Wake Up Call for Green Energy

[SwampDonkey]

No, they are very scarce up here. I look around parking lots and such, haven't seen one. None of the filling stations I use even has a charger. One station is on a country road and the other is off the 4-lane with access to two small towns. Rural New Brunswick ain't the same as rural VA. How far away is Costco down there? :D Well, up here it's far enough that it ain't worth the trip. I never go to the city, I shop by mouse clicks. Malls are going bust everywhere across the continent. Groceries in town, town is 30 miles. :D

[Mooseherder]

Probably because people know what road salt does to the bottom of a vehicle up north.

[WhitePineJunky]

No, they are very scarce up here. I look around parking lots and such, haven't seen one. None of the filling stations I use even has a charger. One station is on a country road and the other is off the 4-lane with access to two small towns. Rural New Brunswick ain't the same as rural VA. How far away is Costco down there? :D Well, up here it's far enough that it ain't worth the trip. I never go to the city, I shop by mouse clicks. Malls are going bust everywhere across the continent. Groceries in town, town is 30 miles. :D

Scarce here too there are a couple chargers at the bigger Irving's along the 100 series highways, but not even close to every gas station, I think it's only used by tourists because I don't see any EVs that are local. Halifax is a bit different but only probably 5-10% EV on road 

[nativewolf]

Questions like - can I source locally, are supply lines fragile, are government policies responsible or reckless come to mind even more so since 2020. Can I heat with coal if my area has it in abundance if natural gas appliances are banned and rolling electrical blackouts occur or wood or oil or ? Is there a plan B<C and D when plan A fails or is taken out in an act of war?
What I liked about the change over from horses to petroleum was it was gradual and concurrent over a span of many years and it even helped during WWII that they still had that remnant around when severe shortages and crisis came whereas there would have been even more shortages and starvation.
The changeover was free market driven and not by statism. Thank goodness they didn't simply shoot the horses and oxen and bankrupt farmers that couldn't afford or quickly adapt to state enforced policies. It was done in a sensible fashion that made the countries strong and resilient.
My own way of life has back up plans for home and business and thankfully there are many more doing the same due to the lack of confidence in those far away that invent policies influenced by lobbyists.
I try to live in a way that wouldn't disappoint my great grandparents.

Maybe news for you but it was forced by the govt.  Horse shat had become such a problem in all the big cities that, starting in the biggest of the big (NYC) they moved to manage horse manure.  That's why you see the pics of horses and then 10 years  later no horses in NYC.  
Here is a nice perspective on that:
The Big Crapple: NYC Transit Pollution from Horse Manure to Horseless Carriages - 99% Invisible
A side effect was that the horses needed huge mounts of food which was no longer required so that hay/oats fields all across NJ and NE went fallow, just hastened after WWI.  
It's almost always the case that governments have forced/enabled/subsidized technology shifts.  Horses to cars, land lines to cell phones, trains to airplanes, typewriters to computers, etc etc.  How much and how they do it has varied but once technology becomes sufficient to enable a transition (and we are there) govts move.  People also need to understand that this is no longer simply an isolated case of the NA situation changing. It's worldwide and China is leading.  We are at a severe risk of losing our auto manufacturing system if we don't manage to keep up.    
I imagine all the posters complaining about EVs don't own one.  8 months into our Ford Lightning and at this point I've decided that I'll just hire out any work that requires towing it is too nice to just come home, plug it in, wake up, unplug and leave and never go to a gas station.   No oil change, no radiator fluid change, probably won't touch the brakes for several years.  Tires will get changed one day, but so far just windshield wiper fluid and that's it.  20k miles to date.  Saturday I'll make a 300 mile trip and charge at a charger along the way home.  First time in 10 days that I'll have to do that, all the other charging is at home.  If I do charging like this our "fuel" bill is half of what it would be with gas.  If I get some solar panels on the garage it will 0 out.  
EVs also see the auto manufacturing sector shrink, just a massive reduction in parts and components.  As you strip parts your overall simplification increases and that allows more manufacturing changes.  The newest Teslas are a good example.  The body is mostly giant castings made in huge presses.  They cut a room full of automated welding robots, they put cars out 5x faster than the best VW facility, it is such a risk to VWs employment situation that VW fired their CEO that was pushing VW to change.  Personally I think they'll fail now.  In a decade we'll know.   Point here is that employment and cost of the manufacturing process will shrink dramatically, who is going to even build cars in the future?  We are at risk of it all moving to China.
Europe is moving to a system similar to the recent legislation in the USA, China was there 10 years ago, Korea has moved.  This is the global economy that politicians, at least wise one, consider when drafting legislation.   Right now for the USA it's a race to keep any of our OEMs (other than Tesla) during the transition to EVs.   
We could try to embrace a "laissez faire" situation but not with China dramatically intervening in the business marketplace.  The costs distortions are too great.  

SwampDonkey is sitting in a rural area ordering online stuff which are managed in a data center very near to my house that are partly supplied with energy by the spate of new solar facilities sprouting up in the Southside of Virginia in former pine plantations.  Without the solar facilities there is no spare energy on hot summer days for the data centers and in fact the waiting list for electricity is huge so lots of facilities are on hold.  The price per acre for land with available capacity is...beyond incredible.  Million dollars an acre for a crappy oak forest site that would not perk, it did sit beside a transmission line with spare juice, so up comes a billion dollar data center.  The demand for electricians is so high that Loudoun Countys recent highschool had a low bidder price of $27 million just for the electrical work.  $27 million for electrical.  That's because SwampDonkey is sitting at home ordering off amazon or from somebody hosting in an amazon datacenter.  Sigh.  It's all connected, my forest are getting converted, southside of VA is getting converted and the world is changing.  You can't stop change.

[doc henderson]

well, we are not there yet.  not enough energy to cool homes in CA, let alone charge electric cars if everyone had one.  If demand for electricity goes up, so will the cost of electricity.  Where will all the wire and other raw materials come from?  for power plants, motors, charging stations, batteries?

[Southside]

So the destruction of southern Virginia timber ground, by the likes of Foxhound ,along with the economy it supports is justifiable to allow NoVa folks to drive around in EV's? Talk about NIMBY to the max. What about those $40K Tesla fender benders due to their construction process?

[Ljohnsaw]

Yes, electricity is expensive here. But, this year when we had the record high of 117° in Sacramento, we didn't have energy alerts. I don't recall any this year.

To put the price of electricity in perspective, "cheap" gas is $5/gallon. Has been for a couple weeks now.

Couple weeks ago I was loading free bags of concrete in my beat up tundra at HD. I guy comes up behind me and says it looks like I could use a new work truck. He introduces himself as the fleet truck sales guy at a nearby Chevy dealer. I guess business is so bad they're hunting down customers!

I told him, sorry, I have a Cyber truck on order and I will never buy an ICE vehicle again. He walked away...

[SwampDonkey]

My big purchases are not Amazon. I could name 20 places not affiliated with the place. :D What I get from Amazon is insignificant.

[barbender]

 I've said it before, and I'll say it again- I have no problem with electric vehicles. If you remove the mandates, subsidies, and the ideology that is behind pushing them so hard, we could have a nice discussion about the merits of the vehicle itself. Like we would about putting an electric motor on a sawmill. 

 

[SwampDonkey]

Nothing so far has curtailed consumption of fossil fuels in the US, all tallied it's 4% higher than 2019. In Canada with all the taxation added on, CO2 emissions never fell.

[WhitePineJunky]

Nothing so far has curtailed consumption of fossil fuels in the US, all tallied it's 4% higher than 2019. In Canada with all the taxation added on, CO2 emissions never fell.

You know their "intentions" are BS when they immigrate 1m per year between foreign students, asylum seekers and refugees. Basically importing the size of Calgary every year, well people that need to be housed, have heat and such, trees that need to be cut down for concrete jungles etc. our emissions won't be falling but skyrocketed in the coming years. Century initiative .....

[Sod saw]

.


I have a "friend" with a new  (January purchase)  2023 electric car.  His bragging claim is that he has only spent $20 on fuel all this year.

When you start asking questions, it turns out that he has only spent $20  of his own electric bill at home.  Each day he takes the car to the local village public parking lot and recharge for a couple hours at the charging station that has free electricity as part of the deal that NY state paid for the charging station installation.

The next village,  over, also has a free charging station in their public parking lot.


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[nativewolf]

So the destruction of southern Virginia timber ground, by the likes of Foxhound ,along with the economy it supports is justifiable to allow NoVa folks to drive around in EV's? Talk about NIMBY to the max. What about those $40K Tesla fender benders due to their construction process?

The "destruction" of the southern va un natural monoculture pine plantations is to feed solar to the datacenters in northern va.  Any big datacenter consumes more electricity than all the EVs in our state to date.  Changing slowly so maybe next year 2 of datacenters and so on.  It is us typing on this and buying stuff on amazon and looking at movies on netflix.  
I find it ironic that swampdonkey is sitting in canada buying things on a computer, causing my potential client to convert his forest to a datacenter site.  Oh to top off the irony..HITT construction is doing the groundwork.  Guess where the HITT family business got going....running a sawmill in Aimsville VA.  They sold out decades ago to focus on construction and engineering, now part of a conglomerate owned by private equity in NYC.  
The world is a very funny connected place.  

[nativewolf]

Yes, electricity is expensive here. But, this year when we had the record high of 117° in Sacramento, we didn't have energy alerts. I don't recall any this year.

To put the price of electricity in perspective, "cheap" gas is $5/gallon. Has been for a couple weeks now.

Couple weeks ago I was loading free bags of concrete in my beat up tundra at HD. I guy comes up behind me and says it looks like I could use a new work truck. He introduces himself as the fleet truck sales guy at a nearby Chevy dealer. I guess business is so bad they're hunting down customers!

I told him, sorry, I have a Cyber truck on order and I will never buy an ICE vehicle again. He walked away...

CT should be getting delivered to a few this year.  I just couldn't wait.  Pretty happy with the Ford Lighting, if I had more money I'd have bought the larger battery.  I think the Frunk on the Lighting is awesome, it might actually be better than the CTs.  The CT stainless steel body though...awesome.  

[Southside]

Sod Saw, I guess your "friend" doesn't allocate for any value to his time to drive to the "free" charger and sit around either. 

[SwampDonkey]

I'm not much of an Amazon customer, if the majority shopped like me on there, the ship would have never left the port. :D I buy mostly direct at cheaper prices and higher quality. :D I'm only aware of one company that I purchase from that is selling also on Amazon because I see their Amazon store. Most of them sell products you'll not see on Amazon, or are cheaper but also ship free. I have yet to see an Amazon truck show up with my parcel. I'm aware that they hire a lot of independent contractors for their Prime deliveries. I don't use Prime. Those people are not much higher up the chain than a guy tossing store flyers in your drive way every week and pay to go with it. :D They might get it here 1 day earlier, no big deal to me. That's costing someone a lot of money to pull off, thus higher pricing.

As to data centres, the government here has bought into crypto mining centres. I think one has been up for awhile and maybe a second in the works. That consumes a lot of juice. Seems like wasteful nonsense to me, but government can be talked into anything for 100+ jobs. Take away the purse and the business will collapse. Reminds me of all the failed call centres financed by government. McKenna's big pipe dream. :D

Ok you have a lightning, it's new, and I bet you treat it like a car and don't have to go 100 miles back and forth in the bush on the roughest wettest roads imaginable to cut wood. The kind of rough roads an F150 will shake and rattle apart in 12 months on.

[nativewolf]

It's my only truck SD so yeah...it goes everywhere I need it to go or I am walking.  Sometimes I'm walking.  Then again in my f350 I'd have more ground clearance and a much higher fuel bill so I guess I am trading some walking for $ savings.   The new f150s are aluminium mostly, so the scratch on the body isn't bad.  However @ljohnsaw CT will do it better.  

[SwampDonkey]

Let me know in 5 years with a few winters on her. Already been recalls on them due to fire risk from high-voltage battery packs. Some recalls over rear lighting failure due to moisture getting in through micro-cracks in the casing. Lots of buyers have been cancelling orders, say dealers,  price is too high for the budget. I'm pretty sure the dirt roads to cut wood are pretty short distance in VA in comparison to here. Plus the rural asphalt roads here will not win any awards. :D

[nativewolf]

It's my only truck SD so yeah...it goes everywhere I need it to go or I am walking.  Sometimes I'm walking.  Then again in my f350 I'd have more ground clearance and a much higher fuel bill so I guess I am trading some walking for $ savings.   The new f150s are aluminium mostly, so the scratch on the body isn't bad.  However @ljohnsaw CT will do it better.  

And it is a bit over a year old now so...doing ok so far.  

[Don P]

Glad to hear it.
Others experiences, conditions and apparent extreme rugged remoteness are outside of my needs.
Our friend's Bolt is running back and forth to C-burg daily ~150 miles round trip. I had forgotten till I drove out the other way. There is a residential plug in about 4 miles in that direction as well. He was actually an early alternative energy guy. He had solar hot water panels up for at least 30 years, PV's in an ever growing array and now the EV. I applaud that. He put his money where his mouth was and is one of the few who wouldn't be bothered or have to switch gears for much at all, good on him.

[gspren]

I won't say never to EVs, they're getting better every year. I remember when cordless drills were a joke for anything bigger than a 1/4" bit, now I haven't plugged in one of my several corded drills in a long time. As the range gets better I could see us having one of each, EV & ICE, with the ICE being the long distance vehicle. My new SUV is a hybrid that still has a 6 cyl for main propulsion but gets a boost from electric for starts, not a plug in.

[SwampDonkey]

$90,000 for the lightning is about $30,000 over the F150. That's 11 years  worth of fuel I claim for work up here on taxes, for which I am reembursed. The lightning would never save me a *DanG thing, end up costing me. And most math I've seen, it's at least 5 or even 7 years to offset CO2 from ICE. A battery with 5-7 years life.

[Southside]

SD is absolutely spot on, "logging roads" here in Virginia are absolutely nothing like up north, in terms of condition and length. I have never seen washboard around here, it was a ritual up there. 

[SwampDonkey]

Yep, and it's not like roads are just gravel. To access a  lot of timber the roads are glacial sand with angular rocks around gulf ball size on the surface and filled in between boulders where annual frost and heavy rain can cause spots to sink in the road. Plus the birches and fir in the middle of older roads, just high enough to brush the underneath of your truck for miles. Often not bladed off until the wood has been cut on the block, then they clean up the road for the trucks. Not to mention the washboards, raised culverts and pot holes. :D The paved road between Juniper and Cross Creek is signed for 50 mph, but you do well to go 35 mph if you want a vehicle left. You've never seen a paved road with deep pot holes for 30 miles before. And not just one here another 500 yards down, more like every 4-6 feet. This is where wood gets cut on a massive scale and silviculture work same. :D

[Stephen1]

I have 3 neighbours with teslas. They really like them and the rest of us call them the experiments! I'll go electric one day. I'm waiting for the roof top panel subsidies that will come soon. 
My neighbour scrapped his 30 ft truck for his Tesla and a trailer.(think Snapon truck) He remodelled his business of selling tire parts, weights and stuff to pull a trailer after the garages order what they need. He will sometimes make an extra trip back to deliver. he is quite happy.