Plus the Tesla always displays current (remaining) range. I imagine all EV's do.
Gotta gas up..
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Absolutely, any foreigner or car sharing people could certainly get briefed while receiving the keys, briefed on battery capacity in kWh and Btu just to be sure, but just as well only told to always charge at least what's needed.
For pedagogically valuable upgrades from there one can always retrofit an Albert clock or Albert voice...
For pedagogically valuable upgrades from there one can always retrofit an Albert clock or Albert voice...
Probably the most watched metric right there. People with ICE vehicles watch the DTE (distance to empty) more than anything - same concept.
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DTE is distance to Exxon 
Wow, DTE? Never heard of it. Sue told me that's Range on the RX and GS. I'll be dipped!
Those Teslas are dumb. They should have DTE. Right?
Your Tesla doesn't show how much range you have left on the battery, no matter at what state of charge it's at?
I had a 2004 Nissan Altima that had DTE ... don't know when it first started to be used in ICE vehicles. My 2005 Tacoma doesn't have anything but an odometer (I use Trip B as the miles put on a full tank), and only has a yellow "low fuel" warning light. ICE vehicles that have DTE also show total range based on the level of fuel in the tank.
I was joking. I never paid attention to "Crusing Range" display on my GS.
The Tesla alway displays available range.
You can see it in the pic in post #129. The 1st pic is driving; the 2nd is charging.
Driving, at a stop light. Notice the range; it is always displayed. Other cars and objects are displayed in real time, such as orange traffic cones and bicycle riders. Derek and the Dominoes shows sometimes too.
^^^ Yeah, I'd expect every EV and ICE car made today to have a range and range left (DTE) type of information - the days of just a yellow low fuel warning light are long gone. You might want to use some kind of emoji when you're not serious in a post because no indication what's really being meant otherwise. 
Really? Why take it seriously when there are more accurate ways to determine fuel or miles remaining. Consulting the fuel level gauge, for one...
LoL ... if you've ever owned an ICE with a DTE readout, the DTE is much more accurage than an anolog fuel gauge ... especially when the tank is 1/4 full or less.
Of course a properly functioning typical analog gauge isn't accurate if you're naive enough to assume the needle being X% of the way from "E" to "F" really means the tank is X% full. BUT, if you learn from experience how much it takes to fill the tank with the needle at certain positions (effectively calibrating the gauge), that should be a lot more consistent with reality than my car's DTE. At least its algorithm is very conservative, so anybody taking it seriously is unlikely to run dry.
The DTE feature on my Nissan 370Z was a joke. When the tank was low, say around 2 gallons a warning light would come on. The gauge display would give a DTE range. It would go from 50 miles to 10 miles just by driving a couple of miles down the freeway and then maybe go back up to 30 miles.
I just never let the tank get below 1/4 full after experiencing how poorly the DTE feature worked.
I just never let the tank get below 1/4 full after experiencing how poorly the DTE feature worked.
With the compute power available today I want to see or at least be able to toggle every possible permutation of information.
Sure I can whip out a calculator or do the rough math in my head, but why should I have to?
Sure I can whip out a calculator or do the rough math in my head, but why should I have to?
Doing arithmetic in the head is good excercise. I remember an older man I worked with who when I started to calculate on paper some arithmetic for work, he would just give me a look like “ come on now.” Don’t use it you lose it idea.
Agreed,
Under certain conditions its not a problem and works well.
Like on a long highway trip where you use cruise control at a fixed speed.
Then it settles into a fairly accurate state.
Driving around town and in hills sure - not lots of value.
Looking at my fuel tracking data which also contains DTE info, looks like at the bottom end of the tank the DTE was typically running around 10% within how many miles I could have went to empty - not perfect, but definitely usable. Example: when DTE showed "22 miles" after filling up and doing the hand calculation it said I had enough gas left in the tank to go 19 miles. At that point, the gas gauge needle is about one needle width above the "E" mark on the gauge and pretty useless. And there is also a "Low Fuel" warning that pops up when there's about 35 miles (~ 2 gallons) left on the tank, which is essentially like the old yellow low fuel warning light in the old days. When I see DTE around 25 miles I obviously start thinking about filling up. But typically I never let it get down to 50 miles DTE and therefore never see the "Low Fuel" warning before filling up. Getting "calibrated" to the DTE function by the driver is no different than getting "calibrated" to an analog fuel gauge.
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MolaKule
Staff member
Burying power lines seems simple enough but it isn't once you consider the details.
One has to consider a number of factors such as cost and maintenance. And there are some areas, such as earthquake prone areas and areas that frequently flood, that are not conducive to Undergrounding.
"WHY DON’T WE BURY POWER LINES UNDERGROUND?
Star Energy Partners
Electricity Company
After a bad thunderstorm or power outage due to falling power lines, one question always seems to pop up: Why aren’t our power lines buried underground? Logic follows that if our power grid were underground, then tornados, windstorms, and many forms of harsh weather wouldn’t be able to cause huge power outages.
While there certainly is a case to be made for the benefits of underground power lines, the huge cost and the potential problems with undergrounding have kept the U.S. from fully embracing this type of power grid.
Why We Want Buried Power Lines
The advantages of undergrounding our power structure are obvious: lines would be less subject to damage from severe weather and other accidents both natural and man-made. There are also several smaller benefits, such as the raw amount of land that would be freed for other uses and a decreased risk of danger to wildlife caused by power lines.
Since it’s well known that the U.S. power grid could certainly use an upgrade, it’s only natural to ask why we shouldn’t just bite the bullet and invest fully in undergrounding.
Why We Don’t Have Them
The main reason why undergrounding hasn’t been fully adopted in the U.S. is the overwhelmingly high cost of installing underground power lines. Estimates place the cost of undergrounding power lines at roughly $750 per foot, compared with $70 per foot to install power lines the way we do today. At over ten times the cost, this would become expensive very quickly.
Take North Carolina, for example. In 2002, the state looked into undergrounding for their three major power companies after a particularly bad power outage that left 2 million people losing power. After it was priced out, North Carolina found that their project would cost $41 billion (six times the net value of those three companies’ distribution assets) and would require 25 years to complete!
“Buried power lines are protected from the wind ice, and tree damage that are common causes of outages, and so suffer "...fewer weather or vegetation-related outages,” their report concluded. “But buried lines are more vulnerable to flooding and can still fail due to equipment issues or lightning.”
Cost aside, there are several logistical problems that have kept undergrounding from emerging in the U.S. In addition to power lines, new transformers and switches would have to be built and buried to get power to our nation’s homes.
There is also the problem that being underground creates for power line maintenance. If there is a power outage in underground power lines, technicians will need to bring in earth-moving equipment to get to the lines and solve the problem. This is much more troublesome than climbing a pole—and a downright challenge in much of the country during the winter.
As if that weren’t enough, underground power lines are still vulnerable to the elements in some ways, notably flooding and earthquakes. This vulnerability was exposed during the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, when several hundred kilometers of underground power lines were damaged, compared to only a few kilometers of overhead lines.
Ultimately, the prohibitively high cost of undergrounding alone has kept the technique from widely spreading in the U.S. Unless big changes are made, undergrounding is just an impractical concept on a large scale.
Another Site:
https://www.xcelenergy.com/staticfi...rate PDFs/OverheadVsUnderground_FactSheet.pdf
Am I the only one here that questions the $750 per foot for underground installation versus $70 for overhead? Another angle on this is continuous maintenance on overhead lines. In my residential community the lines are underground and have been that way for 50 years. Next year they will be upgraded. Meanwhile the overhead lines all around us have been subjected to winter storm damage, car accidents, fires, transformer explosions and also routine maintenance like pole replacement and equipment upgrades.
I think underground is more expensive up front but in the long run a better investment.
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