Most of China’s Lithium actually comes from Australia so no, they don’t own the mines…
Recently, Tesla has been investing in Australian lithium mining to secure its own supplies.
I don’t kid myself here, if China can build up mining/resources in South America or Africa,
it will do that and drop Aussie purchases in the blink of an eye. That’s where America needs
to step in and secure those supplies from a trusted ally and avoid a lot of the environmental
red tape involved with setting up new mines in the USA.
Hello, have been a fan of the site for some time, but this is my first post. Looking for some wisdom that I know exists on this forum.
I have a 2024 F250 Lariat Tremor. Love the vehicle, but I am having some issues with the Upfitter switches (Aux. Switches). When I purchased the truck off the lot, when I flipped one of the Upfitter switches, it would turn from blue to orange. I have had it for two weeks now and I no longer get the orange light when activating a switch. I was going to hook some things up, but found that there is no power to the Upfitter fuse box (under the hood, next to the battery). I have done the obvious, had the "key" in the run position, had the switches to the "on" position and when testing the AUX wires that come from the bottom of the fuse box, there is no power there. There are other wires there as well, including a ACC/RUN wire which should be hot when the key is in the run position, which is also not producing any current. The 5A fuse that is in the box also does not have power to it. The odd thing is the "hot" wire that is included in this group of wires does have current.
Is there a main fuse/CB that controls power to this box? Is there something that I am missing?
And no, these are not the passthrough wires. I have located those as well and plan on using them.
The truck has 400 miles on it, and I can't get into the dealership for 3 weeks. Love to spend nearly $100K and have this kind of service!
Any help would be great, and thank you in advance!
I added a 50-Amp in garage for welder and it cost me very little; almost nothing. For an EV I’d have to change receptacle to include a neutral (I think most if not all EVs require 4-wire), but I ran wiring that way already for possible 50A RV; which I now know will never own. The point I was going to mention is that I may use welder an hour a year, so on average doesn’t affect electrical generation, transmission, or distribution very much at all. EVs are a totally different scenario because most are charged often and for many hours at a time. The cumulative amount of electricity they use far exceed typical home shop.
Anyway, in my opinion, for apartment complexes and the like, the minimum requirement mentioned in article of 20A at 240VAC makes more sense than having fewer chargers of higher charging speed. For example, 10 chargers at 20A each seems much better than having 4 chargers at 50 Amps each. And either of these is much better than one single faster charging spot equivalent to 200 Amps.
The slow charger mentioned at 20A (16A maximum, or 3.3 kW at battery, or +/- 25 kWh/night) would provide at least 100 miles of range overnight (8 hours or longer) to efficient EVs. That is also a good way to limit peak load on grid because most people will plug in at about the same time in evening, and slow charging will spread the load more evenly overnight. It’s not ideal to charge slower, but having more numbers of slow chargers for a given investment seems most beneficial for apartment complexes, work garages, etc. At least for now. Long term it probably won’t matter when owner doesn’t have control over charging speeds.