The Future of Internal Combustion Engine Light Aircraft - Environmental Globalists are in the control seat

[A64Pilot]

 BMW 3 series weight 3,582 to 4,138 lbs

Audi A4 weight 3,682 to 3,726

Tesla Model 3 SR+ weight 3,551 lbs

What extra weight? The Tesla weighs less than the BMW and the Audi.

Average vehicle weight is 4146 lbs, the Tesla is significantly less https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-car-weight/

Now if you build one with sloppy Engineering, then yes you can make an EV heavy. It’s a snowball effect. Lee Ioccoa 40 years ago when he was running Chrysler published that if at the design stage of an automobile if you left out the spare tire you would save 500 lbs. You have certain design criteria to meet, x number of seats, x amount of leg room, baggage space etc. But if you leave that tire out, you can go with a smaller engine, smaller transmission, brakes, suspension and the weight savings stack up until you end up saving 500 lbs. He was not successful in leaving the tire out.

So if you start from scratch with the intent to build an EV you can do so without any weight gain, because you can use a smaller lighter battery because the car weighs less etc etc. This of course can mean a cheaper car to build so more profit or less expensive car to buy, and of course less energy used to drive the thing.

However in the rush to produce EV’s I suspect they were not designed from the ground up but modified from ICE designs and in the push to be able to advertise big ranges we will have a bunch of stupid heavy EV’s with oversized batteries, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

You can get range by being efficient, or by tossing in a big heavy expensive battery.

If you could ever build an electric aircraft you would get a lot of advantages over an ICE airplane, like noise and an engine that can make sea level power at ANY altitude.

Maybe an electric airplane could be a hydrogen powered fuel cell and not have a battery? Who knows, we are so far away from one it might end up with a flux capacitor or Dilithium crystals.

I don’t believe one is currently possible, but I am a believer in technology, just because we can’t do it now doesn’t mean we never will be able to.

We are on the cusp of a personal transportation revolution, just as we were when Henry built the first T’s, then I’m sure many said that thing would never replace the good ole reliable horse, that fed itself and cost almost nothing to operate, was self replicating etc.

Edited May 19, 2022 by A64Pilot

[Fly Boomer]

9 hours ago, philiplane said:

battery is far less efficient at energy storage than a gas tank.

If that were the only issue, EVs wouldn't even be on the horizon.

[N201MKTurbo]

If there are no internal combustion engines, there are no light aircraft except ground launch sail planes and hang gliders.

[A64Pilot]

On 5/19/2022 at 9:25 AM, N201MKTurbo said:

If there are no internal combustion engines, there are no light aircraft except ground launch sail planes and hang gliders.

I’ll argue that too, it’s actually the small motors where electric dominate, weed eaters etc. Years ago I put a Honda small engine on a Dahon folding bicycle, it works and I still have it, but electric bikes out now are far better, lighter, totally quiet, faster and more powerful than my Honda powered Dahon.

So there are no electric ultra lights etc yet, and honestly it seems ultra lights died years ago for some reason, maybe it’s because the Boomers are getting older? They were everywhere in the 80’s.

The one existing electric airplane I know is pretty close to an ultralight, I think it will be awhile though before or if ever before we see electric ultralights due to cost, going to be tough to be less expensive than a little two stroke.

I would expect to see an electric self launched glider though, I think that’s the market, over in Europe at least in Germany they were really noise sensitive.

But only a fool I think is saying all ICE needs to go away, if we are smart we will let the consumer decide, if the Government would just let it alone, Free Enterprise will work. I mean if nothing else we need the electrical generating infrastructure to be increased, currently it’s just big enough to cover demand, because of course that’s most profitable, but only a fool doesn’t understand that you can’t replace a whole lot of ICE with electric without increasing electrical generating capacity?

I’ve heard a whole lot about how the Government intends to spend Billions on chargers, but nothing about increasing generating capacity.

https://www.energy.gov/articles/president-biden-doe-and-dot-announce-5-billion-over-five-years-national-ev-charging

IF we build a bunch of EV’s and spend 5 Billions of the taxpayers money to charge private auto’s, who doesn’t think the end result won’t be rolling blackouts? At least the home chargers can schedule to charge at off peak hours.

Edited May 21, 2022 by A64Pilot

[A64Pilot]

From the beginning the Governments support of EV’s have subsidized the wealthy with taxpayers money, and I think that’s wrong.

You people that dislike EV’s, that’s what you should be pissed about in my opinion, The Governments plan to spend Billion and Billions on subsidizing them.

I drive one and am against it. 

[N201MKTurbo]

4 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

I’ll argue that too, it’s actually the small motors where electric dominate, weed eaters etc. Years ago I put a Honda small engine on a Dahon folding bicycle, it works and I still have it, but electric bikes out now are far better, lighter, totally quiet, faster and more powerful than my Honda powered Dahon.

So there are no electric ultra lights etc yet, and honestly it seems ultra lights died years ago for some reason, maybe it’s because the Boomers are getting older? They were everywhere in the 80’s.

The one existing electric airplane I know is pretty close to an ultralight, I think it will be awhile though before or if ever before we see electric ultralights due to cost, going to be tough to be less expensive than a little two stroke.

I would expect to see an electric self launched glider though, I think that’s the market, over in Europe at least in Germany they were really noise sensitive.

But only a fool I think is saying all ICE needs to go away, if we are smart we will let the consumer decide, if the Government would just let it alone, Free Enterprise will work. I mean if nothing else we need the electrical generating infrastructure to be increased, currently it’s just big enough to cover demand, because of course that’s most profitable, but only a fool doesn’t understand that you can’t replace a whole lot of ICE with electric without increasing electrical generating capacity?

I’ve heard a whole lot about how the Government intends to spend Billions on chargers, but nothing about increasing generating capacity.

https://www.energy.gov/articles/president-biden-doe-and-dot-announce-5-billion-over-five-years-national-ev-charging

IF we build a bunch of EV’s and spend 5 Billions of the taxpayers money to charge private auto’s, who doesn’t think the end result won’t be rolling blackouts? At least the home chargers can schedule to charge at off peak hours.

If charging stations were profitable, they would be everywhere. A lot of businesses that have charging stations, have them to attract customers. They do this because they know they have nothing to do for a while, so they might as well shop or grab a bite to eat. 

As I have said before, people who drive electric cars are currently avoiding road taxes. When the number of electric cars gets to be substantial, that will end one way or another.

Right now Arizona charges $0.19/gallon (one of the lowest in the country, CA is highest at $0.68) and the federal government charges $0.184/gallon or $0.374/gallon lets say the average MPG = 25, so that is ~1.5 cents / mile. If a Tesla gets 300mi/charge , it owes ~$4.50 per charge in road taxes. Think of it as a tip for the gov. for giving you nice roads to drive on. In CA your tip would be $10.38....

Edited May 21, 2022 by N201MKTurbo

[Fly Boomer]

3 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

The Governments plan to spend Billion and Billions on subsidizing them.

"A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon you're talking real money" (attributed to Everett Dirksen without citation)

[A64Pilot]

On 5/21/2022 at 1:03 PM, N201MKTurbo said:

If charging stations were profitable, they would be everywhere. A lot of businesses that have charging stations, have them to attract customers. They do this because they know they have nothing to do for a while, so they might as well shop or grab a bite to eat. 

As I have said before, people who drive electric cars are currently avoiding road taxes. When the number of electric cars gets to be substantial, that will end one way or another.

Right now Arizona charges $0.19/gallon (one of the lowest in the country, CA is highest at $0.68) and the federal government charges $0.184/gallon or $0.374/gallon lets say the average MPG = 25, so that is ~1.5 cents / mile. If a Tesla gets 300mi/charge , it owes ~$4.50 per charge in road taxes. Think of it as a tip for the gov. for giving you nice roads to drive on. In CA your tip would be $10.38....

You keep going on and on about road use fees thinking EV’s are getting a free ride, and in some States they do, and in some States they pay more than ICE, there is a Consumer Reports article that coves that. But States are catching on and charging EV’s extra upon registration, to try to do it any other way is too complex, your idea for example only taxes the people who use chargers, I do 99% of my charging at home, so I wouldn’t pay. So your idea of the free ride isn’t true, depending on where you live, but in truth there are so few EV’s their share is a rounding error. But currently there are several States ripping off EV’s. Truth is I think taxes don’t ever really go down, and anytime a new tax comes out, it’s in excess of the old tax. So I expect EV’s will on average pay more than ICE vehicles, that's the trend anyway.

https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Consumer-Reports-EV-Fee-analysis.pdf

https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/more-states-hitting-electric-vehicle-owners-with-high-fees/

There is money in chargers, lots of Money. I pay 14c per KWH, Tesla I’m sure pays much less, I’d guess 5 to 7c on average but they sell it for 34c a KWH, that’s a 500+% profit, tell me how often you can sell something for 5- 7 times what you paid. Even if they pay what I do it’s still big bucks.

https://info.siteselectiongroup.com/blog/power-in-the-data-center-and-its-costs-across-the-united-states

There are chargers everywhere, Tesla makes so little money on them they have built over 30,000 of them and are increasing them at the rate of 35% a year https://electrek.co/2022/03/01/tesla-unveils-supercharger-station-pre-fabricated-system/ Musk must love losing money.

When there are enough EV’s to support a charging infrastructure, people will build them and make money from them, but except for Tesla’s there simply aren’t enough EV’s to make it profitable yet, and Tesla has a huge network that's getting bigger by the day and covers Tesla’s, so they don’t need Government chargers, free enterprise worked and Tesla is raking in the profit.

The EV’s need to be built first, then the chargers will make sense.

But what’s  interesting to me is Tesla is growing at huge exponential rates.

But the other car manufacturers can’t build cars due to shortages

https://www.statista.com/statistics/715421/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-production/

 

 

Edited May 22, 2022 by A64Pilot

[philiplane]

There is a new Level 3 commercial charging station in a shopping plaza around the corner from my house.

It has four ports, with capacity to add two more. Total cost, $280K. These average $50k per port, plus any additional site work such as landscaping. 

At $5-20 per charge, it will take awhile to make any money on this.

[A64Pilot]

18 minutes ago, philiplane said:

There is a new Level 3 commercial charging station in a shopping plaza around the corner from my house.

It has four ports, with capacity to add two more. Total cost, $280K. These average $50k per port, plus any additional site work such as landscaping. 

At $5-20 per charge, it will take awhile to make any money on this.

What’s a new gas station cost?

I don’t know how valid this is, but it says 2.5 Mil. 

https://www.profitableventure.com/cost-start-a-gas-station/

Apparently there is very little money in a gas station, they only have a 1.4% profit margin, which is very low.

I’m certain Tesla’s profit is much higher

https://thehustle.co/why-most-gas-stations-dont-make-money-from-selling-gas/

Tesla apparently “only” makes a Billion a year on its chargers but by opening them to all EV’s that number is expected to hit 25 Billion.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tesla-confirms-opening-supercharger-network-to-other-evs-what-s-the-revenue-potential-1030652724

25 Billion, sound like a lot of money to me? (future profits) Notice who is doing the analysis, it’s not some green fan boy company

Edited May 22, 2022 by A64Pilot

[A64Pilot]

Either this EV thing is the biggest Hype in US history, or there is money in it, and it’s going to happen. 

[aviatoreb]

33 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Either this EV thing is the biggest Hype in US history, or there is money in it, and it’s going to happen. 

In world history since it is happening around the world.

[Fly Boomer]

35 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Either this EV thing is the biggest Hype in US history, or there is money in it, and it’s going to happen. 

If there is money in it, it's going to happen regardless of headwinds.

[A64Pilot]

49 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

If there is money in it, it's going to happen regardless of headwinds.

One could argue that it HAS happened.

However where the electricity is going to come from is an unanswered issue. Average US house uses 30 KWH per day on average,

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3

we use 16 KWH per day driving about 80 miles a day, and we are driving the most efficient of all the EV’s, the PU’s and SUV’s will likely use twice as much, so as much as the average house isn’t an unrealistic forecast and that’s just one vehicle, but not everyone drives that far either. If so then we are going to double the average house electrical consumption if we go all in on this EV thing. Some of these PU’s etc are planned to have way over 100 KWH batteries, three days of the average house.

Maybe the Government needs to be looking at subsidizing power plants and not charging stations or the purchase price of the vehicles?

If as someone else said that electric rates are controlled and not allowed to rise, then due to the higher cost of fuel the electrical producers have to be just getting by if not at a loss, how can they invest in new plants? All supposition based on another’s comments, but my electric costs haven’t risen.

Sure it’s a future problem, but how much excess electrical generating capacity is there?

Edited May 22, 2022 by A64Pilot

[N201MKTurbo]

I believe Elon Musk estimates the world’s electric production needs to triple if we went all electric. 
California seems incapable of building any power plants (except in Arizona). That’s going to need to change.

[tgardnerh]

California seems incapable of building any power plants (except in Arizona). That’s going to need to change.

As a recent emigrant from CA, the fair statement is "California seems incapable of building anything."

Apparently Tokyo alone builds more housing every year than the entire state, no wonder it's insanely expensive.

And never mind that building density in cities with costal CA weather is probably the quickest way to reduce carbon emissions. Regardless of what you think about CO2, the mismatch between policy and stated goals in CA is stunning.
\end{soapbox rant}


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Fly Boomer]

1 hour ago, A64Pilot said:

Sure it’s a future problem, but how much excess electrical generating capacity is there?

Not enough.  Right now, I can't think of anything other than nuclear, and that takes a long time to bring online.  Any nuclear boats having meltdowns?  Why can't we just line up enough of those power plants to do the job.  My sense is they are pretty safe.

[T. Peterson]

3 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

Either this EV thing is the biggest Hype in US history, or there is money in it, and it’s going to happen. 

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I am curious about the manufacturing feasibility of changing over the entire country to EVs. Realistically is there enough raw material to to make the requisite batteries? I may be entirely wrong, but my understanding is that there is not enough and what does exist is located mostly in China. Is that true or have I been misinformed?

Torrey

[midlifeflyer]

I figure the horseless carriage will never replace the buggy and man will never fly.

[A64Pilot]

10 hours ago, T. Peterson said:

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I am curious about the manufacturing feasibility of changing over the entire country to EVs. Realistically is there enough raw material to to make the requisite batteries? I may be entirely wrong, but my understanding is that there is not enough and what does exist is located mostly in China. Is that true or have I been misinformed?

Torrey

First we are a global economy now, I’m not sure where the raw materials are, but don’t think they are in China.

https://energyx.com/blog/where-do-electric-vehicle-batteries-come-from/

However a very viable battery chemistry is LifePo4 AKA Lithium Iron, less energy dense, but it has many other advantages, it’s mostly only built in China, they have some kind of patent or whatever, but think it expires this year. Interesting thing to me is the LifePo4 battery was invented or designed or whatever at the University of Tx quite awhile ago.

All EV’s except for Tesla standard range use Li-ion, that’s been doped, different recipes exist. Tesla from the very beginning used off the shelf Panasonic 18650 cells, they have gotten larger as 2170 and now I believe 4680. The numbers correlate to size in mm. Essentially thousands of flashlight batteries, everybody else uses much larger purpose built fewer cells. I though the thousands of flashlight cells was because it existed and Tesla didn’t have the money to build a purpose built battery, but they persisted with it, so it must work really well, but you would think a battery with thousands of cells is one with thousands of failure points?

Anyway an issue you pointed out is availability of battery materials, that’s just one issue I have with the typical US thinking with the upcoming EV’s from Ford and GM, the batteries are almost three time the capacity in our Tesla, meaning of course you could build and fuel three Tesla’s or one long range F-150.

So in my opinion if we built efficient vehicles we could build a great many more, but apparently the thought is electricity is plentiful and cheap so why bother with efficiency? Efficiency is hard and time consuming, and inefficient is faster, easier and cheaper to build.

You know if we just would drive efficient ICE vehicles, the “need” for EV’s would be a whole lot less, we could double the fleet fuel mileage with efficient Hybrids, but we won’t. 

Remember anything anything new comes out, many stand up to tell why it can’t work, it’s news, and news makes money.

Tesla manufactures all its own batteries in a joint venture with Panasonic, mostly in the US. However it’s cheapest car now uses Chinese Lifepo4 batteries, probably because Tesla battery supplies were holding back speed of the company expansion and by using Chinese batteries, that freed up the Tesla batteries to go in the more expensive models.

If your interested of all the vehicles you can buy, the Tesla is the most US made, from US manufactured components.

That was another reason I bought one, you can argue the BMW’s and Mercedes etc are built in the US, but the money made goes back to Germany or Korea etc

Edited May 23, 2022 by A64Pilot

[Will.iam]

19 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

 

but my electric costs haven’t risen.

 

Not sure what state you live in but here in DFW my electric rates are about to almost double at my next contract renewal. We have deregulated electricity and i had a contract for 8.9 cents per kwh one of the main reasons I didn’t go solar power as my rate was cheaper than their 12 cents per kwh contract. But with this renewal coming up the cheapest i found was 16.1 cents per kwh so solar panels would now be a good option to reduce our bill that will about double starting in late June. 

[jaylw314]

17 hours ago, T. Peterson said:

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I am curious about the manufacturing feasibility of changing over the entire country to EVs. Realistically is there enough raw material to to make the requisite batteries? I may be entirely wrong, but my understanding is that there is not enough and what does exist is located mostly in China. Is that true or have I been misinformed?

Torrey

Lithium is widely abundant and available worldwide (heck, there are multiple towns of "Lithia Springs" in the US).  It's more a question of whether it's cost-effective enough to try to build the industry and infrastructure to mine it, and in the US that's not typically been the case historically.  That may (or should) change in the future, and I know they're talking about it in southern Oregon, for example.

However, a lot of the rare-earth metals used in relatively small amounts are used in Li ion formulations, like @AH64D mentioned.  Cobalt in particular, IIRC.  Much of those sources are stuck in China for the forseeable future.  I can't remember for sure, but I think the LiFePO4 formulation @AH64D mentioned uses little or no rare earths (don't quote me on that!)

Edited May 23, 2022 by jaylw314

[Will.iam]

8 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

First we are a global economy now, I’m not sure where the raw materials are, but don’t think they are in China.

https://energyx.com/blog/where-do-electric-vehicle-batteries-come-from/

However a very viable battery chemistry is LifePo4 AKA Lithium Iron, less energy dense, but it has many other advantages, it’s mostly only built in China, they have some kind of patent or whatever, but think it expires this year. Interesting thing to me is the LifePo4 battery was invented or designed or whatever at the University of Tx quite awhile ago.

All EV’s except for Tesla standard range use Li-ion, that’s been doped, different recipes exist. Tesla from the very beginning used off the shelf Panasonic 18650 cells, they have gotten larger as 2170 and now I believe 4680. The numbers correlate to size in mm. Essentially thousands of flashlight batteries, everybody else uses much larger purpose built fewer cells. I though the thousands of flashlight cells was because it existed and Tesla didn’t have the money to build a purpose built battery, but they persisted with it, so it must work really well, but you would think a battery with thousands of cells is one with thousands of failure points?

Anyway an issue you pointed out is availability of battery materials, that’s just one issue I have with the typical US thinking with the upcoming EV’s from Ford and GM, the batteries are almost three time the capacity in our Tesla, meaning of course you could build and fuel three Tesla’s or one long range F-150.

So in my opinion if we built efficient vehicles we could build a great many more, but apparently the thought is electricity is plentiful and cheap so why bother with efficiency? Efficiency is hard and time consuming, and inefficient is faster, easier and cheaper to build.

You know if we just would drive efficient ICE vehicles, the “need” for EV’s would be a whole lot less, we could double the fleet fuel mileage with efficient Hybrids, but we won’t. 

Remember anything anything new comes out, many stand up to tell why it can’t work, it’s news, and news makes money.

Tesla manufactures all its own batteries in a joint venture with Panasonic, mostly in the US. However it’s cheapest car now uses Chinese Lifepo4 batteries, probably because Tesla battery supplies were holding back speed of the company expansion and by using Chinese batteries, that freed up the Tesla batteries to go in the more expensive models.

If your interested of all the vehicles you can buy, the Tesla is the most US made, from US manufactured components.

That was another reason I bought one, you can argue the BMW’s and Mercedes etc are built in the US, but the money made goes back to Germany or Korea etc

 

Caranddriver had an interesting long term review of the Tesla 3. The biggest eye opener for me was the less than EPA stated efficiency of real world eMPG numbers they got. With winter cold really having a much bigger effect on range compared to an ICE or that rapid charging can cost more than the efficiency of an ICE and that blended charging of some rapid most slow at home charging came out to the equivalent ICE that gets 50mpg. Not nearly as efficient as the 113 to 141 eMPG  stated from EPA. I know I would be pretty disappointed if i got those kind of numbers in real life driving but being down in texas where the winters are not as harsh nor would i have to get those costly brake cleaning services because we do not routinely salt our roads maybe the numbers would be more inline with what marketing is stating  

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a30209598/2019-tesla-model-3-reliability-maintenance/
 

 

[Mooney Dog]

1 hour ago, Will.iam said:

8.9 cents per kwh one of the main reasons I didn’t go solar power as my rate was cheaper than their 12 cents per kwh contract.

are you getting screwed with this "must use 1000KWH a month" thing as well? 

[A64Pilot]

4 hours ago, Will.iam said:

 

Caranddriver had an interesting long term review of the Tesla 3. The biggest eye opener for me was the less than EPA stated efficiency of real world eMPG numbers they got. With winter cold really having a much bigger effect on range compared to an ICE or that rapid charging can cost more than the efficiency of an ICE and that blended charging of some rapid most slow at home charging came out to the equivalent ICE that gets 50mpg. Not nearly as efficient as the 113 to 141 eMPG  stated from EPA. I know I would be pretty disappointed if i got those kind of numbers in real life driving but being down in texas where the winters are not as harsh nor would i have to get those costly brake cleaning services because we do not routinely salt our roads maybe the numbers would be more inline with what marketing is stating  

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a30209598/2019-tesla-model-3-reliability-maintenance/
 

 

I know I’ve read that report, it’s not even close to what I get, now we live in Fl so heating is a joke and we only home charge, plus the car is “preconditioned” before we get into it meaning the interior is already 68F because that’s what we have it set for, we use I think 218 WH per mile, EPA number is I think 250. Their consumption was over 300? Pre conditioning uses grid power if your plugged in, we plug in every afternoon.

Some of their numbers I have a hard time believing, our cost per mile is 3ish cents they claimed supercharging in the winter drove it up to 22? 600% increase is hard to swallow. But they do admit to 4c when home charging not in Winter. I pay 14c a KWH at home and 32c to Supercharge, but that 32c is based on how many KWH the battery absorbed, not the charger used because the faster you charge, the greater the losses due to heat. So if I Supercharge I guess it 10c per mile? 

From what I can find home charging is about 95% efficient, but fast charging is about 80%

Plus the car mags are very heavily influenced by who buys their advertising and Tesla buys none, BMW can do no wrong, look at how many full page adds they buy every month. Then add in their model 3 had electric resistance heating and the newer cars have heat pumps, but their numbers are suspect, does anyone take their car to the dealer to have the tires rotated? Then the brake fluid flush and drivetrain oil change has been deleted, probably not a bad idea if you want to keep the car forever, but it’s not on the maintenance schedule anymore. Tire rotation is all there is, I do that myself, but I’ve heard it’s cheap to have done. But that’s not an EV thing all cars should rotate their tires although I know many don’t.

Mode 3 maintenance schedule https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-E95DAAD9-646E-4249-9930-B109ED7B1D91.html

An EV with electric resistance heating loses about 40% of its range, or said another way it uses 40% more power in real cold weather. Heat pumps are of course more efficient and the Tesla one does neat things like park in the sun and it will move heat from the cabin and store it in the battery, then on your drive home move it from the battery back to the cabin. But in stupid cold weather with a cold soaked car it operates at a COP (Coeffienct  of Performance) of 1, meaning it’s no more efficient than resistance heat in stupid as in sub zero cold.

ICE cars, heat is a waste product so it’s free of course.

EV’s I’ve said over and over aren’t the perfect solution for everyone, if I lived in real cold place I wouldn’t want one, cold and batteries don’t work well plus the heat consumption thing. If I didn’t have a garage I wouldn’t want one, and if I lived way out like a lot of Montana I probably wouldn’t want one.

But for the majority of people they are fine, and for us in Florida it’s perfect. I don’t think we have used the heat yet, hope it works.

Edited May 24, 2022 by A64Pilot