A Response to, "We are a Republic, Not a Democracy"

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Sunday April 21, 2024 · 1:00 PM PDT

2024/04/21 · 13:00

To which I say, we can, as a nation, walk and chew gum at the same time.

Dan Smoot may claim that democracies degenerate into dictatorships, but most have not. The degeneration of democracy is caused by people who have dictatorial ambitions seizing power and being at first autocratic then moving all the way up to being totalitarian. They get to be dictators by not being beholden to the people and not having elections.

The underlying premise for our democracy was talked about in our Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."

Later they worked out the details of our, to be democracy, and decided that it should take the form of a democratic constitutional-republic. A democratic-republic, (even though it was limited at the time to being just free white males who could vote, to our founders this was "the people"), required that our officials be elected in a vote of the people (limited as it was). We refer to our elected officials as being our representatives, another indicator that we are a democracy.

Our republic provides that the people we elect by voting be persons with leadership qualities, who will work to maintain the people's life, liberty and their pursuit of happiness, and show a willingness to arrive, with other elected officials, governmental action that is for the public good. Representatives once elected operate without the direct participation in law making of people. (Representative yes, but leader based as well) So we are a republic where the officials are elected by vote, who are beholden to the people. And they can only stay as government officials by periodically requesting for the people's consent. In other words, they are elected again into office... which is a democracy.

We are a democratic constitutional republic. Our constitution until the amendments was mainly a description of how our government was to function. One of our founding fathers, George Mason, refused to sign the 1787 Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights. He, along with Jefferson, had made a bill of rights that was incorporated into the body of the Virginia constitution, which he wanted to include in the body of the US Constitution. Instead, Mason's bill of rights was included immediately after the constitution's ratification, in its first 10 amendment to the Constitution, what we call the Bill of Rights.

In the Bill of Rights is the first place where property is mentioned. It is mentioned in the 5th Amendment, and it is only mentioned as an assumption that private property exists and should not be taken away from an individual without due process. It is not an overarching philosophy of the Constitution. It is more of an assumption of liberty. To be free we should be allowed to have stuff and that stuff shouldn't be taken away by the government without there being a good reason, a reason either adjudicated in a court proceeding or by some other process acceptable to reasonable men.

Democracy does have the problem of being manipulated with propaganda and populist demagoguery by those with dictatorial ambitions. Because of this we really need to harden our democracy from these particular dangers. The next Congress and President should make changes to the law or even to the Constitution to outlaw the United States from becoming a dictatorship. Our Constitution sort of does this, but the strong push towards authoritarianism seen rise around the globe tells us we need to harden traditions and norms into actual law and required procedures. And we need to keep power from consolidating into the hands of one person or a very small group of people. Because of the existence of mind altering propaganda we may need to look at speech designed to deceive or confuse the electorate.

One piece of broken logic of Dan Smoot is his stated "tyranny of the people." We have laws against the tyranny of the people, that being our Constitution and the Bill of Rights in particular. We return to our unalienable rights of life, liberty etc. By its very notion, true consent of the people can't be tyranny. It may be unconscionable, but not tyranny. The responsibility for adverse action by the people against their own liberty lays with those who manipulate the masses for their own authoritarian, non-democratic ends.

So, we are a constitutional republic don't you know. Just one where government officials, or better yet the representatives of the people, are chosen through elections with the consent of the people, ie. a democracy.

New Energy Paradigm New Thinking

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday August 04, 2023 · 3:00 PM PDT

2023/08/04 · 15:00

The Aptera solarized vehicle gives us a glimpse to what is now possible

Energy is found in many, many forms, many of which we make the rhetorical mistake of naming after substances, or thinking of them as substances. We often call things like oil, coal, natural gas, etc. energy. We call the companies that extract these substances “energy companies.” But these substances are not energy and the companies that extract these substances are not energy companies.

To think of energy more correctly you need to use a different set of observations. Have you seen a shake-it-up or crank-up flashlight? Ever walk barefoot on sand that was so hot it burned your feet? Ever watch a sailboat move across a bay? Energy is equal to the movement of your hand, it is equal to sun shine beating on the sand, it is a breeze flowing through the air. Energy is energy and it cannot be created nor can it be destroyed. Our observance of energy is merely energy being converted from one form to another. We don’t lose energy as we use energy; energy becomes dispersed, entropy. It goes from being directed and useful like with electricity flowing through a wire, to being spread out and less useful, like the heat coming off an old incandescent light bulb. (Incandescent light bulb is a heater that gives off a little light) But, that energy is only waste if it is not contained or recaptured. This energy stuff is hard to understand because we have wrapped language around it that is more metaphor than a correct understanding of what energy actually is. And this is totally understandable because we don’t think of things like gasoline storing energy and only releasing it when combined with a catalyst (a spark or fire) and oxygen. We think of the internal combustion of gasoline as being the creation of energy, when oddly enough it is not.

Let’s focus on energy in forms where we can see it more clearly for what it is. Bear with me as I try to break the stereotype concepts of energy we have in our head without using physics. Movement is energy that can be converted into other forms of energy. A good example of this is the movement of water through a water mill. The movement of the water spins the mills wheel that turns a shaft that spins the grinding stone to make flour. In a hydroelectric dam that energy is used to spin a generator to produce electric energy. In much the same way the movement of your hand in a shake-up flashlight accumulates electrons in a battery and then the electrons/electricity move from the battery through the light circuit and are converted into light energy. Movement = energy, energy = electricity, electricity = light.

In the hydrocycle the sun heats up water that converts it to water vapor, vapor becomes less heavy than the air surrounding it and travels up in the atmosphere where its heat energy is dissipated. It eventually condenses back into water and ice crystals around small particles of dust, once heavy enough with water or ice it returns to earth in the form of rain or snow. This rain or the water from snow melting is funneled downhill across the land as runoff and collects into streams by the force of gravity. We capture gravitational energy based on the pressure of its mass and velocity now in the movement and weight in the water and convert it to mechanical energy as in the form of a flour-mill or in the turbines that produce electricity in hydroelectric dams.

Have any of you gone on to your roof on a sunny day? Were the roof shingles are hot? Where did that heat come from? You know it. It came from the sun. We build roofs to protect us from the sun as well as wind, rain and other weather. When the sun hits our roofs it turns sunlight energy into heat energy. That heat energy radiates through the rafters into our attics and ends up heating our houses. We spend energy like that from burning substances like coal, oil and natural gas to remove that heat energy from our houses through the use of air conditioners. Instead of fighting energy with more energy and pollution, why not use the roof’s surface to make electricity and hot water, and provide some shade from the direct hot sun? Photovoltaic solar panels are one of the more benign ways to capture energy. They capture energy from sunlight and turn it directly into electricity. The sunlight energy is hitting our roofs anyway, why not use it.

A tree shaped by the wind blowing mostly in one general direction

Ever go out in a storm and see the trees whipping around? That movement is a sign that there is energy out there applying force to the branches to move them around. What is making the branches move? Oh, wind, of course. Wind power makes sense since the wind blows trees, leaves and dust around. Why not put it to use generating electricity? Wind has been used for thousands of years as a source of energy. In farms across America windmills on top of towers were how farmers pumped water out of the ground for their livestock were a staple of the rural landscape. In Ocean City, Maryland the trees are all bent over in one direction because most of the year the wind blows constantly in one general direction. Going to the beach in the winter is amazing. All the flags are tattered because of that constant, heavy wind. I looked at the power lines stretched along the highways of the ribbon like islands along the coast coming from some far away power plant where literally tons of coal are burned every day to produce electricity for these sea shore towns, all the while there is wind traveling through and over and around the buildings. Thousands of watts of wind power only being used to provide the flapping motion in flags. We should use this wind in a more local and distributed way. Again, no need for giant, centrally controlled wind turbines for the purpose of concentrating money into a few hands.

Marine Energy Glossary www.energy.gov/...

There are other sources of energy that have minimal environmental impact and have gone largely unused such as geothermal, wave action conversion systems, tide conversion systems, systems to take advantage of the steady ocean currents, ambient temperature delta conversion systems and many more. Even personally generated energy, with solar powered wearables and devices that capture energy from your regular movements.

The history of a watch powered by the ancillary movements of a wrist.

We’ve powered mechanical watches where the natural motion of the wearer provides all the energy to wind the mainspring for quite some time now.
WE LITERALLY ARE BATHED IN ENERGY. As Obi-Wan Kenobi said of the Force the same can be said of energy, "It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together." We don’t have to burn a single thing to get useful energy from our surroundings. With greater efficiencies now being achieved and new battery technology we can convert or capture all that energy that surrounds us and turn it into electricity. Electricity being the cleanest and most universally useful form of energy. It simply is a no-brainer. We can convert various naturally accessible energies to electricity, store it in batteries, and then we can use that electricity to produce heat, light, radio waves, microwaves, electron beams, motion and on and on.

Another example of this is the solar powered vehicles of the World Solar Challenge held in Australia. These solar powered vehicles today run for more than 30 hours during the race at average speeds greater than 60 miles an hour, powered only by sunlight hitting the surface of the vehicles. Thirty hours is only the length of time of the race. These cars vehicles can travel continuously on the power of the sun. What this proves is that we can make vehicles that can get their energy to move from their surroundings alone. This is quite a radical departure from the standard that we think of when we think of personal transportation; however, it is one that can help us think of energy in a different way.

Solar only cruiser class vehicles of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge

Most of us would assume that driving cars powered by the sun in our everyday life would be impossible. The reality is that we are on the cusp of making this a reality. See Lightyear https://lightyear.one/lightyear-2, and Aptera Motors aptera.us

It used to be that we couldn’t think of a vehicle that used anything other than gasoline or diesel. Then came ethanol, first as a blend as gasohol and then, with the advent of the flexible fuel vehicle, we were able to get vehicles that now can take up to 100% alcohol. We subsequently learned that we can have vehicles that can be fueled by natural gas and liquid petroleum gases like propane. Ford, before gasoline became so widely available, made Fordham tractors that ran on kerosene. Kerosene being something that farmers already used for lighting and heat and so was readily available to them. There are both hydrogen combustion engine vehicles as well as fuel cell hydrogen vehicles. Now we have electric vehicles in the mix. So the idea that vehicles have to run on gasoline or diesel based fuels has been broken. All these new ways of “fueling” vehicles have emerged to allow us to think of automobiles as possibly being fueled differently. Electric energy generation can be thought of in this way as well, and there is where the connection to electric vehicles changes the entire paradigm. If electricity can come from all sorts of renewable energy sources and electric cars use that electricity, electric cars become renewable energy vehicles. Yes, Mitt Romney, you can power a car with the “fuel” made on your roof.

The usefulness of electricity has proven to be far more world changing than any other form of energy. It has given us the digital age. However, we are largely still generating electricity just one step up from the caveman burning wood. Our thinking surrounding energy had not changed significantly for 100 years. Now, with the pressures demanding we change caused by our climate emergency, we are being forced, delightfully so, to consider non-polluting renewables in a serious way, and we are implementing renewables very fast. Will it be fast enough remains to be seen.

A wagon wheel brake is similar to the way a gas car’s brake works

Electric vehicles allow us to think of energy differently too. For example, our braking systems in cars had not evolved that much from pressing a piece of wood against a wheel to get it to stop. We referred to the heat energy given off by friction brakes as waste heat. With regenerative braking we have an example of out of the box thinking. Before stopping a car meant converting momentum energy into heat energy and transferring it to the air, now it means taking momentum energy and converting it into electric energy to slow down and storing that electricity in batteries. That energy captured through regenerative braking now in the batteries can be used to overcome inertia, which then deposits the energy in momentum energy again. When I look at the Metro rail trains around Washington, DC the most evident feature of their undercarriage is their huge disk brakes. When the all-electric trains slow down to stop at a station, part of the sound that you hear is the braking noise coming from those monstrous disk brakes. I look at those disks and think what an absolute waste. The Metro trains using regenerative brakes could send the electricity generated over the third rail to help power the trains going up hill. The engineers who designed those trains just didn’t get it.

To get it you need to think of energy in a different way. For example, the idea of one central location providing the energy needs for a wide area, especially by using fossil fuels, when we think about it, should seem ludicrous. Nikola Tesla made the big electric power plant possible with AC power originally to move the energy harnessed from Niagara Falls to Albany, New York, but energy is abundant and all around us. We don’t need to do it that way anymore. The water movement in your pipes when you are taking a shower has energy in its motion sufficient if captured to power a clock. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TBuF5R42Uc&t=52s) We see the heat of the day move mercury up the thermometer, ambient heat turned into the motion energy of an expanding metal liquid. That expanding metal could push a piston that would turn a crank that would turn a gear that could spin a turbine that could produce electricity. When you start thinking out of the box like this, you discover that the number of ways to produce electricity from the energy around us are innumerable.

To solve the concentration of electric production being put into only a few hands problem we need to arrive at a more distributed or autonomously produced form of energy generation. This new way of thinking of energy can be for all of us. It is only a matter of investment, smart design and strong political action.

Where do we start? When it comes to our personal vehicles, we can make a difference. Trying to wring out greater efficiencies, and lower and lower pollution standards out of millions of internal combustion engine cars on the road is quixotic. It is well known that as internal combustion engine cars get older they become less efficient and much more polluting until they become super polluters. It is infinitely easier to put renewables on our power grid than trying to regulate the emissions of millions of mini wheeled power plants on our roads. And realize another thing about EVs, as the grid gets cleaner, they get cleaner right along with it. One more thing, electric cars, even when being powered by fossil fuels at the power plant, are far more efficient than gasoline powered cars, that whole momentum energy, potential energy and regenerative braking thing, and therefore pollute far less.

It’s the same with pushing a rock to the top & having it come down

The renewable electricity that I purchase for my home through my utility also powers my EV. The energy I put into my car when going uphill comes back to me when I am going down hill. The energy I put into getting up to speed comes back to me when I am braking with regenerative brakes. Energy is momentum. An object in motion remains in motion. Energy is potential as a rock high on a mountain. It is not the rock, it is what happens to the rock when it breaks loose and travels down the mountain with great force and speed. An EV at the top of a hill is a potential energy battery that uses all that stored energy as it drives down from the hilltop. Energy is the movement of wind. Energy is heat on a hot day, the movement of waves, the tide coming up and going down, the warmth that you feel when you hug your loved ones. Energy is sunlight knocking electrons around on a solar cell and those electrons traveling down the attached wire into a car battery where it can be used later to move the car through an electric motor. If we concentrate on what energy really is we can find energy enough for all we wish to do without ever having to burn, pollute, fight wars for, or pay extortionist prices to get. All we need to do is think of energy in a different way.

7 Major Auto Cos. Ally to Launch High-Power EV Charging Network for North America or Not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday July 27, 2023 · 5:34 PM PDT

2023/07/27 · 17:34

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 14: An 'EV Charging Only' sign is seen at a Power Up fast charger station for electric vehicles on April 14, 2022 in Pasadena, California. California has unveiled a proposal which would end the sale of gasoline-powered cars requiring all new cars to have zero emissions by 2035. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) — An EV charging spot with both CCS and NACS chargers

According to a press release Issued by GM on July 26, 2023, at 12:00 ET, and condensed here, BMW Group, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz Group, and Stellantis NV will create a charging network joint venture to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles in North America. It will do so by making EV charging more convenient, accessible and reliable. Charging stations will be accessible to all EV customers, offering both Combined Charging System (CCS) and/or North American Charging Standard (NACS) connectors. The aim is to install at least 30,000 high-powered chargers in urban and highway locations or to offer a charging station wherever people may choose to live, work and travel. The group’s goal is to build a network that will provide reliability, high-powered charging capability, digital integration, at appealing locations, with various amenities while charging. Each site will be equipped with multiple high-powered DC chargers, making long-distance journeys easier for customers. It will attempt to use renewable energy where ever possible or it will power the charging network solely by renewable energy. The first stations are scheduled to open in the summer of 2024 in the United States and Canada will be considered at some later time.

The venture, which is expected to be established this year, will leverage the Federal and State level funds available for the installation of high-powered charing for customers. These chargers are expected to meet or exceed the spirit and requirements of the U.S. National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. The joint venture’s goal is to become the leading network of reliable high-powered charging stations in North America.

So here is my take on this.

The press release seemed to be confused or deliberately confusing when talking about chargers, charge locations, charge stations and charge points. It was also confused about whether it would be concentrated in cities and highway locations and/or located in such a way that it would be accessible to everyone with an EV “whenever and wherever they need.” Because of the lack of clarity it leaves the reader to interpret these statements, possibly incorrectly.

I have not come across the term “charge point” very often when reading about chargers and their charger locations. There is a company called ChargePoint that sells EV charging services with chargers emblazoned with their brand name, but outside of that I haven’t come across the term used widely. So when I came across the term in the press release, I at first wasn’t sure what they meant. A charger to me is one charging machine. For DC Fast Charging (DCFC) these can either be chargers that have various different incompatible cables and plugs that are designed to charge one vehicle at a time, or a charger with one or more of a single type of DCFC, such as a plug with either a CHAdeMO, CCD or Tesla (now NACS) plug, designed to charge a single vehicle per plug. So when a bullet point stated. “Targeting to install at least 30,000 high-powered charge points,” I wasn’t sure if what they meant was 30,000 charging locations or 30,000 places where EVs could be plugged in to a charger to charge. Given that Tesla right now has some 17,000 Superchargers and 1,782 Supercharger locations in the United States, I guess “charge points” actually means available places to actually plug in, but I’m not absolutely sure. Like I said, it is confusing.

The next confusing issue for me was the use of the word, “station.” The word from my extensive reading about them can be used interchangeably with meaning a charger or a charge machine with multiple plugs and sometimes with a charging location, but typically when that location has only one machine. I have rarely seen it used to mean a charging location with multiple chargers. Below are the examples of how it is used in the press release:

Charging stations will be accessible to all EV customers, offering both Combined Charging System (CCS) and North American Charging Standard (NACS) connectors
First stations are scheduled to open in the summer of 2024
The new charging stations will be accessible to all battery-powered electric vehicles from any automaker…
The joint venture aims to become the leading network of reliable high-powered charging stations in North America.
The first stations are expected to open in the United States in the summer of 2024 and in Canada at a later stage.
Focused on customer comfort and charging ease, the stations will be in convenient locations…
A select number of flagship stations will be equipped with additional amenities, delivering a premier experience…
Initial plans call for the deployment of charging stations in metropolitan areas and along major highways, including connecting corridors…
…aiming to offer a charging station wherever people may choose to live, work and travel.

When I switch my brain to gasoline brain I can figure out that when the press release say “charging stations” it means some sort of grouping of chargers or a charger, maybe? The Release reflects the nebulous nature of how “charging station” is used in the vernacular. It requires a fuzzy logic to figure out what they are saying from context and exactly what they mean is not really that important. However, in a press release when reporters and the general public are reading the, a greater level of clarity might be in order. Thirty thousand chargers, spread out one at a location is a very different thing than 30,000 chargers situated such that in high traffic corridors there are more chargers, while in low traffic areas there maybe only one or two, may help the reader get a better idea of what this group plans to do. Again, using the words, “charging station” in all of these different ways may be confusing to a newcomer to electric vehicles as well as to a reporter.

Finally, someone has to tell whoever wrote this press release that there is a big difference between saying, “and” something and “or” something. In several places the release seemed to contradict itself. First example is in the bullet points at the very beginning of the presser says, “Charging stations will be accessible to all EV customers, offering both Combined Charging System (CCS) “and” North American Charging Standard (NACS) connectors.” In my mined this meant that the chargers would most likely have two charge plugs, one being a CCS and the other being a NACS, because from my reading “charging station” could mean a single machine. Then I thought, maybe they mean location by saying “charging station,” which could mean at each location there could be both CCS and NACS chargers separately. But later on in the presser it says, “The new charging stations will be accessible to all battery-powered electric vehicles from any automaker using Combined Charging System (CCS) “or” North American Charging Standard (NACS)…” This to me means that there maybe locations for CCS chargers and others locations with NACS. So, again, the press release left me confused and unsure what it was saying.

Now, Tesla has developed an adaptor for Ford, which I believe will work with other CCS vehicles that allow them to plug a NACS plug into a CCS ported vehicle. Tesla has also had for a time for its Tesla EV owners a CCS to Tesla adaptor. I don’t believe that just any old EV with a CCS charge port on it with an adaptor can pull up to a Tesla Supercharger and begin charging. Tesla Superchargers don’t have many buttons or screens on them to convey information to the user charging. The way the Tesla Superchargers (NACS) work is that information is passed from the vehicle to the Supercharger network and back to make the charging experience just plug and play. It is also done through a proprietary Tesla app on a smartphone, and requires the user to set things up in advance with Tesla in order to use the system. It remains to be seen what advantages the special relationship Tesla has with Ford that may be extended to other car companies. Ford, as well as, GM, Volvo, Rivian and Nissan have all committed to switching their vehicles to the NACS standard with the NACS charge port and electronics inside them. Several car companies in the above group of 7 have not made the same commitment to the NACS standard. It makes me wonder why they would think that Tesla would be willing to let them have access to their proprietary standard? For those that don’t switch, chances are, there will be a marketplace penalty for not doing so.

There is a lot needed to be done to overcomes the errors of the past in EV infrastructure. The first model and mistake handed to us first adopters of EVs by major internal combustion engine vehicle makers was the small battery, low range and slow level 2 charger design. Even the “DC fast charging” that was available was slow, often coming in at a quarter at either the charger or on the vehicle of what Tesla was offering, and was often an expensive option to add to your vehicle. That model met few of the EV owners needs and could never compete against Tesla’s 200+ mile ranges and 30 minutes or less DC fast charging Superchargers. Then car companies began to increase their ranges to match Tesla’s base 200+ mile ranges. The need for truly powerful DC fast chargers became clearly evident. Europe saw the changes coming and switched its DC fast charging network to handle much faster charging for these 200+ range vehicles. But, the implementation of CCS chargers in the US and the “DC fast charging” speeds on the vehicles themselves was still slow. Connecting a 200 mile plus EV to a 50 kW charger for even an 80% charge was hours of waiting. The painfulness of this rollout was exacerbated by the knowledge that CCS had been given a huge shot in the arm with billions of dollars coming to it from a settlement with VW for having cheated on diesel emissions tests with hardware and software in its diesel vehicles. Unfortunately, the company that VW created to received the money of the settlement had misspent the money on charging stations that were highly unreliable. The trouble with its chargers negated all the positives that could have been had from a rollout of a national DC fast charging network. The unreliability of CCS chargers seemed to spread like a virus to the other CCS charger companies. Unreliable chargers seemed to have become the norm across all CCS charger brands. Tesla’s Superchargers, on the other hand, were known to be highly reliable and easy to operate. The stark difference between the reliability of the CCS chargers versus Tesla led Ford to drop the CCS standard soon after Tesla opened its standard up to other manufacturers and changed its name to the North American Charging Standard (NACS).

Now, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Polestar, Rivian, and Volvo have pledge to switch to the NACS standard as well. The group of 7 that have signed on to this press release are going to have to compete with a company that has proven high reliability and a well defined process, has had years to learn how to reduce its costs and improve its product, has years of working with power companies and more, all the while the group of 7 will have to deal with legacy charging companies that already have CCS chargers out there who can improve on their reliability or compete on cost.

Even though I think this alliance between these automakers is going to be overall a good thing for the adoption of electric vehicles, I found the lack of clarity of this press release to be annoying. Were they going to provide access to DC fast charging to everyone, everywhere or weren’t they? Were the charging locations all going to be NACS or were some charging locations on your charge app map going to only have CCS chargers? I also found that this group wasn’t willing or able to come together to put to bed the CCS standard and provide one standard for all EV owners making it much, much easier to find and charge when traveling long distances. One charging standard is all we need, so, one standard is all that we should have. Anything else is added unnecessary complexity and in the long run added frustration.

You can see the press release here.
www.prnewswire.com/...

Green Desalination

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday July 21, 2023 · 10:37 AM PDT

2023/07/21 · 10:37

Don't put the salt and minerals back into the ocean

Reverse osmosis desalination is a very costly way to produce fresh water from seawater, plus it comes with a variety of problems such as what to do with the filters that need replacing often, these systems need lots of energy (typically electric) to create the high pressure to get the seawater through the filters and the problem of the large amount of high salinic water or brine produced by the process that is an environmental hazard often just dumped back into the sea.

Sunbank solar water heater can heat water to 200 degrees F (93 C)

The better solution is to use the sun's heat to produce water vapor. Then condense the vapor back to distilled water. The condensation can be done by freezing seawater in large flat underground facilities taking the layer of ice that first forms on top of the seawater which is largely salt free and moving it to V shaped tanks where as they melt the vapor from the sun heated seawater condenses on the outside of the tanks.

The water harvesting on the outside of the tanks can be sped up with a windshield wiper like device that scrapes the pure condensed water off the outside of the V tanks or you can just let it drip off using less energy.

Ice “tank” has melting ice inside and condensation outside.

As the ice melts it fills the V tanks with cold pure, mostly desalinated water. That water can then overflow and be mixed with the condensed water. This can all be powered by photovoltaic solar panels to run the heat pumps to freeze the water. Solar water heaters like the one pictured above can be used to heat up the seawater. You can keep heating the brine until all you are left with is nearly dry salt. You can move this salt to existing salt flats that have been deteriorating because of climate change.

TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY GERARDO BUSTILLOS.An emploee of the pilot plant for the industrialization of evaporitic resources works at a brine pool in the world's largest salt flat of Uyuni, 550 Km southwest of La Paz, Bolivia on July 14, 2011. Uyuni, with and area of 10,582 square km is one of the richest deposits of lithium of the world. AFP PHOTO/AIZAR RALDES (Photo credit should read AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images) — Salt flats can evaporate the brine without the environmental problems of putting it in the sea.

Joe DoGood and His Petroleum Powered Cell Phone

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday July 17, 2023 · 12:58 PM PDT

2023/07/17 · 12:58

You know, I have a smartphone that recharges in just a few minutes. I have a charger in my office so I can charge my phone if there ever comes a time that I would need to charge during the day. I use my phone a lot for business as well as for pleasure, so it makes sense that I have a charger available during the day just in case my battery ever runs out. I like the convenience of charging my phone late at night at home when I am ready for night-night. The next morning it is ready for me with a full charge.

There have been days at work where I have used my phone almost all day long. It's just the nature of my work. Some days I will use my phone a lot and others hardly at all. I remember once having my battery die on me. I used my phone so much that it ran out of juice. I remember parking the phone on the charger and going to get something to eat. By the time I got back, it was ready to go again. I think about that day often. What an improvement from the first battery powered cell phones. I can't imagine what I would have done if I would have had to wait 8 hours or more to get back to using my phone, like the old days. It would have really hurt my business.

YouTube Video

You know, if the newer fast charging batteries hadn't come out, I would have never switched from my gasoline powered phone. You see with my gasoline powered phone, I didn't have the option of filling her up at home. It might have been an inconvenience to go to the gas station, but it was near my work. Sure, I had to pay more for gasoline than for electricity, but that was the price you paid for being able to fill it up whenever you needed to. If I needed to use my phone a lot, I could always quickly drive to that nearby gas station, fill her up, and I was back in business. Yes, it was noisy, smelly, needed tune-ups, lube jobs and didn't last as long as my phone does now, but it was always available when I needed to use it. There was no 8 hour wait time, and the heavy lead acid batteries of my old Motorola brick phone only lasted a few years or so.

Most of the old cell phones used lead acid batteries that lasted only a year or two and took 8 hours to charge.

Then came the fast charging electric powered smartphones with advanced battery technology. It's the peace of mind that fast charging delivers to a buyer like me that helped me make the switch. Come to think of it this is the same story with my electric vehicle, or EV like I like to call it.

Fast charging gives EV purchasers the peace of mind that if they by chance go too far or too hard or too fast and use up most of their battery’s charge, they can always get to a quick charge "station" and get back on the road. It's not that they would ever need it. They can charge at night from home. It's just important that it is available. Fast charging is a selling point that will help EVs compete with gasoline automobiles on a one to one basis.

Petroleum today is our biggest polluting fuel

As afraid as I am of adding to peak electric demand on the grid, petroleum is our biggest polluter today and has to be dealt with.
LET’S GET THE BIGGEST POLLUTER OFF THE ROAD. Then we can collectively work on closing all the coal, natural gas and biomass power plants by replacing them with clean generated power such as, wind, solar, geothermal, and more. We can now use batteries to iron out their on and off again nature, on when the sun shines and wind blows, and off at night or when there is no wind. Also, distributed energy is going to be the future, just you wait and see. As you well know, WE ARE BATHED IN ENERGY EVERY DAY! Energy is all around us always. We just need to be smart about capturing it for our personal use. We don’t need huge power utilities to make and control the energy we need and use.

Choose or MAGA Will Choose for Us

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday January 05, 2023 · 2:22 PM PST

2023/01/05 · 14:22

The more time that goes on with the election for the Speaker of the House the more concessions that Kevin McCarthy will give to a tiny 4.6% crazy faction of the ENTIRE House of Representatives. This micro-minority will not give McCarthy the Speakership until he gives them all the power. We Democrats will end up with a Speaker who is completely beholden to the most extreme MAGAs faction that represents something akin to a fascist element in our country. How about we don’t let this happen.

The best thing for us to do is to find a Republican that in some marginal way would be willing to work with us to govern. According to Wikipedia there is a group of Republicans who are committed to being “moderates,” anti-Trump and anti-MAGA. They are the Republican Governance Group, originally the Tuesday Lunch Bunch and then the Tuesday Group until 2020. I put "moderates" in quotes because they are to the right of most Americans. Robert Reich says that some 40 Republican Representatives from purple districts might be willing to vote with Democrats for a Speaker. These members along with all the Democrats would put a “moderate” in the Speaker’s chair. No matter how distasteful this may be to us it would be better than having a MAGA fanatic in that seat or having McCarthy doing all their bidding.

Just look at what McCarthy has considered to conced to already:

(1) A rule allowing any member to force a vote ousting a speaker.

(2) The Freedom Caucus gets two (possibly three) seats on the powerful House Rules Committee that oversees the amendment process.

(3) The use of spending bills to defund particular programs and fire or reduce the pay of federal officials.

(4) Considering to hold votes on a balanced budget.

(5) Considering term limits.

(6) Considering more border security.

(7) Considering not increasing the debt ceiling.

I propose Ohio Representative David Joyce be nominated for Speaker of the House. Joyce is the chair of the Republican Governance Group, with its 40 something members. I believe if David Joyce is nominated many of his group will vote for him. Joyce, being a committed moderate, might be willing to agree to share power with the Democrats. If not that he may be willing to promise to keep stupid stuff like Hunter Biden’s laptop or hearings on Anthony Fauci from moving forward. Whatever we get from Joyce will be better than whatever we get if McCarthy or other MAGA nominee gets into the Chair.

If Joyce is nominated and a non-trivial number of Republicans can be persuaded to pledge their vote for him, then Democrats should should vote for him. Out of all of the 222 Republican Representatives in Congress surly six moderates could be persuaded to vote for a fellow Republican. Especially since there are way more moderate Republicans who have been closeted by the MAGA era. Given the opportunity we may get a flood of Republicans who more than anything want to silence the MAGA Republicans much less want to allow them to hold 90% of their Republican Party hostage to their inanities.

(Even though I came to the conclusions expressed here before knowing that Robert Reich held similar leanings, my argument here paraphrase his arguments closely. McCarthy’s considered concessions come from Robert Reich’s written arguments.)

Let's Put Our Weight Behind a Moderate Republican

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday January 03, 2023 · 8:02 PM PST

2023/01/03 · 20:02

As I watch the proceedings in the House of Representatives as Republicans fight each other to witch extremist person will be elected as Speaker of the House, either Kevin McCarthy or Jim Jordan, I can't help but think that for Democrats neither one will make our lives easier. Actually, I believe that Jim Jordan will turn this Congress into a circus freak show with endless investigations on MAGA imagined deep state conspiracies. This show will diminish the United States' standing around the globe. His circuses will radicalize far more Americans against needed immigration reform, gun reform, social security expansion, climate change and much, much more.

I know watching the Republicans fail in doing the most basic function of government, electing a speaker, may be entertaining. Keith Olbermann said something like Democrats should sit down, shut up and get popcorn. I'm afraid the end result of what happens if one of these two actually gets to the Speakers chair will not be so entertaining.

The best thing that Democrats can do, I believe, is to communicate across the aisle that there are moderate Republicans that the Democratic party would be willing to vote for. That Democratic participation for a moderate would get a Republican across the finishing line with the 218 votes needed, but it won't happen with the choices being presented right now by the Republican Party. A moderate Speaker could usher in an era of bipartisan cooperation.

The Republican Governance Group is a group of around 110 moderate Republicans. There are far more shall we say “closeted” moderates in the Republican party that can't be themselves in this “Trump” era. With the loses to Trump backed candidates in the last election more and more moderate Republicans are feeling that it may be OK to come out of the wilderness and flex their moderate muscles.

The choice of a moderate Republican to the Speakership would virtually cut out the MAGA crazies from high power positions. A truly moderate Republican could get a lot of normal legislation done with his caucus and participation from moderate Democrats. I being a progressive am not super happy about this, but choosing between a moderate Republican and two other Republicans, one who borders on fascist, (Jim Jordan) and the other who wouldn't know that what he was doing was moving the nation towards fascism, (Kevin McCarthy), I choose the moderate.

Jukka Kukkonen: 12 EV market trends to watch in 2022

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday February 12, 2022 · 12:48 PM PST

2022/02/12 · 12:48

Woman standing next to a Tesla — Photo/Fresh Energy.

This is being reposted from the Fresh Energy site with permission from its author, Jukka Kukkonen who is a clean transportation consultant for Fresh Energy and founder and chief EV educator at Shift2Electric, an EV market and business consulting and training company in Minnesota..

Through my work at Shift2Electric and as clean transportation consultant at Fresh Energy, I have dedicated the last 10 years to advancing electric vehicle (EV) adoption. It’s both rewarding and gratifying to see that the transition to electric vehicles is becoming inevitable and apparent even to those who do not consider themselves early adopters.

This is not to say that there isn’t still a lot to be done. We must continue to work to ensure the shift from internal combustion engines (ICEs) and fossil fuels to EV drivetrains and the freedom to choose your transportation energy continues. But at least now we can focus more on the speed of transition, how to support all stakeholders in the process, and educate people about the benefits of the transition.

Here are 12 EV market trends for 2022 and beyond that I find important or interesting right now. There are a lot of other trends that could be listed here too, but this year I chose to highlight these ones. Check these out and let us know what you think.

Trend 1: Europe continues to lead EV adoption.
Currently, EVs make up only three to four percent of the new light duty market here in the U.S., but industry analysts anticipate the EV market share in the U.S. to rise to 50 percent by 2030. In 2018, Europe had the same three to four percent EV market share we do now and, as of November 2021, EVs accounted for 26 percent of new light duty vehicle sales there.

The biggest difference between the U.S. and Europe is EV model availability. Europe put tighter emissions standards in place in 2019 which pushed manufacturers to bring a real selection of EVs to consumers in Europe. Manufacturers quickly learned that there was a lot of demand for EVs, and the market took off. Because the U.S. doesn’t have robust emissions standards in place, auto manufacturers are still prioritizing Europe when it comes to the new technology. As a result, the U.S. will have a very limited number of EVs available at a limited number of dealers in select states—this is why Tesla keeps gaining market share rapidly in the U.S. I talk more about this in Trend 4.

Trend 2: The general public begins to realize that range has changed.
In 2012 when my family got our first Nissan Leaf, it provided 73 miles of range. This was adequate for my wife’s work commute, which accounted for most of the miles driven in our family at the time. However, the Leaf didn’t provide much flexibility beyond that at that point. Since then, rapid battery tech and charging infrastructure development has changed the game. The 2018 Nissan Leaf had double the range and in 2019 the Leaf Plus provided over three times the range at 225 miles.

Currently, nearly all new EVs available in the market provide over 200 miles of range and the average range of new EVs sold in 2021 was over 250 miles. I rarely drive more than 250 miles in a day—but if I do, there are an increasing number of DC fast charging stations that enable me to travel where I want, when I want. The public is starting to come around to the fact that EVs are no longer limited by a range of 70-80 miles like they were years ago.

Trend 3: Crossovers continue their popularity.
This is not directly linked to EVs but does impact everything across the auto market. Consumers in the U.S. used to want SUVs or sedans, but now there has been a movement to the middle—to crossover vehicles. Crossovers, or CUVs, make up more than 45 percent of the new light duty vehicles sold, making them the biggest segment of the market, and this is where you can also find most of the new EVs coming to market in general.

Crossovers, like the Volvo XC 40 Recharge, make up more than 45 percent of new light duty vehicles sold. Photo/Mark Urbano for Car and Driver.

Last year we saw the Tesla Model Y leading the segment followed by many excellent contenders like the Mustang Mach-e, Volkswagen ID4, Volvo XC 40 Recharge, Jeep Wrangler 4xe, and more. This year we will also see many great new additions to this same segment: Audi Q4 e-tron, Cadillac Lyric, Kia EV 6, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Nissan Arya, Polestar 3, etc., and dealers won’t have any problem selling all that they can get their hands on. Volkswagen for example has 40,000 customers waiting for ID4s right now, so they can’t get their U.S. production started soon enough! Visit www.shift2electric.com/... for up-to-date list on EV makes and models available in the US.

Trend 4: Tesla continues to rule the U.S. EV market (and maybe Europe too).
Since most traditional auto manufacturers still need to scramble to supply the EV demand in Europe, they continue to provide only a very limited number of EVs to the U.S. market. Tesla has also struggled a bit because demand has been outstripping supply. However, their production has been next level when compared to other manufacturers. Tesla delivered over 930,000 EVs in 2021, and there were still many customers who had to wait for months for their vehicles. The good news is that this waiting game is about to change.

Tesla’s Giga Austin factory, which it plans to open this quarter along with the Giga Berlin factory in Germany, will double the company’s current production capacity. Photo/Inside EVs.

Tesla will be opening Giga Berlin (in Germany) and Giga Austin (in Texas, USA) factories this quarter; when those plants are fully functional, they will double Tesla’s current production capacity. Additionally, thanks to its new Berlin factory, Tesla will no longer need to haul vehicles to the European market from the U.S. or China. This will enable Tesla to increase its sales dramatically in the U.S. In Q3 2021, Tesla’s light-duty market share in the U.S. was 2.5 percent, which made them the 16th biggest seller ahead of many more established automakers like BMW or Volkswagen. With new production capacity and clear market demand, Tesla might find itself in the top 10 at the end of this year. If this is not a wakeup call to all traditional automakers, what is? Fortunately, some of them will get a chance to fight back like I describe in the next trend. That said, they will still be well behind Tesla as it continues to dominate the market due to robust long-term investment into EVs. A good example of this was Hertz’s announcement last year that the company is adding 100,000 Teslas to its fleet by the end of 2022—the biggest story in the car rental industry in 2021.

Trend 5: A small number of EVs will have decent to good availability.
The market will continue to be heavily supply limited in 2022. But, there will be some models that will have a better availability—especially later this year. Tesla buyers will naturally have an easier time getting the segment-leading Model Y and Model 3s. Tesla Model S and Model X production and supply was very limited in 2021 because Tesla was concentrating on the Y and 3, but additional production capacity should help. Fortunately, some of the other manufacturers are also ramping up U.S. production, which will improve availability. Later this year, Volvo and Polestar will start a new EV production line in Ridgeville, South Carolina, where they will produce the new Polestar 3 and new electric Volvo XC90 followed in 2024 by an electric version of the smaller XC60 SUV. Volkswagen will hire 1,000 new employees to start the ID4 production in their Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant. On top of this, Ford will start manufacturing the F-150 Lightning this spring at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, and will have the ability to build up to 150,000 electric F-150s per year by mid-2023. Lucid and Rivian have already started production, but it remains to be seen how fast they can ramp it up. Auto and battery manufacturers are also planning to open 13 new EV battery plants in the U.S. within the next five years to increase domestic battery supply.

Trend 6: Electric pickups are coming.
Years ago, people used to ask me when we would get some electric pickup trucks. My standard answer at the time was: “Whenever Tesla develops one.” That’s pretty much what happened. There was very little concrete movement in this segment until Tesla announced the Cybertruck. Almost immediately afterwards, several other manufacturers started to talk about their electric pickup plans. At the moment, it looks like Ford will be the first to start a real mass market production with the F-150 Lightning.

Ford’s F-150 Lightning is the most powerful and versatile F-150 that the company has ever built. Photo/Ford Motor Company.

Ford recently stopped taking new reservations for the truck after reaching an impressive 200,000 reservations. The company will begin taking orders this month, and deliveries are expected to start early this summer. The Lightning is the most powerful and versatile F-150 that Ford has ever built, so it’s not a surprise that it is extremely popular. Speaking of popularity, I should mention that Tesla has a mind-boggling 1.3 million reservations for the Cybertruck. This is a good reminder that even though I’m not a big fan of the design and wouldn’t have any use for this kind of vehicle, there are a lot of people who think otherwise. So, when Tesla gets Cybertruck production rolling, this will cover a hefty chunk of their U.S. sales.

Rivian has also made waves with the R1T truck. Rivian listed to New York Stock Exchange this fall and immediately became one of the highest valued automakers with a market cap of $100 billion. Rivian has over 70,000 reservation holders for the R1T truck and started to deliver a small number of them last quarter. Their big challenge this year is to ramp up the production of the R1T truck and R1S SUV. General Motors has brought back the Hummer brand to offer a powerful EV truck for their customers and began GMC Hummer EV production in December 2021. We can expect limited deliveries this year and bigger production coming in 2023. Chevrolet has also unveiled the electric Silverado, but we are not expecting to see that in the market until spring of 2023.

Trend 7: New homes start to get EV ready.
Overnight home charging is the most convenient and affordable way to power an EV, and surveys say that more than 80 percent of charging happens at home. You just plug the car in when you get home and unplug it when you leave in the morning. This really doesn’t differ much from plugging in your cell phone for charging—the plug is just a bit bigger! Overnight charging during off-peak hours is the most grid-friendly way to power an EV because the grid has a lot of extra capacity during those hours. To that end, we need to help everyone get access to home charging in single family homes, in condominiums, and in apartment buildings. The key is making sure there is 240V power available in the garage for charging station installation. If the power is there, the process is much easier. Naturally, installation costs are considerably lower if the capacity is installed during building construction versus retrofits. Fortunately, many local building codes are beginning to adopt EV readiness language, and there are good model codes available too.

Ensuring that everyone can access EV charging, including in apartment buildings and condominiums, will be key as the electric vehicle revolution continues. Photo/Chargepoint.

Condominiums are already experiencing demand and will need to address it soon. Just a couple of EV drivers in a condo means that a Homeowners Association needs to figure out how to provide charging for them, and make sure that other condo members have the same opportunity when they consider buying their EV. Utility companies are also becoming more active in this area, and they are providing programs and technical support for condominiums and apartment buildings. Throughout 2022, we’ll see a lot more discussion and hopefully a lot of progress too on this front.

Trend 8: Federal funding will accelerate fast charging network developments.
In the short term, European EV market growth slows EV sales in the U.S. because auto manufacturers are prioritizing their limited EV production allocations to Europe. However, in the long term this will help the U.S. because automakers will accelerate their shift to EVs globally. This will lead to much faster EV sales growth in coming years, and industry analysts are predicting that U.S. EV sales will hit 50 percent in 2030. To support this growth, President Biden has set a goal of installing 500,000 public charging stations by 2030. These efforts got off to a good start in the fall of 2021 when the Federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the “infrastructure bill” was signed into law. This provides $5 billion for states to use to build a national charging network and an additional $2.5 billion as grant funding for all alternative fuels. The infrastructure bill houses the biggest national investment in electric vehicle charging yet and is a significant first step towards building a robust national charging network for all EV drivers.

Trend 9: Public EV charging goes DC.
One of the benefits of Europe’s faster EV adoption is that the U.S. can learn from their experiences. In a way, it gives us an opportunity to predict our future! We’re seeing first-hand the challenges Europe is facing and what solutions seem to work best. One such lesson is that public charging is starting to rapidly move from Level 2 units to DC fast charging (DCFC). Level 2 charging requires hours, and there are limited places where this makes sense in public areas. Hotels and office building parking garages are such locations, but in places where parking times usually are measured in minutes rather than hours, the DC fast charging makes more sense. Corridor charging by highways requires high-power units which can provide 150-350kW, but we can use medium power stations (50-150kW) in many other locations.

kempower-s-series-fast-chargers-at-shell-station-in-norway-1280x720-1-600x338.jpeg — Photo/Kempower.

What we need are reliable, redundant, and scalable solutions which will enable us to build grid-friendly systems right now and easily upgrade them when the demand grows. It’s true that there are local power and space limits that must also be considered, but, in general, public EV charging is becoming faster.

Trend 10: Public EV charging becomes easier.
A pain point of public charging has been multiple network setups, payment system variations, and unreliable payment hardware and software. Interestingly, payment systems have been one of the most common failure points on public charging networks. Tesla owners have been isolated from this because their proprietary Supercharging Network detects the vehicle when the charging cord is connected and automatically deducts charging fees directly from the owner’s account. Owners simply plug the car in and unplug it when they leave, and the system takes care of the rest.

At long last, a new Plug&Charge protocol will bring this same convenience to other EV drivers! There are some EV models and charging networks that can utilize this feature already, but it will be fully rolled out to others in the coming years. Due to numerous vehicle manufacturers, charging infrastructure providers, network operators, and system coordinators involved, this process will be more challenging than it was for Tesla, but it will be well worth the effort. We can expect some challenges during the rollout, but when the initial bugs have been fixed and standard variation differences figured out, public charging payments will be easier than traditional gas car fill up payments.

Trend 11: Power starts flowing back from EVs.
For the last 10 years there has been talk that EVs will become mobile power sources through Vehicle to X (V2X) solutions. Since then, the conversation has continued to evolve. This started with discussions around how EVs could support the grid with Vehicle to Grid (V2G). Next common idea was how EVs could power your home during power outages using Vehicle to Home (V2H) functions. Recently, there has been discussion about how EVs could be used as mobile power banks to power anything you want to do in your life, via a Vehicle to Load (V2L) setup. These are all exciting use cases and provide a new kind of freedom to choose how you power your life, both at home and beyond. There have already been many pilots to study these technologies, but it is looking like this year we will get more and more vehicles that will actually enable people to do these things with their own cars.

Ford-garage-storm-vehicle-to-load-1280x720-1-600x400.jpeg — Ford’s F-150 Lightning demonstrating the potential for a Vehicle to Home (V2H) setup during a power outage after a storm. Photo/Ford Motor Company.

The Ford F-150 Lightning is taking this the furthest by providing a respectable power level of 9.6 kW to power your home. It has a big enough battery that I could power my house with it for a week without any problems. The Lightning also has two 120V outlets inside the cab, four outlets in the frunk (front trunk), four outlets in the bed, and yet another outlet, this one 240V, in the bed that you can use to power heavy duty construction equipment or even charge another EV. The new Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 have 120V outlets by the back seat, and you can connect a special adapter on the charging connector to also power your tools and toys when you are out and about. This is a prime example of a Vehicle to Load (V2L) setup. Volkswagen has also announced that all of their ID branded cars will be V2G capable this year, so this trend is clearly moving forward.

Trend 12: Electrify everything!
In addition to light duty vehicles, we’re seeing electrification happening indoors, outdoors—everywhere you can think of! A few years ago, it was hard to find a decent battery-powered lawn mower. Now, our electric lawn mower lists have over 60 models to choose from! And not just lawn mowers, but chain saws, edgers, hedge trimmers, leaf blowers, pole saws, string trimmers, and even snow blowers. Replacing small internal combustion engines with electric-powered ones is critical: Small engines run very inefficient burning processes and don’t have much emission controls, so they produce some of the worst pollution.

Electric bikes are becoming more affordable and have had a significant increase in sales in recent years—just ask Erik the Bike Man. The extra boost and flexibility they provide have enabled many people to bike more often and use their bike for commuting. Electric bikes will not replace traditional ones, but they have already increased the miles biked in Minnesota and beyond, and they will continue to do so. There are also more capable electric mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles for those in the market for a set of electric wheels. Polaris just unveiled its new electric Ranger XP Kinetic side-by-side which has 80 miles of range and plenty of silent power. But the momentum doesn’t stop there.

Delivery fleets are going electric too. Rivian is starting to deliver the first EDV700 vans to the Amazon fleet, and FedEx has begun using GM’s Brightdrop EV600 vans. Transit agencies are adding electric buses, and school districts are looking to replace their diesel school bus fleets with electric ones. Norway is even electrifying the country’s ferries, small electric planes are being used for pilot training, and much more! There are so many good developments happening in all these areas, and when people start to use electric-powered vehicles, appliances, and tools in one area of their lives they start to think, why wouldn’t I do this in some other area of life too?

Welcome to the EV decade.

It is a Political Mistake to Shun Tesla

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday January 29, 2022 · 11:32 AM PST

2022/01/29 · 11:32

It has been a long time since this was what an electric car looked like

I am NOT an Elon Musk fanboy, but I'm not a hater either. I am exceedingly appreciative of what he has done in the area of electric vehicles. The reason why is because of my experiences in the field of EVs. Who I am is a person who has promoted electric vehicles from way before they were even a twinkle in the eye of public awareness in modern times. I have been writing about their benefits for more than two decades now, however, my first interest in electric vehicles started during the OPEC oil embargoes in the 1970s, when a car dealer, inspired by golf carts, put similar but more powerful components into a cheese wedge shaped two seat enclosure with wheels. What is pictured above. The person was Bob Beaumont, his company was Sebring Vanguard and his vehicle was the Citicar. I was a child living in Bethesda, Maryland and some of my neighbors managed to get a few of these vehicles. They tooled around our suburb to get groceries and run errands. For me this car helped me see a possible solution to the problem of gasoline and oil. If you remember the 1970s you would remember that gasoline and oil shortages dominated all of our minds at the time.

In the mid-1990s my mind went back to thinking about electric vehicles again. There was the ever encroaching price volatility of gasoline prices that could wipe-out ordinary people's disposable income in an instant. That ever present random economic shock from gas prices looming over our economy had dampened economic growth for working class people. There was also big oil's heavy handed meddling in politics. The dangers of poor air quality and climate change were beginning to become evident, growing and becoming part of the public consciousness. All of these things lead to my feeling that there was an urgent need to end petroleum's hold on our lives. I could also now clearly see that these weren't just US problems but problems that affected everyone around the globe.

In the 2000nds my politics had changed from having been business oriented and more neoliberal like to seeing the problems that big business presented and the need for much more government intervention to mitigate big business excesses. Ironically this began apart from but while I had embarked on an MBA program. Given that my point of view was changing I tried to move the focus of my MBA from generic management to the management and marketing of renewable resources and alternative energy. Unfortunately, way back then there wasn't anything like what I was thinking of doing. In fact, the curriculum was downright hostile to that way of thinking. For instance, in one of my textbooks there was an essay/sample study about how you should never attempt to start an electric vehicle company. This anomaly of a thing in my textbook was directly at odds with the research I was doing. Lucky for me it didn't deter me from making alternative fuels as the focus my research and as the subject of my thesis. And doubly fortunate for me was that my professor didn't beg me off of what I wanted to do with my thesis. I think he was curious of what I would discover, and probably hoped that what I was doing was going to be different from all the other papers and thesis he would have to read through.

Along with my making alternative fuel my school obsession, my research in the field made me want to share what I was learning with more than my teachers and my class. I began to write articles on what I was finding and then trying to get them published in the mediums of the day, which were newspapers and magazines. I didn't get anything published in them, however, I did manage to get a reporter to interview me and to write about what I had written. Unfortunately, my essay was over her head and she couldn't understand much about what I had written. She ended up referring to me as an EV frankinfan because she couldn't understand things like automated plug-in devises, ultracapacitors and such. With no luck getting published by traditional means I found myself just wanting to find people who could understand the stuff I was learning about. I found and joined the local electric vehicle club, the members of which really were my people and I felt at home with them. I also found websites and groups in California who were not just enthusiastic about electric vehicles, but politically active in making them a thing. They wanted to make them a thing for the same reasons that had made me change my politics.

EV1s forcibly taken from lease drivers and crushed by General Motors, early 2000s. — The GM EV1 electric vehicle rounded up and crushed in mass

These Californian groups had access to production EVs that we in the rest of the country didn't. They had access to the EV1 and other electric vehicles made possible by California's Zero Emissions Mandate. And later, when the mandate was destroyed by political meddling by powerful business interests, and as a result nearly all of the electric vehicles were rounded up and crushed or shredded, these people protested in a very public way. While they were running a vigil in Burbank to save a bunch of EV1s being staged to be shipped to the crusher, I was online from the east coast on the website they were using to coordinate their activities giving them arguments to use to counter what GM used as reasons for destroying these EVs. In the end we were unsuccessful in saving the EV1s there. We were also unsuccessful in saving most of the EVs from that era. Some Toyota Rav4 EVs made it through to individual hands, and some Chevy S-10 EV pickups, but not much more. No fully intact EV1s survived in private hands. A film maker was among the California activists. His name was Chris Payne. He pieced together much of what went on during this time and used it to create the documentary called “Who Killed the Electric Car?” My contribution may have been tiny, but being involved with the protest changed me into an activist for electric vehicles.

From my communications with one of the members of the protests and owner of the coordinating website, Doug Korthof, I learned about a place I could continue to publish my arguments for electric vehicles. That website was called EVWorld.com where the proprietor, Bill Moore had opened up a portion of the site to commentators like me. I engaged Bill Moore to allow me to post there and he let me. Suddenly, I was reaching tens of thousands of readers. I was engaging them in the comment section, and I went from being a mere commentator to something called a “blogger,” which came with some serious street creds among the EV enthusiast community. Later I learned from Bill Moore that Elon Musk had told him he had been an avid visitor to EVWorld.com even prior to his getting involved with Tesla. I’m sure that something Elon Musk read on EVWorld.com made him realize that EVs were something that could find a market in the United States. I hope it was something I wrote.

For people like me who remember very clearly how EVs have been suppressed. We remember how they were even rounded up and crushed by the likes of GM, Honda and the other internal combustion engine making car companies. And when we remember back in particular to the time just after when the vehicles were being crushed that out of that despair a company called Tesla dared to counter the narrative that there was no demand for EVs and entered into the market with an EV. Not only did Tesla enter the automobile market with an EV, but it did so successfully.

Tesla’s car lineup on Tesla Superchargers

How successful is Tesla compared to the legacy car companies you ask? Tesla is so successful that last year it sold nearly a million vehicles, all of them EVs. This was around 37 times the number of EVs that GM sold last year. This is why everyone of us who are EV enthusiasts, not necessarily Elon Musk fanboys, but true EV enthusiasts are wondering why there is so much emphasis on GM and Ford and so much shunning of an unmitigated American EV success story as are Tesla and Elon Musk.

Right now GM doesn't have an EV that it is selling in any sort of volume. GM sold 26 EVs in the fourth quarter of 2021. The reason why is that its very limited EV product line began to catch fire on a regular basis and production was stopped in August. Tesla, on the other hand, managed to sell 308,600 EVs in the fourth quarter of 2021. If GM wouldn't have had the problems with the fires and production stoppage my best guess would be that GM would have sold around 9,000 EVs in that quarter. So, in comparison GM would have seen sales that were 34 times less than what Tesla was able to achieve even if things had been hunky-dory for GM. GM isn't a leader in EVs or anything approaching it, while Tesla isn't just the EV leader here at home in the US, but globally.

What there was prior to Tesla from the legacy automakers was a tremendous effort to destroy attempts to bring electric vehicles to market. These counter productive efforts on the part of GM continued all the way up to the very near present with the latest being that GM finally agreed just three weeks ago on January 9th of this year, to recognize California’s authority to set vehicle emission standards under the Clean Air Act. GM was working hard to disallow California from having different pollution regulations than those issued by the Federal Government even though California has had air quality regulations that predated those of the Federal Government's.

For me seeing the crushed EV1s and the electric S-10 pickups on the GM proving grounds had a profound affect on how I viewed GM. I was willing, however, to forgive and forget everything if GM were willing to change its attitude towards EVs and electrifying its cars. My mind was changed significantly when GM chose to produce the Chevy Volt, so much so that I leased one. The Chevy Volt was a fantastic vehicle. It is electrified, but it is not a true EV. It is a range extended short range EV. GM calls it an EREV. It starts out as an EV for its first 38 miles or so miles and then switches to gasoline after. For me it could have been an EV, since I only used its under 40 mile EV range for an entire year, and only used its gasoline range because I drove it to Wisconsin to show it off to my in-laws. With the Volt, and the all electric reasonably priced 238 mile range EV the Chevy Bolt, Bolt with a B, for me, all was forgiven. GM looked to me that it was finally doing something useful in this space. Then GM seemed to me to fall backwards into its old horrible culture. Instead of keeping the Volt and the Bolt, two vehicles that serve different markets, one for those just learning about electrified vehicles, the Volt plug-in hybrid, and those who wanted to jump into EVs with both feet, the Bolt battery electric vehicle, they decided to kill the Volt. Their argument was that by killing the Volt, sales of the Bolt would increase. For me, with my MBA, I knew that this wasn't going to happen since the vehicles served two distinct markets. And what happened was that sales of the Volt went to nil while sales of the Bolt didn't go up, at least not with any significance. GM continues to have the same problems it has had for years. Their problems are it has visionless management that don't seem to have the rudiments of understanding their own markets. They have bad corporate culture that stifles there often internal excellence. The Volt was a magnificent product that was ended by its leadership’s corporate stupidity.

On the other hand, Elon Musk's vision of what EVs could be has completely shaped the entire landscape of the future of automobiles. His understanding of what battery ranges should be — 200 miles plus, to how quick EVs should charge — under 30 minutes, to how publicly available charging locations should be distributed, to safety, to acceleration, etc. etc. the rest of automobilia has had to play catch up to Elon Musk’s vision for Tesla. Tesla and Elon Musk have been an unmitigated American EV and business success story. He and his company deserves to be at the forefront of what the Federal Government does in the EV space. Shunning them is a terrible mistake both economically, as well as, politically since there are a lot of Tesla fans out there, even if they are not died in the wool fanboys.

Wall Street is Blind to True Value of EV Charger Companies

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday May 03, 2021 · 2:36 PM PDT

2021/05/03 · 14:36

Electric cars and renewables — Wind farms and solar panels directing their electricity towards EV chargers is one scenario that makes EV chargers the thing in EVs.

Please forgive me for this post. It is not my typical fare. As you may know I have been a long time Daily Kos poster having started in 2006. My second post was titled “On Flexible Fuel Plug-in Hybrids”. Most of my posts have been on various aspects of electric vehicles and alternative/green energy. These are my thoughts about a misstep that the “smart money” of Wall Street seem to be making that could be a great advantage for the people who follow electric vehicle threads here on Daily Kos.

My professionally converted Pontiac Fiero EV in 2006

I'm not a big stock owner or day trader or financial consultant or anything like that. However, I have been involved with electric vehicles (EVs) since before they were a thing. I had one of only a handful of electric vehicles in the mid-Atlantic region around Washington, DC around the end of the previous century way before any manufacturer committed to mass-producing them. I drove my yellow solar paneled electric sports car conversion to every demonstration I could, so that I could to tell people and politicians about the advantages of EVs. Not being a scientist or engineer I mainly talked about my personal experience owning and using an EV. I knew about Tesla before most people, because I knew about the company from where Tesla's technology came from, AC Propulsion and its yellow tZero.

(the reason why I had my converted Pontiac, Fiero painted yellow) Unfortunately, I was too poor during the early days of Tesla to invest, despite urging my readers on the website we activist used to coordinate the protests to stop GM from crushing the EV1, then on EVWorld.com, and the Daily Kos to invest in entrepreneurs trying to get an EV product out onto the market. For those who had the money, saw Tesla and listened that investment turned out unimaginably well.

For those who saw Tesla's success but missed out, the hunt is on. Now everyone seems to be chasing what they believe will be the next Tesla. I remind you that before Tesla there have been hundreds of attempts to start the next American automaker, both gasoline and electric, without success. Just like Ford was in the early days of the automobile, Tesla is a special case not easily repeated. Tesla and Elon Musk had that rare thing that makes a market disruption possible.

However, there was something else that investors who missed investing in Ford could have done as a residual opportunity. That opportunity was something created by Ford selling millions of Model Ts, and that was to investment in oil companies. (HOLD IT! I’m talking about the past and about the nature of residual opportunity. I would never invest in oil today. It goes against my values in so many ways.) - Note: both Ford and the oil companies were closely held private businesses and the order of how they went public is unlike what happens today. I'm using them as more of an example rather than a full historical recounting of how they went public.

Let me remind you that before Ford and the other automobile makers popularized internal combustion engine cars and sold them everywhere, gasoline was something that formed naturally at the top of oil reservoirs and typically had to be burned-off at the wellhead, before getting to what the oil companies really wanted, which was kerosine at the time. With millions of cars drinking away the naturally occurring gasoline, oil companies had to figure out how to make everything they extracted from their oil wells into gasoline. They figured this out and

we call it refining.

There was one fortunate aspects of the primary product for the oil companies. Gasoline was a consumable that was used up. In fact it gets used up rather fast and then car owners, like all those who bought Ford Model Ts, have to go back to buy more gasoline. The constant repeat customers and the wide profit margins eventually grew oil companies to be bigger than Ford, and the other car companies. Oil companies quickly evolved to control the entire supply chain. That is extraction, pipelines, refinement, distribution and dispensation.

Currently electricity is like the “crude oil” of EVs. There are multiple thousands of electric utility companies. However, because of utility regulations, electric codes, plug standards and different levels for dispensing electricity it is my belief that the new “oil companies” in the new EV economy are the companies who provide charging equipment that allow EVs to access electricity, whether they do it from the grid or other distributed or emissions free renewable sources. EV charger companies often collect some type of fee for their service.

I'm thinking that electric vehicle charging station companies are much more valuable, especially when you think of them in the future, than what is being reflected, IMHO, in their current stock prices. Remember, I'm not a stock analyst or some type of stock expert. I'm just a guy who knows EVs, and has been involved in their promotion since before the EV1 and Tesla.

One of the best examples of what I think are depressed EV charging station company stock prices is ChargePoint. Look at this from Wikipedia. “ChargePoint operates the largest online network of independently owned EV charging stations operating in 14 countries and makes the technology used in it.” In the statement above Wikipedia states that ChargePoint is “...the LARGEST online network of independently owned EV charging stations operating in 14 countries....” If I'm right and charging companies are the modern equivalent of what oil companies were in the old days, ChargePoint, being the largest charging company, is the equivalent to me of what Getty was before its antitrust breakup, or at least what ExxonMobil is today.

ChargePoint From Home to Peak Shifting Battery Fast Charger

But there is more to ChargePoint than just being the biggest. For one, ChargePoint is no spring chicken. It was founded in 2007, giving it 14 years of experience in charging infrastructure. ChargePoint has had plenty of time to learn and adjust in its niche to become, as I see it, a solid company. It is not a company created to take advantage of the spoils of a lawsuit, or a big money newborn that dazzles but has no substance. ChargePoint has substance with around 30,000 charging locations and over 100,000 chargers installed, and it keeps growing faster and faster. It is not a niche inside a niche either. ChargePoint has charging solutions from soup to nuts. Covering the entire spectrum ChargePoint has from home chargers all the way to large fast DC chargers equipped with large batteries that shift their load on the grid to off peak hours. With such a wide product line ChargePoint has the products to serve individuals, utilities, private companies, government agencies and much more.

What's more is that all of its products come with software for its charger owners. They provide maintenance for their stations as part of their service. Their charging stations are also listed on their searchable live network database so that EV drivers can find the stations via smartphone apps, and through these apps an EV driver can find out whether the particular charging station is being used, off line, a private station not available to the public, or available. My personal experience with ChargePoint has been flawless. I have never had a problem getting a charge from any of their stations, which is not the case with other brands I have used.

Given all of the above, why did CHPT (ChargePoint's stock symbol) drop below $20 a share recently? I don't understand why the “big money” on Wall Street hadn't buoyed the stock at least above its lesser competitors. Once it dropped below $20 I went to jump in with a little money I had. Being a little guy it took me some time to secure the stock and by that time I was able to get the stock it had gone up. I was still happy with my purchase because I feel in my heart that the company is much more valuable than what is currently being reflected in its stock price. A few days later CNBC reported, “President Joe Biden is prioritizing a national EV charging network under his $2 trillion infrastructure bill, promising to have at least 500,000 of the devices installed across the U.S. By 2030.” CHPT stock went up on the news. I was happy. But it soon started on its way down again. A little while later it was back to just below $20 again, and then it started to climb again. It seems that dropping passed the $20 mark triggers a buying spree. It makes no sense, as little on Wall Street does. In my opinion ChargePoint is still a really good value as a stock. When comparing market control to market cap with other charging company stocks, in my opinion, CHPT should be at a much higher price. My guess is that it will go up in the future to a level that at least matches the values of other stock in this space.

I don't know why the big Wall Street supposed smart money doesn't see this as a fantastic investment opportunity. Also, in my opinion, if you are looking for the next Tesla-like investment don't bother with finding another stand alone EV manufacture. Instead what I believe we should do is look for the opportunities that having EVs on the roads in ever larger numbers creates. My bet is on the proverbial “oil companies,” of the new paradigm in the transportation economy of EVS. For me these are the companies that provide EV charging.

I'm providing this investment opinion because from my years of experience with alternative energy never have I had such a clear example of Wall Street being so asleep at the switch. For me CHPT stock in particular isn't valued correctly. Unlike trying to just stick it to short sellers, hedge-fund managers, big Wall Street and the supposed Wall Street smart money, this investment, I believe, will be a good investment over the long run. This, in my opinion, is a buy and hold stock, at least for a year or more. This stock will go up in value and stay if held long enough for when EVs take a considerable portion of the personal transportation market, something that I believe will happen in the next year to couple of years. I believe CHPT stock will be worth many times the investment if the investment is put in now. Again, I’m not a Wall Street commentator, stock analyst, institutional investor or anything like that. I'm not a day trader or stock junky with my head buried in stock market reports and armed with all of the confusing lingo that goes on with being hyper focused on investments. I don't have any inside information of the companies I've talked about here, or do I have any knowledge of anything going well or bad with these companies. I'm as blind as the next guy to internal workings, management problems or financial trouble that any of these companies may be having. I do own ChargePoint stock as I've stated in the post. I am, however, a person knowledgeable about the EV space and a somewhat regular poster to the Daily Kos just looking to pass on what I’m seeing to my fellow readers of the Daily Kos.

Don't Know Much About... Unity (song)

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 29, 2021 · 10:03 AM PST

2021/01/29 · 10:03

Josh Hawley billboard — Don't want unity with this lunacy

Sing this to the tune of Sam Cooks “Wonderful World — Don’t Know Much About History.”

Don't want unity with Rand Paul
Don't want Republicans at all
Won't get close to Marjorie Taylor Greene
She's to much of a machine gun fiend

But we do know is that we love Joe
And we know that if he loves us, so
What a wonderful world it will be

Don't want unity with Ted Cruz
Don't want unity with Josh Hawley
What we do want is for Lindsey Graham
To go down for his election scam

Plus we do want more covid vaccine
And for neocons to be unseen
Oh, what a wonderful world this would be

Now, I don't claim to be a progressive
But I'm trying to be
For maybe by being a progressive, baby
We can win elections, wee!

La ta ta ta ta ta ta (Josh Hawley)
Hmm-mm-mm (Taylor Greene)
Whoa, la ta ta ta ta ta ta (O' Rubio)
Hmm-mm-mm (Capito)

Yeah, but we do know that we love Joe
And we know that if we love him mo'
What a wonderful world this would be

Pete Buttigieg, a Word on EV Infrastructure

joelado

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday January 27, 2021 · 1:04 PM PST

2021/01/27 · 13:04

A line of four Tesla Model S and X driving side by side, in red, blue, black and white. — Tesla delivered 499,550 electric vehicles to customers in 2020.

Glamour shot of the Tesla Model 3 concept car — Tesla Model 3s designed to go 200 miles plus from the start

On July 16, 2014 Elon Musk tweeted out to the world Tesla Motors would produce an affordable 200 mile range electric vehicle. Ever since that tweet nearly all major automakers around the world have been working towards their own version of an affordable 200 plus mile range electric vehicle (EV).

In 2021 that era of the 200 plus mile range on a single charge EV is here. GM was the first US manufacture to reach the market with its Chevy Bolt EV that had an EPA rated range of 238 miles. Renault reached the market in Europe with its 200-mile range Zoe soon after. On July 7, 2017, Tesla's first Model 3 rolled off its assembly line. Back in 2018 Hyundai came to the US market with long range cute SUV EV. And Ford will have its electric Mustang SUV in 2021. VW, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other major automobile manufacturers have all announced 200 plus mile EVs for sale this year. And Ford will have its electric Mustang SUV in 2021. Last year Tesla sold nearly 500,000 200 plus mile EVs. This year it looks like there will be an onslaught of EVs all with 200 mile ranges or better thereby making the 200-mile range EV the de facto base range. This fact fundamentally changes how the United States should approach its development for EV charging infrastructure.

The number one problem that we are facing as a deluge of long range EVs reach the market is our wrong headed approach to EV charging infrastructure. The problem is with the charging infrastructure model that we have been following so far is based on low range vehicles of around one hundred miles range and low wattage charging stations known as level 2 chargers. Both home and work charging allow for long stretches of charging time where these low watt and slow charging level 2 stations using the SAE j1772 standard, are somewhat fine. The j1772 standard for these level 2 chargers is followed by all electric vehicle manufactures today, even Teslas can access these chargers with an adaptor. The j1772 plug also works with the portable level 1 charger that can use a regular household 110 volt outlet and typically comes with the purchase of your EV. The j1772 plug is also used with level 2 at home chargers that use 240volt household current. The level 2 standard is fine for this use. And it works perfectly fine when using your EV for commuting purposes and driving around your home to run errands. However, the low range low wattage model no longer enough with a base model 200 plus mile EV as the new base range.

EVs charging in Oslo. — An example of the old level 2 based charging model

Outside of home the old level 2 based charging model strategy was to develop convenience charging opportunities at very many places such as work, businesses, shopping centers, public parking, restaurants and more. Basically everywhere. Typically this type of charging can take a vehicle like my 75 mile range EV between 4 to 8 hours to charge. In the old model battery capacities were small and most charging was to be done at home where there is plenty of time to charge overnight. If you work at a place that is over half of your total range this model would require you to add a charging station at your work place so that you could get back home. If you are planning to go to an event that is over half of your available range you may want to find a place to charge near the event so you can charge while you are attending the event and hope you get enough juice while there to get you back home. Are you getting the picture? Low range EVs require a much greater infrastructure to deal with their low ranges. It also increases the hassle of owning an EV exponentially since you have to look for charging stations to help you complete even relatively short trips and hope that they are close to where you are going, hope that they are not occupied by other vehicles and hope that you get enough electric juice to get you back home.

Tesla figured out that there was a way out of this small battery and slow public charging hassle. They envisioned an electric vehicle future of much bigger batteries, with much longer ranges and much faster chargers. The legacy automakers realized this to a much lesser degree and halfheartedly responded by equipping their EVs with DC fast charging. These fast chargers can charge a vehicle like my 75 mile range EV up to 80% in about a half hour. A much larger battery for a 200 mile plus EV would take much, much longer even on one of these DC fast chargers. Also, unfortunately, there are three standards for fast charging in the United States. They are CHAdeMO, SAE CCS, and the Tesla Supercharger standards. Since Tesla vehicles were created with 200 plus mile ranges and much larger battery capacities in mind they needed a system that was much more powerful then the ones envisioned by the original CHAdeMO and SAE CCS offerings championed by the legacy automakers. For Tesla the idea behind quick charging was that long distance travel would not be out of reach for EVs. Cross country trips and long distance travel could be done with quick, half hour or so stops along the way.

Tesla Supercharger network only needed for long trips

Also, Tesla’s long ranging vehicles simply wouldn’t need an extensive infrastructure of convenience charging opportunities at many, many places like the other model since at 200-mile plus range Teslas would have plenty of range to do commutes, event trips and shopping and still have enough juice to return home. Home where the vehicle can easily charge overnight. According to the AAA nearly all vehicle owners use their vehicles typically on a daily basis for less than 32 miles. Where charging was needed for Tesla’s long ranging EVs was on long trips like those between cities.

The small battery slow charger model basically ruled out taking long road trips of any real length. You can only really drive for around an hour and then charge for around a half hour to travel another hour (about 50 miles) again, this with an around 100-mile range EV. That is if your 100-mile range EV was equipped with a CHAdeMO or SAE CCS onboard charger, which were many times only offered as an expensive option. To do long trips using level 2 charging is a mind boggling annoyance. That would be traveling an hour and then charge from 4 to 8 hours depending on the wattage of the onboard charger and the charging station, and then travel for about an hour again. Nuts. This would be an incredible hassle filled long distance trip taking far longer to do than in a standard gasoline powered internal combustion vehicle. Only a company not interested in advancing EVs would consider the old level 2 small battery model as legitimate.

The Tesla infrastructure concept, which should now be every EV manufacturer's concept since 200-miles EVs have become in large part the entry level model range for EVs, is to travel 3 hours or so, around 150 miles, stop at a Tesla Supercharger area, or other adequate fast charging station, plug-in, walk to a nearby place to get food, use the restrooms or just relax for about a half hour and then unplug and drive for another 3 or so hours again before repeating the process. For this charging model Tesla built out its own charging infrastructure to advance this concept. They focused their proprietary infrastructure on connecting cities and made it available to most of it’s Model S and X owners for free. It is possible to travel from coast to coast in the US via the network of Tesla Superchargers, as well as travel between most major cities.

CCS standard even used in Europe like illustrated above

With the other systems CHAdeMO and SAE CCS, when they were first being rolled out, their wattages were about a half to a third of that of a Tesla Supercharger. These other charging systems have been given a huge boost in the arm by being given money from the law suits against Volkswagen for their cheating on diesel engine emissions tests. With this money they have managed to spread SAE CCS chargers across the country. CHAdeMO as a fast charger standard is quickly dying and will most likely be extinct shortly. Europe has also been insisting that the SAE push up the wattages on the SAE CCS standard substantially and has gotten fast charger station manufactures and car makers in Europe to adjust to these much more powerful standards. They have done this for practical reasons as well as making the SAE CCS standard competitive with the Tesla Supercharger network. Tesla is responding by increasing the power of its Superchargers to reduce charging times even more. All this new activity has worked to solidify the vision of the future that Elon Musk had for EV infrastructure that he first articulated to the public in his tweet on July 16, 2014, a tweet that notified the world of the company’s plans that it had developed years before.

The move to 200-miles as the base range for EVs gives us an opportunity to rethink what we are doing when thinking about electric vehicle infrastructure. First, it means that most of the money being used to develop public level 2 charging infrastructure in very many places is unnecessary. With 200-mile range EVs the slow level 2 charging station doesn’t do enough to be useful at shopping centers, restaurants, convenience stores and places like these. They will still be useful at hotels since plenty of time can be devoted to charging overnight, however, they are not really needed in most other places. If a level 2 charger is to be installed it should be done with one caveat, that the wattage of these level 2 chargers be brought up to the maximum of the SAE j1772 level 2 standard which is 19.2 kW. With the maximum wattage in the standard these chargers will be able to fully charge the 200 plus mile range EVs as well as the very large batteries coming in the future, overnight. Also, new electric vehicles need to be equipped to accept these new much higher wattages through their j1772 charge ports.

I believe that the charging infrastructure model first conceived and championed by Tesla for 200 plus mile range EVs is what the charging infrastructure buildout from now on should be. Let the infrastructure for level 2 charging build out organically, based on requests, particular need, and personal/private funding. However, the focus of nearly all of the money available for developing charging infrastructure from government, major businesses and other similar sources should be used on developing a network of fast charging station locations connecting cities and supported by rest stop amenities. Fast charging locations should also be situated at strategic locations inside cities to promote commerce, tourism, sightseeing, and convenience for city dwellers who may not have access to reserved parking spots with level 2 charging.

The most surprising discovery of what I found when plotting out how the fast charging infrastructure should be built across America was how relatively few quick charging station locations are needed to service the entire country. I calculated that around 60 quick charging locations would meet all of the charging needs for my home state of Wisconsin. That covered the entire state, even into remote areas as long as there are good roads. Minnesota needs only 50, and that is with charging stations spaced 50 miles apart in both states. The entire United States including Alaska and Hawaii would be fully serviced with somewhere around 2900 charging station locations on good roads. This was so surprising to me that I went back and checked my assumptions. Especially when you think there are around 168,000 retail gasoline stations nationwide in comparison. The question I had to answer was why so few?

The reason why EVs need so much less publicly accessible infrastructure than gasoline stations needed for regular internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles is due to the fact that the infrastructure that powers electric vehicles is already at our homes. Remember electric vehicles get their “fuel” to move mainly at home through the electricity that comes to your house. Let me give you an image that might help you understand how EVs are different from ICE vehicles.

Think of it like your own gas station but at your home

Imagine that you have a gasoline pump at your home where the gasoline was piped to it directly from the refinery. Think of it like a natural gas pipeline to your home, but in this case it is delivering gasoline to your gasoline pump. Also, imagine that you got in the habit of filling up your car every time you came home. You would have a full tank of gas every time you left your home in your car. The only time that you would ever need to go to a gasoline station would be on long trips that were beyond the range of the gasoline in your tank. Now imagine everyone in the country having the same home based gasoline pump as you do. The need for gasoline stations would drop dramatically because there would be no need to go to a local gasoline station. You have a gasoline station at home. You would only need a gasoline staton on long trips beyond the range of your gasoline powered car. Well, with electric vehicles that “gasoline” pump at your home exists with the electricity that comes to your house anyway for powering your lights, appliances, electronics, etc. Just like charging your smartphone before going out into the world away from the electric outlets in your house, your electric vehicle will charge up at home letting you to go out into the world, only needing to stop and access electricity again when your trip has gone beyond the range on your batteries. With the 2900 fast charging locations across the country, you will always be within 25 miles away from access to the charging you need to keep you going. Get it?

The paradigm shift to 200 plus miles range for electric vehicles is upon us. With production of these EVs by nearly all the major automakers happening now it has created a new paradigm that has changed our charging infrastructure needs going forward. Gone is the need to have a bunch of level 2 charging stations all over the place. The new EVs being built don’t really need them. Also, having quick chargers placed willy nilly based on random funding and support should give way to a plan having fast charging stations positioned at 50 mile intervals on all serious roads, as well as some strategically placed fast charging areas located inside cities and some road side towns to help out with keeping the cities and towns vibrant economically. There should also be DC fast charging areas providing a close place for those EV owners in the cities that have limited access to charging where they live. Government, businesses and other organizations investing in building out the EV charging infrastructure should concentrate their efforts on the 2900 or so quick charging locations needed across the country to make EVs fully competitive with fossil fueled vehicles as soon as possible.

The pieces for creating a world of truly cleaner and quieter transportation is nearly in place thanks in large part to the vision of Elon Musk and the willingness of the automotive industry to follow suit with 200 plus mile electric vehicles. All we need now is for us to be smart about how we build out the DC fast charging infrastructure needed by those EVs. We need to take the desperate pieces that make up our the vision of our electric future and put them together in an effective, appropriate and cohesive infrastructure plan of action that we can all follow.

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