Yeah, my last new vehicle purchase was like two decades ago. I did but a used low milage 2014 from my Mechanic a couple years ago.
That’s not just “people on this board”, that’s the entire auto market. And even if a few people but a new car like the rest of us but smart phones, their used cars get sold to someone else. It takes a "really long time* for any new technology to percolate through the national fleet.
Supercapacitors (capacitor batteries) are not like regular batteries. they’re filled with air gaps and not electrochemicals. They charge almost instantly and would be great for regenerative braking. they’re very lightweight. I’d imagine they would be great for a crush zone but I’m not an engineer.
Also, my idea doesn’t hinge on using bumpers, it was just a thought. My point was that hybrid EV’s focus on using Lithium batteries instead of focusing on the efficiencies of weight. There is no need for a long distance EV when a hybrid fills the current function of CO2 reduction. Capacitor batteries would be a good fit for shorter range hybrids where fast regenerative braking would be improved.
So, just like an ICE, you stop at a DCFC station to top it off. That’s what I did the other week when I had an unexpected trip to Tucson (120mi) when my SOC was 30%. Ten minutes was enough to get to Marana which is where I would have stopped even with knowing the trip was coming anyway.
Of course, if you’re in a DCFC desert and the nearest one is 40 miles the wrong way, that’s not so easy.
When having a parking lot convo about EVs my first question is, “Can you park where there is at least 120v available?” If the answer is no, I recommend a PHEV. If the answer is yes then the miles driven in a typical week is next.
And also, you buy one of the newer EVs that charges quickly. Some charge much faster than others.
I wish there was some actually-tested standard for this (like EnergyStar or the MPGe stickers on cars), rather than just the manufacturers’ untested claims. I think those stated figures are maybe best-case scenarios only possible under ideal lab conditions, and real-world numbers are usually lower.
It’d be nice to have a more realistic figure to work with when cross-shopping, one that takes into account differences in charge rate based on temperature, state of charge, # of cycles, etc, rather than an oversimplified “80% in 15 minutes”.
Huh. I wasn’t planning on using the car for road trips, so i ignored those claims, which i assumed were true.
I think at least one of the reviewers i read tested that, at least in some conditions?
I ended up buying a car that i rented, and tried to fast charge the rental, and it took a whole more longer than i would have liked. It certainly wasn’t up to 80% in 30 minutes. But maybe i picked a bad charging station. I had a hell of a time even finding a charging station, because i was hundreds of miles from home, had never used any of the EV apps, probably didn’t use a good EV app… But i recognized that there’s were all “unexpectedly renting an EV” issues, not “EV issues”. I now have a couple of apps that friends have had good experiences with loaded on my phone, just in case. And if course, I now pick it up fully charged from my garage, not at 30% charge from Avis.
So i bought the car anyway, in part because i knew the driving experience had been comfortable.
Anecdotally: I was shocked when I first charged my Ioniq 5 on a winter road trip. It took like 45-50 minutes instead of the 15 minutes it usually takes. There’s some way to get battery conditioning, but it’s clunky: you have to use the built-in maps program and navigate specifically to a charger, and apparently that’s the only way to get the battery to be heated up to the right temperature by the time you get there. I’ve not gone on a winter road trip since learning that, so I haven’t tested it out.
Under non-freezing conditions, I can attest that 15 minutes is plenty to get a fullish charge.
Yeah, exactly. It’s the kind of misleading (intentionally or not) claim that manufacturers like to advertise, and which are maybe mostly sometimes almost correct, but then there are also often situations where it simply won’t be — not just temperature, but charger limits, shared charger limits (like if someone pulls up to to charge next to you, some chargers will then limit you to only 50% of its max power), etc.
Going into a road trip fully planned with multiple backups, with hours of pre-education and pre-planning, knowing all the charger stations along the way and their exact ratings and customer reviews across a half-dozen apps, we still ran into unexpected difficulties. Mere annoyances, but that’s because we were pro-EV to begin with and anticipated headaches. Someone else might’ve screamed or cried in frustration.
It’s just one of the many unexpected “gotchas” a first-time EV owner might find themselves in, trapped slow-charging at a supposed fast-charger in the middle of a blizzard with a bunch of other desperately low EVs. (More than one YouTuber car reviewers had something like that happen to them when they were first reviewing EVs, unaware of the dramatic difference temperature can make, depending on the car make & model and the particular charger.)
I can believe that some lucky BEVs can charge really fast most of the time, some BEVs will charge somewhat fast some of the time, a few never can… but no BEV can refuel as quickly, consistently, and reliably as a gas car at any ol’ run-down gas station.
Moreover, it is very difficult to know which category a potential BEV you’re looking at buying falls into, without manually digging up multiple anecdotal reviews of that particular model year under similar climate conditions (and even then, with a healthy dose of hope and prayer). And then you have to do the same homework for each and every charger along the route, unless you are (specifically) a Tesla or Rivian owner and can rely on their better-equipped and maintained networks anywhere you go. The DCFC landscape for the “rest of us” can be really hit-or-miss; even when they’re there, they’re not always going to give you anywhere near an ideal charge rate.
I agree with most of what you said, but I want to put some nuance into this: the majority of the time my BEV fuels more quickly, consistently, and reliably than a gas car. I park my car in my normal spot in the driveway, touch a button on my fob, plug in the charger, and go inside. Next morning I unplug it, push the charger cover down, and drive away. It’s so, so much faster than refilling at a gas station, and because it’s where I’m parking anyway, it’s more reliable and consistent than having to figure out which gas station I’ll go to and maybe waiting in line, or dealing with a broken pump, or whatever.
It’s only on road trips when I need a fast charger in a new area that it’s a pain in the ass, and under those circumstances a gas car is much faster, reliable, and consistent.
Quibble. Pretty all the new EVs we were looking at now are NACS capable and able to use that better equipped and maintained network.
We have not yet bought the Ioniq 5 my wife has decided on, but next drive to NJ it will be an up in the air decision between taking the Prius PHEV, or it. Especially if the two local adult kids want to drive with us. Four adults with luggage is snug in the Prius. Lots more room in the Ioniq. Might be worth a few extra fueling stops.
Many of the car magazines test the EV vehicles. They include a bit about charging architecture, how fast. The manufacturers love the highest numbers (same as gas mileage, not so good in winter thru snow drifts and owners still idling to ‘warm’ up the car).
As to preconditioning an Ionic battery. If the charger is in the navigation database, set it as the destination. Done.
Traveling on the East coast, Electrify America is every 50 to 75 miles along the interstates and almost all have been significantly upgraded. Tesla chargers are all over. Make sure you have the adapter (it was free at one time) and have the Tesla app ahead of time. Wife and I traveled multiple times ranging from Kennedy Space Center to Pennsylvania in our Ionic 5 for two years, no problems though I’m a nerd. Back in Hawaii, Oahu, we have another Ionic (a 6 this time). Hawaii is perfect for EVs. Constant temps, slow speeds, lots of hills for recovering charge. 5,000 miles and we get 5 miles/kw here. We averaged 3.7 miles/kw in the Ionic 6 with the higher speeds, interstates (flat on I-95), and temp swings.
When I read this thread on a macro level I get really depressed for Americans.
You are sooooo in for another “1973 automotive moment” and it’s going to be really really ugly for America. I don’t know how it is possible that there are people who do not see this coming ( generally speaking) .
I think the auto industry has seen it coming. And they have to no small degree tried to get ahead of it. But their model is not nimble. And pulling the rug out of the incentive structure, just making that structure something that cannot be relied on, has made it really hard.
Again, given all that, I think the growth over the decade has been fine and the current blip not a death sentence.
“It is difficult to get anybody to understand something, when their salary depends on them not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair
It wouldn’t surprise me. Prior to the first energy crisis in '73, many American cars were massive land yachts, and with low gasoline prices, no one worried much about MPG.
Once consumers suddenly cared about gas prices, the industry shifted to smaller cars (even shrinking the size of the big sedans), and started talking about fuel economy. Now, we’ve crept back into where we were in the early '70s, with the land yachts replaced by enormous SUVs and pickup trucks.
Imagine the point of view of the auto workers. If the Big Three magically switched entirely from ICE vehicle to electric vehicle production, many jobs (and workers) are no longer needed. Think of those involved in building transmissions and engine blocks, for instance. Certainly the number of production workers is much less today than previous decades, given the increase in robots and other automation. (Welding and painting, for instance, are mostly done by robots.)
But I’d rather have an American auto industry even if fewer people are in production than be entirely reliant on Chinese factories for the cars sold here.
We’ve already seen car manufacturers try & charge for things (BMW - heated seats) or taking away existing standards (Android Auto or Apple car play) for proprietary variants which will only be free for ___ months.
At this time is their navigation software free for life of the car or is this something you’ll be held hostage for - Pay us $ or sit extra long for winter on-the-road recharges?
It’s interesting, in the early days of in car navigation, each car had it’s own, on-board maps database. They abandoned that for use your Garmin Nuvi, TomTom, or (later) smartphone to handle that, as they wanted no parts of updating it regularly. Your above comment seems like they’re going back to the original model, which obviously with wifi & smartphones make a bit easier to update than the first go round.
One of our cars – a 2007 Mazda crossover SUV – is from that era. The onboard navigation maps are contained in a dedicated 5 CD player, located under the driver’s seat (I believe). Updating the maps requires changing out the CDs; the one time I looked into doing so (around 2011), it was over $200. Needless to say, we never updated the maps, and haven’t used the on-board navigation in many years.
Remember- in America- 100 years is old- in Europe, 100 miles is far. California alone is 800 miles long. EVs dont fit in America like they do in Europe- America is not Europe.
However, Hybrids have really gotten more popular in the US.
Cause by a combo of factors including an insane president.