What are your electric vehicle plans?

In My Humble Opinion
886

I don’t think you realize how far off your numbers are. Your 80A F-150 charger peaks at 19.2 kW. You plugged in a number 5 times that, and assumed every car would have the same thing.

Canadians drive an average of 15,200 km/year:

That’s 42 km/day. A typical sedan uses 0.15 kWh/km; let’s bump that to 0.25 kWh/km to account for trucks and other large vehicles that aren’t well-represented in EVs today. That’s 10.5 kWh/night. If cars spread out their charging over a 10 hour period–which they will, because this stuff is trivial to control and most cars already do it–then that’s an average of 1.05 kW per vehicle.

So your 100 kW/car is off by about two orders of magnitude.

Where are you getting these numbers? You’re acting like this is a low charging rate when in fact that’s a 125A charger, which doesn’t even exist for home use. I’m pretty sure no car can accept that rate except at a DC charger.

887

For many people, they can just ask their cars to charge between midnight and 4:00 a.m. We rarely charge for more than four hours a night. (I hear what you’re saying about nighttime power availability, but that seems like an Alberta quirk)

888

I had a brain fart. I had just been reading about the new cars with fast DC charging up to 350kW, and how the lower voltage ones usually use anywhere from 50-150kW, so I picked 100 as a mid-range. Of course, that’s HIGH VOLTAGE DC charging. A 240V charger at 80 amps is, as you say, 19.2kW.

Hyundai recommends a home charger of no less than 10kW for the Ioniq 5, a typical new EV. So let’s use 10KW instead of 100. 200,000 cars plugging in their 10KW chargers would add 20% to our nightly power needs. Now, if they only need four hours of charging and we have smart charging that can stagger them, we can cut that in half maybe.

But that’s only 10% of cars. If we want a completely EV fleet, which is what the claim is from our government, We will still need triple the nighttime power, or 1.5 times if we can use smart charging based on usage. And that obviously can’t be solar, and wind is incredibly variable and sometimes goes calm for days or weeks on end. So what are we supposed to do to build out power capacity at night?

If we can’t, we will have to import power, and that will get increasingly expensive as we shut down fossil sources and increase demand. And given that our grid partners are the in same boat, that may not be adequate anyway.

All of this is fixable with time. Infrastructures can be upgraded, homes can be prepared for level 2 chargers and neighborhoods upgraded as needed. Grids can be upgraded to smart grids, and nuclear power can be built for nighttime. But the idea that all this can happen by 2035 is nuts.

889

That’s still nonsense. Absolutely none of the infrastructure you use is designed for that sort of peak usage. If everyone turned on all their water taps at once, they would just get a dribble. If everyone used their entire service capacity at their house at once (forget EVs here), the breakers at the substation would trip. If everyone decided to drive their cars at the same time, there would be complete gridlock everywhere. If everyone tried to download a giant file at once, everyone’s internet would run at 1/100 the speed. And so on.

You simply can’t calculate infrastructure use this way. It doesn’t work. Thankfully, it’s easy to figure out actual usage for cars and work from there.

The calculation I did above is much closer to the truth. In practice, it’ll be more than that, because usage isn’t the same every day, and because the use isn’t going to be exactly constant over the night. But it’ll be much closer than just multiplying the number of users by their peak load.

I don’t know what Alberta needs to do to fix their nighttime power issues. Hell, build a bunch of nuke plants; I’m all in favor of that and I know you are too. If you’re dead-set on renewables, you’ll need to figure out storage and probably import more power. None of that really relates to EVs, though.

890

Right now my electric utility can control when my car charges. I’ve told them that as long as it is finished charging by 7am, I don’t care when it starts. My power costs are cheapest from 7pm to 1pm, so I’m happy to charge anytime during that period. The power companies costs might be cheapest from midnight to 4am, so they just set my car to start charging at midnight. I plug in when I get home, and don’t worry about it.

This isn’t an “in the future” thing, it is a thing I’ve been doing for over a year. I just got $100 credit for participating in the program. So $100 to do something which basically doesn’t inconvenience me at all (if it were working 100% correctly, I did join during the beta, and there have been a few minor issues).

People can still preheat in the morning. They’ll just need a big battery to store the cheap power in, and then use a bit of it for preheating.

891

@Sam_Stone I really don’t understand what you’re going on about in this thread. You’re arguing with people that are agreeing with you. If an EV won’t work for you, by all means, don’t get one. You don’t have to convince anyone of that.

And with that, you do seem to want one, so I’d think you’d be inclined to encourage other people to get them instead of talking them out of the purchase. The more early adopters there are, the more all these things get worked out. Maybe in 5 or 10 years, they’ll be perfectly suitable for the scenarios you’ve described but the more [the royal] you push back against it, the longer it’s going to take.

892

Like anything else I buy, I look at the pros and cons. I try to take a clear-eyed look at things. In the case of EVs, it’s important to consider things like where prices are going, what future electricity prices might be, what the economics look like when net metering and other subsidies end, can you get the battery replaced when it goes, etc.

In Canada, my main concern is weather. A vehicle that doesn’t work well in the deep of winter is unacceptable.

Last year, I was fanboying the F-150 Lightning. $59,000 cdn ($39,000 US) for a vehicle with 300 mile range, ability to power your house for days, with an optional box-mounted generator making it a PHEV when needed sounded about perfect.

A year later, the same vehicle is $81,000. If you want 300 mile range, $97,000. The box generator is vaporware, and will probably be many thousands of dollars if they ever release it. Hardware and installation for using it as emergency backup for the house costs more than twice what a dedicated Generac home generator costs.

And after the first winter with the trucks, reviewers report that it can’t really tow without losing huge range, loses more than half its range on cold winter days, and the huge battery means level 1 charing is pretty much a waste if time, and any kind of reasonable charging rates require a service upgrade to my house for $15,000-$40,000.

We’re talking about EV plans, and I’m outlining mine. Anyone who refuses to look at the downside to a purchase like this is making a mistake. Sorry if that makes me a wet blanket to all the enthusiasm. I don’t want to buy an EV only to find I am restricted heavily in when I can charge it, or to see electricity prices double and it becaomes as expensive to run as a gas car anyway. I don’t want battery shortages to make the EV scrap when the battery goes because a new one is worth more than the vehicle.

If I were to buy an EV today, It would be a small city car for use as a second vehicle to replace our Saab 9-2x. Those still make sense here. The electric truck is now off the table. Sadly.

893

The biggest cold weather EV problem I don’t think has been mentioned. You know how ICE cars leave a big puddle on the garage floor when they’re parked covered in ice and snow? EVs do the same thing. Except now the charging cable is also lying in the puddle. It’s well insulated, so no shock danger, but your hands get wet and dirty when coiling up the charging cable after use.

I’ve looked, but nobody seems to have an EV charger that comes with a towel. I know about things like red shop towels for gas spills, and oil shammies and such, but I haven’t found anything designed for an EV.

894

Our charger has a rack it coils up on between the two garage doors. It’s never on the floor.

895

There are lots of creative mounting ideas to keep your charge cord out of the melty mess in winter, but of course it will depend on the layout of your garage or parking area. My Bolt EUV parks next to the wall with the plug so I’m able to easily drape the cord on a shelf along that wall to keep it out of the mess. I also don’t see why a specific towel is needed. I have a basket of rags that I can launder or toss after use. Every fall I coil up my hoses and other outdoor cords and I use a rag to wipe them down. I just grasp the cord/hose with the rag and pull the length through. Easily done with the EVSE, too.

896

The problem is 100% that I don’t remember to leave a towel near the charger.

897

I think the skepticism is warranted. EV will be good for many use cases in many places. It will help insulate people from gasoline price swings. But it won’t be ideal for everyone in every location. Also it won’t do much to reduce global CO2 emissions. Cars in general aren’t the biggest contributors, and EVs are indirectly coal-fired at this point.

So buy an EV if it works for your situation and budget. But it may not be ideal for your specific case, and it’s definitely not about saving the planet.

898

Bullshit. In some locations, yes–though even then EVs have fewer CO2 emissions than ICE vehicles–but in most locations, coal is a small part of the mix. California has the highest EV penetration in the country and coal accounts for 3% of generation. Well over 50% of generation emits no CO2 at all.

A rare case of being both a strawman and wrong. No one thinks EVs will, by themselves, save the planet. But EVs are an absolutely necessary component of getting through climate change. They are one of the easiest components, too, so if we can’t convert almost all ground transport to EVs, pretty much everything else is hopeless.

899

Exactly. I love the engineering in EVs. I like replacing a million moving parts with an electric motor and some electronics. Electric motors make more sense than gas engines in most vehicles. And yet, there are still glaring limitations for certain use cases and real issues with material availability.

900

When I had a plug-in hybrid car that I charged every night, I bought a cheap cast iron hanger, at the hardware store. Something like this

(darn, no picture in the one-box)

And I draped the charging cable over it. It never got wet. If it had, I would have gotten another hook and hung an old towel on it.

Speaking of which, my electric vehicle plans are to get one. I spent a vast sum of money this year to upgrade the power in the house to 200 amps, and had a 50 amp outlet installed in the garage. In the unlikely chance this house is purchased by someone who wants to live in it, and not by a builder who plans to knock it down, I expect that vast sum to be repaid in the sales price.

My expectation is that my adult daughter will eventually move out, we will give her the car she drives, and my husband and I will replace it with an electric vehicle large enough to carry the groceries, and 4-5 people. We’ll both mostly drive that, but keep the Subaru Forrester for longer trips and for when we both need a car at the same time.

901

Waiting for our Lyriq AWD. We have 2 50A circuits in the garage already and 400A service. We also have 7.2KW of solar panels with hopes to add more.

GM is lowering their prices, compared to Ford raising theirs through the roof. If I’m paying $100k for a truck it’s going to be a Rivian or the GM, both of which seem very innovative. The Lightning is literally an F150 with batteries. Not worth it.

902

Regarding the cord, I can’t say I’ve ever much cared, or even noticed the actual cord. I’m sure it’s draped on the floor, but I just hang the end over a hook. I don’t think I’d even want to coil it up each time I use it.
Plus, not that it matters, but the cord on the Wallbox I have gets really stuff in the cold. It would be a bit of a task to get it wound up nicely.

FWIW, however, my EVSE is mounted fairly high up (with quote a long cord), and then it runs down a wall between a work bench and a shelf. No one is really going to notice if some of it is laying on the floor.

Not just that, but something I’ve heard mentioned quite a number of times, though I’ve yet to actually look up the stats on my own, is that producing electricity at a central location and sending it to your car, even considering the line losses is still more efficient than each car driving around with it’s own, on-board, power plant.

903

Yes, that’s right. A stationary power plant can dedicate a lot of mass to capturing all of the energy of the fuel source. Combined-cycle power plants can reach 60% efficiency; a car engine is more like 30%. And worse than that on non-hybrid vehicles, since they spend much of their time outside their peak efficiency range.

Natural gas is also less carbon-dense than gasoline or diesel. Coal is worse–and we should certainly move away from that as rapidly as possible–but the plant and vehicle efficiency more than makes up for it.

EV charging losses are really not that high. Depends exactly on the situation, but probably 80+% efficient most of the time. Maybe 10% loss from the grid, 10% from the battery and electronics (very roughly).

904

I have a hook for the cord when it’s coiled up. The problem is that the charge hole in the car is on the opposite side of the car from where the charger is mounted on the wall. If I don’t charge, the cord stays dry. When I do charge, I can either run the cord along the floor, or drape it over the car.

I think I’ve spent more time typing out this message than it will take to install a towel hook next to the charger, but then what will I complain about?

905

I park outside in Oregon and my charging cable hangs on the outside of the house. When I’m charging, it’s almost always laying on the ground, which is wet half the year. Most commercial chargers here are outdoors. A wet cable really isn’t worth worrying about.