Oredigger, if you have a 240 V welding plug in the shop or garage you already have a level 2 charger. If not, it’s a great excuse to get one put in if you haven’t built it. How often would you have to charge both vehicles at the same time at full charge? Running a dual charger setup it is really going to be rare that both vehicles will be charging full bore anyway. Once they get to about 80% they slow down the charge rate, and at that point it would drive more current into the other vehicle with a smart charger setup. It’s really not as big a deal as you think it is.
A combination of price and energy density of Li-ion batteries. And the price is pretty much due to that of batteries. EVs actually take much less labor to manufacture, so the high price is due to the expensive materials that batteries are made of. If we could get a minor improvement in the energy density, say about 20%, and a similar decrease in the cost of battery materials, the market would explode.
Currently, no manufacturer is pushing sales of EVs, although VW will be doing so soon. Tesla doesn’t have to push sales; they don’t advertise in any of the usual ways and get by with essentially word-of-mouth advertising.[sup]1[/sup] Other manufacturers don’t push them, but rather sell just enough to be compliant with California CAFE rules. In fact, Chevy actually sells the Bolt at below cost, but most Chevy dealers don’t even try to sell them. The fact that dealers get most of their profits from maintainance and repairs is part of that; EVs require far less maintainance than ICEVs.
[sup]1[/sup] Tesla is limited by production, rather than orders. If they could make twice as many, they’d sell all of them.
That would be a big deal to my Wife and I. Our last long road trip was 4000 miles. 12-14 hours of driving a day isn’t unusual. Add a few hours to that IS a big deal.
For instance, going East and crossing a time zone really helps. Going west ‘losing’ that hour really, really sucks.
I’m not dissing EV’s. Just pointing out that people are different. And there are plenty of people like my Wife and I.
Note that typical dryer outlets (NEMA 14-30) that you buy at home depot aren’t designed for hundreds of connect/disconnect cycles. Normally this isn’t really an issue because the EV charging cord is usually left plugged into the outlet most of the time, but in your case you’d be swapping every time you run a load of laundry.
Also, keep in mind that you’re going to be plugging and unplugging an EV a lot - this may not be a big deal to you, but I certainly wouldn’t want to have to drag & coil cables through the garage, and then walk back and forth plugging in both ends of the cable every time I get home from work, if I didn’t have to. You may want to consider putting in an outlet immediately adjacent to the charge port on the car, just for convenience.
They keep talking about promoting EVs here but they are going to need to address some monumental obstacles to adoption. I keep hearing people talk about how easy it would be to make the switch but for most of the miles in this country there just isn’t any infrastructure in place to support them. In my state most houses don’t even have garages, even many that do are not wired. Most houses here would need major wiring work to even consider an EV. There just is nowhere to plug them in, much less install an charging station that allows for faster charges. The range is also an issue. You can only go, maybe 100 miles on even the best EVs and still be able to get home. We, here at least, have to consider half of the range as the full range because you are going to have to save half of the charge to get back home. I work in the capitol city of my state. I know of three charging stations in town. There are only 236 commercial charging units in the whole state. (So, 236 people could potentially make a road trip on any given day. The 237th gets to spend the night.) Nearly all of those are within a few miles of the biggest towns. So about 90% of the state is completely unserved.
I personally think EVs are great, but until someone figures out how to address the issue of both commercial and private charging infrastructure they will not make sense anywhere but very urban areas.
An ICE car can be fueled at gas stations, which are ubiquitous, while an electric car needs a special charging station to fill up, or somewhere with an outside power line to charge overnight. All of the scenarios people come up with for long trips in ICE vehicles either assume things like ‘hotels will let you charge in the parking lot’ or ‘there will be charging stations conveniently placed on your route’, or require you to make a strict planned timetable of where you’ll be driving and stopping in order to keep the car charged.
Also a lot of the ‘daily use’ scenarios include a sort of perfect, regimented life that a lot of people I know don’t follow. What if you go to work with a 25 mile each way commute, then go out until late, forget to put the charger in when you get home, then want to visit a friend who lives 60 miles away where I’ll be parked in a gravel lot with no charger, then come home after the weekend? It’s not remotely a problem to do that sort of thing with an ICE car, but with an EV I would run into trouble.
If the price was equal, I would choose the car that does what I want it to do instead of the one I’d need to plan around. Since I would probably be paying double for an EV (there’s not a strong used market and I wouldn’t trust unwarrantied batteries so I’d require a newer EV than ICE), the choice is even easier. EVs will be great when there’s a standard charging infrastructure, not sporadic stations run on competing standards and a distinct lack of charging in hotel and home lots, but all of the sneering from EV cheerleaders about how unreasonable people who are unimpressed by the significant limits of EVs isn’t likely to convince anyone to purchase one.
Speaking only for myself, I don’t want to sneer at anyone nor convince anyone to purchase an EV. (I guess I am a “cheerleader” but hopefully not an obnoxious one)
I have had a plug in car for over 7 years now. (first a Volt and then an iPace). I have forgotten to plug in at home exactly one time. That’s less often then I forget to close the garage door.
My life isn’t completely regimented. Sometimes I drive to the airport, sometimes to Bellevue or Everett. I can easily go to Olympia and back on one charge. If I want to go to Portland, I know where I can plug in. Although I haven’t driven to Spokane in the past 5 or 6 years, I could do so with minimal planning. (my car and several smart phone apps tell me where I can stop for a quick charge on the way). By the way, the charging infrastructure is fast improving. Many new superchargers aren’t even on the maps yet, so the system is probably already quite a bit better than it appears if you’re googling “Level 3 charging stations near me”.
Driving to Chicago might be a pain, but I am pretty certain that such a trip isn’t happening, regardless of the car I own. (in the extremely unlikely event I had to make such a trip, I would either plan it out with charging stops or just rent a car.)
I believe there are a significant number of people like me and also a significant number of people who wouldn’t find an EV very convenient.
Eta: tl:dr I love my car, and it works for me. If an EV is not for you, that’s fine.
What about it? That’s only 170 miles, which almost all of the recent EVs will handle with no problem.
The Model S 100D has a 373 mile range, so really it’s >180 miles each way. Even the shortest range Tesla will do 250 miles.
Since this thread seems overrepresented by people telling about their lives with 400 mile daily commutes and numerous consecutive thousand mile drives, I’ll just toss out myself as a datapoint on the opposite end of the scale. I average maybe 15 miles a day and haven’t been more than an hour away from my apartment in thirteen years, and have no inclination to change that in the next thirteen either. I was born to drive an EV.
My apartment complex, on the other hand, wasn’t born to support one. Dashed shame, that. There’s no indication that they’re going to retrofit anything in the forseeable future either.
If I were to follow the trend in this thread and assume that my life choices are utterly representative of all human life then I would conclude that the primary hurdle to wide EV acceptance is not the handful of deviants who continually drive their car around without eating or sleeping, but rather declining home ownership and weather conditions. That and people waiting for the next better thing - the longer battery they don’t need, or the self driving car they desperately want. As they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and given that buying a cars is a pretty permanent investment people are going to be leery of getting in early on developing technology when something better looks to be on the horizon.
In California at least, apartment complexes are obligated to allow tenants to install EV charging stations, within reasonable bounds.
I also think I am about the perfect candidate for an EV. I typically drive 28 miles a day to work and back, and anywhere else I might want to go after work would still be well within the range of any EV. The longest trip I make semi-regularly (meaning a few times a year) would be to San Francisco, a little under 100 miles away. Even that would be within the range of even the shortest range Tesla to do as a round trip, but since it’s San Francisco there are plenty of places to recharge at my destination as well (although the there’s the issue of the car possibly being “idle” on the charger while parked at the BART station until I return). But really I prefer to take the train when I visit the Bay Area anyway, and I only drive if the train schedule doesn’t align with my schedule (like I’m seeing a show in the evening that ends too late for me to catch the last train home). All my relatives live in other states so I would fly if I wanted to visit them anyway, and likewise I typically fly for vacations rather than taking road trips. If I really wanted to do a road trip to somewhere like Yosemite I’m sure I could swing the cost of a rental car once a year or so. I’m sure that would be no more expensive than flying somewhere. Not to mention isn’t there at least one EV that was offering buyers one free car rental per year, to try to assuage the “What if I want to take a 1000 mile road trip?” people? And it sound like I don’t even need any new wiring for a charger since I already have a dryer outlet in my garage. I’d probably get one of those “Dryer Buddy” devices someone linked to earlier so I’m not having to constantly plug and unplug the dryer.
I am seriously thinking of getting an EV for my next vehicle. That won’t be fore several years though, since I just got a new car this year. I’m thinking by there there will likely be more used Teslas and others on the market, so I won’t have to pay full price for a new one.
I have two children who live in Chicago. I don’t believe their landlords are even obligated to provide any parking at all, much less chargers.
Thank you for posting. This illustrates some of what I was talking about in the Original Post
While this may be true for remote areas, it is not true for the majority of the driving population. Also, I find that many people are unaware of what infrastructure exists, as they have never looked, or are unaware that things are changing rapidly. (and will continue to change/improve)
We’ve been having lots of discussion about this above. “major wiring work”? No. a 110, 15 amp plug will give you 50 miles range overnight. A level 2 charger works off of a dryer circuit, and will give you lots of range.
Are you from the past? Have you been reading 2012 Nissan LEAF advertisements?
Infrastructure is coming. Slower in rural areas to be sure. Slower in states and provinces that tend to vote right-wing; certainly. Many of my Alberta friends hate, HATE HATE anything that does not burn oil (and lots of it). They actively FIGHT AGAINST any kind of EV infrastructure. But businesses are putting it in all the same.
So I understand that in your area, the infrastructure problem is real. But I imagine in the early days of internal combustion cars, the same was true. “I can’t get any gasoline in my area. There are no places to sell it, and there never will be. My trusty horse is all I need.”
This article suggests that although new apartments in Chicago have EV charger requirements, there is not yet a California-like right-to-charge ordnance.
That said, it’s also true that apartments in CA are not obligated to provide parking spots. Just that if they do (and meet other constraints), then they must allow apartment dwellers to install a charging system.
Last year I stayed in an Airbnb in an apartment complex in Hawaii where either the landlord or one of the tenants had installed an EV charger in the parking lot. The charger was the same sort that one might install in a garage (I assume it was rated for outdoor use, though) and attached to a wooden post. IIRC they ran a wire from the top of the building to the top of the post, like an above ground power line. So no, installing chargers doesn’t necessarily require ripping up the parking lot like some had previously claimed (although if they installed a bunch of chargers all the hanging wires might look kind of ugly). Every night there was a Nissan Leaf plugged into it.
Seeing that made me realize that an EV is probably the ideal island car. On most of the Hawaiian islands except maybe the Big Island there literally nowhere you can drive to that’s beyond the range of most EVs. The downside is that Hawaii has the most expensive electricity in the country (although they have some of the the most expensive gas, too).
Cities are going to be the most challenging infrastructure-wise for EV adoption. Anybody with a house can install a 240v plug in their garage or driveway. But apartment dwellers are far more limited.
My old building in Brooklyn was built in the 1920s and has 90 apartments. There is no garage or parking lot. Surrounding buildings are of a similar vintage. Street parking is minimal to non-existent. Even if you could get a spot in front of your building, nobody’s going to let you run an extension cord up to your window.
If you’re crazy enough to actually own a car that area, your only choice is to park it in a private lot or garage, probably several blocks away. I suppose private garages could be incentivized to install charging stations, but then they would need someone to rotate cars in and out of the charging spots; people who use private garages in NYC mostly take their cars out a couple days a week, often only on the weekends. So you can’t have a car sitting at a charging station for six days when it only takes a couple hours to charge up.
Things will get easier as fast charging stations become more ubiquitous and (hopefully) more standardized so all EVs can use them. But that’s going to take years.
No, that’s 50 miles for the commute, another 20 or so miles for going out, then 25 miles for the commute, 60 miles to friend’s house, 60 miles back to work, 25 miles to home. That’s 235 miles of driving, not including possibly driving anywhere else while visiting my friend, should could easily be another 25+ miles without doing anything out of the ordinary. With an ICE car, I just stop at one of the ubiquitous gas stations and fill it up at any point on the trip. With the EV, I have to find a special charging station multiple times and hope there’s not a line or that I’ve ended up out of range of the nearest one.
Also, you’re using the range of a car with new batteries under optimal conditions. How much does the range drop when the car has actually gotten broken in at five years or so? What I found in a quick google search is that they tend to be at 80-85% endurance compared to new at the five year mark, so instead of 250 miles of range you’re really going to have 200 miles of range with a non-new car. Same thing with bad weather, that further reduces the range. As that range drops, the number of likely scenarios that require me to plan my life around my car increase.
Edmund’s list the price of a Model S 100d as a staggering $133,000. That’s close to what I paid for my HOUSE, and more than the combined total I’ve spent buying cars in my entire life. A $133,000 car is so absurdly out of the question for me and pretty much everyone I know that it’s laughable to even think of including it in a discussion of adopting electric cars.
You guys can sneer at people who write off using electric cars anytime soon all you want, but it’s not going to get people to pay house money for a car.
Uh, what? That’s not the trip you first mentioned at first.
You seem to be asking what happens if there are two days in a row with above average use and forgetting to charge in between. The answer is: don’t do that, but if you do, then you might have to burn some time at a public charger.
I’ve run out of gas a couple of times. It was a giant pain in the ass and took hours to resolve, but it’s such a rare occurrence that it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. Same deal here. I haven’t forgotten to plug in myself, but I did once forget to set the charge point from 80% to 100% before a trip. It meant I spent a whopping 10 minutes at a Supercharger. So what.
It’s less than that in a Tesla. See a chart here. There’s a fairly quick drop to 95% and then a very slow drop to 90%. That’s at a pretty high mileage, though.
Pábitel said (coloring mine):
And that’s false. The best EVs get >370 miles total range.
Also, your price is for the Performance edition. The long range edition (the one I’m talking about) is $80,000. No, it’s still not cheap. But Pábitel made no mention of price.
You know, when I first read the OP, I thought he was overstating his case.
My apologies, Euphonious Polemic, you’ve proven your point.
Yikes! That’s ordinary for you? Do you live in your car?
If I drove that much I suppose I’d care more about all those luxury features I’ve always ignored. But that sounds like hell.