Cybertruck home charging and utility Time of Use, overnight rates, Not enough time

[CyberGus]

sure there is. That vehicle didn't come from nowhere. A lot of energy was used to create it. ICE or EV, it doesn't matter. there were processes in the production of that vehicle that cannot be offset just by saying "oh we used solar for some of the energy used to produce this".

Literally everything "uses energy" to be created...?

The "most efficient" action would be to stop building new cars and make everyone walk, but that's not a realistic goal.

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[agordon117]

Literally everything "uses energy" to be created...?

The "most efficient" action would be to stop building new cars...

Correct. Cars that have already been built require far less resources/energy to maintain than building a new vehicle.

Which brings me back to my original point, nobody "actually" cares about the efficiency here if they are buying a cybertruck.

Like, if you actually care about efficiency, "the environment", etc, that's cool. But anything short of buying a used prius/volt, keeping your old car, or riding a bike everywhere, is just theater.

Buying new cars is cool with me, pretending to also care about efficiency or the environment is not. I'm here to buy a new car, just like the rest of us. Nobody is unironically doing it for the "efficiency" though. Unless they just don't know enough about the subject.

 

[CyberGus]

Correct. Cars that have already been built require far less resources/energy to maintain than building a new vehicle.

Which brings me back to my original point, nobody "actually" cares about the efficiency here if they are buying a cybertruck.

Like, if you actually care about efficiency, "the environment", etc, that's cool. But anything short of buying a used prius/volt, keeping your old car, or riding a bike everywhere, is just theater.

Buying new cars is cool with me, pretending to also care about efficiency or the environment is not. I'm here to buy a new car, just like the rest of us. Nobody is unironically doing it for the "efficiency" though. Unless they just don't know enough about the subject.

Hooey.

I can buy a new car every Sunday, and it won't hurt "efficiency" one bit. But how can that be?

If old vehicles get tossed into a volcano, then sure, that's a major waste of resources. Fortunately, used cars are sold for someone else to use. A glut of used cars will drive down prices and reduce the number of new cars sold (and thus built). A shortage of used cars will drive up prices, boosting new-car sales by those that opt to replace sooner. Either way, the market will only build to meet demand, and the demand is lowered by the existence of used cars.

Every vehicle has a typical lifespan, so the only "waste" is when that lifespan is not realized (the car is lost or destroyed). Otherwise, market forces ensure that every vehicle is driven to capacity.

Yay, Capitalism!

 

[HaulingAss]

LOL.

If efficiency is any piece of a concern for anyone, the most efficient thing you can do is driving your existing vehicle until it breaks, then fix it, and keep driving it.

The way PG&E operates, and the amount of people they service, it's hard to pretend that anyone cares where electricity is coming from, or how efficiently it's being produced. the tiny credit someone gets per KWh produced vs how much they would have to pay to use a KWh from the grid at the same time of day, is insane. All of the people here that were worried about powershare bumping their plan up to NEM 3.0 made me dig into that a little bit today. What I read was really insane. The only incentive they are driving you towards is having your own personal giant battery bank and solar panels so you never need to buy electricity at their crazy rates. Otherwise nobody would bother installing new solar to help anything, because it only serves to penalize you unless you are self sufficient.

You misunderstood my use of the word "efficient" in two ways:

1) I wasn't talking about energy efficiency; I was talking about cost efficiency of the grid operation.

2) Electrical utilities are regulated businesses. The prices they charge are regulated by various utilities commisions. The more cost efficient the grid is, the less they can charge you per kWh.

That said, I think PG&E, from what I've seen, doesn't have a regulator acting in the best interests of rate payers, as the laws surrounding regulated utilities require. It seems the whole regulated business model has gone off the rails in California and that regulators are in the pockets of the utilities. It's also called corruption. The system doesn't work properly when the regulator is not working on behalf of the ratepayers.

However, there are still places of the country where the regulated business model is working generally as intended. I really dislike what I've seen of PG&E. The process went off the rails decades ago when wholesale electricity was deregulated and that corruption has carried on right down to the local utilities, so it would seem.

 

[CtGA]

I don’t know much about regulated vs unregulated… I don’t have any choice as to which provider I can use for electricity like in some other states. But in GA I’m locked in. I’m pretty happy though with the EV TOU plan that I have access to. That said, not any great deals going for solar metering last I checked.

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