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threegee

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Posts posted by threegee

  1. 8 years later...   ..and this cool-laid-back is even built in to the software!

    I did come across a reply to a "how to" technical question on a forum last night posted five years after the question was asked; but it's nice to know that Bedlington.uk is right up there with the best!  :D 

    • Like 2
  2. It's not simply braking, your engine/transmission is contributing lots of drag too.  There's a charging station in practically every garage or on every drive - it's called a wall outlet.  We quite happily used the little box that came with the car for over a year, and could still get by without the 3-phase wall charger.  But it's nice to know that we can head off on a long trip at max capacity at very little notice, and that we can offer destination charging to visiting friends.  I got an extra long Type 2 cable so that it will reach under the door onto our back lane: one day someone will thank me for this! :D

    People have been fed the idea that you must have dedicated fast chargers everywhere, but the reality is that all you need is to adjust your mindset away from your expensive dinosaur juice addiction.  My only wish is that our wall charger and the car could agree to a slower charging rate, as even the minimum setting (5A of 3-phase) generally tops up the car in little more than an hour of cheap rate power when actually I want to extend this over much more of the cheap rate period.

    So IMHO too much is made of charging times.  Very rarely have we ever been ready to go from a stop before the car was, and not having to queue to pay at service stations is an extra bonus. You can be taking on power within a few seconds of arriving, and it's simply pull the connector and go.  In fact, there have been occasions when a short charging time has been a bit of a pain: getting to the top floor of a hotel and flopping down on the bed to almost immediately get a message that the charge is complete, and you're expected to remove the vehicle from the charger within ten minutes!  Always best to find a hotel with a reserved destination charger that tops you up overnight for free.  We arrived at one posh Italian hotel in the early hours to find the manager - no less - standing ready to remove the reserved sign right outside the main entrance to enable us to plug in for a free overnight charge.  No lugging our bags from the car park, and very satisfied customers who will definitely revisit.

    PHEVs are a bit of a joke when they park up at public chargers in an attempt to bolster their tiny electric range, and actually annoy other EV owners.  There's a usage case for people who do short commutes and can filch power from an employer, but generally they are the worst of both worlds: none of the maintenance savings and very little fuel saving to compensate for all the extra complexity.  I convinced one of our neighbours here to wait for an affordable proper EV, and I'm sure that's coming fairly soon now.

    I agree that you've a special case there, but in a different way we were "way out in the styx" in the first year or two.  We didn't even have any service available this end of Italy, let alone fast public charging.  Any concerns we had were very easily overcome, and we'll never buy another ICE vehicle.  I will bet you are going to see some Cybertrucks locally in the next year - 18 months max!

    • Like 1
  3. 4 hours ago, Vic Patterson said:
      6 hours ago, threegee said:

    It's extremely inefficient as a method of propulsion (circa 17% efficiency).

    ICE 30%. EV 80%

    OK, we are both right.  Power directly from the engine is at around 30%, but power into the wheels is at around 17% efficiency. Also, ICE engines can't recover the kinetic energy of the vehicle, so it's wasted in the braking system.  This can be a huge factor as Pepsi are reporting with their new semis..

    Quote

    "Going across Donner Pass and back from [Sacramento] to Nevada, we're able to, on the trip back, actually zero out, in terms of state of charge improving due to regenerative braking… It extends range for us in a way that is invaluable."

    -- Dejan Antunović, Pepsi

    Of course, the waste heat from the engine can be very useful in cold climates, so there can be some offset.  This doesn't seem to have influence our Norwegian friends too much, though, as more than 80% of their new vehicle purchases are now EVs.

  4. 4 hours ago, Alan Edgar (Eggy1948) said:

    Looks like the UK wants to reduce carbon emissions by less battery plants than the rest of Europe and more car sharing:thumbsup:

    Carbon emissions aren't the problem.  The major problems with ICE are:

    • The UK has depleted its own oil reserves.
    • It can only get more expensive.
    • There's a huge, hidden health problem from NOX emissions.
    • It's extremely inefficient as a method of propulsion (circa 17% efficiency).
    • It's all in the wrong places on earth, so costs more energy to transport.
    • It costs lives in other ways: practically every war in modern times has oil as root cause.

    Lots of more minor problems too.  Think gas street lamps in the age of the electric light bulb - that's where we are currently at!  People resisting EVs are of exactly the same mentality as those silly people in the 1910s claiming that the horseless carriage would never catch on.

    Autos.png

    • Like 1
  5. On 26/06/2023 at 00:07, HIGH PIT WILMA said:

    Money Laundering think ye..?...and as far as zero emissions gaan..a think tha living in cuckoo land!..a think they need ti invest in clean coal burning afore we get left in the dark!

    Coal is too valuable to burn.  It's an excellent source of hydrocarbons to make organic compounds with.  ...even those "evil plastics"!  This will become very apparent to future generations.

  6.  

    "There will be a shuttle bus to get people from one side of the crossing to the other..."

     

    airbus-air-taxi-2-791x510.jpg

    Well, I can dream!  This one was supposed to be flying by 2018, and it seems there are quite a number of such designs.  Maybe it's going to take Elon to bring one to reality!

    • Like 3
  7. Whoops yet another BBC wokey whoopsie..

    Quote

    The BBC has apologised after a presenter called the Second World War Dambusters raid “infamous” on its 80th anniversary in May.

    Sally Nugent used the term in a BBC Breakfast segment about RAF 617 Squadron’s 1943 attack on three key dams in Germany. She was reporting on a flypast by Second World War bombers in May when she used the word. It prompted two viewers to complain to the corporation that the description breached accuracy and impartiality guidelines.

    Executive Complaints Unit (ECU)</a> has ruled that “the original broadcast was not duly accurate”, and the broadcaster has apologised.

    You can't get the staff these days!  Or rather, you can't get the staff if you only advertise your vacancies in The Guardian.  They need to be more inclusive and advertise in Socialist Worker too!

  8. Only missing the fact that I was cleaning out the reports to moderators and found it there.  Thought the additional info might be useful to someone, someday - even if it is an AI bot in 2060.  The board software has just been upgraded to the current version, too.

  9. 2 hours ago, Canny lass said:

    The BCE is under a legal obligation to propose constituencies within 5% of the electoral quota, meaning the number of registered voters for each constituency in the country must be between 69,724 and 77,062” (my underlining)

    Procreation! That’s the problem! There’s clearly not enough of it in Wansbeck. Get that  improved and we can swing this the other way in 18 years!

    Would this apply to Scotland by any chance - where they are vastly overrepresented in Westminster?  Isn't it something like one MP for twenty odd thousand scots?

    As far as the contrivance formerly known as Wansbeck is concerned: people with get up and go generally do!  Plaudits to those brave individuals who slog it out all their lives.  They are most certainly the ones that deserve gongs, but are generally totally ignored by our self-serving establishment.

    • Like 1
  10. Someone directed me to the dailysceptic.org website, where they are having a lot of fun "fact checking" the BBCs hysterical weather coverage:

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/07/27/feverish-bbc-reporting-on-european-heatwaves-debunked-by-actual-temperature-readings/

    Quote

    ...let us consider the plight of Justin Rowlatt, the BBC’s green activist-in-chief who was airlifted last week into heat-torn Alicante. On the southern Spanish frontline, he reported on July 18th that the heat has been “relentless” and continued day and night. It helps explain why these periods of extreme heat “can impose such a burden on people’s health”, he observed. Rising at 6:30am to do his first broadcast, he reported it was 27°C.

    Alas, for our intrepid William Boot, it only briefly touched 33°C that day, and by the weekend the temperature in Alicante was struggling to stay in the 30s.

    But for the BBC, it’s job well done. The mainstream media headlines screamed on cue about imminent Thermogeddon. Writing in the Daily Telegraph this Tuesday, Suzanne Moore said the “world is on fire – and we can’t ignore it any longer”. Arsonists took the opportunity to light fires on the Greek island of Rhodes, but to Moore, observing a hasty retreat by holiday makers, “this is what climate refugees look like”. BBC Dragon’s Den celeb Deborah Meaden noted that arson ”might” have been responsible, but then took the opportunity to widen the debate by claiming – without a shred of proof – “we are about to see the first countries abandoned due to rising sea levels”.

    Most of the grass fires around here are started deliberately.  It keeps the weeds under control by consuming a lot of the seeds and removes much of the roadside litter.  I suspect that in Greece, there may also be an element of cleansing the tourists by some of the disaffected locals.

    • Like 1
  11. Hey, I can answer the BBC's "Have we seen the end of the Mediterranean heatwave" question:

    No, you haven't.  It's almost exactly three weeks from the statistically warmest days of the year - August is pretty much always a heatwave, and of course - give or take a bit - it will all be back again next year as per usual.  Any minute differences you think you'd like to ascribe to CO2 driven anthropomorphic climate change [careful choice of words there, as you can learn a lot from pseudo-scientific shysterism] are hidden in the statistical noise - just where the lucrative "climate change industry" likes them to be! :D

     

    Fun fact:  Ask practically any retired and experienced metrologist for an honest opinion on the matter. They need to be retired so's they aren't in fear of their job, and decades of watching the weather instead of running incredibly dubious computer models helps enormously.  You'll need to reference quite a few before you find one that doesn't smile and tell you that we are all being conned.

    • Like 2
  12. Aww... the footbridge is gone!  Something that should have been listed even if it had to be moved to allow for progress.  So much that's irrelevant is listed, but the real (industrial) heritage - the stuff that really mattered in ordinary people's lives - seems to get the chop without a moment's consideration. :(

  13. Today I can report it's no longer "climate change" but good old-fashioned weather.  It's a pleasant 27.5C in a strong wind from cooler climes.  In fact, it's probably a tad cool for summer.

    There was one word missing from all the hysterical "climate change" reporting in the media.  That word - I learnt it at school, so it's even in the UK vocabulary - is Sirocco.  The Sirocco to be exact.  Why didn't any of the media reports use the word to properly inform their audiences?  Simple: it's a phenomenon that has been documented for thousands of years, and describes the hot winds from the Sahara Desert hitting the northern Mediterranean coastline.  The use of that word would be an implicit acknowledgment that what we experienced isn't remotely new, and would inconveniently clash with the agenda.

    • Like 1
  14. "Centre for Disaster Philanthropy" OMG!  It used to be that wealthy people did good as anonymously as at all possible - their reward was "in heaven".  Am I misunderstanding something here, or is this really another outlet for tedious 21st Century virtue signalling?

    Anyway, the great news is that they won't (can't) fly with Mick the Moron.  If you're curious to know why Ryanair doesn't fly The Atlantic (and never will) then I refer you to my answer on another thread. :)

  15. "It is strange what Ryanair are doing compared with the other airlines. Could it be that they don't have any spare aircraft to send out and bring holiday makers home - or is it just all about money?"

    The latter, for sure!

    It's a completely unprincipled outfit run by a moron!  Other ex-pats here say they have no choice, but I've managed not to give him a bean over more than a decade.  I hate it when Mrs 3G flies with them, particularly when I have to drive her to the airport at some ungodly hour to meet their scheduling.  But she's quite canny and knows exactly how their rip-off charging system works, knows what days to fly, how long to book ahead, so plays the system for the cheapest possible seat.

    Ryanair: I'd rather cycle it!

    Steer clear of EU countries in any case, they have only ever been after our money, and will rip you off in an instant.  If you want that, and want to be treated like cattle, then good luck to you, but don't moan about it afterwards!

    • Like 2
  16. The brainwashing continues...

    Quote

    Fires are common in Greece but hotter, drier and windy summers have brought more of them in recent years. Climate change means heatwaves will become more frequent, an advisor to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Saturday. On Rhodes, the evacuees, including residents from the villages, were housed at hotels, indoor stadiums, conference centers and school buildings, fire brigade spokesman Ioannis Artopoios told Skai radio. “They have been given food, water and medical help,”

    -- Today's Telegraph

    64bd214c2a1c4_bigstory_1.avif

    Seems to me, it's not medical help these folks need!  Anyway, I've just had a great idea: I've decided that I'm a major victim of climate change and that the exploitative capitalist western nations owe me two new air conditioners.  Yes, I've a claim against China too, but that one is never going to go anywhere.  UK treasury, please stand by for details of my gofundme account!

    • Like 1
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