It's good business to support Electric Vehicles. It is also very easy for a business to get started.
There are many things that a business can do to support Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). I've been surprised at how slowly businesses have been to embrace this growing community.
Most people look at it and think that it is complicated or expensive and the reality is that they are wrong. It is easy and inexpensive to take the first steps. I'll talk about ways a business can start small and attract a new, growing demographic out there.
The first step is to take one or all of the light posts in your parking lot. Have an electrician add an exterior 120V outlet to the light post. This is a standard three-prong outlet that you would see on the outside of your house or on your porch. I recommend one that has Ground Fault Interrupt (GFI) capability. Then just paint the stripes on the parking spaces near this lamp post with green paint. Let your customers know that these are designated for EVs or PHEVs.
If you look at it, you're already paying a lot of money to light the parking lot at night. Those high power lights in your parking lot are driving a huge overhead expense. Compare that with the 2-5 kWh that any EV or PHEV will pull from the same circuit.
Don't charge for this service. The national average electric rate is $0.12 per kWh. The Chevy Volt and Ford Fusion have batteries that are only about 7-10 kWh in capacity. To fill a 7.5 kWh battery on 120V charing takes about 8 hours. So either the customers will have to spend hours in your store, likely buying things or they are going to take around $0.25 of electricity from you. The fact that you offer EV spots will bring clients that will more than make up for the $0.25 you spend to charge their vehicle.
You don't need fancy charging stations with 240V plugs and the like. Every EV or PHEV has the ability to charge from a standard 120V outlet. You don't have to lose huge sections of your parking lot either. With a heavy duty power cord, only a cord of 25 feet or less is considered safe for the amperage being drawn to recharge. This means that drivers don't have huge extension cords. You only need to designate the adjacent parking spots as EV spots.
You don't have to lose close parking spots. Right now the drivers of EVs and PHEVs are sacrificing to move the technology forward. The cars are expensive and the charging locations are few. This community is okay with walking a little further from their car to your door if it means they might get 3 or 4 more miles of EV distance from plugging in.
After you have set up the electric charging spots, let people know about it. You can put up a poster in your window. Customers will see the new green parking spaces. Then go to websites like plugshare.com and register your business as one with free charing. The community of EV and PHEV drivers are using Apps and websites like PlugShare.com to find businesses that offer charing stations. Sure there are places with fancy 240V charging stations and charging stations that cost money. Your 120V free spots will still be noticed since very few businesses are doing anything. Look around at your neighbors. They haven't gotten on board yet. You should also know that the Ford Mobile website for EV and PHEV drivers pulls its information directly from PlugShare.com. By registering your outlets, every Ford driver will be able to find your business.
There are two types of businesses who can really take advantage of offering charging stations, even 120V stations. They are hotels and family restaurants.
Hotels are easy. People are spending the night there. That means they are likely to be there for the full 8 hours that it takes to charge a PHEV completely. Even a full charge for a PHEV at the national average rate will cost you $1.20 per car. There just aren't that many cars out there. If you really need the money charge everyone who stays there an extra $1.20 a night and you'll cover this utility cost. As a PHEV driver, if I pull off the Interstate and there are two hotels, one that offers charging and one that doesn't, I'll stay at the one with the charging station, even if it is $5 more per night. We do this for the future, not for the money.
Family Restaurants are a little more difficult to see. This applies to any sit down restaurant. First this may get EV and PHEV drivers just to come in the front door. Even if they don't get much charge from your parking lot, they will chose your restaurant over your neighbors and competitors. If they are charging, they are more likely to stay longer. This sounds like a bad thing since the restaurant business is based on turnover and volume. Still these customers are more likely to get an appetizer or desert or both if it means they get to charge for just a little bit longer. Any amount of charge is better than none. Appetizers and deserts are where the restaurant's highest margins are. Selling more of these is worth the lingering customer.
You don't need the high voltage, high amperage specialized charing stations. A 120V standard outdoor GFI outlet is fine. You don't need to charge for it. The cost to you is minimal and the benefits of advertising and public relations are huge. Pretty soon more and more businesses are going to figure out that there is profit in giving away free electricity. The paid charing stations will dry up and not recover the installation costs to their owners.
You can even convert the whole parking lot to have standard outlets and make a living. If you don't believe me take a road trip to Glacier National Park. Along the way stop in local cities in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Visit the local grocery stores and shopping malls. There is a shopping mall in Great Falls, Montana off 10th Ave South where there is an outlet in front of every parking space. I know because I used to live there. The prices for goods in the shops are comparable to those in any other store around the nation. These plugs were not installed for EVs or PHEVs. They've been there for decades. They were installed for block heaters.
A block heater is a heating element that screws into the engine block of a car. It has a standard three-prong plug that sticks out of the grill of the car. In places like North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana the winters can get so cold that oil in a car engine starts to change from a liquid to a solid, or more of a sludgy goo. The heater in the block keeps the oil liquid and easy to push around and lubricate the engine. The heating element is a constant draw of electricity to warm the inefficient heating element of the block heater. The whole time cars are plugged into these outlets they are drawing electricity. All of these outlets are free for customers to use so their engines don't seize up while they are shopping.
An EV or PHEV will only draw enough electrify for it to charge the battery. Once the 7-10 kWh are drawn, the car stops drawing electricity. If businesses in the northern tier have been able to make profits from giving away electricity, any business any where can do the same.
If you're worried about maintaining these outlets, don't worry. I don't think there is a harsher proving ground for these outlet stations than in North Dakota, South Dakota, or Montana. The temperatures can easily dip below -30 deg F. Then there is the ice. With foot traffic and parked cars it is difficult to clear snow from parking lots before it turns to ice. A car trying to park on a sheet of ice will slip and slide. Many times these posts have been run into by drivers and they still survive.
If they can do it, you can do it. And you can be the first in your shopping area to show your support for alternative energy vehicles like EVs and PHEVs. What are you waiting for?
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Electric Cars: The Perfect Second Vehicle
The electric vehicles (EVs) available today are the perfect second vehicle. If you know how to recharge your cell phone, you know how to recharge your EV. If you know how to drive a gasoline powered car, you know how to drive an EV.
One thing that Americans love is their automobile. We have been fascinated with cars since they came out. Today this love affair with our cars has created a demand for foreign sources of energy to run them. I believe the future of cars is electric cars. That future is starting right now.
There are a growing number of electric cars available on the market today from the Tesla Roadster to the Nissan Leaf. A lot of people are curious about them. The biggest fear is a single charge limit. The auto makers are playing off this fear to keep their gasoline cars in the market and on the streets. With a second car there is no need to fear current range limits.
Part of what we love about our cars is the road trip and since you can't drive halfway across the nation without recharging an electric car, many people stop looking at them. This isn't the whole story. For a single car household, an electric car won't work today. However most families have two cars. With dual income households becoming the norm, more of these households have two vehicles. For these families the electric car makes a lot of sense.
When you want to take the family to Walt Disney World, the Grand Canyon, or Wally World, you take the gasoline powered car or minivan. The rest of the year you can drive the electric car to and from work, grocery store, soccer practice, and McDonalds.
Most of the electric cars today are getting 100-130 miles on a charge. In city driving this is two to three hours. Try this out. Build a playlist for your phone or iPod that is three hours long. Each time you get in the car listen to this playlist. (In iTunes, you can create a Smart Playlist in about 5 minutes that will rotate the contents of this playlist so you aren't listening to the same songs day after day. More on this in another post.) Each time you get in the car, start playing this playlist. Do this for a week or two of regular activities. If you never get to the end of the playlist, you can expect that an electric car will work for you.
What most of us are missing is that we recharge an electric car each night while we sleep. Every morning we have a full tank to use for the day. Even if we drain the tank to nearly empty, we can fill up in our own garage. We don't have to make a special stop at a gas station to refuel. We all have the ability to refuel our electric cars in our houses today, with no special equipment.
Along these same lines, your first car, the car for the road trips, should be a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) or a hybrid vehicle. The PHEV will be the electric vehicle for most of the year. Only when you're on that long road trip will you start to use the gasoline engine and can refuel in a couple minutes at a gas station off the side of the Interstate.
You don't have to use the gasoline powered car for all trips. Many weekend destinations are within 100 miles of your home today. If you're taking a trip out of town for the weekend, do some research and make a couple phone calls. There is likely an outlet at your destination where you can charge. As soon as you get to the destination, plug in. You just drove two hours to get there, so you'll want to spend some time enjoying it. While you're enjoying the destination, your car is refueling for the return trip.
Here is the business secret in this post. If you're part of a motel or other travel destination, having free charging stations for guests or patrons is going to give you a competitive edge in attracting business away from your competitors. The group of EV and PHEV drivers today is small, but it is growing. Being EV friendly now will build a reputation for you. The Internet is allowing EV drivers to share information quicker and easier than ever before. If you don't believe me, check out www.PlugShare.com. Your neighbor may already be listed and getting business you didn't even know was available.
If you haven't quite made up your mind and are wondering if you can really recharge an electric vehicle in a day trip on a Saturday, consider that modern battery chargers don't charge linearly. What I mean is that if a full charge takes 10 hours, after 5 hours you're going to have more than 50% charge. You'll have something closer to 85% charge. Think about filling a large glass with water from the faucet. When you start, you turn the faucet on to its maximum flow. As the glass fills, you start decreasing the flow. When the glass is almost full, you have the faucet back to a small stream to make sure you don't overflow the glass. Battery chargers today work the same way. It is easiest, if not exactly correct, to think of it as an 80-20 split. In the first 20% of the charge time, the charger will fill the battery to 80% capacity. After this it slows down and takes its time.
Like the glass of water, the charger will not allow the battery to be over charged. This is where damage to the battery and loss of recharge cycles comes from. It's reasonable to expect that even during a one hour sit down family meal at a restaurant, you're going to get a significant recharge on your electric vehicle.
I hope after reading this, the next time you're in the market for a car, you consider the electric vehicles as well. It will reduce the impact of fluctuating gas prices from foreign sources on your monthly budget. They are also fun to drive.
One thing that Americans love is their automobile. We have been fascinated with cars since they came out. Today this love affair with our cars has created a demand for foreign sources of energy to run them. I believe the future of cars is electric cars. That future is starting right now.
There are a growing number of electric cars available on the market today from the Tesla Roadster to the Nissan Leaf. A lot of people are curious about them. The biggest fear is a single charge limit. The auto makers are playing off this fear to keep their gasoline cars in the market and on the streets. With a second car there is no need to fear current range limits.
Part of what we love about our cars is the road trip and since you can't drive halfway across the nation without recharging an electric car, many people stop looking at them. This isn't the whole story. For a single car household, an electric car won't work today. However most families have two cars. With dual income households becoming the norm, more of these households have two vehicles. For these families the electric car makes a lot of sense.
When you want to take the family to Walt Disney World, the Grand Canyon, or Wally World, you take the gasoline powered car or minivan. The rest of the year you can drive the electric car to and from work, grocery store, soccer practice, and McDonalds.
Most of the electric cars today are getting 100-130 miles on a charge. In city driving this is two to three hours. Try this out. Build a playlist for your phone or iPod that is three hours long. Each time you get in the car listen to this playlist. (In iTunes, you can create a Smart Playlist in about 5 minutes that will rotate the contents of this playlist so you aren't listening to the same songs day after day. More on this in another post.) Each time you get in the car, start playing this playlist. Do this for a week or two of regular activities. If you never get to the end of the playlist, you can expect that an electric car will work for you.
What most of us are missing is that we recharge an electric car each night while we sleep. Every morning we have a full tank to use for the day. Even if we drain the tank to nearly empty, we can fill up in our own garage. We don't have to make a special stop at a gas station to refuel. We all have the ability to refuel our electric cars in our houses today, with no special equipment.
Along these same lines, your first car, the car for the road trips, should be a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) or a hybrid vehicle. The PHEV will be the electric vehicle for most of the year. Only when you're on that long road trip will you start to use the gasoline engine and can refuel in a couple minutes at a gas station off the side of the Interstate.
You don't have to use the gasoline powered car for all trips. Many weekend destinations are within 100 miles of your home today. If you're taking a trip out of town for the weekend, do some research and make a couple phone calls. There is likely an outlet at your destination where you can charge. As soon as you get to the destination, plug in. You just drove two hours to get there, so you'll want to spend some time enjoying it. While you're enjoying the destination, your car is refueling for the return trip.
Here is the business secret in this post. If you're part of a motel or other travel destination, having free charging stations for guests or patrons is going to give you a competitive edge in attracting business away from your competitors. The group of EV and PHEV drivers today is small, but it is growing. Being EV friendly now will build a reputation for you. The Internet is allowing EV drivers to share information quicker and easier than ever before. If you don't believe me, check out www.PlugShare.com. Your neighbor may already be listed and getting business you didn't even know was available.
If you haven't quite made up your mind and are wondering if you can really recharge an electric vehicle in a day trip on a Saturday, consider that modern battery chargers don't charge linearly. What I mean is that if a full charge takes 10 hours, after 5 hours you're going to have more than 50% charge. You'll have something closer to 85% charge. Think about filling a large glass with water from the faucet. When you start, you turn the faucet on to its maximum flow. As the glass fills, you start decreasing the flow. When the glass is almost full, you have the faucet back to a small stream to make sure you don't overflow the glass. Battery chargers today work the same way. It is easiest, if not exactly correct, to think of it as an 80-20 split. In the first 20% of the charge time, the charger will fill the battery to 80% capacity. After this it slows down and takes its time.
Like the glass of water, the charger will not allow the battery to be over charged. This is where damage to the battery and loss of recharge cycles comes from. It's reasonable to expect that even during a one hour sit down family meal at a restaurant, you're going to get a significant recharge on your electric vehicle.
I hope after reading this, the next time you're in the market for a car, you consider the electric vehicles as well. It will reduce the impact of fluctuating gas prices from foreign sources on your monthly budget. They are also fun to drive.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Ford Fusion Energi SE
I'm loving my Ford Fusion Energi SE. I'd like to thank everyone at Revision3. First they are sponsored by Ford which let me know that Ford had some Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). Then the folks at Ford's Twitter account let me know I could also get Adaptive Cruise Control in the Fusion Energi SE.
As many of you know, this is not my first PHEV. My last one was a Toyota Prius with the Hymotion H5 conversion. I picked up a used 2008 Toyota Prius and the great folks at Pro Auto Care in Denver, CO converted it from a standard hybrid car to a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle.
I loved that car and was getting 80-90 miles per gallon (mpg) during regular use, which was commuting between home and work. Road trips to visit family were between 45m mpg and 50 mpg. Roughly a year ago, the conversion battery pack started giving me trouble and the company who originally built the conversion was in bankruptcy. The Toyota Prius kept working great.
Now things are better. With the conversion, the original Prius computer program was managing the switch between electric and gasoline modes. It was very hard to stay in a a pure electric mode. Every time you start the Prius, after about 20 seconds, the engine would turn on. I assume this was to warm up the catalytic converter to help with emissions for when the engine is needed. This would happen even if I hadn't taken it out of gear yet.
The next thing I learned with the Prius is that I had to keep speeds below 45 mph to run in electric mode. I assume this was to make the transmission switch easier if the engine power was eventually needed. There were a few times that I was coasting down a hill (i.e., no acceleration needed) and as the speed increased, the engine started.
I went into this adventure to learn about hybrids, PHEVs, and electric vehicles. I've been an advocate for hybrid cars since the first ride I got in one in 2003. A friend of mine had a Prius, and the first time the engine turned off when we were at a stop light, it blew my mind. I still believe the future of transportation is in electric vehicles. Hybrids are a necessary step on the way to that future. After years and years of talk, talk, talk about electric vehicles, I decided it was time for me to put my money where my mouth was and figure out if the hype could work for real people with real world driving conditions.
The result was that I learned owning was everything I thought it could be. It drives the same as any other car. I really liked that Toyota had a Smart Key system with push button start. The Smart Key meant I never had to fumble with keys. The push button start only makes sense because you're really booting up your car, not cranking the engine. The car taught me to accelerate and brake smarter as well. That helped me get even better gas mileage.
One thing I wasn't expecting was getting in my car each morning to a full tank. When you plug in your car each time you return home, you're refueling it. Gasoline cars and gas stations have taught us to monitor the gas level through the course of many trips and many days. In a PHEV, I still had to monitor the gas in the tank, but every morning the batteries were fully charged and ready to drive.
I also learned that it was simple to keep the car charged. It didn't take long to develop a habit of plugging the car into the wall each time I pulled into the garage. It is similar to the habits we build to plug in our cell phones to recharge them each day. We also have habits about getting ready in the morning. It is easy to add to this ritual unplugging the car and storing the extension cord.
One thing the manufacturers probably don't want you to know is that there is no need for the extra high voltage charging stations in your garage. All of the PHEVs on the market today offer the ability to charge from a standard 110V outlet. This usually takes 8 hours. The charge time can be cut in half when you install a special 220V charging station in your garage. Your house probably has this capability for your oven and dryer. It sounds like you would want the shortest recharge time because you're comparing it with 5 minutes to fill your gas tank. What you learn when you live with a PHEV, is that you sleep for 8 hours. From the time you pull into your garage after work until you are ready to leave in the morning, your car is charging. There were a couple times where I turned around in 6 hours and still I had plenty of charge in the car. An 8 hour charge every night keeps you running on electric for as long as possible.
Well, the title of this blog is the Ford Fusion and I've spent all of this time talking about the Hymotion H5 converted Prius. I did that because so much of what I love about the PHEV Fusion Energi SE are the same as the Prius, like charging while you sleep.
There are some things different about the Fusion. On the negative side is no Smart Key option and no Pushbutton Start option, even though these are options on other Ford models. I would expect these options will come in future models of the Fusion Energi. Right now the My Ford Mobile app for the iPhone feels cheap and doesn't seem to have much functionality. The good news there is that the Ford software department can fix that without changing my vehicle.
On to the good things. The Fusion Energi SE was designed from the start to be a PHEV. This means that the computer logic does a better job of keeping the car in electric mode. I can drive at full Interstate speeds (70 mph) in pure electric mode. Even after the EV battery has been drained and you're driving on the Hybrid battery, if there is enough power in the battery at Interstate speeds, the engine will shut off and the car will drive on electric only.
This past week I was just driving between home and work. I charged each night. I drive roughly 10-13 miles one way and don't have charing capability at the office. According to the read out at the end of each trip, I used a total of 0.01 gallons of gas. These trips included stops for dinner on the way home and one 6 mile round trip when I had to get a drive through dinner before returning to the office to finish a project. When I was looking at the Fusion, I was also looking at some electric cars. I decided to stick with the hybrid because I am still doing a number of road trips (> 600 miles) during the year. After performance like I saw this week, the Fusion Energi SE is really an Electric Vehicle with a safety net for the longer trips.
This sounds good, and many of you are saying that while I'm not spending money on gasoline, I'm still spending money on electricity. You're absolutely right, so let's look at that. The Fusion battery can hold 7.5 kWh. Most days I was using all of that. Where I live, I'm paying $0.085 per kWh. That is a little over $0.50 per day to drive to and from work. That is $15 a month. I challenge everyone reading this article to look around their house. How much is the alway on refrigerator adding to your electric bill? Surprisingly your Internet modem and wireless router are also using energy 24 hours a day. Then there is the phantom power from your HD television set. All of these appliances are getting more efficient. Still, look at your electric usage for the next few months on your utility bill. Would you be able to afford another 150 kWh to your usage if it meant never filling up the car at a gas station again? I am lucky with my utility rate. The national average is $0.12 per kWh.
One of the other things that I like about the Fusion Engeri SE is that it provides a trip summary when I park and turn off the car. I have used this to compare the different ways I can get to work from my house. One route uses about 3.5 kWh. Another route only uses about 2.5 kWh. This kind of comparison wasn't available in the Prius. I tired comparing routes using the tank milage over the course of 3 tanks. This was very time consuming because it could take me the better part of a month to use up the gas in the 9 gallon tank. Then the milage was an average of all the driving I had done that month, not just the differences between the routes. The immediate feedback that the Fusion provides is helping me find the most cost effective route faster so I can realize the benefits sooner.
The newer car has many more options for displays in the instrument panel. There is a really nice Energy Coach display. It gives a set of bars for acceleration, braking, and cruising. I can use each of them to learn more efficient ways to drive. More gentle acceleration and longer, lighter braking give me a better score and help me get the most from a charge.
So I'm really liking my Ford Fusion Energi SE. If you want to learn more about it stop by and I'll let you take mine for a spin and I'll tell you all about it. It may be easier to just stop by your local Ford dealership and ask them for a test drive. Keep reading this blog as I intend on posting more and more about the Fusion as I learn more about it. I will probably be the only person you know who is happy when gasoline prices go up. That means my investment in this car will be paid off sooner.
Now I haven't even gotten started on the Adaptive Cruise Control. Stay tuned as I expect to be posting more about that in the future as well.
As many of you know, this is not my first PHEV. My last one was a Toyota Prius with the Hymotion H5 conversion. I picked up a used 2008 Toyota Prius and the great folks at Pro Auto Care in Denver, CO converted it from a standard hybrid car to a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle.
I loved that car and was getting 80-90 miles per gallon (mpg) during regular use, which was commuting between home and work. Road trips to visit family were between 45m mpg and 50 mpg. Roughly a year ago, the conversion battery pack started giving me trouble and the company who originally built the conversion was in bankruptcy. The Toyota Prius kept working great.
Now things are better. With the conversion, the original Prius computer program was managing the switch between electric and gasoline modes. It was very hard to stay in a a pure electric mode. Every time you start the Prius, after about 20 seconds, the engine would turn on. I assume this was to warm up the catalytic converter to help with emissions for when the engine is needed. This would happen even if I hadn't taken it out of gear yet.
The next thing I learned with the Prius is that I had to keep speeds below 45 mph to run in electric mode. I assume this was to make the transmission switch easier if the engine power was eventually needed. There were a few times that I was coasting down a hill (i.e., no acceleration needed) and as the speed increased, the engine started.
I went into this adventure to learn about hybrids, PHEVs, and electric vehicles. I've been an advocate for hybrid cars since the first ride I got in one in 2003. A friend of mine had a Prius, and the first time the engine turned off when we were at a stop light, it blew my mind. I still believe the future of transportation is in electric vehicles. Hybrids are a necessary step on the way to that future. After years and years of talk, talk, talk about electric vehicles, I decided it was time for me to put my money where my mouth was and figure out if the hype could work for real people with real world driving conditions.
The result was that I learned owning was everything I thought it could be. It drives the same as any other car. I really liked that Toyota had a Smart Key system with push button start. The Smart Key meant I never had to fumble with keys. The push button start only makes sense because you're really booting up your car, not cranking the engine. The car taught me to accelerate and brake smarter as well. That helped me get even better gas mileage.
One thing I wasn't expecting was getting in my car each morning to a full tank. When you plug in your car each time you return home, you're refueling it. Gasoline cars and gas stations have taught us to monitor the gas level through the course of many trips and many days. In a PHEV, I still had to monitor the gas in the tank, but every morning the batteries were fully charged and ready to drive.
I also learned that it was simple to keep the car charged. It didn't take long to develop a habit of plugging the car into the wall each time I pulled into the garage. It is similar to the habits we build to plug in our cell phones to recharge them each day. We also have habits about getting ready in the morning. It is easy to add to this ritual unplugging the car and storing the extension cord.
One thing the manufacturers probably don't want you to know is that there is no need for the extra high voltage charging stations in your garage. All of the PHEVs on the market today offer the ability to charge from a standard 110V outlet. This usually takes 8 hours. The charge time can be cut in half when you install a special 220V charging station in your garage. Your house probably has this capability for your oven and dryer. It sounds like you would want the shortest recharge time because you're comparing it with 5 minutes to fill your gas tank. What you learn when you live with a PHEV, is that you sleep for 8 hours. From the time you pull into your garage after work until you are ready to leave in the morning, your car is charging. There were a couple times where I turned around in 6 hours and still I had plenty of charge in the car. An 8 hour charge every night keeps you running on electric for as long as possible.
Well, the title of this blog is the Ford Fusion and I've spent all of this time talking about the Hymotion H5 converted Prius. I did that because so much of what I love about the PHEV Fusion Energi SE are the same as the Prius, like charging while you sleep.
There are some things different about the Fusion. On the negative side is no Smart Key option and no Pushbutton Start option, even though these are options on other Ford models. I would expect these options will come in future models of the Fusion Energi. Right now the My Ford Mobile app for the iPhone feels cheap and doesn't seem to have much functionality. The good news there is that the Ford software department can fix that without changing my vehicle.
On to the good things. The Fusion Energi SE was designed from the start to be a PHEV. This means that the computer logic does a better job of keeping the car in electric mode. I can drive at full Interstate speeds (70 mph) in pure electric mode. Even after the EV battery has been drained and you're driving on the Hybrid battery, if there is enough power in the battery at Interstate speeds, the engine will shut off and the car will drive on electric only.
This past week I was just driving between home and work. I charged each night. I drive roughly 10-13 miles one way and don't have charing capability at the office. According to the read out at the end of each trip, I used a total of 0.01 gallons of gas. These trips included stops for dinner on the way home and one 6 mile round trip when I had to get a drive through dinner before returning to the office to finish a project. When I was looking at the Fusion, I was also looking at some electric cars. I decided to stick with the hybrid because I am still doing a number of road trips (> 600 miles) during the year. After performance like I saw this week, the Fusion Energi SE is really an Electric Vehicle with a safety net for the longer trips.
This sounds good, and many of you are saying that while I'm not spending money on gasoline, I'm still spending money on electricity. You're absolutely right, so let's look at that. The Fusion battery can hold 7.5 kWh. Most days I was using all of that. Where I live, I'm paying $0.085 per kWh. That is a little over $0.50 per day to drive to and from work. That is $15 a month. I challenge everyone reading this article to look around their house. How much is the alway on refrigerator adding to your electric bill? Surprisingly your Internet modem and wireless router are also using energy 24 hours a day. Then there is the phantom power from your HD television set. All of these appliances are getting more efficient. Still, look at your electric usage for the next few months on your utility bill. Would you be able to afford another 150 kWh to your usage if it meant never filling up the car at a gas station again? I am lucky with my utility rate. The national average is $0.12 per kWh.
One of the other things that I like about the Fusion Engeri SE is that it provides a trip summary when I park and turn off the car. I have used this to compare the different ways I can get to work from my house. One route uses about 3.5 kWh. Another route only uses about 2.5 kWh. This kind of comparison wasn't available in the Prius. I tired comparing routes using the tank milage over the course of 3 tanks. This was very time consuming because it could take me the better part of a month to use up the gas in the 9 gallon tank. Then the milage was an average of all the driving I had done that month, not just the differences between the routes. The immediate feedback that the Fusion provides is helping me find the most cost effective route faster so I can realize the benefits sooner.
The newer car has many more options for displays in the instrument panel. There is a really nice Energy Coach display. It gives a set of bars for acceleration, braking, and cruising. I can use each of them to learn more efficient ways to drive. More gentle acceleration and longer, lighter braking give me a better score and help me get the most from a charge.
So I'm really liking my Ford Fusion Energi SE. If you want to learn more about it stop by and I'll let you take mine for a spin and I'll tell you all about it. It may be easier to just stop by your local Ford dealership and ask them for a test drive. Keep reading this blog as I intend on posting more and more about the Fusion as I learn more about it. I will probably be the only person you know who is happy when gasoline prices go up. That means my investment in this car will be paid off sooner.
Now I haven't even gotten started on the Adaptive Cruise Control. Stay tuned as I expect to be posting more about that in the future as well.
Sports on Internet TV
Where are the sports on Internet TV?
I'm a huge fan of Internet TV. I cut the cable back in 2006 and haven't looked back. My family and friends will tell you that I've tried to get all of them to try Internet TV with very little success.
One of the key things standing in the way is the lack of sports on Internet TV. When I start talking to someone about watching Internet TV, one of the first questions I ask is if they are sports fans. If they are I slowly back away.
With all there is to love about Internet TV, there are still very few sport games available to watch. This is significantly holding up the adoption of Internet TV by mainstream audiences. For some reason the major sports franchises have been slow to adopt the Internet. Just as movie viewers needed Netflix to bring Internet movies into the living room on the big screen, sports fans need the franchises to dot he same for their favorite teams and favorite sports.
It is starting. I applaud MLB for being the first sports franchise on the Apple TV. They have done amazing things with MLB.com and are leading the charge. After MLB, the sports with smaller audiences have been quicker to adopt the Internet. NHL and MLS have made good use of the Internet to bring games to audiences. NCAA has also brought March Madness to thousands of fans over the past few years. Things are starting to move very slowly.
I was going through some old VHS tapes and noticed that sports fans collect recordings of their favorite teams and their favorite games. There are classic games like the 1997 NCAA Basketball Championship and the 2005 NFL Playoff game between the Steelers and the Colts. Every fan has a number of their favorite games that they can watch over and over and over again.
There is a huge demand for this, if anyone were to figure that out they would see that there is a huge opportunity for this as well. Imagine having the original HD broadcast for your favorite game on a Blu-Ray or a touch of a button away in your iTunes purchases.
There is movement along these lines. Current seasons of MLB, NBA, NHL and NCAA games can be found in the iTunes Store. When you dig deep enough, you can find these games. Some of them are still only available in SD. NFL seems to be dragging their feet on this one. They must not know tht their fans are buying Smart TVs and set top boxes to watch Netflix and other online streaming content. So far you can only get Preview shows and Highlights of NFL games.
The real money will be made in the classics. The historical games that many of today's viewers missed when they happened. These are the games of legends. They are the clips that you see year after year in highlight films pre-game shows and Post-game wrap-ups. Millions of fans will want to own a commercial free, high quality copy of these games. It will create a continuing revenue stream for the teams that even the marketing department from Star Wars would envy.
I'm not much of a sports fan myself. While IU basketball games played while I was growing up, I was usually on our Apple II computer playing Load Runner or trying to build an AppleWorks database. In the end I was hours of television for free, on demand, and podcast episodes on the niche topics that I'm interested in, which no TV studio executive would agree to include their programming schedule. I get what I want, when I want it, and spend less time since each episode is typically shorter than broadcast shows.
So what's my point? (You may have missed that this will be mostly a blog of rant sand random thoughts which are pretty much pointless.) There are two things to come away with from this post. If you're a sports fan and interested in money, find a way to digitize old games and legally sell them through the Internet. I would start with the iTunes Store.
Second, if you enjoy watching TV and are too busy or dissatisfied with the programming you're paying for, cutthroat cable. It is easier than you think. You'll thank me later. Also stay tuned to this blog. I'm passionate about this topic and will have much more to say about this in the future.
I'm a huge fan of Internet TV. I cut the cable back in 2006 and haven't looked back. My family and friends will tell you that I've tried to get all of them to try Internet TV with very little success.
One of the key things standing in the way is the lack of sports on Internet TV. When I start talking to someone about watching Internet TV, one of the first questions I ask is if they are sports fans. If they are I slowly back away.
With all there is to love about Internet TV, there are still very few sport games available to watch. This is significantly holding up the adoption of Internet TV by mainstream audiences. For some reason the major sports franchises have been slow to adopt the Internet. Just as movie viewers needed Netflix to bring Internet movies into the living room on the big screen, sports fans need the franchises to dot he same for their favorite teams and favorite sports.
It is starting. I applaud MLB for being the first sports franchise on the Apple TV. They have done amazing things with MLB.com and are leading the charge. After MLB, the sports with smaller audiences have been quicker to adopt the Internet. NHL and MLS have made good use of the Internet to bring games to audiences. NCAA has also brought March Madness to thousands of fans over the past few years. Things are starting to move very slowly.
I was going through some old VHS tapes and noticed that sports fans collect recordings of their favorite teams and their favorite games. There are classic games like the 1997 NCAA Basketball Championship and the 2005 NFL Playoff game between the Steelers and the Colts. Every fan has a number of their favorite games that they can watch over and over and over again.
There is a huge demand for this, if anyone were to figure that out they would see that there is a huge opportunity for this as well. Imagine having the original HD broadcast for your favorite game on a Blu-Ray or a touch of a button away in your iTunes purchases.
There is movement along these lines. Current seasons of MLB, NBA, NHL and NCAA games can be found in the iTunes Store. When you dig deep enough, you can find these games. Some of them are still only available in SD. NFL seems to be dragging their feet on this one. They must not know tht their fans are buying Smart TVs and set top boxes to watch Netflix and other online streaming content. So far you can only get Preview shows and Highlights of NFL games.
The real money will be made in the classics. The historical games that many of today's viewers missed when they happened. These are the games of legends. They are the clips that you see year after year in highlight films pre-game shows and Post-game wrap-ups. Millions of fans will want to own a commercial free, high quality copy of these games. It will create a continuing revenue stream for the teams that even the marketing department from Star Wars would envy.
I'm not much of a sports fan myself. While IU basketball games played while I was growing up, I was usually on our Apple II computer playing Load Runner or trying to build an AppleWorks database. In the end I was hours of television for free, on demand, and podcast episodes on the niche topics that I'm interested in, which no TV studio executive would agree to include their programming schedule. I get what I want, when I want it, and spend less time since each episode is typically shorter than broadcast shows.
So what's my point? (You may have missed that this will be mostly a blog of rant sand random thoughts which are pretty much pointless.) There are two things to come away with from this post. If you're a sports fan and interested in money, find a way to digitize old games and legally sell them through the Internet. I would start with the iTunes Store.
Second, if you enjoy watching TV and are too busy or dissatisfied with the programming you're paying for, cutthroat cable. It is easier than you think. You'll thank me later. Also stay tuned to this blog. I'm passionate about this topic and will have much more to say about this in the future.
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