The thing a lot of these people dknt understand is that not everyone has a garage where they can charge a car. I love in an apartment, where am I suppssdd to charge an EV? My parking space is too far away from my parking spot to charge, and I’m positive that my complex would never pay to add charging spots connected to each apartments meter.
Even if they did, I wouldnt trust my neighbors to plug tjeir EV into my charger. This alsomapploesmto people in houses that don’t have a garage. An I supossed to run an extension cord to the street st night so that anyone driving by can llut into my electricity?
I live in a cold climate and so my apartment stall is electrified in order to run a block heater. The way that it works here is that I am charged for power usage off of that stall outlet, but my unit has a breaker that allows me to turn it off and on. I think charging ports could operate similarly, hopefully offering some kind of smarter scheduling that allows you to only have it active when your car is in the stall and needs charging.
And you think the apartment complexes are going to foot the bull to install that here? Every parking lot would have to be torn up to install that. Its a ridiculous assumprion.
Cutting a narrow trench so you can run electricity out to parts of the parking lot you can’t get to otherwise isn’t exactly a big deal. Utilities do that sort of thing all the time. We can patch parking lots - we do it all the time. Or even just put a pole and run the lines overhead. And, in many parking lots, you can just run the trench or conduit around the edge of the parking lot. You also don’t need every space to be electrified, at least at first.
And who’s going to pay for that? I promise you, my shitty complex won’t.
Won’t they? What if they can charge say $20/month + electricity cost extra for those parking spaces and pocket more money?
Why would a parking lot need to be “torn up” to add a power outlet
Because the parking lot is paved? And you have to break throigh that pavement to run power lines?
You don’t need to break up the pavement to add chargers. Indoors they usually add chargers to the wall spots, outdoors add them to (solar paneled) shade structures.
It takes 20 mins, and many grocery stores have chargers, plug in when you do your shopping
Nobody stops to fuel their vehicle taking gasoline, gets out, rushes as fast as possible, puts as much fuel in the car as possible, and gets back in the car and drives away
This almost reads as satire. Like this has to be a joke, right? No way this guy can really be this stupid (or out of touch), right?
He’s saying most folks take something like 10 minutes taking their leasurely time. So that is the goal for ev charging
I literally pump my gas looking at the time because i need to be somewhere, i’ve literally never leisurely gotten gas, i dont even know what that means. Like youre bored at home and decide to go get some gas??
There’s a huge difference between charging in town while you’re out for other things, and refueling while on a longer road trip.
If you’re in town with an EV, you theoretically never need to charge because you all have a full battery when leaving your house.
If you’re stopping after three hours on a longer trip, then you’ll likely need to attend to your biological needs at the same time, including just walking around and stretching your legs.
That’s fine, im still on a timer when im taking a rest stop on a long drive. Im just saying as a non billionaire, idk wtf leisurely getting gas or electricity is.
ITT: Lots of people dont realize how infrequently you actually stop at a charger if you have charging at home or work.
Okay, now what about the people who don’t live in SFHs? I could charge at home most nights if I had an EV, but a lot of people literally can’t install chargers.
Of course your daily mileage comes into play… but
You don’t have to install a charger, if you can charge your laptop/phone at home you can charge your car at home.
It’s just an extension cord.
Of course this requires you to run the cord outside if you don’t have a garage but it’s not like you have to bury it or anything. Because again it’s just an extension cord.
And even if you want “fast” charging at home you aren’t really “installing” a charger you are just getting a 220v outlet installed in the US. If you have a central A/C unit or electric dryer as an example you already have this installed in your house you are just adding an additional outlet for ease of access.
The “real” fast chargers that are installed for public use are not being installed in your home because those are 480v or even 800v. Which is considered industrial use, as far as I am aware you can’t get that power connection in your garage because the infrastructure isn’t there.
I’ll let my friends living in apartments know they can run an extension cord from the 5th floor then lol, I’m sure there’s nothing unsafe about that.
Daily mileage isn’t the only factor either. I’m not sure why I would pay 30k for a used EV if it costs almost the same to charge per 100km as a diesel car worth under 2k takes to refuel per 100 km but takes much more time to do so. EVs start making more sense for people in apartments when public fast charging is nearly free, like charging at home is.
Hey everyone with an electric car did you know you are wrong because if i follow this correctly.
1 .You can buy a 20 year old car for $2000. 2. This person knows someone who lives on the 5th floor.
Yeah it’s called individual choice. It’s not for everyone in every situation. Just like diesel versus gasoline or natural gas or walking or riding a bike or taking a bus.
But the point I made still stands you don’t “have” to install anything.
And yes I have seen people running cords out of windows from apartments. Is it the best option. No. Would I do it also no.
But there are options available.
Make the choice that works best for your situation.
All the messaging about fast charging speed is focused on the wrong thing. EV drivers should be able to do the vast majority of their charging at home or at their destination. The messaging should be about getting chargers in more homes, apartment complexes and workplaces. Speed doesn’t matter as much if you’re going to be parked for half the day or overnight. That’s something that gas simply can’t do.
Fast charging stations should only be necessary for road trips, where you should be taking a break every so often anyways.
The fact that so many people don’t think about this or are unaware shows how well the propaganda worked.
Here is a car that is by far the easiest car you’ll ever own, the power to run it is the cheapest you’ll ever see, and 99% of your trips will be within one charge/tank meaning you’ll never need to worry about range ever - but the propaganda convinced them all that that’s a deal breaker.
As an EV owner the road trips we take are the vast minority of driving anymore. When we do there are options.
- plan out your route and stops. Requires maybe 15 minutes of planning before your trip. You pick a place with food nearby, get out for 30 minutes, stretch, eat your meal, and you are good until the next meal.
- if you are one of the 80% of households with 2 cars, take the other car for that roadtrip.
- get a rental car for your trip. (Remembering that a couple hundred for a rental car is vastly cheaper than paying for gas for 10+ years)
Requires maybe 15 minutes of planning before your trip. You pick a place with food nearby, get out for 30 minutes, stretch, eat your meal, and you are good until the next meal.
It assumes when you want to eat coincides with when you need to charge. It assumes there’s something you want to eat within walking distance of the charging station. Also assumes you eat as often as you charge. I almost never find any of those to be true.
Good thing I wrote up two other options if it doesn’t work for you. It works perfectly fine on our car trips.
And what will happen to all those gas stations when we are at 90% EVs adoption, as is the goal? Where will you find a gas car to rent? How many gas stations will be left? EVs still need to be much faster at charging if we are going for high adoption
Is your argument both in the same breath that EVs will catch on too quick that all gas stations will disappear in a matter of days and also that EV adoption will not catch on quick enough because charging is too slow?
I want EVs, but they’re simply not good enough yet. They need to be much better before they can reach 90% adoption
I can’t help but feel if EVs were invented first, convincing people to adopt gas cars would be impossible.
- “You mean I have to take it somewhere and stand outside every time I need energy?”
- “Why do I have to put all these fluids in it? And why does it need all these filters, brake pads, and maintenance?”
- “These things are so slow, why would you ever want to drive one?”
- “What do you mean I can’t turn on the climate control anytime I want? You mean I have to wait for this thing to heat up?!”
EVs still use brake pads. lol
Also electric cars, gas, and steam has a bit of a format war in the 1890’s-1920’s or so, and people really did make a lot of these points back then. Unreliable and sometimes unsafe chargers (basically due to people not understanding electrical engineering as well as we do now) were a big part of why gasoline won out
EVs still use brake pads. lol
not really. almost all EV breaking is regen, unless you drive like shit.
Speed doesn’t matter as much if you’re going to be parked for half the day or overnight.
The apartment complex and workplace chargers I’ve seen all limit how long you’re allowed to leave your car parked at them. I suppose speed doesn’t matter in the sense that having to move your car 20 minutes later isn’t much less annoying than having to move it 4 hours later. Still, I wouldn’t want an EV without my own garage even if I never went on road trips. It seems like a pain.
Considering how inexpensive it is to put in a 30A, 50A, or 60A circuit, and how modern L2 chargers can both downrate dynamically and be activated with simple apps or cards, this is not a difficult problem to solve.
Considering how inexpensive it is to put in a 30A, 50A, or 60A circuit
I have a 50A circuit that i just installed. And previously installed a 30A circuit at my last house. It’s not inexpensive. A 50A breaker and 30 feet of 6/2 Romex with ground costs $240. Then add in a 40A capable Grizzl-E Classic for another $299 and you’re on your way to $600.
If you’re like me, you also buy conduit for the wiring in the garage to keep it dry/protected and a receptacle rather than hardwiring to allow for a little more flexibility.
Easy, yes. Cheap, no.
Only $600??? That’s cheap as hell! I thought you were going to say $2k at the absolute lowest
The great majority of my gas stops are stop, fill up, leave. I expect those would be eliminated by having a EV I just charged at home though.
For the cost of running a washing machine.
Hmm. There’s many ways that could be a lie. Could I get a source?
A source that a car and a washing machine both use 240V? Sure you could.
Voltage != power draw
This is pure cope from a nation that is a long way behind the rest of the world on EV technology. I’ve done some very long road journeys, 900+ km in a day, and having an EV would likely have added at least an hour to that day, even more if I was towing.
The reality: “Nobody stops to fuel their vehicle taking gasoline, gets out, rushes as fast as possible, puts as much fuel in the car as possible, and gets back in the car and drives away,” Cutler said.
This is exactly how I go about my business at a fuel stop. Maybe do a few stretches and check everything on the roof isn’t working it’s way loose, but once the pump clicks off, I’m goneburgers.
Good to know you’re the overtired and in a rush driver that the defensive driving courses warn me about. Worse if you’re towing something.
I’ve got shit to do, especially when I’m doing that type of distance.
So leave earlier. Don’t put me and me family at risk.
How is me not wanting to fart around for half an hour every time I stop putting you at risk?
You’re not taking the appropriate rest brakes (while towing).
https://www.schmidtlaw.org/how-frequently-should-you-take-breaks-when-driving-long-distances/
Breaks. Brakes are what slow the vehicle down.
I prefer the idea of plug it on and go get lunch and take a piss and have a stretch, rather than have to stand there with it for a few mins and then do all that other stuff.
Well, I prefer to have the choice between both. But I’ll take an ev that can charge in 10min over a gasoline car. It just has to be fast enough to not be annoying.
Where it becomes an issue is when there’s a line. When you’re 3 cars back in the line for a gas pump you’re still done in just a few minutes. With charging it can be an hour or more of waiting.
That isn’t an issue with the car but with the station network. Gvmnts need to support more EV stations rather than more fossil infrastructure.
Can’t rely on untrustworthy governments to fix everything. Supply and demand. Demand rises, supply will have to match or they lose out to the competition (granted their IS competition)
It’s a dumb take on the face of it; splash n dash trips are extremely common, that’s why they put points of sale on the pump stands. It’s common enough for people to want to pay at the pump rather than ever walk into the store. Extremely common weekly errand.
Now, with an EV, likely charged at home every night thus starting most trips with a full battery, that should sharply reduce routine visits to gas stations. That leaves refueling on longer journeys. Which varies.
Me personally traveling alone, I’ll still do quick splash n dash stops on medium length journeys, say 200 miles or so? At interstate speeds that’s about 3 hours of traveling, I’ll use the restroom before setting out and one 5 minute fuel stop will do the distance.
Now, if there is a planned stop, say on a 400 mile trip, I’m gonna stop, bathroom, grab a snack and a drink, and fuel the car. That’s maybe a 15-20 minute stop to use the bathroom, grab a gatorade and a bag of funyuns from the convenience store, pay the clerk, walk back outside, then stand there at the pump while the car fills.
I will grant you, you can plug in your EV and have it charging while you’re in the store, but none are going to charge in 15 minutes. So you’re going to end up just standing there, or sitting there, while it finishes charging. With nothing at all to do. Even simulating the same behavior as with a gas car, stand there next to the charging cable staring at the price going up for ~5 minutes, the car’s not going to have taken on enough power.
I have refueled my car at night at unattended gas stations. Sitting there for a couple hours while a car charges enough to reach the next station sounds real fun.
With level 3 charging most vehicles don’t take multiple hours to charge an almost dead battery to almost full. You don’t fill your gasoline car through a straw, why would you choose to charge your electric car with a level 1 or 2 while on a trip (for overnight charges at home the straw actually makes sense)
For example, a mach-e on that 400 mile trip, charging at 150kw you’d need ~1hr total charge time to finish the trip with the same battery capacity as you start with. But considering you likely start with full battery, and if you finish with completely dead battery, charge time required could be as little as 23 minutes.
Most of the time, they don’t need to be anywhere near as fast as gas (most, maybe even nearly all, people have or can have a way to charge at home). But there’s lots of people that don’t do long stops on their trips and just want to stop, fuel up, and go. The EV can be a bit slower, but anything over about 15 min is going to be a showstopper for alot of people.
Many people don’t enjoy having to regularily go to the fuel station, but they have to. You do not necessarily have to do that with EVs. Habits form around necessities.
Oh, for sure. I haven’t needed to go to a public charger since I got my EV. And I don’t forsee making very many trips to one in the future. Home charging just changes so many things.
I mostly agree but part of me thinks you can get away with below 80% charges to save time rather than being hung up on the time to reach that 80-100%. (shifting one’s thinking like how EV roadtripping is currently about reaching the next charger rather than a 100% fill each stop)
I say that because some gas vehicles like the two-door Bronco just have relatively poor range (in the 200’s) due to smaller tanks and I’ve seen how long folks can wait in line for gas at Costco. (having also been in line)
Most of the DC fast charge specs are like 20-80% because that last 20% is usually much slower. Even with my home charging I don’t typically charge to 100% because it’s better for battery health not to. And yeah, alot of the planning apps don’t assume you’re going to be charging to 100% each time - they tell you what you need to charge to at each stop.
(most, maybe even nearly all, people have or can have a way to charge at home)
What? Most people where?
I live in a fairly rich European country, and EV chargers here practically don’t exist. Almost everyone lives in apartment buildings. If you’re lucky, yours will have 1 or 2 chargers in the underground parking lot or somewhere close by outside.
It’s even worse in Eastern and Southern Europe. Outside of North America, Europe, and China, EVs, as well as chargers for them, don’t exist at all.
Are those ‘most people’ you’re talking about actually just <5% of human population that happen to live in North America or Western Europe, and happen to be wealthy enough to afford that?
EV chargers need not be some special thing. Level 1 charging is more than sufficient for the vast majority of people. Can you find a regular outlet near where you park? Maybe with the help of an extension cord? Or maybe your complex could put outlets in.
Arguably, EVs work even better for places that don’t have infrastructure. Which is easier? Building a network of fuel stations (which need electricity) and keeping them supplied or putting in solar panels in people’s villages? I’d argue the second is generally easier now and is overall better for society - electricity comes with so many benefits beyond just being able to charge your car.
Then there’s upcoming EVs, like what Aptera is working on. Those will be able to add significant amounts of range each day using just the solar panels on the roof. Now you’ve got a car that needs no infrastructure at all (but can use it, if it exists).
I really don’t think charging EVs from regular outlets is at all realistic for the vast majority of people.
Unless you live on the ground floor, you’d have to drag a long ass cable through one of your windows. One of my neighbours actually does that, but just imagine everybody doing it. Not to mention the grid would most likely be unable to handle the load.
I’ve never seen public outlets, aside from USB ports in public transport, so I doubt it’s a thing.
Honestly sounds like a reasonable idea, and not just for EVs. The problem is that more and more countries are steadily moving away from public goods, so every building/complex would have to organize it individually.
Arguably, EVs work even better for places that don’t have infrastructure. Which is easier? Building a network of fuel stations (which need electricity) and keeping them supplied or putting in solar panels in people’s villages?
Absolutely, agreed. But keep in mind the fuel stations are already there, because most countries spent the last 150 years building them everywhere.
It’s an unfair comparison, of course, but it’s also impossible to make a fair one. As it stands, pretty much all developed and a lot of developing countries are already well connected when it comes to gas stations. It’s a lot cheaper and easier to keep them going, than it’d be to replace them all with EV equivalents.
Then there’s the question: does it really make sense to spend the next 50 years upgrading all that infrastructure? When, at least in Europe, public transport is already present everywhere and well developed?
Would it not be a whole lot easier and cheaper to just get rid of fuel stations, and keep expanding public transport, which emits dozens of times less CO2 per passenger than cars do?
Now, obviously, there are still uses for personal vehicles, even if public transport is great. It’s not a question which one to focus on exclusively, but which one to propritize.
Those will be able to add significant amounts of range each day using just the solar panels on the roof.
If this can be done well, then yeah, infrastructure problem kind of solved. Then you’d just need to wait for people to upgrade their existing cars, and afterwards all that gas infrastructure is basically redundant.
The grid can handle the load. There have been studies done on this and the increased load from going EVs will only be a slight increase over the increased electrical generation we have to do anyway. It’s a gradual transition, not a thrown switch. The increased load can be easily accounted for. Remember that an EV charging off a regular outlet is basically the same load as a space heater and that’s only when it’s actually charging.
Wiring charging outlets for people to charge at will require a bit of work, but this is pretty straightforward stuff. Apartments can dedicate parking spots for EV charging. They’d probably pick spots where its easy to run wire from existing power infrastructure. They’d then charge you for the electricity at a reasonable markup or at cost plus a reasonable additional monthly fee. The apartment complex makes a bit more money with a small investment and the tenants get cheaper transportation. For street parking, cities are already looking into adding EV charging to their existing light poles. Worst case, they have to upgrade the wiring. But they probably already have plenty of excess capacity because they switched to LEDs, lowering power consumption. Again, they charge you for the electricity you use at a reasonable markup. The city makes money to maintain the system plus maybe a bit extra and residents get to charge their EV.
The transition from gasoline infrastructure to EV infrastructure won’t be and can’t be quick. There’s just too many gas cars on the road. But all infrastructure wears out and has to be replaced. As demand for EV infrastructure grows, gasoline infrastructure will decline as it naturally wears out and isn’t replaced. It’s unlikely it will ever fully go away, but it could decline to a point where its rare. But that’s decades away.
Yes, public transport is indeed a greener solution. It’s also entirely unfeasible for much of the US. Our cities are just too spread out for it to make much sense most places. For places with the density, it absolutely should be expanded. Even in Europe, people still live in the countryside, suburbs, small villages, etc. Public transit doesn’t make sense everywhere, even there.
So many people will get gas then go in for snacks by the time you wait in line and get gas that’s 20 minutes alone.
That’s why I figure 15 min, give or take, is low enough for it to not matter for most people. It’s not alot more than what even a quick gas stop would be. And that’s not some unobtainable thing. Tesla superchargers can already do it. Some Chinese brands are already at 10 minutes and pushing for <5 minutes.
I was arguing with my mum and she said it can take twenty minutes to recharge the car. I said, after driving for five hours don’t you want to get out, stretch your legs and have a coffee? That’s half an hour easy.
