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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

#211

Post by barbazoo »

nikau wrote: post #186
tapoxi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an early adopter, the benefit of less maintenance, home "refueling", and the fact that an EV is more fun to drive offsets the hassle. We've done a few road trips in it, and while road trip charging is annoying (we have a VW ID4, so the CCS network) its still worth dealing with because we enjoy the EV. Personally I think right now EVs are a great second car for almost everyone because you get the benefits of an EV…

> benefits of an EV but can fall back to your gasoline car for trips. Why not just get a pehv

Having both, ICE and EV tech under the hood means more technology that can fail. Heavier than either, less EV range, possibly no subsidy in some jurisdictions, things like that.

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

#212

Post by vel0city »

alistairSH wrote: post #104
iknowstuff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Model 3 can travel that distance without charging. There is also a supercharger right in the middle. https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=9daba0ea-ad2e-449...

Sure and that’s the best case. Just about anything else needs a multi-hour detour. Anyway, my only point was there are still some gaps, even in the relatively dense eastern seaboard. But not many.

There's a Sheetz in Stephens City that adds like 10 minutes to get to. Add 15-20min for actually charging. If you do it both ways, that's probably less than 1 hour extra on a 6 hour drive. Hardly a "multi-hour" detour. And if your camping area has power, you probably don't even need to stop at all.

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

#213

Post by borski »

steveBK123 wrote: post #196
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.

Right, and to those who might think "hey 90% isn't so bad". Imagine a light switch or sink faucet working "90% of the time". Or the gas pump working "90% of the time", knowing that there are no other pumps in a 30 mile radius.

So charge before you are down to 30 miles?

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

#214

Post by vel0city »

aksss wrote: post #113
alistairSH wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A 2kW generator will get you like 6ish miles per hour running. A gallon of gas will get you less than three hours of running, so probably less than 18 miles or so.

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

#215

Post by QuarterReptile »

degrees57 wrote: post #174
k8sToGo wrote: post #138

Yes same happened to me. After about 3 years I went back to a gas car. After the vanity / hobby enthusiasm diminishes, charging and the current limitations become just very frustrating to deal with every day. To be fair I made the frustrating experience mostly in non-Tesla cars. However, Tesla has other things that can be frustrating.

I'm quite happy with my PHEV. I charge at night at home, and have even gone a whole month without needing to get gasoline (in town driving only). But when I need to drive a long distance, it's a complete non-issue to find a gas station after 550 miles.

>have even gone a whole month without needing to get gasoline

Every time I consider getting a plug-in hybrid, I'm reminded that they're not for me. Even with daily commuting, I only fill my 12gal tank 10 times annually. I've put, at most, $8000 of gas into my car in the last decade.

I want the geeky toy, but it's just not sensible. If I want to make 50mpg instead of 35, I just have to drive carefully and draft behind trucks.

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

#216

Post by retrocryptid »

vel0city wrote: post #203
retrocryptid wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother's new Tesla cost $76,000 more than my used Fiat 500. The fiat gets something like 26mpg in the city and 34 on the highway. If gas is $5/gal, then it's going to be 400,000 miles or so before the cost of gas equals the $76,000 price differential. (It occurs to me I didn't even factor in the cost of the electricity to pay for miles his Tesla drives.) I'm also driving a car with about half to one fourth the en…

Your brother didn't need to spend >$76,000 more than you did on a Tesla. I see used Tesla's in my area for sale <$30k.

Except that the Tesla he wanted at the time he wanted to purchase it was $76,000 more than my Fiat. The existence of $30k Teslas at other points in spacetime do not change that fact.

If we rework the example with a $30k Tesla, that's still $26k more than my used car, which brings the break-even point down to about 150,000 miles (if you assume electricity going into the EV is without cost) or somewhere around 225,000 miles if you go with the previous poster's assumption that price per mile is one third of an ICE engine.

I (absolutely) got a cranking deal on my Fiat. But if you compare a new Tesla at $35,000 with a new Camry, it (the Tesla) is starting to look more compelling, but as long as ICE vehicles have functionality left in them, it's probably more environmentally conscious and economically sound to drive them.

That being said... if you want a Tesla, get a Tesla. But if your objective is to drive around cheaply, I don't think it's the cheapest option.

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

#217

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

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…

Perhaps I should have clarified, but I didn't need to pump gas. I had plenty of range to leave. The point I apparently failed to make was that the range of my ICE meant I didn't have to consider or plan for this contingency. In fact I used my car to charge some electronics and still had ample range to get back to civilization a few hours away.

If it were an EV then I would have had to find the nearest place to charge that did have power, which isn't trivial.

I agree if it's just travel between major population centers then it's not as big of a deal. There just happens to be a ton of travel that isn't between major population centers, and I'm not talking about camping.

Simply put an EV is just not as useful today as I wish I were. I'd just like to be able to visit family without getting stranded.

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

#218

Post by vel0city »

roflchoppa wrote: post #179

So one of the two phases of power that comes into my house went out. I was chatting with the lad that came to fix it from PGE. I wanted to know how much it cost to update my 125amp main panel to 200 amp. He responded , 30-50k after all the trenching work. At home charging is gonna be a pickle for older homes… esp if you have powerlines that are trenched.

You don't need 200A to charge at home. I've got 150A service and have no problems charging at 32A.

Even at 12A charging at home is still pretty viable. 12A * 240V = 2.88kW. I'll round down to like 2.5kW for some charging losses, average at least 3.5mi/kWh, and that's 8.75mi of range an hour. 8 hours of scheduled charging and that's 70mi of charge.

Are you pulling over 100A of power at midnight normally?

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

#219

Post by [deleted] »

vel0city wrote: post #218
roflchoppa wrote: post #179

So one of the two phases of power that comes into my house went out. I was chatting with the lad that came to fix it from PGE. I wanted to know how much it cost to update my 125amp main panel to 200 amp. He responded , 30-50k after all the trenching work. At home charging is gonna be a pickle for older homes… esp if you have powerlines that are trenched.

You don't need 200A to charge at home. I've got 150A service and have no problems charging at 32A. Even at 12A charging at home is still pretty viable. 12A * 240V = 2.88kW. I'll round down to like 2.5kW for some charging losses, average at least 3.5mi/kWh, and that's 8.75mi of range an hour. 8 hours of scheduled charging and that's 70mi of charge. Are you pulling over 100A of power at midnight normally?

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by m463 »

rzimmerman wrote: post #176
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…

It's hard to explain how much better the Tesla charging experience is to someone that hasn't tried both. As frustrating as the company (and the leadership) can be, the car is great and the charger network is outstanding. There are superchargers everywhere. You can get anywhere in the US without having to worry about it. You type your destination into the car and it plans a route for you. It picks stops strategically…

My experience was:

- evgo was decent, but had limited capacity (usually 2 L3 per location)

- chargepoint was usually pretty decent, but mostly was an L2 charger network

- blink was L3, but their chargers were ALWAYS broken.

that was 3 years ago, and switching to a tesla changed a few things:

- the range of the car was higher

- superchargers were in more locations

- had more stalls per location

- were faster at charging

- were more reliable

- one small detail worth mentioning - the other systems had payment networks that were frequently part of the problem - either preventing charging, or having you fiddle with things, or calling in to manually start things

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