On Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 8:26:46 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:

I know several people who own hybrid cars, plus one guy who owns an
all-electric Nissan Leaf. What I've heard:

The dominant model is the Toyota Prius. It seems Prius battery life has
been much better than anticipated; they're going way over 100,000 miles.

One guy I know has a hybrid Honda Civic. He lives in a hot southern
state. After something like seven years, his battery capacity dropped
terribly. IIRC, there was some sort of recall for recalibration of
software, but he's still very dissatisfied.

Another guy, until very recently, owned a Honda Insight, the very first
hybrid I'd ever heard about. It's a tiny, super-aero two seater. He
bought his used, it had some electrical/battery problems, and Honda
astonishingly replaced the entire battery pack and some wiring for free.
However, I wouldn't count on that ever happening again. It didn't with
that Civic owner.

But the battery packs do have limited life, even if that limit is very
long. Replacement is very expensive. So when gauging the long term cost
of these cars, it would be good to know the battery lifetime. It might
be wise to sell it or trade it in before the battery's due to crap out
(if you're that kind of person), and it might be good to research the
battery issue heavily before you buy one that's used.

Mileage is NOT a good way to judge car costs anymore with 5 or 6 year old cars commonly with 200,000 miles on them. Batteries tend to wear out by the number of recharges and age. 5 years is a long time on a lithium-ion battery. You can judge this by the age of your cell phone battery and how long the charges are lasting. Heat does affect battery life as well. You have to be very careful of the charge rate from 3/4ths full to full because as the battery ages if you use full charge rate you can not just burn the battery up but explode it.

This was why several aircraft fires occurred. Rather than use a ground power unit some aircraft companies (particularly the Asian airlines) would use battery power to light the interior and run the machines necessary for cleaning the aircraft between flights. Then when you started the motors they could pour full charge rates into the batteries. Since they had gone through a lot of recharge cycles in a short time the last quarter charge had a high resistance and would generate a LOT of heat to the point where batteries would burst into flames.

Lithium-ion batteries do not show discharge like other chemical batteries by significant voltage change. You have to know how much energy you have pulled out of them and only charge them back with that amount. Your cell phone is simplified because they do not use over-voltage to charge with and so the slight difference in voltage from discharged and charged is used to stop the charging. But you should still remember that the Apple SmartPhones are using very high charge and discharge rates and can start a fire on your nightstand overnight.

IME, seeing someone 20 mph over the limit is pretty rare. Lots of people
seem to shoot for 2 to 5 over the limit, though.

I'm sure that the auto-cars will be limited to the limit (duh!). Again,
it really doesn't add much time to a typical drive.

To divert into psychology: Somehow, being in a car triggers urges to
"get to the front" or "get past this guy."

The slightly more practical justification is "I don't want to be slowed
down." But as we all know, it's not unusual to have a motorist race to
pass a bicyclist, then end up sitting at the same red light. The even
more stupid freeway example is when a construction project reduces
everything to one lane. Passing is impossible, traffic might be lined up
for a mile ahead, yet some dolts will tailgate and even honk horns if
you're not near the rear bumper of the car in front of you.

Driving makes many people insane.

I kept complaining to my brother that the traffic was going altogether too fast and he was telling me that I'm supposed to keep up with traffic. Just then a car came by easily 20 mph faster than me at 65 and swerved over three lanes and slammed on the brakes and the car behind him rammed him. The guy that caused this kept going. This is so common during the commute times that my wife pulls onto the freeway and finds a double semi to drive behind. They can't stop overly rapid and no one in back of her wants to go truck speed. But she goes by wrecks every single day in the 20 mile commute to babysit her grandkids. This has ceased to be anything unusual.

As I complained before, I was driving across the San Mateo Bridge which is long and straight. I was in the number two lane because at the Hayward end of the bridge there is an odd-ball interchange and traffic will NOT let you in. So you have to be in the correct lane to begin with. The rest of the traffic was going by AT LEAST at 90 mph. There was a rather large opening and in the distance I watched a cop come up at about 80 mph or so. As he approached he pulled in behind me because I was suspicious because I was driving the limit. I had sent all of my money etc. in for a new year license tag but it hadn't shown up and I had forgotten it so he pulled me over and ticketed me. Then he seemed surprise when he discovered that I was a handicapped driver. Who would have guessed that anyone would be driving the speed limit? It turned out that there are two kinds of smog tests here now. One where the smog test is run and the guy signs a paper that you send in that says you passed. Every couple of years you have to go to this Star Smog test. There isn't any difference except the Star sends the complete results to the DMV. I didn't know there was any difference and just used the normal test. So of course DMV didn't send me any information about this.

Now where you live you might be OK. But on lonesome country roads around here if there are traffic backups you could be in the middle of hundreds of cars driving past you on a narrow two lane road at 60 mph or more. When there is a van the car behind him can't see around and might pull to the right for some reason without knowing you're there.

So when Joerg is talking about bikeways he has plenty of reasons to worry.