EV experience so far

Originally posted by offgrid GG, unless you owned the lightest EZ ever built, I think perhaps ole' Burt might not have approved of where the MGW was set on your bird....

I used to run biodiesel in a sailboat I owned.  It stunk like a cheap hamburger stand when motoring down wind.  The motor always ran nicely and reliably, though.

Yeah but no pottie or shower, so my wife would veto it.

I did take her to look at one of these.

https://www.theimportguys.com/product-page/1996-isuzu-elf-camper


At 16 feet its a whole meter longer than the Citroen but still shorter than my Highlander. And, it has a bathroom.

It's an ultra reliable Izuzu N series which is still sold in north America so parts are available unlike that French truck.

2.4 liter 4wd old school diesel churns out a whopping 90hp or so. I could run it on biofuel. All I'd need is some used veggie oil from Mickey D's and I could drive it around being nice and green smelling like french fries....



20 years ago I could probably have talked her into it. But now we're too old to be climbing up and down all night from that overcab bed.

Yeah but it's kinda hard to fly IFR with no radios.

GG, unless you owned the lightest EZ ever built, I think perhaps ole' Burt might not have approved of where the MGW was set on your bird...

But it's all good. That design has never to my my knowledge suffered an in flight structural failure and the builder can set his limits wherever wants. Not sure how well the gear would hold up to those kind of loads long term though. I think lots of them have had gear upgrades from the original design?

In my case the EZ option was vetoed anyhow so I didn't explore its weight and balance any further. Having previously owned a couple of certified planes (Tiger and 35 series Bonanza) my wife has pretty strong opinions about what she is willing to get into (or not get into).

The RV is fine for her, but she still misses the elbow room in our old Bo and the ability to carry a couple more folks occsionally. That was a nice flier and remarkably fast and efficient considering how what it could carry and that it was designed 75 years ago. 175 mph at 11-12 gph, 900 lb useful load, 54 gal fuel. Fairly inexpensive to purchase too. I probably would have gotten another one if I didn't have all the certified aircraft baggade to deal with. But it is and not being an A&P the mantenance cost wouldve killed me.

Since this was a vehicle efficiency discussion, I took a shot at comparing all these vehicles efficiencies, correcting for the square of the speed fur payload. Payload was gross weight - empty weight - fuel for a 500 mile trip with 30 minutes reserve (VFR requirements). I used the designers gross weight and typical real world empty weights to try to keep a lid on the payload optimism. I also did my Prius and a Boeing 787-9 using the same criteria (I adjusted the Boeing numbers down to account for the higher energy content of JetA vs gasoline. And since this is an RV forum I did my Chinook too.

With the Prius as a baseline at 1.0, the Bonanza came in next at 56% better, then the RV6A at 72% better, then the LongEZ at 92% better. So all three light planes beat the best ICE car on the road by a lot, and had enough extra fuel capacity to go much farther. The Prius barely made the distance with reserve.

Are you ready for the Boeing? 154 times more efficient than the Prius considering it's speed and payload. So much for commercial airplanes being inefficient. Boeing rules!

Anyone want to guess how the ole Chinook did? 0.27 vs the Prius. Except its fuel tank was 6 gallons shy... Such is the price of dragging your house around with you.

Now I'd like to consider to a high speed train....