Future Without Oil

Time waits for no man. (or battery) From a Tesla owner; 

What about the battery losing capacity, though? This is the one point of weakness in the depreciation of  any all-electric car like the Tesla. Time will tell how much battery capacity is lost in the various Tesla models and then how much it costs to replace the battery, given the plummeting costs of lithium-ion batteries and Tesla’s Gigafactory. My own experience is that after four years and 30,000 miles, I have lost about 12 percent of my original range of 245 miles. At this rate, it could be a decade before I have less range than a brand new Nissan Leaf, and a decade from now I suspect batteries are going to be a few thousand dollars, a little like replacing an engine block.

The above simply lends more credence to the notion that traction batteries thrive on exercise. "Use it, or lose it" really seems to apply here and half of this scenario plays out in my LEAF on a regular basis.  Because of widely scattered job assignments, the LEAF has not been possible for a lot of recent jobs.  Due to mileage reimbursement; it has not really been an option most of the time anyway because my office to reduce expenses prefers that I take a company car when its available so there is a constant juggling of who is going the farthest that day and how many passengers they will have.  But to make a long story "slightly" shorter, my battery stats are currently down. Down so much that I barely eeked out 84 miles of range despite the dash claiming 4.5 miles per kwh!  That is 18.66 kwh used with a small amount of defrost involved from a LEAF Spy reported 20.5 kwh available that morning.  This implies that degradation is well on its way and after 33,923 miles, I was expecting some. Now how much I really have? Well, that remains to be seen. I have actually seen greater degradation almost a year ago in the very same LEAF so stay tuned. My current thoughts on the subject of battery improvements from the 2011 to 2013 are still being formed.

Now if you have been reading my blogs lately you probably have noticed my thoughts on public charging have not been good. In fact; they really really SUCK here lately including my local dealer Olympia Nissan and their feet dragging to get their fast charger working. Its been down at least a month or longer but I have decided to put the complaining on hold (most of it) for a bit. (a very little bit actually) and instead of whining about what we don't have, I want to show you what we could have if we simply started putting it together.  A great video put out by Nissan shows an awesome vision of networked charging and power distribution and how it could really change our lives.  The message becomes more poignant in my area when the memories of power outages a few days ago are still fresh in people's mind.

Now tell me that is NOT TOTALLY COOL!! Although, not sure about the cars rearranging themselves every night but then again, push a button on your FOB and the car pulls up the front door. Yeah, I could live with that!




Now as much as I complain about... that thing I said I was not going to talk about, every once in a while I see something that gives me hope.  What is really amazing about this town is their proximity to oil riches!

https://www.facebook.com/newsyvideos/videos/10153501550793775/

I guess the real issue is that climate change is no longer your children's problem. The predictive models simply did not account for cheap gas so this issue that was supposed to be a few decades away is pretty much kicking in our door right now.  Sure it was a combination of bad timing, bad weather, etc. but when this happens a few miles from your home, its hard to ignore. 

Downtown Olympia

Gotta be better ways of keeping our sidewalks clean!  But to be fair, it was high tides, high winds and unusual weather. Now how much correlation between the unusual weather and Global Climate Change exists is becoming clearer and clearer daily but many choose to use old news to form their opinions.  I admit; I am guilty of that. My mind; blessed though it be has time/spatial issues.  Its hard for me to keep straight the old and the new sometimes.  But lets face it; the jury is not only in, they have left the building! We are GREATLY hastening our own demise and our fossil fuel based transportation system is chiefly to blame!