Electric Vehicle - Justin Foell

The weekend of WordCamp US 2022, I took Sunday off to attend another event happening in San Diego that weekend: Fully Charged Live. Fully Charged is a YouTube show that centers around electric vehicles, but it’s really about electrification of everything. In the same vein, the show had a plethora of electric cars, but it had a lot more: electric motorcycles, bikes, skateboards, and one wheels. Also there was a lot of information about non-transport related electrification, such as efficiency in your home. One suggestion: try a portable induction cooktop to see if you like it.

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Portable Cooktop

Induction cooking is up to 95% efficient. All the heat goes into the pot – not the air or the even the cooking surface itself. Straight into the cooking vessel. I’ve always been intrigued, so I bought this Duxtop model on Amazon that came with a sauce pan for $150.

I have to get new pots⁉️

Since induction cooktops require “special” pots and pans, buying this combination made sense. The saucepan included was a great place to start, as it’s the sort of pan I use most often.

But you might already have some pots & pans that work. Take a refridgerator magnet to the bottom, if it has a good stick, it will work. One thing that will work for-sure: cast iron 🧲

Great features

Besides being able to bring that full saucepan to a boil in less than 5 minutes(!), there are a lot of other nice features that I didn’t expect…

Timer

There’s a built-in timer to automatically stop after a set amount of time. It’s great for boiling rice or pasta. It’s also good for making water for coffee or tea. When I’m making Aeropress coffee I like the water to be about 180-190°F. For me this means filling the kettle consistently and setting the boil timer to 4 minutes.

Keep Warm

The keep warm feature is programmable in 20°F increments. I can use it for my coffee water to keep at 180°F or make sure dinner waits perfectly at 140°F.

No flame

I trust my 13yo to make macaroni and cheese on this thing without burning the house down.🧯 Sure there’s still a scalding concern with boiling water, but he’s good with that part.

Clean Up

Because the surface itself doesn’t get hot, clean-up is a snap. Simply wipe the surface off. Nothing gets burnt or caked on.

Downsides?

The only annoying thing about induction cooking is the cooktop knows when the pot is and isn’t there. So when you lift the pot off the surface while it’s heating, it will beep.

If you’re the type of person that likes to shake the pan rather than use a spatula to mix the contents, the cooktop will beep at you. No harm, no foul – it will be fine, but it will keep beeping until you set the pot back down.

Gateway to a full induction cooktop

This is the best way to try induction cooking before switching to a full induction cooktop for thousands of dollars. But I expect we’ll switch to an induction range as part of electrifying our home.

What about the portable cooktop? I still think this thing is useful. I’d for sure lend it to anyone wanting to try induction cooking. Also, I plan on buying an induction fondue set for it so we can retire our setup.🔥

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The other day I was at a stop light next to a hopped up Civic with a fart-can exhaust pipe. I got to wondering if the Bolt was faster than a Civic Si. I did some research and the answer is yes (depending on the year & trim).

The Chevy Bolt clocks in at 0-60 mph in 6.4 seconds, and a quarter mile in 14.9. My old WRX could run the 1320 (1/4 mile) in 14.3 seconds. But as you can see, the Bolt is no slouch and it’s in pretty good company with some cars that people would associate as sporty:

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People have tons of questions about owning and driving an electric vehicle (EV). There are also a bunch of people that nay-say and make assumptions about EVs without first hand experience.

I look at the new Ford F-150 Lightning as a truck of the future. The base model is around $40k, it has a 230 mile range, and can tow 11,000 lbs.

Here are some common concerns/complaints:

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I was talking to a friend about my Chevy Bolt after I got it, and remarked how many features it has. Then I realized nothing on the list of features would impress him. He’s the type of guy that gets a new car every 2 years, so he’s seen the gradual stair-step addition of features across several models.

The “new” automatic windows that go all the way up/down with a single button press astound/annoy me. That’s how far behind I was.

I’d driven a 2002 Subaru WRX since 2005. It was a fantastic little car that was terrifically fast. At the time it didn’t have a lot of extra features – you could buy the base WRX for less than $25k in 2002. While the base MSRP for a 2021 Chevy Bolt is in the $30k range, tax and dealer incentives frequently brought it to the $25k price point.

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Being a die-hard Minnesotan, I’ve developed some habits that I need to break. Many of these are stubborn/stupid habits that simply come from getting old and always doing things the old way.

One of them is my insistence on not using seat warmers in cars. Mostly because my first encounter with them was unknowing. I was riding in someones fancy car (Lexus) and it detected that a butt was in the passenger seat. Combined with the outdoor temperature, the climate computer decided it should activate the heated seat. About a minute later I was wondering if I had peed my pants 😳🍑🔥

I decided then and there that it would be the first and last time I used a heated seat… But was it really?

Driving my Chevy Bolt in winter, the range is reduced due to several factors: batteries don’t like the cold, the factory heater is a resistance unit instead of an efficient heat pump like on the newer Teslas. Combined with the fact that my car is currently limited to an 80% charge, the juice gets used up much faster in the winter.

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Heated seats & steering wheel vs. Cabin heater

I still love this car, and I’ve come to terms that I won’t be doing any winter road trips in it this year. But even with long-ish drives around town, I want to know my options for energy conservation. My two best friends in this department are the heated seats and the heated steering wheel.

Someone over on the ChevyBolt.org forums did the research and found the consumption of them:

One Seat:
– High 35W
– Medium 28W
– Low 20W
Steering Wheel: 47W

Running both full blast for one person is less than one hundred watts 💯

Compare those numbers to the resistance style heater that is used to heat the cabin – it can use up to 9kW. That’s 9,000 watts y’all – enough power for a small rock concert 🎸 It works well – the cabin heats quickly, especially compared to an internal combustion engine. It’s just sort of a power hog… granted it won’t be using 9kW all of the time, but it will use that much to get up to your desired temperature.

Reducing heater usage

There are a few things you can do to reduce the mega energy sap from the heater:

Pre-heat the car while it’s plugged in

My 240V charger can deliver 40 amps of power to the vehicle, that’s 9kW (240V x 40A = 9600W). The Bolt will use up to 7.6kW of that (32A). If the car is plugged in while pre-conditioning, the Bolt will use as much of the AC power it can. This will pull at most 1-2kW from the battery even if the heater is going full-tilt. Result: pre-heating while plugged in won’t take away any range from your trip, plus your car is toasty warm when you get in.

Use the heated seats and steering wheel

I’ve learned to love the heated seats and steering wheel. You’ll be surprised how much a difference it makes to heat the surfaces your body touches. The wheel is like holding a hot cup of coffee, which has some sort of lizard-brain effect on your perceived comfort.

The climate controls will guess how high to turn the seat warmers on. Despite my earlier protests, I now find myself turning the seat heater up an additional setting so I can turn down the cabin heater a few degrees.

Turn the heater off

I don’t normally do this, but I will if I really need to conserve range or it’s not terribly cold out. The difficult part to manage when the heater is off is window fogging. Face masks help with moisture from our breath – what a strange time we live in. Wet hair from a recent shower certainly won’t help either. Even a cup of coffee can make things worse, but I have to draw the line somewhere! ☕

I really wish there was such thing as a heated foot plate. I think I could go further with heater off longer if my feet had a little heat 🥾🔥Maybe I’ll get some heated socks or boots to see how much it helps.

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Justin Foell

Technology, Bicycling, Hobbies, Kids, Life.

Tag Archives: Electric Vehicle

Induction Cooking – try a “portable” cooktop

Portable Cooktop

I have to get new pots⁉️

Great features

Timer

Keep Warm

No flame

Clean Up

Downsides?

Gateway to a full induction cooktop

10 cars that are surprisingly slower than the Chevy Bolt EV

EV Excuses

You’re not going to get 230 miles range while towing.

It’s not going to get me to my mother-in-law’s house in rural North Dakota

EVs don’t charge fast enough

$25k cars 20 years apart

Anything missing?

Learning to love the seat warmer

Heated seats & steering wheel vs. Cabin heater

Reducing heater usage

Pre-heat the car while it’s plugged in

Use the heated seats and steering wheel

Turn the heater off