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Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

nytimes.com

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Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#181

Post by pi-e-sigma »

eli wrote: post #144
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quick, someone tell that small rural community of 600 people they need public transportation! When people express opinions like this you immediately know they live in the city and think everyone else does too.

What percentage of Americans live in a community with 600 or fewer people? There are very few policy decisions that will be universally good for everyone. That doesn't automatically make them bad policies.

Doesn't exactly answer your question, but 20% of the US population is living in settlements with no more than 5000 inhabitants. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#182

Post by vdnkh »

PaulHoule wrote: post #63
xyst wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real blunder in this country is the lack of viable alternative transportation options in a majority of the nation. Visited NYC recently and didn’t need to rent a car. Primarily took the bus, ferry, and rail car/trains. In some cases I just walked from my hotel to the destination. Could have rented one of the e-bikes as well. Transportation costs for just 1 week were less than $100 (a quarter of this was because o…

... but a small apartment costs $4000 in NYC which would cover the payment, gas, insurance and everything on two or three big SUVs. Without some revolution in the cost structure of urban life, "transit friendly" is going to look like going from the frying pan to the fire for most people.

According to AAA, the average cost of owning a new car is $12k per year [0], and that's just for one car. So New Yorkers can put that extra $1000 per month towards housing. As a New Yorker, $4000 is pretty high. You'd typically see that in hot areas for 1br's with in-unit w/d. Most people, including myself, do not pay that much.

Also, interesting phrasing to make it seem like a "small nyc apartment" is a bad thing. I don't pay for expensive repairs, yard maintenance, or big ticket appliances. Most renters don't pay for heat either (at least not directly). Not to mention interest on a mortgage or property taxes. All costs totaled, living in NYC isn't strictly more expensive than living in a suburb.

[0] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2023/08/annual-new-car-ownership-co...

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#183

Post by eli »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #164
eli wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of Americans live in a community with 600 or fewer people? There are very few policy decisions that will be universally good for everyone. That doesn't automatically make them bad policies.

The real question you're asking is what percentage of people live in areas where public transportation isn't reasonable. it's a lot larger than you think, especially if you're a city dweller.

Most Americans are city dwellers. It's not even close. And the trend has been consistently towards increased urbanization since the country's founding.

I'm not arguing we should ignore rural communities, just that we shouldn't rule out ideas that work in cities because they don't work outside cities.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#184

Post by thfuran »

pkulak wrote: post #180
thfuran wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I'd say that all that proves is that there's so much demand for not needing to own a personal automobile! It really doesn't. NYC isn't $ARBITRARY_SUBURB except without obligatory car ownership.

I totally disagree. Density and transit are the defining traits of NYC. What's something else NYC offers that you can't find in a similarly sized, but spread out, population? Keeping in mind that the population of NYC is about that of the entire Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, or the entire state of Washington.

UN HQ, Wall Street, potentially one's family, etc. Cities just aren't fungible. There are way more reasons someone might prefer or be pushed towards one or another besides the traffic or transit.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#185

Post by natch »

mikestew wrote: post #77
natch wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This last quote just showcases a few people’s ignorance (at a minimum the author, the editor, and the person being quoted) of the fact that nobody needs a “charging station” at home. All you need is an outlet and a charging cable.

I have to assume you either don’t drive much, or don’t actually own an electric car. Those are the only explanations I have for making such an inaccurate (I hesitate to quote the word “ignorant“) statement. — Owner of an EV that would take days to charge on 120V

We own three BEVs for quite some years now and no ICE cars and I drive a lot so your assumptions are wrong right at the start.

You seem to be making a common mistake of thinking that one always needs to charge from empty to full in every charge. Not so. A common scenario would be arriving home with 190 miles of range left on the battery, and plugging in. After a few minutes, you have to go out again, no problem. Eventually you come home for the night with 160 miles of charge left, and plug in again. Overnight you get let’s say (super slow case) 40 miles and now you’re at 200 or more. Not the problem you are envisioning.

You may also be forgetting that public fast chargers which can be used in a pinch do exist.

220 is also an option so let’s not restrict ourselves to 110/120.

But if we must talk about 110, I’ll point out that we survived just fine for 2 years with 2 BEVs sharing (alternating cars) ONE 110 outlet in an apartment after laboring, like many mistakenly do, under the false assumption that you still carry that it was not an option, for an entire year, before we realized that it was totally doable. It worked great. We also used fast chargers when needed but they were not needed very often.

Ignorance is definitely a thing, but it works both ways.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#186

Post by TheCoelacanth »

engineer_22 wrote: post #133
smileysteve wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you look back 70 years and realize that many small towns only existed because they had rail (passenger and goods). (and/or private bus service). Turns out, getting your goods to market before every person had a car was a requirement.

I think that puts the cart before the horse. Why build a railroad to no-where? Surely the small towns pre-existed the railroad.

From one big town on a navigable waterway to another big town on a navigable waterway. The small towns in the middle came later.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#187

Post by mdorazio »

tw04 wrote: post #123
mdorazio wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, though. The average American drives 37 miles a day [1]. Your 48 miles overnight is more than enough 9 months out of the year even in a place like Chicago. A once a week trip to a faster charger or just a top-off when you're at a store / workplace that has chargers would cover the other 3 months. For places with less extreme winters than Chicago (the vast majority of US population centers), it's a non-issu…

48 miles assumes 12 hours of charging every day, in 50 degree or warmer weather. You haven't covered how you're planning on securing the charger or getting power to it for someone that lives in an apartment. I have multiple EVs in my household, I'm completely onboard. People acting like they're for everyone today are delusional with the current state of charging infrastructure in the US. We've had the unfortunate nee…

We’re not talking about apartments. The parent post specifically looked at having access to a standard outlet.

If you live in an apartment without an electrified garage then of course the BEV use case is less likely to work for you. And I totally agree on public chargers. Non-Tesla is a complete crapshoot and probably will be for several more years until the adoption curve forces the infrastructure to improve.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#188

Post by natch »

joezydeco wrote: post #107
_ea1k wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used an EV for years with a 120V. It also would "take days to charge", but 12 hours would net ~24%. It is surprisingly usable, especially if there is a nearby DCFC bottom charge at if you ever get a little low. Of course, there are caveats. If it is cold and the vehicle has to be charged at the street, charge times will be much longer. But he's right that people often underestimate the usefulness of L1 charging, ev…

If the vehicle is cold soaked and only has a minimal amount of charge left, won't most of it be consumed by the EV trying to preheat the battery? Seems like you're then trapped in a corner case that you can't get out of: not enough energy to allow for any kind of charge at all.

Preheating is not an absolute necessity for charging. It is done because it helps the charge go faster.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#189

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

eli wrote: post #183
PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question you're asking is what percentage of people live in areas where public transportation isn't reasonable. it's a lot larger than you think, especially if you're a city dweller.

Most Americans are city dwellers. It's not even close. And the trend has been consistently towards increased urbanization since the country's founding. I'm not arguing we should ignore rural communities, just that we shouldn't rule out ideas that work in cities because they don't work outside cities.

most people are not disabled, and yet somehow catering to the disabled is written into law.

this is not an argument for why we should be ignoring EV's in lieu of transportation, which is what I originally responded to.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#190

Post by Corrado »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #69
_ea1k wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of them didn't buy them. There are a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers up there and many use the Hertz Uber rental program ( https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/hertz/tes... ). I'd guess that most of these would use superchargers as their idle lots to top up between rides. I'd guess that this usually works pretty well, but with winter and a higher than normal number of broken chargers, those became more c…

From what I heard, a lot of those chargers weren't broken. What happened in Chicago was that Tesla drivers plugged in, and the car didn't immediately start charging because it had to warm the battery first. So they did the universal signal for a broken charger and left the cord dangling rather than hooking it. It then froze. IIRC on a Tesla the car screen displays that it's warming the battery, but the app on the pho…

> IIRC on a Tesla the car screen displays that it's warming the battery, but the app on the phone doesn't. The phone screen just says that it's charging with 0 amps.

This isn't quite accurate. The Tesla app on iOS at least shows the battery preconditioning.

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