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Hybrid cars in ski area

x10003q

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I believe they can be charged from household electric outlets. But it might take all night. The supercharge station are the fast chargers so you can charge up quickly and go.

So You should be able to plug in at the townhouse/condo/lodge. Now, if this electric car business gets popular, condo/lodging MAY put a meter on those plug-ins and charge for it? I don't know

Super Charger Stations are 30 minutes to get to 170 miles. That will be fun on a Friday night with 2 kids in the back. With household it takes a lot longer to charge.

Plugging in at a townhouse/lodging could be a problem if there are no outlets near the parking. I wouldn't want some renter running a 100 foot extension cord fire hazard from my townhouse sucking on the electric.
 

Rowsdower

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THIS IS STUPID. Why is Tesla on fire?

Electricity is better than foreign oil which results in wars and caring about places in the Middle East. Electricity costs currently result in equivalent of 99 mpg. Old plants are going offline. Demand will rise. Clearly, energy plants need to be constructed in the future.

I would much rather have a local industry to this country producing electricity than foreign supplies.

Translating energy usage for transportation to electricity generation would require a massive amount of new capacity. Not to mention the demand on non-renewable sources where 80%+ of that energy would come from. Think natural gas is cheap now? Wait until its the primary energy source for transportation, home heating, and electricity generation, not just in the US but globally. Whatever replaces fossil fuels is going to be so out of the box we haven't even reckoned on it yet. It would need to make current renewables orders of magnitude more efficient. That kind of technology doesn't exist yet, at least not in any form that can be feasibly implemented.

And by "Tesla is on fire" I guess you mean their stock prices. Please. It's overvalued and overhyped. Musk will make a bunch of money and the status quo will go unchanged like every other flash in the pan experimental venture into "revolutionizing" personal transportation. The fact remains that the company isn't even planning on boosting production beyond 10,000 units for delivery/quarter as the demand isn't there.

But hey, this is why investments into research are so important.
 

DoublePlanker

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Translating energy usage for transportation to electricity generation would require a massive amount of new capacity. Not to mention the demand on non-renewable sources where 80%+ of that energy would come from. Think natural gas is cheap now? Wait until its the primary energy source for transportation, home heating, and electricity generation, not just in the US but globally. Whatever replaces fossil fuels is going to be so out of the box we haven't even reckoned on it yet. It would need to make current renewables orders of magnitude more efficient. That kind of technology doesn't exist yet, at least not in any form that can be feasibly implemented.

And by "Tesla is on fire" I guess you mean their stock prices. Please. It's overvalued and overhyped. Musk will make a bunch of money and the status quo will go unchanged like every other flash in the pan experimental venture into "revolutionizing" personal transportation. The fact remains that the company isn't even planning on boosting production beyond 10,000 units for delivery/quarter as the demand isn't there.

But hey, this is why investments into research are so important.

I guess I am the stupid one. So electric cars eventually just make up some small piece of market.
 

x10003q

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THIS IS STUPID. Why is Tesla on fire?

Electricity is better than foreign oil which results in wars and caring about places in the Middle East. .


Oil companies are lobbying hard to change the restrictions on exporting US oil. The US is awash in oil.

Electricity costs currently result in equivalent of 99 mpg. Old plants are going offline. Demand will rise. Clearly, energy plants need to be constructed in the future.

I would much rather have a local industry to this country producing electricity than foreign supplies.

Electricity cost do not result in the equivalent of 99mpg. The EPA has calculated 1 gal= 33.7kWh. The costs are different all across the US. The Tesla currently has an 89 mpge combined.
 

abc

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But hey, this is why investments into research are so important.
Commercial product research has a very long odd. Majority of them won't generate profit. But the one that works will make the owner (and his backer) very very rich.

Investors to all the other failed research will lose their money. Anyone who think otherwise is delusional (doesn't mean "investment advisor" won't pedal them though).

A lot of the research used to be funded by tax payer money (e.g. man on the moon). When the government research money dried up, they tried to rope investors in. That's why the strange government funded private venture going on all over the place (not saying Telsa is)
 

jack97

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Commercial product research has a very long odd. Majority of them won't generate profit. But the one that works will make the owner (and his backer) very very rich.

Investors to all the other failed research will lose their money. Anyone who think otherwise is delusional (doesn't mean "investment advisor" won't pedal them though).

A lot of the research used to be funded by tax payer money (e.g. man on the moon). When the government research money dried up, they tried to rope investors in. That's why the strange government funded private venture going on all over the place (not saying Telsa is)

I do not know of a case where in recent times, private investment got the whole rolling on new tech. In the past, such as the electric grid the government had to step in and help it out. Even for the recent high tech boom we had for the last twenty years, venture capital would leverage matured research initially funded by the government. That's their mode of operation, they do usually do not have funds to start things from the ground up.

All electric motors have a ways to go.... I was seriously thinking about the hybrids but its still too costly for an all season vehicle let alone for three season. It might have ease the financial burden if they still had a tax credit or better increase the tax credit. But the current admin will increase energy cost even more so... that's the irony of the situation.
 

abc

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I do not know of a case where in recent times, private investment got the whole rolling on new tech.
But that's my point!

In the past, taxpayer money funded the bulk of research that ultimately become commercial success. But those money is drying up faster than the snowmaking pond in November!

Even for the recent high tech boom we had for the last twenty years, venture capital would leverage matured research initially funded by the government. That's their mode of operation, they do usually do not have funds to start things from the ground up.
Look back into the recent history of the internet boom, private company funded research did contribute significantly to the success of our economy if not the company that sponsored it: Bell Lab (Unix) & Xerox (GUI) comes to the top of list. Though it took a government funded research to help make the whole thing takes off: the www part (born in CERN, a government funded research facility)
 

BenedictGomez

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Think natural gas is cheap now? Wait until its the primary energy source for transportation, home heating, and electricity generation, not just in the US but globally.

Ten or twenty years from now people will marvel at how cheap natural gas stocks are now. Get involved.

I guess I am the stupid one. So electric cars eventually just make up some small piece of market.

I wouldnt call you "stupid", that's a bit harsh. What it sounds like is you have swallowed the false and over-promised and over-hyped benefits of these current alternative energies (solar, wind, hybrid cars, etc..), put forth by politicians and others who financially benefit from them.

I was seriously thinking about the hybrids but its still too costly for an all season vehicle let alone for three season. It might have ease the financial burden if they still had a tax credit or better increase the tax credit. But the current admin will increase energy cost even more so... that's the irony of the situation.

Which goes right to our debt (not that those who push for these "tax credits" care a whit about financial debt).

No thank you.
 

Glenn

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I think we'll need to see improvements in the grid before we can look at electric cars in a broader sense. If everyone who owns a car is plugged in at night, it's going to create a helluva load on the grid. It'll be like those days when it's hot and A/C usage is high. Oh, and they'll find a way to tax it to. With technology, it probably won't be that hard to figure out if the juice is going to your dryer or your car.
 

abc

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I think we'll need to see improvements in the grid before we can look at electric cars in a broader sense. If everyone who owns a car is plugged in at night, it's going to create a helluva load on the grid. It'll be like those days when it's hot and A/C usage is high. Oh, and they'll find a way to tax it to. With technology, it probably won't be that hard to figure out if the juice is going to your dryer or your car.
They already have something and it's far simpler than that, peak/off-peak pricing.

When I bought my current house, my home inspector handed me a sheet of calculation with the time it takes to recoup the cost if I choose to buy a timer for my water heater to take advantage of off-peak rates. It didn't take very long. (though I ended up buying a programmable thermostat for the home heating part first).

If a lot of people owns electric car, the current "peak" period load would go up. But if power company can make a bigger gap at peak/off-peak rate to entice people to put a timer on their car battery charger. That thing draws a lot more juice so the saving will be bigger. I bet a lot of people will do just that, set the timer to charge in the middle of the night to save on electric bills. That would have the benefit of balancing the power need fluctuation of the grid overall.

Electric cars aren't the magic bullet some advocates want to population to believe. But it DOES have many benefits. Trouble is, there's so much trash talk in the news out there people can't figure out what's real and what's just hype, which is quite unfortunate. It doesn't help any one who's trying to get the technology accepted by the average user.
 

steamboat1

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How does one charge their car if they live in the city & have to park their cars blocks from their residence? I mean it's great if you own a home with a driveway with somewhere to plug in but the majority of people living in the city are either apartment dwellers or live in brownstones with no driveway.They don't have access to an electrical outlet on the street. Isn't the big advantage of electric cars supposed to be for short commute city driving?
 

Scruffy

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OTOH, electric cars can be a form of energy storage for renewable energy. One of the biggest problems with solar and wind is the sun does not shine at night and the wind does not always blow. How to capture the energy so that it can be distributed when needed is one of the cruxes. A fleet of batteries in cars owned by the public can serve as a mass storage device. Of course, that would mean charging your car during peak times.
 

abc

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OTOH, electric cars can be a form of energy storage for renewable energy. One of the biggest problems with solar and wind is the sun does not shine at night and the wind does not always blow. How to capture the energy so that it can be distributed when needed is one of the cruxes. A fleet of batteries in cars owned by the public can serve as a mass storage device. Of course, that would mean charging your car during peak times.
I don't think night time is peak time.

How does one charge their car if they live in the city & have to park their cars blocks from their residence?
If they park in random street location, no I don't see any option.

But actually more people park their car in a commercial garage. So they should be able to charge in the garage. Garage may charge a different rate for electric cars, or they may not since most electric cars are smaller and take up less space which offsets the expense of electricity.
 

abc

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I didn't say that! reread!
You mean charging during peak GENERATING time! i.e. during the day. OK, I got that wrong.

However, day time is usually also the peak energy consumption time too. Don't see the point of adding car battery charge to the load.

The issue with many of the new renewable power generating technology isn't to USE the surplus energy but rather store them to be fed back into the grid when the power plant isn't generating. Car batteries doesn't really have much to do with that.
 

Scruffy

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You mean charging during peak GENERATING time! i.e. during the day. OK, I got that wrong.

However, day time is usually also the peak energy consumption time too. Don't see the point of adding car battery charge to the load.

The issue with many of the new renewable power generating technology isn't to USE the surplus energy but rather store them to be fed back into the grid when the power plant isn't generating. Car batteries doesn't really have much to do with that.

What if you could store surplus renewable energy at the consumer end? If you get enough electric cars sucking on the grid when renewables are peaking, you solve the storage problem, and the electric company has made a sale in the process. The tricky part is, the peak production time for reneables ( at least with solar and wind ) is usually peak usage for everything else. The problem to solve is segmenting and pricing the recharge of the electric car differently during peak renewable production times to incentivise consumers to 1) buy electric cars and 2) to charge during the day for a reduced rate.
 

DoublePlanker

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I just remember how I got very high mileage in Prius on highway. The technique is to constantly vary speed. Accelerate to something like 70mph then coast to 55 mph. Do this repeatedly. Try to accelerate going downhill. Avoid accelerating going uphill. I found this to be a bit of work and sometimes other cars get in the way. But this is how I was able to achieve much higher fuel economy. The car does ok with cruise control set to 65mph but does much better by varying speed between 70mpg and 55mph. I think due to getting more coasting time. Perhaps I will try this soon to see what I can get.
 

abc

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What if you could store surplus renewable energy at the consumer end? If you get enough electric cars sucking on the grid when renewables are peaking, you solve the storage problem, and the electric company has made a sale in the process. The tricky part is, the peak production time for reneables ( at least with solar and wind ) is usually peak usage for everything else. The problem to solve is segmenting and pricing the recharge of the electric car differently during peak renewable production times to incentivise consumers to 1) buy electric cars and 2) to charge during the day for a reduced rate.
Power companies offer differential pricing reflecting the mis-match between generating pattern and usage pattern.

Right now, the pricing structure is reflecting a flat, time independent generating technology. Hence the reduced rate at night when usage is low.

If renewable ever become the dominant generating technology, the pricing structure WILL BE reversed. The peak rate will be applied at night when usage outstrips generation. People will be re-programming their hot water heater to fire during the day instead. That's a energy storage device by default.

And yes, those owning electric cars will TRY to charge it during lower rate period. But many of them won't be able to, because they're DRIVING the car during the day.
 
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