OT: Electric Vehicles

[MelroseHawkins]

Yup, he loves them rice-burners. Can't argue with the quality. I've owned enough Fords and Chevys in the 70s. Put way more money into keeping them on the road than I ever should have.

Yea. Agree. I have nothing bad to say about them. The old made in America statement is kind of dead now about car manufacturing. I agree they last a long time and are made with quality. It just gets old from him. I drive a Subaru now because I always heard they can run forever and are pretty durable. He puts them down to. He does admit the Ford F-150 is the best truck though so I think he believes what he states.

 

[ModebaSan]

Yea. Agree. I have nothing bad to say about them. The old made in America statement is kind of dead now about car manufacturing. I agree they last a long time and are made with quality. It just gets old from him. I drive a Subaru now because I always heard they can run forever and are pretty durable. He puts them down to. He does admit the Ford F-150 is the best truck though so I think he believes what he states.

I also like Ford trucks because they have a better towing capacity than Chevy or Dodge hands down. An old girlfriend of mine had a little Toyota and she dogged the piss out of it. Never checked the oil or water, but that damn thing put on 200,000 miles and was still going strong. I also like the Nissan’s, they seem pretty rugged too. The only thing I don’t like about compact cars is they don’t like bad roads conditions like potholes and such.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

I also like Ford trucks because they have a better towing capacity than Chevy or Dodge hands down. An old girlfriend of mine had a little Toyota and she dogged the piss out of it. Never checked the oil or water, but that damn thing put on 200,000 miles and was still going strong. I also like the Nissan’s, they seem pretty rugged too. The only thing I don’t like about compact cars is they don’t like bad roads conditions like potholes and such.[/QUOTE]

I think their small wheelbases don't do well on bad roads. Many compact cars are made to be less expensive for a different buyer market I think to.

I sure miss the muscle cars of the mid to late '60's and early '70's, though. The gas embargo deal killed muscle cars.

My dream is still to get a late 60's or early 70's muscle car and restore. Should look for a 1971 car which would be my birth year. That'd be pretty cool.

 

[Grady]

Let me get this straight. The reason you buy an electric car is to save energy? And because it doesn’t pollute the environment? You do plug this thing into an outlet right? Doesn’t this increase your electric bill? And doesn’t that electric come from a power plant that runs on oil? And doesn’t that electric plant pollute the air? Unless of course you get your power from a nuclear power plant, but I don’t think I wanna live anywhere near one of those. I think the only safe and economical usage would be if you got your electric from hydro-electric plants, but then there’s still that increase in your electric bill. Solar would be the perfect solution, but again, you would have to invest in thousands of dollars of solar panels to even get a half way decent charge. And then there’s the question about power outages. What if you only got a partial charge in before the power went down. Would you take a chance to go somewhere on a partial charge? Just playing devil’s advocate here guys. But it is something to think about before you go and make Elon Musk a little richer so he can fly around in outer space.

After we bought our plug-in/hybrid we installed solar panels on our garage, so now the car batteries are charged by solar. Yes, we use a little more electricity charging the car, but since we're on MidAmerican much of the electricity we DO use is produced by their wind turbines. We don't have a large solar array, but our electric bill is zeroed out for 5-6 months each year now, even after charging up the car daily.

 

[okeefe4prez]

I bought a new Sorento a couple months ago. 10/100,000 power train and 5/60,000 bumper-bumper. It’s friggin nuts what Korean and Japanese car companies do for warranties these days. I don’t know if I feel better about the warranty itself, or that they trust their stuff to last long enough that they’re comfortable putting that long of a warranty out there.

 

[Fryowa]

You ever tried to get a good look at a T-bone by stickin your head up a butcher’s ass?

 

[MelroseHawkins]

I bought a new Sorento a couple months ago. 10/100,000 power train and 5/60,000 bumper-bumper. It’s friggin nuts what Korean and Japanese car companies do for warranties these days. I don’t know if I feel better about the warranty itself, or that they trust their stuff to last long enough that they’re comfortable putting that long of a warranty out there.

One of my friend’s experience with his ‘12 Sorento sealed the deal for me. He’s got 246K one owner miles on it and not even a minor problem with it in all that time other than maintenance stuff like brakes/tires/etc. he was always a trade every five years type of guy but now he’s just keeping this one because it’s comical. He turned it into an experiment and the damn thing won’t die.

When my twins were born in 2007, I bought a new Kia Sedona van to haul them in. At the time it was right up there with the Sienna and Oddessy, ranked 3rd. But, it was ranked #1 in safety because had side airbags. I also wanted one with a bigger V6 as I wanted to pull an enclosed trailer on occasion.

It was my first "foreign" vehicle purchase and was a Kia so was hesitent. It turned out to be a great vehicle/van. I had few issues with it and I think had on it 160,000+ miles on it when all said and done. Sucker went thru brake pads like no other but no big deal. It was probably the heaviest minivan on the market which probably helped with the safety ratings. The Kia's and Hyundai's are not what they used to be or the Hyundai of the '80's. They make a nice vehicle. They are prob where Toyota and Honda were in the 1980's. The kick ass warranty is probably what made me lean their way when I bought it.

My buddy is in the same boat as your friend. He has a truck he decided to drive until it just dies. He bought it new when he graduated from college. It's a 1993 Dodge Dakota and he's been driving it back and forth to work every workday which is a 85 mi round trip. He's now pushing 400,000 miles. He's been saying for two years he needs to get a new truck but last time talked to him, he stated he's driving it just to see how many miles it will go. A challenge. It's a freaking rust bucket but he doesn't care. I'm surprised he's never had a transmission problem being a Dodge but he hasn't really pulled anything with it.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

I was one of the first EV owners in MN. We bought our first Nissan Leaf in 2012. The car had a range of about 80 miles and served as a good daily driver for my wife.
I've seen a lot of comments and questions about cold weather and the batteries. That isn't really an issue. The batteries are insulated and they have heaters. There's a small draw on the batteries to keep them from getting too cold.
The bigger draws are the in-car heater and defrost. On the 2012 Leaf, it would knock the range down to about 50 miles. It wasn't good when you have to trade off comfort and/or safety for range.
In the 8 years that we owned the car, we probably spent about $500 total on maintenance--we kept it on its maintenance schedule.
The only item we had to replace were the tires, once. We also had to replace the charger in the house, $400.
It cost us about $10 a month to charge the batteries.
I compared the cost of owning the Leaf to the gas cars that we've had. I would say that the electric car saves about $1000 per year.
We exchanged that Leaf late last year for a 2020 Leaf with a 250 mile range. All the trade offs and range anxiety are gone.
It uses more electricity, we're probably closer to $20 a month when we're commuting. With our quarantine, we filled the other car once.

Good info. Thanks Paul.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

Nope. I was choosing between the Sorento and a Traverse. Blown away on how expensive the Traverse was for not as nice an interior or ride. It was trimmed out slightly higher (Kia and Chevy trims don’t exactly line up perfectly) but not $8,000 worth. The warranty is less than half, and I heard a lot of horror stories about the timing chain issues that require a motor pull. And they like to happen 5,000 after warranty lol.

What I can’t get over is how for the most part the Asian vehicles don’t have those big issues that a lot of domestics do. Like the old GM 3800s liked to leak the intake gasket, 3.6s had the timing chain issues, Ford and Dodge has their issues too. You hear of certain repeated stuff with Asian vehicles, but 1) they’re pretty few and far between, and 2) the warranties are so damn crazy that if they do happen they’re usually still covered.

I don’t see myself going back to domestic after this one. The Kia is just a way nicer vehicle for less money and double the warranty.

Have you seen this one. This one caught my eye when saw it. The Telluride. Also, the Kia Optima is a nice looking passenger car. Looks to be nice size.

 

[Fryowa]

Have you seen this one. This one caught my eye when say it. The Telluride. Also, the Kia Optima is a nice looking passenger car. Looks to be nice size.

Yep, looked at one, but the equal trim was quite a bit more expensive. That and I am a little wary of buying a vehicle the first year it comes out. When I go to trade the Sorento I'll definitely look again at the Telluride.

One thing I'll mention is that unfortunately I won't be buying another Sorento after this one. They're doing away with the V6 and only offering a 2.5 I4 and a hybrid as the only two options. The I4 (22 less horsepower) is going to be turbocharged and I won't go that route. Had troubles with turboed stuff before and not interested. The Telluride will be the only V6 left at that point if they keep it so if I want to stay in Kia it'll have to be that.

I like their cars too, but I do a lot of fishing and outdoor stuff and I need the room of an SUV or pickup. I wouldn't buy a pickup anymore after my old Dakota simply because they're so expensive. The Sorento/Santa Fe platform is perfect for me size/price/warranty-wise. Driving a Traverse and seeing that price tag sealed the deal. I easily got 18 bags of mulch in the back last weekend without having to put the 2nd row down, and I don't see me hauling much more than that volume-wise.

For ice fishing I'll load the cargo area up with gear and get a receiver hitch cargo carrier for my two-person flip over shack. Should work well

 

[MelroseHawkins]

Yep, looked at one, but the equal trim was quite a bit more expensive. That and I am a little wary of buying a vehicle the first year it comes out. When I go to trade the Sorento I'll definitely look again at the Telluride.

One thing I'll mention is that unfortunately I won't be buying another Sorento after this one. They're doing away with the V6 and only offering a 2.5 I4 and a hybrid as the only two options. The I4 (22 less horsepower) is going to be turbocharged and I won't go that route. Had troubles with turboed stuff before and not interested. The Telluride will be the only V6 left at that point if they keep it so if I want to stay in Kia it'll have to be that.

I like their cars too, but I do a lot of fishing and outdoor stuff and I need the room of an SUV or pickup. I wouldn't buy a pickup anymore after my old Dakota simply because they're so expensive. The Sorento/Santa Fe platform is perfect for me size/price/warranty-wise. Driving a Traverse and seeing that price tag sealed the deal. I easily got 18 bags of mulch in the back last weekend without having to put the 2nd row down, and I don't see me hauling much more than that volume-wise.

For ice fishing I'll load the cargo area up with gear and get a receiver hitch cargo carrier for my two-person flip over shack. Should work well

Boy, aren't you right about that. Pickups have out priced me. You can't even touch a decent truck anymore without shelling out $45-50 grand. Since they started making trucks as luxury passenger vehicles the prices exploded, unless you want an all white plain company truck. Sad to see those options go.

Yea, buying a first year model is a grab bag. Good point and I forgot about that. Yea, I agree on the V6. I bought my first 4 banger in my 2018 Subby Outback and I wish I would have upgraded to the V6. I've driven a V6 for years and miss it. My Subby V4 is a 2.5i. Just doggy taking off. I hate the takeoff of V4's. Once up to speed they are fine.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

Yep, looked at one, but the equal trim was quite a bit more expensive. That and I am a little wary of buying a vehicle the first year it comes out. When I go to trade the Sorento I'll definitely look again at the Telluride.

One thing I'll mention is that unfortunately I won't be buying another Sorento after this one. They're doing away with the V6 and only offering a 2.5 I4 and a hybrid as the only two options. The I4 (22 less horsepower) is going to be turbocharged and I won't go that route. Had troubles with turboed stuff before and not interested. The Telluride will be the only V6 left at that point if they keep it so if I want to stay in Kia it'll have to be that.

I like their cars too, but I do a lot of fishing and outdoor stuff and I need the room of an SUV or pickup. I wouldn't buy a pickup anymore after my old Dakota simply because they're so expensive. The Sorento/Santa Fe platform is perfect for me size/price/warranty-wise. Driving a Traverse and seeing that price tag sealed the deal. I easily got 18 bags of mulch in the back last weekend without having to put the 2nd row down, and I don't see me hauling much more than that volume-wise.

For ice fishing I'll load the cargo area up with gear and get a receiver hitch cargo carrier for my two-person flip over shack. Should work well

You should take a look at this for your next potential vehicle. The Subaru Ascent. They started this model to compete with the Honda Pilot. I think it is an 8 seater if I remember correctly.

 

[westender]

Let me get this straight. The reason you buy an electric car is to save energy? And because it doesn’t pollute the environment? You do plug this thing into an outlet right? Doesn’t this increase your electric bill? And doesn’t that electric come from a power plant that runs on oil? And doesn’t that electric plant pollute the air? Unless of course you get your power from a nuclear power plant, but I don’t think I wanna live anywhere near one of those. I think the only safe and economical usage would be if you got your electric from hydro-electric plants, but then there’s still that increase in your electric bill. Solar would be the perfect solution, but again, you would have to invest in thousands of dollars of solar panels to even get a half way decent charge. And then there’s the question about power outages. What if you only got a partial charge in before the power went down. Would you take a chance to go somewhere on a partial charge? Just playing devil’s advocate here guys. But it is something to think about before you go and make Elon Musk a little richer so he can fly around in outer space.

Personal solar is always connected to the grid. The way it usually works is a net metering deal. It covers 12 months, so in the dark of winter you are drawing more from the grid and in the peak of summer you are crankng the kilowatts into the grid. Your home uses what it uses and it either pushes excess into the grid or consumes from the grid. Solar installers usually take a look at the most recent 12 months usage before they recommend to you what size of installation. They also obviously look at the property and where the panels can be installed. Under shade trees is not a good option. If you go with a system that is fully sized to match your 12 month consumption, net over the 12 months you should just end up paying their connection fee, something like maybe $14 a month or so. If you had an existing solar array and were adding more consumption to your home then you would want to add a panel or panels to it or expect to be paying a bit more to your utility provider. Very few installations around midwest would be stand alone battery storage only. Almost all would be grid connected. If power goes out on the grid it kicks off your panel generation so workers don't get jolted by power coming in from panels. We have all electric appliances except for furnace, so heavy electricity user and fully sized solar system to match usage. Not an environment do-gooder, more of a financial deal.

 

[okeefe4prez]

Personal solar is always connected to the grid. The way it usually works is a net metering deal. It covers 12 months, so in the dark of winter you are drawing more from the grid and in the peak of summer you are crankng the kilowatts into the grid. Your home uses what it uses and it either pushes excess into the grid or consumes from the grid. Solar installers usually take a look at the most recent 12 months usage before they recommend to you what size of installation. They also obviously look at the property and where the panels can be installed. Under shade trees is not a good option. If you go with a system that is fully sized to match your 12 month consumption, net over the 12 months you should just end up paying their connection fee, something like maybe $14 a month or so. If you had an existing solar array and were adding more consumption to your home then you would want to add a panel or panels to it or expect to be paying a bit more to your utility provider. Very few installations around midwest would be stand alone battery storage only. Almost all would be grid connected. If power goes out on the grid it kicks off your panel generation so workers don't get jolted by power coming in from panels. We have all electric appliances except for furnace, so heavy electricity user and fully sized solar system to match usage. Not an environment do-gooder, more of a financial deal.

I was looking at solar but the net metering here is on very tenuous legal grounds. There is a nuclear plant nearby that uses two lakes as a battery (one sits at a higher elevation than the other) and they are both way bigger than Okoboji. They can pump water at night from the lower lake to the upper lake using surplus power and then can create hydro power when the grid peaks the next day by opening the dam between the lakes and letting the water go through the turbines. The nuclear plant and "battery" crank an absurd amount of emission free energy and people are kind of asking if it makes policy sense to put in solar that is dirty to construct and ship around when we already have a zero emission grid. I suspect that as more power companies produce more zero emission electricity, that sort of fight is going to be more common. It's hard for the power companies to justify the massive capital expenditures if their customer base is going to effectively become their competition.

 

[Fryowa]

If power goes out on the grid it kicks off your panel generation so workers don't get jolted by power coming in from panels.

This is more nerdy than you probably want to bother with so most of you guys wont want to go any farther. Fair warning.

Grid tie inverters do disconnect power, but it's purpose isn't worker protection, it's equipment and electronics protection. Worker protection is done by grounding--before anyone even gets close all three phases are jumpered together and to neutral, and grounded at the structure. Creates a direct short if anything gets energized. If you worked bare hands on an un-grounded system there are 35 million things that'll kill you first before a backfeed.

The reason the inverter kicks out is because of phase protection. Basically, the only reason AC electrical systems can be tied together is because the voltages are perfectly in phase with each other. Meaning that the wavy line graph you've always seen representing AC power is exactly, and I mean dead-nuts, in sync no matter where you go and the RMS voltage stays stable. Remember, 120 volts AC is just the "average" of the total sine wave, it's infinitely changing. The voltage in your house goes from 0V, to 170V+, back down to 0V, to 170V-, and back to 0V sixty times a second and 120 is just the "average" of that sine wave. One thing that's super interesting that a lot of people don't know, is that every power generating station in the country is synced and in phase with each other. So a nuclear plant in California, coal plant in Virginia, wind farm in Iowa, etc...every single one of them the output hits zero, peak positive, zero, peak negative, and zero again all at exactly the same time.

Anyway, if you get two AC voltages out of phase, you get major, major problems and it destroys motors, electronics, etc. Your solar system stays in phase via electronics, and they get wonky when power's dropped.

*source: was a powerlineman for a lot of years, over 3,600 hours logged hot time (hands-on, energized distribution voltages with rubber gloves and hot sticks) working for companies out of IBEW 55.

 

[Fryowa]

I was looking at solar but the net metering here is on very tenuous legal grounds. There is a nuclear plant nearby that uses two lakes as a battery (one sits at a higher elevation than the other) and they are both way bigger than Okoboji. They can pump water at night from the lower lake to the upper lake using surplus power and then can create hydro power when the grid peaks the next day by opening the dam between the lakes and letting the water go through the turbines. The nuclear plant and "battery" crank an absurd amount of emission free energy and people are kind of asking if it makes policy sense to put in solar that is dirty to construct and ship around when we already have a zero emission grid. I suspect that as more power companies produce more zero emission electricity, that sort of fight is going to be more common. It's hard for the power companies to justify the massive capital expenditures if their customer base is going to effectively become their competition.

It's actually just a game of accounting methods. There's really not a surplus of electricity, it's a surplus of capacity on their particular system. Demand is low, market prices are low because other grid customers don't want/need to buy it at night, so they put in the books for personal use at whatever arbitrary price they want to call it to 1) be legal, and 2) look the best on monthly financials.

Electricity is weird in that every amp produced in the US goes into the exact same giant bucket, and there is only one bucket. The power being pumped out of Seattle right this instant is going right into the same bucket that a Tennessee, or Texas, or Iowa plant it. There's literally no way to parse it out or identify it unless you have a separate system in which case you're out of the market anyway. I can't say this is a MidAmerican volt and this is an NPPD volt like you could theoretically do with a kernel of corn or barrel of oil. It's all just numbers in a ledger.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

This is more nerdy than you probably want to bother with so most of you guys wont want to go any farther. Fair warning.

Grid tie inverters do disconnect power, but it's purpose isn't worker protection, it's equipment and electronics protection. Worker protection is done by grounding--before anyone even gets close all three phases are jumpered together and to neutral, and grounded at the structure. Creates a direct short if anything gets energized. If you worked bare hands on an un-grounded system there are 35 million things that'll kill you first before a backfeed.

The reason the inverter kicks out is because of phase protection. Basically, the only reason AC electrical systems can be tied together is because the voltages are perfectly in phase with each other. Meaning that the wavy line graph you've always seen representing AC power is exactly, and I mean dead-nuts, in sync no matter where you go and the RMS voltage stays stable. Remember, 120 volts AC is just the "average" of the total sine wave, it's infinitely changing. The voltage in your house goes from 0V, to 170V+, back down to 0V, to 170V-, and back to 0V sixty times a second and 120 is just the "average" of that sine wave. One thing that's super interesting that a lot of people don't know, is that every power generating station in the country is synced and in phase with each other. So a nuclear plant in California, coal plant in Virginia, wind farm in Iowa, etc...every single one of them the output hits zero, peak positive, zero, peak negative, and zero again all at exactly the same time.

Anyway, if you get two AC voltages out of phase, you get major, major problems and it destroys motors, electronics, etc. Your solar system stays in phase via electronics, and they get wonky when power's dropped.

*source: was a powerlineman for a lot of years, over 3,600 hours logged hot time (hands-on, energized distribution voltages with rubber gloves and hot sticks) working for companies out of IBEW 55.

No shit. I thought about getting into that profession and going out to western Iowa for school for it. I ended up starting out in the industrial electrician field. Did you know a Bob Danielson from Sioux City. This may be well before your time in the field.

 

[Ree4]

I got hard just reading this response.

I threw up in my mouth a little reading this one. I don't get why people think it's important to share their boners with a bunch of dudes.

 

[westender]

This is more nerdy than you probably want to bother with so most of you guys wont want to go any farther. Fair warning.

Grid tie inverters do disconnect power, but it's purpose isn't worker protection, it's equipment and electronics protection. Worker protection is done by grounding--before anyone even gets close all three phases are jumpered together and to neutral, and grounded at the structure. Creates a direct short if anything gets energized. If you worked bare hands on an un-grounded system there are 35 million things that'll kill you first before a backfeed.

The reason the inverter kicks out is because of phase protection. Basically, the only reason AC electrical systems can be tied together is because the voltages are perfectly in phase with each other. Meaning that the wavy line graph you've always seen representing AC power is exactly, and I mean dead-nuts, in sync no matter where you go and the RMS voltage stays stable. Remember, 120 volts AC is just the "average" of the total sine wave, it's infinitely changing. The voltage in your house goes from 0V, to 170V+, back down to 0V, to 170V-, and back to 0V sixty times a second and 120 is just the "average" of that sine wave. One thing that's super interesting that a lot of people don't know, is that every power generating station in the country is synced and in phase with each other. So a nuclear plant in California, coal plant in Virginia, wind farm in Iowa, etc...every single one of them the output hits zero, peak positive, zero, peak negative, and zero again all at exactly the same time.

Anyway, if you get two AC voltages out of phase, you get major, major problems and it destroys motors, electronics, etc. Your solar system stays in phase via electronics, and they get wonky when power's dropped.

*source: was a powerlineman for a lot of years, over 3,600 hours logged hot time (hands-on, energized distribution voltages with rubber gloves and hot sticks) working for companies out of IBEW 55.

I think in layman's terms the guy told me it kicks out so people and equipment don't get messed up. That I understood. The greatest lesson of electricity I remember is grabbing the old electric fence and steel fence post at the same time as kid. Shocking.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

I threw up in my mouth a little reading this one. I don't get why people think it's important to share their boners with a bunch of dudes.

Then my work here is done.