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.
When I worked under contract for the Australian Government, someone had thrown it in the garbage. Along with the wall-wart power adapter, a bunch of mag strips, maybe the manual (can't remember), and even the leather case..
But don't think I'm being a tree hugger and trying to make people need to get one.
Both my vehicles are manual transmissions, and you can take that away from me when you can pry the gear stick or the clutch lever out of my cold dead hand.
So many people accepted automatic transmission vehicles that manuals are all but extinct, at least in North America. Look at the car line-ups last and this year, the manual transmission models are all discontinued.
He replied "MG B & Austin Healey Sprite, need I say more."
I didn't respond to that directly, I just continued:
So give it a few years, and it'll be impossible to get an internal combustion engine vehicle, and you'll end up like me, needing to hunt through used vehicles to get something that you want to drive :-)
I mean, with going from internal combustion to electric, when you were already "driving" (steering) an automatic vehicle, what have you lost? The noise?
Going from manual to automatic is worse, that takes away all the fun and skill of driving.
When I'm forced to switch to an automatic or an EV, it had better have awesome autopilot, because it's going to be boring as shit, and I'm going to need to be able to sleep, or read, or go in the back and make a sandwich while I'm "driving".
At this point, realising I was having a rant, I decided to shift this dialogue here, and so I finished up with "Sorry. Maybe I got a bit carried away. I rebooted my ranty blog, theangryaussie.com a few days ago, and I've just been on a roll.
So, continuing that rant here, and extending on some of my points..
First of all, I have no interest in EVs. I am going to avoid buying one of them for as long as I possibly can. I am going to be cobbling parts of engines together from junkyards to keep my vehicles going.
My reason for saying this, is because they are just like a toy version of a car to me. It's bad enough that manual transmission vehicles are almost extinct here. Whenever I have to drive an automatic.. ohh, gawd, it's so boring.. It's not driving, it's just steering.
Steer with one hand, and use one foot to press the go and stop pedals.. It's a vehicle for people who are physically unable to handle steering, controlling the clutch, controlling the throttle, and selecting gears.
In the previous comment thread I was involved in regarding EVs, it was pointed out that because of the regenerative breaking (a cool technology!), that you don't even need to use the "stop" pedal most of the time..
So my next question, was, do you also have to turn the steering wheel all the way to the left when you want to reverse?
All motorcycles have manual transmissions. They look like this:
Or this:
Or this:
"Motorcycles" with automatic transmissions are called scooters, and look like this:
Wait. No. Sorry, they look like this:
I know which one I'd rather be riding. And so do you.
So, getting back to cars and EVs.. because I hate "driving" automatic vehicles, since you are just steering, it's the same for EVs..
Not only do I now have no proper control over how much torque I'm applying to the wheels/tyres/road surface (or do I? I don't know.. I haven't tried driving one, let alone one on dirt/mud/snow/grass/steep inclines, where this matters), but I've also lost any of the noise, other than perhaps some electric motor whining (is that an electric wheelchair behind me?), and all of the fun and excitement that's involved with driving.
I guess most people don't even know what they're missing.
I'll bet you've never even tried to get your tyres squealing, while they slip ever so slightly, while you're apexing your car around a corner, going as fast as is physically possible, based on the road and tyre conditions, and being able to apply just the perfect amount of torque to the tyres, by having your transmission in the right gear to have the engine's RPM running perfectly inside the power band, in order to maintain and prolong that squealing until you complete the turn, and you can accelerate away from it.
Most people seem to be happy with the fact that they can just sit there, with one hand hanging limply on the wheel, and one foot lazily resting on the accelerator. Or they've got the cruise control or, or maybe they even have adaptive cruise control, so they don't have to bother paying any attention at all to the road.
Then they sit back, and they fiddle with the radio, or they text or play on their phone, or put their makeup on, or eat their breakfast, or my, favourite, read a book!
All of these things were things I actually saw people doing, while commuting on the highway, during the span of only a few days in a single week, when I was staying at a mate's place in the west end of the city, while I worked in the east end.
This was after I became homeless due to an abusive landlord a few years ago, but that's the subject for another rant, about how completely and utterly useless and pointless the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board is.
I don't know how there's not a huge pileups everywhere, everyday. I guess it's down to all the junk they pile into cars these days, like "parking assist", "lane assist", adaptive cruise control, back up cameras..
Holy crap. It's no wonder people are all such awful drivers these days. Nobody actually drives any more. You've just spent way too much money on a vehicle with too many stupid "features" that take all the skills required to actually drive the thing away from you.
Well, I'm just glad that this is a thing:
So that when there's no fuel left for me to put in my last of the V8s, and I have no choice but to get in one of these boring as batshit EVs, I can have a sleep, or read a book, or eat my breakfast, or put my makeup on, or go in the back and make a sandwich.
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