My Electric vehicle challenge

[Bob Blaylock]

You let me know when someone forces you to get rid of your gas car, and buy an electric.

California bans the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035

The historic rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board on Thursday, will force automakers to speed up production of cleaner vehicles starting in 2026.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Bob Blaylock]

You can't "swap" EV batteries unless you want to take the chassis off the frame and that will take a fuck of a lot longer than a few seconds.

You can't "quick change" an EV battery.

I wonder what it would take to engineer a practical EV in which the battery was easily and quickly swappable.

With electric forklifts, it's pretty routine. The forklift that I drove when I worked at the now-gone Campbell's Soup factory here in Sacramento used a battery that was roughly a cubic yard in size, and weighed about 3,500 pounds. Later in my time at that factory, we had “fast” chargers installed, to which we connected our forklifts when they were not in use, but even they could not charge our forklifts fast enough to keep up with the rate at which we discharged them while using them, so we still had to swap batteries fairly often. before we had these fast chargers put in, we typically had to swap batteries once or twice per shift. Afterward, it was down to maybe once every two or three days. The procedure involved a second forklift, and took maybe five or ten minutes.

There are ways that these forklifts were made, very different from what would work for a street-going car, that made swapping batteries relatively easy and quick. I don't think street-going cars could be made very much like these forklifts, but perhaps some clever engineer can come up with a practical way to make them easy to swap batteries.

If this could be worked out, then I could envision an infrastructure wherein stations would exist, where you could drive your EV there with a nearly-empty battery, have it swapped out for a full battery, and drive off. The station would recharge that battery, and it would be swapped in to a future customer, just as the full battery that you just had put in was some past customer's nearly-empty battery.



The size of the battery itself might be the problem. As I mentioned before, the battery in my forklift was about a cubic yard in size, and weighed about 3,500 pounds. That's more than the weight of a typical compact sedan. I once got it into my head to wonder how much energy it could hold, relative to a quantity of gasoline. On doing some online research, I learned that a gallon of gasoline contains roughly 33.7 kilowatt-hours of energy that can be released by burning it. The battery in my forklift, was nominally 48 volts, with a claimed capacity of 850 amp-hours, which comes to 40.8 kilowatt-hours. That's a battery that weighs more than a car, and it had only slightly more than a gallon-of-gasoline's worth of capacity. Now this was an old-school lead-acid battery, far from the best we have these days as far as capacity relative to size and mass. We've got much better battery technology, that can store more energy in less weight and less volume, but even so, I don't know that a battery with enough capacity for a practical EV can possibly be small enough or light enough to be swapped out like a forklift battery.

 

[nomadic5]

Do this with your gas vehicle

Pull in to the garage at night with an empty tank and when you come back in the morning, it is FULL

too bad poor people cn't afford them but who cares about them?

I forgot

not many

 

[Bob Blaylock]

24 miles left on the fuel gage

At the pump at 5:36

back in the car after fueling at 5:39

349 miles on the gage

Pulling out of the gas station at 5:40

Which electric vehicle on a charger can do the same?

...or, this challenge.
8:00 "A" is in the garage at home in gasoline driven car ready for 20 km commute.
8:00 "B" is in the garage at home with "EV" ready for 20 km commute.
9:00 "A" has spent 30 minutes in traffic jam and will probably arrive at work by 9:30 or so.
9:00 "B" is preparing a cup of coffee at work while the computer gets up to speed. His "EV" is folded up next to his desk. The ebike doesn't need a charge really, but why not do it here for free?

Here's my challenge.

Imagine you're a construction worker. You live in an apartment, where there is no charger available for you at home, and no practical way to install one. Your current project is about eighty miles away. There'll probably be chargers there, when it's finished, but by that time, you'll have moved on to another project. You need a vehicle big enough to carry all your tools, so don't even think about an “E-Bike”.

It takes you, perhaps an hour to an hour and a half to get to work in the morning. Traffic is worse on the way home, that being a time when a lot more people are out and about, so you're looking at maybe two or three or four hours to get home.

So, let's say an hour to get to work, eight and a half hours at work (counting a half hour for lunch) and three hours to get home. About twelve and a half hours total.

When, out of that, are you supposed to find time to stop at a charging facility and wait for several hours for your electric car to recharge? With a real car you can fully refuel it in a few minutes.

 

[rightwinger]

too bad poor people cn't afford them but who cares about them?

I forgot

not many

Show me the difference in price

Poor people can’t afford a College education or healthcare and all you guys whine about is they can’t afford a top of the line EV

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Rain? Water falling from the sky? Does that scare someone? As for snow, well, that's just a good day to work from home and avoid slipping off the road or getting run into by someone who doesn't know how to drive in the snow.

How does any real man who does any real work—such as a construction worker—work from home?

 

[Bob Blaylock]

You [pknopp] are either really dumb, or blind.....

Both.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Lol, remember when being a conservative meant wanting people to mind their own damn business? If ya don't want an EV don't damn buy one. Don't wanna be trans don't be one. Don't wanna drink bud don't drink one. What I do is none of your damn business. Mind your own damn business. I don't really drink alcohol but I went to the bar on Saturday and had a bud just to piss ya all off. Give me a smile. That's my message to the right. Now here is my message to the left leave my damn guns alone.

You side is the side that does not want those of us who need real cars to be easily able to have them. Yours is the side that wants to force us all into EVs that, for many of us, simply are not practical.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

You poor guy. Looks like your only choice is to go live in a cave, and eat nuts and berries. The rest of us will enjoy the advances science has given us.

Yours is the side that is trying to force that, by trying to deny us the established technology that enables us to live better.

 

[Unkotare]

How does any real man who does any real work—such as a construction worker—work from home?

 

[Dadoalex]

24 miles left on the fuel gage

At the pump at 5:36

back in the car after fueling at 5:39

349 miles on the gage

Pulling out of the gas station at 5:40

Which electric vehicle on a charger can do the same?

I am reminded of the fellow with a wagon and horse saying that if his horse gets hungry he can stop in any field and eat.

 

[Unkotare]

I am reminded of the fellow with a wagon and horse saying that if his horse gets hungry he can stop in any field and eat.

And if the fellow gets hungry he can stop and eat the horse.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Did Murdock ever work from home?

My memory, of that movie, and of the TV show on which it was based, is that every adventure began with some clever new way of breaking Murdock out of his “home” to join the rest of them.

 

[pknopp]

+


It is over others seeking to deny us the choice that is by far the best for our needs.

No one has denied you anything.

Those who want to force us into electric vehicles that are not capable of serving the needs of many of us, nearly as well as real cars can.

And it isn't going to happen anytime even remotely soon if ever.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

No one has denied you anything.
And it isn't going to happen anytime even remotely soon if ever.

California bans the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035

The historic rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board on Thursday, will force automakers to speed up production of cleaner vehicles starting in 2026.

www.cnbc.com

 

[pknopp]

California bans the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035

The historic rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board on Thursday, will force automakers to speed up production of cleaner vehicles starting in 2026.

www.cnbc.com

There will be gas vehicles available in California for a very long time.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

I won't buy an EV for now. The battery is worth 30% of the car's value and last eight years. The average car today has been on the road twelve years.

 

[pknopp]

I won't buy an EV for now. The battery is worth 30% of the car's value and last eight years. The average car today has been on the road twelve years.

They are warrantied for eight years. That does not mean that's how long they last.