BluePen7

> You absolutely couldn't plan a calendar appt around it without adding 30 minutes of buffer.

These cars have ranges in the hundreds of miles, how far are your appointments? If I have an appointment that far away, my whole day's already shot.

Source? Even as an EV owner/enthusiast I find that a little hard to believe.

I find the idea of the portable power fascinating and have watched some YouTube videos on them, but it seems like a very expensive and niche thing so far. I've seen one company on YouTube that showed it off.

I wanted an EV since back when I lived in an apartment, wished there was some sort of big capacitor on wheels I could charge all day from a normal outlet that would then fast charge my car for a few minutes.

Most actual products seem to use batteries and cost thousands, and are for some unique scenario where you somehow can't just public charge. Still find them neat though.

I think they typically just tow you to a charging station, seems a lot easier/faster/cheaper given they already own tow trucks.

In my opinion the only cost effective battery to travel around with would be the one inside an existing EV, I just hope we get beyond household outlet speeds for V2L. Would be neat if a passing EV could rescue at 50kw or something fast.

You must have very limited use cases, I tried to do that but ended up with a vehicle that was heavily compromised because half my use cases are at odds with the other half.

I was driving to my office job in an F150, burning enough gas to finance and fuel a new Civic, all while being terrible to drive.

So I did the logical thing, and added a vehicle that was efficient and enjoyable to drive, a motorcycle.

But it's agility made me only further resent the truck during the winter months, so I also added a compact luxury sports sedan.

Worst part was the F150 was both "too much" truck to daily drive, but never enough when I needed to do truck stuff.

Tried to landscape my home with some crushed rock, had to do 9 trips bottomed out because of it's paltry payload. Couldn't tow enough to borrow a friend's skid-steer. Had to buy my bricks a half-pallet at a time, a full pallet bottomed it out before the forklift had even finished putting the full weight on.

Downsized the F150 to a Tacoma, anything over 1200lbs and it's more practical to pay for delivery using a proper commercial truck anyways.

In the end I ended up with 3 vehicles, and if I had the means I'd have 4, I'd split the compact luxury sports sedan into a small sports car and a full sized luxury sedan for long highway travels. And this is all before even adding an EV.

tldr: In the motorcycle community they say the correct number of bikes is always 1 more than what you have. I strongly feel that applies to cars/trucks too.

The hobbit was 48FPS, so that was probably pretty weird.

Can confirm, my one incident is a homeless guy who decided to sail down a hill on his BMX at night, wearing all black, and run a red light against my right-of-way.

He "hit me" as much as I hit him, but given I'm in a car on a freeway exit, obviously he was worse for wear.

But on the plus side, I do drive a low slung sports sedan so he got to tumble and walk away alive at least. Car was a write-off though.

If he'd been hit by a truck like the one my tenant drives (GMC Sierra 3500), the hood is about eye-level for me, and I'm 5'11, it probably would have been a lot worse.

I owned an F150 because there's a weird premium on anything smaller, it was cheaper than a Ranger or Tacoma.

Eventually just switched to an economy car with a trailer hitch, and it was somehow mind blowing to everyone that a Toyota Camry could haul 2000 lbs.

I was hauling a motocross dirtbike, 200lbs (trailer was maybe another 400), if it was a 200lb person any small car could seat 4 of them.

When I switched to a sports sedan and wanted a hitch all the forums were like "Just get a cheap truck", for some odd reason they only sold the hitch in Europe.

Seems like the solution to anything slightly heavy or large is "Buy a truck that can haul 2000lbs". Meanwhile my old Scottish dad would remark to me "We used to haul caravans with cars smaller than this!"

> Then Tesla pulled a fast one on the morons at GM and Ford

They're trying to sell expensive EVs, but people were buying Teslas instead because they can guarantee the chargers work and are in good locations.

I have a lot of strong criticisms of Tesla, but slowly investing billions into building a reliable charging network over the last 10 years is hardly a "fast one"

As a Tesla owner I agree they've accomplished a lot, but they've also promised us the world, by yesterday.

Until something is delivered, and bug-free, I don't really believe anything they say. They've done a lot, but their word is next to worthless.

Ioniq 5 does it too

As a new Model 3 owner, I've been looking into how to do this.

The solutions aren't particularly nice, there's the Quick220, a device which does all the safety checks of manually combining 2 circuits on opposite phases so you can actually get 12A at 240V. But it requires 2 circuits on opposite phases, neither with GFCI (which most outdoor outlets have).

Second option is a NEMA14-50 extension cable, which obviously carries it's own risks but if there's a dryer outlet on a 30A breaker, that gets you 24A at 240V.

But yes, either solution requires a bunch of bulky cords running out the door, and the assumption that the houses' electrical wiring was done properly and is in good condition.

So far the only less-invasive alternative is hoping they have a 20A circuit somewhere convenient, rather than just the kitchen plugs, then you can get an extra 33% charging speed (16A @ 120V) with the proper 5-20 adapter.

I think the more practical solution will be private plug-sharing, there's already a few apps and startups advertising I can earn money by allowing others to book my home charger, and a proper home install can do 11kw.

That is correct, although the filter location on my first gen Tacoma is also not ideal.

$25 and $65 did not include parts (the oil or filter)

I use synthetic, and their markup is so much it's cheaper to just provide them with my own. Hell their price for filters is more than the parts counter at the dealership.

Quick lube shop, so the least qualified people you can get to lay their hands on your vehicle. Gonna be honest, I check there's still oil in my car when I get home.

And yes, the quick lube shop is always trying to upsell me services I "need", like $100 to change my air filter, or $80 to change my cabin air filter (both which are literally 1 minute jobs), and $20/$40 parts from the dealership. Same with brake fluid flushes and other things.

Even as a rider myself, just seeing how others ride I'd agree.

If you're going to go twice the speed people are expecting a vehicle to go, in a space nobody expected a vehicle to fit, in a vehicle that offers none of the usual protections, your luck may run out sooner than average.

It's frustrating because everyone wanted to cite the statistics at me when I started riding, but I just wished I could get those stats filtered by people who ride in a civilized manner.

Unless you have a bus route that goes straight to the auto parts store, yeah that's the ideal.

Often I'd invite a friend over while I did the work, keeps me company and that way they can be the backup vehicle (and I'd return the favour).

Just due to the lower volume the price jumps up unexpectedly.

For the labour of an oil change, I was quoted $25 for my car, and $65 for my motorcycle.

To change the oil and filter on my car, you have to reach in a super terrible spot prone to burning and cutting people who attempt it.

On my motorcycle? It's an enduro, I have a foot of clearance and can see the single bolt required from across the driveway, it also requires exactly 2 quarts.

I got quite quick at changing my bike oil, and continued to pay someone else to burn themselves on my car.

They've just acknowledged degradation with lambda

As with most investments, real estate is potentially profitable if you're careful, thorough, and knowledgable.

It can be low margin though, so you're going to lose most of your profit if you genuinely intend to be fully hands-off. Every call out of a blue-collar professional often gets very expensive very quickly, along with any scheduled upkeep (yardwork and snow clearing).

I know small-time RE investors worth single digit millions, and we still help each other out with hands-on stuff.

But if you intend to do it carelessly in bulk, completely hands off and paying property managers for everything, for it to still be profitable you'll need to take unreasonable amounts of risk, which nobody knowledgeable would do with their own money.

That's where social media comes in, they need the dumb money. So they can make the massively risky play and reap their cuts when times are good, and walk away when things go poorly.

I also preferred working in office. My company had a really nice one.

But due to covid forcing remote work I was able to go from renting a basement, to buying a home (and renting out MY basement).

House cost me the same as a city apartment, but I only qualified for the mortgage due to the added rental suite income. So if I'd stayed, I'd be unable to buy and have to continue renting.

Compared to staying in town, since I made the move in 2020, the difference in my net worth is now more than the entirety of my untaxed salary over that time.

tldr: I prefer office work, but working remotely has been the equivalent of earning 2.5X my salary the whole time.

I actually kinda liked it.

The issue is the cost of getting to work, and even to live near work.

Just getting to work is a significant expense, parking, having a vehicle that's good enough to commute in, insured for commuting, and always repaired before the next weekday, it adds up.

When the pandemic kicked off WFH, I suddenly found myself with an extra $10,000 or so in my pocket each year.

Then I moved away from work, which allowed me to go from renter to homeowner (with rental income that helped me get approved). My monthly COL is lower, and between paying my mortgage and home appreciation, I've accumulated $300,000-$400,000 in equity over 4 years.

Back in town, I'd still be a renter hopelessly saving up for an apartment with maybe 10-20% of my current net worth.

tldr: My office was actually pretty nice, but not having to physically live near or get to it, has put me in a dramatically higher socio-economic class.

If I were to attempt to re-buy any large portion of my tools all at once, I'd consider it an absurd amount to spend.

But over a lifetime of things breaking, you'll get a lot of large quotes for professional repairs, or replacement of a much bigger part than what actually broke.

When the washer fluid sprayer on my old Tacoma failed due to decades of a wire rubbing against a sharp metal edge, I was quoted $300 for the whole harness, and 2 hours of labour at $100 an hour.

Suddenly, the $120 soldering iron didn't seem so expensive.

tldr: I'm only 30 and own thousands of dollars worth of tools, but at no point have I ever spent more than the quote to fix the problem at hand.

Maybe it could have lasted 4 years, but you had to choose carefully.

I've worked at orgs that used a variety of expensive windows laptops, because they kept having abysmal failure rates and switching every year.

They already had stacks of failed Surface Books and ASUS Zenbooks.

Maybe my HP Elitebook would have lasted, but it was terrible to use the whole time.

Not that my Mac experience has been flawless, but the odds seem to be far better.

But, they often still pay far better than just about any other career you can do.

I'm a fairly unremarkable developer who works for a no-name tech company, but still make twice as much as my friends my age who are in law or accounting, even finance.

Only ones who even come close are in non-white collar jobs with unions and access to lots of overtime hours that they pick up. Their base pay isn't even close.

As a Canadian, there isn't actually an alternative with reliable and fast shipping.

And if you live outside of a major city, it's still like 4 days.

The only downside is there's entire categories of amazon lost to fakes, if I need batteries I either have to buy amazon basics, or drive to the store.

There are certain categories you can basically guarantee to get fakes.

Brand name batteries is one of them, I guess that's one more thing pushing people towards "Amazon Basics", it's the only one that's not going to be counterfeit.

They've gone downhill enough I've started returning a fair bit of things and it's almost always effortless.

Only time it was a hassle was when a price dropped the day after my order, and they don't have price matching, so customer service suggest re-buying and returning and promised me free return shipping.

That promise turned out to be worthless, and I had a helluva time trying to get them to pay for return shipping across the country for a squat rack.

Thankfully, I did succeed in the end (phone support person was much better, chat people ran me around in circles). I didn't get the at-home pickup I was originally promised, but fortunately I owned a spare old pickup truck.

> I prefer music when cooking or cleaning or whatnot.

And that's where the time is found.

Podcasts play in my headphones as I do any mindless physical tasks I need to get done, snowblowing, renovating something, mowing my lawn, etc.

I'm not a good enough cook to do it without 100% of my focus.

Also despite WFH, I still drive quite a few hours so often there as well. I like music for quick drives around town, but 30+ minutes I prefer podcasts.

Without functioning spray and wipers, even a human wouldn't be able to make it further than 30 minutes where I live.

Some of us live in areas where a car wash subscription is common and basically required.

Have you looked at any of the Pi clones like the Orange Pi?

Also if you're building these IoT things at scale, have you looked at the more simple/cheap chips like an ESP32?

Obviously I ask without context for what you're doing, but also as an amateur hobbiest who's not even sure which board I should use for my own minor project after Raspberry Pis became unobtainable.

I buy a lot of small electrical components from AliExpress and have had a near perfect success rate here in Canada (not bulk, maybe 1-5 of each to have spares). Just lots of soldering accessories (and my TS100 soldering iron).

Only board I've ordered has been an Orange Pi, and it claims to have arrived in my mailbox (I've been away from home).

When I researched appliances, nobody could decide on the best fridge other than suggestions that were 4x the price (or even more).

But dishwashers it was almost unanimous, Bosch is best.

I couldn't afford new ones, so I found good deals on second hand 500 series ones and they're both still going fine for myself and my rental suite (only a year and a half so far though).

Crazy quiet too, I suggest people opt for the one that shines a light on the floor cause otherwise you can't hear it running (or finish).

There's also a fancier model that projects a timer.