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.
Even disregarding the fact that reliable electric cars are much more expensive secondhand than comparable ICE cars, there’s still a significant economic barrier to owning one. It’s significantly more difficult to effectively own an electric car if you have an apartment, or live in a house that only has street side parking, or live in a house that has a landlord that’s not willing to install an expensive electric car charger, which covers the vast majority of lower income housing.
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)
I can vouch for this 100%. Have had an electric vehicle for 6 months now.
The vast majority of my charging has been done at home on 120v. Granted, my wife and I both work from home most of the week and have short commutes. Our grocery store has free 240v charging so I top up while I shop.
We took one long trip in those 6 months and rented cars for the drive to/from and used public transit while we were there.
I used a fast charger for the first time this weekend to drop off a kid at the grandparents a couple hours away on Friday and then picked them up in Sunday. Didn’t have enough time between trips for the trickle charge to leave me in a comfortable range. 20 minute fast charge did the job for about $15.
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.
I fully agree with you, but you should check out the rest off this thread. I have someone who literally said:
I’m not willing to compromise on my road trip plans.
I’m unwilling to plan out two 20 minute stops in my day long road trip that happens maybe once or twice a year in order to have the lowest maintenance lowest fuel cost vehicle I have ever owned. Not to mention the other two options if you seriously cannot do it. People are so carbrained/gas brained I just can’t even. I will never go back to owning an ICE vehicle, literally why would you?
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.
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.
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?
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.
This thread is full of delusional evangelists who are out of touch with what most people actually think about EVs. I owned an EVs for 10 years and the range anxiety is not just some imaginary mental block, it’s a real issue that isn’t going to be solved anytime soon. I tell you this from first hand experience
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
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.
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.
Theres no external outlets just out in the parking lot in my complex. You’d have to run an extension cord out a door or window all the time, which would leave them cracked, and I live on the third floor
More progress really needs to be made on infrastructure for a lot, probably the majority of apartment complex dwellers
I agree :) all fixable problems, just things that will take time and will progress naturally as electric cars become more and more commonplace
Especially once EVs start to become like a relevant part of the used market, since I think that makes up the bulk of cars at a lot of complexes. Most of the cars parked out by mine aren’t new
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.
Most EVs charge at home doesn’t mean it’s not cheaper than fossil fuel even using the charger down the road. As for convenience, using a public charger is like pouring fuel in at the petrol station.
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.
Amen. The building I work at, where there’s roughly about 100 people each day, including police department and local part of ministry’s office has exactly ONE charging point built last year. One.
My EV’s getting older now, but it’ll still do 400+km if I charge it fully overnight.
If we’re doing a road trip it’s time for a burger and to stretch ones legs when it’s getting low anyways. Eat my food, get some rest and 20-30 minutes later I’m ready to go again.
I was sceptical before buying it, but I will never buy a gas car again. And I work in oil and gas
One doesn’t have anything to do with the other. Fast chargers ARE for road trips. And we can improve them irrespective of L2 chargers. Where are you seeing “messaging” that suggests otherwise?
It’s for all the people that wont accept that must be able to charge to full at any moment regardless that they usually wont have to because its already full from being charged at home/work etc
that’s not always true, its free at my workplace I just need to unplug every two hours. They do that so people don’t sit on the chargers all day. I know people without home charging, for them its 6kw charging at work, public parking and a visit to a fast charger when needed. They say its still cheaper than gas.
Depends on your utility plan and if it’s time based or not. The chargers at work are the same price from 7:00 to 22:00.
Yes
Depends on the office. Plenty of office parks don’t require you to move.
I’ve avoided (as best I can) the “energy providers” that charge and extra fee just to charge. Obligatory fuck ChargePoint.
I can’t charge at home (fuck you NJ) but still have two EVs that I take to the single public charger (limited to 2 hours) nearby because fuck gas powered cars.
Maybe next time don’t make sweeping generalizations about things you personally haven’t experienced.
Industrial electricity prices are a lot more complicated than residential. You basically get the price set by your highest demand/lowest supply. Meaning you charging your car could hike their rates.
Answers “possibly” or just straight up “yes” to literally every point, and then criticizes them for generalizing.
While EVs are 100% the way to go, acting as though the very real problems and drawbacks faced by real people don’t exist is disingenuous and just gives anti-EV people more ammo.
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.
Even disregarding the fact that reliable electric cars are much more expensive secondhand than comparable ICE cars, there’s still a significant economic barrier to owning one. It’s significantly more difficult to effectively own an electric car if you have an apartment, or live in a house that only has street side parking, or live in a house that has a landlord that’s not willing to install an expensive electric car charger, which covers the vast majority of lower income housing.
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.
I can vouch for this 100%. Have had an electric vehicle for 6 months now.
The vast majority of my charging has been done at home on 120v. Granted, my wife and I both work from home most of the week and have short commutes. Our grocery store has free 240v charging so I top up while I shop.
We took one long trip in those 6 months and rented cars for the drive to/from and used public transit while we were there.
I used a fast charger for the first time this weekend to drop off a kid at the grandparents a couple hours away on Friday and then picked them up in Sunday. Didn’t have enough time between trips for the trickle charge to leave me in a comfortable range. 20 minute fast charge did the job for about $15.
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.
I fully agree with you, but you should check out the rest off this thread. I have someone who literally said:
I’m unwilling to plan out two 20 minute stops in my day long road trip that happens maybe once or twice a year in order to have the lowest maintenance lowest fuel cost vehicle I have ever owned. Not to mention the other two options if you seriously cannot do it. People are so carbrained/gas brained I just can’t even. I will never go back to owning an ICE vehicle, literally why would you?
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.
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
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.
This thread is full of delusional evangelists who are out of touch with what most people actually think about EVs. I owned an EVs for 10 years and the range anxiety is not just some imaginary mental block, it’s a real issue that isn’t going to be solved anytime soon. I tell you this from first hand experience
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
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.
Yeah EVs seem almost non-viable if you live in an apartment complex right now, which is a shame. At least where I am
I live in an apartment and can neither charge at home nor at work. I just charge when I go grocery shopping. It’s absolutely viable.
When we made laws for handicap parking, there was handicap parking everywhere, overnight.
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.
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.
Theres no external outlets just out in the parking lot in my complex. You’d have to run an extension cord out a door or window all the time, which would leave them cracked, and I live on the third floor
More progress really needs to be made on infrastructure for a lot, probably the majority of apartment complex dwellers
All doable… we can route power easily enough to about any place on this planet
I agree :) all fixable problems, just things that will take time and will progress naturally as electric cars become more and more commonplace
Especially once EVs start to become like a relevant part of the used market, since I think that makes up the bulk of cars at a lot of complexes. Most of the cars parked out by mine aren’t new
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.
Which part of “apartment complex” did you misunderstand
Most EVs charge at home doesn’t mean it’s not cheaper than fossil fuel even using the charger down the road. As for convenience, using a public charger is like pouring fuel in at the petrol station.
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.
Amen. The building I work at, where there’s roughly about 100 people each day, including police department and local part of ministry’s office has exactly ONE charging point built last year. One.
My EV’s getting older now, but it’ll still do 400+km if I charge it fully overnight. If we’re doing a road trip it’s time for a burger and to stretch ones legs when it’s getting low anyways. Eat my food, get some rest and 20-30 minutes later I’m ready to go again.
I was sceptical before buying it, but I will never buy a gas car again. And I work in oil and gas
One doesn’t have anything to do with the other. Fast chargers ARE for road trips. And we can improve them irrespective of L2 chargers. Where are you seeing “messaging” that suggests otherwise?
It’s for all the people that wont accept that must be able to charge to full at any moment regardless that they usually wont have to because its already full from being charged at home/work etc
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that’s not always true, its free at my workplace I just need to unplug every two hours. They do that so people don’t sit on the chargers all day. I know people without home charging, for them its 6kw charging at work, public parking and a visit to a fast charger when needed. They say its still cheaper than gas.
That’s basically me.
No home charger because no off street parking and fuck NJ.
Ignoring the better driving comfort of an ev, which is valuable on its own, it’s still much cheaper to charge on the go, than buying gas.
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I can’t charge at home (fuck you NJ) but still have two EVs that I take to the single public charger (limited to 2 hours) nearby because fuck gas powered cars.
Maybe next time don’t make sweeping generalizations about things you personally haven’t experienced.
Industrial electricity prices are a lot more complicated than residential. You basically get the price set by your highest demand/lowest supply. Meaning you charging your car could hike their rates.
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While EVs are 100% the way to go, acting as though the very real problems and drawbacks faced by real people don’t exist is disingenuous and just gives anti-EV people more ammo.
Problems exist, sure. But not those.
Then why were your answers “Possibly, Yes, Possibly, Yes”?
The problems being fixable by legislation a) doesn’t make them not problems and b) doesn’t mean they’ll actually be fixed by legislation.
Those were my answers because those were my answers.