Are you gonna get an electric car anytime soon? (Or do you already have one?)

[Lyle Romer]

Sirius|XM is a little better than traditional broadcast radio, but I think the service is kind of expensive.

It's a pain but I keep doing the $4.99 a month deal and then I contact them and threaten to cancel before the full price charges start if they don't continue at the promotional price and so far they always give me another year. I'm not going to pay more than that for satellite radio but it is worth $5 a month with the amount of driving I do.

Back to the EV and practicality discussion, I watched this YouTube video yesterday showing how much the range of the F-150 lighting falls off when towing to the point that it seems completely useless.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I rarely ever listen to broadcast radio anymore, be it FM or AM. Over the air radio might still be decent in really large markets like NYC, but it tends to suck everywhere else. IMHO, the only "good" radio station we have in Lawton is run by Cameron University, but it's a NPR affiliate. They air a mix of news/talk-radio and music, most of it Jazz or Classical. I'm a rock guy.

Our local commercial radio stations used to be decent 20+ years ago when they were mostly locally owned. They've all been bought and re-bought multiple times over since then. Each buyer has come in and trashed or deleted more and more of each station's music library. Playlists are ever more tightly controlled, if the station has any ability to play music on its own. Basically it's roughly the same dozen songs in a repeat loop for several months on end. There is a lot of automation and few human DJs on the payroll. Of course there's more commercials. The stations will still air these "bumpers" where some random person calls in a song request (of something they played barely an hour ago). Who the fuck do they think they're kidding?

Sirius|XM is a little better than traditional broadcast radio, but I think the service is kind of expensive.

One feature I look for in new cars is USB ports and their ability to play various kinds of audio files from different media, be it hardwired phone, cheap USB memory stick or a portable SSD. I'm a little disappointed my truck's stereo system can't play FLAC lossless audio files from attached media. My Galaxy S22 Ultra can play FLAC files. Still, WAV files or high bit rate MP3s aren't bad. I like being able to have much of my music library available to play at any time without having to cart along any physical CDs. I've never been a fan of those plastic binders where people slide naked discs into those clear sleeves. Those are a great way to ruin discs in short order. I usually RIP any store bought CD into LPCM WAV files and then export to other more portable formats afterward. The discs stay in perfect condition that way.

I have all my CD's and all the CD's that I wanted from the library system here ripped in flac mode on a media player I built. Id guess over 800 CD's so far and the 1 tb media drive is only 2/3's full. If anyone is contemplating building one I reccomend using JRiver as the control program. I ripped all my DVD's and Brue Rays as well. But I store those on a NAS.. And there are backups on other drives here and on a cloud. Too much time spent ripping all that stuff! I am actually about to get rid of all the CD's and dvd's.

Radio and TV are the same... tune in for a lot of commercials and a little bit of music, tv show or an abbreviated version of some movie. I don't even own a TV, but my other half does and likes to watch certain things. I rarely watch anything...

[Bobby Henderson]

I really like the FLAC format. It's lossless yet supports embedded metadata and album cover artwork unlike LPCM WAV files. I just wish device support for FLAC was better.

I have my music collection set up where I can play parts or all of it on multiple kinds of devices or platforms. When I'm lifting weights at the gym I'll listen to music stored on my phone via a pair of Jabra ear buds. Samsung's stock music player app generally does a good job playing albums in "gapless" fashion.

Vehicle entertainment systems and after market in-dash car stereos are hit and miss with what they'll read from something plugged into a USB port. Some car stereos have a limit of how many files they'll be willing to read. That limit could be as little as 256 files. Limits in the 2000-4000 file range are more common. I have a 32GB memory stick plugged into a USB port in my pickup truck's glove box. I have only a small portion of my music collection on that memory stick. I don't need to be scrolling through hundreds of album folders when driving down the road.

When I was in Colorado a few weeks ago I copied around 70GB of music albums in 320kb/s MP3 format for my brother to play in his old Jeep. At first I tried copying it all onto a single 128GB USB memory stick. The stereo system wouldn't read the memory stick (it was formatted in FAT32). I divided the collection across 3 32GB sticks and it worked. Funny thing: when I copied the same 70GB collection to a 400GB portable SSD the car stereo read the entire volume without any problem. SSDs work far faster than cheaper memory sticks. I'm guessing there is a certain latency limit the car stereo is willing to tolerate when cueing up audio files. It just rejects the whole volume if it's going to take too much time to parse.

The ever improving ability for people to carry around immense collections of music on smart phones or detachable USB volumes further lessens the relevance of broadcast radio. If I was buying an electric car, its ability to pick up AM radio broadcasts would mean very little to me. I would be more concerned with how well the car interfaced with my smart phone or read files from portable memory sticks or SSDs.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

[QUOTE=Bobby Henderson;n24282]I really like the FLAC format. It's lossless yet supports embedded metadata and album cover artwork unlike LPCM WAV files. I just wish device support for FLAC was better.

I have my music collection set up where I can play parts or all of it on multiple kinds of devices or platforms. When I'm lifting weights at the gym I'll listen to music stored on my phone via a pair of Jabra ear buds. Samsung's stock music player app generally does a good job playing albums in "gapless" fashion./QUOTE]

I have mine set up in a similar way... The streamer feeds my router, and I also have JRiver on my phone.... We have a great College Station here that is commercial less, so I pretty much stick to that one. I can also feed my phone into my car audio systems for longer trips.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

It's a pain but I keep doing the $4.99 a month deal and then I contact them and threaten to cancel before the full price charges start if they don't continue at the promotional price and so far they always give me another year. I'm not going to pay more than that for satellite radio but it is worth $5 a month with the amount of driving I do.

Back to the EV and practicality discussion, I watched this YouTube video yesterday showing how much the range of the F-150 lighting falls off when towing to the point that it seems completely useless.

Sirius has way too much blabber jabber. I'm not even willing to pay a nickle for that junk. I want music not someone's else's opinion.

[Buck Wilson]

As a result of this, numerous vendors have appeared that offer to install these things on a profit sharing basis (the business hosting the chargers pays nothing up front, and receives a small percentage of the revenue they generate). The problem is that these charge the EV owners as much if not more than they would pay for gas to cover the equivalent distance.

I charge publicly daily and while it is twice the cost of charging at home(.10/kWh vs .20/kWh) it's STILL cheaper than gas, so costs do vary, it's not just a flat out "it's more than gas"

Drive-ins already keep a few "jump start carts" for use when customers discover a flat battery when they attempt to leave at the end of the show (typically 2-3 after each screening), so I guess that EV chargers will make these a thing of the past.

Beyond that, even if not charging, in an EV you can leave it "running" while parked unlike a gas car. It'll keep the 12v charged and you can sit there watching movies for 2 days if you want, WITH the A/C running. There's definetly perks.

His justification was that if you depend on an electric car for mobility and suddenly have to evacuate to escape a fire, having your battery go flat half way down the mountain would be a bit of a bummer.

I know this isn't your point, but with an EV you actually gain charge driving down a mountain

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I know this isn't your point, but with an EV you actually gain charge driving down a mountain

I don't think EV's do that, but hybrids definitely do. All EV's do right now is to move the CO2 output over to another source. That is unless you have Solar Panels and Power Walls. Then the people that do actually get a credit, or check back from their power company.

[Buck Wilson]

I don't think EV's do that, but hybrids definitely do. All EV's do right now is to move the CO2 output over to another source. That is unless you have Solar Panels and Power Walls. Then the people that do actually get a credit, or check back from their power company.

I'm not sure what you thought you were replying to but I will note that EVs don't "just" shift CO2 usage. EVs are wildly more efficient than gasoline cars, so much so that even if charged on a 100% coal fired electric grid(which exists nowhere in the us at this point), you're using less energy and producing less CO2 than a gasoline car.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I'm not sure what you thought you were replying to but I will note that EVs don't "just" shift CO2 usage. EVs are wildly more efficient than gasoline cars, so much so that even if charged on a 100% coal fired electric grid(which exists nowhere in the us at this point), you're using less energy and producing less CO2 than a gasoline car.

Probably around 75% of EV owners are charging their cars from electricity generated from a coal, fired power plant. They are still the primary source of electricity in this country. Down the line is Natural, gas, then Hydro, then Nuclear, and lastly solar panels and power walls. And thus, by using mainly coal powered electricity you merely shifting the CO2 that the car itself would have generated over to the power plant. There is no way around it. It's a fact because of the way this country generates the majority it's AC power.

[Geoff Jones]

Here are some links to actual data.

U.S. electricity generation by energy source - 2021
38.4% - Natural gas
21.9% - Coal
18.9% - Nuclear
19.8% - Renewables (combined)


SHORT-TERM ENERGY OUTLOOK - 2022/23 projections

"We expect renewable sources will provide 22% of U.S. generation in 2022 and 24% in 2023, up from 20% in 2021."


U.S. coal-fired generation declining after brief rise last year

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[Mike Blakesley]

All EV's do right now is to move the CO2 output over to another source.

I keep reading that it produces some large amount of waste, something like 150,000 pounds of toxic stuff, to create an EV battery, but how much tonnage of exhaust fumes would that same car running on gas put out in its lifetime?

[Leo Enticknap]

EVs are wildly more efficient than gasoline cars, so much so that even if charged on a 100% coal fired electric grid(which exists nowhere in the us at this point), you're using less energy and producing less CO2 than a gasoline car.

Can't find the source after a brief search just now, but I've heard it claimed that the energy inputs into the manufacturing process are significantly higher for EVs than ICEVs, most of the difference being in the battery (mining the ingredients, transportation, and production); so much so that an EV does not start to pull ahead of an ICEV in terms of total lifecycle energy consumption per mile driven (taking into account everything - manufacturing, planned maintenance over the design life, and then EOL disposal/recycling) until it's clocked up 60-70K miles. That is significantly more miles than the average American owns their car for.

Power lost in grid transmission is something else to factor in to the overall equation when charging EVs using electricity generated at a station hundreds of miles away, too. It's the same reason as why very few ultra long haul (ULH) flights are operated, and the few that are tend to be business/premium class only. Fuel burns fuel carrying itself. The more you take on board at the start of the flight, the more you burn carrying the extra fuel needed toward the end of it. Likewise, the resistance in long distance transmission cables consumes a certain amount of power before it even makes it to the EV charger.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I read in.another article this am that a Tesla Model S only reduces CO2 emissions by 20% as compared to a gas fueled car if driven 100,000 miles.
when I worked for Claco I drove a V-8 powered vehicle that ran on gas or CNG. It ran fine on CNG but was way less efficient if you drove it over 65 mph. At 70 mph, it could make it from Salt Lake City to Evanston, WY on one tank at 65 to 70mph. Then from Evanston to Rock Springs and fill it again. There were no CNG fill stations after Rock Springs, so then it had to run on Petrol. Overall the CNG was way less expensive, but inconvenient and often the fill stations were not right off the intestate. So filling up could also be time consuming. The NCG conversion was also very expensive and payback time could go beyond 10 years.

[Steve Guttag]

It's clear, based on the graph that Geoff posted, that Natural Gas is what is displacing coal in the US. It is also surprising how little the renewables are contributing to the overall picture though if things continue, wind will overtake coal in the not-too-distant future. However, half of that speed is coal's decline and not all attributable to wind increasing. I also am curious if wind increases will start to plateau as good places for turbines decrease. The graph also doesn't indicate costs of upkeep of the various sources. I, personally, would like to see nuclear increase and, more importantly, development of nuclear into safer forms.

[Mike Blakesley]

I was talking to a guy who works at one of the power plants in Colstrip, MT, which is 37 miles south of here. I take his words with a grain of salt because after all he is a "coal guy." There is a new wind farm about 50 miles northeast from here. They built a power transmission line from the farm to connect to the "main" transmission infrastructure which is currently fed by that coal power plant. Distance from the wind farm to the main transmission line = about 90 miles. From there the power is sent on to eastern Washington, about 900 miles west of here, which has used power generated in this area for the past 50 years or so. My friend said that they have to employ these "boosters" on the wind power because it isn't as steady as the coal power (since it relies on the wind blowing, of course) and also the power diminishes over the course of its long journey, so it has to be "boosted" to be high enough amperage for what's required at the other end.

My knowledge of "big power" is pretty limited, of course, but it does make me wonder about the efficiency of the wind power vs the coal power. I mean, how much juice does it take to run those boosters? And where is THAT power coming from?