- 3 days
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.
- OriginalTangle@feddit.orgEnglish3 days
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.
- chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish3 days
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.
- betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish3 days
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.
- unitedwithme@lemmy.todayEnglish3 days
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)
- betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish2 days
I’m not talking about “untrustworthy governments” in particular, I’m talking about governments of any kind. Demand for less pollution is inherent, yet governments are not making enough efforts to reduce fossil combustion by electrifying instead.
- benjirenji@slrpnk.netEnglish3 days
The few times I’ve charged an electric rental car, I had to go pee and buy snacks or go for lunch anyway… in my opinion a longer break of a few minutes from driving is healthy and safer anyway.
- jj4211@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
In three years of ownership, I have used a fast charger once. A sudden unplanned road trip when I had let my charge get low.
Charging at home is so much nicer than a gas station. It is worth the rate longer fast charging on a road trip to usually not to go to a gas station at all.
If I lived in an apartment, I think I might be pretty frustrated though.
4 daysI’m fine with waiting. Thing I wonder about is, how many vehicles can charge at a station at a time? Can you just make a parking lot with plugs for each space? If so, I’m good. Where’s the snack machine—
- catdog@lemmy.mlEnglish3 days
Aa a European, this thread reads like it’s 2016.
Range is not an issue, nor is public charging. Yes, we drive long distances as well, it just happens to be cross-border. Fast chargers are nice for road trips, but destination charging is fine all other 350 days a year.
- sparkyshocks@lemmy.zipEnglish3 days
Isn’t the stereotype that in Europe, 100 miles is a long distance, but in the United States, 100 years is a long time?
- catdog@lemmy.mlEnglish3 days
Miles are not a thing here.
My longer distance single day drives in an EV were 800-1000km.
- Technus@lemmy.zipEnglish5 days
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.
- 5 days
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)
- stickyprimer@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
A year later, we still haven’t even gotten a 240V fast charger at home. Still just pluggin’ in to the old wall with a regular old cord. We still manage to get all the charging we need done during the cheap-metered hours, too.
I laugh when I think back to buying the EV. I was so panicked about getting fast charger as soon as possible. I thought the wall plug would get us through the weekend while we tried to find an available electrician, but then we’d get desperate. It just never happened.
After 100k miles in an EV, road trips add about 20 minutes for every every 3 hours of driving. That’s all. It’s basically a trivial difference which gets statistically lost in the noise of traffic variability. If this causes an issue, it’s a lack of prior planning.
Yep, though that depends on destination in some regions. When my partner and I planned our trip to their parents’ place, what’s normally a 9 hour drive turned into a 13 hour one because we ended up having to charge up to 100% from 5% for one of the intervals due to lack of CCS stations, which was nearly a 60-70 minute charge each way.
That may have changed in the intervening year, and I’d love to have that drive only extended ~1hr instead because we can do ~15% -> 80% charging intervals instead.
- hcbxzz@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
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.
- acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish3 days
okay so a few times a year your meal isn’t exactly when you want to eat. or you can’t eat exactly what you want to eat.
i’ll take that over having to go to a gas station weekly to fill up and pay $50 for the privilege.
- 4 days
Good thing I wrote up two other options if it doesn’t work for you. It works perfectly fine on our car trips.
- hcbxzz@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
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
- 4 days
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?
- hcbxzz@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
I want EVs, but they’re simply not good enough yet. They need to be much better before they can reach 90% adoption
- sanzky@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
EVs are perfectly fine, even with current charging speeds. the problem is not fast charging but AC charging coverage. everyone should be able to charge their cars at home or work.
The thing with charging times is mostly anxiety based on fear of the unknown rather than anything tangible
- 4 days
simply not good enough yet
This thread is full of people telling you the opposite. I own an EV and am telling you it’s the best car I’ve ever had and will never go back. If you don’t believe they’re good enough then you need to analyze why you believe that, because it’s simply not true. If you want to ask me questions about what they are actually like, feel free, but I won’t sit here and help you “feel” better about them when all the facts show that they’re great vehicles to own.
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?!”
1 pedal driving doesn’t use brake pads to slow down your car. You still have brakes in case of an emergency, but if you’re using them enough to wear out your brake pads then you’re doing something wrong. As someone else pointed out, you’re much more likely to rust off your brake pads rather than wear them out.
- Jolteon@lemmy.zipEnglish3 days
The amount of braking force that you can apply with that is relatively small, so if you want to either brake quickly or come to a complete stop, you’ll still use the actual brakes. While your brake pads would last longer than typical car, they would still need wear down.
- psx_crab@lemmy.zipEnglish5 days
“those fluid is VERY flammable, it’s insane people wanted to sit above one”
“it stink when it’s running.”
- stickyprimer@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
“the wear and tear from containing thousands of internal explosions will inevitably wear parts down over time.”
- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish5 days
“leave it running in a closed garage and it will kill you in minutes with poison gas”
- kestrel7_7@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
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
- acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
EVs still use brake pads. lol
not really. almost all EV breaking is regen, unless you drive like shit.
- Nollij@sopuli.xyzEnglish5 days
First, just to be pedantic, EVs did exist first. They go all the way back to the early 1800s. But battery technology didn’t advance enough to make them a good option until recently, so your point remains.
I fully agree with you that the only thing keeping gasoline going is inertia. There have been parodies applying the same logic to other fields, like the gas-powered phone.
There’s a reason why 80%+ of EV owners say they’ll never go back, and a good chunk of the remainder are just waiting on the field to mature a bit.
- 5 days
The saddest part is that EVs were invented first, but it was easier to tanker fuel everywhere, rather than building out the electric grid in low-density areas.
- 8oow3291d@feddit.dkEnglish4 days
Many people fail to appreciate just how much consumer battery technology has improved, in their lifetime.
- stickyprimer@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
Yes. And another thing people don’t appreciate is that gas always had the inherent advantage in that the oxidizing agent is just sitting around wherever you go. You don’t even need to carry all the chemical agents. If gas cars had to carry around their own oxidizer like rockets do, batteries would have surpassed them long ago.
- Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
the vast majority of their charging at home or at their destination.
Absolutely true, which is also why I found it extremely annoying when reviewers began claiming that range wasn’t as important as fast charging speeds in daily use. Luckily most have stopped that shit, probably realizing there’s a reason most people want good range, and this is one of them. Also charging at home/destination cost way less than using a fast charger, and it’s better for battery life too.
- 5 days
Yeah EVs seem almost non-viable if you live in an apartment complex right now, which is a shame. At least where I am
- Mantzy81@aussie.zoneEnglish5 days
You can literally have just a simple wall plug and charge a car. It doesn’t need to be a fitted wall-mounted charging box. Yes, it is much slower and takes 24+ hours to charge the car completely but most people don’t actually use much of their battery per day anyway so if you plug in every night when you get home, you’re not going to have a problem for the majority of the time. And those are a very cheap socket run that an apartment’s body corporate could/should install.
- FrChazzz@lemmus.orgEnglish5 days
I have been an EV owner since 2018 and I have never had a “level 2” charger installed. I’ve been fine with just plugging into the wall. Now, granted, my cars have been 80-125 mile range vehicles. But it’s been fine.
- Nollij@sopuli.xyzEnglish5 days
Not OP, but nearly every apartment complex I’ve ever been to has absolutely 0 electricity to a surface lot, and very limited/restricted access in a garage. And no apartment managers are going to change that unless there’s money to be made from it.
Fortunately, newer buildings are now including some public charging stations, presumably getting a portion of the sales.
- 5 days
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.
- Brkdncr@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
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.
- LincolnsDogFido@lemmy.zipEnglish5 days
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.
- frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish5 days
Only $600??? That’s cheap as hell! I thought you were going to say $2k at the absolute lowest
- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish5 days
You do not want 50A 240V circuit built cheap, because of the circuits arcs, the house will burn down. The proper way to do it is a pony box for the charger circuit only, and special plug hardware designed for 100% duty cycles, not clothes dryers. States haven’t even updated codes for EV charge circuits.
- Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish5 days
Great which contractor offers those terms?
I have a 50a charger installed but holy hell this comment is silly.
You still have to pay up front for the charger+wiring. That can be a deal breaker for many, and the point is apartments are much harder as most don’t offer any electricity for even l1 charging
- Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish4 days
Again most people can’t afford the up front cost.
Its expensive to be poor, and most people are poor
They are already in debt paying huge amount of interest monthly.
I like being able to charge at home and it’s a luxury I know not everyone gets.
For the numbers:
Paying off a $600 charge at $10/month like you suggested would take almost 13 years and cost over $900 in interest at a 18% apr
So you are spending almost 50% more on interest than the original charge. So 150% more expensive at 1500 vs 600.
For a 5 year payoff you have to spend just over $15/month but still are paying over $300 in interest. That’s now over $900 total or 50% more expensive because you can’t afford the up front cost.
- Pyro@pawb.socialEnglish5 days
Then you have where my apt had another company put in and manage the charges but they charge 15 cents more a kw then the fast charger around the corner.
I don’t mind sitting every so often in the morning drinking some tea while charging but it would be nice if it’s faster
- gigaqps@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
Gasoline cars need to accept grass if they are ever to be a viable replacement for a horse. Like, what if you’re far from a gas station but there’s a meadow right there?
Only fringe enthusiasts can own a gasoline car that doesn’t have a biofuel fermenter attached.
So, every parking space is going to have a charger? Because those times that I’ve been to one of these big gas stations, I don’t leave my car blocking the pump while I wander around inside looking for the restroom.
- 5 days
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.
Say what? Outside of a long road trip, that’s very much what I do every time. I haven’t been into the store at my gas station in years. I’m hardly alone, I see plenty of other people fill up and leave.
The “charging problem” is most completely addressed by doing less driving. Obviously.
- 5 days
We have been wanting an EV (something other than a Swasticar) for our next vehicle and think we could deal with the extended charging times required during a long drive or trip, but we ended up ruling it out.
For us the big problem is the difficulty getting parts and service. Service for the models we looked at is only available at dealers (and only some dealers), and parts are regularly not in dealer stock.
We really don’t want to risk taking a cross-county trip and having the car break down 200 miles from the nearest mechanic. With the additional real possibility of having to wait weeks (or months) for a part, an EV is not an appealing choice for us, at least not yet.
What are you expecting to break down? A modern internal combustion engine plus continuously variable transmission is one the world’s most complex pieces of engineering in common use today.
An electric drive system is trivial in comparison.
- Mandarbmax@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
I’d be worried about some of the electronics, modern cars, electric or not, tend to be overcomplicated with tablets and server connections and what have you. I might also worry about getting into an accident.
- acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish3 days
if you get into an accident on a road trip you’re fucked regardless of what car you have.
- blargh513@sh.itjust.worksEnglish5 days
Hate to tell you this, but cars have been like this for about 15 years now.
Been a long time since ol Joe at the gas station could fill the tank and tune your carburetor with a screwdriver.
- Mandarbmax@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
Yes but other cars can be repaired at any mechanic rather than just at a dealer, which is the issue we were talking about above.
I am well aware of the computerization of cars, how carburetors have not been a thing for more like 30 years, and how generally electric vehicles are better than combustion ones but both are worse than public transit.
- blargh513@sh.itjust.worksEnglish4 days
I have a seven year old Volvo.
It cannot be repaired at a mechanic beyond simple mechanical things. Everything else has to pass through a Volvo dealer because they locked down their software (Vida) and regular mechanics COULD buy it, but it would cost them several thousand dollars a year for the subscription. Unless they are going to specialize, it’s not worth it. I cannot drop my car off at joe’s garage.
There’s no real difference between ICE and electrics in that regard. You can still do basic repairs to an electric like brakes, tires, suspension, etc.
- Semester3383@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
Yeah I fucking do. I’m at Costco of BJs just long enough to fill the tank, and then I’m off.
- kunaltyagi@programming.devEnglish3 days
At this point driving is your profession 😂 and you need a diff solution. Either fast charge or battery swap or plain old fossil fuels.
Honestly though I hope there’s stuff like park and ride or decent public transportation for people who have such long commutes (or a society where you can afford and prefer to love closer to work). Driving for hours on end can’t be healthy
- lightnsfw@reddthat.comEnglish4 days
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.
- betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish3 days
A source that a car and a washing machine both use 240V? Sure you could.
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?
- sparkyshocks@lemmy.zipEnglish3 days
I’ve done a few cross country moves where I would only try to time out a stop for all three reasons at a time: restroom, refuel, meal. I was doing pretty great with only one stop every 4-5 hours or so, 14 hours of driving per day.
As an EV owner (and a parent who now usually has kids in the car), I go at a much more leisurely pace and don’t need to do that kind of road trip anymore. But I totally get why it’s the default for a lot of people trying to get from one place to another
- ohulancutash@feddit.ukEnglish4 days
If the charge is 6x longer than filling, then there need to be 6x the charging points. Stations will need to have a much larger footprint which isn’t always possible in urban environments. Then the occupants are stuck there for 30min so there better be adequate security otherwise it’ll be ground zero for crime.
- BastingChemina@slrpnk.netEnglish4 days
There is an issue with your argument, fast charging is rarely used by EV owner.
EV can charge from a regular outlet overnight. So everyone with a private parking spot is charging their car overnight. Of cities can build outlets where there is public parking then only long distance travelers have to use the fast chargers.
- adeoxymus@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
I agree. That does mean during vacation season the peaks can be way higher
- bountygiver [any]@lemmy.mlEnglish3 days
You can also slow charge in hotels if they provide them.
You sleep and wake up with 100%
- adeoxymus@lemmy.worldEnglish3 days
That’sa good idea l have done this also a few times. Note that during peak season these can also be full 😅
Or sometimes taken up by non charging cars (that one is very annoying).
- hcbxzz@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
Lets say you have a 300mi range EV. that sounds great, until you realize you can’t actually use it all.
We like to save the bottom 20% for emergencies and battery longevity, and fast charging is too slow above 80% to be worth it, so effectively, on a road trip. only the 20%-80% range is usable. Your 300mi+ range just turned into 180mi of usable range. And then factor in ~10% battery degradation over time, or range reduction in winter conditions, and you could easily have as little as 150mi of actual usable range between charging stops. And that’s assuming the charging stations are perfectly spaced apart.
That’s only a little more than 2 hours at highway speeds. And that’s not along time to be driving, even for a single person. In gas cars, we will regularly do 3-4 hours without stopping at all. And if we do stop for a break, it’s rarely at gas stations or places with charging stations. Those are typically awful places to spend the limited amount of time you have on a trip.
In practice, the charging interval is far, far less than the ideal 300mi and far more frequent.
- skyfex@lemmy.zipEnglish5 days
The usable range is 10%-100%. Nobody starts an EV road trip with much less than 100%. Though you may consider cutting a mid trip fast charge somewhere around 90%. Usually for me that’s because I see that I can get to my destination without going up to 100%
Charging stations will eventually be spaced at close enough distances that you don’t have to think about where to stop. In a mature EV market there’s generally many more EV chargers than gas stations along a given route.
And if we do stop for a break, it’s rarely at gas stations
I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped at a gas station to fast charge. I stop at roadside McDonalds (we have kids), cafes, supermarkets (last stop before a trip to a cabin), etc.
How, in this day and age, could you not be aware that fast chargers are put up in more diverse places than gas stations? They’re not stinky. They don’t need to be separate from the businesses where car drivers want to spend their time.
I’ve stopped at a fast charger at a small cafe in the middle of nowhere on the top of a mountain, you could take a wonderful hike there while your car charges. You do know you can walk away from the car while it’s charging… right?
we will regularly do 3-4 hours without stopping at all
My trip to my family cabin is around 3 hours. And the last 30min is through an actually snowy dirt road up a steep climb. And I still have 40% or so left. With skis in the roof. So get outta here with your arm chair expertise.
Incidentally I don’t have to fast charge on this trip at all since we have electricity at the cabin. Super slow but I can get at least 80% which is plenty to get back.
Anyone still bringing up winter in an EV conversation should be laughed out of the room now that Norway is at near 100% market share. And no, you can’t use “Norway is small” as an argument. Road trips are common here to start with, every other family has a cabin in the mountains. But Norway is also part of Schengen. The borders in EU/Schengen are open just like the US. The first post I saw on my EV car models Facebook group was a person planning a trip to Croatia.
- hcbxzz@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
Nobody starts an EV road trip with much less than 100%.
That’s exactly the problem. Yes you start a trip with 100%, but that only happens at most once per day. What about in the middle? You willing to sit a fucking Walmart for 1hr to get to 100%? We’re not talking about a trip where you drive 3hr from home to the destination. I’m talking about road trips where you go half way across the country and do 5+hr of driving in a day, across multiple days.
- skyfex@lemmy.zipEnglish2 days
I’ll be the first to say, if you regularly do multi-day 6+ road trips, staying at places with no over-night charging options, then maybe an EV is not for you.
But even among the people I know in the US, I don’t know of even one person doing this. I think the closest is my uncle driving Norway-Italy a few times. On the flip-side I’ve seen plenty of people writing online about multi-day EV cross continent trips in Europe. Even back when charging infrastructure was much worse.
A single 5-7 hour trip is not an issue in an EV. One or two half hour stops isn’t a big deal for most people. Nice to stretch the legs and get some coffee. You dont have to do all the charging in one stop you know. It makes more sense to stop at places you think it’s nice to take a break, and do a couple more of them instead.
Last trip I took across Norway (~5h) I took more breaks than I needed charging stops (needed just one). I stopped at a nice cafe at the top of a mountain crossing where I was surprised to see fast chargers even there, but I didn’t need a charge to get to my destination anyway.
Personally I’ve had one trip that would be hard with EV. Portland-SF if I remember correctly. ~10h. But I deeply regretted not splitting the trip over two days.
- UroFighter@sh.itjust.worksEnglish5 days
Well, 3-4 hours without stopping is not only miserable, it is also unsafe.
- 5 days
Highway Hypnosis/ Road Hypnosis is real. In most driving manuals it’s recommend to take breaks and stretch.
