Bikes, electric cars, fuel costs

Or in hot weather as we are now getting extreams of both

If I run out of petrol on the motorway the garage brings me a 5 litre bidon, what happens to battery that just run out due to roadworks, strikes, accidents etc….

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Never thought of that. I guess they bring you a generator and you sit there for 5 hours charging it.

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I can tell you only one thing - I get more range from my e-bike (pedal assist) battery (17ah) in Winter, than Summer…

But I guess many on here, living in the Northern Hemisphere, may well scoff at my idea of “cold weather” - i.e. here in Perth - in July, some days the mercury only gets as high as 18 celsius (65 Fahrenheit… that’s Brass Monkey weather to me…

I fuelled up with 98 octane maybe a week or few days before Trump started the oil crisis?

I only ever put 98 octane in it… I remember once - riding across Australia, one servo (petrol station) only had 91 octane unleaded… I got noticeably less range on 91 octane fuel…

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Thats good… 98 has fuel system cleaners added to it.
Sounds OK . Not the problem.

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Just been out to garage and started it - problem seems to have “gone away”…

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Great. Its hard to think what high revs might do to a fuel injected system.

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There is some drop in range in cold weather, maybe 5%. Our average trip is under 40 miles, so it’s never a problem.

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If you’re not sure, just don’t drive. Running out of charge on a trip is normally a matter of poor planning.

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Normally I would agree, but last year on our way home the french farmers did a strike and blocked all routes between France and spain and we were stuck for 3 hours no movement at all. Yes I had filled the car to get from the airport so no problem, but it was cold dark so needed a heated. In electric car how do you heat interior ?

I wonder if you could get an air lock in a fuel injected system? The revving may have made the fuel cavitate.

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Some have resistance, some have small heat pumps. Mine turns on the front seat warmers and steering wheel heat if it’s below 40 or 45 deg F. The warm air flow is markedly less warm than in an ICE vehicle, of course. Their main idea is to heat the driver and passengers, not the air.

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I have been using that idea in my Landrover for years … the original blow heater packed up in about 1980, so I installed loops of copper pipe on the floor connected to the radiator water … no moving parts , only a control tap . It heats the driver and passengers feet, not the air.
If your feet are warm, you feel warm.
Electric cars should warm yout feet, not the seat or steering wheel.

Cooling is more difficult, but you definitely need enhanced air flow. Landrovers have openings between the window and the dash, and later models also have openings at floor level.

Electric cars have a lot to learn about passive heating and cooling. They can learn it from older vehicles from the pre-air-conditioning era.

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If they use electric of your battery you are stuck !

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Only if you’re a terrible planner, Paul.

Never happened to me but could with serious accident blocking paying motorway with no exits.

Last summer with the wild fires we had several were blocked on the payage fir hours you cannot always plan. Yes fuel cars would be the same

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Do you have an electric auto, if so, would love to hear about your experience!!!

I recently traded in my 10-yr-old Prius-V for a slightly used 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV. In 10 years I had put 30K miles on the Prius; I don’t drive a lot. The Bolt came with a portable 120V “Level 1” charger, which I thought would be just a temporary solution to charging, but it turned out that the 120Vac “charging speed” is about 4 miles per hour. The Bolt sits in the garage at least 20 hours per day; time for 80 miles added range. The electricity cost per mile works out to be a little less than half that of the fuel the Prius would have used at $4/gal (U.S.). To make the battery last extra long, I keep the battery at about 50% of full charge, and that will take the car 125 miles. I was going to get a 240V charger (Level 2) installed but it will cost $2000 (U.S.) in my case, and so I’m pleased to postpone that. We have an older gasoline car that could take us on a long trip and probably get us home again, or we could just rent a car for a long trip, but long trips are rare for us. I am “super-pleased” with the Bolt. There is a LONG list of periodically failing gas engine components, that the EV doesn’t have. I had not realized that although the BOLT has conventional brakes, they almost never need to be used, so it will never need new brake pads or linings.

Maybe in the long term, humans would do well to learn to live happily without hauling their bodies around from place to place so far and so often. (exit the stone age, the iron age, the travel age…)

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That is a difficult goal, but I agree with you.
If I stay in one place, someone or something has to deliver things to my residence, and take garbage away. That should be able to be organised more efficiently than having me travel everywhere to collect things.

On tourism:
One of my old bosses once said
" I believe everything that is there in the geography books… I dont need to go there and verfy it"

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Right on! Too much of the time we think “I can be happy later if I just busy myself now manipulating people, places, and things in just the right way, when in reality we have the ability to be happy where we are, with what we have, right away. That’s not to say it’s easy to change how we think.

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“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

“… but being there is worth a thousand pictures.”

There’s a big difference in seeing a photo and visiting a place in person. Seeing the Eiffel tower in a pic is nice. Being there looking up at it, walking around the base, riding the elevator to the second floor is truly an experience you can not get from a photo. It creates a memory that will last a lifetime.

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I thought virtual reality replaced being there.?

Yes that quote from my old mentor was deliberately cynical. He was like me … did not like travel. He was the one who taught me to shear sheep. … you definitely need to experience that … no picture conveys the energy involved … it is like stoking a blast furnace… but no travel, except to the next shearing shed.

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