Hacker News Reader

Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

Why not? Home storage batteries are available.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com