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Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

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Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#81

Post by revscat »

version_five wrote: post #78
emilecantin wrote: post #14

I did a similar roadtrip back in 2015 (!) in my ex-boss's Tesla Model S: we traveled from Montréal to Atlanta for a weekend conference (JSConf, IIRC). We were driving continuously, switching drivers every time we hit a charger (we were 4 in the car). I think it took us about 24h to do the trip. My main takeaway from the experience is that charging wasn't actually "painful" at all. On the contrary, it was a welcome br…

I find this kind of "it's great to have a break" justification tiring. Glad that you found something to do while your car is charging, but pretending it's not a limitation feels like just glossing over something that does make it less flexible, whether that was a problem for you or not.

It’s not, though. It is genuinely a nice break. The very first road trip I took on mine was with my three teenage children. It was a moderately lengthy trip, from Texas to Colorado. After we got back home I asked them which they preferred, and their answers were surprisingly unanimous: electric. And given that they had taken many road trips with their mother and her ICE vehicle, they had something to compare it against.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#82

Post by golemiprague »

For many people around the world the distance is not the issue, it is actually the overnight charging. In many countries people mostly live in apartment buildings and have to park in the street or if they have a parking spot it usually doesn't have any dedicated electricity near by, especially not something that can be charged per resident.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#83

Post by Aperocky »

emilecantin wrote: post #14

I did a similar roadtrip back in 2015 (!) in my ex-boss's Tesla Model S: we traveled from Montréal to Atlanta for a weekend conference (JSConf, IIRC). We were driving continuously, switching drivers every time we hit a charger (we were 4 in the car). I think it took us about 24h to do the trip. My main takeaway from the experience is that charging wasn't actually "painful" at all. On the contrary, it was a welcome br…

24h continuous? how's sleep on the Tesla?

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#84

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #75
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #21

From the end of TFA: >And everyone should stop driving fossil vehicles starting now. [ ... ] There’s no excuse not to. Admirable sentiments, but can anyone point definitively to the net gain/loss in CO2 terms of actually ditching a fossil fuel based car and replacing it with a new EV? And how does that look if the FF car is something like a Honda Fit (good mileage, lower than typical emissions)? I'd be willing to dum…

Carbon zero transportation is a two step process: electrify the transportation and green the electricity. They both have to be done, and they both take a long time. If each side waits for the other, neither gets done. At current prices, renewables are the cheapest energy sources, any increased demand for energy will bias the electricity mix greener.

> If each side waits for the other, neither gets done.

But for it to get done, we essentially have to junk all current IC vehicles, and build replacements. My question was whether or not that actually puts us ahead CO2/climate-wise.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#85

Post by carcostthrow »

>And everyone should stop driving fossil vehicles starting now. [...] There’s no excuse not to.

Isn't there?

Right now for me to own a Ford Mach E, a Tesla Model 3 or a RAV4 Prime is $3400 to $3700 per year for comprehensive insurance, $1400 a year for liability only. My SUV right now costs $1100 a year to insure comprehensive, but even a 2021 Acura NSX or Jaguar F-Pace is only $1400 for the same level of insurance that I have right now.

I only spend about $1200 a year on gasoline for the SUV and another $200 for regular maintenance. So right out the gate, assuming electricity is free and tire rotations are free, I'm already looking at least $900/yr increase in operating expense.

And then there's the upfront; the above is on top of the $10,000 to $20,000 more I'd have to spend to buy an EV vs a comparably sized and equipped ICE. And an additional $1500 to $2000 to have my garage accommodate charging a car, assuming main panel doesn't need upgrading and only installing a 240V circuit.

Right now it's a detached garage with a single 120v to it, so it's retrenching and installation of new conduit and wire, installing a new sub panel in the garage, and rewiring everything. Not going to count the cost of a level 2 DC charger (Chevrolet and Kia are offering one as an incentive for purchase). Main uncertainty is whether or not the main panel would need to be upgraded.

If I didn't have a garage, I'd also have to be super concerned about charging stations though. You leave an extension cord more then once out overnight, it will get stolen; the copper in it is worth a dollar or two. I can't imagine how fast a $200 charging cable with $10 of scrap copper in it wouldn't get swiped. It's unfortunately common here, there's quite a few sections of street where the street lights have been knock out for months now due to copper thieves ripping it out of the conduit. A nearby truck depot gets the copper wire cut from the trucks battery systems sitting there overnight every few months.

So... yeah. There's my excuse. Money.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#86

Post by derefr »

908B64B197 wrote: post #74
gorkish wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid even less for my Bolt and while I think it's a wing dang doodle of a little car, I am not stupid enough to try to take it on a road trip. If I had to move the car any significant distance, I would not even attempt to drive it; I would ship or tow it. I "fast charged" the car exactly once, to test that it worked and familiarize myself with the process. $15 and 90 minutes later, I lost interest in ever doing it…

> I am sure that we will see strong opinions come from both the tesla and non-tesla EV camps in discussing this post, so hopefully my dual perspective will be of some value. If it doesn't plug into a supercharger it's pretty much defective on arrival. https://youtu.be/hA_B7qPyUDA?t=1136

Is anyone working on an active adapter to make a Supercharger think the device on the other end is a Tesla vehicle, so it'll put out a charge?

I have no idea how Superchargers work, but I assume there's some sort of active electronic handshake going on over some control pins to authorize power delivery — perhaps even something cryptographic, e.g. the "pump" and the car both having Tesla-signed TLS certificates and peer-verifying one-another.

If so, spoofing a Tesla might involve cloning a cert from a real Tesla vehicles, possibly from the car's TPM. Full-on DRM-breaking stuff. Stuff I would expect from the kind of teams that present at DEF CON.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#88

Post by mikewarot »

I drove 2000 km in a single day, on a number of occasions, when I was younger. I don't see how anyone could do it in less than 3 days with this many charge stops.

I had no idea the range of electric cars was so short. I expected that they'd do better at cruising speed on the highways, because the mpg in my car goes up as I get up to 70 MPH. Apparently a Tesla Model 3 is only good for 289 miles at that speed before giving up the ghost.

13*40 --> 520 miles is what I'd expect to get out of our car.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#89

Post by wstrange »

If my math is correct, driving 1,725km in a Prius (assume 6L/100KM - which is fairly conservative) would cost about $135 CDN in fuel - (approx. $1.30 per litre).

Not much more than $120 spent on charging. For a car that is much less expensive than the Jaguar.

Environmental considerations aside, this is a tough sell for most consumers.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#90

Post by blacksmith_tb »

feifan wrote: post #13
hogFeast wrote: post #6

Wait until the author finds out how the batteries are made. EDIT: just to be clear, I am not a "climate change denier"...although always interested to have lots of random people attempt to diagnose me. I worked in equity research, I have seen mountains of reports on this topic: lithium and cobalt production are terrible for the environment (ignoring issues with forced labour and human cost at mines, most people who m…

You're making a stock-vs-flows comparison: a battery is manufactured ~once for the lifetime of a car and then produces ~zero emissions per marginal mile driven. Combustion engines produce emissions for every mile driven (and require some emissions to produce as well).

Both ICE and EV vehicles require a lot of GHG emissions to produce[1][2] - in the case of an ICE car, that works out to about as much as driving it for its working life. For the EV it's more - but then driving it is associated with much less in the way of emissions, that's sort of the point. Either way, getting rid of a working ICE vehicle that's got life left in it is going to mean all the emissions that stem from its manufacture were for naught (though I'd hope it get sold to someone else who will continue to use it, not scrapped).

1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...

2: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/may/11/viral-imag...

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