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all of this applies to Tesla. Junk like Leaf take 8 hours to charge for 75 miles
The 40 minute charge time on Tesla (which charge faster than others) gets you to 80% and now costs $15-20. You can sit in your nice warm car, surf the net, watch Netflix, or play video games
You time your bathroom, stretch, and lunch breaks around charging
The miles you get out of a charge is like a gas vehicle, it varies with how heavy your foot is. 90 mph will get you 235 miles either gas or Tesla. 55mph will get you closer to the EPA ratings. You also add miles on when you are going down hill (Regenerative breaking)
I did not hear of any of the infamous I-5 lines during the holidays. The infrastructure caught up to the sales. This may not apply in other areas. You need the infrastructure.
A route that I have taken extensively in both a Tesla and an SUV pulling a horse trailer (so iI was going slower with the trailer) takes me the same amount of time
 
EastenerWesterner said:
all of this applies to Tesla. Junk like Leaf take 8 hours to charge for 75 miles
The 40 minute charge time on Tesla (which charge faster than others) gets you to 80% and now costs $15-20. You can sit in your nice warm car, surf the net, watch Netflix, or play video games
You time your bathroom, stretch, and lunch breaks around charging
The miles you get out of a charge is like a gas vehicle, it varies with how heavy your foot is. 90 mph will get you 235 miles either gas or Tesla. 55mph will get you closer to the EPA ratings. You also add miles on when you are going down hill (Regenerative breaking)
I did not hear of any of the infamous I-5 lines during the holidays. The infrastructure caught up to the sales. This may not apply in other areas. You need the infrastructure.
A route that I have taken extensively in both a Tesla and an SUV pulling a horse trailer (so iI was going slower with the trailer) takes me the same amount of time
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Or we can spend 5 minutes, fill up and get back on the road. My wife's Grand Cherokee with a V8 Hemi has a 400 mile range. If I fill my pickup all the way I have a 1200+ mile range (100 gallons at 12-15 mpg).
I personally don't care what kind of vehicle a person buys. The only problem that I have with EVs is the government trying to force them on us. I think they do have a place for some people in certain applications, and should be available. Just not with government subsidizes or mandates.
 
Arcticdude said:
Or we can spend 5 minutes, fill up and get back on the road. My wife's Grand Cherokee with a V8 Hemi has a 400 mile range. If I fill my pickup all the way I have a 1200+ mile range (100 gallons at 12-15 mpg).
I personally don't care what kind of vehicle a person buys. The only problem that I have with EVs is the government trying to force them on us. I think they do have a place for some people in certain applications, and should be available. Just not with government subsidizes or mandates.
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The Govt forcing them down our throats is like the Govt regulating the gas can. How did that work out? So we agree on that.

Again I am not talking about the junk ones. From what I have seen grown organically (ok maybe some subsidies) They are building the car, the infrastructure and a different side of the industry. I am for them doing it on their own like they have been.
They do make a quick fun car. New one is probably faster than my old Porsche

I personally can’t drive 1200 miles, 400 miles without stretching. Maybe 150 to 200. That SUV I used was 50 miles Because it was uncomfortable for me.
 
EastenerWesterner said:
The Govt forcing them down our throats is like the Govt regulating the gas can. How did that work out? So we agree on that.

Again I am not talking about the junk ones. From what I have seen grown organically (ok maybe some subsidies) They are building the car, the infrastructure and a different side of the industry. I am for them doing it on their own like they have been.
They do make a quick fun car. New one is probably faster than my old Porsche

I personally can’t drive 1200 miles, 400 miles without stretching. Maybe 150 to 200. That SUV I used was 50 miles Because it was uncomfortable for me.
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It's just over 400 miles to our kids place. I usually fill up here at home, stop for breakfast after we hit the road and about half way there I'll stop at the reservation and buy a box of cigars. If I need to take a leak I just pull over on the side of the road and let it fly. The only time I've driven a thousand miles in a day was driving to Alaska or traveling to and from our place in Indiana. I don't like to stop unless necessary, like to fish or swim in the river.
Some day your going to have to give me a ride in your Tesla.
 
In my humble estimation only…EVs will not give me enough “bang” for my buck. It isn’t the cost to charge them. The problem lies solely in their years of actual use. Even if you get a good one with no problems. Most will not be running in a matter of 10 years, since replacing the battery is so expensive. They literally are throw away vehicles. Talk about bad for the earth! And this is before you even get into the issues with cold weather.
 
Repairing the battery packs is a cottage industry that has sprung up.
Gruber Motor Company started by repairing the original Roadsters and is now repairing other models batteries.
https://grubermotors.com/services/model-s-main-battery-pack-repair/
Its not like changing out your car battery. It’s more like 1000 D size batteries, find the bad ones and change it.

I expect others are out there also or soon will be.
 
It is my understanding (EW tell me if I am wrong) that lithium batteries cannot be charged if they are below 32ºF. The battery in my car (an AGM) will be below 20ºF (probably well below) when I crank the car in the morning. It will then recharge from the alternator immediately even at that low temperature.
I assume that the EVs have some sort of heater for the battery pack, but I can see scenarios where you could not immediately charge you EV in bitter cold weather.
One scenario would be you get home in 0ºF weather and plug in your nearly depleted battery pack and the power goes out. The battery heater then completely depletes you battery pack while waiting for the power to come back on. When the power comes back on you've got a 0ºF battery pack which cannot be charged until it is warmed up to 32ºF.
 
DrHenley said:
It is my understanding (EW tell me if I am wrong) that lithium batteries cannot be charged if they are below 32ºF. The battery in my car (an AGM) will be below 20ºF (probably well below) when I crank the car in the morning. It will then recharge from the alternator immediately even at that low temperature.
I assume that the EVs have some sort of heater for the battery pack, but I can see scenarios where you could not immediately charge you EV in bitter cold weather.
One scenario would be you get home in 0ºF weather and plug in your nearly depleted battery pack and the power goes out. The battery heater then completely depletes you battery pack while waiting for the power to come back on. When the power comes back on you've got a 0ºF battery pack which cannot be charged until it is warmed up to 32ºF.
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The batteries do not charge as quickly.
From what I read about the Chicago situation-
People did not precondition their batteries for charging (around here it makes it charge quicker, I very rarely get below 32) so heater.
The charging stations themselves were down.
People left the car on defrost mode all night, drained the battery. Heavy frost around here takes 5 minutes.
Even heard of some people putting it in camper mode, so it heated the car all night.

As far as being out of juice in the morning- If you have an 1/8 of a tank of gas, you will have 1//8 in the morning. To keep the batteries optimal, you might lose some juice. The car will make noise in the cold to protect the battery. It also makes noise in 100 degree heat to keep them cool.

It’s a learning curve like any new technology. And you will always have idiots.
 
Just as an aside- the nav system is a real time system.
On our way out today, our road was in blue, normal. The next road was orange, very odd. We very quickly caught up to another Tesla doing 30 in a 50 zone.
After we passed, we noticed the road behind us had turned blue.
 
TeslaModelBurning.jpg
 
GaRp58 said:
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I've been to this event several times, back when only a few people showed up. A friend of mine owns this place. My favorite was a school bus. They put cutouts of kids in the windows.
This is on a bluff overlooking the Matanuska River near Palmer. I sold my jet boat to Arnie. He used it to rake tours up to the glacier.
 
Well is looks like the Soletrac tractor is dead. Too bad it probably would have served my needs at my next place.

Reasons for the downfall
Too expensive compared to the bigger tractor I previously bought
Small size is about the same as my 1981 18HP Tractor, not good on my hills
PTO doesn't work in reverse, so I don’t see how you can run a post hole digger.

Here is a video from a guy whose channel was promoting the tractor but he hasn’t from them for months.



The idea was good, implementation failed, and the market spoke.
 
Was in german news yesterday, dissapeared today:
Used car dealers in Germany are complaining about used EV sales,
- EV's, average 2 years old, 40'000km already lost 67% of their new price (note: fuel powered cars ~30%)
- In average they stand around between 4 and 6 months before they are sold. Fuel powered cars, especially with low electronics, go within a few days when the price is fair.

Seems no one really would like to buy this crap. BTW, German government sponsored every new sold EV with 6000€ tax money. They stopped this "climate saving sponsoring bonus" (no joke, it was really called so) end of last year - and the sales of new EV's crashed.

Other news from the EU: seems the EU is by cancelling the law for new cars, which says from 2030 onwards are only EV's allowed to sell as new cars. The EU realized in reality the charging infrastructure for EV's is decades away from the imagination and they still can't tell from where to take the electric energy just with windturbines and solarpower. In germany they stopped nuclear plants - and was need to restart coal powerplants because there wasn't enough "green energy" aviable. Seems green deal is going to die.
Seems stupid workers was more clever than the studied genius from the universities.
 
EastenerWesterner said:
Well is looks like the Soletrac tractor is dead. Too bad it probably would have served my needs at my next place.

Reasons for the downfall
Too expensive compared to the bigger tractor I previously bought
Small size is about the same as my 1981 18HP Tractor, not good on my hills
PTO doesn't work in reverse, so I don’t see how you can run a post hole digger.

Here is a video from a guy whose channel was promoting the tractor but he hasn’t from them for months.



The idea was good, implementation failed, and the market spoke.
Click to expand...

I've never had a tractor that had a reverse on the PTO, and I've dug thousands of post holes. Not even sure why a reverse would be necessary. If my current tractor has a reverse on the PTO I don't know about it.
 
EV's, another government/hippy pipe dream dead. Maybe in another 100 years or so there could be a market for EV's. Maybe during that time someone will develop an inexpensive light weight battery that will have a 25+ year lifespan and a range of at least 500 miles per charge, in all weather conditions. And takes 5 minutes or less to charge.
 
Arcticdude said:
I've never had a tractor that had a reverse on the PTO, and I've dug thousands of post holes. Not even sure why a reverse would be necessary. If my current tractor has a reverse on the PTO I don't know about it.
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What he is talking about is that the PTO doesn't work on the Solectrac when the tractor is in reverse. That's because the engine itself is turning backwards. So the tractor just disconnects the PTO when the tractor is in reverse. You would have to have a reverse gear on the PTO to make it turn in the right direction when the tractor is in reverse.
About the only real problem I would have with this is when bush hogging some hard to get to spots where you have to back the bush hog up to those spots.
 
DrHenley said:
What he is talking about is that the PTO doesn't work on the Solectrac when the tractor is in reverse. That's because the engine itself is turning backwards. So the tractor just disconnects the PTO when the tractor is in reverse. You would have to have a reverse gear on the PTO to make it turn in the right direction when the tractor is in reverse.
About the only real problem I would have with this is when bush hogging some hard to get to spots where you have to back the bush hog up to those spots.
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OK. That makes sense now. Thanks Doc.
I just looked it up online. It sounds pretty good. With a front loader it runs about $35,000 for a 25 hp tractor. I don't know how that compares to a similar sized diesel tractor now days. In 2018 I think I paid $36,000 for my 75 hp JD tractor.
 
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