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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

#161

Post by elihu »

junofan wrote: post #83
elihu wrote: post #70

I think part of the problem here is that the public and government officials don't treat lack of charging infrastructure and broken chargers as an emergency. If a tree falls across a major road, you can bet there will be work crews showing up within hours to cut it up and move it aside to restore access, because a road with a tree across it doesn't function as a road anymore. We should treat lack of working charging…

Ideally EV owners would obtain a permit before blocking a highway. I would expect the violence to come from the state.

I'm actually not sure what the legal criteria are around blocking roads. I mean, it's not unusual for protests to block roads, but there's usually some amount of rule-bending when it comes to protests -- that's often the point. I don't know if you can literally apply for a permit to have a protest that blocks a highway in most jurisdictions. I'd imagine in most cases you'd have the police come and give everyone a ticket and/or tow their vehicles.

There is a significant recent precedent when it comes to vehicles blocking roads: there was the

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

> "Beginning January 22, hundreds of vehicles formed convoys from several points and traversed Canadian provinces before converging on Ottawa on January 29, 2022, with a rally at Parliament Hill. The convoys were joined by thousands of pedestrian protesters. Several offshoot protests blockaded provincial capitals and border crossings with the United States."

...

> "Between February 17 and 20, a large joint-operation police presence in Ottawa arrested organizers and protesters, removed parked vehicles, and dismantled blockades from Ottawa streets. By February 21, most of the protesters had been cleared from Ottawa."

So, if you're right wing, you can shut down major cities for weeks with minimal consequences. I don't think EV owners protesting the sorry state of infrastructure would get the same treatment.

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

#162

Post by cs702 »

edbaskerville wrote: post #159
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…

Non-Tesla supercharger pilot: https://www.tesla.com/support/non-tesla-supercharging

As soon as the charging experience is as good as Tesla's for other EVs, including BMW, MB, and Audi, I will consider them :-)

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

#163

Post by ericd »

jaclaz wrote: post #12
obloid wrote: post #5

Once newer high density batteries make it into cars and we can get 500+ mile ranges I think it will help with a lot of these concerns. When your car's range is longer than most people are willing or able to drive in a single day then you can charge overnight at your destination without worrying about finding charging stations on the road.

But you still need finding charging stations at your destination. This sounds a lot like an intentionally exagerated article, but the underlying issue might be real, if the (publicly available) charging stations do not increase in number according to the increase of number of EV's circulating there will be problems. On the other hand if many more charging stations are created than what is needed, there might be a was…

Thick extension cable and mobile charger on a 120V outlet has been generally enough for us at eg cabins.

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

#164

Post by ericd »

borski wrote: post #136
ericd wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FWIW, the Lucid and Ioniq navs also take stall availability into account.

Ah cool. Not sure why you’ve been hitting waits at superchargers, maybe it’s just a Bay Area thing?

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

#165

Post by ncr100 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #25
_xerces_ wrote: post #7

She's not blowing past any muscle cars in her Kia Nero EV with a 0-60 of 6.5-7 seconds. I guess everyone in an EV assumes their vehicle is superfast?

It's enough to blow past a late-70s Ferrari. Car enthusiasts don't appreciate how good we have it today.

0-60 is not a 1970's Ferrari thing.

Ferrari of most eras, until recently, were a "go fast slowly and in the style of a Ferrari" type of car.

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

#167

Post by frumper »

noogle wrote: post #105
stryker7001 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we had a chevy bolt, lived in condo, parked in a parking garage in Cow Hollow in SF. Had no problems charging either at work, or at a charging station down by the marina. We drove it to Yosemite a couple times, drove to Paso, and Napa all for fun. Got rid of it because we didn't need a car while working from home. Long story short, it was useful and viable even though we didn't have charging.

The question is not whether you can make it work, but how much effort do you have to put into using an EV. Vehicles are bought to make life more convenient. To introduce constraints and time waste you can just use public transportation.

You’re not using effortless public transportation to take day trips to Napa or Yosemite. Not having a car has constraints too.

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

#168

Post by noogle »

mkozlows wrote: post #160
noogle wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the article seems to be right - wait with EVs until they improve. Why suffer the pains of an early adopter?

I think it is absolutely true that people who don't want to be early adopters shouldn't be. At the same time: I had no regrets about being a DVD early adopter, because (hot take incoming) DVDs were in fact better than VHS tapes, and not dealing with VHS's badness was really nice, even if it was also annoying in some ways. Similarly, there are going to be people who are happy being EV early adopters because the (very…

It's a different risk: if your novel DVD player did not work, you could just watch something else. If your novel EV doesn't charge, you may be left stranded, miss a flight or fail to reach medical care. Moreover, no government planned to ban VCRs using those early problematic DVD players as a justification.

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

#169

Post by erik_seaberg »

borski wrote: post #38
tgma wrote: post #8

Specifically the author is talking about a non-Tesla EV, one that had the known defect of lack of a proper charging infrastructure at point of purchase. Nothing to see here. [Talking about Teslas and “EVs” as if they are the same category is like talking about Computer Science and “STEM” in a single category. Often disingenuous and draws the wrong conclusion.]

Nonsense. Superchargers are packed; while they work, you’re waiting in line for a charge. Meanwhile, while some folks have had issues with EA, I haven’t, and even if I did, I’d just use a Chargepoint, EVGo, Shell Recharge, or any number of other chargers as needed. Not to mention that I can buy a Tesla charger adapter for like $60 that lets me use destination chargers at hotels, and that Tesla is opening up to CCS ch…

How do destination chargers at hotels work? It seems like only seedy motels have parking spaces right outside the room where you could use its outlets. Are nicer hotels starting to build a few dedicated chargers somewhere in their parking lot? Do you reserve one when you book a room?

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

#170

Post by yarg »

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.

Never - Tesla's gone the opposite way and started structurally integrating its batteries.
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