Intel junk...Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forcesLinux, Windows redesign

In article
Bill Gunshannon wrote:

On 01/06/2018 08:55 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Ron C
wrote:

human drivers make all sorts of mistakes, some incredibly stupid.

however, human drivers can't be hacked by malevolent actors

sure they can. it's called carjacking.

or malicious actors, such as dropping a rock off a bridge.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/us/fli...g-murder-trnd/
index.html
(CNN)Five teenagers from Michigan have been charged with
second-degree murder after being accused of throwing a rock off an
overpass that killed a man, according to the Genesee County Sheriff's
Office.


Old news. They did it here years ago. And, guess what, autonomous
vehicles certainly won't stop that.

bill

In article
DaveFroble wrote:

nospam wrote:
In article , Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

My neighbor is a mechanic for a dealership. They send him to classes
for the latest updates and such. He's told some stories about the warnings
related to servicing electric cars. Most of the stories start with
something
to the effect of "..if you touch THIS you're dead.."
Seems there's the potential for a lot of dead shade-tree mechanics, to say
nothing of the risks to EMTs responding to crashes.
if you touch the wrong thing in a gas vehicle you could be dead too.

Having worked with both automobiles and electricity since my childhood
i think the electric has a much better chance of doing you in than the
average gasoline automobile.

there's essentially no maintenance on an electric vehicle, so no.

There is no such thing as a vehicle that doesn't need periodic maintenance.
Granted, with electric, no more oil changes, no more exhaust systems to replace,
and such. But there will be places with lube, and such. And components will
need service. You still running that 50 year old computer with no issues? Or
even 2-3 years.

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail:
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

In article
Roadie wrote:

On Sat, 06 Jan 2018 23:12:23 -0500, DaveFroble
wrote:

nospam wrote:
In article , Ron C
wrote:

human drivers make all sorts of mistakes, some incredibly stupid.
however, human drivers can't be hacked by malevolent actors

sure they can. it's called carjacking.

or malicious actors, such as dropping a rock off a bridge.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/us/fli...g-murder-trnd/
index.html
(CNN)Five teenagers from Michigan have been charged with
second-degree murder after being accused of throwing a rock off an
overpass that killed a man, according to the Genesee County Sheriff's
Office.

And what?

The autonomous car's sensors sees the rock, and raises it's shields to repel the
rock? Maybe swerves, and causes a pile up.

Once cars are fully autonomous, maybe they won't need to have a giant
window across the front. Just put that view on a video screen, a screen
that can be switched to show news headlines, movies, whatever. The 'view
ahead' simply becomes one option of many. Then, with the front
windshield gone, falling rocks can hit something sturdier than glass.

In article
DaveFroble wrote:
nospam wrote:
In article , Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

My neighbor is a mechanic for a dealership. They send him to classes
for the latest updates and such. He's told some stories about the warnings
related to servicing electric cars. Most of the stories start with
something
to the effect of "..if you touch THIS you're dead.."
Seems there's the potential for a lot of dead shade-tree mechanics, to say
nothing of the risks to EMTs responding to crashes.
if you touch the wrong thing in a gas vehicle you could be dead too.

Having worked with both automobiles and electricity since my childhood
i think the electric has a much better chance of doing you in than the
average gasoline automobile.

there's essentially no maintenance on an electric vehicle, so no.

There is no such thing as a vehicle that doesn't need periodic maintenance.
Granted, with electric, no more oil changes, no more exhaust systems to
replace,
and such. But there will be places with lube, and such. And components will
need service.

Tyres will need replacing, brake pads will need replacing, air-con
systems will need cleaning, ...

The entire battery pack itself will need replacing from time to time,
depending on the longevity of electric cars, but I doubt they'll stay
on the road as long as cars used to and currently do. Cars (whether
indivdually owned or corporate owned as on-call for public use) will
become just another throw away item like a cellphone more or less is
now.




You still running that 50 year old computer with no issues? Or even 2-3 years.

I used a PowerMac G3 for nearly 20 years without major problems, until
a major fault somewhere in the IO system on the motherboard meant I was
forced to upgrade to a new Mac. Even the original hard drive was still
working ... and is still working, now in an external USB enclosure.

But I do know quite a few iMacs (both CRT and LCD models) from around
that same period that have either had multiple dead hard drives or
completely failed), possibly due to the all-in-one design and heat
issues over time.

Your Name wrote:
On 2018-01-07 03:56:57 +0000, DaveFroble said:
nospam wrote:
In article , Scott Dorsey
wrote:

based on that, you shouldn't trust a *gas* powered vehicle in such
temperatures.

many gas powered vehicles have engine block heaters because they won't
start in extreme weather.
This is all true, but modern oil technology combined with fuel
injection
systems have made matters a whole hell of a lot better than they
were back
in the eighties. But when you think the gasoline engine had been
around
for ninety years before anyone managed to make one start
consistently in Alaska, you have to realize how quickly the electric
technology is moving
in comparison.

yep.

electric cars are relatively new, as is the infrastructure to support
them. that's quickly changing.

50 years ago, there weren't gas stations on every corner or every rest
stop.

Actually, 50 years ago, 1967, there were more gas stations then there
are today. Almost one on every corner.

But so what, electric is a moving target. Gasoline isn't moving much.

My mother got a message from a friend in England today where she said
that some people on her street who are getting their driveways re-done
and also having electric sockets put in to "futureproof" them to be able
to charge electric cars.

Problem is of course that the electrcal socket they're putting in *may*
be completely pointless very quickly as electric cars changeover to
wireless charging instead, so they'll have to re-dotheir driveways to
put in charging pads ... probably only to find that is replaced by some
other technology.


Same happened in house wiring. All the houses around here were built not
that long ago with "future-proof" wiring and sockets, and a patch panel
in the garage so you could supposedly easily move electronic bits around
and plug them in. Problem is that now everything is going either
wireless or fibre cabling, so that in-house wiring is either completely
pointless or a (relatively) data slow-down point. :-\

There's a standard for it.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/05/prweb13421064.htm

"SAE TIR J2954 establishes a common frequency band
using 85 kHz (81.39 - 90 kHz) for all light duty vehicle
systems. In addition, four classes PH/EV of Wireless Power
Transfer levels are given today. Future revisions may include
even higher power levels:

3.7kW (WPT 1) specified in TIR J2954
7.7kW (WPT 2) specified in TIR J2954
11kW (WPT 3) to be specified in revision of J2954
22kW (WPT 4) to be specified in revision of J2954
"

https://www.sae.org/news/3634/

"demonstrated between 3.7 to 7.7 kW with efficiencies
exceeding 85-90% under aligned condition"

Ugh. I'll be plugging in thanks.

At home, the size of your infrastructure for your car
charging, is going to have to take that into account.
Like, you might need a larger electrical panel. Or, the power
company might need to replace the pole transformer with
a larger capacity one.

At the 22kW level, the waste heat from the circuit will
be like radiating a toaster into the air, for the entire
charging cycle. Just what we need.

I think the plug-in method will be with us for a while.
Even if there is an 85KHz coil on the bottom of the car...

Paul

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 01/06/2018 2:07 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Doomsdrzej
wrote:

The biggest problem in even considering a Tesla is that I live in a
very cold climate which, since mid-December, has seen its temperature
go no lower than -25c. In such a climate, the already poor range of an
electric car is even worse and there are good reasons to believe that
it wouldn't even start.

the batteries are heated in cold weather and the cars start just fine.

Are they heated through the use of a block heater or is there some
other solution I'm not aware of?

the batteries are heated and shortly before leaving, you can preheat
the cabin via a smartphone app.

There's also the fact that the computers
within it, something which is essentially problematic for all cars,
tend to go crazy when the temperatures are too low so the car might
effectively become useless.

nonsense.

Do you live in a climate where -28c temperatures are normal? My
Infiniti started perfectly the other day at such a temperature but the
continued exposure to the freezing temperatures caused the computer to
go nuts and essentially all of the lights within the dashboard lit up
and the system disabled everything from the power steering to the 4WD.
Once things warmed up a few days later, all of the lights as well as
the annoying check engine light turned off. To say the least, I
wouldn't trust an electric car in such temperatures.

based on that, you shouldn't trust a *gas* powered vehicle in such
temperatures.

many gas powered vehicles have engine block heaters because they won't
start in extreme weather.


Computer chips do not suffer from cold weather, The reverse is true and
heat will be more of a problem, You have some other problem in your
Infiniti.
This none starting of an electric car in cold weather is pure BS.
If you want to see some trending take a look at Tesla's Highway
tractors, That will surprise you.

Rene

You have to simulate and close timing, at the stated temperature.

Computer circuits work, as long as the temperature range is "expected".

In the case of your desktop computer, download the Intel data sheet
and check the temperature range. That will tell you what temps
are "valid" for the product. If the product says 0C to 70C,
there is no particular reason it has to remain "sane" at -20C.
The circuit will rapidly heat up and enter the "sane" range,
but that doesn't prevent problems during the first few seconds.
You might have to press reset twice or three times, until
it gets up to 0C inside the CPU. But then, what happens to
the (relatively cool) DRAM ? How many seconds does that
take to heat up ?

When you do chip design, you set the simulator for PVT (process,
voltage, temperature). You set the simulator conditions for
whatever the boss tells you :-) Maybe my chip was -5C to 105C
or so. At -5C, strong process, high voltage, the process is
"fast", and hold time can be violated at a DFF. CMOS circuits
work faster at low temps, but it can affect the ability for
one circuit island to talk to the next. The wider you set the
temp range, the harder it is to close timing at the two extremes.
(This statement is true for the "most naive" interfacing method.)

The automotive companies know all this stuff, and they'll
be careful to set the PVT on their chip designs, to easily
pass -20C or colder operation.

If I had to guess, it could have been a mechanical issue,
like tempco causing something to shrink or expand,
causing an intermittent in an electrical connection.
Some car console panel problems can be intermittent,
even at room temperature.

One other area that can be a bit flaky, is clock
generators. They use a quartz crystal. The person
designing one of those, has to know the expected
temperature range too, and those are a lot trickier
to get right.

Commercial: 0°C to 85°C.
Industrial: −40°C to 100°C.
Automotive: −40°C to 125°C. === some car electronics go to 150C
for under the hood stuff
Extended: −40°C to 125°C.
Military: -55°C to 125°C.

The "regular" CMOS at our fab, was not long term
stable at much over 135C. That means after 100,000
hours at 135C, you might expect doping migration
on the silicon die, sufficient to slightly affect
circuit operation. That's why we don't push those
numbers even higher. Pure Bipolar circuits love
heat, and should be able to go higher than that.

"... Useful bipolar transistor action over the
temperature range from -195C to 550C has been
demonstrated for heterojunction bipolar transistors
in the GaP/AIGaP chemical system. This represents
the highest temperature at which useful bipolar solid-
state..."

Now, nobody builds complicated chips with these
exotic technologies for your home computer. Suffice
to say, space craft could benefit from stuff like that.
The faster exotic chips go at 100GHz, yet we
don't see any Intel 100GHz CPUs :-) A CPU built
from such things, would burn up from the power it
would use. It's fun to dream though.

Paul

Den 2018-01-07 kl. 05:01, skrev Ron C:
On 1/6/2018 10:38 PM, DaveFroble wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Tim Streater* wrote:
In article , nospam
range is only a problem for long road trips, and in those cases, rent a
vehicle. eventually, that won't be a problem, as more charging stations
are built.
I think some of you guys need to calculate the power rate needed to
charge the higher range cars in any sort of reasonable time. You'll
find it quite high. Then you have the problem of supplying that power
at a safe voltage, and without such a high current needed that even Mr
Muscles can't lift the charging cable, never mind plug it in.

It's not that bad, one or two cars at a time.* These days it's not unusual
at all for houses to have 200A service and putting a 100A 240V outlet in
the garage for a charger does not require a major retrofit.

Where it gets bad is when you start thinking about doing that in every
house
in the country and the degree to which the grid needs to be enlarged in
order
to deal with that load on a constant basis.

It'll happen, and the money is there to make it happen because it's the
same
money that is currently going into purchasing gasoline, but it's not
going to
happen today and it's not going to happen tomorrow.

But you can go out right now and buy a BMW i3 at your dealer today,
get a charger installed on your existing service panel, and have a whole
lot of fun driving fast right now.* It's not cheap, but that's how it goes.
--scott


Not sure how this got into c.o.v, and no, I'm not helping the problem.

People who want to drive gasoline powered autos should be the biggest
proponents of electric vehicles for local usage.* Look at what happened
to the cost of gasoline, almost $4.00 a gallon in the US,...

It is approx $6.50 a gallon here today. And probably should need to be
something like that in the US also, to force the developmet and use of
less gasoline hungry cars forward. And also to drive the development
of cities forward with such as better cycle paths everyware.

With a too low gasoline price, you will never learn or evolve.

In article
nospam wrote:

In article , Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

Pre-heating the cabin essentially means that you've turned on the car
remotely. However, this is only possible if the car starts which, of
course, often requires the batteries to be heated.

for a gas powered vehicle, the engine must be running.

not true for an electric vehicle.


True, it just uses some of that electricity that you need to get from
one place to another. So much for driving range. I haven't looked
lately as I am not in the market for any kind of electric vehicle
but the last time I looked the all electrics I saw didn't even have
enough driving range for my daily commute.

how far is your daily commute?

you'd need to be driving on the order of 100 miles *each* way for it to
be an issue.

Off-Topic in the privacy group.

On Sat, 6 Jan 2018 19:54:11 -0500, Ron C wrote:

On 1/6/2018 7:38 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
It's not that bad, one or two cars at a time. These days it's not unusual
at all for houses to have 200A service and putting a 100A 240V outlet in
the garage for a charger does not require a major retrofit.

Garage ha ha ha. That'll work a treat on those streets of terraced
houses, eh?

A 50kWh battery is going to need 100A at 1kV to charge up in 30 mins.

You're not going to get that right now. Maybe in a decade. Right now
you're talking four hours to charge it up full.

You going to give the punter a cable at 1kV to shove in their car?

It's dangerous, sure, but ever seen a gasoline fire?
--scott


Thousands of people pump their own gas every day. Seldom
a conflagration. Several hundred volts and a little water in the
wrong place .. and zap!
I'd tend to trust some average rube with gasoline before I'd trust
them with high voltage stuff.

Not only that but one of the reasons people opt for an electric car
over a gasoline one is the fact that they don't want to have to stop
somewhere and add fuel... for a fee. If the charging stations remained
free, were ubiquitous and allowed you to go from empty to full in
about five minutes, I could see electric cars becoming the norm.
However, none of those seem to be the case anymore. While charging an
electric car is likely less expensive than fueling a gas one for sure,
I doubt that people will still be willing to pay the extra amount up
front if they knew that they had to pay to continue driving the same
way that they would with a gas car.

On Sat, 6 Jan 2018 20:00:27 -0500, Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

On 01/06/2018 07:56 PM, Doomsdrzej wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jan 2018 17:46:57 -0500, Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

On 01/06/2018 05:27 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

The biggest problem in even considering a Tesla is that I live in a
very cold climate which, since mid-December, has seen its temperature
go no lower than -25c. In such a climate, the already poor range of an
electric car is even worse and there are good reasons to believe that
it wouldn't even start.

the batteries are heated in cold weather and the cars start just fine.

Are they heated through the use of a block heater or is there some
other solution I'm not aware of?

the batteries are heated and shortly before leaving, you can preheat
the cabin via a smartphone app.

And that heating shortens your range. Or did you think it was
somehow free?

it's effectively free. the impact is a few miles less range, out of
200-300 miles total. most trips are well under that, so it's not even
remotely a concern.

Say what?

Honda FitEV - 82 miles
KIA SoulEV - 93 miles
Mercedes Benz B-Class Electric Drive - 124 miles
Mitsubishi I-MiEV - 106 miles
Nissan Leaf - 75 miles
Smart electric Drive - 90 miles
Volkswagen e-Up - 99 miles
Chevy Spark EV - 82 miles
BMW i3 - 114 miles

Not everybody can afford a Tesla.

Before I retired my daily commute was between 60 and 70 miles. Very
close for some of these cars without using some of that electricity
for heat. One detour because of an accident on the highway and I am
screwed. And what do you think it will cost to have it flatbeded to
my house? Not to mention the wasted time, inconvenience and danger of
being stranded on the side of the road. especially in -20 temps.

Electric cars are about as ready for reality as autonomous cars.

I just put 450km of highway/city driving on my QX30 before it kindly
asked me whether I would buy it a drink of oil. None of those
affordable electric cars get anywhere near there. Only Tesla does...
and it has a wait time as well as a very high price tag.


My Silverado gets over 500 on a tank except when I'm towing
my camper. Wonder how far a Tesla would pull that? :-)

I imagine that the Silverado has a fairly large tank to be able to do
that. Mine's about 50 litres if I remember correctly.

On Sun, 7 Jan 2018 19:30:01 +1300, Your Name
wrote:

In article
DaveFroble wrote:
nospam wrote:
In article , Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

My neighbor is a mechanic for a dealership. They send him to classes
for the latest updates and such. He's told some stories about the warnings
related to servicing electric cars. Most of the stories start with
something
to the effect of "..if you touch THIS you're dead.."
Seems there's the potential for a lot of dead shade-tree mechanics, to say
nothing of the risks to EMTs responding to crashes.
if you touch the wrong thing in a gas vehicle you could be dead too.

Having worked with both automobiles and electricity since my childhood
i think the electric has a much better chance of doing you in than the
average gasoline automobile.

there's essentially no maintenance on an electric vehicle, so no.

There is no such thing as a vehicle that doesn't need periodic maintenance.
Granted, with electric, no more oil changes, no more exhaust systems to
replace,
and such. But there will be places with lube, and such. And components will
need service.

Tyres will need replacing, brake pads will need replacing, air-con
systems will need cleaning, ...

The entire battery pack itself will need replacing from time to time,
depending on the longevity of electric cars, but I doubt they'll stay
on the road as long as cars used to and currently do. Cars (whether
indivdually owned or corporate owned as on-call for public use) will
become just another throw away item like a cellphone more or less is
now.

The battery pack, logically, will need replacing but it all depends on
the car. On something like a Prius, the batteries are never charged
any more than 25-30% which means that they can last forever. On a
purely electric car, I doubt that's the case and they should last no
more than three years. However, it seems that they've managed to get
more out of them somehow.

You still running that 50 year old computer with no issues? Or even 2-3 years.

I used a PowerMac G3 for nearly 20 years without major problems, until
a major fault somewhere in the IO system on the motherboard meant I was
forced to upgrade to a new Mac. Even the original hard drive was still
working ... and is still working, now in an external USB enclosure.

That's pretty impressive.

But I do know quite a few iMacs (both CRT and LCD models) from around
that same period that have either had multiple dead hard drives or
completely failed), possibly due to the all-in-one design and heat
issues over time.

I owned an iBook G3 back in 2002 and I can't imagine still working on
it today even though it likely would have managed to do pretty much
everything I would need for it to. Even maxed out at 640MB of RAM,
that thing was slow. Mac OS being the bloated behemoth that it is
didn't help. It ran Mac OS 9.2.2 beautifully though.

In article
Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

Den 2018-01-07 kl. 05:01, skrev Ron C:
On 1/6/2018 10:38 PM, DaveFroble wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
In article , nospam
range is only a problem for long road trips, and in those cases, rent a
vehicle. eventually, that won't be a problem, as more charging stations
are built.
I think some of you guys need to calculate the power rate needed to
charge the higher range cars in any sort of reasonable time. You'll
find it quite high. Then you have the problem of supplying that power
at a safe voltage, and without such a high current needed that even Mr
Muscles can't lift the charging cable, never mind plug it in.

It's not that bad, one or two cars at a time. These days it's not unusual
at all for houses to have 200A service and putting a 100A 240V outlet in
the garage for a charger does not require a major retrofit.

Where it gets bad is when you start thinking about doing that in every
house
in the country and the degree to which the grid needs to be enlarged in
order
to deal with that load on a constant basis.

It'll happen, and the money is there to make it happen because it's the
same
money that is currently going into purchasing gasoline, but it's not
going to
happen today and it's not going to happen tomorrow.

But you can go out right now and buy a BMW i3 at your dealer today,
get a charger installed on your existing service panel, and have a whole
lot of fun driving fast right now. It's not cheap, but that's how it goes.
--scott


Not sure how this got into c.o.v, and no, I'm not helping the problem.

People who want to drive gasoline powered autos should be the biggest
proponents of electric vehicles for local usage. Look at what happened
to the cost of gasoline, almost $4.00 a gallon in the US,...

It is approx $6.50 a gallon here today. And probably should need to be
something like that in the US also, to force the developmet and use of
less gasoline hungry cars forward. And also to drive the development
of cities forward with such as better cycle paths everyware.

With a too low gasoline price, you will never learn or evolve.

On 01/07/2018 10:36 AM, Doomsdrzej wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jan 2018 20:00:27 -0500, Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

On 01/06/2018 07:56 PM, Doomsdrzej wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jan 2018 17:46:57 -0500, Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

On 01/06/2018 05:27 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

The biggest problem in even considering a Tesla is that I live in a
very cold climate which, since mid-December, has seen its temperature
go no lower than -25c. In such a climate, the already poor range of an
electric car is even worse and there are good reasons to believe that
it wouldn't even start.

the batteries are heated in cold weather and the cars start just fine.

Are they heated through the use of a block heater or is there some
other solution I'm not aware of?

the batteries are heated and shortly before leaving, you can preheat
the cabin via a smartphone app.

And that heating shortens your range. Or did you think it was
somehow free?

it's effectively free. the impact is a few miles less range, out of
200-300 miles total. most trips are well under that, so it's not even
remotely a concern.

Say what?

Honda FitEV - 82 miles
KIA SoulEV - 93 miles
Mercedes Benz B-Class Electric Drive - 124 miles
Mitsubishi I-MiEV - 106 miles
Nissan Leaf - 75 miles
Smart electric Drive - 90 miles
Volkswagen e-Up - 99 miles
Chevy Spark EV - 82 miles
BMW i3 - 114 miles

Not everybody can afford a Tesla.

Before I retired my daily commute was between 60 and 70 miles. Very
close for some of these cars without using some of that electricity
for heat. One detour because of an accident on the highway and I am
screwed. And what do you think it will cost to have it flatbeded to
my house? Not to mention the wasted time, inconvenience and danger of
being stranded on the side of the road. especially in -20 temps.

Electric cars are about as ready for reality as autonomous cars.

I just put 450km of highway/city driving on my QX30 before it kindly
asked me whether I would buy it a drink of oil. None of those
affordable electric cars get anywhere near there. Only Tesla does...
and it has a wait time as well as a very high price tag.


My Silverado gets over 500 on a tank except when I'm towing
my camper. Wonder how far a Tesla would pull that? :-)

I imagine that the Silverado has a fairly large tank to be able to do
that. Mine's about 50 litres if I remember correctly.


Of course it does. But it's all about range and getting a
bigger tank gives me more range. Doing that with an electric
would be, well, impossible.

But, now all you electric guys got me thinking. I am not
against electric cars. I just have always found them to
be impractical both technically and financially. I have
an article here somewhere about a man who converted a
Triumph Spitfire (I used to have one of those, too) to
an electric car and while searching for the article online
I found dozens and dozens of articles about people who
converted old sports cars to electric. Maybe that's
the direction I should take my MGB. It is never going
on any long range trips anyway (at least not with todays
technology) but for just driving around electric would
work just as well as gas. Who knows, maybe by the time
I actually get around to doing the conversion electrics
may have solved the range problem.

bill

In article
Bill Gunshannon wrote:

On 01/07/2018 10:36 AM, Doomsdrzej wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jan 2018 20:00:27 -0500, Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

On 01/06/2018 07:56 PM, Doomsdrzej wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jan 2018 17:46:57 -0500, Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

On 01/06/2018 05:27 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

The biggest problem in even considering a Tesla is that I live in a
very cold climate which, since mid-December, has seen its temperature
go no lower than -25c. In such a climate, the already poor range of an
electric car is even worse and there are good reasons to believe that
it wouldn't even start.

the batteries are heated in cold weather and the cars start just fine.

Are they heated through the use of a block heater or is there some
other solution I'm not aware of?

the batteries are heated and shortly before leaving, you can preheat
the cabin via a smartphone app.

And that heating shortens your range. Or did you think it was
somehow free?

it's effectively free. the impact is a few miles less range, out of
200-300 miles total. most trips are well under that, so it's not even
remotely a concern.

Say what?

Honda FitEV - 82 miles
KIA SoulEV - 93 miles
Mercedes Benz B-Class Electric Drive - 124 miles
Mitsubishi I-MiEV - 106 miles
Nissan Leaf - 75 miles
Smart electric Drive - 90 miles
Volkswagen e-Up - 99 miles
Chevy Spark EV - 82 miles
BMW i3 - 114 miles

Not everybody can afford a Tesla.

Before I retired my daily commute was between 60 and 70 miles. Very
close for some of these cars without using some of that electricity
for heat. One detour because of an accident on the highway and I am
screwed. And what do you think it will cost to have it flatbeded to
my house? Not to mention the wasted time, inconvenience and danger of
being stranded on the side of the road. especially in -20 temps.

Electric cars are about as ready for reality as autonomous cars.

I just put 450km of highway/city driving on my QX30 before it kindly
asked me whether I would buy it a drink of oil. None of those
affordable electric cars get anywhere near there. Only Tesla does...
and it has a wait time as well as a very high price tag.


My Silverado gets over 500 on a tank except when I'm towing
my camper. Wonder how far a Tesla would pull that? :-)

I imagine that the Silverado has a fairly large tank to be able to do
that. Mine's about 50 litres if I remember correctly.


Of course it does. But it's all about range and getting a
bigger tank gives me more range. Doing that with an electric
would be, well, impossible.

But, now all you electric guys got me thinking. I am not
against electric cars. I just have always found them to
be impractical both technically and financially. I have
an article here somewhere about a man who converted a
Triumph Spitfire (I used to have one of those, too) to
an electric car and while searching for the article online
I found dozens and dozens of articles about people who
converted old sports cars to electric. Maybe that's
the direction I should take my MGB. It is never going
on any long range trips anyway (at least not with todays
technology) but for just driving around electric would
work just as well as gas. Who knows, maybe by the time
I actually get around to doing the conversion electrics
may have solved the range problem.

bill

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
On 01/06/2018 06:22 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Bill Gunshannon
wrote:

I haven't looked
lately as I am not in the market for any kind of electric vehicle
but the last time I looked the all electrics I saw didn't even have
enough driving range for my daily commute.

how far is your daily commute?

you'd need to be driving on the order of 100 miles *each* way for it to
be an issue.


See my last post. My commute was 60-70 miles and the
majority of cars that normal working class people can
actually afford barely make that.

see my reply to that post.

while there are electric vehicles with very short range (for those who
don't drive very far), there are also models with greater range.

don't dismiss electric because you chose the wrong car.


Like most of us in the working class I can only choose from
the list of cars I can afford. Tesla is not on that list.

bill


Tesla Model 3 — 220 miles (354 km) or 310 miles (499 km)
$35000 $44000

Paul