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Citizen complaint of the day: Your right to own a plug-in hybrid ends at my foot
By adamg on Sat, 05/18/2019 - 12:44pm
A concerned citizen files a 311 complaint about the way one resident of Lawrence Street in the South End is recharging his or her Honda Clarity:
So we are running electric cords across sidewalks to charge electric vehicles. And that's ok?
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Put an orange cone there.
Mark as resolved.
Hear, hear, sidewalk spot
Hear, hear, sidewalk spot savers. How dare you walk on this section of sidewalk when I've cleared it for my cord.
I'll take "White People's Problems" for 400, Alex
Just unplug the thing and move the cord aside, if it's a real problem to you.
Limited Mobility
You're forgetting that people with limited mobility need to use the sidewalk with walkers.
To be fair this sidewalk on
To be fair this sidewalk on Lawrence is so ridiculously small and the brick is a mess with roots there's no way someone with limited mobility can get down it anyways. I usually walk in the street when I come down this street because the sidewalk is a joke.
Actually I did consider that...
...which is one reason why my suggestion that the person making the complaint take 2 seconds to fix the problem on their own, rather than go to their phone to whine about it.
This is as entitled -- and as
This is as entitled -- and as unacceptable -- as dropping an orange cone or an old toilet in the space. The owner should be cited.
I'll take "Known Hazards Prohibited On Worksites" for 200
n/t
Um... okay, racist much? POC
Um... okay, racist much? POC own electric cars and have nice homes in the South End too.
Lol uh oh
Lol uh oh
Oh isn't that cute!
This may come as a shock to you, but I am white. So you assuming otherwise makes YOU the racist.
Also, you spelled "AOC" wrong.
Dont give the city any ideas
They will insist you hire a police detal at 4hr minimum and time and a half pay if you charge your car on a city street.
They will sit in their car and close the sidewalk.
If only
If only Nikolai Tesla was able to get continued funding back in 1905, that Honda could recharge itself from the air, we would not be at war in Asia, and the atmosphere would be a hell of a lot cleaner.
Magical thinking
Because in 114 years nobody has been able to achieve what he deluded himself. Physics - bummer.
Really?
You're going to deny that an acknowledged genius knew what he was doing, because lesser people have been unable to reproduce his real results?
Edit: A negative that changed my meaning removed.
Tesla has become a kind of stoner super-hero of late.
I myself am a big fan and don't deny his genius. However his legend has grown into this narrative of him creating a perfect world with no polution and no wars. A bit much but everyone needs an altar to kneel before. (Get yer Tesla t-shirts heah! Show everyone how smart you are by wearing a Tesla shirt!) Some people can only imagine simple answers to complex problems.
No, not that...
He's merely pointing out that no matter how much of a "genius" Tesla was, even he is subject to the laws of physics that prevent this particular idea from ever feasibly working. All the funding in the world wouldn't fix the fact that his ideas about the transfer of energy and the loss involved in it just weren't/aren't possible, and things like the Wardenclyffe Tower could never possibly work as intended.
Yes, I agree with that guy, it's the other one that
Wants to replace the laws of physics with a MCU movie plot line.
Edison
Out maneuvered Tesla politically and financially. Too much profit in the hardware and distribution to let Tesla and the betterment of human kind succeed.
He outmaneuvered Tesla, but ...
He ultimately lost, because Tesla's AC (which Westinghouse managed to get from him) ultimately proved far more useful than Edison's DC (mainly because it could be more readily transmitted over long distances by wire at high voltages than Edison's DC).
Some BU dorms used DC into the 1970s
Does anyone know when they were finally all converted to AC?
It's not like he's the only
It's not like he's the only genius who's tried to figure this out over the past 114 years. So far the best they can do is charge a cellphone, slowly, from a centimeter or two away.
Inferior geniuses
Can you name any of the geniuses you refer to? Would any of us recognize their names as having discovered something important, on the scale of, say, alternating current, or radio?
Tesla-ed
In London the gobnimint has installed chargers on the lamp posts.
plug-in hybrid
Running the cord up and over the fence would be the right way to go. Maybe around the light pole?
Yeah
We had a resident in our Cambridge neighborhood who did just that for a couple of years, stretching the cord over a very busy sidewalk (Huron Avenue near all the stores). He/she has since moved.
That's a great idea. Maybe
That's a great idea. Maybe make use of the horizontal bars on the lamp post, since the lamplighter guy doesn't lean his ladder against them any more.
Clean coal and natural gas powering the electric cars
Great to see cars that provide a psychological boost to the owner, even if they are powered by the same coal and natural gas that energizes over half of the US power grid. It must feel good to bypass the gas station and plug in when nobody's looking, especially when the emissions are moved from the owner's neighborhood to those in the path of the power plants.
No such thing as clean coal
Not a SINGLE electron transferred to that car came from coal fired power plants.
Geezer fuckwits be alzheimering again.
Hey Flushall - maybe store your "thoughts" in the cloud?
Meanwhile, for those who want facts to understand rather than memes to believe in:
https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=MA
The EIA is right
But while is is good that we are replacing coal with relatively cleaner natural gas, let's not forget that we are also using natural gas to replace nuclear power, which is carbon neutral.
And you'd have to admit, in a lot of other states, his claim of electric cars being coal powered would hold a lot of salt.
Nuclear power may be carbon neutral
But the waste it generates more than offsets that benefit.
Depends
If one’s objective is to reduce greenhouse emissions, the benefits outweigh the problems with the waste.
Geezer fuckwits be alzheimering again.
My mother just died of Alzheimers, you nasty bitch.
My grandfather died in 1988 of Alzheimer's
I wasn't remotely offended by Swirly's comment.
Nothing is perfect but some things are better
A gasoline-powered car gets 100% of its energy from burning fossil fuels, an electric car gets a mix of fossil fuels and other energy sources. The latter is a significant improvement, and if over time the energy grid gets more of its energy from renewable sources it gets even better without having to do a thing to the car. I don't think electric cars are the perfect solution, but they're certainly a big help. (And arguably methane is better than gasoline, although that's much more debatable and even more marginal.)
Energy source used to power EVs
While much of the electricity we use does come from coal-burning plants, as well as natural gas, there is the option to buy your electricity from such providers as CleanChoice Energy.
I personally have solar panels on the roof of my home, but am still grid-tied for my nighttime electricity use. Here's the beauty. I signed up for CleanChoice energy, so my grid electricity is sourced from solar farms. They also offer electricity sourced from wind turbine farms.
So, my plug-in hybrid car gets all of it's electricity for charging directly from the energy through the solar panels on my own home and then at night from the electricity from solar farms.
I call my car 100% solar powered.
Just trying to do my small part.
Clean coal is one of Trumps
Clean coal is one of Trumps "alternative facts". It's a lie. But then again you were dumb enough to vote for someone who has been caught lying 10,000 times, so what else is new.
"Clean coal" is part of a
"Clean coal" is part of a family of environmental feel-good word twisting that goes back before Trump - see things like "Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle".
Many people understood "cleaner coal" - specifying slightly better grades, performance modifications on plants, etc... to improve the point-source emissions - as part of a reasonable economic/environmental/social policy. Acts to promote energy diversity, energy independence, not throwing blocks of people out of work, not tossing infrastructure to the wayside, not having huge startup costs...
Nope. Fish shoots well wide of the net.
Weekend load with moderate temperatures in New England? The amount of coal on the ISO-New England grid was ZERO. It peaks at 3-5% anyway.
Natural gas? About 50% of the mix. The rest was nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind. Wholesale prices were too low to support biomass.
The emissions of EVs are dramatically less than gasoline or diesel vehicles. Traditional air pollution like particulates falls to nearly zero*, and carbon pollution falls dramatically. Don't hate on it just because you don't understand it Fish, and don't hate on it just because Al Gore suggested it was a good idea nearly 20 years ago.
* Tires degrade putting tiny bits of debris in the air, plus they kick up more, so even EVs have some impact on air quality.
For Massachusetts
Natural gas is more than 50% of the mix. It's used to widely that ISO-NE is worried about that.
Check out Swirly's link above.
idlers, fowlers, and EVs
You'll find it in the original Boston Charter: "idlers" are banned, including "common coasters, unprofitable fowlers, and tobacco takers" as well as "carriages power'd not by beast but thru tubes of aether Charg'd with Mr. Franklin's Electrick miasma."
I'm impressed by the
I'm impressed by the restraint (and lack of imagination) shown by both sides.
If this idiot was creating a tripping hazard on my sidewalk... I'd be bringing out whatever rechargeable tools and appliances I have, unplugging their car, and charging my stuff on their dime.
If I was the idiot, I wouldn't be spending my own dime - I'd be unscrewing baseplates on streetlights to splice a (very unsafe) outlet in order to steal city power.
The best way for the city to handle this situation is to
install a certain number of charger/plug-in outlets for electrical cars, then.
Who Pays?
Who pays for the electricity?
While I support alternative means of transportation, the energy to charge your car needs to be paid for. I see too much "Free energy", and I rarely see any of it 100% powered by renewable energy (I.e. nearby solar panels). So who pays. Someone is paying the 30cents a/kwh? Probably the tax payers.
And while I get the argument of "they are choosing an environmentally friendly car".. if it was 2002, you'd have a point. But now that everyone has one (and everyone can get one), we're just giving away energy at this point.
Everyone would be up in arms if we gave away free gas.. electricity is no different really, and should be treated as much. You want to drive a car, even if its an electric one. You need to pay for it.
Card Readers
Charging stations can be set up with a card reader that then gets invoiced to the user. Or tied to their electric bill. Or even set up like a parking meter or gas station dispenser: insert credit/debit card to start the dispensing of electricity. When it's full, charge the card. If the cord is ever unplugged, the card is charged at the point, and the system resets itself, preventing someone from charging another vehicle on the first person's dime.
Honestly?
The amount the city would pay in additional electricity at whatever discounted rate they get would more than outweigh all the benefits to healthcare and so on from charging an electric car instead of burning gasoline.
The same person or
The same person or organization who pays for electricity at the thousands of chargers that already exist. You know, this is already a thing.
Some charging stations are free to the user. Others make you pay. The sponsoring organization decides if they want to provide a subsidy.
https://chargehub.com/en/countries/united-states/massachusetts/boston.ht...
Not without a driveway
I drive a plug-in hybrid and I have a garage. If you don't at least have a driveway where you can run your cord from your home to the driveway, and out of anybody's way, you have no business having a plug-in car.
Also, as well as the possibility of a lawsuit from someone tripping over your cord, I wouldn't trust some vandal to damage my cord. Those cords cost around $400.
One has to bear in mind, however, that
Electric cars may be the wave of the future at some point.