What are your electric vehicle plans?

In My Humble Opinion
806

I watch a lot of videos on electric cars, and one thing that’s clear from them - the North American charging infrastructure is terrible. One person tried to drive 178 miles in a Ford Lightning with a supposed 320 mile range. He never came close, and had to stop and charge for three hours total to get home. Snow, winter tires and cold weather play havoc with range. I think an F-150 Lightning lost something like 40 miles of range just switching to winter tires from the low rolling resistance standard tires.

One of the issues seems to be that charging stations must be power throttled or something, because charging rates go all over the place. One minute it’s 150kW, then it drops to 30kW. Or places that offer ‘level three’ charging offer the absolute slowest version.

And you never know how fast your charge will be, so you can’t plan your trip very well. Some places that offer charging literally just take a feed off their own electricalservice, giving you extremely slow charge rates.

Other times you can arrive at a charging atation to find all the working stalls full, and the available stalls the app said were available are out of order. When a car can take hours to charge, waiting in line doesn’t seem fun.

And sometimes the chargers just don’t work, or they drop offline and you have to manually re-start the charge. On one video, the guys started their car charging, and were told by the vehicle that it would take about an hour. So they went to a restaurant and had supper, only to find out that the charger had dropped offline a couple minutes after they left, and they had to restart it and wait another hour. I would find that maddening.

One problem is likely that the power company is managing how much power charging stations can have at any given time. 800v charging is what, 350 kW? Imagine a row of 8 of those all feeding 800v cars. That’s 2.8 MW. When there are energy shortages, I’ll bet those stations get throttled down. That’s what appears to be happening, anyway. That makes cross-country travel unpredictable.

807

I agree. Chargers are unreliable, there are too few of them, and at the same time too many different companies with too many different apps. It’s a mess. One hopes the new money that was recently passed and allocated to charging infrastructure makes a difference over the next few years.

That said, it still is almost never a problem for me, as 99.5% of the time I am driving within 50 miles of my home. It’s not something I worry about on a day-to-day basis.

808

Yep

But my personal experience, especially with Tesla (on the US West coast) is different. I find Tesla charging effortless, reliable and fast. I’m looking for an excuse to do another road trip. (also, free for me, as we got one of the last “free supercharging for life” deals)

That can happen, but it’s very easy to check your app when you sit down to order and confirm everything’s going as planned.

I assume a video of everything going normally is less likely to hit the internet. You could do a lot of videos of gas cars having all kinds of problems on long trips. No one would be surprised.

809

Can you imagine an internet video of a family having a trouble free 6 hour road trip?

Who’d even watch that?

810

Yep, I’ve watched lots of EV videos, too, and I’ve seen lots of self caused problems. I suspect in many cases they purposely create the problem for the drama. Here are just a few I can think of:

  • Choosing a route that doesn’t have adequate charging, when an alternative route is available
    • Anti-EV response: But I don’t want the car telling me where I have to go
  • Using a level 2 charger when there are level 3 chargers nearby
    • Anti-EV response: This is too confusing
  • Ignoring data available in app about the condition of upcoming chargers, and planning appropriately
    • Anti-EV response: I don’t want to do that much planning
  • Waiting until at the trip until trying figure out how charging works
    • Anti-EV response: I was born knowing how gas pumps work
  • Insisting on charging to full, so it takes a long time, when it’s only necessary to get enough energy to reach the next charger
    • Anti-EV response: I always fill my tank
  • Making a big deal out of an extra 12 minutes because the charger is only running at 130kW instead of the promised 250kW
    • Anti-EV response: 12 minutes!

At least with a Tesla, the car can handle most of these things on its own. If I go to my car, and put in a destination 600 miles away, it will pick a route with adequate charging. It will tell me where to stop, and how much charge to put in. If there are multiple charging options, it will pick the best one. While charging, the app will tell me when I’ve reached sufficient charge. The app will also tell me if charging is interrupted.

811

Sometimes that’s true. But other times it’s just people trying to use an electric car to do the things they would have done in a gas vehicle. The videos I watch, the people generally just pick whatever route the vehicle tells them to use.

But the list of things you are dismissive of are real concerns for a lot of people. They shouldn’t have to sit down and plan to drive 178 miles. They shouldn’t have to research which charging stations are on the road and their history of defective chargers or low charging ratyes. They shouldn’t have to fiddle with buggy apps and broken chargers just to get to where they are going.

I haven’t seen anyone try to charge to 100%. Every video I’ve seen, they start discharged to 10% and charge to 80%, which is the manufacturer’s recommendation to maximize battery life.

However… We should really start publishing ranges based on 10-80%, rather than empty to full. If we did that it would be more realistic to people’s typical use. But then, a car with a 250 mile range would actually have 175 miles of usable range. An F-150 with 320 mile range would have a usable range of 224 miles.

This is a real issue. Winter can cut range in half. So if I want to drive with the battery between 10% and 80%, the usable winter range of a ‘320 mile’ F-150 could be as low as 110 miles or so. If you are towing anything or have a topper on the bed, you cabn lose up to half of that again. The same is true of other electric cars.

You can make fun of ‘an extra 12 minutes’, but for people working or on a schedule of any sort, having a large variance in how long it will take to make the trip is not a good thing.

I like electric cars. I’ve been talking about how much I like the F-150 Lightning for a while. But real world usage varies dramatically from the ideal case, and using these vehicles may be easy for a techie, but for my father-in-law who never used a smart phone because he was happy with his flip phone, not so much. Not everyone wants to fiddle with an app every time they want to go somewhere.

EV’s are great for the tech crowd. But the tech crowd tends to seriously overestimate how much difficulty non-technies have trying to use modern app-enabled stuff. As a UI specialist, I saw many times during user testing just how confusing new products and UIs could be to people who don’t learn that stuff for fun or care enough to read about it.

812

[and all the other questions]

Most of the discussions I’ve had that involved one or more of those types of arguments result in me making sure they fully understand that no one is forcing them to get one (and sometimes it’s worth reminding them that they don’t have any interest in getting one either). Also, as the amount of EV cars on the road increases, a lot of those issues are going to get ironed out.

Most problems that I hear people talking about are related to range and charging. As more and more L3 EVSEs are installed, this will be less and less of a concern.

813

This is exactly what I mean. Charging to 80% is a problem. That is going to greatly extend the length of time at the charger, and should only be done if that much charge is required to make the next charger. If it’s 120 miles to the next charger, even on the 178 mile range winter conditions, then charge to 72%, and leave. Charging to 80% is not necessary. Sometimes getting to 95% charge is necessary, but definitely not every time, and very rarely on interstates.

As the battery gets more full, it takes longer to charge, so somebody concerned about an extra few minutes at a charger should really be charging from about 5-50% each time. Often the fastest way to travel in an EV is more frequent, but shorter, stops. 20% of battery from 15-35% might take a third as long as from 65-85%, but that 20% will still take the car the same distance.

How much is your time worth? If 12 minutes of time is worth the cost of gas over electric, then stick with an ICE vehicle. Also, if the schedule is that tight, then I hope there’s no road work, accidents, weather, slow drivers, or other inconveniences.

At the moment, taking a road trip in a Tesla consists of putting in the destination, then following the car’s instructions. Go to this charger, charge to 65%, go to the next charger, charge to 58%, arrive at destination. Not all EVs are that easy, and that is a very common complaint I see in videos about other EVs. Some others will do it, too.

814

Doing a road trip with an EV has changed the way I think about driving longer distances. (Or maybe because I’m getting old). I’m just not in a hurry anymore. I’m happy to stop every four hours for 30 minutes to check my emails, or stretch my legs. In my teens I would go 8 hours or more, hoping to get to my destination a few minutes sooner.

I usually charge more than they recommend. Maybe it’s minor range anxiety on my part. I don’t want to have to worry (or even think) about it. Sure, I’ll have to stop for a few more minutes, but I just don’t mind. Especially since I’m driving outside of my home range only about once per year. Maybe twice. If someone routinely drives long distances, maybe it’s different. An extra 20 minutes, once or twice year is a small issue for me.

815

I find those two things go together for me. I’m traveling with a family. The car may need to charge for 14 minutes, but nobody is ready to leave for 20+, so I get a bit of extra cushion in range for the next leg of the trip. No need to hurry, because the time doesn’t feel like it’s wasted. Best case, the next charging stop can be a bit shorter.

I took a trip in my ICE car this summer, and gas stops took 20+ minutes. Easily long enough that I have to move the car after filling up. I’ve never had to move the car after charging because we weren’t ready to leave yet.

Also, unlike in the ICE car, I can run the AC while the car is charging, so after the 30 minutes of debating snacks the car is still cool.

816

I think with any new technology the early adopters are willing to jump through more hoops and deal with more bumps in the road than the average consumer. There is no doubt that the infrastructure for EVs is going to get better and require less planning, but it may never reach the saturation level we see with gas stations because it’s just different. Other ways of travel are different, too. Subway and bus users have to know how to read the route maps and schedules and deal with delays. Or do we hear the same complaints about private planes? Like, oh, I’d love to fly from here to there but I shouldn’t have to plan fuel stops or check the weather, or whatever else goes into that sort of travel. I view having an EV sort of like that, at least where longer trips are concerned. And after all, for those that think they “shouldn’t have to do” this or that, no one is forcing them to buy an EV. You also don’t need to “fiddle with an app every time [you] want to go somewhere.” I think for most EV owners, the majority of use is for daily commuting. The apps and planning come into play for longer trips where you might need to charge while on the road in order to reach your destination.

Also, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find an EV manufacturer give actual charging recommendations as far as %s, other than Chevy’s temporary restriction (also just recommended) until recalled batteries can be replaced. Nowhere in my Bolt manual does it recommend to only charge to 80% to maximize batter life. Yeah, that’s how lithium works best and the 10-80 (or sometimes 20-80) charging guideline might be a popular best practice, but there is zero reason not to charge to 100% to maximize range for an occasional longer trip. Once on the road, most people only charge up to 80% because the rate drops off significantly and it’s considered rude to tie up a DCFC longer than really necessary.

817

Yes, but we are essentially trying to force people into electric cars. Gas cars won’t even be available after 2035 - and some places are pushing for 2030. In the meantime we are trying to force people out of gas cars by driving up the price pf gas through taxes and by restricting availability. I’m saying that the experience of tech-oriented early adopters may be fine for them where driving their Tesla is a bit like playing a game. Whether a salesman on a deadline trying to drive to another city will also find it acceptable is another question.

Exactly. I owned a light plane, and used it for business travel a few times. But not very often because flight planning, prepping the plane, and the vagaries of weather made it a pain in the ass. Super fun when you first learn to fly, and you put up with the hassles because it’s part of the fun. But when you absolutely have to be at conference at a certain time, the light plane gets left at home.

It doesn’t really matter if the practical effect is that no one charges past 80% for the reasons you mentioned. It’s a far cry from, “This vehicle has a 320 mile range and can be charged up in 20 minutes!” to, “The practical range is 230 miles in ideal conditions because you will realistically only use 60-70% of the battery. If you need winter tires, make that 200. Plus, take off another 75 miles in winter. Oh, and that 20 minute charge could take a couple of hours if the charging station is throttled or broken, or your battery is too hot or too cold.”

So I want to drive from Edmonton to Lethbridge - a trip I used to make regularly. It’s 303 miles. It takes about 5 hours to make the drive in a gas car, with one fuel stop that takes no more than 10 minutes. An EV with nominally a 300 mile range might get 1/3 to 1/2 of that in winter. So I’m going to make three charging stops, . Also, while gas stations are right off the highway, charging stations are sometimes located in places like Wal-Mart parking lots, so I may have to drive out of my way for a charger.

My 5 hour trip in a gas car could be more like 7-8 hours in an EV, with big variance because of the unknown health/availability/charging rate of the EV chargers along the route. This is fine for the occasional vacation trip, but for people doing commercial work on the clock, not so much,

There was a video series showing some guys trying to get to Alaska in an F-150 Lightning extended range with the lightest-weight, fold-down camper they could find. After all the charging stops their average speed for the trip was 23 mph. That’s unacceptable for the majority of customers, as was the large number of hassles with chargers they discovered on the trip.

EVs make great city cars. For commuters they are awesome. But if we ban gas cars, they have to work for ALL use cases, and at least right now and with any forseeable near-term tech, they can’t. We are currently solving the easy cases and selling to highly motivated earl6 adopters, Solving the hard cases and attracting skeptics who don’t care about the tech but uave work to do is another thing entirely.

818

No, they don’t. Because the alternative to a 100% electric future is the total collapse of technological civilization. The existence of some edge cases that gas vehicles can serve but EVs cannot is rather irrelevant in that situation.

819

John Stossel is working on a 3-part video series on electric cars. Here is Part 2, where he says that an all-electric future is unlikely to be achievable, ever. He even brings up those nasty, nasty laws of physics:

820

Is John Stossel known for having a firm grasp of the laws of physics?

I can tell from the title page, with Biden’s head and the word PROPAGANDA! below it, that this isn’t likely to be a reliable source of facts.

821

Ok, so pick one or two Stossel facts and refute them with better science.

822

To be clear, the proposals are to only permit sales of new zero-emissions vehicles after 2035, So new gasoline powered vehicles may still be sold until then, and presumably used ones will still be available. (My car, for instance, is twelve years old and I have no immediate plans to replace it.) And there are technologies other than electric vehicles, such as hydrogen power, that may be used in car then.

823

I plugged that route into A Better Route Planner, put in my car, a 2018 Tesla Model 3 AWD LR. Let’s make sure it takes into account winter conditions. My average energy use at -6.66C to -3.88C (20F to 25F) is 321 Wh/mile, but ABRP estimates it will be 322 Wh/mile, so that seems good enough. According to some website, the average high in Calgary in the winter is about -1.66C, so a “typical” winter day.

It comes back saying 314 miles, 5 hours 26 minutes, with a single 21 minute charging stop just north of Calgary, and estimates the cost at $15.90, but I don’t know if that is USD or CD. The charger is just off the highway. There is Costco right there, too, so lets say you fill up there, for near the cheapest price in Calgary today (according to Gas Buddy) $1.239/liter. So about $47 CD in gas for the trip at those prices (30 MPG).

So for the Tesla case, that trip seems pretty much the same for ICE or EV, except the ICE trip costs 3 times as much.

824

Can you pick a few key ones from the video? I despise the video format for this kind of thing. I’ll bite the bullet and watch if you really insist, but I’d rather just address any specific questions you have.

825

List them out. Make sure to list some new ones, not the same old ones that have been rehashed over and over:

  • The electric grid can’t take it - the grid is growing and expanding all the time
  • It will take too much power - see above, the grid is growing and expanding all of the time
  • Mining lithium makes a mess - have you heard about the mess cause by oil extraction?
  • EVs actually produce more carbon - this is false, go look for any number of refutations
  • EVs are too expensive - have you seen the price of the average new car? All cars are expensive, but there are many EV options at below the price of the average new car
  • Not all use cases can be solved by EVs - so what? solve the many transportation use cases that EVs are an excellent fit for
  • Charging is hard - In the limited case of long road trips in unserved areas, yes, but for the vast majority of use, charging is extremely easy
  • What about people that can’t charge at home? - An actual legit problem! no need to hold up the adoption of EVs by everybody else, while we work on this one
  • The top EV company is run by a nut - Maybe the solution isn’t to get rid of Musk, but to get Mary Barra to start tweeting nonsense?