What's something modern you won't miss when it becomes obsolete?

LostInTyme said:

Can you imagine a battery powered RV Behemoth?

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"It has enough power, but every 15 minutes we have to stop for 14 hours to recharge the batteries so we can drive for another 15 minutes."

tonyb said:

Speaking of Ford …

Now that there’s an all-electric F-150, it’s time for the Neds to put down the pitchforks and accept that electric vehicles are increasingly replacing gas burners. Gasoline (and diesel) powered vehicles will likely be with us as long as most of us here will continue drawing breath, or so I suspect, but, like two-strokes, they’ll mostly be relics of a bygone era.

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My wife mentions on an almost daily basis that she'd like our next second car to be all electric. She has eyes on a Nissan Leaf: personally, I'd like something a bit sportier. (Old game plan was to get a Mazda Miata convertible. That fizzled when I went to a dealership and tried to actually get into one. You know those little peddle cars that the kiddies used to tool around in on the sidewalks in the 50's & 60's? I actually believe that a 5'10" man might have more legroom in one of those than a Miata.)

An all electric F-150: now that has possibilities. I doubt that I'd be allowed to get it tricked out with a compressor, full sized air tanks, a set of K5LA locomotive chime horns and an e-bell, and really live out my childhood train engineer fantasies (especially in tunnels)... but perhaps the world is better place because I won't.

LOL, it figures. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

The batteries required for an electric RV is not the problem. The real problem is charging it.

Electric motors can easily spin the wheel. Bigger batteries and more batteries will increase the operating hours. But the increased capacity will take longer to charge. The current technology allows for a car to charge overnight for a full battery. The full battery will operate the car for a few hours.

The problem with the RV is the same as a car. How many hours of driving are you doing, and where do you recharge? If the RV has enough battery capacity to go for 4 hours, it will probably take up to 12 hours to charge. Tesla has quick charging, where in a few hours, you can get a charge, but not a full charge. Then there is the problem of finding a charger, where ever it is that you run low.

People who live in big city apartments, who park on the street, don't have any way to consistently charge the car. Public charge stations are not empty, awaiting you. You find a charger, and another car is plugged in. Then there is distance. Where I live, there's no charge station. Closest is almost 3 miles away at a mall.

As Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, "It just goes to show, it's always somethin'."

Zombie_61 said:

"It has enough power, but every 15 minutes we have to stop for 14 hours to recharge the batteries so we can drive for another 15 minutes."

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Honest to god I could do that as long as the fridge worked and I had cold beer.

LostInTyme said:

As Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, "It just goes to show, it's always somethin'."

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The longer I live the more strongly I understand this to be true.

Fifty150 said:

The batteries required for an electric RV is not the problem. The real problem is charging it.

Electric motors can easily spin the wheel. Bigger batteries and more batteries will increase the operating hours. But the increased capacity will take longer to charge. The current technology allows for a car to charge overnight for a full battery. The full battery will operate the car for a few hours.

The problem with the RV is the same as a car. How many hours of driving are you doing, and where do you recharge? If the RV has enough battery capacity to go for 4 hours, it will probably take up to 12 hours to charge. Tesla has quick charging, where in a few hours, you can get a charge, but not a full charge. Then there is the problem of finding a charger, where ever it is that you run low.

People who live in big city apartments, who park on the street, don't have any way to consistently charge the car. Public charge stations are not empty, awaiting you. You find a charger, and another car is plugged in. Then there is distance. Where I live, there's no charge station. Closest is almost 3 miles away at a mall.

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Many (most) RVers drive for 6 hours a day. It is called the power of 3. 300 miles covered ...parked and drinking by 3:00PM. And electricity is readily available in RV parks and some state parks.

It’s not such a stretch to imagine a time when autonomous (aka self-driving) cars that come when summoned will eliminate the need for many people (most, maybe) to own their own personal vehicles.

At present most cars sit unused the overwhelming majority of the time, and most get the overwhelming majority of their use within a fairly short radius from home.

It’s really no great wonder that we’re seeing more and more all-electric cars. For many people, they’ve proven quite practical. If you put a solar array on your roof, you can quite literally be driving on sunshine. The setup is spendy, which is why I don’t have one. Yet. But I welcome the technology. And I’m guessing that prices will come down.

But nah! Who am I fooling? It’ll never replace the horse.

No real science. I'm not a scientist, in a laboratory, generating my own data set. Just reading things online. At different times, I've thought about an electric car. I've also thought about getting a solar panel. At one of the local jails, the Sheriff installed solar panels in the parking lot. It looks kind of like 10 solar panels over every 8 car spaces.






As I said, no real science. Just random things you read from different websites when you search for "electric car" and "solar panel". A lot of websites give different information. Solar panels all come in different sizes. I'm guessing that the jail used panels about the same size as plywood or wall board. Different panel makers claim different wattage; ranging from 200 watts to 400 watts. All panels require direct sunlight for premium results. Unless you have special motors to turn the panels as the sun goes across the sky, even on the best summer day, direct sunlight is limited to the hours which the sun is directly overhead. I see how on some rooftops, the panel is mounted to face south....... the jail is on a north-south road, so the panels are facing west.


No real science that on a good day, 1 premium solar panel takes 23 days @ 1.5 kWH per day, to generate the 34.5 kWH it takes for a Tesla to go 100 miles. At 60 miles per hour, that is an hour and a half.

Assuming that I have an open parking space (which I don't), I would like to set up something like what the jail has. A few support beams, a rooftop with 2 solar panels, whatever electronics (which comes in kits) to harness the solar panel energy and feed it directly into an electric car charger. It seems to me, 2 solar panels over 1 parked car could charge that car in about 2 weeks, once you factor in overcast days, fog, rain.....where the panel isn't producing at full capacity.

But none of that really matters. I park on the street. I don't have the luxury of a dedicated parking space, reserved only for me. The reality of living in a big city, is that you have to drive around looking for a parking space, then walk back to your apartment. The City is not going to install charging stations next to every parking space (although they have parking meters at every space). And in my real world, If every car on the street were plugged into a charger at the same time, the load would be high enough to blow a transformer.

belfastboy said:

electricity is readily available in RV parks and some state parks.

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At an RV park, you have full hookups. Plumbing, electricity.....probably propane, diesel, cable TV, internet.....like when a trucker stays overnight at a truck stop. Completely possible for someone to travel from Trailer Park to Trailer Park..... unless the distance to the next trailer park is beyond the range of the electric vehicle system. A little more to consider when trip planning. Unless your idea of seeing the country is seeing Trailer Parks.

Most electric vehicles have the batteries on the underbody. RVs being bigger, can carry more batteries. An electric RV could also be built to use 4 separate motors, independently driving each wheel. A true 4 wheel drive RV could be engineered. RVs could also have a couple of solar panels on the roof.

The special magic is in engineering the perfect combination of battery capacity to load. A larger, heavier vehicle could easily roll with a more powerful electric motor. How many batteries would it take to keep that vehicle on the road, for what amount of time? And as you add more batteries, it gets heavier, requiring more energy to move the heavier load.

The real limit is today's battery technology. We simply haven't invented a better battery. It's not like nobody wants to, or that nobody is trying. The best that we have currently is lithium ion. The race is on. Not to make a better electric car. But to make a better battery.

Another thing to factor into the calculations is that along with the greater weight with more/larger batteries, so too must the body, brakes, and suspension be made stronger and heavier. This can cut into the vehicle's payload. I think this is a factor in Toyota's new version of its now all-electric minivan. The second row seats are not removable so cargo volume is greatly reduced compared to earlier petrol versions.

I know that several municipalities have added Tesla cars to their police fleet. Mostly as show pieces. Since Tesla cars cannot realistically be used as police cars. Tesla cars do not have the interior cubic footage to carry all of the gear that police officers carry. There just isn't enough interior space in a Tesla to build a prisoner cage. Tesla cars are not rated to carry the weight of officers, equipment, and prisoners. Tesla cars were not designed with armor body panels or ballistic auto-glass. Then to equip a Tesla with the lights, sirens, and communications equipment - more electrical load decreasing the useable battery time.

A local agency has a Tesla which is assigned to a community liaison officer. Goes to press conferences, schools, street faires, and other public relations events. The officer gets in, drives it for 30 minutes to get to the event. Then drives it 30 minutes back to the station. One time there was a pursuit, he was nearby, and he joined the pursuit. After all, he is still a cop, and he couldn't just run & hide. What happened was that as he accelerated onto the freeway, the car got up to 90 mph, and the battery quickly depleted. All of a sudden, he found himself in a superfast electric car, with no battery power.

Even before buying the car, the motor pool knew that a Tesla had to be charged for 8 - 10 hours, to drive for 1.5 to 2 hours. Great for a guy who drives to work, drives home, then plugs in the car overnight. No way a Tesla can get through a 10 hour patrol shift. Even when the car isn't moving, the battery is still depleting because the cop is sitting in the car, running the air conditioning, and those computers and radios are always on. Completely unreasonable for a cop to leave the station for an hour, then bring the car back, and sit around watching TV because his car is charging. Even with a quick charger, you can't bring the car back to charge for an hour, go out for 90 minutes, and then come back for an hour.

I wonder how those electric delivery trucks will work. Unless they have built an electric truck with enough battery capacity to operate 6 hours - how are they suppose to work an entire shift? If it's the same weight, power, energy ratio - with a bigger, heavier truck, carrying more batteries....What delivery driver is going to go out, deliver for 2 hours, then come back to the warehouse because the truck needs a charge?

The real test will be the electric F-150. They are assuming that the truck will have a charger setup everywhere the truck goes. When you leave the construction company, you drive to the jobsite. Once there, you will need to be plugged into an electric vehicle charger. Then you can use all of the power ports on the truck. That means that the construction company will need a generator trailer, just to make enough electricity, for all of the construction trucks on the jobsite which need to be charged. Real world conditions are not such, that a project under construction, will have EV chargers before the building is actually built. Real world traffic, and the weight of building materials and tools, will drain the battery. And any workman who plugs in all of his power tools, and job site lights, will deplete the truck battery before the end of the day.

LostInTyme said:

It may have been stated already, but ALL Reality Television.

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I'd mind it less if it was reality... Even the better shows that aren't that awful "scripted reality" drivel are still faked to a great extent. More importantly, the fact that they squeezed out so much quality content on grounds of simply being cheaper. While panel shows aren't quite the same thing, they are that much cheaper to produce - and it's no coincidence that the rise of the comedy panel show in the UK mirrors the decline of the great British sitcom. To a great extent this is now being offset by the streamers, though, as tastes change and we near the death of traditional television broadcasting.

LizzieMaine said:

"All news" broadcasting formats in general. They've degenerated from "give us ten minutes, we'll give you the world" to a distasteful melange of shock headlines delivered by glass-voiced anchors, idiotic "analysis" by idiots who should be seeing analysts, thundering music cues composed by "Guitar Hero" devotees, and witless commercials for shoddy products designed to prey on the desperate, the gullible and the stupid. If they think their listeners are "news junkies," well, they're half right.

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News as entertainment is ghastly, especially when it puts the biases of the audience above fact. Journalism is rarely what it used to be.

tonyb said:

Now that there’s an all-electric F-150, it’s time for the Neds to put down the pitchforks and accept that electric vehicles are increasingly replacing gas burners. Gasoline (and diesel) powered vehicles will likely be with us as long as most of us here will continue drawing breath, or so I suspect, but, like two-strokes, they’ll mostly be relics of a bygone era.

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It's inevitable. Over here I think it's 2040 has been set as the date at which, by law, all petrol engine car production must cease. I don't imagine it will be anything other than a smooth transition: 99% of the UK car industry is now merely assembly plants for Japanese and other, foreign-owned businesses (mostly German), companies with such a reputation for efficiency that it'll not be a big deal. Already one of the Japanese companies is opening a significant battery-producing facility here.

LizzieMaine said:

As for electric cars, I have no view one way or another, except I think they should be required by law to have some kind of noise-making attachment simulating the sound of a conventional engine. I've almost been run down in crosswalks twice this summer because I couldn't hear the electric-car coming.

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That's already being discussed over here. Ironically, I can see it happening anyhow because of the market: at some point, a bunch of the petrolheads will be persuaded to switch over because they can see all the advantages of an EV, and if it looks, sounds, and otherwise feels like "the real thing", they'll do it. Of course, doubtless there will always be the extremists who refuse to accept the change, and when asked will go on at length about "If it's just the same experience, why change it?", muttering darkly as they retreat into their caves.

belfastboy said:

The batteries required to move my 18,000lbs of RV would probably take another vehicle to house them.

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Zombie_61 said:

"It has enough power, but every 15 minutes we have to stop for 14 hours to recharge the batteries so we can drive for another 15 minutes."

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Undoubtedly the technology will improve by leaps and bounds. In 1969, men landed on the moon using a computer vastly less powerful than the mobile phone I had in my pocket nearly twenty years ago, itself laughably limited to the one I have now. Indeed, my mobile phone today is vastly more capable than the desktop computer my parents bought in 1993 when I first went to university. That computer cost £1,000 at the time - just over £2,000 in today's money. My mobile phone cost me £100 in today's money. Thirty years from now, 99% of the current drawbacks of going electric will be eliminated completely.

tonyb said:

It’s not such a stretch to imagine a time when autonomous (aka self-driving) cars that come when summoned will eliminate the need for many people (most, maybe) to own their own personal vehicles.

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I have a feeling that in a few decades' time there will be one almighty ruck over self-drive taxis versus black cab drivers with The Knowledge here in London. The self-drive capacity on the EV will doubtless appeal to those who like to take their own car on a night out, have a few drinks, then let it drive them home. Of course, for that to happen they'll have to be considered safe enough not to need a sober adult overseeing them... Then again, as (at least here in the UK) more and more young people abandon alcohol, that itself may no longer be a significant issue in thirty years' time.

At present most cars sit unused the overwhelming majority of the time, and most get the overwhelming majority of their use within a fairly short radius from home.

It’s really no great wonder that we’re seeing more and more all-electric cars. For many people, they’ve proven quite practical. If you put a solar array on your roof, you can quite literally be driving on sunshine. The setup is spendy, which is why I don’t have one. Yet. But I welcome the technology. And I’m guessing that prices will come down.

But nah! Who am I fooling? It’ll never replace the horse.

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I'm sort of surprised we've not seem more take-up of the hybrid option because of this, but again that may be price. The Toyota Prius is a very common option for minicabs here in London, of course, as if you drive electric you don't have to pay the congestion charge. The latest generation of London black cabs are all-electric too. That's one market which will increasingly refine the tech, I suspect. (Many of our buses are hybrid, with the electric used in and around the centre, and petrol to drive them back out to the garage on the outskirts at the end of a shift).

Fifty150 said:

At an RV park, you have full hookups. Plumbing, electricity.....probably propane, diesel, cable TV, internet.....like when a trucker stays overnight at a truck stop. Completely possible for someone to travel from Trailer Park to Trailer Park..... unless the distance to the next trailer park is beyond the range of the electric vehicle system. A little more to consider when trip planning. Unless your idea of seeing the country is seeing Trailer Parks.

Most electric vehicles have the batteries on the underbody. RVs being bigger, can carry more batteries. An electric RV could also be built to use 4 separate motors, independently driving each wheel. A true 4 wheel drive RV could be engineered. RVs could also have a couple of solar panels on the roof.

The special magic is in engineering the perfect combination of battery capacity to load. A larger, heavier vehicle could easily roll with a more powerful electric motor. How many batteries would it take to keep that vehicle on the road, for what amount of time? And as you add more batteries, it gets heavier, requiring more energy to move the heavier load.

The real limit is today's battery technology. We simply haven't invented a better battery. It's not like nobody wants to, or that nobody is trying. The best that we have currently is lithium ion. The race is on. Not to make a better electric car. But to make a better battery.

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The batteries will improve over time, and recharging speeds will get faster. I have no doubt there will soon come a time when the car can be powered off a battery the size of a current car battery, and every car can carry two or three more so you can fire up and drive just by switching them over. The real chicken and egg imo will be the spread of recharge points. Simple enough in a fairly small area like the UK, but somewhere like the US with such huge tracts of rural land, you either need a much better network, or better batteries, or both. There's the chicken / egg thing: a lot of folks won't want to take up EVs until there are enough charging points, but will there be enough charging points without market demand for them?

The other US specific issue is that petrol has been relatively cheap there for so long. Look at all those classic US cars where a V8 was a norm for the shopping runabout back in the day - as compared to here in the UK, where tiny engines abound because petrol costs about three times what it does in the US... I'd say electric (especially for those who can charge their car at home with solar) will find a market more rapidly where petrol is expensive and there isn't quite the same car-culture as in the US. Start-up costs are indeed currently big with electric, though if they come down enough I wouldn't be surprised if it saw more private vehicles on the road here in London for a bit, given that currently it is otherwise so expensive to own a car here in top of it being a luxury at best for most of us, given the public transport infrastructure. (I notice that big time as I moved here from a rural area of Ireland where you'd never be able to get to half the place without a private car, and haven't felt the need of a car at all these twenty years here.)

Edward said:

...Thirty years from now, 99% of the current drawbacks of going electric will be eliminated completely...

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Sure, sure. And in the early-1970s most people were convinced we would have colonized the moon by now and that trips between our moon and Earth would be commonplace. You could be correct, but I'll wait until the so-called "experts" make good on improving things first.

Edward said:

Over here I think it's 2040 has been set as the date at which, by law, all petrol engine car production must cease.

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You can't legislate technology. Just because a politician signs it into law, it doesn't mean that it can happen.

In order for EV to replace the combustion engine, battery technology needs to improve and infrastructure needs to support it. The second part can be done. More power plants to produce the electricity, more lines to deliver the electricity, installing public charging stations at every parking space....... Taxpayers and utilities rate payers will bear the cost. The first part is not as easy. Technology develops at it's own pace. A better battery will be invented, but not by a political time table. The best that we have right now, lithium ion batteries, is based on 1970's technology. I'm not an expert, but I'll bet you that since the 80's, somebody has been trying to make something better.

In 2012, President Obama signed a law which said that all cars had to get 54.5 miles per gallon. Almost a decade later, it hasn't happened. You can't force an invention to happen, by signing it into law.



The automotive industry is the heart of the economy. Basic transportation. Trucking. Fuel. Roads. Almost everything that you can imagine, is in some way, tied into the auto industry. Even technology. Cars have computers and microchips. Any improvement to auto design and operations will improve everybody's way of life, and generate profits and revenue.

Personally, I would love to have a useable electric vehicle. Something with acceptable range, and being able to "refill" efficiently. Maybe cars can be developed with exchangeable batteries. Pull up to a "gas station", and simply change out the battery. Remove a few fasteners, slide out the depleted battery, reload with a fresh battery, back on the road within minutes.

Zombie_61 said:

Sure, sure. And in the early-1970s most people were convinced we would have colonized the moon by now and that trips between our moon and Earth would be commonplace. You could be correct, but I'll wait until the so-called "experts" make good on improving things first.

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In 30 years from now I will very likely have pinched my butt anyway…

Fifty150 said:

You can't legislate technology. Just because a politician signs it into law, it doesn't mean that it can happen.

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I suppose it depends on what the law requires: if they stopped production of ICE cars today, serviceable EV designs do exist. The only limitation at present is unit price and the infrastructure, but the former will come down rapidly, and the latter is already beginning to quietly roll out. That's just a matter of availability rather than inventing new tech. The problem to date has been people being wary of buying an EV (price aside) because of apparent rarity of charging points. Those who provide charging points have been reluctant to do so for lack of perceived demand. However, if we know all new cars must be electric by a certain date, then we know there will be a level of demand for the infrastructure, so the investment appeals... The law is far from the only driver here (lots of cultural factors, including how expensive petrol is in the UK), but it'll certainly be a useful tool. They did something similar a long time ago with a deadline for selling only unleaded petrol, and now nobody even thinks about it.

Yep, leaded fuel for highway use became illegal in the US in 1996 and hardly anyone even noticed. It took twenty-two years of "unleaded fuel only" cars in order to do it, though.

I missed it because I still had some earlier model cars that actually needed leaded fuel. The lead raised the octane and cushioned the valve train from self destruction. But, those cars are gone, and along with that, my need for leaded fuel.