Ford Focus Hated. Who did not see this coming?

[timster2]

New York City is already plagued with not enough power in the summer. Brown outs are common in the summer and rolling black outs have happened in the past. Now add electric vehicles and more demand on the system. Enough electric vehicles to make difference in pollution will need a whole new infrastructure to accommodate all that load. Electric rates are already high $0.295/KWH from last Augusts bill, the current rate this month is $0.231/KWH.

If a charge took 20 KWH that would be $5.90 to go perhaps a sixty miles or less in traffic. That's about equal to a high mileage gasoline or Diesel powered car.

If the charging system is anything more than a standard 15 amp plug add in the cost of a licensed electrician to run the service to the parking area/garage. And what about those that park on the street?

Electric vehicles have a long hard road ahead, not impossible but a micro-niche market for the near future.

 

[ultrarunner]

New York City is already plagued with not enough power in the summer. Brown outs are common in the summer and rolling black outs have happened in the past. Now add electric vehicles and more demand on the system. Enough electric vehicles to make difference in pollution will need a whole new infrastructure to accommodate all that load. Electric rates are already high $0.295/KWH from last Augusts bill, the current rate this month is $0.231/KWH.

If a charge took 20 KWH that would be $5.90 to go perhaps a sixty miles or less in traffic. That's about equal to a high mileage gasoline or Diesel powered car.

If the charging system is anything more than a standard 15 amp plug add in the cost of a licensed electrician to run the service to the parking area/garage. And what about those that park on the street?

Electric vehicles have a long hard road ahead, not impossible but a micro-niche market for the near future.

Could be different outside California... everyone I know with a 100% electric charges the cars from solar arrays at their homes and at their business... so they are not adding to the demand on the grid.

Actually, the local utility has said too many people are going solar and it is impacting their bottom line especially if the trend continues...

There are 17 homes on my street and 6 have solar arrays... better than 1/3 and they no longer pay the utility for electricity... my 80 year old neighbor just replaced a perfectly good gas water heater with electric because he produces to much excess he needs to find a way to use it...

 

[IslandTractor]

New York City is already plagued with not enough power in the summer. Brown outs are common in the summer and rolling black outs have happened in the past. Now add electric vehicles and more demand on the system. Enough electric vehicles to make difference in pollution will need a whole new infrastructure to accommodate all that load. Electric rates are already high $0.295/KWH from last Augusts bill, the current rate this month is $0.231/KWH.

If a charge took 20 KWH that would be $5.90 to go perhaps a sixty miles or less in traffic. That's about equal to a high mileage gasoline or Diesel powered car.

If the charging system is anything more than a standard 15 amp plug add in the cost of a licensed electrician to run the service to the parking area/garage. And what about those that park on the street?

Electric vehicles have a long hard road ahead, not impossible but a micro-niche market for the near future.

Brown outs is not likely to be a concern. Main reason is that summer electricity use is highest in the daytime for A/C while almost all electric vehicle battery charging would occur at night.

People will likely opt for having a 220V dedicated line as it cuts the charging time by about half. Economy is not the main reason early adopters are choosing these things so that is not likely to stop anyone.

I don't know if your estimate on KWH is correct. The battery is rated at something like 20kwh but I believe only 10kwh are actually used/replaced with a charge. The EPA estimates 36KWh per 100 miles so that would in your case be roughly $9 per 100 miles. A Prius would go 100 miles on about 2.5 gallons of gas which would cost about the same or a little more. Your electricity cost is higher than many other parts of the country though. In MA we pay about $0.15/kwh so here it would cost only $5.40 to drive 100 miles. A savings over the Prius but payback on the $30,000plus vehicle cost after tax credit would still be a decade or more. With $4/gallon gas and 15,000miles/year a Prius would cost about $1400 to fuel each year compared to a hypothetical $800 in electricity for the same Volt in pure electric mode. Take quite a while to pay off the $5,000-10,000 price difference at a savings of $600/year even when taking the tax credit into account. There are some parts of the country that get electricity to the end user for only $0.08-0.10 per kwh and the Volt or Leaf might make a little more sense there. Maybe the big market for these things will be urban Idaho!:laughing:

 

[two_bit_score]

perhaps you could stay over whilst the car filled up with electrickery:laughing:

That's all part of the 'central planning' recommendation......:laughing:




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[two_bit_score]

That may change to diesel owners benefit soon. I've seen coal plants out west with no stacks, they instead pump the soot and smoke into some sort of facility and use it to generate algae. ExxonMobile apparently invested $600 million into this.

It works like this: instead of the emissions from the coal and dino-diesel ending up in the air, the exhaust from burning coal is fed into a plant that generates algae, which can be distilled into bio-diesel. That bio diesel can then power trucks.

Same emissions as a coal plant, but you don't need the dino diesel anymore (overall cut in emissions then). Also, algae apparently has a really good return on energy investment. You can get many times more BTU's out of an acre of algae compared to corn, with less water investment and the harvest equipment would cost less too.

Yeah and the dimmocrats want to eleminate all deductions for oil companies. They must be afraid the oil companirpes will find a solution before the friends of Obama can spend all the money going broke.


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[two_bit_score]

If there is a new technology for long distance high mpg vehicles then sure, support development with incentives.

Government doesn't need to tell anyone how far and how they travel. If I want to drive an electric out of town it's simply my choice and I need to figure out how to recharge before heading home.

So more and more taxpayer money thrown at any and every possible improvement? Guess the company will be owned by the taxpayers too?

Sounds just like Obama and his health care idea. 'oh no, we won't take your insurance away, you can keep it'. But not telling you that you won't be able to afford it, no doctors will take it and that eventually the coverage will go away on it's own, strangled to death by government bureaucracy.

Yeah sure, just run full speed to the end of your extension cord.


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[IslandTractor]

So more and more taxpayer money thrown at any and every possible improvement? Guess the company will be owned by the taxpayers too?

Sounds just like Obama and his health care idea. 'oh no, we won't take your insurance away, you can keep it'. But not telling you that you won't be able to afford it, no doctors will take it and that eventually the coverage will go away on it's own, strangled to death by government bureaucracy.

Yeah sure, just run full speed to the end of your extension cord.


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Not quite sure what you are yammeriing about here. The discussion is cars not healthcare and incentives not insurance.

I don't own and don't plan to own an electric vehicle any time soon but it still seems reasonable to support developing the technology. In the 21st century that means government incentives unless you want to cede that area to China as well. Maybe you'd just rather go back to horse and buggy once fuel prices double again due to increased world demand. Dream on if you think there is an endless supply of cheap oil just waiting to be tapped.

 

[timster2]

Brown outs have lasted for days on end. True most demand is for air conditioning during the day, however, there is a shortage of power in general in the area. Depending on the time necessary to charge the battery if you had to wait till late at nite to charge your car you may not have enough time to get a full charge before you head off to work in the morning.

There is not a lot of solar power in NYC. In most neighborhoods you have between eight and ten homes per acre. There is not a lot of room to set up large solar arrays. I haven't looked into the process but with the need for licensed electricians and building permits for almost everything the cost of a solar power array may be very expensive to install. The power company may have a problem with installing the necessary meters etc. they have enough to do to just supply the power in the first place.

The older the neighborhood the older the infrastructure. My first house had underground power service, two number ten wires, yes thirty amp service. The service was a loop feeding three houses with the same two number ten wires. The house was built in 1926 they did not need more than that back then.

 

[IslandTractor]

There is not a lot of solar power in NYC. In most neighborhoods you have between eight and ten homes per acre. There is not a lot of room to set up large solar arrays. I haven't looked into the process but with the need for licensed electricians and building permits for almost everything the cost of a solar power array may be very expensive to install. The power company may have a problem with installing the necessary meters etc. they have enough to do to just supply the power in the first place.

The older the neighborhood the older the infrastructure. My first house had underground power service, two number ten wires, yes thirty amp service. The service was a loop feeding three houses with the same two number ten wires. The house was built in 1926 they did not need more than that back then.

You'd have to be a real green weenie IMO to try to charge one of these things in the northeast with your own solar array. Arizona maybe but not NYC for sure.

Brown outs really are not that common, maybe for a day or so every few years. I would imagine that storm related power outages would be just as common. In that case rig up your backup generator to run all night and charge the car. Not a big deal if it happens only a day or two every few years.

 

[timster2]

Brown outs really are not that common, maybe for a day or so every few years. I would imagine that storm related power outages would be just as common. In that case rig up your backup generator to run all night and charge the car. Not a big deal if it happens only a day or two every few years.

Brown outs happen every summer. As soon as there is a heat wave there are brown outs. Storm outages, however, are rare. Most of NYC has underground power lines not affected by storms. As for generators they are few and far between. The power rarely goes out so most homeowners don't have generators.