turboSnail

I go through periods of high and low caffeine intake, so I have some experience in managing withdrawals.

Let’s say you want to go down from 4 cups to 2 cups. Here’s how to do it:

1. Write down how much you currently use. Let’s say you’re using the traditional 60 g/l recipe and a 200 ml cup. Therefore your starting point is: 60 g/l × 0.2 l × 4 cups/d = 48 g/d
2. Prepare a daily plan on how do you go from 48 g/d (4 cups/d) to 24 g/d (2 cups/d). I would recommending reducing the does by 1 g of beans per day. So, if you used 48 g of beans yesterday, grind only 47 g today and 46 tomorrow etc. If headaches occur, you need to go slower. If you’re drinking dark roast or if you have a headache resistant head, you can probably get away with 1.5 g/d or 2 g/d reduction rate.
3. Don’t switch to another type of coffee while ramping down your intake, since the different caffeine concentration in the beans will change the daily dose. You don’t know the mass of caffeine, but you do know the mass of the beans you grind. Don’t introduce unknown variables. This is hard enough as it is.
4. Don’t drink coffee made by other people. You won’t be able to control your intake properly.

That’s how I do it when ramping down my intake. You can also go all the way to zero if you like. The same logic applies to tea as well, but doing it gets a bit tricky. The concentration of caffeine in the solids is much higher in tea, so 1 g/d reduction rate is far too rapid. You also need to have a good scale, and you need to weigh very small masses, which may require some trickery.

Oh, ok so that was only a 10⁹ times more… No biggie. LOL.

Anyway, as long as you’re able to sleep well, it should be ok. Personally, I think 2 cups (2*200 ml) is a good amount for me. The exact amount of caffeine that contains depends on the type of coffee beans I use. The concentration in the drinkable liquid should be around 300 mg/l, but who knows really. Dark roast will have less than light roast. In any case, that could be something like 2cups/d *0.2 l/cup *300 mg/l = 120 mg/d. Compared to that, I would still say your caffeine intake is a lot higher than mine.

Anyway, as a fun thought experiment, I looked up what caffeine costs and what it would take to buy 400 Mg of it. Sigma-Aldrich/Merck sells 25 kg drums of this stuff and they charge only 1060 € for each. What a bargain for food grade caffeine!

That means, you would need to order 16 000 drums of it. That will be quite a few pallets. Is that going to be more than a single lorry? Don’t worry about it. It will cost you only 16 960 000 €, so I guess now would be a good time to start a company to get those tax deductions on chemical orders. On the other hand, you might actually want to contact one of the many factories that produce decaf beans and ask for a better price. All of that caffeine has to go somewhere, right?

Usually, I would recommend using gloves, respirator, full hazmat suit etc. when handling this kind of cargo, but in this case that would kinda defeat the purpose.

source: https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/DE/en/product/aldrich/w222402

Exactly. Capital letters matter in science and technology.

400 Mg? sounds orders of magnitude beyond lethal. How do you even shove all that into your system?

Some people say Oracle doesn’t have clients. They have hostages.

Turns out a lot has happened in the past five years. It was about time I took another look at the EV market.

I narrowed it down to cars manufactured in 2019, and I found so many Nissan Leafs. Those are the kind you’d only want to drive when the ambient temperature suits NMC batteries. Maybe a third of the year, if you’re being generous. Not too long ago, those cars were new and really expensive, but still equally niche products as they are today. Many competing models had the same issues back then, and my perceptions were shaped by that era.

Another popular model seems to be the Renault Zoe. Some versions can heat the battery to optimal temperatures, so I guess a Zoe could be a reasonable option as long as you do your due diligence. These Zoes are now used and very affordable, so I’d say we’ve passed the point of no return. EVs are a viable option today. 😀

Well… assuming you have a place to charge it. Right now, I don’t, so it’s back to square one for me. 😞

Don’t think about it too much. Engaging with paradoxes is known to exercise your mental muscles.

I’m a liar.

Recently I realised that my EV data needed an update. Previously I thought that everything even remotely affordable was automatically Nissan Leaf level of useless. Well, the cheapest ones still are, but within the affordable range there are some cars that aren’t trash. I was surprised to find something I could realistically consider buying.

As long as I can figure out a way to charge it, my next car will be electric. Currently, I can’t charge at home, so there’s a bit of a problem…

Haven’t seen anything decent at that price. You’ll be fine as long as you just drive in a city and keep the temperature of your car reasonable. If not, you’ll need to spend at least twice as much to get something decent.

The prices coming down though. We’re actually pretty close tolerable prices right now.

In practical terms, maintenance used to be a bottleneck. Didn’t know if it still is. If you always need to go to Tesla for maintenance, it’s going to get ridiculously expensive.

And then there’s the philosophical side. Who wants to drive a car associated with filth like Elon.

Other than that, getting a used Tesla could be nice.

Did some quick market research and the numbers are in.

If your only drive in good weather in a city, you can get an EV for about 5 k€. If your country has snow and ice enabled, you’ll need to spend about 12 k€, but that’s still tolerable.

It’s not that expensive after all. Used to be pretty absurd a few years ago. Next, I’ll just need to figure out how to charge an EV. I’ll probably need to move to a newer building first.

Better watch out. What if you get lung cancer from all that exposure. Nearly every character in the series is smoking all the time.

Stopped reading after the “Why it matters” section. Nobody uses that phrase in an article.

The only good things about NMC cells is the energy density and the ability to pull a decent power during acceleration.

When it comes to temperatures, they are surprisingly picky. Too hot or cold, and they wear out quickly. If you push beyond that, you’ll lose range instantly. That’s why a heat pump is such a great thing to have.

Also, the state of charge matters to longevity. If you use the wrong percentages frequently, you’ll start losing capacity sooner or later. Even if you treat the battery perfectly, it’s still going to wear out like the tires do, but this thing costs as much as an engine.

I’m really looking forward to seeing all the other battery chemistries take their share of the market.

I guess an update is in order. I was thinking of a calculation that is already several years old. I can’t even find it any more, but it had three options: small gasoline powered ICE car, hybrid and a fully electric one. Can’t remember if the latter one was Tesla, Toyota, BMW or something. Anyway, at that time, TCO of a small gasoline powered car was a bit lower that that of a hybrid or a fully electric one.

The final tipping point will be when the demand for EVs exceeds the demand for other car types. When that happens, depreciation of gasoline cars will increase dramatically, giving EVs a lower TCO. At the moment, charging infrastructure seems to be the bottle neck for a many people, so that’s why we haven’t gone past the tipping point yet. The real bottle neck here is actually the electrical grid, and upgrading that will take many years, if not decades. We could install more charging stations, but that would break the whole grid, so that’s why we have to limit their number in specific parts of the grid.

The price of a new EV is obviously going to decrease in the future, as every step along the chain ramps up production. Alternative battery chemistries play a role as well, now that LFP cars have finally entered the market. I’m also looking forward to seeing how Na-ion batteries affect the prices, but that’s still going to take a many years. I expect that in about 5-10 years the prices of cheap EVs will be a lot lower than they are today.

The way I see it, rich people can buy new cars. Everyone else who needs one should consider buying a used one instead. After a few years, depreciation isn’t quite so rapid any more, which makes TCO less of a burden.

Maintenance expenses do increase as the car ages, but as long as it isn’t like 25 years old, it’s not completely absurd. Currently, I’m looking to buy something that is about 5 years old, and then sell it when it begins to require frequent maintenance. That way, I should be able to avoid the two expensive extremes.

However, there’s another nasty twist. Cold environment will murder the NMC cells in no time. Not too long ago, I had to leave my car in a cold parking lot for a long time, and when I got back it was about -30 °C. Fortunately, I don’t need to abuse the engine this way any more than maybe twice every year. Oh, boy did it sound unhappy with that cold start, but it managed it anyway. If I had an EV, I would probably need to leave it at home, and take a bus for horribly timed trips like that.

Let’s say, about 6 times a year, I’ll have badly timed trips, with temperatures hovering around +5…-15 °C: That isn’t a complete disaster for EVs, but it’s still very bad for the cells. Some cars have a built-in heating system for the battery, so I guess that feature would see frequent use. When I’m eventually buying a use EV, having a battery heating system is going to be a completely non-negotiable feature.

Oof… that’s just diabolical. If I say that I hate that, it’s still going to feel like an understatement.

Depreciation is a massive slice of the pie in all cars, but EVs are hit even harder. Buying a used EV is probably my best bet in about 5-10 years from now.

Specific cost of ownership (as in €/m) is what actually matters in the end, but most people ignore it. Usually people just compare gasoline and electricity prices and draw their conclusions based on that. That sort of analysis is not going to give you a very reliable picture.

Regardless, if I had the money to drive a BMW, buying an EV would be a simple decision. Who cares about the purchase price, ongoing expenses or depreciation when you have that much money. Since I’m not in that market segment, EVs aren’t really a viable option for me just yet.

Here’s a financial argument. The initial purchase price is too high for me, and the depreciation of electric vehicles is also very high. Overall cost of ownership per distance driven is lower if I drive a small gasoline-powered car.

I really don’t want it to be that way, but that’s the reality I have to deal with. Cheaper EVs are coming, but they still aren’t in my price range.

Update: Yes they are. Needed to update my data. Used EVs aren’t expensive trash any more. Some of them are actually quite reasonable.