A persistent EV challenge looms over NY Auto Show: Charging
canarymedia.com
canarymedia.com
While I was charging there for about 45 minutes I watched a Kia, a Toyota, and a Ford come to the station, move around several times, and then leave.
Oh, and half the time the problem with the EVGo network is their cloud software is just broken.
But recently my charger broke, and the replacement charger did not come in for 3 weeks.
Without being able to charge in my garage, finding a place to charge was _very_ challenging. There are only about 5 DC fast chargers within a 1/2 hour of me. Within those 3 weeks, 3 of those chargers had some sort of charge issue. There are some other level 2 chargers within range.
The first issue is that with an EV, if I drive 15 minutes to go charge - I need to be assured that the chargers are working, and that they are available. The second issue is that if you have other responsibilities - work, kids etc. - it is very difficult to find the time to just go hang out at an EV charger for an hour - or if you are a level 2 charger - 5 hours. And this is a problem right now, when only the tiniest fraction of cars on the roads are EVs.
I honestly don't know why gas stations aren't jumping on the charging train. They will have customers, they'll be preparing for the future, and you're going to have captive audiences to go in and by snacks and drinks... where they make their money anyways.
If I go EV I may have to consider convincing a neighbor to get the same type as me. I wonder if you can charge at a dealership, which may help for some.
Neither had I. No stores around me had a physical charger in stock, and the ones I could find online were a couple hundred more than I was looking to spend. I ordered a replacement through the dealer - I figured I didn't want any compatibility problems - but if I had known it was going to take 3 weeks - perhaps Amazon could overnight an expensive charger a lot quicker, it would have been worth it.
1. Perception by non-EV buyers that charging is difficult, slow, unavailable, etc. This is what Tesla fought against at the beginning and arguably has one of the best "solutions" for.
2. Actual usage by EV owners; if the first is perception only then this one shouldn't exist much; but if they are complaining, there is a massive real problem that needs to be addressed - otherwise the EV owners will become non-EV owners over time, and it'll be harder to get them to go back.
(If I were a car company wanting to reassure people about the EV issues, I'd have a "bring the car in anytime during the first 5 years and we'll rent you for cheap or free a hybrid for those long trips you're worried about" or similar. The vast majority of vehicle travel can be done with any EV, because they start and end at home and are less than 200 miles.)
There’s also an entire segment being ignored, those using their vehicles for off-road, long distance trips with near a ton in cargo weight. How do you recharge in the middle of public land when there’s nothing around you for miles?
Also I wouldn’t call this perception, as it implies it’s not true. It doesn’t take 45 mins to refuel a vehicle, therefore it does take 10 times longer or more to recharge an EV. Let’s not even touch the amount of power these things use, each vehicle pulling more than a house does.
Not even close.
The average American house uses 30 kWh per day. The average American drives 37 miles per day, which requires 8kWh in a Tesla.
We haven’t even touched on evacuations and how many people will be killed because they’re unable to charge their EV. People are supposed to go wait in like to charge their car for 30+ minutes? Have you seen the lines at gas stations during evacuations? How long do you think they’ll get when refueling takes 10 times longer?
The other aspect is that electric cars gain range in stop and go traffic and gasoline cars lose range. If there's a traffic jam and speeds average 20km/hr I can probably get 500km of range out of the EV. OTOH an ICE car loses range in stop and go traffic. I might be lucky to get 50km on an eighth of a tank in my gas car in stop and go traffic.
I’m guessing that since you’re using km instead of mi you’re outside the US. Perhaps your experiences won’t translate over here? The US tends to be larger than most countries so the distance traveled to evacuate is longer.
We need to slow down and research newer technologies. A german company can create 1600 liters of carbon neutral fuel using 1 MW of power. This fuel can run on existing engines. Those 1600 liters can fill 40 average sized cars. Yet that same megawatt can only charge 3.7 ish Teslas.
Are you also aware that this is the second time EVs have been tried? They lost out to gasoline for all these same reasons.
The only place I can think of in the US where you would need to drive more than 320 miles to get out of a disaster area is Miami. Everywhere else if there's a hurricane then you travel at right angles to its path. In Miami there's only one direction you can go.
There’s other places, like leaving CA, WA, and OR now and the tornadoes in the middle.
Average people don’t charge their car every night. Even if they did, what’s the storage ratio for liquid vs electric fuels? This directly translates into how much you can have on hand in an emergency.
You’ve ignored every issue stating “it’s not a problem for me” yet I’m guessing you’ve never been in this situation living in Canada. Maybe think outside the anecdotes and realize you’ve not experienced every situation in life.
Liquid fuels does not mean gasoline. Stop thinking this way.
Many gas stations were down because of loss of power and lines at the working stations were an hour long. But our friend had power, so we just plugged into 115V at their house overnight.
I know dozens of people with electric cars. Every single one of them has a plugin at their home, and every one of them plugs it in over night. A couple of them plug into a regular 115v outlet overnight rather than a faster charger, but everybody plugs in every night. Why would you give up one of the main advantages of EV's to save yourself the two seconds of effort it takes to plug the car in?
And again, why are you so enamored with EVs? There are other options that actually have a chance at mass adoption.
I add 320 miles of range to my EV for $8. A gallon of synthetic fuel is projected to cost $25/gallon once it hits mass production. Hydrogen is completely non-viable for emergency situations. What other options are you thinking of?
Which one? I’m guessing you just did research on this and just learned they existed? One of them costs $80/liter now, but said they can get it down to $6/liter through scaling.
> Hydrogen is completely non-viable for emergency situations.
Why? propane is shipped in, you don’t believe getting compressed gas in an emergency is possible?
Again, do you have a financial interest in EVs? Or you just trying to win this argument? I’ve never met someone so in love with electric cars. I can certainly understand the desire to get rid of gasoline, but to force people into electric when there’s tons of problems that people see means you won’t get the adoption you’re looking for.
You know there’s even another issue with EV I haven’t brought up yet. Every time you charge it, you lose a little range. This isn’t true with a liquid fueled vehicle in that the fuel tank gets a little smaller after every refuel.
> Which one? I’m guessing you just did research on this and just learned they existed? One of them costs $80/liter now, but said they can get it down to $6/liter through scaling.
You do realize there's only a 20% difference between $6/l and $25/g? IOW, they're basically the same price.
> Why? propane is shipped in, you don’t believe getting compressed gas in an emergency is possible?
Propane is shipped as a liquid with a high volumetric energy density. Hydrogen is shipped as a gas with a very low volumetric energy density. You'd need a lot of tanks of hydrogen to replace a single tank of propane.
Hydrogen needs to be regularly recompressed, requiring a lot of electricity. It's then further compressed before fueling a car, meaning that the hydrogen fuelling stations in California can only fuel 3 cars per hour.
Hydrogen leaks like crazy. NASA delayed the Artemis I mission by 3 months due to hydrogen leaks. If NASA can't do it...
> Every time you charge it, you lose a little range. This isn’t true with a liquid fueled vehicle in that the fuel tank gets a little smaller after every refuel.
The fuel efficiency of a gas car gets worse over time, so the same effect happens to them too.
If they can do that, they've broken the laws of physics. A litre of fuel contains 9kWh of energy. 100% efficient synthesis would result in 111 litres of fuel.
If you have not been in this scenario, you shouldn’t comment on what your opinion is.
It made me wonder how often I'd be worried about finding a charger if I owned an EV.
There are many apps for locating chargers. Including ones that are built into the cars themselves. They include route planners that tell you where to stop and to what capacity you need to charge.
The biggest issue I've heard from road trippers is that non-Telsa charging stations are hit-or-miss. They either don't work, take several tries to work, or charge below stated performance.
If you're in the USA: https://chargefinder.com/us/search
We are never going to replace all ICE cars with EVs. It simply does not pencil out economically or even geometrically. In reality we need to replace the ICE fleet mostly with bicycles, some buses, and a very small number of EVs, preferably in shared fleets.
For most EV's, they are. They're built into the nav, and show up on the nav screen when you get close to one, and will route you through them if you need one to get to a destination.
Essentially: I have not bought an EV if I can't recharge it at home. No one can have a life on public-charging only, no matter how spread will might became.
IME the real needs for public charging are:
- on highway, for trips longer than the battery range, so fast charge
- similar for long range artery not necessarily highways
- inside parking lot/garage of hotels/other touristic places, for visitors
- casual fast chargers spread just for quick "emergency" charges
In this terms the low level of EU offer is already more than enough, try to do more targeting those who do not own a garage is pointless: they'll never buy EVs until being forced and even in this case they'll probably can't afford them anyway.
1. I will arrive, put CCS connector into my car
2. I will use my contactless debit/credit card to activate charging
3. Charging will automatically stop when battery is full, or there is a button to stop it if you need to leave.
4. When charging is done, money are withdrawn from loaded card.
NO applications, NO registrations, NO reading of QR codes. A vending machine can achieve this, you can too.