Re: [Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
"Free rider." I think public transport should be free too. but of course it won't really be free. The costs will be borne by the taxpayer. Harry On Tue, Apr 5, 2022 at 11:51 PM CB Sites wrote: > I will confirm what @Jed Rothwell is saying as an > EV owner. 90% of my travel is inner city 30miles or less all stop and > go. Just an overnight charge on a 110v plugin charger and good to go. > I've not seen a noticble change in my electric bill. It's like driving for > free. > > On Tue, Apr 5, 2022, 6:42 PM Jed Rothwell wrote: > >> I wrote: >> >> >>> I don't see the point. Why spend four times more money than you need to? >>> Electric cars are far cheaper per mile. >>> >> >> It is actually 5.6 times more money per mile, because the power companies >> offer a huge discount for recharging overnight. In Atlanta, the power >> company estimates it costs $19 a month to charge an electric car versus >> $107 per month for a gasoline car. See: >> >> >> https://www.georgiapower.com/residential/billing-and-rate-plans/pricing-and-rate-plans/plug-in-ev.html >> >> As I mentioned, in parts of Texas the cost is $0.00 per month. Granted, >> they also charge a flat fee for electricity, but the incremental additional >> cost of charging an electric car at night is zero. You can't beat that! The >> oil companies cannot compete with that. Which is why they will not be >> selling gasoline cars much longer. People will not pay for Exxonmobil for >> something that the power company gives you for free. >> >>
Re: [Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
What happens when everyone who currently owns a gasoline car buys an electric car and is charging overnight? Would it make sense for the utility companies to continue offering huge discounts for over night charging? Harry On Tue, Apr 5, 2022 at 6:42 PM Jed Rothwell wrote: > I wrote: > > >> I don't see the point. Why spend four times more money than you need to? >> Electric cars are far cheaper per mile. >> > > It is actually 5.6 times more money per mile, because the power companies > offer a huge discount for recharging overnight. In Atlanta, the power > company estimates it costs $19 a month to charge an electric car versus > $107 per month for a gasoline car. See: > > > https://www.georgiapower.com/residential/billing-and-rate-plans/pricing-and-rate-plans/plug-in-ev.html > > As I mentioned, in parts of Texas the cost is $0.00 per month. Granted, > they also charge a flat fee for electricity, but the incremental additional > cost of charging an electric car at night is zero. You can't beat that! The > oil companies cannot compete with that. Which is why they will not be > selling gasoline cars much longer. People will not pay for Exxonmobil for > something that the power company gives you for free. > >
Re: [Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
H LV wrote: "Free rider." ... I think public transport should be free too.but of course it won't really be free. Few thins are really free, of course especially if carbon fuel is consumed. But basic transportation can be much smarter and less costly, perhaps fuel-free and out-of-pocket free. Plus, as Elon sez -- a massive societal shift can take place in a relatively short time frame. Soon! There has been a lot of speculation online about one or more 'new paradigms' for automotive transportation. Many assume some kind of sharing to cover added costs, along with battery power, low emissions from shared solar and even shared-AI being a part of the total package. And of course LENR could make things much more interesting since the car and it battery storage capability will be capable of providing electricity to the homes involved. Critics call this kind of talk neo-Marxist, but a substantial financial benefit could indeed end up favoring the limit4ed situation where the net cost of automobile ownership becomes indeed "free" in one way accounting... commies-be-damned. The refusniks will be the last to profit. This is actually paer of the logical end-game merger of Capitalism with Marxism. Sure - the family car will never disappear - nor will fossil fuel, especially in rural areas and the Third World - but the types of shared ownership and common usage controlled by AI are flexible and real. If and when we move closer to a work-at-home society, then the value of space is multiplied - even garage space becomes so valuable that monetizing extra space could actually "pay" for basic transportation.This is already true in a few big cities. The scenario which I favor combines full self-driving (self parking and self recharging ) with shared neighborhood ownership and hydrogen power via LENR and an advanced local AI network where say a dozen vehicles are shared by a dozen like-minded households who also get much of their electrical power from the cars - which can actially be parked miles away. Dream on ! ...and wait till the next April fools prediction by Elon where he actually buys into LENR...
RE: [Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
As things now stand, automobile drivers are getting a free ride. That's not fair. Toll roads/bridges? License/registration fees? Gasoline taxes? CAUTION: This message was sent from outside the Nexstar organization. Please do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender.
Re: [Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
H LV wrote: "Free rider." > > I think public transport should be free too. > but of course it won't really be free. The costs will be borne by the > taxpayer. > Public transport is a lot cheaper than roads, highways and the damage caused by automobiles. So it would be best to make public transport free and charge $10 or $20 to anyone who wants to drive a car in Atlanta or New York City. In London drivers have to pay £11.50 daily charge. That seems reasonable to me. As things now stand, automobile drivers are getting a free ride. That's not fair.
[Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
CB Sites wrote: I will confirm what @Jed Rothwell is saying as an > EV owner. 90% of my travel is inner city 30miles or less all stop and > go. Just an overnight charge on a 110v plugin charger and good to go. > I've not seen a noticble change in my electric bill. It's like driving for > free. > I had one for several months. It was great. With the pandemic, I closed my office, moved home, and gave the car to my daughter. She loves it! H LV wrote: > What happens when everyone who currently owns a gasoline car buys an > electric car and > is charging overnight? Would it make sense for the utility companies to > continue offering huge discounts for over night charging? > Yes, it will. There is no market for electricity at night. Either they sell it cheap, or they don't sell it at all. It is like running a grocery store and having to throw away produce that no one buys, or flying an airplane with half the seats empty. You never get back the unsold seats. Perhaps the one-cent deep discount in Atlanta will go up in price closer to the daytime cost, but it is not going back to the full rate. There is no way the Texas companies will start charging for nighttime electricity. It costs them more to get rid of it than to give it away for free. They charge a fixed fee for service. They resemble an internet service provider that finds it cheaper to give unlimited bandwidth to most customers than to try to limit it. Nighttime electricity in Texas really is "too cheap to meter" (as predicted by Strauss in 1954). The power companies do not offer these rates as a favor, or out of the goodness of their corporate heart. The Texas power is from wind and nukes, which you cannot turn off easily. I guess you can feather the wind turbines . . . Anyway, they make more money giving away electricity and collecting a monthly fee. A business model like an ISP, or NetFlix.
Re: [Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
Here is one of many examples of free nighttime electricity in Texas: https://comparepower.com/electricity-rates/texas/free-electricity/ There is a lot of competition in the Texas electric power market, so many companies offer this. As I said, this is a good business model, not a favor to the customers. Not idealism. I compared it to NetFlix. You might also compare it to a big commercial bakery such as Entenmann's that runs an outlet store. They sometimes sell discounted day-old pastries and bread. I guess they don't make much profit, but it is better than throwing away the food and making no money at all. The trick is to avoid cannibalizing the market for fresh pastry. Try not to have large production overruns. Do not make old pastry so cheap, tasty and available in such large quantities that many customers say: "I won't buy the fresh Entenmann cake in the grocery; I'll buy the discounted older cakes at their outlet." In Texas, the power companies want some customers to run their air conditioners and washing machines at night, to use electricity they would have to throw away otherwise. But the power companies do not want everyone, everywhere to move to nighttime use. They want to sell electricity during the day at premium rates. They know there is a market for that. Corporations, car dealerships and so on are open during the day. They have no use for electricity at night. It is a captive market. Many people prefer fresh Entenmann cakes and will pay a premium for them at a grocery store, so the discount outlets do not threaten their existing business. Anyway, that is why I am confident the power companies will continue to offer discounted rates as electric cars become more common. They might tweak the discount, and reduce it somewhat, as nighttime use increases. If they raise the nighttime rate too much, many people and corporations might install solar panels and charge the cars during the day. Plus, as I said, in Texas other power companies will poach their customers.
Re: [Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
Regarding hydrogen vehicles and safe fission reactors, over at LENR Forum I wrote: It may be possible to develop safe fission reactors. I cannot judge. Some experts say pebble bed reactors might be safe. However, we know for a fact that solar panels are safe, and they can produce electricity much more cheaply than fission. Probably cheaper than pebble bed reactors. So why spend a ton of money inventing safe fission reactors now? We don't need them anymore. If they had been invented before solar PV fell in price, we could have used them. No doubt they would have some advantages, such as being more compact, with less overall material needed. Any technology has advantages and disadvantages. Years after integrated transistors were invented, Ken Shoulders and Charles Spindt invented special purpose chip with microscopic vacuum tubes on it. Spindt told me it was better for some purposes than transistors. If they had come up with that in 1955, perhaps we would not have needed integrated transistor chips. Not for a while, anyway. Suppose Toyota had come up with the Mirai hydrogen fuel cell car in 1990. It might be cheap and widespread by now, and we might have hydrogen gas stations everywhere. It has a better range than today's electric cars. Hydrogen made by some processes is renewable and not polluting. Hydrogen fuel cell cars might have progressed faster than electric cars, eliminating the need for electric cars. That's one of history's might-have-beens. It didn't happen, and now it is too late for the Mirai hydrogen fuel cell approach. Electric cars may not have been inherently better in 1990. They might have lost the competition. But they won, and you cannot undo that. A winning technology develops economic and technical momentum. It becomes a standard, as more and more people buy it, and mechanics learn to deal with it. Mechanics and automobile companies can only afford to support one or two technical standards -- gasoline and electric. They cannot afford to manufacture, sell and service another standard such as hydrogen fuel cells.
Re: [Vo]:This smells like an April 1 joke
Chris Zell wrote: As things now stand, automobile drivers are getting a free ride. That's not > fair. > > Toll roads/bridges? License/registration fees? Gasoline taxes? I don't know. We should see how they do it in London, England. I paid a bridge toll in New York state just by driving past an array of cameras. The bill came in the mail. Atlanta now has variable rate toll roads. You have to have a "Peach Pass" gadget in your car to use them. I don't have one, and I don't know how the gadget works.
