Electric Cars Continue to Make Inroads

The Fit's at the top of my list. Damn fine cars made by a company full of real engineers.

A Ford Focus or Fiesta are the other contenders.

Cheers, James Arthur

I'm pretty sure those are proprietary Tesla superchargers, yeah? I couldn't charge my Volt there if I wanted to. Neither could anyone else with any fashion of affordable plug-in hybrid not designed for big ballers.

So there isn't anyone with an 80k Model S or a 100k Model X hitting up those chargers up in the mountains of Truckee in the dead of winter? Wow!

The Honda Fit seems to be the US name of what is here known as Honda Jazz.

Beware about "car made by company" based on the nameplate... it appears that this car is actually made by Honda, but many small cars being sold here (especially in this segment) are actually re-badged cars developed and usually built by a completely different company, with some small style changes.

Yes. And I very rarely see a Tesla there, especially in winter. When Safeway is crowded, other people park their gas guzzlers in the charging slots.

I saw three T's charging side-by-side last week, first ones I've seen in about a year. Must have been some sort of caravan. It's a pretty serious haul up there, peaking at 7200 feet over Donner Pass, and it can get really cold, so you'd want to run the heater too. You really need 4WD to do it reliably in the winter. When it snows up there, chains or 4WD are mandatory, and it can take hours for a car to get over the summit, much less a tow truck.

Teslas are ugly anyhow.

If they are connected equally, the loads will statistically average out. It's a simple application of the law of large numbers.

But the connections have to be managed somehow to assure the connections are evened out. In the US it appears the three legs of a 3 phase circuit are not the same. Two legs off the transformer provide the split phase for homes and small businesses while the third leg is only used for three phase. The power company can manage how that is connected to the main 3 phase to balance loads across their distribution network.

So far I've only seen one Tesla in my life (in a friend's garage) and one Tesla supercharger (in the parking lot of a mall).

Early days... early days.

Snort!

That was a nice story...

Happy New Year!

John :-#)#

They're popular in the Boston area; I can usually count on seeing at least one a day just commuting around. The median yearly income in my town is 100k though, so people have the money for it.

I saw three Volts besides mine in the same day a few weeks ago, which was a new record.

"split phase" is NOT 2 phases of a 3 phase network!

A Volt-style hybrid can handle long trips. I use my hybrid to commute to work, and the wife's Subaru for longer trips, she prefers riding in it. The 2nd car gets only 1/4 as many miles on it. Many (most?) families are two-car families.

It's a feature! Windows Update: Uploads spyware, hogs your CPU, AND NOW ... it heats your house too!

You too.

Cheers, James Arthur

Their terms say that the rental is only for transporting goods purchased at HD. If you use it for anything else, you may be in deep insurance hockey.

...until you have an accident.

But I'm "using more than I need", to keep my options open.

Well, we all make trade-offs but if you include all aspects of life, the quote makes no sense at all. There is a value in vegitating on a beach (or in front of a television), too.

I'm sorry to hear that. My condolances. I lost one of mine five years ago, or so. He was the one who everyone thought would outlive us all. "Poof". Gone.

No, they wouldn't be exempt. They just would have a different set of "needs". From each, according to his abilities. To each, according to his position in the party.

I've driven several Focuses (Foci?). Nice (small) family cars, if that's your need. The Fiesta, I'm not so hot on.

Sure. They all make stinkers.

Do you have an example of a Honda being built by someone else? Chrysler is famous for this but I'm not aware of any Toyotas or Hondas being made by anyone else.

I found this in various places. The reference point is the center tap of a delta coil. Check out "Three Phase Four Wire Delta with a High Leg".

No, that's *not* the way it works. All three phases are balanced. Each house uses a single phase, split in half ("Wye" connection). You'll be on a different phase than your neighbor. It *is* balanced, given a sufficiently large number of homes. Some areas, particularly rural areas may be fed by only a single phase, with the other two phases used to service homes in other areas (three phases split over a larger geographic area).

No. It's one phase of the three-phase network, split in half by a transformer with the center tap of its secondary being the neutral (and ground at the entrance panel). They're not 120-degrees apart from neutral, rather 180-degrees. I believe it's a "Wye" connection everywhere, now, on the load end ("Delta" at the generator).

Yeah, I forgot about the income issue. In the DC area the demographics are such that a high end anything will usually open first either in the Rockville/Bethesda in Maryland area or Fairfax in Virginia. I was thinking it would be nice to have one in Frederick, but that won't happen for quite a while I expect. I thought they had a supercharge in Frederick, but I see I am mistaken. I guess what I saw was a generic high speed charger, just not a Supercharger. They seem to be spacing them more evenly which makes sense when the network is new. Space them out so you can easily hop from one supercharger to another on a long trip.