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I’m ready to trade in my electric car

latimes.com

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Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#111

Post by Isolus »

datadeft wrote: post #92
cs702 wrote: post #19

At the moment, ONLY Tesla has decent supercharging (i.e., fast-charging) infrastructure in the US: https://www.tesla.com/findus I regularly go on ~300-mile drives that need only a single charging stop, lasting 15-20 minutes, on my Tesla EV. By the time I've gone to the bathroom and gotten a drink, the supercharger has added 100-150+ miles of range and the EV is ready to go. All the stalls always work. No other EV bra…

I am not sure when the car industry reaches that iteration where you can swap out batteries. It already happened for the electric rollers and it is freakin amazing. I think many of the electric car skeptics would convert if there was a way to "re-charge" the car within 5-10 minutes. The batteries would be also happier.

NIO ist doing this with it's Power Swap Stations. But there are too few to really use them.

Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#112

Post by jfengel »

datadeft wrote: post #92
cs702 wrote: post #19

At the moment, ONLY Tesla has decent supercharging (i.e., fast-charging) infrastructure in the US: https://www.tesla.com/findus I regularly go on ~300-mile drives that need only a single charging stop, lasting 15-20 minutes, on my Tesla EV. By the time I've gone to the bathroom and gotten a drink, the supercharger has added 100-150+ miles of range and the EV is ready to go. All the stalls always work. No other EV bra…

I am not sure when the car industry reaches that iteration where you can swap out batteries. It already happened for the electric rollers and it is freakin amazing. I think many of the electric car skeptics would convert if there was a way to "re-charge" the car within 5-10 minutes. The batteries would be also happier.

Battery swap seems unlikely. It's just an excuse for "skeptics".

The use case for swaps is small. The vast majority of trips are short. Trips long enough to require a recharge often require a long stop for the driver.

People have priced in the notion of spending some time each week pouring flammable liquids into their vehicle. If we had started with electric cars everyone would find it disgusting and far too frequent. The speed of it for rare use cases would not impress.

Swappable batteries will not change that. They are too expensive and they limit design too much. Reducing the charge time to five minutes or even zero minutes would not change the minds of people who would simply swap to their next excuse.

Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#113

Post by aksss »

alistairSH wrote: post #54
aksss wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that it’s wildly impractical. Some people carry battery-powered emergency jump starters for their ICE car. This just seems like the reciprocal backup power solution. Carrying a generator seems very practical to me if you are putting yourself in situations where it could be not just useful but the difference between you being stranded vs self-sufficient. Nobody said that owning an electric vehicle require…

How are you going to carry a generator in a typical sedan or crossover? In the trunk, next to your luggage? Now your clothes smell like fuel. On the roof? Now your range took a 15% hit. On a trailer? Range hit, plus you have to store the trailer at home. As a one-off thing, like driving into a town after a storm, might work. But it’s not a solution to range anxiety generally.

Re: size - you can buy 2kW generators that are scarcely bigger than a regulation piece of carry-on luggage, so yeah, store it in the trunk.

Worried about the smell of fuel from the empty generator you never use? If so, wrap it up in garbage bags. Remember - it's there for emergencies. Odds are good you'll rarely ever use it. And don't transport it with fuel - get the fuel when you can't find a charger but can find a gas station. Let's be sensible about it.

The comment is in reply to someone describing their experience driving to a town that was without power for 24 hours due to a storm. This "road tripping into the unknown" is where taking a generator is applicable, not general range anxiety.

Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#114

Post by sp332 »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #109

> That means mapping out charging stations in a comprehensive, thoughtful way … not leaving it to the whims of the commercial sector, … It will require cities to develop plans for how and where to locate public chargers I spoke at public hearing last year in favor of an EV ordinance that my city passed. I believe that if we are to involve government with EV adoption, which is necessary, we need to be prepared for bac…

Threatening someone’s livelihood is not a good way to get them on your side. It has a real “some of you may die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take” feel. On the other hand, if you really are willing to leave these people behind in your march of progress, be prepared to defend tourself.

Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#115

Post by ericd »

borski wrote: post #51
tgma wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, even in Tesla heavy Northern California supercharger wait times are often zero or close to zero unless you consistently hit the peak times. I don’t know if you have stats or bad first hand experience or simply generalizing reports from holiday peak times off hand. The expansion of superchargers to non-Teslas may indeed cause problems. So far I have seen perhaps one total non-Tesla vehicle. If anything, t…

The implication that Teslas were somehow superior and outside the category of other EVs. I don’t hate Teslas; I just consider them another EV, with some pros (the supercharger network) and some cons. Elon and the FSD nonsense is one such con. I only brought it up because he just promised it again by the end of this year, and it set off a spate of people going “Tesla is the best” when we’ve all seen this story before.…

I think their innovations are mostly going towards scaling supply and manufacturing now. They’ve scaled their large-can batteries, they’re finally starting in earnest on Semi and Cybertruck. And FSD has been improving.

To your earlier point, I have literally never once had to wait to get a supercharger, the route planner takes number of open stalls into account. The non-Tesla experience, idk, and we only use them on road trips, so we’re generally not going to any inside big cities, so maybe that’s the difference. Also not in the Bay Area, so they’re not the local “Camry” yet.

Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#117

Post by [deleted] »

gharman wrote: post #49
shireboy wrote: post #18

This to me is still the weak link. It’s not just chargers, it’s 30+ minute charge time. As great as electric is, an extra hour in the car on a road-trip with 3 kids is a tough sell. More chargers would help but it’s really battery tech and charge times that need a few more innovations before I’d consider for a car I might take a road trip in.

> it’s 30+ minute charge time. As great as electric is, an extra hour in the car on a road-trip with 3 kids is a tough sell. I dissent! Just did a 2-day (each way) road trip with young children and those charging breaks are pretty great and well-spaced for letting them run around and blow off steam. It’s not such a bad idea for the adults either…

[deleted]

Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#118

Post by Marsymars »

avalys wrote: post #55
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently went on a trip where the power was out at our destination for over 24 hours due to a storm. The nearest town was ~20 minutes away and likely did not have any fast charging infrastructure. Even if it did, it's a pretty bad spot to be in, especially if you have young kids. I have been considering getting an electric car but that trip made me realize I'd have to reserve the EV for urban travel only. Otherwise…

If the power is out at your destination you're unlikely to be able to operate the gas pumps either. Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous. Is your typical vacation, like, traveling to Florida to experience a hurricane making landfall? If you do a lot of travel to remote locations and camping and hiking and things like that, yes, an EV will proba…

> Even if you are into the remote/outdoorsy stuff, an EV is a perfectly viable second car.

This has been my conclusion - the main problem at that point being the sheer cost. My household’s current secondary car is one that cost $10k a decade ago. (Two years old at the time of purchase.) There’s no EV that’s even in the same ballpark for cost-per-km or cost-per-year. (And for a second city-only car, they almost all come with far more battery capacity than is required, adding weight and expense. The Mazda MX-30 EV is probably closest from a technical standpoint with 160 km of range, but still has a cost problem, starting at $40k locally after taxes and credits.)

Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#119

Post by comte7092 »

iknowstuff wrote: post #90
comte7092 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The norm is honestly that over 90% of the time, there are no issues. The thing is, when there is an issue, it’s at minimum a huge pain in the ass, and a complete nightmare at worst.

If you have better data than them feel free to post it. Only 50% of attempts to charge at EA succeed without a problem according to their chart.

I’m talking about personal experience.

Is my experience universal? Of course not.

However, the data on that page has massive sampling bias.

Re: I’m ready to trade in my electric car

#120

Post by speedgoose »

CarbonCycles wrote: post #116

To make things worse, the neighborhood crack heads have discovered that the charging cables can bring in some decent money. Neighborhoods are having problems with theft, and from what I've been told, those charging cables aren't exactly cheap to constantly replace.

In Europe we bring the cable to AC chargers. DC cables are stolen once in a while but it’s a lot more rare, it’s not that much copper in them now that they are liquid cooled.
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