Very interesting
 

Engineering point of view.......



So......what do you think ? 🤔


INTERESTING - ONE OTHER QUESTION. IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE,
THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT
IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO
MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT
PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE!

In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car:

Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those
things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms
of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it.
This is the first article I’ve ever seen and tells the story pretty
much as I expected it to.

Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things
yet they’re being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put
engineering and math to paper.

At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro executive.
I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got
serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed
out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging
system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is
equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25
homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than
three houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have
electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.

This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential
infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials
promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things
and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new
windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire
delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until
we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an
'OOPS...!' and a shrug.

If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are
eco-friendly, just read the following Note: If you ARE a green person,
read it anyway. It’s enlightening.

Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and
he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted
only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline
engine.” Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it
ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and
the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.

It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10
hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5
hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging
time) would be 20 mph.

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of
electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The
cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I
looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies
with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh
= $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles =
$0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a
similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per
gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs
$46,000-plus So the American Government wants loyal Americans not to do
the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more
than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive
across the country.


Please note , I have not researched these comments I only pass them on
Oz

Thanks for the article.

I have never ran the numbers but I always have been skeptical of these electrics. Of all the people that I have had discussions with, these people seem to have this illusion that the electricity to charge their cars falls out of the sky, free of charge.

:bash2:

My brother in law has a Prius and it's getting pretty old, he said it will need new batteries in the next couple years and I believe he said it was about $7,000 to have them replaced. I'm sure that all these years of getting 50mpg has more than paid for it but that sure is a big chunk of change to drop on a car that old, I told him he should just sell it now while the batteries are still decent and let it be someone else's problem.

Then there is the ethanol debate.
Most of the corn I raise goes to the local processor.
I till, fertilize, spray, harvest and truck the corn.
then it is processed and trucked again to the refineries to blend .
Yet they say it is efficient to burn it and cleaner for air?
What about all the fuel I burn and chemical I apply to grow it,
is that not considered?
I don't know, but money is being made and it is not going to the grower.

They talk of mandating electric cars in California in the future, The grid will not handle it as been stated.
They are dismantling coal in favor nuclear, wind and solar, yer the nuclear waste is stored in temporary storage as there is no safe, long term place to store it.
Wind is not self sustaining without subsidies,
oh and I recently read where in my state they are taxing individuals that put solar panels on their roof or properties.
They say it increases the property values and they want to raise the valuation, thus raising the property tax.

I pay only $.0485 per kwh (yes $.0485) for the next 3 years. The county I live in lets the commissioners seek bids for electric power. The price is lock in for 3 years.

What would the price be for corn if it wasn't for the ethanol plants???

No one is telling you that you have to grow corn.

The last fill up on E85 I paid $1.70 a gallon. For me it is cheaper (cost per mile) to run E85 than is is to run E10 gas. Non ethanol gas around here is $.40 to $.50 a gallon higher.

Let’s not forget how dirty it really is (nature resources and heavy metals, etc) to manufacture batteries and solar panels!

I think Tesla's are pretty cool cars and launch off the line super fast. I see more and more of them around my area but they are too much $$ for me.

I don't think that article is from the US. Most homes I have been in have at least a 200 amp panel and we pay way less for a KWH. My power is about 10.5 cents / KWH. The average in the US is 12 cents / KWH.

I often wondered about those cars not paying the gas taxes but still using the roads. Every commercial building we work in has charging stations and they are always full. You pull in, swipe your card, go to work and come out in a few hours and move it so someone else can charge up.

I believe I heard that Porsche will stop production of 100% gas vehicles and start making only gas/hybrid or all electric soon.

In my state:
Electric car and plug-in hybrid owners pay annual
surtaxes of $135 and $47, respectively, to compensate
for non-payment of the road-use fee on gasoline.
Derived from here:
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/m...1_345554_7.pdf

Urban areas are for electrics. In my rural area it’s 28mi to town. I’m never going to own a hybrid. My electricity at the farm is also three times what it is at the shop in town.

No one is telling me yet to grow corn, and @ 72, I prolly should sell my old vintage tractors/equipment for scrap, and sit on the porch and let nature take it's course.
But I enjoy being productive and doing what I always did, although at a much reduced acreage.
The thought if sitting in a chair playing board games is not my idea of retirement, but I'm sure all will have different ideas.
As a good steward of the soil, it is advised to rotate crops, IE: soybeans/corn, or other crops.

My son has a late model pickup truck that can use E85 fuel as per manufacture.
For him, the reduced mileage/power of E85 does not pencil out vs the reduced fuel cost of E85.
Cost ways, it it is better to use just regular E10 which is commonly available.

I would be thanking ethanol instead of complaining about ethanol if I was you. The price of corn would be 30 to 40% less than it is now. Worth saying again.....you don't have to grow corn for ethanol plants.

The family farm I grew up on had a 3 crop rotation program for years. We grew dent corn ( animal feed-same corn use to make ethanol)-wheat and soybeans. Quit growing wheat because we would loose around 30% of the crop because of spring flooding. Every time we tried 2nd crop beans on the wheat acres we usually get an early frost. We now have a 2 crop rotation program now-soybeans and popcorn.

I need the price of E85 to be $.50 to $.55 a gallon cheaper to make E85 cost effective. I do not notice any difference in power in my 2012 Chevy 2500 HD. My is mainly used to haul loads and pull trailers weighing 3000 to 9500 pounds.

Dale, I don't mean to debate with you..... but corn in 1974 was about $4/bu..... which is about where it is now. If you look at a 45 year average, you see a spike in price right about in the 05 area, then down, then back up for a few years.... but 12 was a bad year for corn in the US. Weather killed the crop, and prices spiked. Looking at the graph of price, and the current price.... I'm going to say without ethanol, the price would pretty much be the same, which is shit BTW. How many other commodities are worth basically the same as they were over 40 years ago? Grain prices are ridiculous. Cost went up to grow, but market price has stayed pretty much the same. I blame the chemical companies for the price of grain/corn. I really don't think ethanol affects it much at all.

Reference:
http://www.macrotrends.net/2532/corn...cal-chart-data

Jon,
I'm not here to debate with you......

Back in the late 70's early 80's I was looking at buying 175 acres. I decided against it because of the poor price of corn-beans and wheat. Interest rates that the bank were charging and the problems IH were having at that time was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
I look over your chart.
September 23, 1974 corn sold for $3.865. That was the high for year 1974. Low price for the year was $2.995. That was January 14, 1974. The September price didn't stay there very long.

Looking at your chart corn had to wait till March of 1996 to make that $4 mark.

The price of a product will drop if you have too much product chasing too little demand.
The price of a product will increase if you have too little product chasing a high demand.

Mid western farmers can grow lots and lots of corn. Local grain elevator I used to haul corn to has a price of March corn at $3.57. Be interesting to see what the price would be if there wasn't any ethanol plants.

After working in the utility industry for 30+ years as a mechanic and also managing the NGV (natural gas vehicle) program for 6 of those years, I have learned a lot about the misconceptions and "dark marketing" that alternatively powered cars are hyped as.

Compressed natural gas is relatively cheap compared to other fuels, but the conversion hardware is expensive and the cost of home compression (a selling point) puts the total payback out beyond 15 years. LNG - Liquefied natural gas is even more expensive and there are few refilling stations so far.

Electric vehicles have all the costs as mentioned in the above posts. Higher initial cost, battery replacement costs, and one cost not mentioned - low or no resale value due to the cars battery age if not replaced. The electric car industry loves to call electric cars green and zero emission. Both are false. Electric cars may not have tail pipe emissions, but the power plants generating the electricity do. We referred to them as REV. Remote emiting vehicles. And how green is it when we have all the heavy metal environmental issues of battery mfg. and recycling?

Treated gasoline engines producing low emissions will most likely be the best option for a few more years until hydrogen fuel cells are perfected, although hydrogen has it's own problems.

Nothing like a good ethanol debate.:biggrin2:

These are the only corn squeezins that I recommend! :biggrin2::beer2:

The electric Nissan Leaf I had would go 4 miles per KWh, so at .10 /KWh I can drive 40 miles for $1. Most economy cars need 1 gallon of gas to drive 40 miles which might cost $2.50

Solar panels are getting cheaper and better by the day so the power to run an electric car will continue to get cleaner as solar replaces coal.

Electric cars don't have to be charged at 70 amps as was stated earlier. I plugged my Leaf into a standard 15amp, 110 outlet to charge it up each night. When you turn off the TV and all the lights in the house in the evening that's when your electric car should begin to charge so we don't need extra electrical capacity.

The batteries are expensive but they are getting cheaper and better all the time. If the batteries can last 200,000 miles then it won't be an issue. Some batteries don't make it that long but some do.

The gasoline tax will probably be moved to an electricity tax, a registration tax, vehicle tax etc. I wouldn't worry about Uncle Sam figuring out a way to get paid.

Electric motors are more reliable, powerful and efficient than combustion engines. There is almost no maintenance to perform on an electric car since they have no transmissions, radiators, or motor oil, fuel injectors, mufflers etc. They slow down with re-generative braking without using the brake pads and the energy from re-gen charges the battery.

Electric cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats, planes etc are coming soon. Speak to someone who has experience before making your mind up about it. Back about 100 years ago some people were afraid of gas engines but they got over it eventually.

I had to get rid of the Leaf because I wanted to drive farther than 70 miles per day. I'll get another electric car in a few years when the prices drop and I can drive over 200 miles per charge.

I would love to see true numbers for cost of electricity produced by wind and solar. Also a true price for a gallon of ethanol. The government subsidizes these things very much and where do those dollars come from? I'm in the heating and cooling business. The other day at a meeting with a manufacture. I was told the government set standards that they can't meet. Oh that's okay they just pay $200 fine per unit until they meet the standard. Thus far none of the manufactures can meet the standard. $$$$$$ for other green items to make them look better.