OT. Ford Lightning. Battery F150

[invalid unparseable]

Delaware does but you can get 5 years registration then another 2 without inspection then it is every two years. Not sure about Ohio inspection but you need registration every year.

[invalid unparseable]

I get a kick out of him but could understand some might not like his style.

[Dean Hoffman]

Some guy calling himself Two Bit Da Vinci

23 minutes. He talks about battery cooling. They show a big screen in the dash. My Toyota has one telling me not to use it while moving. Human nature doesn't exist.

[krw]

Hydrazine is really nasty stuff. Just a little on your hands will ruin your whole month. There has been more than one tech maintaining jets who have evidence of it, for life. I good friend is one.

There is no reason gas couldn't be used. Both need a large generator.

[krw]

It'll take a lot longer than that for the sun to go nova.

[gfretwell]

We rented a car a few times for a vacation but it was because we were going to fly home. (Drive out, fly back)

[krw]

You wouldn't know science if it bit you on the ass.

[krw]

I lived 70mi north of NYC. We had to go to DC for a meeting. I told my boss that I'd beat him to the hotel, driving a rental car. I did, by an hour.

So do I. The brat still lives in Vt. When we lived in NY (and Vt), we drove to Il twice a year.

I made that comment a while back about the couch potatoes.

[krw]

That's not nearly enough.

[gfretwell]

I am one of those guys who's range was well within an EV for my "going to the store car", even using lead batteries but I had the problem that with that meager fuel cost it was still hard to justify the capital outlay so it is a double edged sword. You need to hit that sweet spot where you drive enough to make the difference between electric and gas economically viable against your initial cost. I ran the numbers on slapping a $4500 EV kit for a Civic into my Prelude. I could buy a bunch of gas for $4500 and I knew that wasn't going to be the only cost, even with me doing all the labor. You don't get the $7500 tax credit for that either. The idea was quickly abandoned.

[krw]

Makes sense, depending on what you can get a rental for. One-way rentals are usually ridiculously expensive.

[gfretwell]

With smart metering it would only have to be a chip in the charger that reports the amount of electricity that goes into the car, directly to the PoCo receiver your meter talks to and they could attach the road tax right there. God know they have no problem collecting all the other taxes on your bill.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Truckers have been paying fuel tax by mile in each state they travel for years. It was a PITA for our truck at work as we mostly traveled in the

3 closest states.

I had to do it from the driver's logs and fuel purchase receipts but I imagine with GPS there are better ways to track. Many cars have navigation now so it should be simple. Google even know where I've been.

[rbowman]

I remember when a mix of nitro and hydrazine set some dragstrip records

-- if it didn't blow up.

Then there was the Titan II

[angelica...]

Who said anything about ride sharing?

My mother uses Lyft to get to the doctor and has had her groceries delivered for several years. She hasn't driven since the 1960s.

Do you expect to be one of those old men who plows into a crowd because he's too senile to drive?

Cindy Hamilton

[gfretwell]

The only way to get from DC to New York is the Metroliner (Acela now). That is one of the few rail lines in the country that make sense because the airports are jammed and it is pretty much city all the way from DC to Boston. They called it the Megopolis when I lived there and it is only more congested now.

[gfretwell]

It wasn't horrible to DCA (within Florida it is usually the same price). We did the DC thing a few times, going up 75 and spending a week or so in the mountains before cutting back over and hitting

301/206 around Richmond. (my folks are in Southern Md). After more trips than I want to think about on 95 and 301/17/15 before that I got to hate that ride.

[Scott Lurndal]

Or just mark part of the battery capacity reserve and use the reserve for another 50-60 miles.

Or just plan ahead.

[invalid unparseable]

True. I knew someone working on it and after many years project was terminate.

[Scott Lurndal]

Quite literally as it happens. At the historic 2.3% annual petroleum usage increase rate, in 400 years the waste-heat alone will raise the surface temperature of the earth to 100 C (212 F). Simple arithmetic (exponential growth) and physics.

But we have about 40 years of proven reserves at the current rate of use (and given the 2.3% increase in usage, it's more likely to be much less than that).

And long before that 40 years arrives, the costs of extraction will balloon, and the costs to the consumer will be huge due to scarcity.

If we wait that long to prepare alternatives, we won't have enough energy to both support current needs and to prepare for the future (the energy trap).