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Lots of her friends have cars and cruise around Pennsylvania with them, so after researching what kind of car is best for her, Periwinkle goes to a dealership and buys one.
The first time she shows it off, her friends are dubious, but once she explains the advantages it has several of them come around.
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Never mind the publish date on the chapter . . . this one's been in the pre-reading file for a bit.
Some people at EFNW got a preview of this one!
I wonder if Rarity, being a mmost stylish cat lady, would prefer a V12 E-Type, or an XJ220?
Why isn’t there an alternate universe tag?
11733246
Cause it takes place on Earth.
. . . haven't the ponies made it to where you live yet?
Ironically enough, the car that I was in for most of Driver's Ed was a Ford Focus.
It's adorable though.
I should have caught when she mentioned it was quiet, but figured it just meant the car had the active exhaust. Then I realized and went "oh no".
A good friend of mine has a '16 Mustang GT and a '21 Mach-E GT, which I'm sure has caused at least one purist's head to explode. As he's noted, driving a supercharged 5.0 with a manual is fun when it's with purpose - boring if it's to the grocery store. That's when the Mach-E comes in handy.
Periwinkle, 1.1 Gigawatts is WAY more than you require. So please, for the sake of your car, use the charger.
Clever girl.
Added to
Admiral Biscuits Fleet (group)
Pony On Earth (folder)
Humans, the dear little monkeys, are remarkably clever, but oh so fragile.
Yeah, if the car's so -ING good, why are you selling it? MY experience has been that people keep their car until it breaks THEN they sell it.
As an aside, I have a little thing called Operation Fourth Wall that says that isn't happening. The relevant documents cite DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths, which destroyed the multiverse with a wave of antimatter and had Superboy-Prime in a major role to remind the biggest fans that that's supposed to include our own world.
11733271
The practicality issues us mere humans have to deal with disappear when you can conjure lightning.
This... raises all kinds of questions. How much gold is in an Equestrian bit, anyway? And why isn't bit conversion/FOREX a more popular service, particularly near portals?
That said, if pegasi do actually have a way to capture lightning at scale for electrical power, I can see a whole bunch of companies falling over themselves to hire pegasi to perfect the process.
I love these stories. Keep 'em up! (Might have one of my own to share soon...)
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The trick here is "at scale"; it's likely not possible to automate, which as far as modern humans are concerned means it's not at scale.
goggles
The link to the story notes seems broken?
I don't think a single lightning can charge up an electric vehicle if it could be channelled. Unless the jar contained more than a single lightning?
Plus, I don't know about the economics of that, but it sounds like Periwrinkle is performing some kind of tax evasion with non-taxable electricity. Humans are greedy at times.
Musk badly exaggerating the range on his junk was quite a hit to any interest I might have for EVs.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/doj-subpoenas-tesla-in-probes-of-autopilot-and-driving-range-estimates/
Though a pegasus service where they fly glass jars out to you instead of waiting for a AAA mobile charger in an emergency would be a business model I'd happily invest in.
Still, https://www.motortrend.com/news/2023-jeep-magneto-30-concept-first-look-review/ has my interest.
I'm not going to give up a clutch pedal ever. I'd rely on an E-bike before I get an automatic.
I was expecting another scene where Periwinkle would come back to a burned out car.
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A single bolt of lightening could actually charge an EV several times over.
Most of them are insanely efficient these days
She got everything I want. The Mustang is my dream car, but they are impossible to find. Any time one appears on the market, someone else buys it within minutes. I'd have to either buy new or go out-of-state, neither of which I can afford. I can't get an electric car, either, because I, too, live in an apartment, but do not have the ability to collect lightning.
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For my brother who works in education and commutes between a few schools his Bolt never runs low enough to worry. the car charger itself isn't nearly as beefy as what any of the huge electric SUVs need, it only needs a 40 amp circuit. the issue is that most americans opted for gas stoves and ovens instead of upgrading electrical panels and most houses have 100 or even older 60 amp panels
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Oops, I forgot to put the link in. It's fixed now, thank you
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Plus, I thought it had been well-established in the Admiral's other "pony on Earth" stories that visiting ponies were not allowed to bring significant quantities of gold or gems through the portal with them?
Canned lightning? Awesome.
These ponies are way too lax about electricity, scares me every time they make worrying parallels. How the car hasn't died is a mystery, or she has bit more understanding of this canned lightning then it seems.
Story concept: pony learns about, gets, and uses credit cards. There's plenty of easily available research material on r/creditcards!
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It's not tax evasion. Otherwise, people with hone solar panels would be committing tax evasion.
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A single bolt of lightning would instantly fry any electronic or make batteries explode. Looking around it is thought that a single bolt of lightning is about 10gigawatts of electricity. And thats in a split second. There NO storage medium that is even remotely capable of trying to store that HUGH amount of energy in that short of a timeframe. Only in a pony fiction universe is it possible.
Oh and mustangs suck! Pontiac Trans Am's all the way! Fight me!
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Well, whatever she buys it shouldn't be a Lambo.
- MLP: FiM
- Comedy
- Slice of Life
Ponies and horsepower aren't a good mix, as Rarity finds out when she wrecks her Lambo. At least the airbag worked.11733254
I want to say I got a Chevy Lumina. Remember those?
Nuzzles are, and I would welcome nuzzles from
our new pony overlordsponies.11733271
It's a very practical car for a pegasus who can catch her own lightning. Or even make it if there isn't enough for it to occur naturally.
Yeah--I've never wanted a performance car 'cause the rare occasions where I'd be able to use it as intended are far outweighed when I need a general purpose stuff-hauler . . . actually why my last three daily drivers have all been minivans. Decent fuel economy, and good storage space for people or cargo as needed.
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Using some quick googling, I found that normal lightning bolts are typically only 1400kWh, but that was just one source and the numbers vary wildly.
If she can build an apparatus that catches is and then release it at an appropriate level for her car, she's got free power. And instant feedback if she hasn't done it right, 'cause something melts, explodes, catches fire, or all three at once!
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Ponies aren't entirely rubes, they're often bloody-minded rules lawyers. As we all know from Offbeat and her carriage horse gig.
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Thank you!
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At least when it comes to some things. Like lightning.
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It really depends on the person. But I come from a family that generally drives their vehicles into the ground; the few of mine I've sold rather than just scrap I did sell for about junkyard price, 'cause that was what you were getting.
At least I was honest about that. "You've buying a $200 truck, I'm not making any promises about anything."
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Sure, it's all well and good to have that theory, but how do you account for your Fanta and canned peaches constantly disappearing? Who else but Princess Celestia—long may she reign—could be to blame for that?
That does solve a lot of problems.
It also creates other problems, which pony society has long since figured out but humans haven't yet.
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I figure after the initial novelty increasing value (anybody can have gold, but not anybody can have a genuine Equestrian bit coin), their value would be purely based on weight.
I assume they're pure gold. There's been some fandom calculations about how much they'd weigh based on assumptions of the pony size relative to humans and screencaps of ponies handling bits. Doing some quick interneting, by 1559 Guilders weighed 2.5g each (or contained 2.5g of pure gold, I'm not entirely sure). Since humans are basing the value on weight, it doesn't really matter for the story. I did a little more research back when I wrote Rarity Wrecks a Lambo and determined that she could buy a used Lambo (about $70k IIRC) for ten bits . . . I might have considered heavier bit coins.
Depending on what they're actually made of and how big they are is of course an exercise in speculation; they might be made out of something gold-like which is actually worth less than their theoretical money value like most currencies, in which case their value is even more arbitrary.
[As an aside on that path; they might be worth less to ponies 'cause gold is so common but worth more to humans since it isn't; see for example the historical price difference between aluminum and gold]
In regard to your second question, most of my stories assume that there is some sort of value exchange magic going on at the portals so ponies don't accidentally destroy the gem market by importing diamonds by the bucketful, let's say. Shameless self-promotion
This is set in AlwaysDressesInStyle's 'verse, and I don't know how he handled the problem; if he does have a currency exchange program in place, assume that Periwinkle was clever enough to sneak them in so she can use them for large purchases, like a car.
Yeah, I agree. Even if they can't, just being able to hit things with lightning on command would be very useful when it comes to hardening the grid, inventing better lightning rods, and so forth.
Don't worry, I will!
Yay! Looking forward to it!
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That's debatable: I could see it going either way. Obviously, for them to make a dent on electrical production, they'd either need a lot of pegasi or a very good system that is largely automated, which canon suggests they have with the weather factory. (Likely Cloudsdale isn't the only one, but I don't recall any others ever being mentioned in canon.)
I don't know if they could do that for lightning, I don't recall it from canon, but we do know from canon that they can industrialize clouds, rain, snow, and rainbows at least to a degree.
In my own personal opinion, they cannot commercialize electricity production from lightning, even using a combination of human and pony tech. But given what we've seen in canon, I wouldn't be fussed seeing that as a plot point in a story. One of those 'not how I'd have done it, but' moments, if you know what I mean.
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Flash googles save your vision!
Also ponies with steampunk googles are extra adorable.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2023/5/1/3117482.png
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Depends on how much electricity is in it. Sources vary (I suppose how you measure it factors in), but one source I found suggested that the average negative lightning bolt contains 1400kWh of power, and if she had the best battery available for her Mach-E, it can only hold 91kWh of charge.
There'd be losses due to capture, storage, and then putting it back in her car, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to imagine that she could get ten full charges out of one lightning bolt.
I don't think that in the US there are any specific laws against that (our utility companies are typically quasi-public companies, which means that they have to follow public utility rules but they're privately owned companies). My local utility runs natural gas to my house and has a meter on the side of my house, but they can't force me to use their natural gas if I decide to use something else.
The only real potential crime would be if the jurisdiction in question had some kind of road tax scheme built into the electricity, and as far as I know no state in the US does yet; we don't have enough electric cars for that to have become an issue which needs solving just yet. In the future, it will be.
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So would I. The thought of a pegasus flying in with saddlebags full of Mason jars, and probably with flash goggles perched on her forehead for safety is exactly the kind of industry I could get behind.
That thing looks pretty cool!
I used to say that, but the kinds of vehicles I want to daily drive don't come with manual transmissions unless I import one from Europe at great expense. Given the option between an automatic and a manual, I'll pick the manual every time, but when there's no choice in the class of vehicle I want or the price I'm willing to pay, I'll drive an automatic.
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I didn't expand on it in the story, but if she's smart enough to figure out how to build a device to catch lightning, she's probably also smart enough to figure out how to put it into her Mach-E at a rate the batteries can accept.
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Yeah, the numbers I found suggested that she could get ten full charges out of one bolt (assuming some conversion losses; if there were none she could get close to 15).
How much theoretically usable electricity is in a lightning bolt doesn't seem to be a decided-on answer; I got lots of different answers on the internet. Peak voltage and peak amperage seem well-known, so there's probably some factor I don't fully understand that makes it complicated to figure out.
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I haven't been keeping track of new Mustangs, but the used ones do seem to be hard to find with the specs I want and they do seem to have a price premium. Another vehicle I've been considering is difficult to get, although I have seen one for sale used two states over.
Right now the car market is still kind of screwed up, it might improve in the next couple of years.
11733636
Yeah, my normal daily commute is only ten miles at most, so I could use a normal extension cord and keep most electric cars well-charged with just being plugged in to a normal circuit overnight.
One of my friends (who's anti electric-car) said that would be an inconvenience, and I said it wasn't that inconvenient when I had to do the same with my diesel Suburban in the winter.
I'm also in the boat of having a house with several gas appliances and only a 60A panel.
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You are correct.
This story is technically in AlwaysDressesInStyle's Car Wash-verse, and I don't know what rules he set up for that. Periwinkle might simply have smuggled the bits in.
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Imagine going down into her pantry and screwing the lid off what you thought was an empty jar
Seriously, though, I just love the idea of her having boxes of jars full of captured lightning.
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In my 'verse, pegasi are immune to normal (negative) lightning, so she doesn't have any real fear about getting electrocuted by it. Besides that immunity, pegasi—especially weatherponies—have a lot more experience with it than humans do.
In order for the car to accept a charge, she would have to build a circuit that tells it what it's getting. I didn't mention that in the story, which I should have. In the US, IIRC there are two communication pins which tell the car what it's getting, and then two bigger contactor pins for fast DC charging (which is what she'd be using). She could stuff enough electricity through the charging cables to overcome the car's internal circuitry, but that would just explode the batteries, and she knows that.