> (including plug-in hybrids and fully electric models)
This includes plugin hybrids, so it's not that 10% of cars sold in Europe are BEV's. Majority of those are actually plugin hybrids.
And this already gives us like 90% of the environmental benefits. Sure BEV is more environementally friendly. But with PHEV's we can get more total amount of electrical kilometers driven on the road. And one only needs to be able to charge at home, no need to care about charging infrastructure yet. But when it improves one can use it just fine.
Basically you drive your daily commute with electricity, but when you go to summer cabin then you can use gasoline as usual.
This is an example of Finland, registrations for last month (march 2021):
6197 pure gasoline cars (includes non chargeable hybrids)
2121 Plugin-hybrids (gasoline)
1139 diesel
789 BEV
78 Plugin-hybrids (diesel)
At this rate it won't take many years anymore until pretty much all the new cars sold here will be chargeable, even if some of em still have ICEs inside them too.
I'm just about to change my winter heating socket into a charging outlet, and move into plugin hybrid. It just makes so much sense here. Because due to high gas taxes when driving with electricity it costs around 20-30% of what it costs to drive with gasoline. So it's simply a no brainer in economical sense.
Seems like there is a real opportunity to increase EV adoption through some level of government subsidy... which will likely pay great dividends in the future. All that being said, because it is going to be good later and not right now, I expect this policy change to never happen.
>Seems like there is a real opportunity to increase EV adoption through some level of government subsidy.
If all of the claimed benefits of EVs are real (better for the environment, simpler and cheaper to maintain), why should we subsidize them at all? Perhaps we tax ICE vehicles based on emissions, but spending tax money to encourage people to buy more vehicles seems like an odd policy. EVs are cleaner, but they aren't clean, and cars in general have externalities.
Subsidizing them will make the cost of new EV cars more competitive with used ICE cars, which is what someone is much more likely to buy now. Also, subsidizing car sales indirectly funds development of more attractive EV car tech, which will increase people's desire to buy them in the next few years instead of having to wait decades for their personal killer feature.
Taxing ICE vehicles hurts poor people who can't afford buying new EV even with subsidies, while subsidizing EV's doesn't. So I would argue it's more sustainable from a social perspective than a punitive tax. Eventually used EV's will end up being bought by poorer folks as well, as long as the wealthy buy them first.
Besides, nothing you buy is exactly clean. At least vehicles provide real value by allowing people to move around, unlike your average cheap fashion item which is bought because some people just enjoy shopping, and soon forgotten after minimum use. Thus, typically purchasing a car is ethical compared to purchasing something you really don't need.
>Taxing ICE vehicles hurts poor people who can't afford buying new EV even with subsidies, while subsidizing EV's doesn't.
This is debatable. A dollar subsidy given for (expensive) EVs is a dollar not able to subsidize something that can directly benefit the poor (say, housing). In other words, resources are scarce.
>Besides, nothing you buy is exactly clean.
I agree, which is why we should impose costs on the things that are not clean, like cars, generally. Economics 101 says when you subsidize some behaviour, you get more of it. Do we want more cars, or fewer?
Personally, I think (thanks mostly to Tesla) EVs are past the point of of skepticism. They've become desirable.
The federal tax credit in the US is nothing to sneeze at! I'd prefer investment in better infrastructure (in the form of more charging locations) to remove or at least reduce the fear people have about range.
I expect it to end sooner than later, for two reasons: first, where I'm from (Canada), the vast majority of fuel surcharges go towards road maintenance. That revenue disappears with EVs under current policy. Second, the vast majority of EV subsidies are going to, essentially, rich people, who in most other aspects of their lives have disproportionate carbon footprints. It's not progressive policy.
I'll argue otherwise (I'm also from Canada) because countries are getting more aggressive in their battle against climate change, including enacting carbon taxes, and even banning sales of new ICE vehicles past certain cutoff dates.
> the vast majority of fuel surcharges go towards road maintenance. That revenue disappears with EVs under current policy.
I don't believe that's true. All taxes go into a mixed pool and are put towards the budget as a whole. It would be weird to "color" tax revenue from certain sources and earmark it only for specific uses
How do you do longer trips? I live in Colorado and go on multi day "camping" road trips.
I'd be able to charge, but what's the time spent at a charging station along the way?
How would I find a charger in the middle of nowhere Utah or Wyoming? Often even gas stations are pretty few and far between when you're not on the more main roads.
It's only maybe 5% of my total miles, but it's the fun ones. In-town is a solved problem for sure, but seems less so for long distance, and often back-road travel.
Define "middle of nowhere", I guess? Not a lot of places, even in Utah and Wyoming, are more than 100mi from an interstate. Also recognize that "a charger" is any building with an electrical drop. A regular 120v 15a plug in someone's wall will give you 100 miles of range in 6-7 hours. If they have a 240V dryer or cooktop or whatever you can cut that down to 1-2.
Broadly: EVs are absolutely going to be slower going on long road trips, but it's not that bad. A routine gas car trying to make good time will have an average driving pattern like "drive for four hours, stop for 15 minutes for gas/food/potty". So you're getting 16/17ths of your highway speed on average. A typical long range EV is more like "drive for two hours[1], stop at a supercharger for half an hour", which is more like 4/5ths efficiency. That's a net difference in average speed of 18%, or roughly the difference between someone on that interstate going 75mph vs. 65mph.
Is that a killer problem? Up to you to decide. It wasn't for me.
[1] The cars charge much faster with emptier batteries (just like your phone), so topping up isn't something you typically do on the road, you just put enough in to get to your next stop plus a safety margin.
> Define "middle of nowhere", I guess? Not a lot of places, even in Utah and Wyoming, are more than 100mi from an interstate.
In Utah and Wyoming you can be on the interstate and still be far from a gas station[1]. I don't think most people who don't live out west are aware of how remote parts of this country truly are.
I've been there (though not recently and not in an EV). And you'll find charging of some form everywhere you find gas, including the stretch of I70 in that article. (Actually in this case it's trivial for Teslas: there are superchargers in both Green River and Richfield, 123mi apart. I don't see any non-Tesla DC supercharging in Green River though.) Check https://plugshare.com if you just want to see charging facilities.
In general anywhere in the USA that is "on" an Interstate is solved problem for EVs. If you want to drive on I-whatever you're covered. The question above was about getting to remote areas far from infrastructure. And even there you need to work really hard to be far from a wall outlet.
Again, incremental costs to build out (non-supercharger) vehicle charging is much cheaper than installing a gas station, because it's ultimately just freeloading on the long-established electrical infrastructure.
Ohh so I need a specific brand of car so I can use a specific charger, and If I leave the interstates I have to be very careful about where I can charge? Also I'm not counting anything that is not a fast charger, I don't want to have to wait somewhere for hours to charge my vehicle.
Edit:
Do the downvoters really think the above scenario is acceptable? Being limited on where you can go, what chargers you can use and the increased time to go places?
This sounds like you're starting fights, honestly. Maybe you can propose an itinerary and someone can post a reasonable way to handle that in an EV?
If you're demanding to know that there is no where that your hypothetical gas vehicle is going to be an exclusive choice vs. an EV, then clearly the answer is no. Different vehicles have different capabilities.
And that includes your car! Do you normally get nagged by helicopter owners about all the places they need to be that your ridiculous wheeled thing can't reach? The whole thing seems a bit specious.
So pointing out that EVs can't go all the same places as ICE cars is picking a fight? Also EVs take longer to charge, cost a lot more, haver fewer places to charge, charging stations are incompatible between some brands, and EV cars don't last as long. If EVs are going to replace ICE cars they need to be equal or better, not worse. And finally the fact that you suggest to post an itinerary so I can figure out how to get somewhere by EV is a huge red flag. In an ICE vehicle I don't need to plan out my trip, I just drive and fill up when I need.
Presumably your going to sleep somewhere. Anywhere you sleep that has a 120V outlet is effectively a charging station. Which means staying in a rustic cabin in the middle of nowhere for a weekend is still going to fully charge you for the return trip.
Generally you end up spending less time filling up in an EV than gas powered cars due to this kind of convenience. Filling up once or twice a week gets replaced with 2 or 3 fast charger stops on long trips and simply plugging in at home.
What about a long day trip or a weekend camping trip not in a cabin, which I do all the time. For the day trips I will be sleeping at home, so I don't want to have to take an extra day to charge my vehicle overnight. And for weekend trips camping there is again no place to charge when your in the middle of the woods, mountains or deserts. And a 120V outlet is going to be slow. Seriously why would I spend 30,000 - $50,000 on an electric car when it's less capable than my current vehicle?
This is getting ridiculously contrived. You now demand to pick a vehicle capable of taking you to locations outside of round-trip range from a fast charger that lack any alternative charging facilities AND any place to stay, so you're going to drive straight there and back.
Are you writing a novel adaptation? This is how Heart of Darkness works. It... ends badly.
But sure: expeditions into the untamed metaphorical wilderness of the depths of the human condition probably do want to stick with ICE vehicles for now. But Tesla will probably get the savage wastes a supercharger soon enough.
Can your gas powered car go months between fillups doing 20 mile commutes every day? Get 100+ mpg? Do 0-60 in less than 4 seconds?
Stuff is different. Different stuff works better in different situations. The point everyone is making is that long road trips and access to very remote locations are definitely not the sweet spot for an EV, but they're tasks it's capable of doing well enough.
Seriously if you desperately want to do your crazy day trip where you drive for 9 hours, and you own an EV... just rent a Jeep or an Outback.
Because you can do things in an EV you can’t do in a gasoline powered car. EV’s can’t win the cannonball run, they can drive to and from every residential address in the US that a gas powered car can. Conversely, I can’t fill up a gasoline powered car at home or in a remote area with solar.
So you’re going to travel 400+ miles in one day for a day trip? That doesn’t leave much time to do anything while you’re there. Still a long range model 3 will do ~530 miles with a single 15 minute charge stop, actually spending 450+ minutes driving is a larger issue.
If that’s not enough for a day trip I have questions. IMO, even traveling that range for a weekend is questionable.
What EV gets 400 miles on a charge? And all I'm talking about is driving for a couple hours, rock climbing until its dark and driving back. For many of the places I like to go an EV is unpractical or not even an option.
Long range model S actually has a range of 412 miles and several other EV’s are similar.
However, the long range Model 3 only does 353 miles without charging. But you’re adding ~175 miles in 15 minuets, which is where I was getting the 530 mile figure. Basically 400+ miles is where charging wait times become noticeable.
Of course numbers depend on driving habits etc, but that’s the rough ballpark.
We enjoy mild backroads - dirt, sometimes rutted or washboarded or sandy, but not strictly "offroading" in the sense of Jeeps. I drive a Subaru Outback.
My dad & I have done driving around Bears Ears, Grand canyon, various national parks & forests in Colorado & Utah, and have basically had to roll downhill into Loa (if I remember the town right) when we were at the bottom of a tank.
Blanding, UT surprisingly shows a tesla supercharger, but Monticello doesn't. So I imagine the overall situation will get better over time too.
Sorta another side question - I assume any sort of car-hauled solar is too weak to meaningfully charge a car? Totally back of the napkin math (80kwh battery @ 200w portable solar = 16 days to charge). Obviously a partial charge could be had quicker, or a larger solar setup, but not really feasible, even if you figure out all the connections.
You're quite a bit off in terms of charging speeds off 120 and 240V.
Even with a Model 3 (which is among the fastest charging EVs off AC power, due to its efficiency) you're closer to around ~3-4mi of range per hour (so, 16-24mi in 6 hours). It gets much much worse in cold climates, where 120V may not even charge the car at all (although, it will prevent charge loss).
120V, 20A outlets are much better (~7mi of range per hour), but still that's only 42mi/6 hrs.
Assuming you have a full 240V 50A outlet (i.e., a NEMA 14-50), you're getting maybe 30 miles of range an hour. That's max 60mi/2 hours. Also, unless you have that outlet available for EV charging or an RV, it's most likely your home will only readily have a dryer outlet available for hookup (so, 22mi range per hour max) which is less current.
Numbers get significantly worse (up to say, half the rates quoted above) depending on the vehicle used for charging.
All that to say, it's still pretty livable in my experience. As long as you aren't exceeding ~100mi/day consistently you can just constantly charge over 120V/20A and get by just fine locally.
For road trips, I'd consider 120V as a last resort until you can limp to a DC fast charger.
> Also recognize that "a charger" is any building with an electrical drop. A regular 120v 15a plug in someone's wall will give you 100 miles of range in 6-7 hours.
I wonder if this will drive business owners to secure their outlets better or perhaps fast chargers will be cheap and ubiquitous such that few people feel the need to "steal" electricity ("steal" is in quotes because I don't mean to imply judgment).
I'm actually seeing a little of the opposite. I've seen some little caesar's pizza locations advertising free access to their 14-50 outlets when their own vehicles aren't charging.
> A regular 120v 15a plug in someone's wall will give you 100 miles of range in 6-7 hours.
For anything other than an Aptera, this is going to be really optimistic. For a Tesla Model Y LR or 3 LR, 7 hours on a 15A 120V will get you 10%. This is closer to 30 miles than 100 and a bit less at interstate speeds.
With a 20A outlet, you can bump that up to 14% and closer to 40 miles.
This is a "cheating" answer, but we have a plug-in hybrid minivan. We get ~30 miles on the battery, which covers the vast majority of our day to day driving, but still have the ICE option for longer trips.
One thing people forget (and that I have realised once I bought an EV) is that you save a lot of time never having to go out of your way to a petrol station for that 95%.
Plugging in at home takes 10 seconds. That does add up to a fair amount of time saved over the year.
I would bet the vast, vast majority of people pass a petrol station on their way home or to a destination such that going out of their way for petrol is a rarity.
Even driving a few blocks, having to stop and fill up, and then getting back on the route can easily take 10 minutes of your time. Being able to plug in at home and never worrying about filling up unless you're on a long drive will save you a ton of time.
Not to mention the case where you're pressed for time and realize your car is on empty.
It's still an inconvenience. It's a minimum 5 minute detour, possibly more depending on your route, versus plugging in your car when you get home which adds maybe 10 seconds to your home routine.
The tech just isn't ready for that scenario, but I'm hopeful things will change rapidly in the next decade.
It reminds me of when they phased out incandescent bulbs almost a decade ago (2012?). I always hated CFL lights so I bought a case of 75W incandescent bulbs before they were banned. Within a year or two the price for LED lights plummeted at the same time as the quality increased dramatically. I still have most of that case of incandescent bulbs in my basement, and I'll probably end up just tossing it.
Indeed. I would advise the same for people who consider buying a truck on the premise that every once in a while it would be handy to have for hauling something.
I have a Tesla rated for ~320 miles. On the highway (75mph), I see closer to 250 miles in the real world. My first charge stop will typically be around 200-220 miles way, last 20-30 minutes and provide enough range for another 150-180 miles. The most optimal way to travel in the Tesla is to stop for slightly less than 20 minutes but only travel another 120 miles before stopping, as peak charging rates are between 5 and 50%, but I don't typically bother to micro-optimize this much.
I recommend playing with your start and destination addresses in https://abetterrouteplanner.com/ to see what they would look like with charging included.
Its definitely a little slower than gas. Right now, the best speeds that you can average on a long trip are ~60mph inclusive of charging stops. That is pushing REALLY hard, though. I suspect most folks end up closer to 50mph.
Exactly, I want to go visit the Deep Creek Mountains in western Utah, and I've heard that bringing your own gasoline is a good idea because of just how far the Deep Creeks are from a gas station or civilization for that matter. I love exploring the deserts of Utah, and that just wouldn't be possible with current electric vehicles.
Absolutely, but the vast majority of drivers will never desire to or do this.
This is like asking how to tow the Space Shuttle with your pickup truck. It can be done (Toyota did it with a Tundra pickup for marketing), but no one is selling into a market to do so. You’re better off outfitting a used 4x4 for overlanding (as @grecy did [1]).
> This is like asking how to tow the Space Shuttle with your pickup truck. It can be done (Toyota did it with a Tundra pickup for marketing), but no one is selling into a market to do so.
Sorry but that's a ridiculous comparison, I just want to be able to drive to places my current gasoline vehicle can travel to, but in an electric car. Also there are large numbers of people out west camping, climbing, skiing, etc on all sorts of remote backcountry roads far from services. Its the reason many of us live out here.
How many vehicles a year do you think get sold to folks who are going to be so far off the grid, they might consider jerrycans for fuel security? 10k? 20k? 17 million new cars a year are sold, for comparison.
I admit you adventurous folks exist (and commend your wild spirit), just not in sufficient quantity to sell vehicles at volume, considering the average American light vehicle use case (a few road trips a year, ~40 mile daily round trip commutes).
I think your looking at this all wrong. Why would I or any other person spend $30,000 - $50,000 on a vehicle that is less capable then the vehicle I currently own? I cant charge at my apartment so I'm totally dependent on charging infrastructure, which is slower, has less locations and has compatibility issues that gas stations do not have. Even if most Americans dont use the full capabilities of their ICE car, why would they pay more for a less capable EV?
If new gas vehicles are banned, it’s not much of a choice. Several states have new combustion vehicles bans (between 2030-2035), and more are expected to follow.
I’m looking at it from the perspective of what options are left, based on the legislation I mention.
I'm assuming the charging infrastructure, and electric vehicles in general around 2030 - 2035 to be way better and not suffer from these issues I mentioned above. I just think right now EVs are unpractical for people who don't live in their own house and people who travel long distances or into very remote areas.
Do they have RV parks out there? Because if they will allow you to use them, most of those are suitable for overnight charging. I'm not familiar enough with the routes and distances involved to know, but it'd be interesting to see some of the specific locations you are thinking of?
In the deep creeks there's nothing, no RV parks or anything for that matter, but that is a pretty extreme location to get to. But every other place I've been to in western Utah for climbing, hiking, camping is also quite remote, not as extreme as the Deep creeks, but they all involve driving down horrendous 4x4 roads with no services let alone charging for miles. Here's some of the climbing areas I'm talking about[1]. Although most areas are not written down as that is the local tradition.
Hmm, seems like the closest high speed charging is Fillmore, UT, about 60-70 miles away?
Obviously, I don't know of any current EVs that would be suitable for those kinds of 4x4 roads, but it seems like it isn't impossible from an infrastructure standpoint.
TBH, part of me thinks that in the long run getting electricity near places like this will actually be easier than getting gasoline there.
It completely depends on the vehicle, and what the charging options are where you're going. Teslas have pretty quick fast-charging options that may line up quite comfortably with ordinary travel breaks, some other vehicles may not.
I think the reality is that people will need to accept that their use of the vehicle will just be a bit different than ICE vehicles for some cases. In some cases people will just need to have or rent or share specialty-purpose vehicles for things like camping or off-road experiences, at least until things like fast-charging stations are as common as gas stations are.
Buying vehicles that are optimized for the 5% use case seems really wasteful, but we do it now because the real (environmental) cost of that inefficiency is not paid for directly by the consumer.
I just went on a long trip and going on a couple more in a few months. The Tesla navigation will autopilot you to the charging stations making it a something you don’t even need to think about. Most of the chargers are near food or shopping but we usually just take the time to stretch or get some fresh air. By the time your charge is low you definitely feel like you need a stretch anyways. We also went camping at an RV site and plugged the car in. We were able to run the heater while we slept in sleeping bags in the back. If we weren’t at an RV site we would have charged to 95% at a super charger and driven in and tent camped for 5 days and it would have been more than enough to get us back.
> I'd be able to charge, but what's the time spent at a charging station along the way?
Charging is getting a lot faster as companies move to dedicated EV designs.
Not out yet in North America, but the Hyundai Ioniq 5 will be able to go from 10 - 80% in 18 minutes. And that's only if you need to fill up on a longer trip, if you're just topping off you might only spend 5 minutes at a charging station.
Adding to others: RV hookups. There are tons of these around, some further away from civilization than you’d think. They provide 220 hookups, which is plenty to get you charged up overnight.
Most RV campsites are set up for 30A at 120V over a NEMA TT-30R receptacle. Three pins, looks like a typical cord but the blades are rotated outwards by degrees:
Only the really, really big ones are 240V split-phase with a NEMA 14-50R receptacle. It's a 4-pin connector, with an additional neutral blade, but it's not a twist-lock:
It's not likely to break anything or hurt anyone if you know what you're doing, but with the ridiculous number of variations and non-standard wiring you'll find out there, be sure you do know what you're doing!
I haven't seen this with any other EV maker's chargers but Tesla sells an adapter kit for it's 2nd Gen Chargers.
They have a 14-50 but there isn't a TT-30R however they have a 5-20 which can be mated to 5-30 with a passive adapter. Not ideal but better than nothing.
Proper way to use a TT-30R is to use a 14-30 or 6-30 and then adapt to the TT-30R. The Tesla adapters do not care what the voltage applied is. You can happily use a NEMA 14-50 adapter at 120V-50A, but it's kind of a stupid idea since power is so much lower.
I imagine that nowhere in Utah or Wyoming is more in the middle of nowhere than Northern Ontario.
We did a road trip in an EV from Ottawa, ON to Saskatoon, SK and back. (3000km each way). The Tesla trip planner said we'd need to stop 9 times to charge, but we ended up stopping 18 times to charge because we needed to stop 17 times for the bathroom, eating or sleeping. Only once was the stop only for charging (15 minutes). One charger was broken on the trip out -- we had enough charge to make it to the next one, but only barely.
I have a model X but a gas minivan for road trips. There’s no way around it, even “super”charging still sucks compared to filling up a gas tank.
I do think when the cyber truck comes out with 500+ range that will change things... you should be able to only need to charge overnight even on road trips.
But long term camping trips might still be an issue.. possibly solar panels on it will help a bit?!
Eh, Super Charging is 15-25 minutes. Gas fill up is about 3-5 minutes minimum and definitely more expensive. So I'd say they're closer to even, but w/e.
I don't think solar panels will help though. You need too large of a solar array to make a difference. Would be nice though!
> Eh, Super Charging is 15-25 minutes. Gas fill up is about 3-5 minutes minimum and definitely more expensive. So I'd say they're closer to even, but w/e.
In my experience, the biggest issue is location. If I had superchargers at every lunch/dinner stop, the difference would almost be unnoticeable.
Yea definitely. They aren't always at the best spot. Sometimes we grab food on the way to the charger and then just eat it there. The best ones IMO are at grocery stores or nicer gas stations/travel centers.
> Often even gas stations are pretty few and far between when you're not on the more main roads.
In addition to the other responses, I'll note that you can charge (for example) a Tesla at about 4 miles per hour with direct sunlight using a fairly portable solar setup. I've seen some demos of just that on youtube.
So it's not perfect. The only time I've run into trouble was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We had to go charge at a slow rate in Marquette, Michigan (one of my favorite towns now) because there were no Super Chargers or overnight chargers available where we stayed "someone might trip over the cord".
So if you get, say, a Tesla Model Y you're looking at probably around 300 miles of range in the summer time (less in winter or cold conditions). So you just need to be able to charge somewhere. It takes more planning for now.
If you're with another car, I think it's not quite as good. Typically people will find a destination charger (i.e. stay at a hotel with an outlet to charge at).
So you're likely to be in the smaller minority where they don't quite yet fit all of your use cases. Often times I tell people to plan for most of your use cases most of the time. For example, we are in our house or around town 95% of our lives. So I'm not going to stress out or over-optimize for that 5% when an electric car might be inconvenient. That's us though. It's an individual decision. It's nice that we can charge our standard range Model 3 fully (220 miles~ of charge) for $2.65 total. Much, much cheaper than gas. On the other hand we spent 8 lovely hours in Marquette charging our car. YMMV
Charging times vary. We recently did about a 5 hour trip from Columbus to Michigan with a Tesla and spent 40 minutes charging (each way, a little more on the way up and less on the way back) - a couple of stops. One at a Meijer where we went in, walked around, got some snacks and used the restroom. Another at hotel lot where we just stood and stretched for a bit. That's with Tesla SuperCharging network though. We also were at a house and had a 110 outlet so just plugged in and when we went home we were at 97% so didn't have to charge as much on the way back home. Personally wouldn't do a long road trip with any other EV.
-edit-
It'll be gradual then sudden, but a lot of those convenient gas stations will be going away too as we shift toward electric vehicles. It won't be long before gas itself becomes inconvenient compared to electric as far as availability is concerned. For example, national parks can install electric chargers. They can't put in a gas station.
As someone else mentioned, you probably are saving more time overall with an EV since if you charge at home you don't ever need to go to the gas station. I have to imagine that more than makes up for the time you spend stopping and charging on road trips. Would be interesting to see studies on this.
A problem I've noticed since moving out West is that distances are just so damn big here. I grew up on the East Coast and, even in the remote place I grew up in, it was rare to be more than 50 miles from a gas station. Out here, that's practically the norm. I suspect that the Tesla Supercharger network would work well if you stay along major highways like 60/70/80, but I keep thinking about my long weekend trips to national forests and just how impossible they would be in a Tesla.
Very curious, though, just what kind of timeframe we're looking at before gas fills become more inconvenient than electric charging... my hope is that by the time my current ICE vehicle has to be replaced (8 years or more, with luck), we'll have electric vehicles with 600 mile ranges and enough reliable fast-charging infrastructure that I can actually justify an electric vehicle.
One thing to consider is RV camping spots which commonly have power hookups.
The the 2nd GEN Tesla charger has pigtail adapters for a lot of NEMA single and split phase receptacles. While it doesn't cover all (e.g. TT-30R), you can use passive adapters to convert to those specifically.
You can purchase the pigtails individually for under $50 each or $200 for a kit.
If we're talking about Tesla (which IMO is the only serious player in the space right now) I'd just say take a look at the SuperCharging network and see if things are covered based on what you might want to do. Right now it definitely requires some planning, but so far I haven't run into many issues except the UP.
Tesla-wise there is already a reliable fast-charging infrastructure. The question is what will happen with the rest of the industry. I would say in 8 years we will definitely have electric vehicles with 600+ mile ranges. I think the Plaid Model S is over 500 already, but I think there will be less emphasis on milage and more emphasis on fast and available charging. It's going to be more feasible to expand infrastructure (as far as I can tell) than to build the batteries. Likely both will happen simultaneously. For Tesla, I think if they thought larger batteries were the answer they'd probably slowly stop expanding the SuperCharger network - but doesn't appear that's happening. Could be wrong here and would welcome a more thoughtful discussion.
TBH I'd say gas on the whole is more inconvenient to me than electric charging. 95% of the time I charge at home, car is always just ready to go. 5% of the time I stop after 2 hours, charge for 15-25 minutes, take a quick break, and move on. But I don't have to go to a gas station once/week or more, stand outside my car in the cold, pump gas, w/e. Personal preference though. My back cramps up sitting in a car for 3+ hours between gas stations and would prefer more stops (and this gives me an excuse).
To just part of your question, in some western states (Colorado and New Mexico from personal experience, but maybe others) the local power company has installed public electric chargers in some towns, sometimes at their local office, or sometimes downtown. For example we wanted to take some smaller roads from Durango to Santa Fe via Pagosa Springs, and there was no Supercharger along the route. But there was a fast charger in Pagosa, so that filled our need.
As to the time, we timed it for breakfast at a coffee shop there. It was about a 1 hour stop.
The power company in Taos (northern NM) has chargers at their office. In that case, they are slow chargers, which is a bummer, but it's walking distance to restaurants and stores and things to do, and free, and it's enough to extend the range a bit and get you on your way to the next faster charger elsewhere.
Almost everywhere there are chargers at hotels. For Teslas hotels often have Tesla connectors which are faster than the other hotel options. They often will allow you to plug in for a charge for a fee, even if you aren't a guest, on an as-needed basis in the daytime. For nighttime, I assume guests get priority.
I haven't scoped out Wyoming. We did traverse Nevada and Utah and no problem with Superchargers but were only on small roads for some of the time. I mean if you are charged up to 300 miles, you can drive for (up to) 300 miles on small roads if you know there's a charger at the other end. Obviously I would build some margin into that.
With Superchargers most stops are between 10 and 20 minutes, for me at least. Some people stay longer because they think you have to charge to full at every stop. This is wrong, and slows down your trip because topping up that last 20% gets slow, since charging slows down as you approach full charge.
I've been from California to New Mexico and back four times, to Oregon and back twice, to San Diego once, to LA and back a bunch of times, and to the far side of Texas and back once. Way more enjoyable than in my old ICE cars. On longer trips if Superchargers are spaced out wider, the stops are slightly longer just because I like to keep a margin of extra range. If there's no Supercharger then there are sometimes fast chargers at Walmart, but usually fewer of them, so if you don't have a Tesla you have way fewer options.
Major routes are very well covered. Minor routes, say going down through Ouray and Silverton, I would incorporate a hotel with a charger into my plans to charge overnight, but you should have a backup option because someone else could have occupied the hotel charger first. I don't know whether some hotels allow you to reserve a charger in advance. Haven't crossed that bridge yet but I imagine some do.
This is all a moving target though as the system is being built out rapidly. I think hotels will start catching on that they need to add more capacity soon.
The high order bit here is, and sorry for making it a company product endorsement, but if you're going to get an EV, get a Tesla. Way more options. Especially if you buy a CHAdeMO adapter (yucky, but useful). Non-Tesla drivers are going to get very familiar with Walmart, which is fine, but pretty limiting, and are probably going to be reluctant to go on road trips, pretty much the opposite of the Tesla experience.
On the other hand.
If something breaks, with a Tesla your car is going to be loaded onto a flatbed and carried far away to a Tesla Service Center somewhere, and you are not going to see it for a while! That's kind of a different topic though. They don't seem to break in such ways very often. Usually only when hit by an ICE car driver, lol. It's probably even worse with other EVs, some of which sell way smaller unit numbers, like the Kona — good luck finding service for that.
Thank you for the detailed answer. It's exactly that kind of trip I'm talking about - although sometimes more remote (driving around the whole of Utah between Moab and Grand Canyon is pretty quiet, although some smaller towns along the way, and one supercharger in Blanding it looks like.
On these trips I always go looking for the less-traveled route. Ouray area is beautiful, we pick other mountain passes instead of I70 when we can, and go back ways into national parks and forests.
I had a Tesla Model S for about a year. Had several 6-8 hour trips which would require one or two charges and quite often day trips which required one stop. It helps to find charging stops with a Starbucks or something close by. Then you can just get a bite to eat and it's done when you get back.
The charging stops more like a regular gas station I'd just walk slower and make sure to use the bathroom and browse every isle.
It adds about triple the time for a stop. Not sure about non supercharger capable EVs. With a Tesla it's pretty close to same experience.
This smells like an opportunity to build some charging stations that provide more to do than a gas station. You could build a diner, with an arcade or mini golf or some attraction to keep people busy (and take more of their money) for a few hours while their cars are charging.
It definitely is an opportunity. Most charging takes 20+ minutes and you have a captive audience the entire time.
A lot of Tesla Superchargers are in restaurant or hotel parking lots.
We use to drive Atlanta to Asheville and would stop at a Supercharger in Greenville on the way up, it was in a hotel parking lot and the hotel lounge was setup to accommodate people stopping to charge with an array of snacks and drinks to purchase along with the restaurant and bar.
I use to drive from Atlanta to Jellico regularly and would stop at a Supercharger in a strip mall within walking distance of shopping, a Starbucks, and three restaurants.
We went to Joshua Tree from San Diego recently and stopped to charge along the way at an In-N-Out.
I only considered Tesla for this reason, the superchargers work - the other options suck.
Non Tesla EVs can still be nice EVs, but today they’re city cars.
I had a Fiat 500e before my Model 3, a great little EV (and absurdly cheap lease at ~$87/month) but I can take my Model 3 to Tahoe from the bay area easily and would never take the 500e there. I was hesitant to take the 500e from Palo Alto to SF.
Eh, we roadtrip in our Bolt, it's fine. We roadtripped in the Tesla, it was fine too. To go to grandma's house, which was way out in the sticks, we'd stop for a charge on the way there, and once on the way back, in either car.
The biggest difference is that there are more DC fast charging locations for non-Tesla EVs but they tend to have fewer chargers per location. Superchargers are less common but there are more chargers at each location.
Both chargers have less than stellar reliability, but I'd give Tesla the overall edge there. But the third-party networks are growing much faster overall, and the quality of their infrastructure is improving dramatically as well. At some point in the next couple years I expect Tesla will need to find a way to allow their cars to take advantage of these other fast-charging options, to stay competitive.
I think you are a little biased by having a vehicle (the Bolt) that can't do more than about 55kw. There are more DCFC for CCS, but most are limited to ~50kw or less with most vehicles.
The only comparable network to Tesla is EA and they hope to be about 3/4s the size of Tesla's network by early 2022.
The chargers we go to in the Bolt are almost all 150 kW chargers. Yes I wish the Bolt could use all of it. No the 45 minute wait isn't really a deal killer. It still took a half hour in my Tesla even though it peaked out at 1000 mi/hr for the first bit of charging.
In my opinion, 99% of everyone worries far too much about the road trip use case and completely overlooks that most people will do almost all of their charging at home.
No, the US has a large number of CCS combo 1 chargers. Its just that most are only 60kw or less, and will only do about 45kw on most cars due to amperage limitations.
The big exception is Electrify America, which has about 600 sites now. Its good enough for many right now, though it isn't as deep or reliable as the Tesla Supercharger network.
It looks like the number of CCS Combo chargers is in the thousands in the US, somewhere just above CHademo. By comparison the J1772 chargers numbers in the many tens of thousands.
That is correct. It would be almost 1:1 between CCS and CHAdeMO, but Electrify America only includes a single CHAdeMO cable per station. Most other networks are 1:1.
Tesla supercharger coverage is pretty good with just over 1000 sites. EA coverage is actually pretty good too with just 600 sites. The # of sites needed for L3 in the short term isn't really that high. The number of plugs is important. I think EA averages 6 plugs per site, and Tesla is a little over 8 per site, with most new sites being 8 stall setups.
There's not much point in deploying CHAdeMO at this point, Nissan is pretty much the only one using it and it's mostly useless IMO as a Leaf owner. Sure it can charge the car faster but it's also bad for it and will quickly degrade the battery because there's no active cooling of the pack.
I would like to see Tesla transition to CCS in the US but that's going to be a hard sell without legislation.
Maybe in Europe. In the USA they definitely cannot. At least mine couldn't. Sure, I could use the adapter to do level 2 charging, but there is no provision to use DC fast chargers other than superchargers.
*exception being CHAdeMO, but those are becoming so rare now as to be not worth consideration.
Hoping my current car makes it until I have a house with a garage. Electric cars don't seem well suited to apartments with street parking, especially in northern climates.
Working from home last winter I could just leave my car parked for two weeks and wait the snow out. Can't do that with a battery.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve been wanting a new (electric) car for a while but it’s so hard to pull the trigger when my old Toyota gets me from point A to B. Recently, I’ve been thinking all of the new safety features might be worth getting a new car before my current one is finished.
Ditto. I've got a 12-year-old Honda with only about 40K miles on it. Planning to run it into the ground or into obsolescence and then get an EV or plug-in hybrid once we need to replace it. Might be waiting a while, it should have another 100K+ miles left, but I figure I'll at least get to around 2023-2025, see what sort of electrics are on the market, whether our family situation requires a new car anyway, and then this'll be the last of our gas-powered cars.
Same here. Bought a car very recently, wanted it to be an electric car, but I live in the city center and charging is just a pain, plus the car is frequently used for long trips. So, I am skipping on the (pure)electric cars until we get 1000km range per charge with good charging networks. Hopefully, we will be reaching that point soon.
Teslas are expensive, but the compliance EVs are quite good now and the economics are more compelling. We pay about $0.01/mile to fuel our Bolt. I had a Tesla P3D and it was a little more expensive, but still nowhere near the cost of gas, which is about $0.10/mile. Just in fuel savings alone it was an easy decision for us.
We leased our Bolt, because the price was great ($6K for 3 years at 15K miles/year). When we replace it in a couple years, we will buy something similar, maybe another Bolt (GM really did a great job with this car IMO), and keep it until the wheels fall off. If something happens to my pickup anytime soon I may buy another gas-powered one, because I don't think EVs are likely to be good RV-towing machines for a number of years yet, but I don't expect to ever buy another ICEV daily driver.
How do you like the Bolt? That's the car I've had my eye on - economical and has range. And I've heard the latest model (2020?) fixed some issues with the seats.
I like it much better than I expected. We picked it up about six months before I decided to part company with my Model 3 Performance.
The Bolt is nowhere near as quick as the Tesla, of course, but it's perfectly competent. Even manages to feel zippy though in a full race with an ICE car at full throttle it's clear that the Bolt is average at best. I like that it's nimble and tossable (though a sports car it definitely is not). And it's small, so it fits anywhere. It has enough power to roast the front tires, for better or worse.
We use it 99% for in-city driving and never DC fast charge aside from occasional 300 mile road trips to grandma's house. The range has been more than adequate, even in the winter. The most we ask of it on a routine basis is about 150 miles in a day, and it managed that fine even during the cold times of the winter (cold as defined by PNW standards, however). And we only charge it to 80% every night.
The seats kinda suck. They're worse than my Tesla's seats were, for sure, and I didn't like those seats very much (especially on an expensive car). The Bolt's seats don't make me hurt, but they don't make me happy either. Mostly flat, a bit hard, definitely the low spot on this car. Ours is a 2020 model, I haven't heard of any significant changes though.
At this point we have just over two years left on the lease (picked it up for just over 6K one-time payment for a 3 year high mile lease), and I will definitely be considering an outright purchase of another one at that time. Maybe the EUV. I'm disappointed the refreshed Bolt & EUV have the same relatively slow DC fast charge speed, but OTOH when we stop on the way to grandma's to charge, the fact that it takes 45 minutes to fill back up isn't really a big deal for us. We travel with two kids and it's a nice break to stretch our legs and use the facilities, etc. Since we only do that trip maybe a half dozen times a year, it's not a big issue for me overall.
Thanks for the info. We are in a similar boat, although the visit to Grandma is only 100 miles. So I figured I really wouldn't even need to use a charger on the trips. We do have a gas car that my wife doesn't really want to part with, so we could just use that in case of longer trips. Our daily usage is really probably under 15/20 miles a day so an electric car would be perfect, just looking for the correct one.
I currently don't own a car and I promised myself a while back that I wouldn't buy a non electric one. Just waiting to have either the on street infrastructure or driveway for it.
similiar but on the flip side i’m pretty sure they’ll be cheaper and better in a few years. so seems dumb buying one now. cars aren’t like iphones where i can afford to upgrade often
* only one mention of Hyundai about its hydrogen trucks
* zero mentions of Toyota, BMW, FCA, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda
It's true that I'm looking at too small a sample here to draw a conclusion just from this report alone. But given the fact that Tesla has been investing in electric vehicle development for the better part of two decades while every other automaker was resting on their laurels, I think it's fair to add it to the mountain of evidence that Tesla is well on its way to being the Apple of this decade.
I know that legacy automakers will eventually produce some good EVs, and I'm glad that they are finally appearing to take this seriously. However, I think that many of them will not survive the coming wave of consolidation. In general they are far too indebted, too dependent on marketing, and lack the vertical integration required to deliver affordable EVs in volume.
I think the Apple analogy is especially apt: since the iPhone was unveiled, Apple has earned the majority of the profits in the smartphone market. There are good reasons to think that this effect will be even more pronounced for Tesla, given the fact that it is developing large-scale manufacturing capacity on each continent (whereas every iPhone is only made in China). Add its massive growth in the energy storage and leadership in autonomous vehicles and the full picture becomes even clearer.
(Yes, I have a large position in $TSLA. No, I'm quite certain that this post will not move the stock even a cent. My point is only that in a few years time, Tesla will dominate multiple industries, and the auto market will be just one of them.)
> Tesla is well on its way to being the Apple of this decade
I owned a Tesla, I would not take this bet. Apple makes opinionated decisions, similar to Tesla, but they also make a quality product. Tesla struggles mightily with that. People are surprisingly loyal when it comes to car purchases, and Tesla's lack of reliability will come back to bite them in the ass. There are too many good options coming down the pipe.
Heck, the Ford Mach-E all by itself is the epitome of why Tesla won't be the next Apple. It is a better Model Y than the Model Y. Ford really hit that one out of the park IMO, and that's just their opening salvo. As more of the real car companies start bringing out real cars, just powered by electricity, it's going to be great.
People that bought new Apple products early in Apple's rise had similar experiences. As new product categories were introduced from the 1998 iMac onward, more technical users complained about nits in "rev A" products, tending to wait for the second revision ("rev B") to buy.
You are right that some existing automakers will succeed. Still, I believe that in a decade's time the consensus view about this will be that Tesla won.
Who knows, 10 years is a long time and most of my predictions are 50/50 even a year out :). Still, I feel relatively confident based on past history (I'm a car nut, and have been for the last few decades), the incumbent manufacturers are very capable and have a valuable pool of experience to draw from.
What I truly expect to happen is that some manufacturers will try to emulate Tesla and fail. Some will remember that they know how to make cars, and that people want cars not computers on wheels, and they'll make good cars that just happen to use electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. These latter manufacturers will be very successful. The whole touchscreen-on-wheels fad is just that, a fad. On average, people's taste in cars is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Depends what you view as the core competency of an automaker.
Tesla has large leads in battery technology, software, and electric drivetrains. But they suck at manufacturing and quality control. Meanwhile Japanese & Korean automakers like Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Subaru, etc. have spent literally decades perfecting manufacturing, QC, supply chain management, etc. It's a question of whether you can see legacy automakers catching up on the "electric" part before Tesla perfects the "car" part.
IMHO I think Tesla's strongest moat is in the battery technology and production capacity. Electric drivetrain components are a commodity, and Toyota etc. have had them for 2 decades with their hybrids. Software is also hard, and Tesla understands that more than legacy automakers - but actual software companies like Google & Apple are now getting into the auto business and selling their software solutions to automaker OEMs, and they can do a much more compelling software product than Tesla can. Doing QC, supply chains, and manufacturing right is harder than most startups think, and that's where Tesla really falls down.
Also, personally I won't buy any Tesla product other than the PowerWall (where they actually do have a strong competitive advantage and solid manufacturing). Heard too many horror stories about their cars, their solar panels, their solar panel installation, their roofs, their self-driving car software, etc. Quality issues early on become very persistent brand issues, and it's hard to change the perception of selling an unreliable product once ingrained.
(Interestingly, sometimes you don't have to - people buy BMWs and Ferraris despite them having shit reliability records. Sometimes because they have shit reliability records - being able to afford a BMW and its repairs is a mark of having income & time to spare. But that automatically locks you into the luxury Veblen-goods market; you'll never sell to hassled parents if they keep hearing stories about how your products are unsafe, have manufacturing defects, and require frequent repairs.)
I think you're right. But unfortunately $TSLA is already priced assuming it. If we knew which other companies would survive the coming shakeup we could make a lot more money buying them than Tesla.
As part of the 41% that recently swapped out their "gas guzzler" Porsche for a Tesla M3, I can confirm that they're ready for prime time.
The Tesla Supercharging experience has been pretty great. The route planner calculates charging stops automatically and you only need to wait 5-10 mins to top off ~100 miles before you're back on the road.
Without the Superchargers, though, the experience would be pretty terrible - how is the current charging station grid for non-Tesla EVs?
> how is the current charging station grid for non-Tesla EVs?
Acceptable, but different. More stations, fewer chargers per station. We haven't had any difficulty, the experience is largely similar to our Tesla. We do have to swipe a card (or use Apple Pay, which is what I do) on the charger before the electrons start flowing, but aside from that it doesn't really change our road trip experience.
Where are we on charging-from-underneath-the-car? I live in a city center, where I can't hook up to my own charging unit, curbside units are scarce and a pain in the ass having to plug in your car every time anyway (my neighbour's charging cable is always across the sidewalk, an accident waiting to happen, especially if more people would start doing this)
The obvious (to me) future is small-ish in-ground base stations in the center of all parking spots, with 'prongs' that come out and automatically plug into a car parked on top of it, presumably with some sort of communication between car and charging plate, and some way to 'guide' the prongs so that you don't have to park exactly in the right spot. There are technical challenges wrt reliability etc, but I wouldn't think those to be unsurmountable. Still I haven't heard of any advances in this field in years. Is that still happening or is manually plugging in the way of the future?
Curbside parking in city centers should go away. So much space is given to those tons of metal blocking the sidewalk and the streets, taking freedom to move from pedestrians, cyclists and also moving cars. Underground parking and parking further away from the city center can take its place.
In my city all new apartment buildings (here that's 5-7 floors) have underground parking with at least 1 parking space for every unit. I'm not sure if that's by law, but it makes good sense. The parking spaces cost an extra €20,000 on top of the apartment price, so it makes good business sense for the developer to do this too :-)
Opposite me (literally 10m from my window, across the street) there is a new development being built that used to be a dirt patch of private parking for an office. It's going to be a mixture of office, retail and residential units. For the past year it's been fun to watch them digging out the plot - around the size of a medium supermarket - to 20m or so below ground level, which will be used for parking.
The "prong based" approach is never going to happen, in my opinion. Inductive charging is already a thing for EVs (it's less efficient, and not at all widespread), and my guess is that where we'll see investment.
It looks like the curve may be a similar shape for electric bikes and scooters. IMHO an e-bike is the fastest way to get kids across town to school, it's interesting to watch the world discover this.
I think people are going to be surprised by how quickly this transition happens once it takes hold. This growth rate really isn't new, its just that the baseline percentages are large enough now that people are starting to notice.
In another year or two when 1/20 new cars are EVs, people will start to realize that the benefits often do outweigh the drawbacks. Its really hard to tell what the upper bound will be after that.
The report had four categories, none of which seem to include bicycles.
Electric bicycle counts would be interesting though, and I hope more people start adopting them for their transportation needs (or non-electric bikes for that matter).
This includes plugin hybrids, so it's not that 10% of cars sold in Europe are BEV's. Majority of those are actually plugin hybrids.
And this already gives us like 90% of the environmental benefits. Sure BEV is more environementally friendly. But with PHEV's we can get more total amount of electrical kilometers driven on the road. And one only needs to be able to charge at home, no need to care about charging infrastructure yet. But when it improves one can use it just fine.
Basically you drive your daily commute with electricity, but when you go to summer cabin then you can use gasoline as usual.
This is an example of Finland, registrations for last month (march 2021): 6197 pure gasoline cars (includes non chargeable hybrids) 2121 Plugin-hybrids (gasoline) 1139 diesel 789 BEV 78 Plugin-hybrids (diesel)
At this rate it won't take many years anymore until pretty much all the new cars sold here will be chargeable, even if some of em still have ICEs inside them too.
I'm just about to change my winter heating socket into a charging outlet, and move into plugin hybrid. It just makes so much sense here. Because due to high gas taxes when driving with electricity it costs around 20-30% of what it costs to drive with gasoline. So it's simply a no brainer in economical sense.