Electric Cars........an interesting encounter......
William81
Member Posts: 25,503 ✭✭✭✭
My Bride and I visited out son/DIL in Indiana last weekend. We were driving there and about 3/4 of the way through Illinois and needed a little walk and a drink so we rolled into a rest area. It was snowing and the place was empty except for us and one other car........
The other vehicle was a fairly new Lexis....as I exited my vehicle I noticed an adaptor line coming from the Lexis and attached to it was a 150 or so feet of extension cords running all the way to the building...There was no one around or in the building. After a little walk around I headed over to the soda machine for a drink. There were three machines, the one at the far end had been unplugged and you guess it.....the other end of the extension cord from the Lexis was plugged in there. As I walked back to my car the owner (I assume) came walking out from behind a small shelter. She looked scared and then gave me a dirty look when I eyed the extension cord.....I figured it was time to leave.
I guessing she was not suppose to be "borrowing" electricity from the State of Illinois in this manner...I guess this will be a common sight if the greenies have their way and we all get converted in the future !!!
Comments
I don’t think I could keep my mouth shut in a similar situation.
It was snowing pretty hard....likely poor planning on the driver's part....I commented to my bride if she was there very long a trooper was going to roll in there at some point and she would find herself in a little hot water...
Plugging in a cell phone is one thing but I think this would be a ways over the line...
I don’t think I could keep my mouth shut in a similar situation.
Sure I've run out of gas, but I did not steal any to get going.......
Hmmm. I was not aware that Lexis offered an electric-only car anywhere but Europe (a UX model).
I would imagine that, had she been caught by a state trooper, she would have been arrested for theft. Not because of the value of the electricity, but because misuse of extension cords is a National Electric Code violation which may cause a fire.
Neal
“be "borrowing" electricity from the State of Illinois...”
Couldn’t happen to a better state. Unless it was California.
I thought they charged on 220? doesn't a pop machine use 110..???
There was a line that came out of the vehicle to what I assumed was a converter of some kind to accept the 110...I only looked at it in passing.....the long extension cords were what caught my attention...
I hope she got where she was going without any issues......that being said, she would have passed through Champaign/Urbana less that 30 minutes prior to this rest area. College town...Lots of Greenies so there are several charging stations set up around town..
Where does an electric car's heater get heat from?
If I had an electric car, I'd carry a 4kw gas powered generator in the trunk! For the "roundabout" method of getting somewhere.
🤣
need to carry a small harbor freight genny in the trunk
There's the beauty of thermodynamics... energy is never created or destroyed, it just changes form.
Realistically? That heater's heat came from the Sun. Which produced plant life, which fed dynosaurs, which turned into petrochemicals, which were refined, which were trucked to a power station and burned, which turned a turbine, which produced electricity, which went into her battery... to be converted back into heat.
I like to ask my Scouts the same question around a campfire: "where did all this heat originate?" The answer is the same, but it leaves out a few steps. A LOT of steps.
Which means a campfire is more energy efficient than an electric car.
Charge on both 220 and 110. Takes much longer on 110
Cold is merely the absence of heat. Like said, a small suitcase generator and a sealed can of fuel would save the day.
There is a hellofa lot of that absence going on across our nation right now.
That is exactly why I carry a short hose and an empty can in my vehicle.
If I am running low on gas and don't want to be stranded on the side of the road waiting on a tow truck, I pull into a rest area.
I carefully look around for a vehicle that is just sitting there. I use my short hose and can to steal some gas . . . just so I can get to where I need to go. I mean how am I supposed to know when I am about ready to run out of gas. Sure I could look at the gauge, but who does that?
I completely understand that it is just the right thing to do for other folks to help me out in my time of need.
Stealing is stealing regardless of reason.
What she should have done is been more prepared and planned better.
She should have stopped sooner and charged her vehicle, or filled the tank with fuel, not been a gimme gimme gimme unprepared typical liberal.
if She had good judgement she would have purchased a car that got her from point A to point B without stealing from others
Just have to wonder how all the folks in Texas who drive electric vehicles are doing right now. Not only do they not have power, they can't get to somewhere that does.
"She gave you a dirty look"
Just another entitled little spoiled american(yes I used a lower case a on purpose).
I drive back and forth every month from Raleigh NC to Atlanta Ga and I cannot count how many times I have seen an Electric car in trouble. Most of the time its a Tesla in limp mode but I have seen several on fire around 285 in GA. I wouldn't have one.
In todays political climate would a State Trooper do anything?? How much grief would you be willing to take to "run in" a greenie, leftie, commie nut job who believes her time has finally come and you the cop are the problem with todays society???
If I was a cop today I would be afraid to stop/arrest any black person or any woman. I would be terrified to stop/arrest any gay person or tranny.
If I was a cop today, I wouldn't stay a cop unless I was getting close to my retirement. If my pension was getting close I would show up for work, keep my head down and count the days until I could retire. Bad attitude you say?? Smart attitude I would say. Look at the cops whose lives were ruined by pulling over/stopping the wrong person. like I said, if my retirement wasn't getting close I would be out the door and down the street to a job where I wasn't worried about doing something and ending up in the slammer or financially ruined.
Good friend of mine is a 30+ year auto tech at various dealerships and currently Jaguar.
He is the only tech in town trained to work on the electric Jaguar.
Called me yesterday ready to quit, he has to change a complete wiring harness because a 1 milimeter (read tiny) wire broke off flush somehow at a connector and totally disabled the car.
The flat-rate book gives him 13 hours to do the job and he figures that it may take him all week, which means that he is working for free after 13 hours.
Hands on guy not a fan of the technology available up to this point.
But stealing from Illinois is simply good citizenship.
I would have been tempted to just unplug the extension cord on my way out and be on my way.......
My brother bought a Tesla last year. He did not buy it for ecology reasons he could not care less about CO2 emissions.
Brother thinks Global Warming is a bunch of BS. I drove the car 80 miles down I 40 and it is a great car! Fun to drive and very powerful. Great handling.
The day after he bought the car we went for a drive in the country. We went 201 miles. When we got back the Tesla computer showed it would go just 17 miles more. This was a 68 degree day, partly cloudy. We hardly used any a/c or heat. So the Tesla has a limited cruising range. In our regular cars, heat is free, the engine puts off all kinds of excess heat and it is simple to put some of that in to vents to heat the car.
The Tesla uses the battery to run heaters and on a cold day, the cruising range would be much reduced.
I wired up my brother's charging station in his garage. We just bought a dryer receptacle at Lowes for 16 bucks and a breaker, and I wired it up with the 220. On this device the Tesla charges at 22 miles in an hour. So if you charged for 10 hours, you could drive 220 miles.
Tesla also provided owners with a 110 cord which can be plugged in anywhere. But, on the 110 you only get 4 miles in an hour of charging.
I am surprised that y'all would criticize this gal for charging up at the Coke machine. That looks like a pretty resourceful person to me. I am sure she would have been willing to pay for five bucks worth of electricity, if there had been someone there to give the money to.
Would y'all prefer that her car conk out on the interstate and she be stranded on the shoulder?
What always puzzles me is how the greenies think electric cars are saving the planet. How many places that are supplying the electricity are burning fossil fuels to generate the electricity? Coal, natural gas, oil, dams? Something has to be used to generate it. It doesn't just magically appear. Some may be from solar or wind but after the Texas fiasco we all know how well that works in inclement weather.
IMHO the way to go would be the hybrid if you want to cut down on emissions and fossil fuel use. Just my wandering thoughts on the entire mess. It goes back to when plastic bags were introduced to the shopping experience. It was done to save the trees because of all the paper bags being used. Milk jugs and soda/water bottles from card board containers and glass. Now we have the entire planet covered in plastic. Forests were never in jeopardy, but every generation has to have a cause.
Fix one issue, create three more. SMDH.
Small hose=Carolina credit card😀
I agree, Susie. Hybrid is the way to go. We just bought a 2020 Toyota Highlander Hybrid. What a fabulous travel car. We took it on a trip and refilled the gas tank every 300 miles. Eight gallons every time. The very high-tech little four-banger in it isn't connected at all to the wheels, and there is no transmission, per se. The gas engine charges the big battery through an inverter. The battery powers the drive electric motor. That's the much simplified version of how it works. It's no slug, either. If you step on it, it GOES.
I don't see an issue with her plugging in her car. People buy electric cars for the ease of use and value. Trains run on electric motors, electric motors are very efficient for cars with huge torque.
Condemning someone for using resources needed to get them out of a tight spot is wrong. I am glad she had the forethought to bring a 110VAC cord in case of emergency.
Many moons ago a couple of friends and I got stranded in Tutka Bay Alaska. We were duck hunting at a place called the electric cabin which, ironically did not have electric. It got real stormy, I mean 8 foot waves with huge surf, we could not get off the beach for DAYS because of the rolling crashing waves hitting the beach. It got darn cold and the firewood was soaked and running low.
We had extra food for a couple of days, but not enough to get us through the storm, it lasted about six days. About 350 yards down the beach was a VERY nice cabin, I busted the window lock and went in to get food. We found Asian food, some bens and Ramen Noodles, we also found a 20# propane tank for cooking and heat. Those supplies kept us going during a VERY rough time. We left $40.00 inside the bible he had beside the bed with a note on what we broke, what we took and my phone number to call if he needed any more money, thanking him profusely for the supplies, begging for forgiveness.
When we finally got off the beach there were still huge rollers it was scary and dangerous to load up and get onboard before the surf crushed us. It was wet freezing ride back to Homer harbor. Truth be told, we should not have left that day, the surf was still too rough the seas too big, but we were running out of smokes and booze, that is something one can not tolerate.
The lady did what she had to do to get out of a tough spot. None of us know she did not sent a $10.00 check to the State for the electric. Another thing, her car charging did not use much more power than the stupid pop machine uses to heat the contents durng freezing weather.
Global warming or not, electric cars are here to stay. I would have one myself if the battery life could get me 400 or more miles out here in the boonies.
They definitely need to improve the cruising range of these cars. My brother drove the Tesla from Marshall NC down to Lake Charles La. a few months ago. Now, the car is entirely run off of the big computer screen. You want windshield wipers, you click on the computer screen. You want heat, look to your screen and click on the icon.
Of course, Tesla has the location of every charging station on that computer screen. On this trip down I 10 from Mobile to Lake Charles, the stations are about 70 miles apart. So, you go 150 miles and you are pulling into a charging station. Now, the Tesla will really fly, so doing 75 mph on the Interstate, brother was stopping every 2 hours to recharge. And it takes an hour to recharge.
Now, ten years ago there were no charging stations. In a few years, they have a charging station every 20 miles that would help a lot. Also they improve the batteries where you can go 400 miles and not 217, and you would have a good car for the long trip.
I will say, as bad as the Tesla is for a long trip, for day trips it is great! The acceleration is unbelievable! Electric motors have full torque from a standing start, whereas a gasoline engine needs, what, 3,000 rpm to get maximum torque.
This car will snap your neck if you floor it, whether from a standing start, or whether you do it at 70 mph. Very sporty handling this car is a joy to drive. If you wanted to take off from here to drive to the top of Mt. Mitchell on the Blue Ridge Parkway, on a nice October day, that is a 45 mile trip. You could even detour to Asheville on the way back and hit a nice restaurant, a 120 mile day trip, even if you had to use heat the Tesla is perfect for that. Park it in the garage at dark and plug in to the 220 volt station that your brother has wired up for you, you got it made. It is charging at about 22 miles per hour of charge, in just 6 hours you have a complete recharge.
The Greenies, and nutcakes like Biden and John Kerry talk about Teslas like they are the solution to CO2 emissions. That assertion is absurd. Around here, used to be our power came from a coal fired plant. So you had to burn coal, and transmit the power 55 miles to our house. I bet you a dollar it would cause less CO2 emissions to just run a gasoline engine.
That plant got switched to natural gas 2 years ago but I bet a tankful of gasoline in a car is still more efficient. Like I said my brother thinks Climate Change is BS and he did not buy the car to save us from, let's see they used to call it Global Warming, hard to sell that one this week in Texas, yes, he did not buy it to save us from Climate Change.
If they could get solar powered charging stations, maybe you drive an hour to work, and you plug in and recharge for 9 hours with the solar powered, while you are at work, then you would have something. I don't believe that technology is available yet but maybe in the future.
All electric has a ways to go (pun intended) which is why I said hybrid is the way to go. (again) The efficiency of electric with the practicality of gasoline. They're even coming out with hybrid pickups now that can tow things. Not yet up to what a big diesel or big block gasser can tow, but getting there.
I’m assuming she was also stealing business from the vending machine.
Ummmmm......Who travels with 150 foot of extension cord?? Sounds like premeditated theft! How about that, is that ok? LOL.
Also, I hope she planted some trees at that rest stop to "offset" her "carbon footprint"😁
Pretty sure the big locomotives run on electric motors but guess what there is a big diesel engine turning the generator.
Same with the big and I mean big off road construction trucks.
The car with a gasoline engines to top off the charge in the battery are not true electric cars.
I think soda machines give clean energy. If I see a liberal I will ask.
Ask all the folks in Texas how all the green electricity is going right now.