Search results

A friend of mine always drives Lincolns. He said the dealer he uses told him last year that he was dropping his dealership because Lincoln planned to go all electric and he couldn't afford the investment to service the EVs. Of course, the plans may have changed with the recent lowered...

Michigan just increased EV and plug in hybrid registration fees - in an odd way. The law links EV registration fees to the gasoline road tax. To direct more money to the road fund, the legislature eliminated sales tax on gasoline but increased the road tax by an equivalent amount. So the...

I've been wondering about the overall economy of EVs. It seems that the efficiency of EVs tends to be about 3 miles per kWh. The national average residential electricity cost is now about 18 cents/kWh. So the energy cost of driving an EV if you charge at home is 6 cents/mile. We are about...

EV batteries are more analogous to engines and transmissions than gasoline. All the EVs essentially take the same electricity which corresponds to gasoline. I think the EV batteries have been quite reliable. I'm sure there have been some early failures, but there are early engine and...

Interesting aspect of electric vehicle braking: My front wheel drive hybrid lightly applies the rear brakes (for stability) when it's regenerative braking. As a result, driven conservatively, the front brakes essentially never wear out but the rear ones do - the opposite of a conventional car.

Tesla is the public face for Musk and it's fun to watch all the haters jump on Tesla sales figures, but that's just a distraction. He has now put 10,000 Starlink satellites in space and successfully launched 132 rockets this year. Add to that the Boring Company, Neuralink, and the robotics work...

An interesting aspect of the electric cars is that the performance doesn't come with a loss of efficiency. A big electric motor has essentially the same efficiency as a small one. Of course if you use that capability the economy decreases, but having it isn't the same compromise you have with an...

It's pretty hard to find anyone today that under promises and over delivers. However, given that Musk has put more electric cars on the road than all the other companies combined and that he launches about 90% of the satellites at this point, I'd say he's been fairly successful.

Your wife has good taste - at least in trucks.

I think what he was saying was that there is very little market for used EVs in Holland now. I remember the Norwegian situation. The subsidies made EVs so cheap, it was a no-brainer to buy them. However, most people that them kept their ICE cars. If I recall, over half of the new cars sold...

I don't have much interest in owning an electric vehicle, but the concerns about battery life seem overblown. Current replacement cost for Tesla batteries seem to be in the $12K to $15K range and the failure rate is very low. The warranty is for 100K to 150K miles depending on the model and...

Current Ford F-250 is rated at 14K to 22K depending on engine, rear axle ratio and body/frame configuration.

I'm pretty tolerant about what other people want to drive. After all I once had a girlfriend with an AMC Pacer and I kept my mouth shut about it.

There are a lot of different grades and processes for stainless, most notably 304 and 316. Some are more corrosion resistant than others, some are magnetic, some are not. Allegedly the CT is a proprietary 301 alloy which I know nothing about.