My son asked me this question and I didn’t know the answer.
I know that the hybrids have both and electric engine and a gasoline engine, so running out of gas is no more likely or inconvenient than in a conventional car (if your battery dies out completely, you just rely solely on the gas engine).
But what about the purely electric vehicles (Chevy Volt? Tesla?). What happens if your battery dies while you are out and about? Charging stations aren’t common yet (at least in my area), so presumably you would need to get towed (someone can’t come out to you with a 5-gal can of electricity).
Obviously, some people have never experienced running out of gas. These people always make sure to have enough fuel to get where they are going, or at least to the next gas station. Likewise, you could just make sure you always had a sufficient charge (BTW, how does that work— a gauge of some sort? I assume how far you can go would be highly variable due to hills, traffic… I don’t even know what other factors). Is there a learning curve to get over with just how far you can push it? If you own an all electric (or know someone who does) has it ever happened and if so what did you do?
Also, how much does it cost in electricity to keep your car charged, compared to buying gas? I assume it’s cheaper, but by how much?
Chevy Volts can recharge their battery from an on-board gasoline engine, so you are back to running out of gas as a problem.
I don’t own an electric car, but I suspect that if you run out of charge and get stuck, you are going to need to be towed. I don’t know of any mobile chargers. All the electric cars have very sophisticated charge management and accurate gauges, so they can tell you with a few miles of when you are going to get stuck. Owners need to plan their trips carefully.
The cost per mile for electricity vs gasoline is dramatically different - something like 3¢ vs 12¢.
From here.
If they run out of charge completely, the car stops moving – just like a gas car. But yes, they have charge gauges that let you know when they run out. The remaining mileage is continually updated based on real-time battery monitoring, so over a long enough drive the estimate gets to be pretty darned accurate.
Tesla suffered a small controversy regarding this a few months ago, where a NYT reporter purposely drove around and tried to run down the battery pack to claim there weren’t enough charging stations. Since then other papers did the same test with no problem, and they also added more charging stations.
In the future, Tesla is investigating stations that can fast-swap your entire battery pack with a fully charged one so you don’t have to wait 30 min to several hours to charge your pack, just park, wait a minute or three for the replacement pack, and go on your way.
Burning gasoline to generate electricity seems quite wasteful. If they were smart they’d just load up a few huge batteries, charge them at night, and use that instead of a generator. And maybe with a small coffee bar on the truck, since useful recharging will take at last half an hour or more even with a 220V outlet.
The cars have an estimated range to depleted display, which works more or less like the range to empty on a normal car. Just like the gas light on a regular car it has a lot of padding built in, so by the time the thing refuses to move the low charge indicator should have been on for a while.
At this point, running out of juice will require a tow in most places, but there are mobile charging rescue trucks being rolled out in some areas. They can give the car enough power to go a few miles in 10 minutes, so it’s really just to get you to the nearest charging station, assuming there is one. Some of the car makers are toying with quick-swap batteries too, where instead of charging you can swap your depleted battery for a charged one, which might make roadside rescues easier.
How much it costs depends on your electric rates obviously. The Nissan Leaf is EPA rated at 29 kWh per 100 miles, and the average electric rate nationwide these days is around $.12/kWh, so figure about $3.50. The same trip in a 30 MPG car would cost about $12.
Those EV batteries are complex and expensive. I wouldn’t trust some random roadside towing company to swap in a good one instead of some refurbished, run-down POS.
But if it were a first-party (Tesla or otherwise) station (or truck), that’s another story.
That is an issue if you buy an electric car today. Some areas have enough charging stations that a tow won’t cost you too much. In other areas though the tow cost could be substantial since you have a lot farther to go.
If electric cars become more popular you could see a lot of solutions to this problem, such as the other things that have been mentioned in this thread so far. But today, it’s still an issue.
It varies depending on the car. A car designed for economy like the Chevy Volt isn’t going to suck down as much electricity as a performance car like the Tesla Roadster, for example. In general though, an electric car costs you roughly a third as much per mile, when comparing just the cost of electricity vs. gasoline.
While that is a pretty substantial savings, you also have to keep in mind that electric cars also have batteries that wear out, where the fuel tank in a gasoline car usually doesn’t wear out. If you factor in the battery costs as well, the overall cost of running the vehicle tilts back in favor of the gasoline car. The money you save per mile isn’t enough to overcome the additional battery cost, at least not with present technology.
Battery costs have been dropping and gasoline costs have been rising, so that may not be true for too much longer.
The Volt works exactly like this. If you charge your car overnight and stay within your electric range the engine will never be needed. In fact, the engine is programmed to come on a few times a year only to ensure that it doesn’t freeze up.
You may be asking yourself why they included it. They did so because it acts as a range extender. As long as you have gasoline in the car you will never get stuck, no matter what the availability of a charging station or a place to plug in is. In other words, for a small weight penalty and minimal gas usage, they overcame every objection to electric vehicles and created one that maximizes efficiency and can still be used as a primary car for things like cross-country trips if need be.
I don’t think that’s really a fair assessment. Electric cars have the battery issue, but they also require virtually no maintenance. So you’re saving money on oil changes, spark plugs, belts, hoses, transmission fluid changes, etc. Even the brakes last much longer because of regenerative braking. Tire, shocks and wiper blades are really the only things that follows a typical car wear-and-tear schedule.
Thus far, real world experience with EV batteries has shown they last essentially the life of the car. Even if it did turn out you have to change them around 100,000 miles or so, I suspect you’d still be ahead versus 100,000 miles of maintenance on a conventional car, even without fuel savings.
For people talking about swapping out the batteries, bear in mind that for the Tesla, that’s a 1,000 pound battery that’s a fairly integral part of the frame of the car. Swapping it out requires a machine slightly less complex than the one that Tony Stark built to put the Iron Man suit on him. Also, their business model for that includes an obligation to return to that station and get your original battery put back in your car once it’s fully charged, otherwise you owe them big cash–it’s not a Pony Express, where you get to swap out batteries every 200 miles on a speed run across the country.
Not sure where you get your information. Not that I think Tesla’s one brand stand alone approach is the best option but what you describe is not completely accurate.
90 second swap planned with the same distribution as their 20 minute free supercharger stations for about the cost of a gas fill-up. Yes, either end your trip where you began and get your original battery back or pay some unnamed fee to trade your battery for the one you ended your trip with, which would have its own warranty.
The energy equivalent of a gallon of gas (from grid electricity) is roughly $0.80. A major factor is that about 80% of the energy from gasoline is wasted while only about 10-20% of energy in batteries is wasted. How far you can get varies and obviously a sports car like the Tesla is not going to go as far fully charged as an economy car.
We are in the intro phase of electric cars. In 1997 electric cars had 1300 pound batteries that stores 19 KWH of energy. The high end Tesla Roadster has a 1200 pound battery that has 85KWH of energy. Battery energy density is almost 5x better now.
If trends like that continue (or god willing accelerate) by the end of the next decade batteries could be 5x better, meaning a 1000 pound battery would have about 400KHW of energy in it, good enough to drive a roadster about 1300 miles or a less powerful economy car 2000+ miles.
What do you do if your all electric car runs out of juice? Tow it. Thats about all I can think of. I don’t know if there are services like battery wagons where a tow truck pulls up with a wagon and charges you up on the side of the road. If there isn’t, there should be. There ‘could’ be a market for that. There are also various fast charging stations that will charge a battery in a much quicker time than a regular outlet but I think these are just in California right now.
If you drive 15k miles a year in a car that gets 25mpg that works out to 600 gallons of gas, about $2000ish a year. If an electric car can be powered to drive the same miles for $500 a year that is a savings of $15,000 over 10 years.
I don’t know when electric cars will reach parity with gas cars on economics alone. Plus there really isn’t a used car market for electric cars like there is with gas, you can’t buy a 5 year old Tesla for 60% less than the price of a new one the way you can buy a slightly used gas car for less than half the cost of a new one.
I wonder if it would be possible to have a tow truck, or a friend bring a … don’t know what I would call it… Roadside assist battery? A smaller batter that one person can lift and then set it in the trunk and plug it into a special outlet in the trunk (or where ever) so the car can move 10 miles to the next charging station (when they exist). Sort of like someone bringing you a gallon of gas.
