I rent a home right now (and I've rented a half house before). So yeah, that's a challenge.
The other option (and I do this a lot) is to just go to whole foods and use their monster-fast chargers. You can do a whole car in just a few hours with an L3 charger, it's amazing. This is more expensive than using any kind of outlet, but so is gas.
Please forgive the imposition, but if you live in the dense and expensive part of the city, you probably are best off simply not owning a car.
>go to whole foods and use their monster-fast chargers. You can do a whole car in just a few hours
I'm sorry but things like this always come up and I can't keep my head from shaking at these types of comments.
So, you don't have other options to charge and simply go somewhere else where there is a charger that can do a car in "a few hours"?!
So, I guess you say if you can do it, everybody else in that situation can, too? A short thought experiment, if everybody else did exactly that, how often would you say you will find your charger occupied? And since it is "a few hours" per car, you are in for a nice long shopping spree in whole foods while you wait for the guy in front of you to finally drive off. IF you are already next in line, that is. "Hi Honey, sorry, it'll be a couple of hours till I'm home. What? No, I'm not working late, I just want to gas up the EV and there is one person in front of me."
And before you say "But there are two or three chargers there" I say: And all would be constantly occupied if EV adoption would take of as many here wanted it to. The only way this could technically happen would if if at a snap of a finger suddenly every parking space had a charger available. Then the EV industry could go "Buy an EV today, no matter where you park, you can always charge it" Before something like that is in place, the odd charger at whole foods ONLY works as a solution as long as only a tiny subset of driver choose an EV. If not, you will find yourself cursing all the other EV drivers that constantly block your charging spot and you curse at anyone who still tries to drum up support for EV adoption. Cause that just means an even longer queue to get to your charger.
> I'm sorry but things like this always come up and I can't keep my head from shaking at these types of comments. So, you don't have other options to charge and simply go somewhere else where there is a charger that can do a car in "a few hours"?!
You can fill a car from a dead charge in a few hours with these type 3 DC chargers. If your car's battery is NOT empty, it'll go significantly faster. Or if your car has a smaller battery.
> So, I guess you say if you can do it, everybody else in that situation can, too? A short thought experiment, if everybody else did exactly that, how often would you say you will find your charger occupied? And since it is "a few hours" per car, you are in for a nice long shopping spree in whole foods while you wait for the guy in front of you to finally drive off. IF you are already next in line, that is. "Hi Honey, sorry, it'll be a couple of hours till I'm home. What? No, I'm not working late, I just want to gas up the EV and there is one person in front of me."
Yours is a great example of a terrible comment. The kind of comment where you showed up wanted to yell at people about something, not talk about something. This discussion is about short term solutions for people in an early electric car market, specifically because the infrastructure isn't there for everyone yet.
That's okay, most people in this discussion do not have the option to purchase a pure electric car, yet.
> And before you say "But there are two or three chargers there" I say:
See what I'm saying about "yelling at" rather than "talking to"?
> If not, you will find yourself cursing all the other EV drivers that constantly block your charging spot and you curse at anyone who still tries to drum up support for EV adoption.
Quite the contrary. EV drivers are pretty good about this and we share where we can. Driving an EV is a interesting experience, because other EV drivers on the road will interact with you.
And you can fill a fuel tank with gas in 10 mins. Really wide spread adoption of electric vehicles will require a Nobel prize winning jump in battery tech.
And governments will tax electric cars to make up for the loss of fuel duty.
Really wide spread availability of home, apartment, and work chargers doesn't need a Nobel Prize. Plugging and unplugging takes a few seconds, and having cars with big batteries plugged in a lot is a great way to store "excess" solar and wind energy.
The number of times a full recharge time has bit me is 0. But yes, if you exceed the full range of the car in a day and do that every day, an EV is not for you.
Not at all. A Tesla already can recharge significantly in 20-30 minutes, and the Hyundai Ionic takes even higher charge rates than a Tesla, compared to its capacity. If you add to that the ability to slowly charge at a cheap power outlet when you are parking, recharging is not a technical challenge. We just have to equip more and more parking places with power outlets, as demand increases.
If chargers become widely available then this is only a consideration for long road trips. Otherwise your car can be charging at practically any time it's not being driven. Meaning it stays near full battery most of the time you start driving. That's not true for gas; you don't have a gas line connected to your tank in every parking lot.
Teslas have a driving range of ~200 miles or something like that right? After driving 200 miles, most people are happy to stop and stretch their legs for 15-20 minutes. Tesla superchargers take about 30 minutes to charge your battery most of the way. Drive another 200 miles and you're ready for lunch or dinner, which could be a ~1 hour break, if you're not getting drive-thru and a chance for a much longer charge.
The only limiting factors I see are cost, the availability of charging options (and density of locations) and charging for apartment dwellers. Charge times are probably "good enough" already and likely to get better.
Until battery/recharging tech makes that leap, we have plug-in hybrids. My Chrysler Pacifica PHEV minivan gets 30 miles on battery before reverting to a regular hybrid getting 30 MPG.
That would turn into a grind pretty fast--if it can't charge up in 20mins. it's a no-go long term unless it's in your garage (or someplace else you want to be).
Are you sure? Super fast discharge and charge cycles are only part of the story. I have seen that the Nissan Leaf battery problems stem from heat, choosing a poor mixture of electrolyte and additives in the Lithium. Why do Lithium batteries die? By Professor Jeff Dahn - WIN Seminar Series[0]
If that's the sole charging method, then a faster battery degradation is expected. Note that fast charging adds quite a lot of heat. Worst case is starting with a low charge, fast charging, going to a highway, fast charging at the destination. I've only done it once while traveling so I don't think the battery even cared – I still have full bars on a 1.5 year old leaf.
Note that the Leaf's battery is not actively cooled (it does have heaters for extreme cold). So it could be the case that people living in colder climates could get away with it with little degradation.
The other option (and I do this a lot) is to just go to whole foods and use their monster-fast chargers. You can do a whole car in just a few hours with an L3 charger, it's amazing. This is more expensive than using any kind of outlet, but so is gas.
Please forgive the imposition, but if you live in the dense and expensive part of the city, you probably are best off simply not owning a car.