Ok, usually this blog is me being pissed off about something that has affected me, some crap situation or something I've had to "deal" with.
Now I'm just going to have a rant for the sake of it. Why? Because I can.
This was prompted by 2 things, both posts on Facebag. The first:
But, I didn't bother reading the article. And neither did you. And you're not even reading this.
I just trolled my mate's post, by replying with these comments:
That would normally be the end of it, however I kept scrolling, and a couple of posts down, was this:
But I didn't bother reading that article either :-) which is here: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/26/its-official-consumer-reports-confirms-ev-owners-spend-half-as-much-on-maintenance/
Although that was probably because I got involved in a discussion with someone else regarding the same subject a few days ago (but I don't recall reading their linked article either.. Hmm, now I'm wondering if I should bother continuing to type this out..)
There were a couple of comments that got me to reply..
(I have cropped censored the posters and commenters, as I didn't seek permission to reproduce their comments on my ranty blog.. I did this because it's unfortunate that these days you can't get away with having an opinion about something, without potentially having to deal with someone who disagrees, and then they go as far as contacting the company that you work for, and tries to get you in trouble, and it ends up getting escalated to the CEO of the company to respond to, which happened to me previously, but I digress, that is a rant for another day..)
These comments got me thinking, and so I replied..
In regards to the first comment, concerning graphene and lithium, I said..
Graphene is pretty close. I worked for a satellite based phone and internet provider last year, and since all our equipment was situated in the middle of nowhere, it was reliant on the local power supply, which were next to useless, and so all our installations included a diesel generator and battery backup.
It got to the point that the company formed its own subsidiary for the purposes of researching and developing power solutions for this scenario.
We were testing graphene batteries in the office as backup for our servers, and doing load testing on them such as running base board heaters when we just needed a ridiculous load.
Other than the fact that they need to come with their own forklift, and I guess using them in a car where it can move it itself makes sense, there are some exciting things coming I suspect.
I am planning to build a bus to live in, and part of this plan involves a diesel generator, to work in conjunction with solar panels, maybe a wind turbine, and being stored in either graphene, or 18650s (ala Tesla battery, maybe even a salvaged/rebuilt Tesla battery), but preferably graphene, for space efficiency.
and in regards to the second comment, the following exchange occurred, which was also the motivation for authoring this post..
I also like to take the piss out of EVs, however..
There are little trailers available which contain a generator, along with a bunch of empty space, which could be used for those occasional long distance/camping trips away from charging stations etc.
This was based on the earlier trolling of the post from my mate in NZ, as when I was trying to find a specific image, which I didn't find, and got bored trying to find, and moved on, I saw the following images:
Although, I now can't seem to find the "little trailer available which contains a generator, along with a bunch of empty space" which I thought I had. Did I just invent it?
So I continued..
There's probably a business opportunity renting them out to EV users for those rare occasions.
The original commenter replied to me, saying:
Simon Quigley, I am not against EVs but they are not up to the job in many environments and very expensive. If you live in an urban environment and travel short distances they can be very good (then so is a bus/mass transit). Winter kills distance, Canada is distance, and winter is still very much a Canadian reality. Not the ideal place for an EV.
These are some valid points, but it got me thinking, and so I continued to consider things, and reply, which ultimately lead me to want to share this..
Totally, and I agree with you, however the majority of people do not constantly travel long distances, at least not ones where there's not a charging station on each end, so you only need to get one way, and on those long distances you usually stop for food, during which time you can recharge quite a reasonable capacity from a high current charger in that time, considerably extending the distance you can travel.
They aren't going to be for everyone, ever. There will always be people with requirements that an EV can't meet.
But that's going to be a very small group of people. The majority of people will be able to get away with an EV without issue.
Just like most people can get away with recharging their phone once a day, and it serves them fine, and there are some people who need to have a second charger located somewhere convenient to get them through the day.
And then there are people who need to carry a charger, and possibly an external battery pack around with them in their pocket all day.
What's the ratio of people who fit into these groups?
And as for the expense.. Everything is expensive when it's new. I have a HP pocket calculator, that can use magnetic strips for programming. When this calculator was released/available in the 1970s, it cost the equivalent of over $4000 in today's money.
