this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Not to mention not everyone has a garage or nearby charging spot to charge an ev.
Perhaps dealing with infrastructure first would be interesting...
Then again, I don't have a gas station in my backyard either...
Shopping centers/grocery stores need more charging stations, that's the most realistic place to go to charge when you don't have the capacity to do it at home.
Workplaces too.
I cannot even charge my phone at work under Italian law (I'm a public employee and it would count as malversation).
Wow that's a bit of a stretch 😂
Man I haven't learned a new word in a long time, and "malversation" is a great one.
My workplace is adding free EV charging installed at my closest building for those who work in person still. It definitely seems like a smart idea.
The issue is charging takes a while, while refuelling is pretty much instantaneous
90% of people can charge their car enough in between Shopping trips
People that live in the city don't usually go shopping with their cars (at least here in central Europe) and people in the countryside will have enough space for a charger anyways.
People do everything in their cars in the U.S.
Yeah, and not being Amercian is a crime on the internet, I know.
This article is about cars being made in the U.S., so it's kind of about the U.S....
The article is, but this discussion didn't really specifically mention the US, so I assumed we were talking about EVs in general
What? Why would you react that way, this isn't even an "America is the only country that exists" moment. Nobody disagreed with you, insulted you, misinterpreted you, etc...
Just look at the votes on my previous comment
Those downvoters are because you shifted the conversation away from "ev's in the US". But since you like sophistry, that was intentional.
You're exactly the kind of person I'm talking about.
DC fast charging is fairly fast. My car goes from 10-80 in less than 20 minutes in summer, and probably 35 minutes in winter. My wife spends more time than that in grocery stores weekly.
4 times longer refueling is crazy that's only 80 percent versus 100 % refueling.
The point is that you're already parking your car for that much time while you're doing other things. They just need to put more charging stations near those things.
Imagine instead every week having to make a special trip with your vehicle to a designated location where you have to interact with a point-of-sale that is trying to upsell you car washing services or loyalty program enrollment with a good chance of skimmers installed on credit card readers.
You then have to dispense gallons of fluid of highly flammable liquid which you, in the week ahead, will turn into carbon dioxide that will slowly alter the climate of your planet to the point that hundreds of species of plants and wildlife die off.
On the financial side, the price of the liquid is so variable that it can change multiple times a day based on market demands and world events. Your country may go to war to ensure you getting that liquid. There will be deaths of your countryman to make sure you get that liquid.
Instead, I pull the car into the garage and plug a cable in. When I get in the car the next day, its full. So yes, one of these sounds crazy, but not the one you say it is.
Your privilege is showing. I live in an apartment so I would have to make a separate trip and sit around for 40 minutes to fill the car up 80%...
So talking about privilege, let's go back to the part where multiple countries have killed millions of people over that magic flammable liquid. Trillions of dollars have been spent in extracting, transporting, refining, and transporting again to byproducts of these flammable, toxic liquids.
Hell, I personally have three classmates from elementary school who died in another country trying to extract that flammable liquid from the ground from another country.
Completely agree. Not a fan of that or capitalism but I'm living in the real world which requires me to use the system. Electric cars aren't there for me yet.
I know someone who does that and it’s manageable even if inconvenient. He only needs to go once a week and can find something to do for an hour
Even if we're talking road trips, after 4 hours of driving (often much less), you're going to want to get out, stretch, pee, and get a bite to eat. All stuff that easily takes 20 minutes.
4 hours at 70mph is 280 miles. Add 20% for not charging all the way (which is faster and is easier on the battery). Add another 20% for cold weather. That gets us to about 400 miles. EVs on the market now are hitting 350 miles, and that number is only going up in the next few years.
EVs past 350 to 400 mile range only serve a small section of the population that likes to pee in a bottle and eat sandwiches prepared ahead of time so they can go 7 hours at once. Most ICE cars don't have that kind of range. We don't need to wait around just to serve this handful of people. In fact, we should keep to around 350-400 miles and use any further advancements to reduce weight.
True! I'm more at the 2 to 3 hours get out and stretch kinda point in my life. The amount of chargers and the fact that I can't do it at my apartment is still a deal breaker.
The idea is that you charge when you go somewhere with a parking lot where you are staying for more than a few minutes. Almost everyone whose primary mode of transportation parks somewhere and then spends 30+ minutes inside, whether that be restaurants, grocery stores, work, or somewhere else. In that time I get get 200 miles of range, which is far more than I actually use most weeks.
Well, you also have to account for the fact that you're not supposed to completely charge (or discharge) a lithium battery pack. 80% is effectively full (if you care about cell longevity)
e: Li-Ion to lithium
That's why NIU' system with swappable batteries is a great idea, even though it makes engineering more difficult
I either charge at home, or at work, or if there happens to be a charger at my destination but I'm almost never waiting to charge.
I've frequently had to wait for a pump or had to go out of my way to get to a working pump. Gas pumps don't work when the power goes out but batteries stay charged. I've actually had to load up my gas generator in my ev to drive 2 towns over during a power outage to get fuel...to keep my pets alive. Car only had about 30% charge to start and roughly 22% when I was back. Generator had 0 gas to start (had just run through my old gas) and was full when I got back....also the power decided to come back on which began refueling my ev.
The goal is, to set them up so people aren’t necessarily waiting.
-- I don’t care how long it takes to charge at home: just like my phone I plug in overnight and it’s fully charged in the morning
-- all the grocery stores and restaurants and workplaces that have chargers are all pretty slow but you’re going to be there for a while anyway, plus they only need to recover the charge used to get there
-- on road trips, my stop is well under an hour but a supercharger can give back a good percentage of charge in that time
"Barring about this one minor annoyance, EV's are great!"
Good point. It's a sort of chicken egg problem. Lack of ev and no investment for infrastructure, resulting in even less ev.
Here in Germany, in my local town, they build hydrogen fuel stations instead of charging stations. Very strange.
Hydrogen may not be such a bad idea until there's electrical infrastructure. Hydbrid hydrogen-electric even?
Hydrogen cars are basically hybrids already. Hydrogen has some issues though that are unlikely to be overcome. Go watch a video of someone driving one around, if you think finding an EV charger is difficult, just try finding a hydrogen charger outside of southern California.
There are two types of hydrogen cars: Fuel Cell EVs and ICE built to run with hydrogen fuel. Both of them are the future of fuel. You won't see a network of EV charging stations in most south american, african, or Asian countries. The EV revolution is very urban focused. Hydrogen as a fuel that can be transported almost as easily as gasoline is the pragmatic future. EVs are popular because Elon Musk went viral.
Edit: totally aware it's not successful at the moment: https://www.motor1.com/news/693449/toyota-hydrogen-mirai-not-successful/
Hydrogen doesn't solve any problem. It's just a secondary set of infrastructure we'd have to invest in, and it doesn't overlap with BEV infrastructure (excepting for some grid improvements).
Planning on a 1-to-1 swap between traditional cars and EVs is the crassest mistake. It would take a paradigm shift that emphasizes remote work, carpooling and carsharing in order to make private transportation really sustainable.
EVs are here to save the car manufacturers, not the planet. Literally just a bandaid solution to kick the can of actually implementing the harder solutions that require some societal change down the road a few more years
You can't have infrastructure without the cars, and you can't have the cars without the infrastructure. The solution to this catch-22 is to force the infrastructure to catch up.
Or maybe instead of blocking everything on the theory a complete charging solution will magically appear despite no demand, we can go ahead with the 59% of the population living in a house, and can decide to install a charger. Maybe we can go ahead with charger networks we already have, already allowing most road trips and getting better continuously. And we can use all that demand, all that money to keep building out a better and better charging solution.
FYI - buddy of mine has an EV at a townhouse with no opportunity to charge, and just goes to a supercharger once a week to top off. It may be inconvenient, but it’s not onerous
Charging infrastructure is getting better. I've had an EV without home charging for three years now and I've managed just fine. Overall it's no more inconvenient than having to go to a gas station.
I have a plug-in hybrid. I try to charge while running errands. I (almost) never can. In my area, most stores don't have chargers and those that do, typically have a slow charger with 2-4 spots. Those spots are always taken.