EV experience so far

So a quick trip to a salvage yard solved by spare-less Bolt issue. Picked up a donut spare and and jack/lug wrench kit off a 2014 Cruze furv$80. Fits in the hoke just fine.

Re the Chinook, it's an E350 van chassis with a 460. Everthing is so jammed in there under that tiny hood that I can imagine Ford hiding a jack there. I looked anyway, no joy. I'll keep looking but I'm pretty sure at this point there isn't one.


Anyone have experience with those exhaust inflated air bag jacks? Looks like they would be more stable than a regular jack on an incline. Lighter too.

I now think of the Chinook as my anti-EV. 46O V8 vs variable speed ac motor. Lots of stinky bladder inflating exhaust vs none. Plenty of rumble and vibration vs zero, unless GMs pedestrian warning turns on, then the Bolt does sound kinda like my 12V electric tire inflator.

The Chinook weighs 2.5 times the Bolt and consumes more than 11x the energy per mile, but that big V8 only makes about 25% more power than the Bolts tiny variable frequency ac motor. Gotta love the tech advances.

OTOH the Chinook can carry 18x the energy the Bolt can so it has about 60% longer range. Wouldn't want to try a long road trip yet in an electrified Chinook...

When my parents had their RV (I don't remember the length) with the V10, they got about 6 mpg. Of course, they had everything, including the kitchen sink stowed in it and towed an automobile as well. Filling it up was an experience as it would only accept gasoline at a trickle due to the way the fill pipe was run. It could take more than one pump activation as well because the pump would cut off at a set dollar amount which was $100 if I remember correctly.

that plane sounds pretty environmentally friendly.....kinda like these activist who preach global warming then jetsetting all over the world.  jon

Originally posted by hogone that plane sounds pretty environmentally friendly.....kinda like these activist who preach global warming then jetsetting all over the world.  jon

Actually small airplanes can be extremely energy efficient. Far more efficient than cars. I'll explain but it will take a teeny weeny bit of basic physics.

There will be a quiz at the end (not) so pay attention...

As an example, my plane is over 3x more efficient than my Prius is. How is that? Because of much lower air drag. Drag accounts for most of a cars energy use at highway speed and practically all of an airplanes'.

Drag is measured in square feet of equivalent frontal area (aka CdA), meaning the area of a flat plate that would create the same amount of drag if you pushed it through the air.

The CdA of my Prius is 6.2 square feet. It's about the lowest drag car on the road. In comparison an rpod's CdA is around 30 square feet.

My airplane's CdA is 2.3 square feet, 37% of the Prius and less than 10% of an rpod's. Like a 1x2 ft piece of plywood vs a 4x8 sheet for the rpod and a 2x3 piece for the Prius.

How did the plane designer manage that?   Its waaay more cramped in there than in any car. Plus great attention to detail of every little thing on the plane that creates drag.

And the plane has another big advantage over the Prius. I can fly at around 8000 feet where the air density is only about 77% of sea level. So overall drag effects my plane only around 29% of it's effect on my Prius.

So now that we have that tidbit on drag let's move on to how drag and efficiency are affected by speed.

My plane travels at about 195 mph, compared to the Prius travelling 65 mph. So almost exactly 3x faster (not counting the additional benefit of getting to go point to point rather that having to follow roads).

The problem with going fast is that drag goes up with the 3rd power of speed. The plane is going 3x the speed so that would require 27x the power the Prius does if it had the same CdA and flew at sea level. But since it has 29% of the drag at altitude it "only" needs about 8x the power to overcome drag.


8x the power still sounds terrible but it's only about 2.7x the energy. That's bc energy is power x time and I'm getting there in 1/3 the time.

But I still do have to have an engine with enough power to supply 8x the continuous power of my Prius. That turns out to be a 180 HP engine running at 75% (135 HP) burning 10 gallons of gas per hour, compared to the Prius running at about 17 HP burning around 1.3 gallons per hour.

Bottom line is that even though the plane is more than 3x as efficient, it still only gets about 20 mpg vs the Prius getting 50 mpg, because of the 3x speed difference. Try finding a 200 mph supercar that gets 20 mpg.

So next question is, why don't I just take my time and drive the Prius? To which I answer, why don't you just take your time and walk or ride a bike rather than drive?

The whole point of having motor vehicles is to get where youre going before you die of old age. I got the smallest most efficient plane I could afford that got me the speed and convenience I wanted.

Which leads back to the complaint about so called environmentally conscious VIPs burning up fuel in jets blasting around the planet.

In their defense, those folks' work requires them to travel a lot, and not at driving speeds. I'm sure those guys do virtual meetings when they can, but sometimes there's no substitute for being face to face.

My job required a lot of commercial air travel too. I hated it. The rigamarole at the big airport terminals ofen takes longer than the flight. I won't get on a commercial flight now that I'm retired unless its a dire emergency.

If you fly commercial on your necessary travels then youre actually being quite energy conscious. Commercial jets get about 100 mpg per passenger mile, the same as my Prius and 2.5x what my plane gets, assuming I'm carrying a passenger in each. Amazing considering the jets speed is about 8 or 9x a car's (that's 500-600x the drag power requirement). Jamming hundreds of folks in a long streamlined aluminum tube at 40,000 feet with giant high bypass kerosene burning turbofans does wonders for efficiency.

Bizjets get around 15 to 25 passenger miles per gallon if you fill the seats. Not bad considering the speed but nothing close to commercial jets or efficient cars, or my plane. and I doubt those seats are getting filled very often.

OTOH a bizjet can be a whole lot faster and more convenient door to door than a commercial jet. At the end of the day we all choose to consume energy in transportation because of speed and convenience. Otherwise we could just walk, ride a bike, or sail a boat.

So while I agree that environmentalists who fly in bizjets should suck it up and fly commercial instead, I can certainly sympathize with their not so great choices. We all do it to one degree or another.

Look at us RV folks. A couple in an RV are getting around 15-25 passenger miles per gallon, same as a full bizjet. We could backpack but we choose speed and convenience instead.