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Pondering electric vehicles

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Windmill said:
how long would a Honda air cooled generator last if it was ran 10 hours a day
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Oosh. You're right. I didn't even think to factor in the service life of the generator.

Thank you.

Grok says a Honda EU2000 will typically do around 15,000 hours. Or, about 1,500 days, a little over 4 years if used every day.

So: $1,200 ÷ 15,000 hours = $0.08 cents per hour.

Add oil changes every 100 hours and fuel.

I still think it could work in my use-case; Putting around the Oklahoma/Arkansas Ozarks and Flagstaff, AZ where few charging stations exist.

I'll be poor, so I need to go where it's cheap to retire, but not Lake Sam Rayburn because of this !@#$%^&* humidity.
 
Windmill said:
Just curious do you have or need central air-conditioning? It's been close to a 100 deg outside ambient here in Thorndale for the last week.
Do you have batteries with your solar set up? My electric bill is usually about 150./month in the 4 month summer and the cold month of the winter. Then about 70-80 other months.
Your set up sounds great how much is a KWH where you are? It is about 16 cents here which is expensive in my opinion.
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A bit of background here, I bought a Honda EU3000is some 25 years ago for use with a fifth wheel because I was working about 4 or 5 months out of the year as a cat adjuster during Hurricane season. I then moved to México and brought the fifth wheel with me so I kept the generator. I soon found out that there would be monthly power outages here from the local utility so I kept the generator and still use it as needed. Only problem was a dead battery in 25 years. I routinely would run it 10 hours or more continuous, with the gas tank about 3 1/2 gallons. If anyone wanted to steal my generator, they better bring along a couple of friends, it weighs north of 130 lbs. I cannot move it by myself. With a friend, I cannot lift it high enough to get it into a truck bed, but I´m sure a good thief could get it done. Here in México, the price of a Kw has three tiers with basic 150Kw at about $.06 USD, then the next tier is intermediate so an additional 150Kw at about .10 USD, and then Max rate is .25 USD. Anytime you hit the max rate, you will remain at that rate for 6 months before you are allowed to go back to the basic rate. At each level, you will be billed for the total Kw used at the highest price. So if my total Kw consumption is 1000 Kw then my bill for that billing cycle (60 days) would be 1000 Kw x .25 = $250 USD. The killer for me is pumps, they eat a lot of juice. Fresh water pump (aljibe), pool pump, hot water recirculating system pump, solar hot water pump, and the fountain pump in the atrium. We built this house in 2019 and the climate here is springlike year round. We lived without AC, and most people here also, for 13 years. It did get too hot for me in April-June, the season before the rains begin. So I put a 1 ton mini-split in one BR and a 1.5 Btu mini-split in the master. They are used about 30 % of the time in the hot season, three months. Both units are heat pump invertors with cool/heat although I never need it for the heat cycle. My 16 panels at 450W average 32 Kw production a day so in peak months I am still producing more than I need. My son is installing a system at his house now and his panels will be 750 watt each so the technology has changed a lot. I have 16 panels and he will have 6 panels. The sun shines at least 7 to 9 hours a day and just about every day of the year is sunny. In the rainy season with some clouds my production may drop from an avg of 32 Kw daily to 16 Kw daily, but I am still producing enough to keep my bill at 63 MXN for a 60 day period. The 63 peso bill is the minimum fee that the utility charges to email you a bill every 60 days, so my monthly cost for electricity is about $1.75 USD. Excess solar production is credited by the utility company and it rolls over on a calendar year basis, so one month from a year ago will fall off and the credits are adjusted. In 6 years as of today, my bi-directional meter shows that I have consumed 24974 Kw and my system has produced 35023 Kw. The difference is 10,049 Kw that is my credit with the utility company as of today in the bank. My system is oversized. The solar system invertors will begin "clipping" at maximum production at the system limits. So if my son charges his car between 11 AM and 4 PM on a sunny day, then the excess power produced goes straight to him and none of my credits are withdrawn. Contractors design systems here to produce about 60% of you projected consumption. Anyone can do the installation, it is fairly simple but in the states I suspect there may be problems with ´permits and regulations, I dunno. The only advice I would offer is to go with micro inverters instead of one main house inverter because each micro inverter will sync with 4 panels so if any one panel is shaded then the other panels will continue to produce elec. At the time of my installation, the technology was that if you had one main inverter and one panel became shaded, then the entire system shuts down. That may be different now. I do not have a battery backup system since I have the Honda generator. My system paid for itself in 3 years. The prices have come down so much that now renters are installing their own systems and then taking the systems with them when they move.
 
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kiko said:
...my monthly cost for electricity is about $1.75 USD. ...My system paid for itself in 3 years. The prices have come down so much that now renters are installing their own systems and then taking the systems with them when they move.
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Wow! My D.I.Y. Frugality respect meter is off the charts for you! 🙂

Where in Jalisco do you live ? The ocean humidity doesn't get you ?


I honey-mooned in Puerto Vallarta in 1988. Loved it there.

PVHoneymoon.webp
 
John Bennett said:
Wow! My D.I.Y. Frugality respect meter is off the charts for you! 🙂

Where in Jalisco do you live ? The ocean humidity doesn't get you ?


I honey-mooned in Puerto Vallarta in 1988. Loved it there.

PVHoneymoon.webp
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I live on Lake Chapala in San Juan Cosalá, Jalisco, about 40 minutes S of Guadalajara. I am at 5250' surrounded by mountains so with the largest lake in México in my front yard, we enjoy a micro climate system that has low humidity and springlike weather year round. The coldest days in winter maybe 55F and the hottest days in summer maybe 93F. May be selling this year and downsizing to a cabana in the forest.
 
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The Jalisco state police have a handful of Tesla cybertrucks. They never travel alone outside of the metro area, always escorted by IC trucks. There are not many EV charging stations outside of the cities but I've seen a police cybertruck a few times in my town. Probably out for a joy ride. A cybertruck here costs about 2,500,000 MXN so today that is about $145,000.00 USD.

 
For city use electric is by far the best if the power grid could handle it . That is the major drawback anymore , the grid is so out dated and poorly maintained it can strand you at any time . If you dont live the structured life and are prepared to cover long distances at any time without support . electric can't handle that .
 
cabanza said:
That Slate truck looks pretty appealing
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So much this....
Mitchell Eisenbraun said:
"One of the main reasons many of us keep older vehicles is the feeling that they genuinely belong to us. We can work on them, diagnose problems, and modify them without being locked out by proprietary software or sealed modules.

The Slate seems to be positioned the same way. It's modular by design with accessible parts and an approach that encourages owners to maintain and customize it themselves.

Most modern cars, trucks, and EVs keep adding layers of electronics, screens, and connected systems that raise the price and pull attention away from driving.

The Slate goes the opposite direction. It comes with crank windows, physical climate knobs, steel wheels, and no giant touchscreen or data harvesting telematics system. By keeping things deliberately simple, it leaves the owner in charge instead of the vehicle managing the driver.

For anyone who has held on to an older vehicle to avoid all of that added complexity and surveillance, this approach feels familiar."
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Yeah - it really does! it's VERY small though. I think 2 feet shorter than a Maverick...
 
Most EVs are charged at night. This is when demand for electricity drops off. Periphery, “helper” generation devices are shut down leaving fossil fuel to deliver electricity. Texas gets at least 50% of its electricity from fossil fuels. At night more so.

Electrical generation is very inefficient. Most states in the US lose at least 7-10 % of the generated electricity in transmission (some countries where I taught power generation lose as much as 50% of their generated electricity!). The fuel used to generate the electricity doesn’t matter-the electricity is lost in transmission. A fun and damning experiment is to hold a fluorescent tube-bulb under high tension lines. The leaking electricity makes it glow! Russia doesn’t even let cattle graze under high tension lines.

And that’s not the long pole in the tent. To attempt to keep the electricity from leaking out, insulation is used. In the old days it was PCB that was the insulator. But this leaked and killed everything. So SF6 replaced PCBs. It’s so benign that it can be inhaled with no more effect than lowering one’s voice.

As more and more things become electrified, more and more SF6 leaks. SF6 is the most potent greenhouse gas ever isolated. It is at least 23,500 times more potent than CO2 and it lasts in the atmosphere 3,200-years. All the SF6 leaked into the atmosphere since it was first compounded in the early 1900s is still there. It will be there until 5100 ce.

Unless the electricity used to charge an EV is from hydro, wind or solar AT the point of charging, SF6 is being released.
 
When pcb’s were phased out in electric transformers the epa allowed the pcb oil to be introduced into the natural gas fired power plants boilers to be deposed of . One of the now decommissioned gas power plants in La Porte I worked at burned pcb , never did like working inside that boiler.
 
IOM TT said:
damning experiment is to hold a fluorescent tube-bulb under high tension lines. The leaking electricity makes it glow! Russia doesn’t even let cattle graze under high tension lines
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Example from my motorcycle lease in Nacogdoches.
 

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woodsguy said:
Example from my motorcycle lease in Nacogdoches.
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Very cool!

Most people don't know our Sun also works this way.

The Sun is an electrical anode of glowing plasma, energized by enormous currents of electricity that flow through our galaxy, just like the plasma contained in your glass tubes above.

Most Scientists don't like this because of the societal implications, so they perform hilarious rhetorical acrobatics to pretend the Sun is an endless nuclear bomb going off.

 
So much energy is being leaked that it can be harvested to charge low power devices. But don’t get caught-from the box of truth:

Legal Precedent: Courts consistently rule that extracting this induced energy is a form of illegal wire-tapping or abstracting electricity from the grid without authorization. [1]
 
Ford counters Slate with a $30k small truck.


The disastrous EV Fad may be ending.

Modern electric vehicles became a status symbol for wealthy people with the launch of the Tesla Roadster in 2008.

Then came the plethora of corporate Taxpayer Looting Operations with government EV mandates and automaker pledges to "end ICE engines forever".

The most hilarious examples of this were the Rivian and Porsche’s "All EV" catastrophic financial collapse in Q3 2025 with a loss of $1.1 Billion dollars (98% drop).

Now the EV market seems to be attempting to align with reality. Young people are poor nowadays and want cheap, durable, practical EV's. Check out the out-doorsey / practicality marketing Ford is using to target them...


This could back-fire. I remember 23 years ago when Honda did this with the brilliant Element SUV. "Spray it out with a water hose!"

The Element was so practical and reasonably priced that gray-haired old men began buying them, which made them very un-cool, and thus unpopular with young people.
 
Back in the ‘80s when I started my career in power generation and began working in the UK and Europe it was typical that a kid had a bicycle and rode busses and trains. Young adult singles rode scooters and motorbikes. When paired up, couples rode two-up. When the first baby arrived, a side car was added. By the late ‘90s an economy car was had. By the ‘00s two (per-household) cars started to be the norm.

I see the same with electric propulsion. Kids on E-scooters will graduate to EVs. It is hopeful that hydrogen or some other less polluting motive-force will overtake EV propulsion.

For the near future coal (China builds-every year-for itself and for export, more coal fired plants than the US currently operates) will power the majority of the EoE: Electrification of Everything products.

energyandcleanair.org

Built to peak: Coal power expansion runs out of room in China – Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air

energyandcleanair.org energyandcleanair.org

But coal isn’t the worst part of the EoE. Any electrical power-generation: hydro, thermal, solar, fossil or fusion creates more SF6 release.

Those that refuse to recognize the step-change in SF6-emissions will live to regret it.

gml.noaa.gov

Trends in SF6 - NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

GML conducts research on greenhouse gas and carbon cycle feedbacks, changes in aerosols, and surface radiation, and recovery of stratospheric ozone.
gml.noaa.gov
 
Imagine this...

Every Harley Dealership has a charging station in the parking lot with free swappable battery packs. (deposit required)

Harley Dealers would make a fortune off gear and accessory sales when people stopped in to swap or re-charge.

I told Grok to imagine this. It was unable to make the packs fit the bikes: 🙂

hdcharge2.webp
 
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