I find the maps in the internet to miss a lot of actual charging stations, including Level 3. The various apps seem more up to date, in my experience.
Between St Louis and Chicago I saw level three chargers in Effingham, Joliet, Woodbridge, Bloomington, and Springfield. it’s about 300 miles. One stop should be sufficient. I am actually surprised there aren’t more. The West Coast has more on the highways.
Thank you for acknowledging the problem. The Midwest is not the West Coast.
Door to door from my house i St. Louis to my son’s apartment in Chicago is 320 miles. Now, assuming I can get 270 miles off a charge, I could drive to Joliet, where there seems to be a good choice of charging stations, get a high-power charge, then have plenty of power to get to Chicago, play around in Chicago, get back on the road to Joliet, top off and drive home.
But take a look at your maps. I-80, or worse, I-88 across northern Illinois. I-39 from Rockford to Bloomington. The most direct route from Springfield to Kansas City. There are a lot of literal charging deserts, and where there are chargers, they’re Level 2, which means (so I’m told) plugging in for a long time to get even 50 additional miles.
It’s not quite as bad as in 1919, whenEisenhower’s cross-country trip planted the idea of interstate highways in his head, but you have to admit, a weekend trip to see the sights in Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc. can require a good deal more forethought than most of us are used to.
So, as I understand it, here are the extra steps:
a. Set your EV to maximum charge a few hours or less before you depart.
b. Get in the car, put the navigation address in the HMI
It will then plan for you your charging stops and give you your route.
Is it perfect? Can you come up with a more optimal plan? Possibly, but it’s not like planning the lewis and clark expedition. Which, ironically, covered a similar area to where you are noticing problems.
I disagree. I think EV’s will completely replace ICE cars when the batteries improve. I don’t think it will be an overlap.
And nobody is going to miss ICE cars beyond nostalgia.
Didn’t look at my examples, did you? OK, here are a few more. These are not theoretical - these are actual trips that I’ve made, and not unusual for us Midwestern clodkickers.
I’m using PlugShare.com as my source here. Maybe there’s a more up to date resource.
My house to Kirksville, MO -194 miles each way. When I had a kid at Truman State University, I’d make this trip several miles a year. There are three possible routes. The two shortest ones have NO Level 3 chargers anywhere. The user comment on the Tesla charger said it charged at a rate of 25 miles per hour. The comments on the J1772 charger suggest roughly the same time. So I’d need to park my car for 4 hours to get the range for a 400 mile round tip.
My home to Osage Beach, Mo (aka, Lake of the Ozarks) 157-167 miles. There is a Tesla Supercharger at each end, but Lake of the Ozarks doesn’t have a Level 3 supercharger. In fact, of the three more direct routes from my house to Osage Beach, there’s exactly one CHAdeMo Level 3 charger outside of St. Louis along any of the routes.
My house to Memphis, TN 290 miles. Straight down I-55, should be a breeze. I see exactly one Tesla supercharger between St. Louis and Memphis, or a single Level 3 charger, just 30 miles south of St. Louis.
My house to DFW airport - 674 miles. By far the fastest route between my house and my wife’s sister’s home is I-44/U.S. 69/U.S. 75. There are chargers “coming soon” to Muskogee. but as of today, I’d have to drive from DFW to McAlester to top off, then to Springfield, MO, then to my house.
When people tell me all I need to do is plan my trip, here’s what I’m hearing.
Plan to make more stops, and longer stops than just taking an off ramp to the closest gas station.
Prepare to eat a r-e-a-l-l-y long lunch. And maybe a r-e-a-l-l-y long dinner, as well.
Better yet, limit your car choices to whatever Tesla happens to be making at that time, because there are even fewer fast chargers for anything that isn’t a Tesla.
This reminds me of the Mac/PC wars. Folks, the Mac is still a niche product.
If your point is that EVs are still a niche product, I don’t disagree. I think the total number of EVs on the road in the US is a million or two, versus 250 million ICE vehicles. So no surprise that EV chargers are rare. (Except, of course, that any 110V outlet can be used for slow charging.)
Another factor. Tesla charges an average of $0.26 a kilo-watt hour at supercharger.
The 5-year average gasoline price is $2.70. (and unfortunately, in California where gas is expensive, so is electricity)
Traveling by supercharger, assuming 300 watt hours/mile (there are charging losses), this is equivalent in cost to a car that gets 34.6 miles per gallon.
Or you can go get a Rav4 hybrid, which has more competitive acceleration than previous hybrids, and is bigger inside, and has more ground clearance, and is a little cheaper, and is likely more reliable than Tesla - and get 40 mpg all the time. There’s only a cost savings with an EV if you charge at home. Oh, and it has a tank range of 580 miles. (though in practice you only get 460 miles, the car starts to bully you with a flashing fuel light when you have 3 gallons left)
Huh.
Agreed, as I said way back in Post #19. It may take decades for an adequate charging infrastructure to be built out in non-urban areas.
At the risk of telling another back-in-the day-story, in the 1980s I did some work with Ford on alternative fuel vehicles. (Chrysler and GM were doing their own research at the same time.) That was also the time period when T. Boone Pickens was beginning his attempts to convince the U.S. to convert to natural gas. Ford was prototyping a Crown Victoria to run on compressed natural gas. They kept running into range issues - no matter what the designers and engineers tried, either the tanks took up the entire trunk compartment (in a 1980s era Crown Victoria :eek:) or the vehicle couldn’t go 200 miles.
Y’all can figure out what happened after that. 30+ years later natural gas is a niche product, used mainly in local service fleets within a small radius of a charging station. 30+ years later, fuel cells still haven’t worked out. Battery technology has turned out to be the best alternative, but there are still too many holes in the performance envelope. And ICE technology has improved in the last 30+ years.
But it’s fun to watch technology advance. My 1980s cell phone (yes, I had one!) came in a bag, had a battery the size of my shoe, and barely gave 15 minutes of talk time.
And yet, the EPA estimates it costs $1,000 a year to fuel a RAV4 hybrid, versus $500 a year for a Model 3.
I think you’re significantly overstating the infrastructure difficulties for EVs here.
Most people do most of their driving in shortish trips beginning and ending at their home. For those people, an ordinary 120V plug would on average maintain a charge for most and an 240V plug would on average maintain a charge for all. Even granting that people don’t want to have to rent a vehicle every time they want to make a road trip (however infrequent), EVs are already entirely adequate for nearly every second/third car in a household where that household has off-street parking. According to this, 38% of households have 2 cars and 20% have 3 or more. With 9% having no vehicle at all (and ignoring the existence of 4+ car households), that makes some 47% of personal vehicles 2nd or 3rd cars.
Even if only half of those have or can easily get a power outlet at their parking space, that’s nearly a quarter of all vehicles for which the charging infrastructure is perfectly adequate right now, with no additional charging infrastructure besides a few 240V plugs being added to garages for those who use their second vehicles too much for a 120V outlet to keep up. And that’s without even considering those households whose driving patterns allow for an EV as their primary vehicle, or all the fleet vehicles that don’t need long range.
That’s without even thinking about L3 chargers. As the L3 charging network is built out, the percentage of vehicles that could feasibly be EVs will of course increase. This isn’t remotely like CNG, or fuel cells, or whatever other niche alternative fuel source you want to try to compare it to. Electrical infrastructure is already ubiquitous. It’s not going to take decades for EVs to be a feasible choice for a large percentage of vehicles, because they already are. They are still relatively expensive, potentially difficult as a household’s primary vehicle, and not at all good for people who drive significantly more than average, but they are far more than niche.
Don’t be lazy. Check the math I gave. If it is right it’s right. EPA must be assuming mostly or all at home charging.
ehhh, I don’t know about that, the HOV lane is full of cheaters. Bridge tolls (I have a 2- bridge commute) and fuel savings are good, though.
And there are other good plug-ins!
The issue isn’t your manipulation of numbers, it is your manipulation of numbers.
You mean the EPA is assuming people use the cheapest and most convenient way to refuel their vehicles? What a curious assumption.
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And a vehicle that is only adequate for most of their trips is inadequate. Especially when most vehicles do not have dedicated home parking near a plug.
And the refueling time was slow. You could pay big money for a home compressor, assuming you even has has at home, but I found their reliability wanting. And filling at a station, while lightning compared to EV charging, is still too slow.
There was another push for NGVs with the shale boom, and we did see some improvements, e.g. conformable tanks, better small compressors. And Pickens reactivated briefly before he died. But the smaller the vehicle, the harder it is to have NG make sense. Opposite of how it’s harder to make a larger EV.
Did you not read the rest of my post? If a household has multiple vehicles, the second one doesn’t need to have the range to do roadtrips.
And how did you arrive at that statement?
Seriously? Because most households don’t do road trips in two vehicles simultaneously? Therefore they only need one with longer range? Therefore the second one that was purchased because it was needed for a second commute and dragging the kids from soccer to music lessons only needs enough range for the second commute and music lessons?
That’s a ridiculous statement. No vehicle is adequate for all trips. I can’t drive to England, I have to take a plane. I can’t pack all my belongings in my car, so next time I move, I need to rent a truck or hire a mover. My car can’t take me home from a bar after I’ve had a few drinks, or after I’ve been sedated for a medical test. I can’t drive to the middle of a lake, I need another type of vehicle for that.
So the real question is, does your new car need to do everything your current gas-powered car can do? Or will you accept something that’s better in some respects, but worse in others? Many people today make the latter choice. Some people buy 2-seater sports cars, even though it can’t carry their entire family. Some people buy small cars for commuting, even if it means they need to also keep their SUV for towing their boat. Others buy an SUV that can tow their boat, and also use it for commuting, and live with poor gas mileage. Everything is a compromise, and electric vehicles are a reasonable compromise for many people.