Here's a very in-depth video about how Tesla's heat pump works. It's a wee bit long but this guy, who teaches at Weber State University, really gets into all the different components of Tesla's heat pump. I found it very informative. 
ICEs and EVs
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Also if your utility bills by Time Of Use (TOU) then you will be billed at a much lower rate by charging during off peak hours.
Tesla isn't the only one who (now) uses a heat pump to heat/cool the cabin. My 2016 Kia Soul EV has one. Use of either the heat or the AC has only a small effect on range (2 or 3 miles out of ~100).
Cold batteries, regardless of chemistry, don't perform as well as "room temperature" ones, so there is a noticeable decrease in range in winter, which is more significant. Again for my old-by-EV-standards Kia it's ~20-25%. It would probably be worse in Chicago than it is in Seattle just due to the colder temps. So Dave is generally correct on that concern, and probably the best solution for that is cars which pre-warm the battery while the car is still plugged in. I don't know (though I'm sure others here do) which makers provide for that in a user-friendly way.
I have an all-electric home, and I had no issues adding a 40-amp EVSE to charge the Soul shortly after we got it, but I was able to have an electrician run a dedicated 50A circuit from the service panel outside for this (I have no garage, so I charge in the driveway).
Cold batteries, regardless of chemistry, don't perform as well as "room temperature" ones, so there is a noticeable decrease in range in winter, which is more significant. Again for my old-by-EV-standards Kia it's ~20-25%. It would probably be worse in Chicago than it is in Seattle just due to the colder temps. So Dave is generally correct on that concern, and probably the best solution for that is cars which pre-warm the battery while the car is still plugged in. I don't know (though I'm sure others here do) which makers provide for that in a user-friendly way.
I have an all-electric home, and I had no issues adding a 40-amp EVSE to charge the Soul shortly after we got it, but I was able to have an electrician run a dedicated 50A circuit from the service panel outside for this (I have no garage, so I charge in the driveway).
I'm actually wondering when Puget Sound Energy will try to do that again. They did maybe a decade ago and it didn't last long. And I would certainly do that then.
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Unfortunately, TOU rate plans are usually a total rip-off. You get 15-50% lower rates at night, but at the cost of significantly 15-50% higher rates during daytime.
I charge my car about once a week. And usually from ~20% SOC (state of charge) to ~85%. So, roughly, +50 KWh for each charge, or ~200 KWh total during a month. At ~$0.15 / KWh, that's ~$30/month.
Compared to $150-250 total electricity bill per months, that's nothing.
So any increase in my daytime (AC) electricity rates would more than wipe out night-time savings.
Most likely because folks did the math, and ditched TOU plans?
a
Here, an independent third party (Public Utilities Commission) sets the electric rates, not the utility.
High enough to stay in business, low enough not to rip off the consumers.
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PUCO's guarantee the utilities (modest) return on their investment. No matter how poor or inefficient the investment is. TOU pricing is not a ripoff, its the rate that is required to cover the fixed and variable costs of power generation and distribution. In WI, if you are single, working a day job and no one is home during the day, you can save a modest amount with TOU pricing. A very modest amount.
Here they also approve the "investment".
A biomass plant proposal was denied a permit to build recently.
Too sketchy.
Funkworks
Low Earth Orbit, obstructing Earth's view of Venus
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I hope that the Stellantis EVs are better than their ICEs.
(Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Fiat).
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boatgeek
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It probably depends on where you are. In more regulated states like mine, the PUC regularly dials back rate increase requests from utilities. In less regulated states like Texas, you get fiascos like the several thousand dollar electricity bills when the gas plants went down.
I think that you also kinda prove @BEC and @afadeev’s point. There are edge cases where a few people can save money from TOU plans. Most people don’t though. That may change with greater use of EVs.
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Only if you 'opt' for a variable rate plan. Unfortunately the average person doesn't know you can shop for plans in unregulated states. I am locked in for the next 12 months at 6.3 cents per kwh. I could have opted for a cheaper variable rate but there is value in knowing exactly what my cost is going to be.
There are some dogs in that company’s portfolio…
| Abarth | 1949 | Olivier François | |
| Italy | Alfa Romeo | 1910 | Jean-Philippe Imparato |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Chrysler | 1925 | Christine Feuell[47] |
| France | Citroën | 1919 | Thierry Koskas |
| United States | Dodge | 1914 | Timothy Kuniskis |
| France | DS Automobiles[note 1] | 2014 | Béatrice Foucher |
| Italy | Fiat | 1899 | Olivier François |
| Italy | Fiat Professional | 2007 | Lorenzo Sistino |
| United States | Jeep | 1943 | Christian Meunier |
| Italy | Lancia | 1906 | Luca Napolitano |
| Italy | Maserati | 1914 | Davide Grasso |
| United States | Mopar | 1937 | Michael Koval |
| Germany | Opel | 1862 | Uwe Hochgeschurtz |
| France | Peugeot | 1810 | Linda Jackson |
| United States | Ram[note 2] | 2010 | Timothy Kuniskis |
| United Kingdom | Vauxhall |
You are lucky. We are paying nearly five times that per kWh. They are shutting coal-fired stations to be green, but not adding anything to provide base-load capability. There are some natural gas-fired generators but gas here is horrendously priced. The companies don't mind because they are making an absolute mint of everyone.
New Astronaut Transports Land At KSC
The Orlando (FL) Sentinel (7/12) reports that while the next humans “to fly to the moon will rely on the Orion spacecraft for the nearly half-million-mile trip next year on the Artemis II mission, the final 9 miles to the launch pad will come while riding in one of three new astronaut transports now parked at Kennedy Space Center.” Three electric vehicles “were built by California-based Canoo Technologies and arrived to KSC on Tuesday.” They will be “used during training leading up to the Artemis II flight slated for no earlier than November 2024.” The new zero-emission crew transportation vehicles (CTVs) “are equipped to bring the four crew suited up in their spacesuits along with support personnel including a spacesuit technician on the ride from the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building out to Launch Pad 39-B.” Canoo won “the $147,855 fleet contract in April 2022.” The vehicles are “based on the company’s all-electric LV model with an eight-person capacity.”AIAA Daily Launch 13JUL2023
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/202...emis-missions-arrive-at-kennedy-space-center/
Now they just need a zero emissions moon rocket.
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Pretty.
That's not impossible right? Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen?
Ez2cDave
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Further developments in the ICE world.
thedrive.com/news/company-builds-powerful-500cc-one-stroke-engine-immediately-installs-it-in-a-miata?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR3fnlZsuAco6_0wYnRPbEUurT2nvIelZhaS0Ot7WkZiyUeBWwK1_HXc85Y
thedrive.com/news/company-builds-powerful-500cc-one-stroke-engine-immediately-installs-it-in-a-miata?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR3fnlZsuAco6_0wYnRPbEUurT2nvIelZhaS0Ot7WkZiyUeBWwK1_HXc85Y
Saw that. Calling it a "one-stroke" is a bit of a stretch. I would call it a lie. It is actually two-stroke but the marketing people got involved. Good power density though.
I wonder if it could find a home in a motorcycle. Probably too late for revolutionary changes in ICE automobiles.
Or the Norton Commander (rotary):
Ez2cDave
Well-Known Member
Electric Cars Are a Scam
https://www.theepochtimes.com/electric-cars-are-a-scam_5399413.htmlBy David Harsanyi
July 17, 2023
The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars (EV) as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation.
Even the purported amenities and technological advances that EV makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology.
Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project.
And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that government is promising to artificially limit the production of gas-powered cars.
In August 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to set a target for half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 to be zero-emission. California claims that it is banning combustion engines in all new cars in about 10 years. So carmakers adopt business models to deal with these distorted incentives and contrived theoretical markets of the future.
In today’s real-world economy, Ford projects that it’s going to lose $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, bringing its EV losses to $5.1 billion over two years. In 2021, Ford reportedly lost $34,000 on every EV it made. This year, it was losing more than $58,000 on every EV. In a normal world, Ford would be dramatically scaling back EV production, not expanding it. Remember that the next time we need to bail out Detroit.
Then again, we’re already bailing them out, I suppose. Recently, the U.S. Energy Department lent Ford—again, a company that loses tens of thousands of dollars on every EV it sells—another $9.2 billion in taxpayer dollars for a South Korean battery project. One imagines no sane bank would do it. The cost of EV batteries has gone up, not down, over the past few years.
Ford says these upfront losses are part of a “start-up mentality.” We’re still pretending EVs are a new idea rather than an inferior one. But scaremongering about climate and a misplaced romanticizing of “manufacturing” jobs have softened up the public for this kind of waste.
In the real world, there’s Lordstown. In 2019, after General Motors—which also loses money on every EV sold—shut down a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, then-President Donald Trump made a big deal of publicly pressuring the auto giant to rectify the situation. CEO Mary Barra lent Lordstown Motors, a new EV outfit, $40 million to retrofit the plant. Ohio also gave GM another $60 million.
You may remember the widespread glowing coverage of Lordstown. After Biden signed his “Buy American” executive order, promising to replace the entire U.S. federal fleet with EVs, Lordstown’s stock shot up.
By the start of this year, Lordstown had manufactured 31 vehicles in total. Six had been sold to actual consumers. (Most of them would be recalled.) The stock was trading at barely $1. Tech-funding giant Foxconn was pulling its $170 million. And last week, the company filed for bankruptcy.
Without massive state help, EVs are a niche market for rich virtue signalers. And, come to think of it, that’s sort of what they are now, even with the help. A recent University of California–Berkeley study found that 90 percent of tax credits for EVs go to people in the top income strata. Most EVs are bought by high earners who like the look and feel of a Tesla. And that’s fine. I don’t want to stop anyone from owning the car they prefer. I just don’t want to help pay for it.
Really, why would a middle-class family shun a perfectly good gas-powered car that can be fueled (most of the time) cheaply and driven virtually any distance, in any environment, and any time of the year? We don’t need lithium. We have the most efficient, affordable, portable, and useful form of energy. We have centuries’ worth of it waiting in the ground.
Climate alarmists might believe EVs are necessary to save the planet. That’s fine. Using their standard, however, a bike is an innovation. Because even on their terms, the usefulness of EVs is highly debatable. Most of the energy that powers them is derived from fossil fuels. The manufacturing of an EV has a negligible positive benefit for the environment, if any.
And the fact is that if EVs were more efficient and saved us money, as "enviros" and politicians claim, consumers wouldn’t have to be compelled into using them and companies wouldn’t have to be bribed into producing them.
Ford announced today that it is slashing the prices of its' Ford F-150 Lightning models.
Base "Pro" model now under $50,000.
$10,000 less than it was yesterday.
https://www.reuters.com/business/au...-trucks-base-variant-cost-17-less-2023-07-17/
Base "Pro" model now under $50,000.
$10,000 less than it was yesterday.
https://www.reuters.com/business/au...-trucks-base-variant-cost-17-less-2023-07-17/
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Funkworks
Low Earth Orbit, obstructing Earth's view of Venus
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Mine wasn't. I can hardly think of any ways to improve upon it, and I like it even more than my electric drill. I'll replace my PHEV with a 100% EV when the time comes.
Maybe this one!
:https://aptera.us/wind-tunnel/
I'm very much looking forward to see how the Aptera does with the first customers.
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Yep. Posting that drivel was just one more in the long list of reasons I need to keep him on my ignore list.Mine wasn't. I can hardly think of any ways to improve upon it, and I like it even more than my electric drill. I'll replace my PHEV with a 100% EV when the time comes.
Maybe this one!
https://aptera.us/wind-tunnel/
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