Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Power Transportation

America Has One Public Charger for Every 20 Electric Cars (msn.com) 131

Posted by EditorDavid from the electric-dreams dept.
This week the Washington Post noted that just last year nearly 1.2 million more electric vehicles were sold in America, "accounting for over 7 percent of total new car sales and a new national record." But "data show that EV sales are far outpacing growth in the U.S. charging network... In 2016, there were seven electric cars for each public charging point; today, there's more than 20 electric cars per charger."

The article points out that 80% of America's EV's are just charging at home, according to the U.S. Energy Department. (Which seems to leave one public charger for every four EVs that don't charge at home.) And the article notes several other important caveats: Experts say that there is no "magic number" for the best ratio of EVs on the road to public chargers. "It absolutely depends on the local landscape," said Peter Slowik, U.S. passenger vehicles lead for the International Council on Clean Transportation. Globally, there is about 1 public charger for every 11 EVs, according to the International Energy Agency. But in countries where there are more single-family homes and garages, the ratio could be lower....

In a way, the United States' slow charging build-out could be a benefit in the long-term: Many automakers have now promised to switch to Tesla's charging connector in the next few years, which could help put most cars on the same system.

Not everyone agrees there is a delay. Slowik says that his team's research shows that the United States is on-track for building out the charging needed over the next eight years. An increase in the number of EVs per public charger is a natural part of the adoption process, he argues, that will subside with more sales and as more chargers come online.
Still, the article argues if Americans continue buying electric cars, public chargers will be essential "to support long road trips, help apartment-dwellers go electric and alleviate overnight pressure on electricity grids."

Today U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reiterated America's commitment to having a national network of 500,000 charges by 2030, saying the country is at "the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

America Has One Public Charger for Every 20 Electric Cars More

America Has One Public Charger for Every 20 Electric Cars

Comments Filter:

  • Banks only keep a fraction of the assets needed to pay back all their customers because not everyone requests the bank to pay them back at the same time.

    Same thing here: not all the cars need charging at the same time.

    And as we all know, this has never failed for the banking industry. So it's fine.

    • Re:But but... It's like a fractional reserve syste (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @10:48PM (#64501617)
      Oversubscription of chargers are ok, but

      Wait times.

      If people are queuing up, there are not enough chargers.

      The real test is around Christmas. People are away from home and it's cold. This year, I had 1km charge left in minus 25C and had to sit in the car with the power off for 45 minutes because firewood delivery vehicles chose to charge to 100%.

      Charging stations who increase prices after 30 minutes or 80% help a lot, but in a place with over 85% new car sales being electric, I sort of deserve waiting for driving on an old BEV. I adopted 1-2 generations too early and made a huge mistake choosing BMW

      • Thanksgiving has a lot of car travel too. It's not as cold as Xmas in most places. In San Jose, my lowest temperature days are always around Thanksgiving, though. Actual gets below freezing at night . Have not seen it happen at other times or the year. At least according to my z-wave outdoor device temperature probes.

    • It's not about how many EVs per charger there are. It's about whether there are enough chargers to have enough anywhere you go. If I drive to a small resort town ti stay for the weekend, will there be enough chargers to handle the summer peak when ten thousand people flood in to go to the beach. Will there be a fast charger every 120 miles on every highway. Canada has a population of 4 people per sq km, meaning there is a lot of highway with hardly anyone around, but the person trying to drive down it w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        As someone who once made the mistake of assuming gas stations would be common on heavily used state highways I recall once arriving at the gas station running on vapor. That taught me to check where gas stops were on unfamiliar routes. With a BEV it will tell me before I depart where charging is so the risk of that happening is less these days.

        Putting charging stations in remote locations is less costly to install and run than putting in gas stations so I would expected finding a charging station will
        • But will it tell you if that charger is going to work when you get there, or how many cars you will be back in line? There is no way you left with a full tank and didn't see a gas station until you were almost empty. I'm thinking you miscalculated how much you have left. Most newer cars calculate that for you now.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ukoda ( 537183 )
            I have never come across a charger that didn't work. Then again I am not in the USA where non-working chargers is an issue. From what I can tell is the difference is many chargers installed in the USA were for compliance requirements where here they are installed to make a profit and you don't make a profit on non-workling chargers.

            In 4 years I have waited twice to use a charger and the longest wait was about 5 minutes. To be fair I mainly charge at home but driving past charging locations it is rare
            • Even ignoring the fact that most ICEs have built in GPS that will tell you where the gas stations are now, you will always be doing more planning with EVs in their current state.

    • Banks only keep a fraction of the assets needed to pay back all their customers because not everyone requests the bank to pay them back at the same time.

      Same thing here: not all the cars need charging at the same time.

      And as we all know, this has never failed for the banking industry. So it's fine.

      Were it my turn to give out the points, you get all the funnies.

  • This might bear on the subject above. We need waaaaaaaaay more charging and America needs waaaaay more EV's if we're going to advance ourselves.

    Forgetting about the carbon footprints, EV's stand to dramatically lower the costs of everything in the manner that high gas prices are said to raise them. That is, EV's are blindingly efficient compared to internal combustion engine (ICE) cars and trucks, so the dramatically reduced transportation costs for people and cargo SHOULD result in a disproportionate a

    • The slowdown is mostly due to the restrictions on the tax credit introduced in the inflation reduction act. There are restorations based on income as well as origin of components. You can thank president Joe "coal" Manchin for that.

      • It's also largely related to the higher interest rates on leased / financed vehicles now. Gas cars are having the same issues as EVs, but EVs will upset the petrochemical applecart so it's much more trendy to talk about how they're slowing doing in an effort to make it look like they're failing and no-one wants them.

        Then again it's largely the automakers fault simply because they chose to switch to the higher rates for financing instead of keeping the rates low to continue encouraging new sales; just becau

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "The promised Solid State Battery (SSB) ... will be a big advantage since such cars should be superior to ICE in all aspects of driving, except maybe refueling. "
      BEVs deliver this promise today, SSBs do not change that promise at all.

      "It is doubly important since such batteries cannot be charged overnight at home. At least not in 1 night. SSBs to drive cars 750 miles, which is 2 1/2 times the current cars with 100 KwH batteries, means that the SSB must be a 250 KwH battery. You're not going to get a 250 Kw

    • Your first two paragraphs are absolutely SPOT ON. I am in complete agreement.

      But for most day-to-day benefit, a 220v charger is FINE. In fact, for most folks, it's overkill. Not saying you shouldn't go for 220v over 110v -- it's way more convenient, but really, for most day-to-day driving even a bob-wall-socket is enough. Assuming you're not driving a Hummer, that is. because most people drive less than 35 miles a day. That's easily overnight on a 110v charger. All talk of electric cars focuses on th

    • This might bear on the subject above. We need waaaaaaaaay more charging and America needs waaaaay more EV's if we're going to advance ourselves.

      And waaaaaaaaay more grid capacity to handle the load all of those EVs are going to cause, as well as biting the bullet and paying for the storage capacity to handle supplying that load at night, when the solar generation drops to zero, and during calm periods when the wind generation drops to zero, as well as the excess capacity to charge those storage systems when wind and solar generation are producing power. It's still funny that we always see announcements about the deployment of X capacity of wind or

  • Way better than gas stations (Score:4, Insightful)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @10:32PM (#64501605)
    284 million registered cars in the US, 1% is electric, 145k fuel stations. That's around 2k gas cars per gas station, even if gas stations can do an average of 8 cars at a time that doesn't really put a dent in that ratio comparison.

    • Re: Way better than gas stations (Score:4, Interesting)

      by madbrain ( 11432 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @11:33PM (#64501645) Homepage Journal

      To be fair, the charge time is usually much longer than a fill-up at a pump, even with a DC fast charger. Our 2017 Bolt certainly isn't so fast to charge over CCS. We haven't been in a position to need to use it, except when the garage door was broken, and the soonest the guy could fix it was a week out. And that was still just a 25 min charge.

      • Most of our EV car charging are done at home when the car is sitting over night doing nothing. Cheapish (~$300)level 2 charger that can deliver 7 to 10 kW on a dryer 240 socket are available. Most common daily commute of say upto 200 miles in 1 day can be taken care at night. We need public chargers if we live in apartments with no level 2 charger access or going on long road drive....
        This counter balance some of the time that charging at public chargers may take 10mins (most cars now take 10 mins to

        • THIS (Score:2)

          by stooo ( 2202012 )

          This.
          Get a Chargehanger :)

        • "Most" is the operative word. There will be still plenty of times for most people that don't fit into "most" times. I'm not paying more for a vehicle that is "mostly" as good.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          "Cheapish (~$300)level 2 charger that can deliver 7 to 10 kW on a dryer 240 socket are available."

          Not very many drivers have access to a "dryer 240 socket" that can deliver 7-10 kW. Most dryer sockets are 30A which would provide 5.8KW charging and how many homes allow a car to be pulled up close the the laundry?

          Yes, $300 can get you one of these "chargers" but it's very misleading to suggest that $300 is what an L2 charger would cost, particularly if you are expecting > 30A L2 charging like you have sai

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tizan ( 925212 )

            Not very many drivers have access to a "dryer 240 socket" that can deliver 7-10 kW. Most dryer sockets are 30A which would provide 5.8KW

            30A x 240V = 7.2 kW. Most standalone houses build after the 50's have 240V access in the panel...they are used for ovens and dryers. Anyways even 5.8KW is still more than 4 times faster than L1 charger at 120V at 12 A...and will still charge 80% of most cars overnight. So even if you don't want to pay an electrician to make a proper outlet near your car. There is plenty of RVs that have 220 V extension cables for sale that are 25 ft or 50 ft. But go on... ICE with 20% efficiency from energy to mechanica

      • To be fair, the charge time is usually much longer than a fill-up at a pump, even with a DC fast charger.

        To be actually fair most EVs will never use a DC fast charger or sit on some forecourt. Consider literally every service station that isn't on the side of a major highway redundant.

        Our 2017 Bolt certainly isn't so fast to charge over CCS.

        Your old car (by EV standards) isn't fast? No kidding. My 2020 Polestar is quite fast to charge over CCS. But interesting the 2023 Polestar is even faster. We are talking about infrastructure and future car purchases. Unless you're quoting figures from 2024 your point isn't relevant. No one buying a new car will end up with somet

    • 284 million registered cars in the US, 1% is electric, 145k fuel stations. That's around 2k gas cars per gas station, even if gas stations can do an average of 8 cars at a time that doesn't really put a dent in that ratio comparison.

      You didn't factor in cars/hour/pump. A refuel takes ~5 minutes so each pump can do ~12 cars/hour. Using your "8 at a time" number (which I think is low, double that is common in my area) means the average station can refuel ~96 cars/hour or ~2300/day. So we have the capacity to refuel ~334 million cars/day.

  • May be one for every 20 cars, just not -YOUR- car (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spazmonkey ( 920425 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @10:43PM (#64501613)

    Many that appear on maps as "public" are not, or on restricted access land, some are tethered to car brand, and most are exclusive to specific subscription services.
    "Public" is a relative term when it comes to chargers.
     

  • I can count on two hands the number of times I have charged in public by necessity, rather than because it was free.

    1 in 20 would be a pretty good number if they were all DC fast chargers.

  • We got a dupe supercharger!

    This dupe article was posted so fast after the original that the first article was still on top on the page.

    Duping at home usually took a full day until I installed a dupe supercharger in the garage. Now I can fully dupe several articles a day.

  • I reckon you really only need chargers for EVs that are traveling long distances. If you're just driving around town, you're charging it at your home. It's not until you decide to drive it more than ~150 miles from home, that you need to visit a public charger.

  • America's behind Europe (Score:4, Informative)

    by theweatherelectric ( 2007596 ) on Monday May 27, 2024 @12:14AM (#64501715)
    America is quite a ways behind Europe in EV infrastructure. I don't see that Musk firing Tesla's charging infrastructure team [reuters.com] is going to improve that situation in the US.

    The US needs to start building compatible, interoperable EV infrastructure. All brands of EV charger must be able to charge all brands of EV. That's what Europe has done for a long time. It makes sense and it works.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tizan ( 925212 )

      Americans have illusions...how many people with F150 really use it to carry and tow stuff on a regular basis (not just once in a year, where you can rent a u-haul truck). My neighbor F150 is spotless..no dirt not a scratch. Similarly Americans are being told they drive 500 miles regularly that is why EV is not suited for them ...when they barely do 30 miles daily on average and they may go on 500 miles to 1000 miles drive once or twice a year.
      European countries are small relatively so they have no illusio

      • Re:America's behind Europe (Score:4, Insightful)

        by stooo ( 2202012 ) on Monday May 27, 2024 @02:03AM (#64501847) Homepage

        >> European countries are small relatively so they have no illusion of doing 500 miles or more jaunts every week.
        Yes.
        We like quality of life :)

      • It's not about what you do "on average". It's about what you think you may need to use the car/truck for when you purchase it. I work from home, but the airport four hours away from me has flights that are half price and if I'm going to the airport that far away I want the comfort of knowing how long it will take me to get there rather than risking a lineup at a charger.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "Guess why Tesla is getting out of the business of car charging."

        Citation please.

        • "Guess why Tesla is getting out of the business of car charging."

          Citation please.

          Tesla laid off the supercharger team so they may be pausing new deployments. They have already deployed > 50k superchargers worldwide, half of those in the USA

    • America is quite a ways behind Europe in EV infrastructure. I don't see that Musk firing Tesla's charging infrastructure team [reuters.com] is going to improve that situation in the US.

      The US needs to start building compatible, interoperable EV infrastructure. All brands of EV charger must be able to charge all brands of EV. That's what Europe has done for a long time. It makes sense and it works.

      Must is not responsible for building America's entire EV infrastructure. He already built over 25,000 supercharger ports in the US alone. If you want him to build and maintain more of them then write him a check for a few billion dollars to pay for it.

      • write him a check for a few billion dollars to pay for it.

        No need to. The Supercharger business was already profitable, but Musk threw a tantrum and fired them all. Musk is really bad for Tesla and it's time for him to go. It's remarkable that people still make excuses for him.

        In Europe, Tesla is just one charging provider of many. Many businesses have invested in Europe's EV infrastructure because they can all build to a common standard.

        • write him a check for a few billion dollars to pay for it.

          No need to. The Supercharger business was already profitable

          Really? Exactly how profitable?
          Where in the 2023 Tesla annual report are the revenue and net profit from the supercharger public charging network listed?

          • They put it in Services & Other. Tesla employees themselves say the network is profitable. It comes from opening the network to all EV brands for higher utilization. Their European operations have benefited from that. North America is starting to benefit from it as well.

            • They put it in Services & Other. Tesla employees themselves say the network is profitable. It comes from opening the network to all EV brands for higher utilization. Their European operations have benefited from that. North America is starting to benefit from it as well.

              Exactly - it is not broken out so there is no way for us to know exactly how profitable it is. We also don't know how much benefit they would get from adding more ports over the 25,000 already deployed. According to https://www.rochesterfirst.com... [rochesterfirst.com]

              "Musk, he said, may see the Supercharger network as a money-loser despite opening it to other automakers, so he’s cutting expenses there in an effort to restore profit margins, which have been reduced as EV sales have slowed.

              There are significant costs fo

              • Exactly - it is not broken out so there is no way for us to know exactly how profitable it is.

                Not "exactly". You've gone from disbelief that's profitable to accepting that it's profitable. So you accept that I don't need to give Musk billions for an already profitable charging network.

    • The US needs to start building compatible, interoperable EV infrastructure.

      Ummm, you can't corner the market if you use standardized infrastructure. Americans won't start a business unless they can be guaranteed monopoly rates in the future. Everyone wants to be Microsoft.

  • My family has 3 EVs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by linuxguy ( 98493 ) on Monday May 27, 2024 @01:57AM (#64501843) Homepage

    And we use a public charger maybe once a year. Lack of easy access could be an issue in denser population centers where people do not have access to chargers at home. I wonder what percentage of those people also do not have cars at all and use public transportation.

    Anyway, with an ICE car, I never had an option. I had to go to a gas station for a fill up. With EVs, many of us can charge at home when needed.

    • You can fill up with fuel at home too. Unless you have some shitty ass HOA or something that won't let you keep a 50-200 gallon tank in your garage / the side of the garage. You will get your fuel for cheaper than at the pump, but with delivery fees it might just even out to being the same. Even then you can have a couple of 5 gallon gas containers.

      Every farm in Wisconsin has both diesel and gasoline delivered. There are many people who have tanks in the smaller towns as well, especially for the towns that

      • Every farm in Wisconsin should have some solar panels on the barn. They could charge a beater Leaf and most of the day-to-day driving they do would otherwise do in a pickup would be basically free. Then they could use the pickup for things it was absolutely needed for, pay less for that gas, and keep the truck longer.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ukoda ( 537183 )
          BEV utes (pick ups) are now starting to appear. Given time farmers will adopt them because they are not BEV hater, they are simply practical. With plenty of space and solar panels becoming quite cheap the farmers will run the numbers, they are good at that, and when charging BEV farm vehicles from solar works out cheaper than trucking in gas they will switch over. It is simply a mater of time. I live rural I have notice that BEV cars are already becoming popular since all rural homes have electricity bu

  • Caveat (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Monday May 27, 2024 @06:03AM (#64502133)
    The key caveat - As the article points out - Is many people charge at home.

    We've had an EV for nearly five years. I can count on one hand the number of times we use a public charger in a year, and that's usually only because there happens to be one there when we arrive in a parking lot or whatever.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bsolar ( 1176767 )

      The key caveat - As the article points out - Is many people charge at home.

      Which is the main reason I recently got another ICE car instead of electric: I live in an apartment complex and the landlord for now has no plans of installing the charging infrastructure in the underground car park.

      The EU is pushing "right to plug" legislation exactly for this reason: until I will be able to charge my car in my own parking place at home, EVs will not even be an option.

      • Re:Caveat (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Monday May 27, 2024 @07:34AM (#64502307)
        ...yes. Does not work for you.

        But there are millions and millions of two-car families who live in detached homes and townhouses with driveways for whom charging at home is relatively straightforward.

        Those millions of people are the low-hanging fruit.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          And that's about half of American drivers...and they are addressed already. The public charger problem is NOT a problem for them.

          But sure, we should focus our attention on the most privileged and entitled, right? Lets limit our problem solving to only solved problems, you know, the "low-hanging fruit".

      • Complete agreement. This is a huge problem and is going to create haves and have-nots. We need plugs everywhere. It's so strange, since your landlord would make money on it, even if his/her markup was small.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        It may take a while but once your landlord realises he is loosing tenants and it gets harder to get the kind of tenants he wants he will bite the bullet and add charging to the car park. This is simply a repeat of what happened in the past to landlords who refused to allow broadband Internet connections to be installed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      So since public chargers don't benefit you...?

      "many people charge at home"
      Half of all drivers have no option to charge at home. For the most part, those do not have EVs because of that. Perhaps you could consider the issue in a broader context than your own selfish interest.

  • Is that almost every car dealership has a fast charger that is âoepublicâoe and counted but is usually blocked by the dealers own ice inventory or in a part of the lot they close outside business hours, or outright turned off. That 1:20 number is pretty meaningless unless itâ(TM)s geo-specific and couple with the ratio of cars that use public charging. EVs need the right infrastructure, in the right places, but interests who only stand to benefit (economically) should not be involved in the p

  • Owned 2 EV's for 5 years and been to a public super charger twice. Public chargers are irrelevant. Home chargers are the important part. Every new home should be required to put them in the garage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      It's cute that you think every "new home" has a garage. Let them eat cake.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        I agree, most vehicles are parked outdoors. The neighbor with teenagers has five cars in their driveway.

    • ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

      I've never paid for electricity for either of my EVs. Not once. I've had one for 5 years now.

  • Put a charger in your front yard. Put one on your garage. A cheap, slow charger that'll get someone a few miles to make it to the next open DC charger.

    Charge an ABSURD rate. (You know the DC chargers have very roughly a 400% markup on electricity right?) You'll make a few bucks now and then. It'll pay for itself in a few months, and from then on it'll be pure profit. Every farm in the country should have one. People in the city doing it, if they have space up front, could either charge a massive mar

  • Given how common home charging is, public chargers are more commonly used for road trips and don't get as much routine usage as gas stations do. Normally this is not a problem but come holiday breaks, when everyone hits the road at the same time suddenly you have a problem.

    Of course the same problem occurs with gas stations where you suddenly have queues that don't normally exist but the issue is worse for charging as the ratio of normal use to peak use is much higher. This is the invisible downside of

  • Stating the obvious (Score:3)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Monday May 27, 2024 @09:46PM (#64504195)

    Some things that folks tend to overlook:

    Thing number one:

    Not everyone lives in a home and, thus, have zero capacity to charge at home. While I don't have the data that shows how many people actually live in apartments / condos, I know it's high enough to be a problem about how / where they're going to charge an EV. This is a rather large concern for those folks and rightfully so.

    Thing number two:

    Unless we come up with some super battery-charging breakthough, it takes too long to charge an EV vs an ICE vehicle. From what I read about the Teslas, it takes about half an hour ( ~25 minutes ) to charge to 80% on a super-charger. Whereas I filled up my tank 75% ( 1/4 tank to full ) in one minute, fifteen seconds. ( Yes, I timed it ) Let's just call it two minutes to make the math easier for those who need the extra time. We can fill up fifteen ICE vehicles in the same time it takes to charge one EV to approximately the same amount.

    To have the same throughput / efficiency as a gas station, you will need significantly MORE charging stations than you have gas pumps today.
    Dare I say 15x more ? ( 1 gas pump = 15 ICE vehicles in thirty minutes whereas you would need 15 charging stations to get the same amount of EV's ready )

    I just don't see that happening to be honest.

    This is a big one actually. Without the capacity of charging stations to handle the sheer numbers of vehicles that need charging, the wait times will make the 70's gas lines look silly by comparison.

    Thing number three:

    It's a bad idea to put all of your eggs in one basket. Those whose homes are all electric ( no gas lines available in the neighborhood ) understand this all too well. When a natural disaster hits and your power goes out for a few days for some and up to a Month for others, it becomes crystal clear why you shouldn't run everything off of a single power source. ( Yes, I hear you people out there screaming Solar. You need to come to the realization that not everyone can afford such things and probably can't afford the storage systems ( read that batteries ) required to make a Solar installation useful when the power goes out.

    Hell, most people don't even know that a Solar Installation doesn't do squat for you if the power goes out. Your transfer switch will disconnect your panels from the main lines to keep you from electrocuting the very folks who are trying to fix the problem. Which means, unless you have a battery storage system, no power for you either. Power walls are only $15k each :|

    Recall from an earlier statement that there are those who live in apartments / condos to see the flaws in that logic.

    Thing number four:

    Resale value. No one wants used EV's. Even if they get a good deal on the vehicle, the horror stories of having to spend ludicrous amounts of money to replace the battery array is a reality. Few will run that risk which is why the used market for EV's are abysmal. Along the same lines go ask your insurance company what your rates will do if you switch to an EV. I guarantee you your rates won't be going down . . . . . .

    Until they can be competiive in price, range and refueling / recharging times, they'll be nothing more than a niche item.
    ( We're pretty close on price and range already, but not anywhere near where we need to be when it comes to charge times / vehicle capacity )

    • To have the same throughput / efficiency as a gas station, you will need significantly MORE charging stations than you have gas pumps today.

      Or.. hear me out... batteries could be standardized and hot-swappable which would make your "gas" station visit much shorter as it is quicker to swap out a battery than it is to fill a tank up with liquid...

      But I know, that is purely a crazy idea that could NEVER work... but here we are.

Slashdot Top Deals

You will lose an important tape file.

Close