Smaller Ecomods have better Return On Investment

[Talos Woten]

Originally Posted by Blacktree

Variation between different vehicles will make it difficult to be very precise. But I like the idea.

Another thing to consider is how long you plan to own the car, and how long it'll take for a mod to pay itself off. If the break-even point isn't before you sell the car, it's not worth the effort.

I also refuse to do some popular mods, because the ROI just isn't there. For example, I won't build a boat-tail for my Prius, because it would take a significant amount of time and resources. I'd rather focus on cheap easy stuff that gets results.

Good points all.

One of the reasons why I want to do the small stuff first on Champrius 4.0 is to see just how much improvement I can get with a bunch of little things. Right now it's looking like a ~ +20% FE increase. That's more than a third of what I'm hoping to do total, costs < 15% of the total project budget, and takes < 20% of the time. It totally makes sense to do small stuff first and then stop once one reaches one's personal ROI / ownership / comfort / aesthetic limit.

As E.F. Schumacher once said, "Small is Beautiful".

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Talos Woten

Let me share with you a story that deeply affected me. I consulted for many years in the energy industry. It was obvious decades ago that we (as a species) needed to transition off fossil fuels and onto sustainable and renewable energy. But the major energy companies refused to do so because it was too expensive.

Enter renewables over the last couple decades. The price per kWh installed of things like solar and wind kept dropping, but were still more expensive than fossil fuel plants. Eventually they became lower total cost of ownership, and still energy companies resisted transitioning. And then the literal second it became cheaper to build renewable plants than fossil fuel burning ones, every major energy company on the planet rebranded themselves as green and started building environmentally friendly power plants.

The lesson I took away from that experience was that the way to catalyze large scale positive change is to arrange things so that people make more money doing the right thing. All too often "doing the right thing" is synonymous with "paying a premium". What to eat healthy and organic? That will cost you more. Want to use ecologically friendly products? +15% markup.

Ecomods are an enviable position that it's one of the few strategies out there where doing the right thing (use less transportation energy) already makes more money (by paying less for fuel). It's also a double whammy where the ROI horizon is something a real consumer would consider investing in, i.e. something that pays back within 1-4 years.

Anyhoo, my goal is catalyzing positive social change, and ecomods seem like a ripe area. That's why I'm so keen on getting fiscal data in addition to the FE. It will identify the mods / products most suitable for widescale deployment. Oh, and I'm also a cheap *******, so it also suits my misery mindset.

Total agreement with the sentiment of this post. Also in agreement with the statement that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuel generators.

Problem is, that isn't the whole picture. Renewables generally don't displace fossil fuel generators, but instead are in addition to them. While renewable electricity is cheap, it drives the cost of dispatchable (responds to demand) sources up. This is because utilities end up utilizing renewable electricity first since it's cheapest, which displaces dispatchable generation. With less utilization of those dispatchable generators, the cost per delivered kWh goes up. These plants were built assuming amortizing the cost over a certain duration and certain production quantity. All of a sudden much less production capacity is utilized when renewables come online.

Renewables will be fantastic when they have no dependence on dispatchable generation AND they are cost competitive. That means lots of storage so that renewables become dispatchable and capable of totally displacing other demand-following generators. As of right now, they add to the overall cost of electricity because they lack the most important feature; responding to consumer demand.

[Ecky]

Corporations will often make the most rational choice, but individuals? For whatever reason our decision-making is a lot more "sticky", and rarely in our best objective interests. Look at the proportion of solo commuters in large SUVs and trucks, or the proportion of people still paying monthly cable TV bills. Change is hard, and many choices are irrational, even without an obvious dopamine hit causing them.

My opinion: if you want "doing the right thing" to have the broadest reach, it needs to be commercially viable. Individual people will generally keep to their ways until it kills them.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Corporations will often make the most rational choice, but individuals? For whatever reason our decision-making is a lot more "sticky", and rarely in our best objective interests. Look at the proportion of solo commuters in large SUVs and trucks, or the proportion of people still paying monthly cable TV bills. Change is hard, and many choices are irrational, even without an obvious dopamine hit causing them.

My opinion: if you want "doing the right thing" to have the broadest reach, it needs to be commercially viable. Individual people will generally keep to their ways until it kills them.

I recall Elon saying something like, "a new product needs to be 20% better than the one it replaces before people adopt it".

Sounds about right to me. If something is just marginally better than the existing thing, people can't be bothered with it. This is why insurance "price creep" exists, because so long as the increase is gradual, the consumer just puts up with it. While changing insurance is a relatively easy thing to do, it's just 1 thing among tons of things that can be optimized, so as a whole, optimization is a daunting task.

[freebeard]

I recall Elon saying something like, "a new product needs to be 20% better than the one it replaces before people adopt it".

I watched these Robert Murray-Smith videos on Ohmic Heaters.

1573 The Dumas Effect - Free Energy Water Heater
1574 Simple DIY Version Of The Dumas Effect Free Energy Water Heater
1575 The Dumas Effect Free Energy Water Heater Explained

If it's not a drop-in replacement for what's already in use, there is an additional hurdle to adoptation.