u/tuctrohs

Living up to your username. Or, I guess if the ground is good, there's no such hazard.

It would be less work for the subscribers here if you described your situation and ask for advice about that rather than asking everyone to write essays covering all possible situations.

https://www.reddit.com/r/evcharging/wiki/options is one starting point that might be aligned with opie's question.

If you use plugshare and a better route planner, both of which have apps and websites, you can probably plan a route using other charger brands that have native NACS plugs (no adapter needed) and much longer cords.

Plugshare, or Google street view, might also give you a way to scout out which supercharger locations would work for you.

Or, you'd probably do fine showing up at Tesla superchargers and looking for a spot that will work, and if not, it's probably faster to take the bikes off than it is to go to another charging location. But I would prioritize the other networks first, where you know it will work without a hitch (figuratively), even when you have a hitch mounted rack (literally).

The Glenwood springs option is a great one. The trip includes let's probably the most spectacular day of train scenery in all of Amtrak.

But if East Coast cities like washington, philadelphia, new york, or Boston are on your bucket list, it is quite feasible to make the connection in Chicago to get there. If you book it as one trip, Amtrak will take care of you. The trains are timed so that missing the connection is rare,, and in that rare case they will take care of you, either put you up in a hotel and get you on the train the next day, get you on another train that still gets you to the destination, or sometimes even put you on a bus a few stops before Chicago that will catch up with the train you're going to miss a few stops after Chicago. The risk is just that if they need to put you on a train the next day, there might not be a sleeper available, and so you might have to do an overnight in coach. You would get a refund for that part of your fare in that case. To eliminate that risk, some people do opt to book it with a plan to spend the night in Chicago and continue the next day.

I guess an option would be to go to Winter Park or Glenwood springs, spend the night, and then take the eastbound train all the way to Chicago, spend the night in chicago, and come back to Omaha. That way you could sleep right through the wee hours eastbound stop.

To elaborate a little on why you can't sit in coach, they sell up to exactly the number of seats available in coach, and so they're often aren't extras for you to sit in. And, they keep track of whose tickets they have scanned by marking which seat those passengers have taken. So if you were to wander into coach and sit down, pretty soon the conductor would see that you were new there and would want to scan your ticket, and would see that you are supposed to be in the sleeper.

You aren't actively kept out of the coach area—you are free to walk throughout the train, but you can't occupy one of those seats without having a ticket for coach.

But you probably won't find that you want to. The seats in your room are just as comfortable, and it is quieter and obviously more private.

Another option to consider is to take the coast starlight from Emeryville to Portland or seattle, and then take the empire builder back to Chicago from there. There's not quite as much spectacular scenery, but there's still spectacular scenery on that trip, and late spring is a great time to do that, because it's not as crowded and expensive as summer, and the timing of the train is not quite as good for getting daylight for some of the scenery, so having the extended daylight hours is more useful on the empire builder than it is for the zephyr.

I wish I could be optimistic about this idea but it's not likely to be practical for the reasons others have mentioned.

You can get some perspective from the Wikipedia article on transporting livestock by rail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_car_%28rail%29

Most of that was transporting animals to slaughter houses, and that doesn't happen by rail anymore in the US. Mostly ended in the 1970s and completely ended in the 1990s. And it was not a good experience for the animals, so not what you would want, but the history of it is interesting.

But there is also discussion of horse transport, including high-value racehorses, with cars designed to be a good experience for the horse. That is more in Britain than the US.

All in all, I think it would be easier for Amtrak or some private car operator to offer expanded pet services, for dogs and maybe cats, which is extremely limited on amtrak. I think that would be a bigger market than horses as well as being logistically easier.

I recently read the great book The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck, which chronicles a journey along the Oregon trail by mule and wagon. It was not at all easy. They chose to use a wagon built with historical materials and design, and inadvertently including the historically accurate scenario of being scammed by the person who sold them the wagon. A modern lightweight cart might make that kind of travel with a horse more practical. But I realize that's completely different from what you had in mind! Not to mention that, depending on the available low traffic roads, it could be much more stressful than driving with a trailer.

I had a glitch on the website yesterday just trying to book a regular ticket but then later it started working again. Try again or call.

They said on a bridge so I assume that was over the water not under.

Theoretically passenger train should get priority once the tracks open, but I imagine things will be such a mess that getting priority doesn't mean running on schedule.

You took issue with me saying the OBC controls all,

I did not. I thought your wording of what the EVSE does in that case might ascribe excessive agency to to "running at" at particular power level. I didn't complain about what you said about the EVSE, but merely restated it more precisely. And I certainly didn't complain about what you said about the OBC in that comment.

Many dictionaries now include a definition of electrocution meaning severe non-lethal shock. You can argue that the dictionaries are wrong (and there's good reason to think that) but that opinion is not universal so adding a word to remove all ambiguity is not a bad thing.

That's correct and exactly as I described a few comments up.

Yes, the charging will occur at 6 kW. The car doesn't tell the EVSE to do that and the EVSE doesn't do anything to make it be 6 kW. It just turns on the relays, same as it would for 8, 10, or 3.278 kW.

If you read what I said again, I didn't say the 3-phase has no advantage. I just said that the voltage is the bigger advantage. That gets you a factor of 230/120 = 400/208 = 1.92. Comparing 3 phase to single, you get 11/6 the power, but using 1.5 X the conductor area, so per square mm or circular mil you get (11/6)/1.5) = 1.22. Actually a little lower given the directions of rounding on those numbers I used.

92% is enough bigger than 22% that I consider that the main story and the 22% a minor point.

but don't know what the leading 7 is.

It was a typo. I'll fix. Sorry.

The issue is single phase 30A+ wiring is prohibitively expensive

3 phase wiring is cheaper For a given power level, but the big difference versus European wiring is that 400 volts is a lot higher than 208 volts. Most of the advantage Comes from the higher voltage.

The only order the EVSE follows is "on" or "off". And in addition to following that order from the car, it tells the car the allowable rate.

You seem to be suggesting that you'll do 16 A on a 10-30 but 24 on a 14-30. That doesn't make sense. The difference is that a 10-30 doesn't have a ground. Ground doesn't allow you to run higher current. It protects you from shock hazards.

My strategy is to help my friends and family get set up with good EV charging, even before they get EVs, rather than bootlegging power from them using sketchy setups. You might start with your own house for practice. How many different places are you thinking of charging.

Possibly. If it is a Leviton receptacle with aluminum wire and it hasn't been tightened to spec, it could fail at 12 A. We've seen failures at 16 A.

spec grade is short for a reference to a specific federal specification, so that means more than the other three examples you list.

A 50 amp aluminum circuit should be #4.

Depends on the temp rating of the wire and the terminals. If it's all 75, and this wire is, #6 is allowed. I support the recommendation to upgrade to #4, or downrate to 50 A, but it's not a code requirement.