WHO IS PAYING THE MOST (OR LEAST) IN THE WORLD FOR GAS????

[rokkerr]

[greggl]

just saw $4.19 today

[Hornylady9]

Wednesday we put gas in the car for $3.49 here in South Carolina. I do know it did go up to $4.97 here for a while! I know I didn't see it for $5 anywhere in my town. I know there has been some crazy prices!!

Zany

[WalterB]

We're down to $3.57 or so here.

[WalterB]

Down to $3.45 Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso.

[rokkerr]

Down to $3.45 Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso.

REALLY?!??! We are still at about $4.00 or so...

[rokkerr]

Anyone here own an electric car?

[ErikB]

Anyone here own an electric car?

Funny you should ask. The technical answer to your question is "yes, I own an electric car". Do I actually USE it? Nope! Not even with additional charging help as shown in your funny picture!

I drive my Toyota Yaris.

I bought the electric car a while ago when I had money burning a hole in my pocket and possibly a little mid-life crisis depending on how old I end up living to be. Mine is a Solectria Force, 1997 if I remember correctly. I think I read somewhere that only 400 of them were ever made (Wikipedia agrees). Basically, the Solectria company bought Geo Metro gliders (cars without an engine) and put their stuff into them. It uses 13 lead-acid batteries, so the range is small even if the batteries are balanced. I suspect mine are not, because the guy I bought the car from mentioned he had recently replaced one of the batteries. I think the conventional wisdom is that one should really replace the entire pack at a time. Two weeks after buying it the switch that controls the vacuum pump for the conventional brakes failed. The replacements I ordered from the switch manufacturer did not work. I have a replacement from a better manufacturer but it needs adapters to go into the existing system, and I never took it that far.

I did drive it long enough to get some numbers, though. I think I had already garaged the electric when I bought the Yaris, so we are talking at least 12 to 15 years ago. At that time, gas had to be up over $4.50 a gallon for the electric to make sense. It only worked for me because I only drove 14 or 15 miles a day. Now that electric costs are up as well as gas, I don't know who the winner would be. It might have better performance if I replaced the entire battery pack. If I converted to lithium and dealt with whatever charger issues that would bring, perhaps it might be a more useful car.

However, there is a big design flaw that might have prevented me from buying it if I had known about it or thought about it at the time. The drive and the regenerative braking, are both from one wheel in the back. So, not the best driving experience in an area that actually gets rain and snow. Also, even in dry conditions, the regenerative braking cuts out while the car is still moving at a pretty good clip. The braking uses the drive motor as a generator. That only works well if the motor is turning above a certain speed. Once the car slows down enough, the braking force is pretty weak and their controller just cuts if off. The car is still moving fast enough, though, that you need to use the conventional brakes to finish stopping. Also, with no engine to constantly apply a little pressure to a clutch (also non-existent), the car rolls any time there isn't a brake applied (foot brake for driving, handbrake for parking). You need to be fast and good to start moving again if you had to stop facing uphill at a stoplight.

I was actually wondering whether I should see if it can be restored after all the time sitting in the garage. Remembering the design flaws that make it an unpleasant car to drive even in the summer helps me decide against it. Fortunately, Jay Leno has quite an eclectic taste in cars. Also, he bought a 13-million-dollar mansion in Newport, Rhode Island and makes the occasional video with Donald Osborne of the Audrain Auto Museum. Since Newport is just down the road from me, if Jay doesn't want the car maybe the museum might. Hopefully one of the two would be interested if I donated the car rather than sending it to the scrapyard.

As a side note on the Audrain Museum, I thought it was a joke name at first. It turns out it actually was the guy's name who founded it. I thought it was a joke because "Au" is the atomic symbol for gold. I thought some rich guy was complaining that his car collection was draining all his money, so he decided to call it the "Audrain" museum. Turns out, just a neat coincidence.

So, I imagine this wasn't really what you were asking. Owning an electric car that uses 25-year-old technology isn't really the same experience as owning one that was built recently.

I found a picture online that pretty much matches mine. I don't think I ever took a picture of my own! I have to fix that just before it gets hauled to wherever it ends up going.

solectria_force_cropped.jpg (29.33 KiB) Viewed 114 times

Here is the last episode of Season 3 of the show Jay Leno does with Donal Osborne, "Mansions and Motorcars"

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A thing to note about the towns of Portsmouth, Middletown, and Newport, Rhode Island. They are all on Aquidneck Island, which is actually another name for Rhode('s) Island. The name of the state, until the last election changed it (most likely fraudulently), was officially "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations". Rhode Island is this island, and Providence Plantations is Providence and everything else on the "mainland". Jay has owned a home here long enough to do what most of the locals do, and simply refer to "the island". At 51:57 he talks about there not being a road suitable on "the island" to really put the car he is driving through its paces. One of the "local pride" things people around here do is talk about how long it has been since they have been off the island. It has probably been 10 to 15 years for me. There is a guy who works at the local health-food store (https://www.thegreengrocerri.com) who claims never to have been off it. At least, that was the claim many years ago. I haven't seen him in a while. When I asked about him, they said he is fine and that he works mornings.

[stickyvicky]

doesn't play right for me? Got horizontal bars through the entire video

[ErikB]

doesn't play right for me? Got horizontal bars through the entire video

Wow, that's odd. It works fine for me. Maybe going directly to the URL would work.

https://youtu.be/X_uECjrRHAc

[ErikB]

Anyone here own an electric car?

This video of a line at an EV charging station was just posted to a YouTube channel that I monitor ...

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The direct URL is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU_K2NhD_1I


The homepage for this YouTube channel is

https://www.youtube.com/c/TonyHeller/videos


While I agree with his message, I think his presentation style could use some work. If you are having trouble sleeping, pick one of the longer videos.

[WalterB]

Guess when the guy at the end of the line is going home. I'm guessing November.

[ErikB]

A heating oil delivery was made the other day. The cost was $1000, which is almost double what they usually are ....

different_eye_reactions.jpg (46.81 KiB) Viewed 68 times

[stickyvicky]

[UncleDave]

Corporations are trying to make back all the money they lost and more during the shutdowns.

That whole "We're in this together" bullshit dried up right away.

[stickyvicky]

Money they lost? I don't think any of them lost anything they all profited like crazy off of all the free money that was being handed out.

For example a hairdresser that I used to go to, took a huge handout and shut down her store anyways, no she's remodeling her mansion with all that money......

[rokkerr]

Gas is on the rise here again...

[stickyvicky]

[UncleDave]

And that's just a Quarter not for the year.

It's ridiculous. It's not a Democratic or Republican thing it's straight up robbery by the Corporations

[WalterB]

Well, I paid $2.67 this morning, not too bad. But things are really still out of control here. According to the Gas Buddy heat map
.
(https://www.gasbuddy.com/gaspricemap?_g ... 591588&z=4)
.
gas in El Paso is running from $2.50 in the Southeast, to $3.30 on the West side.