Electric Car Prediction - Whatdayathing???

[Olaf Hart]

Interesting interview, the inside story on Jimmy Cornell’s all electric catamaran, which is now up for sale

https://youtu.be/6EplXM0fksw

[Jamie]

Oops! I guess that didn’t go as planned.

I didn’t realize about 8% of the US grid is wind. 10% in ‘21 and at least two states get more than 40% of their power from wind.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46976

[kdh]

Oops! I guess that didn’t go as planned.

I didn’t realize about 8% of the US grid is wind. 10% in ‘21 and at least two states get more than 40% of their power from wind.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46976

I don't know why people keep trying all-electric. It doesn't work with current technology, as the energy density of batteries is too low.

I'll take 50 gals of diesel and my 55hp Yanmar to power an entire season's energy needs when I'm not using the wind, thank you very much.

[Jamie]

Oops! I guess that didn’t go as planned.

I didn’t realize about 8% of the US grid is wind. 10% in ‘21 and at least two states get more than 40% of their power from wind.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46976

I don't know why people keep trying all-electric. It doesn't work with current technology, as the energy density of batteries is too low.

I'll take 50 gals of diesel and my 55hp Yanmar to power an entire season's energy needs when I'm not using the wind, thank you very much.

Same. Induction top stoves? No thanks.

I can sort of see see having a pusher electric motor for short distances if you are basically engineless cruising. It might have made this guys exit from Luperon much easier, but he did it just fine regardless. With a diesel it would have been a non-event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLd4G-BYmSc

[TheOffice]

So much for proof of concept!

When we have solid state batteries perhaps it will be viable. My Yanmar burns about .75 gallons/hour at 5 knots. My neighbors SeaRay burns about 60/hour at 30 knots. My impact is minimal.

[Jamie]

"The world needs more imperfect environmentalists."

Best line of the interview.

[kimbottles]

Oops! I guess that didn’t go as planned.

I didn’t realize about 8% of the US grid is wind. 10% in ‘21 and at least two states get more than 40% of their power from wind.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46976

I don't know why people keep trying all-electric. It doesn't work with current technology, as the energy density of batteries is too low.

I'll take 50 gals of diesel and my 55hp Yanmar to power an entire season's energy needs when I'm not using the wind, thank you very much.

So true!

[BeauV]

While I find it fascinating to think about an all-electric boat from an engineering point of view. The answer is obviously "Nope" from the real-world point of view.

As to this solution, boats have had towing generators on a torque line for years. We had one on SALEE (built in 1929) which was installed sometime in the 1950s. It worked just fine. You tossed the "fishing-lure" over the stern once you were out of port and in deep water and once the thing had sunk to about 20' deep it caused the generator on the stern rail to hum along putting out about 30amps of 12v. In those days, that was all a boat with oil-burning running lights needed. Today, you'd obviously want to tow a bigger fish. The fishing-lure approach would have worked perfectly for these folks, as the lure runs along under the tops of the waves, unlike the props on the boat. This design is quite fundamentally flawed.

All that said, to exert this level of engineering on something which is so obviously not a problem is just stupid.

These bright folks should be working on something that matters - this doesn't. In my perhaps overly harsh opinion.

[kdh]

30 amps at 12v? That would better than easily power everything on my boat. 10 amps would be plenty.

[TheOffice]

A Watt and Sea generator is good for 10 amps at 5.6 knots. It will set you back about 5k.

https://www.wattandsea.com/index.php/en ... uising-600

[Ken Heaton (Salazar)]

While I find it fascinating to think about an all-electric boat from an engineering point of view. The answer is obviously "Nope" from the real-world point of view.

As to this solution, boats have had towing generators on a torque line for years. We had one on SALEE (built in 1929) which was installed sometime in the 1950s. It worked just fine. You tossed the "fishing-lure" over the stern once you were out of port and in deep water and once the thing had sunk to about 20' deep it caused the generator on the stern rail to hum along putting out about 30amps of 12v. In those days, that was all a boat with oil-burning running lights needed. Today, you'd obviously want to tow a bigger fish. The fishing-lure approach would have worked perfectly for these folks, as the lure runs along under the tops of the waves, unlike the props on the boat. This design is quite fundamentally flawed.

All that said, to exert this level of engineering on something which is so obviously not a problem is just stupid.

These bright folks should be working on something that matters - this doesn't. In my perhaps overly harsh opinion.

30 amps at 12 volts is 360 watts, so about a 1/2 HP. That's impressive. How big (what diameter?) was the impeller or propeller or whatever you called the "fishing-lure" thing dragging in the water?

[Ken Heaton (Salazar)]

Found a smaller one: Hamilton Ferris Waterpower 200 with about 8 amps output.
https://www.hamiltonferris.com/categori ... r_Power/16

And a Practical Sailor article: https://www.practical-sailor.com/system ... eld-report

[BeauV]

While I find it fascinating to think about an all-electric boat from an engineering point of view. The answer is obviously "Nope" from the real-world point of view.

As to this solution, boats have had towing generators on a torque line for years. We had one on SALEE (built in 1929) which was installed sometime in the 1950s. It worked just fine. You tossed the "fishing-lure" over the stern once you were out of port and in deep water and once the thing had sunk to about 20' deep it caused the generator on the stern rail to hum along putting out about 30amps of 12v. In those days, that was all a boat with oil-burning running lights needed. Today, you'd obviously want to tow a bigger fish. The fishing-lure approach would have worked perfectly for these folks, as the lure runs along under the tops of the waves, unlike the props on the boat. This design is quite fundamentally flawed.

All that said, to exert this level of engineering on something which is so obviously not a problem is just stupid.

These bright folks should be working on something that matters - this doesn't. In my perhaps overly harsh opinion.

30 amps at 12 volts is 360 watts, so about a 1/2 HP. That's impressive. How big (what diameter?) was the impeller or propeller or whatever you called the "fishing-lure" thing dragging in the water?

The fish looked a lot like this one (which is from a taffrail log). But bigger. It weighed about 10 lbs and was about 13-15 inches in diameter. The torque line was the big problem, it was some sort of metal wrapped in sizing so it coiled into a 4' diameter circle. If you kinked it you were done, so I was told. It drove what looked like an old automotive generator, a modern alternator would be much more efficient and lighter. That said, it maybe that the low RPM requires a generator.

There is a Practical Sailor article about them HERE. There is a smaller 12amp version HERE.

[avramd]

Had a fun little experience with the Tesla in the last week. Last Thurs, I flew to Denver for 6 days. I parked downtown Boston on the street & took the T to Logan so I didn't have to pay ~$200 for parking. I'm always leery though parking in Boston, it's very common that there's a sign that says "you can park here," but something else that I miss that says "... also, you can't."

So, I checked on my car's location via the iOS app every couple of days. It didn't move. But what I discovered as a side effect was that it was losing 8% charge - 25 miles - PER DAY just sitting there parked. While I had enough charge that I'd be able to get to a charger, that was only true be about 1 day, so that was absolutely unacceptable.

I dug into it, and the first thing I discovered was that keeping "Sentry Mode" on means the car can't go to sleep. This is the cameras constantly recording, and other sensors detecting shock/motion, saving off footage and alerting me if anything happens. Bummer that I can't run the security feature if I'm going to be parked in public for an extended period of time.

HOWEVER comma, after turning that off remotely, the car still wouldn't go to sleep. Extensive troubleshooting on teslafi.com (the service I use to record and visualize historical data) yielded no fruit. Most of that was directed towards making sure the service itself was not what was keeping the car awake. Then it hit me - I trialed another service before choosing teslafi.com, back in Jan. When I deleted that app from my phone, that did not delete my record on the server. Even though I never signed up or paid them, they had been polling my car for data since January. I emailed them, they removed me, and my car went to sleep. Then it only lost about 1 mile of charge in the remaining 36 hrs.

[avramd]

Beau, thanks for your comments about your experience with the car's apps, glad to know I'm not nuts or an aberration (on this matter). I do like the big screen, so I haven't had the guts to switch to the phone for primary nav. But I am almost entirely using Siri for music (when not Siri, I'm using the phone's UI).

[avramd]

In case anyone is interested, the demo subscription for the self-driving feature of my Model Y ran out on Apr 1. Amusing choice of expiration dates.

So far I genuinely do miss the automatic parallel parking feature. After Beau's tips, I got it to work reliably, and even used it in a couple of spaces I probably wouldn't have tried parking in myself. Not worth $10,000 to me though.

I also do miss being able to look out my bedroom window, see that the car in front of me has left, and then push a button on my phone to get my car to pull forward into the best spot while I watch. Also not worth $10,000

Rumor has it they are going to actually start offering it as a subscription. No prices announced yet.

[BeauV]

At $10k I'm not sure I'd have paid for it either. Although I've done a massive number of miles with the Teslas on autopilot. I might rationalize it as "fall asleep one time at the wheel and you'll wish you'd paid for autopilot." But, I'm 69 and haven't killed myself.... yet.... I don't remember what the upgrade cost but I think it was more like $2.5k when we bought our cars.

Eventually, all cars are going to do this, at that point it'll be buried in the price like the cost of a radio.

[SemiSalt]

At $10k I'm not sure I'd have paid for it either. Although I've done a massive number of miles with the Teslas on autopilot. I might rationalize it as "fall asleep one time at the wheel and you'll wish you'd paid for autopilot." But, I'm 69 and haven't killed myself.... yet.... I don't remember what the upgrade cost but I think it was more like $2.5k when we bought our cars.

Eventually, all cars are going to do this, at that point it'll be buried in the price like the cost of a radio.

About radios: there is a car ad running here which is totally about how their model comes with Apple car radio at no extra cost while it's either not available or costs extra on the competition.

[avramd]

I might rationalize it as "fall asleep one time at the wheel and you'll wish you'd paid for autopilot."

By the time the subscription ended, I had 100% sworn off ever actually functionally using auto-steering on the highway. I really tried to get it to work for me. Ultimately what happened was that there were three incidents in which using the feature almost caused an accident, all in the same way - the feature abruptly shut it self off for no particular reason, when nothing special was happening. Since I have to keep torque on the steering wheel, when it shuts off, this causes a swerve that is crazy-making to other drivers, and scary for me. One time I almost hit a guardrail at 65mph.

I think you commented a while back that you're always using it on roads that are almost all straight, or the curves are trivial. I think that on top of that, you must have mastered the "sweet spot" of giving it just enough torque to convince it you are there, but not enough to cause these scary swerves when it shuts off. I do wonder however if the self-criving on your older S may actually be more "useable" than mine. Maybe all my extra cameras and sensors are a liability, maybe by having less information, yours isn't trying so hard.

Honestly, I wish I could turn off the traffic-aware cruise control. On the way home from viewing the Corsair 880 this weekend, I had a really scary moment that was 100% a fail in either design or implementation of the feature. I was cruising on I-195 back from the Cape at around 75mph. With no warning, the car went from maintaining speed to maximum engine braking. The transition was so abrupt there was almost a "thunk" to it. I never did figure out what actually happened. I believe it suddenly decided there was an obstacle in my lane, but there was not. My best guess is that a car that was in an exit lane to my right, that was slowing down to take a ramp, must have suddenly occurred to my car as being "in my lane." Perhaps it was a spot where there was no line between my lane and the exit lane. Perhaps he drifted towards my lane a little, and entered a virtual box that my car had in mind that was unnecessarily wide.

At the end of the day, basically my car slammed on its brakes for no reason. I'm close to the point where I'm never going to use cruise control on this car b/c I can't trust it not to do stupid dangerous things. Ultimately I find that it requires more attention to use cruise control than to not use it, which defeats the purpose of having it.

[TheOffice]

Saw an E Mustang in the wild. While it has some styling cues borrowed from a real Mustang, no one will ever confuse it for a pony car. Looks better than a Y imho.
Joel

[slap]

About radios: there is a car ad running here which is totally about how their model comes with Apple car radio at no extra cost while it's either not available or costs extra on the competition.

BMW tried to make Apple Car Play available through a subscription for $80/year. That didn't last long, especially since many entry level cars offer it for free.

[BeauV]

About radios: there is a car ad running here which is totally about how their model comes with Apple car radio at no extra cost while it's either not available or costs extra on the competition.

BMW tried to make Apple Car Play available through a subscription for $80/year. That didn't last long, especially since many entry level cars offer it for free.

I remain amazed that car companies believe that they can continue to build entertainment dashboards. They are TERRIBLE at it. The customers have abandoned using in-dash maps, music, etc... by the hundreds of thousands. Even the companies which sign up for mapping and guidance from Google (EG: Tesla) and then varnish the surface with their own icons etc... are failing miserably to understand how ingrained the customer (Only the computer companies call their customer's "users") have already shifted to the computer in their pocket.

Apple CarPlay is simply the iPhone doing a temporary and quite ugly version of what an iPhone does beautifully. Friends at Apple have pointed out (because the iPhone gives them the data) that the number of folks who use CarPlay vs just buying a mounting bracket and using the iPhone screen directly is dropping steadily. It's not that CarPlay is worse than what the car company offers, it's actually better than most. It's because CarPlay is much worse than just putting your iPhone (or iPad) on a mounting bracket and using it the way you use it all the rest of the time.

I wonder which car company will figure out they have failed first? The obvious "win" is to be the first to just provide a high-res screen to the iPhone or Anderoid device and then an API to the AC and other non-essential functions. The customer will buy the freaking car just for that reason alone and the car manufacturer will save zillions of dollars designing/building/maintaining the software which they do very very badly.

[BeauV]

BTW - all the boat chart-plotter companies have turned their User Interface into an iPhone App, why not the Car companies? Garmin may even be doing this with its aircraft navigation systems. I get that they don't want it to be the ONLY way to use Garmin or Raymarine or B&G equipment, but I can tell you from personal experience my entire crew on MAYAN complains when everyone puts the navigation info onto their phone and clogs up the local internet on MAYAN. It's hysterical. They'll sit on the weather rail and watch how we're doing on the leg of the beat by watching my performance on the iPhone. "You're 0.34 knots below Target Speed, Beau! Pick it up or find another helmsman!" This is not just in Silicon Valley, it's happening all over the sailing industry.

The car companies (as usual) are so self-absorbed and non-technical (even Tesla) that they don't know they've already lost the war and have a massive opportunity to cut significant costs by just recognizing that fact. It's a lot like when they did fuel-injection mechanically for years after they could have done it with a 5$ controller chip and a fist full of solenoids and sensors.

[Jamie]

I don't think I've ever used CarPlay or any OE entertainment. I've always had an iPhone in a holder and an iPod plugged in to the audio system, though finding support for the iPod Classic is getting harder and harder. The iPhone is much easier to keep current.

My experiment this Summer will be to use a Vesper XB-8000 to splash AIS and instrumentation data to my iPad and iPhone.

What amazes me is how few people in the US know how to or try to use bluetooth/hand-free for their phone. I fail to understand why. They've been able to teach every driving granny in Taiwan and Korea.....

[BeauV]

I don't think I've ever used CarPlay or any OE entertainment. I've always had an iPhone in a holder and an iPod plugged in to the audio system, though finding support for the iPod Classic is getting harder and harder. The iPhone is much easier to keep current.

My experiment this Summer will be to use a Vesper XB-8000 to splash AIS and instrumentation data to my iPad and iPhone.

What amazes me is how few people in the US know how to or try to use bluetooth/hand-free for their phone. I fail to understand why. They've been able to teach every driving granny in Taiwan and Korea.....

Jamie, don't get me started on how technical inept most Americans are. Just watch folks trying to operate zoom or get a printer hooked up. It's pitiful. My 8 year old granddaughter is doing tech support for her 2nd-grade teacher. sigh. To make matters worse, her teacher thinks it's some sort of badge of honor to be incompetent as understanding the most powerful teaching tool invented in 1,000 years. sigh again.

The Vesper XB-8000 will gateway you to your network just fine. iNavX shows me all the data on my phone and pad. We also have a laptop on the WiFi network and it has pretty much replaced the B&G chartplotter. When I look below during a race or long passage, the only thing that the B&G is doing is displaying the RADAR if needed and that's about it. I'm guessing the RADAR data will be transmitted soon to at least a wired computer if not on WiFi.

You'll find that using a wireless network to talk to the instruments is more reliable than the wires over the long haul. I had the proven to me repeatedly as the Moore-24 has wireless instruments and displays (the ones with the little solar cells). They were installed 5 years ago and have had ZERO failures or lock-ups since. The B&G/Raymarine networks on MAYAN have problems constantly with the CAN-bus and various wires getting wet, stepped on, accidentally pulled on, etc.... But, when I tell a skipper that information, most of them just reject the data. sigh....

[Jamie]

My SB20/SB3 had a solar powered wireless Tacktick (sp?) (Pre-Raymarine) and it always worked well for me. Never an issue.

Thanks for the real-life feedback. I'm seeing how practically I can go chart-plotterless. If it works I might invest in some ROKK mounts and USB chargers and buy a big iPad and velcro it to the nav station. I do like "real" buttons, so I did buy the physical alarm and switch for the proximity and anchor alarms.

An interesting take on the Ford Mach-E and electronics and car development.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62TlGLQRsUA

[H B]

When we bought our used 2007 cars (in '09 and '10), I tried pretty hard to NOT get ones that had a navigation system in them knowing they would be terribly outdated in no time. We keep cars a long time, and any 12-15 year old map in a car would be laughably useless..We borrowed a buddy's 2008 Acura MDX in 2019 for a trip, and the nav system in it was like playing Pong from 1976!

Some sailing neighbors down the street just bought a Mach-E. They love the thing, but I have only seen it around town once.

As for the boat's nav system, I agree with Beau the wireless system should be great. I bought a little Quark QK-A027 box a couple years ago and finally got it hooked up last summer. The little box takes my NMEA streams from the instruments (that is hardwired to the Quark box and chats Seatalk v1), has an AIS receiver, a GPS antenna, and a WiFi antenna. All that stuff is broadcast via WiFi to my iPad running iSailor & iNavx and/or to the laptop which I have running OpenCPN. I have not tried to get the data into Navionics, which is on my Android phone (yet). I always say (and probably have here) that I like to get on the boat to get away from all the technology, but having all that data at my fingertips is really nice! Now, if we just went somewhere besides putzing around the harbor I might actually get to use it!

[BeauV]

I have to admit to using the iPad with iNavX on long passages just to go on-line cruising to other places.

One of the most entertaining activities was using the chart on iNavX and Google Earth to see if the sizes of things were roughly correct. I started out measuring harbors, channels, and then the distance between islands etc... I was amazed at how accurate the ruler was in Google Earth. To test my theory I went to Santa Cruz and measured the length of the 50' slips and then the length of MAYAN on deck. I'm estimating that the ruler on Google Earth is accurate to within 6". Amazing!

Reverting to entertainment uses of navigational tools, go check out the various lagoons and atolls in the Tuamotus. Find the entrance passage(s) and see if you think you could go in/out. Then take a look at the same place on Google Earth, I was amazed at how much you can see and how clearly the coral shoals show up.

[kdh]

I have to admit to using the iPad with iNavX on long passages just to go on-line cruising to other places.

One of the most entertaining activities was using the chart on iNavX and Google Earth to see if the sizes of things were roughly correct. I started out measuring harbors, channels, and then the distance between islands etc... I was amazed at how accurate the ruler was in Google Earth. To test my theory I went to Santa Cruz and measured the length of the 50' slips and then the length of MAYAN on deck. I'm estimating that the ruler on Google Earth is accurate to within 6". Amazing!

Reverting to entertainment uses of navigational tools, go check out the various lagoons and atolls in the Tuamotus. Find the entrance passage(s) and see if you think you could go in/out. Then take a look at the same place on Google Earth, I was amazed at how much you can see and how clearly the coral shoals show up.

The Cape and the Islands here are just sand that was the stuff a glacier was pushing when it stopped in Cape Cod Bay and melted. The sand shifts around from year to year quite a bit from tidal currents and weather. Google Earth is really helpful to know if things are like last year. Mostly one just has to be careful not to mistake an eelgrass bed for deep, dark water.

[Anomaly]

The Cape and the Islands here are just sand that was the stuff a glacier was pushing when it stopped ...

That is the description of a terminal moraine... many of the best loved features of the sailing grounds in southern New England are the result of terminal moraines.