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Who has or is planning to get an electric car / EV Talk
- Thread starter PracticalMac
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If EVs are intended to become used by the majority some better way to charge them is needed. If you have to park on the street wherever you find space you cannot plan to find a charger when needed. Big city population cannot use EVs the way garage owners and people with staff parking garages might be able to.
Aside from charger access issues the charging should be done automated without connectors to handle.
I am surprised that these basic issues are not solved first. It is like grids unable to serve all this future charging.
Aside from charger access issues the charging should be done automated without connectors to handle.
I am surprised that these basic issues are not solved first. It is like grids unable to serve all this future charging.
I agree it is not as convenient as being able to do it from home, but for some reason hardly anyone seems to have petrol pumps at their homes and manage to manage just fine without them
Yeah, I love those contactless petrol pumps as well. And once I put the plug in the wall for my wireless iPhone charger all I have to do is just place it on it
Seriously, you are surprised about those basic issues? LOL In the mean time the rest of us are enjoying it...
Not using a connector to charge (like your iPhone can), would significantly increase the amount of power you need. Not a green solution with current technology I’m afraid.
Plugging them in is easy. Not sure why that’s a barrier to ownership. Understand the issue about on street parking. But I’ve never bought a house without a garage and off street parking. I never would.
This is exactly what is happening to my MIL. If was supposed to arrive a month or two ago, and all anyone ever knows is in transit.
Well in my case, someone backed out of an order and another EUV became available yesterday at my dealer, so I snagged it and now own a Bolt EUV.
Hope your situation clears up
The near meltdown of the power grid in so many places across the country in the last few days is a stark reminder that our electric infrastructure is not ready for massive electric car adoption, as much as we might need it. In my area the electric company was begging customers to reduce usage voluntarily to avoid a blackout, and several areas in the US did have rolling blackouts and some full blackouts. Just imagine what it would be like if electric car adoption was higher. We desperately need to upgrade our electric infrastructure if widespread adoption is to be successful.
Why my friends have an EV and a gasoline-powered vehicle. Also, long trips. The infrastructure in our area is decent if you own a Tesla but not so great otherwise. Fusion looks promising but I think that's at least ten years out.
I don’t disagree, but the vast majority of EV charging is done at night when the grid is not being used much.
Here in the UK home chargers have to be smart so you can (or the grid can) control what time they come on.
That doesn't work so well when power is out for a couple of days. Or longer. We had people without power for up to 3 weeks in the ice storm of 2011. Gasoline generators are really popular in my area to provide power (including heat) when the power goes out.
Fusion has been “…at least ten years out” since the 1960’s. Still is.
We’ve been very fortunate in our area in that power outages are few and far between. One datapoint: we’ve been in our home for about 9½ years, have experienced four outages. One lasted 36 hours, and the other three were less than four hours each. Our previous home in central Ohio had short outages frequently and one that lasted a week. After that long outage, we installed a 20kw natural-gas-driven generator which pretty much guaranteed we’d never have another outage. And we didn’t. The unadvertised downside of whole house generators is that they consume huge amounts of expensive natural gas or even more expensive propane if you’re using them for long periods of time such as 12 hours or more. And for really long, multiple day outages you may need to shut them down at times because of noise for your neighbors (a neighborhood without power is very, very quiet and any noise is very noticeable and carries), or to perform some service like an oil check or oil change.
I was going to get the electric cars,
but the you_tubes forbidden me to!
but the you_tubes forbidden me to!
All true. I’ve never been without power for more than an hour or two in my lifetime. Obviously depends on where you live.
Gas stations won't work either in a total power outage scenario.
Really? The ones in my area were up and running on gasoline-powered-generators.
Someday we may get neighborhood fuel cells too.
The issue with power outages in my state is usually tree branches. If you live in a rural area with a lot of distance between you and your neighbors, then outages due to branches falling are usually low on the priority list. If you live in a city, then fixing one issue could get hundreds of people back on line with relatively little effort while taking care of rural problems means that you may fix a problem for one, five or ten people with a lot of work. So people have gas generators. People usually have a decent amount of land so that noise isn't an issue.
Kind of a shame that NG prices went up so much because of the war.
The charging stations in my area don't have any staff. I suppose that it is possible but I have never seen it in practice. Have you?
On the other hand, I have personally seen it at gas stations as that's how I filled up during a power outage.
The advantages of the gas generator at a gasoline station is that you only need enough electricity to run the pumps - the energy is already in the gasoline. And you have as much gasoline as you need to run the pumps. So the generator doesn't have to put out much power to service cars. A charging station would have to use gasoline to provide all of the power to charge vehicles so you'd need a much larger generation operation.
The USA the most powerful country on earth can’t keep their electricity grid going. Oh my gosh if that was true we are doomed.
But I suspect there is some dramatisation going on here. Sure I’m in Europe but on the EV specific forums for my car there are a lot of people from all over the US. And I’ve never ever heard them about not being able to charge, having a blackout, or even worried about it. Just thousands of people who use their cars every single day.
The people I know with EVs have backup ICE cars. In general, it's seems to be a thing that affluent people buy because they have systems that can mitigate power outage issues.
One of the problems we have in the US is that electric utilities are more about making profits than providing service and that can lead to power outages; even when there is no shortage of power.
And how often does such a multi week event happen? And what about all other systems, such as to register the sale, make the payment, getting paid yourself, and so on. I’m sorry but I think some very unlikely doomsday scenarios are once again being promoted. In reality and every day life there isn’t an issue.
Multi-week outages are rare. But just one can ruin your month. Those tend to be in rural areas. My area is somewhat rural with a few small cities nearby and there is a Tesla Supercharger station 30 minutes away.
As far as payment systems go, it was cash only. There was a 15 minute line to pump gasoline and you didn't get gasoline if you didn't have cash.
We had a big storm across the country last week and dozens of people died. Some areas had a lot of snow followed by a deep freeze. Things are mild right now but we sometimes have these weather patterns with 2-3 storms a week for several weeks and no warmup. Several years ago I had the situation where my roof was bowing so I cleared part of it and paid someone to clear the rest off of it.
EV sales in the US in 2022 are 6%. Globally, the number is 11%. If EVs were a panacea, then those numbers would be a lot higher.
I will strongly consider an EV when Toyota makes one with decent range (I get 600-700 miles range on my Camry). That way I get a local dealership for service and parts, and the reliability of Toyota. Their RAV4 clone is their first experiment with EVs but it only has 250 miles of range and it's their first try. I would also like to see more Supercharger-class charging stations in my area. We only got our first a few years ago.