• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

Electric Vehicles

Status
Not open for further replies.
crescent said:
Thanks - I'll keep that in mind. My old Malibu is on its last legs and has probably only held out so long because I can work from home during Covid issues time.

Another month or two (or three or four, who knows?) and I'll be back to commuting. I'm not sure how long the Chevy will last, as the head gasket leaks (or so they claim) and that is a big enough repair to probably just give up and trade in the car for a few bucks (we already spent a boatload of money on the oxygen sensor and an issue with the gas tank). It leaks oil all over, I tried putting in the stop-leak goop but then the epidemic got rolling and I largely stopped driving any great distances in that car. I'll try it again once I'm back using the car most days.

;)Just for comparison, how often do the head gaskets and oxygen sensors go out on the Bolts? ;)
Click to expand...

What color is your exhaust? If you're blowing a lot of white smoke, you're almost certainly leaking coolant into the fuel system and you probably have a bad head gasket. If it's gray or almost unnoticeable your issue is probably something else. Blue smoke indicates that you're burning oil. Black smoke shows you have too rich a fuel mixture.

BTW, check this after the car warms up. Most cars blow a bit of white smoke in the morning when the engine is cold. Oxygen sensors can go bad on any car. The problem with electronics in the engine bay is heat and moisture. Sometimes they put them in spots where it just goes through too many heat cycles
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Now I wonder how much extra current the wiring to a typical streetlight could safely supply.

Or indeed efficiently supply. I was reading an article recently on how electrical installations which regularly use a significant proportion of their rated current can waste enough power in just warming wire that within a few years it would have been more cost effective to spend the extra to install heavier gauge wire in the first place.
Click to expand...

IN the case of streetlamps though, they might still be useful because it might be easier to upgrade the wiring compared to a fully new installation.

I'm thinking that the lights (in most cases) are supplied by wiring in conduits. Might be easier to pull new/additional wiring through those conduits that it would be to bury new conduits.

I am also wondering if many streetlights are wired for more power than they use - if they were installed before power-saving lights were a thing.



acbytesla said:
What color is your exhaust? If you're blowing a lot of white smoke, you're almost certainly leaking coolant into the fuel system and you probably have a bad head gasket. If it's gray or almost unnoticeable your issue is probably something else. Blue smoke indicates that you're burning oil. Black smoke shows you have too rich a fuel mixture.

BTW, check this after the car warms up. Most cars blow a bit of white smoke in the morning when the engine is cold. Oxygen sensors can go bad on any car. The problem with electronics in the engine bay is heat and moisture. Sometimes they put them in spots where it just goes through too many heat cycles
Click to expand...

No visible smoke - yet. The leaky head gasket was reported to me by an oil-change place - right before I stopped commuting. But it seems plausible as the car leaks oil in other places. I guess we'll see once I start putting miles on the car again. As it is, I probably only drive it a few miles a month. That will change when I go back to the office.
 
Last edited:
crescent said:
IN the case of streetlamps though, they might still be useful because it might be easier to upgrade the wiring compared to a fully new installation.

I'm thinking that the lights (in most cases) are supplied by wiring in conduits. Might be easier to pull new/additional wiring through those conduits that it would be to bury new conduits.

I am also wondering if many streetlights are wired for more power than they use - if they were installed before power-saving lights were a thing.
Click to expand...

The lamps might well have been replaced with low energy types but the saving is probably on the scale of one or two hundred watts. Not in the same ballpark as a useful amount to charge a car overnight. I think a typical low-power domestic car charger runs at 6kw.
 
crescent said:
IN the case of streetlamps though, they might still be useful because it might be easier to upgrade the wiring compared to a fully new installation.

I'm thinking that the lights (in most cases) are supplied by wiring in conduits. Might be easier to pull new/additional wiring through those conduits that it would be to bury new conduits.

I am also wondering if many streetlights are wired for more power than they use - if they were installed before power-saving lights were a thing.
Click to expand...

A high-pressure sodium street light can draw up to 1000 watts.. Some LED street lights require only 73 watts and put out more light.

So it might make sense. But still, a thousand watts is nothing compared with what an EV wants or needs to draw. A 50 Kwh battery pack to charge from empty to full in 2 hours uses 25 times that.
 
crescent said:
No visible smoke - yet. The leaky head gasket was reported to me by an oil-change place - right before I stopped commuting. But it seems plausible as the car leaks oil in other places. I guess we'll see once I start putting miles on the car again. As it is, I probably only drive it a few miles a month. That will change when I go back to the office.
Click to expand...

Oil leaks are sort of a natural thing in older cars. Not so much in newer cars.

I'd bet money he's wrong. It really doesn't sound serious to me. I had several older cars that leaked in my driveway for years. It's messy, but not that much of a big deal. Are you sure he didn't say valve cover gasket? Unless your car isn't running well I wouldn't worry much about it. Might check your oil levels a little more often and have a spare quart of oil just in case.
 
acbytesla said:
Oil leaks are sort of a natural thing in older cars. Not so much in newer cars.

I'd bet money he's wrong. It really doesn't sound serious to me. I had several older cars that leaked in my driveway for years. It's messy, but not that much of a big deal. Are you sure he didn't say valve cover gasket? Unless your car isn't running well I wouldn't worry much about it. Might check your oil levels a little more often and have a spare quart of oil just in case.
Click to expand...
An oil change might reveal the presence of engine coolant in the oil. A leaking gasket could be the cause.
 
Distracted1 said:
An oil change might reveal the presence of engine coolant in the oil. A leaking gasket could be the cause.
Click to expand...

Jack by the hedge said:
You can often spot coolant in the oil by looking at the underside of the oil cap for distinctive "mayo" sludge.
Click to expand...

That's true. Forgot to mention looking under the oil cap. Also look in the radiator. I just don't trust the quick oil change guys.
 
Last edited:
crescent said:
I don't trust them either - which is why I still have the car.
Click to expand...

I have always changed my own oil because some of those companies are seriously disreputable.

But Jack is right on. When coolant mixes with oil it creates this sort of yellowish like mayonnaise in globs. It sticks to the bottom of the oil filler cap and can be seen in the oil that is drained and in the oil filter. For some reason my mind blanked. First place to look is under the oil filler cap and if you can inside/under the valve covers. Then looking for white/yellow globs in the radiator. Those are telltale signs.

Here are a great YouTube link that could help.

https://youtu.be/Drd9N-qWVJY
 
Last edited:
Good IC engine advice above, to which I will add that if the oxygen sensor is a "downstream" one, it is monitoring, not the combustion but the operation of the catalytic converter, and if you're already suffering from a sick engine, the sensor may actually not be bad but doing its job, telling you your engine has clobbered the catalyst, or it might be clogging with soot, and it might not be long before the new one acts up again. The good news just keeps rolling in, eh?
 
Delvo said:
I don't know how much of an increase this means for our consumption of electricity, but I do know the number of chargers your plan needs is many times the number of gas pumps we have out there now. Pretty much every single place where anybody works would need more of them than the number of pumps at any gas station, and even that's ignoring the ones that would be at people's homes.
Click to expand...
No, you don't know that. Assume an employee says they'll pay for your commute electricity. They know how far you travel so all that is required is to top up the battery. Assume 15 min per charge; that's 32 cars per day. That takes care of millions of employers right there. You can scale it up yourself.

acbytesla said:
Maybe. But at some point you need to connect to the grid. So charge Robot would still be dragging around a high voltage cable behind it and that seems problematic.
Click to expand...
Nah, you just hang charger cables above each parking stall. Now the robot only has to grab it and plug it in, then remove it later (it's on a retractable spring so it retracts itself.)

Outside is even better. You cover the lot with solar panels on the roof. The employees are happy because they and their cars are protected from inclement weather and the employer is happier because the sun offsets some (most?) (all?) of his costs.
 
JoeMorgue said:
The average person has one breasts and one testicle, but they don't design bras and jockstraps to accommodate that.

Designing for the "average" is how people get left behind.

And it's another thing custom gift wrapped to make life easier for people in dense urban cores and harder for people in rural eras, a phenomena which, in case you haven't been paying attention, has caused some problems in the last few years.

It's easy for Hipster John as he drives his Prius from his apartment to his job making gluten free vinyl records but not so much for Redneck John driving his truck from his house to a construction site.
Click to expand...

We're talking concepts here so where is the lucrative market for the things we're talking about? It begins with the very market you cited: the dense urban core.

Yeah, Joe Tractor gets left out but there's a helluva lot more Vito Vinyls than there are Joe Tractors - and that disparity is only growing. And eventually solutions for the tougher markets will emerge.

I reject the notion that if you can't serve everybody, then it won't work.

ETA:

JoeMorgue said:
I think the point is people who have ...

- Totally set in stone schedules where they drive the exact same amount at the exact same time using the exact same route every day

- Are not ever in situations where they have to go somewhere in their vehicle right now and "No I'm sorry boss I have to wait for my car to drink enough nectar from this flower to have enough energy to make it to the next flower. Give me a minute while I break out my phone app and run a traveling salesman problem on EV chargers between here and where you want me to go" is not a viable option.

... are nowhere near the "average car user" as people are presenting.
Click to expand...

You ever heard of market segmentation? Objections such as this are totally unconvincing and, actually, irrelevant.
 
Last edited:
GlennB said:
And hope that people who are not charging don't park there. The UK has a notorious problem with people - sometimes with no excuse - occupying 'blue badge' (disabled) parking spots, so getting people to respect EV charging places might will be an issue.
Click to expand...

The fine for such illegal parking is clearly not high enough. Here, it is over $400 so I rarely see an offender.
 
It's funny reading about how these cars are so impractical, when I've had mine for nearly six years... (2014 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV)

It costs me 40 litres of 'gas' per year, and I can still drive a thousand kilometres on holidays if I want too. (Note, mine's a hybrid).

I've never used a public charger, and I charge mine from a 15 amp socket in my driveway.

It happily hauls tools, a trailer, my kayak, etc.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom