Wow, looking at the specs, that’s a crazy efficient generator. I have not considered inverter gens. To be fair he actually did not get the 12~18mpg but he estimated he would get that based on the displays, but it does look like a better option for this application.
Another option I have seen, which is not without it’s problems is to hook up a solar panel/grid tied inverter to a generator output. The main issue if the grid tied inverter accepts the generator as grid power, would be a situation where the solar panels oversupply the load with the generator providing as little power as it can.
No, I get it. I’m not sure it will work when the market share of EVs has grown significantly larger and other manufacturers are fully represented in the market place. I suspect the consumer will demand universal accessibility, over exclusivity and marketing hype. Can you imagine if you could not fill your Ford at a GM refueling station?
East coast/Gulf of the US . Basically Texas to NY following the coast line. In my experience in NY perhaps every 7 years or so, some places more as we are at the far end of it.
Tesla has already offered Supercharger use to other manufacturers, but so far no takers.
One problem is that Tesla would want the other vehicles to charge at something approaching the full rate: 100+ kW, not the 50 kW that’s common on other cars (Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf). It’s not just the juice that costs money, but the stall itself, and if a car is occupying a stall for 2-3x as long as a Tesla would, it’s costing more than its share relative to a Tesla.
There’s also the branding problem. Superchargers are made and built by Tesla, and I see no reason why Tesla would weaken this link. Other makes wouldn’t want to be seen as dependent on Tesla for their infrastructure.
I grew up in Connecticut, about five or six miles away from the coast, and I don’t ever remember evacuation orders. Perhaps if you live directly on Long Island Sound, you might be advised to evacuate, but you need not go far to avoid the danger. Perhaps in Florida, Louisiana or Texas, you might need to evacuate, but again mostly coastal dwellers and I doubt they need to go very far. Certainly not hundreds of miles.
yes, it’s a post-fix “Dieselgate” car, it has the updated firmware and the DPF and EGR were replaced before sale
I see no soot on the tailpipe, the 50,000 original miles were on the “cheater” software, I’ve only put around 6K on it so far, but i’m happy with it so far.
And older mechanical diesel motors (like in my okd Kubota G5200 garden tractor) have no computer hardware to fail, it’s an old mechanical fuel pump, and no electronics to fail, and diesels have no ignition system to fail anyway (compression ignition FTW)
diesels are generally more robust than gasoline cars
I think it’ll work itself out eventually (a decade or two).
There was an obvious chicken-and-egg problem here. No charging network means only niche demand for EVs, but few EVs means no one wants to build out a charging network. Tesla was the only one to spend the billions on a network for cars that didn’t yet exist. For them, it was existential–they *had *to build out a network to convince people that electric-only cars (not just hybrids) are viable.
Now that EVs are a proven concept, and other makes see them as pretty much inevitable, there will be a lot more money going into public chargers. Right now, Electrify America is the main competitor to Superchargers and they are funded by Volkswagen, Ford, and others. They aren’t yet as available as Superchargers but they’ll probably exceed Tesla eventually.
Most people who evacuate are going to evacuate to a location that’s convenient to them for other reasons. They’re going to go stay with family, or at least go far enough that the hotels aren’t all booked up.
If a major population center has to evacuate, the necessary evacuation distance is not primarily determined by the danger they’re evacuating from, but by their economic situation and the capacity of nearby areas to absorb a temporary mass migration of people.
From what I’ve read, the main issue is that Tesla wants other manufacturers to help pay for the Supercharger network, and no one else wants to do that.
The other large area type of storm I’ve experienced multiple times is a wide area ice storm. If it hits early in the season, while leaves are still up, it can devastate a large area for quite some time and bring down wires, I had 2 that lasted over 2 weeks without power in the last 10 years. and while one can survive at home if prepared, eventually one will need to get gas for the generator before one strands oneself at home due to insufficient gas to travel to a functioning station. Here the ability to survive maybe 3 days or so, then head out for fuel, even over great distances makes sense. If a EV would be as good for this as a ICE IDK.
I didn’t even include CT - while it could get hit, it doesn’t have the same problems as places further south, even NY was pushing it except for the problem of Long Island. CT is protected by the huge landmass of LI as a buffer which kills the hurricanes energy, and also that hurricanes are typically weaker that far north.
And that LI is a problem. During one evac I sheltered at Hofstra, though it may have been the coliseum. What I found is it’s an incredibly boring experience which made me want to go back home and face the hurricane just to get some excitement. From that yes i know there will be safe shelters set up, but no I don’t want to go there and I’m sure others feel the same way. I’m getting out of Dodge, will be passing the coliseum with the parking lot full of EV’s :D.
Seems pretty dumb on the part of the other manufacturers. Part of the price of a Tesla goes into maintaining and building out the network. Of course they’d want others to pay their share of that, too.
It has to be this way for a while. Superchargers are available even in places that couldn’t justify ordinary paid chargers. These stations simply wouldn’t exist unless they were subsidized by the fleet. But they’re also necessary if you want to say that your charger network covers the whole country.
When EVs have ~50% penetration, we can expect chargers even in very out of the way locations. But we aren’t there yet, and certainly weren’t several years ago.
Volkswagen and Ford seem to get this now, at least. Not sure about the others.
Coal was certainly first on the chopping block, but the goal was to eventually get to zero carbon.
I generally agree with you. I think the ‘golden days’ of the Alberta oil economy are behind us, and for pretty much the reasons you mentioned. Oil demand is not increasing like it did, and new supplies and alternatives are going to keep prices low for the forseeable future. Add in the fact that Alberta’s oil is moee CO2 intensive than most other sources, and there will be a lot of pressure to stop production even if prices make it profitable.
However, one area where we can do better is to dump the transition to wind and solar, which are the two worst energy generation technologies I can imagine for Alberta. Wind is viable in southern Alberta, but already pretty well exploited. There might be room for a few more percentage points of wind power in our mix. But solar is terrible. We only get about 50% of the energy in sunlight that the southern US gets, and the imbalance between winter and summer means we’d have to massively over-build summer capacity to get much energy from solar in winter. And you still need a baseload infrastructure, so you have to pay to maintain both.
Manitoba and Saskatchewan have it right, If coal has to go, the only real alternative for the cold prairie provinces is nuclear, backed ip with natural gas for load following. Until we come to that realization we will be stuck with coal and/or buying energy from somewhere else.
Is there a supercharger somewhere on that road? Edmonton to Cold Lake is 294 km. A Tesla 3 Long Range has a book range of 518 km in perfect conditions. Edmunds found a Model 3 lost 40% of its range at -7c when the heater was running. That brings you down to 318 km. Now remove your low rolling resistance tires and put on a set of winter tires, and drive on a bad, snow covered road instead of an interstate highway in a warm place. And do it in -30. You aren’t going to make it.
If you only drive to Cold Lake in the summer, the Model 3 should make the trip fine. Try it on a bad day in winter, and you’re likely going to be boned.
I’ve also lived on the prairies my whole life. I’ve done the sterno can thing, and also used propane heaters to get small aircraft started in winter. Fun times. And yes, range is reduced even for gas vehicles. The thing is, I can refill my gas tank in a few minutes, and there are gas stations everywhere. And gas is flexible. For example, if I had to bug out of here now, I could top off my tank by siphoning the gas out of my wife’s car, and fill a couple of gas cans as well. That would probably get us 600-700 km of range. And if I can find any working gas station, I can have my range topped back up in a few minutes.
I would really like to hear some reports of how electric cars fare when it’s -40. My guess is ‘poorly’.
I agree with you on nuclear, but I also think that there’s plenty of roof space for solar and we are no where near saturated as far as wind. The thing is if we rely on one source of energy we are screwed no matter what. Manitoba also has a fair bit of Hydro electric to offset coal as well. FWIW, we use solar as back up power for our remote sites with battery banks and it has saved us a trip more than a few times when the diesel gens wouldn’t fire up (and they have hydronic heaters plus big MF batteries to get them cranked).
As far as the Model 3 goes there is a level 2 charger in Bonnyville, about a 1/2 dozen assorted chargers in edmonton and level 3s coming to Lloydminster the Battlefords and Vegreville, which is really not ideal for me on Hwy 28. There are quite a few videos on you tube of drivers in hard winter conditions that show up to a 30% drop, which would be tolerable for me. It’s still easier to get gas, no dispute there, but it will get better as we go and I’m comfortable with being on the frontier of something new. I keep thinking of Tomas in The High Mountains of Portugal trying to find fuel for his Fiat and ending up at the pharmacy.
Norway has a climate similar to ours and they don’t seem to have an issue, it’s just a matter of knowing yours (and the car’s) limits, I suppose.
I, for one, am of the opinion that if you live in a place with a known tendency to get power outages concurrent with evacuation orders requiring you to go a hundred-plus miles in freezing weather, then perhaps an EV is not for you at this time. Though if you don’t meet all those qualifiers EVs would get more and more viable.
Honestly, I don’t think ice storms are going to be as big an obstacle to EVs as apartments with no likelihood of powered parking in the foreseeable future.
Indeed; if your situation involves long power outages but not quite at evacuation level, an EV is still potentially a great choice.
Full-house generators are common and I imagine that anyone that can afford a Tesla and lives somewhere with frequent power outages is likely to get one.
Consider a Generac RG022. 22 kW, natural gas powered, and enough for a decent sized home including EV charging. It costs around $10k. A Tesla with a fast wall charger uses about 10 kW.
At 50% load, the RG022 uses 207 ft^3/hr. That’s 0.053 kWh/ft^3.
Average US residential price/1000 ft^3 is about $11. That comes to $0.21/kWh (not bad: that’s only a bit more than my off-peak electric rates). For a Model 3, that’s about 5 cents/mile, or about half the cost of a reasonably efficient gas car.
So if you’re on generator power, there’s still no problem charging your Tesla and you retain all the other advantages. If the gas stations don’t have backup power, or are just closed or out of fuel, you aren’t out of luck. You don’t even have to stand outside in the cold.
Incidentally, the CO2 emission of a Model 3 charged this way is equivalent to a 35 mpg car. Not great, but not bad for a relatively rare situation.
Sam Stone, does your natural gas furnace actually work in a power outage? Mine won’t, and that is true for most. We rely on our fireplace for heat when the power is out.
Also, using hurricane Irma as an example is a poor choice. Uncertainty about the track and Florida’s geography had people evacuating both coasts, and people just trying to get out of the state, period. Even for Florida it was unusual. Usually people in a limited area need to evacuate less than 100 miles.
Having been stuck for 8+ hours in traffic during snow/ice storm, I wonder how well an EV would handle keeping occupants warm. Would it manage OK for that length of time, with enough reserves to continue once free?
When this happened, I had a dual-tanked 4WD diesel truck with chains, and water/food for several days (I always travel this way). As it became apparent we’d be there a while, I started the small generator in the back and used it to power electric blankets and the block heater – to save my fuel. But others were not prepared, and the few I talked with worried about fuel reserves as the night went on.
As I said upthread, I wouldn’t use an EV for long distance travel. But I wonder if they’d be at a disadvantage trying to keep the interior warm in a jam like this? The rest of the traffic ended up being there for over 12 hours (I chained up and left overland).
I think in this scenario, trying to stay warm using the seat heaters is probably the best bet. From the internet, it looks like a Tesla Model 3’s seat heater consumes 500W (for the first setting, at least) - with a 75kW-hr battery, this would mean an 8 hour ice storm with 4 seat heaters on (2kW) would drain about 16kW-hr (about 22% of the full battery’s capacity).