I recently checked and apartments.com shows that 12.4% of the available units in Houston have access to EV chargers, which is in line with EVs being 10.5% of Q3's new vehicle sales.

I've had family members tell me "EVs won't work in Wisconsin in the winter", yet in 2019 I'd already taken my Model 3 on a road trip from Houston to visit them in the winter.

Road trips have only gotten better since with the rollout of faster chargers, in 2019 the 250 KW V3 Superchargers started to be deployed and most of the exising 120 kW Superchargers were increased to 150 kW, and the massive expansion of the Supercharger network over the past 7 years can be seen in the maps I posted in this tweet.

A common piece of EV FUD is "the grid can't handle it if everybody switches to a EV", which ignores that it's going to be a multi-decade transition.

For the US our vehicle fleet size is about ~284K are on the road

About ~16K light vehicles are sold per year

So it would take ~18 years to transition the fleet to all EVs if 100%of new vehicles sold were EVs. However, EV sales are only~10%, and that's likely to drop next quarter due to sales being pulled forward by the end of the Federal Tax Credit, so we're probably looking at 2-3 decades for the transition.

Back in the 50s we saw the grid more than doubled in capacity in less than a decade when the widespread adoption of AC (air conditioning) occured. This video covers that.

You're welcome!

Yes, it was $35K before the tax credit, from 4:41 - 4:55 of the Edmunds video they talk about the price and show the Monroe sticker with $35,000 (not $34,999). Tesla hit the 200K sales limit of the original EV Federal Tax Credit at the end of 2018, so the tax credit for them was being phased out in 2019 - it was $3750 for the first half of 2019 and $1875 for the second half.

Yep, in Diamond Bar. I think that was the Warpstock that Timur didn't book a hotel room and ended up crashing in the extra bed in my room. I also attended Warpstock in Chicago, Toronto, and Austin. I did presentations on emulation in Toronto and Austin. Looks like Warpstock started putting the presentations online in 2002, including mine. In 2003 a friend gave me an old PowerMac G3 - over a 6 month period I switched from OS/2 to OS X, so I stopped attending Warpstock. I did have OS/2 running under Parallels on a Mac Pro for a long time, but one of the updates to Parallels broke my VMs so I switched all my VMs to VirtualBox. I bought a Mac Studio in 2023 and haven't run a VM since as none of them supported Intel operating systems as guests on Apple Silicon. Looks like Parallels does now, but warns that performance is very poor.

There's so much excess power at night that free-nights electric plans like this one are common here in Texas. When I had a free-nights plan I was able to save 20% over my prior plan by scheduling my Model 3 to charge, and my washer and dishwasher to delay-start, during the free period.

Not on the plan anymore as I've since installed solar and have my Model 3 scheduled to charge when I'm generating excess solar power - I work from home so this works well for me.

7:12 in this video covers how the grid capacity more than doubled over the course of a decade to accommodate the increased electrical demand from the mass adoption of air conditioning in homes:

Can the electric grid handle electric vehicles?

though Tesla made it difficult to buy:

As late as 2020, devoted Tesla fans could still finagle their way behind the wheel of a $35,000 Model 3 if they were willing to parse a labyrinthine ordering process. They were forced to build a more expensive version of the car using its online configurator (the Model 3 Standard Range Plus, which then retailed for about $40,000), bail out at the paperwork step, and then call the company directly to have the order altered to a Standard Range model.

Edmunds bought one and made a video about it in early 2020:

Tesla Model 3: What Do You Really Get for the $35K Price?

As an aside, your username brought back fond memories of my OS/2 days - we even met at Warpstock 97. I used to use your DSMI/2 plug-in to play back MOD files on my GeoCities site that hosted my emulator ports for OS/2, such as ColEm/2 a ColecoVision emulator. Here's an archive of my ColEm/2 page from Wayback Machine. At the bottom is a "DSMI/2 Enhanced" GIF (may have to reload the page to get it to show up) links to a cached copy of your DSMI plug-in page.

The Nuclear plant south of me (Houston metro) lost half its output during the '21 grid failure

How and why a nuclear reactor shut down in Texas cold snap when energy was needed most

The shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Texas has contributed to the state’s power shortage crisis caused by extreme cold weather.

One of two reactors shut down at the South Texas Nuclear Power Station an hour southwest of Houston, knocking out about half of its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity.

I just checked Amazon for USB C headphones. After sorting by price Low to High the cheapest was $3.49, and the price for non-sponsored headphones does not exceed $7.95 for the first 10 pages.

The first set is on sale for $3.49, normally $6.99.

The next set for $3.99 is not on sale.

Last non-sponsored set on page 10 is $7.95.

Understanding Lithium Battery Charge Cycles: A Complete Guide

A charge cycle refers to the process of discharging a battery and then recharging it back to full capacity. Technically, a complete charge cycle occurs when a battery has discharged to a certain percentage—commonly 100%—and is then charged back to its full capacity. However, it’s important to note that a charge cycle can consist of smaller partial discharges. For instance, if you use 50% of your battery one day and recharge it to full, then use 50% the next day and recharge again, that still counts as one full charge cycle.

So a charge from 0-100% is 1 charge, charging four times from 75%-100% is also 1 charge, and charging ten times from 90%-100% is also 1 charge.

Do note that some lithium batteries do not like to sit with a 100% charge for a long period of time, such as for my Model 3 the suggested daily charge limit is 80%. If I charged it five times from 60%-80% that would be counted as 1 cycle. On a trip it's OK to charge to 100%, just want to hit the road soon after reaching 100%.

Natural gas is still our biggest source of electricity* and heat in Texas, and it's production dropped nearly in half during the freeze:

Regional natural gas production (January 2020-February 2021)

A large portion of the decrease in natural gas production was from declines in Texas, which fell over 10 Bcf/d during the February 8–17 period. Unlike natural gas production infrastructure in northern areas of the country where below-freezing temperatures are more common and infrastructure is generally winterized, wellheads, gathering lines, and even processing facilities in Texas are more susceptible to freeze-offs during periods of extremely cold weather.

The nuclear plant south of me lost half its output:

How and why a nuclear reactor shut down in Texas cold snap when energy was needed most

One of two reactors shut down at the South Texas Nuclear Power Station an hour southwest of Houston, knocking out about half of its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity.

Interestingly enough, even with all the frozen turbines wind was generating more power than expected when the grid collapsed:

Texas’ power grid crumples under the cold

Since wind in Texas generally tends to produce less during winter, there's no way that the grid operators would have planned for getting 30GW from wind generation; in fact, a chart at ERCOT indicates that wind is producing significantly more than forecast. [see chart, green line is what was generated, blue and red lines below it are what was forecasted]
...
An ERCOT director told Bloomberg that problems were widespread across generating sources, including coal, natural gas, and even nuclear plants.

My understanding is it was windier at the coast than expected and those turbines more than compensated for the frozen inland turbines.

* from ERCOT's Fuel Mix report for 2024

- 35% Gas-CC
- 24% Wind
- 13% Coal
- 10% Solar
- 9% Gas (not CC)
- 8% Nuclear
- 1% other

but I'm not going to pretend it's foolproof - during the big freeze the nuclear plant just south of me lost half its output.

How and why a nuclear reactor shut down in Texas cold snap when energy was needed most

The shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Texas has contributed to the state’s power shortage crisis caused by extreme cold weather.

One of two reactors shut down at the South Texas Nuclear Power Station an hour southwest of Houston, knocking out about half of its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity.

During that same time the snow & ice covered solar panels on my home generated just enough power to keep my gas furnace going, so my home did not freeze and I didn't have to deal with burst water pipes* like many others did. I got up on a ladder and swept off what snow I could reach, without climbing onto the roof itself, and the panels freed themselves of snow and ice by that afternoon even though it stayed below freezing.

* Really wish they didn't do stuff like this with our water pipes - if you're away during an unexpected freeze event you may be coming home to a big problem.

Been roadtripping in a Tesla since getting my Model 3 in 2018. Back then the Superchargers maxed out at 120 kW and during roadtrips to Wisconsin (from Houston) some of the stops would require the slow* 100% charge to reach the next Supercharger. On occasion I'd be prompted to drive slower to extended range, such as between Little Rock Arkansas and Miner Missouri (example of that prompt from a 2019 trip).

Now the newer (2019+) V3 Superchargers max out a 250 kW, plus those older 120 chargers were software updated and now max out at 150 kW. New Superchargers have infilled between older Superchargers, so I haven't needed to do the slow 100% charge in years. A lot of our stops are now:

1) plug in
2) take care of our needs
3) unplug and resume trip

Sometimes we do have to wait a little bit after getting back to the car, which makes those stops comparable to stops we used to have in a gas car when we had to spend time standing next to the car to monitor the refueling process.

The lastest V4 Superchargers currently max out at 325 kW** but not many vehicles support yet such as my Model 3 still tops out at 250 kW when using a V4.

Our longest trip to date was 5000 miles to Yellowstone, onto Tacoma Washington to visit family, then back to Houston. On the route back it was pretty wild to see the car gain range when we were driving down from Monarch Pass in Colorado.

We've been mostly lucky with options around a Supercharger, though on occasion we have encountered restrooms that we didn't want to use - sure am glad that Buc-ee's signed up with Tesla to host Superchargers, really nice for our roadtrips around Texas.

* charging from 0%-80% takes about the same amount of time as charging from 80% to 100%, so it's a waste of time to go past 80% unless you absolutely need it, or are stopped for a meal.

** with plans to go up to 500 kW

I've imported DVDs and Blu-rays of shows from Europe and with Match Frame Rate turned on I no longer experience the 50 fps to 60 fps conversion judder that would show up with my prior setup. The judder was most noticeable when a scene would pan.

Match Frame Rate: Turn on to have Apple TV 4K or Apple TV HD match its refresh rate to the original frame rate of content. This applies to content that's mastered at different frame rates — for example, 24fps film-based content or other international content.*
...
*Apple TV matches the frame rate of content encoded at 60, 50, 30, 25, and 24fps. Frame rates match the refresh rate appropriate for your region, for example 29.97fps for NTSC. 25fps and 30fps content uses frame rate doubling to display at 50Hz and 60Hz when available, matching its original appearance while preserving a fluid user interface.

Interesting....thank you!

You're welcome! My folks were skeptical of EVs, but after joining me on a number of road trips they now own a Model Y.

I don't hear the same positive things about other EVs.

I haven't kept up with others, that's a bummer to hear.

The charing...6-7 minutes ok...but once above 12-30 min....not acceptable to me.

Next time you're on a road trip time your stops as you might be surprised, I know I was - from a trip in 2019 at a V2 Supercharger in Alberta Lea, MN.

$8.12 for 126 miles of range in 22 minutes.

The 22 minutes is how long it took us to walk from the back lot to the travel center (with 4 restaurants), visit the restroom, grab some drinks and snacks, and walk back to the car.

"Back lot" sounds far, but it wasn't - check the map at google, be sure to check the photos as well.

I use to keep it wound up to about 95mph or more, but these days, I stay about 80-85mph....

Speed limits are pretty high around in Texas; though living in Houston I don't often get on 130, it connects Austin and San Antonio and has our highest speed limit of 85 mph.