Recent test drives, GOlf R, S3, M240i, Model 3 (Tesla)
06-26-2018, 07:08 AM
#21
Thread Starter
I’ve got panels on the roof that provide my power so I’m double dipping. All depends upon what you pay for kWh. If I were paying straight local kWh it’d be a dollar and some change to fill mine up. kWh full charge is always going to be less expensive than gasoline here.
No need to get defensive either way.
My wife works for an electric utility and she says "Over my dead body." She hates them on principal. If they ever are priced, with efficiency improvements, to a 5 year payback, I will just have em installed. Gonna re-do the driveway next year and they would have to be wired under the driveway. I am going to get the wiring and have it placed under the driveway and buried for future use.
06-26-2018, 08:33 AM
#22
At home we already have 240 wired into the garage third stall. We also have a spot on our lot that is a downslope into a swamp that faces the travel of the sun all day. Perfect spot for a ground install of solar panels and we would not even be able to see them from the house unless you walked back around a bunch of trees to see where they were.
My wife works for an electric utility and she says "Over my dead body." She hates them on principal. If they ever are priced, with efficiency improvements, to a 5 year payback, I will just have em installed. Gonna re-do the driveway next year and they would have to be wired under the driveway. I am going to get the wiring and have it placed under the driveway and buried for future use.
My wife works for an electric utility and she says "Over my dead body." She hates them on principal. If they ever are priced, with efficiency improvements, to a 5 year payback, I will just have em installed. Gonna re-do the driveway next year and they would have to be wired under the driveway. I am going to get the wiring and have it placed under the driveway and buried for future use.
06-26-2018, 09:00 AM
#23
Thread Starter
The electric companies hate panels, as they take money from them. Every day that passes by, solar, and wind are becoming cheaper than existing. It is just a matter of time. Many places solar is cheaper than existing already as the solar panel growth has driven down cost exponentially. If I would have purchased my array, oh yeah, the payback certainly wouldn’t be 5 years. But I leased, with an option to buy, so I started saving money the second the switch was flipped to turn them on. Even if you are straight paying the electric company, kWh to power a DD is much cheaper than gasoline, the fuel is much less expensive in most parts of the country. Then you have to take into account the heavily decreased maintenance of an EV. In 25k miles I’ve changed my in cabin air filter twice and mounted a new set of tires. It goes to the dealership once per year for annual inspection only. Another benefit is short distance trips. They are irrelevant on an electric vehicle whereas they can be harmful to an engine that hasn’t warmed up. Also not a bad idea to have redundancy from a power perspective. When Hurricane Harvey hit our state we had gasoline shortages, lines, total outages from a gas station point of view. In many cases LEO’s parked at filling stations to prevent infighting and rioting. It lasted 7-10 days in total, taking a few weeks to fully restore. Everyone at work was panicked, friends, family, etc. I kept hearing “You are lucky you have that electric car” and I told each of them that luck had nothing to do with it. Panels and an EV isn’t life changing but it is a step in self sufficiency. I am under no delusions about saving the Earth and the decision was not political. It was simply about saving money, having redundancy and allowing me to start/stop with no negatives. In the winter I was driving short distances where my motors couldn’t even warm up. My employer and many locations have free level 2 power as well so for me just a way to combat inflation. They are a great solution for a DD as I have learned. I debadged mine of all EV, zero emissions crap to boot. Every manufacturer in existence has EV’s on the way so the market will be full of models in the next 5 years.
I personally would spend some money to pollute less, become less dependent on "the grid" and support such things with my own money as a personal choice. Forcing it as policy is an expensive one that is passed on to consumers. Sure, once we pay for a ton of panels we will have less reliance on other sources and make cleaner energy. But in the short term, panels are expensive, they don't convert nearly enough solar radiation to electricity yet to justify the cost, and they do eventually wear out and have to be replaced. I am not a true believer by any stretch, but I would spend some of my income for what I perceive as a "good". I also think it is just kind of cool to generate some or all of your power at home.
My wife hates them because in our state, the legislature has mandated that companies produce X% from solar and that percent goes up every year. We are not the sunshine state and very far north. Then the legislature mandates that they buy most of those as "Made in Minnesota" panels. That was a huge joke. All of he components were made in China and then put into panels by some overpaid workers and sold at 5X the cost as ones you could buy in the market. But it was popular with a couple powerful politicians that had lots of out of work people in their district. We have to scrap that law now because even though the utilities were forced to buy them, the was no other buyers in the marketplace because of the inflated cost so both companies went out of business. It was a total farce and increases electric bills.
But when the efficiency goes up (which I think is right on the horizon) and the cost comes down a little. I will be all over it and put a few up just cause I like the concept. My wife, after having her company forced by law to lose a ton of money, is understandably not cool with them. Wind is far better here, we get lots of wind. But still more expensive than coal, gas, nuclear. I would not put up residential wind and we live on one end of a lake that gets a straight wind nearly every day all day, but they just kill way to many birds and we have tons of them in the yard. Turkeys, pheasants, egrets, cranes, herons, owls, bald eagles, osprey, hawks, and all kinds of little birds. The first one whacked out of the sky I would be ripping the system out. I like critters. I am a climate change "denier" that is also a bunny hugger.
But yeah, being able to power my car with power made from my house sounds cool. Would be great in an unforeseen emergency or disruption in supply too.
Last edited by vader1; 06-26-2018 at 09:09 AM.
06-26-2018, 03:37 PM
#24
Registered User
Ahhhh. I was not thinking of the competition, must have missed that. It will just be too spendy. I am fortunate in that my wife does fairly well (read way better than me) and we split expenses we each keep our remaining income separate (my suggestion) and then we can buy whatever we want without any veto from the other. It works really well because we don't have kids and if I want a mototrcycle, boom. Motorcycle.
But while I spend a bunch of my money on cars. Scratch that, all of my money on cars, I don't make so much that I can keep pulling the trigger on expensive stuff. The Cayman was an keep-forever-favorite-car purchase. The next one has to be a little more reasonable. While I would LOVE to get an M2 competition, I can't justify the cost. My dealer that I spoke to last week mentioned it. He does not know how limited the model will be (he thought it would be a limited model) and he did not know if his dealership (a smaller one) would even get a single allocation if it was a small production run.
But while I spend a bunch of my money on cars. Scratch that, all of my money on cars, I don't make so much that I can keep pulling the trigger on expensive stuff. The Cayman was an keep-forever-favorite-car purchase. The next one has to be a little more reasonable. While I would LOVE to get an M2 competition, I can't justify the cost. My dealer that I spoke to last week mentioned it. He does not know how limited the model will be (he thought it would be a limited model) and he did not know if his dealership (a smaller one) would even get a single allocation if it was a small production run.
06-27-2018, 06:15 AM
#26
Thread Starter
Well Saki, again, I love your taste in cars, but I will have to daily it and pile miles on it and drive it through blizzards. I don't think even an AWD 911 is the best idea for me.
06-27-2018, 08:55 AM
#28
Join Date: Mar 2017
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I've had this conversation many times with enthusiests.... the sound and overall feel is going to be the biggest hurdle for people to get over I think when you start talking about electric cars....regardless of how fast they are.
06-27-2018, 11:55 AM
#29
Funny this gets brought up any time either panels or EV's are even brought up. The climate had nothing to do with why I have panels on the house or why I daily an EV. You want to know the reason why on both? MONEY. Cold hard bennies. Either or both, saves me $, 4 figures per year which I usually spend on ammunition, and tires for the fleet. I ride 170 RWHP sportbikes with cans on them (actually full systems and tuned), drive an AWD Turbo on the weekends as well, that I can't wait to tune. It's just money, and a smidge of politics but not the kind you think. An electric vehicle.....is cheaper to fuel off kwh than it is off gasoline, at least where I'm at in the country. And the political side? It isn't the climate. 13% or so (last time I checked it) of our gas, or imported oil to the USDM, comes from the Middle East. 8% of that or so is Saudi, so that leaves 5% from other Middle Eastern nations. Mon-Fri the Middle East gets F'd, as they get $0 dollars from me, I personally do not care for that region of the world. I'd love to see our country energy independent so we don't have to import oil from that corrupted area of the world. So I get your argument but you using an EV would mean your wife's company makes more $. It gets moved from big oil to local kwh production for powering that DD. I'm not a bumper sticker person but I'd love to see a bumper sticker that read "Powered by the sun and 100% American energy". EV's are always pointed out by political pundits but they always fail to mention they are powered by 100% USA energy. Again last time I checked, domestic oil production accounts for about 40% of our use. If driving EV's moves that percentage up, I'm all for it. Like I said, I ride fast bikes, and I shoot and carry guns, so I'm a big black eye in that political theater. You drive an EV so you are automatically a climate worrying person, down at the SJW rally, or whatever. It's funny to read, and I don't mean your comments, elsewhere. And if I could, I'd have a big windmill generating power too, as well as a large battery backup. With my inverter on the house, power outage, blackout, what have you, I can run most of the house. Oil shortages, I can still drive. Cash savings are numero uno, but the self sufficiency is very rad.
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06-27-2018, 12:40 PM
#30
Good call I love the thought of having solar power with battery storage for just this reason. When I priced it out, it just wasn't realistic.