Just out of curiosity, have there been any reports of all-electric vehicles vastly out-performing gasoline and diesel powered vehicles during the 20 hour period when vehicles were at a virtual stand-still?
All-electric vehicles are about 1% of the total US fleet. Surely some of them were caught in the traffic jam. Fifty miles, three lanes in each direction has to be about 50,000 vehicles figuring one vehicle every 30 feet. That suggests that there were about 500 all-electric vehicles in the traffic jam.
This is not a frivolous post. If we know one thing about Socialist/Communist governments it is that people will be waiting in lines. The performance of the vehicles they are jamming down our throats when stalled in sub-freezing weather needs to be talked about.
We will never hear about the gross failings of EVs by anyone in power or their media whores.....never. The truth does not serve their agenda.
ReplyDeleteI have a Chevy Volt. It's a plug in hybrid with a 14.4 kWh (usable) battery. Using the cabin heat on the low setting uses about 4 kW per hour, so my battery would be dead after a few hours and I'd have to run the gasoline engine for heat. On the other hand, using the heated seat uses almost no power, so a blanket and heated seat on high would be the solution.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't sound right. What heats the seat?
DeleteElectric blankets use about 0.060 kW. I think the original writer was making the case that you can stretch out the battery if you are not running defrost and heating the entire cabin.
Delete.060 , I'd believe .6 . Still are warm seats enough?
Delete60 Watts, on average with peaks of 180.
DeleteElectric blankets don't put out much heat but it is targeted because one usually puts blankets on top of the electric blanket.
For HVAC purposes, the average human who is awake and working in an office is usually considered to be putting out 100 Watts. So 60 Watts of electric blanket is the equivalent of having another (sleeping) human being wrapped around you.
ERJ - As it has a high likelihood of contradicting the prevalent narrative, I doubt anything will be done.
ReplyDeleteThe Volt has an energy meter showing energy consumption. At idle is reads 0.5 kW. With electric seats on it still reads 0.5 kW. With cabin heat on high it reads about 8 kW and at low about 6kW when it cycles on and 0.5 when it cycles off.
ReplyDeleteTeslas are how the beltway crowd likes to virtue signal. They are way more than one percent in that region.
ReplyDeleteI've been through that stretch of road many times. It's always backed up, no matter the weather or time of day/night. Throw a blizzard into the mix and it's no wonder everything was snarled up.
ReplyDeleteJoe, sorry but this is going to be a long one.
ReplyDeleteI have been driving a Nissan Leaf EV around the Midwest for a several of years now on my 24 mile daily commute. The car is obviously designed by people who live where winter is something you drive up to the mountains to visit on the weekend. Cold weather cuts down on the range and running the heat reduces it further. On the plus side, the battery pack gives the car a low center of center of gravity, so I find the car handles on the snow and ice better than most FWD small cars.
I'm not sure I understand the argument being made here. Sitting stuck in a car in a blizzard is unpleasant. The degree of unpleasantness depends on how prepared you are. A person who doesn't have a winter kit in their car and is stuck with a 1/4 tank is going to have a bad time independent of what kind of car they have. If you have a full kit and full tank it will be much better.
According to the OBD App for my Leaf, sitting in the car with the heated seats and radio running uses 300 watts. If you're stuck with a 1/4 charge, you can run it for 13 hrs and still have 10 miles of range to find a charger when you get unstuck. If you were wearing a light jacket over office clothes that would be an uncomfortable night, but survivable.
I'd argue that most internal combustion cars wouldn't be able to idle 12 hrs with the heater on with a 1/4 tank, so it would be a long night of turning the car off and on. Again, an uncomfortable night, but survivable.
Being prepared is way more important than what you're driving. The winter kit for the Leaf is different that the one in my weekend camping truck. For example, there are more chem heaters and less food and water in the Leaf, because I know its going to be a bit colder, but its never going to be outside of an urban area.
https://www.quora.com/How-long-can-a-Tesla-run-its-heat-if-the-car-is-not-moving
ReplyDeleteIn camp mode 72hours, full charge
Model 3 has 82,000watt 350v battery that weigh's 1,000lbs
It use's a heat pump instead of glowing metal strips.
Keep in mind we are talking about a car that you have to tell it, that you are going in carwash for wipers, windows and transmission to cooperate. Another important note, is tesla uses a cell app as a key to open the car. With that app on my phone I could watch everything going on in car from my house. Cabin temp. Camera pictures from more than half dozen angles. Battery capacity. And if need be change some of these things in car. So if you go shopping and leave A/C on for dog, you can tell inside/outside temp's and adjust volume of air.
That is comparable to a gas engine.
DeleteA 2.0l engine at idle can run about 6 hours on a gallon of fuel (https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-861-february-23-2015-idle-fuel-consumption-selected-gasoline-and-diesel-vehicles) so ten gallons of gas is good for 60 hours.
One difference between an all-electric car and a gas car is that a 10 year old gas engine perform about as well (perhaps better from a friction standpoint) than a fresh-from-factory engine. I am not sure a 10 year-old-battery can make the same claim. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the population is clueless to the point of being antagonistic toward maintenance.
Incidentally, the combination of units you posted may be accurate but they are not useful. Energy stored would look like Watt-hours or Volt-Amp-Hours or if a known voltage Amp-Hours.
I went to the link you sourced and they were talking about no accessory load idling. If you go to where they got their data (https://www.anl.gov/es/reference/vehicle-idle-reduction-savings-worksheet-excel) Argonne National Laboratories have the loaded idle use as .29 gal/hr for a 2.0 L gas and .39 gal/hr for a 2.0 L diesel. I was using 3.25 gallons as my 1/4 of a tank estimate so that give 11.2 and 8.3 hrs. The numbers go down for bigger vehicles.
DeleteThe downloadable spreadsheet is pretty neat, if you want to calculate fuel use for idling fleet vehicles from a Ford Focus to a school bus to a tractor trailer. In case you ever get in the fiction writing mood again.
In regards to 10 year old EVs, my current rundown commuter car is a 2012 Nissan Leaf. I offered it for this example as a about the worst case EV for this situation, as it has the smallest battery of any pure EV, none of the battery active temperature control systems or more efficient cabin heating systems on more modern EVs. Any newer model EV would have 15 KWHr available on a 1/4 charge and be able to pump 1000 watts of heat into the cabin for 12 hrs then go 10+ miles to find a charge.
For battery degradation the 2012 Nisan Leaf is also the worst case scenario for that. The non temperature stabilize battery gets beat up by high temps during quick charges and use in high temp environments. When brand new the car was advertised to get 100 miles per charge, and in the real world got 75 miles in the summer and 60 in the winter. After 10 years, the usable battery capacity has dropped from 21 KWHr to 13.5 KWhr, and the range is 55 miles in the summer and 40 in the winter. If you want more data on what a degraded battery looks like vs a new one I have an OBD II app that gives me more info than you can shake a stick at, and I'd be happy to send you some.
For performance after 10 years, I will bet my 10 year old electric motor has more of its rated HP than any 10yr old combustion engine with the same amount of work done to it. None. For 10 years. If you want your combustion engine to deliver 3/4 of its power after 10 years you better have changed the oil, oil and air filters on schedule, changed the spark plugs once or twice, timing belt, piston rings, valves, fuel injectors fuel system, all still in spec, your coils are giving you solid spark and you have a fresh battery.
That being said, the 10 year old gas tank will have more of its rated range than my 10 year old battery.
I have kept a series of 8 to 12 year old little 4 cylinder cars running as commuter cars and it is hard to believe how little maintenance I have done with the EV. Its mechanically simpler, and just doesn't have all the little things you have to check to keep cascade failures from ruining the car. No belts, timing chains, water pumps, starters, alternators, fuel pumps. The regenerative braking means the brake pads and rotors last forever. I have had the car for 2 years and all I have had to do was rotate the tires and remove a piece of after market equipment the previous owner installed.
As a final note to the preparedness minded people who hang around here. Lots of people's plans include back up solar power on their house, I have yet to see anyone planning on pumping oil and refining gasoline in their back yard. The closest I've seen is the gasifiers in our gracious host's writing. My EV is a 13 kwh back up battery, that I can get 1 mile of driving for every hour of sunshine on a 250 watt solar panel. Most families have multiple cars, but only one ever gets 50 miles away from their house. If this sounds like you, perhaps you want to think about diversifying your transportation options.
You caught me Joe. The battery is 82kWh. Often wondered why you couldn't salvage a battery from one of these to use for home off grid power. It has high enough voltage to run the efficient big inverters.
Deleteev or not, when did it become the govt's purpose to wipe traveler's snotty nose and wipe their asses? we need to let darwin win a few rounds so this becomes a non-problem. i don't go the five miles to town w/o a coat and walking shoes in my truck, among other items. i fill up at half a tank, or better if weather is coming in. just common sense, much lacking in those stuck in on i95.
ReplyDeleteAssume everyone's vehicles expend all that they have - gas tanks dry, batteries discharged.
ReplyDeleteIt will be a lot easier to clear that big jam up by refueling gasoline engines than it would recharging EVs.
Johan makes some good points (mostly about maintenance issues, though his comments about backup power are irrelevant to vehicles), but for most people, EVs are a still stupid choice.
I have yet to see a enough "backup" solar on someone's house to handle recharging EVs and in most parts of the country, recharging stations are nonexistent. If you can't get petroleum based fuels, chances are there won't be any juice in the grid to recharge EVs either. When things get that bad, you better own a horse, or better yet, a team.
You're correct drained evs are much more of a complication than dead gas cars.
DeleteI completely disagree about horses. Evs are stupid or most people, get a horse is hilarious. If ev's are suboptimal for most people, horses a uselessly impractial for 95% of the country. An EV is a car and does car things. It's an everyday useful tool. How many people can get everyday usefulness from a horse? And it requires money and care everyday until things fall apart.
The only scenario I see horses being superior is in a complete collapse scenario. In anything other than a complete collapse an EV is more useful. If you only get two hours of power a day, that's 24 miles of driving or just more storage battery's for other electric requirements.
For minor disruptions a charged ev is the back up power equvalent of filling your bathtub with water before a storm.
Solar charging an ev is like having extra barrels to fill with rainwater when your cistern is full. You're not going to be able to do it every day, but in a sunny week gives you more options. Literally everyone's solar system can charge an EV. It just depends on what the priorities for power use are, power is power.
Strawman much? I didn't say horses were a practical alternative for most Americans today. I said that when the grid is gone and no petroleum fuels are being made or distributed, horses will be the only practical thing to have. So yes, complete collapse scenario; even an 80% collapse will do. Which is coming. 95% of the country will be gone then. Enjoy eating your EV then.
DeleteHere is a guy with two Teslas ($$$$), different models, who tested his car batteries against 15° temperatures. He set his cars' thermostats to the internal temperature of 70° and had seat heaters on as well. He says they did very well. He's somewhat long-winded, but shows time stamps in his video for those who want to skip ahead.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3E0t0kGeug