As Dewey notes, you’re limited to about 15 or (at most) 20 amps on a circuit serving a typical 120-volt receptacle. If you try to draw more than that, you’ll just trip the breaker, and now you’re getting zero amps. Car chargers will typically limit themselves to about 12 amps when plugged into a 120v receptacle so as to not risk tripping the circuit.
240v receptacles (NEMA style) can be commonly found in 30 or 50 amp varieties. I have a NEMA 14-50 receptacle on my garage for charging my car. My car will draw about 40 amps from it, which at 240v equals 9.6kW of power. By comparison, drawing 12 amps from a 120v receptacle will get you 1.4kW.
Every detached residence in North America has 240v split-phase service, but 240v receptacles are fairly uncommon outside kitchens and laundry rooms. Installing a plug for car-charging is usually pretty easy, though, as long as you are able to put it in a convenient place. But it’s going to be a while before you can expect to be able to drive to a random friend’s place and plug in for a reasonably fast charge.
An EV vehicle can pull into practically any strip mall, business parking lot, or someones driveway to get enough juice to reach home or a charging station. You can’t do that with a gas vehicle. Unless you hike to a gas station, you aren’t going anywhere. There is no gasoline at McDonald’s or on Pine Ct.
Maybe my next (and perhaps last) car will be an EV. I’ll most likely buy out the ICE model I am currently paying for on a lease, and when that dies, I’ll seriously think of an EV. Why?
Most of my driving is around town. An EV does not need to warm up, which is an issue in winter even with the newer models. My guess is that by the time I am thinking of an EV, the prices will have dropped, there will be charging stations everywhere, and I won’t be driving much anyway. For long distance it is either a question of planning a charging stop or two, or renting an ICE vehicle just for that trip.
At the moment an EV is essentially an urban or suburban vehicle. I’d rather have an ICE vehicle if going somewhere really remote. BTW, how do EVs compare for reliability? You are in the backwoods of Alaska, and if your vehicle doesn’t start you have a BIG problem. Which would you choose?
EV’s are still pretty young, but they appear to be extremely reliable with significantly lower maintenance costs than ICE vehicles. Which makes sense, given that there’s no combustion engine, transmission, alternator, exhaust system, starter motor, etc. There are far fewer moving parts and no fluids to constantly gunk things up.
Of course, there’s no long-term data yet. But I predict that in the long term EVs will remain useful for several years more than a typical ICE car.
As explained, you can’t plug in multiple cords to the same circuit to get more power. However, I have seen a device that will let you plug into multiple 120v circuits on different legs of the split phase 240, and will combine it to provide much better charging than can be achieved from a single 120v outlet. Certainly something for very niche situations, as it was $500+ for the box, and slower charging than a dedicated 30 or 50 amp 240v outlet.
I know – this is how diesel-electric trains work, and diesel-electric earth movers (used in mines, with an electric motor for each wheel). We just naturally expected that cars would work the same way, because of the obvious advantages that lead to doing trains and trucks that way. So it’s absolutely fascinating how the technology for cars evolved in the opposite direction, with a gasoline engine for standard operation, topped up with an electric motor for peak power.
I don’t know who said it first, though Musk was the last person I’ve heard articulate this point: the design of a product can always be traced to the organization that produced it. If you take, say, an automotive drivetrain, then you can bet that each of the obviously distinct components has their own group within the automaker. If you see something dumb in a design, like a container inside a container, you can bet that different groups are responsible for each of those containers.
Very roughly speaking, the two types of hybrid are where the ICE is the prime mover and the motor acts as a kind of efficiency adjunct, or where the motor is the prime mover and the ICE is just a generator to keep the batteries topped off.
The groups designing combustion engines have been in a lead role in auto companies for over a century. Of course they aren’t going to let themselves get relegated to a role of being a stupid generator. They can accept a motor as a little helper, but allowing them to be in charge? Unacceptable.
Organizations can change, of course. It’s just a very slow process.
Who at the strip mall, business lot, home driveway, or McFoodery is going to let you plug into their power? Do you expect juice provided for free, or from metered outlets? Circa 1900 many cars burned kerosene, as did many urban streetlights with internal fuel tanks. Crafty drivers, watching for cops, stopped at lampposts to refill for free, gratis, no charge. You might find available 120v outlets accessible in public parks. Watch for cops.
RV parks, many located in metro areas, typically have 240v outlets. Ask the fee for recharging at some.
The problem with EV’s and hybrids is that a gallon of gasoline provides an awful lot of power compared to the equivalent batteries. My Model 3 with a 75kWh battery is as heavy as most luxury vehicles, a lot of that attributable to batteries; whereas enough gasoline to go 300mi (same range) would probably be 10 gallons. A smaller gasoline car can weigh substantially less. I traded a Camry hybrid for the car - 11 years old and working fine, no issues especially with the batteries or drive train. The difference was, my 2008 Camry had the same size motor (1600cc) as my 1991 Honda Civic; it didn’t need a bigger engine because the power assist for acceleration came from the electric engine - it micromanaged energy, recovering momentum by charging batteries when braking. I typically got highway mileage even with city driving. BMW i3 had an onboard small gasoline generator option. However, it was so pathetic a long-ish highway drive would still drain the battery. Making the electric and battery the primary mover just means a heavy battery vehicle with the added weight of a gasoline engine and generator.
As I mentioned a Tesla with the portable charger would get about 3 miles per hour charging in a standard household circuit. You have to desperately need those extra few miles, or be willing to ie. leave it overnight, to bother using that. I doubt many locations will be pestered by non-stop freeloading chargers; it will be more the occasional desperation act to plug into a household outlet. It’s 120V, 12A, 1.4kW per hour - an hour of charging 1.4kWh would cost the business about 30 cents in an area with expensive electricity. All day charging for the price of a Starbucks coffee. If you presented yourself as desperate and stranded, most businesses or homeowners might be accommodating, but if it were an endless stream of moochers looking for a free charge patience would wear thin. And if it’s just trickle charging while at work - why bother? You can get the same charge with 1 hour at home with the high-power charger. And in a few years - real chargers will be everywhere anyway, with appropriate means to charge money for power used.
Yes an outlet box has two plugs, but they are fed by the same wire. It’s like trying to get more water out of your garden hose by attaching one of those Y-splitters. Plus, most vehicles are not designed to accept multiple feeds, and as mentioned, if a box were made to combine those feeds - the typical household outlet has a 15A or sometimes 20A breaker - trying to get more out of the outlet will pop the breaker. It is possible to build voltage boosters - lots of electronics have them. The problem is, you are talking about some seriously hefty power - as much as an oven or more. Electronics to boost voltage for electronics, no big deal. To boost voltage with serious power - not worth the cost, plus it would probably shed heat like a toaster over, since the process would not be 100% effective.
Thanks for the info, which confirms what I thought. But the question is, are there any stats on catastrophic failures of EVs? Electronics or battery suddenly failing? If not, then is an EV would be a better choice if you absolutely, totally need the vehicle to drive off
EVs have been built continuously for well over a century, primarily for commercial applications. Electric taxis swarmed US cities in the 19-oughts. Certain city folk were seduced, like lithium-battery-EV buyers now.
Of course roads outside US cities were horrible then so few auto-mobilers - ICE, electric, or steam - ventured far from town. Otherwise that sounds familiar.
Which is why they’ve been in commercial use since day one.
Keyed-in from the DB Wise paperback again:
Even really, really primitive ICE vehicles with friction drive and lacking lubrication could last a long, long time.
That’s assuming the owners are generous enough to let you run a cord for an hour or however longer it will take you to get enough charge, giving you the juice for free in the bargain. Which isn’t to say that most of them wouldn’t let people do it occasionally out of kindness, but if it happens all the time, for instance if the sale of EVs outpaces their infrastructure buildout, businesses will start feeling a lot less generous.
Whereas if you are the type of person to always push it to the limit in an ICE, there is a simple solution: carry a full gas can.
Blame my reality fetish. EVs have been built and used, mainly commercially but also as personal vehicles, for a long time. Someone buying a vehicle with a new ICE design is an early adopter of that design, not of ICEVs. Some buying a vehicle with a new battery type is an early adopter of that battery, not of EVs. That’s reality.
How big a market is “massive”? Do a few hundred million electric golf carts (ECGs), low-speed vehicles (LSVs), and neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) around the world count? It’s hard pinning down numbers but one source says Yamaha Electric Vehicles built three million in 2018. Yes, Tesla and automakers are shooting for even larger markets. Fine.
My point is that new battery technologies are great but EVs aren’t new and I won’t pretend they are. And mass-market personal EVs need a reliable power infrastructure, which California (and much of the world) lacks now.
So, returning to the OP, I see a perception problem. Past EV’ers had to stay conscious of range and charging. ICE drivers, in the first world anyway, have enjoyed a fairly robust fuel infrastructure for quite awhile. We think stinkpots can go almost anywhere - in a pinch, haul a can of fuel to extend the range. EVs force a re-think. Can we carry extra batteries to avoid running out of juice? Or buy added towing coverage?
Charging from a regular 120v outlet gives around 3 miles of range per hour of charging, so in the vast majority of the US you’re looking at a long charge (overnight would be 8 hours for 24 miles of range) to be able to get to a supercharger station. Hiking to a gas station and back (or just calling roadside service) is going to take under an hour in an awful lot of places that are 50 miles (17 hours charging) or more from a T3 station. So, yeah you conceivably charge at a lot more places than have gas, but hiking to a gas station is going to take you ‘annoying delay’ time instead of ‘miss the event and/or take off extra time from work’ amounts of time.
Also, I would not advise just pulling into a random person’s driveway and poking around their house to find an outlet to plug into. That sort of thing can be hazardous to your health and/or arrest record. I also suspect you’d have trouble pulling into a restaurant and going up to their outdoor plug. And if you’re asking people to let you park in their driveway to charge, you could also just ask someone to give you a ride to a gas station. Also the ‘No gasoline on Pine Ct’ claim is clearly false, in almost all neighborhoods there will be people with a gas can for yard equipment, and (assuming 25mph) a half gallon of gas will get you as far as a 4 hour wall charge.
The oft-repeated claim that you can charge and EV anywhere where there is an outlet is technically true, but neglects that the ‘can charge’ takes an extreme amount of time.
One of the major problems for early EVs is battery deterioration, with some models losing 50% or more of their capacity after just a few years. The current generation of batteries (especially Tesla’s) are doing much better than that, but most of the data from that is from people in temperate climates who are EV enthusiasts. If an EV has significant capacity loss, you can technically call it ‘useful’, but the range can easily end up below what any particular person wants to tolerate.
That’s a major difference between ICE vehicles and EVs - ICE vehicles have more parts that need to be replaces or repaired over time, but EVs have a single component (the battery) that is unrepairable and extremely expensive to replace and that does undergo deterioration. In the ‘starting out in the middle of nowhere Alaska’ situation, while it seems likely that the EV will be more reliable at starting, whether the battery will be able to hold enough charge for someone to want to risk taking it out in the wilds is a key question.
I am pretty sure that you won’t have above 90% battery capacity on a Tesla that spends ten years going through Alaska winters even when it’s not actually freezing. And of course when it is freezing, you’re typically looking at 20% capacity loss even in a brand new vehicle.
I know I’m getting a bit far afield here, but there’s not really a valid basis to compare ICE cars in the early 20th century and current EVs as far as “filling stations.” ICEs were in common use in 1895, especially single cylinder units used in agriculture, and gasoline was common, even though filling stations might not have been. You could frequently find a farmer who would sell you a few gallons of gas from his stock. You could also carry your own gas (e.g., when driving over remote areas of the country) and many people did. This is not really an option for EVs. Sure, you can find someone to let you charge your EV, but it’s a different situation entirely.
Again, this is not meant to demean EVs, just to point out that the comparison in infrastructure and (lack of) support is not particularly relevant.