I drive a EV with a range > 200 miles. Utility-customer funded chargers strike me as a solution tomorrow for a problem of yesterday -- limited EV range.
I think the parallel here is to cell phones.
If you cell phone battery sucks, you're probably carrying around a portable charger, and a usb+wall charger.
However if your phone normally goes ~2 days without a charge then you can simply charge nightly at home without carrying a portable battery and/or cable + wall plug everywhere you go.
Vehicle emissions contributes to as much as 50k premature deaths each year, tax dollars have been spent on worse things.
http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-e...
There are far too few chargers, specially outside the bay area (and even in the Bay, considering the number of cars already in the streets). EV will be more convenient than ICEs when you have both high range + charger availability.
About 1/3 of the time I'm doing this, I end up waiting in line for 20-45 minutes behind someone else anyway before I can start charging. I imagine this will only worsen if more infrastructure isn't built.
My wife and I have 2 vehicles, and only one is EV largely because of this issue. There are too many places I can't go with an EV without significant risk of being stranded. Stranded in this case may mean waiting 4 hours to charge up at the more common Level-2 chargers.
My EV can get me to the airport and with a bit of charging only just get me home. A ride share is $40+ off peak. Public transit isn't an option. If I lived further out in the suburbs such a trip wouldn't be possible without more prolonged charging.
You might balk at dropping $40+ spontaneously but a lot of people don't. I remember working a salaried position and still not being able to afford a spontaneous invitation to lunch with coworkers and I have never in my life been in financial trouble.
EVs might be practical in a dense Urban setting with access to Public transit but the further you are from urban centers the less practical it becomes exponentially.
The fact that EVs are practical in dense urban settings is great since those have the largest air quality problems that can be addressed by the centralized (or green) power generation that EVs utilize.
Never may be too strong a word. Electricity is likely to continue flowing to more locations for longer than petrol stations will continue to get restocked.
There is a DC fast-charger at a walgreens not far from where I live that is broken 90% of the time (*not scientific) and always reports available online.
Some people might consider 1-2 45min supercharging stops between SF and San Diego to be too much to tolerate, but wait until you tell them they've got to wait 3 or 4+ hours at a chargepoint station instead -- especially given that the charging infra isn't as tightly coupled to the in-car experience (maps, realtime charger info, etc).
I don't feel like I can trust random public chargers to exist and be available. Even at work, where we have 14 chargepoint chargers, they're all taken by 9am. I'm sure if I got plugged in (hah!) to the correct slack groups I'd be able to figure out when I can shuffle my car in, but realistically, you can only rely on home charging today.
1. I assume you're probably only using 60 or maybe 70mi, tops, of that range -- so you're talking minimum charging 3-4x as often as you'd be filling up with a gas car. (yes, I recognize that you probably change at home most of the time; of course, the shorter the range the more likely it is that you'll need to charge 'on the road' rather than at home)
2. What do you mean by DC fast-charge? In researching ChargePoint (I just became a member), it looks like most stations are 220v and something like 20a; even the ones that have higher current feeds are typically split in half if 2 cars are using it. I agree, 20 minutes to charge is hardly an unreasonable amount of time, considering how rarely one should have to charge away from home. But on a roadtrip, again, 20mins every hour starts adding up really fast.
Generally, though, I think people should spend less time worrying about day-to-day charging time (as opposed to roadtrip charging time), because they ignore fuelling time of gas cars. Let's say you spend 5 minutes a week filling up your gas car. That's 4 1/3 hours per year filling up (assuming we ignore any special trips made to the gas station. Thankfully we live across the street from one, but it's still not unusual to hop in the car after dinner and spend 10min driving to get gas to prepare for a trip the next day just to have one less thing to do in the morning, for example). Vs with an electric car where your charging time is effectively 0 if you plug it in at home every night or once a week or whatever. Then, of course, on a roadtrip, the times are flipped; do a thousand miles and you might only spend 15-20mins fuelling a gas car but maybe 2h charging an electric (depending on charge rate, again.. this is more supercharger speed we're talking about).
My father (long since retired) actually loves the charging breaks with his Model S on roadtrips; 1-2x 45min stops along the way from San Diego to Phoenix, or San Diego to SF, for example. He likes relaxing, stretching, chatting with other owners, .. feels in less of a hurry to race to his destination, etc. I'm sure a lot of this is down to the novelty factor and justifying one's purchase, but I also get it-- it's just a different way of thinking.
The 10 minutes I spend filling my fuel tank every other week (including time to get there, it is on my route home but I have to cross a stoplight I normally turn right at) is ultimately less time that you spend charging your electric car.
Of course I fill my tank as part of a different errand, not a fill the tank now to be ready for the morning. This does change the calculation somewhat. I also don't know exactly how long it takes you to plug in and unplug that cable, if you normally park such that you walk past the charging port, and you just toss the cable wherever when done this can be much quicker. If your car door is next to your house door, but have to walk to the other side of the car, and then as a neat freak you carefully coils the cable up it will be longer.
But if you're filling every other week you either have a massive 25-35 gallon tank, or you don't drive much. And if you're not driving much, you're probably not charging much, either :)
If I had a Leaf or eGolf I'd probably want to charge every day regardless; with something with 200-300 miles range, it certainly wouldn't be a daily thing.
If I got a 200-300 mile range I'd set the battery charge to max life and charge daily, which I understand is the way to have the battery last the longest.
Surely it doesn't take more than 2-3 mins to fill a car with petrol/diesel? Certainly don't think it's ever taken me any longer than that, unless I'm on a big journey and I need a break.
1. Gustine (https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&search=North%20America&boun...)
2. Kettleman City (https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&search=North%20America&boun...)
3. Tejon Ranch (https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&search=North%20America&boun...)
4. Burbank (https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&search=North%20America&boun...)
5. Temecula (https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&search=North%20America&boun...)
The Model X 75D has 237 miles range. At 504 miles total trip time, you should have had to make exactly 2 stops along the way. 5 would be completely unnecessary.
Also I'd be shocked if anyone got the rated miles but you're definitely not going to get the rated miles up the Grapevine.
Remember, hills require more energy to climb, but you regain the energy on descent which is captured by regenerative braking. It's not 100%, but it's efficient enough that it doesn't make a significant difference. And, again, driving 20 mph through some switchback curves is a hell of a lot less wind resistance than driving 75mph on the freeway.
I still say you need some evidence to back up the claim that you got less than half the rated range on a Tesla. You better believe the media would be all over it if that were true.
You're absolutely going to not get the rated battery life there.
Obviously if you only go up but not down that's a different story, but mountainous driving is not nearly so hard on range if it's a net of 0.
Makes me wonder if a solar panel hood/roof would help any.
Is that necessarily true? The 75D has a curb weight of 5,140 pounds, which would require a fair amount of energy to get moving from a standing stop. While aerodynamic drag would certainly tax the powertrain to maintain 75 MPH (op didn’t specify anyway), one would expect the overall range at such speeds to be greater than in stop-and-go traffic. Or are regenerative brakes really that efficient at recapturing energy?
Looking up published mileage of say a Tesla X, Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, and Toyota Prius, all but the X have better city mileage than highway mileage (but the X is 86 MPGe city vs 89 highway, so even then it's only 3% difference).
That's the neat thing about electrics and hybrids -- the "you get better highway mileage" intuition gets flipped by regenerative braking.
This may not be true for Teslas. Most EVs and hybrids will increase their regenerative braking when the brake pedal is pressed, and use mixed braking at slow speeds and hard stops. Teslas, however, maintain a constant rate of regeneration when not accelerating, and apply the mechanical brakes when the brake pedal is pressed, without increasing regeneration. Thus, Teslas waste most of their energy as heat when not driven in one-pedal mode.
My Camry Hybrid has a "CHG" section on the lower "tachometer", where the needle dips when I press the brake pedal. Braking carefully to a full stop from freeway speeds regenerates enough energy to maintain 35-40 mph for 10-15 miles. Often I can get above the estimated 40mpg (sometimes over 50mpg) in stop-and-go freeway traffic, rolling along on battery, only using the engine for a few seconds to occasionally sharply accelerate.
The Model 3's abysmal (and recently improved) stopping distance may have something to do with this. Many EV enthusiasts tout the reduced stopping distance benefit of mixed braking. However, Teslas do not currently perform this sort of mixed braking, so they miss out on this benefit. Could it be a software update away?
Unless you're braking hard for an unexpected stop, one pedal driving can easily slow you from 75mph down to almost 0 on a freeway off ramp (and recover that kinetic energy as charge).
The rest of your comment is fine. If something doesn't add up or make sense, you can always express that without accusing someone of lying; for example, by asking a simple question.
Of course, the model X is also sort of a worst case scenario because it's the least efficient car they sell.
IIRC my parents stopped 3x from Peninsula to San Diego (well, okay, north county) in their S 75d. But they didn't start with a full charge either, and on top of that, typical users only charge to 80-90% on a regular basis, and only cram it full for roadtrips. They could definitely make it in 2.
With a LR Model 3 you could definitely do the drive in 1 stop but it depends on the exact location; IIRC Atascadero is a little too close to SF and Buellton is a little too close to SD. On the other hand, with the proliferation of superchargers, the increasing number of options makes it a bit easier to YOLO it and then stop short even if it means a stop for a quick charge only 20-50mi from your destination.
California has 172,138 miles of maintained roads, 63,856 if we don't include "Local" roads.
There are certainly many stretches of road in the state that could use charging stations in order to be accessible by EV.
Or would the weight be more than a (future model) Leaf could easily be designed to pull?
The gas range extender though means that you can take your EV on a road trip and refuel in a matter of minutes. Overnight you charge, but during the day, you fill up along the way.
Or maybe highways could have electric cables that the cars could latch onto and recharge with on long trips.
Unless the battery isn't owned by you, it won't work as well.
Compressed gas cylinders sort of work this way. When you 'refill' a cylinder you just swap the empty one for a full one. You can even swap different sizes as needed. Which might also be useful for trucks.
1) Essentially requires a standard battery form factor. Tesla alone already has between 8 and 13 batteries (not bothering to check if e.g. the Model S 60 is the same as the Model X 60). Throw in other manufactures and any future Tesla sizes and this becomes infeasible pretty quickly as your "gas station" begins to look like a warehouse.
2) Warranty. When you're swapping out the most expensive part of the car several times a week, what happens when you get a dud? Is it covered by Tesla's warranty, the swap service, or are you just screwed?
Or, what if I trade in my 8 year old essentially depleted battery for a brand new one? Obviously I should pay some sort of "upgrade" fee, but tracking that will be a headache.
Gogoro is doing quite well with scooters, because the battery pod is small enough to swap by hand.
I get that switching in $10,000 of hardware is kind of a big thing, but the question is like asking about how can I be sure every station has real gasoline (which hey, with ethanol, they don't!).
I think battery swap doesn't make sense for passenger cars because as the guy said once you hit 200 miles of range charging isn't an issue. And having to stop and charge for an hour and a half every three hours on a long distance trip isn't the end of the world. Especially since you could roll those into lunch and dinner stops.
But likely makes some sense for large trucks.
The hour sure matters to me, I hate being in the "travel" part of a trip like that.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-pl...
So, mostly corporate welfare.
"place an emphasis on installing charging stations in disadvantaged communities or in facilities — such as ports — that tend to be located near low-income neighborhoods."
But they are going to dispense the corporate welfare in the general vicinity of poor people, so the poor people can get some vicarious enjoyment out of watching people who are already rich eat a free lunch.