Parking lot Solar Panels/Shade Structure

Scott Cameron:

...until I went to the dealership to actually get the car. It all fell apart from there.

Should be pretty painless once I look the car over and still want it. I already have the check in my hand from my bank so the price is already settled on and there isn't much more they can try and sell me. It was a "No Dealership Fee's" kinda place where the advertised price, was exactly the price you pay once all was done. I am hoping the longest part about the process will be the 55 minute drive there in the morning, because I still want to get a days worth of work in after I leave the place.

Ugh, the "your payment will be" nonsense is exhausting. It's especially bad with leases. If you do want to lease, go in negotiating the price of the car. When they arrive at something you're cool with, say, "OK, make it a lease based on that price and this much down." It pisses them off to no end, but that's how I ended up with a $98 lease on our first EV (Nissan Leaf), and then Nissan financing extended it by two years! I'll never get a deal like that again.

Scott Cameron:

Report back after you do that.

Could not have been any smoother of an experience. I text my guy that I was on my way to the dealership and the drive there was longer than my time at Ford. Once I met him in the lobby, he had me go out and look over the Bronco while he got a dealer plate. About 4 minutes later he had the plate on the car and had me take it on a drive while he stayed back and got the paperwork ready at the dealership. Once I was back, I started the paperwork process while the car got a final wash (it had rained that morning) and my trade-in plate switched over to my new car. After I finished signing the paperwork, about 5 minutes, I was once again given the keys and was done. The whole process was about 30 minutes start to finish, and that includes the test drive around the block. Hands down the best car buying experience I have ever had.

I'm very glad to hear that and it gives me hope for other dealers. What you described is what I expected to happen when picking up my car in 2022 but it certainly was not (see my posts above). I've had better experiences before that one so I'm more convinced now it was just that dealer and (hopefully) not the direction of traditional dealers as a whole (that was my first new car purchase since 2017). Good to hear.

I'm happy to report that my experience picking up my Tesla was very smooth as well and in line with how easy ordering it was. Had I not spent 20 minutes messing with the settings in the car, I would've literally been out of there in 3 minutes.

In case anyone is wondering, the dealer I reference above with the horrible experience is Les Stanford in Dearborn, MI. Avoid that place if you don't want nonsense games from their "business" manager.

In general, I have found that dealers are more likely to play games with people looking to play games and are much less likely to do that if the customer isn't looking to play games. General rule so some dealers always play games and those are places to avoid. But its like going to heckle a comedian who has toured for a long time: they deal with hecklers every night so your chances of getting the better of them heckling (besides being an a-hole thing to do) are very small. You aren't the first customer looking to play whatever game you are looking to play. And your time has value. Being respectful of my time is very important to me. Have dealt with 2 dealerships over the last 20 years. Each understands that. Though ultimately, I think if they had Tesla's historical profit margins, other manufacturers would likely be more respectful of people's time as well.

We're in the extremely early stages of planning a trip next year, and as such, we're exploring our options in what will ultimately culminate in a visit with family in Florida. At this point everything is on the table, including flying directly down or turning it into a road trip.

One of the latter scenarios involves driving down to Pigeon Forge and spending a day and two nights there before continuing down to Gainesville, and doing so in a rental car. Looking at our options, I came across Teslas that are priced in a way that seems compelling given the lower cost/mile.

First, if we're driving a ICE vehicle, we'd need to stop for gas ~halfway on the first day (+20 minutes, to be generous), plus, generously, another 60 minutes for other various stops. The same for the second day, but to be very generous we'll round that up from 80 to 90 minutes a day, for a total of 3 hours of non-driving time. Add that to the driving time of 17.5 hours, and we're looking at a grand total of 20.5 hours of total travel time to FL.

Plugging in the trip details to Tesla's "Go Anywhere" trip planner and selecting a Model Y Long Range, the total trip time would be 21.5 hours. So, even with a generous allotment of stops in an ICE vehicle, we'd still be sitting on our hands for an extra hour down and an hour back in an EV.

I suppose we could find something to do, assuming there is something to do for 55 minutes in Buford, GA (or wherever else for whatever amount of time), but it's less than ideal for us. And it gets complicated if trying to align charge-ups with something to do, since the stops range in duration from 10 to 55 minutes.

Then again, maybe the cost savings would be dramatic enough to make it "worth it", but I don't know as I've not drilled down to what we'd save using electrons versus petrol. And I don't know how much I'd have to save to make it worth adding an hour to what will already be a long road trip. And there are other variables, like breaking the drive up into 3 days, whether or not we'd have to wait in line for a charger, etc., but the gist of it is that there would be a nontrivial amount of time spent sitting around waiting for the car to charge.

Obviously everyone's MMV, but this is the first time I've done any real world comparisons, and found it interesting given the context of the conversation.

I don't know what the trip planner is "thinking," but it doesn't at all align with our experience. With the exception of a trip in 2016 during a hurricane up the east coast, when there were far fewer but slower superchargers, we've never had a true idle experience on any road trip. May vary indeed.

Real world tests suggest that at 70MPH the range is ~276 miles. So, for us on our day one of our ~570 mile journey, we'd need 2.5 "tanks", but we'd hit the road full, so really only 2 stops would be strictly necessary based on the mileage. So maybe the planner is working under the premise of doing "quick" partial charges, i.e. 20% ==> 80%, since full charges take considerably longer?

Under that premise, the range for the first "tank" is 221 miles (100% ==> 20%), at which point we charge up to 80%, and then can go a further 166 miles (80% ==> 20%), before another partial charge, allowing a further 166 miles, putting us at ~550 miles, still ~20 miles short of our destination, so Tesla's planner is presumably having us charge up from 20% ==> 80% regardless of the remaining distance, which is weird. At 20% capacity we would in theory be able to make it the additional ~20 miles to our destination. This scenario reduces our time spent waiting from 1 hour to 30 minutes, but that's still 30 more minutes of idle time compared to ICE.

You would get to stop at Buc-Ees for an extra visit doing it that way.

Can you get good chicken tenders there?

Never been. The idea of stopping at a gas station/store for 20-30 minutes to simply take in the sights is not my idea of a good time. I would much rather spend that time with a drink in my hand sitting under a palm tree than watching the stampede when they announce the brisket is up.

It was a joke. I thought you were the anti-chicken tenders guy? Or at least gourmet chicken tenders.

And ultimately, my family takes a lot of long road trips (have an 8 hr/each way trip in a couple weeks). We minimize/combine stops.

I know that is the joke with me. I just keep playing along with the idea that chicken tenders are considered gourmet food items.

Only the hand-breaded ones. Breaded by any other means? Not so much.

But by hand???

Out of curiosity, is anyone concerned with how (and who) mining for the minerals used in making EV car batteries is done?

Just to clarify, I'm not against EV's at all. I just have a few concerns about how we are going about the transition, the cost of said vehicles being significantly higher and other factors. Also, the infrastructure needs to be considerably better and it seems the way the electricity is being generated is by coal. I do reside in coal country and have believed for some years now that society needs to move away from this type of energy produced, for the record. In addition, I have concerns with wind turbines generating electricity as well. It seems that once the turbine blades reach the end of their useful life, they are buried, which hardly seems environmentally friendly.

I would like to read up more on carbon capture as an alternative as well. It's something that I have heard very little about, but find anything related to alternative energy to be fascinating.

By the way, thanks for the clarification on solar panels as I seem to be behind on my knowledge of those.

As for the wind turbine blades when they're done..... they make em into furniture now.....

https://www.gocanvus.com/

Ok, now there's something I can get behind

I don't think there is such a thing as "sustainable" mining, but the math of total environmental impact from manufacturing and operation has been done a hundred times, and it works out. The fossil fuel industry has put out "studies" that are selective at best, but mostly misleading. The important thing is that you have to get the materials for batteries once, and for gas continuously. Slowly, more existing lithium battery material is being recycled, but it's a nascent market that didn't even exist a few years ago. (Lead-acid car batteries, which have been around for decades, are almost entirely recycled now.) Furthermore, even if you still have electricity from coal, the efficiency of an EV and economy of scale result in far lower carbon emissions per mile driven. I wrote this about seven years ago:

The EPA says the average carbon footprint of driving a combustion engine car one mile is 411g of CO2. Generating a single kWh of electricity from a coal plant generates about 900g of CO2. So using our numbers below, [using "coal electricity" in] the Leaf at 4 miles per kWh costs 225g [per mile], and the Model S at 3.5 miles per kWh costs 257g. Already, we're at a 38% reduction [compared to gas] assuming it's 100% coal generated electricity. Natural gas generates on average 465g of CO2 per kWh, so now we're at 116g for the Leaf and 132g for the Model S, a reduction of 72% and 68%, respectively, compared to burning gas. That's a massive difference.

And I'll add that any arguments against are typical "perfect being the enemy of good" arguments. There are pros and cons to everything, but that math dramatically favors EV's.

Thanks Jeff. I appreciate the insight. Also, I was just thinking about this very point that you mentioned this morning, which is, any way you look at it, there will be SOME environmental impact. Minimalizing the environmental impact is what matters to me the most.

Concerning the cost of EV's as compared to traditional cars, I would expect those costs to decrease significantly over time. I'm just not sure that attempting to set a concrete deadline as when to phase out the old school vehicles is a great idea (unless it's a non concrete target). Infrastructure has to be considerably better with larger access to chargers and the ways to furnish the electricity for those has to be much better as well.

^Your last sentence hit home for me about an hour ago. I was at the Walmart in Chipley, FL, which has an area in it's lot with four "Tesla" chargers. I rarely see them in use, sometimes a vehicle is there charging. Today all four were in use with people milling about their vehicles. And, there were 7 other vehicles in an unorganized line waiting for next available.

Let's hope Brandon, if he chooses the EV, will not have such a potential added wait-time.

extremecoasterdad, I also echo your statement of thanking some of these contributors on here that have really helped supply some interesting, thoughtful bits if information about this whole subject.