patrick.net

I wish gas was at $3.

FuckCCP89 says

I wish gas was at $3.

They are much below $3 here

$4.50 for 89 grade around my hood in Tri Valley.

$3 would be a steal in SoCal

Rb6d says

FuckCCP89 says

I wish gas was at $3.

They are much below $3 here

I'd have to spend too much gas to get to "below $3" gas, if you catch my drift....

Can't you Californians drive down to Mexico to gas up?

HeadSet says

Can't you Californians drive down to Mexico to gas up?

SD dudes can, theoretically. The line at the border is several hours though.

The situation is the worst in North Carolina, where about 28% of stations were out as of late Wednesday according to GasBuddy. About 18% of stations in Georgia, and 17% in Virginia were out, while 16% in South Carolina, 5% in Florida, 4% in Maryland, 4% in Tennessee and 2% in Alabama were down.

Are there "price-gauging" laws and are they just keeping the price low at the expense that now you pay with hours of waiting?

I assume this'll blow over in a few days, but you south-eastern citizens have it easy compared to our $4+ special-blend California gas.

I paid $3.499 today for 87 octane at Gas And Shop at the corner of McKee and 33rd Streets in SJ, about 500 feet from the 101 / McKee interchange. Moe's across the street was same price.

For reference, I paid $3.319 at that location on May 15, 2006; $0.18 less. Fifteen years ago. But the People's Republic of California gasoline tax was lower in 2006 than it is now.

B.A.C.A.H. says

For reference, I paid $3.319 at that location on May 15, 2006; $0.30 less. Fifteen years ago. But the People's Republic of California gasoline tax was lower in 2006 than it is now.

Because fracking was in its infancy then, duh.

Eric Holder says

Because fracking was in its infancy then, duh.

Yep.

Technology development is deflationary. Fracking, Moore's Law, A.I., etc.

I don't advocate Marxism, but he's been proven right on that point.

B.A.C.A.H. says

I don't advocate Marxism, but he's been proven right on that point.

Did he really make this argument?

I wish you could easily fill up a car with natural gas, I would convert my car to run on it.

Teslas run on natural gas too, but the process is complicated with electricity generators, transformers, wires, batteries, etc.

I hope the NSA/CIA/FBI are diverse enough to be up to the pipeline hacking challenge.

clambo says

I wish you could easily fill up a car with natural gas, I would convert my car to run on it.

Teslas run on natural gas too, but the process is complicated with electricity generators, transformers, wires, batteries, etc.

I had one of those type cars 2007-2018. It was an "off-the-shelf" Honda Civic GX. It cost about $2k or so more than a regular Civic. The People's Republic of California Air Resources Board, and also PG&E rebated me a bit more than that. I did not get the federal subsidy due to my income.

In the runup to the last commodity bubble, in 2008, I consistently paid $1.69 per Nat Gas "gallon" while liquid gasoline approached $4.50.

The use case works for commuting around the SF Bay or LA, where there's numerous refueling locations. It works better if you can fit the drive to one of those refueling places into your normal routine.

They use "GGE"; "gasoline gallon equivalent". The tank capacity is about 8 GGE. You don't ever want to run out of gas. Refueling requires a delivery system pressured at 3000 psi or more, with quick-release connector. Not the same as pouring a gallon of liquid fuel from a small container.

Use case is not so good for long distance trips. Most large communities in California have ONE refueling location, typically a PG&E maintenance yard. But! If the pumps are inoperative (it happens some times), got to have a backup plan. Easy in the Bay Area, not so easy in Bakersfield or San Luis Obispo or Reno/Tahoe.

PG&E refueling stops along the I-80 corridor between the Bay and Sacramento area are conveniently spaced apart and very close to freeway exits. That's a workable route. I used those many times making a commute along that corridor. Saw lots of folks like me at those stops.

Another drawback is the tank itself. It has a finite lifetime. I had to sign a statement at Honda agreeing to replace the tank at the end of its service life. In 2007 that was ten years. PG&E had a similar requirement. The state, Honda, and PGE extended it to 15 years, but only in California.

The tank has some other stuff built into it, so that you cannot just get a generic gas cylinder to replace. The replacement cost was about $8k. Needless to say I parted with the car near the end of my tank's15 yrs.

clambo says

I wish you could easily fill up a car with natural gas, I would convert my car to run on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO055g6JqLs

clambo says

I wish you could easily fill up a car with natural gas, I would convert my car to run on it.

Teslas run on natural gas too, but the process is complicated with electricity generators, transformers, wires, batteries, etc.

As a engineer who have designed many products, I can tell you that the calculations won't be easy.
There are 100s of variables, But What I will mention here:(Ignore solar/wind which can put electric on positive side even after adding infrastructure energy cost)
..
What I would say that energy efficiency or conversion can be more optimized in giant gas plant VS IC engine in every car.
Even assuming that electricity transmission cost is same as delivering oil to every car.(Also you drive back home rather than trip to gas station).

I wish politicians leave these subjects to engineers and planners and let them decided if something truly greens or just a govt boondoggle.

Eric Holder says

clambo says

I wish you could easily fill up a car with natural gas, I would convert my car to run on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO055g6JqLs

Thank you for sharing, Eric Holder.

This is the reason for the service lifetime requirement on the tanks. I've seen those NCG-conversion airport shuttle vans and taxis at the airports. They're the reason most airports have a filling station.

Why was the van being towed on a trailer? No doubt, they'd run out of gas. Hope the airport customers didn't miss their flight.

clambo says

I wish you could easily fill up a car with natural gas, I would convert my car to run on it.

If you have natural gas running to your house, you can get Honda's "Phil" device, which lets you (slowly) fill your tank in your garage. Expensive to instal, though. Personally, the most important part of filling at home is that you can plug in at night and unplug int he morning; as a second car, it's perfectly fine if it takes 10 hours to fill. That's the same filling time as a level-two electric charger, but the theoretical advantage of natural gas cars (assuming a network of filling stations), is that it can be filled at a dedicated station in only a few minutes.

It’s very interesting to read BACAH had a natural gas car.

If there were more places to fill up with natural gas it would be cool.

I have been scuba diving with tanks pumped up to 3000psi for decades, they get hydro tested every 5 years and last a very long time, 20 years is no problem at all. I wonder what the big deal was with the car tanks?

The van explosion looks scary; guys have also been killed by exploding tires on heavy equipment.

clambo says

I have been scuba diving with tanks pumped up to 3000psi for decades, they get hydro tested every 5 years and last a very long time, 20 years is no problem at all. I wonder what the big deal was with the car tanks?

The van explosion looks scary; guys have also been killed by exploding tires on heavy equipment.

I suspect that those "van conversions" were done on the cheap. I've seen those sort of vans refueling at SJ airport and SF airport, when I was refueling the Honda. They look like Old Beaters.

MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says

I looked it up to be sure it was Trump. It was:

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk/desk-2de2mqg5yz/

Pipeline restarted:
https://foxbaltimore.com/news/nation-world/colonial-restarts-pipeline-gas-disruptions-expected-to-persist

HunterTits says

So a pipeline is hackable, but a voting machine wasn’t???

Stop spreading THE BIG LIE!!!

Hydrogen vehicles are kinda interesting. Supposedly the H creates electricity, which powers the elec motors - so the car accelerates well like an EV.

I thought I once read that they can make hydrogen from air and electricity, which would allow the refueling stations to make their own hydrogen, eliminating transportation costs and replacing it with electricity costs. But, 2-3 years ago I recall hearing in the SF bay all the gas stations that sell H were mostly out of stock for a month because the local H plant blew up, and so they were trucking it in from elsewhere, but couldnt meet demand. So anyway, it sounds like individual gas stations weren't actually manufacturing their own H, at least here in the bay.

I was considering leasing an H vehicle because there's amazing incentives attached to them. Basically, some auto mfgs need to meet some kinda yearly green quota for CA for H vehicles. H vehicles are expensive to make, and there's not many H gas stations except in the SF bay and LA, so youre range bound and need to live near an H station, making them really unappealing for most people - so mfgs have trouble meeting quotas.

So, to meet their quota, the mfgs incentivize the sales and leases like hell by giving rebates + free fuel + free gas vehicle rentals (for road trips) + free roadside service, including H delivery if you run out of fuel. I'm talking like $10,000 - $18,000 worth of free fuel over 3 years, and 5-10k in rebates. I think the offers aren't as sweet as they were 2 years ago, but back then when I crunched the numbers, I could lease a car from honda, toyota, or hundai for 3 years, and after accounting for the free fuel and rebate, the car was almost free.

But, they're really ugly (except the hundai), and the limited H stations bothered me, so I didn't. But they seem like a good deal for the right person.

Speaking of Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars:
Toyota has debuted a complete redesign of its Mirai concept vehicle, which would run on hydrogen fuel cells. The splashy Mirai could be powered for a year from hydrogen from a single cow's manure.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a29575713/toyota-2021-mirai-cow-manure-hydrogen/#:~:text=Toyota%20has%20showcased%20its%20second-generation%20Mirai%2C%20a%20concept,Mirai%27s%20success%20depends%20on%20reliable%20fuel%20cell%20infrastructure

Hircus says

But they seem like a good deal for the right person.

Refueling stations are so thin on the ground it's not even funny. It might be a good deal monetary, but the hassle with refueling will get old fast.

HeadSet says

The splashy Mirai could be powered for a year from hydrogen from a single cow's manure.

Haha - I worked in this area. I call bullshit, no pun intended.

There no way that a single cow's feed could produce enough energy to run a car for a year, much less just their manure which is at a far lesser energy density.

Currently the way hydrogen vehicles get power is through steam reformation - basically taking natural gas and going through a chemical process to make hydrogen, and CO2. It's a pointless process, since the natural gas could be used directly, and the hydrogen is enormously expensive. Like 4 times more expensive than gasoline.

I drove behind a Mirai earlier this week. There was definitely a lot of splashing coming out of its tail pipe. All ICE vehicles make water as a byproduct but this thing had a steady stream.

HunterTits says

Cows produce a lot of methane. Hence why Greenies want to ban sale of beef.

Nah, they are just militant vegetarians or idiots.

HunterTits says

Not sure how they can put manure into a tank. Methane gas maybe.

That's an insane amount of methane to produce. I mean, shit, if a cow produced that much methane, it would be quite worthwhile to harvest their bullcrap and to use a biodigestor to run the entire farm - hell it would make sense to do it with human waste.

Methane is the main component in natural gas. You can run an ICE car directly off natural gas.

I don't believe a single cow could produce that much methane in a day to run a car doing, say, 10 miles a day. I don't think a cow's digestive system is that inefficient.

If you could produce THAT MUCH METHANE from, basically, grass, it would make sense to collect lawn clippings, dump it into a biodigestor, and produce your own natural gas. You'd just have to compress it. It would be simple enough to design I think.

Also, the article was from Popular Mechanics. Read some issues from the 1990's. I've never considered them very concerned about scientific accuracy, it's more science fiction than anything else to me.

Methane is about 2 parts per million in the atmosphere if I understand right.

It seems like free energy and a way to reduce a strong greenhouse gas if someone can just find a way to filter out enough of it. Literally all you would have to do is let the wind blow through the filter.

I'm not sure it's possible, but seems like a win-win if it could be done.

Patrick says

I'm not sure it's possible

I don't think so, you will need more energy than you will get out of harvested methane.

If you drive by oil production sites, you often see flames burning on top of a high chimney - this is natural gas flaring. Even in this case, where quite pure methane is produced, it is not economically viable to capture it and use as an energy source. It is really difficult to compress and transport due to too low boiling point.

Rb6d says

I don't think so, you will need more energy than you will get out of harvested methane.

There is a landfill in Hampton, VA that collects methane from the decomposing garage and uses it to power generators. Run by Waste Management.

Near Richmond, VA:

Eric Holder says

B.A.C.A.H. says

I don't advocate Marxism, but he's been proven right on that point.

Did he really make this argument?

from https://andymerrifield.org/2019/09/29/marx-on-technology/

"...technology becomes yet another pretext for producing surplus-value. Insofar as machinery dispenses with muscular power, shouldn’t it lighten the load, actually make worker easier? Sensible people would have thought so, and plenty of political economists began arguing as much, often with noble, if naïve, intention. Marx was the first, and most vociferous, to twist the logic around, to point out the “economic paradox”: 'that the most powerful instrument for reducing labour-time suffers a dialectical inversion and becomes the most unfailing means for turning the whole lifetime of the worker into labour-time at capital’s disposal for its own valorisation.'. "

ThreeBays says

I've driven electric for 8 years no

Thinking of getting an EV. Have a shit ton of solar panels and i just feed back into the grid....need a battery and EV....

Which EV are you driving/recommending? @ThreeBays