I like to drive though.
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Boeing 737-800
In the US you got to allow 2 hours at the airport to deal with TSA. In my local regional airport, John Wayne, it's about an hour. Less if you get pre-screened. But still.
I'm about 10 minutes to the airport... give it 15 to park. So, it's about 2 hours from leaving the house to boarding.
Flying to Petaluma for Burning Amp. Give it about two hours to get off the plane at SFO, rent a car and drive up the 101.
45 minute flight between JWA and SFO.
Total trip would be about 4 hours and 45 minutes.
Mostly a PITA... dealing with TSA, the airport, the airplane, etc...
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Now then... Honda Passport Elite AWD
About 475 miles from chez nous to Petaluma. If traffic in LA is not stupid and no one has done something really dumb along the 5 or the Bay Area.... it's about 6 to 7 hours.
I can play music all along. Frank Sinatra on the 405 up to the Grapevine, some good old Bakersfield Country and Western when I get North of the Grapevine and then some good Dead once I hit the 505 all the way through the East Bay and then the 101.
If I wish, I can light up one or two nice cigars on the way... take some good road snacks and a single quick break in Santa Nella for gas and Numero Uno.
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Now which way do you think I went? Is the saved time on the flight worth the aggravation of dealing with people and petty federal tyrants?
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BTW. on the way back, I left Petaluma at 6PM on Sunday and got home just after midnight. I was going pretty fast... ;-)
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I can sing along with Jerry...
I'm goin' down this road drivin' fast,
I'm goin' down this road drivin' fast,
I'm goin' down this road drivin' fast, fast, fast!
Ain't gonna be pulled by the CHP this time.
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Friend of @Zen Mod song...
I lit up from Santa Rosa, I was trailed by Nelson Pass.
Didn't get to sleep that night 'til I got past the LAX trucks.
Got the bunch of SITs and ZM in the trunk of the car.
The first ones are expensive as hell and hard to get all the time
The second one is nuts and wants to smoke the amps
And if Nelson catches up we'll be doing Bose till the End Of Time.
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The problem is that agricultural land would need to be dedicated to fuel production even though the world is already not producing sufficient food for its people. This is apparently the major hurdle against alcohol fuelled cars, I believe. Just imagine how much land would be needed to grow plants (sugarcane, beet etc) to replace hydrocarbon fuel.
Hydrogen is the future. Goverments know this, as do vehicle manufacturers.
Where there is a plentiful supply of renewable electricity, it's a no brainer to use it to produce H2.
I would also suggest that it is much safer than Lithium batteries in the event of a major incident. (burn rather than explode, can be extinguished with water or foam, neither of which are any use on a large Lithium battery.)
Where there is a plentiful supply of renewable electricity, it's a no brainer to use it to produce H2.
I would also suggest that it is much safer than Lithium batteries in the event of a major incident. (burn rather than explode, can be extinguished with water or foam, neither of which are any use on a large Lithium battery.)
I can't wait to buy the first BMW LZ129 Hindenburg. 😉
An Australian mining billionaire, Andrew Forrest, has bet his house on a massive green hydrogen production venture. Hopefully it succeeds.
An Australian mining billionaire, Andrew Forrest, has bet his house on a massive green hydrogen production venture. Hopefully it succeeds.
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How long will it take to get sufficient renewable electricity bearing in mind an increase in BEV's as people on here call them. For me they are just EV's and the other type is a Hybrid. There are different hybrid arrangements. Most of the hybrid stuff available in the UK doesn't really offer much over combustion. One allows pure electric drive to be selected, At a cost and just a 50mile range, Full EV's with high range - the battery weight can be rather surprising. Cost wise they are far from mass market combustion cars. TBH I think that the UK assumes a big increase in the use of public transport. A cheap EV will never be a high range type. That has implications in the charging area if use is widespread.
UK has the worst public transport systems in Europe and there is little sign of investment so no chance it will ever appeal to any motorist.
I disagree that a 50 mile battery range is no use.
On the contrary, if your daily mileage is within that range, or you have charging at work, then a hybrid makes great sense.
I owned a VW PHEV which did about 20miles on battery, which was perfect for my 15mile daily mileage.
Even on long journeys when the 1.4l petrol turbo engine had to be used, it was switched off at low speed so there was no pollution through towns and villages.
My Honda CRZ is a mild hybrid so never runs on battery alone, but the motor provides most of the torque at low rpm- 1000-2000rpm cutting down on gearchanges and the need to rev the engine.
Buyers of full BEVs are lugging around a large and heavy battery that they do not need for 90+% of journeys.
One option for many is to buy or lease or rent a small BEV for this 99% of journeys and then just hire something with a bigger range for holidays.
Our government needs to adopt this approach and encourage & incentivise the sales of BEVs with a max 100mile range. (25-30Kwh battery)
Small btteries also charge up more quickly and so don't need to occupy a public charger for so long.
I disagree that a 50 mile battery range is no use.
On the contrary, if your daily mileage is within that range, or you have charging at work, then a hybrid makes great sense.
I owned a VW PHEV which did about 20miles on battery, which was perfect for my 15mile daily mileage.
Even on long journeys when the 1.4l petrol turbo engine had to be used, it was switched off at low speed so there was no pollution through towns and villages.
My Honda CRZ is a mild hybrid so never runs on battery alone, but the motor provides most of the torque at low rpm- 1000-2000rpm cutting down on gearchanges and the need to rev the engine.
Buyers of full BEVs are lugging around a large and heavy battery that they do not need for 90+% of journeys.
One option for many is to buy or lease or rent a small BEV for this 99% of journeys and then just hire something with a bigger range for holidays.
Our government needs to adopt this approach and encourage & incentivise the sales of BEVs with a max 100mile range. (25-30Kwh battery)
Small btteries also charge up more quickly and so don't need to occupy a public charger for so long.
I didn't say that. In fact I think that is likely to be the range of a cheap EV as it would cover a lot of peoples commuting needs. 2 wheel drive? Range options in the purchase price? The need for a certain size due to kids and shopping etc. Probably be much the same - at a cost.
Trying to do long distances with a vehicle like that has implications. Overnight charging vehicles like this at home may work out in terms of the domestiic grids capabilities. Same with high range if it isn't all used.
Public transport expenditure, a for instance. 😉 Much cheaper than an underground,
https://trundleage.co.uk/proposed-a...nd-rapid-transit-systems-proposed-and-opened/
There is a coach to Petaluma, I used to take it when my sister lived near Santa Rosa.
We are a 2 Toyota group family now. I have a 17 year old oil burner and wife has a much newer hybrid. The hybrid is great in stop start traffic and the smooth power delivery allows me to make good progress without the wife or kids noticing BUT it can't beat the economy of the old diesel on a long run with lots of motorway cruising. If you weight in the difference in energy density between DERV and E85 they are close but you still have the problem that, even with an atkinson cycle you just can't run lean enough. Sadly to get diesel soot and Nox down you end up with something horribly complex that needs adblue to clean things up.
My son drove from Perth to Melbourne via Adelaide (and back 3,420 km each way) over Christmas which involves crossing the Nullarbor, where the service stations are fairly basic and quite remote. Apparently there were a few EV's on the road, which surprised me. One remote service station has a biofuel fuelled generator for charging EV's - bearing in mind these places are pretty remote and installing solar infrastructure is too costly for small operators. The generator is fuelled by cooking oil from the kitchen.
How long would an ICE (ironic term in this scenario) keep you warm?
Depends on a lot of things, not least of all how much fuel you have and how well the engine will continue to run .
How much charge does the EV battery have, what is the efficiency of a heater, how much energy does it use, how insulated is the car etc etc
Daft to compare any vehicle with another... compare a thin - sheet steel classic with a modern insulated car ..
Subsidies for fossil fuels are $7 trillion globally (in 2022) ..
Why would anyone want to embark on building battery storage solutions when governments are using tax dollars making fossil fuels so cheap?
Subsidies for EVs and electrical storage infrastructure are a drop in that ocean.
https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies
There are reasons why governments are half-hearted about renewables, energy storage and EVs ... and allowing them to remain under developed .
Those O&G subsidies are usually just depreciation. The exact same depreciation is used for mining battery chemicals. (CVX as an example PAID 14B in income taxes in 2022, tesla paid zip and will likely pay zip for the foreseeable future) And TX currently has around 4GW of energy storage, so even O&G TX has grid storage to cover their massive renewables (~45GW nameplate at the moment although today generation is a measly 4-5). And those batteries can be the heavier LiFe kind as grid storage doesn't care how heavy the battery is.
@NATDBERG the reason why governments are half hearted as far as EVs go is because, as I suggested, they know that they are not a long term solution, but Hydrogen is.
Unfortunately, it will be same chicken and egg as with EVs - no one wanted to install chargers until there were enough EVs to justify the expense, and manufacturers were reluctant to design and build them when the public charging infrastructure wasn't there.
The fact that more than half of motorists will never be able to charge their EV at home and the whole fiasco is just a sop to the 'Greens.
It just doesn't work in the UK - we don't have the Grid capacity and connections to support the number of public chargers we'll need and nor will we have sufficient renewable energy.
Either way, I won't be around to see what happeens in the long term.
Unfortunately, it will be same chicken and egg as with EVs - no one wanted to install chargers until there were enough EVs to justify the expense, and manufacturers were reluctant to design and build them when the public charging infrastructure wasn't there.
The fact that more than half of motorists will never be able to charge their EV at home and the whole fiasco is just a sop to the 'Greens.
It just doesn't work in the UK - we don't have the Grid capacity and connections to support the number of public chargers we'll need and nor will we have sufficient renewable energy.
Either way, I won't be around to see what happeens in the long term.
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From nationalgrid website:
"Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle."
"Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle."
Issue with Ethanol as replacement/supplement to Gasoline is it competes with food, beverages, etc. Gasoline competes with, well, nothing... back in the early days of petroleum refining, Gasoline was a by-product that was basically thrown away...oh how far we have come, yes?
Can't wait for subsidized E100 (100% Ethanol) at the stations...really really cheap Everclear (ok, kinda joking, don't drink E100)....
That may be true as an average, but there are big issues locally with charger installs being held up by lack of adequate grid connections.
I don't believe a word of it anyway - they are trying to justify their lack of investment.
I don't believe a word of it anyway - they are trying to justify their lack of investment.
Correction to my earlier post, sorry. The allowance is called depletion credit, not depreciation. Kind of the same thing just different names for something being "used up".
Already an issue with corn turned into ethanol for fuel. Increases prices of tortillas in Mexico for instance.
If you want to make ethanol from growing things, use hemp in places where only it will grow. Lots of other uses as well — the oil from seeds can replace diesel.
dave
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