Tag Archives: Millage

I hate CNBC

Ok, it’s not just CNBC but pretty much all so called news outlets They don’t report news as much as sell you something.

I was on Yahoo.com doing some financial research on Tesla. While I’m looking at the research there is a video from CNBC with some talking heads and a so called expert from Garage Monkey  or some crazy name telling people that we will never give up our loud sounding big horsepower muscle cars. Or at least he won’t. We love the sound and the smell. Just look at how many classics are still around.

Well, yeah, there are lots of classics still around. In garages and museums. Unless you count the thousands that are rusted out and decaying in the barns and backyards of America. About the only place people still drive Classics everyday, Cuba. And I doubt that’s because they want to.

I remember the days of my youth riding in my fathers ’67 (maybe ’68) Dodge Charger. I remember what a cool car it was at the time. It was also a real piece of crap. It always had trouble starting and it didn’t have air conditioning . The sad part is I was to young to drive it. Had I drove it I surely would have never look at a classic ever.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s I got to drive classics like the Chevette, Chrysler K car, and Nova. There are more as I drove a lot of real junk back then. They sure didn’t make them any better. I can’t or don’t want to remember all those really bad cars of the day.

But like many folks in their late 40’s and feeling flush with cash after the market boom of the early 2000’s I went out and bought not just one but 2 classic cars. A 1967 Chevy Chevelle SS. Wow, what a cool car. Well not really. It would make a lot of noise and sounded really neat but it really drove like crap. It’s amazing people drove those things more than 10 miles a day even when they were new.

But being a glutton for punishment I bought a more luxurious classic car. A 1964 Chevy Impala. Also the SS version. This was a boat. I should have driven it before I bought but I got it sight unseen off eBay.

What these cars did most of the time was sit in my warehouse. I had to move them every time I got a delivery. After the market crashed in 2008 I decided they were just to much trouble to keep moving. They were so crappy that I never wanted to drive them. They were pretty to look at though. If I want to do that there are plenty of people who have them in garages all around me. My best friend has a 1964 Corvette sitting in his garage. He’s not a big fan of driving it either. He’s afraid that if he leaves it parked to get something to eat that someone might steal it or crash into it. It’s around 64k of wasted potential. While it keeps going up every year if he had taken the 22k he paid for it ten years ago and bought almost any decent stock it would be worth twice what it is now. And instead of parking his Kia Soul in the driveway he could fit it in the garage. That’s right, he’s driving a Kia Soul. At least when he doesn’t need his big Dodge Diesel for moving motorcycles everyday. He buys and sells them.

So as long as we are giving opinions, here are some of mine.

Just like people hated answering machines when they first came out or cellphones (the people who didn’t have one yet). The technology and price of the electric car gets more attractive every few years. It might take 10-20 years to get to the point where that’s what people want or can afford but there is no question that the technology is here and if automakers actually build them and sell them in every market people will buy them. As more people get them, more people will want what everybody else has. Just like the Navy Converted from Coal and Wood to Oil back in the day.

Used cars will hit the market as well. Just like some people wait for last years iPhone before they buy it there will be people buying 5-8 year old electric cars and loving them.

No buying gas. No oil changes. No filters to change. The scheduled maintenance is pretty much rotate the tires every 10,000 miles.

I have about 2000 miles on my Ford Focus Electric and there has only been one day where I was afraid to take it on the trip I had planned. If I had known I was going to be where I was for as long as I was it wouldn’t have been a problem. They had a charger there and in 2 hours I would have been good to go. I was there all night.

While todays ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars are really pretty good, O.K. really good they still burn gas. A product that we fight wars for. A product that we have no control over the pricing or production since most of it is imported. We use almost 80-90% more than we produce. And while people still debate if fossil fuels cause global warming there is no debate that they cause pollution. Oil spills cause catastrophic losses to wildlife and livelihoods.

Do we want to go back to the days where air pollution was so thick in many cities you couldn’t see more than a couple miles. Do we want Los Angeles or Chicago to look like Mexico City or Shanghai. Should we go back to the days where Lake Erie is dead and the rivers of Ohio burn when you light a match?

The price of gas in Phoenix is over $2.70 a gallon again. Up more than a dollar a gallon in less than 4 months. The cost of my electricity is down. At least between midnight and 5 AM. The electric company wants me to charge my car at night. They need people to use all that excess capacity that’s available at night when people are sleeping and the temps are cooler so the AC doesn’t run as much.

Another thing is there are no refineries in Phoenix using a ton of electricity to turn all that crude oil into gas. Yeah, it takes a lot of electricity to make a gallon of gas. Then it takes a lot of diesel to truck it to the gas station. Then it takes more electricity to pump it into your car.

Almost everybody in the U.S. now days has electricity already coming to their house. It doesn’t take any more modification to get it to your car than it does to hook up an RV.

The only reason I go to a gas station now is to buy a snack and use the washroom.

People are not so EV Friendly

Ford Focus

2015 Ford Focus

I have had my BEV (battery electric vehicle) less than a week now. And just like the complaints about cars having to share the road with bicycles, ICE cars have to share the road with drivers who are trying to get the most range out of their battery.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love flooring the gas pedal and going fast but I do it for fun, not because I am trying to get anywhere in a hurry.

Yet most drivers, my wife included drive like they are always late to work or trying to catch a flight leaving in 5 minutes. You’ve seen people like this or you might be one. They are first to the red light and the first to honk their horns if you aren’t going at least 10 MPH faster than the posted speed limit.

Just today while driving just a few miles to my mothers house. I was doing the speed limit when I saw the light ahead of me turn red. There was a line of about 5-6 cars ahead of me so I clicked off the cruise control, (yes, I do use the cruise control a lot now and have it set at the speed limit) and coasted to the light ahead of me. I was probably at least a block away from the light when I did this. The person in car behind me threw  up their hands in frustration. I look in the mirror a lot more now too.

As I coasted to a stop, so I didn’t hit the car in front of me, the light turned green. Had I gone faster all I would have done is wasted a lot of energy by not getting all the regeneration from slowing down and put a bunch of wear on my brake pads instead. An advantage of hybrids or electric vehicles.

Once I reached 30 MPH I let the car coast again so I would make the next light where I was turning left, now we all know you have to slow down to turn. That is unless you want your passengers puking in your car.

At this point the Chrysler 300 that was dying to get out from behind me did and speed off ahead into the distance. Not so far a head though that two miles ahead I caught them at the second stop Light. They were now 6 cars ahead of me instead of just behind me. Probably still frustrated though they weren’t the first car at the light. LOL

This is not a one time incident, this happens all the time. Every day, many times a day. More than once has someone speed past me giving me the finger only to have to sit next to me at the next light if not the next 2 or 3 traffic lights. And that’s not in my Electric car. That’s with my Miata or my Mazda 6. Going fast just to stop ahead just wastes gas and adds a lot to your maintenance bills.

If you wonder why your gas millage is terrible, why you need to replace your brake pads every 12k miles or why your cars are beat to crap in just a few years, just look in your mirror.

Next time you drive to work, or the store or somewhere you always go trying doing this. When you reach the speed limit, set your cruise control. When the light ahead of you is red cancel the cruise and coast. If it turns green before you come to a complete stop and it is safe to do so hit the switch to resume your speed on the cruise control. Try to use your brake as little as possible. Do not speed or at least don’t do more than 5 MPH over. Time it. See how much longer it takes to get where you are going.

See how much less stress you have driving like that as well. Another benefit is you won’t stand out when the police are around. Drunks and stoners drive to slow and thieves and drug dealers usually drive to fast. How many times do you see some guy who sped by you getting a ticket down the road?

Another thing you can do is compare your gas millage. Like most cars now days your car probably has a trip computer that is pretty accurate. It probably even tell you how long the trip took. There was a reason they set that 55 MPH speed limit back in the 70’s. That’s the speed where you generally get the best gas millage per mile of driving. After the power needed to move your car through the air takes far more gas than the engine moves the car efficiently.

I do realize that 55 feels slow, real slow but 65 is really pretty fast and since most people are doing 70 anyway the 75 MPH speed limit is ludicrous. At most it will say you 5 minutes every hour and cause you far more stress of having to be vigilant of others. Another draw back is if you opt to have one of those drive safe discount monitors on your car it will send love notes to your insurance company every time you exceed 75.

The easiest way to see what kind of damage and wasting fuel speed can do is take your car to the race track.

I have a Mazda Miata that I have taken to the track and a car that can get a combined MPG of 26 becomes a car that gets less than 12 MPG. The tires last about a third of their regular life and the brakes last even less. Even if you aren’t going from 35-110 and back down to 30 again in seconds, all that acceleration and stopping is what causes wear and tear on your car.

In an Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) driving smart can be the difference between getting 50 miles per charge versus 100 miles per charge. Maybe the reason you don’t like or have never considered driving a BEV is because you drive like a teenager. That or you don’t have to pay the bills.

Check out this website. It will open your eyes. https://www.fueleconomy.gov