It’s because Europa use RON (Research Octane Number) and North america uses AKI (Anti Knock Index).
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Kristijan, I noticed some trucks in Alabama and Indiana smelled just fine though 
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I know the bio-diesel they have been using for school buses and public transportation around Fort Wayne, IN creates a sour-smelling exhaust. I don’t think it is quite as bad lately, maybe they are blending different additives. When you first start a modern USA gasoline vehicle, you get that sulfurous smell until the catalytic converter gets hot.
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All the indiana alibama wood gas fuel powered trucks smell the best and put out less harmfull exoust.
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Lets say this “occurrance” is far worse then you might think… Its not the cat, its the “enrichment” of the fuel mixture during “cold phase” of the engine what gives this smell.
Where as “old” carburator engines had a manual choke and we learned to drive with less power as the engine is cold, nowadays the computer takes over and compensates the mixture, to give you more power, even when the engine is cold…
For long stretches, no worry, but for short trips… high consumption and very high pollution of the environment…
The output power of any given engine should, IMHO, be adjusted / balanced with the emission in mind, not the comfortable feeling for the lazy (ignorant) driver…
So, running short trips with cold engine ? = barely power output
I could write a book about this… but only a few people, who learned to drive with low powered vehicles or wood powered transportation, would understand …
“only those who ran their engines on fumes of fuel gas” is what my grandpa used to say…
I should not read so much… not react so much and just enjoy the people i admire, or just go to my workshop and build some…
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In the old days we used to warm up the engine before driving off in cold weather. Maybe not a bad idea with today’s cars too.
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Mark, I have always heard that sugar beets exhaust the soil nutrients quickly. Maybe that is just an old farmer’s tale though.
My Grandfather grumbled when someone plants sugar beets, they want a fast cash crop that hurts future use of the land.
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With as much wooded land as you now have access to, I would be looking to wood for the base material for fuel, and grow food for humans and animals on your 6 acres of tillable soil. Check Bill’s “living off my land” thread for multiple uses of standing timber!!
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You can get both power and efficiency with electric drivetrains. No need to sacrifice one for the other. There are all sorts of Electrics and PHEVs that will be on the market in the next few years. The market is still new, and technology is still improving. I am interested to see what Ford does with the F150. I wouldn’t mind a truck that is cheaper to drive then the efficiency cars I have owned.
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On a permaculture system sugar beets shouldn’t be much of an issue. Feed the cooked mash back to livestock, and the manure goes back on the same land. Or compost. Either way all the nutrients taken out should go right back to the land, the sugar is entirely carbohydrate and derived from soil nitrogen and solar energy.
With 6 tillable acres there should be plenty of land to do a rotation, as it’s never good practice to grow the same thing year after year. One acre or half an acre should provide all the food needs for a family, an acre even enough grain for some livestock.
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Just look at what their subcontractor is selling to see what Ford will build. Ford has made large investments in Rivian recently.
It looks like they will be providing Ford with the electric running gear and ford will be putting their own body on top. Which wouldn’t be a bad deal to be honest it is a good truck by the specs just needs volume to bring the cost down which is something Ford can definitely help with.
The truck I am most interested in see if it comes to market in volume is Atlis Motors they have a flatbed truck which looks perfect for my needs.
https://www.atlismotorvehicles.com/xp-platform
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It is good practice to rotate any nitrogen depleting crops with beans they are one of the best nitrogen fixers in a garden. But annual gardens are usually referred to as sustainable agriculture. Typically permiculture will lead you to a focus on perennial crops. I mention this because Gaia’s garden is probably one of the better books I have on permiculture but it will lead you more to plants like Rhubarb, Horseradish, walking onions, and other perennials.
I was just thinking about it and honestly I don’t have a recommendation for a good reference on annual gardens because I just do what my grandfather taught me and the soil here is insanely fertile so I pretty much can’t fail. I have helped others enough to know how fortunate I am to be blessed with the soil my grandfather spent a lifetime building up.
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We are only planning on having a 1/4 acre vegetable garden, with winter squash vines and fruit trees along the borders. Amaranth in some marginal areas. The south pasture would be used for sheep (I have 4 ewes and two rams, all St. Croix). Sheep are easy. My sheep now weigh about 850 Lbs collectively . St Croix average 2.5 lambs each = 10 lambs, assuming nine survive would get me about 300Lbs lamb meat each fall for my wife and I. That’s about all of the lamb meat we could stand to eat. But six acres is more than the sheep could ever graze, so I’m considering keeping a Kunekune boar and an Idaho pasture pig sow for piglet pork. While the offspring would be a mixed bag, I could live with that to avoid having a 450Lb boar to deal with. Pigs can live on mostly grass and are profitable. The 2-acre north pasture will be cut for winter hay. So we could live on lamb, pork, black walnuts, fava beans, veggies, berries, and eventually fruit. Looking at growing Gilfeather turnips, winter squash, sunflower seeds, amaranth, sugar beets, and ground black walnut for some kind of a winter feed mix.
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I have done a fair amount of research into pigs. When I was a kid we always raised 3 pigs a summer. My grandfather insisted on getting Yorkshire pigs and we always raises 3 a summer because you don’t want less then 2. But when it comes to pigs I would suggest just buying piglets from a breeder. There is definitely some work to breeding and castration isn’t as simple as banding other animals. I am planing on raising some Berkshire or Large Blacks myself. The darker skin helps limit the sunburns the Yorkshire would get when I was a kid. We kept them with sheep and one sheep liked to trap the pigs outside.
Anyway I would definitely recommend talking to someone who has raised pigs before trying to breed them.
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That wuld be me
I raise my own pigs for years. Mark, l strongly suggest you look in to minipig vorietys. I raise Minnesota but aquired a Vietnamese boar this year, for reasons stated above (sunburns). The pigs will do just well on gras and acorns, and with occasional treat they can be fattened up to bare 100 pounds of meat and fat. They can be slaughtered from 4 months old on, weighing about 20 pounds wich is ideal for roasting.
I like to preserve my meat “on the hoof”. Small animals provide us with fresh meat year round, and are much easyer to deal with.
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Oh, castration. Not a hard task at all. I looked at a youtube video and sucseeded the first time.
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Make sure you are aware of the animal import requirements for West Virginia. Everything requires testing and certification now.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/animals/animal_import/downloads/wv.pdf
I don’t know if that is exactly the case. I haven’t heard anything official along those lines. Ford has the all electric Mustang Mach E, which is a skateboard platform that can easily be extensible to mid-size trucks and SUVs. They -may- use the Rivian skateboard for full-size electric trucks, SUVs and commercial vans.
I don’t want a fully electric vehicle. The charging isn’t fast enough unless you get to Proterra buses, but Tesla is woefully short of the speed. And I would be perfectly happy with a 40 mile range PHEV, and they very well could offer expandable battery pack sizes.
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You just plug in the EV before you go to bed it will be fully charged when you get up the next morning. I don’t drive 300 miles a day to worry about charging on the road but that is just me.
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Like you say its not quite set in stone. But all the current test vehicles I believe are Rivian platforms with the f-150 on top. The early test vehicles for Rivian were these same trucks as well. It would make more cost sense to use a platform that is already developed and since they made this investment seems like they would use the Rivian platform.
GM plans to have 22 new EV models on market in the next few years. The Hummer H3 is getting a face lift with an EV drive train and is on the way back as a GMC model. Cadilaic has an awesome new cross over coming and word has it the CT-6 V will be transformed into an EV. Those that are not in the know, the CT-6 V is an insanely fast Cadillac that can easily give the new Vet a run fro its money.
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