$1 Gasoline???

People in my orbit are worrying about keeping their jobs, and their normal priced cars.

 

A few locals tell me that they've been declared as essential personnel critical to operations and they've been issued Official Letters to declare their status.

Lately I ask if it came with a red shirt.

 

the super chargers are for long distance driving, which few people are doing nowadays. But a supercharger station fee is not just to cover the cost of electricity. That room-sized Transformer can easily cost six figures. Some locations may have four or more. Then there are the envious douchebag vandals.

So between the cost of maintenance, repairs, liability insurance, leasing the land, installation etc - prices add up - really really fast. Many areas also charge "demand fees" (capability to pull over 30kW-50kW at any one time during the month) . That fee can more than quadruple the cost per kwh. Long & the short of it is - you can't do anything but lose big money - charging for electricity anywhere near residential rate. That's why more and more supercharging locations are installing solar with battery backup. In the long run, those systems will eventually be nearer to break even.
So - for the few that are still on the road - AND that are driving under 250 mile round trips, home charging is still a bargain. With more & more plugin owners drawing from their renewable solar power - the cost of interstate & /or long distance driving is not as traumatic, cost-wise. Worst of all, if you make supercharging a bargain, every cheap-skate freeloader WILL stop unnecessarily - just to take advantage of not charging at home, defeating the purpose meant for the true long-distance driver. Don't forget, most of the first 5yrs of the model S - & the 1st 2yrs of X's are driving cost free for supercharging. The system has to absorb costs for them as well. If Tesla buys those cars back, they will deactivate that feature prior to sale, in most instances.

i40 was hideous with potholes on the ⅔ of it we were on - driving across the nation a few weeks ago. If even ½ of the interstates are nearing that condition, they will have plenty of fixing to do - catching up anyways.

 

E.g. The West Seattle Bridge, a major arterial from the West Seattle neighborhood to I-5, closed Monday due to increased crack propagation. Though it hasn't actually free-fallen yet.

 

I've been rethinking this one- not only is there still weather damage as @litesong points out, there are still a lot of trucks delivering goods. One truck can do the same damage as about 10,000 passenger cars, so I reckon we're still doing a lot of damage with a lot less revenue coming in to clean it up.

Sounds like first-world problems, and it'll be a while before we are back in that club.

 

Not a big deal with PHEV's= the beauty of dual fuel.

 

I have one of those letters.
No red shirts yet

 

Does everyone know what a red shirt means in StarTrek lore?

 

that's security. Um, i mean .... that's what I've heard from others.

.

 

Yes that's the classification but there's one more thing.....

 

In Star Trek, they're usually the first to go.

 

Ding, ding, ding. Winner!

 

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Redshirts | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

 

That game will mess with your mind!
You "win" by failing missions while trying to force your opponents to succeed their missions.

 

I have not seen it yet myself, but local news said the gas price in our area hit $1.50/gal. Now the cost of gas is about half of the cost to charge my PRIME to drive the same distance on EV mode. Since I don't plan to drive my car for a while, my PRIME sits on our driveway, not charged and full of gas from the last fill-up last week at $1.75/gal.

 

In theory, natural gas price should fall as well. That should allow those tons of electric utilities utilizing natural gas powered turbines to at least temporarily dump their prices. Especially with so many losing their jobs. However, experiencing how the boards that run the utilities are often so self serving -
https://www.thestate.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/cindi-ross-scoppe/article216953890.html
if anything - they'll just use the opportunity to take profits as bonuses.
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our prices are fixed over 6 month + periods
Unlikely excess profit will reduce rates.

95% of my bill are fixed fees taxes

 

Yeah, we have not seen any rate decrease after utility deregulation in our state. Cheaper natural gas or not, my electric rate was locked in for the next two years. Terminating contracts early will result in a hefty penalty, but I may have to do a hard calculation if other electricity providers slash the rates.

 

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