Weekend warriors - electric cars?

Dan Schmidtwrote:

Just throwing it out there that a train ticket from Paris to Chamonix is apparently just $46. It's not absurd that you could connect major cities and significant natural destinations via train.

Interesting, so for comparison I googled some numbers for what the drive would cost. It looks like gas costs about $8/gal in France right now and the drive from Paris to Chamonix is about 381 miles. So with a 30mpg vehicle it would cost about $101.60 in gas. Depreciation/maintenance adds a lot of variability, but if the driving cost is split between 4 riders, the gas cost is $25.40 so if those other costs come out to less than $20/person, driving is cheaper, if not the train is cheaper. Also, the train is faster and presumably more comfortable, but if you ride the train you won't have a car when you get there. I could see people making either choice depending on their situation. There are also hidden costs, e.g. some amount of your taxes pays for both roads and trains.

For what it's worth, I lived in Europe for a couple of months a few years ago. I went on 3 climbing trips with 3 different groups of climbers I met while I was there. All 3 of those trips were by car, and it seemed to me that the baseline assumption of all the people in those groups was that climbing trips are done by car. I did 100% of my non-climbing transportation by foot, bike, train, or bus. No one gave any indication that that was unusual either.

So my small-sample-size take is that the norm in that part of Europe is that climbing trips are done by car, most other travel you don't need one.

Preeti Pwrote:

+1

I have taken that Paris to Chamonix high-speed and mountain train ride and it was fantastic.  

Many Americans think that the private gas automobile is the only solution because 1. it has always been that way. 2. They have no other experience- the have not traveled to a city with good transit or alternatives. 

Stockholm syndrome  

Or, you know, a rudimentary understanding of the country we live in.

Obviously trains would be better. But most US cities can't even get the political will to connect their neighborhoods with trains. The car companies oppose it, the unions oppose it, and the city environmentalists who "support it" for everyone else, suddenly oppose it when it's in their backyard because they don't want trains bringing unwashed train people to their gated communities. There are areas that are exceptions, such as NYC, but underfunded, aging infrastructure and miles of red tape mean it takes decades to get even comparatively-small projects done (example).

Instead of smugly talking about how woke you are compared to people who don't share your pie-in-the-sky dreams, maybe consider a basic example: a high speed rail from San Fran to Yosemite:

1. Would Yosemite climbers from this forum even want this when it brings more tourists to their climbing area? Most of this forum is only pro-access for themselves: as soon as people other than them start accessing the crag, suddenly it's too crowded, and climbers are having too much impact. Like I said: everyone is in favor of trains until it the train is in their backyard. We can call this what it is, NIMBYism, but calling it out doesn't change it.
2. If somehow we could get a massive amount of money and political will for high speed rail: would San Fran to Yosemite be the highest priority? Given there isn't high speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles, or San Francisco and Seattle, don't you think one of those might have a larger environmental impact?

Given these facts, how long do you think it will take to get a high-speed rail between San Francisco and Yosemite? If you want to start building a political movement to now, feel free to get started now, but in the mean time, do you mind if we discuss things that might actually happen in our lifetimes (like electric cars), or is that too Stockholm Syndrome for you?

David Kwrote:

Or, you know, a rudimentary understanding of the country we live in.

Obviously trains would be better. But most US cities can't even get the political will to connect their neighborhoods with trains. The car companies oppose it, the unions oppose it, and the city environmentalists who "support it" for everyone else, suddenly oppose it when it's in their backyard because they don't want trains bringing unwashed train people to their gated communities. There are areas that are exceptions, such as NYC, but underfunded, aging infrastructure and miles of red tape mean it takes decades to get even comparatively-small projects done (example).

Instead of smugly talking about how woke you are compared to people who don't share your pie-in-the-sky dreams, maybe consider a basic example: a high speed rail from San Fran to Yosemite:

1. Would Yosemite climbers from this forum even want this when it brings more tourists to their climbing area? Most of this forum is only pro-access for themselves: as soon as people other than them start accessing the crag, suddenly it's too crowded, and climbers are having too much impact. Like I said: everyone is in favor of trains until it the train is in their backyard. We can call this what it is, NIMBYism, but calling it out doesn't change it.
2. If somehow we could get a massive amount of money and political will for high speed rail: would San Fran to Yosemite be the highest priority? Given there isn't high speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles, or San Francisco and Seattle, don't you think one of those might have a larger environmental impact?

Given these facts, how long do you think it will take to get a high-speed rail between San Francisco and Yosemite? If you want to start building a political movement to now, feel free to get started now, but in the mean time, do you mind if we discuss things that might actually happen in our lifetimes (like electric cars), or is that too Stockholm Syndrome for you?

Why did you dream up this bizarre SF to Yosemite rail thing? You're acting like they're being ridiculous but you've created one of the more absurd strawmen I've ever witnessed. 

Preeti is arguing for reasonable transit solutions that will actually address the bay area's horrific traffic. When I lived in San Jose it was endlessly crazy-making to me that everyone would vote for more traffic (refused to further fund the light rail system, refused increased CalTrain traffic, didn't want BART coming to San Jose and on and on) and then everyone would bitch about the traffic they voted for.

Your claim that they're woke is completely absurd. This is a black and white issue. Do we want real, meaningful, long lasting solutions that will decrease transit times and increase transit satisfaction, or will we continue to vote for worse traffic and then go all surprised Pikachu face when traffic inevitably worsens yet again? Preeti is the reasonable one here, certainly not you. 

Ricky Harlinewrote:

Why did you dream up this bizarre SF to Yosemite rail thing? You're acting like they're being ridiculous but you've created one of the more absurd strawmen I've ever witnessed. 

Because they are being ridiculous. Can you come up with a better potential connection between an urban area to a climbing that isn't a strawman in your head? Or is this "rail is the way" absurdity just connecting hypothetical points for you?

Preeti is arguing for reasonable transit solutions that will actually address the bay area's horrific traffic.

Preeti is doing nothing of the sort. This thread is about getting from urban centers to climbing areas. Preeti is waxing poetic about a Paris to Chamonix route as if we could just pick up and do that in the US--look at the post I was responding to, I literally quoted it. It doesn't mention the Bay Area at all--that's just your mistake. I just picked the most obvious urban area and the most obvious climbing area as an example of why Preeti's idea starts to look ridiculous pretty quickly when we start talking concrete examples in the US. If you can think of a better example of a climbing area and urban center to connect in the US, be my guest.

When I lived in San Jose it was endlessly crazy-making to me that everyone would vote for more traffic (refused to further fund the light rail system, refused increased CalTrain traffic, didn't want BART coming to San Jose and on and on) and then everyone would bitch about the traffic they voted for.

Yes, this is exactly an example of why I think rail to climbing areas is unrealistic. You've seen exactly what I'm talking about, and you think suddenly the voters are just suddenly going to change?

Your claim that they're woke is completely absurd. This is a black and white issue. Do we want real, meaningful, long lasting solutions that will decrease transit times and increase transit satisfaction, or will we continue to vote for worse traffic and then go all surprised Pikachu face when traffic inevitably worsens yet again? Preeti is the reasonable one here, certainly not you. 

Look, nobody agrees with me more than you, and if I were voting in the SF area I'd vote for public transit every time, and most US cities have similar problems. But it hasn't won and isn't likely to win soon, let alone expand to include significant natural sites, so you'll excuse me if I explore other options and get annoyed when people say I have "Stockholm Syndrome" because I'm looking at reality instead of science fiction.

I've been to the EU, the transit was great but it didn't go everywhere the roads did so people still drove. Having both makes sense, I think there are way too many positives to having cars and roads for them to ever go away at this point, other than in mega-dense urban cores.

I drive a model Y and it works great. A round trip from Fort Collins to Voo is ~68% battery and there are Supercharger stations in Laramie and Cheyenne if that didn't work. Snow and ice are not problems at all, other than the lack of ground clearance - this is not a Wrangler. I've done road trips to Texas and back in it too, it kinda just works, at least for all my needs. I haven't tried it yet, but I have a mattress to put in the back for car camping - with a 240V RV hookup, I could charge and run the HVAC while I sleep, which is pretty neat.

David Kwrote:

Because they are being ridiculous. Can you come up with a better potential connection between an urban area to a climbing that isn't a strawman in your head? Or is this "rail is the way" absurdity just connecting hypothetical points for you?

Preeti is doing nothing of the sort. This thread is about getting from urban centers to climbing areas. Preeti is waxing poetic about a Paris to Chamonix route as if we could just pick up and do that in the US--look at the post I was responding to, I literally quoted it. It doesn't mention the Bay Area at all--that's just your mistake. I just picked the most obvious urban area and the most obvious climbing area as an example of why Preeti's idea starts to look ridiculous pretty quickly when we start talking concrete examples in the US. If you can think of a better example of a climbing area and urban center to connect in the US, be my guest.

Yes, this is exactly an example of why I think rail to climbing areas is unrealistic. You've seen exactly what I'm talking about, and you think suddenly the voters are just suddenly going to change?

Look, nobody agrees with me more than you, and if I were voting in the SF area I'd vote for public transit every time, and most US cities have similar problems. But it hasn't won and isn't likely to win soon, let alone expand to include significant natural sites, so you'll excuse me if I explore other options and get annoyed when people say I have "Stockholm Syndrome" because I'm looking at reality instead of science fiction.

Transit to climbing does exist. I see two problems with most of it in the US - lack of frequent service and the last mile problem. But these are solvable with existing resources and rights of way and the solutions are in no way ridiculous. In Chamonix, not only is the train or bus from anywhere in Europe easy, reliable, and cheap, but there's also regular bus service up and down the valley stopping at major trailheads and ski areas. It was trivial to take buses from Milan to Chamonix, start hiking at le Tour, take the bus from Arolla to Visp (bad weather getting all the way to Zermatt) and train back to Milan.  

In the US, some of the systems are theoretically connected but lack frequent service and last mile options, but again, these are solvable issues. There is literally a train from Oakland to Truckee. It's awesome. It's also worth pointing out that transit access used to be better than it is now in some places: there used to be a train from Truckee to down to Tahoe City; the old rail bed is now the bike path. It was a tourist train bringing people to the lake back in the early-mid 20th century. TART exists to get around the Tahoe basin but its frequency of service leaves something to be desired; and good luck on crowded ski weekends. There's a train to Merced which is also nice and you can connect to YARTS to Yosemite and from there ESTA on the East Side. If either of these ran more than a couple times a day I would take them. On the JMT forums, people from out of town are begging for more transit options to get from airports to trailheads. the demand is there and if transit were built out, more people would use it. In your home area, people take the train from NYC to Bear Mountain to hike the AT all the time, and take the bus or train to Poughkeepsie and connect to the Gunks. Again, there's a last mile problem but no theoretical impediment to someone running a shuttle a few times a day from the train station to the West Trapps. Would save on parking. 

Induced demand works for transit as well as highways. 

Isaiah aka Zay Foulks wrote:

1 pound of CO2 per mile.

1 lb of CO2 ~~ 64 gallons in volume.

Edit: felt like a brief rabbit hole...

Average American drives around 14,000 miles per year...

=896,000 lbs of CO2...

Lets round up and just say a million.

And lets assume that half of all Americans drive.

Rounding down to 300,000,000...

150,000,000 Americans...

So 150,000,000,000,000 lbs of CO2...

= 9,600,000,000,000,000 gallons of CO2 by volume per year.

Nine thousand six hundred quadrillion.

That is a load of bollox!  Let's say you drive 15,000 miles per year and get 30 mpg.  That would be 500 gallons of gas which would weigh less than 4,400 pounds total.  Most of that does NOT end up a CO2.  So where the hell you got your numbers from has been lying to you.  Per your own calculations you would only produce 7.8 pounds of CO2 in a year with a 30 mpg vehicle.  So if every single person in the US drove 15,000 miles (which doesn't happen since half of them are too old or young to drive) you would end up with 2.73 million pounds of CO2.  So figure in reality you might get a little over 1 million pounds for all the car miles driven in a year.  Of course, add in airplanes and whatnot and this number goes up but I'd be surprised it the entire world outputs the FAKE amount in your calculations.

Jan Mcwrote:

That is a load of bollox!  Let's say you drive 15,000 miles per year and get 30 mpg.  That would be 500 gallons of gas which would weigh less than 4,400 pounds total.  Most of that does NOT end up a CO2.  So where the hell you got your numbers from has been lying to you.  Per your own calculations you would only produce 7.8 pounds of CO2 in a year with a 30 mpg vehicle.  So if every single person in the US drove 15,000 miles (which doesn't happen since half of them are too old or young to drive) you would end up with 2.73 million pounds of CO2.  So figure in reality you might get a little over 1 million pounds for all the car miles driven in a year.  Of course, add in airplanes and whatnot and this number goes up but I'd be surprised it the entire world outputs the FAKE amount in your calculations.

I think they messed up the units and the “lbs” is supposed to be gallons of CO2. Looks like the error propagated through. Either way it’s still a lot and could be better. 

Jan Mcwrote:

That is a load of bollox!  Let's say you drive 15,000 miles per year and get 30 mpg.  That would be 500 gallons of gas which would weigh less than 4,400 pounds total.  Most of that does NOT end up a CO2.  So where the hell you got your numbers from has been lying to you.  Per your own calculations you would only produce 7.8 pounds of CO2 in a year with a 30 mpg vehicle.  So if every single person in the US drove 15,000 miles (which doesn't happen since half of them are too old or young to drive) you would end up with 2.73 million pounds of CO2.  So figure in reality you might get a little over 1 million pounds for all the car miles driven in a year.  Of course, add in airplanes and whatnot and this number goes up but I'd be surprised it the entire world outputs the FAKE amount in your calculations.

It may look like a concervation of mass fallacy, but the combustion process takes uses air in the compustion process. Boom more mass.  

Check out this Toyota Avalon which is a very average ICE car that makes 5.8 Tons of CO2 equivelent  at the tail pipe per year based on 15K miles a year.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=44380&#tab2

The Avalon makes 1.2 Tons of CO2 equivelent upstream - meaning the energy to get the oil out of the ground, refined and to your car.  

"in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide (CO2), it emits. Your choice of vehicle has the biggest impact on your overall contribution to climate change."

Jan Mcwrote:

Let's say you drive 15,000 miles per year and get 30 mpg.  That would be 500 gallons of gas which would weigh less than 4,400 pounds total.  Most of that does NOT end up a CO2.  

The US EPA estimates that burning 1 gallon of gas generates a bit under 9kg of CO2 (a little under 20lbs).  As your estimates imply, a gallon of gas probably weighs around 8lbs.  So how can you get 20lbs of CO2 from 8lbs of gas?  Burning is a chemical reaction that combines carbon from the gasoline with oxygen from the air.  So you pick up a lot of mass from the oxygen in the air.

epa link

Preeti Pwrote:

It may look like a concervation of mass fallacy, but the combustion process takes uses air in the compustion process. Boom more mass.  

Check out this Toyota Avalon which is a very average ICE car that makes 5.8 Tons of CO2 equivelent  at the tail pipe per year based on 15K miles a year.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=44380&#tab2

The Avalon makes 1.2 Tons of CO2 equivelent upstream - meaning the energy to get the oil out of the ground, refined and to your car.  

"in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide (CO2), it emits. Your choice of vehicle has the biggest impact on your overall contribution to climate change."

That's right, but still doesn't save Isaiah's original calculation that was figuring 450 tons/year (off by a couple orders of magnitude). 7.8 lbs/year (unless they meant tons/yr?) is an even worse calculation, but it doesn't make the first particularly good. Oof.

David Kwrote:

Because they are being ridiculous. Can you come up with a better potential connection between an urban area to a climbing that isn't a strawman in your head? Or is this "rail is the way" absurdity just connecting hypothetical points for you?

Preeti is doing nothing of the sort. This thread is about getting from urban centers to climbing areas. Preeti is waxing poetic about a Paris to Chamonix route as if we could just pick up and do that in the US--look at the post I was responding to, I literally quoted it. It doesn't mention the Bay Area at all--that's just your mistake. I just picked the most obvious urban area and the most obvious climbing area as an example of why Preeti's idea starts to look ridiculous pretty quickly when we start talking concrete examples in the US. If you can think of a better example of a climbing area and urban center to connect in the US, be my guest.

Yes, this is exactly an example of why I think rail to climbing areas is unrealistic. You've seen exactly what I'm talking about, and you think suddenly the voters are just suddenly going to change?

Look, nobody agrees with me more than you, and if I were voting in the SF area I'd vote for public transit every time, and most US cities have similar problems. But it hasn't won and isn't likely to win soon, let alone expand to include significant natural sites, so you'll excuse me if I explore other options and get annoyed when people say I have "Stockholm Syndrome" because I'm looking at reality instead of science fiction.

Sir, this is Mountain Project. You're assuming people aren't going on tangents without any intent to discuss the central subject of the topic. That's a dangerous assumption to make anywhere but here it is extraordinarily so. 

You ever tried to just get to the central valley some time via public transit? Try to get just from SF to say Stockton or Modesto. It's absurd how many various agencies and types of transit it takes and how many hours it is. There should be good rail to a city where YARTS will pick you up. That there isn't is completely absurd. The state of affairs is embarrassing for any "developed" nation or even most third world nations, much less the richest nation on the planet. 

I think this is the point here, not some SF to Yosemite Valley high speed rail that only you have imagined. 

One of the things I love about Latin America (only poorer part of the world I've spent time) is how you can get a bus ANYWHERE. At first I would ask people if you can take a bus x place and people would look at me like I'm crazy. You can take a bus absolutely anywhere. There's probably one that leaves every thirty minutes.  It makes you so goddamn free. Show up to the station any time, don't check the schedule, buy a ticket for $2, arrive only a little bit slower than you could drive anyway and massively cheaper and more comfortable. 

Europe with its rail is even better. 

This is a freedom that we should enjoy here in the richest state in the richest nation but probably never will in my lifetime. Instead we have to have these stupid ball and chain vehicles (which to be clear CAN be great, or can be nothing more than a giant hassle depending on the context). If you actually read what Preeti was saying it's very clear this is what she's talking about, not some pie in the sky bay area to SF high speed rail system. 

Wow! This is by far the most prolific thread that I've ever started on MP and I feel bad in a way for not being more involved - I was out in the mountains with no internet...

I really appreciate learning about the experiences of the handful of people who posted in here who do make the weekend warrior thing work with an EV. I think that in the end though it doesn't yet make sense for me from a cost perspective. The EVs are too damn expensive and it seems like you're unlikely to get 16 years/200k out of one and still be able to sell it for a few grand. I am also kind of morally opposed to the idea of taking the EV tax credit, which is a handout to the rich - it's wrong and regressive - and without the EV tax credit, the numbers really don't add up. Maybe for my next car.

As mentioned just financially speaking it probably doesn’t make sense. Gas is $6 a gallon. A Tesla, that has the range you want for eastside trips is maybe $20,000 more than Outback. If you do the math for fuel savings (still need to pay to charge the EV) it may take driving 150,000 miles to break even. Of course there’s a whole bunch of factors to take into account besides purchase price and fuel cost. Resale. Maintenance cost. Insurance. Registration. Teslas are amazing to drive but range anxiety and waiting to charge is real.

I usually buy used low mileage cars for cash. My current vehicle had less than 30,000 miles on it and was less than half the price of new.

I own a rav4 hybrid, 29,500$ and  38 mpg in the summer; running 77 mph on the freeway. Pretty good all wheel drive too.

I would have bought a rav4 prime, but they are functionally unavailable.

I just can’t see spending 70-90k on a Tesla.

We haven’t addressed the lifecycle cost of ev batteries imo.
cobalt lithium copper and other mining have great environmental  costs.

just my thoughts 

E

If Toyota made more than (apparently) a handfull of Rav4 Primes, they'd be everywhere. I almost bought one until I realized I couldn't really find one, and at the time Tesla had a 2-3 week order-to-delivery timeframe - that made the choice easy. Also, my long range Y was ~$60k at the time, since this was before things got crazy.

Also yeah, you will not save money with a long range EV right now... I think. I didn't do the analysis, I just bought one because I wanted to. You can find studies on cost, both personal and environmental, biased whichever way you'd like with a little web searching - my take is that I'm not dumping noise and pollution in my town, using far, far less energy per mile and it's just a better driving experience than gas cars and thus makes sense for me. I'm also a bit of a car guy so spending lots of money on a car is kinda my default anyway.

Gloweringwrote:

As mentioned just financially speaking it probably doesn’t make sense. Gas is $6 a gallon. A Tesla, that has the range you want for eastside trips is maybe $20,000 more than Outback. If you do the math for fuel savings (still need to pay to charge the EV) it may take driving 150,000 miles to break even. Of course there’s a whole bunch of factors to take into account besides purchase price and fuel cost. Resale. Maintenance cost. Insurance. Registration. Teslas are amazing to drive but range anxiety and waiting to charge is real.

I usually buy used low mileage cars for cash. My current vehicle had less than 30,000 miles on it and was less than half the price of new.

Glowering and I agree!

Wait for the "good" EVs to got the used market and snatch them up for cash cheap.

JonasMRwrote:

That's right, but still doesn't save Isaiah's original calculation that was figuring 450 tons/year (off by a couple orders of magnitude). 7.8 lbs/year (unless they meant tons/yr?) is an even worse calculation, but it doesn't make the first particularly good. Oof.

Yes, the math was off. It needed some peer review to get right. The important take away is that its a bigger number than expected because of the compustion process.  

Methane is a potent green house gas and in the oil extraction process a lot of methane is vented or burned.  Its sad because we could use the energy.  

Another conclution is that gas are are dirtier than most people understand.  Well to tank is a bitch.  

"A quantity of GHG can be expressed as CO2e by multiplying the amount of the GHG by its GWP. 

E.g. if 1kg of methane is emitted, this can be expressed as 25kg of CO2e (1kg CH4 * 25 = 25kg CO2e)"

https://ecometrica.com/assets/GHGs-CO2-CO2e-and-Carbon-What-Do-These-Mean-v2.1.pdf

Those you you saying the cost benefit analysis doesn't add up at the moment are probably correct. But that will change shortly.

https://electrek.co/2022/06/01/electric-car-price-war-coming-ford-ceo/

Edit: It's already starting

https://electrek.co/2022/06/01/2023-chevy-bolt-ev-and-euv-get-6000-price-cut-start-at-25600/