My peak electricity rates are about $0.50/kWh, but that’s the absolute peak in summer. Of course, no EV driver is going to charge at those times. I pay $0.11/kWh at night and that’s still relatively high.
Your numbers are way off. The average US driver drives 1100 miles per month. If we’re assuming 10 cars, that’s 11,000 miles, or 2750 kWh for a reasonably efficient EV (Model 3, Bolt, etc.). Nighttime electricity rates are probably around $0.10/kWh, so the actual monthly cost is ~$275.
Anyway, there’s all kinds of ways a complex can recoup their costs. It’s probably cheapest for apartment owners to just charge some nominal rate, say $40/mo, for spots with outlets. Some owners use more than others but on average they’ll come out even.
So, I own a phev (because a full electric vehicle doesn’t work for me) and I have two local friends with all-electric vehicles (a Leaf and a Tesla) and three more local friends who drive PHEVs with significantly larger batteries than mine, and mostly drive electric (Honda clarity, the Chrysler Pacifica, and a Chevy Volt). I also have three friends with Tesla’s who don’t live near me, but who’ve talked about their experience enough that i have some idea how they use their cars. So I probably know more about the practicalities of charging, both at home and away from home, than you do.
fine. Unless you are in the market for a Tesla, that’s too far. But there are affordable choices today for the 50-70 mpd driver. Especially those in a multi-vehicle household. Especially those who have a designated parking spot at home. No, of course that’s not everyone. But I bet it is 20-30% of US drivers, which isn’t really “niche”.
uh… My examples are all real scenarios.
well, the first time she wanted to bring her old bev over, she asked about the drier. I assume she’s asked other people for their drier outlets with better results. This friend IS an ev evangelist. The others aren’t. And you know, either it’s no big deal or the homeowner says, “no”. This is an easy negotiation.
this weekend I am going to a remote camp in Vermont. It doesn’t have a charging station. Last year, at the weekend, two of the other guests charged their cars from a random external outlet. I think they swapped mid-weekend so they each got a full charge at 120v. It is a real option. It’s also a perfectly reasonable option for someone spending the night at her boyfriend’s house.
My friend who asked about the drier charges her car in her company’s parking garage every day. They don’t have chargers, she brings hers. I have a charger in the back of my car. It’s about as hard to carry around as a set of jumper cables.
even ignoring that your costs sound high, I spend >$100/food when I host a gaming night, so that doesn’t seem like a big deal. I have friends to whom it’s a bigger deal, who ask everyone to chip in for the pizza. They’d presumably expect some cash offset from friends who use a lot of their power. My friend the EV enthusiast is actually listed in some on-line EV reference as a charging location, and once had a random person contact her to charge. Yeah, she’s an outlier. And now that there are other charging stations in her town I assume her garage will eventually drop off.
Sure, but be honest and use an “or”. Either you have to find a 240v outlet at your friend’s house OR you need to charge slowly. Not “you need to spend half an hour playing Tetris with my basement furniture and then leave your car there overnight”.
Also, the “always fully charged every day” was an approximation. It’s actually, “always have enough charge that I don’t have to worry about range”.
I think it’s like AC. There’s a real cost to the landlord. Some will not allow AC. Some will charge for the electricity. Some will provide central air (or built in faster chargers) and be able to charge more rent because there’s a market that wants a nicer place with better amenities.
But the earlier claim was “At the moment they are great options for people in industrialized countries who have access to home charging, typically drive less than 100-200 miles per day (depending on the EV), and can afford an EV as their next car.”. Your set is much, much smaller than that - you’ve limited things to people who never make what I’d call a medium or longer length trip. And I doubt that 20-30% of US drivers never drive more than 70 miles in a day, I just haven’t seen anything to back that stronger claim up.
I wouldn’t call a camp with enough power outlets in the parking area that you can reasonably expect to plug in a car all weekend especially ‘remote’. And I would consider having to go back to the car to move the car mid-weekend pretty disruptive to a camping trip. Usually if I’m going camping an explicit part of the point is to not drive except for arriving and leaving. And if instead I’m camping incidental to a festival or similar event, finding parking at all is usually difficult, much less getting an outlet, staying plugged in, and going out to swap cars around. Also, how does this work if another EV user got there first and is already plugged in, or if one arrives later but decides you’ve probably charged enough and takes over? And what do you do if it turns out that power is out at the outlet?
This seems to be a consistent pattern. EV proponents insist that charging is super-easy and not inconvenient at all, but then when pressed it turns out that there are significant limitations that they’re glossing over, there are major inconveniences they are willing to shrug off as ‘no big deal’, and there is a significant risk of getting stranded in the scenario. (The risk of stranding comes about because people in earlier examples were insistent that charging the car just enough to arrive at the destination with 10 miles or less of range was entirely reasonable). It also appears that widespread adoption of EVs will make the issues significantly worse; I don’t really expect that remote campsites and cheap parking lots will add enough circuits and wiring that you can count on being able to ‘just find an outlet’ when there are 5x or 10x as many EVs in the field.
If you’re going to admonish people to ‘be honest’, how about be honest about where you got ‘basement furniture’ or ‘half an hour’ from - it wasn’t something I said. And I’m not going to be dishonest by adding an incorrect ‘or’ - if the assumption is a full charge every day for up to 70 miles of driving per day, then 120v simply isn’t up to the task.
Some offer AC, and then it doesn’t work or doesn’t work reliably, but it turns out that rental laws are such that AC is not considered essential, so you just suck up your AC not working. So if you’re someone who can consistently afford places with good landlords, this isn’t a problem, but for anyone who might have to deal with a bad landlord, you have to be aware that you’re putting ‘able to charge the car’ on the list of things you rely on your landlord for.
Do you realize that other people (perhaps not you) have friends and relatives who don’t live in houses? And that they sometimes visit those people for an extended time? And if 50% of new car sales were EVs, the charging infrastructure would be badly overloaded for quite some time. The multi-hour thanksgiving super charging waits would probably be a regular weekend activity, and you’d start to find that those occasional outlets in parking lots are always full of other people’s EVs getting their free charge.
Great, so if we assume that electricity rates don’t rise with the increased usage, and that a particular apartment complex has a fairly small number of people with electric cars, they’re still looking at losing something like 1/4 of a unit’s rent. This doesn’t seem like a good deal for the complex, and especially doesn’t seem like something that would prompt them to install more outlets so that more people (especially friends of the apartment dwellers) could come over and charge. It seems to me more like something that would cause them to restrict usage of outdoor outlets to either cut costs or recoup costs by charging for charging.
Not everyone who camps is also hiking their stuff deep into the wilderness. You have heard of “car camping” right? Places like KOA offer this, where there is a central area with showers/toilets/other amenities but your space has nothing but what you bring. You set that up as your base & can then go fishing/hiking/etc. from there. If your car is no more than a 5 min (or less) walk from your tent it’s not totally disrupting your weekend to walk over there & move it once, say during the couple of minutes you’re boiling water to cook a meal.
Again, you do realize that today not all charge ports are free, that some of them you need to pay for, either with a credit card or an app. If apt complex management decides that they’re paying too much to recharge the EVs they can
[ul]
[li]Charge an EV fee[/li][li]Raise everyone’s rent[/li][li]Change the head unit to a charging model.[/li][/ul]
The third option is about as much work as changing a fixture in your house. The work is in digging a trench, running conduit & repaving to install electric to the recharge poles; once that’s done it’s easy to change what’s on the end of the pole.
Have you considered that people might be OK buying a car that meets 95% of their driving needs, instead of 100%? The average US household has nearly 2 cars, so it’s pretty likely that the majority of household in the US have 2+ cars. This article suggests that 35% of US households have 3+ cars (it is a bit older from 2008, so it might be a bit lower now, but likely still a substantial number). Why shouldn’t these households have one of their cars as electric? What’s preventing single-car owners from renting a car when they want to take a long trip? Yes, it can be inconvenient to rent a car, but it’s also inconvenient to take your car for oil changes, or fill up on gas - if it were the other way around, and electric cars were the norm and ICE cars were the emerging technology, would you be like “How could anyone like these gas cars, can you imagine having to go out of your way to fill up on gas every week? What a pain!”
You also don’t specify what a “much, much smaller set” of people is who you think an electric car might be suitable for - 1% of the population of the US? 10%? 20%? 30%+?
For the record, I agree that if suddenly 50% of new car sales were electric, it could potentially cause issues with the grid, big lineups at charging stations, etc - but I don’t think 50% of new car sales would be electric, even if in isolation, electric cars might be a good technical option for 50% of buyers. Since electric cars are still substantially more expensive up front than their counterparts, sales are going to still be skewed towards what is the best value for buyers as opposed to what is the best technical fit. In addition, even if 100% of the new cars being sold were electric, it would basically take a decade for there to be a majority of cars being electric - so I think there is time for better infrastructure to roll out.
Apartment complexes will charge for the electricity one way or the other - either by metering it, charging an estimated-to-be-profitable flat fee on assigned spaces, or by including it in the rent the way the do for any ‘quality of life’ enhancements like pools and gyms.
This is so obvious I can’t imagine why you bothered to write what you wrote.
If somebody occasionally has to drive 100 miles in a single day, then they absolutely can - most or all EVs can drive 150 miles on a charge without a problem. Having a regular daily drive of 50-70 miles means that the EV will work for you even if you’re sloppy and forgetful and park in darkened gravel lots half the time; they don’t mean that your car explodes when you hit mile 71.
When will someone write a cool song about driving… a Prius?
Car songs of the past:
Now just try… please TRY… to take some of those lyrics and apply them to a Prius or a Leaf or a Volt.
For example “Well I’m not bragging babe so dont put me down. But I’ve got the most fuel efficient car in town. My carbon footprints low and…” sounds pretty pathetic!
:dubious:
Putting aside that it’s been decades since songs like those were in style…
It’s my understanding that your average billion-dollar newest-model Tesla is:
Fast
Great acceleration
Smooth ride
Great handling
But you’re right, all those old songs were about how much smoke the car was putting out, not how fast it was.
Your forgetting the sound. The engines. Pealing out. Electric cars are almost silent.
Of all the tangents…you’re just not pealing out hard enough. Driving sufficiently recklessly and I bet you could squeal some tires.
(And my mind is now leaping to the part of Leader of the Pack where they screech straight into a crash.)
Plus, I thought they usually used guitars to make most of the sound in those songs. I could be misremembering them, though.
Back when Car Talk was still on the radio, you know how they always played a different car related song before the breaks? I swear I once heard them play a song about a Prius there. But on their web site they have a database of songs played on the show, and a search for “Prius” returns no results. So I don’t know if I’m just imagining that song or what. And if it exists it may well have been a parody song and not a serious song bragging about a Prius.
But on the subject of bragging about having the most fuel efficient car in town, a guy I used to work with bought a first generation Honda Insight when they first came out. He says when he bought it he was also considering a Camaro Z28, a car that couldn’t be any more different. But he says he wanted a “performance car”, and in his mind extremely high fuel efficiency is just a different kind of performance.
Only if you can bypass the traction control system, which I suspect you can’t. Obviously with max torque available at low rpms, EVs without traction control could smoke their tires right off.
Now I’m picturing a song that’s like Beep Beep, but with the overtaken driver getting the shit scared out of him by the silent ghost headlights that are stalking and then blasting past him.
So not much like Beep Beep at all, really.