Few people predicted the pandemic and how, via supply chain shortages, global vehicle production would crater. The only thing predictable about the car market, really, is how it always ends up harming poor people. There’s a new report out on aging cars and it’s good news for mechanics but bad news for people who need a car to work.
Plus, we check out the inevitable Tesla lawsuit, the unionization of robotaxi firms, and the sudden increase in battery capacity in the United States.
A Double Whammy For Poor Car Owners
It’s now a matter of conventional wisdom that automakers shifted their production to more expensive models during the pandemic, causing prices to go up. At the same time, limited inventory meant that deals for new cars were hard to come by for budget conscious buyers. Even with lower interest rates, this meant that many buyers with limited incomes or poor credit were forced to either stay out of the market or take on longer loan payments (the average new vehicle loan for someone with a 500-600 credit score is about 74 months).
And what about used cars? Used car prices also increased dramatically during the pandemic (about 40% higher than pre-pandemic levels). Unsurprisingly, this means that the average age of a car on the road has reached about 12.5 years, an all-time record. As mentioned yesterday, it’s now a better time to buy a new car and deals are finally out there, though higher interest rates are going to still make it difficult for some to buy anything, new or used.
There’s a nice report out from S&P Global Mobility that addresses how this presents a big upside for mechanics:
Two years of short supply of new vehicles has driven consumers into the used-car market. Now, there could be a counterintuitive shift: Surging new-vehicle supply could further boost expansion of the used-vehicle fleet, bringing more high-mileage vehicles into service bays.
How is this possible? The aging car parc has already expanded the repair business sweet spot, which we consider as vehicles from six to 11 years old. Now 12- and 13-year-old vehicles are becoming a bigger part of the business – even though they were originally sold during the slow-sales years of the Great Recession.
None of this is surprising to anyone paying even limited attention. It’s also not surprising that cars that are over a decade old are now new enough that they’re likely to contain more sensors and be more expensive to fix than older vehicles.
Working class people taking it on the chin is sort of a tradition. Here’s where it gets super fun, though, as pointed out by S&P Global Mobility:
In addition, drivers of older, lower-priced, out-of-warranty vehicles are likely to drive more miles, because they may have jobs without a work-from-home option. During the pandemic years, vehicles from six to 13 years old – the new aftermarket sweet spot – will increase their share of annual miles traveled, outstripping both vehicles zero to 5-years-old and 14-years-plus, according to S&P Global Mobility projections.
The bolding is mine and it’s another obvious, but extremely important point. If you’re a working class person with a job that cannot be done from home you have to keep putting miles on your car. A Pew Research study from early in the pandemic found that 76% of lower income people couldn’t do their work from home, as opposed to just 44% of upper income individuals.
I think it’s plausible that, barring some huge economic upheaval, carmakers will start producing more affordable models and those will eventually become available as used cars, but that’s not going to be for some time. Until then, lower income individuals will have to contend with putting more and more miles on vehicles that are increasingly complex and expensive to fix.
Cruise Probably Becomes The First Firm To Unionize
I’m going to do this backwards and start with a sentence that made me laugh this morning, courtesy of this Reuters report on GM’s self-driving firm Cruise:
Reuters could not definitively determine if these are the driverless car industry’s first union agreements.
Obviously, it’s not the driverless cars themselves that are being unionized but the staff being used to maintain them, though that leads to the other funny note in this piece, calling the agreement:
…[A] significant milestone as unions and robotaxi firms have historically been at odds.
LOL. I mean, yes, of course. Automated systems present a real threat to organized labor and, in the absence of some sort of Universal Basic Income-type system, it’s not clear what happens if we automate everything. The deal is with the IBEW and SEIU and will cover “dozens” of workers.
Tesla Hit With A Class Action Lawsuit Over Range
Like clockwork, the exclusive report from Reuters that Tesla created an entire department to basically ignore people who complained about the potentially overly optimistic range estimates of their cars has resulted in class action lawsuit in California. Since Reuters broke the news, let’s let Reuters chime in here as well:
The lawsuit alleges Tesla breached vehicle warranties and engaged in fraud and unfair competition.
“Put simply, Tesla has a duty to deliver a product that performs as advertised,” Adam A. Edwards, an attorney at Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, the firm representing Tesla owners in the lawsuit, said in a statement.
The lawsuit’s three plaintiffs cite occasions when their Teslas didn’t achieve close to their advertised ranges and said they had complained to the company without success.
It’ll be interesting to see how much momentum this gains. Many of the earliest Tesla adopters were die hards who have a serious attachment to the firm, but now Tesla is just a car company that makes a lot of fairly affordable EVs.
How Much Battery Capacity Do We Actually Need?
As far as successful legislation goes, the constant news about automakers and suppliers rushing to build battery plants in North America indicates to me that the Inflation Reduction Act has been a success. The big question, though, is how much capacity do we really need?
I ask this because there are two big pieces of news again this week. First, from Automotive News is the fact that LG Energy Solutions says the Korean company wants to build more than 300 gigawatt-hours of production capacity by 2025. That’s a lot. From the story:
LG Energy Solution has the most gigawatt-hour capacity among EV battery plants in North America that have been announced, are under construction or are operational, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy research and consulting firm. Three hundred gigawatt-hours would be enough to supply batteries for 3 million to 6 million EVs, depending on their size and configuration, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
For comparison, in 2022 about 750,000 new EVs were registered.
We’re also learning this week that a joint venture between Stellantis and Mercedes called Automotive Cells Co. (it worked so well last time!) is considering building a battery plant in Canada. Here’s some detail The Detroit News:
Mark Stewart, Stellantis’ chief operating officer in North America, said in October that Stellantis could need as many as four battery plants in North America by 2030 to achieve its goal of having at least half of its U.S. passenger car and light-duty pickup sales be all-electric. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares previously suggested ACC could expand to North America.
The train has left the station and, while some automakers like Ford are starting to consider more hybrids in the mix, it seems like most automakers are trying to shift to EVs as fast as possible.
The Big Question
How is is your daily driver? How long do you expect to keep it? How many miles does it have on it?
Photos: Tesla, Skoda, Ford, Cruise
My all-weather DD is a ’12 MKZ (70k) and for the non-snow months I use the ’06 Z06 (55k) quite often. I have no plans on replacing either for quite some time. Parts are still easy to find so they’ll be repairable for a long time. There’s other project cars that will get out occasionally but are usually in some state of brokenness so hardly any miles.
My job has gone full WFH so they don’t get many miles these days and I’ve been considering switching to using a bike (electric or burger-powered) to do most shopping so they might get even less.
You literally cannot conceive of the amount. That is not intended as an insult. I am telling you that you simply cannot conceive of it, because you can’t. I can’t. Nobody can.
I’m going to start throwing out numbers here. Please pay attention. These are important numbers.
Again: these are very important numbers. Write them down. We’re about to come back to them.
That’s not even remotely enough if you want to actually do anything environmentally useful with EVs. Here is where we come back to those numbers above. Those are from the EIA. Total generation in 2022, and then broken down by generation source, excluding renewables.
Again: where the fuck do you think the electricity for EVs comes from? Going back to our very important numbers:
40 billion kilowatt hours is from petroleum and related.
772 billion kilowatt hours come from nuclear plants
829 billion kilowatt hours come from coal fired power plants
1,689 billion kilowatt hours come from natural gas fired power plants
If you want all clean energy, you must have battery capacity to cover all of that or you need to more than quadruple nuclear. And this is where the “you cannot conceive” part comes in.
If you want to make a solar plant function like a mid-size nuclear power plant, remembering that said solar plant produces no electricity 50% of the time, then you will need roughly 4,800 gigawatt hours off the batteries every year.
That’s 16 YEARS of this proposed LG plant running 100% capacity. To support a single grid-scale for a roughly 1200MW nameplate. And remember, those batteries WILL wear out and be damaged and require regular replacement.
Can you even imagine what 1200MW+ of battery looks like? The actual answer is that you can’t. Prototype 400MWh battery systems have been built. They’re literally too big to fit in turbine halls, continuously require megawatts of downright deafening cooling, take up acres of space, and can only manage 100MWh for 4 hours.
You’d need 36 times the battery capacity to build a 1200MW equivalent for solar, and god help you if you get two cloudy days in a row.
And where, exactly, does anyone think we’re going to get the materials for these batteries? Uh-huh. The number one priority isn’t coal – it’s natural gas, which pumps out methane. So you need to replace 1,689 billion kilowatt hours.
That’s 1,689,000GWh/year.
That’s 174 Perry Nuclear Generating Stations, which produces about 9700GWh/year.
Renewables contributed a total of 913 billion kilowatt hours. 21.5% of the total. That’s great. Just build more, right? Problem one, only 6.2% of is hydroelectric. And EIA ‘renewables’ includes things like incinerators (conveniently renamed to ‘biosolids’,) ‘biofuels’ like ethanol, and literal wood burners. No, seriously – burning wood is classified as a renewable energy.
NOW do you understand the scale of the problem?
The lease is up on the absolute piece of shit rattletrap, the other is just tired and I don’t want to deal with it any more. A whole 9,000 miles and 165,000 for the other. Trying to find some way to do a deal where some
suckersmart person takes both off my hands.rootwyrm is an AI bot. it is literally impossible for one human to have so many quotable figures, relevant anecdotes, or strident opinions about so many subjects.
Worse; I write fiction. So I actually know all that stuff about nuclear off the top of my head from writing research. Plus a former friend was a nuclear NDT.
The rest? EIA’s numbers are a quick search away, and I have calc.exe 😉
Pumped storage hydro is a much more effective method to store large amounts of electricity for more than an hour or two than batteries – but the current regulatory / deregulated-utility market makes it difficult to take the big-$ risk required to put in a new facility. If this can be figured out we will have a lot more pumped storage – freeing up potential battery capacity for transportation. It is a political problem more than anything else.
That said, I expect someday to put a LiPo4 battery at my house for backup so that my solar system can work if we lose power. I suspect at some point the power company will give me an incentive to install such a battery to make a distributed demand-control system that helps them manage the overall grid better and which will use half its capacity on a daily basis. One can dream :-).
Anything I would have read? Aside from your comments here, of course. 🙂
The obvious solution here is to go big on nuclear and conserve batteries for transportation and grid peaking. Doable.
More nuclear, more wind, more solar – less cars. Nothing worth doing is easy.
I’m for renewables where it makes sense — rooftop solar is an easy one, and some spots get a lot of wind. That said, RootWyrm is spot on about the storage requirements — it’s mindboggling huge. The smart thing to do is cover baseload with nuclear, peaking with distributed storage and load shifting, Less cars? NA dosn’t have the population density to pull that off.
I found this book very interesting on the challenges presented by future energy needs https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Grid/1ZEyEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
I just put a hold on a copy at my local library, thanks!
Why less cars? There’s a lot of options between Nikes and Hummer EVs.
Leaning into nuclear is by far the smartest choice from a ‘transition from fossil fuel’ perspective, but the NIMBY resistance will make it borderline impossible.
Even with the upcoming age of fusion power, it will be a looong time before wide scale adoption of nuclear happens, unfortunately.
I have spent a lot of time researching fusion. Going back years. It’s an interesting topic.
And any time someone says “we’re just 10 years away from fusion” I just laugh my ass off. We’ve been ‘just 10 years away’ since 1954 when Tamm and Sakharov conceived of the Tokamak.
We were ’10 years away’ in 1985 when Reagan and Gorbachev signed the ITER agreement.
We’re ’10 years away’ when JET managed 59MJ over 5 seconds last year, setting a new record.
59MJ over 5 seconds is 16.38kWh before generation conversion losses. 16.38kWh is just about enough to run a single small window A/C unit for a day.
Another point on Fusion folks gloss over: it’s going to produce intensely radioactive waste if we use Tokomak designs. We estimated in 12 years of operations every single atom in a tokomak reactor chamber would take a neutron hit. There are paths to recycle fission waste but nothing but time will work for those reactor chambers.
Honestly, I consider the high level radioactive waste a ‘half-solved’ problem. But that’s because we’re more or less determined that Tokamak as originally conceived is just bad. ICF is the more feasible direction.
And yeah, ICF is massively dangerous during operation, but it’s high intensity X-ray. You have some D-T but mostly it’s hydrogen now.
So the end result is that you don’t have the high level waste problem any more. The target bay at NIF is literally so safe that it’s below 3mrem/hr in as little as 3 hours after a shot. Everything’s pretty much prompt decay even with D-T shots. At 1 day, it’s below 1mrem/hr, and at 3 days it’s below environmental.
But as I said: holy shit is it a nightmare during operation and continuous operation. The radioactive decay rate is more than sufficient that it would transition to low-level in a matter of months if not weeks. But while it’s running, you’ve got so much X-ray and thermal that chugging AquaSalina shakes with Iodine-131 chasers would be safer.
Nevermind the electrical safety issues; I just do not see any possibility of scaling in any dimension with current materials science.
“I consider the high level radioactive waste a ‘half-solved’ problem.”
I consider it a non issue.
Decades of worst case illegal Soviet dumping of high level waste with no thought to containment whatsoever, losses of nuclear powered (and armed) submarines breaking up on the way down, detonation of multi megaton nuclear devices in the ocean, all with no long term measurable detriment. If anything measurements of such sites have shows nuclear wastes CAN be disposed of safely and permanently on the ocean floor.
And that’s not even getting into SUB seabed disposal.
There are ways to deal with it — what you’ve describing was my work environment for years. Still, the increased flux level of xray is pushing the limits. This is why I’m more bullish on breeder reactors / Thorium hybrids than fusion.
Nothing that can’t be safely disposed of into the ocean depths till the end of time.
Make sure you shove it into the subduction zones and I think you’re right. There’s a lovely one off of Seattle.
It would take a looong time. Plates subduct about 10 cm/year. A waste dump will still be in essentially the same spot for millenia so a tsunami and major earthquake zone may not be the best place.
Better I think to dump it hundreds of miles from anywhere under a few miles of ocean water and preferably under many meters of nucleotide binding muck. There is no better security or shielding than that. There are places down there between spreading ridges, hotspots and subduction zones that have been (as far as anyone can tell) geologically stable since the dinosaurs were around. Don’t worry, it’ll subduct eventually.
Mind you this only applies to crap we NEVER, EVER want to see again. Once something is down there it would take the resources of a nation state to even find it, much less recover it. One of the beauties of nuclear is that a lot of one reactor’s waste is another reactor’s fuel so if there’s any chance of recycling it should be kept on land where it can be recovered.
Regarding the JET, you’re missing the point.
The point wasn’t to show grid-scale levels of power output. The JET experiment showed that the physics models were correct, with a record level of output for that reactor. The updated models show that ITER should work as expected. 59MJ was about the maximum that JET was designed to produce.
If you just wanted to be negative, you should have instead focused on the fact that the JET operated at a Q of 0.33. Which means it only put out 1/3rd of the power which was put into it. So it didn’t even manage to run your A/C unit. Sorry.
The NIF has achieved Q of 0.7 and ITER is expected to be Q>1.
All of that said, I’m not holding my breath for fusion any time soon either.
But we can at least explain it correctly without over-simplifying and completely missing the point.
I recently ran into a friend of mine who is probably the best finite-element-analysis practitioner I have known (and yes, I am using FEA as shorthand for all the different methods). We got to chatting and he mentioned that he had spent the last decade or two highly concentrated in fusion and was a little sad, since he was approaching retirement and expected he would not see a full-scale system running before he retired.
The problem with nuclear is that it is extraordinarily expensive. Georgia’s new nuclear plant ended up costing around $31,000,000,000. Nuclear power sounds like a great option, but that is a ton of money.
Corruption is expensive
It is expensive for many reasons, some of which are peculiar to the United States. But a big one is the bespoke nature of every nuclear plant here thus far. The plant designs need to be commoditized as much as possible. And then the more we build, the cheaper they will get. (I know this is a gross oversimplification of the economy of scale principle, but this is a car website after all.)
Regardless, as the effects of climate change start to intensify more rapidly, I can see the cost of nuclear power suddenly becoming less of an issue. When you’re being rushed to the ER you just want the best care possible, cost be damned.
A lot of that is the Byzantine regulations. Streamline those, standardize designs and costs will drop.
Nimbyism doesn’t even come into the question. Industry doesn’t want to take the risk/ can’t get financing so new nuclear is basically dead. Every project is perpetually over budget by huge margins plus there’s the long-term risk issue. The only path forward for nuclear is public funding either directly or indirectly.
Except that doesn’t work either. Because again, you are talking an amount of battery that is quite literally inconceivable.
If you want to know what happens when you take a power plant offline, look at Texas constant fuckery. Nevermind the blatant use of ‘maintenance’ to manipulate prices.
As I mentioned; I know someone who was a nuclear NDT for years. Which means he was intimately familiar with and shared insights into the extremely important shutdown and maintenance process. A good nuclear power plant runs about 90% capacity factor. What that means is they generate 90% of their potential per year. 80-85% is more typical. 80% lifetime is considered good.
That 10-20% ‘loss’? It’s not things breaking or running cold. It’s necessary shutdowns and maintenance. And fixing things on nuclear plants takes a LOT of time. Because it’s nuclear. So everything has to be checked, re-checked, and built to exacting standards. One job my friend was on, they were planning on a relatively simple pump replacement. But NDT found problems in hot (radioactive) pipes which turned a 14 day outage into 3 months.
And any time they inspect certain areas, the reactor has to be shut down and cooled for days or weeks in advance. Meaning you don’t need to bridge a few hours of peak; you need to bridge days or MONTHS.
And of course, because late-stage capitalism, it’s never going to happen because natural gas is orders of magnitude more profitable. And these critical utilities have all been privatized for profit. See also: HB6.
RootWyrm, I used to consult on power grids, so I get it. I used to deal with high radiation and contaminated areas too… which is only interesting in this conversation. The way you deal with duty cycle on fission plants is to build more, smaller units and stagger the manufacturing cycle so MTBF doesn’t kill you. Your distributed peakers sit in homes — Tesla already does this with Powerwalls and their distributed power plant software, which is something we were talking about with the DOE over 20 years ago. Mass produce the reactors and spares in a controlled way and get rid of bespoke power plants. Yeah, you’re still going to have NG plants because we need NG and oil for other things. Still, this would work.
Would it work? Hypothetically.
Is it going to happen? Abso-fucking-loutely not. Because remember: privatized utilities. Their only and sole objective is profit. They don’t care if people die as a direct result.
It costs on the order of billions of dollars to build a nuclear power plant, and after HB6, they can’t just openly bribe the government any more. But they’re still getting bullshit like getting to charge co-generators for the power they generate themselves. (No, seriously.)
And the government is even less helpful. “Oh, just install Powerwalls! The end-user can pay for it!” That may be the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas. Sure, let’s just drop $20,000 on a Powerwall that will save us $2.00 a month on our bill. It’ll only take 10,000 years to ‘pay for itself.’ (You aren’t installing one without a new panel install. That’s $4k+.)
So it’s not going to happen. Is it the right answer? Personally I think it starts in the right direction. But it’s not even remotely there yet.
The whole point of light water SMRs was to make it cheaper and more attractive. But as it sits, it has achieved neither. A 470MWe Rolls-Royce SMR needs 430k square feet or 10 acres of building. For just 470MWe.
Solar, well. Ivanpah has a nameplate of a whole 392MWe and takes up 3500 acres. LOL.
West County Energy Center has a 3750MW nameplate and fits comfortably on 220 acres including lots of clearance and unbuildable area.
And cost? The NRC doesn’t fuck around. Meanwhile, AEP bought out the entire city of Cheshire to evade lawsuits at 3.5x market value; cost them just $20M to keep Gavin (2600MW coal-fired) operating. The EPA still hasn’t managed to shut down their use of unlined ash pits or enforced their order to clean up the site.
I do know that; I sat in a room full of VP’s from the power industry while they solemnly promised they’d fix the grid so nobody died. PG&E fires anyone? No, they won’t, but there is a solution: disrupt the business model by distributing the system. I know you don’t like Tesla, but they are absolutely on the right track with this one.
Right. Power companies are actively trying to slow/stop adoption of home solar, which does NOT require batteries (optional), and which is a great way to distribute load, especially during peak demand. (Usually, sunny = hot = highest AC loads)
Just getting them out of they way would help. Distributing the system to take power away from the large companies can only be a good thing.
Okay. You pay for it.
You heard me. Fork it over, buddy. I’ve had it quoted. $21,000. Put it in my hand. Immediately.
Then you’re gonna need to fork over another $75,000 for a new roof and solar installation. Which will operate at maybe 38% efficiency for the year.
What? No. I’m not paying for it. I can’t afford to pay for it anyways. I don’t care how many bullshit tax accounting tricks you attach to it. People can’t afford cars, and you think they can afford this?
So unless you’re going to pay for it out of your pocket?
Nope. It is not a solution. End of discussion.
I won’t pay you, but I would pay them. But I can easily afford it, and my plan is to use a more mobile battery (or 2, actually). This will be my reality in less than 24 months not because “it will save the world”, but because I want to be able to adaptively island my power and the inverters are at the right point to pull it off. I suspect others will end up leasing it if the grid continues to destablize. I’ve put my money down and I’m now starting the work on implementation.
You’re missing another point. You *will* pay for it if the government says you have to. They’ve got more guns than you do. You won’t even have a choice about it if you have a mortgage or rent. You can deal with that, put yourself off the grid (assuming no mortgage), or do without. That’s pretty much it I’m afraid.
How big is your roof/array that it is $75k?
In 2018, our 8kW array was ~$20k and the new roof at the time was another ~$10k. The 10kWh battery we added later was also about $10k installed and would have been less if we could have gotten it done at the same time as the solar (no stock at the time and we didn’t want to wait due to sunsetting tax credits).
Getting the 10kWh battery installed was only about $2k more than an appropriately sized gas generator at the time and has no ongoing expense.
The tax credit basically paid for the roof. We do not have a Tesla roof but this was before Tesla standardized installs and correspondingly *slashed* prices.
Every house will eventually need a new roof, and not every solar install will require a new roof, so thats not necessarily a strong argument. Mandate solar as part of any new roof?
Why are you suggesting that entire powerplants have to have full battery backups for maintenance? That’s not how it’s done now, and not how it should be done in the future. Distributed load with staggered maintenance. People have actually solved this problem before.
Your post is contradictory. You say that the bridging requirements are extensive, I guess implying that huge batteries are needed (?), but at the same time, you give an example that a nuclear plant was down for months, and I’m willing to bet that the customers had power for those 3 months. So the company had the capacity and distribution to manage that. I’m sure it was expensive, and it’s not ideal.
So, what’s your point?
Your battery numbers assume an all-solar grid. If you look at simulations of what a functional, zero-emissions grid looks like, you end up with a lot of wind generation and relatively little battery storage. A lot of much smarter people than me at NREL wrote all this up a few years ago (I recommend focusing on the “No CCS” scenario).
Backing up the grid is an absolutely terrible application for new batteries given the already-acute lack of supply just for transportation demand. But is simultaneously a great use of secondhand EV batteries, after the car itself is scrapped and the battery has deteriorated; capacity-to-weight ratios are way less important for the grid than for an automobile.
As for the two crappy cars you’re trying to get off your hands: I hear daily application of Saab Viggen treats automotive malaise.
Bzzt. Nope. False.
My battery numbers assume any form of non-flammable renewable. Or are people going to claim that wind turbines work without wind? Or that wind turbines work with 70MPH winds? (They do not. They often get severely damaged, or if somebody was too stupid to feather the blades, they burst into flames.)
ALL energy generation systems have downtime, period. Solar and wind just have more frequent gaps. Hydro also has gaps; you lose capacity when water is too low, and you have to shut down when water is too high. (To oversimplify, obviously.) Nuclear has to shut down for refueling and inspections. Natural gas has to shut down to do inspections and repairs. Coal has to shut down to clean ash.
No generation system runs at 100% capacity 100% of the time.
That’s why I specifically used the single plant with 1200MW nameplate. I don’t have the numbers or data or expertise to even begin to estimate what kind of gap coverage is needed total. It’s not “every single power plant” but it’s definitely more than 10.
But I can estimate a single solar or wind installation.
And backing up the grid just destroys those batteries even quicker. They’re already destroyed, so they’re unreliable at best. And then you’re going to put a literal mountain of worn out, corroded, unknown batteries into one giant pile and feed them megawatts of power?
Ask South Korea how that worked out. 23 battery farm fires in a year, all with mandatory evacuations. Or ask Illinois how they feel about mandatory evacuations and destroyed property due to hydrogen fluoride.
In other words: it’s a deeply stupid, unsafe, and irresponsible idea.
And daily application of Viggen only works if the Viggen works. It still does not.
“Or that wind turbines work with 70MPH winds? (They do not. They often get severely damaged, or if somebody was too stupid to feather the blades, they burst into flames.)”
I’d think they could if designed to do so. After all we’ve had propellers that can cruise all day at over 100 mph since the 1920s.
I appreciate to your enthusiasm and most of your posts, but this one is a little bit nonsense, and you’re conflating different problems.
1) grid level battery capacity
2) renewable power generation
1) Your power generation numbers are the power generated for an entire year.
“If you want all clean energy, you must have battery capacity to cover all of that.”
Why in the world would we need a whole year’s worth of battery storage?! And why are you even doing those calculations?
Base nighttime load could be covered by nuclear, wind, hydro, etc, and does not need to be stored in batteries at all.
Peak daytime load could be offset by solar, which operates at the same time. Grid level battery systems are only needed to offset surplus solar day generation for potential night usage, and to stabilize output (wind and solar). That is only a small fraction of DAILY power generation.
2) Yes, there are a lot of fossil fuels to replace, and serious challenges! But grid level power companies have been half-assing it at best, or outright obstructionist at worst (see Texas).
To your point about two cloudy days, most grid-level solar is not built in highly cloudy places; and partly cloudy only reduces output, it’s not an on/off switch.
Also, yes, EIA reports woodburning under renewables, because it is carbon neutral, but that is less than 10% of even solar, and “other biomass” is half of that. So I don’t think those sources are really skewing any numbers here.
EDIT: There is a HUGE difference between “non-flammable renewable” that you seem to have created, and “carbon neutral renewable”. Burning recently grown plants is carbon neutral. (but it’s a TINY contribution in any case)
EDIT: and despite your dismissive “Bzzt. Nope. False.”, Sensual Bugling Elk is correct. He linked to the report. Yes, all sources have downtime. That’s why a power network has to be managed. Will it be managed differently that fossil fuels? Yes. So? Why is that a problem for you? I still don’t understand why you’re trying to replace grid-level generation with full sets of batteries. It doesn’t need to be done, and shouldn’t be.
Yeah, but remember there are several countries (Japan and ?) who have almost solved the orbit solar farms that will transfer the energy to us by
magicmicrowaves. Problem(s) solved.I’m sure they’re just “a few years away®”.
My dude, I want to be polite, but this is gonna come across as a little salty. You’ve made some really, really bad calculation errors. I may not be good at calculating how spicy my hot takes are on a scoville scale, but I take pride in electrical engineering.
Here are the numbers you need to remember:
A factor of two hundred4217 GWh14 years
A 1200 MW nuclear plant (with a 92% capacity factor) produces around 9671 GWh in a year. If you switched to a power plant that runs 50% of the time, you don’t need 4800 GWh of batteries. You don’t need 6 months of storage! You need 12 hours! If that!
To replace a nuclear plant with solar, you’d first throw out the solar panels and buy wind turbines. But jokes aside, you’d need a 4506 MW solar farm (thanks to a 24.5% capacity factor). And according to the EIA and NREL, thanks to lower demand at night, a solar farm needs 2.4 MWh of storage for every MW of nameplate capacity. Our example 4506 MW farm would need 10.8 GWh of battery. The highest ratio of storage to capacity would be in Kauai Hawaii, where they have 5 MWh per MW (likely to cover residential solar and not just utility scale solar, but I’m being generous here).
23 GWh. Not 4800 GWh. That’s not 16 years of LG Chem’s manufacturing capacity, it’s 28 days. Even with generous assumptions, you’re off by a factor of two hundred.
To provide enough storage for a renewable grid, first you’d forget a solar baseline and build wind turbines and HVDC transmission backbones across the midwest so your effective capacity factor is over 50% and your downtime is negligible. Which is exactly what the engineers who make an honest living solving this problem are doing. But I digress. If we’re still playing along with solar+storage, the US produces 2.56 million GWh of fossil fuel electricity. Let’s convert all the cars to electric for good measure, for a 29% increase in total electric demand (based on ANL numbers — that’s another story for another day) or another 1.21 million GWh. That’s 3.77 million GWh, which translates to 430 GW of real generation capacity or 1757 GW of nameplate capacity for solar farms. Using the 5-to-1 ratio of storage, that’s 8785 GWh of energy storage. With the 2.4-to-1 ratio (more likely at this scale), it’s 4217 GWh, or slightly higher than NREL’s 2050 forecast.
What would this look like? Well, the 300 MWh battery you mentioned is Moss Landing. It’s not 300 MWh, it’s 300 MW max output rate and 1200 MWh storage. Or rather, it was until this year, when it grew to 750 MW / 3000 MWh. All of this fits in a single former natural gas power plant that used to produce 1060 MW. Excluding the decommissioned piping, it’s the size of a small warehouse. There are about 1900 natural gas plants and 220 coal plants in the US, so we’d have to build some warehouses.
Bottom line:
Even with a horribly inefficient renewable mix and incorporating future EV demands, LG Chem’s 2025 capacity alone could produce enough batteries in 14 years to convert the entire US energy grid to solar and battery storage.
And LG Chem isn’t even the biggest battery manufacturer in the world.
Take your upvote and a hearty chuckle from me. I had a project earlier this year to plan a 100% renewable (and 100% hypothetical) grid for a mid-size rural town. Completely open-ended. I got a big linear solver set up, put in all the wind and solar parameters, and gave initial conditions of equal parts wind and solar (by land area). And the answer was always just to go 100% wind, whether that was optimizing for cost or land utilization.
And thanks for doing the research and the math on this one. My immediate spidey sense looking at rootwyrm’s numbers was that some order-of-magnitude errors were being made, but between work and catching up on missed Autopian articles didn’t have the time to start fishing numbers out of reports.
LOL, I wasted my entire lunch break writing that — you know what they say about the truth getting its boots on. Rootwyrm’s posts are entertaining (his blood pressure could crush a Titan submersible), but people shouldn’t take for granted that any number he quotes is accurate.
To be fair to solar, there are some locations where it makes financial sense — places with high solar irradiance and where land is expensive but rooftops are cheap. Basically, southern California. But for the rest of us, like you said, there are just better options that almost completely sidestep the issue of battery storage.
I think local battery storage makes sense for areas with grid issues, and it seems to be working well for peaking. I’m still not sold on it for base load though.
“The big question, though, is how much capacity do we really need?”
A LOT.
Its not just for cars but for fixed energy storage systems( home, industrial, charging stations etc). Gravity storage solutions are nowhere near as flexible as batteries and hydrogen is way too lossy. Some trains will also benefit from batteries to span gaps in electrical coverage.
New batteries will also be needed to replace older worn out ones and maybe even retrofit older ICE guzzlers.
That’s on top of all the batteries needed to manufacture all the new cars.
If anything we need even more capacity.
Annoyingly, pretty much NONE of the electric cars on the market can be used to power a home during a grid-down situation. We’re cranking out 100kWh batteries for 4-ton SUVs save trucks, but they can’t run your dishwasher or refrigerator during a power outage. It is moronic.
I thought a killer feature of the Lightning was vehicle-to-home power, is that vaporware?
Cars maybe not. The Ford lightning F150 can power a house for up to three days. The Nissan Leaf has the tech but for now is limited to commercial loads.
https://www.cars.com/articles/whats-bidirectional-charging-and-which-evs-offer-it-457608/
There is a balancing act needed where buying one battery to do both transport and home backup loads makes some sense, instead of two that aren’t used all the time, but also letting utilities off the hook by making consumers buy the battery that serves as grid stabilization and then depreciate it with transport is a bad deal
Why do you think gravity storage (and are you including pumped hydro in this description) is nowhere near as flexible? Pumped hydro is already in pretty widespread use at least in areas where there is some form of existing hydroelectric power, is much, much cheaper and safer than batteries, and is considerably more environmentally friendly since it heavily utilizes already existing infrastructure, and has the same response time to grid loads as the hydroelectric plant that is being used.
First you have to have water. Then you have to have a sufficient difference in level that can be easily utilized. Last, you need it fairly close to the area needing the power to limit transmission loss. Unfortunately, it won’t scale.
Because a $8500 6.5 kWh Power wall 2 in the garage is a lot easier and cheaper than a 16m high 150,000 L water tower, ground level holding tank and connecting pump/Pelton wheel in the backyard.
My DD is the 2018 BRZ I bought after Harvey took away my WRX hatch. I guess I’m driving it until Subaru brings back the WRX hatch, or until the GR Corolla comes down to reasonable prices, or until Tesla builds the Bishop’s Model2.
My daily driver until recently was a 2004 Toyota Tundra with >300,000 miles on it. My son is now driving it (I expect it will easily hit 500k miles) and I drive a 2017 FIAT 500e with 26,000 miles on it. For longer trips I’m leasing a Polestar 2 with 6,000 miles on it. My wife and I work from home so our driving is all grocery-getting and vacations.
We want to keep the 500e forever, but we’ll see how long it lasts. It’s just such a joy to drive! The Polestar will go back to the company after the lease is up and we’ll see what other EV options are available at that time.
So far, I don’t have a need to replace either of the proper DD’s in the fleet – my wife’s 2006 Subaru Outback (2.5, auto, 140k-ish miles) or my 2012 Mazda 5 (2.5, manual, 135k-ish). Both still run well but don’t get a ton of use – the Subaru is really just used around town so the mileage per year is minimal, while the Mazda gets used for my ~100 mile round-trip commute on days I need to go in, and usually 3ish road trips/year for camping, visiting family & friends etc, so that racks up more miles.
Ideally, I’d like to replace both eventually with a PHEV minivan that could be used for both purposes, with the times that we both need a car simultaneously being filled by either the RX-7 or RX-8. This probably won’t happen for a few years though, based on new car prices and the condition of both our existing DDs.
I daily a ’17 Mazda6 MT with about 51k miles (replaced my ’13 BRZ, which I loved initially but had some annoying first year problems). WFH so trips are mostly short. I keep a close eye on the market to see what’s out there, but I just can’t find anything that gets me exited in the range I’m willing to spend. Hopefully the Skyactiv 2.5 proves to be durable in the long run.
Driving a 2012 Toyota FJ Cruiser with 178K miles and going strong. Paid off years ago. Bronco (and Defender) looks interesting, but still too much money when optioned. Guess I will be driving this beast until it dies (or rusts out).
As a 4Runner owner, I fear rust much more than age or mileage.
I have co daily drivers.
2016 Leaf – 72,000 miles. Range is around 80 miles in town. I bought it when I had a lengthy commute. I no longer have the long commute and only drive the Leaf ~5,000 miles per year, but I see no reason to get rid of it since it is worth very little (maybe $4,000) and is cheap to insure.
2021 F250 – 46,000 miles. I use this for long trips as well as occasional towing and hauling. I don’t need a truck with this capacity, but I bought it because I have always wanted a large diesel truck for some reason. I intend for this to be the last ICE vehicle I will ever buy for transportation (i.e. I’ll keep driving my classic vehicles for fun). How long I keep it depends on how quickly EV technology advances. I would also consider trading this in for a PHEV pickup, as long as it could tow 5,000 lbs and had an EV only range of 40+ miles.
My daily driver isn’t really representative of the cars I usually have, because I inherited it; it’s newer and nicer than anything I would buy for myself: a ten year old Chrysler 300 with 65,000 miles on it. 7000 of those have been added by me in the last six months, driving it up here from Las Vegas and commuting 50 miles a day. I plan to keep it as long as I can; if I run it up to 150k and stuff starts going wrong, I’ll have to assess the situation then.
My wife’s car, just purchased last month, is more typical for us: a 19 year old GMC Yukon, in fantastic shape, but with 188,000 miles on it already. But she has a lot shorter commute than I do. If that one makes it to 250k, I’ll be happy.
It’s a 300C with the 5.7 Hemi, Mark.
You feed it a diet of 5W20 full synthetic, transmission fluid and filter every 60,000, keep on top of the PCV and plugs (60k for plugs,) and it will run forever.
What’s your take on the new 20k interval synthetic oils?
I wanted to get rid of my daily driver. However, it has a new engine and transmission in it thanks to Kia’s warranty. With only 80K miles on it, I’m going to live with the missing clear coat and keep it until car prices and interest rates come down. Heck I might even get it painted and keep it even longer
I drive maybe 4,000 miles a year. And I own several cars, so I found the secret to longevity is to never drive your cars. My main whip is a 2003 Mercedes Benz E320 wagon at 189,000 miles. It’s given me no reason to get rid of it. Frankly it’s hella useful and getting increasingly harder to replace with the death of wagons. Probably going to keep that one around for a few more years. Currently the one on the chopping block is 5.9 tow rig/ farm truck that’s been chugging towards death. With the price of used diesel truck right now, that’s been a harder task then anticipated.
“Frankly it’s hella useful and getting increasingly harder to replace with the death of wagons”
You think that’s hard? Try finding a sliding door replacement for a Mazda 5 microvan. especially one with a 6MT.
My daily driver is a 2019 Kia Niro PHEV with around 40,000 miles. My pickup is a 2002 Silverado with 165,000. I’d love to replace them both soon (probably with one vehicle), but it’s not a pressing need.
Modern auto journalism:
I mean, it’s a pretty good joke, but I’d say most of modern automotive journalism doesn’t seem to concern itself as much with vehicle affordability. At least not the let’s-drive-expensive-cars-all-the-time set.
It might have been a cheap shot on my part but I couldn’t ignore the juxtaposition of $100,000 Land Cruisers with home cobbling 10 year old shitboxes. Frankly, I am quite surprised by the sheer uncool factor of most of people’s daily drivers on an enthusiast car site. Or maybe my “cool” meter swings more Jason than David.
Surely you understand a large number of people either have children and/or live in a place where daily driving a Miata 12 months a year is foolhardy if not dangerous?
I mean I’d drive the Viper every day if I was single and lived where there wasn’t winter, but life has a way of upsetting the best plans.
I have been daily driving a Miata for 33 years. It won’t haul children but it will handle just about anything else. And yes, I appreciate the utility of a minivan, SUV, or a nice sedan. That’s why my wife drives one.
Bingo – not everyone can manage to DD a 30 year old 2 seat convertible for many reasons, including elderly family or kids, a long commute, an absolute need to get to work at a specific time regardless of weather, storage space for a week of groceries for a family of 4, work or leisure-related transportation of larger objects or ground clearance, just to state a few.
Should people in this situation be disqualified from being considered car enthusiasts?
An observation is not necessarily a judgment. I am constantly trying to reevaluate my perception of the world based on new information. Being surprised simply means that I didn’t understand.
I’d argue that calling them uncool is a judgement, but as long as you’re trying to understand… 🙂
I expressed it was my own personal “cool-meter”. YMMV.
I think part of the reason we all come to this specific site, and comment, is that we see the cool in the uncool cars that most people drive. I’m more stoked to see that somebody is using a Nissan Leaf for the exact purpose it was built or keeping a 2002 Mazda going strong than somebody DDing a Bentley.
I remember as a kid riding in my dad’s 912E (which he semi-DDed), any time you passed another Porsche the drivers would lift a hand and do a subtle little wave to each other. Now I do that whenever I see another person driving a Volt. They don’t know why I’m waving to them, but I do.
I also celebrate the weird and unusual. A first gen Leaf has always been both and today I would marvel at seeing one still on use. That was why I was surprised at the number of normal daily drivers. Maybe all these folks have a Citroen as their weekend car. Or maybe they just appreciate those that do.
I’m pleasantly surprised to hear some people find a first-generation Leaf at least somewhat interesting. I think of mine as boring, but I have daily driven it for over 4 years so I see it as a cheap commuter car. It honestly never occurred to me that others may view it differently.
I love my Leaf, even if it is outdated tech. I’m planning to drive mine as long as possible.
I was looking at an Austin America locally the other day. And started thinking about how fun it might be to do a custom build, but in the serious commuter vein. A little research in to hybrids led me to find that honda offered a manual hybrid civic in the early 2000s. Honda to “mini” swaps are super common, so it seems like it would be a super fun, “boring” commuter car to build. I won’t, but it was fun to investigate.
About normie cars…
I’ve been a all things mechanical & transportation enthusiast as long as I can remember. Growing up I loved a lot of European sports cars especially. I remember looking at the classified > auto section every weekend + the paper weekly? “auto trader” magazines that used to be common in grocery & convenience stores. In particular I loved the looks of the vw karhman ghia, MG A, triumph tr4, tr6, bugeyed sprite, MG B, jaguar e-type, lotus’, original minis, Morris minors, Citroën 2cv, DS, tatra t77, t87, BMW 2002, e30 325, Porsche 356, 911, 912, 914, 924, 944, 928, 968 etc…
My 1st car I bought for I think $1k when I was 14 with money I made from a paper route was a 1978 Triumph tr7, which was followed by an 84 (mk1) vw (rabbit/golf) GTI, then a 90′ vw jetta gli, then 98′ jetta tdi
Then I had kids and my wife’s Ford contour was traded in for a Toyota sienna xls as a reliable family hauler & fantasticly comfortable road trip king now with 224k miles on it.
When my tdi was at the end of its life (rust sadly took too much of a toll) at 300k miles I found a 3rd gen prius plug in as a dd replacement; I’ve been pleasantly surprised how much fun I’ve had driving it too (now with 214k miles on it).
My ‘fun car” is a 74’ MG B GT that was my father’s and will be in the family certainly as long as I’m alive & hopefully for many years after!
Long story short, as much as I love cars, for me at least, the DDs have to serve a practical purpose 1st.
Having more than 2 cars for any couple I think can be challenging not only bc of costs (purchase, fuel, insurance, routine maintenance), but simply bc of how much space they take up. Only (common’ish) personal possessions that take up more space of course being boats, motorhomes, planes & horses.
As such getting to 3 cars or +3 cars means finding some place to store them the +99% of their existence when they are not being used.
Even if you have a 3 car garage (and you want them protected from the elements) means getting lifts (if your garage has the ceiling height) or an additional garage / pole barn on your property or a paying for some type of storage. Then of course there is the (mechanical) care and feeding (beyond routine maintenance, such as rust repair, repaint, electrical harness replacement, all soft mounts replacements (engine, trans, suspension) etc…to make sure they continue to run and have some chance at some level of reliability. This is a good part of the fun of seeing ‘survivor cars’ that may still have all original paint after anything over 20 years from new still being used & looked after by their owner. Doing so often is about the person’s love for that car or sentimental reasons beyond finances and logic bc as much as I think we like to think we’re logical, we’re really not. We’re mostly emotional beings that use logic to justify our emotions/feelings
“I’m more stoked to see that somebody is using a Nissan Leaf for the exact purpose it was built”
For me its seeing a truck actually being used for truck things. A Home Depot run for a box of screws doesn’t count.
Cool cars usually don’t have great utility. I’ll drive my Colorado to haul the kids, lumber, and boat. That’s the DD. Get that stuff done.
My Saturn Sky Redline and ZR1 Corvette are reserved for the moments in between.
No sense making DD duty take longer for the sake of trying to do it all with a 1982 VW Rabbit or something.
I’d love to have a cool car. But, like many people here, I have to consider practicality. When I got my Niro, getting a PHEV was somewhat of a cool factor (to me), while also allowing me to commute on electric without another vehicle for longer trips. And the ventilated seats were both a metaphorical and literal cool factor. I picked up a pickup because that utility is helpful to me. With those, I have no room for a fun vehicle. If I sell them both and get a more efficient pickup, I’ll finally have the space for something more fun, but it’ll probably be a bit before I can justify the purchase.
For now, I can come here and find a community that enjoys cars and also largely accepts that people have different types of enthusiasm and life circumstances. I think that part of what you’re seeing is the result of that acceptance. People don’t need to have a tuner car or an offroad machine or whatever else here, so they feel free to talk about their “uncool” cars.
Also, this is a site with a lot more van enthusiasts than most automotive sites, which skews what people think of as cool, too. Seems like there are a lot of people who value utility here.
My Leaf is extra boring, but it is such a drama free vehicle that I often prefer it over more interesting vehicles. You just get behind the wheel, press a button, and drive away. There is no noise, no excess heat, no annoying vibrations, no worrying about whether it will start or overheat, etc. It is also comfortable and the AC and radio work.
Sometimes a car is just about transportation. Boring cars are often the best transportation appliances.
What DD vehicles were you expecting to be common amongst this crowd? I’m just curious what falls inside your cool meter.
My previous daily driver was a 2008 Mazdaspeed 3 with 130K miles, but I hardly drive it now and it just sits most of the time, plus it’s kinda thirsty at the pump and being an early direct injected turbo car I’m concerned it’s a bit of a ticking time bomb, so it’s going on Cars and Bids next week.
Replaced it with a 2015 Mazda 3 2.slow with 82K miles. I wanted a “simpler” car and one that gets reasonable MPGs since all of the other cars in my fleet are gas guzzlers.
Mine: 2008 Pontiac G6 GT convertible. 115k miles. I don’t see myself replacing it in the next 2 years, at least.
Wife: 2018 Infiniti QX30. 65k miles. She works from home now, so I see this being her car for a while.
The kids have a 2016 Equinox, a 2010 Sonic hatchback, and a 2013 Fiat 500. I don’t think any of those will be replaced any time soon, either.
2001 v70 t5 manual. 260k, ~20-25k/yr. Needs to nestle its way into my garage for its quarter million mile service (drivetrain/subframes, everything out! replace nearly all old rubber mounts and seals, clean it all, possibly give it a fresh(er) interior, quaife lsd, minor changes and upgrades to prepare it for its next trip to the moon. Should take about a year.
2006 xc90 also 5cyl. 230k, ~20-25k/yr. Needs angle gear resealed and collar sleeve installed and a transmission flush.
Off to
bedthe garage2008 cx-9 150k miles. Looking to replace with smaller hybrid in next 6 months.
2011 Tiguan 100k miles. Looking to replace in next year for ev.
1995 XJ Cherokee rhd, 377500 miles; 132 miles added 6 days a week. As a rural mail carrier it’s hands down the best vehicle for the job, I plan on using it until I can’t buy or fananagle parts anymore. Although if someone wanted to give me a diesel Hiace, I would love to try one for a while.
2014 Mazda3 hatchback with 140k miles on the clock. I bought it new, fully-loaded, so it has automatic braking and radar cruise control–that’s all the automation I want for now. Mechanically fine, but it’s been a scratch and dent magnet in the city. Seriously considering pumping some money into fixing the outside and pushing the car until it literally falls apart, Blues Brothers-style.
2000 Toyota Altezza
2002 Mazda Roadster
No plans on replacing either with a modern disposable instead.
Literally my dream garage but add a 94 aristo in there!
2013 ex-rental Chevy Sonic, 137,000 miles. I drive less than most, and am more permissive of old-car weirdness, so I don’t expect to have to replace it anytime soon. I do most of the regular maintenance and can youtube weird fixes (and use public transportation if I strand myself on a repair) which makes it easier to hang on to it for a while. I cringe at how much I paid for the thing in the worst part of the Pandemic price curve (divorce forced the decision), but I don’t need anything fancy, and it has not left me stranded in over two years. Maybe once I crest 200k miles I can think about something else, but that should take me a while.
Me – summer – 2016 Chevy SS 27,000 miles. No plans to replace it as I can’t get anything like it anymore.
Me – winter – 2019 F350 28,000 miles. No plans to replace it as a new one wouldn’t do anything better than what I have.
Wife – 2020 Sienna 58,000 miles. No plans to replace it because I expect to get 300,000 miles out of it.
Depending on what the situation looks like when the last ICE-only models start being discontinued, I may swoop in and preemptively replace the truck or van with something reasonably equivalent while I still can. If real world 4 season 500+ mile EVs are commonplace and reasonably priced by then, this wouldn’t be necessary. If we are forced to make do with $60-80,000 “300 mile” EVs like we have now, I’ll be sticking with gas as far into the future as possible.
I think in permissive environments E-bikes will solve some of this transportation related pain. Households will opt for one vehicle and one e-bike to solve their needs.
My retired dad who has a model 3 tesla bought an E-bike a couple of years ago and the miles on the tesla are way down in the summer because all the grocery store runs etc are done on the ebike with the panniers instead of the tesla.
I wouldn’t want to have to buy food for a 4-person family on a bicycle, electric or not. Heck, even buying a case of beer for my single-guy household would be cumbersome.
I have seen some cool tricycles though, front half bicycle, back half basically two wheels screwed onto a box and with an electric assist motor. Those would have the space to transport a case of beer and food for a couple of days and be a lot more stable with all the added weight, too. Plus as a trike they’re a lot more suited to older people who might not have the best sense of balance and/or coordination anymore.
Been trying to badger my parents into buying one, my dad could use some exercise but he’s going on 70 now and I’d be uncomfortable seeing him on a bicycle tbh. A fall at that age might turn out badly.
Yeah I am not advocating getting rid of cars altogether. I assume most will keep a vehicle for like costco, weekend grocery runs but if you look at most shopping patterns – folks will run to the store for like one or two things mid week. Those runs are perfect for an ebike. I make liquor store runs to get a twelver and bag of ice all the time on my pedal bike. Bags on the side would make it a bit more ideal than the backpack though.
“Bags on the side would make it a bit more ideal than the backpack though.”
I got a pair of these:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NX9WYJB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
They allow one to strap heavy, bulky items like sacks of dog food and suitcases to the rear rack. They’re not perfect (hooks instead of Velcro would have been better) but at least they’re cheap and store easily.
There are also backpacks that convert into panniers. I haven’t tried them so I don’t know how comfortable they are. I just tie my backpack to my rack with bungee cords.
You can also make hard sided, covered panniers out of rectangular kitty litter buckets or pick up a set of wire baskets pretty cheaply. For bigger hauls I recommend a trailer which usually runs between $50-$100.
You can carry quite a bit on a bike trailer provided the store isn’t too far away, you’re not loading up at Costco and that distance is reasonably flat and bike friendly. As a bonus the trailer makes a convenient shopping cart too.
FWIW my 70+ FIL was gifted a non E Schwinn trike but we found it dangerously tippy. One’s instinct is to lean into a turn which you can’t do on a trike. A trike with the single wheel in the back might be more stable but definitely try before you buy and anticipate a relearning curve.
Good to know, thank you.
Luckily my area is *very* flat. The highest (natural) point within 90 minutes’ driving distance is a sand dune that is about 25 meters (± 80ft ) high. So lots of cyclists and ok-ish bike infrastructure.
I live close to the grocery stores (1-2miles) I live in mn where it’s flat. I go once on the weekend with a car but try to make the short little trips for things I’ve forgot, missed, crave with the bike. Next year MN is offering a rebate to encourage e-bikes and I am going to try and get a bigger one with it racks/basket so I can commute to work in the summer and do weekend grocery store/target runs. Maybe like a radwagon.
It would be a long 20 mile one way trip to the store on an ebike. Groceries for a family of five, with 2 teens, would be difficult to fit too.
The average american travels less than five miles to their grocery store. Sounds like it might not fit for your needs but it is a viable option for many.
Perfect use case for an old LEAF though.
That’s a great idea in theory, but the infrastructure in the USA is almost purposely hostile to cyclists. People may live close to their necessities as the crow flies, but a e-bike will not get you far on high speed, multilane roads with no bike lanes.
Combining an e-bike with public transport solves the last mile problem. Ride your bike from home, toss it on the train or bus for the long haul, then zoom from the station or stop to wherever you need to go.
I handed down my old e-bike to my son so he can use it for college, he has no interest in getting a driver’s license.
Yes, that would be great, assuming we expand public transit and accommodate bicycles in those (and most) areas. Which we could and should do.
I mean I guess that would work amazing assuming:
A: there’s a train station near where you live / where you’re going
B: it never rains
C: it never snows
D: you never need to carry anything larger than a backpack
I think most folks will still have at least one car per household. I live in MN so its definitely less than half a year solution. That said putting half as many miles on a car should in theory mean they last twice as long provided rust doesn’t get them.
My current vehicles are an 03 infiniti g35 c (summer), 05 grand cherokee (winter) & 08 Prius (wife). Fixing to pickup a new Prius here in a spot and who knows maybe I can eek 30 years out of that if I only put 3-4k miles a year on it.
I commuted (in MN) 12 miles 1 way for 4.5 years. I’d ride every year until usually mid Jan. b/f the trails were too icy & start up again in March. Admittedly I was rather committed, so rain or snow typically didn’t stop me it was the ice each winter that would, though all my riding at the time was on a road bike a cyclocross/gravel/mtbk would have greater clearance for studded (carbide) winter tires which I never tried. Now w/hybrid wk arrangement I’m approx. 2x as far away from office & don’t need to go in much, which makes commute by bike less practical, although could be an excuse to buy a new e-bike hmmm
My city is a first ring suburb and they are in the process of addressing this right now. Some of the bikelanes are useless/dangerous but other ones are decent.
One owner ’90 Miata, 190,000 miles, forever. Super reliable.