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Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

reuters.com

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Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#271

Post by vel0city »

addingnumbers wrote: post #154
mcot2 wrote: post #120

Solar + Battery + EV - No need for a pump, just sayin…

How much panel surface would you need to drive an EV, say, 100 miles a week?

This will need to make some assumptions based on how many good hours of solar generation you get. This will vary quite a bit based on latitude and season. Assuming you get ~6 hours of good generation a day on average, charging 7 days a week means you'll get 42 hours of good solar power output.

Depending on your EV car, your driving habits, etc you might get ~4mi/kWh. So for 100mi, you're looking at 25kWh to get your 100mi weekly range.

So over the course of 42 weekly hours, you'll need to come up with 25kWh. 25,000Wh / 42 hours converts to ~595.24W. So you'll want about 600W of generation capacity.

Modern PV cells usually get ~150W per square meter, so 600 W / 150 W/m^2 = 4 m^2.

You'll probably want to add a bit of additional overhead to deal with the weeks where you don't get quite a much sun and also with some of the losses in the system. As an additional note, this is only really thinking about the "peak" hours in the system. You'll get a few more hours a day charging at a lot of latitudes. This can also vary a decent bit based on the layout of your solar array.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#272

Post by mywittyname »

sgt101 wrote: post #174
tialaramex wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's a waste of money. Britain is a small country, you're not going to run out of fuel (ordinarily) on a trip and so it makes sense to keep the money in your pocket instead of turning it into fuel that's sat there doing nothing useful. Also, it's very common to buy round amounts of value e.g. £30 of petrol, periodically, rather than just fill it up for however much that costs, for some people this makes it easier…

Also if you fill it up you have to tow it around with you; an extra 40kgs of weight in the car which costs a bit. The fill it up to the brim meme seems to come from emergency preparedness folks like the police and the army where no vehicle goes to the parking space overnight without being 100% as ready as it can be for tomorrow.

>an extra 40kgs of weight in the car which costs a bit.

Do European cars have gigantic fuel tanks?

40kgs is 40 / 0.71kg/L = 56.3L ~= 14.9 gallons.

14.9 gallons is as much, or more than any car I own carries. And I've never put more than 13 gallons into any vehicle ever during a single fill up.

To have that kind of "spare" capacity beyond what would be necessary for my daily commute, I'd need to be driving a large SUV or pickup truck.

I looked up a 3 Series BMW, and they have 40L or 57L tanks in the new models. Down from 60 or so 10 years ago.

I feel like 20kgs is a more accurate number. And that's really the difference between a small woman and a medium sized man driving the same vehicle.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#273

Post by hermitcrab »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #171
bayesian_horse wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely true that they lack truckers. They don't just grow on trees, and when a few tens of thousands leave, well...

There are hundreds of thousands of people in the UK with HGV licenses but only half of them driving. This problem has been brewing for decades as the jobs have been outsourced to low cost countries and the drivers mercilessly exploited. Now that some economies have improved and COVID has hit a lot of those drivers are either unavailable or simply unwilling to travel so far and so long in horrible working conditions f…

Britain treats it's HGV drivers like crap. Long unsociable hours, low status, lack of facilities and relatively low pay considering how responsible the job is. I was horried to find that some (all?) of them don't even get paid for their mandatory breaks. Why would anyone put up with that, if they had any choice?

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#274

Post by rjsw »

Swizec wrote: post #230
timellis-smith wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to argue whether the actual statement is true or not: Many people don't trust the government at the best of times but if it is true, I seriously doubt whether it constitutes 1/5 of all EU trade (assuming that border checks are in proportion to trade).

Or people who live just across the border where there previously was none continue to commute to work daily, now across a border. With time countries usually end up passing treaties to make these regular passings easier. When you are a country newly enforcing the Schengen border it’s a high faff affair and closely scrutinized. I remember when Slovenia first got the border it caused huge problems and long delays.

> Or people who live just across the border where there previously was none continue to commute to work daily, now across a border.

The checks are at the ports in NI, the whole point of the agreement between the EU and UK was to avoid any checks at the land border between NI and the Irish Republic.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#275

Post by danuker »

nicoburns wrote: post #215
danuker wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather keep my money in fuel than cash, in the off chance hyperinflation strikes, triggering a bank holiday, without me having any physical cash. But so far this has happened 0 times since I have a car.

That's great if you have the money to spare, but not everyone does.

If you don't have money for fuel, I warmly recommend learning about hypermiling.

The main ideas are not to step on the gas pedal more than say, 30%, and use the smallest car for the job.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#276

Post by silisili »

simonswords82 wrote: post #6

Not suggesting that there are not other factors (Brexit, Covid etc) but the media have to shoulder the "panic" element of this. E.g. stop publishing photos of queueing cars and cordoned off pumps and report purely on the statistics of the matter. Too many media outlets are entirely hell bent on getting clicks without a care for the furore they induce in the general public as a result. Social media does of course ampl…

This is exactly what happened during the Colonial pipeline fiasco. They themselves said if things went normally, there'd be no shortage. Of course the media had a field day with that one nationwide. Florida, who doesn't even get gas from it, saw outages and long lines for gas. I wish there were more controls for prosecuting media companies.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#277

Post by polka_haunts_us »

louthy wrote: post #160
mnw21cam wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that the photographs that the news outlets use in the articles about supermarket shortages are mostly from last year. It's deceptive.

We don’t need to rely on photographs to physically see the sparse shelves with our own eyes

I dunno, this site probably disproportionately represents the kind of demographic who just orders all their groceries on Amazon Fresh and hasn't set foot in a grocery store in months anyways. Maybe some people do need photos.

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#278

Post by adventured »

nicoburns wrote: post #215
danuker wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather keep my money in fuel than cash, in the off chance hyperinflation strikes, triggering a bank holiday, without me having any physical cash. But so far this has happened 0 times since I have a car.

That's great if you have the money to spare, but not everyone does.

If you have money to spare, you're also not going to be able to keep a meaningful share of it contained in filled-up household vehicles, even if you own several of them (such that it'll actually function as a sum large enough to offset hyperinflation in any way that matters).

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#279

Post by oh_sigh »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #250
dev_tty01 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is odd to you because you have never had to live paycheck to paycheck. Many people are barely getting to the next pay day so that extra $70 the first week means less food that week.

True, if you have literally $0 cash on hand then it could make sense. If you ever get your hands on $70 though that seems like a worthwhile investment to spend ~50% less time at the gas station for the remainder of your life. Probably one of the more cost efficient quality-of-life purchases you could make in my opinion, which is why I find it odd that it's not more common (apparently).

But "time at gas station" is only like 3 mins per visit though. Yes it's not where you want to be but in absolute time terms it isn't much, especially if a gas station is on your typical travel route

Re: Pumps run dry at gas stations in Britain

#280

Post by mywittyname »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #171
bayesian_horse wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely true that they lack truckers. They don't just grow on trees, and when a few tens of thousands leave, well...

There are hundreds of thousands of people in the UK with HGV licenses but only half of them driving. This problem has been brewing for decades as the jobs have been outsourced to low cost countries and the drivers mercilessly exploited. Now that some economies have improved and COVID has hit a lot of those drivers are either unavailable or simply unwilling to travel so far and so long in horrible working conditions f…

> There really is no good reason why the average software developer should be paid more than an HGV driver while enjoying much better working conditions.

There really is. Computers will blindly obey orders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and can be scaled pretty much indefinitely. So those capable of giving computers orders are in a position to do a large amount of important work, with little effort.

Truck drivers can only do a relatively small amount of work at a given time. Trucks have a limit to the volume of weight they can carry, and the speeds that they may travel to carry it. Thus, their work per hour is capped to a very modest amount. Since there's no real efficiencies to be gained, the only way to improve wages for drivers is to increase the cost of goods by a proportional amount.

Replacing fuel delivery via truck with fuel delivery via pipeline would make things much more efficient, but seems like a waste of resources given that EVs are taking off.

It's not fair, but it is reality. Any profession whose labor cannot be augmented by technological efficiencies is likely going to face the same economic realities. They either go up-market and serve only those who can pay reasonable prices for their services, they get their wages and status slashed in a cut-throat environment, or they are displaced by an inferior, machine-driven replacement.

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