| ▲ | aftbit 15 hours ago |
| It probably does though, unless you have stockpiled gas. If the power is down to the gas station, the pumps don't work. My experience with power outages (after big summer storms, not a hurricane thank goodness) has been that my neighborhood is impacted, but that places nearby have power. They tend to restore commercial first, so the supercharger near me is up and running before my house. |
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| ▲ | jjav 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > If the power is down to the gas station, the pumps don't work. In places where long power outages are common (hurricane areas), many gas stations have their own generators (they also have a convenient source of fuel to run them!) |
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| ▲ | sumeno 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If the power is down to the charging station the chargers don't work, this is just as likely as the power being down at the gas station |
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| ▲ | labcomputer 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | Let me know when you figure out how to refill your gas car from solar panels. | | |
| ▲ | solyin 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I know you're being snarky, but the chemical process for that exists! It's called the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. You take air, CO2 specifically, and then run the process, which needs electricity, possibly from solar panels, and get diesel/gasoline/jet fuel out the other end! Isn't science amazing? There are practical issues with it, but it's possible. The question is EROI or Energy Return on Investment. Do you get more energy from it than it took to make it, which unfortunately is not there yet. Shrinking it down to fit into your backyard is an exercise left for the reader. | | | |
| ▲ | sumeno 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you've got solar panels sufficent to charge a cybertruck then you don't need the cybertruck to power your home. Regular battery systems will work | |
| ▲ | petcat 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Charging an EV from regular household solar panels would take days.... And that's assuming they are sunny days. | | |
| ▲ | imtringued 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | There are many hours in a day and EVs are pretty efficient. You might struggle if your goal is to drive 200km per day but if all you want is to drive to work or go shopping, you'll be fine. | |
| ▲ | lanstin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think your math is off some how. I have a Model 3 and two Leafs and we charge them from our 39 400 Watt panels without trouble. They are always ready to go fully charged unless one of the boys has been doing more than normal of driving to the beach with a girlfriend and then borrowing the Model 3 for a concert, or whatever fun involves using all the stored energy at the same time (e.g. not commutes to school or work). | |
| ▲ | lostlogin 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It takes about a 6-8 hours to charge my Leaf on a small solar install. But yes, it needs to be sunny if that’s going to be pure solar. | | |
| ▲ | ryanbrunner 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | I realize the person you're replying to wasn't specific and said just "EV" but a leaf and a cybertruck are pretty much the polar ends of a spectrum. | | |
| ▲ | imtringued 13 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Ok but the problem with this argument is that you could come up with a hypothetical EV that can store enough energy to last a year and then take a year to charge. And yet nothing prevents you from driving daily. What matters is how much range you drive and recharge, not how big your battery is. |
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| ▲ | sveme 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What? My BIL’s installation is small, roughly 8kWp, on sunny days he easily gets 40-50kWh, if not more. | | | |
| ▲ | its_ethan 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | because solar panels only exist on houses? | | |
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| ▲ | rightnutwingjob 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Let me know when you invent solar panels that aren’t vulnerable to damaging winds. | | |
| ▲ | pmontra 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Where I live solar panels have been smashed by hail ice balls, 3 inches diameter. | |
| ▲ | scarecrowbob 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Probably when they invent a genset that can sustain its surrounding structure being immolated in a wildfire? I'm 100% off grid on solar in the middle of nowhere. My panels could burn up, get hit by hail, get searched by law enforcement, flooded out, eaten by mice, stolen by miscreants, abducted by aliens or buried in snow. And of course in the event of a volcano they are probably not gonna function well. So they are of course totally unworkable in events when the power grid is down. But I like using them and they've been reliable so far... |
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| ▲ | LordDragonfang 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > unless you have stockpiled gas And are regularly rotating that stockpile, because gasoline has a shelf life measured in months edit: Apparently this leans more technically-true factoid than fact, thank you replies |
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| ▲ | Ariarule 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You're not wrong but this is commonly exaggerated: half a year with a stabilizer is entirely doable under reasonable conditions. | | |
| ▲ | ljf 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Amuses me hear this - I ran a moped from a large tank of multi-year old petrol, and it got by fine. But maybe a modern car might be more picky? | | |
| ▲ | ssl-3 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Last year, I let a fairly new portable generator with low hours on sit with gas in it for 6 months and it would not fire up. It wouldn't even sputter. That was surprising to me because it was working quite well when parked, and I'm used to doing things like leaving lawnmowers outside continuously (including over the winter) without much trouble, but that's what happened anyway. I drained the old fuel out and replaced with fresh, and it fired up on the first subsequent half-assed pull of the starter rope. (Which reminds me: It's been six months again already. Time to see if it still works.) | | |
| ▲ | mgerdts 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A fairly new snowblower of mine had gas left in it over the summer. Before the first snowfall of the following winter it would not start. A dissection of the carburetor revealed numerous places where small passages were completely filled with a sticky gummy substance that had to be mechanically removed. After cleaning and reassembly, it fired right up with fresh gas. Maybe the old gas would have worked just fine once it could flow. Clearly having the gas sit in there had adverse effects. | | |
| ▲ | ssl-3 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The carb on this generator has a drain for the bowl. It should've been dry in there when parked. I don't know what the insides looked like because replacing the gas was easy and it worked, so I stopped troubleshooting at that point. :) |
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| ▲ | timr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Fuel stabilizer is cheap insurance for anything that overwinters with fuel in it -- motorcycles, boat engines, etc. You have to put in in the tank and run it for a bit to make sure that the carbs don't have untreated fuel inside. |
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| ▲ | greenavocado 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I just did this as well. Fired up my moped on 2 year old stabilized gas. Runs fine. |
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| ▲ | ryanbrunner 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We use the (inboard) engine so rarely on my sailboat I'm sure we've gone 2 years on a tank without issue before. | |
| ▲ | lostlogin 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | HN is full of maintenance purists, and I do know I should do better, but... A Corolla will work fine after sitting for a year or so and it’s once-or-twice-per-decade oil change seems to work ok. |
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| ▲ | AngryData 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Unless you are trying to race your car at the drag strip with charged air and hit your best times, that isn't true at all and I don't know why people keep saying it. You think everybody empties their lawn mowers, snow blowers, snowmobiles, generators, etc. every year of gas or before trying to start it up again the next year? No way. Simpler gas equipment like mowers and generators don't have enough compression to really care about anything but ancient gas, and if you run any vehicle that is multi-fuel capable it can detect and adjust compression based on a fuel's capabilities. Ive been repairing and fixing junkers of cars, mowers, ATVs, generators, and more for 30 years and not once has bad gas stopped something from running. I only remove it if it was clearly having water raining into the tank. In every other case where I couldn't start something after sitting around for 5+ years, it was from the gas gumming up in the carb or the shitty diaphragm pump, which generally means there is little to no gas left to start with. I wouldn't even suspect gas of ever being bad unless it was atleast a few years old. If the tank was open it could have evaporated, if the tank was closed it probably ain't great gas but I bet it would still run in anything but a high compression application. | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | > detect and adjust compression based on a fuel's capabilities. Spark, not compression. |
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