Anecdotally, in conversations with other drivers, it seems that far too many people overestimate their driving habits.
A standard wall outlet will charge a car perfectly fine for your average driver assuming you can park the car for several hours. I would hope the vast majority of Americans who have access to a driveway will be able to find a block of time for this. Perhaps this duration may be found overnight when one sleeps.
If the worst happens and you need to travel for an emergency, you just need enough juice to get you to a DC fast charger. You’d only be spending 10 minutes charging anyways to carry on. I would place bets that most people do not keep their gas cars filled to 100% in case they need to do that weekly emergency 300-mile drive that everyone seems to have.
The bigger and most realistic issue is capacity for travel rushes. When everyone’s driving to relatives for the holidays, finding a line at chargers isn’t ideal. Fortunately this isn’t a problem in the vast majority places today and I hope continued investment in fast charging networks ensures this remains a limited problem.
I was charging my car on a 120V, 15A circuit (12A draw to the car) for over a year. I'd use about 8kWh per day with a 20 mile round trip commute + extras; that translated to needing about 5.5 hours of charging.
It really was fine, but it was near the limit of what's practical without using a fast charger. Extra trips around town would put me at a deficit, and it'd take a few nights of charging to bring things back up to my set point of 80%. Additionally, I had to think a few days out for when I'd know I'd be doing a bunch of driving to make sure I gave myself enough buffer. Now, having a charging circuit that can put out over 9kW means I can think about it a lot less.
But I thoroughly agree with you: a normal mains outlet is often fine, and holiday road trips can be messy.
Your daily travel was around half of the average American's[0], and as you said, that was near the limit of what's practical. It follows that for the average American, a normal outlet is not fine.
> it'd take a few nights of charging to bring things back up to my set point of 80%
But is that an issue? As long as you always have enough juice to get to a fast charger, and you can always get back to 80% by Friday morning, isn't that enough?
Sure, it's nice to have a 9kW charger, and I'm glad I do. But if I would have been forced to pay $5K to upgrade my mains connection I would likely have just kept the $5K and charged on 120V.
I had been doing a similar 1kw trickle charging setup for 3 years. While it was sufficient for daily driving we would go on longer drives regularly, mostly on weekends so 2-4 times a month.
It was annoying mental overhead to have to plan out the charging so often.
Three months ago we ran 240v to the garage and now have 12kw charging at home. It has been a game changer! We don’t have to think or plan around the charging. Every morning the car is at 75% (the limit we have set). And if we are going on a long drive I can move it to 90% or 100%.
I really regret not getting the level 2 charger years ago when we got our first EV.
You know, there's a car train between the northern US and further south. Your car goes on one train car, you get to relax in the train. And I know the UK/france tunnel is like this too.
Seems like an optimal solution in some respects, if optimized. For example, millions of Canadians travel to Florida each year for the winter, a lot by car. If such a train ran once a day, it would help many with range anxiety for such cases.
But imagine if major cities had such trains between them daily? These can still carry commuters without cars, too! And of course, we don't need everyone to be covered by this solution today, because the goal is to keep the transition to electric happening. This would help.
> that translated to needing about 5.5 hours of charging
How much time do you have available for charging? I'd have thought you'd spend a lot more than 6 hours a day at home. And chargers at work would allow charging the car near constantly when it's not being driven (other than days when you travel elsewhere), so I think that's an important part of transitioning to EVs.
I did the same thing. My daily use averaged 24 miles and 110v worked just fine.
Since then, batteries have gotten bigger, I have a 220v charger than can easily fill the large battery overnight with cheaper power, many parking garages have chargers, and high speed fast chargers have become commonplace.
I kind of wonder if the people purchasing cars for these theoretical events have a first aid kit in their car, emergency food in the house, or savings for a few months out of work.
I think getting a older big gas SUV with plenty of storage space is a good backup. You can haul things too big or dirty for your EV, use gasoline when electricity for some reason doesn't work, and haul around a big family visiting from out-of-town.
You can also lend it to the people who don't understand EVs.
An acquaintance of mine lost his lease on house he was renting and temporarily moved his family out of state while looking for a new place here. As you can imagine, this turned into many months of them being gone.
He left his Chevy Bolt parked across the street from his former residence (or rather, across from the construction site that replaced it).
Eventually, the car got impounded and I got roped in to go bail it out and bring it to another friend of ours who had space to store it legally.
When I got the car, the battery was almost completely discharged. When dropped off the car I don't actually know how it was still moving. We plugged it in to a regual home wall outlet be cause that's all there was. The car computer said it would take SIXTY HOURS to charge to full.
People overestimate because underestimating means you just wasted 50k+ on something that doesn’t meet your needs. That’s why normal people don’t buy EVs, cars are usually the most expensive thing someone owns outside of real estate and you’re going to have a hard time convincing someone to buy something that is a worse value.
It’s why so many people own pickup trucks and large SUVs. People don’t buy vehicles for what they need 95% of the time, they buy vehicles that will do whatever they want it to do 100% of the time.
You will never, ever be able to spend any amount of money on any vehicle that will perpetually guarantee a 100.000% success rate for all situations you will end up in.
Suddenly inherit a boat? Perhaps your towing capacity is inadequate.
A ravine appears due to an unexpected earthquake? Four tires probably won’t traverse it.
You’re out at a dinner party. Your friend’s car breaks down and you now need to carry 9 people? Anything but a small bus will be inadequate.
How to solve this? Look at your last X years of driving and solve for that. For everything else, vehicle rental exists for the exactly-once occasion.
I’m impressed by how many 9’s people try to solve for. It’s completely unreasonable. I solved for my 99.9% of days driving and am extremely happy.
Plus, how many of us would be currently unemployed if our respective industries demanded a 100.0% solution before adoption?
Are you sure that the reason isn't the cost of them? I mean, sure charging is one aspect, but is there actually a study that compares the two? There's plenty of "normal" people buying cheap BYDs.
> It’s why so many people own pickup trucks and large SUVs.
Which is an interesting parallel to Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority." Essentially one's own fringe preferences dictate the design requirements of something that doesn't utilize that preference a significant amount of time.
My strategy is never buy new cars, period. Spending $50k+ on a car seems absolutely insane to me. In the past 26 years I've been driving, I've spent a total of $19k on cars, $11k of which is on my most recent as I got a great deal from a family member. So previous to last year, I was averaging a $26/mo "car payment". No major repairs outside of alternators, starters, batteries, and tires. I probably won't own an EV for another 20 years.
The biggest issue with real life is that we have to prepare for 5-6 sigma events, and they actually happen quite often. Otherwise the whole insurance industry should die away.
I think the biggest hassle is that we need to make sure that each place we spend vacation in has enough EV charging stations. We do go for distances that need intermediate filling/charging quite often (reads once per month perhaps) I never had to worry about that for my gas burning Tucson 2020. Even having to worry about it, having to do research about that is a hassle for ordinary people. We already have too much to worry about.
And then there is the issue of charing is way too slow. It may also induce excessive shopping at the charging station -- the most expensive places for drinks and foods.
And then there is the issue of long-term (read 2-5 days) power outage in Quebec early springs which occur more often than I want to believe (we just had one last year, and minor outages occur after EACH rain here and there). It does hit gas stations too, there are more gas stations than charging stations anyway.
And what benefit does EV give me? I don't care about driving experience. I'm insensitive to gas price jumps. And the cynical me believe that once we have more EVs the businesses would simply double the charging costs.
I'll probably switch to an EV eventually, but that's when charging stations are literally everywhere in Canada.
I think realigning expectations ever so slightly can cure a lot of that. The cost of renting a gas car once a year or calling a taxi when you're stranded are comparatively tiny compared to retaining full-time ICEs just in case. I'm a city person so my default is no car and rent/taxi when I need one. My automotive expenditures per month probably nets out around $50 or so and I can handle any exigency.
> Anecdotally, in conversations with other drivers, it seems that far too many people overestimate their driving habits.
Or conversely, folks who are making this argument underestimate the flexibility people want out of a car.
If all you factor in is the average daily work commute, then most car owners don't need a car to begin with - even in the US. There's usually some public transport, or work-provided transportation, or opportunities to carpool with a neighbor. Not glamorous, but enough to get you through your average day.
The car culture has very little to do with averages. And for what it's worth, it's the same for most other goods, from computers to kitchen appliances. I mean, how many techies need a kitchen in their home to begin with?
> folks who are making this argument underestimate the flexibility people want out of a car
It’s anxiety. I took a parent’s EV to Sonoma and back (100 mi each way + detours + driving around Sonoma) and stopped once for a 5-minute fast charge on the way back. The battery got to a low of 5%, but that was expected.
Unbeknownst to me, my father was checking the battery level remotely and freaking out that it would get that low. Let me remind you, this is in the Bay Area. There is no deficit of public chargers here.
Another: I had a mid-forties friend visit me in Wyoming. I have a gas Subaru. Its fuel level getting to quarter full—good for at least 100 miles—freaked them out. To go to the grocery store. Two miles away.
If all you factor in is the average daily work commute, then most car owners don't need a car to begin with - even in the US. There's usually some public transport, or work-provided transportation, or opportunities to carpool with a neighbor.
I don't know if this is true. For example, I live in San Francisco, one of the densest cities in the US. Public transport for my typical journeys (kid's school, Costco, doctor, dentist, visiting in-laws) takes twice to four times as long as the same journey by car. I wish it were not so.
> Or conversely, folks who are making this argument underestimate the flexibility people want out of a car. ... The car culture has very little to do with averages.
On the other hand, capacity planning e.g. for charging or gas stations, has everything to do with averages and the aggregate effects of people each exercising that flexibility occasionally.
Needed capacity for EV charging will be lower, and more centred around longer trips, since a large percent of charging is at home, from wall sockets or L2 chargers.
Parents make up a significant enough part of thr population that I can't believe this is true for most people. When you have a kid you have a significant chance of impromptu emergency trip to pick up your kid. It's bad enough that I have seen this restrain people's careers because committing an hour was not viable when you might have to drop everything and get your kid, so they took lesser jobs in order to maintain that flexibility. Speaking as someone who actually lived on public transportation for years in the US, you definitely need a car in the US the moment you have a child. It was what prompted me to get a car. Working with the US's public transportation system is awful when you have to make these kinds of time sensitive trips. Taking ubers to where you need to go is prohibitively expensive (I've done this). Relying on neighbors just puts your kid's wellbeing on the grace of others which is untenable for parents.
Maybe if you live somewhere like New York it's possible, but I can't see it in other US cities. You definitely need a car in the US. If you don't have one as a parent in the US, you wish you had one.
> If all you factor in is the average daily work commute, then most car owners don't need a car to begin with - even in the US. There's usually some public transport, or work-provided transportation, or opportunities to carpool with a neighbor. Not glamorous, but enough to get you through your average day.
It’s not a matter of being glamorous or not. Public transit is with relatively few exceptions much slower than point to point driving. This is true even in places with excellent public transit, like Tokyo.
Just to put some numbers on it. A standard outlet is rated for 1440 watts under continuous load (1800 * 80% per NEC) or 1.44 kWh. A Tesla Model 3 travels around 4 miles per kWh. So each hour of charging provides between 5-6 miles of range. Installing a 240V/30A "dryer" outlet would allow charging about 4X faster.
Personally, we own a Chevy Volt and get about 3.5 miles per kWh out of it. I installed a 240V/30A outlet in our garage, but the Volt's max recharging rate is 4 kWh. Still that gives us 14 miles/hour.
One drawback of charging on an 120v (or 230v) outlet is efficiency. While charging, the energy consumption of an electric car can easily reach 300-400 watts. When you're only charging with 1800-2400 watts, that's a sizeable amount of energy that never reaches the battery.
With a dedicated level 2 charger, you can charge with 10+ kW, making the percentage that is lost in the electronics of the vehicle much smaller.
That doesn't match my experience. At 9-10A (2100W) the efficiency is way above 90%, meaning the consumption of the rectifier inside the car is more in the 100-150W range.
> While charging, the energy consumption of an electric car can easily reach 300-400 watts
This is the first I'm hearing of this. Is this for real? Six modern desktop PCs worth of power, doing what? And that draw only occurs while charging, so it goes away when the car is "off"? Is this for heating the battery when it's cold? I'm not trying to jump on you, I'm just seriously surprised.
It's also even more of a problem in freezing temps. I've charged with both a wall outlet and a 240v at home and at 15amps it will really struggle to heat the battery enough to charge. It gets painfully slow.
I agree that it isn’t the most efficient manner, this is not an insurmountable issue for the vast majority of people. The cost will still be well under half the price of gas for most people driving electric sedans and crossovers.
Yes, those living in the Bay Area with a Hummer EV will find the economics problematic but this solution is fine for the vast majority of other situations throughout the US.
> I would hope the vast majority of Americans who have access to a driveway will be able to find a block of time for this.
Given housing costs, that assumption of access isn't a sound one. And Apartments from what I've seen have maybe 5 total charging stations for every few hundred cars?
>Fortunately this isn’t a problem in the vast majority places today and I hope continued investment in fast charging networks ensures this remains a limited problem.
well, not today. If the adoption is aggressive this can and will quickly be an issue in urban areas.
> most people do not keep their gas cars filled to 100% in case they need to do that weekly emergency 300-mile drive that everyone seems to have
The behaviour is caused by "ease of resolution".
Low Petrol - 10 minutes to drive to the servo and fill up, almost guaranteed and no more worries. If a long drive, then maybe another stop.
Low EV charge - where I live, maybe you can do a quick 10 minutes somewhere and get a long way and while you're travelling find another 10 minute stop etc.
But people don't want to add extra "unknowns" - however small - in an emergency. People want certainty. People want "Problem fucking dealt with."
Emergencies don't happen often, it really isn't optimal day-to-day behaviour. But sometimes emergencies matter; for themselves, their family, or their friends.
So I don't think you'll stop this range anxiety until it is as easy - and well known to be easy - as dinojuice currently is.
I keep a 110v charger in my car for emergencies (especially since my car can charge others in a pinch), but it wasn't that hard to install a 220 in my garage (of course Texas is a bit more lax when it comes to doing that kind of work without a license, though I was pretty meticulous about following code). I didn't buy a super expensive charger, and the most expensive part was the Romex (it was when copper was pricier), and overall it cost me about the price of a basic gas grill.
Yes, definitely agreed. My wife and I haven't ever used a public charger with just a 120V outlet in our garage, and I suspect that would apply to many other people as well. For a great many more, a 240V charger is easily installable in any garage or driveway and dramatically increases how much you can charge overnight.
That's obviously not going to work for everyone, but between the two of them it drastically reduces the number of charging stations needed in suburban areas.
> I would place bets that most people do not keep their gas cars filled to 100%
A sibling comment put it well -ease of resolution. I can drive comfortably with less a 1/4 of a tank either in town or on long trips. I can easily find a gas station, fuel up in 5 min and drive away with a full tank without worrying much about it. I don’t want to think about looking for chargers, or structuring my trips around them. It would just not be fun for me and add extra hassles. That’s just my personal take, of course. One day we’ll have super high capacity batteries, much faster and ubiquitous chargers, and then I will happily buy an EV.
Access to a driveway means that the first hurdle to own an EV is probably owning a suitable home. EVs will be a less practical option for future generations unless we can fix this broken financial system and inflated assets.
>If the worst happens and you need to travel for an emergency, you just need enough juice to get you to a DC fast charger. You’d only be spending 10 minutes charging anyways to carry on. I would place bets that most people do not keep their gas cars filled to 100% in case they need to do that weekly emergency 300-mile drive that everyone seems to have.
That's because gas stations are plentiful in most areas and you usually only spend a few minutes refueling. If gas stations are rare and/or the pumps are slow or unreliable, you bet most drivers will keep themselves topped up more often than not.
Cheers an EV on a 120v outlet is extremely slow, over the course of 6-8 hours you may get only 8% or so, at best. It's unclear what experience you've had but the laws of physics are a pain in North America.
> If the worst happens and you need to travel for an emergency, you just need enough juice to get you to a DC fast charger. You’d only be spending 10 minutes charging anyways to carry on.
And if it's an emergency, why would I want to waste 10 minutes charging instead of just going where I need to go right away--since it's an emergency?
Arguments like this boil down to "I think you should accept just giving up something you want, for nothing in return." Which ordinary people quite rationally do not see as a deal they should accept.
I certainly find that standard wall outlet charging at 240v is enough for me in Australia, altho the US power system is lower voltage/power. I don't even plug in every night, usually every second night.
The problem is that I need to move and I can't afford a house, only an apartment. I may never afford a house. So I'll be relying 100% on public charging. Not because home charging is too slow, but because I will have no access to it.
My wife has the charging concern when I bring up buying a Tesla as her next car. She's worried about running out of juice but she only drives 30 miles round trip to work every day plus maybe a grocery run or a similar trip to relatives.
She asks about going on longer range trips and I say that's why our second car would be a hybrid, such as the Prius I have.
If you have a driveway, I don’t see why you don’t just add the little extra to add a charger at home. That’s actually my plan when I eventually get a UV. Just get a face charge and someone to wire it. Where I’m located at the current rate it should be around $1600 for the charger and the install.
My family had to evacuate from Houston a few times from hurricanes in my childhood. Every time involved a shit ton of idiling in high heat. Every time saw tons of cars stranded from no gas, every time saw rural gas stations along the highway close from being out of gas. Every time we barely made it.
Those trips were Houston to San Antonio. A bit under 200mi. It took over 12 hours. Loads of modern EVs would have made that trip in one charge, slowly crawling along the whole way, without an issue. My EV can idle for hours without using much range. My ICE chugs gas sitting there doing nothing but running the AC.
If you need to evacuate 1000km as fast as possible without stopping, bring water and food and be prepared to die in a massive traffic jam. Or in the post apocalyptique world that will follow.
Or maybe you can stop a few more minutes when it happens?
I've leased 3 Leafs in the past and have a Niro EV now. Always charged them exclusively from a 110V regular outdoor outlet. Have a 18miles commute roundtrip and never had an issue. I'd get a 220V charger if we didn't have a PITA HOA.
"A standard wall outlet will charge a car perfectly fine for your average driver assuming you can park the car for several hours."
This could be a problem in the future though. As the newer chemistry for batteries increases energy density, it would demand more power or time assuming one still drains the battery a sufficient amount to reduce cycles in an effort to preserve battery life.
Batteries don't care about cycle count, if "cycle" in this context is every time you switch between charging and discharging. They care about how many amps go in and out, along with disliking being too close to 0% or 100%.
Limiting max charge is easier if you have extra range, and so is staying away from empty. Making the battery hold more energy only improves things. Go ahead and charge every night.
If you see someone giving "cycle count" as a spec, they mean full cycles. If you charge 10% five times, that's half a full cycle.
>You’d only be spending 10 minutes charging anyways to carry on.
I am sorry but NO. EV fans always push this narrative but now finally having experienced it myself by doing day long road trips in Mach-e, Bolt, and Tesla I can clearly say that this is more of a problem than you let on.
Maybe if you are on Tesla NACS which is plug in and 3 seconds later it starts but for others you must account for the time it takes to get the charger to start. Even if you are on Tesla, repeating the process of stopping, connecting and then waiting still adds time to the trip.
Typically on Non Tesla it involves bringing up the app, waiting for the charger to "negotiate" with the car and then accounting for any failures in communication and restarting the process to compensate. To be fair, Tesla has really perfected this as much as they can but that time is still spent.
Repeat this process for every "10 mins" you have to stop and for a long road trip all of a sudden all those minutes end up to 1+ hours.
And no typically, 10 mins gets you 300-500 miles of range in a gas car depending on model but 10 mins cannot get anything close to that in any electric car(and thats accounting for ideal conditions like being in the right part of the battery charge curve, no other cars occupying the same block of chargers, etc.)
You will spend more minutes despite Tesla being the clear leader in making this experience as painless as possible and in an emergency that could be a dealbreaker.
> Anecdotally, in conversations with other drivers, it seems that far too many people overestimate their driving habits.
I mean, yes and no.
But there's side effects.
Haven't looked at TFA but unless they considered realities of condos/etc (my condo, parking is more like an apartment) that must be considered too.
If I don't have a way to charge my car at night I will hold on to an ICE with every fiber of my being, and at this rate unfortunately it's the just about-ish 12 year old 20-25MPG WRX instead of the 2.6 year old 37-45MPG Maverick Hybrid, based on downtime/repair cost if I had to pick one today.
As far as 'driving habits' mine vary greatly.
However whenever possible I take the Maverick for trips that can be hotshot (my current record is ~830 miles in 14ish hours with 10-15 minute stops along the way as needed.) Honestly with a good side crew I can do it all myself while clearing my mind (i.e. spare cycles while focusing on driving, I think about baggage.)
I honestly don't know if I could do the same sort of trip in a current EV even if there were the best charging stations at every stop we went to.
Maybe we could?
OTOH that's the 'distance' case. Compare to driving up north in MI where stations are few and far between, or worse, the UP where a car accident may cause a many-hour backup.
I should note, for my hybrid, my 'cutoff' for Hotshotting, once I am <100 miles till refuel, I get topped fully back off.
I know how to mitigate, but how do we deal with the people that can't even handle stop signs and signals?
> A standard wall outlet will charge a car perfectly fine for your average driver assuming you can park the car for several hours.
"several" doesn't convey the reality here. It's a lot of hours. My partner has an EV and coming back from work it gets plugged in and by noon next day it is still not charged up to what it was before going to work the day before.
It kind of works because here they only need to go to work twice a week and not on consecutive days, but on rare occasions when consecutive days are needed it requires a trip to a commercial charger.
> You’d only be spending 10 minutes charging anyways to carry on.
No. They drive to whole foods and spend an hour or so waiting around to charge it up enough to get to work and back (not 100%).
It takes a lot of committment and careful planning to drive an EV. For an occasional commute like here, it's mostly ok.
> It's a lot of hours. My partner has an EV and coming back from work it gets plugged in and by noon next day it is still not charged up to what it was before going to work the day before.
What kind of outlet are we talking about here. Either this outlet is somehow very limited or the commute is very long.
It’s simple, they’re just stubborn. Almost no one in the US has a commute of more than 40 miles a day, and most Americans own their own place. If EVs had a 600 mile range and could charge in fifteen minutes, they’d be saying they need to have a 900 mile range and charge in five minutes.
For EVs to truly win in the US, we’re going to have to wait for boomers to die, or stop driving.
…or, an EV has yet to be proven to be comparable to the cost per mile (including depreciation) of a hybrid, especially a plug in hybrid, for the driving patterns of most Americans.
It is going to be a while until a brand has the trust per dollar that Prius/camry/corolla/rav 4 hybrids and the like do.
My concern is the number of charger stations required between LA and Phoenix in the remote sections of I-10. Replacing all the cars with EVs that need to charge at a minimum of twice and you need two parking garages the size of the mall of America’s parking lot - each spot with its own supercharger. The power consumption is equal to a nuclear power plant for each garage. And this is only required for the peak Thanksgiving traffic. The rest of the time, 90% of the chargers would be idle. Oh, and this would in Quartzsite, a town of 2500. There aren’t power lines capable of this power. All the infrastructure would need to be built.
How about between people where they live and anywhere else in the west? People take the 4 hour road trip for granted if we are to all transition to EVs with dubious >100mi range when its cold or hot. The settlements in the eastern sierra alone are scarcely close enough to feel comfortable even with a gas car in my experience. Let alone the more remote regions of the west.
As the EVs gain battery capacity the chargers need to gain amperage. If those don't happen in concert then that one stop is going to take quite a bit of time.
This is what the article misses. You can't count 1:1 replacements. Fuel pumps dispense gasoline at 10 gallons per minute. That's an _insane_ power transfer rate and one that EV chargers just aren't anywhere near, and until they are, you can't imagine that "swapping infrastructure" is going to work in practice.
I have a long range Model 3, I can assure you that you cannot drive from Phoenix to LA, charging just once. According to the Tesla trip planner, it’s two stops. One in Quartzsite and the second in Indio. When I do the drive, it’s typically three stops, or I arrive at my destination completely empty.
Even with the Model S, the trip planner indicates 2 stops.
If this is so heavily traveled, then maybe rail is a better option. We need to dispense with the idea that auto traffic is the only option, or that we need to optimize for a particular mode.
I'm much more optimistic on solving the energy problem than the public transportation problem at this point. You gotta remember that Arizona and many western states were ratified not too long before automobiles took over. There has quite literally never been a "walkable city" in consideration for these states.
Agreed, but you could start trying to build out that rail system right now and it'll still be decades before it meaningfully changes the need for car traffic (even then, look at Europe, cars are still quite popular and necessary in many places despite a significantly better passenger rail system). EVs are already a huge improvement on the status quo. And there's no reason we can't do both.
Neither Phoenix or LA are cities where the average person would be happy without a car. Sure you could take a train and rent a car at your destination, but that’s adding many hundreds of dollars to a week at the beach.
> Oh, and this would in Quartzsite, a town of 2500.
While Quarzite has an year-round population of 2500, the actual winter population is much, much higher in addition to significant tourist traffic..
Blythe is right nearby and has year-round population an order of magnitude higher. Both cities are not far from the Parker Dam which distributes it's 120 MW via power lines.
> There aren’t power lines capable of this power
Um, what? Long distance transportation of power at these scales happens routinely in the US.
Traffic on I-10 at Arizona state line is 31k vehicles per day, with peak hour being 4.3k vehicles per hour. Assuming 350Wh/km, 120kW average charging rate and 90% utilization 3.2 charger stalls per mile per 1k vehicles/hour are needed. Or putting it differently, a 100 charger site with 12MW of power every 5 miles.
That’s a 370 mile drive. Most EVs can already make that trip today, with a stop in San Bernardino if necessary. Some like the Lucid can do substantially more. In 5 years I suspect no EV beyond a city commuter sold can’t make that trip without a single charge. Those who make the trip without a full charge knowing it’s a limited resource trip would suffer the same fate as people who ignore “last fuel for 100 miles” signs on the route today. Regardless I suspect this problem isn’t one, and it’s not a problem for almost any other location in the entire country so I don’t think we should set national policy based on the relatively uncommon trip of non stop between LA and phoenix, which has an alternative route slightly longer through San Diego and Yuma with more infra.
I would note that a 6 hour drive requires for most people at least one stop to use the restroom and most people require food and beverage at some point as well as a stretch. This is the time span for EV charging. If that infrastructure can exist today it can have EV charging at those locations. In fact the locations who add EV charging will attract customers during the transition period between the age of fire and the age of Maxwell.
> That’s a 370 mile drive. Most EVs can already make that trip today
Per https://ev-database.org/cheatsheet/range-electric-car, there seems to be essentially two cars that theoretically have >370 mi range (and looking at the data, the range is distinctly less if you're on a highway and not regeneratively braking a fair amount).
That's a pretty big difference between gasoline and electric cars. With gasoline cars, 400 mile range is a comfortable low bound on how far you can go after filling up, no matter the driving conditions; with electric cars, 400 mile range is something you might hit in optimal driving conditions.
This is a common misconception about EVs. The stated range is for the EPA range, not on open roads at 80MPH (typical speeds on I-10 between Phoenix and LA). Even Tesla’s longest range Model, a Model S, with a 405 mile “range” needs to charge TWICE on the Phoenix to LA drive. This is only a 373 mile drive, and assumes you start completely full. From the 405 mile advertised range, you’d think you could drive Phoenix to LA, and arrive with enough charge to still drive to dinner. One of my most annoying revelations in owning a Tesla.
> Most EVs can already make that trip today, with a stop in San Bernardino if necessary.
With the AC running which is a practical requirement on that drive for most of the year? Highly doubt any current EV is going to do fewer than two stops on that drive. I doubt even more if that drive were from the LA metro to Phoenix as the first quarter of the route has a lot of day time traffic.
I'm not saying the drive is impossible for an EV or anything, I just don't see an EV not having to stop several times on that drive. Maximum range numbers for every EV I've ever looked at seem to be pulled from the world of frictionless pulleys and spherical cows.
Except that doesn't solve the problem. Those gas stations have an exponentially higher energy transfer rate than the chargers would. The delays will stack up in only that footprint. Not to mention those gas stations need a tiny fraction of the power. So there's no guarantee the electrical infrastructure is in place
In Sweden they install temporary chargers containing both a battery and charger along the route when it is spring break season and everyone heads north to ski.
This allows the grid infrastructure to be better utilized and provide more charging spots for the users.
The goalposts for "No uh, EVs will never work!!!" just continue to get moved.
Batteries are common even in permanent charger installations, because they enable use of cheaper off-peak electricity, and peak charging rates higher than the grid connection.
I have driven that route many times in a Model 3 and it's been fine. Easier today than it was a few years ago. It's a theoretical issue not an actual one.
Anecdotally - probably not that many. I have a 2018 leaf with ~220km of range on a full charge, and my commute is about 20km each way. We probably travel far enough to actually need a fast charge maybe once every 6 months or so? It will charge to full overnight on regular wall power from ~30% so it never runs anywhere near low enough to be a problem.
The convenience factor of never having to spend time stopping at a petrol station can't be overstated, now I just spend 10 seconds plugging the car in after work every two or three days instead (although I do still stop for junk food sometimes).
And to preempt the "it wouldn't work for me" comments - sure, but "how many chargers do we need" is a whole population average question, and I suspect (although I have no hard data) that the vast majority of driving is work commutes that aren't long enough for most EVs to come close to running out of charge.
Although I live in a country with 240v power - I imagine you might want to hook up a dedicated full 240v socket similar to the wiring for ovens/stoves if you were in the United States?
Here in NorCal it is common to have the laundry in the garage. If you have an electric dryer, then sharing the dryer circuit makes some sense. Sure, you can’t dry clothes and charge the car at the same time. I can live with that.
This is assuming that electrical cars are "filled up" the same way as gas cars are. This is very far away from being as fast and convenient as filling up a gas tank in 1-2 minutes.
I like the model that you swap your low charge battery with a fully charged one. That would require some new technology.
> and convenient as filling up a gas tank in 1-2 minutes.
But you can’t just walk away from a gasoline car when it’s filling. And gas stations aren’t very attractive destination to do much of anything.
Where I’m from almost every roadside McDonalds has fast charging. And almost every road trip I’ve taken where I’ve had to fast charge we’ve taken the kids to a McDonalds for a short break and finished charging long before we were finished eating and doing bathroom breaks.
I haven’t really owned an ICE. (Used my parents cars quite a lot though). Our first car was EV 9 years ago. But I’m fairly sure ICE would be significantly less convenient for us than EV. Especially with the newer one we recently got that has a more reasonable battery size, which we’ve never even had to fast charge once. Even on road trips. We never go anywhere we don’t need/want to go anyway. So having to go to a gas station just to fill the car with gas would be a significant inconvenience.
You wouldn’t want a phone that you’d have to take to a phone station to fill with phone juice would you? Even if it lasted longer on a fill-up (say two weeks)
I drive past a gas station every time I go to or from work. And if I could stop off there and get two weeks of charge out of my phone with a five-minute fill-up, I would, because that’s way better than having to remember to plug it in.
I’m sure it’s nice to have a car that is always ready to go, and I don’t think EVs are bad, but let’s not pretend that gasoline or diesel fuel isn’t really easy for most people, most of the time. The only time I ever had to go out of my way regularly for gas was in college, and they wouldn’t have had charging points in the mass parking lots anyway.
> But you can’t just walk away from a gasoline car when it’s filling. And gas stations aren’t very attractive destination to do much of anything.
That's probably a US (or maybe some other places) thing but you certainly can do that here in Estonia. I do it all the time - start the pumping and then go inside to the gas station to buy a drink or whatever. Especially with the in-app payment for gas it's great.
Never heard of anyone having an accident with it either...
I can tell you from experience that leaving my EV to charge in my driveway overnight is way, way more convenient than stopping for gas (and paying a lot more for it).
I drive a lot, and I’ve ran into a situation only once where I had to find a charging station away from home. It just doesn’t happen nearly as often as people worry.
Forget it. Folks have been thinking about this battery swap thing for years and years, and it is not going to happen.
However what I like about NIO model is that you might be able to swap out a smaller, lighter city-driving oriented battery to a large 100kWh+ one when you go on a road trip. And then swap it back when you're back home.
What I however still don't understand is why this isn't at least offered in niches where it would make even more sense, like electric buses. If you have a fleet of these buses, minimizing the charging downtime should be a priority, right? Plus, in a bus it should be easier to find a suitable place for the battery pack where it can be accessed easily.
I've heard that the issues with the "swap the battery" model are:
1. The battery is one of the most expensive parts of the car. People won't want to swap it for some random battery, and you risk an illicit market for swapped out "good" batteries. Sure, if swapping is very common, then batteries are fungible and maybe it all evens out. I doubt it, though.
2. Batteries are large, heavy, and not necessarily centrally placed. You'd need some sort of winch/harness/crane system, which is dangerous and expensive to automate. Even if you figure it out, swappable batteries might be a negative design constraint for electric cars (e.g. "what if we want to put battery cells throughout the body of the car?").
I also like the model, but how could it be made to work well?
It still has to scale up from there and get traction from other car vendors beyond paper-only "partnerships"... but they've gotten vastly farther than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company) did before it failed 10 years ago.
You know what's really convenient? Never having to stop to fuel up for something like 90% of the miles I drive.
I spend way more time fueling my ICE than my EV. It's a pain to have to go out of my way to a fueling station. It's far less convenient than just plugging in every few days at home or at the office.
I’m actually confused about Norway, you see a lot of electric cars parked down the street but no one has a garage in Norway (in the city, at least), and I haven’t seen many cars actually plugged in. Where does everyone charge?
In the US as well. I have to admit however that I didn’t think of this as that much of a big deal before we bought a Tesla. The FUD about charging that’s out there is really effective. But then it turned out I can even charge it out of a common household outlet and there’s really no problem at all until you need to drive 300+ miles
> as fast and convenient as filling up a gas tank in 1-2 minutes.
I recently drove to the airport in a bit of a rush in a small 4-cylinder car. Drove straight up to pump that was basically touching the road I was on, tapped credit card, authorized for $100 and opened cap at same time. Stuffed the pump in and held it at max flow. 45l of gas later, cap back on, pump away and moving again.
I don’t think it would be possible to be faster.
Total time stopped: 7 minutes.
I'd love to know how much range you're adding to your ICE vehicle after pumping gas for 1-2 minutes.
All these people saying it takes a minute or two to get gas haven't paid attention to how long they actually spend entering the gas station, driving to the pump, getting out, negotiating payment, choosing fuel type, opening your tank, pumping, putting the handle back, hitting no on the receipt option, getting back in the car, leaving the pump, and entering traffic. Sometimes it'll take a minute just waiting for traffic to clear to pull out!
And then it's also assuming there is a gas station on your current route, and that it's one with a decent price and not more expensive than other stations around. A lot of the trips I take don't go past a decently priced gas station, the few I routinely do pass are often 5-6¢/gal more than others. At 22 gallons that's over a dollar more.
And also assuming you never get gas at a place like Sam's Club or Costco, which offer some big discounts but often have lines.
Yeah, my first thought on seeing the title question was "well, they charge slower than you can refill gas, so obviously you need more chargers than existing gas stations, though of course most people don't have gas stations at home so it's a kind of messy comparison".
It doesn't help the comparison to lie about the time. If you have a smaller gas tank and the pump can fill at it's maximum speed, you can fill in 1-2 minutes from the moment you put the nozzle in. As a practical matter, you're rarely getting in and out of a gas station in under 5 minutes, and only then if it's completely empty when you arrive. When I'm filling up our pickup, it takes a good bit of time -- the pump rarely runs at full speed or the vapor pressure sensor trips, the tank is pretty big, and there's usually a few cars in line in front of me. 15-20 minutes is a lot closer to realistic.
Most EVs only need a "fill up" on a road trip, and AAA puts the average road trip refueling stop at 15 minutes. The technology in place today is adequate to do the same with EVs, and it only gets better every year. Battery swapping was a cute idea for a while but kinda pointless now.
Of course, all of this talk about time completely ignores that an EV driver spends quite a lot less time every year refueling their vehicle. 10 seconds to plug in when you arrive home, full every morning. Imagine trying to sell someone on the idea of going the other direction "Hey, buy this fancy car, it's great, but you have to take it to a dedicated location periodically just to keep it fueled up."
Blimey! Lord only knows where you live that it can take that long. I can count on one hand the number of times it's taken anything like 10 minutes over the years and they were during crises!
In reality, even if I have to wait for a free pump, my car is at 100% range in 5 mins when I pay at the pump by using my credit card.
I want my car filled to the brim any time I go to the petrol station (gas station to our friends over in the colonies :D). That's just how I roll. And I know many others who are the same. I also know some that just put in £10-£15 at a time, mainly due to finance constraints tbh.
To "fill" an electric car to 100% isn't feasible in 2 hours, let alone 5 mins. Even if it took just 20 minutes to "fill" it is still shit compared to my current diesel.
As a consumer, if I have to join a queue for hours [0] then to hell with that! However, with my diesel, it's literally 5 minutes once a week and I'm full up.
In addition, I run my car until 50 - 100 miles left in the tank and I don't get bent out of shape when the light comes on at < 50 miles. In an EV I'd shit bricks if that happened. I'd have to change my behaviour to many smaller topups.
The simple fact is that we have a chicken and egg scenario with EV's vs charging points/charging time at this time and I don't see it changing any time soon.
Anecdote: I just remember something I saw 3 weeks ago. I was in a town near where I live. I parked up to walk to a shop about 2 mins away and I walked past a girl at a charging station staring at the big charger thingy while on her phone. I couldn't hear what she was saying but I could see that the charging flap on her car was open. I was in the shop for about 10 minutes and came back the same way and she was still there, this time poking away at her phone and the cable still wasn't in her car but the charging flap was still open. No idea what the problem was but it caught my attention. Anyway, just thought I'd share.
Edit: Something else to mention - Many people round where I live are in Victorian flats with almost no parking nearby. It's not umcommon to park streets away from where you actually live... they'll not buy electric for the most part.
> When I'm filling up our pickup, it takes a good bit of time -- the pump rarely runs at full speed or the vapor pressure sensor trips, the tank is pretty big, and there's usually a few cars in line in front of me. 15-20 minutes is a lot closer to realistic.
I'm willing to believe that it takes 15-20 minutes to fill your pickup, but that's a far outlier. If I was guessing, I'd say that your tank is a factor larger than most cars, and I'd also say that I can't remember the vapor pressure sensor malfunctioning like that and that's also skewing your data.
well I fill up a sedan (~13 gallons), So 2-3 minutes fits unless I'm in a long line. I'd only be spending 15+ minutes in a Costco line.
>all of this talk about time completely ignores that an EV driver spends quite a lot less time every year refueling their vehicle.
Depends on how readily you have access to a charging port at home/work. if you have no garage to park in and charge overnight with, you're pretty much stuck at some public space for 30 minutes minimum (assuming fast charging).
> When I'm filling up our pickup, it takes a good bit of time
Well yes if you have a huge pickup that can take a while. I have 35 gallon tank on the pickup and it does take a while (never measured it so not sure how many minutes).
But on our regular cars, it takes less than 2 minutes to fill the tank.
> Of course, all of this talk about time completely ignores that an EV driver spends quite a lot less time every year refueling their vehicle.
Well the EV driver spends less "CPU time" (using computer analogy) since they plug it in and go do something else. But the wall-clock-time is orders of magnitude higher so if the battery is empty and you need to go somewhere, it's not happening very soon.
You can create a charging station with solar panels and a battery.
Gas stations don't fill up themselves out of thin air — a massive infrastructure has been built (and wars fought for) for extraction, refining, and supplying the fuel.
You can (and people do) create a charging station with just a battery. Using the same metric as the gas station, which will indeed need more than just a barrel to make it work.
Doesn’t solve the underlying problems that are caused by having car-centric cities. Walkable cities where most people’s needs are meet within walking distance and the mass transit for times you need to further is the real solution.
Readit News
A standard wall outlet will charge a car perfectly fine for your average driver assuming you can park the car for several hours. I would hope the vast majority of Americans who have access to a driveway will be able to find a block of time for this. Perhaps this duration may be found overnight when one sleeps.
If the worst happens and you need to travel for an emergency, you just need enough juice to get you to a DC fast charger. You’d only be spending 10 minutes charging anyways to carry on. I would place bets that most people do not keep their gas cars filled to 100% in case they need to do that weekly emergency 300-mile drive that everyone seems to have.
The bigger and most realistic issue is capacity for travel rushes. When everyone’s driving to relatives for the holidays, finding a line at chargers isn’t ideal. Fortunately this isn’t a problem in the vast majority places today and I hope continued investment in fast charging networks ensures this remains a limited problem.
It really was fine, but it was near the limit of what's practical without using a fast charger. Extra trips around town would put me at a deficit, and it'd take a few nights of charging to bring things back up to my set point of 80%. Additionally, I had to think a few days out for when I'd know I'd be doing a bunch of driving to make sure I gave myself enough buffer. Now, having a charging circuit that can put out over 9kW means I can think about it a lot less.
But I thoroughly agree with you: a normal mains outlet is often fine, and holiday road trips can be messy.
[0] https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us...
But is that an issue? As long as you always have enough juice to get to a fast charger, and you can always get back to 80% by Friday morning, isn't that enough?
Sure, it's nice to have a 9kW charger, and I'm glad I do. But if I would have been forced to pay $5K to upgrade my mains connection I would likely have just kept the $5K and charged on 120V.
It was annoying mental overhead to have to plan out the charging so often.
Three months ago we ran 240v to the garage and now have 12kw charging at home. It has been a game changer! We don’t have to think or plan around the charging. Every morning the car is at 75% (the limit we have set). And if we are going on a long drive I can move it to 90% or 100%.
I really regret not getting the level 2 charger years ago when we got our first EV.
Seems like an optimal solution in some respects, if optimized. For example, millions of Canadians travel to Florida each year for the winter, a lot by car. If such a train ran once a day, it would help many with range anxiety for such cases.
But imagine if major cities had such trains between them daily? These can still carry commuters without cars, too! And of course, we don't need everyone to be covered by this solution today, because the goal is to keep the transition to electric happening. This would help.
> I had to think a few days out for when I'd know I'd be doing a bunch of driving to make sure I gave myself enough buffer
Its hard to accept a future that involves this sort of compromise and introducing new stresses for an inferior solution.
How much time do you have available for charging? I'd have thought you'd spend a lot more than 6 hours a day at home. And chargers at work would allow charging the car near constantly when it's not being driven (other than days when you travel elsewhere), so I think that's an important part of transitioning to EVs.
Since then, batteries have gotten bigger, I have a 220v charger than can easily fill the large battery overnight with cheaper power, many parking garages have chargers, and high speed fast chargers have become commonplace.
I kind of wonder if the people purchasing cars for these theoretical events have a first aid kit in their car, emergency food in the house, or savings for a few months out of work.
I think getting a older big gas SUV with plenty of storage space is a good backup. You can haul things too big or dirty for your EV, use gasoline when electricity for some reason doesn't work, and haul around a big family visiting from out-of-town. You can also lend it to the people who don't understand EVs.
He left his Chevy Bolt parked across the street from his former residence (or rather, across from the construction site that replaced it).
Eventually, the car got impounded and I got roped in to go bail it out and bring it to another friend of ours who had space to store it legally.
When I got the car, the battery was almost completely discharged. When dropped off the car I don't actually know how it was still moving. We plugged it in to a regual home wall outlet be cause that's all there was. The car computer said it would take SIXTY HOURS to charge to full.
That's two and a half DAYS.
"fast charger" usually means one of those fancy DC systems, not just a bigger outlet.
It’s why so many people own pickup trucks and large SUVs. People don’t buy vehicles for what they need 95% of the time, they buy vehicles that will do whatever they want it to do 100% of the time.
Suddenly inherit a boat? Perhaps your towing capacity is inadequate.
A ravine appears due to an unexpected earthquake? Four tires probably won’t traverse it.
You’re out at a dinner party. Your friend’s car breaks down and you now need to carry 9 people? Anything but a small bus will be inadequate.
How to solve this? Look at your last X years of driving and solve for that. For everything else, vehicle rental exists for the exactly-once occasion.
I’m impressed by how many 9’s people try to solve for. It’s completely unreasonable. I solved for my 99.9% of days driving and am extremely happy.
Plus, how many of us would be currently unemployed if our respective industries demanded a 100.0% solution before adoption?
Are you sure that the reason isn't the cost of them? I mean, sure charging is one aspect, but is there actually a study that compares the two? There's plenty of "normal" people buying cheap BYDs.
> It’s why so many people own pickup trucks and large SUVs.
That's a very region/culture-specific thing.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
I think the biggest hassle is that we need to make sure that each place we spend vacation in has enough EV charging stations. We do go for distances that need intermediate filling/charging quite often (reads once per month perhaps) I never had to worry about that for my gas burning Tucson 2020. Even having to worry about it, having to do research about that is a hassle for ordinary people. We already have too much to worry about.
And then there is the issue of charing is way too slow. It may also induce excessive shopping at the charging station -- the most expensive places for drinks and foods.
And then there is the issue of long-term (read 2-5 days) power outage in Quebec early springs which occur more often than I want to believe (we just had one last year, and minor outages occur after EACH rain here and there). It does hit gas stations too, there are more gas stations than charging stations anyway.
And what benefit does EV give me? I don't care about driving experience. I'm insensitive to gas price jumps. And the cynical me believe that once we have more EVs the businesses would simply double the charging costs.
I'll probably switch to an EV eventually, but that's when charging stations are literally everywhere in Canada.
Or conversely, folks who are making this argument underestimate the flexibility people want out of a car.
If all you factor in is the average daily work commute, then most car owners don't need a car to begin with - even in the US. There's usually some public transport, or work-provided transportation, or opportunities to carpool with a neighbor. Not glamorous, but enough to get you through your average day.
The car culture has very little to do with averages. And for what it's worth, it's the same for most other goods, from computers to kitchen appliances. I mean, how many techies need a kitchen in their home to begin with?
It’s anxiety. I took a parent’s EV to Sonoma and back (100 mi each way + detours + driving around Sonoma) and stopped once for a 5-minute fast charge on the way back. The battery got to a low of 5%, but that was expected.
Unbeknownst to me, my father was checking the battery level remotely and freaking out that it would get that low. Let me remind you, this is in the Bay Area. There is no deficit of public chargers here.
Another: I had a mid-forties friend visit me in Wyoming. I have a gas Subaru. Its fuel level getting to quarter full—good for at least 100 miles—freaked them out. To go to the grocery store. Two miles away.
On the other hand, capacity planning e.g. for charging or gas stations, has everything to do with averages and the aggregate effects of people each exercising that flexibility occasionally.
Needed capacity for EV charging will be lower, and more centred around longer trips, since a large percent of charging is at home, from wall sockets or L2 chargers.
Maybe if you live somewhere like New York it's possible, but I can't see it in other US cities. You definitely need a car in the US. If you don't have one as a parent in the US, you wish you had one.
It’s not a matter of being glamorous or not. Public transit is with relatively few exceptions much slower than point to point driving. This is true even in places with excellent public transit, like Tokyo.
Personally, we own a Chevy Volt and get about 3.5 miles per kWh out of it. I installed a 240V/30A outlet in our garage, but the Volt's max recharging rate is 4 kWh. Still that gives us 14 miles/hour.
With a dedicated level 2 charger, you can charge with 10+ kW, making the percentage that is lost in the electronics of the vehicle much smaller.
This is the first I'm hearing of this. Is this for real? Six modern desktop PCs worth of power, doing what? And that draw only occurs while charging, so it goes away when the car is "off"? Is this for heating the battery when it's cold? I'm not trying to jump on you, I'm just seriously surprised.
Yes, those living in the Bay Area with a Hummer EV will find the economics problematic but this solution is fine for the vast majority of other situations throughout the US.
Given housing costs, that assumption of access isn't a sound one. And Apartments from what I've seen have maybe 5 total charging stations for every few hundred cars?
>Fortunately this isn’t a problem in the vast majority places today and I hope continued investment in fast charging networks ensures this remains a limited problem.
well, not today. If the adoption is aggressive this can and will quickly be an issue in urban areas.
Most people already have an EV "gas station" at home...
The behaviour is caused by "ease of resolution".
Low Petrol - 10 minutes to drive to the servo and fill up, almost guaranteed and no more worries. If a long drive, then maybe another stop.
Low EV charge - where I live, maybe you can do a quick 10 minutes somewhere and get a long way and while you're travelling find another 10 minute stop etc.
But people don't want to add extra "unknowns" - however small - in an emergency. People want certainty. People want "Problem fucking dealt with."
Emergencies don't happen often, it really isn't optimal day-to-day behaviour. But sometimes emergencies matter; for themselves, their family, or their friends.
So I don't think you'll stop this range anxiety until it is as easy - and well known to be easy - as dinojuice currently is.
That's obviously not going to work for everyone, but between the two of them it drastically reduces the number of charging stations needed in suburban areas.
A sibling comment put it well -ease of resolution. I can drive comfortably with less a 1/4 of a tank either in town or on long trips. I can easily find a gas station, fuel up in 5 min and drive away with a full tank without worrying much about it. I don’t want to think about looking for chargers, or structuring my trips around them. It would just not be fun for me and add extra hassles. That’s just my personal take, of course. One day we’ll have super high capacity batteries, much faster and ubiquitous chargers, and then I will happily buy an EV.
That's because gas stations are plentiful in most areas and you usually only spend a few minutes refueling. If gas stations are rare and/or the pumps are slow or unreliable, you bet most drivers will keep themselves topped up more often than not.
I have relied on this setup for multiple years without stress.
And if it's an emergency, why would I want to waste 10 minutes charging instead of just going where I need to go right away--since it's an emergency?
Arguments like this boil down to "I think you should accept just giving up something you want, for nothing in return." Which ordinary people quite rationally do not see as a deal they should accept.
The problem is that I need to move and I can't afford a house, only an apartment. I may never afford a house. So I'll be relying 100% on public charging. Not because home charging is too slow, but because I will have no access to it.
My wife has the charging concern when I bring up buying a Tesla as her next car. She's worried about running out of juice but she only drives 30 miles round trip to work every day plus maybe a grocery run or a similar trip to relatives.
She asks about going on longer range trips and I say that's why our second car would be a hybrid, such as the Prius I have.
I don't care about personal emergencies. I care about local emergencies. It only sounds unreasonable until you've had to do it multiple times.
Those trips were Houston to San Antonio. A bit under 200mi. It took over 12 hours. Loads of modern EVs would have made that trip in one charge, slowly crawling along the whole way, without an issue. My EV can idle for hours without using much range. My ICE chugs gas sitting there doing nothing but running the AC.
Or maybe you can stop a few more minutes when it happens?
10 years driver of evs here (california then arizona): 110v wall outlet was more than adequate almost always...not adequate if trying to go super far.
the question is what fraction of daily distances driven exceed what overnight recharging can do, I believe.
This could be a problem in the future though. As the newer chemistry for batteries increases energy density, it would demand more power or time assuming one still drains the battery a sufficient amount to reduce cycles in an effort to preserve battery life.
Edit: why disagree?
Limiting max charge is easier if you have extra range, and so is staying away from empty. Making the battery hold more energy only improves things. Go ahead and charge every night.
If you see someone giving "cycle count" as a spec, they mean full cycles. If you charge 10% five times, that's half a full cycle.
I am sorry but NO. EV fans always push this narrative but now finally having experienced it myself by doing day long road trips in Mach-e, Bolt, and Tesla I can clearly say that this is more of a problem than you let on.
Maybe if you are on Tesla NACS which is plug in and 3 seconds later it starts but for others you must account for the time it takes to get the charger to start. Even if you are on Tesla, repeating the process of stopping, connecting and then waiting still adds time to the trip.
Typically on Non Tesla it involves bringing up the app, waiting for the charger to "negotiate" with the car and then accounting for any failures in communication and restarting the process to compensate. To be fair, Tesla has really perfected this as much as they can but that time is still spent.
Repeat this process for every "10 mins" you have to stop and for a long road trip all of a sudden all those minutes end up to 1+ hours.
And no typically, 10 mins gets you 300-500 miles of range in a gas car depending on model but 10 mins cannot get anything close to that in any electric car(and thats accounting for ideal conditions like being in the right part of the battery charge curve, no other cars occupying the same block of chargers, etc.)
You will spend more minutes despite Tesla being the clear leader in making this experience as painless as possible and in an emergency that could be a dealbreaker.
I mean, yes and no.
But there's side effects.
Haven't looked at TFA but unless they considered realities of condos/etc (my condo, parking is more like an apartment) that must be considered too.
If I don't have a way to charge my car at night I will hold on to an ICE with every fiber of my being, and at this rate unfortunately it's the just about-ish 12 year old 20-25MPG WRX instead of the 2.6 year old 37-45MPG Maverick Hybrid, based on downtime/repair cost if I had to pick one today.
As far as 'driving habits' mine vary greatly.
However whenever possible I take the Maverick for trips that can be hotshot (my current record is ~830 miles in 14ish hours with 10-15 minute stops along the way as needed.) Honestly with a good side crew I can do it all myself while clearing my mind (i.e. spare cycles while focusing on driving, I think about baggage.)
I honestly don't know if I could do the same sort of trip in a current EV even if there were the best charging stations at every stop we went to.
Maybe we could?
OTOH that's the 'distance' case. Compare to driving up north in MI where stations are few and far between, or worse, the UP where a car accident may cause a many-hour backup.
I should note, for my hybrid, my 'cutoff' for Hotshotting, once I am <100 miles till refuel, I get topped fully back off.
I know how to mitigate, but how do we deal with the people that can't even handle stop signs and signals?
"several" doesn't convey the reality here. It's a lot of hours. My partner has an EV and coming back from work it gets plugged in and by noon next day it is still not charged up to what it was before going to work the day before.
It kind of works because here they only need to go to work twice a week and not on consecutive days, but on rare occasions when consecutive days are needed it requires a trip to a commercial charger.
> You’d only be spending 10 minutes charging anyways to carry on.
No. They drive to whole foods and spend an hour or so waiting around to charge it up enough to get to work and back (not 100%).
It takes a lot of committment and careful planning to drive an EV. For an occasional commute like here, it's mostly ok.
What kind of outlet are we talking about here. Either this outlet is somehow very limited or the commute is very long.
For EVs to truly win in the US, we’re going to have to wait for boomers to die, or stop driving.
Edit: downvote me boomers. Do it.
It is going to be a while until a brand has the trust per dollar that Prius/camry/corolla/rav 4 hybrids and the like do.
The most popular EVs today would stop once on that trip. There's probably a couple that can do it without stopping.
This is what the article misses. You can't count 1:1 replacements. Fuel pumps dispense gasoline at 10 gallons per minute. That's an _insane_ power transfer rate and one that EV chargers just aren't anywhere near, and until they are, you can't imagine that "swapping infrastructure" is going to work in practice.
Even with the Model S, the trip planner indicates 2 stops.
https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=MS_2020_LongRange&o=Phoenix,...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_shuttle_train
While Quarzite has an year-round population of 2500, the actual winter population is much, much higher in addition to significant tourist traffic..
Blythe is right nearby and has year-round population an order of magnitude higher. Both cities are not far from the Parker Dam which distributes it's 120 MW via power lines.
> There aren’t power lines capable of this power
Um, what? Long distance transportation of power at these scales happens routinely in the US.
I would note that a 6 hour drive requires for most people at least one stop to use the restroom and most people require food and beverage at some point as well as a stretch. This is the time span for EV charging. If that infrastructure can exist today it can have EV charging at those locations. In fact the locations who add EV charging will attract customers during the transition period between the age of fire and the age of Maxwell.
Per https://ev-database.org/cheatsheet/range-electric-car, there seems to be essentially two cars that theoretically have >370 mi range (and looking at the data, the range is distinctly less if you're on a highway and not regeneratively braking a fair amount).
That's a pretty big difference between gasoline and electric cars. With gasoline cars, 400 mile range is a comfortable low bound on how far you can go after filling up, no matter the driving conditions; with electric cars, 400 mile range is something you might hit in optimal driving conditions.
https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=MS_2020_LongRange&o=Phoenix,...
With the AC running which is a practical requirement on that drive for most of the year? Highly doubt any current EV is going to do fewer than two stops on that drive. I doubt even more if that drive were from the LA metro to Phoenix as the first quarter of the route has a lot of day time traffic.
I'm not saying the drive is impossible for an EV or anything, I just don't see an EV not having to stop several times on that drive. Maximum range numbers for every EV I've ever looked at seem to be pulled from the world of frictionless pulleys and spherical cows.
I'm assuming there are already gas stations on this "remote" stretch of road (all of 370 miles).
What power service do those gas stations already have?
Bulldoze the gas station and put EV chargers in their place. Problem solved.
This allows the grid infrastructure to be better utilized and provide more charging spots for the users.
The goalposts for "No uh, EVs will never work!!!" just continue to get moved.
This creates jobs.
The convenience factor of never having to spend time stopping at a petrol station can't be overstated, now I just spend 10 seconds plugging the car in after work every two or three days instead (although I do still stop for junk food sometimes).
And to preempt the "it wouldn't work for me" comments - sure, but "how many chargers do we need" is a whole population average question, and I suspect (although I have no hard data) that the vast majority of driving is work commutes that aren't long enough for most EVs to come close to running out of charge.
Although I live in a country with 240v power - I imagine you might want to hook up a dedicated full 240v socket similar to the wiring for ovens/stoves if you were in the United States?
I like the model that you swap your low charge battery with a fully charged one. That would require some new technology.
But you can’t just walk away from a gasoline car when it’s filling. And gas stations aren’t very attractive destination to do much of anything.
Where I’m from almost every roadside McDonalds has fast charging. And almost every road trip I’ve taken where I’ve had to fast charge we’ve taken the kids to a McDonalds for a short break and finished charging long before we were finished eating and doing bathroom breaks.
I haven’t really owned an ICE. (Used my parents cars quite a lot though). Our first car was EV 9 years ago. But I’m fairly sure ICE would be significantly less convenient for us than EV. Especially with the newer one we recently got that has a more reasonable battery size, which we’ve never even had to fast charge once. Even on road trips. We never go anywhere we don’t need/want to go anyway. So having to go to a gas station just to fill the car with gas would be a significant inconvenience.
You wouldn’t want a phone that you’d have to take to a phone station to fill with phone juice would you? Even if it lasted longer on a fill-up (say two weeks)
I’m sure it’s nice to have a car that is always ready to go, and I don’t think EVs are bad, but let’s not pretend that gasoline or diesel fuel isn’t really easy for most people, most of the time. The only time I ever had to go out of my way regularly for gas was in college, and they wouldn’t have had charging points in the mass parking lots anyway.
You don't need to do much of anything because the fillup takes like 2-3 minutes max.
It's enough time to go buy a bottle of water or something at the attached convenience store, but then you're done and ready to go.
That's probably a US (or maybe some other places) thing but you certainly can do that here in Estonia. I do it all the time - start the pumping and then go inside to the gas station to buy a drink or whatever. Especially with the in-app payment for gas it's great.
Never heard of anyone having an accident with it either...
I drive a lot, and I’ve ran into a situation only once where I had to find a charging station away from home. It just doesn’t happen nearly as often as people worry.
Do you have a low electricity rate?
A petrol car would use around 0.03 gallons per mile (33 mpg). At $ 4 per gallon that's $ 0.12 per mile.
A Tesla model S does around 0.3 kWh per mile. So to get to the same cost per mile your electricity price would have to be below $ 0.40 per kwh.
In a lot of places electricity isn't (much) below $ 0.40 per kwh.
However what I like about NIO model is that you might be able to swap out a smaller, lighter city-driving oriented battery to a large 100kWh+ one when you go on a road trip. And then swap it back when you're back home.
What I however still don't understand is why this isn't at least offered in niches where it would make even more sense, like electric buses. If you have a fleet of these buses, minimizing the charging downtime should be a priority, right? Plus, in a bus it should be easier to find a suitable place for the battery pack where it can be accessed easily.
Just one idiot sabotaging batteries is enough to collapse the whole business.
1. The battery is one of the most expensive parts of the car. People won't want to swap it for some random battery, and you risk an illicit market for swapped out "good" batteries. Sure, if swapping is very common, then batteries are fungible and maybe it all evens out. I doubt it, though.
2. Batteries are large, heavy, and not necessarily centrally placed. You'd need some sort of winch/harness/crane system, which is dangerous and expensive to automate. Even if you figure it out, swappable batteries might be a negative design constraint for electric cars (e.g. "what if we want to put battery cells throughout the body of the car?").
I also like the model, but how could it be made to work well?
It still has to scale up from there and get traction from other car vendors beyond paper-only "partnerships"... but they've gotten vastly farther than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company) did before it failed 10 years ago.
Obviously, a swappable battery is something you rent.
Car manufacturers would love to charge us a monthly fee. They are currently trying all sorts of schemes to do it.
But a swappable battery might justify a monthly fee.
What if it has a number of smaller ones that can easily be swapped out by one person?
Or maybe one big unswappable battery, and 1-3 smaller swappable ones?
I spend way more time fueling my ICE than my EV. It's a pain to have to go out of my way to a fueling station. It's far less convenient than just plugging in every few days at home or at the office.
I recently drove to the airport in a bit of a rush in a small 4-cylinder car. Drove straight up to pump that was basically touching the road I was on, tapped credit card, authorized for $100 and opened cap at same time. Stuffed the pump in and held it at max flow. 45l of gas later, cap back on, pump away and moving again.
I don’t think it would be possible to be faster.
Total time stopped: 7 minutes.
I'd love to know how much range you're adding to your ICE vehicle after pumping gas for 1-2 minutes.
And then it's also assuming there is a gas station on your current route, and that it's one with a decent price and not more expensive than other stations around. A lot of the trips I take don't go past a decently priced gas station, the few I routinely do pass are often 5-6¢/gal more than others. At 22 gallons that's over a dollar more.
And also assuming you never get gas at a place like Sam's Club or Costco, which offer some big discounts but often have lines.
Competent charging networks also accept contactless cards or even automatically bill your account when you plug in.
It doesn't help the comparison to lie about the time. If you have a smaller gas tank and the pump can fill at it's maximum speed, you can fill in 1-2 minutes from the moment you put the nozzle in. As a practical matter, you're rarely getting in and out of a gas station in under 5 minutes, and only then if it's completely empty when you arrive. When I'm filling up our pickup, it takes a good bit of time -- the pump rarely runs at full speed or the vapor pressure sensor trips, the tank is pretty big, and there's usually a few cars in line in front of me. 15-20 minutes is a lot closer to realistic.
Most EVs only need a "fill up" on a road trip, and AAA puts the average road trip refueling stop at 15 minutes. The technology in place today is adequate to do the same with EVs, and it only gets better every year. Battery swapping was a cute idea for a while but kinda pointless now.
Of course, all of this talk about time completely ignores that an EV driver spends quite a lot less time every year refueling their vehicle. 10 seconds to plug in when you arrive home, full every morning. Imagine trying to sell someone on the idea of going the other direction "Hey, buy this fancy car, it's great, but you have to take it to a dedicated location periodically just to keep it fueled up."
Blimey! Lord only knows where you live that it can take that long. I can count on one hand the number of times it's taken anything like 10 minutes over the years and they were during crises!
In reality, even if I have to wait for a free pump, my car is at 100% range in 5 mins when I pay at the pump by using my credit card.
I want my car filled to the brim any time I go to the petrol station (gas station to our friends over in the colonies :D). That's just how I roll. And I know many others who are the same. I also know some that just put in £10-£15 at a time, mainly due to finance constraints tbh.
To "fill" an electric car to 100% isn't feasible in 2 hours, let alone 5 mins. Even if it took just 20 minutes to "fill" it is still shit compared to my current diesel.
As a consumer, if I have to join a queue for hours [0] then to hell with that! However, with my diesel, it's literally 5 minutes once a week and I'm full up.
In addition, I run my car until 50 - 100 miles left in the tank and I don't get bent out of shape when the light comes on at < 50 miles. In an EV I'd shit bricks if that happened. I'd have to change my behaviour to many smaller topups.
The simple fact is that we have a chicken and egg scenario with EV's vs charging points/charging time at this time and I don't see it changing any time soon.
Anecdote: I just remember something I saw 3 weeks ago. I was in a town near where I live. I parked up to walk to a shop about 2 mins away and I walked past a girl at a charging station staring at the big charger thingy while on her phone. I couldn't hear what she was saying but I could see that the charging flap on her car was open. I was in the shop for about 10 minutes and came back the same way and she was still there, this time poking away at her phone and the cable still wasn't in her car but the charging flap was still open. No idea what the problem was but it caught my attention. Anyway, just thought I'd share.
Edit: Something else to mention - Many people round where I live are in Victorian flats with almost no parking nearby. It's not umcommon to park streets away from where you actually live... they'll not buy electric for the most part.
[0] - https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/video-massive-line-of-e...
I'm willing to believe that it takes 15-20 minutes to fill your pickup, but that's a far outlier. If I was guessing, I'd say that your tank is a factor larger than most cars, and I'd also say that I can't remember the vapor pressure sensor malfunctioning like that and that's also skewing your data.
>all of this talk about time completely ignores that an EV driver spends quite a lot less time every year refueling their vehicle.
Depends on how readily you have access to a charging port at home/work. if you have no garage to park in and charge overnight with, you're pretty much stuck at some public space for 30 minutes minimum (assuming fast charging).
Well yes if you have a huge pickup that can take a while. I have 35 gallon tank on the pickup and it does take a while (never measured it so not sure how many minutes).
But on our regular cars, it takes less than 2 minutes to fill the tank.
> Of course, all of this talk about time completely ignores that an EV driver spends quite a lot less time every year refueling their vehicle.
Well the EV driver spends less "CPU time" (using computer analogy) since they plug it in and go do something else. But the wall-clock-time is orders of magnitude higher so if the battery is empty and you need to go somewhere, it's not happening very soon.
Obviously for the first few years it was difficult to drive an automobile very far.. and every year it got better and better.
Gas stations don't fill up themselves out of thin air — a massive infrastructure has been built (and wars fought for) for extraction, refining, and supplying the fuel.
Yep, EVs are better than ICEs. Public transportation and proper infrastructure is far better (and cheaper overall).
Get the public transit in order, and you don't need so many charging stations.
Money chart (2022) is here: https://www.fleetowner.com/perspectives/running-lights/blog/...
Most people already have an EV "gas station" at home...