The US Government Has Just 1% of the EV Chargers It Needs (techcrunch.com) 104
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. government owns about 1,100 charging stations. It may need more than 100,000 charging stations to support widespread EV use in the next decade, according to testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Tuesday. The testimony, which was first reported by Reuters, mainly delved into the U.S. Postal Service's efforts to transition its fleet to EVs and federal fleet transition issues. GAO found that federal agencies like USPS held certain incorrect assumptions about the cost and benefits of using gas versus electric vehicles, namely that USPS used gas prices that are about $2 per gallon less than the current national average in its estimates, and assumed maintenance and acquisition costs that are higher than the reality.
GAO has identified charging infrastructure costs and installation as a key challenge to acquiring EVs for federal fleets. [...] The General Services Administration (GSA) said that as of March 10, federal agencies have only ordered an additional 1,854 zero-emission vehicles since its prior report. The U.S. government usually purchases about 50,000 vehicles annually. The federal fleet currently has about 657,000 cars, SUVs and trucks, out of which less than 1% are currently electric, according to GSA data.
GAO has identified charging infrastructure costs and installation as a key challenge to acquiring EVs for federal fleets. [...] The General Services Administration (GSA) said that as of March 10, federal agencies have only ordered an additional 1,854 zero-emission vehicles since its prior report. The U.S. government usually purchases about 50,000 vehicles annually. The federal fleet currently has about 657,000 cars, SUVs and trucks, out of which less than 1% are currently electric, according to GSA data.
Re:Wanna know a secret? (Score:5, Insightful)
...but the power plant down the street doesn't have the capacity even if you did put in the chargers.
The commercial grid has plenty of capacity to charge post office trucks. They charge overnight, which is when the power plants are idle, and has spare capacity to burn.
And you don't need a fast charge. This is not a car stopping for a mid-trip charge when driving cross country, when you want to get back on the road as soon as possible; a C/10 rate is fine.
Re: Wanna know a secret? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is besides the point though. At the rate we are producing electric cars, we are producing solar panel charging capacity faster. Far faster. As we load more and more solar onto the grid, the fuel not burned will really, REALLY, not be needed. Solar panels have a longer lifespan than the cars on the road too, so itâ(TM)s just a matter of keeping ahead of the adoption curve, or at the very worst getting behind by just a couple of years of adoption rates of BEVs take off in comparison to Solar Panel production. But either way, burning gasoline in an ICE is just about the worst way to power vehicles when speaking of efficiency.
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Cabin warming is a fairly minor load on an EV, believe it or not.
Mine has a 4kW PTC heater, so at max draw, it’s 4kW. But it doesn’t run constantly, even on coldest of days. Duty cycle is around .3-.5, so at most it’s a 2kWh draw. On a 100kWh battery, that’s really not much.
Newer EVs are using heat pumps - those have a massive efficiency boost as they harvest heat from numerous sources - ambient air, the battery itself, cabin heat, etc. At its very worst, it’s 1:1 efficient
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If you are draining the battery from warming your cabin either your cabin temp is too high or you didn't charge your battery. The only other possible answer to draining the battery with the heater is that you are staying in your car way too long (or stranded). A 50kWh battery EV can run a 1kW heater for 50 hours (assuming no other power drain so being very generous say 40 hours). That is comparable or better than your average ICE vehicle.
I know you will argue that in extreme cold the battery efficiency is a
Re: Wanna know a secret? (Score:2)
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Pants on fire false. [caranddriver.com] Car and Driver is averaging 5% loss using a 240V charger on a Tesla Model 3. How would they be doing that if "even the best battery chargers on the planet are only 90% or less"? Did they get their hands on an EV charger manufactured by extra-terrestrial life that somehow plugs into both a human-made power grid and a Tesla Model 3?
Stop posting lies.
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1. cite sources for your figures, or they will be considered bullshit. For example, this story about charging losses [caranddriver.com] shows that a Tesla Model Y charging at 240V will only have losses somewhere in the 5% to 12% range. Even plugged into a 120V outlet, the losses were around 15% in their recorded data. Tesla's own paperwork filed with the EPA during a worst-case battery scenario (charging from 0% to 100% battery capacity) was 14%, and my guess was that the most of that was lost between 90% and 100% when the
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What world are you living in?
Re: Wanna know a secret? (Score:2)
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it's takes 7x the energy to heat a house (10F outside to 70F inside) than to air condition 80F to 70F.
1. Most people don't heat their houses with electricity.
2. The energy needed to heat and cool a house is not a simple linear function of the temperature difference.
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Also, please tell me you're kidding when you say power plants completely spin down and turn off during the night. Holy crap.
It's like you didn't read the parent's post and made up your own words. Idle and burning power != spinning down and turning off. Holy crap indeed.
English motherfucker, do you speak it?
The grid has excess capacity at night [Re:Wann...] (Score:3)
...They charge overnight, which is when the power plants are idle, and has spare capacity to burn.
I don't know what kind of island paradise you live in but here in the rest of the world it gets cold at night and it's takes 7x the energy to heat a house (10F outside to 70F inside) than to air condition 80F to 70F.
I don't know what kind of expertise you have, but I can tell that it's not in electrical power generation. Electrical power systems do have excess capacity at night. This is not some theoretical musing, it is simply a fact of life, and a fact that is perfectly well known to everyone in the industry.
Also, please tell me you're kidding when you say power plants completely spin down and turn off during the night. Holy crap.
Huh? Most baseload plants aren't even designed to fully spin down, much less turn off during the night! The big generating plants run best at near constant power. (Natural gas turbines are better, though, which i
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I don't know what kind of island paradise you live in but here in the rest of the world it gets cold at night and it's takes 7x the energy to heat a house (10F outside to 70F inside) than to air condition 80F to 70F. Also, please tell me you're kidding when you say power plants completely spin down and turn off during the night. Holy crap.
Not sure what this has to do with EVs but whatever.
Are you really sure about your numbers? Most houses heat by burning fuel and pumping the resulting heat around (losing some up the flue). Burn a fuel with a Joule of energy and you get .5 to .9 J of heat in the house. ACs move heat around so 1 J of energy used by the AC moves 3-5 J out of the house. Just roughing that up and it ought to take much more than 7x the raw fuel to heat your house than cool it.
Unless, of course, you heat with a heat pump. They did
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You might want to lose the aggression in your tone, when you clearly don't know what you are talking about. About 25% of generation in the US can start within an hour [eia.gov], and a good chunk of that can be up and running in under 10 minutes.
If: ... then why the hell would you eat the fuel cost of keeping things running
- the energy demand isn't there, and
- you can safely shut down the plant, and
- you can have it back up and running fairly rapidly, and
- demand is easily predictable
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Nukes are expensive to build but cheap to run. You want to run them 24/7 to maximize ROI, so they are a perfect match for the nighttime demand from charging EVs.
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Batteries can't make an airplane fly, but kerosene can. If we are to solve the problem of carbon emissions from transportation then we need synthesized hydrocarbon fuels. Fuels that we can use in airplanes and commuter cars. We can use nuclear power to run these fuel synthesis plants 24/7.
The problem of matching load to demand with nuclear power is a solved problem, and the solution was tested with solar thermal systems. Heat up some salt to melting point as the fluid for heat storage and transfer. Wit
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Batteries can't make an airplane fly
I'm afraid you may be mistaken on that point. https://www.bbc.com/future/art... [bbc.com]
The problem of matching load to demand with nuclear power is a solved problem, and the solution was tested with solar thermal systems
So maybe I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say here but if using solar thermal systems to store energy works where does nuclear fit in? Just use a solar farm and heat the salt directly with solar energy.
Once they close they will not be replaced by renewable energy, the capacity to build that out is already as high as the market will allow
So no one is building any more renewable energy plants? That is rather shocking news. You should let all the solar panel plants and wind turbine plants know that they can stop production.
Nuclear should clearly be a con
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If what you say is true then we solved global warming. We can stop building any nuclear or fossil fuel power plants because we have all the industrial capacity, land, raw material, labor, and whatever else to meet our energy needs with renewable energy at a cost that nothing else could compete with.
Good news everybody. We solved global warming!
What you are missing is that solar power takes at least an order of magnitude more land, materials, and labor than nuclear power. Claim nuclear power is too this o
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Solar often uses land that is already used. We call that "rooftop solar". Why would I give a fuck that the solar panels on roofs use more land than a reactor complex? That land is already being used, and that energy hitting those roofs is 100% going to waste.
Why does everyone seem to think that in order for one energy generation technique to be good, they have to try to shit on all other energy generation techniques? How about we harvest energy that is being totally wasted through known means (solar, wi
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If what you say is true then we solved global warming. We can stop building any nuclear or fossil fuel power plants because we have all the industrial capacity, land, raw material, labor, and whatever else to meet our energy needs with renewable energy
You were the one that indicated that renewable energy production was at maximum market capacity (unless I misunderstood what you were trying to say). If renewable energy has reached maximum market capacity then there is no reason to build any more.
I never said anywhere that global warming was solved.
I didn't say that we don't need nuclear. I actually stated that nuclear should be an option to consider.
Re:Wanna know a secret? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Maybe it could have been supported by the
S.2332 - Grid Modernization Act of 2019
116th Congress (2019-2020)
Buuuut, it was sponsored by Dems, so it did not go anywhere
Fun fact, grid modernization, including using super conducting main trunks [energy.gov], could make sure that you don't have to rely on the power plant down the street. As a matter of fact, plans put together during the Obama administration included connecting these superconducting trunks in large interconnects [nmlegis.gov] that would allow the wind form the plains, or the sun from the desert to power EVs in Chicago or New York
But those darned republicans, with their crafty donors who are neck deep in selling fossil fuels, just seem to always pop up with inane arguments and handy lies to try and scuttle the projects
Fascinating
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>"But those darned republicans, with their crafty donors who are neck deep in selling fossil fuels, just seem to always pop up with inane arguments and handy lies to try and scuttle the projects"
Sorry to break it to you, but such special interests are just as much attached to those darned democrats as well.
And that test cable was only 350 meters long, carrying only 34KW, and with a cost of $27 million. So perhaps each 1000 miles of 1000MW (a single typical power plant output) would cost what, $36 trilli
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Sure buddy, and if the entire internet was built out as a multiple of the cost to initiate the first legs of ARPANet it would have cost a lot too... Maybe you should read up on what a demonstration project is. The really good news is that it will operate at a temperature that would allow them to use liquid nitrogen a material they can chill from the atmosphere on site.
Thanks for self identifying, maybe next time you can go over the top raging about actual democratic special interests like a livable planet (
Re:Wanna know a secret? (Score:4, Interesting)
And that test cable was only 350 meters long, carrying only 34KW, and with a cost of $27 million.
That's a bit like saying that the first F-35 off the line cost $300B, so obviously it's too expensive to buy more than 1.
It isn't actually 34kW, it's 800 Amps at 34.5kV, or 27.6MW.
Most of that $27M was development work, not actually building the 350 meter line. That includes all the research just to know how to make the cable. You have techniques to be developed, equipment to make the line to buy, etc...
Of course, your estimate is three orders of magnitude low if you (I got $3.7 quadrillion) estimate that way, so yeah, that would probably nix development costs, assume quantity of scale, etc...
Still, I have to point out that at the numbers the US government operates at, spread out over 20 years, it'd still be a significant expense, but manageable.
For example, the first line was produced using an actual silver sheath, which is too expensive for common installs, but was the only thing that worked back then. The second used a much cheaper non-silver sheath using alloys since developed.
Honestly, what you'd do for this is just add superconducting to the lineup. I'd expect to see much more superconducting lines in and around NYC, for example, due to the shear demand for power in such a dense area. You'd still do your cost benefit analysis for various options when installing, and pick the best one. As demand increases and superconductor technology gets cheaper, it'll make sense in more areas.
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>"It isn't actually 34kW, it's 800 Amps at 34.5kV, or 27.6MW."
Oops, didn't catch that. Much more impressive than 34kW! And yeah, that would change the numbers a LOT. That's what I get for posting so late.
Thanks
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We already have a pretty good long distance transmission grid. Most of my power in Western Washington comes from the East side of the state. Some used to come from the middle of Montana.
What we don't have is local capacity to support large amounts of EV charging. Sore, we could put in a higher capacity grid. But most of the cost of that is digging up your neighborhood. Superconducting cables aren't necessary. Higher distribution voltages and larger conductors will do at a fraction of the cost. But one way
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Most electric vehicle charging is done overnight and most grids have spare generating and transmission capacity during that time. Most of the transmission problems are last mile, and are similar to any other commercial or industrial operation requiring above average amounts of power.
A combustion vehicle runs 100% on fossil fuels. An electric vehicle uses a variety of sources, depending on location. But where a combustion vehicle will never seen an improvement in emissions, the electric grid is constantly
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Pssst. don't tell slashmydots people are now also are having access to home energy production technology, like Solar Cells and Person Wind turbines which can offset the power grid needs.
Not a real secret (Score:2)
There are two key things to remember:
1. The transitions to EVs will be slow for the majority of the country. Annual sales of new vehicles, both EV and ICE, can give you an idea on the upper bounds for a rate of change. That doesn't change unless someone comes up with a practical ICE to EV conversion process.
2. Charging happens at night. For individuals the estimate is around 80% that they charge at night. For commercial EVs, it's almost 100% off-peak charging, outside of usual operational hours. This has be
Ahem the USPS is not a federal agency (Score:4, Insightful)
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Does USPS pay taxes? Compared to UPS, Fedex, DHL and others?
Given that it seems to perennially lose money, probably not. I don't know what is supposed to happen should it ever turn a profit.
We'll burn that bridge right about the time we have to worry about how global finance operates without T-bills because we've paid off the US national debt.
Re:Ahem the USPS is not a federal agency (Score:5, Insightful)
Most federal entities are subject to oversight by the GAO, and USPS has no reason to be exempted.
Re:Others go to jail for that. See Enron (Score:4, Informative)
Somebody lied that you. When any other employer raids the employee's retirement fund to cover other expenses, that's fraud and they go to jail. See Enron.
Pension shenanigans is about the least reason why Enron had people going to jail.
That said, from what I've read about the pension contribution requirements for the post office, it went far beyond the standard corporate "pay as you go" system, where you take what you expect to need in the pension fund for when a worker retires, divide by the number of hours you expect them to work in the job before retirement (So roughly 80k hours if you assume a 40 year career), and that's how much you need to contribute into the fund each year. Well, probably you'll get to apply a multiplier to factor in interest/capital growth over that period as well.
What the post office retirement fund requirement was set to was that they needed to have a worker's retirement completely funded basically day 1 of hiring them. Because they needed to have funded all of it's employees pension benefits 50 years in advance. [wikipedia.org]
Which means that if they hired me, they needed to assume that I was going to work there until I was 65+ and have all that money already in place. Not build it up as I worked there.
Here's the law. You can see what it says. (Score:1, Troll)
Here's the law:
https://www.govinfo.gov/conten... [govinfo.gov]
The whole bill looks kinda long, but the retirement stuff isn't long. It's section 802. It's 17 sentences.
Do you see anything in there about "pay 50 years in advance"? Nope.
Again, someone lied to you. Well, specifically a certain house rep lied to you by mentioning two unrelated things back to back, so that the newspapers then reported them as as if they were related.
The only *really* long term thing in there is they have to do what every private employer
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The only payments "required" is 802(c):
You then missed the payments of $5.x B required from 2007-2016 in 803(B)(B).
"The United States Postal Service shall pay into such Fund--"
5.4B,5.6B,5.4B, etc...
A bit later:
"B) Not later than September 30, 2017, and by September 30 of each
succeeding year, the United States Postal Service shall pay into such
Fund the sum of--"
Which kills any assertion you have that the law doesn't require them to pay anything on an annual basis.
If you want citations, because it's a bit complex(IE the law doesn't actually requir
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Love watching people bring this up; as if the Lizy Warrens of the world would not wet themselves at the prospect of requiring every commercial business to do the same for their pension beneficiaries.
Frankly - commercial companies offering pensions probably SHOULD be required to do something similar. Maybe not 75 years, but 50 or so... The idea you can loot your pension fund as free loan is little bonkers. Essentially your beneficiaries have to be come your potentially unwilling creditors without any say. Oh
The ideal application for electric vehicles (Score:5, Insightful)
Postal delivery is pretty close to the ideal application for electric vehicles. Lot of stop and go, so the regen braking is a big win. And the postal trucks go home to a fixed location every night; you don't need a network of remote chargers.
They want electric vehicles because they make a lot of sense for this application.
And, yes, if they're taking federal money, the GAO audits them, and if it turns out that they're choosing an option that is less economically effective, the GAO should point that out.
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If you use fair balanced comparisons between EV and ICE it makes a big difference though.
Sure ICE vehicles look great and cheap to operate when you can get gas at $2.00/gal and way underestimate the maintenance costs (or over estimate the costs for EVs). If you use realistic estimations it may just turn out that it is cheaper to buy and operate EVs that ICE vehicles. If it is cheaper to get EVs then it is easier for the USPS to "pay their own way".
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If the USPS is in the black and paying for it's own EV's all is well and good and it is none of the GAO's business what they are doing. What they definitely should not be doing is taking several billion dollars worth of EV subsidy strings from a congressional social spending bill. The postal service MUST remain politically neutral so it is safe for everyone to transmit
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I agree that EVs would be ideal for postal delivery.
However, the IC engines still have one advantage: In my area they still use the old Grumman LLVs, and you can hear the unique sound of the GM "Iron Duke" 4-banger straining to move from mailbox to mailbox from a quarter mile away, so it's easy to tell when the mail has been delivered.
If they switch to EVs, the USPS needs to modernize like Amazon and provide an online update the instant your mail is delivered, even if it's just the usual junk pamphlets.
Even
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You must really like your junk mail if you need to know the exact moment it hits your mailbox. 8^)
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If you want to know when your mailbox has mail in it, paint the floor black and put a reflectivity sensor in the top of it, connected to an ESP32. Hook the sensor up such that it triggers an interrupt so you can wake it up and ping you.
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If they switch to EVs, the USPS needs to modernize like Amazon and provide an online update the instant your mail is delivered, even if it's just the usual junk pamphlets.
Why is it important for everyone to know the moment their mail is delivered?
Re:Ahem the USPS is not a federal agency (Score:5, Interesting)
The USPS is not "independent of the Government" - if you think that, you clearly don't understand what "independent agency" means.
It is a Cabinet level agency. It's run by a board whose members are nominated by the President and approved by the Senate, and the Postmaster General is appointed by the same board.
The USPS hasn't had subsidies or tax breaks for nearly 40 years.
The USPS does in fact make money, unless Congress decides to fuck it over like it has in the past - by either forcing it to fund pensions for employees that aren't even born yet, or by preventing them from increasing postage fees, or any amount of other bullshit, because the USPS basically can't do anything without congressional approval; tacit or explicit.
Everything "wrong" with the USPS is the fault of the politicians pulling the strings behind the scenes. The USPS is a shining example of how government can create something good for the people, efficient and effective, which is why congress - especially conservatives - do everything they can to hurt it. God forbid the government actually do something well, or else people might come to expect it!
So no, it's neither private nor independent.
=Smidge=
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And answer to neither. Just like the Fed. Government is not running it.
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The USPS is not "independent of the Government"
It is more independent than most of the executive branch though.
It is a Cabinet level agency.
No, it isn't. Cabinet level agencies are the ones with a "secretary of" that agency (or in the case of the Justice Department, the Attorney General): State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HHS, HUD, Transportation, Energy, Education, VA, DHS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is the government expected to build charger stations?
How many gas stations does the government own, outside of military bases?
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
Why is the government expected to build charger stations?
For its own fleet. Instead of depending on the public charging network (and fast charging), the idea is to charge pool vehicles, mail trucks, etc. overnight. Relieving the pressure on the public network, allowing for slower charge rates and not having to pay federal employees for their time while their gov't vehicle charges and they are banging a truck stop lot lizard.
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
How many gas stations does the government own, outside of military bases?
Thousands.
Yes, all the military bases, but pretty much every federal facility that has vehicles has its own pumps.
And, yes, that includes post offices. Any large post office will have its own gas pumps. Not little rural post offices, but all the city post offices do.
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And, yes, that includes post offices. Any large post office will have its own gas pumps. Not little rural post offices, but all the city post offices do.
I don't think USPS is unique in this. My impression is many organizations operating large vehicle fleets have their own gas pumps so they can buy wholesale.
It makes sense for each Post Office to have chargers for the trucks so they can all recharge overnight. Whether that's a few high speed chargers with charge monkeys moving the trucks around or a low-speed plug for each truck in it's parking stall is TBD. This should be part of the purchasing plan.
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a real opportunity here. As others have posted, EV postal delivery vehicles generally charge in the in evening. If you put some of these in the parking lots of the post office, during the day you can make the chargers available to the public to use (at some cost) and ideally defray some of the charger costs and offer a service. DDG says there are ~ 30,000 post office locations. Not all will be right for EV charging but many (most ?) will be. Win-win.
Customers during the day, trucks at night [Re:So?] (Score:2)
Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Since postal delivery trucks are out during the day, sure, you might be able to use the chargers for customers during the day, why not? Central post offices are usually located right in the middle of the city, too, a good place for people to charge.
The tricky part, though, is that you'd now need to make them pay chargers, with some infrastructure for payment, and you'll have to put some gates on the lot, and you're going to have to be pretty hard-nosed about towing the c
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Why is the government expected to build charger stations?
How many gas stations does the government own, outside of military bases?
Even small cities typically have their own gas pumps at places like their public works facilities. City trucks aren't filling up at your neighborhood gas station.
Luckily native Americans built your roads (Score:4, Insightful)
The lack of imagination and awareness in all of the responses here makes me wonder if you thought the national highway network already existed when cars were invented because it was built by the native Americans, or it came after the car.
It seems to me that the problem of installing a bunch of chargers is a smaller problem than building a national road network, but for some reason people here think it is an insurmountable problem.
The fabled American can-do attitude seems to be more a more a can't-do attitude.
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Not only were the roads always here (well before any cars) but so were all the gas stations.
We can't have EVs since there aren't any places to charge them but we can use ICE vehicles because the infrastructure has always been here.
Note: Since this is the Internet after all, I feel that I must state that the above was a sarcastic post and wasn't meant to reflect the reality of the world we live in.
Had price in three months: $3.02 (Score:2)
It's kinda silly to complain that their projections don't assume the current gas price spike lasts forever.
Even if you buy it today, gasoline for delivery in July is priced at $3.02, not $4.22.
https://www.marketwatch.com/in... [marketwatch.com]
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Oh, that is funny... take price gouging by fossil fuel industry and spin it as greenies playing games
fascinating
Re: Had price in three months: $3.02 (Score:1)
Not quite.
Take opportunistic price gouging and panic buying, and despite all evidence, theory, and historical data to the contrary...claim that the prices will keep climing into the stratosphere forever.
Two types of people do this: grifters looking to make a buck by shorting oil and gas futures and grifters looking to make a buck by selling you a solar panel on top of a magic beanstalk.
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Take opportunistic price gouging and panic buying, and despite all evidence, theory, and historical data to the contrary...claim that the prices will keep climing into the stratosphere forever.
But I also see the opposite a lot: gas prices drop to two dollars & change, and people say "gas is cheap! I don't care about mileage, I'll buy me a Ram 1500 TRX at 12 miles a gallon" on the assumption that the price will stay forever.
Re: Had price in three months: $3.02 (Score:1)
Flipping that around, I bought myself an SUV with a 6 cylinder engine that gets between 18 and 25 mpg depending on what I'm doing on the assumption that gasoline prices above the point where I couldn't eat them are unsustainable unless civilization were to collapse.
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You want to talk about grifters you don't have to look any further than the gas companies for that. The price of crude went up to $120+/barrel so the price of gas spikes up. Now the price of crude is below $100/barrel yet the price of gasoline hasn't seen an equivalent drop in price (at least it hasn't here).
Re: Had price in three months: $3.02 (Score:1)
That happened in 08 too.
All them high prices encouraged behaviors that built up stored supplies of crude and refined gasoline and bam: 1.50 per gallon the following year.
Ain't no free lunch.
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Even if you buy it today, gasoline for delivery in July is priced at $3.02, not $4.22.
That's just someone shorting a commodity. It's entirely possible they've bet wrong and will have to eat a loss if gas doesn't drop by then. Speculation is literally just legal gambling.
Lol Susie doesn't set the price of gas (Score:3)
> That's just someone shorting a commodity.
The global price of gas isn't determined by "just someone shorting".
It's determined by the combined research of EVERYONE who buys and sells significant quantities, from BP to Walmart.
Essentially a vote by everyone who has reason to know or care, it's Walmart and Tyson buying gas for their trucks, and it's gas companies selling it - agreeing on a price, because that's how prices are set.
> Speculation is literally just legal gambling.
Gas futures are normally ex
Futures [Re:Lol Susie doesn't set the price...] (Score:2)
> Speculation is literally just legal gambling.
Gas futures are normally exactly the opposite of gambling. They are about REDUCING risk.
Almost. Futures are about selling risk. This reduces risk for the people who sell it, but increases risk for the people who buy it.
Done right, this makes a market more efficient: the people who necessarily have price risk in one specific area can sell that risk, while the people who buy the risk can spread their exposure across many areas, and hence dilute it. (But futures markets aren't always so perfect, and some people use them as, yes, legalized gambling.)
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So you're telling me that crypto will solve the energy problem, too?
Shit I better go get me some before it's too late!
One little thing you forgot (Score:2)
> Almost. Futures are about selling risk. This reduces risk for the people who sell it, but increases risk for the people who buy it.
There's one little thing you forget. For some people, the price of gas going up is bad for them, for others it's good for them.
If company A peoduces gas (or pecans or anything else), a DROP in market price hurts them. They want to be protected from the risk of *falling* prices.
if company B buys the thing, they want to be protected from *increasing* prices.
Setting some of th
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You're forgetting that while ultimately commodities are intended for companies who will utilize the product, futures contracts are also traded by speculators. That's where the gambling comes in.
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You do realize that $3.02/gal is still 1.5x the estimate of $2.00/gal that was used to make ICE vehicle look better don't you?
Do you even realize you're lying? (Score:2)
Do you even realizing you're lying when you do that?
Or do you actually believe the stupid shit you make up, because you wish it?
Your mom would be ashamed of you.
For anyone curious, the prediction (before Russia invaded Ukraine), was that the wholesale cost of gas would be $2.19 - $2.55.
Currently, the cost of gas for delivery a year from now is $2.54.
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Um, I'm not the one making up numbers.
You were the one that pointed out the July delivered gas is set to cost $3.02/gal. That is your figure not mine. The math I was taught at school would indicate that $3.02 is 1.5x $2.00. The figure of $2.00 is what was used to calculate the running cost of the new ICE vehicles (per the summary so if the summary got it wrong that is on them not me).
Could you please point out exactly where I lied when I used your figures to indicate that the price you quoted for July deliv
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> Ok, I re-read the summary and see that they say that the price of gas used was $2.00/gal less than current prices and not that they used $2.00/gal as the price.
That's fair. In fact I suspect they may have intentionally worded it to be less than perfectly clear.
Btw they said "nearly $2" less. Because of course The wholesale price used for the estimate is NOT $2 less than the peak retail price. They also compared wholesale to retail and peak to average. So kinda seems like they were trying to b
So tell me.... (Score:1, Troll)
I'll keep an eye on Nancy's portfolio in the mean time.
Why no investments in synthesized fuels? (Score:2, Troll)
The US Navy demonstrated a process to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels using carbon and hydrogen from seawater, a process powered by electricity. The process doesn't have to use seawater, any water exposed to the air will have dissolved CO2 for the process. The process is expensive right now, about double what fossil fuels cost, but with rising fossil fuel costs and improvements in the technology that's a problem that will solve itself one way or another.
The US Nay plans to use nuclear power for the electrici
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What problem would synthesized fuels solve? You're putting in more energy than you get out, you're still polluting,
The process takes electrical energy, which can be produced by multiple means, and turns it into liquid hydrocarbons, which are a storable, energy-dense fuel for transportation.
Might be useful, if electrical power moves in a big way away from hydrocarbon fuels (As long as a large segment of electrical power comes from burning hydrocarbons, though, it makes not sense use that electricity to produce synthetic hydrocarbons; just use the hydrocarbons in the first place).
Almost no EV chargers... (Score:3)
Transitioning (Score:2)
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As an EV owner... (Score:3)
If you're on a road trip and your favorite DC Fast Charger is occupied or not working with your adaptor for some reason (looking at you, Tritium), then you can usually seek out an L2 charger, which is the most common.
The problem is: L2 charges at a miserable 25mi/hr of charge. If you arrive to an L2 charger you need and it's occupied, you're going to be waiting for hours not minutes. If you need to add on 100 miles on L2, you had better take a nap or find something to do for 4+ hours.
Anyone road tripping in an EV should have adapters to use campground TT-30 and NEMA 14-50 receptacles for dire emergencies, but the infrastructure needs to be built out with more stalls and more DC Fast Chargers.
We Need Ebike, Emotorcycle, and Scooter Chargers (Score:4, Interesting)
At Orchard Valley Coffee, one on the most popular coffee shops in Silicon Valley, there are usually around 6 assorted ebikes and scooters there on a given day--and that's with no infrastructure.
I would like to understand the critera. (Score:2)
A big advantage of EV's is the ability to charge at home. So you can leave on your commute every day with a full charge. And one would need the more public fast charging for those who are one a long drive. I fill my tank every week, So I drive to the gas station, and I am mostly filling up with a set of regulars who are also filling up their tank for a week. At the gas stations most of the people are local, with a very few people who are more than 10 miles away from their home.
I expect roughly 80% of th
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I am not sure if the government charger numbers, are accounting for the fact that most people will just charge from home.
This is about government owned chargers for government fleet vehicles.
No one else accounted for gas prices either. (Score:2)
...namely that USPS used gas prices that are about $2 per gallon less than the current national average...
Oh, so they used prices from January?
There's lots of things you can fault the USPO for. I'll let this one slide. No one anticipated gas prices going up so much so fast.
Additional quirk (Score:2)
In addition, remember that the USPS often has their own gas pumps.
The national price difference between retail and bulk probably averages around $1/gallon. Ergo, the post office can fill up cheaper than you can, at the expense of needing to maintain their own tanks and pumps, like the military often does. After all, the USPS can save money by paying for bulk delivery and probably avoid most of the taxes, as they're a federal institution.
This also saves them money because they don't need to divert to fuel