Guest post by Richard Fowler
First of all, I like the idea of an electric car. I like “all-electric”. I’ve got an electric power washer, an electric weed eater, an electric riding lawnmower, an electric robot lawnmower, an electric toothbrush, and electric air pump just to name a few. I’ve driven an electric car, and it was fun to drive. Now they’ve got the range up to 250 miles, for an extra $9,000 you can get the range up to 300 miles. If you use your car to commute to work you can charge it between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., which is ideal for Howard Electric’s off peak rates. At our current off peak rates you could travel 250 miles for under $2.50.
Believe me, I and most other cooperative managers in the country would love to see an abundance of electric cars. If every member of our cooperative were to go out and buy an electric car tomorrow, slow charge their cars on our off peak hours, we could probably lower our electric rates 15%. Why is that? Because we wouldn’t have to upgrade our power lines. Those power lines have been designed and engineered for peak times (in Howard’s case 6 to 8 a.m. & 4 to 8 p.m.) and by charging your car in off peak hours you would be using those power lines during non-peak times. We would not have to upgrade your transformer because it too was engineered for your peak usage. The same is true for your substation, your transmission lines, and the coal and gas power plants – all designed for your “peak” usage. So using power during off peak times should be the cheapest power there is, and with our demand time of day rates, it is.
So yes, I want electric cars to be successful. But sometimes what we want, requires a reality check. So whether it’s electric cars, which I want, or a carbonless world, which those espousing the green new deal wants, both groups need a reality check. I will write about a reality check for the green new deal later, but today….let’s talk about a reality check for electric cars. I don’t believe, for the most part, that electric cars will be more than commuter cars. Here’s why.
We’ve tried hard to educate you on a KW charge vs. a kWh charge and you now have both on your bills. A car charger that’s a slow trickle charge overnight doesn’t present a problem, but when you’re traveling you’re not going to want to wait 8 hours to get your car charged. You’re going to want a fast charger. Well the fastest charger so far is a 500 KW charger and it will charge a car in 10 minutes. Tesla is working on a 550 KW charger. When you trickle charge an electric car the batteries should last about 10 years, but if you fast charge an electric car the battery life goes down significantly, and at $6,500 a pop, these batteries aren’t cheap.
Imagine a charging station, instead of a gas station, that has eight of these 500 KW chargers. That’s a four megawatt load, which is more than all our large power accounts added together. You’re going to need a substation for this charging station which will cost $1,000,000 not counting the upgrading of the transmission lines to feed the substation. That too will cost hundreds of thousands and this extra load is the equivalent of a new power plant which costs millions – and no – solar and wind for the most part do not provide reliable peak power, they provide unreliable intermittent power.
And it’s even worse for electric 18-wheelers. An ongoing study in California, Oregon, and Washington has projected a 10 MW charging station for electric 18-wheelers. How many gas stations exist across our country now for 18-wheelers? Well convert sixty of those to electric 10 MW loads and you’ve got the equivalent of our biggest coal fired power plant, and this will require more million dollar substations, more transmission line upgrades which will be very, very expensive. Now, on the positive side these 18-wheelers will go 500 miles on a battery pack, but these battery packs do weigh 5 tons which, along with their normal loads could test the highway legal “heavy haul” limits in several states. I really do hope they are successful, but the electric infrastructure to make this happen is a very big hill to climb and will likely require more carbon based coal or natural gas power plants (unless we’re willing to go nuclear).
Some have theoretically argued that by reversing the electricity flow from tens of thousands of cars to the grid at peak times, you could levelize the grid and avoid adding more peak power plants. In other words, the grid would use the charge from the car batteries, leaving the owner needing to recharge before driving. The problem with that theory is people probably aren’t going to spend $40,000 – $80,000 on an electric car so they can levelize the grid. If they spend that kind of money, it will be to drive the car.
System peaks are on the hottest and coldest days of the year. If on those days you’re using your car to drive and using your heater or air conditioner, how much excess battery energy do you expect to have to charge the grid? It is these hottest and coldest days that determine how many power plants we need. I don’t believe reverse flow is a reasonable solution to avoid those higher peaks that will be caused by cross country cars and trucks who will be fast charging their vehicles during peak times.
Unless somebody (either our members or taxpayers) has money to allocate to these fast chargers, substations, transmission upgrades and power plants they’re not likely to become a reality.
So, for discussion sake for cars, let’s tone down the chargers from a 500 KW charger to a more reasonable 50 KW charger (which is 8 times the peak of the average house). These are the fastest chargers Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) is installing in Kansas City.
These 50 KW chargers will charge a car in 93 minutes. So you pull into this charging station and there’s three people ahead of you, each taking 93 minutes. That’s a 4 ½ hour wait plus 1 ½ hours to charge your car. Many of KCP&L’s chargers are level 2 chargers. Those take four hours to add 200 miles of drive time. Not a bad wait if you’re on the golf course.
So how far can I go on a charge? Like I said earlier, these newer electric cars can now go up to 250 miles on a charge…….unless you turn on the heater. Heaven forbid you turn on your heater. The miles go down 25% if you need heat. Northern states may struggle with this issue. Slow charging workplace charging stations could make longer commutes more reliable and would work with existing infrastructure, but if you are going to rely on a slow charger to get home, it would need to be dedicated to you.
Electric cars are estimated to cost six to ten thousand more than a gas car. These cars need 70% less parts than gas engines and need 30% fewer workers to put them together, so lost jobs and a more expensive car. On the positive side, the cost to charge an electric car at home is much cheaper than gas….if….you don’t use a fast charger. Most of the cobalt in lithium batteries comes from the Congo. The Congo continues to raise the price of cobalt and the Congo is considered an unstable country.
In 2012, the CAFÉ standards required cars to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. President Trump has reduced that requirement to 37 miles per gallon. Apparently General Motors and other car manufacturers believe that either by 2020 or by 2024 politics will return that standard to 54.5 miles per gallon, so they are moving forward with that target. The only way to achieve that goal is to blend in a significant amount of electric cars. General Motors expects that 20% of their car sales by 2023 will be electric.
The Green New Deal would make all vehicles electric by 2030 and the proposed “OFF Act” would make all vehicles electric by 2035. If that happens, traveling across the country could be a circus. An electric car makes sense for a commuter car, but for traveling across country, if you don’t want the long charging wait, you’re going to want a gas vehicle, if you can find one.
P=E times I. Still trying to wrap my head around handling a 500 kW cable and plug.
And what kind of service do they require? 480VAC three-phase? Not cheap. Residential service is generally only 208VAC single-phase.
Th most common residential electric US meter meter is form 2S. 2 phases plus neutral. It allows 24o for oven and clothes dryer, 12o for everything else.
You are correct, I was not thinking clearly.
You can recharge on 240V AC but it takes 20 hours for a full charge on a Tesla S
If you change your service to 480v you can recharge in solitary significantly less time but 480v isn’t generally used for single unit residential service. One way around is to run a second parallel 240v svc
Bryan,
If the primary feed and transformer are typical for a residential setup then running a second service wire won’t get you to 480v. Primary residential feeds usually only provide two two phases on the pole. You can run as many service drops as you want, you won’t get more voltage between them. It would just be like increasing the size of the wire in the service drop – more current capacity, e.g. a 100amp svc to a 200amp svc.
Oh…that’s easy. Just buy an electric forklift to haul your 8″ cable around that weighs 600 pounds, filled with pure copper. And another attachment to ensure you can plug it in without busting off the connectors when attaching it to the car. But this is what a EV semi truck will require.
This thought of fast high capacity chargers for a lot of vehicles doesn’t add up, obviously, and shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to understand this. It’s why it really isn’t happening, except for a smallish trial that is being subsidized to the point of ridiculousness. Many of these fast chargers are just a diesel generator on a trailer they pull in, maybe with another trailer full of charged batteries they haul in daily to make this appear to work. Add all this up, and it doesn’t add up. Not for the pure BEV fast charger. Maybe a PHEV might be a place to start if you needed short range EV capabilities in the city, for all the obvious reasons, but we finally have perfected the ICE auto that is highly efficient, little pollution, reliable and relatively inexpensive. The gist of the post is correct.
Keep in mind the current (also remember, we are talking DC, not AC) is not flowing during User interaction; only low voltage contacts to perform a digital handshake are active. Current flow begins / ceases at the press of a physical button or via remote software action (e.g. in-car or phone) by the User. The cables themselves for the fast charging DC are pretty hefty — go to a charging station and check one out. The cables for Level 2 (say, 32A AC) are likely 6 gauge or similar and still only flow when activated. Hope this helps!
I ran the numbers a year or so ago. To carry that kind of current you need a bar around 0.4 inches in diameter. Of course you would need two of those for a charging “cable”.
It is said in the article that slow charging is the cost effective way to go. Once there becomes a significant fleet of EV the supply and demand ratio for those cheaper electrons changes, and so do the costs.
And when a huricane takes out the power lines to the charging stations over a large area, what then?
Atlanta is about 400 miles from where Zeta made landfall. The storm swept through the city on Thursday, leaving approximately one million people without power. Power may not be fully restored until Sunday. No power, no phone, no internet, no TV. Imagine no transportation, either, since the storm hit in the middle of their precious off-peak charging time period.
When the power went out here (we were lucky, only a four-hour outage), I announced, “Welcome to the Democrats’ Green New Deal. Enjoy not using fossil fuels.”
I have always classified EVs as a technology that, when you need it most, will most likely fail.
The solution to all the problems of decarbonization is the realization that decarbonization is not necessary.
That sir is the money shot. More CO2 is better. ( On another matter I prefer the 6L6. I know it is generic but it gives a better light show)👍😉 Boogy tubes
I work for a power company. There’s nothing we would like any more than to sell power to squillions of electric vehicles. It would put our CEO in an ecstatic trance of inexpressible joy. Our company, along with every major power company in America, has been throwing money at battery technology for a long time. We do this for cars, and we do it for the much dreamier fantasy of grid level battery storage.
But nothing’s working out. Storing energy in battery chemistry is fundamentally inadequate. The biggest battery on the planet can replace an average sized power plant for, at most, an hour or so. The biggest one I’ve ever seen planned might last 12 hours. To replace a real power plant, we need 12 days or 12 weeks worth of storage — and a half a continent full of windmills and solar panels to charge it up…. and another squillion miles of transmission lines to plug everything in. Money, money, money, money! Like I said, our CEO would need tranquilizers to restrain the gladness.
Conclusion: Battery technology is not even within an order of magnitude for the amount of energy storage needed to be a practical solution for cars or the grid.
But if they did those grid level batteries on a trickle charge, it would only cost like a buck thirty.
x10^42?
Keeping batteries fully charged, especially when it’s hot, degrades the battery over time.
You will not own a car in the future and you will not be allowed to travel outside your smart city without special permission so the distance is a moot point. Cars will be self driving and will be rented. The freedom to roam is a thing of the past. No longer the freedom of the wide open spaces. You honestly don’t think that all petrol cars are going to be replaced with electric do you? A huge cultural change. Pity teenage boys in the future… Prefab Sprout – Cars and Girls .
https://youtu.be/jEJdfDD4dVg
Close to my conclusions. I believe the intent is to deny citizens the private ownership of vehicles. Their (those in power) personal rationale is: less congestion, less policing, fewer injuries and deaths, less road maintenance, repairs, and construction, all leading to a higher standard of living (in their eyes). The true reason – they are tired of increasing traffic, lack of parking, and having to engage the masses. We are an inconvenience. They will be exempt, because they ‘need’ their vehicles to run government.
Their method of making this happen is to blame vehicles for climate change, and institute policies that make owning them unaffordable, unless government is picking up the tab for you. They will NEVER say you are banned from owning a vehicle. That would be politically unacceptable. Instead, they will simply price you out of the market.
That’s the only explanation I can conceive that explains why they are pushing a concept that so clearly could not be implemented. It is not possible to replace the existing number of vehicles with EVs, nor provide them with the electrical energy necessary to drive the existing number of miles driven.
So there’s another explanation that I think is more accurate. We don’t need to presume some massive conspiracy to take away our liberties. It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey. Kind of like going on an all-inclusive cruise paid for with OPM.
Unicorn fart energy does not need to be the slightest bit practical to be implemented. There does not need to be any practical roadmap to a complete and functional system. The entire objective is to create government spending cash flows that only connected cronies can access.
Crony capitalists can get ridiculously rich farming subsidies without actually contributing any value to society. The way a crony becomes a crony is by paying a politician for access. The politician passes laws, controls regulations and arranges contracts that enrich the crony.
As long as the crony keeps paying the politician, the politician makes sure that the government teat is still in the crony’s mouth.
Eventually the scam has to pack up and move on to a new scam. Think Solyndra. Do you think that the 0bama contributors who ran that scam are living in a refrigerator box under a highway overpass today? Um, no. The company went bankrupt and taxpayers covered the whole cost, except for any unfortunate vendors who failed to demand cash in advance. The cronies are surely either set for life or are running a new scam, or both.
Another thing to consider is that ridiculously impractical schemes beget new subsidy opportunities. Impractical windmills and solar panels lead to battery scam opportunities, smart meter opportunities, frequency stabilization opportunities. None of it needs to work! Their flaws propagate even more scam opportunities.
Incidentally this hypothesis works equally well to explain pandemic response “opportunities” like remdesivir that doesn’t work replacing no-profit HCQ that does.
OT
M6.8 earthquake just hit Turkey, significant damage reported.
Surely we can blame it on climate change so it isn’t OT.
may be solar minimum, natural variability 🙂
… angry God (the one true One :))
Big government…..submit & obey.
Randomized charging over the time interval from off peak start (8pm?) to on peak start (6am) will efficiently spread the load just as electric base board heaters do. Simply need an algorithm for the charger to divide the overnight interval into charge segments needed( seldom will full charge be required for daily commuters) and randomize the intervals or even coordinate via internet with utility software. It will be a very good leveler for capacity and make the whole system much more cost efficient and more economic since your annual peak of peaks (for which capacity must be designed) is far, far higher than average usage.
Since it takes all night to trickly charge a car’s battery, there is no availability time shift some of the demand.
If you make all chargers the high current type, all you have done is have say 1/8th the number of people charging at any given time, the problem is that each of them is pulling 8 times as much power.
Your solution doesn’t help in the slightest, just makes the system more complex and expensive.
What if I’m pulling my 2000 pound fishing boat? What is my range then?
Worse, what about on the way home, when you are pulling your 2000 pound fishing boat and one or two 1 pound bass?
You’ll likely be OK so long as your lake is in your backyard towing the boat shouldn’t present a problem. Of course you might have to stop and recharge on the way back to your garage
Yup and how about a 6,000lb horse trailer with six 1150lb horses in it. Up and down mountains while running either the heater or the AC, with nothing but a currant bush to plug into when you reach your destination several hours later.
You’d do better to pull a 2000lb EV with your 2000lb fishing boat.
The argument about not having to upgrade power lines is inadequate.
If electric cars are charged only at night, there will be no change to day-time load, it will increase with population and economic activity.
But electric cars will be charged during the day as explained in other posts, for example at work and at the shops, as well as at home at night. Some owners will save on upgrading their home electrical facilities and use daytime outlets only. In general, charging electric cars will increase both day and night loads.
I don’t care whether or not electric cars are successful. I do care that they are being given preferential treatment, at everyone else’s expense. That, in a nutshell is the issue, and the same goes for “renewable” or “green energy”. That is all we climate and energy rationalists want – a level playing field. But I guess that is asking too much.
Spare nightime capacity exists up to about 10% of the cars being electric. After than we need to upgrade all electrical production by a factor of 10.
Unless we go nuclear there is no way this can be done, because it takes the energy of 1 solar panel over 20 years to produce a second solar panel. There is no surplus energy to power cars, unless we use fossil fuels to build the panels. Which is no better than simply using fossil fuels in the cars.
“it takes the energy of 1 solar panel over 20 years to produce a second solar panel”
That assumes the solar panel will last for 20 years.
BTW, does that 20 year calculation include loss of efficiency in the panel as it gets older?
“The Green New Deal would make all vehicles electric by 2030 and the proposed “OFF Act” would make all vehicles electric by 2035.”
What on earth are you talking about? I don’t know about you but I’ll be buying an EV in Oz at the end of 2023 when I planned to chop in the missus ICE shopping trolley and no more petrol and excise for me at that price-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/21/electric-cars-as-cheap-to-manufacture-as-regular-models-by-2024
Yippee as the federal Gummint charge Ozzie 46.53 cents/litre on fuel now and with EVs at parity with ICEs get out of my way at the showroom and where do I pay brother?
Hey Griff! You don’t suppose this EV price parity is really like the tipping points predictions do you?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/23/joe-biden-transition-from-oil-industry-rowing-back
https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
You know… fake news that Trump bloke is always banging on about?
Italian governament earns about 80bln yearly on fuels for automotive. So what will the kwh cost when most cars are electric?
Installed a free at point of use 32A charger at one of our office car parks down in Devon (UK) to start a learning curve . . .
instant mayhem as soon as a second person wanted to charge, due to the very limited number of car spaces otherwise available and always full
We now need to install a metering system and a booking system and hope person A shifts his car when person B wants to charge , which means phone calls and leaving the office to swap cars and to talk about cars etc.
I suggested we supply a long pair of flying leads to stretch across the car park , just waiting for the first person to think its a good idea !
There are many studies which quantify the consequences on the environment of an object from the extraction of the metals necessary for its manufacture, until disposal. Between 2010 and 2019, at least 85 studies of this type have been carried out on electric vehicles by various research institutes.
Here’s one: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/3/1241
« Sensitivity Analysis in the Life-Cycle Assessment of Electric vs. Combustion Engine Cars under Approximate Real-World Conditions », Eckard Helmers, Johannes Dietz and Martin Weiss, Sustainability, février 2020
There is a consensus across all studies that says, producing an electric vehicle requires much more energy, and emits twice as many greenhouse gases as producing a combustion engine vehicle.
So why are climate alarmists happy about this?
I’ve got a new slogan for Oslo: “Oslo, producing more CO² than we need to since 2014”
The cost to fill up an EV in CA jumped 12.5% this August vs last per the EIA “Transportation Sector” data.
If one was charging a laptop at a local CA commercial operation (Starbucks) someone would be paying 11% more this August.
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a
If you go to e-caworld.com and read up on the e-cat SKL, you would understand your issue is no issue at all. This would allow electric generation units of 5 , 10, or 15 kW to be incorporated in the automobiles (larger for busses, trucks, etc.). The average power consumption of cars in town driving is about 8 to 10 kW, but has peak power to 100 kW or more for acceleration. The acceleration can be handled by battery, but since each acceleration only lasts for seconds at a time and only uses 0.1 to 0.2 kW-h each time, fairly small batteries can be used (10 or so kW-h would generally do). Trip driving uses 12 to 18 kW average (again with up to 100 kW or so peaks for acceleration), so 10 to 15 kW e-cats and 25 to 50 kW-h of battery would allow 8 hour of high speed driving, and recharge within the auto on stops and meals. Slightly higher e-cat power would allow less battery, and faster turnaround. The e-cats, long life modest sized battery packs, and electric motors capable of 100 or so kW make the whole issue moot.
Mr. Weinstein: Which “your issue” do you mean? Thanks for the link, but if e-caworld or anybody else had solved any one of the issues raised in the article, the author would know it and any number of commenters here would know it, so I’ll not spend any of my time visiting some site that is promoting unicorn farts as long life, modest sized battery packs. If it floats your boat to believe it, enjoy. As I’ve said many times, when a business like the post office starts using EVs in the fleet, then I’ll look. Have you ever noticed all those postal trucks parked in the same place in the early morn, and again at night, drive 100 miles stop-n-go, never far from the base? Your e-cat SKL, whatever that is, has very large customers just waiting for it to arrive, but it hasn’t. If only the EV fans could recharge a battery with unwarranted optimism.
Lithium market tracker…
https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/
We should neither ignore the positive nor the negative aspects of any new technology, but take everything into consideration and balance the pros and cons. For example, Climate Change Alarmists tend to ignore the beneficial aspects of warming and increases in atmospheric CO2, whilst those who disagree with the AGW concept tend to downplay the ‘potential’ benefits of renewable energy supplies.
The progression of electric vehicle technology has been rather slow because it is understood that a reliable and very large supply of electricity would be required if most people were to use EVs, and that that situation would be in conflict with the political drive to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels.
Electric vehicles are potentially cheaper to run and less expensive to maintain than diesel and gasoline cars. However, the expense of needing to replace the batteries after a certain mileage, and the slow degradation of the batteries after frequent recharges, is a negative aspect which adds to the over all cost.
The good news is, this could change as battery technology develops. Tesla seems to be in the process of developing an amazingly durable battery which could outlast the rest of the car.
“A Tesla battery researcher showed updated test results pointing to batteries lasting over 15,000 cycles or the equivalent of over 2 million miles (3.5 million km) in an electric car.
Most impressively, the batteries show very little to no capacity degradation when they are discharged between 25% to 50% of their capacity, which is actually how most people use their cars.
On average, American drivers use their vehicles for less than 30 miles per day.
For example, with this battery in a Tesla vehicle with over 300 miles of range, you could use it to commute 30 miles a day and by charging, on average, from 70 to 80% every day, it would result in very little to no battery degradation.”
https://electrek.co/2020/10/18/tesla-battery-test-results-over-2-million-miles/
Research test results pointing to.
Get back to us when real and all details worked out. In the meantime, I buy a Tahoe to pull my boat and to travel and the commitment will be for a long, long time. I don’t know any electric enthusiast who doesn’t imagine elimination of the internal combustion engine and is against co-existence.
Discharging and charging between 70% and 80% every day is highly damaging to the battery.
Batteries like this are on the verge of reality, and have been for many, many decades.
It’s easy to get great results in a lab where every factor that can damage the battery can be excluded from your test.
The real world, not so much.
oh ye of little faith
“The good news is, this could change as battery technology develops. Tesla seems to be in the process of developing an amazingly durable battery which could outlast the rest of the car.”
Tesla has a long history of announcing amazing breakthroughs that never make it out of the lab.
That 15K cycles is only possible in a lab, where the battery is both charged and discharged at the perfect rate and to factory specified levels and only at factory specified levels with extra cooling to make sure the battery never heats up.
Beyond that the battery is never stored for hours at a time with the battery full.
In other words, it will never happen in the real world.
A reality check on self driving vehicles and electric trucks.
This truck driver writes up an e-mail and posts a “Trucker Report” on another board every week. This week was quite interesting. Imagine driving an EV of any kind in the conditions we encountered, let alone getting stranded in the middle of nowhere in such conditions.
Truckers report. (Global warming my ass edition)
Teamed with Randy to do the Nogales, AZ run. Departed at 02:00 Sunday morning.
Took the route we prefer across I-70 W to Kansas City and the bypasses south to the US 35 toll road to Wichita, KS where we catch US 54. US 54 across KS and through the panhandles of OK and TX to Tucumcari, NM where we catch I-40 W to Santa Rosa, NM and get off on US 54 again. US 54 to US 70 passing by White Sands to catch I-10 W at Sant Cruz I-10 W to I-19 S to Nogales, AZ on the border with Mexico.
It took the first shift and got us down to the I-35 service area south of El Dorado a few short miles north of Wichita. Randy took over and started hitting freezing precipitation in SW Kansas. He drove through freezing rain, sleet, and light snow as we skirted the eastern edge of the powerful cold front pushing down through the center of the country. When I woke up the leading edge of our mirrors were covered in ice with icicles hanging down from the lower edges.
I took over about midnight in a small truck stop south of Vaughn, NM. Randy had gotten down ahead of the leading edge of the cold front. The temp was 45 F when I took over and the wind was howling out of the south east. The ice on the truck starting to melt. Once I had driven 38 miles further SW on US 54 the temp was 70 deg. F! When I yelled back to the sleeper to let Randy know he responded. “I say this with Love! F you!” We both had a good laugh.
I drove us on to Nogales where I made the delivery at 11:30 and then drove up through Tucson to Oro Valley near and dropped the special refer trailer (having rear and front refer units with a movable insulated divider so that freight requiring two different temps can be carried in one trailer. I this case it was reagents and pre prepared slides in the front and diagnostic medical equipment in the rear bound for the Roche Labs campus in Indianapolis.) at the place where they would load it.
I then bobtailed to a nearby WalMart and there we waited. As we waited we used his microwave and heated up the two big bowls of homemade vegetable and beef soup my better half had sent with us and topped that off with the brownies she had given me. Both of us got a nice 4 hour nap before they called us to come get the trailer.
Randy had the first shift. When I woke up we were in snow and far behind where I expected us to be. It was dark and Randy had run into blizzard conditions on I-10 in Arizona before we got to the New Mexico state line that had forced him to slow to 35 mph for some time. I stayed up. Conditions sucked, it was night, and I know the route better than Randy and getting misoriented in those conditions is not a good thing.
East of Santa Cruz is a long climb over a ridgeline and I suspected we might run into very heavy snow at the crest. Sure enough the wind was howling up there and and if it had been plowed the wind had undone the work. Descending on the east side was treacherous in 6 to 8″ of snow. Randy didn’t get over 15 mph all the way down until it flattened out. Temperatures this whole time were well below freezing and with the wind chill in the open desert land it was damned cold in the single digits at times.
As it got light the view of the high desert we were passing through was that of a winter wonder land. Never expected I would see snow covered tumble weeks rolling but now I can say I have seen such a thing. The east wind in those wide open spaces interspersed by mountains combined with the road conditions makes driving exhausting.
We started coming across slide offs and checking to make sure the drivers were ok. Came across a car carrier that was slightly jacked off the road with a 4-wheeler slid off near it. Stopped to check. The truck driver said he had stopped to check on the 4-wheeler and his rig had just slid off the road when he was stopped. He was fine but those folks were going to have a long wait for a tow truck I’m sure because they were out in the middle of nowhere.
I took over in Vaughn, NM and we had to use an E-tool to clear enough of a run (about 6 feet) for me to get going after we got stuck in the truck stop. I didn’t see a tow truck heading south until I was almost to Santa Rosa. I-40 from Santa Rosa to Tucumcari was a mess with only a single lane open most of the way. As I drove Randy checked his phone to see if we should stay on I-40 to Oklahoma City or get off on US-54 at Tucumcari to go back the way we came. Oklahoma City had a serious ice storm and the reports were not good so we opted to go back the way we came.
Once I got onto US 54 at Tucumcari road conditions steadily improved. The rest of the trip was routine. I got us to a Flying “J” truck stop on I-35 south of KC. Randy got us back to the terminal.
So! Blizzard conditions in the high and low desert not far from the Mexican border in OCTOBER! Global warming MY ASS! Never thought I would see snow covered tumble weeds rolling but now I can say I have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-6igPGWCXc&feature=youtu.be
As soon as we got to the terminal we dropped the trailer we brought and hooked to a standard dry van in a door at the cross dock bound for TENNECO in Seward, NE.
Route used was I-69 S to I-465 W to I-865 W to I-65 N to IN 32 W to I-74 W to I-72 W to US 36 W to I-29 N to NE 2 W to I-80 W to NE 15 S to Seward.
I managed to make that 700 mi. plus run in one driving shift since most of my driving was at night during low traffic hours and the load was only 26,000 lb. I had 6 minutes remaining of my 11 hour drive time when I arrived at TENNECO.
While Randy dropped the trailer we brought I went in and took care of the paperwork. Got the manifest for what we were delivering signed and signed the six bills of lading for the 39,000 lbs of freight on the trailer we would be taking back to the yard in Anderson, IN. After we were hooked I secured the load with two load straps as Randy did a pre-trip inspection on the trailer. Then I entered the bills into the Samsara tablet for transmission to our dispatch.
Having a heavier load and driving during higher traffic hours Randy couldn’t make it back in his 11 hour shift and I took over and drove us in from the junction of IN 32 and I-74 at Crawfordsville, IN.
I doubt there will ever be an EV that will deal with that. And as for self driving? The 2019 Volvo we were driving has a radar sensor for distance to the vehicle in front. It also has lane departure warning. Both systems failed because they were frozen over. I would guess there was over 500 lbs, of black nasty ice built up on the trailer landing gear and the DOT bumper.
That finished my week. I was down on hours remaining to work on my 70 hour duty cycle.
Thanks rah for the real view of how your world works.
I believe that those working to electrify trucks (not just writing about electrifying trucks) are looking at local delivery first — fewer miles and back to the terminal every night. And by charging at night they will be using the grid when it is otherwise underutilized. UPS comes to mind.
The On Ramp to Fleet Electrification
At UPS, we’ve learned many lessons on our journey to building the fleet of tomorrow.
[ … ]
“The first thing is it just makes an awful lot of sense on paper to do this because it’s a zero-tailpipe-emission solution, which is what cities want. We have very controlled, relatively low-distance routes, which are compatible with electrification technology. We have back-at-base operations, which suit overnight recharging.”
[ … ]
There’s an enormous power supply challenge as well, and it’s not really around the availability of the power in terms of the amount that’s generated. It’s a distribution problem.
It turns out that the network has a series of pinch points – particularly if you’re trying to operate from an older legacy building. You just can’t get enough power into the building without then getting involved in expensive upgrade procedures. And the market for those upgrades is archaic. It doesn’t work effectively for fleets.
https://longitudes.ups.com/the-on-ramp-to-fleet-electrification/
Richard Fowler will appreciate that last part.
Thanks to wattsupwiththat for the great post.
Oh yeah. I have been through a similar experience on the same roads, although not in a 18 wheeler. One time it took me almost 12 hours to make it from Tucumcari westward in a MB 4-matic. I left the road once but managed to drive back on.
At that gas station east of Santa Rosa, I saw a shell shocked rookie New Mexico state trooper, and told him that he needed to close the roads east to Amarillo and get rescue vehicles going to the stranded cars. It was about 10- degrees F below zero and those people may have been running out of gas and heat. He said : “Are you sure?” “Ah yes.”
I know, they’ll make all trucks haul double trailers, with the first trailer hauling the batteries. That way when you come back from a run, you just dump the exhausted trailer and pick up a freshly charged one for the next run. /sarc
The anti-LENR side of the EV issue please ignore (and has ignored) my continual updates on the potential to power electric cars primarily with on-board power supplies.
As a 79 year old Professional Chemical Engineer, I can clearly remember $0.24/gallon gasoline with “gas wars” down to 19 cents. I remember flatting my (lead-acid) battery in my Chevrolet while Parking with a tube-type radio on. I can remember government fiascoes after fiascoes, such a growing corn to dilute the energy content of my car’s gasoline.
I’ve rebuilt (and raced) overhead cam engines, used methyl alcohol to remove Castrol R from car chassis, and dreaded the continued expansion of lithium-ion battery use. So believe me when I say that I was disappointed to see Pons and Fleischman’s incompetent attempts to prove their palladium-hydrogen-electrolysis “excess energy” experiments were true. Since then, thousands of man/woman hours have been expended to investigate the potential for lattice confinement to break down the hydrogen atom and release energy. And progress is being made.
When? In 20 years (ITER?) Focus Fusion? BrilliantLightPower.com? Aeron.ca? NASA? Mizuno? http://www.cleanhme.eu ? Leonardo/Miami? No, if governments don’t interfere as usual, certainly withing 5 years, maybe sooner.
Holding my breath…..
So why exactly is driving an electric car fun? For everyone?
Ideas so good they have to be mandatory aren’t that good.
Richard Fowler is rather ignorant on mant things EV. The most powerful chargers these days are 350KW chargers being installed by IONITY and Electrify America. Not all of their chargers are 350KW jobs, since almost no electric cars on the road today can take that much charging power. There are also many charging stations that don’t even hook up to the grid, but use solar panels – they have plenty of batteries to store power for sunless times.
But perhaps the silliest argument is that tons of EV drivers will use public, high powered chargers in the first place. Public chargers are used on two occasions : by travelers (who often can charge overnight at motels) or by those who cannot charge their cars at home. Most EVs these days are pushing 350-400 miles, and except when engaged in long range travelling will NEVER use a public charging station – the cost alone will ensure that they will charge at home in practically all cases. And the cost of batteries will, by next year drop below $100 per KWhr, which will make EV prices equivalent to gas powered car prices. The average EV driver logs less than 40 miles per day, which means that even those who cannot charge at home, will require public charging only rarely.
Where do you live? A third of the US population do not own homes. Most of those who do, will not want the expense of wiring up a home charger, particularly since you are unlikely to recover the cost when you sell your home, and may face the expense again when you buy a new one.
Further, landlords (like me), are not going to install equipment for renters, nor allow them to do so unless they cover the added insurance costs on the property. Then there are those without a garage or have multiple cars, and use street parking.
Add all that to the third of the population who live in apartments and other rentals, and travelers, and there is an absolute need for public fast charging stations.
I have seen many of your posts. I don’t think you are in any position to call someone else’s contribution, ignorant.
My guess is that the Col is hoping to push people into electric cars so that the country will have no choice but to start building the MSR that he’s been investing in.
What the Col is ignoring is that many, if not most, people don’t have a place where they can charge up at home.
It’s not that ColMosby is ignorant. It’s that he knows so many things that aren’t so. (Apologies to Ronald Reagan)
ColMosby, could you please provide the location of at least one these “many” off-grid charging stations?
I’m sorry but when we have a major ice storm and electricity is out for three days or more I still need to be able to get around. Solar panels for a residential charging station just aren’t going to cut it when the weather is bad and the panels are covered in two inches of ice.
It simply doesn’t matter what the “average” driver logs per day. It’s the non-average use that becomes critical. Like someone else pointed out, what do Floridians do when their EV goes flat while trying to get out of the way of a hurricane on a jam-packed interstate? What do those that can’t make it out do when electricity is out for days?
I don’t know what others do but I keep 15 gallons of gas in an outside shed at all times.
Mods. I posted a long report on conditions I met this week trucking that would have been terrible for an EV or self driving vehicle. It has not appeared. Is there a problem with it?
Thanks Mods. I should have waited a bit longer to ask.