretty bad. Then in the US you have to think that most of the electricity is generated by COAL, followed by natural gas, then nuclear.

So in essence you buy an electric car you trade burning one fossil fuel for another. Energy can not be created nor destroyed just transformed so you are literally netting nothing beneficial until you are charging up with green energy. Its just like the cooling fan on your engine, either your engine turns the fan directly, or your engine turns the same amount to charge a battery that in turn turns and electric fan. More EV's without investment in green energy production means more power plants polluting the environment = more pollution. You just don't see it, the popluace becomes numb to it much like the burger in the fridge and how it got that way. Out of sight out of mind.

Now ad your zero net to fossil fuel burning combined with your increase in pollution for new production, and battery recycling and electric cars and this is why studies show that mass adoption of electric vehicles will "increase overall emissions of sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, and particulates, compared with the same number of new internal combustion engines. The simple fact is that, because of stringent emissions standards and low-sulfur gasoline, new gasoline-powered cars and trucks today emit very little pollution, and they will emit even less in the future" (Lesser, Johnathan A: Short Circuit: The High Cost of Electric Vehicle Subsidies, Manhattan Institute).



https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/short-circuit-high-cost-electric-vehicle-subsidies-11241.html
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/05/15/are-electric-cars-worse-for-the-environment-000660
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-used-cars-are-more-ecofriendly/
https://www.dw.com/en/how-eco-friendly-are-electric-cars/a-19441437
https://fee.org/articles/electric-cars-aren-t-nearly-as-green-as-people-think//amp?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8aDwtr2A5gIVuSCtBh0ziA0MEAAYASAAEgJAKPD_BwE

I will say old carbed engines do make good candidates for hydrogen cells.

Gary, look at the strech of Texas from Houston to Dallas.
Plenty of Superchargers.

Tesla has location data on all their cars.
They're going to build out where the demand is, first.

Just because it doesn't fit your use case (today) doesn't mean it won't.
How many miles did you drive between fillups on that trip?

Hydrogen fuel cells in cars is a non-starter.
But LNG filling stations are everywhere.
I don't see any issue doing this TODAY.

Also don't forget the damage done to the environment and the pollution created strip mining lithium for batteries.

Hydrogen cells make more sense. Not much infrastructure to produce, all the parts can be made by recycling older vehicles. And every step of the process can in turn be powered by hydrogen with a by product being pretty much water. Hydrogen can power engines, turn turbines to create electricity etc.

ArdWrknTrk wrote

Hydrogen fuel cells in cars is a non-starter.

I don't agree here. Hyundai has a semi that runs on hydrogen cells, hydrogen trains are going to built in Europe. If it can be done for semis and trains it can be done for cars. "Recent breakthroughs in chemistry and physics have made the creation of hydrogen with electrolysis very economical and greenhouse gas free."

https://tech.hyundaimotorgroup.com/press-release/hyundais-hydrogen-mobility-solution-wins-2020-truck-innovation-award/

http://oceangeothermal.org/archive-old/hydrogen/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkbin0cGA5gIVLCCtBh2PMgqHEAAYAiAAEgKUafD_BwE


I think were looking a massive combination of H2 and green electricity as the future state. Coal plants etc have to go by the wayside for ocean-turbine, geothermal-turbine, solar, and hydro-electric turbine generated electricity. Combine that with the portability of H2 and its a bright future if we can get there.

John Lesser is an oil industry shill writing for a lobbying group.
You're telling me to take his "stuff" at face value???

The gorilla is how distributed grid fuel cells will lessen powerline losses (ever stuck a florescent tube in the ground below high tension lines?) and make carbon capture viable.

NOBODY is making new dirty coal plants.
Investment in renewables is huge and driving production costs to negative numbers almost every day.
Damn right oil and coal don't like this!

Simple fact: Fossil fuels can never be net zero.
There's absolutely no way to make up for (quite literally) billions of years of solar.

Jim - I'm not saying electric vehicles are not good for some people.  They just do not fit in the kind of driving we do.  Our trips frequently aren't planned, and certainly aren't planned around where we can get an electric vehicle charged.  Plus, we like to take the road less traveled.

And speaking of that, we took off west out of Katy TX when it was time to come home because we weren't about to go back into Houston to go north on the interstate.  That took us up into the Hill Country of Texas where Tesla charging stations are few and far between.  In fact, looking at the list I didn't find any where we went.

As for how far we drove between fillups, the little GLK is getting ~35 MPG and we routinely put in 500 miles per tank.

Hydrogen comes from two places.

Electrolysis of water. (Strong bonds mean a net loss of energy to heat and other processes)

Steam reforming methane. Again multiple steps -each costing energy- and the release of the carbon associated with the methane molecule.

Hydrogen is a tiny atom and hard as hell to store due to difussion and embrittlement.
Plus, it has  energy density.
Can't be stored as a liquid without energy intensive super cooling, etc... etc...

Meanwhile, almost every one of us has a propane tank in their yard or under their grill.
THAT makes for easy fueling of a methane fuel cell.

Which is why I said it doesn't fit your use case today

.If a comfortable EV at a comparable price to Janey's Merc had 500 mile range would you consider it?

What if you only made 1 or 2 planned trips a year?
Would you consider renting an ice for those occasions?

TheScatch wrote

"Recent breakthroughs in chemistry and physics have made the creation of hydrogen with electrolysis very economical and greenhouse gas free."

Absolute BS.

When the laws of thermodynamics are broken, you let me know.  

We'll all be flying around like the Jetsons, and nobody will need hydrogen as a combustible fuel.