Author Topic: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?  (Read 458148 times)

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Offline coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #400 on: April 17, 2018, 08:07:31 pm »
Only Tesla seems to think a vendor run charging network makes sense. Everyone else realises that charging has to come down to a common infrastructure, like every gas station being compatible with the tank filling port on every make of car. Where I live there are lots of places around the town to charge a car. For example, supermarket and retail park car parks mostly have a few charging points. I can't remember seeing a Tesla charger, though.
Hmmm, and you discount the possibility of the network being a factor in Tesla outselling other BEVs?

You don't see the chargers because they aren't terribly obvious. The brown markers are superchargers, the green are Tesla outlets at destinations.
The Leaf is fairly common in the UK, but Teslas are rare. Tesla lists 47 working superchargers across the entire UK. The nearest is about 20 miles from our home. On the other hand I can charge any electric car with non-Tesla chargers in many convenient places around most urban areas, like supermarkets, retail parks, and park and ride centres. These are the bulk of the locations on the plugshare map you posted. Most of the free to use chargers are not fast chargers, but some of those at bigger locations, like park and ride centres, offer fast charging. These non-Tesla site are really making EVs practical for lots of people. The Tesla network doesn't really add to the attraction of buying a Tesla at all.

Recent figures for the UK say there are 4300 public EV charging sites in the UK, offering 12500 charging ports. If I choose a Tesla over an another make of car it looks like I increase my 4300 choices of charging site by 47 supercharger locations.  :)
« Last Edit: April 17, 2018, 08:17:59 pm by coppice »
 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #401 on: April 17, 2018, 09:40:09 pm »
Those 47 super chargers (you ignored the much larger number of tesla "wall" chargers) are sited to support long distance travel (near motorways) and charging at high speed.  How many of those 4300 sites are similarly sited and have high speed charging?  The point a lot of people are missing is that the Supercharger network is set up to make long distance EV travel work. I know in the US, long distance travel in any EV other than a Tesla is hard, if not impossible. Would be surprised if the the UK and continental Europe were different.


 

Offline poorchava

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #402 on: April 17, 2018, 09:51:22 pm »
Unless they come up with a way to charge up the battery in 5 minutes - it's not gonna fly. In many countries the predominant form of housing are all sorts of apartament buildings, often without any form of garage (people just keep their cars parked on the street). So no charging overnight. Many companies do not have big parking lots, so people park on the streets too. No charging either. So they'd have to spend some hours every other day (depending on the commute distance) to wait for their car to charge up. No thanks. With battery powered tools, there are rechangeable batteries for that exact reason. To not put you in a position where u need to do something, but you have to wait for the damn thing to charge. Wealthy people will often live in a house or an apartement building with a parking spot, where they can charge their cars - that's true, but if it's supposed to be something that masses can use - no go.

Car's a tool. It's supposed to work.

meh. heard this before. Filling Station mentality. I won't make a change if I have to ANYTHING differently. The world is changing, get used to it.

It's not that, but rather: I'm not gonna make a change if the result is less convenient and functional than the current way the things are done.
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Offline coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #403 on: April 17, 2018, 09:57:34 pm »
Those 47 super chargers (you ignored the much larger number of tesla "wall" chargers) are sited to support long distance travel (near motorways) and charging at high speed.  How many of those 4300 sites are similarly sited and have high speed charging?  The point a lot of people are missing is that the Supercharger network is set up to make long distance EV travel work. I know in the US, long distance travel in any EV other than a Tesla is hard, if not impossible. Would be surprised if the the UK and continental Europe were different.
By wall chargers I assume you mean home chargers. Those seem irrelevant to the discussion. Who has an electric car and no home charger? Leaf owners in the UK seem to do OK on long journeys, as long as they plan properly. There are quite a few public chargers that will charge as fast as the car permits.
 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #404 on: April 17, 2018, 10:40:27 pm »
No, that doesn't list home chargers.  Those are at restaurants, hotels, ...  Several of the hotels I stayed at in Scotland last year had Tesla wall chargers. The one in Inverness had 3.
 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #405 on: April 17, 2018, 11:12:00 pm »
It's not that, but rather: I'm not gonna make a change if the result is less convenient and functional than the current way the things are done.

For anyone with a garage or dedicated parking space where you can set up a charger, the net change in convenience is very positive.  Long distance travel is typically the exception. For most EVers, it takes less than a minute to plug/unplug for a once a week charging session. Compared to 15-20 minutes to go the the gas/petrol station and gas up once a week, the net benefit outside of long distance travel is huge.

For those that don't have dedicated parking with chargers, shopping areas and places of employment with chargers can gain benefits similar to a dedicate charging space. Overlapping charging with shopping or dining helps.  It's not perfect and does require some behavioral and infrastructure change to increase adoption. But I don't understand why people seem to think that's a reason to say EVs are a stupid idea.

And by the way. There are other ways they save you time. With EVs, no oil changes are required, no tune-ups needed. The only fluid needing regular replacement is windshield wiper fluid. Because of regen, brakes last 50K miles/80Km. Once a year checkup. So, they save a lot of maintenance time and cost.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #406 on: April 18, 2018, 02:43:34 am »

Progress is not assured, you have to make realistic plans and carry them forward without hopeful thinking.

If you try to use the state to force the poor into electric cars while the rich just use it as a second car and use fossil when convenient (very often once the novelty of value signalling is gone, plus the many rich who get a kick from signalling opulence). You're going to see a change you will not like.

Who's trying to force anyone? Encourage yes, but only because it's obvious that a lot of people write off the whole idea of an EV without even stopping to think of the "problems" they think of are really an issue for them. For some they are, for many they aren't. EVs are not for everyone, they're not the best tool for every job, but for many people they're the best tool for that particular person's needs. For those whose lifestyle and living situation is not a good fit for an EV, conventional cars will be around for the foreseeable future. I'm not trying to convince anyone without private parking to get an EV, but there are millions of people who have private parking, a modest commute and in many cases even a second or third car in the household who still come up with the same bogus excuses of why an EV wouldn't work for them.

I'm a big fan of older cars so I have not seriously considered an EV, but man, if I could just plug in each night when I get home and never have to go to a gas station again that would be awesome, it's such a hugely compelling convenience that I have trouble understanding why anyone who has private parking would consider it a detriment rather than a feature to just be able to plug in the car each night like they already do with their phone. Have a full "tank" every morning with almost zero effort.
 

Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #407 on: April 18, 2018, 03:21:55 am »
I imagine that if internet forums existed 100 years ago, the exact same analagous debate, with analgous arguments one each side, would have occured on the topic “When will automobiles become mainstream”.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #408 on: April 18, 2018, 03:48:55 am »
I imagine that if internet forums existed 100 years ago, the exact same analagous debate, with analgous arguments one each side, would have occured on the topic “When will automobiles become mainstream”.

It only took 2 years for New York city to be 99.999% horse driven to 99.9999% ICE.  That was in 1912.  People were tired walking though horse poop that could be 3 feet thick on some days.  And any idea how much horse urine there was?  60, 000 gallons.  If I'm not mistaken in 1920 New York on a daily bases had to deal with 2,500,000 pounds of horse poop.  Average life expentancey of a working horse was three years.  They would drop dead on the street and left to rot for days. Similar story every other city in the world.

Simiar story in London with the "Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894".
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/

Haven't we already seen some cities ban smelly diesel trucks during certain hours so shoppers would not be exposed to diesel fumes? 




 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #409 on: April 19, 2018, 12:24:21 am »
I imagine that if internet forums existed 100 years ago, the exact same analagous debate, with analgous arguments one each side, would have occured on the topic “When will automobiles become mainstream”.

It only took 2 years for New York city to be 99.999% horse driven to 99.9999% ICE.  That was in 1912.  People were tired walking though horse poop that could be 3 feet thick on some days.  And any idea how much horse urine there was?  60, 000 gallons.  If I'm not mistaken in 1920 New York on a daily bases had to deal with 2,500,000 pounds of horse poop.  Average life expentancey of a working horse was three years.  They would drop dead on the street and left to rot for days. Similar story every other city in the world.

Simiar story in London with the "Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894".
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/

Haven't we already seen some cities ban smelly diesel trucks during certain hours so shoppers would not be exposed to diesel fumes?

Well in 1920, according to your numbers, there weren't very many horses in NYC.  But your point about there being a tipping point with a high Q rings true. 

But there was a lot of resistance to transitioning from horse to automobile throughout the US. Keeping a horse was labor intensive, it could only go so far before needing a rest, you had to feed it even if you didn't ride it and the manure needed to be dealt with on a regular basis. But even with all the benefits of auto ownership, people resisted. So, I don't find it surprising that people resist EVs.

Perhaps the bigger question is will people actually own cars in 50 years?  Or will we have massive fleets of self driving Uber cars.  All EVs, of course.
 

Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #410 on: April 19, 2018, 12:28:52 am »
Perhaps the bigger question is will people actually own cars in 50 years?  Or will we have massive fleets of self driving Uber cars.  All EVs, of course.

Or we'll be back to horses.  I put the odds at 50/50  EVs versus Horses. :o
 

Offline vk6zgo

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #411 on: April 19, 2018, 12:49:08 am »
I imagine that if internet forums existed 100 years ago, the exact same analagous debate, with analgous arguments one each side, would have occured on the topic “When will automobiles become mainstream”.

It only took 2 years for New York city to be 99.999% horse driven to 99.9999% ICE.  That was in 1912.  People were tired walking though horse poop that could be 3 feet thick on some days.  And any idea how much horse urine there was?  60, 000 gallons.  If I'm not mistaken in 1920 New York on a daily bases had to deal with 2,500,000 pounds of horse poop.  Average life expentancey of a working horse was three years.  They would drop dead on the street and left to rot for days. Similar story every other city in the world.

Simiar story in London with the "Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894".
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/

Haven't we already seen some cities ban smelly diesel trucks during certain hours so shoppers would not be exposed to diesel fumes?

Well in 1920, according to your numbers, there weren't very many horses in NYC.  But your point about there being a tipping point with a high Q rings true. 

But there was a lot of resistance to transitioning from horse to automobile throughout the US. Keeping a horse was labor intensive, it could only go so far before needing a rest, you had to feed it even if you didn't ride it and the manure needed to be dealt with on a regular basis. But even with all the benefits of auto ownership, people resisted. So, I don't find it surprising that people resist EVs.

Perhaps the bigger question is will people actually own cars in 50 years?  Or will we have massive fleets of self driving Uber cars.  All EVs, of course.

If you lived on a farm, "fuel" for your horse was, for much of the year, free.
Most people didn't travel really long distances, & when they did, scheduled their trip so the horse & owner could "recharge" overnight.

At least in Australia, the Great Economic Depression put a serious kink in the take up of cars as horse replacements.
This was followed at breakneck speed by WW2, when fuel was rationed.
Some cars had charcoal burning "gas producers" fitted, others were used very sparingly, with many garaged "for the duration", with their owners reverting to public transport, bicycles, &, yes, horses.

Hell, we had a horse & cart when I was a kid in the early 1950s, being one family of several in our small town who did this.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2018, 07:08:36 am by vk6zgo »
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #412 on: April 19, 2018, 06:37:31 am »
I think you are mixing up the confidence of a modern car with what a pain in the ass it was to own a car over 100 years ago.  Remember 100 year ago customers had a choice between electric cars, Internal combustion engines and external combustion engines, steam).  I believe the odds on favorite was ECE/steam as that was a trusted and proven technology at the time.  Steam powered machines were wide spread use and ICE and electric were the new fangeled unproven technology.  As oil was refined gasoline was considered a waste product and barrels of it were poured into streams to get rid of it.

Folks who could afford to purchase cars also had to employee a chauffeur/mechanic to keep the thing running.  Cars then were very temperamental and were always in need of adjusting. 

And let’s not forget there were no gas stations 100 years ago.  If one needed gasoline they purchased it at a there local drug store.
 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #413 on: April 19, 2018, 04:07:23 pm »
I think you are mixing up the confidence of a modern car with what a pain in the ass it was to own a car over 100 years ago.  Remember 100 year ago customers had a choice between electric cars, Internal combustion engines and external combustion engines, steam).  I believe the odds on favorite was ECE/steam as that was a trusted and proven technology at the time.  Steam powered machines were wide spread use and ICE and electric were the new fangeled unproven technology.  As oil was refined gasoline was considered a waste product and barrels of it were poured into streams to get rid of it.

Folks who could afford to purchase cars also had to employee a chauffeur/mechanic to keep the thing running.  Cars then were very temperamental and were always in need of adjusting. 

And let’s not forget there were no gas stations 100 years ago.  If one needed gasoline they purchased it at a there local drug store.
I don't think so. 

While really early ICE cars were the province of the rich or tinkerers, the Model T was a breakthrough, especially with the introduction of the electric starter in 1919. It was inexpensive, relatively reliable and easy to fix. They "flew off the shelves" - there was huge demand. In 1920 Ford cut the price to $395 and sold 1.4M of them. Cumulative number of Model Ts sold from 1909 through 1920 was 4.6M. The population of the US at that time was a bit more than 100M. There were about 23M families at that point - almost 1 family in 5 had a Ford Model T.

Steam was a problem because you had to fire it up well before you left whereas the ICEs of the day, with an electric starter, took just a few minutes to get ready. While steam autos may have out numbered ICE autos early on, it was on very small numbers. Wikipedia says:  In the U.S. in 1902, 485 of 909 new car registrations were steamers. However, by 1910 only a handful of steamer companies were left. One of which was Stanley - Wikipedia says: Production rose to 500 cars in 1917. Ford that same year: 375K. White was probably the leading manufacturer and built a total of about 10K, ending production in 1912.

Electric was a non-starter due to poor battery capacity and weight . Also limited electrification restricted where they could go - in 1921, a little more than half the population of the US had electricity.
 

Offline bicycleguy

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #414 on: April 19, 2018, 05:12:26 pm »
There was lots of discussion a while back about the effect on the grid of EV's.
Here's some actual data of power consumption before and after my Chevy Spark electric.

'Electric Use.png' shows I've been collecting data for a while.  You can see in May 2015 when I first got the car I went nuts driving .
I''m in Southern California, no home air conditioning, so winter actually uses more power than summer for the fan on the gas forced air heating.

'Elec b4 after.png' re-arranges the data to see the delta better.  Looks like maybe 50KWH/month more, 50/360 = 14% increase.  All charging at night, only driving about 600mile/month.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2018, 05:36:52 pm by bicycleguy »
 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #415 on: April 19, 2018, 06:42:59 pm »
Hmmm, what's your spark's WH per mile? doing the math (50KWh/600) I get 83 wh/mi. Seems kind of low, was expecting something in the 200-250 range.
 

Offline bicycleguy

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #416 on: April 19, 2018, 07:20:33 pm »
Hmmm, what's your spark's WH per mile? doing the math (50KWh/600) I get 83 wh/mi. Seems kind of low, was expecting something in the 200-250 range.

Yah, that looks weird.  Must be my home efficiency upgrades, my daughter moving out and a more efficient computer to read these blogs  |O has skewed the data.

So I have car-charger only data from my kit built, OpenEVSE which records very accurate kWH.  It works out to 233Wh/mile or 4.3mile/kWH, which better agrees with the cars onboard display of ~5mile/kWH(driving only, no charging).

thanks
 

Offline coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #417 on: April 19, 2018, 07:24:56 pm »
Hmmm, what's your spark's WH per mile? doing the math (50KWh/600) I get 83 wh/mi. Seems kind of low, was expecting something in the 200-250 range.

Yah, that looks weird.  Must be my home efficiency upgrades, my daughter moving out and a more efficient computer to read these blogs  |O has skewed the data.

So I have car-charger only data from my kit built, OpenEVSE which records very accurate kWH.  It works out to 233Wh/mile or 4.3mile/kWH, which better agrees with the cars onboard display of ~5mile/kWH(driving only, no charging).

thanks
Its a pity that visible energy metering isn't a standard function in EV chargers. I think you'll find some kind of reasonably accurate power/energy monitoring in most of them, but its buried and only used to manage the load.
 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #418 on: April 19, 2018, 09:03:04 pm »
233 including charger efficiency is pretty good. At the average national rate of 11.7 cents/kwh thats 2.7 cents per mile. Though, you probably pay a bit more than that for your electricity.
 

Online radar_macgyver

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #419 on: April 20, 2018, 06:00:34 am »
Perhaps the bigger question is will people actually own cars in 50 years?  Or will we have massive fleets of self driving Uber cars.  All EVs, of course.

Or we'll be back to horses.  I put the odds at 50/50  EVs versus Horses. :o

Self driving horses?  :D


Its a pity that visible energy metering isn't a standard function in EV chargers. I think you'll find some kind of reasonably accurate power/energy monitoring in most of them, but its buried and only used to manage the load.

Open EVSE has it, as does the Juicebox Pro. Juicebox lets you show plots of energy vs time, and download csv files of the data as well.
 

Offline Miyuki

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #420 on: April 20, 2018, 08:54:53 am »

Self driving horses?  :D


horses have pretty good self driving features and also automatic braking  ;D
and they can bring you home from pub even if you are a bag of potatoes  8)
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #421 on: April 20, 2018, 10:02:45 am »

Self driving horses?  :D


horses have pretty good self driving features and also automatic braking  ;D
and they can bring you home from pub even if you are a bag of potatoes  8)


 

Offline paulca

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #422 on: April 20, 2018, 10:34:21 am »


More intelligent than the right hand lane hoggers round here!
"What could possibly go wrong?"
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Offline glarsson

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #423 on: April 20, 2018, 10:44:51 am »
The intelligent part of that vehicle was obviously the dog. 🐕
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #424 on: April 20, 2018, 03:44:08 pm »
I think you are mixing up the confidence of a modern car with what a pain in the ass it was to own a car over 100 years ago.  Remember 100 year ago customers had a choice between electric cars, Internal combustion engines and external combustion engines, steam).  I believe the odds on favorite was ECE/steam as that was a trusted and proven technology at the time.  Steam powered machines were wide spread use and ICE and electric were the new fangeled unproven technology.  As oil was refined gasoline was considered a waste product and barrels of it were poured into streams to get rid of it.

Folks who could afford to purchase cars also had to employee a chauffeur/mechanic to keep the thing running.  Cars then were very temperamental and were always in need of adjusting. 

And let’s not forget there were no gas stations 100 years ago.  If one needed gasoline they purchased it at a there local drug store.
I don't think so. 

While really early ICE cars were the province of the rich or tinkerers, the Model T was a breakthrough, especially with the introduction of the electric starter in 1919. It was inexpensive, relatively reliable and easy to fix. They "flew off the shelves" - there was huge demand. In 1920 Ford cut the price to $395 and sold 1.4M of them. Cumulative number of Model Ts sold from 1909 through 1920 was 4.6M. The population of the US at that time was a bit more than 100M. There were about 23M families at that point - almost 1 family in 5 had a Ford Model T.

Steam was a problem because you had to fire it up well before you left whereas the ICEs of the day, with an electric starter, took just a few minutes to get ready. While steam autos may have out numbered ICE autos early on, it was on very small numbers. Wikipedia says:  In the U.S. in 1902, 485 of 909 new car registrations were steamers. However, by 1910 only a handful of steamer companies were left. One of which was Stanley - Wikipedia says: Production rose to 500 cars in 1917. Ford that same year: 375K. White was probably the leading manufacturer and built a total of about 10K, ending production in 1912.

Electric was a non-starter due to poor battery capacity and weight . Also limited electrification restricted where they could go - in 1921, a little more than half the population of the US had electricity.

Thank you for sharing this.

Do you know when the first ICE, ECE and electric car companies began selling cars in the US?
I think the first ICE car was in Europe/Germany around 1880.  Bens(?)  From before Mercedes Bens.
And did Baker Electric cars sell okay?  I think they did go out of business until 1930s.

The "Early Car Wars" would make for an interstring documentary video.
 


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