A petro-licious gear head motorcycle, aircraft, automotive, and energy geek nerd enthusiast through & through, I found my wheelhouse with a 05 Prius II via hypermiling regen experience, block heating the 1NX-FXE with an extension cord even at my apartment parking lot all winter. Its given me 44-52 MPG on regular pump gasoline for its entire life of more than 160,000 miles so far without every breaking down & keeps going, even with the OEM hybrid battery in perfect condition. But the numb driving experience via electric power steering & relatively noisy harsh ride make for a less favorable experience.
Modern life exists on a knife edge, that knife made of grid power electricity. If the power turns off for a prolonged period, everything will go to seed in short order. I am writing to warm you about this, because you need to prepare for when bullets, water bottles & toilet paper become the most valuable things that gold & silver can buy.
The mental focus cycling workload I do with the Scan Guage 2 keeps my mind active as I glance at its monochromatic LCD data channels to monitory engine & air temps, & many other variables that can be cycled with buttons on the corners of the display frame, which is mounted below the central stereo console fits perfectly in the little door covered holder pocket, that I wired an OBDII connector into so the Scan Guage 2 can connect to the OBDII port under the steering wheel area of the dashboard. I use this to monitor engine & battery parameters while hypermiling to eek out even better performance while still getting stellar fuel economy using tricks I learned via Wayne Gerdes on Green Car Congress & Autoblog/Green many years ago :) I also use the Scan-gauge 2 to clear OBDII MIL warning codes 0000 & 0420 that happen now after replacing the stollen OEM Catalytic Converter & downstream O2 sensor, as the aftermarket very cheap solution has different thermal electrical properties so the O2 sensor sends the wrong voltage range to the ECU as the engine temp approaches 177 F, on its way to 186 F full operating temperature, trigger the MIL lamps with the aforementioned codes retrieved & erased by the Scan Gauge 2 or a very cheap OBDII tool in Meg's 2010 Prius because it suffered the same Catalytic Converter & downstream O2 sensor theft issue as my 05 Prius.
You can obtain up to 30-40% better fuel economy by simply using light hypermiling driving techniques like not rapid acceleration, maintaining your speed by predictive traffic lights & traffic patterns up ahead, keeping more of your speed in corners only when its clear and safe to do so, going 15 mph instead of 7 around the corner; removing extra cargo from your car, stuff in the trunk, in some cases like removing 2 average adults of mass, which improves performance & fuel economy at the same time, especially improving cornering & handling performance. Think safe, smooth, steady, predictive driving with forward patterns analysis & watch other pedestrians, people on bicycles or kick scooters or electric scooters & other cars, trucks, SUV's, School Buses & work trucks to make sure they are driving safe & not posing an immediate of upcoming hazard to your route of travel.
There are hybrid, plug in hybrid, pure electric, battery electric, fuel-cell electric, RF electric, ZPE electric, nuclear fission electric vehicles like aircraft carriers sub submarines. As of February 2023, there are more than 100 battery electric passenger vehicles for sale from the world's automakers that have superior energy efficiency than even the best gasoline fueled Toyota Prius Prime or similar. Sodium Ion battery electric vehicles are emerging as a way to overcome the higher cost of cobalt & lithium supply chain issues while magnet-less electric motors are enabling a way to bypass the use of expensive rare earth metals supplied & controlled by China. Radical advances in AC motor controllers & high-power silicon carbide switching chip motor controller circuitry enabling even better range & performance in existing & near-term electric cars & similar electric motorcycles or electric passenger vehicles, even the electric kick scooters & other personal mobility devices that I really like, in the Segway MP for example.
Gasoline engines, like the very popular 2L 4cyclindar engines used by 22 automakers across 600 different vehicles, in naturally aspirated flavors for lower power solutions while supercharging & turbocharging & direct injection & variable valve timing & electronic ignition control make exceptional 350+ HP & similar torque figures, well more than 100 HP per liter, in the piston powered helicopter engine power to mass performance envelope range like the common turbo ROTAX motors in such small lite 2 seater helicopters not powered by expensive turbine engines that are featured in much more costly Helicopters, where piston powered versions are hundreds of thousands of dollars, the turbine powered models cost millions of dollars. With operating costs of $400-5000 per hour, helicopters are expensive to operate, largely because of their regular costly maintenance costs, but also because of helicopter fuel costs & low passenger or low cargo mass carrying capacities, meaning very high cost per hour per seat where aircraft like the 777 from Boeing able to fly for $2 per person per hour of flight when fully loaded with 450+ passengers, by comparison.
Air mostly nitrogen, giving rise to NOX in combustion engine exhaust emissions, that can be reduced back to N2 with catalytic converters, but this not always cost effective or practical, in many lawn & garden tools, pressure washers, generators, lawn mower, chain saws, or other mass sensitive applications where small 2 stroke motors are still used legally even in countries with strict emission controls regulations & laws. Small oil fuel mix 2 stoke engines emit up to 200x more toxic emissions per gallon of fuel used than a common gasoline fueled automobile model year 2014 of newer.
Modern Diesel school buses like the one I drive as a School Bus Driver, Class B CDL holder, have more than $30,000 of exhaust emissions controls installed to clean up the CUMMINS diesel engine exhaust emission, with DEF injection & particulate filters & other selective exhaust emission control methods to reduce toxic emission in the exhaust gases, to reduce harmful emission in the vicinity of where the bus engines are running. This important because Students have younger more sensitive lung cells more easily harmed by diesel exhaust pollutants. In many ways, traditional petrochemical diesel a finite dead end of climate changing toxic air pollution, but DME fuel conversion & hydro-diesel & biodiesel retrofitting of existing diesel engines enables a lower cost pathway to emissions reductions to improve local air quality for the benefit of improving local public health improved by reducing air pollutant exposure to toxic vehicle exhaust emissions.
Synthetic fuels that are far cleaner burning, that enhance engine oil life, make few toxic emissions when compared with traditional fuels, for example GTL or gas to liquids fuels by Shell, made of gasified coal or natural gas, which can be recovered from agricultural waste ponds of pig poop or cattle dung or via trash dump natural gas recovery, or even just pipelining natural gas from oil & gas operations that currently flare it off as a waste product, to be sold as a market commodity.
Energy will become a very important topic worldwide in both economic & political arenas. as well as continuing to trend in the public consciousness & mass media because of its social, personal & financial effects on individual working members of the public, their parents & children & grandchildren, neighbors, communities. For air conditioning or HVAC for heating & cooling buildings & vehicles, even electric ones. I woke up at 4 am thinking about heat pumps & how to make solid state water bottles that chill beverages using DC current & the latest fan-less chipset cooler technology. Chilling a beverage for consumption might sound odd given the current winter weather conditions of sub-freezing air, ice, snow, but think ahead to hot summer weather & a cold beer or chilled glass of sweet white wine, though a Gin & Tonic with fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice, sour, tart, bitter & tannic, with some floral & citrus notes, that's more my jam. That involves keeping the Tonic water cool, making ice cubes by freezing water, keeping the lemons & limes cool to enhance their shelf life. Want to make on demand on the go, well that might only be worth a few dollars, if you stop to buy a bag of ice from a gas station or similar place on the road, but I assure you, making ice very important. Consider the value of portable vaccine fridges with helium coolant Stirling cryocoolers that cool to -80 C, similar to a portable cooler in size & mass, they can cost tens of thousands of dollars like some sort of aerospace part! Ultracold, deep freezing on the go a particular hard challenge to do on very small scales.
Many industrial processes that are feasible to conduct on large throughput operations often fail to be realized at the personal scale, like the Harvest Right Home Freeze Dryer made in Utah, USA. Making something that is cheap & easy to use that also does something amazing using technology becomes a headache when you have to run a vacuum pump with frequent oil changes of light refined mineral oil lubricant because the exhaust gas stream exiting to sublimination cool dried food contaminates the hot oil in the vacuum pump.
Using such technologies in mobile platforms becomes even more complicated as making that kind of 2000+ watts of electricity for 40+ hours continuously not an insignificant engineering challenge, & given the value of multiple KW portable energy storage & portable power generation technologies, with value in directed energy weapons applications, makes such systems maintenance heavy in the case of power generators, think air cooled with engine oil changes every 25-50 hours of operation, or $2-5 USD2023 per kilowatt hour of energy made. So operating an energy gobbling heat pump, deep freezer, vacuum pump, on the go, means you need an RV with a robust expensive electrical system, usually plugged into the grid or mains, since making thousands of watts with roof mounted PV that's also water proof & sturdily mounted so wind pressure does not rip them off at freeway speeds, this not cheap or easy, and storing many tens of kilowatt hours of electricity means an array of non-trivially costly batteries & charge controllers & relays & wiring & connectors & so forth.
Yes, recreating the power grid in a portable system means a large vehicles with many KW of power. This is why automotive engineers used gasoline & diesel fueled engines. Thermal engines like the 2 liter 4 cylinder engines popular with automakers today offer 80-300 KW of power, with 10-45 MPG or 14 to 3.8 liters of fuel per 100km of fuel economy respectively. Thats a lot of energy on the go in a relatively small package in terms of volume. The high-performance engines are turbocharged. 500cc displacement for each cylinder makes a special balance in engines that engine engineers discovered after more than 100 years of piston engine redesigns & optimizations. While most cars & automobiles available to common vehicle buyers today offer 150+ kw of performance with fuel economy of 24-30 MPG or around 6-9 liters per 100 km fuel economy. Thats with engines with thermal efficiency lower than 40% at converting the fuels chemical energy into power to move the vehicle down the road & run all the driver assists & other sizzle technologies via the alternator generator or similar DC power converters in AC drive battery electric vehicles.
Consider the BMW I3-REx, in particular the 22kw range extending generator with 600lbs of mass added to the range extended versions of that CRFP intensive compliance vehicle made in medium volumes to sell in markets with complex emissions control laws & fleet fuel economy standards. Since BMW makes motorcycles, they borrowed that 600cc twin engine from one of their other products, then beefed up an magneto design for the crankshaft to turn it into a power generator. Automobile solutions like that are expected to last 3000 hours & required maintenance every few hundred hours of operation or every few thousand miles of operation. If you wonder why an automobile engine requires less oil change frequency than your portable power generator, then consider the cost. At higher cost structures its possible to make better longer lasting engines.
Consider what Toyota did in the 1NZ-FXE engine in the 04-09 Prius, that's totally impractical to do in a $2000 or less emergency backup generator. My 2020 Yamaha MT-03 motorcycle puts down about 37 hp to the rear wheels with some 45 HP made in the 321cc offset DIASil aluminum engine refined in the R3, with O2 sensor ECU fuel injection emissions controls & catalytic converters, it 56-84 MPG with a tank of ~14 L or 3.5 gal, so range many hundreds of miles before cheap 5 minute refueling at a retail gas station, of which their are many locally & many millions worldwide. Thats a hard system to replace with electrical outlets, EV charging & battery electric vehicles for 10+ billion people. I mention this MT-03 because its ~30kw engine & 373 lb mass, when similar bikes that weigh 50lb more make 3x or 4x more power from larger engines, like the middle weight ADV bikes with 600-800cc engines. I actually wanted a Honda CB500F when Meg purchased me the Yamaha MT-03, but they were not available because of COVID. We did not even know about the MT-03 when I discovered it & the DARK SIDE OF JAPAN Master of Torque ideas from Yamaha's marketing department :)
Will this or that vehicle work during a prolonged global power outage? Keep it in a metal shed, with a metal floor, metal doors, a Faraday Cage, all electrically bonded to ground & maybe the ECU & fuel injection & battery & other electronics & chips essential for your vehicle to function, might still work after the CME blows out most other grid connected electrical devices of all kinds & types. You can remove the battery from your smartphone, wrap the phone in plastic wrap, then wrap that in aluminum foil & place that into a metal ammo can with metal lid & close that, put that into a metal safe, it might still work, but how will you charge it. Will the cell systems, Wi-Fi routers, internet or anything else still work? You can kiss your Steam gaming & YouTube & streaming Netflix goodbye. Bullets, water bottles & toilet paper become the most valuable commodities when society falls apart & crime lords with armed gangs of warped sickos take over. Good luck finding gasoline for sale. Fridges, microwave ovens, electric stoves, washing machines, dryers, most of the sizzle that makes warm homes in the winter, even the blower motor fan in the furnace, required electricity to function.
Without electricity, modern society does not work, cannot function. Societies with electricity that are suddenly forced to operate without electricity are similar to societies that get the fuel cutoff with higher prices, think recession or stagflation or the opposite of progress & development, degeneration, social decay & crime escalation into chaos & worse than war like conditions. All those electric vehicles are useless without a way to recharge the 100kWh battery pack. Sure, the rooftop solar PV on the elite homes will work with the Tesla Charger wall station for that latest Model S3XY etc, but where will they go when none of the traffic intersection controller lights are working, when all the stores are closed, long ago looted to nothing in stock by ravenous hungry desperate people just tryng to survive the land of the dead when the lights are turned off for 6+ months & 90% of the human population dies off in short order.
I found this when researching this F17 gaming laptop power efficiency settings, vs performance for playing No Man's Sky or other Steam games :)
Power efficient settings in Windows 11
Updates to the default Screen and sleep settings now help you use energy more efficiently and extend battery life.
Save energy
We need energy to power our electronic devices. When energy is produced, carbon is often emitted. This is because much of the world’s energy today is created through the burning of fossil fuels.
Microsoft is committed to reducing the environmental impact caused by the energy use of our products, including when devices are idle. With power efficient settings, you don’t need to worry about using energy on your device when it’s idle—Screen and sleep settings will put your device in a low power state while you’re not using it.
Help improve battery life
Lithium-ion batteries age over time, which can result in a battery not holding a charge for as long as it did when it was new. The capacity of lithium-ion cells is reduced after a certain number of times the battery is charged and then discharged. As a result, you’ll need to charge your battery more often, and the overall battery capacity may be lower. Power efficient settings help extend your battery life by minimizing the amount of battery needed to power your device when you’re not using it. These settings turn off your screen and put your device to sleep when not in use.
Reduce Emissions
Because much of our energy today is produced from the burning of fossil fuels, reducing the amount of energy we consume results in fewer carbon emissions. Together, we can help reduce our carbon impact for computers by using power efficient settings.
Updated default Screen and sleep settings
Windows defaults for Screen and sleep have been updated to reduce energy use when your device is idle. The tables below show the new default values for Screen and sleep.
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