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Comment by redserk | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

Looking at prices, the chunnel car shuttle seems to be $200 for a 50 mile trip. If a regular American car was driving this distance it would cost about $10 in gas.

I don't see this catching on for links between cities.

the chunnel goes _under the sea_ for 30 miles.

Yes. But most of the cost of the ticket will be operating expenses for the train and associated service. The cost of building under a body of water, which is large, does not make most of the ticket price difference.

The cost of the Channel Tunnel (by car) is determined by what the market will sustain: the only alternative to move a vehicle is a ferry. The train is a bit faster.

A more realistic comparison is something like Villach in Austria to Edirne in Turkey, which is 1400km by road, and €259 one-way for a car plus €149 for one person (https://www.seat61.com/motorail-trains.htm).

For comparison, math for the Villach to Edirne trip comes up with USD 158 in gas for the average US car mileage and gas price for 1400km, versus USD 443 for the car + person tickets.

I'd gladly pay 300 dollars not to drive 1400km. Once or twice a year, I drive 320km, and I think about twice that (to and fro) is the limit of what I am reasonably willing to drive over a couple of days.

Those are rookie numbers. I used to drive 100km for dinner sometimes or to visit friends on a Saturday afternoon. This is in a major US metro.

Driving 100km on a straight highway with driver assist is nothing.

Driving 100km on a nauseating mountain serpentine can easily take 2-3x longer.

But yeah, 300 dollars in Turkey is a lot of money that most people will be willing to save.

Depends on the roads, obviously, but my limit is around 12 hours a day, however far that gets you.

I’ve driven 680 km each way on interstates to my in-laws’ home. There on Friday, back on Sunday. Had to drive because I was bringing gifts, way too much for air travel.

And to most Americans, that’s not a particularly long drive. It’s all a matter of what you’re used to. I’ve done 4800 km in eight days and didn’t do anything but local driving on three of those days. That’s a bit more than Madrid to Berlin and back. It’s a lot of driving, but it’s definitely doable even if you’re not twenty years old.

Madrid to Berlin is not comparable to the same distance across the USA. The population density means the roads are much busier and have many more junctions etc.

I take it you’ve not driven from Boston to Miami and back.

Interesting.

In my own little world, I don't worry too much about 1400km in one day. I'll probably stop and take a long break at some point (and maybe catch a nap), but I don't think I'd be willing to pay $300 to avoid the drive.

It's a long day of driving, but I enjoy the diversions on trips like that. There's a whole world of stuff between A and B and it's nice to be able to stop and take some of it in whenever I feel like it when driving alone, which I can't do with a train that has my car loaded on it. (My solo driving style suits me very well.)

Or: With passengers, we can take turns driving and the cost per-head decreases instead of increasing.

1400km in Europe is significantly more taxing than in the USA. The density means more junctions, traffic, variations in speed etc -- I think it's twice the mental effort of the same distance in North America.

Something like a drive between Denver to Kansas City is utter torture for me because it's nearly void of any mental stimulus, doesn't matter that I can cruise along at a high speed in a straight line the entire time, I'm worried about myself or other drivers around me falling asleep at the wheel midway through the utter nothingness that is Kansas. Give me cities and terrain to navigate so that I'm doing something with my body while just sitting there for hours and hours and hours on end.

With the average EU consumption (6.0L/100km) and the average price (€1.59) it's €133.

(Though for a journey this long people with multiple cars would probably be taking the larger one.)

The train costs more, but means families can play with their children (around a table) rather than having them stuck in the back seats for hours, and probably part or all of the journey is overnight.

Yes, it does. It does to recoup costs, even decades later, and it does so because the alternative is a ferry, and so they can charge this price.

Also a lot of the cost is load/unload time.

There is one single car train route on the east coast that goes between Virginia and Florida with no stops.

I am skeptical about the ease of scaling this, especially given the state of non-car distance travel on Amtrak.

I looked into this a few years ago. It cost more and took longer than if I just drove it. Not sure how that calculation would work out today, though.

I've looked at it a bit tonight, since I do drive from DC-ish to Orlando-ish for a thing every year.

It looks like ticket prices vary considerably based on date, and tend to get cheaper as dates grow closer if bookings are sparse, much as airfares or hotels behave.

Depending on date, it looks like I can take one direction of that trip on a train for as low as $360. That's $75 for (what looks like decently comfortable) "coach" seating for 1, and $285 for a "standard size" vehicle.

To drive between those same two points is 811 road miles. At $0.67 per mile (the IRS reimbursement rate, which is supposed to include consumables like fuel and also less-visible things like insurance and depreciation), that's $544.

So the Auto-Train can be cheaper.

It can also be more expensive: Again, depending on date, I've seen coach seats as high as $280 -- a couple hundred bucks higher than the cheapest fare of $75 -- which makes it more rather more expensive than driving.

Trip time, if driving solo, looks close-enough to the same. It's 12-ish hours to drive straight-through, plus stops for fuel, libations and probably at least one nap of indeterminate length to combat fatigue. That seems close-enough to the auto train's ~17-hour trip to not be worth thinking too much about.

And theoretically, after getting off of the train, I won't be worn out from having spent an entire human day driving. That seems like it would be nice -- I can have a cocktail or two and play some Factorio instead of just...driving all damned day.

Fascinating stuff, I think.

I'll check out prices before I head out to make that trip again in the spring.

Who knows: Maybe I'll wind up taking the train.

If you used to sleeping in a very quiet room, I suggest getting some Loop Earplugs or similar.

The background noise should be much less than a plane, and the air pressure etc is obviously normal, but the erratic noise can be more -- e.g. some clunks if the train stops.

> To drive between those same two points is 811 road miles. At $0.67 per mile (the IRS reimbursement rate, which is supposed to include consumables like fuel and also less-visible things like insurance and depreciation), that's $544.

That IRS rate is incredibly high. It's probably around $150 or so in fuel depending on prices and efficiency to make that trip. I can't see food, insurance, and depreciation adding another $300. The ability to not drive is what can make it worthwhile for some, as you note.

Erm, $400 not $300. I guess I typoed that.

People will come up with the craziest solutions to problems solvable with 200 year old technology (trains). Why you need these heavy metal boxes instead of taking a train is beyond me. Cars are optimal for trips below 100-ish miles. Anything above is high speed train and airplanes.

You're making a very big assumption that once you get dropped off by the train at your destination that you aren't going to need a vehicle once you're there.

Rent one?

Have you rented a car recently? I'd rather drive my own car for 3 hours. Then I'll also have an easier time securely bringing a whole bunch of stuff, which I sometimes do also.

It's definitely worth reminding anyone that this is why you need train stations to have good bus service to the surrounding area. You can't even take a commuter rail (in a city with decent rail transit) unless your destination has good bus service or a friend to pick you up.

These things come hand in hand, if you want to make it work things either need to be walking distance from the station or with reasonably frequent buses. If a bus comes once an hour (actually the case in my city off rush-hour) it may as well not exist.

Or you take a folding bike with you. Brompton even make an electric version for those that need it.

Such an easy solution, all we need to do is raise every city and suburb in North America to the ground and rebuild them around a massively expanded rail network which we also need to build. It would be nice if NA cities were already amenable to walking and public transit and served by ubiquitous passenger rail but there’s a century of car infrastructure instead that nothing but a century of overhaul will fix.

> raise every city

raze = tear down

Absolutely, instead of actually fixing the problem, let’s invent muskisms like creating underground highways by boring tunnels underneath cities or ferrying said cars across long distances with a train.

That’s the public infrastructure equivalent of technical debt.

A better solution imho is to create a plan for building train capacity where it makes sense (high traffic areas where trips are such and such - Boston-NYC-Philly-DC) and fund them through public-private contracts.

> 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've been doing 120V for just over a year with the Chevrolet portable charging cable. It's mostly been fine, the main issue is that it stops working every so often and has to be unplugged and plugged back in.

My Bolt lets me say that the circuit is dedicated to it at home and pulls 12 amps instead of the 8 amps it would pull anywhere else. It's trying to make sure it doesn't overload the circuit.

We are moving to a newer home and I already have the 240V charger installed there. Looking forward to 25-30 miles of range per hour (running at 32A normally but have a dedicated 60A circuit) instead of the 3 I'm getting now.

At this house, the 200A panel is full so I would have had to add another panel.

Emporia makes a load balancing charger. You hook an anmeter around the mains and it can pull anything less than the max the box can handle.

My 200 service was also "full" but when monitoring the energy, we rarely pull above 40 amps. We'd only hit 200 if the emergency heat was running at max for both HVACs, the oven was on, the water heater was going and the dryer was running. Pretty hard to do by accident, nigh impossible if you think about it

I probably would've stuck with 120V charging if I didn't also want the 240V outlet for machine tools/etc in my garage. And like you, I wouldn't've paid to upgrade the panel if that was necessary. Fortunately there was capacity.

> 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.

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.

[0] https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us...

But using two outlets, on opposite phases, would give you double the voltage. Might be too much to expect people to identify two suitable outlets and have a “Y”extension lead that would bring them together.

Somewhere a copy of the NEC is bursting into flames.

You'd be better of installing a new circuit with proper equiptment. Most homes would be able to at least accommodate a 20amp 220v socket, which takes about 40% of the charging time of a regular socket (15amp 110).

OTOH I see no fundamental reason that one couldn’t build an EVSE that connected to two different outlets and drew from both of them. Two branch circuits supplying the same device is not especially rare.

I've never seen that. With the right protection circuits it could work safely. However, most garages seem to only have one branch anyways, so might as well add a 20amp+ 220v branch.

In a (large, recently constructed) garage, it seems likely that you've got multiple circuits with outlets. If you've got multiple outside outlets, they're probably all on the same circuit. If the hots are the same phase, I don't know if there's a way to determine if they're behind the same breaker or not. If the hots are on different phases, you need to return to each neutral or the gcfi that's likely to be present on an outdoor outlet will trip.

>I don't know if there's a way to determine if they're behind the same breaker or not.

Turn the breaker off and plug something in and see if it turns on

Well yeah, but it'd be a bad idea to make a charger with two 120v plugs, because chances are people will plug them both into the same circuit.

I'm not defending the idea of using two out-of-phase 110V circuits, but... this theoretical EVSE could detect its two inputs not being out-of-phase, blink its red "110V only" light, and only use one of the inputs to charge at 110V instead of 220V.

I’ve seen carpet cleaners where their machine had two 120v cords that needed to be on different breakers

If either circuit had arc fault or ground fault (or both) it would trip if you tried drawing power from both. Which is going to include pretty much any plug outside or in a garage in the past 30 years.

Yes, it'd create a multi-path circuit causing the trip.

This (multi-path circuits) is not uncommon when homeowners try to wire up a smart switch requiring a neutral to a switch-circuit without a neutral (as most light switches actually only need to switch the hot) and so they "borrow" a convenient neutral from a neighboring circuit which causes it to immediately trip!

If you are going to that effort do a 220v with a 60amp, should cost almost the same but is typically the top of level 2 charging specs.

Yeah, I put 20amp because the higher amps are nice, but many panels aren't going to handle an additional 60amp circuit (and be NEC compliant). Most panels should be able to handle an additional 20amp circuit though.

Any outlet that is safely usable outdoors will have a gfci, and using two outlets on different phases would be indistinguishable from a ground fault.

Many (if not most) residential electrical in North America is split-phase, not multi-phase. This is why residential high-power sockets are usually 240V, and industrial 2-phase is most often 208V.

There is a big carve out in your residential is 240 rule. A lot of apartment buildings have two phase and are also 208.

Why are you spit-balling bizarre and dangerous fixes to an already solved problem?

A certified electrician will know how to cable up a higher-capacity appliance such as an electric oven or level 2 home EV charger.

>> Why are you spit-balling bizarre and dangerous fixes to an already solved problem?

Darwin Awards don't just win themselves, you have to be creative about it, right?

Seriously. It's wiring up a dryer outlet. Takes very little work if the breaker box is nearby, to do it the right way.

My partner and I did it in less than a day in conduit in our garage. No jury rigging necessary.

That product exists, and it's called Quick220.

The Y extension lead would work, except that if either outlet has line and neutral swapped, you have a dead short, and if you pull one of the male ends while charging, you have a live male prong.

Quick 220 mostly resolves this, but you still need a 3 lamp tester, IIRC.

https://hackaday.io/project/4818-a-quick-220-clone

https://quick220.com/

My EV charging, at 32A, draws more power than the rest of the house combined at peak load. The battery capacity is also equivalent to the house's max power usage for an entire day. Even when the low temperature is 90F/32C.

I hired an electrician to come out and install the 240V 50A circuit. I'm sure I could've, but our local code requires it, I don't want our insurer to deny our claim if something goes wrong. I, obviously, think people should be pretty careful with 10kW (or more) continuous load for hours at a time.

I definitely don't think people should lean on janky solutions that are technically feasible when it comes to EV power.

you must be driving great distances if you're charging at 32A?

i've got 240V 40A and I trickle charge at at most 10A overnight, and it's way way beyond adequate. i don't drive super far daily...but easily could still.

At the moment, I'm WFH -- charging at 32A lets me utilize my solar panels instead of selling the energy to the power company at a discount and then buying it back at full price. It's also a bit more efficient, since the car's electronics consume 300W continuous during the charging process, which means shorter charging times use less total power.

But as I mentioned in my comment way above, 120V12A works, but 240V32A is notably more convenient.

yep, agreed. didn't realize the power company pricing dynamics would make it preferable: that's interesting!

> It follows that for the average American, a normal outlet is not fine.

Yes, that's why it's recommended to install a home "Level 2" charger (1). that's that's several times faster than "a normal outlet". It's both fine and practical to do that.

Not everything in a typical house runs on just "normal outlet" power. e.g. electric ovens also do not.

https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-advice/a39917614/best-...

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-electric-veh...

We really need a device that can replace our current electric meters to charge a few EVs. Meters are often on the side of the house by the garage or driveway.

Having a device installed by the power company would be ideal.

Why replace the meter? Are you just suggesting that doing that would be easier than running a new high amp circuit from the circuit breaker?

The L2 chargers are often quite programmable to e.g. use the cheaper late-night electricity. And because what new gadget these days doesn't come with software and an iPhone app?

And some chargers would have an integrated meter as well. Would this suit you? But we don't really know what your intended for that meter use is.

I think street parking should be phased out. Private parking should be mandated. Then it'll be the matter of parking lot billing.

Totally.

As a person who doesn't drive I'm getting pretty sick of the expectation that I pay for parking spots every drivers may want to go, and find the exasperated and demanding attitude that drivers display when they can't find convenient parking to be utterly childlike behavior. God forbid you have to walk a block. You know how many blocks I walked to get here?

Also we need to have a discussion about the hoarding going on in suburban garages. People buy these tacky box houses and then cram all kinds of dumb shit in their garage where their vehicles are supposed to go and then park on the street and bitch about their neighbours friends stealing 'their spot.'

This is all so insane.

I have seen streetside chargers near me.

https://www.evstreetcharge.co.uk/

The electricity delivery infrastructure actually already exists, and has for a long time: street lamps were spec'd before the transition to low power LED lights.

Does it follow? I'd expect the average daily travel to be significantly higher than the median daily travel.

I said "average" twice, and "median" zero times, so yes, one statement does follow from the other. But you're right that the median may be different.

My point was that when the median of something is much lower than the average, the "average" member of the group can be way below the group average for that thing.

Consider a group of 200 people, where 50 drive 10 miles a day, 100 drive 20, 20 drive 30, 5 drive 40, 5 drive 60, 5 drive 80, 5 drive 100, 4 drive 200, 4 driver 400 and 2 drive 600.

That's 8100 miles per day by 200 people, giving an average daily drive of 40.5 miles. If we assume 40 miles is too much for an overnight charge on an ordinary outlet to cover then we might think this means the average person would find they need more than an ordinary outlet.

But 75% of those people drive 20 miles or less per day, and 85% of them drive 30 miles or less per day.

In standard usage, "the average member of the group" simply refers to the hypothetical member whose relevant attributes are those of the group's average.

> near the limit of what's practical without using a fast charger

"fast charger" usually means one of those fancy DC systems, not just a bigger outlet.

Confusingly, Level 2 charging can refer both to 220V AC or fast DC charging. Context is key, but home level 2 (AC) can get up to about 20kW, while DC Level 2 easily delivers up to 400kW.

"Fast charger" in the context of home charging means 20-50A at 220V, which is enough to fully charge the battery in a few hours. Basically, you can roll in on fumes at midnight, plug in and go to sleep, and wake up and leave the next morning with a full tank.

I’ve always heard DC Fast Charging called “DC Fast Charging” or “Level 3”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called Level 2.

Because if you use the wrong terminology it's more clear, but SAE J1772 specifies two levels of DC fast charging.

No one calls DC fast-charging "level 2". It's a mistake. Let's not confuse the issue by starting now.

I dunno what you want to happen here: SAE J1772 refers to level 1 and level 2 DC fast charging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772

I stand corrected. Someone has called it that.

> it was near the limit of what's practical without using a fast charger

> 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.

You have to think about gas too, you're just used to it.

And the future has enough fast chargers that it's hard to be caught out no matter where you go.

The future also involves more high power plugs, which would have removed the issue you quoted.

If you would mind that issue more than they did, then you just need to get a plug installed when you buy an EV.

Its a different order of magnitude. I don't need to think about fuel every day, and I don't have to consider my week if I have a busy day.

All of that gets removed if you have a bigger outlet. There are some people that mind that very little and won't bother to get the upgrade, but judging EVs in general based on the 120-volt situation is like judging pasta in general based on cups of instant ramen.

People who walk out every morning to an EV fully charged up on a home L2 charger (the "high power plugs" mentioned above) very seldom have to think about charge, and definitely not "every day".

How would you feel if your car automatically had a full tank of gas every morning? Even when near empty the night before. It's described as the complete opposite of "worry every day".

It sounds like you feel the same way I feel about a gas car - ie highly unconcerned about distance, fuel, etc.

However, going off the post I initially replied to, it seems that this person did have additional anxiety on account of their EV - ie the issues EV's have with charging, short distances, etc.

It wasn't anxiety -- it was just awareness after having to unnecessarily go to a supercharger a couple of times.

But like I mentioned: I installed a 240V50A outlet, like I think most people will do. 120V15A works with some awareness. 240V50A is easier than having a gas car.

I have to think about my fuel a lot more on my ICE than my EV. I just plug it in when I get home and it's taken care of. Outside of a couple of road trips that were as simple as punching in addresses and following directions that's been my experience.

On my ICE, I think about if gas is expensive or cheap now, maybe I should go ahead and stop at Sam's/Costco while I'm out, but I still have a bit more than a quarter tank, maybe I'll get gas next time. Or I think darn I'm low, I guess I'll have enough, better stop on my way home. And then when I'm there I have to negotiate payment, stand in the 100F heat for several minutes, worry if this pump has a card skimmer on it, and get ads blasted at me. Rinse and repeat every couple of weeks.

"Thinking about gas" for 99% of people means either glancing at the fuel gauge when you get in the car and making a 15 minute detour + pit stop if you think it looks a bit low for your trip, or just ignoring it and making the 15 minute detour once the low fuel indicator comes on.

Electric is on the whole better & cheaper, but insisting the downsides around charging and endurance do not exist isn't going to help convince anyone

> glancing at the fuel gauge when you get in the car and making a 15 minute detour

You realize for a home-charged EV, that literally never happens, right? Your car is always charged, always ready. You never need to make a "detour + pit stop", ever. EVs are the superior solution in this regime, not a compromise. This is 100% not a "downside", period.

Repeating another comment further down - an EV is like an ICE that just magically has a full tank of gas again every morning.

All the comments on here calling them inconvenient seem to be either people who are clutching at straws because they want to believe that EVs are bad for whatever reason, or people with transport requirements well outside the norm (e.g. >~200km per day fairly regularly.)

I don't think it's intentional clutching at straws, but there are definitely people that are quick to notice the inconvenience of a 120v outlet and extrapolate that into the future when they shouldn't, and into more situations than it's actually relevant.

It matters that many people don't have outlets at all, but when we're talking about "how many EV charging stations does the US need" that lack of outlets is a problem that will be fixed.

This is only really true if you have a 240v charger at home, not everyone has the ability to have that kind of setup.

This is true enough, but it's advice of the same form as "Don't buy a pickup if you live in NYC and only have street parking". It's a valid exploration of the solution space but not a fundamental indictment of flatbed technology.

"We shouldn't say EVs are good because they aren't good in all ways" is... kind of a dumb point. And in particular the specific point you tried to make is, as I pointed out, actually incorrect for the bulk of actual owners.

>You have to think about gas too, you're just used to it.

Have you travelled in the past 40 years? There are gas stations on every corner across the USA. Even the smallest hovels have them.

> Even the smallest hovels have them.

Not sure what you are looking for, but it isn't sensible to use "hovel" (="a small, squalid, unpleasant, or simply constructed dwelling") here. "Hamlet", maybe?

I never think about gas. In 20 some years driving only once I ran into an empty gas station during an end of holiday weekend rush. I just drove to the next station and got gas there. I can drive around with less 1/4 tank knowing I can stop at gas station and in and out in 5 minutes with a full tank of gas.

> And the future has enough fast chargers that it's hard to be caught out no matter where you go

For sure. I will happily sit here waiting for the future. It’s just probably good to acknowledge this isn’t the future yet.

Most homes have access to 240V outlets that charge much faster, at a rate of 20 to 30 miles of range per hour.

The solution to this is an extra 240V AC circuit that’s basically the same wiring you already have to power your electric clothes drier or oven. It isn’t free, but it’s also a modest one-time investment that will eventually have to be made (either by you or some future owner), since it will soon be expected in the same way that electric/gas lines are expected to be available in the kitchen and laundry room. The upshot of making this investment is that it pays for itself in 2-3 years worth of gas savings, and your “tank” is always full.

The anecdote was about charging a car on a 120V 15A wall outlet, the kind of thing that a toaster usually saturates. Absolutely not about charging a car with household electricity.

Does your home have an electric dryer or oven? Use a circuit like that. Does it have that outlet in the garage or parking area right now? No, likely not. But the question is about running cable, not "introducing new stresses for an inferior solution".

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.

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.

That's two and a half DAYS.

Completely unsurprised. Just consider the energy density of gasoline or a modern EV battery.

The fact remains that a full EV battery can really take you a long ways.

It really can't.

A fully charge bolt (when it's still new) will take you about 250 miles.

You won't find a gas car that can't go 300 miles on a tank.

I currently have an old prius (which is admittedly far above average compared to regular cars) and it can go 450 miles on a tank.

And that tank gets filled up faster than the time it takes to walk inside and buy a bag of chips.

Very normal. You have to consider how long you need to 'replenish' the the range you used from your daily driving.

Assuming you plug in when you get home, you likely have ~10 hours of charging time. Standard wall outlet is 12A continous, so 1440W. Most 120V is relatively 'inefficient' due to needing to run all the cooling infrastructure which tends to be a fixed overhead. A good number is roughly 4 miles of range per hour of charge on a 120V standard outlet for most normal vehicles (Bolt, Model 3, Ioniq 5, etc)

So, as long as you're driving less than 40 miles per day, 120V outlet will always keep you topped up. If you charge longer (i.e., plug in at 8PM, leave at 7AM) then the numbers look even better. Some considerations for cold climate and whatnot, but 40 miles in a day is a good commute.

> That's two and a half DAYS.

yes, the largest possible charge on the slowest possible charger is not fast. That's why a higher capacity "level 2" charger at home is recommended.

The upside is that you don't have to attend this home charging. It's usually done overnight while the car owner sleeps. So the vehicle has "a full tank of gas" automatically, every morning.

This reply was to someone saying regular wall plug charging was good enough.

It's often good enough for most people.

0-100 is incredibly rare. If I had to deal with that commenter's situation back when I was only on 120V and actually needed 100% soon (this is getting pretty contrived,) I would've charged to 10-20% and then gone to a level 3 charger. Admittedly, this still isn't going to be fast -- but it's not going to take 60 hours.

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.

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.

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.

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Which makes sense, imagine only have shoes that worked on 95% of the floors you walk on. Imagine a fridge that only cools 95% of your food, and it’s a fun surprise when it doesn’t.

This is entirely rational, and reminds me of people who can’t understand why everyone doesn’t bike everywhere. It just reeks of solipsism.

I own a Tesla, and I have to tell you it’s a massive pain to own an EV and live in an apartment complex. It’s honestly frustrating to the point that I regret getting it. The performance is great, but the interior, significant price drop in the year I’ve owned it, and the constant anxiety about the battery has not made for a pleasant experience.

If I could go back I’d get a Mercedes S class that’s 5-7 years old.

Gotta admit, after moving to the Netherlands, it’s kinda legit insane how much stuff people will carry on a bike. A new 55” tv is not uncommon! Today I saw a lady with two toddlers and a grocery bag swinging from the handlebars.

I take your point though. There are still plenty of delivery trucks and personal autos, even in this biking paradise.

Imagine you have a portable laptop that works for 95% of all your use cases except those days when you need a cluster of GPUs training a ML model or doing some large-scale scientific calculation.

Imagine having a fridge that isn't cold enough for storing ice cream and frozen veggies.

And yes, none of my shoes are even remotely close to covering 95% of floors. Some are good for hiking, some are good for running, some are warm in the winter.

The issue is not the lack of 100% coverage. The issue is that there is no sufficiently appealing option for a large number of people to get access to the 5% of cases when you do need it. Apparently rentals and other sharing options aren't quite up to snuff, so everybody overprovisions like crazy.

It's not exactly irrational though. Swinging back to car rental companies, they will overbook their vehicle fleets in order to maximize the amount of time that they're out generating revenue. Even if you prepay a reservation, it's no guarantee you will get a car.

It gets awful stressful awful quick when you have to deal with availability uncertainty and other things depend on it.

Those items are all vastly cheaper than a car. When shoes were expensive relative to what the average family could afford, families bought for quality and longevity, because they would need to last for years at a time, and most people only had a single pair.

A car is just a fundamentally different product to a set of shoes. If cars ever get to the point where the cost of one is trivial for the average person, we'll probably see the kind of specialization you see in other cheaper products. Also note, we can see pressure in the opposite direction for phones. Phones have become more expensive as they become more general purpose.

I've read all of Taleb's major works, twice. "The Most Intolerant Wins" is not in any way an explanation of the market failure of EVs.

His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over.

"EVs vs. ICEs" is nothing like that. EVs have been rejected by vast numbers of consumers because they find them impractical. That's all.

> His canonical example was "kosher food is acceptable to nearly everyone, and required by a small minority." Thus kosher takes over.

Which is a great example of how Taleb's "examples" are BS. Really, when Taleb goes into a grocery store, is all of the food kosher? Or even a majority? Kosher has not "taken over". It's a niche product.

so why did you quote him in the first place?

Secondly, his examples were from the Middle East, where kosher food is indeed ubiquitous even for non-Jewish consumers. Because almost no one really objects to it.

Whereas US consumers really do object to EVs.

> why did you quote him in the first place?

I didn't bring Taleb into the thread, adolph did.

> his examples were from the Middle East

Not the one in the article adolph referenced:

"The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher."

> "The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher."

This implies that some sort of considered effort has been made to produce these drinks as kosher. This is just paying some money to get the private certification and the license to put it on the can. In the context of a drink, the drink ingredients is almost certainly already kosher, so the certification is just saying: "there was no cross-contamination in the making of this product". Which isn't a special consideration made for kosherness.

If I told you that you could increase your TAM by a million people, and open new wholesale marketing opportunities for a onetime payment of ~$1000, you take the deal.

I don’t think the EV market has failed in any way. What makes you think it has failed?

My analogy for the most intolerant wins is treating a decision-maker’s personal values as a population, one of which is “the most intolerant” and thus drives the decision because the others are indifferent to that quality.

There are a variety of aesthetic or prosaic values that might drive a decision for EV or ICE. A minority of those values will likely drive the decision since the majority will be satisfied by any number of options.

> I don’t think the EV market has failed in any way. What makes you think it has failed?

I guess you don't read the Wall Street Journal, or otherwise follow automotive news. I don't feel a need to provide links for you.

> the others are indifferent to that quality

No auto buyer is indifferent to the choice of EV vs ICE.

If you got nothing to back up your assertion there is no need to type it out. Let your thumbs relax in a fact free zone.

it's not up to me to prove to you what everyone knows. Except you, apparently.

Growth is slower this year vs last year but the growth is still happening...

How is that a failure? Slow sales are occurring across the entire auto industry probably because people are broke/unemployed and dont want to spend the cash right now.

> I guess you don't read the Wall Street Journal, or otherwise follow automotive news. I don't feel a need to provide links for you.

I don't read the WSJ, but I do understand numbers. This site seems to indicate that 4% of global new car sales were electric in 2020, and 18% are electric at the end of 2023. https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales

What are you reading that would indicate that an industry segment that is up 450% in four years has "failed"?

You have made an extraordinary claim, and refuse to back it up in the face of compelling evidence.

The rate of growth is falling, but the overall sales trend is still up. Perhaps you are confused with the math, and the difference between rate of growth and growth?

> That’s why normal people don’t buy EVs

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.

This is a thread about US charging infrastructure, BYD does not sell vehicles here and large trucks and SUVs are extremely popular here.

The thread is about incentives and future possibilities in the US. The current state of the charging network is not set in stone. Neither is regulation, EV availability, etc.

Even then, the question "what are the actual preferences when adjusted for price" is valid even in today's US.

I'm definitely not an expert but I think BYDs are popular in China and EU because of governmental policies (in China) and geographical reasons (both China and EU are more urban than North America, owning a detached house in China that is closer to good schools, hospitals and infras are unthinkable for most Chinese).

I live in Canada and I really can't see myself driving an EV right now. It doesn't guarantee my not-so-rare but crucial requests:

- Going to some random places for vacationing without worrying about whether there are enough charging stations;

- Going through early spring without adding anxiety about a power outage that sweeps for 2-7 days;

The infra is just not ready. And TBH, I don't think it's going to be ready forever. Infra construction is so corrupted and so expensive in NA that I absolutely have zero faith in it.

Actually, the push to more EVs in China is already a bit problematic due to lack of Infras. Just imagine you are in the middle of Spring festival traffic jam...it's already bad for gasoline cars but it's a nightmare for EVs.

>I live in Canada and I really can't see myself driving an EV right now.

We live in a semi-rural part of Canada, and have a bit of a (pleasant, country) commute. I want the most efficient vehicle. I ran the numbers and an EV just did not make sense. If you're driving mostly highway, the overall cost/km isn't that much better than the best ICEs, and the ICE is much cheaper.

Oh I wish I could live in such a place too.

Financial-wise, I actually haven't compared the cost/km because of two things:

- I'm not sure how expensive a switch of battery going to be (do we have data on that?)

- Yeah they are outright more expensive than ICEs, and with the current financing climate, not very attractive

This what I don’t get about EV

If you live in suburban and commuting to downtown for work, large part of the driving would be high way. Having hybrid makes way more sense in this scenario.

If you live in downtown, you probably don’t need a car or you are parking in a underground parking lot that does not guarantee you a charging plspot

I'm not sure the urban part is that relevant as a country-scale statistic. Australia is uninhabitable in lots of areas and 90% of people live in cities. I'm still planning an EV in a small town, because I'm never driving more than a single tank anyway and that one time I want to do a cross-country trip, I'll just rent a car for that time.

A more interesting statistic would be something like daily commute https://www.thinkinsure.ca/insurance-help-centre/commuting-t... which recently was ~30min each way on average - very much in range.

On the other hand the power issues could actually improve with enough V2L deployed.

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?

> 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.

True, except all they said was that consumers "overestimating" their needs, which is pretty reasonable, not that they contracted pathological monomania leading to psychiatric and financial disaster.

> I solved for my 99.9% of days driving and am extremely happy.

That’s mostly what people are trying to do. In that 1000 days of driving, they are going to have ~three of every annual event. Thanksgiving travel to family three times. Christmas travel three times. Three years of summer vacations or ski trips, etc.

We have an EV and love it. We also have a hybrid for road trips.

Why not just have the hybrid? You already blew your carbon budget by having two cars so this is definitely not about saving the environment.

We have two adults and two kids and frequently need to be in two different places at the same time, each in a car, between the combination of two working adults and various activities.

I never said it was about saving the environment. (It’s about not being outright ridiculous in either direction.)

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.

Is t one of the main problems with used EVs the battery cap? Unless battery tech gets better can it be assumed that most EVs on the used market would also require a battery replacement so they have the original range?

Liquid cooled batteries (so, not the LEAF) have pretty modest degradation. Yes, it would require a new battery if you needed 100.0% of original range, but if you need 92% of range, you just buy a much cheaper used EV.

You would just deal with the reduced range. With a hybrid it's not really an issue.

The battery replacement meme seems like mostly propaganda. Lots* of 10 year old EVs have 20% or less degradation. That's very usable.

Excluding cars without active thermal management, which mostly means the Nissan Leaf.

Yes sounds like propaganda but I worry about the long term repair costs of the rest of a car like Tesla. They weren't built well in the first place and age can only make that worse. This is where right to repair would have really helped Tesla but no they have to act like every other crap SV company.

At this point, most car brands with dealerships also have a selection of EVs. You can get things like extended bumper-to-bumper warranties also.

Tesla batteries are close to 90% after 200,000 miles. There is some degradation but it plateaus quickly.

It’s a good strategy for someone who doesn’t care about vehicles and mostly sees them as a point A to B thing.

That’s not how many Americans view vehicles though. They view them as a reflection of themselves and as a status item.

$50k to you seems insane but I was eyeing a car that was about $280k in Redwood City last week. It’s been sold. Some of us enjoy cars.

That's what blows my mind. A married couple in the midwest might make $130k combined and have 2 $60k cars in the garage.

If so, they probably didn't buy them outright. They probably leased them.

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.

I think "cost" consists of two parts: financial and mental. The financial side is probably negligible, but the mental part could be larger.

But everyone has one's own needs so I fully understand your scenario.

> 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

That is because a lot of people have ICE cars already.

If there were a lot of people like you, I suspect rentals would get more expensive. In addition, because of the likelihood of correlation (for example a blizzard that knows out power) you may have a bunch of people also wanting to rent he ICEs at the same time making them unavailable for you.

And also, EV charging would a lot better than it is now. Gas stations are everywhere because the cars are everywhere. If EVs were the bulk of cars on the road, the charging experience would be better than it is now in the same way.

Sure, but electricity still isn't a great energy vector for mobile applications. A gas pump pumps at an equivalent rate of 3MW or so after accounting for thermal losses in the vehicle. To match that with electricity, someone is either dispatching capacity on demand, or you're already generating it and curtailing it, which puts to bed any arguments about efficiency.

Electricity only really exists in a transient state, and has to be stored in bricks made up of complex materials that are harder to scale than equivalent chemical storage mechanisms.

That's not the same thing as saying EVs have no place, because they clearly do, but I don't think that place is as a general replacement for a standard vehicle in societies that rely heavily on cars. I think they're a niche product there.

I live in such a society. I replaced my ICE vehicle with electric 2 years ago. I'm not going back. They CAN be a replacement but not for everybody. This equivalent pumping rate thing is interesting but it doesn't really capture the whole thing. I don't have gasoline deliveries to my house. What about oil changes per year?

The calculus changes for ubiquitous slow charging, and I think that's really where EVs make the most sense. The issue is that the fast charging problem needs to be solved for EVs to have functional parity for certain use cases that do affect purchasing habits (i.e. a car is expensive enough for me that I buy for all of my needs, not my average need).

Ultimately, everyone needs to make the call for themselves. I'm glad you're happy with your EV, but I can't see myself purchasing one within the next fifteen years or so. Even then, I'd still have an ICEV backup. But that's based on my particular needs, and not necessarily applicable to others.

I’ve been looking at a house in a city I visit often, thinking of buying it and renting it out via AirBnB or VRBO or similar. The Chinese EVs that are coming to the US market are cheap, less than a golf cart, and suitable for city driving. I would buy one to use there. Slow charging would be fine; I wouldn’t drive its 100 km range in a weekend, and 35 mph/56 km/h is enough speed for almost all my driving there.

But at home, I have to get on the limited-access highway to get to work (there really isn’t a good alternative). If it can’t travel at 100 km/h, it’s not a suitable commuter car, but that puts it in a very different price range.

And I’m still going to use the ICE car to get there and back. Needs 320 km each way of range with air conditioning running to be viable. That’s a trip I make at least every six weeks. The ICE car has a range of almost 1000 km on a full tank.

EVs have a lot of potential but there are still a lot of details to work out.

I'm curious, how often do you change the battery? A few years? What's the price? Genuinely curious as this is also part of my consideration when switching to EV.

Never. My sister-in-law had the same Model S for like 11 years. There was no need.

The whole thing about expensive battery replacements every 3 years is mostly propaganda from entrenched interests. There are legitimate isolated horror stories, but battery replacements don't generally need to be a thing. Do your own research, but that's my experience. I know a fair number of EV owners.

That kinda skirts the main reason EVs are being pushed which is that ICEs absorb energy very quickly and then spew massive amounts of byproduct out the back and into the air. EVs are less efficient at storing energy, but vastly more efficient at emissions. And the cost of ICEs are foisted on the entire world and not paid by drivers.

ICEs can run on pretty much anything, and there are a number of easy-to-make fuels that are carbon neutral or even carbon negative. Case in point: the global shipping industry is in the early stages of transitioning to green methanol as a fuel. They have trials of the fuel underway, new engine designs being made, and every indication is that they're serious about the transition. Modern cars are perfectly capable of running on methanol with minor modifications, and it's certainly more cost effective than buying a brand new vehicle. If we're going to be running the whole shipping industry on green fuels, I don't see any reason why we can't do the same for cars. Doing so is almost certainly a lower emissions path than replacing the whole fleet with EVs, and would still be necessary even if we did electrify most of the fleet, because battery electric just isn't suitable for some tasks. Long haul trucking, for example, won't be electrified any time soon.

> 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.

I think this is partly because there is not really an alternative once you run out. Getting a jerrycan of gas from a gasstation is possible, a reasonable expectation can be made that if that happens a good samaritan will help you. Or a friend can drop by with one.

The same thing cannot be said about electric cars, unless you have a good friend with a fuel generator. Even then you still have to wait for it to charge. More likely you will be towed, at least in The Netherlands they will tow you to the next parking place. If you are lucky it will be one with a charger, if you are unlucky you are once again on your own.

> same thing cannot be said about electric cars

Gas cars need a jump all the time.

If this is really an anxiety of someone’s, they can carry a capacitor in the back sufficient to be charged somewhere and take the vehicle to a charger. That should work in 90%+ of situations.

> Gas cars need a jump all the time.

All the time? That's some strong exaggeration there. Last time I needed a jump start was in 2016 and before that.. can't put an exact year to it but it was back in the 80s.

> If this is really an anxiety of someone’s, they can carry a capacitor in the back sufficient to be charged somewhere and take the vehicle to a charger.

Please describe in some detail how you expect this to work? Can you link to this "capacitor" that people should buy that can do that?

> Last time I needed a jump start was in 2016 and before that.. can't put an exact year to it but it was back in the 80s

As in it's frequent. I'd estimate about as frequent as someone running out of charge in an EV nowadays.

(If you're in a hot climate, e.g. Arizona, and park your car outdoors, it literally can be every year or two.)

> Can you link to this "capacitor" that people should buy that can do that?

Apparently they're still marketed to commercial users, pricing in the $5k+ range. EV to EV charging, emerging on newer vehicles, would be the analog.

Do these exist?

A quick Google turns up this kind of thing [0] which, based on the price point and form factor, is aimed at tow truck operators rather than individual drivers. Costs $10k+ and will take up most of the back of your car.

[0] https://jtmpower.ie/collections/electric-vehicle-charging

Yes, they do, and it's available as a service in Australia:

https://mobileevcharging.com.au/

That's a commercial unit again, not something you throw in your trunk.

That's probably the right solution to this - and something every tow truck will carry in 10 years - but it's not the "capacitor in the back" analogue to an empty jerrycan.

>Gas cars need a jump all the time.

In my family's 20+ years of owning multiple vehicles I can count on one hand how many jumps we've needed, and they fall under the category of 1. old battery or 2. left some lights on.

The latter wouldn't even kill the battery any more.

Errr that's a few minutes at most to fix, and once the car is started, the battery is no longer necessary. That's a fundamentally different thing to a dead battery in an EV, where the battery is essential to the propulsion system.

They also sell portable jumper battery packs for like 60 bucks. We got one because our car battery got terrible during COVID, when we barely drove it for a year or more. I've never had to use it, but it's nice to have in case the need ever arises (and it can be used to charge electronic devices). It stays basically 100% charged for surprisingly long periods of time.

Aren't their car models who can charge other vehicles ?

In some capacity yes, a lot of them. Plenty of EVs can do "vehicle to load" or V2L. i.e. they have plug points for running appliances off the vehicle battery. This can be used to slow-charge another EV.

"The scenarios where this is useful are plentiful, from helping a stranded EV driver with no power to whipping up a brew with a portable kettle."

https://www.ag-elec.com/vehicle-to-load-v2l-what-is-it-and-h...

I see it like "give the vehicle a few miles, to get to a better charge point" and nothing more.

We'll have to see. I know AAA has some mobile charging trucks that can boost an EV with a few extra miles (diesel generator AFAIK), but I don't know how widespread it's been deployed or response time, and it does mean that the service truck is on site for 30+ minutes vs the 1 minute to give you some gas.

I think the shitty part at least in Canada is the sheer network fragmentation for fast charging. Understandable why it's fragmented but it's still frustrating nonetheless.

It's not just that, it's also time... in 99.9% of cases, the gas station is there, and you'll get gas in ~5 minutes, full tank, enough to drive another 1000km. Even if it's busy, you wait a few more minutes and get it.

If you come to a busy charging station... are you really going to wait for an hour? are you going to risk it with the next one? What if that one is even busier?

I live in a country which is full of people transiting every summer from norther europe to croatian beaches, like literally 10km traffic jams to go through a tunnel, police stopping transiting vehicles from leaving the highway (so the locals can use the side roads, but the gas stations can manage it, because refilling takes just a few minutes.

Now replace just 10% of those german cars with electric ones, calculate how many refills you need to drive between eg. frankfurt to split, multiply by thousands going through every weekend, and there's no way to get efficiently charge all those cars, and noone is designig charging stations for peak traffic. 30km left? 8 charging stations, 15 cars waiting, will you really risk it? Or will you wait two hours at least to get a chance to charge your car?

Charging stations are extremely scalable, though. Tesla has one supercharger in California with 98 charging bays, and plans for another with 200 bays. You’ve never seen a gas station with that many fuel pumps because it would be extremely difficult to install the tanks and fuel plumbing and fire suppression systems to make it work. With electric charging you just need a parking lot.

But you don't need that many pumps, because it takes 5 minutes to fill up the gas and pay... and then drive a 1000 more kilometers. You don't have to stay there for 1hour+ and then repeat the same after a few hundred kilometers.

Pretty much no EVs on the market in North America take an hour or more to charge enough for a few hundred km.

On the road trips I've gone on with my EV the average charge time I had was like 15 minutes. The longest was 22 minutes. I sometimes charged a little longer than as it took some time getting the kids through the bathroom and get a snack.

And my EV kind of sucks for road trips. Smaller battery, only 400V instead of 800V, and a less efficient motor setup compared to other EVs on the market.

Yeah I’m baffled by the GP poster. 15 min is standard. 25 or 30 in rare circumstances or when you want to sit down for food. And this is using today’s battery chemistries, while even faster charging is already coming from solid state and sodium batteries. Naively if we assume that a gas car can move in and out in 5 minutes, you need 3-5x as many charging bays to maintain similar throughput, and those numbers are already deployed in some stations. I also think the poster seriously underestimates the cost of building, maintaining and decommissioning fueling infrastructure. Gas stations are not cheap or scalable in the same way that charging stations are.

I just did the math, and it's even worse...

VW id.3 are one of the most popular electic vehicles here.. They don't need an hour on fast charger, but still...

I took the data from here: https://ev-database.org/car/1202/Volkswagen-ID3-Pro

> Charge Time (35->280 km) 31 min

So, for ~250km of driving, you chrage it four half an hour (let's say everything is ideal, no AC needed, no stopping in traffic with ac running)... for a drive from eg Frankfurt to split (~1200km) and then back, this means 9 charges (assuming you did the first charge at home, which is far from a common thing in frankfurt with a lot of apartment buildings and not a lot of chargers there). For a normal diesel car, that would be 2 refills (assuming you started with a full tank... and you'll still haeve half a tank left over).

So, 9 charges means using the charging stations for 279 minutes, a bit over 4 and a half hours if done ideally. Refilling a diesel would take 10 minutes. So to serve an equivalent number of tourists here in transit (since our gas is cheaper outside of highways, and locals fill their cars there), we'd need 28x more charging stations compared to gas/diesel pumps. Also, even with gas pummps, during peak times (weekends all summer), you sometimes have to wait for 3-4 cars infront of you to refill, so even that is not enough for peak usage.

So, for an average german tourist going to croatia for a vacation (and there's a lot of them.. a lot!), the electric car is useless until we build A LOT more charging stations, 30x more than our curret gas ones, and add 4.5 hours of drive time.

Sure, living in a house (charge at home) and commute to work and back within the range of the vehicle... that's great. But for road trips, we're not really there yet.

I deleted my earlier comment, I didn't realize you were saying 1,200km there and back. So nine charges to go 2,400km does sound a bit realistic.

But you're saying 4 and a half hours to charge to go 2,400km is worse than the above poster who said 1+ hour to go like 200-300km. 4.5 hours of charging to go 2,400km is ~533km/h effectively, assuming starting with a good state of charge.

But you're also ignoring the fact nobody doing that route would be driving 1,200km and then immediately turning around and driving back home. They're probably going to stop at some point along that 24+ hour journey, right? Probably going to spend the night somewhere, probably going to get food to eat somewhere, right? I imagine most people need to use the bathroom at least once every 24+ hours? And they're probably driving that distance to actually visit someplace, so they're likely going to stay there at least a few hours if they're willing to drive over a dozen hours each way right? So some of those charging stops are realistically only a few minute wait, as you're just talking about the time to plug in to the charger near a restaurant, or plug in to the charger near your destination, etc.

Do drivers in Frankfurt really get in their car and drive 24+ hours round-trip only stopping to get gas a couple of times? Do people in Frankfurt not need to sleep, eat, or pee? Is driving 24 hours non-stop round trip an ideal German vacation?

And then to top it all off, the ID.3 isn't the best road trip EV. There are many other models that will charge faster. If you're the kind of person making non-stop 2,400mi road trips every few months you could pick a different EV that has better charging speeds.

Pick a Kia EV6 Long Range and you'll get an average of nearly 200kW charging speeds doing a 10-80% charge. The ID.3 Pro in your link only gets about 82kW average charging speed for a 10-80% charge. (1070 km/h vs 470 km/h). You'll end up doing the trip in significantly less charging time.

https://ev-database.org/car/1481/Kia-EV6-Long-Range-2WD

No, those drivers drive 10, 12 hours from frankfurt to croatia, then park in a place like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hRNCgPUhGEHayXex6 or this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/mTg4SpaNrcsi1hiv5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/dWEqaBQNVbMtC26f8 or https://maps.app.goo.gl/w4Ywf5cMzU1e4dSf8 etc. No charging station anywhere. I live much closer to that (only ~500km), and park between cars with german and czech licence plates in parking "lots" just like these every year.

I also live in a transit country for them, so I have to actively try to avoid them every summer: https://www.rtvslo.si/slovenija/zastoj-pred-predorom-karavan... most of them have german plates (this is on the way back in a 15km long traffic jam before a tunnel, and our police closed the exits so they can't leave and use the local roads.

This is the charging station before that 15km traffic jam: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xBrxbccqVg7mSw3D8 ...so, either wait here in line, or risk it for a few hours... will you use the AC, or not? :) It's not much better in austria, and even worse in croatia.

The throughput of a charger is a lot lot lower. A single pump can maybe serve 20 cars an hour if it’s got a credit card reader. Most petrol stations in the UK have this and maybe 4-12 pumps depending on size. So just ball parking, if the average needed duration to charge is 10 mins on a supercharger, you need 4x more chargers than you would pumps for an equivalent.

The obvious difference is that you can’t pump your car at home, and by installing chargers in ordinary car parks you can mitigate the need the specific infrastructure of petrol stations, but the number of total chargers needed is still high, they are just not in the same places.

> 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.

  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.

That argument can be made everywhere even with perfect public transport. It is usually about choices you have made. Of course in the US it is far too easy to become car dependent. If you wish it, it is most certainly possible but you have probably made some personal choices that makes it harder.

Car dependency is a choice. Even in Europe the norm of cars is strong.

  That argument can be made everywhere even with perfect public transport.

Where I grew up (London) public transport was usually faster than driving.

Even that is only really true when traveling within zone 1 and 2. If you're further out and not going into zone 1, then driving is generally faster, especially if you have to change trains/busses.

2x is pretty common in some parts of the Netherlands. If you’re deep within the city center, sure, public transit is faster because streets are designed intentionally to be hostile to drivers.

In the suburbs or even smaller cities, driving is still faster. Hell, the trains here hardly have time to accelerate past 120kmph so driving can actually be faster than the train too unless you are going directly from city center to city center (most people need a 10 min bike ride on one or both sides).

Even If North America starts taking transit seriously, the routes needed to connect the suburbs to most metro downtowns will be enormous. There will either needs to be hundreds of bus routes feeding into light rail, or perhaps better bike infrastructure can get people close enough to one of dozens of light rail stops.

In any case, sprawl is currently setup to make urbanizing a slow and painful future for transit enthusiasts.

When I lived in Amsterdam, so a solid public transport connection on at least one end, the best I clocked is 2x. Often it was more like 3x.

I was just rarely traveling to other city centers, and some town or forest isn't going to have a time competitive public transport options.

Hell, the Flixbus Amsterdam-Maastricht (station to station) is faster than the train. It has a lower top speed, no direct line, but it just doesn't stop 7 times or so in between.

Hah I didn't know about the Flix bus! Living near Eindhoven, it's crazy to me that I need it's almost faster to drive to Amsterdam, especially when I need to cycle to the station first. Not to mention the ticket is 22 euros one way. I drive a very fuel efficient car, so paying 40 euros for a day trip is crazy. If you add one more family member or friend, then taking the car is a no brainer. You can park at one of the P+R facilities and take the metro to the center and still come out ahead financially.

If the Netherlands wants to continue to be competitive and ease the housing crisis, the trains need to be faster and cheaper so everyone can spread out and not be forced to spend 3 or 4 hours a day commuting to work if they live in a different city.

Even as of 1 person, the car was also cheaper, all in, for me back then (a 20 year old car).

NL public transport is super expensive. Doesn't mean it's never interesting, but when I lived in France near a TGV station, I took the train much more often. It did often have both speed and price advantages.

Yeah, that's pretty accurate, I'd say that population-weighted for the Netherlands the average is around 2x. If you're in rural areas it can easily be 8x or worse (2 hours for a 15-minute drive.)

Where things really shine is high-frequency, high-speed rail plus bikes. The IC Direct Rotterdam-Amsterdam is fast enough that I used to go from my place to my sister's, door-to-door, in about fifty minutes by bike+train, versus typically around a little over an hour for a car.

If you want a really impressive ratio you have to look to the TGV; in college I did Marseille-Paris, Paris-Lille, Lille-Brussels often and each of those segments are three times faster than the car!

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.

And in a gas car you get 300-400 miles of range or more in a 5-minute fuel stop. That’s the inconvenience they needs to be largely overcome.

As others mention it really depends on your use case.

If you can charge at home (ideally at 240v), and you don’t drive more than the range of your vehicle in a day regularly, it’s gas that has an inconvenience to overcome. I don’t have a gas pump at my house.

If you are an Uber driver and you do 2-3x the range every day, it’s a different story. But if you can charge for free - which isn’t hugely uncommon currently - you can save a lot of money on gas with an EV, so there are tradeoffs.

The daily drive isn't what people are thinking about when charging time is brought up.

They're thinking about visiting family, or short day trip vacations, or longer hauls through very rural areas.

Or, they live in an apartment complex that doesn't let them run extension cords out to their cars or have charging stations for everyone yet (though admittedly this is only a matter of time).

Anecdotally I just went on a 200 mile trip. Had to fast charge once but I was able to fully charge at my destination with a 110 volt outlet and a long extension cable. Turns out I like to lounge for about 16 hours a day on vacation.

Of course I rented a Tesla for this trip and at home I can’t charge because I live in a condo.

So it’s tradeoffs all the way down in life

As someone who owns an EV I'm 100% okay with spending an extra 30 minutes eating lunch somewhere with a fast charger when I'm likely on vacation and don't really care about time when what I get in return is more convenience the other 95% of the time when I never have to stop at a petrol station during my work commute.

Seriously, it's great. The FUD around EVs is ridiculous and so many people seem to have swallowed it wholesale without really thinking very hard.

I think this kind of sentiment is problematic. Ultimately, the people most qualified to tell you whether or not a given product will work for them are the potential users of that product. Most people these days have been exposed to EVs in some fashion, so it's not like they're an unknown quantity. If, at this point, people are telling you that the product doesn't work for them, that signal is probably real and needs to be addressed.

To put it another way, I'm not telling you an EV doesn't work for me because some online article told me what to think. I'm telling you that because I've investigated the options for myself, and come to a conclusion that, ultimately, only I am qualified to make.

You’re comparing the time to fuel a car at home vs a dedicated fuelling station.

You can’t (generally) refuel your ICE car at home. The times to recharge at a fast charge station is coming down and down.

> You can’t (generally) refuel your ICE car at home.

You potentially can, though. In many areas, laws/regulations/ordinances allow one to have a large tank and a pump. Bulk gasoline delivery can also cost less than what one would typically pay at the pump. I've rarely seen it done except at businesses with fleets of vehicles or large farms, though.

Potentially true, but in practice much less useful than fitting one more high-power electric plug, to a garage.

A house will already have electricity, even high-power plugs for electric stoves and dryers. A house will not already have any gasoline taps. A gasoline storage tank is another avoidable source of fire and chemical contamination risk. The shelf life of gasoline is not indefinite, it is "about six months".

Both are upfront costs, but the average person won't put a gasoline storage tank in the same ballpark as a L2 EV plug.

It would be somewhat comparable to a heating oil tank, which many residences in the northern US already have.

Note that I'm not suggesting this be done, only that it's potentially possible, and in some rare cases is done.

I refuel my ICEs at home all the time. I have many ICE tools, so I've got a pair of wonderful metal gas cans. I refuel the gas cans while I'm out, and then I can refuel tools and vehicles at home.

Capless tanks in cars are kind of a pain, but other than that it's easy. Storing filled gas cans isn't an option for everyone; usually the same people who will have trouble with a charger at home will have restrictions on gas cans. Regulatory devices to prevent spilling gas seem to ensure spilling gas too; it's better to use a 'for entertainment purposes only' flexible spout if you've got one.

Well unless you have an oil well and a full refinery in your backyard really it’s apples and oranges

And you have solar panels that can charge your car at night?

Why not? Home storage batteries are available.

Of the size of a car battery? Well, there go all your cost savings.

It's very much possible to buy a solar + battery system that will charge your car at any hour of the day or night. Tesla even sell them. People do it.

Actually my power company is offering free night electricity albeit at a higher day rate. I think it’s unused wind power. They have similar offerings in Texas

I swapped out all my gas tools years ago for battery operated tools (mower, edger, blower, chainsaw) and I don't miss those gas tools at all. There is nothing wonderful about metal gas cans or about gasoline. I mean, I converted my generator to natural gas just so I don't have to deal with gasoline during the rare power outage.

How does that matter? Generally never have to "refuel at home" because you refueled by taking a small fast detour on a path you were driving anyway.

I spend hours a year more doing those "small fast detour on a path you were driving anyways" rather than charging. And I do way more miles on my EV than my ICE.

Yeah but you're at a gas station for that stop (and you had to drive there). Charging an EV at home at night involves approximately 10 seconds to plug the car in followed by going inside, eating dinner, watching tv, going to sleep etc just like you would have without the EV.

Unless the average needed charge time is more than the average gap you have between "come home" and "go out again" it's a meaningless number.

As someone who owns an EV and doesn't regularly drive more than ~200km in a single trip the EV is much more convenient than my old ICE. "Oh no I need to stop off at the petrol station before/after work" used to be a fairly regular occurence and now it's something I never think about.

What about apartment dwellers? They can't just plug in their cars at night. They'll need to go to a charge station. Now we're comparing a 5 min fill up to a 1 hour charge.

I agree for me as a home owner the charge station question is no big deal, but when I was doing apartment living it's a completely different consideration.

> Yeah but you're at a gas station for that stop (and you had to drive there).

Uhhhh, you mean an extremely brief stop along a common route I was already traversing anyway?

I really don't understand your approach here, are you speaking from the perspective of some region where gas-stations are rare remote outposts that require a dedicated trip?

I'm not arguing that gas stations are horribly inconvenient or anything like that. I'm just pointing out that with EVs you don't have to do anything at all.

We're quibbling over very small amounts of inconvenience with either option.

That is just not true. Planning a handful of longer trips a year require much more planning than dropping by a gas station for 5 minutes every few weeks.

For now it's a trade off. Besides the Volt which is my wife's daily driver, we also own a Mazda CX-9.

They're both about 7 years old now. My wife's Volt has 80K miles and has been to the gas station only a handful of times because 95% of my wife's driving fits within its 50 mile all-electric range. Literally just on the rare road trip she takes does she need to gas it. Meanwhile my CX-9 with half the mileage (I work from home) has visited the gas station a hundred or more times. Plus the additional maintenance that it has as an ICE vehicle over the Volt which isn't even pure electric.

But yes, we use the CX-9 for our yearly family road trip of 650 miles because for me, I like to stop, gas and go. But not everyone has my driving stamina or willingness to sit in a car w/o a longer break. So for them, having to spend 30+ minutes charging an electric car might not be an inconvenience at all.

A few years ago I swapped out my gas mower for an Ego electric mower. Despite having had a top-of-the line Honda, I don't miss an ICE mower at all. And I don't have a tiny lot or easy to cut grass either. I'm in NC with a thick fescue lawn that takes me 45+ minutes to mow. The Ego has no trouble with it.

Recently I was at a hotel and bumped into another guest with a Chevy Bolt. I think he said it had about 200 miles range. I asked him if that was an issue, but it turns out with his wife and dogs, he couldn't drive more than a couple hours at a time w/o taking a break anyway. So for him the vehicle fit his lifestyle and it was no compromise or inconvenience at all. Meanwhile the hotel had an on-site charger he could use.

At the end of the day we've spent 120 years building our lives and infrastructure around ICE vehicles. Electric vehicles have only been on the scene for what, 20 years now? So using electric vehicles in an ICE world requires compromises in some situations. But even since I purchased the Volt 7 years ago the equation has changed and my next vehicles will likely be electric. There's enough fast charging stations now that I no longer see that as an issue any more.

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.

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.

> 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.

My source is an article from the ADAC, a German automobile association.

https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/elektromobilitaet/lade...

They say 100-300W for the onboard electronics, and 15-25% total loss when using a wall socket (other losers contribute as well, e.g. cables that weren't originally meant to run at peak current for hours on time).

If I'm reading that article/pictures right (using Doubleclick Translate), it's claiming that when charging at 2.3kW, 5-15% of the power is going to the 12V system. So assuming 90% efficiency for the main power converter and 80% efficiency for the 12V converter, that's at least 6-20 amps of draw on the 12V bus? That seems quite high.

Premises wiring seems like a red herring. At least in the US, conductors are sized based on a maximum percentage voltage drop at rated current, which means the branch circuit losses should be similar when using either one at full capacity. (A lower current circuit for a longer time is actually going to be slightly more efficient because the feeders are fixed sizes)

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 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.

In the US, ~70% of people live in single family houses.

Most people already have an EV "gas station" at home...

I'd want to see a breakdown of that by demographic. I don't think many boomers are itching to switch to FEV as of now.

> 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.

I usually get a bit above 20% when I get home to when I leave in the morning. My vehicle has about a 70kW battery and ~300mi range.

I have relied on this setup for multiple years without stress.

> 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.

The US power system is 240V. Every home has 240V service.

This is my thought, too.

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.

I won't buy a car that I can't adequately evacuate in. This means 700 miles with a 10 minute stop for gas / restroom.

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.

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?

Did you ever consider that the reason I would prefer a gas engine over electric is because I can quickly refuel a gas tank to be full and be on my way? You aren't doing that when there are lines down the road at each station along the route and you're in an electric car. You're just stranded, because if these are EVs, they will either take forever to charge or you're going to make a dozen supercharger stops that will literally eat up HOURS of your time.

Your gas station has electric pumps. Doesn't take hours to fast charge.

It does when everyone is waiting on "electric pumps" because they've switched to vehicles which are far more inefficient on average at refueling. Try thinking about the situation instead of just coming up with a dumb rebuttal that doesn't make even a tangential amount of sense.

Since, we're just making stuff up and lambasting someone else for doing it. Think about this...If everyone has switched to electric cars. Doesn't it stand to reason that everyone would have switched to electric chargers or by then the inefficiency of charging would be gone?

If charging queues are a worry, gas stations queues and shortages are also a problem.

I understand your worries but I am not sure it’s a great excuse to keep driving ICE cars.

Where do you live that you've had to do multiple 700 mile evacuations?

Probably hurricane strike zone. It's not weird to travel that far to get out of the way of a hurricane. Usually because that's when lodging becomes available. I did it every few years as a kid.

Hurricaneland. Unless you are SUUUUUUUPER on point with booking a room well in advance at the far edges of the state, you are definitely driving out of it and likely a good bit away. I've had friends who needed to drive to Tennessee from New Orleans, and when the last major storm that hit the NOLA area, my parents asked me to check hotels in Dallas but they were all booked.

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.

agreed.

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.

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.

Also: If you only slow charge, it will _drastically_ increase your battery life span / general health.

"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.

Edit: why disagree?

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.

I know specs go by full cycles. I was always taught not to shallow charge because each partial charge essentially carried some overhead to it. Sort of like two 10% is not equal to one 20% charge. I guess that's not true anymore since I couldn't find anything on it.

Keep in mind that the battery is doing an extra transition between charge and discharge every time regenerative breaking kicks in.

Looks like maybe I was thinking of the lead acid battery "formatting" phase. Seems as though lead acid batteries benefit from deep cycles with full charges, while lithium batteries benefit from smaller depth of discharge without going to full.

>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.

> What kind of outlet are we talking about here.

A standard wall outlet, as in the post I was responding to.

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.

Edit: downvote me boomers. Do it.

…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.

It’s really not. Hybrids are going to be obsolete way faster than you think, given the price and innovation curves of EVs.

It takes 20 years to build up a track record of 20 year reliability.

During which they’re going to become irrelevant clinging to out of date technology. Building reliable ICEs is much much harder than EVs, the field is wide open now.

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