Does anyone on the L1 Team have plans on getting an electric car in the near future?

Choosing electric vehicles because of the environment are 100% not-in-my-backyard-ism.

Especially with retarded countries like Germany running from Nuclear because they’re scared of a few stray protons.

Behind every EV is a coal power plant.

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Pretty much for the biggest part yes. :grinning:

While this is definitely true for many parts of the U.S, up here in Canada and most of Europe, we use mostly renewables + nuclear, with natural gas being the main additional power-plant type (but sub 20%).

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Maybe if bidens gas prices keep going up ROFL

thats actually quite accurate if I were to get an F150 in the next year or two… maybe 2040 if dems dont ban ICE

Nuclear for the most part if people stop being so scared of it

I’m not sure if the solid state batteries are going to be a good solution for bigger ranges.
Then EV’s would become more interesting over time.
But aside from that prices are the biggest reason,
that makes EV’s unreachable for allot of people.
They are just really expensive.

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A large coal plant is more efficient than your car’s gasoline engine, so that would still be a net win. But it’s not true. Coal is becoming extinct. Natural gas and renewables continue to undercut coal on price, forcing more and more coal plants to close:

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Honda E…

But yes honda are way behind on battery and electric.

@rcxb yeah the original ones were ugly alright but the more recent ones are far better looking, especially the back

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Not available in north america for some reason.

Yes, but coal and natural gas are unsustainable from an ev perspective. Renewables are not scalable to the level you need.

I looked into adding solar to my house to power 2 evs. It’s possible for 1 if I blanket the entire roof, but 2? Simply not possible.

Don’t get me wrong, evs are good and renewables are good, but we need to make a hard shift to nuclear if we want to migrate to electric powered transportation. Especially long haul trucking and other commercial transportation.

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Are you assuming you’re using up all the battery? Like I mentioned before I charge my car at 120v 8a which works out to be 960watts, and it usually finishes charging around 1am, so it’s only using 960watts for 8 maybe 9hrs a day.

I drive only 25miles a day though.

I don’t typically get sun at 1am. Given that, I need large production for a short time, given 25% losses to store then promptly retrieve it from batteries in the house, I was looking at about 35k diy price to install enough solar and battery ballast for 2 cars assuming 65mi per day each.

Iirc, I had calculated something like 20kwh of charge daily, not solar

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Oh, we use the grid as our buffer.

Dang, not bad, your numbers seem pretty good.
Running the numbers for my car. If assume I was to drive 65mi a day it would take 13hrs (obviously too long lol) to charge my car at the 960watts which would work out to be about 12.48kw. I’m going off the wall socket so that should account for losses while charging.

Since I’m crunching the numbers, this (65mi a day) would cost me (taking our solar out of the picture) $0.87 a day, $6 a week, or $26 a month.

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In the short to mid term they’re fine. As I said, they’re an IMPROVEMENT over what we have now. And improvements to the power mix of the grid will happen without any further effort from you.

They absolutely are. In fact renewables are the ONLY option that is scalable to the next century of increases in power demands.

Wind turbines are a bfar etter fit for charging EVs than solar. Solar peaks in the middle of the day, when your air conditioning usage is highest, but when your EV probably isn’t plugged-in. Wind power often peaks at night, when you’re charging. And thanks to the grid, there’s a ton of wind power available for low prices at night.

Many people who buy EVs find that by installing solar for their daytime usage, and switching to peak/off-peak electric billing, reduces their electric bill, even while they eliminate their gasoline usage.

What happens when there’s no wind at night?

Don’t get me wrong, renewables are cool, but you need to be able to provide gigawatts of power on demand, and the only thing that can handle that kind of burst load is nuclear.

Or every individual needs to handle their own production.

My power cost is $0.48/KwH. We don’t have time of use yet here, it’s purely based on how much you use. First 120kwh are “low tier” and that’s at $0.25 and everything else is $0.48

And here, we have the most sunny days and regular wind out of the entire country.

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Sorry, I meant 20kwh each. So 40 total.

Damn. I fill up twice a month, and it costs me 55 a tank, so 110 a month. Hmmm down from the 160 I was paying in 2019, which is good, but I guess that reflects pandemic idleness. I think that’ll go up in the coming months when I spend more time at the boat.

There’s always wind at night, somewhere, even if not near you. And other renewable options run non-stop, like large hydro. Solar and wind can be used to turn regular hydro into pumped hydro when there’s more supply than demand. There is a ton of unused baseload supply, which is why ToU billing is always much cheaper late at night.

Nuclear does not scale-up quickly on demand at all. They tend to just run at a steady rate constantly. Peaking plants are just about always natural gas, or hydro where possible.

Maybe the 70s designs. (Which admittedly is all we have in the states)

I think this is a great idea, but do we have any case studies on cost, both ecological and material? Not sure that significantly disrupting rivers is a good strategy.


I dunno, I think this idea of reliance on a giant grid for power is foolhardy. Texas, canada and california are perfect examples of that. Yes, those are mostly bureaucratic issues at hand, but you have to design to account for that, not hope for utopia.

At the end of the day, lessening your reliance on grid is the way of the future, even if grid is there for some level of it.

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Unfortunately you pay an insane amount for power compared to me.
I pay $0.07 per kilowatt, so your savings might not be much higher then using gas.

Self reliance is probably the theme for me this year. Ditching all the big companies and govs that I possibly can, as fast as I can.

Not a fan. We don’t get much wind here at all, and they have very high maintains cost.

My old boss who lived on the very top of a hill got one, and it would have been good for him if it worked. I saw them install it brand new, and the next few years I saw it not working more than it worked. They eventually had it taken down. Massive waste of money for him. [presses F]

Half our power comes from hydro dams which are amazing from what I know. Super scalable here in the mountains, and it doesn’t take long to spin up another generator during spikes. Also very clean. Too bad there wont be another ever built in the US (iirc) due to environmentalist crying about fish.

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I just paid $4.39 per gallon, so actually a full tank is more like $65 these days. And it’s not even summer. It’s gonna be $5.50 soon.


Thankfully, my solar system (grid tie, ugh) covers about 98% of our consumption. I’m seriously considering trading my merc for the Hyundai Kona EV specifically because of this. What’s funny is the only thing that’s nicer about the Merc is the sound dampening on the freeway, which I can easily handle.

The big cost of our power is that since the San Onofre reactor was shut down, we have to import it from other states, and the transmission lines are aging and require huge maintenance costs. (peak not-in-my-backyard-ism)

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More than 45% renewable sources though.

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