The EV Early Adopter Era Is Over, and Automakers Are Scrambling
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
I own my house, but I don't have a garage, and I don't have enough land to construct one. I could potentially hire an electrician to run a new circuit out to the pole where I have a lamp that is next to my driveway, but there's no feasible way for me to get anything other than L1 charging out there safely, which would get me very little range.
However, if you have a townhouse or an apartment, or even if you rent your home, with rare exception of your complex either having chargers or potentially having a deck for you to park in where you might get lucky in negotiating a charger, you're straight out of luck.
I'm casually planning the next car purchase in the next year or so. At this point, unless I expect there's a move in the cards that could put me into a house with a garage where installing an L2 charger is feasible, or the amount of range that I need + accessibility of chargers is so ubiquitous that I will be able to reasonably charge the car when I need range, I'm probably looking at a range-extender style hybrid for the next car.
Not saying you’re wrong, but are you sure? I ran a new 240 line out to a post in the middle of the yard to charge a EV with no trouble at all. Run it into a weatherproof outlet box and plug in any off the shelf outdoor EV charger and you should be good to go. If you have to run a new line anyway, there’s no reason you can’t run a line capable of 40 amps at 240v.
> However, if you have a townhouse or an apartment, or even if you rent your home, with rare exception of your complex either having chargers or potentially having a deck for you to park in where you might get lucky in negotiating a charger, you're straight out of luck.
Not necessarily. In California at least, landlords are required to let tenants install EV chargers in their assigned parking spaces, including running any electrical lines or conduit needed. Granted, you still have to pay for what is effectively a capital improvement on a rental property, but some landlords may be willing to split or subsidize the cost, especially if they can get a tax incentive for doing so.
To be honest, I was anticipating using the same circuit for the lamp instead of pulling a new one, but sure, having the electrical work done to pull a new circuit to the car is definitely feasible.
> Not necessarily. In California at least... Thanks for making keeping me honest in assumptions there. That said, I have to imagine the amount of states that have these provisions is pretty small, and likely more importantly, this assumes that one has assigned parking. I haven't lived in an apartment in a long time, and never in a major city, but all of the apartments I've lived in had free-for-all parking.
The point I was trying, but didn't fully make in my original comment was to highlight that there's a fairly significant amount of the population in the US that doesn't have easy and/or reasonable access to home charging, and that is a fair reason why even folks who can afford and are interested in owning BEVs are precluded from considering them.
I think temps above 0°F aren't that big of a deal. The cold will hurt you more in terms of miles per kWh than it will for charging speeds. If you go below 0 that's when the car might spend the majority of incoming juice maintaining battery temps if it's sitting outside on an L1 charger. However even that will vary from car to car.
Then, you get 3.8kW of charging (240V, 16A from a 20A outlet) which is plenty for all but the longest daily commutes.
Sure, running a 7.2 or 9.2kW charger is nicer, but it's not actually necessary is almost any case and the cost of the wire is substantially higher to run a 50A circuit.
For when you're not charging, that's what a lockbox of some sort is useful for as others have suggested. You need to weatherproof an outdoor outlet in the first place, so going the extra step of having an enclosure for the EVSE isn't too much harder or more expensive. Nobody is going to cut an EVSE cable... since if they do they're likely to get a tasty 240V.
a) rents
b) does not have off-street parking
c) is not doing city driving
d) wants only one car and occasionally drives long distances
e) drives medium distances but might get stuck in traffic in winter
f) lives somewhere with cold winters
g) wants only one car and occasionally drives to remote locations, such as national parks
Basically, the recharging situation is just not tenable for an EV to replace a regular car. Waiting thirty minutes to recharge adds up on a long trip, plus there's the uncertainty of how long the wait will actually be, if the charging station is not as fast as advertised. Until these use cases get fixed, EVs are strictly inferior to a regular car. Yes, one could rent a car for some of the infrequent use case, but since a regular car handles them fine, the EV is a less compelling option
I commute 100 miles each way several days a week. I just charge my Model 3 to 100% the night before. I've done this on very cold days in single digit (f) temperatures and literal blizzards. Yes the cold hurts range, but it's enough margin that I rarely worry about it. Some days when I'm running around I'll park at a parking garage for a few hours plugged in to a level 2 charger and it's all topped off.
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/08/tesla-touts-tax-credits...
The Model Y is said to go 3.8-3.9 miles / kWh and would've cost something like $22,000 more (both new, mine was discounted in late 2020).
Sources for Model Y efficiency:
https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons...
Gas is near $4 where I live, so a mile is about 7.3 cents.
A kWh for me costs 19.6 cents - off my most recent electric bill, not including the price of basic service to be a fair comparison. 19.6 cents/kWh divided by 3.85 mi/kWh is 5.1 cents per mile.
So the obvious savings is around 2.2 cents a mile. $22,000 divided by 2.2 cents is a nice round million miles.
I swear I didn't rig this to come out to exactly 1 million...
But the other thing is that I only drive my hybrid about 8,000 miles a year. That's why I'm a good candidate for an EV in theory, since I wouldn't be relying on public chargers.
A million miles divided by 8,000, though, is 125 years.
Another perspective is that an EV that gets < 2.7 miles per kWh would likely be more expensive to "fill up" than my gas-powered car. There are EVs like that on the market! Apparently they are mainly BMW, Mercedes, or Audi models, so admittedly Teslas (and the Nissan Leaf) seem to be better.
You could argue TCO, but how much do you think maintenance on a new Honda or Toyota hybrid costs? A Tesla could need a million times less, but a million times less than an insignificant amount still only saves an insignificant amount. And you start tens of thousands in the hole.
At least one person had brought their extension cable and was charging via their cabin's electrical outlet.
Ignore online forums, look at the market, where people vote with dollars instead of internet points.
BEVs need to be charged about once a week of city driving. I can charge at a supermarket while I’m shopping. I also have charger near a local park and cafe, so if I really have charge more that’s a 25-minute break. When going outside of the city I can just stop at any DC fast charger.
EU has a decent network of 300kW chargers. eGMP cars need 20min charging per 3h of driving. That’s good enough for road trips.
I notice that in the article the sales situation for Tesla isn’t addressed, just crap automakers like Ford or half-hearted EVs from companies like Mazda.
The best competitor is Hyundai which is a shitty buy because it doesn’t have a tax credit.
I think it’s also worth pointing out that EVs are exploding in China because those buyers don’t have to worry about long distance driving. They travel the country with the world’s best high speed rail system.
When the current EV market just barely competes with ICE cars I think it’s logical for people to really converge around the very best option.
... the best choice by far is still Tesla. The best competitor is Hyundai which is a shitty buy I think it’s also worth pointing out that EVs are exploding in China because those buyers don’t have to worry about long distance driving.
"Plug orphans", puh-lease. Like adapters don't exist. I smell nonsense, and it ain't TFA.
We actually paid more for a Hyundai than what one can get a Tesla for, and we'd do it again. Because painful as it might be to hear, Tesla isn't the end-all of EVs (not even close, IMO). And we're not the only ones, considering that Hyundai sold more EVs in July than they ever have. I mean, if the charging plug is the selling point, Tesla must be in desperate straits otherwise. (Which I don't believe, but if parent is going to hammer on the type of plug used...)
I'm all for my new HI5 that I bought in March too, but I have to admit I had a sinking feeling around the NACS announcement. It's not so much that I'll have to use an adapter as that the EA and CP stations will be even more awkward than they are now with the cables diversified further. And the handful of Tesla stations that are supposed to support adapted CCS don't work reliably with Hyundai's E-GMP platform in general for whatever reason. That's not even to mention that NACS stations all expect the charging port to be on the wrong end of the car, and if you back in the port will be on the wrong side.
If nothing else, it brought down my outlook of the car as a 7-10yr vehicle to a 3-5yr one in terms of future proofing, and now that $60k+ outlay I made isn't so satisfying.
Yeah, it's surmountable. I'll be fine. The car will be fine. It'll be a hassle but there'll be a solution--too many cars on the road now to not have one. After all, people still drive CHAdeMO Leafs.
But if I were buying right now, I probably wouldn't buy anything with a CCS port with obsolescence looming. And since I refuse to buy a car that makes me look away from the road for vital controls (and Elon is both anti-dashboard and anti-HUD for some pants on head stupid reason) that means I'd have stayed out of the market had the announcement come a couple months earlier.
Upshot is I absolutely buy that the NACS convergence will have a chilling effect. Whether it's had one this quickly is another story.
Near as I can tell, the 2024 Leaf still uses CHAdeMO.
Looks like the CCS adapter for Tesla works at 250kW, which is fine, but nobody else offers this type of thing currently on the market.
- auto hold
- start/stop buttons
- frunk
Software/app is another thing, but applies to all manufacturers.
- You must not mean what I think you mean by “start/stop” button. Because just about every car has one of those these days.
- yeah, the frunk are is small…in the U. S. Hyundai apparently didn’t want to deal with making it meet U. S. régulations, EU frunks are fine.
And the Hyundai software is fine. And Hyundai figured out how to put buttons on the dash.
I hope you’re enjoying your Tesla as much we enjoy our Hyundai.
Software is far too basic, just like rest of automotive. Auto-hold needs a button press on each drive, which is just silly. You need to disable fake noise on every drive. Start/stop is just an insult to intelligence. Frunk is basically useless when it's a size of glovebox and has two doors to open.
Only thing Hyundai excels is V2L which is kinda useful, but I'm sure it's not as popular as people think. And the adapter itself costs more than a gas generator.
Unfortunately even with my tech salary a model 3 or Y is roughly twice what I am willing to spend on a car.
I was excited about the upcoming Equinox EV, but now that Chevy is going NACS in 2025 it seems silly to buy a model that’s outdated before it’s even delivered.
I would have grabbed a Bolt but the charging time is atrocious. It would be impossible to ever take it on a longer trip even with L3 charging.
I really like the feel of the Niro, but without the tax credit it just doesn’t make financial sense because it’s nearly the same price as the Tesla but with FWD and worse specs.
The Pacifica PHEV was tempting but there are no minivan EVs and they are all way more expensive.
There are plenty of AWD gas options for under 25k. Not exactly half but nearly. Factor in a 10k down payment and it’s 30k vs 15k and the payments are double for the Tesla + higher insurance.
I would go FWD EV if it were cheap enough to justify having it as part of 2 car system, but the only on that heap is the Bolt and it has the aforementioned charging time issue.
But because we have done that, we've created a car market that is something akin to what we saw in the Communist bloc. Basically, the government is forcing people to buy cars they don't want, or trying to get people to stop buying cars they do want. It's not even paying attention to even basic economics, as cheaper hybrids or PHEVs are heavily dissuaded against. So people who are less well-off and want to participate are instead told to suffer. The whole thing is a doomed process and will only generate resentment.