Just tell your EV to start charging at 11:00 p.m. We have ours set for 1:00 a.m., but that’s because is seldom needs more than two or three hours.
Or plug it into your smart meter, and tell it to charge whenever it’s cheapest, just so long as it’s ready to go by 7 AM. Maybe there’s an unusually high peak of wind at 8 PM that night, and so the utility lowers rates to entice the smart chargers to use the extra energy.
Just an anecdote, but:
My sister lives in Southern California. She has solar panels, and an EV (a Nissan Leaf). According to her, the panels provide plenty enough power to charge the car.
Does available power vary with wind speed, or are they continuously charging batteries, with available power stable?
Or maybe there’s no wind during the night, and next day it’s cloudy all day.
This may occasionally get interesting.
On a night of high demand that coincides with a power distribution problem, an algorithm that tries to couple “Charge when it’s cheap” with “Be sure to have me fully charged by 7 AM” playing in millions of California garages and driveways is likely to yield more than a few unhappy customers.
So one has to decide whether it’s more important to charge when it’s cheap or to have the car fully charged by morning. Perhaps there’s a priority setting one can use?
I have a $3000 vehicle with a range of 400 miles that can transport a pickup load of hay. More importantly, I can drive from Little Rock to Memphis and back. Why would I want more? I certainly don’t want less.
I’m glad you’re happy.
Thanks. = )
Another problem is that my Wife and I work at different places, we have two cars. My next door neighbor just paved most of his yard because there are four cars at his house. He would have to charge four EVs. I believe we have to increase electrical generation without fossil fuels to manage that.
My wife and each drive an EV. it’s never been an issue. Not even close to anything to worry about. Granted, with wildly different driving needs, hypothetically, it could be a problem. For most people it won’t be a problem
Presumably, you’d set it to “Absolutely finish charging by morning, and do that using what you estimate to be the cheapest energy possible”. Those predictions won’t be exactly perfect, of course, but they don’t need to be: They just need to be good enough. Of course, there also needs to be some intelligence at the utility company to set the rates, but again, perfection isn’t required.
We have threads and threads numbering hundreds of posts dating back a decade where various folks who know nothing abut EVs trot out every tired objection you have in this thread.
You might try reading those and their cites first rather than relying on questionable propaganda and personal “It stands to reason” guesswork.
This comment applies equally to @nearwildheaven.
Really. All these objections are ill-founded and way out of date. Are there challenges to refleet the USA? You bet. Are they like “Har har, those dummies can’t even see this is orders of magnitude not doable!”? Nope. Not even remotely.
Some missions, and particularly rural missions, will remain ICE long after the 80+% of the USA who live in urban / suburban areas have converted.
More than enough to charge. None of my friends have any issues at all.
You mean you work 12 hours a day?
And of course you can get a battery for your solar array.
Sure natural gas is pretty good environmentally compared to coal, oil, etc.
Yep. My neighbor gets enuf power to charge form dawn to 730, then from 430 to dark.
Sure, but used cars for $3000 are unicorns today. A new car is now running close to $30000.
Exactly, not to mention ignorant.
Thanks, Dr Deth.
Nationally, the Infrastructure issue is simply not being adequately addressed.
In my (non-Californian) city, I have only seen TWO charging stations. Both beneath City Hall. And I don’t even know if they work.
Things are different here in the SF Bay Area, I guess. Here, I see charging stations being built at a ferocious pace. Two new ones just opened a mile from my house.
And bear in mind, this thread is specifically about California.
The law allows for plug-in hybrids. I say that if they allow for hybrids (or any car for that matter) of a certain MPG or higher then all of these problems would go away.
Permit me to disagree, in my AWD Electric Vehicle thread, I checked the Colorado Springs to Dallas route, which involves going east from Raton through some of the emptiest portions of NM and the Texas Panhandle. It had charging available.
Now granted - if this was the scenario in the OP where there’s a mandate that vehicles be BEV/PHEV it wouldn’t be adequate, but it shows that the infrastructure is emerging, just not quickly. And no other state is pursing such an ambitious (but possibly rubbish) goal. It’s a chicken and the egg thing, if there aren’t enough users, then no one wants to build chargers, and because there aren’t chargers, people don’t want to buy EVs… but the balance is definitely tipping.
As the options increase, I’m seeing it become much more available, at least here in purple Colorado. I still say the pace CA is setting is unreasonably optimistic, but I don’t feel it’s wrong to have such goals.