What drudgery? My 5 year old plugs in my car, and I certainly wouldn’t let her pump my gas. Even at that I spend less time plugging and unplugging the car the entire week, than a single gas stop. You’re probably one of those people who complains about plugging in your phone every day, even though it’s sitting unused 8 hours a night (or do you not have a phone?).
And who are these people who are taking so many long road trips that an EV is impossible? Just think about this: I’ve had my car for about 5 weeks and gone 1500 miles. That has cost me $30. If I had been using my old gas car that would have cost me about $155 in gas at $2.80/gallon. For the $125 I saved in less than two months of use I can rent a car if I take a trip that the EV won’t be convenient for.
Don’t attack EVs over silly problems you’re inventing. You even mention some real ones—they’re expensive, and the cheap EVs are expensive compared to comparable gas cars; not everybody can conveniently do home charging; and they have a different set of compromises and requirements compared to gas cars, which obviously some people have a hard time getting used to.
I’m still not understanding the hassle. What is it about plugging in the car that is so difficult? My hands don’t even smell when I’m done.
And where is this magic gas station that takes 2.5 minutes? Do you have an 8 gallon tank? It takes .5-1 minute just to get my card authorized and the pump started. Then another 3-5 minutes to fill the car, then .25-1 minute to put everything away and get back in the car. Then 0-3 minutes to turn out of the station back into traffic.
Here’s the hassle and drudgery of unplugging the car. I just timed this: Opened the car door (so the car is unlocked) and started the timer. Walked to the charge port, pushed the button to unlock it, pulled it out, coiled the cord as I walked to the wall, hung the cord on the hook, walked back to the driver door to get in, stopped the timer. Total: 22 seconds. At a gas pump, I’m still typing in my zip code.
I didn’t time plugging in the car, but here’s how the drudgery of that: Push button to open charge port (like pulling the lever to open the gas door), get out of the car, walk to the wall, grab the charge cable, let it uncoil as I walk to the charge door, shove the plug in. The only hassle is when I forget to ask my 5 year old if she wants to do it, and have to unplug it and let her plug it in again.
who are these people? the ones without a garage, and 220 volt service or any outlet for that matter.
I’m not attacking EV’s. I’m stating historical fact. They lost out to ICE cars due to convenience. They will replace ICE cars when that changes.
Stop acting like everyone has a garage or even access to an electrical source or that charging stations are readily available to people who don’t have those amenities. Not everyone lives in your sheltered world.
Right there in the part of my post you quote I say “not everybody can conveniently do home charging.” I’m not the one pretending.
Why are you conflating long trips and home charging? They have nothing to do with each other.
I’m sitting in a vast tract of suburbia with thousands of free standing houses with garages. All of these people are excellent candidates for EV ownership. The main limiting factor today isn’t convenience, it’s price (and the actual availability of vehicles).
mine don’t smell either. I’m kind of funny about not pouring gas on them.
the magic gas stations are too numerous to count in my area. There are multiple stations at every exit along my drive to work.
That’s about how much I put into the tank at one time. I don’t run it to empty. But if I did I’d be back on the road in minutes because of all the gas stations available. And in those few minutes the tank would be completely full.
It takes me 2 ½ minutes starting with a few seconds to verify credit. I don’t know what you’re doing wrong.
the hassle is that you have to do it 2 times a day, every day. That’s 14 times a week. The hassle for people without a garage is that they have to do it 14 times a week in crappy weather. the hassle for those without electrical service is that they have to hunt down a charging station and wait at least 20 minutes for a decent partial charge. That’s assuming there’s a bay open for charging.
again with the “everyone drives 500 miles every day” canard.
psst- there’s another key difference. at the time, the fuel ICE cars could run on petroleum fractions which weren’t much good for anything else. the naphtha and straight-run gasoline was too volatile for lamp use. Kerosene/fuel oil and heavier lubricants were the desired fractions at the time, gasoline was all but worthless.
I dunno, I’d say waking up every morning to a full battery would be more convenient on any given day than getting ready to go to work and realizing “shit, now I need to waste 10 minutes getting gas.”
on the other hand, I always seem to need gas at the most inconvenient time.
And you can leave your EV plugged in all winter and have the battery kept properly maintained the entire time.
As an owner of a classic car that sometimes sits I can tell you leaving an ICE car sitting all winter is likely to make for a hard-to-impossible to start car in the spring. The ethanol separates from the gasoline after a couple months, and shortly after that the gasoline itself starts turning into not-gasoline.
I’ve been driving a Tesla as my main vehicle for 5 years now. It is so much more convenient than any ICE car and seeing ‘EVs are not practical until they charge in 5 minutes’ is just baffling to me.
Funny how you seem to know more about my driving experiences than I do.
Incidentally, it’s 5 mph. And I’m still haven’t upgraded the charger. I plug in 2-3 times a week unless I’ve just come back from a trip.
Most people don’t actually need more than a 120 v home charger. Counting weekends, most probably have around 80 hours of charge time a week. That’s 400 miles, but the average American only drives ~230 miles a week. A fast charger might be desirable if the family has two EVs and a heavy commute, but even then a pair of 120 v chargers on separate circuits are adequate.
Not to beat up on this but everybody I know who stores a car over the winter puts premium fuel in it or adds a stabilizer as well disconnect the battery. It’s easy to mothball a gas car. I routinely let one of my cars sit for a month at a time and don’t have to do anything to it regardless of what fuel I put in.
People seem to miss my point entirely. I firmly believe ice cars about to disappear in a very short time frame. The changeover that will allow everyone to transition over is a fast charging battery. I don’t think cost will be the deciding factor because of the benefits of EV’s. I think fast charging will be the tipping point of no return for ICE cars.
I’m just reading what you posted. YOU wanted faster charging. And now you say you only plug in 2-3 times a week. That’s great if you have a psychic who can tell you what you’ll be using the car for. Otherwise your 5 mph charge time means you get 40 miles in an 8 hr evening or it means you can’t go anywhere after work because you have to charge the car.
By your own admission you would like a faster charging system yet you declare it adequate for others. There is a disconnect in this line of thought. When someone shells out $35,000 for a car they want to think it will be there for them for unforeseen trips. That’s just natural.
Batteries are already fast charging and the changeover is already happening now. The speed of changeover is limited by production capacity and economics.
The reason is simple. I thought it would be easy to deal with charging in the Tesla. But as it turned out, it was still even easier than I had thought.
I wasn’t sure, exactly, how my driving preferences would translate to real-world charging needs. But >6 months later, I know. I’ve done all my usual commuting and errands, and taken all my usual trips, including a fairly long day trip. And the answer is that not once would fast home charging have made a difference.
Skipping a day of charging, or even a week of charging, would not be a big deal at all. And I’d still be able to visit my parents, a couple of hours away, in an emergency. Simply not a problem.
The only disconnect is between what I thought I needed before having driven the car, and what I now know I need.
Of course, everyone’s situation is different. Some will want a home L2 charger. But purely on the numbers, the average American doesn’t need it.
One addendum: this does depend on having a fairly long-range EV. Slow home charging does mean that a day that exceeds the average needs to be made up on later days; possibly the weekend. But it’s obvious that all of the new generation of EVs will be 200+ miles, so that won’t be a problem.
I may still install the charger, just out of some sense of completeness. But if I had really needed it I’d know by now.
Magiver, EV owners are never going to do to “gas stations” to charge their batteries in 3 minutes or whatever. It’s a totally absurd idea which is conclusive evidence in itself that you just don’t understand how they are used.
Will people charge at home? Oh yeah. At the grocery store, restaurant or movie theater? Yes, that’s coming, but it hasn’t quite arrived. Work? Maybe, depending. Driving to a store to get a charge? Not unless they are making a road trip. It just isn’t going to work that way.
The deal here is like if someone is explaining to you how PayPal works, and you keep insisting that nobody will use it until they figure out a way to print out personal checks quickly and efficiently, perhaps by going to a bank with their mobile phone, and plugging it into the bank’s printer. This of course is a fictional representation of how someone can’t come to grips with new technology changing everyday tasks; which is exactly how I would describe you talking about EVs.
I’ve mothballed cars quite a bit. Two years in Germany (I left the parking brake on, big, big mistake), then multiple times for assignments in Mexico, and ultimately for five years in China. Oh, I’d turn them on from time to time as I got home, and maybe take them out for a spin. On the five year assignment, though, I couldn’t do that as I let the registrations lapse. In the end, my Expedition ran fine on five year old gasoline.
Now, after storage I always make it a point to burn it up and add fresh stuff, because gasoline does suffer decomposition. But one tank won’t kill anything. You know what really suffers? Lawn equipment. Now I make it a point to use ethanol-free.
I’d hate to count on 110VAC for a pure electric car. Yeah, yeah, everyone’s experience is different, but when I had my Fusion Energi, it took about six hours to charge its tiny, little 7 kWh battery. That was barely enough to get to work in the winter, where I could charge in just under two hours. Let’s say I have 12 hours available daily – that’s still only 14 to 18 kWh, plus weekends, assuming I don’t have a 200 mile road trip. I’ll definitely want the fast charger, even for routine, daily driving.
(Hmmm… I wonder if it’s ethical to require fast chargers at my suppliers as part of future negotiations?)
Cars have the advantage of having sealed fuel systems. Lawn equipment generally doesn’t. Nor do motorcycles, outside of California. When I put my bikes to be for the winter they get a good shot of stabilizer and a tank filled to the very top.
I have a very similar circumstance with my CMax Energi but really its not a fair cop.
These are small capacity plug-in hybrids not EVs and 7kWh is just never going to be enough to get to and from a reasonable commute in winter. But even within that class if you got a Volt charging overnight (figure home by 7p leave 6a?) would be more than twice as far.
Still no question that having home level 2 with a PHEV is convenient for days of many errands but stops at home. And there the onboard charger is the rate limiting step for our cars. Newer vehicles can charge 25 miles range in an hour; we are down at 5ish.
Hate gas station trips with a passion. Plugging in is nothing.
I’ve put more than 8,000 miles on my model3 so far. I’ve probably spent less than 10 minutes total time plugging,unplugging or otherwise waiting around for my car to charge over those 8,000 miles.
To caveat that, I have a garage, and I located my 220v plug right in an optimum location on the wall right next to where the charge port is on the car, so Magiver is probably going to say that my experience doesn’t count. But for situations like mine, all this imagined “hassle” is non-existent.
The plug and charging system on the Model 3 is honestly pretty slick. I get out of my car, grab the charge cord hanging on the wall right at arm level, press the thumb button on the charger cord and the charge port on the flap automatically opens. Slide the connector in (the connector is solid construction, is pretty ergonomic, and the connector smoothly seats in the charge port without having to wiggle or force the connector at all), the charge port clamps down on the connector, and starts charging automatically.
The whole process takes me less than 5 seconds, I don’t even think I have to stop walking.