opinions concerning electric cars?

[jwhouk]

Problem is, once you get west of the Mississippi in the US, trains are non-existent. Heck, you get west of Chicago and they're essentially non-existent.

[Gnoman]

You must be in the east somewhere, because around here, 3 states almost inevitably takes me across a time zone.

I live in Ohio. The furthest West I ever bother going is Chicago - which does, however, cause a time zone change.

[Rockphed]

Problem is, once you get west of the Mississippi in the US, trains are non-existent. Heck, you get west of Chicago and they're essentially non-existent.

I have ridden the train once, from Detroit to Chicago. It wasn't bad, and possibly got me there faster than driving would, but it had almost all the inconvenience of a plane and all the slowness of a car.

[Peelee]

I have ridden the train once, from Detroit to Chicago. It wasn't bad, and possibly got me there faster than driving would, but it had almost all the inconvenience of a plane and all the slowness of a car.

How about price?

[Tvtyrant]

This is a strawman fallacy if I ever saw one. The topic of this thread is "what is the current reasons for buying an electric car" not "should all internal combustion cars be replaced" or whatever you seem to think it is. No-one is disputing that there are circumstances where an internal combustion is necessary. But in the US, the average commute is well within battery limits of electric cars, even in bad weather.

Grey Wolf

Gotta love someone strawmanning someone while accusing them of strawmanning.

I'm personally a big fan of electric cars, I think to get it to really take off companies should look at GM policies in the 1920s and 1930s. Do car swaps where they allow people to trade in gas cars in certain cities for electric cars at a rate that hurts the company in the short term but will drive out gas stations in the long run. Rinse and repeat until urban areas are defacto electric (it isn't going to happen in rural areas).

[Peelee]

I'm personally a big fan of electric cars, I think to get it to really take off companies should look at GM policies in the 1920s and 1930s. Do car swaps where they allow people to trade in gas cars in certain cities for electric cars at a rate that hurts the company in the short term but will drive out gas stations in the long run. Rinse and repeat until urban areas are defacto electric (it isn't going to happen in rural areas).

"Rural" is a helluva term in the US, though. Hazel Green or Montevallo are rural, yet still an easy drive to Huntsville or Birmingham, respectively. Opp or Arab are rural, and not really an easy drive anywhere. And then you have Kansas or Wyoming rural, which is just emptiness.

[Rockphed]

"Rural" is a helluva term in the US, though. Hazel Green or Montevallo are rural, yet still an easy drive to Huntsville or Birmingham, respectively. Opp or Arab are rural, and not really an easy drive anywhere. And then you have Kansas or Wyoming rural, which is just emptiness.

And I think Lift and Uber are doing a better job of displacing traditional car use in most urban areas than electric can hope to have.

[Peelee]

Also, fun fact, Arab is legit pronounced as redneck as possible. Henry Cho joked that it was supposed to be named Arad (similar pronunciation), after the towns founder, Arad Johnson, and they misspelled it on the water tower. Thats just a joke, though, the name didn't come from anything that stupid.

It was the post office that misspelled it.

[jwhouk]

How about price?

Train vs. car between Detroit and Chicago is 50/50, because of toll roads.

[jwhouk]

The problem in the Western US is that it just takes so dang long to get from one place to the other.

Just in the metro Phoenix area alone, it would take you about an hour and a half to go from the northwest part of the Metro area (Surprise/Sun City) to the southeast part (San Tan Valley/Queen Creek).

[factotum]

The problem in the Western US is that it just takes so dang long to get from one place to the other.

Just in the metro Phoenix area alone, it would take you about an hour and a half to go from the northwest part of the Metro area (Surprise/Sun City) to the southeast part (San Tan Valley/Queen Creek).

I just had a look at a map of Phoenix, and I'm not surprised--there doesn't seem to be a ring road of any sort, so a direct journey between those two places takes you right through the city centre. Most UK cities have at least some sort of motorway around them, so I can reasonably expect to get from my house on the eastern side of Manchester to the Trafford Centre on the western side in less than an hour unless the traffic is particularly bad.

[5a Violista]

I just had a look at a map of Phoenix, and I'm not surprised--there doesn't seem to be a ring road of any sort, so a direct journey between those two places takes you right through the city centre. Most UK cities have at least some sort of motorway around them, so I can reasonably expect to get from my house on the eastern side of Manchester to the Trafford Centre on the western side in less than an hour unless the traffic is particularly bad.

So, I was curious and decided to Google the size of the Phoenix metro area.

...
Google says that the Phoenix metro area is more than 10% larger than Wales, and is 18 to 28 times larger than Greater Manchester (depending on how you define "Greater Manchester" and "Phoenix metro area")...and Wikipedia says that the Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area is half the size of Scotland, or 80% larger than Wales.

(Obviously Google's Phoenix Metro Area and Wikipedia's Metropolitan Statistical Area are defined differently. I'm pretty sure Google's area includes what any reasonable person would call "Phoenix" when talking to someone not from the area, while Wikipedia defines its area as "relatively high population density at its core and close economic ties throughout the area." So, once again, everything relies on how you define it.)

It's entirely possible the sheer size and geometry of the Phoenix metro area makes it so a ring road around Phoenix wouldn't be very effective, and a highway straight through the center would be easier.

(I hope I did my calculations correctly; otherwise, this post would be really embarrassing.
Phoenix metropolitan area: 9 071 mi² or 23 494 km²
Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area: 14 598 mi² or 37 809 km²
Greater Manchester area: 493 mi² or 1 277 km²
Area of Scotland: 30 918 mi² or 80 077 km²
Area of Wales: 8 006 mi² or 20 735 km²

[Peelee]

OK, that got me interested. I now call shenanigans on official "metro area" sizes. Birmingham metro area sure as hell ain't 7 damn counties. It's Shelby/Jefferson, and even then it's not the entire counties, because that's ridiculous.

[5a Violista]

OK, that got me interested. I now call shenanigans on official "metro area" sizes. Birmingham metro area sure as hell ain't 7 damn counties. It's Shelby/Jefferson, and even then it's not the entire counties, because that's ridiculous.

Yeah, it's pretty weird, especially considering how Google and Wikipedia have vastly different numbers for practically the same thing. While I found how Wikipedia defines it (and I think it defines it too broad for something reasonable (I mean, seriously? "Close economic ties"? Just because something is economically tied to a place, I wouldn't consider it to be part of the metro area.)) I couldn't find how Google was defining the area.

Edit:
Then again, the average county in Arizona (7,572.9 sq mi) is 10 times larger than the average county in Alabama (767.4 sq mi) so that has to be taken into account when defining a statistical measure to be used across the entire United States.

[Peelee]

Yeah, it's pretty weird, especially considering how Google and Wikipedia have vastly different numbers for practically the same thing. While I found how Wikipedia defines it (and I think it defines it too broad for something reasonable (I mean, seriously? "Close economic ties"? Just because something is economically tied to a place, I wouldn't consider it to be part of the metro area.)) I couldn't find how Google was defining the area.

Edit:
Then again, the average county in Arizona (7,572.9 sq mi) is 10 times larger than the average county in Alabama (767.4 sq mi) so that has to be taken into account when defining a statistical measure to be used across the entire United States.

Yeah, the US is kind of funny like that. With both states and counties, it's really easy to tell the early ones, mid ones, and late ones just by eyeballing. European settlers were all, "oh man, new land! Alice has claimed this land, Bob claimed that land, I got this land, we're all different states!" Then, a hundred years later, they're just looking around and saying "look, that's too much work. The next quarter million square miles we're calling Texas, ok? And every thousand square miles is a county. There, simple. Not like we don't have the land to do it."

Imean, I joke, but still.

Spoiler: Seriously, you can see the exact point where they said "ah, screw it"

Show

[Rockphed]

It's like somebody drew a circle centered on DC the east end of Virginia from the west end of Lake Superior to the Texas coast and said, "outside this line, we are just going to make nice, big counties."

[Peelee]

I also love how, if you see it going to down, Texas is all nice and orderly but keeps messing up and they eventually said "just dump the rest in the southeast area."

[jwhouk]

That's the Northwest Territories Act at work. Land was parceled off in township form, a square of one mile on each side divided into 32 (relatively) square parcels. In some cases - like my former home county of Waukesha in Wisconsin - the townships are pretty much as-is, and the county is divided into 16 townships. Only problem is when rivers interfere with boundaries, which is why some of those counties in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio look like they're a bit off-center.

Oh, and it's generally assumed that all of Maricopa County and the western half of Pinal County (west of the Superstitions) is considered the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. And that is one pretty big hunk of land; it's bigger than all of New Jersey.

[Rockphed]

That's the Northwest Territories Act at work. Land was parceled off in township form, a square of one mile on each side divided into 32 (relatively) square parcels. In some cases - like my former home county of Waukesha in Wisconsin - the townships are pretty much as-is, and the county is divided into 16 townships. Only problem is when rivers interfere with boundaries, which is why some of those counties in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio look like they're a bit off-center.

Oh, and it's generally assumed that all of Maricopa County and the western half of Pinal County (west of the Superstitions) is considered the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. And that is one pretty big hunk of land; it's bigger than all of New Jersey.

Townships are 36 square miles, 6 miles on a side. I know that the square miles were divided up, but can't remember the exact division (though I think it might have been 40 acre parcels). Either way, I do know that one of the parcels was designated as being earmarked for building schools.

However, that only explains the shape of counties in the Midwest. It doesn't explain the shape of counties in north- or west-Texas, nor the shape of counties in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, or Wyoming. In fact, aside from a couple huge counties north of Lake Superior, the old Northwest Territories have counties of comparable size and shape to those in North Carolina.

[factotum]

Google says that the Phoenix metro area is more than 10% larger than Wales, and is 18 to 28 times larger than Greater Manchester (depending on how you define "Greater Manchester" and "Phoenix metro area")...and Wikipedia says that the Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area is half the size of Scotland, or 80% larger than Wales.

I blame Bing Maps. When I did my search for Phoenix it automatically changed the map scale to fit the entire city in, so it looked a lot smaller than it actually is. After taking the scale into account, the trip from Sun City to Queen Creek mentioned is about 50 miles as the crow flies, which is a lot longer than the Manchester journey I was talking about!

[DavidSh]

I wonder, for those monster-sized western counties, do electric cars have the range to drive to the county courthouse and back from everywhere in the county on a single charge? Maybe they need to have a charging station at the courthouse parking facility.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I wonder, for those monster-sized western counties, do electric cars have the range to drive to the county courthouse and back from everywhere in the county on a single charge? Maybe they need to have a charging station at the courthouse parking facility.

...
Why the courthouse, precisely?

Grey Wolf

[jayem]

"Rural" is a helluva term in the US, though. Hazel Green or Montevallo are rural, yet still an easy drive to Huntsville or Birmingham, respectively. Opp or Arab are rural, and not really an easy drive anywhere. And then you have Kansas or Wyoming rural, which is just emptiness.

Though presumably at that level of emptiness solar-electric starts becoming near beneficial. You need something like 150kW hours for a charge. That's probably petrol station sized to deliver a car 'real time, but you don't need to resupply or dig out so could realistically be supplied pre-fab to moderate sized farms [to create a finer grid].
And a realistic car-roof sized panel, you could just about get a miles charge in an hour, which isn't quite enough to mean you can't get stuck (5 mile/hour seems a more reasonable threshold).

[ETA though even say Graham-County Kansas might be too crowded, one petrol station could serve it by area (4 to have them all within a days walk). Whereas you'd need about 10 of my solar stations to deal with the population]

[DavidSh]

...
Why the courthouse, precisely?

Grey Wolf

My own interaction with county governments has largely consisted of being summoned for jury duty.

[wumpus]

So, I was curious and decided to Google the size of the Phoenix metro area.

...
Google says that the Phoenix metro area is more than 10% larger than Wales, and is 18 to 28 times larger than Greater Manchester (depending on how you define "Greater Manchester" and "Phoenix metro area")...and Wikipedia says that the Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area is half the size of Scotland, or 80% larger than Wales.

The thing about Phoenix is that it is constrained by the water supply, not at all by available land. In most places, somebody would be living in the outskirts (probably farming) and would expect to be well paid for new land. Once you leave Phoenix, there is basically *nothing* until you get to the next settlement. While I'm sure speculators grabbed up the entire "Phoenix Metropolitan Area", it isn't like they can keep up prices in all directions. So lots are as big as you feel like living on, and the city grows in area. But the water is relatively limited, and limits the overall population.

The other thing to keep in mind with Phoenix is that when computing the range of an electric car, assume your air110 conditioner is running full blast the entire time, and possibly run to cool the car down to merely "outrageously hot" before starting. The heat of Phoenix has to be experienced to be believed, and 45C isn't particularly hot. Don't forget cars make excellent greenhouses, thus needing plenty of air conditioning just to get down to 45. Don't assume "full blast" gets things as cold in Arizona either, trying to cool neo-freon in 45C isn't remotely as efficient when blowing 45C air on the cooling pipes. And don't be surprised when it gets hotter than 45C...

This is a strawman fallacy if I ever saw one. The topic of this thread is "what is the current reasons for buying an electric car" not "should all internal combustion cars be replaced" or whatever you seem to think it is. No-one is disputing that there are circumstances where an internal combustion is necessary. But in the US, the average commute is well within battery limits of electric cars, even in bad weather.

Grey Wolf

The original question also excluded the middle choice, the hybrid (plugin or not). The hybrid appears to be a bizarre choice, using the electric motor for power and the gas engine for range (scaling up the power of electric engines is expensive, scaling up the power of gas engines is dirt cheap [doing said efficiently often isn't]). For all the handwringing over the lifespans of electric vehicle batteries, hybrids have to charge and discharge their tiny batteries far more often, and don't appear to be killing them at all. I'm convinced that a high capacity capacitor (or Li-ion capacitor, much more likely) that can hold enough charge to either accelerate or brake from highway speed would make a hybrid car nearly perfect.

The catch is that between the shear amount of money spent on phones and the non-trivial amount of electric car batteries being produced, I expect battery technology to eventually bury both all-gas and gas-hybrid cars. Instant charging is largely an issue of battery packaging and connector design (and don't underestimate the issues of building a consumer operable connector that can handle that much electricity).

[LordEntrails]

I just had a look at a map of Phoenix, and I'm not surprised--there doesn't seem to be a ring road of any sort, so a direct journey between those two places takes you right through the city centre. Most UK cities have at least some sort of motorway around them, so I can reasonably expect to get from my house on the eastern side of Manchester to the Trafford Centre on the western side in less than an hour unless the traffic is particularly bad.

Ring? Well, it's not complete, but you have the 101, 202, & 303 freeways that ring everything but the southwest quadrant. Which is mostly Indian land and therefore is mostly unsettled and not available for development without major political issues. Which has been going on for probably 20 years trying to get approval etc.

The red here is the proper city limits of Phoenix; https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ph...4d-112.0740373

But, everything from Queen Creek (SE), to Carefree (NE) to Sun City West (W) is generally considered "Phoenix" when talking to someone not from the area.

The thing about Phoenix is that it is constrained by the water supply, not at all by available land. In most places, somebody would be living in the outskirts (probably farming) and would expect to be well paid for new land. Once you leave Phoenix, there is basically *nothing* until you get to the next settlement. While I'm sure speculators grabbed up the entire "Phoenix Metropolitan Area", it isn't like they can keep up prices in all directions. So lots are as big as you feel like living on, and the city grows in area. But the water is relatively limited, and limits the overall population.

Sorry, you don't know what you are talking about. This type of approach might be true in other places (land speculation etc), but it absolutely WRONG in Arizona.

First, Phoenix is not constrained by water thanks to the CAP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project) and the Colorado River Compact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact). In short, Arizona has plenty of water that the state usually sells to California. Though the amount they have sold have significantly decreased in teh last decade, worsening California's drought.

Second, most of Arizona is owned by government entities. 42% by federal agencies, 13% in the state trust, and 27% by native tribes, only 18% is privately held. Phoenix is mostly bounded by native tribe land and state trust land, though in a few places it is bound by Federal lands. State trust lands are only sold to the public infrequently as a means of raising money for public schools. (Of course, money is fungible, so it doesn't actually benefit schools like intended.)

So, Phoenix is not constrained by water and it is constrained by government agencies that own most of the bordering land.

[snowblizz]

My own interaction with county governments has largely consisted of being summoned for jury duty.

Obviously people with electric cars don't have to do jury duty.

Interested yet.

[Peelee]

Obviously people with electric cars don't have to do jury duty.

Interested yet.

I'd love to do jury duty, honestly, even if the pay in Alabama is ten bucks a day. Governments work best when the people are involved in it, and if I'm ever in front of a jury I damn sure don't want it packed with people who don't want to be there.

[Nourjan]

From what I seen battery powered electric vehicles seem to be the way of the future while hydrogen fuel cell powered electric vehicles seem to be a dead end (at least for consumer level ). Currently the only drawback of BEV is seem to be the upfront cost and range. The latter is dropping fast with newer models having the range of over 500km on single overnight charge( which is more than enough for 90+% of motorist out there). Of course there are few that whose daily commute exceedd this greatly and then there are also the problem with people who live in homes that cannot re-charge their BEV easily ( flat/apartment style homes), this necessitate the need for supercharger station and that could be a problem (especially when there is no standard for supercharger among different car models) . Still, upgrading that infrastructure would still be cheaper than the one for HFCEV .As for the upfront cost,while BEV is more expensive they actually cheaper to maintain and operate than internal combustion engine vehicles due to having less moving parts and cheaper fuel.

As for environmental cost , BEV is still better than ICE and HFCEV if we consider the total cost from mining the mineral needed to produce them to the end of their lifespan (where they're nothing more than scrap metal).

[wumpus]

Sorry, you don't know what you are talking about. This type of approach might be true in other places (land speculation etc), but it absolutely WRONG in Arizona.

I haven't been there since 1984, but remember that water use was more or less reasonable (especially compared to the California areas that I could see the water flowing to in quickly evaporating canals). They may have golf courses (Arizona is like a western Florida in attracting retired people), but they weren't watering grass planted on the side of the highway like California was doing (even in low water areas).

If you are used to England, there is nothing constrained about Western US land use. It might be slightly different in Arizona and especially places like Scotsdale (an expensive part of Phoenix) but land really isn't the issue.