Also, oil changes, spark plugs, and god knows what else.
My dealer said I got free “regular maintenance” for my EV. I said, “Great, when should I bring it in?” The response: “Two years.”
Wait, you mean you planned for a trip with a gas car? I’m not sure I understand. I thought all people who drive gas cars just start 1000 mile journeys on a whim?
I’ve been driving gas cars for a long time, so I’m familiar with all of the micro planning that goes into it. Should I get gas on the way home tonight or tomorrow morning? Should I get it on the start of my trip or the end? Am I going to Costco soon, can I put off getting gas until then, it’ll save me $2, but not worth going out of my way? Do I want to make my wife do it, I know she’s using the car next?
With an EV planning consists of: I’m home, should I plug the car in now or not? 220 miles of range, and I’m not doing anything special tomorrow, don’t bother to plug it in. 140 miles of range, but I plan to drive 90 miles tomorrow, sure, plug it in. 160 miles of range, and I don’t have any plans, meh, may as well plug it in, doesn’t hurt anything.
Even if you have an EV, you can still stop at gas stations for lottery tickets and Slim Jims.
I’m going away for a few days, and I won’t be in a position to visit the Board that much. But I have to say, it seems to me that not only has anyone in this thread succeeded in convincing anyone else of their position, but the tone of some posters has gotten increasingly angry.
Please allow me to sum up, as rationally as I can, what the EV situation seems to me to be.
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It’s an emerging technology, and like any emerging technology, the path isn’t 100% clear. Look at me - in 1981 I bought an Atari home computer (all the smart people bet on Commodore and both the Atari and the Commodore owners laughed at those poor people who got suckered into buying at TRS-80.)
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All Teslas may be electric vehicles, but not all electric vehicles are Teslas. When someone says “range isn’t a problem” or “performance is amazing,” please be clear about whether we’re talking about something like a Chevy as well as a Tesla, or whether it’s just a Chevy or just a Tesla.
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Why can’t manufacturers standardize charging plugs? How many damn cables will I need to carry with me?
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If an hour at a public charger only adds two, or even 10 miles of range, what good is it to someone, unless they can’t charge their car overnight where they live? And if they can’t do that, then trying to charge an EV seems to be like buying gasoline a gallon at a time.
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Until there’s a massive commitment to rationalize the charging infrastructure, EVs won’t be a good alternative to ICE vehicles is vast areas of the U.S. EV proponents need to understand and acknowledge that fact.
Some valid points. But:
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yes
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I’ve driven two non-Tesla EV’s. A Bolt and an iPace. The with both I can say “the performance is amazing” and “range isn’t a problem.” Probably obvious, the Jaguar is a superior car (with a price point to match). I have also owned a Prius Prime (plug in) and a Chevy Volt. Both fine cars. (I prefer the Prius for its ICE performance.)
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They will, although all the level three chargers I’ve been to (not very many) solved the problem by have two cables. You simply pick the one that’s right for your car.
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In my opionion, it would be a pain in the ass to own an EV without the ability to charge (level 2) at home. At least for the way I drive. I can imagine rare scenarios where 110 volt charging would work for someone. I sometimes plug in to a level 2 charger when I’m going to be in a lot for 2 hours or more. I haven’t needed the top off, but I’m getting acquainted with the technology and infrastructure.
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I disagree. I’m sure there are some areas where that’s true. Maybe they’re “vast.” For example, I wouldn’t want an EV if I lived in Montana right now. They could work everywhere as a second car, and in many places as an only car.
I would add:
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Emerging technology, yes. But we’re not at the cutting edge anymore for EV’s. We are rapidly moving into mainstream
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I compare my LEAF with my Toyota matrix, since this seems to be comparing similar cars. The LEAF has WAY better performance and acceleration. I feel much safer merging onto the highway or knowing that I can power out of dangerous situations in the LEAF.
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You don’t carry cables with you for charging on the road. You go to a charge station and use one of the cables on the charger there. You don’t have to carry a gas pump hose in your car to go to a gas station either. Yes, there will be more common charging infrastructure as we move forward. For DC fast charging, there is currently Tesla (only for Teslas), chADEmo for Japanese cars like Nissan, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda and finally CCS, which most American car manufacturers are going with. Every DC fast charger I have seen has both chADEmo and CCS cables. These stations can charge every single EV out there. With no need to “bring cables”
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An hour at public chargers (level 2, 6.6 kW, not DC fast chargers) will give you 22km (14 miles) ranger per hour. That’s not a guess, that’s a fact. I have no idea why you thought an hour at a public charger would give you TWO miles of range. These are the typical chargers found in shopping malls, recreation centers, underground parking, hotels, etc. Very common. These chargers are not used when you need more range fast, but rather when you’re parked for a while doing shopping, or at the doctor, or other tasks. They are “convenience charging” that places will put in to entice you to visit their business.
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There is a commitment to get better charging infrastructure in place. By private companies who see the writing on the wall and are keen to change quickly. Yes, it will be slower to come to remote areas with widely spaced infrastructure. This is how it always is for these areas. This should not come as a shock. EV’s will not be practical for these areas for a while to come. This is just a fact of life for those living remotely.
No, planning your life around the car is installing a special charger at your house, worrying about charging anytime you’re staying at a friend’s house or hotel, having to base travel routes and hotels around charger availability, and having to significantly increase trip time to allow for charging. It’s not changing the tires every few years or paying for parking (which you do with both ICE and EV vehicles) or getting the oil changed 2-3 times a year. I’m not even sure what ‘check the gas and mileage before parking’ means, and ‘notice the fuel light has come on’ is kind of the opposite of planning.
To compare: I made an unexpected 280 mile trip from Raleigh to Charleston this past weekend in an ICE car. I fueled up once before starting, and once before heading back and stayed in a hotel that worked for the rest of my family too. So next to no planning involved for the car, and maybe 20 minutes on fueling, with no need to actually locate fueling stations.
If I was making the same trip in a Tesla, I would have to first coordinate with the rest of the family to stay at the one hotel near the destination that has charging (according to the Tesla map). I would need to sit down and check where supercharging stations are on the way, as none of the cars have the range to make that trip at the 80mph I actually drove. I’d need to spend a good bit of time at the last supercharging station on the route, as the destination is 70 miles from the nearest supercharger (according to the Tesla map) despite being a metro area with about 3/4 of a million people with a military base nearby, not some ‘in the middle of nowhere Nebraska’ small town. It looks like I’d need to do two 40-minute charges on the trip down (and back), unless I wanted to risk getting semi-stranded.
So the actual trip would have about three hours added to it (taking 10 hours of travel to 13), would require me to pick a specific hotel, and would have a lot of potential points of failure. If the one charging hotel was already full on EVs or had no vacancies (or was out of order), that would be a big problem. If the supercharging station in Santee had a wait I’d just have to eat the delay, and if it was out of order I’d probably have to spend an extra day slow charging for the last leg of the trip. With an ICE vehicle, I can stay at any hotel, and don’t really care if any particular gas station is out of order or backed up since there are 2-6 at each exit near a decent sized town.
With an ICE car, I just made the trip without needing spend any significant effort on planning. With a EV, the trip would be significantly longer, more restricted, requiring a lot more forethought than ‘pack stuff in the car, stop at a gas station, go’, and would have significant risk of a major issue based on charger availability.
Please don’t deny what’s clearly posted in this thread. Real people don’t always charge electronic devices, and pretending that ‘doesn’t charge an electric device one night’ means ‘can’t function in the modern world’ is definitely belittling. The fact that EV proponents won’t drop this is actually interesting to me - I didn’t even think that it was a major point, but EV proponents keep doubling down on it.
No, using ‘hur hurr you might have a disability’ as an insult says a lot about your attitude towards the disabled whether you want to admit it or not. It’s like calling people ‘retards’; the fact that you’re using a form of ‘retarded’ as an insult shows your own prejudice against people with learning disabilities, even if you are just trying to target the not-actually retarded person you’re directing the insult against. I really didn’t expect that from EV proponents.
Fortunately, I never said anything remotely like that. “Planning your life around the car” is needing to check for charger availability anytime you stay at someone else’s house, plan road trips based on where chargers are, plan hotel stays around places that offer charging, and the like.
Let me nitpick this one point. No need to sit down and figure out where to charge. You plug in your destination and the car gives you charging options.
This is curious. I own an EV, yet I haven’t done any of that. Am I doing it wrong?
Public chargers are, at best, an occaional substitute for dedicated home charging, and are unlikely to become as quick as a gas station for on the go charging. It’s an issue that will impact EV adoption in urban areas without dedicated off street parking for residents.
However, charging infrastructure will happen organically as EVs become increasingly practical as personal vehicles. That’s how the free market works, people want something, they offer up money to get it, and someone finds a way to get their hands on the money. You want a new EV car, and tell the electric company “here’s some money, upgrade my service” the company will make sure you get enough power for your new Level 2 charger.
I’m not belittling real people. I’m belittling the pretend people you claim are too incompetent to remember to [del]brush their teeth[/del] plug in their car.
Not at all. My XJ Cherokee was sporty, practical and proportionally one of the better looking Jeeps out there. It was reliable and did what I needed it to.
Same with my first Focus, my Legacy wagon, and my current ride the last MY Focus ST that Ford is bringing to N.America. I am willing to compromise in some areas if the benefit is there for me, like the range on the ST that is roughly the same as a Model 3 LR.
I AM an outlier in that I like wagons and hatchbacks versus CUVs and SUVs. So it’s not the case that the Big 3 in particular can’t make a car I want because I’ve bought them, it’s more that the ones I want they won’t bring to market in N.America and the offerings they have had in EVs have overall been meh because they weren’t taking them seriously. Tesla is changing that, I hope.
How is that not sitting down and figuring out where to charge? I don’t know if you’re nitpicking the idiom (this is the SMDB after all) but you’re going to pause in what you’re doing, look up charging options, and decide which ones to use, and whether it’s the car, a phone, a laptop, or a desktop computer that you’re using isn’t a significant difference.
I’m also not going to just hop in the car and start driving when I know the trip is longer than the car’s range and superchargers are spaced such that I’ll need to drive 20-70% of the car’s range between them, I’m going to plan the route first so I don’t end up stuck at a rest stop for hours with a charging cable.
I have no idea why EV proponents have decided that real people always charge electronic devices every single night, but it’s pretty hilarious. Keep insisting that no one ever leaves electronics unplugged and that no one should consider it a possibility, and instead insist that people who do this are imaginary. I certainly am not going to be able to inject reality into the planet you live on.
I charge my phone every night because I know it won’t have juice to last me the next day if I don’t.
If someone doesn’t charge their phone every night because it will last them through the next day, or if they can recharge at some point the following day to keep it operating, great.
But I fail to see how any of these scenarios – charging at night, charging on the go, or charges lasting multiple days – cannot apply to cars as well as phones.
ETA: how often does your own phone run out of charge? Mine literally never does.
You really are going all-in on this argument that EVs won’t work because people will forget to plug in their cars, despite all the real people in this thread who have EVs, telling you they don’t forget.
Well, it’s an odd hill to die on. Keep fighting the good fight.
The real people I know who own EV’s, plug their EV’s in every night (unless they make a conscious decision not to). Hell, I even remember to unplug my wife’s Prius and plug my car in, or vice versa. (we share a charger). It really is automatic. 1) Turn off the car, 2) grab the charging cable.
You need to get one of those fancy gas cars that don’t need fuel so you never, ever have to fuel them up or wonder where to get gas when you’re in a new place at 12 midnight.
Speaking of rest stops, it would be ludicrous of me to consider an EV unless I lived in a house or in the unlikely event my apartment put in chargers, but superchargers at rest stops would be a killer app that would make me almost, but not quite, prefer them over even ICE if I could also charge at home.
Last week I drove from NYC to Fayetteville NC in a day, only stopping for gas-and-a-carry-out-meal once, but stopping several times at rest stops. If I could extend my mileage by those 20 or so minutes of supercharging that the combined bathroom breaks would bring, I might have been able to make the 550 miles to Fayetteville without having to formally stop just to recharge. If the chargers became just a little faster and the batteries a little bigger, it would be even better than having to stop every 400 miles to get gas.
Functioning adults understand that there are things that should be done routinely, and take responsibility for ensuring those things are done. They feed their pets, change diapers, go grocery shopping, pay bills, amazing numbers of things get done by adults just cuz they need to be done.
If an adult cannot remember to plug in an EV, they shouldn’t buy one.