Electric vs Gas Cost

There aren't any semi trucks that I can see in that picture. If you gave trucks their own dedicated routes or roads, and passenger vehicles their own dedicated roads. That would alleviate a lot of stop and go traffic.

The concentration of people in urban areas is the sole contributor to the congestion on the roadway. It's not having a positive impact on the environment either.

 

It most definitely would. The problem for me is justifying the overall cost. It’s like a new EV. We own all our vehicles so even if it was a little cheaper to run it I’m still adding a 600 dollar a month car payment for the next 7 years. With the high price of just about everything these days you’re going to shell out 50-100k for one of those. Even if the power was cheaper then the fuel it would still take me 100 years to break even. Same thing with a solar set up. Having it would be awesome but how long is it going to take me to see any kind of savings after I spent 50-70k to install it?

 

But the traffic lights, I can't believe anything is achievable if the traffic lights can't be synchronized to alleviate congestion.

 

Totally understood and appreciated.

The cost for components must come down, and the ease of installation should be similar to doing a brake job. Some will do it, some won’t. But you could if you wanted to.

At present, everything is so proprietary and needlessly complex. These systems can and should be plug and play. Visit Home Depot, buy the stuff, go home and do the install.

 

Yeah, I just like picking them apart and figuring out how they came up with their numbers.

 

just lie to yourself like most people and feel good about the 12 dollars a week in fuel savings

 

I especially liked that their numbers are based on the average ICE driver getting 33 MPG for every single mile. It's almost like we have a federally regulated government authority that publishes totally contrary data.

 

So they'll upgrade all the traffic light systems.. eventually.
There is no doubt that it's a large, complex problem and it will take a couple of decades to solve.

One of the most signficant challenges is / will be bringing about changes in driver psychology to enable such a system to be rolled out. Drivers will have to adapt to the notion that, when driving on certain arteries, their vehicle will switch into full-self-driving upon entry, at which point the vehicle will be fully directed by the regional central traffic direction cloud-computer. Drivers will have to be cut out of the vehicle piloting loop for this to work, at least when they are on a section of "managed roadway."

On a fully-managed roadway, instead moving like a turbluent fluid (independent driver control,) vehicles will move in smoothly-orchestrated laminar flow. Probably urban traffic engineers have already fully modeled the efficiency/capacity gains to be had from such a system.

Basically, for it to work, the traffic grid has to be re-imagined as a single unified system whose core & mid-level flows are centrally-managed by SkyNet. (Probably it won't be named Skynet but that's what it will actually be -- cloud-managed AI direction.)

This kind of notion won't be needed everywhere, just on primary arteries (freeways/turnpikes,) and on major secondary/tertiary surface-level feeder streets. There could be additional optimizations to be had via demand-shaping, i.e. asking vehicle users to stagger their departures a little bit in order to flatten out rush-hour demand peaks a bit.

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Yes, there are a zillion complications & frictions in this scenario, at every level from technical to economic to political. There are pathways for it be tested & rolled out incrementally. The same way there are now dedicated "fastrak" toll lanes in some urban areas, these could become test zones for "autonomous-only" traffic, enabling comparative efficiency studies, safety studies, etc.

FSD is in its infancy now and people will continue to die from time to time when their car mistakes the side of a tractor trailer for an overpass, but these are teething pains which will eventually get worked out.

I'm pretty sure the stats will eventually make it clear - maybe by 2030 or so -- that mature FSD turns out to be at least several hundred percent safer, per passenger mile, on average, than notoriously-unreliable human drivers. If that proves to be the case it will have an immense effect on a) the insurance & economic incentives for FSD and b) driver psychology / willingness to trust the FSD to drive as, or more safely, than oneself.

I wonder what today's traffic accident stats would look like if you subtracted all the accidents caused by one or more of these factors:

• Drowsiness / falling asleep at the wheel
• DUI
• Speeding
• Road rage
• Disobeying posted signage & signals
• Unskilled panic responses to changing road/traffic conditions. (Wildlife or debris on roadway. Localized flooding during heavy weather. Sudden major wind gusts. etc.)
• Health conditions, whether acute or chronic. (Heart attack/stroke, or simply slowly-decaying visual acuity)
• TXTing-while-driving
• Simple lapses of skill and/or attention. (Failing to signal a turn, failing to check blind spots before making a lane change.)

 

Actual charge cost data for roughly the past 4 months on my Tesla M3P. The gas equivalent is for a 30mpg ICE sedan which is better mpgs than a Tacoma. Electric is .11kWh. Electric is substantially cheaper to operate, but I drive it because it is mind blowing fast and fun. The Tacoma sits right along side it in the garage for weekend warrior duties.

 

That's almost $70,000 in savings over 10 years. Sounds pretty good

 

Yes, many of the opinions in this thread could have "EV" replaced with "Porsche 911" and they would read like a joke and be mocked off the forum. Your Porsche 911 isn't very fuel efficient. What do you do with your Porsche 911 in a snow storm or a tornado? You will never make your money back on a Porsche 911.

 

12 dollars a week for 53 weeks a year is 636 dollars saved per year. Times 10 years? 6360? Hmmmmm....

 

One thing the original article included was dead end miles. Having to go out of the way for chargers. It one of a few reasons why the two types of propulsion can't really be compared head to head yet. If you can charge every night in your garage, that is one thing. If you are on a thousand mile road trip through open areas it is another.

 

Same with the internet (I recall hearing that around year 2000)

 

this topic needs way way more research and data.

Problem is, there isn't many ev trucks on the road yet so difficult to make a conclusion...

 

yeah, but it's only 1 horsepower

 

Mitsubishi is working on a Triton PHEV for the Australian market, that would be perfect for me. The only reason I don't have an Outlander PHEV is it isn't rugged enough. Wrangler 4XE is an option but I'm hesitant to spend so much on a Jeep product.

Current truck is in great shape and long since paid for. I'd like something at least 2x as fuel efficient when it comes time to replace it.

 

TFLT just did a road trip in an EV against the new Sequoia, EV lost. EV was WAY more efficient with energy but still cost more and wasted a lot of time.

If it costs more at the wallet and your time, I don't see how that makes up for a more efficient electric engine.

Everyone is real quick to say how valuable their time is until we bring up EVs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaMT6QxmHjI

 

You are right they all ready are here.

 

Just checking. You can officially own an EV