Ford Focus Hated. Who did not see this coming?

[Grateful11]

I see SUV's with no rust on their hitches in accidents with small cars often and I have never seen a small car win in and accident with the SUV and the clean hitch.

I'll keep my clean hitch, pay through the nose for my fuel, and KEEP both my legs in a head on accident with all the unlicensed illegal aliens driving around.

Hey what od we have here...a white pick up truck ...does it have a hitch. I know it doesn't have a scratch on it.

You're telling us that the white pickup doesn't have a scratch on it after doing all that damage to the Prius? I say bull, if it doesn't it's name must be "Christine".

 

[Alan L.]

Yes... we have a winner!

California mandates a percentage of vehicles sold must be zero emission and the date is fast approaching...

So far, the electric is the only real technology in the game.

Also, the express car pool lanes in urban areas can be accesses by solo drivers when they have a zero emission or till recently a very low emission vehicle.

Many commuters bought hybrids because of the savings in commute time and bridge tolls...

California sees itself as a trend setter... politicians say as California goes so goes the nation...

California has had unleaded fuel and catalytic converters since the early 70's...

This is because Kalifornia figures on generating the electricity in other states to use in their automobiles. They don't want power plants or refineries in their state, but think the other states need to provide this dirty service for them.

 

[IslandTractor]

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.

If a brownout is simply the utility lowering voltage a bit then it might not affect charging much at all. If they lower voltage by 10% then maybe it would take an extra hour or so to charge but as this is all happening overnight when demand is lowest, I'd guess it really doesn't happen that much. I used to live in NYC and don't recall brownouts being all that common.

 

[rsewill]

We had some storm damage last summer and insurance is paying for new shingles. They started replacing them yesterday and will finish tomorrow. I checked out solar just in case shingling would be best done with solar installation. We'll live here at most ten years before heading south. Calculations indicated it would take twenty years to recoup our costs so we passed.

Also, the array would have been on our roof on the frontside of the house and the CEO said they were too ugly.

Now if the solar cells were integrated into the shingles I would have spent the money.

 

[ultrarunner]

This is because Kalifornia figures on generating the electricity in other states to use in their automobiles. They don't want power plants or refineries in their state, but think the other states need to provide this dirty service for them.

To maximize incentives a electric vehicle owner would have their own solar photovoltaic system at home and maybe another at work...

This is what we do here... even the local community college has carport type structures in the student parking lot to recharge electrics...

As mentioned... everyone I know with 100% electric charges them on power they generate... no out of State Power Plants involved...

 

[ultrarunner]

We had some storm damage last summer and insurance is paying for new shingles. They started replacing them yesterday and will finish tomorrow. I checked out solar just in case shingling would be best done with solar installation. We'll live here at most ten years before heading south. Calculations indicated it would take twenty years to recoup our costs so we passed.

Also, the array would have been on our roof on the frontside of the house and the CEO said they were too ugly.

Now if the solar cells were integrated into the shingles I would have spent the money.

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area and there is plenty of fog and it is not exactly sun city like southern California...

All the neighbors that have installed the solar cells all have credits on their electric usage... some of the homes are 4000 square feet or larger and most are between 25 and 60 years old...

We do have one advantage... air conditioning is almost unheard of in my neighborhood...

Half the install are on the roof and the others are poll mounted on the hillside...

 

[ultrarunner]

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.

Don't really need more in 2012 either... at least at one triplex I manage also built in the 1920's... all three units are tied to one electric meter with a single 30 amp fuse for the main and this is in California.

Electricity is included in the rent and owner doesn't want to spend the money to upgrade.

All 3 units do have individual gas meters....

Electricity is for lights and refrigerators...

 

[powerpace]

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.

My first thought is why do people have a car in New York anyway. Public transportation is available. A monthly Parking space can cost what many people pay for house rent for a month.
My KWR is .0792. Every month. $260 avg. House with central heat and air, barn with water heater, two corral lights, 2 wells. I do have Propane for the cookstove and fireplace occasionally used.
Electric charging stations are being placed in multiple locations on the I-5 freeway in Oregon. Walgreens Drug and several other national retail chains have installed stations also.

One interesting development happening on the West coast is increasing coal export to Asia. 38 million tons is already being shipped and another 10 million ton per year is planned from Oregon ports next year.
Alaska and Canada have curbside plugin for engine block heaters in most of the urban areas that experience subzero cold.

 

[powerpace]

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:

2008 Prius 170,000 miles. Wife drives 150 miles round trip to work three times per week. Compared to our previous vehicle we saved over $15,000 in four years. Compared to the Dodge 1500. We would have saved $21,000 in a four period.
Insurance gives a 10% discount for Hybrid.

 

[powerpace]

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.


.

Helllooo Friend.

The United States is not the only country in the world. We have no lock on new technology. The Europeans have been driving fuel efficient cars for years. They do have smaller cars with smaller engines. The biggest difference is they buy more for efficiency instead of vanity.
All other car manufacturers in the world are developing alternative fuel vehicles, Electric Vehicles and even compressed air vehicles. Compressed air vehicles have been used for over a hundred years. They were also used in mines and manufacturing situations.