IIRC, I’ll be able to fill the batteries at off-peak if needed, but with 200+ days of sun here, hopefully it’s a rare occasion.

It’s my understanding that our solar panels will be able to mostly run the house (unless I’m welding, or other large draw) during the day only after first charging the battery.  From there, I believe the only time we’ll access power from the grid is if the battery gets low enough overnight between daylight hours. …

Ugh.  The late fall, early winter flood of root crops in our old subscription... we’d save them up for a month and a half or so, and do a gigantic root-veg roast in the oven.  Parsnips, turnips, rootybegas, celery root... I had no problem dealing with the gobs of beets we’d get, but the more obscure roots took finesse…

I’ve personally had two conversations with our rep/installer about our system. My neighbors have virtually the same, and my Mother in Law a town away has a similar, but smaller, setup.

I just can’t imagine ever supporting anyone that unhinged... it’s the same with trump supporters, or Joe Rogan (the Gwyneth Paltrow for Men™) adherents.

Installation is finalized Wednesday. From what I’ve gathered from minimal conversations about our system is that our panels will first fill the battery, then our house will run on whatever is available via the panels until sundown when we run on battery alone through early morning, switching to the grid if the battery…

I say this as someone who just laid out $40k for a battery/solar array in CA... we made sure Nothing came from Tesla. That lies solely on He-Lon acting like an entitled douchebag. Factor in the “Self Made Millionaire” myth he propagates, when he had literal fucking jewels to sell when he felt poor. We couldn’t in good…

the Gods wasted a perfectly good asshole when they put teeth in your mouth.

This. I have a Sony head unit (IIRC 7") with no Disc player on it in my 68 Scout. If I ever get out of cell range, I have flash drives full of Spider John Koerner, Charlie Parr and dozens of Discworld and Stephen King audiobooks. I plug in my phone, Google maps comes up, or Spotify, or Audible, and off I go. There’s…

In 1985 my sainted Father heard tell that a co-worker had a 1953 Morris Minor in the weeds behind his house that was free for the taking. This was in International Falls, MN. One Sunday morning we loaded up our ‘76 Scout Terra with 4 new tires, a gas can, his collection of half-used and 1/4 hardened tubes of various…

Like how BEV’s skirt most road taxes, as they pay for no fuel?  I’m all for going by weight and odo reading.  We have the ability.

I read about that fuel.  Seems legit.  Yours is the first mention outside the article I read on it.  

Maybe that’s why the sales guy at the local Volvo dealership was so fucking grumpy and had zero, zip, nada to say about the XC40 Recharge I was curious about yesterday. He knows the writing’s on the wall.

I hope Polestar gets reinvented as you said as their performance Marque, but also uses their engineering magic to produce conversion kits for the older models. There’s a BEV Polestar P1800 Cyan that’s bloody incredible. I don’t know if it was a Polestar engie who made it, but whoever made that car should work for them…

I picked my Scout project partially for this reason. It’ll be the last ICE I’ll own, and I can reasonably easily keep going until we can justify a BEV conversion. Our 07 XC90 will last just long enough that we’ll have a great variety of options when we finally pull the trigger on a BEV (neither my wife or I have…

I had a good look at an XC40 Recharge, and it’s older sibling the XC90 recharge yesterday. I’m still adjusting to whatever new vehicle we get having a big screen in the middle, but the rest of the inside of both was definitely not stark.

Sonoma County has gone so far as knocking 20% off the top for solar/battery arrays and the construction upgrades needed to support them. Our rebates equaled $16k which we rolled into a larger battery and better controller. It’s getting installed this week, in fact.

They seem too busy trying to resurrect meaningless heaps of rust and shilling crappy head units to actually peel a layer or two off the top of Automotive news.  I ditched Autoblog years ago because the format drove me nuts.  

This is his new ‘Anchor” vehicle.

I’ve always advocated for an arts grant to place Acme Crates, mocked-up large slingshots, and the occasional fake tunnel-through-the-mountain graphic to break up the monotony of driving in the Southwest.