[quote=“puzzlegal”] Many American households own more than one car. Switching one of those cars to electric (and drivers taking turns, to optimize its use) is a fairly easy change for many households.
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Remember we’re talking about the kind of electric car Slate thinks we should be driving, a car with 50 mile range and presumably so tiny that you need a chiropractor after you get out out of it.
Problem is we’ve had “2nd car in a two car family just to drive to work” cars like the Chevy Spark for a while and they’ve been greeted with yawns by the marketplace. In 2019 the Spark sold 10% of what the Honda CR-V did.
I’m guessing it’s some combination of
A) Not feeling safe in tiny cars (would a Crossover SUV with 50 mile range sell better? I don’t know)
B) Choosing a 2nd car for the family that comes with additional capabilities. You can haul and tow in pickup. You can off-road in a Jeep. Both of those vehicles will stil get you to work on your 40 mile trips Monday through Friday, but a Spark won’t haul lumber for your weekend projects.
C) The 2nd Car isn’t specifically bought, but is the retired 1st car. Once it gets old an unreliable, you don’t want to drive it from Minneapolis to Chicago but it’s paid for and you can still drive it 40 miles to work. This might work in the favor of electric cars since battery deterioration becomes acceptable; If your Model Y now gets 150 miles on a charge instead of 300, then you’re not going to take it on road trips but it still drives just fine to work
It has a built-in J1772 adapter that slips on and off based on which button you press. Not a huge deal over a standalone adapter, but if someone were in the market for a wall charger and wanted dual compatibility, this would probably be the one to get.
Technology Connections videos are always great. You don’t think you want to watch a 45-minute video on a single model of toaster… but you do anyway.
I do find his semi-hostility toward plug-and-charge hard to understand, but there seem to be a few members here that have the same attitude, so I guess it’s not unusual.
The upcoming v4 Superchargers do have a screen and contactless payment system:
That might be a legal requirement for federal funds. In any case, it should satisfy everyone except those that want to pay cash.
It’s the second or third of his videos I’ve watched, all sent to me by someone else, and I’m thinking i ought to subscribe to his channel. He’s really good.
All his videos are really good, but you have to be on board with watching long(ish) videos about generally very boring topics. For example, Sony Playstation Copyright Protection (actually really interesting), How AV info is recorded onto VHS tapes, at least 3 videos about toasters etc.
I’ll say this is still on topic because Technology Connections has several EV videos. I really liked his one about powering his house with the 110 volt outlet on his EV. In the linked video about NACS, he said something that somehow I had missed, though it is incredibly obvious now: (paraphrasing, because I can’t be bothered to look at the transcript)
Tesla does not have any cars with vehicle to load or vehicle to grid capabilities.
Strange stance from a company that sells PowerWalls.
[long pause]
Anyway […]
I don’t remember where, but I read something that made me realize why I like his videos. It is excitement porn. He is really excited about the topic, and through his personality that excitement is contagious, and fun to watch.
I’ve realized the two types of youtube videos I watch are either excitement porn, or competency porn—somebody very good at their job, doing their job.
A little snark is warranted, sure, but the reality is more complicated. EV battery lifetime is related to the number of charge cycles. So, using it for home power storage has a direct warranty cost. Cells for the car are also a different chemistry than those for the PowerWalls.
I’m sure that wanting to sell PowerWalls plays into things a little bit, but at the same time, not supporting V2L or V2G keeps costs lower for everyone that doesn’t need it. And they’ll undoubtedly support it when competition actually heats up a bit. The Cybertruck will support V2L out of the gate, at least; I think all of their truck competition already has high-wattage plugs available.
Huh. The people i know who use their cars to power their houses don’t do it as a routine thing, they just use the car instead of an emergency generator when the power is out. That can’t add any significant number of charging cycles to the life of the battery.
I guess if you use solar panels and then want to store power overnight, that would chew up battery life. But most places in the US seem to let you trade daytime power for nighttime power with your local power plant, so why use your car?
Buy power at cheap night rates, then feed it back to the grid at high daytime rates. Or charge the battery with peak noon solar power and timeshift to late afternoon peak rates. PowerWalls support these modes by default, but doing it with your car battery would definitely eat into the cycle life.
I think the worry isn’t about people using it as an occasional backup supply, but those using it for this sort of timeshifting. It’s hard to support one without the other, though.
I guess locally, we pay the same all day long, so there’s no motive to try to do that. Maybe if we had differential costs more of my friends would use their car batteries for time shifting, and not just emergencies.
Yeah, I pay $0.58/kWh peak and $0.27/kWh off-peak. I’d definitely use my car if it were supported, even if it’s just to run the A/C without pulling from the grid.
Yes, I would have to think real hard about the cost benefits of using the car for V2G. It would be nice to be able to get out more than 120 watts from the car, though. Even 1500 watts would be extremely useful on occasion.
Agreed. Technology Connections guy has an adapter (for his Hyundai, IIRC) good up to 1200 W or so, and uses it in case of outage. It’s enough to keep the fridge cold and run an induction stove (and other kitchen appliances if you’re willing to juggle loads a bit). Certainly better than having a fridge full of rotten food.
Spurred on by looking up the latest crazy electricity prices around here, I was thinking maybe I could get a kind of battery backup system for my computer and bedroom lights (which is the highest daily load). I could save about $0.60 a day by timeshifting the load from peak to off-peak hours. I’d need 2.25 kWh to do so. Unfortunately, units with that capacity seem to be north of $1.5k, making for a somewhat long payback time.
Even a tiny bit of solar would help immensely, but being in a condo I can’t pull this off. Unless I can get something durable enough to line my patio floor…
Someone on reddit posted this article about recalls of some vehicles because their brake lights aren’t turning on correctly.
And the top comment:
“Damn you technology connections!” - Kia probably
Here’s the video:
I wouldn’t have though a youtuber could start a recall, but it seems like he has. Seems Consumer Reports picked up on the problem almost 10 years ago, but it was his video that really seemed to have gotten the ball rolling.
From CR:
CR first identified this issue on the BMW i3 in 2014. It surfaced again recently in a video posted by the Technology Connections channel on YouTube.
From Technology Connections (pinned comment on the video)
GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE! Consumer reports picked up on this video and did testing which confirmed that this issue affects nearly all Hyundai/Kia E-GMP platform cars (and I very much appreciate them giving a shoutout to this video!) https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-safety/brake-lights-can-fail-to-provide-fair-warning-on-some-evs-a9533519285/ And now! Hyundai will fix this. They’re calling it a “field service campaign” and it will begin in July. Weirdly, Kia hasn’t said anything yet at the time of this comment’s posting. https://www.autoblog.com/2023/06/15/kia-hyundai-genesis-one-pedal-braking/ Now, while I’m glad Hyundai is doing the right thing (and hopefully Kia does soon), I believe we still very much need a clear, unambiguous regulation to unify brake light behavior with features like one-pedal driving. We are still leaving too much up to manufacturers right now.
Serious question–when I have adaptive cruise control engaged in our '17 CRV, do the brake lights activate when it slows due to sensing another vehicle?
No idea about your specific car, but in general, I believe they do.
Quite a few years back I started noticing, what I perceived as, a lot more people driving two footed and/or driving way too close to the car in front of them such that they had to constantly brake. While I’m sure that’s the case for some of them, I don’t think driving two footed (or otherwise riding the brakes) is nearly that common and I came to the conclusion that that it was their cruise control maintaining the distance.
I can’t answer the OP’s question but my ex-wife’s RAV4, when holding down the “set” button which also decelerates the car (in most cars this is similar to taking your foot off the gas) would apply the brakes after a few seconds…or rather did something that actively slowed the car down. I assume it was the brakes. I remember being able to hear something that sounded pneumatic happening when it activated.
I think, but don’t remember, that the brake pedal actually moved down when CC applied the brakes, so the lights would have turned on regardless.
In any case, the easiest way to find out, and it’s how I checked to see if they come on in my EV when I use the paddles to slow down (they do), is to go out at night, set your cruise control and then use it to decelerate your car when someone is behind you. You should be able to see the brake lights reflect off of their car. Even without someone behind you, if it’s dark enough, you might be able to see a little bit of light from the high mounted brake light bleeding back into the cab.
You could check to make this method works by first just braking normally to make sure you’ll be able to see some type of reflection from them.
