https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/run-flat-tires.19937/ - https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/run-flat-tires.19937/

Edit:  Post #5 in this topic has the instructions for patching the self-sealing tires.

https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/tire-repair-woes.19482/#post-242282 - https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/tire-repair-woes.19482/#post-242282

It really seems counter-intuitive to not have a spare.  It may be an old-timer attitude though.  I have a 4WD FJ Cruiser, over 12 years old now and I've mounted the spare once.  I wouldn't want to be without a spare -- a full sized spare is important for 4WD.  My road conditions are worse than yours, I can just about guarantee you, but if I had a 2WD "little" EV car, it would be hard for me to get used to, but I think run-flats would be the way to go.  For reasons I don't understand, people hardly ever have flats anymore, and when they do, run-flats will get you home probably over 90% of the time.  That would be good for a hundred years for me in my FJ at the rate I've been going.

TT

Originally posted by StephenH The reason for eliminating spare tires is to reduce weight. When a heavy battery is being carried, something has to give to keep the weight down. Beside that, the space the battery takes also impacts what can be carried.

There's obviously that, but totally aside from the weight and space issues, run-flats can make more sense for some vehicles than others.

TT

My '84 F-150 had the jack under the hood, passenger side, tucked down against the firewall.  Had a 390 V-8 but once you looked at the right place, there it was.  The '94 F-150 Ford got a little more sneaky, hiding it behind the drivers seat against the back wall.  Even on the currently owned '17 F-150 it is tucked behind the back passenger side seat against the back wall.  If you don't have a flashlight, it is easy to miss.

My son-in-law got one for Christmas. He tried it out in his drive way and it seemed to work fine on his lifted Tacoma.

Pretty sure it won't work on an EV 

Anyway that exhaust lift bag looks like the bomb. If you run a rich fuel mixture, it literally could be a bomb!

I know there are a lot of factors involved, but planes go from airport to airport, which are very rarely your real starting and ending points.  Plus, I'd say there are usually car rentals and or parking fees involved on one end or the other, so the math is at least a little more complicated than you seem to make it out to be.

Generally, a very interesting post.  And I'm not trying to debate; really agreeing with you that we all make our choices.

TT

I only "filled it up" that first time I flew cross-country. After that I rarely put more than about 12 gallons per side. That increased payload by about 180 lbs, and gave me plenty of range at ~~ 5 gallons per hour. With my SO and me at ~~ 310 lbs, that left almost 300 lbs for "baggage". We made a couple of duffle bags that fit into the wing roots, and we could be off. My SO did not like the tandem seating either, but a quick hop to Tucson was a piece of cake. Useful load of our EZ was a little over 750 lbs, divided between people (310lb), fuel (144lb), and baggage (296lb). When I did my solo flying on weekends, I'd have less than 10 gallons per side, which made her very light and responsive. It was my little airborne sports vehicle.

  https://www.autoevolution.com/news/1990-citroen-c15-autostar-is-a-tiny-home-on-wheels-and-the-last-of-its-kind-209653.html - https://www.autoevolution.com/news/1990-citroen-c15-autostar-is-a-tiny-home-on-wheels-and-the-last-of-its-kind-209653.html

I'm sure there is an electric motor out there than can much the raw HP of a 1.1L inline 4 gas engine. LOL.

I don't know that mine was the lightest, but it was lighter than all my buds with Long-EZs. It started at a bit over 800 lbs, but after a couple of cross-country trips, I realized that any notion of IFR flying was out of the question. So I removed some "cruff" (go back anf re-read what Burt thought about cruff or excess crap in the plane). Removing the vacuum system and gyros alone got me a little over 35 lbs (vacuum pump, plumbing, and gyros). I resigned myself to day-VFR and used it as a purely pleasure plane, and had way more fun. Flying around the west, day-VFR was very friendly. The 1500 lb gross weight was slightly more than "book", but I had the pre-fab landing gear, and never had an issue. The FAA still has it on the record not far from here, so I think it's doing OK for an experimental that was completed in 1988.

Well said!  When I was a kid I can remember mom purchasing cottage cheese in metal "drink" cups or so it seemed.  They could be returned for 2 cents or in her case, she kept a set of 5 (all different colors for each of us boys; i being the youngest got stuck with the ugly army green colour.

It sickens me to thinks that so much we purchase doesn't make it to the recycler as we have gone out of our way to purchase items than normally can be recycled such as 'recyclable' plastics, glass, cardboard and paper.  Last year we did manage to generate 4 bags of trash for the entire year that went to the landfill.  The rest we either recycle, or put into compost for our garden, got to love all the egg shells for the Ca it adds to the soil profile!

There is a very good reason that this hasn't happened here. 99% of plastic feedstock is, you guessed it, petroleum and natural gas. As the world transitions off fossil fuel, plastic is plan B for Big Oil. Some project 50% of all petroleum produced will go into plastics by mid century. That is a whole lot of plastic. The growth is mostly expected to come from the emerging economies in the developing world, which often have no effective waste disposal programs at all, so the crap just piles up in vacant lots and blows around the neighborhoods. Anyone who has traveled much in the developing world has seen it.

Do you think Big Oil likes the idea of recycling plastic? Of course not, they'd rather see our oceans and landfills and vacant lots fill up with single use plastic and our communities bankrupt themselves managing the waste.  More profitable.  Big Oil doesn't care,  they're corporations, not humans,  they have no emotions or empathy. And those corporations own the politicians to get what they want, and the PR firms to make up nonsense reasons why its all going to be OK, don't worry. 

The manufacture and transport  of this stuff isnt safe either, 5000 ppl in Ohio just had to evacuate for days due toxic exposure risk to vinyl chloride, a known liver and blood carcinogen,  from a train derailment. Its the primary feedstock for PVC plastic, which is number 3, so not getting recycled currently, although it could be. 

The Ohio governor wants the railroad to pay for the cleanup, which is fine, but shouldn't the producer of the vinyl chloride also take responsibility? No one talks about who made the stuff BTW. There is one big plant in Calvert City, Kentucky,where the manufacturer just got a million dollar fine last year for improper waste stream disposal. Drop in the bucket. Most VC in the US comes from Cancer Alley in LA. Whats the thread linking Calvert City, Cancer Alley, and the developing world disposal sites? Hmmm.. Could it be lots of poor people maybe?

Which brings me full circle back to my EV experience. I now smile every time I plug in my Bolt, because that's less pennies going into the pockets of Big Oil so they can spend it corrupting a politician. Yes, I'm still on Appalachian Power's relatively high fossil fuel mix right now, but even they are at 30% renewable and nuke generation. And soon I'll be 100% solar...Then Ill be hurting Big Oil's bottom line just a little bit  whenever I get behind the wheel. Helping to break the back of the fossil fuel oligarchy, now that is a true "feel good" experience. 

While its certainly possible to recycle HDPE (its number 2, which is most of whats in most plastic grocery bags), in practice few bags get recycled, because they're hard to clean and manage. Its very hard to find out how much actually does, that information is not tracked.  Most recycled HDPE goes to Trex and the other polymer composite lumber manufacturers.  It for sure doesn't get stored for alter use either, no one has room for it all. So it mostly goes to the landfill if were lucky and the ocean if we're not.  

The bacterial decompostion stuff is just marketing fluff, no one is actually doing that, And yes, there are replacement products for the vast majority of our plastic uses. We grew up with paper cartons, cloth bags, etc, they're nothing new. So bring your own bags when you get your groceries, choose paper cartons over plastic bottles, no plastic waste to worry about then. 

Not to pick nits (but I am), I think you meant cradle to grave?

Separately, I think that the number of times "leaving it up to the manufacturers" has succeeded has been a distinct minority.

I did mean "cradle to cradle",  "Grave" implies that the material ends up in the landfill rather than getting reused. So you're only looking at the first half of the process.  If its getting recycled it becomes feedstock for a new product (the cradle).  So "cradle to cradle" captures the whole process. 

And for sure, there should be no "leaving it up to the manufacturers", they won't do anything unless required to. As others have said, this is a place where regulations are needed. 

Of course, when it comes time for you to buy your next vehicle you're free to get anything you want.

But before you decide that shouldn't be electric, consider that practically all the vehicle manufacturers are on board with the conversion to evs. They wouldn't do that if they didn't see a profit in it. These are huge companies with lots of clout to drive and keep their battery and other costs down. You and I have no equivalent leverage over fuel prices. We go to the pump and pay what its set at, or we don't drive. So I don't think we need to worry much about what Ford, Tesla, GM, VW, Toyota etc are paying for their batteries. They will be sure to get the good deals.  In many cases because the are partnered with the battery manufacturers. 

My Bolt, batteries and all, already cost me about the same as an equivalent ICE vehicle (thanks GM for not gouging your customers like Tesla has been up till now). And we're only at the beginning. Li battery cost has dropped like a stone over the past few years and continues to go down. The rest of an EV drivetrain is simpler and cheaper than a gasser's. So overall EVs will soon be cheaper to buy and offer better performance and reliability than ICE vehicles. Tesla just had to drop their prices dramatically, they are no longer the only game in town.

Then there are the much lower energy costs. I'm paying about 4 cents a mile in my Bolt, half what my (very efficient) Prius cost me.  So, buy an ev because its cheaper,more fun to drive,  and you get a better ownership experience, let the car manufacturer worry about battery sourcing. 

Or by all means don't buy one and stick with a gasser because it meets your needs better (like towing range) for now. No one is forcing you to go electric. 

That being said, and being this is an Rpod/travel trailer site, until manufacturers come up with a cost effect way for all electric technology to be used in a TV with a suitable range, there will always be an ICE on a TV whether it is a hybrid or not. Sure, in time there will be an all electric TV option, but for most of us, time is not on our side. We purchased our current rig with the understanding that it will be our last given our current age. 

The Bolt has had a very bad reliablity history  because of the huge battery recall, one of the most expensive in history. Im betting on that being behind GM and LG, I think they would go to great lengths never to have that happen again. I have no idea about any of the other EV's except the Nissan Leaf because all of them are way out of my price range so I didn't research them.  I rejected the Leaf because it still uses the Japanese standard charge port that's not going to be the North American standard in future so its going to be hard to find charging stations for it.

Well, actually I can because it's my opinion  and I can say it all day long. Now whether anyone wants to hear it is another story.

Frankly, I find the analysis-paralysis that goes into the researching reliability to be time mostly wasted. I have owned vehicles and equipment that are supposedly "reliable" only to have those them fail spectacularly. I have also owned items that are supposed to be unreliable and have had them out perform expectations and estimated life expectancy. I may glance through reviews and evaluations but ultimately that data does not carry much weight in my final decision.

If we all sought total reliability, we would still be swinging stone axes.

I know early Teslas were rightly criticized for many of the fit and finish issues they had (and were extensively discussed by critics like Munroe). I was critical of CR for lumping fit and finish issues under the umbrella of "reliability", but who knows.

I'm also pretty sure that a Tesla motor has more than 3 phases, but not sure how many. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Eberhard - Martin Eberhard is a friend and a neighbor of mine (Martin and his friend Marc Tarpenning are the actual founders of Tesla, NOT Elon.). 

I knew about Tesla (through him and some neighbors) way before Elon was involved. During one of our talks together, he told to me about the multi-phase motor being one of the innovations they were working on.

Sorry, I intended the impersonal or generic form of "you".  A weakness of the English language is the ambiguity of some of our pronouns. Of course you, personally, can hold any opinion you want to. 

I bet the leather thongs or whatever stone age man used to attach their axe heads to the handles  weren't that reliable. Gotta be ready to duck those flying axe heads or risk a broken noggin...

The Prius has had regen braking since it was introduced in 1997. Its just weak compared to a pure EV because the electric motor in a hybrid is pretty small.  I think the GM EV1 had it in 1996. 

As far as I can tell the Tesla uses a good old 3 phase induction motor, patented by Nicola Tesla in 1887. The Prius actually has two motors, both are 3 phase, but they have permanent magnet rotors so they're not induction motors. The Bolt also has a PM rotor, not sure if its 3 phase or not but probably. 

 I think the main difference between PMAC and AC induction motors is that the induction motor has to be rotating in order to create a magnetic field in the rotor while the PM motor doesn't. So its a little more efficient and high rpm while the PMAC motor is a bit better at low rpm.  Probably the driver wouldn't notice any difference. 

The oil and gas companies' net income more than doubled in 2022  to over $4 trilion (with a t). And thats after a record year in 2021. This includes not only companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP who are household names in the US but also the nice folks at Saudi Aramco (the largest by far), PetroChina, and Gazprom in Russia. Its all profit, it doesn't cost these guys any more to pump their black stuff out of the ground than it did a year ago.   Its a global not a US issue. 

That's not what Martin explained to me. Their motor does use permanent magnets and it's an induction motor.

Life is full of contradictions and a person can drive them self insane trying to balance all of the causes out there and assign significance to their lives. Truth be told, none of us have it all figured out and never will. The best we can hope for is to be good human beings to each other and do what we think is right for our community.

Hope you find it useful.

I've been thinking about that as well.

I think in the relatively short term, as the demand for gasoline goes down, the price for it will go down as well. That means that it could dampen the demand for EVs. So it will be an interesting dynamic for sure.

Personally, I think that the fear about the magnetism over high voltage lines is overhyped. I will say that the buzzing sound is pretty annoying. I wouldn't want to live near them for that and the appearance. The other issue is the hazard of when/if the lines come down in a major weather event.