Thousands of New GM trucks just showed up at closed Delco plant.....

... Right-On man!

 

You will be getting your CC out to be able to plug into the charging stations.
Doubt they will be free, nothing in this world is...

 

I have a Milwaukee 18v chain saw, weedwhacker and blower. Great little tools, but I wont be cutting a grapple load with that saw, weedwacker is good as long as the grass isn't very long, and the blower works great for small jobs. I still need to have gas powered stuff to do the bigger jobs, so we are not there yet. I've said before, EV tech is still in its infancy, and the infrastructure is not there yet for it. When it is, and is not astronomically priced, I may go for it. What bugs me is fuel being priced high to force me into something that is, at best, marginal. JW said what I have been thinking all along, when ICE came out, no one jacked the price of horses or feed, people made their own decisions, and the ICE won out, but only after the infrastructure was in place.

 

Last time bulk oil prices were this high was 2014. The average price of gas was $3.54 / gallon. Now it is over $5.00 / gallon.

It isn't the government raising prices and taking the money. It is Big Oil price gouging everyone because they can.

And yes, some people don't want to stop them...

 

You are correct. This isn't the first time gas prices have surged. Gas more than doubled in 1980 to over $1.00 a gallon. At $5.00 a gallon now, it's just at the price that it was in 2008 after it went to $4.15 with adjustments for 2008 dollars vs 2022 dollars. At some point, it will come back down and everybody will go back to buying trucks and suv's. I'm all for having a choice as to what kind of vehicle I purchase. Most people that I know, except the gear heads, really don't care if they drive an EV or an ICE vehicle. My sister said it would be great to charge up at home and not have to go to a gas station. Nobody is being forced to buy an EV and they won't be anytime soon.

 

Governments are not raising prices, correct. Their policies are. Only leasing unproductive land with no infrastructure and not leasing productive land will do that. When there is uncertainty as to where their raw product will come from, they will raise prices.

I also suspect that retailers are tired of putting fuel on the street for tiny mark-ups, and have decided to increase their margins a bit also, as they can't find help, and when they can, they have to pay far more than they were. I always said that $ 15 minimum wage was going to bite us. gov't regulations are also playing their part. NH DES mandated that all pump sumps must now be tested for tightness every 3 years. That means physically removing all the dispensers to test the sumps for integrity, a huge cost increase to retailers.

when I first got into the retail gas business, the oil companies touted that selling x gallons per year would cover the cost of rent. Now they tell you that as long as it covers the cost of annual and tri-annual testing, you are doing good.

 

Two comments: During the Arab oil embargo in 1973 people were in a panic - there were lines at gas stations, and people wanted to get rid of their big gashogs. The owner of a hair salon up the street from where I worked offered to sell his '70 Cadillac ragtop for $1,000. There were no takers. Two years later with gas at even higher prices, he was still driving it and people were once again purchasing big, powerful cars.

The second: If I was designing an AC system for an EV, it would have no compressor clutch, and a direct electric motor-driven compressor. An AC Compressor clutch uses a lot of electricity. I would think about some creative way to get heat from the evaporator into the car in winter and cooling the car in the normal way in summah.

 

The price of everything I buy has skyrocketed since 2014. What makes you think it's any different for oil companies, in everything they do, from extracting oil to buying toilet paper?

This doesn't take into account the fact that the US government has declared war on the fossil fuel industry. Same as mega-corporations with their ESG standards, which are designed to choke to death industries they don't like.

https://www.edie.net/blackrock-puni...over-climate-inaction-puts-191-more-on-watch/

 

Almost verbatim. Nice!

 

LOL

 

Ok.....here's my take on my trip last night......we took a 2017 Bolt with 48,000 miles....it had the 66kw battery as the original 60kw was subject to a recall. We started the trip with 62.6kw in the battery and the car saying it had 229 miles of range.He drove the whole trip in "L" which i don't think it means low....he said it uses the motors for slowing down when you let off the go pedal....and you can feel the motors slow you down and supposedly it puts energy back in the battery when that happens.The trip was quite smooth and the AC did its job well....i liked the display screen for the cars systems and the trip was easy by just following the directions it gave us.He had alexa installed and all we had to do was ask her to play a certain artist and they came right on(i'm not nuts about her listening to our whole conversation during the trip)......overall i liked the small SUV.
Once we arrived i took note of what the battery status was......we had went 153 miles we had used 42.4kw so we 20.2kw left....we averaged 3.6 miles per kw....94% of battery used was for driving the car and 5% was for AC and entertainment/aux and 1% was battery conditioning. We got there at 5pm concert at 8....he dropped me off at the BRICK tavern and he went over to the WalMart to plug into the ElectrifyAmerica fast charger that would take an hour to charge the battery back to full.As i waited for him to join me.....the tavern had a pre-concert band playing...Vincent van Goat....



so i had a local IPA and called him to see if he was plugged in and joining me or if he was waiting in a line to charge....he said he was headed back...BECAUSE THE WHOLE DAM CHARGING STATION WAS SHUT DOWN!!!!
He called customer service but they did not know when it would be back up so now he had to find another fast charging station to get some juice to get us home....he ended up dropping me off at the venue at 5:30....luckily i had brought a cold 6pack of IPA's and my wife had given me half of a sub she brought home right before we left.
He found a fast charging station at the Yellow Springs Airport 25 miles away....so off he went and i went and made some new friends hanging out in the lot
So about 7:30 i headed in for the 8pm start .....









So Billy ALWAYS starts his show on time so it's 8pm and still no Brian...

Billy and the boys kick it off with "Red Daisy" and here we go....



About a minute into that first song he shows up and we enjoy one hell of a great HOT concert

He sat on the charger for 70 minutes to get it back up to 62kw....says the charging rate slows down as the battery fills up.
The trip home was smooth and alexa served up some more good tunes......we were back in town at 1:30am and and the Bolts battery was down to 23kw for the 153 mile trip home. It's used a little less energy for the night trip home.
The word inside the venue was that Colombus and some of the area around it had been experiencing brown outs and maybe that's why the station was down...i have'nt checked their local news yet to confirm.
My take on the trip with the EV.....right now you are at the mercy of the charging stations...especially the fast ones if you want to complete a trip in a timely process.
As far as cost....they hit you $20 right off the bat just to plug in and then they charge you for the amount of juice you take....he is gonna check his charge card and give me the total so i will post that later.....the receipt printer was not working....go figure.I would take a trip again in the Bolt again but at this point in time i sure as heck would want to know the status of the charging station that was going to be used....because there ain't one on every corner

The infrastructure needs a lot of work before i go EV.....maybe i will live long enough to see that.

Peace WildBill

p.s....me,my son Jason and Billy

 

Thanks for the trip review with the Bolt, Bill!

 

https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-ne...minute-breakdown-on-when-aep-cut-electricity/

Peace WildBill

 

So $5.00/gallon compared to $3.54/gallon in 2014 is a 41% increase. Official inflation numbers since 2014 are around 25%.

 

Our latest official inflation number is 8.6%. Pick some random object around you and see how much it has gone up in the last 12 months.

Do you remember when the $15/hr minimum wage thing was all the rage a couple of years ago? Haven't heard much about that in quite some time.

 

The increase in the minimum wage is just another contributor to inflation. But the people legislating all this stuff didn’t get a degree in economics.