Scientists at UChicago discover that trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), a fatty acid found in beef, lamb, and dairy products, improves the ability of immune cells to fight tumors.
I think this is simply tapping into existing infrastructure. It's not all bad. When I stop to charge, usually I'll find the nearest washroom and use it (why not?). I might grab a snack or something, too. A gas station satisfies both these requirements and is already grid-connected (electricity, plumbing, waste).
What I'd like to see more of is comforts -- I want a comfy place to sit and relax for a bit or a park trail to walk around. I hate when I pull into a charger and it's just a parking lot. Not stimulating at all. Nothing to do but sit there. If I'm not using the gas station amenities it's not much better than an empty parking lot.
I feel like gas stations have this "grind" / roadtrip mentality whereas I kind of want a relaxing, decompression space to charge my car. So maybe you're right...
It feels like it would make more sense to encourage installation of charging infrastructure at places where you might want to be for half an hour anyway; parks with parking lots, restaurants, grocery stores, etc; rather than encouraging it at gas stations, except for in the rural highway case where gas stations might be all that's easy to find when you're driving between urban areas.
> except for in the rural highway case where gas stations might be all that's easy to find when you're driving between urban areas.
Range is the one thing that is preventing me from looking at EVs at the moment. I own a car but I don't actually drive much in the city since I work from home and use grocery delivery services since I hate grocery shopping. When I tend to drive most it's because I'm going a long distance: 8 to 10 hour road trips up north etc. The idea of adding hours to such a trip, or turning it into an overnight trip, makes it a non-starter for me.
I bring this up because the article specifically talks about about gas stations along the Autobahn. I've never been to Germany, let alone driven on the Autobahn, so maybe it is used quite frequently for shorter trips. But speaking of freeways in general, especially here in North America, I wonder if this is another reason that looking to gas stations along a freeway is a misguided "target." If people are using EVs on freeways, wouldn't they be more inclined to exit the freeway into a city and charge at a motel or a shopping centre while they stop overnight or at least a few hours?
> The idea of adding hours to such a trip, or turning it into an overnight trip, makes it a non-starter for me.
> If people are using EVs on freeways, wouldn't they be more inclined to exit the freeway into a city and charge at a motel or a shopping centre while they stop overnight or at least a few hours?
Yes you're right on the money.
I bought an EV to drive around my home area in CA. Instead I've just used it for road-tripping back East to see family.
Each road-trip has convinced me how bad these cars are for long-range driving. Aside from "range anxiety" (going only from one supercharger location to another, and not venturing away) - the charging times are brutal for cross-country trips.
You will spend hours per day, hours, sitting in back of Holiday Inn Expresses in the middle of nowhere Kansas, or in back of a shady truck stop in the middle of Texas.
Safety as well: I've thought about if I were a female for example at some of these locations it wouldn't be safe to be alone, with nobody around, sitting in your car. You're unable to start it and drive away if it's plugged in, not without getting out to unplug it which you have to do manually (there's no emergency eject charger cable button). So if there is a Texas Chainsaw Killer outside your window you're screwed.
Having said all that. It is a perfect car for just driving around my neighborhood IF that's what I intended to. In practice, I never do it.
It's a completely different experience in a Tesla. We've done 4 3000 km trips in our Tesla (Ottawa to Saskatoon and back twice). Never any anxiety, the car tells us where to charge and we know it will work.
Being a young family, we had to stop more frequently and for longer for bathroom breaks etc than it took to charge.
Hopefully you get a NACS adapter and a proper experience soon.
Yes and no. You only stop for "hours" once / day when you're done driving. It's _convenient_ to charge overnight (and why wouldn't you do it) but it's not necessary. 90% of my charging is done during the day, during the drive.
For example, here's a 7+ hour drive from Calgary to a campground in the middle of Saskatchewan: https://i.imgur.com/GTeNnYa.png (the 5.4 hour charge is us charging up using the RV hookup at the campground)
We stopped for about an hour total. If you are a "roadtripper" -- that is, no stopping, just getting to the destination, then sure, you have a point. That's 1 hour where you could have been at your destination. From my perspective, I took that time to get lunch and stretch my legs and use the washroom... mental health stuff.
Yeah I guess I'm a "roadtripper." I don't like driving itself. I just want to get from point A to point B as fast (and safe) as possible. Typically on an 8 hour drive my wife and I will make one or two 5 minute stops for bathroom breaks and to refuel. We'll eat in the car if we actually have to eat (but I only eat one meal a day so that's not common). The mental health hit for us is knowing that we're wasting precious vacation time travelling rather than vacationing. If we loved the drive itself then maybe it would be different, but I don't.
How long does it actually take you to charge? I'm picturing the gas stations around here and even with a supercharger I'm not sure I'd want to just sit at a gas station for 15 minutes, even if there was room on these small-footprint locations to park several cars for an indefinite amount of time.
I don't have any better ideas, mind you; maybe small local parks should have to have charging infra if they have parking spots. Great place for the family to just get out of the car and stretch their legs for a while.
Waiting 15 mins at a gas station during a road trip isn't bad. You probably have to go in and use the restroom and grab snacks anyways. Usually by the time I'm done with that, the car is ready to make it to the next charger
I see people write stuff like this, and it doesn't resonate with my experience at all. My understanding is that 20 mins is the minimum for a 10-80% charge, and that's assuming that your vehicle can charge very quickly, and that you got lucky and found an available charger that supports very fast charging.
Second, a 20-minute stop is much longer than pit stops I make. It takes 3 minutes to fill my gas tank, and then I can go for another 400 miles. I might add another 4 minutes to use the bathroom, but I never stick around for 20 minutes.
I can imagine in the future there might be plentiful supply of super-fast chargers that can add 400 miles in 5-10 minutes. But today, the much more common experience is to add 250 miles in 20-30 minutes, which is a far, far slower rate. Until things change, EV advocates aren't helping their cause by claiming that charging doesn't take much longer than pumping gas. You might be correct that "by the time I'm done with that, the car is ready to make it to the next charger", but who wants to stop at every charger? I don't gas up my car enough to make it to the next gas station — I fill up the tank so I can make it to my destination.
For the record, I own a PHEV and like it. But I don't have an full EV because it introduces too much uncertainty for road trips, and because electricity is subject to outages where I live (norcal).
> Second, a 20-minute stop is much longer than pit stops I make. It takes 3 minutes to fill my gas tank, and then I can go for another 400 miles.
Don't do this. It's extremely bad for your health, and it also results in degraded and more dangerous driving quality. The worst thing is you probably don't realize it. Unless you're a professional driver, you should take a break every 2-3 hours for at least 15 minutes (which is coincidentally about what charging requires.)
This only applies to the supercharger network, but they are so common that I don't go from 10-80. It's usually more like 20%-60%, which is 15 mins or under for me usually. I can make it to the next charger with ~20% and repeat the process
Besides, chargers are usually really far from the actual building so you gotta add another couple mins just walking to/from your car :)
So you’re stopping every how many miles? 40% of 300, so 120? Seems like that adds a significant amount of travel time, roughly 1/4 hour for every 2 hours traveled.
Maybe I'm just coping, but I personally see this as a feature rather than an issue. Sitting for long periods of time is not healthy. Getting up for 10-15 minutes every two hours is _good_ for my mind and my body.
I would agree in general, but on the infrequent occasion when I'm doing a road trip, it's more important to reduce travel time and avoid traffic backups that result from extended travel time. Most of my trips are from norcal to socal, so avoiding morning/evening rush hour on both ends is the name of the game, at least for me.
Makes some sense at highway gas stations, but hardly any in cities.
I'm not even arguing that I hardly ever do or want to have longer stops at gas stations. Restrooms only when it's urgent (so maybe once per 5h drive), food only when needed (overpriced and not good). So I'm the 90% "stop, fill tank, go pay, drive off" person, so if I had an EV this would be.. mostly as unpractical as everywhere else.
I'm sure the infrastructure will evolve over time but it currently seems like a good stop-gap. Makes dual use of current infrastructure in a transitionary period. EV adoption is still quite low. But I won't be surprised if when it increases we see the infrastructure change a lot. Like movie theaters offering deals for EV parking or far more charging stations at malls and big stores like wallmart and costco. But what to do on interstate seems like the interesting one. Do we see more casinos pop up? What entertainment or time expending industries will pop up to fill the time for people stopped in the middle of nowhere.
In Norway there’s a few charges at every mall and parking garages, a lot of grocery stores also have charges in the parking lot. Many of the gas station chains have started to adapt by installing charging stations and remaking the store inside to more of a fast food shop/coffee shop with a few tables and places to sit etc.
If you need to charge on the road then most rest-stops and fast food restaurants along the main roads have charging stations installed.
Yeah these same things exist in most American cities, especially in the West. But a big difference in America is the population density. America is almost all empty. Yeah, Europe has a lot of sparse areas, but remember that the landmass of America (contiguous) is 8e6 km^2 while Europe is 10e6 km^2 while US has that between 350m people and Europe between 750m people. Lose 4e6km2 and 143m people if you want to remove Russia (which itself is sparse, a bit more than the US). I'm saying this because what happens in the US around transportation infrastructure is going to be __substantially__ different than what happens in Europe. There's always people saying "well Europe does X why can't the US" but you can't drive for 10hrs in Europe without passing through a major city while you can do that in just Texas[0]
That's why I specified the middle of nowhere ones as the "interesting" ones. The mall one, like Norway, was explicitly stated.
Is this a real scenario? Most EVs can rapid charge with the right infrastructure in 30-45 minutes. It’s stop and get coffee/stretch legs timeframes, I’m not sure it’s that much of an event.
You be the judge. It is literally an order of magnitude longer than filling up with gas (this is actually why some car companies have pursued hydrogen which is also 3-5 minutes).
Also EV: ~0 minutes because you plugged in at home/hotel last night and get to walk away.
No need to drive to a gas station, pay, and watch something flammable for several minutes. Just plug in and go to sleep. Different technologies simply have different trade offs.
Waiting 45 minutes at a charger is also really inefficient. At 350kW a 100kWh car would fully charging in 17 minutes but unfortunately things really slow down above 80% charge, optimum is closer to 10-50%. This makes longer stops wasteful unless you happen to want to stop for something else.
Optimizing for speed it’s ~10 minute stops and fully charging at night thus skipping multiple fueling stops.
Indeed, but that is still an order of magnitude slower than adding the same range to a gasoline-powered car. If everyone who, today, refuels along an interstate / motorway / autobahn took 30-45 minutes to do so, I suspect that traffic in the more densely populated areas would grind to a halt.
Parked cars don’t impact traffic. The major difference is presumably the size of parking lots devoted to charging vs pumps, but ant home/work/etc charging offsets quite a bit.
On longer trips the pay/pump/bathroom/grab a soda/hit the road cycle is probably 15 minutes. I expect many businesses focusing on capturing revenue from the captive audience of people waiting 20-30 minutes for their cars to charge.
However, this goes away if we end up with in road charging.
I am assuming a large majority who stop to refuel do not park at all, let alone for 20-30 minutes, and there would not be room for them all to do so if they wanted to.
In-road charging would render this article moot, together with the discussion about it.
Tell that to anyone who's been on a roadtrip and visited a busy rest stop. I've definitely seen long times on off-ramps as well as on-ramps for them. Given your "15 minute" time I'd take it you haven't really done a long road trip. As in multiple days of 8+hrs of driving. I did 4 days of 12hrs (split with someone) and that was rough.
I entertain myself on long trips by timing how long things take and 15 minutes is sadly common I’ve seen it take take 25 minutes when the bathroom has a line. Gas stations are much faster day to day when you just want fuel and to hit the road, but after a few hours in the car someone needs to go to the bathroom etc and nobody is racing for the car.
I do know people who try and minimize such stops. They got an extra gas tank and use a piss bottle etc but businesses optimize for the general population not extreme outliers.
> I entertain myself on long trips by timing how long things take and 15 minutes is sadly common
Honestly, seems like you have a bias. If you're timing yourself you're biasing yourself to be faster. So incorporate higher variance into your model and assume you're on the lower end of at least that 1std deviation.
And again, I'm considering a long trip as multi-day 8hr+ driving. Your legs just don't last that long. First day is usually fine. Second if you're seasoned. Beyond that is where it gets real hard.
There is a significant overap - fuel up, find the restroom, grab some snacks.
EV chargers have the benefits of being cheap, take little space, and permitting is raesonably simple. Expecting them to be way more widespread than fuel stations ever can be.
Depends on the charging density. I drove across Canada and, when I knew the next charger was under 200km away I'd "fill up" for maybe 5 minutes and get on with my journey.
Unlike an ICE, you want to keep your car between like 10% and 70% while road-tripping for charging efficiency.
There are times I'd stop for 30+ minutes but typically I'd go find a place to eat or take a walk at those stops.
Average gas station stop looks to be ~8 minutes. Tesla superchargers can do up to 200 miles in 15 minutes. So 100 miles of range in the same timeframe. And the charging technology is still in the middle of constant improvement.
In the following, "charging" means charging EV batteries or putting gas in an ICE car's tank.
> Average gas station stop looks to be ~8 minutes. Tesla superchargers can do up to 200 miles in 15 minutes. So 100 miles of range in the same timeframe.
But if you make a long trip, just doing ~8 minute, 100 mile charge stops, you'll be stopping about every 100 miles to charge. On a 1000 mile trip that's 80 minutes at charging stations.
With an ICE that ~8 minute gas station stop would have filled the tank, giving 500+ miles of range. On a 1000 mile trip that's 16 minutes at gas stations.
A gas station pump can pump 10 or more gallons per minute. (They are limited to 10 by regulation in the US, but I've heard that Europe allows more than that).
If a car got 25 miles/gallon, which even a big SUV can do on highways, recharging at a gas station gives you 15000 miles/hour.
Something smaller that gets 40 miles/gallon highway recharges at 24000 miles/gallon.
Even driving some giant truck or SUV in a city where you might only get 10 miles/gallon would recharge at 6000 miles/hour.
No matter how you slice it then the time actually taken to put a given number of miles into the vehicle is at least an order of magnitude more for an EV with current charging technology unless you driving a huge ICE in city conditions or you are at a very badly maintained gas pump. (And even then gas will be several times faster).
If the other things you do at a charging stop, such as paying, using the restroom, getting snacks, checking the tires, cleaning the windshield, stretching, etc., take long enough and can be done sufficiently parallel to the actual charging the impact of EV charging being an order of magnitude slower might be lessened or even eliminated.
On a long trip where you are going most of your vehicle's range between stops that very will might be the case. If I've been driving 3 or 4 hours I certainly want to stretch and walk around a bit before resuming.
But when I'm just out and about doing normal daily stuff and see that gas is getting low, I just pay at the pump with Apple Pay, fill it up, and leave. The total time at the station is rarely more than a minute more than the pumping time.
You are quite right. A typical German gas station has nothing to offer somebody who is going to stay there for 30 minutes. Their little shop is usually overpriced and beyond that there is usually a place to pump your tires and to wash your car and little else.
Chargers in the parking lots of supermarkets would make much more sense. And indeed that is already where the chargers are to be found. This is a case of the market outsmarting the stupid bureaucrats.
Great news. Finding stuff that doesn't fit into the current model and we need smart people to get to work understanding may be the surest sign that the JWST is invaluable.
Not only because it means we're about to learn some big stuff, but also because it would be completely *preposterous* if humans at our puny stage of development had already correctly figured out every last detail about insanely complex things like the exact size, age, and origin and age of galaxy-sized things that developed tens of billions of years ago, billions of light-years away from the tiny rock we stand on. Getting things wrong shows that people are actually doing science honestly!
We have known that the current model of physics is wrong for a long time. But the main focus has been on math. "If only we could figure out this formula, then we would understand everything"
It seems much more likely that we are not missing a formula but a basic understanding of reality. Much like the early astronomers trying to find a formula for the movement of the sun and planets that put Earth at the center of the universe
I really like this comparison. But isn’t the case with modern physics that we are getting something like 8 of 10 things right? So that’s a lot of correct triangulation - and throwing the current understanding out would throw all of that away - and potentially rearrange things.
Interesting, but I'd need far more medical knowledge than I have to put this into context. Does this mean people with existing heart conditions should avoid these vaccinations? Does it mean those at otherwise very low risk for severe COVID-19 shouldn't bother? I sure dunno.
Note, regardless of the validity of this study I am confident that the vast majority (all) rocket scientists and neurosurgeons are smarter than *I* am. ;-)
I am very confident that the dumbest rocket scientist and most incompetent of neurosurgeons are more intelligent than all of the readers of the Daily Mail combined.
