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Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

davidexmachina.com

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Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#121
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind IF, Excel now has LET and LAMBDA. There is an n-ary AND function also; the documentation doesn't mention whether it's short-circuiting or not, and it doesn't return the last value if they are all true, just a Boolean true.

I haven't had the opportunity to use excel for a problem that would require a lambda yet. But for those interested https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ult... My two examples were more of a "show a clear correspondence between the syntax of excel and lisp" for the "if someone knows basic excel, you can introduce them to lisp."

If that worked for C programmers on Unix who use GNU Make, that would be cool.

   $(if $(filter foo.o,$(OBJS)),this,that)

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#122
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently tasked with moving a chevy bolt what was parked on the street too long to save it from being impounded. It had sat there for quite a long time and wasn't anywhere near full when it was parked. When I got it the battery was in the orange where it stops telling you how much range is left and just says find a charger. I belive this kicks in at the 15-20 miles remaining range. I moved the car about 10 mile…

This is not true. Rule of thumb is 4-5mi per hour on 120AC. I drive a Leaf and charge exclusively at home on 120AC, zero problems keeping up with my non-bicycle-friendly commute. If I needed to I could put in a 220 charger for a couple hundred bucks and a few hours of time, but I just don’t.

It is true, and your rule of thumb backs it up.

The chevy bolt has a range of ~260 miles. Divide by 4mi per hour charging and get ~60 hours of charging.

I'll allow that my bit about the bike was slightly hyperbolic.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#123

The "best" figures for a petrol car is 39mpg, which seems a bit low. My (diesel) car will do over 50, and it's over 10 years old and isn't famously economical.

Petrol is not diesel, so not sure how your datapoint relates. Which petrol cars get more than 39mpg? Also, were diesel cars only getting those high mpg due to cheating the emissions limits? I never saw them in the US.

Lots of hybrid sedans, eg Prius, Corolla, Ioniq, Insight Granted I think the only non-hybrid ICE getting 39mpg or better is the Mitsubishi Mirage.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#125
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Rule of thumb is 4-5mi per hour on 120AC. I drive a Leaf and charge exclusively at home on 120AC, zero problems keeping up with my non-bicycle-friendly commute. If I needed to I could put in a 220 charger for a couple hundred bucks and a few hours of time, but I just don’t.

It is true, and your rule of thumb backs it up. The chevy bolt has a range of ~260 miles. Divide by 4mi per hour charging and get ~60 hours of charging. I'll allow that my bit about the bike was slightly hyperbolic.

I was a little taken aback first time I charged my Bolt up with the 120V charger on an standard outdoor outlet. The time estimate said “9 AM” but I didn’t notice that it meant 9 AM two days from now.

I still only use the 120V outdoor outlet charger, since my usage is infrequent and adequately served by the 0.9 kW/hr charging, but it helps to know that a full charge does take something like 55 hours.

On the (hasn’t happened yet) occasion that I need more range than that, there’s a variety of level 2 and 3 chargers easily accessible in the area.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#126
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Rule of thumb is 4-5mi per hour on 120AC. I drive a Leaf and charge exclusively at home on 120AC, zero problems keeping up with my non-bicycle-friendly commute. If I needed to I could put in a 220 charger for a couple hundred bucks and a few hours of time, but I just don’t.

It is true, and your rule of thumb backs it up. The chevy bolt has a range of ~260 miles. Divide by 4mi per hour charging and get ~60 hours of charging. I'll allow that my bit about the bike was slightly hyperbolic.

Average commute is 40 mile round trip so 10 hours of charging.

A top up fast(-ish) charge then becomes something you need to do about as often as visiting a gas station in an ICE.

EVs generally shouldn't be run to 0 or charged to 100%, so this works out well if you have a suitable parking spot.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#127
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even my LEAF (which has one of the worst battery management systems in terms of having passive cooling only) is 7.5 years old and has around 85% of its original capacity.

I guess I don’t understand why that’s acceptable. 15% degradation takes you from what 350 miles from full to just shy of 300. How much worse is it in the winter? None of those things happen in ICE vehicles that are much cheaper than even the cheapest BEV.

If your regular commute is below 200-300 miles (I hope so!) it doesn't even affect your daily use at all.

I'm not saying it's great, but just want to highlight that EV batteries don't fail as quickly and catastrophically as you may expect from batteries in consumer electronics.

EVs aren't cheap yet, but overall cost of ownership can make sense. Other components of EV drive train are usually more reliable (fewer moving parts, not exposed to outside elements as much), and cost of fuel can be much cheaper. And switch to EVs is also motivated by factors that have indirect costs, like air quality and energy independence.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

search '3-phase 220/240 volt EV charging USA' @Goo https://www.google.com/search?q='3-phase 220/240 volt EV cha... >

Search it for what? How is this a useful comment? Yes, the US has 3-phase 220/240 volt plugs. We call them "dryer plugs" out of habit and there aren't enough of them . Because they are "infrequent use"/"single use" plugs in the US most buildings don't have a lot of three phase circuits and expanding the number of three phase "dryer plugs" is relatively expensive. Expanding 120v plugs is much simpler in every class of…

All the dryer plugs I've seen are single phase. I don't think I've ever seen a household with 3 phase service. Our farm has 3 phase service but the house is still wired up to a single phase.

Using both sides of split phase is still single phase.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true, and your rule of thumb backs it up. The chevy bolt has a range of ~260 miles. Divide by 4mi per hour charging and get ~60 hours of charging. I'll allow that my bit about the bike was slightly hyperbolic.

Average commute is 40 mile round trip so 10 hours of charging. A top up fast(-ish) charge then becomes something you need to do about as often as visiting a gas station in an ICE. EVs generally shouldn't be run to 0 or charged to 100%, so this works out well if you have a suitable parking spot.

But that one fast charge takes 40 minutes, not the 5 minutes at a gas station.

It's totally workable, you can uausaly find something to do during that time, but I maintain that we are still one or two charging tech generations behind parity with gasoline.

Re: Should You Buy an EV? A calculator to figure it out

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this work? Brake pads don't seem like they should be different on an EV. It's really just the engine components that should have less wear and tear and those only come into play at the 30k and 60k mark

I drove down a hill 15 minutes and didn't use the breaks once. The display then said 'recovered 9x%'. It also feels less wasteful on the Autobahn as well because quick deceleration is also possible. The adaptive Speedcontrol can handle like 99% of the cases were cars slow down or switch into your lane. With the general speed limit in USA I think that should also be possible.makes driving much nicer

Adaptive cruise control in the us means jumping on the brakes every 30 seconds when someone goes straight from the on-ramp to the leftmost lane at 20 under the limit.

I only get to use my cruise control at night

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