Bruce's Journal

[Baymule]

Our DD has a Chevy Volt and gets 40 miles to a charge. Round trip to work is 50 miles a day. Her gas bill is around $20 a month.

 

[RollingAcres]

And for something more pleasant to look at, this is DD2's cat Christofur on top of the cat tree.

Your car pics certainly were not pleasant to look at. Glad you were not seriously hurt. Hopefully there's no other issues with your neck. Christofur is much pleasant to look at.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Mr. @Bruce, sir

Glad to see that you are recovering, though still sore.

Wow on the car wreck! So glad your weren't hurt any worse than you were. Sounds like you found a good replacement Prius. I may need to have you negotiate for me should I ever buy another vehicle (which I hope I don't).

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[farmerjan]

Wow. I think I would have contracted with people to provide a bed so I could sleep instead of dringing home after doing one farm and the go to the closest one the next day.

There are a couple of farms I can do back to back. But you have to test when it is good for them. Plus, you have to be able to rearrange your schedule when there is a reason one has to cancel and stick someone else in.
On top of that, I couldn't be gone for 24 hours straight when I had my own chores to do. The nurse cows take more time and a routine that my son didn't have the luxury to do, plus what he does. And I have to be able to come home, pack samples, upload info from the computer to the processing center, get more sample bottles etc, to go to the next farm. Add to that, I have to be able to get some sleep and although I have over the years stayed overnight, often in a motel when I was doing some farms as a relief test, you just don't sleep as well. There are 2 now that I do together whenever I can. I do stay at the farmers house, go up the night before to sleep because they start milking at 2 a.m. The second farm starts milking at 7:30 a.m. so I can finish at the one, and go to the second. But, I get up at 1:30 a.m. to go down the road to test at 2, get done, do the computer work and leave there by 6:45 go 15 miles to the other, start about 7:30, don't get done with all the paperwork, and the meters going through the wash cycles, til about 10:30; get loaded back into the car and come home and it is usually 12:30 or 1 p.m. Then I have to get the samples packed and out for UPS. I put in over 12 hours when I do them that way.
Doesn't matter so much now as I don't have the workload that I had with so many farmers struggling financially, and skipping a month or more sometimes. Plus the ones that have sold out and the 2, that I gave up a couple months ago due to their expanded parlor size and my not being able to keep up with my ankle problems. I am ready to slow down and cut back. I have 3 that are talking selling out in the next couple of years, and one just told me that his cows are for sale... so don't know how long they will still be milking. Prices are so depressed for the cattle that he may still be milking for quite awhile. They are all registered and very good cows.
Nearly 40 years of EARLY morning hours between milking and testing... I like not having to constantly wake up to an alarm now. Plus any I do, I won't take on any more that want mornings. I will do afternoons.

 

[farmerjan]

I have a question. What value do you put on the charging of the batteries? You may be saving in gas costs, but what does it cost to charge one of them? I realize that you have solar @Bruce, so that is a part of what you are "producing" but what does it cost to charge them when you are somewhere else? Are there that many places where they can be charged? They would not be at all practical for us with needing vehicles that can pull heavy loads, and often not having the downtime in the middle of doing stuff to stop and charge them. Night time charging is fine, but to only go 25-40 miles and needing to recharge would just not work for us. Do companies where people work allow "charging"?

 

[Bruce]

Our DD has a Chevy Volt and gets 40 miles to a charge. Round trip to work is 50 miles a day. Her gas bill is around $20 a month.

I considered looking at a Volt and found that Chevy is not going to make them after this year. I am concerned about their commitment to anything. GM had an all electric in the late 90s, made maybe 1,000 all leased and when they canned the program, they crushed the cars. When the 2004 Prius came out, GM dumped all over it and said wait for our hydrogen car, coming in 5 years. Every succeeding year it was "coming in 5 years, wait". Where is is now? Right, non existent. Prius is still selling quite well. They are, in theory, going big into all electric. At the moment their only all electric model is the Bolt, with all the safety features available and the rebates, it would be $7,600 more than the Prime I got and still not have all the features.

The Volt does have more electric range capability than the Prime and seats 5. I had to think about that some. The original Volt seated only 4 like the Prime and I did downgrade it for that along with the poor MPG (37) it got when the gas engine ran (on high test no less. That adds about $0.40/gallon here). The newer model improved to seating 5 and gets EPA 42 MPG on regular gas. The MPGe went from 92 to 106 starting with the 2016 model, the electric range went from 40 to 53, all good improvements. The Prius Prime has an EPA combined of 54 (which I regularly exceeded in the summer with both my 2004 and 2009 which spec'ed at 50 MPG) and a MPGe of 133. Of course to get those EPA MPGe values you have to drive the EPA test routes which likely fit no one. The other glitch in the Volt vs Prius Prime is the price. Even after the $4,500 rebate on the Prime and the $7,500 on the Volt, the Volt, with all the safety features on the Prime Advanced still costs $9.6K more than the Prime.

I had hoped my next car would be an all electric but the totalling of my 2009 Prius kinda of stomped on that. There are more choices just now coming out and I would have liked another year or two to see what each manufacturer came up with and which were weeded out before I bought in. At the moment the only 200+ mile EVs I know about are the Bolt and the Tesla. Nearest US Tesla dealer to me is in Boston, not real convenient for a test drive. AND they are a lot more money even for the Model 3 that came out last year. Maybe DW's next car will be all electric.

 

[Bruce]

I have a question. What value do you put on the charging of the batteries? You may be saving in gas costs, but what does it cost to charge one of them? I realize that you have solar @Bruce, so that is a part of what you are "producing" but what does it cost to charge them when you are somewhere else? Are there that many places where they can be charged? They would not be at all practical for us with needing vehicles that can pull heavy loads, and often not having the downtime in the middle of doing stuff to stop and charge them. Night time charging is fine, but to only go 25-40 miles and needing to recharge would just not work for us. Do companies where people work allow "charging"?

Our electric rates are $0.15/kWh, thus the cost for 25 miles would be $1.32 (8.8 kWh battery). With gas at $2.49 now (seems like it went up in the last couple of days), 25 miles in my prior car would cost about the same.

As you said, we have solar panels and they generate more than we use. I lost close to $100 in credits last year because they lapse 1 year from when they are booked. Generally speaking, I'm using credits only Nov - Feb and accruing them the other months. Some areas have time of use rates, usually lower at night. The only thing we have with my power company is lower rates at night if they control your electric water heater, it won't run between 4:30 and 10:30 PM and you pay less for electricity when it is running.

There are some places that have free charging, like the health food store in South Burlington. Some businesses do allow employee charging, there are at least 2 at the hospital were I was in the ER. I don't know if they charge to use them. I expect the number of employers allowing charging will increase as more EVs are sold. There are some EV stations around, I haven't looked to see what they cost per kWh because I wasn't expecting to need them.

And you are right, you are not going to pull heavy loads with a Prius Prime or any other Prius. But because the Prime isn't all electric, it has a range of over 600 miles gas plus electric. "Range anxiety" is a real thing and when the first EVs came out the range was something like 70 miles, it increased over time in the Nissan Leaf to 107 in 2016 and is up to 150 miles now. That is summer, not winter. Using the battery to drive AND heat the occupants uses more power. Good enough only for relatively short daily commutes.

The all electric Bolt has a range of 238 miles. I consider 200 mile electric range to be the minimum *I* would want in a pure EV and if I had only 1 vehicle I would rent on the occasions I needed to go much farther than that. There are charging stations all over the country, more in some areas than others. If you happen to be going somewhere you will be shopping or sleeping for some hours, the car can charge while you are doing that. Some hotels have charging stations and I know there are some at airports. There is a charging curve that is something like the first 50% goes fast, the last 20% much slower. Thus with some planning you can go a bit farther than max range miles and not take many, many hours to fully recharge before you arrive. But it wouldn't be near as fast as pumping 10 gallons of liquid into your tank. Nope, EVs are not currently for everyone but I hope they continue to improve in the future such that they make sense for more people.

 

[Bruce]

Cleaned the pond fishes' "winter home", they look like this now

The one was always bigger than the other but the difference is greater now.

The prior picture is here for comparison
https://www.backyardherds.com/threads/bruces-journal.34651/page-229#post-591569

 

[Baymule]

They might not want to go back to the pond, you might have yourself some house fish!

 

[Bruce]

Life in the bucket is certainly easier and safer. Free ranging isn't really a possibility though.