Update on Chevrolet Bolt EV experience - Page 3 - Rant

 My two recent essays about our electric car were intended to help people understand the real world trade-offs of owning electric cars. I believe that information should apply to most if not all electric cars on the market.

This essay is specifically about the Chevrolet Bolt EV. It is my rant about the brain dead engineers and designers at Chevrolet.

The Bolt EV is a small economy vehicle with an electric drive train. As an transportation tool it is adequate. The motors and batteries and charging systems work and get us from here to there.

But compared to other cars I have owned, the Bolt is a nightmare.

I have driven Saabs almost exclusively since the late 70's. I liked Saabs cause they were safe, reasonably sporty, reasonably efficient, and perhaps most of all, well thought out.

Here are my main complaints about the Bolt:

The Bolt has not just two pillars holding up the front of the roof; the Bolt has four. Two on each side. And, they're not thin. They're thick and bulky and positioned so they effectively block the view of oncoming traffic in side streets. Incredible!

The Bolt's windshield is raked at a very shallow angle. I'm sure this is to reduce drag, but there's no reason to have the top edge of the windshield so far back that it provides an unobstructed view of the sun and glare. And, the dashboard is composed of some surface that reflects sunlight into the windshield. So, on a bright sunny day, the reflection of the dashboard interferes severely with the view outside.

The seats are narrow, light weight, and clearly cheaply made. I felt one of the spars in the driver seat back break the very first time I drove the car. I'm just waiting for the seat to collapse and give out. Car seats should last for several hundred thousand miles; they should not break at 10,000 miles!

Both the inside and outside rear view mirrors have odd angular shapes. They're perhaps stylistically interesting, but they're too oddly shaped and small to be as useful as they should be.

The car has a backup camera system that works well except for one thing: the rear camera is mounted above the license plate where it collects dirt from the rear tire spray. The lens becomes so dirty within just a few minutes of driving in inclement weather or on dirty roads, that the rear camera is unusable.

The dashboard gauges are incredibly hard to read. There is no analog speedometer, only a digital numeric one. But even worse than that, the speed is drawn in a color and size that is completely overwhelmed by bright green and yellow battery energy and energy flow arcs and circles. Never mind that the energy data is presented in ways that are hard to understand, they are so garish and bright, it makes it hard for the driver's eye to find critical information like the speed.

And then there's the radio. It's unbelievable.

When you first get in the car, a little movie of stars is displayed on the dashboard screens and a musical fanfare is played. It's useless and annoying. There is no way to turn off the movie. And although you can turn off the fanfare by diving deep into the settings app, it occasionally, without warning, reverts to some sort of default and plays at maximum volume when you open the door and enter the car.

There is no off switch for the radio. You can turn the volume all the way down or mute it. But not to worry, the car will automatically raise the volume the next time you start the car. You can set the volume it uses initially, but you can not set it to zero. So, whether you want it or not, the radio turns on each and every time you get in the car. Oh Boy!

Oh, and if you get sick of the radio shenanigans, you can plug in your phone using a USB cable and the CarPlay app and play the songs on your phone. But, be forewarned, you won't be able to play just any song from your phone. No matter how many songs or albums or artists you have on your phone, while you are driving, CarPlay will only show you the last half dozen or so that you've listened to. If you want to select from your entire music library, you have to stop the car and put it in Park before CarPlay will let you see the complete list. I'm sure this is a safety feature. It's not unsafe to spend five minutes punching different buttons and screaming at the dash board trying to figure out how to select songs you know you have while you're driving. It's also not unsafe to stop on the interstate just to change the song you're listening to.

And let's talk about the navigation system. You can use your phone's map apps through the CarPlay system to have GPS navigation in your Bolt. Cool! But, there's no way to control the volume of the navigation system's driving commands voice. And the preset volume of the voice is too low to be heard over normal radio listening levels. Useful! Not!

And by the way, that business about the radio turning on when you start the car? It's worse than that. When you turn off the car, the radio doesn't turn off. But if it is off and you have your phone plugged in, when you unplug your phone to take it with you, the radio turns on. Crazy!

My guess is that when Chevrolet wanted to hire people to design and implement their dashboard and electronics, they found some doper kids right out of engineering school.

Don't get me wrong. I like the Bolt. I really do. But, I spend far too much mental energy deliberately avoiding noticing the badly designed user interfaces. I bought a used low mileage Bolt cause I got a great deal on it. If I could afford a Tesla (or if Teslas were more affordable), I would buy one of those in a heartbeat before I would buy another brain dead Chevrolet vehicle.

Update on Chevrolet Bolt EV experience - Page 2

 Having shared the positive side of the electric vehicle experience, I should share the unknown or negative side.

The Bolt's range of 160 miles on cold days and 240 miles on mild days and 210 miles on hot days with the AC is fine for our daily life. I plug it in every night and it always has enough range for anything we do on a regular basis.

We're not so comfortable when it comes to travel and emergencies.

I have only ever plugged it in at home. I have an app on my cell phone (which I can use from the car dashboard) to find charging stations, and I understand I can fully charge the car in a few hours at high powered public charging stations. But, I have never tried it and can not attest to how convenient or inconvenient it is. To me, it seems like it's probably a pain to stop for a few hours regularly during road trips like to visit her Mom 164 miles away or go to concerts in Boston 141 mile away or in New York 240 miles away. So, we plan to use Annie's gasoline fueled Durango when we go on long trips.

Emergencies are another matter.

The Bolt has plenty of range to go to all the local doctors and hospitals when it is charged. But, we think it would be a problem to only have the electric car if we had spent the day doing errands and the batteries were depleted and we had an emergency in the evening. We need a form of transport that is never incapacitated. We think this means a second car. Maybe a second electric car that we keep charged would work, but for now we're happy to have a gasoline car.

In summary, we think the Bolt is terrific. We both like it far more than we expected. But, the technology is not yet fit to completely replace fossil fueled vehicles in our normal average American life style.

Update on Chevrolet Bolt EV experience

 This is the first month when I've been enrolled in the power company off peak rate for electric vehicles, I got new batteries from the recall, and, it's been very cold. So, it seemed like a good time for a status update on my fully electric Chevrolet Bolt EV.

I got new batteries in the Bolt on December 3. It was warm that week and after I configured the car to accept a full charge, it reported I had a range of 241 miles. (The manufacturer claims a range of 238 miles.)

Over the next couple of weeks it got progressively colder and I was getting a range of about 200 miles when it was around 40 F degrees and I used the heater a little bit.

For the past month, it has been very cold. It has not gotten above freezing and we've had many days below 20 and several days below 10 or even 0. I have been experiencing a range of about 160 miles. That's a loss of 30% of the range due to the cold.

If you had told me before I bought the car that I would only have that range, I would have thought it would be unacceptable. As it turns out though, it is fine. When I first got the car, I was often anxious about whether the 238 mile range would be enough. I no longer have that anxiety. I have gotten used to plugging it in every night so every day I have the full range and am comfortable that it is plenty for my normal daily errands. In fact, I find that not only do I no longer have range anxiety, I feel better than I ever did with a gas powered car. I have absolutely no anxiety that my car is going to fail to start in the cold, or die on a cold road somewhere. The electric propulsion system is so reliable, I feel much more comfortable than I ever did, particularly compared to my beloved old Saab that had nearly 300,000 miles and might have died at any minute.

I was also worried about whether the Bolt's heater would work well enough. It turns out it too is better than the Saab's heater. It does not blow a huge amount of heat, but it heats up very quickly and warms the cabin quickly even on very cold days. Best yet, I can turn on the heater while the car is still plugged in and warm the cabin before I leave without using energy from the battery. It takes about 10 minutes to warm it up very nicely.

I also got my first meaningful electric bill this week.

The bill shows that I paid $38.15 for 284 KWH to charge the electric car between December 14 and January 14. The car reports that in the cold of the last week, which has not been above freezing and has often been below 10, I am averaging about 3.5 miles per KWH. That means that I have driven about 990 miles. My Saab gets about 25 mpg so that would have required 39.6 gallons of gas. A gallon of regular costs $3.39 this week so that would have cost $135. I saved $100 in fuel costs in one very cold month!

Just to give you a sense of how much we like the Bolt, we still have the Saab and Annie's Durango. Last week I took in the Durango for the annual inspection. The mechanic told me we had only driven it 36 miles since last year's inspection. I doubt the Saab has many more miles too.

In my opinion, EV's are the way to go!

The Structure of Reality

A friend asked me, "Do you wonder why we are here?"

 

I experience a sensation of awareness of structure in the universe. Part of the structure appears to be sentience at deeper levels of reality than the every day. The experience includes a sense that physical reality is part of a plan which we both helped design and which preordains our actions and experiences. The experience informs my sense that reality is a manifestion of a protrusion of energy from deeper levels of reality. It may be correct to call this energy light, or love. My sense is that when we have moments of awareness of these matters, we experience beauty. The experience includes a sense of absolute truth; it seems to explain everything and not subject to argument. I believe that similar experiences informed the foundations of most of the world's major religions and much of modern physics.

 

However, this experience, when it feels most profound, also includes a sensation that the plan and deeper levels of reality are so far removed from normal reality as to be almost irrelevant. There is no way you, I, or anyone else, can make use of knowledge of the experience in normal physical reality. Great prophets, like Jesus, may have been able to use the knowledge directly.

 

When I try to engage my rational faculties to try to determine whether this experience actually corresponds to reality, I am struck by a several thoughts:

 

The experience's sense of complete explanation tells me that our brains have evolved to be able to detect beauty and the structure of reality of which it is an echo.

 

The sense of the numinous is merely an effect of brain chemistry and is a construct of our minds, like green, or hot, or emotions. It does not necessarily correspond to any feature of physical reality.

 

The vast scale and age of the universe, from the Planck length, the smallest meaningful distance, to the tendrils we see in the arrangement of superclusters of galaxies, the behavior of which is described so accurately by the standard model of physics that it seems completely absurd to posit any divine being that cares about a species of primates that has existed for less than a tiny faction of the age of the planet, much less the universe.

 

So, to answer your question, I do happen to believe there is a plan behind reality. But, I refuse to use my belief as a basis as any argument about how we should organize our society and interact with each other.

 

I do believe in Love. And Beauty. And Truth. And Good.

Climate change organizations

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/

 https://www.environmentalvoter.org/ 

Intolerance - posted on Facebook on Sunday August 9, 2020

Some of you may have noticed recent comments on some of my posts from Tod Eberle. Rather than reply to each of his comments, I'm going to post a general reply to his comments here.

Tod, you wrote, “And, I guess that you are appalled by me. However, I am not appalled by you, but rather by the level of intolerance.”

You are correct. I am appalled by you and I have become extremely intolerant of people who continue to support the Republican Party. You perhaps don't realize that I have developed these attitudes after decades of being what I consider to be extraordinarily tolerant and patient.

I was tolerant when Reagan campaigned with the phrase trickle-down economics and claimed it meant tax cuts would lead to greater investment in the people. I was tolerant until I realized I had been naïve and it had been a lie. The tax cuts were simply a gift to the wealthy.

I was tolerant when rather than working on governing the country as they were elected to do, the Republicans focused all their energy on impeaching Clinton because he had extramarital affairs and lied about them. Their hypocrisy becomes clear when you realize that 10-20% of people have affairs.

I was tolerant when the Republican Party gamed the system to steal the election from Al Gore and elect G. W. Bush, a barely competent failed baseball team owner.

I was tolerant when G.W. Bush ignored intelligence community briefings and arguably let 9/11 happen.

I was tolerant when G.W. Bush and his administration lied to the international community and started the war in Iraq.

I was tolerant when G.W. Bush squandered the greatest international support we’d seen in my life time.

I was tolerant when G.W. Bush passed the Patriot Act, created the Department of Homeland Security, and ushered in the surveillance state.

I was tolerant when G.W. Bush used torture in direct violation of international law and then imposed indeterminate length imprisonment without trial.

I was tolerant when rather than governing as he was elected to do the leader of the GOP vowed he would make Obama a one term President and did his best to stop him from passing any legislation.

I was tolerant when the GOP’s Supreme Court justices passed Citizens United so wealthy individuals could use money from their corporations to buy elections.

I was tolerant when the GOP would not hold hearings for the elected President’s Supreme Court nomination.

I was tolerant when the GOP again gamed the system and gerrymandered districts so they could win enough Electoral College votes to legally elect a man President even though he did not win the most citizens’ votes.

Perhaps most of all, I’ve been tolerant as the GOP impedes any progress on addressing climate change and at the same time say they want small government but spend 18% of our federal revenue on the defense department whose primary mission is to support the fossil fuel industry.

I was tolerant and patient through all that. I didn’t like it, but I did not say that the Republican Party was illegitimate or that people who supported it were traitorous. I think I might have been justified in saying that, but I was patient and tolerant.

But then, you’ve spent the last three and half years supporting an imbecile and idiot who has destroyed our international relations, rather than working to avert climate change catastrophe has actually dismantled environment protections, made racist and misogynistic attacks on the population, attacked the Constitution and the Press, fostered distrust of the government and science, and fucked up the nation’s response to the coronavirus so badly that we’ve already had over 150,000 deaths and will be lucky if we don’t have several hundred thousand more.

You’re damn right I’m intolerant. I think you and anyone who does not abhor and disavow any connection with the Republican Party is a traitor to the United States and humanity. I am unwilling to remain silent and tolerate any more.

And Tod, you said in a private message, “I only wish to share the concept that reasonable people can disagree in good faith, and that news broadcasters, in the quest for ratings, will recklessly gin up emotional rage. Please consider me an alternative, but not antagonistic, viewpoint.”

I have three responses:

1) I agree that reasonable people can disagree in good faith. However, as should now be clear, I do not think any reasonable person can accept or support Trump and the current Republican Party.

2) Some news broadcasters do in fact foment rage in pursuit of ratings. However, I believe this fact is irrelevant to the topic under discussion. The actions of the Republican Party throughout the last 40 years are fact. No news organization fomented my rage; the Republican Party did it all by themselves.

3) I do consider your viewpoint as antagonistic. As I said, I consider the Republican Party and its supporters as traitors. I do not believe you and they simply have an “alternate viewpoint”.

Places to donate to help Democrats

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

Biden For President

 

Vermont Democratic Party 

 

Amy McGrath for US Senator from Kentucky 

Fairness, private schools, and the COVID 19 pendemic

This post was prompted by an article published in the New York Times on July 16, 2020:

In the Same Towns, Private Schools Are Reopening While Public Schools Are Not

Evolution leads species to evolve traits that enhance their ability to survive and pass on their genes. We are accustomed to this idea when it comes to physical traits. Fish develop fins so they can swim; birds develop wings and feathers so they can fly; snakes lose their legs so they can slither. (That last one may not be exactly accurate, but you get the idea.)

Evolution also has lead some species to develop traits that are mental rather than physical. For example, primates’ sense of fairness is an evolved trait. Both monkey and human children, at very young ages, exhibit the sense of fairness. They object when others receive more than their fair share.

These conclusions are well accepted in the scientific community. My additional sense is that the sense of fairness trait exists on a spectrum. Some people have a highly developed sense of fairness; others have little or no sense of fairness. We can easily identify people at the extreme ends of this spectrum. Mother Teresa has a developed sense of fairness; Trump has little or none.

Although I understand parents’ desire to give their children the best care and education, it seems clear that this article raises serious issues of fairness. Is it fair that the good fortune that wealthy parents have enjoyed leads to their kids having profoundly better educations than everyone else? It’s one thing, in normal times, for children from wealthy families to get a somewhat better education. It’s another thing during a pandemic, when most people have to delay a year or two of schooling likely causing developmental impairments and even risk exposure to infections that can cause permanent damage or death, for children of wealthy families to be able to forge ahead untouched by the catastrophe unfolding around them.

Things to do to fight racism

75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice

How To Adopt a Battleground State in 2020

Rutland area NAACP Action Items

The 1619 Project

Read Equal Justice Initiative reports

Lynching in America report

 https://culturesofresistance.org/

God and Prayer - First draft posted on Facebook on October 9, 2017

There is no evidence for god; none of the known physical laws are inexact enough to support effects of "divine influence"; the universe is so enormously large and complicated that it is absurd to think that a supreme being organized it all for the benefit of a primate species that has only existed for a tiny fraction of the age of the universe.

So, prayers are really only hopes. Think about that. When something bad happens, politicians basically say, we hope it won't happen again. That is absurd. We need to do more than just hope. We need to take action.

On the Covid-19 pandemic
On climate change.
On gun control.
On inequality.
On relief for Puerto Rico.
On fixing the redistricting process.

I am a racist

I wrote this Letter to the Editor in response to Charles M. Blow's opinion "Denying Racism Supports It" that was published in the New York Times on July 22, 2019. The New York Times did not use my submission. You can find the original article here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/opinion/trump-racism.html.

I am a racist.

I don’t deliberately advocate racism or discrimination. I try to support legislation and civic and personal activities which reduce racism and discrimination. I abhor people who display overt racist behavior. But although I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed to admit it, I am a racist.

Please let me tell you a story.

When I was 6 years old, I was attacked by Humphrey, my best friend’s German shepherd. Although the wound was not life threatening, it was a single deep puncture in the shoulder that required several stitches; it left a physical scar that can still be seen today, 55 years later. The attack also installed a fear of dogs, a traumatic emotional scar that took nearly a decade to heal.

More importantly, the attack revealed a dark emotional scar that I’m still trying to heal.

After the attack I was encouraged to take it easy for several weeks. In particular, I was discouraged from taking part in games during recess at our neighborhood elementary school. So, rather than play kickball, I walked quietly around the edge of the playground watching my friends.

I was not alone.

I was accompanied by another boy who was also discouraged from playing with the other kids. He was black. He was the only black kid attending our school. As I recall, we enjoyed each other’s company and walked and talked together every day during my convalescence. And I didn’t think anything of it. I wasn’t uncomfortable hanging out with a black kid. Indeed, as I recall, I was aware he was black, and understood that was why he was outside the circle of my friends, but I didn’t have any negative feelings towards him. I liked him and was grateful he befriended me and saved me from feeling lonely. But, when my period of convalescence was over, I went back to my circle of friends and never looked back. I abandoned him. Even at 6 years old, I was already a racist.

Now I know that at that age I did not have the maturity or courage to make a stand for my new friend and bring him with me when I rejoined my regular playmates or to stay with him on the edge of the playground. Frankly I don’t remember whether it even occurred to me.

I do know that I have spent the last 55 years being ashamed that I treated by friend so badly. I know in my heart, I did it because I was a racist.

I am a creature of the culture in which I was raised. I feel genuine shame and embarrassment when I find prejudices in myself, but even though I try to be better, I continue to find them. Although difficulty is no excuse, it is difficult to stop being a racist. I am still a racist. But hopefully I will be better, someday.

As Samuel Beckett says, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Absurdity

Written July 9, 2018

A while ago I posted an article stating that given the size, complexity, and age of the universe, it seems absurd to me to believe there is a God who cares about humans. However, I understand it is terribly difficult to wrap our minds around the colossal numbers used to describe the universe. I thought it might be useful to share some thoughts about the scales of some common things.

Here’s a little background information:

1 centimeter (cm) is .39 inches

1 decimeter is 10 centimeters long.

1 meter is 100 centimeters and 10 decimeters long.

A cube ten centimeters on a side contains 1,000 cubic centimeters; it is a liter.

Aside: The diameter of softball is 3.8 inches or 9.88 cm. This is pretty close to a decimeter. So, if you have trouble understanding the size of a liter, think about this size of a softball in a box.

A cubic meter contains 1,000 liters.

A cubic meter contains 1,000,000 cubic centimeters.

1 kilogram (kg) is 2 lb 3.273965 oz

1 cubic centimeter of water weighs one gram.

1 liter of water weights one kilogram.

1 cubic meter of water weighs 1000 kilograms.

1000 kg is equal to 2204 pounds and 9.964800 ounces.

So, a cubic meter (about a cubic yard) contains a million cubic centimeters and weighs about a ton.

The average weight of a human is 62 kg.

The average weight of an ant is 5 micro grams. (A microgram is one thousandth of a gram.)

So, on average, each human weighs a million times more than an average ant.

Maybe that’s enough to get a feel for what a million means. How about a billion?

Think about a swimming pool that is ten meters wide, ten meters long, and ten meters deep.

That’s 32.5 feet wide, long, and deep.

That is about the size of a house.

It would contain a million cubic meters.

It would contain a billion cubic centimeters.

It would weigh a thousand kilograms, or about a thousand tons, or 2 billion pounds.

Now that you hopefully have a feel for what millions and billions are, let’s look at some facts:

The smallest length that has any meaning to physicists is the Planck length: 1.6E-35 meters.

The diameter of a proton is 87.E-16 meters. That is 5.4E19 bigger than the Planck length. That is ten times a billion times a billion bigger than the Planck length.

The diameter of a hydrogen atom is 1.2E-10 meters. That is a 1.38 million times bigger than a proton.

The diameter of blood cell is 7.5E-6 meters. That is 62,500 times bigger than a hydrogen atom.

The average human is 1.85 meters tall. That is 247,000 times bigger than a blood cell.

The diameter of the Earth is 6356 meters. That is 3,436 times bigger than a human.

The diameter of the Sun is 1.392E10 meters. That is 2.19 million times bigger than the Earth.

The diameter of the Solar system is 9E13 meters. That is 6,530 times bigger than the Sun.

The diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is 9.5E21 meters. That is 100 million times bigger than the Solar system.

The diameter of an average galaxy cluster is 3E25 meters. That is 3,260 times bigger than the Milky Way.

The diameter of the observable universe is 8.8E28 meters. That is 2,852 times bigger than an average galaxy cluster.

The diameter of the observable universe is 5.52E63 Planck lengths. That is a billion raised to the seventh power. It is a billion times a billion times a billion times a billion times a billion times a billion times a billion Planck lengths.

To me, it is absurd to think that a God created the entire universe for the benefit of creatures that are one or two meters tall who have lived for only a few tens of thousands of years on only one planet in the entire vast universe.

Two kinds of smart - an idea I want to develop

It seems to me that there are two kinds of smart. Or, people exist on a spectrum whose ends are two kinds of smart:

Smart at inventing tools
Smart at using tools

Inventing tools requires a kind of curiosity, a habit of tinkering

Using tools really well requires grace, dexterity,  observing what works and learning to do it again