Can you cite anyone saying that on this board?
What people have said is that the current crop of EV’s are slow to charge and as such require a garage with 220V service to bring it closer to the utility value of other vehicles.
Since not everybody has a garage with 220V service and lives 5 miles from work it’s reasonable to say that that EV’s are not a direct replacement for ICE cars at this time.
I thought I made it clear that I was discussing people who spout off about EV’s without knowing anything WHO ARE NOT POSTERS HERE.
In fact, my second line was "Whenever I see a news article that discusses EV’s, the comments section is often full of critics. " Critics who post utter crap and lies, and then use these lies to say that nobody should ever buy an EV.
I have no problem with what anybody has said here on the Straight Dope or on this thread.
With regards to your comment, I do not have 220V charging at home, and nor do I intend to get it. My LEAF fully charges on a 110v 15 amp circuit overnight, and I find this is perfectly fine for my use. (And many other LEAF owners I have spoken to.
Also, if you live 20 miles from work (four times your estimate), you could make three round trips to work in a 2019 LEAF quite comfortably, and then charge overnight on 110V.
Newer EV’s have more range. The new Ford SUV that will be rolled out shortly and available at the end of 2020/early 2021 will have 300 miles of range. I’m pretty sure this will work for you if you live more than 5 miles from work.
Certainly better charging infrastructure is needed, and will be put in place. Ford is partnering with private charging networks to increase this. I’m sure in the early days of combustion engine cars, gasoilne stations were few and far between, and you could not make your own gasoline at home.
Bottom line; EV’s are currently not for every single person or use right now. Agreed. I am not telling you to get one. HOWEVER. This is changing rapidly, and I get tired of people who base their opinions on falsehoods (not anybody here), or on 10 year old EV technology, and telling me I am an idiot for having an EV. (not anybody here!)
110V service will be fine for most people. I lived with 100% 110V charging for two months before I got my 220V line installed, and it was fine. It was actually so fine, that I probably wouldn’t have bothered, except the location of the 110V outlet was inconvenient.
So, here are some calculations that are specific to me: 9pm (start of low price electricity) to 7:30am (leave for work) is 10.5 hours. A 110V outlet can provide 12amps * 110V * 10.5 hours = 13.8kWh (for $1.11) * 0.80 charging efficiency ~ 11kWh of power added to the car . For my car, that translates to about 50 miles. It’s nearly a third of a charge for a 2016+ Leaf, and almost half of a charge for an older Leaf. That’s enough to completely fill a PHEV.
The only difference in my behavior between the 110V and 220V outlet is that with the 110V I plugged in every night, and with the 220V I only plug in a few times per week.
That won’t work for everybody, but it will work for most people. What is the modal commute in the US? I’d say if you can do 10-11 hours of charging per night, and have a 30 miles or less in typical daily usage, then 110V will work. Obviously if you drive 200 miles per day pulling a trailer, then don’t buy a used Fiat 500e.
From the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the average driver drives 29 miles each day. So yes, overnight charging at 110V would work for most of us.
Personally, I drive less than 500 miles a month, and only a couple of miles each way to work and I park in a single-car private garage attached to my apartment building. So an electric car might work for me. But the only outlet in the garage is in the ceiling, for the garage door opener. I could probably plug into that, but the apartment includes free electricity, so recharging my car at home would probably mean cheating the landlord.
If you make a couple of extra slices of toast every day in your toaster, would that be “cheating the landlord”?
Nobody bases their life around average travel. 110V charging doesn’t allow for charging beyond the range of the car in a timely manner. For that matter, neither do superchargers. At some point it means planning your life around the car instead of the car simply being available on demand.
In order to rely on an EV as the only source of transportation the average person needs a substantially faster charging battery in addition to infrastructure to support it.
The fact that some people use their car on a limited basis and can tolerate the shortcomings of an EV puts the current technology of the car in the niche market. It truly needs a better battery than Lithium Ion. If it were up to me I’d turn the quest into another “Manhattan project” and get it done.
I greatly look forward to the day when I can own an EV and drive it at will without thought of distance or state of charge. I will probably by an EV in it’s current evolutionary state as a 2nd car in 5 or 6 years.
Every vehicle is a tradeoff. I’d be perfectly happy with a ~300 mile EV which I wake up to find a “full tank” every morning vs. the usual “fuck, I need gas again?” With my truck. And my truck always needs gas at the least convenient times.
These numbers worry me more about switching to an EV. My wife currently commutes 45 miles one way so a 10 hour overnight charge at 240V will leave her ~10 miles per day to run errands. Once you include the low being -2 this wednesday any drop in range will leave her having to dip into the extra range. I think earlier in the thread it sas said a 20% drop in range so 200 turns into 160 so 70 extra miles per week total that’s a trip to the vet or the in law’s house so at least once per week in the winter she’s going to have to stop what’s she’s doing and track down a charging station.
It also worries me about getting the 400 mile Rivian. If I can’t fully recharge over night that seriously undercuts the utility of the range. Needing to change for 40 hours at 240 to get a full charge really is a serious negative.
Their slogan: KEEP THE WORLD ADVENTUROUS FOREVER.
Might need a re-working.
Here’s the magical EV that people need if they are going to make the switch:
This is the magic EV that would please everyone.
Or, alternatively, we could get away from the idea that one single vehicle type will please everyone.
You have argued several times that EVs are basically undesirable until there’s a battery that can add 250 miles in 3 minutes (or something).
Potato, potato.
Reading this thread made me curious about some of these vehicles, so I looked them up.
It turns out that a fair number of them aren’t even available here.
Some, like the Kira Niro and the Honda Clarity simply aren’t sold in the Midwest.
Some, like the Jaguar I-Pace might technically be available, but there isn’t a dealer who stocks them within 250 miles of here.
I see that the Misubishi i-MIEV is no longer sold in N. America. There’s an Outlander plug-in hybrid now, but that raises another concern. The number of Mitsubishi dealers around here has dwindled to a single dealer within 100 miles. This makes me leery of buying anything by them, particularly a technology which is by no means universal.
So my choices are severely limited compared with someone in, say, Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, you are correct. A number of EV’s are what are known as "compliance cars" ; Cars that are only sold in limited States (like CA) in order to meet emissions control regulations.
The good news is that once these cars are sold in good numbers in California, manufacturers often then start selling them all over.
The bad news is that the Trump Administration does not like emission standards, so they are busy trying to forbid California from setting them.
The good news is that California and 23 other states are suing the Trump Administration for doing this.
Meanwhile, car companies are moving ahead with more EV plans anyway. So you’ll likely have more choice in a few years. I agree though, the choice for many is limited right now.
I sat for 45 minutes, in hot summer, on a freeway bridge that had traffic stopped for an accident.
Everyone else in sight either idled their engines for the AC, or shut them off and used windows or got out of their vehicle (in 98F 90% humidity sunshine).
I was using no engine, running the AC, and the ‘range remaining’ display did not change.
Felt good.
Oh, forgot to add to the list above:
I am currently sitting in a hotel. When I arrived here, at 2am, after a 250+ mile drive (ending thru the mountains) there was no parking close to the building, nor would I expect that to change at any point overnight. I might have made it there but wouldn’t have been able to do much the next day. I usually do trips like this 6-9 times a year. At least one & frequently two over holiday weekends. Not only would my car rental costs be astronomical but I’d need to leave work early to get to the rental place before they close. That’s not even factoring in do I want to be driving an unfamiliar car in sometimes dark or crappy weather. High beam, windshield wiper/washer, & climate controls aren’t always in the same place or operate the same exact way; therefore, I’d need to take my eyes off the road to do things I can do by feel in my car.
There is a significant portion of the population that doesn’t have the ability to charge either at home (many apartment dwellers or city row home/brownstone residents that don’t have dedicated parking) or at work.
I can fill up my car in under four minutes; there are enough pumps that I very rarely have to wait in line but even if I do, it’s only six or seven minutes, tops. I have never seen more than two EV charging stations at one location. There are many people that would waste a lot of time regularly charging an EV.
Your OP comes off as rather sanctimonous. If EVs work for you, wonderful; however, until the range increases, the recharge infrastructure increases, & on-road charge times come down I wouldn’t even consider one.
Thank you for not telling me that because an EV does not work for your personal circumstances, that therefore I must be an idiot for owning one because I am stupid.
Also, thank you for clearly explaining your particular circumstances, and not demanding an impossible car. If you are doing monthly 500 mile round trips for work, over the mountains in poor weather, I can certainly see why the current crop of EV’s might not work for you.
To be clear:
I don’t have a problem with anyone (esp. folks in this thread) who cannot own a current EV because their personal circumstances make it difficult or impossible for a variety of valid reasons.
I DO have a problem with those (not in this thread) who have told me that I am stupid for owning an EV because THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES are such that an EV would not work for them.
I DO have a problem with those (not in this thread) who spread complete and utter buillshit about EV’s because they are either assholes or useful idiots spreading crap for assholes.
I guess people hear what they want to hear. I said they need a fast charge battery to replace ICE cars. When a battery can recharge as quickly as people fuel an ICE car they will stop making ICE cars.
If the current EV technology was as desirable as ICE cars the change would already have occurred.
Your math is off. 240V is shorthand for twice the voltage and a significantly increased amperage.
Sometimes a standard 120V outlet is all that’s easily available. They can support about 12 amps of continuous load. For a Model 3, that provides 4-5 miles of range per hour of charging, so maybe 40 miles overnight.
If you have a dryer outlet, you can do 240V at 24 amps. That’s 4 times the charge rate, and gives an efficiency boost, so you end up with 20-22 miles per hour, or 200+ overnight.
And if you really need it, you can get a hard-wired installation that will charge at 48 amps. That’s 44 miles per hour, which means you can complete a 100% charge in under 8 hours.
I don’t know what the Rivian will support as far as charging goes, but there’s no reason they can’t match the Model 3 in charge rate. They’ll probably end up with a lower miles/hour, because being a big truck the overall efficiency is lower. But I’d be surprised if they can’t charge at 30 miles/hour with a beefy home charger system.