(Edit) All seriousness aside, electric vehicles are a great idea (Look up Detroit electric). Problem is that batteries suck-shit-in-hell.

I've been working with alternative (everything) for years now. It'd take a reset of the way everybody lives, and not always in a bad way.

With the goobermunt meddling, etc, people like Elon Musk are just milking the goob's (and people's) tit.

(Edit 2) My highest NatGas bill here in NE IN was ~$30 this winter. I heat with NatGas.

I'm not buying an electric car until that happens.

I'll never buy an electric car. Environ-whacko nonsense. Check the EROI. Same with those BS windmills.

When is the army switching to electric tanks?

F#ck them. When's the last time the military protected your freeeedums?

Some guy over at ZH said we should send all the effed up batteries to Gretta. He should get the Nobel Prize.

Esso

She could stand more lithium in her diet.

Dakmar

ROTFLOL

I want one of the 2015 VW diesel trucks that the EPA killed for their corporate parnters. 60-70 MPG and good power. Eric Peters wrote a piece about it.

Esso, your nick reminds me of the gas stations when I was a kid. For some reason I used to love it when we pulled into a gas station. I knew all the signs. My favorite was Mobil's winged Pegasus.

I just looked it up, the gas tower was 378 feet tall, considerably more than 10 stories. You could see it long before you got anywhere near town.

Jest askin.

I remember the Pegasus from when I was really little, it was one of the three major landmarks in Kokomo, the others being the 10 story gas tower and the Sherman tank in Foster Park.

I remember the gas tower well. We used to see it long before reaching Kokomo when traveling north up US 31.

Do you remember Old Ben in Highland Park? My dad worked for PSI out of Highland Park for several years in the 60's. He and I toured Kokomo last year after he recovered from a long illness. Saw Old Ben, PSI which is now Duke Power, my old Little League ballpark, and where the gas tower used to be. And our old house -- still standing -- which was 80+ years old 50 years ago.

How are e-cars any improvement when the power is still coming from oil and coal? Bad enuff are bad eon the environment, and can you imagine people using and discarding these by the millions?

They're not. Besides that, the electric power generating and distribution grid couldn't handle more than a small percentage of cars switching from gasoline to electric power. Eric Peters figures that's why fedgov is pushing (and subsidizing) electric vehicles (EVs) as replacements for internal combustion (IC) powered vehicles -- to limit our mobility and freedom.

Just manufacturing an electric car is un-green due to the required lithium mining, which is reportedly done by child slaves. And EVs are are inferior to IC vehicles in almost every meaningful way. An EV is appropriate for only a small subset of drivers.

An EV is appropriate for only a small subset of drivers.

Like grannies who only drive to the grocery store? ') Thanks for a properly crushing, bludgeoning, pulverizing summary of this insufferable fad.

Like grannies who only drive to the grocery store?

Yes, for people who NEVER need to travel far, an EV can work. But alas, lots of those folks live in cities in apartments where there's no place to plug the thing in down on the street. And even if there was a plug-in (as we say in the South), JarDavius would cut and steal the cord every night.

They killed VW's diesels because they would have killed EVs.

The autopilot EVs will run around in the cities as cabs.

I'm skeptical that that could be accomplished with an acceptable level of safety at a justifiable cost.

They killed VW's diesels because they would have killed EVs.

Yes, and that's sad, because diesels are excellent in many vehicular applications. (I used to work at Cummins Engine Company about a hundred years ago.)

Musk is what my economist friend in Chile calls a "rent seeker".

How are e-cars any improvement when the power is still coming from oil and coal?

Current electric motors can have a near unity power factor (meaning a near 100% efficiency), whereas, internal combustion engine cars have about a 20% efficiency, at best. The rest goes out as heat through the engine block, radiator, brakes, etc.

The biggest problem is crappy batteries. They suck. EROI on them suck.

It boils down to EROI (energy returned on (energy) invested). Start to finish, from when the first scoop of iron ore comes out of the ground, to when the car gets puked out the end of a factory to you. You have to count everything.

Even with low efficiency of int. comb. engines, the EROI is much better.

I'm trying to explain a couple college degrees and a lifetime of work in industries, it's hard.

Trust me, electric cars, and other doo-dads are cool as hell, but there's no viable alternative to fossil fuels, not yet, may never be.

Please bear in mind, your toaster, lights, computer, etc, are powered by fossil fuels in some part. It's done at a central location, on a massive scale (efficiency of scale).

We're not talking about a cell phone battery, rather several trillion of them. I hope that helps.

Ah, hell, I have no idea what I'm talking about. Call that deluded child Gretta and have her save the effin' world. She can see the CO2 in the air.

It will be done with visual recognition, which is a statistical problem. The computers will get fast enough to crunch enough data to recognize moving things and people, even people doing stupid human pet tricks. Reflections in glass windows is the current challenge. That will probably use the addition of radar-like topography sensors.

That is interesting about energy efficiency, tho. 20% on gas cars is a scandal, but then fireplaces are terrible too -- right?

Just accounting for the vagaries of weather and lighting is a huge challenge. It's impossible to program a computer to account for the all the situations that might arise. A computer can see someone in the street, or even analyze someone's path and predict that he might shortly be in the street. But it's a lot harder for a computer to know that a little kid might decide to chase that just thrown and missed baseball into the street, like you and I would know. Or that somebody assaulting somebody by the side of the road might decide to throw her out in front of a passing car.

Eric Peters, who reviews new cars, was aghast when a new car he was recently driving just decided to brake and stop suddenly in the middle of the road. For no known reason. "Collision avoidance" or some such.

Radar, GPS, cameras, and what not -- all working together -- still won't be as perceptive or as smart as a real person.

And the power plant that burns oil or natural gas to produce the electricity doesn't run anywhere near 100%. efficiency.

Right, but generating power on a large scale is many orders of magnitude better than, say, a little gasoline generator in your back yard. It is very efficient though.

And there are distribution losses. Etc.

Nikola Tesla knew what he was doing when he discovered alternating current (AC) over Edison's direct current (DC).

AC is easy to convert up or down in voltage with transformers (those cans hung on utility poles that the Africans steal for cooking oil). Not kidding. The folks are stealing them and discarding all the worthless copper and iron in them (magnety stuff) and using the PCB coolant to cook their fries.

DC's great, but it doesn't travel well over distance though, and at higher voltages, DC will clamp you to it and BBQ you.

Distribution losses are part of the game, you try to minimize them.

You can't harness the power of the Sun in a small space like a battery, well, you can, but I wouldn't be comfortable with everybody driving around with a nuclear reactor under their hood.

LOL -- you make a case, sort of, then throw in the towel

I never give up.

I've been run over when I was 4. I still remember doing sommer-saults under the dry cleaning van, some 55 years later. Needed stitches on my head. Ol' Dr. Weber came to the house and plied his trade. Probably cost my folks $25 for that. The driver of the truck was probably the first DWI case ever.

I fractured my skull in a bike race. Dad was still alive, I'm guessing I was about 12.

Been shot, blown up in a foreign country, hit head-on by a texting granny disseminating world-shattering info to a four year-old girl, probably other things, but I don't reflect on it much if I don't have to.

WuFlu? Shit, it'd be my luck that some bug one-trillionth my size takes me down. That's why I don't play the lottery. I'd probably win the damned thing with my luck. Got enough tax problems already. Am I scared? No effin' way.

That is interesting about energy efficiency, tho. 20% on gas cars is a scandal...

No, internal combustion engines are just that way. No such thing as an adiabatic ICE (ask Smokey Yunick about that).

...but then fireplaces are terrible too -- right?

Can't tell you about wood-fired ones, except that they're carbon- neutral. I'd rather have the trees unless they're dead or going to waste. They're "renewable" after all.

My fireplace is a NatGas non-vented unit claiming 99%+ efficiency (yes, I have CO detectors). My gas stove moves the CO reading when I cook spaghetti water (probably due to flame impingement), but the gas fireplace doesn't. One Btu in, .999 Btu out. Last I read, they're being outlawed in several places.

I guess that's how I can heat my house than less than $30/mo, including my gas stove.

...then throw in the towel

I'm not gonna beat up a 17 year-old mentally deranged/retarded girl. I'm funny that way.

Great info! Thanks.

Don't thank me, thank WuFlu. I'm bored off my ass.

I used to love staying home until goob told me I have to. I guess I'm just obstinate.

A few years ago I designed the battery management system (the hardware and some of the firmware) for an electric car for Jay Leno. (Celebrity means less than nothing to me; I wouldn't cross the street to meet any athlete, entertainer, etc. of any stripe. I mention Leno only because his car fanaticism seems to be well known.) We took a new car (a PT Cruiser, as I recall), removed the drive train, installed a variable speed AC motor and drive, and stuffed Li-ion battery packs into every nook and cranny -- some existing, and some we fabricated. Each battery pack had 8 cells and a controller board that charge balanced the cells and communicated over an optically isolated CAN bus to a master controller. Each pack also had 2 thermistors to monitor the cell temperatures. 12 packs, 96 cells as I recall. The main controller would disconnect the motor drive if any cell discharged too low or any pack got too hot. And it would disconnect the charger if any cell charged too high or got too hot. The main controller drove a dash-mounted display that displayed cell voltages, temperatures, and state of charge (the "fuel gauge").

We used a DC-DC converter to get 12V power for the vehicle's lights and accessories from the ~375V battery pack.

The shop guys trailered the vehicle up to New York City. In a hurry.

I had kind of the same idea years ago, but using a Grumman-bodied Mail truck which were built on Chevy S-10 chassis, using the big, flat roof with solar panels on it.

It would've been an easy retrofit for a prototype, cheap and efficient since mail trucks don't need to be much more than NEVs. In the city, they don't need to go much faster than 40mph.

The idea was a bit ahead of it's time, the proposals went nowhere, and I'm no Elon Musk with his cult following. The battery tech wasn't there yet, and the $/Watt on panels was still too high. I couldn't get funding and the program went nowhere.

My dream car for in-town would be one of those new four-wheelers (don't know the exact terminology) made by John Deere, Honda, etc. with a cab, A/C, heat and basic usability, kind of like my '93 GMC Sonoma, sans the 4.3 litre V-6 Vortac (three quarters of a 5.7 V-8, 13mpg, ~60k mi). They're illegal for on-road use. (Edit) I could live with a 60mph max velocity in town.

My work truck that I bought and outfitted just before the accident is a 2013 Toyota Tacoma base, equipped nicely, with manual windows & locks, etc. Less than 10k on the clock to date.

A couple months before the panicdemic, I found a sweet little 2015 Scion iQ in Denver. Low miles, NDH, right colors, right price, perfect. I arranged a flight from FWA to DEN, and the SOB dealer sold it out from under me. I did get all my money back from everybody. Chase Private Client takes pretty good care of me in that regard.

Eh, easy come, easy go. I sure as hell aren't flying anywhere now.

The world out there was a dangerous place 55 years ago, it's 3 or 10 times as much now thanks to cell phones, drugs etc -- why I do as little driving as possible. Road rage is another symptom of an ameriKa whose foundations have been hacked away by fleshly devils.

I sure as hell aren't flying anywhere now.

I used to pick up air freight at Chicago-O'Hare.

One time I walk in there and saw another driver who was a regular. He said to me, "What are you doing?"

I said, "I'm sleep walking man, I'm sleep walking." Since I was running so hard. ;)

There is a good chance I am on the "no fly list" anyway. LOL

Used to go sledding on the big hill by the creek.

Whoa. Flashback.

I sledded down the big hill, too. And ice skated on the creek. The city erected a makeshift wind shelter (no roof) with a fire barrel in the middle so sledders and skaters could get warm. Mid-late 60's.

Back then IU Kokomo had a monument with a hammer and sickle prominently displayed and visible from the street. Dad would always curse the damn commies whenever we drove by it.

Back then IU Kokomo had a monument with a hammer and sickle prominently displayed and visible from the street. Dad would always curse the damn commies whenever we drove by it.

That shows us how the leftists have infiltrated the University system in this country. I wonder what would happen if there were another Kent State incident now? ;)

IU Kokomo had a monument with a hammer and sickle prominently displayed

Before my time, I guess. I do remember the Phoenix thing, which taught me that post-modern was a synonym for wasting good stainless steel.