Dropping the fuel tank reveals a clean area protected from dirt and grime over time and from well meaning painters. The metal surface shows the factory finish — semi-gloss black. Knowing this, I will be able to scrape and sand and restore the undersides in original color.
Planning a trip in an Electric Vehicle (EV) is very similar to fuel planning for a cross-country in light aircraft. Before undertaking a journey you want to know enroute conditions, access performance data, locate fuel stops, have an alternate or a backup plan. EV range, like aircraft range is limited. Fuel stops are few and far between for either. The consequences of miscalculation for either can be serious. If you have aviation experience you will grasp the range planning concept readily.
The variables that can affect range, i.e. shorten or lengthen are:
There are other factors to consider exclusive to the EV such as cabin comfort; heating or cooling (HVAC) uses energy from the battery whereas a light aircraft uses waste energy from combustion exhaust manifolding to provide heat. A battery electric vehicle will suffer from some degree of vampire drain and parasitic energy losses -0.3 range miles for each clock hour vehicle moving or stationary. Wheel and Tire design choices influence rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag. Passenger windows open vs closed can alter aerodynamics.
By far the biggest consideration is speed because of wind resistance. Drag is proportional to the square of speed, and the power needed to overcome that drag is proportional to the cube of speed so if you want to go twice as fast, you’ll have to be eight times more powerful. The following table shows percentage corrections to rated range and is based on driver reports and manufacturer guidelines.
| 45mph | +26% |
| 55 | + 8% |
| 60 | 100% of EPA rated range (at 70 degrees with miniscule HVAC) |
| 65 | – 8% |
| 75 | -26% |
| Clear and dry | 100% of rated range |
| Wet roadway | – 2% |
| Standing water | -10% |
| Light snow | -15% |
| Heavy snow | -25% |
HVAC referencing the outside air temperature (OAT)
| 15 | -25% at full blast, HVAC pulls about 7.5kW — battery heating is ncessary |
| 32 | -13% pre-heat the cabin if possible and then reduce cabin heat temp and use seat heaters. Optional cabin heat switched off (Brrrrrr) but still need battery heat -8% |
| 50 | – 7% |
| 70 | 100% of rated range (HVAC on, but barely in use i.e. vent only) |
| 100 | – 7% |
| 120 | -13% there is energy draw for battery cooling in extreme |
ELEVATION
| Mountain | -10 miles in lost range for each 1000′ of Rise |
| Mountain | +4 miles recovered range for each 1000′ of Descent |
It is a personal mission to discover and understand, validate and maintain family heritage. A family tree is an obvious means and method. Civic ledger books and Church records are commonly used to validate the verbal recall of relatives during generational passdown. This printed historical documentation has been digitized and access enabled through personal computing.
An example is the military experience of family members who were engaged by World War. There are those who kept memories alive and told all; going so far as to write memoirs, books, and reminisce at social reunion with others who also shared in the experience. They re-live those years which they consider to be an important part (if not the highlight) of their lifetime.
Those family members that I knew who served, had vivid memories as well but there was a difference. They didn’t wish their lives to be defined by this particular event and in an effort to move on, their war stories were seldom a topic of casual conversation. Those of us eager to know “what it was like” gathered the anecdotal tidbits over time.
With the internet and the availability of declassified military reports it is now possible to the retrace events as a virtual itinerary. This timeline validates the first person recount and adds clarification to bigger picture understanding.
Browsable portals such as the WWII Archives Foundation and this enthusiast collection contain reams of raw data. The above view is a snapshot sample of a war diary of a naval warship observing the hour to hour defensive or offensive exploits in the Pacific Theatre. Another example illustrates an Army Air Force sortie in Europe. This becomes especially interesting knowing that family relatives were involved during these recordings. Putting it altogether as a retelling the memory can be preserved.
The more cars at the gas pumps in a filling station the lower the pressure. i.e. unleaded may flow more slowly due to reduced pressure. A Tesla Supercharger station is similar but first — how the Supercharger Station is engineered:
The takeaway here is that the 120kW charge rate is a perfect case situation. If others are on the same Teat your rate of flow will vary [lower].
Tesla Model S has a mid year production update which means that if you took delivery before X date your unit has been superseded by something better. This can be expected with any leading edge technology but has the tendency to upset the early adopters. Remember ordering your first Pentium PC only to see the Pentium II intro mere months later rendering your box obsolete? Or smart phone, or tablet or…
First production vehicles are limited to a 90kW rate of charge. These cars have “A” batteries. Word gets out that updated “B” batteries, with the bragging rights of a 120kW hour charging rate have been incorporated into production. Somewhat unfairly, Tesla led folks to misunderstand that the higher charge rate would be enjoyed by everyone after a routine Firmware Upgrade which turned out not to be the case. Suddenly everyone is on their knees to look at the underbelly of their pride and joy to glimpse a factory VIN label 
proclaiming which batteries are installed with hopes that it will say “B”. Some are disappointed. Others find both letters mix and matched. Evidently there may have been a 4 month span when the new batter was ready but there were plenty of the “A” batteries still in inventory. Unfortunately those folks are also limited to the lower standard. Some people have newer car VINs with older style and some owners older VINs with the newer type leading to additional bewilderment.
This charge rate thing is meaningful. If you’ve spent luxury car money and your available time has considerable value, your wait at the charging station is measurable. The higher charge rate ability will get you back on the road perhaps 5-10 minutes before the Tesla owner with the lower limit. He might be left grumbling as you both pit stop and you are able to speed away first. This is a new world to understand. Those of us still consuming petrol don’t give a second thought to refueling. The Tesla owner when away from home base will strive to locate and use a Tesla SuperCharger location and by the way, Tesla’s deal is to provide a network of stations and make the energy available without cost to driver (as in FREE).
It becomes an interesting study in behavior as those first in line to buy the new car must have known that the original design, as wonderful as it is, was bound to be improved upon and enhanced over time.
A key piece to web developer modernization is a scheme called GIT which allows synchronization of files and versioning control. Further, one can easily invite collaborators to join in on a project or fork to their own. FTP gone social.
There is a learning curve. There isn’t a user friendly face on GIT. All interaction is via the command line. A new language with artful terms such as Branch, Merge, Add, Commit, Push, and Pull to understand along with esoteric switch options: e.g. -a -u -m
It can be simple or complex. Unfortunately I blundered into the latter by creating several local repositories. One of which was innocently placed downstream of a root repository thereby creating a submodule. I had no idea what I had done apart from the realization that I was no longer able to modify the contents of this submodule from within the main project. In laymans terms; it was screwed up. Simple to implement but so difficult to undo.
A search result offered instructions to eliminate a submodule reference with all sorts of caveats and cautions.
I eventually made a draconian choice and abandoned my local directory tree structure by emptying the files. The submodule became its own repository after I split it off from the root but kept the original files. Its git tracking was undisturbed. In the root repository it was hoped that a simple Clone from the remote would restore all but this didn’t pan out. The remote was linked to deleted files in the old structure and *new* copied files refused to be tracked. A fresh local directory with a new name was established in order to begin again.
While learning the complexities (the hard way), I plan to “keep it simple” going forward.
Giving Heroku another try, it was straight forward to deploy a php app / mysql database. The routine is similar to the OpenShift PaaS and Heroku is not much different using the CLI as well. Console functionality is barebones.
My test app bombed during its maiden run however with a fatal error: Class ‘mysqli’ not found in /app/www/db.php on line 5. I learn that the mysql_connect() syntax in php is old hat and myslqi is to be encouraged instead. The old way works fine on Heroku but for some reason mysqli syntax has not been configured — and my app is peppered with mysqli.
Thanks to this search result, what one does is to configure Heroku to use a custom buildpack (see below).
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heroku config:set BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/travstoll/heroku-buildpack-php |
Then create an empty commit and push the app again to force heroku to recompile the runtime:
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git commit --allow-empty -m "empty commit"git push heroku master |
That worked and my app is restored without recoding.
S’man advises that using a traditional hosting service to render web pages is passe. Not wanting to be eclipsed by new technology I followed his encouraging to advance. Aided by online postings, hints, and narratives one can learn the new jargon and implement the latest in cloud computing methods.
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There are many solutions offerings. I discounted Google App Engine off the bat because their implementation is a bit arcane. Ditto the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Heroku was limited in their programing language offerings. AppFog looked promising with a generous CPU allotment but their console system behavior was discouraging. OpenShift by Red Hat however, seems like a winner with excellent documentation and performance. Beware: Most PaaS(s) rely on the Command Line Interface but as the concept matures; user friendly interfaces will develop. App templates are currently provided for common setups but fine tuning requires knowledge of the command line.
A domain name is furnished with each app that you build on OpenShift. The domain that you are viewing currently is actually: wordpress-strombotne.rhcloud.com/ It is possible to use a CNAME record to point to that URL with one more personalized i.e. the sub-domain blog.strombotne.com One uses their domain name registrar for this purpose and this is fine. However, a weakness that I’ve discovered is in using a naked domain, e.g. strombotne.com for an OpenShift app. Here’s where it becomes a bit wonky. You can’t use CNAME with a domain name but typically use an A record resource with an IP number. The OpenShift DNS is limited as one isn’t provided. The fix is to try Domain Forwarding and Masking — a band-aid.
The fuel sending unit cleaned up nicely. An overnight solvent bath dissolved away the crud and freed the shaft. Unfortunately, the acetone melted the insulator spacers on the terminal posts. I sourced substitutes made of nylon to replace them.
A partial disassembly revealed the innards and some fine wire too delicate to probe further. But it is interesting to see how it operates. I borrowed a multi-meter for an operational check and it appears serviceable. The cork gasket which seals the underside of the sending unit attachment flange to the tank is too far gone to serve as a template so I will trace a pattern on paper. Hopefully all of this will seal properly without seepage or weepage when installed.
Unearthed from the fuel tank, this piece looks like it has been salvaged from the sea floor. It is (or was) the business end of the fuel sending unit. The metal rod, partially in view, is connected to a plastic float at the extreme end. This float will bob up or down and mechanically position the arm as the fuel level changes. That pivot point, behind the gruesome mess, is locked up solid. I will attempt to chip away the corrosion and free the shaft. Peering into the tank itself revealed no similar horrors. Plenty of debris and rust but no stalactites or stalagmites artefacts. It will need to be boiled out.
