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Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

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Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#391

Post by gnicholas »

sokoloff wrote: post #304
gnicholas wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a used C-MAX plug-in hybrid and was told that with the EV plan offered by PG&E, I'd save money versus gas. Only after I purchased did I learn that the EV plan gives you cheaper charging at night only if you're willing to stomach very high rates during the day. Since I work from home a lot and have a toddler, this is a non-starter for my family. So we pay roughly the same amount per mile with electricity as f…

I'm in MA (home of $0.20/kWh electricity) and my LEAF gets about 21 miles per dollar of energy. A comparable gas car would get ~13 miles per dollar of gasoline. I think you're likely still saving money on the electric portion of your driving, as CA rates seem to be slightly lower than MA rates from a cursory Google search.

We pay a bit more than this for electricity, on the margin (they give you low rates on the first chunk but then it goes up from there).

But most of the difference is that our vehicle is nowhere near as efficient as yours. The 9kW/h battery only goes about 18-20 miles on a charge, and it costs more than the $1 that you pay to get that many miles.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#392

Post by leetcrew »

udfalkso wrote: post #305
leetcrew wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would consider buying an electric car if it were as fast as my hot hatch, had comparable range, and weighed less than 3000 lbs. i doubt that will happen for quite some time.

Why is the weight of concern to you?

massive acceleration in a straight line gets old really fast, and you can't legally enjoy such a car on public roads. any performance oriented car over $25k already has too much power to fully appreciate this way. once a car is "fast enough", weight is the single most important factor for real world driving enjoyment.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#393

Post by pja »

dzdt wrote: post #340
zizee wrote: post #45

I think that electric car adoption is going to have similar characteristics to digital cameras. I remember playing with an early digital camera and seeing a poor replacement for film, but with obvious benefits. Back then it was common to hear "serious" photographers pooh-poohing digital, and how it's many drawbacks would mean it would remain niche, and never replace film. It didn't take long and digial cameras improv…

"I live in an apartment, I can't charge one on the street." The electric car revolution is going to come at the same time as the self-driving revolution. That will change the calculus of parking significantly. No longer does your car need to be parked right next to your building to be convenient: it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button. So charging infrastructure doesn't have to be…

it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button

The roads around where I live are /already/ at nose to tail capacity at the times I might actually want such a service. What do you think is going to happen when you add electric cars travelling from wherever they're being stored to the customer?

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#394

Post by ryanmarsh »

sokoloff wrote: post #310
ryanmarsh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most urban areas hooking up new electrical service does not usually mean breaking concrete. I think you'll be amazed how quickly cities deploy charging infrastructure once they realize the premium they can charge for the same parking spot.

What's the "premium" that a typical consumer would pay? Take 15K miles/year at 4 miles/kWh or 30 miles/gal. 3750kWh or 500 gallons of gas. At MA electric rates, the electricity is $750, the gas is about $1500. It's unlikely that an electric car consumer would pay more than the $750 delta for the electric charging spot, and would likely be willing to pay only a smaller figure because they are unlikely to do all of the…

Any infrastructure spend that paid for itself in a year would be like winning the lottery. Infrastructure investment is evaluated on a timescale more akin with geology.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#395

Post by skybrian »

pja wrote: post #393
dzdt wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I live in an apartment, I can't charge one on the street." The electric car revolution is going to come at the same time as the self-driving revolution. That will change the calculus of parking significantly. No longer does your car need to be parked right next to your building to be convenient: it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button. So charging infrastructure doesn't have to be…

it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button The roads around where I live are /already/ at nose to tail capacity at the times I might actually want such a service. What do you think is going to happen when you add electric cars travelling from wherever they're being stored to the customer?

If it makes carpooling and/or getting to public transportation easier, it could improve things.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#396

Post by sokoloff »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #394
sokoloff wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the "premium" that a typical consumer would pay? Take 15K miles/year at 4 miles/kWh or 30 miles/gal. 3750kWh or 500 gallons of gas. At MA electric rates, the electricity is $750, the gas is about $1500. It's unlikely that an electric car consumer would pay more than the $750 delta for the electric charging spot, and would likely be willing to pay only a smaller figure because they are unlikely to do all of the…

Any infrastructure spend that paid for itself in a year would be like winning the lottery. Infrastructure investment is evaluated on a timescale more akin with geology.

Agreed with the first sentence, but I still don't think the math pencils out. I'm not going to pay City X $750 (on top of the existing parking charge and electricity) so I can use their charging network. The figure I'm willing to pay specifically for the EVSE access is probably more like $100.

Barring significant over-subscription, that's still a ~10 year payback. With massive over-subscription, it doesn't become a reliable charging source. (My prior post, which I'll leave unedited, was unclear/insufficient in stating it was longer than a one-year payback.)

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#397

Post by darkerside »

dzdt wrote: post #340
zizee wrote: post #45

I think that electric car adoption is going to have similar characteristics to digital cameras. I remember playing with an early digital camera and seeing a poor replacement for film, but with obvious benefits. Back then it was common to hear "serious" photographers pooh-poohing digital, and how it's many drawbacks would mean it would remain niche, and never replace film. It didn't take long and digial cameras improv…

"I live in an apartment, I can't charge one on the street." The electric car revolution is going to come at the same time as the self-driving revolution. That will change the calculus of parking significantly. No longer does your car need to be parked right next to your building to be convenient: it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button. So charging infrastructure doesn't have to be…

You're coupling a very complex solution (self driving) to a much simpler one (electric vehicles) in order to solve a niche problem (urban dwellers without garage parking) who could either be served with other potential solutions, like charging at workplace, or might simply become even less likely to own a car than they already are.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#398

Post by josteink »

rhino369 wrote: post #363
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The batteries are no good in really cold climates" If that's true of EVs (I have no idea, but it is/was true of the batteries in digital cameras), then it's very odd that EVs are so popular in Norway. Incentives can only get you so far if the product doesn't work well in local conditions.

Norway has extreme incentives. EV’s are functional in northern climates, they have lower range.

> Norway has extreme incentives

To expand on that, electric cars in Norway has so extreme incentives...

That price-wise Tesla Model S is not competing with Ferrari, Lambourghini, BMW M3, Mercedes Amg’s or anything like that.

It’s competing with a mid range Audi A4.

Basically, regular petrol cars are so heavily taxed that EVs (which are exempt from all these taxes), can be a luxury car in any country on earth and still come out relatively cheap in Norway.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#399

Post by labster »

josteink wrote: post #398
rhino369 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway has extreme incentives. EV’s are functional in northern climates, they have lower range.

> Norway has extreme incentives To expand on that, electric cars in Norway has so extreme incentives... That price-wise Tesla Model S is not competing with Ferrari, Lambourghini, BMW M3, Mercedes Amg’s or anything like that. It’s competing with a mid range Audi A4. Basically, regular petrol cars are so heavily taxed that EVs (which are exempt from all these taxes), can be a luxury car in any country on earth and stil…

So, Norway actually makes car buyers pay for externalities of hydrocarbon consumption?

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#400

Post by p1mrx »

sokoloff wrote: post #316
p1mrx wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ClipperCreek sells EV chargers with a UART interface to set the charging rate (in 25% increments), so it should be relatively straightforward to stuff a Raspberry Pi or something in there. But that option costs an extra $184, and the UART protocol is only available under NDA, which probably makes it difficult to open source.

The J1772 spec is well documented and supports the "advertisement" of maximum charging current. You could add the capability to something like OpenEVSE. https://www.openevse.com/

At the moment, I'm pretty sure I have enough panel capacity for a plain old EVSE, but if I do need something controllable, then OpenEVSE looks really interesting. Thanks.

Here's an example of OpenEVSE tracking solar capacity, which is basically equivalent to panel load management:

https://github.com/OpenEVSE/ESP8266_WiFi_v2.x#solar-pv-diver...

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