- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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I would like to buy an electric car but I will not because;
- I don’t have a garage.
- I live in a very wintery climate and don’t trust the battery to take it/don’t want to heat a battery
- The closest chargers are at least 50 km away in other towns
- My house has 60 amp service (upgrading that is on the todo list, but it’s a long list)
- I don’t trust the battery to last longer than the life of the lease
I charge my car off of a regular outlet outside in a very cold climate, and charging like that will actually likely make the battery last quite a while. The only way to find out for sure is to wait, but it has been 4 years and the battery hasn’t lost any capacity. My car also has a 320 km range, so even in your scenario, if you charged 50km away and came home, you’d still have 270km of range.
I think you may have given too much weight to FUD about EVs from companies that would like to see them fail. I’ve seen a lot of concerns posted online that just don’t practically matter, once you actually try it. There’s also some really nice minor things about owning an EV, like not having to breathe in toxic fumes when walking around the car. Especially nice if you have kids that are right at the level of the tailpipe.
It is also fine to wait a bit, of course. In my area chargers are springing up in lots of places, and I think we’re not far off from a tipping point away from ICE cars, which will spread even to rural areas pretty quickly when gas stations start becoming unprofitable.
Good to hear. I fully expect our next car to be electric. Funny enough, the only gas station in my town just announced it was closing this year (the tanks are outdated and the company isn’t replacing them). Perhaps I made the wrong decision buying another ICE vehicle. Won’t be the first time I was wrong.
Block heaters are a thing for decades and no one worries about needing to keep the oil warm. Don’t see how warming a battery is any different.
I don’t use a block heater. I don’t have a heated driveway. I don’t have heaters on my eaves. I don’t heat a bird bath. I don’t have exterior flood lights. If I can help it I don’t run heaters outside where I am not. I said in the OP I don’t like the thought of throwing electricity into the wind.
If you don’t live where you aren’t using a block heater, you don’t get cold enough to worry about ev usage. But also, plugging an ev in over night is generally how you’ll charge it. Unless you live in an apartment complex that can’t do that. So you’re not “throwing electricity into the wind”
If you don’t have a block heater you don’t live someplace cold, just chilly. Either way it’s no reason to not get an EV.
EVs charging in the cold will heat their battery. It’s a big power draw and it is quite reasonable to not want to waste money and energy like that.
Yea you can just pay to heat the air in a internal combustion engine where 60% of the energy goes to making heat instead.
What is even your point?
But my ICE doesn’t consume energy when I’m not using it. I try to structure my life to drive as little as possible. My car sits more than it moves.
Most new EV models allow you to set a “leave time” for when your car needs to be fully charged, with a warm battery and a pre-heated cabin. For example, Tesla owners have the ability to “precondition” their car, which entails setting a time via the Tesla app for their car to pre-heat.
Many people pre-heat standard engine cars in the winter, setting an app isn’t really that much different and arguably more convenient.
It’s a stupid argument to be so concerned over power being used when ICE are ridiculously wasteful. In a standard 50L tank 30 liters literally goes to doing nothing other than getting hot. If your EV is pulling 60% of the total energy bill to keep the battery warm you have other issues that need looking at.
Just out of curiosity are you clutching your pearls over the clock drawing power while your car is parked too?
How long is a lease? 3 years? 4 years? My little Corsa has 95% capacity left after 3 years and 40000km.
60 amps, three phases that’s, what, 72kW at 400V - that’s more than enough. My cars charge at 11kW/3phases. I’ve got 63A service and I can charge both cars, run the heatpump, have the stove going and still have amps to spare.
You must not be familiar with North American power systems. I would bet the op had single phase service providing 220 or 240 volt service. 60 amp service is outdated, 100 amp is basically the minimum and 200 amp is common.
You must not be familiar with North American power systems. I would bet the op had single phase service providing 220 or 240 volt service.
Oh, I see. Yeah, well, okay, that’s basically nothing. Seems like the country isn’t really on a good path for electrifying things, then. How do they use any large electric motors at home?
Living in the boonies - I could get 3 phase, 400V, 100A for 800€, that’s 120kW. Yes, we’re paying a lot per kWh but the grid quality is okay-ish.
You got it. I’m not really familiar with electrical stuff, but I kinda think my service is 110? My dryer and water heater are on separate 2 fuse circuits. I think it was upgraded from aluminum wire in the 70’s. I have the “good” paper wrapped wire now.
As another cool aside about my house, the sewer line was made of cardboard
The guy who replied is correct. My house was built in the 50’s it was upgraded from 30amp service and the aluminum wire was replaced with a “state of the art” 60amp fuse panel and paper wrapped wire at some point. Not that much of an upgrade. To use large motors at home you put a penny under the fuse /s. I also don’t have any space left in the panel so…
I misspoke saying lease, I meant finance. I like to keep things as long as possible.
Most of those fears aren’t completely valid anymore.
- You can park it outside.
- winter gets you less mileage but not the end of the world, some of the fastest growing EV markets are cold countries.
- You might be surprised, a lot of grocery stores and even workplaces have some basic charging capabilities. Plus you can charge at home.
- If you have an electric dryer you can charge your car overnight, just don’t do both together.
- Batteries will outlast any lease, if you’re looking to get 10-15 years out of a car that would be understandable, but if you’re leasing it won’t be a problem.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect 10+ years or more out of a car without shelling out a large sum of money for a battery swap. This is probably my only concern. Repairability and the cost of those repairs.
I don’t think I said that’s an unreasonable concern anywhere. If the EV offering doesn’t meet your requirements now, don’t get one.
Current EVs meet a lot of people’s requirement, so they’re getting more popular. They’re also getting better, cheaper, charge faster, last longer, have longer range, and weigh less every year. They’re literally getting better in every way faster than anyone thought possible thanks to how popular they are.
Hopefully soon there will be an EV that does match your requirement. Maybe there never will be, but you’ll probably be in the minority and that’s for the best because we need to get ICE passenger vehicles off the road and into niche applications where nothing else works.
I agree that all of those things are improving but repairability or even the right to repair new electric vehicles is flaky at best and that’s my concern. I don’t want to own a vehicle that I’m unable to repair. Not to mention manufacturers locking features behind paywalls.
If the EV offering doesn’t meet your requirements now, don’t get one.
That’s it exactly. 7 years ago EV’s were way out of my price range and, to my mind, did not offer me value for money. This year when we went shopping, they were cheaper, there were way more options, but they were not available without a significant lead time and I wasn’t fully sold on their reliability. I fully expect^hope that in 7 years from now we’ll need to shop around to find a ICE car.
If you have street parking in a urban area there’s a good chance you can’t get a outlet connected to your car without running a extension cord from your window, across a sidewalk, and then to the port.
You could try the portable battery options, but not sure how you prevent someone from taking it.
That’s a different situation than OP, so what I said to him isn’t going to work for you.
There are so many public charging options now, just go to your grocery store and charge while getting groceries. My workplace has a few as well.
Why is everybody so erect for EVs? They save you gas and some maintenance, but that’s about it. They increase tire wear for sure, and weigh a heck of a lot more which wears the roads down quicker (roads wear with the cube of weight). They use less gasoline at the expanse of the poor third-world countries which front the environmental cost of mining and battery production, not to mention their archaic worker’s rights.
In 20 years, we’ll realize that EVs were probably about as bad as gasoline vehicles–what we should be focusing on is public transportation and updated city design to reduce our need to travel in the first place.
Sure, a split of electric and gasoline vehicles is beneficial, but they’re not the environmental panacea they’re being pushed as. So please keep the whole picture in mind when you’re telling people to suffer and sacrifice to give up a cheap, convenient gasoline vehicle.
Change needs to be made somewhere. Gas isn’t the answer, so sticking with it… Kinda stupid. The “saves on maintenance” part is actually a really big deal that was just glossed over. You don’t need oil changes. You don’t have a transmission. You don’t need radiator fluid. With regenerative braking, you’re not wearing down brake pads anywhere near as much. Not to mention the gas emissions reduction. These are all highly toxic materials that are not being consumed and distributed into the atmosphere. And which mines are being operated in third world countries? If you’re referring to lithium, the largest producers are Australia, the USA, Chile and China. You know, some of the wealthiest countries on the planet… And Chile.
Understandably, hand waving “public transit” as the answer does make sense. Designing urban centres in such a way to make public transit preferable makes sense. The problem is that these changes are slow. In 20 years, you’ll have a few new suburbs built with these practices in mind. The majority of everything else will still be the same, because it’s not feasible to bulldoze existing infrastructure to replace it. It’ll need to be aged out, and climate change isn’t gonna stop for 100 years and wait for us to get our road placement juuuuuust right. Further, adding more public transit is expensive, with a high up front cost, plus a high maintenance cost ongoing. Unless you dump enough money into it such that it completely replaces the need for private vehicles, there will always be private vehicles regardless.
But the greatest benefit to EV is the pollution is centralized. Making vehicles will always suck for the environment, full stop, but EVs allow the production and majority of the pollution to occur at a relatively small number of places, which can be contained much easier.
To be absolutely clear, I don’t disagree with your point, but the answer won’t come overnight, and we’re on a time crunch. We need lots of innovation, and early adoption of incremental gains. One day, public transit and better cities will be part of the solution. But until then, we need solutions, and this is the direction to progress.
I’m not against change, and I encourage it. But We also can’t put all of our eggs in one basket. I am glad people are buying EVs, but we can’t let a market for an inherently disposable item dominate over another option (ICE vehicles) that will outlast an EV a substantial proportion of the time. The automotive producers are licking their lips at the thought of getting us all into vehicles that will be be effectively unusable in 10 or 15 years–batteries age with use and also time, unlike steel and aluminum.
I am an environmental engineer and I have worked on remediation projects for oil and gas, as well as other types of natural resource exploitation such as mines. The damage caused by mining metals from the ground is extreme, and it will last decades, if not forever. “Centralizing” pollution isn’t a good thing–we’re best off distributing our pollution so that the Earth can have a fighting chance of repairing it piece by piece, which may never happen in areas that have undergone certain types of mining and other industry. Look at an old oil and gas site, and you would never even know it was there after 10 or 50 years. CO2 is a problem, for sure, and so is methane, but methane degrades in the atmosphere after just over a decade. Mining causes damage to the air, ground water and surface water, and to the nearby wildlife. Look up Tar Creek in Oklahoma, the Questa Moly Mine in New Mexico, and do you remember what happened in Colorado when the EPA accidentally released an entire mine full of acid drainage into the nearby river? Nothing but dead marine life for miles and miles. Mines take some of our most beautiful natural areas and destroy them.
If you think modern mines are going to circumvent all of these issues, they aren’t. They’re going to have accidents and cause damage just the same as the fossil fuel industry–some ways, even worse.
The automotive producers are licking their lips at the thought of getting us all into vehicles that will be be effectively unusable in 10 or 15 years-
I see it like that too. The enshittification of the automobile. I am not putting my money down to bet against that just yet.
If this take was true the headline would be the opposite. They’re not living their lips, they’re trying to not sell any because they want money from expensive ICE maintenance.
That’s on the dealer end. The manufacturer end wants to keep selling cars. They can both be happening at the same time.
They save you gas and some maintenance, but that’s about it
I’ll cop to that. My sole motivation for going EV was to minimize the potential maintenance burden in the long term. In my experience, the internal combustion engine was the single largest maintenance cost, for both money and time, that wasn’t a wear part (e.g. wipers, tires). The sheer number of moving parts and subsystems in an ICE vs an EV is staggering. I’m taking a bet here, but there’s just less to break down on an EV and until that’s the standard, it’s a convenience I’m willing to pay for.
This sums it up pretty well. Battery powered EVs are still a luxury item both financially AND in terms of lifestyle. Most people don’t have the finances or the ability to accommodate one, and I think the people who own them forget that as they spout tone deaf positivity about the virtues of owning an electric vehicle. But tbh, I am not even sure what maintenance you’re talking about that’s such a big deal. You’ve still got tires, brakes, suspension, and steering components to worry about. All that’s missing over the typical <100k mile life of a vehicle are fluid changes every now and then. My understanding is that if you own a Honda, you can do basically nothing but oil changes and tire/brake maintenance and the car will still last forever lol.
What a dumb regressive take. Just because you can point out some problems with the solution doesn’t mean it’s not in the right direction.
Lithium is plentiful on earth. Yes we can’t extract it cleanly now, but you know how we get better at that? Higher demand!
Electric cars and batteries are expensive, you know how we fix that? More production so we can leverage economies of scale. More production so that more research investment becomes profitable.
Electric cars can’t yet cover all the use cases that ICE can do. That’s not actually a problem at all. If we can cover even 75% of all transportation emissions that’s a big step.
People having a “hard on for EVs” and paying a little more for a luxury product is exactly what we need to get to the next phase on EVs and to start phasing out ICE for general public transportation. I don’t know why it makes you upset, but you can’t pretend this isn’t part of the solution. You’d have to be blind not to think electric transportation is part of the green future that’s going to reduce global warming and keep the earth livable. Sure EVs aren’t enough now, but EVs will be and passenger ICE vehicles are NEVER going to be enough EVER.
I’m with you except for the “all we need is more production” point. That’s like the city planner who says all we need to solve traffic is one more lane, one more overpass. We are not going to manufacture ourselves out of the climate crisis.
Technology and infrastructure don’t work the same. Look at solar panels and electric batteries. Early adopters got expensive low quality products. But these early adopters drove the demand that is making both of these products dozens of times cheaper and more powerful than they were 2 decades ago.
Investment drives progress for young technologies.
I’ve said before, I’m not interested in personally financing innovation. Perhaps that’s selfish, but here we are.
Actually, your response is a dumb take, and I don’t know why you’re acting so offended about facts–lol. Let’s just look at your comments one by one:
Higher demand makes energy exploitation cleaner? Is that way oil and gas and strip mining is so clean nowadays? Lol.
Yes, batteries are expensive. Higher demand does drive more production, but lowered price of goods is only a textbook theory nowadays. Or is that why food has gotten so cheap lately? Is that why vehicles are so cheap post-COVID, because demand is so high? Lol.
I’ll be waiting for your miracle battery, but it’s still a leap away–we’re not going to see exponential gains in battery capacity like we saw with computer processors. We literally cannot cover “75% of transportation emissions” because less than 60% of transportation emissions are derived from light road vehicles, most of them being trucks and SUVs: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-06/420f23016.pdf Sure, we can see that 58% shrink, but it’ll be picked up in part by electrical generation and industry with more frequent vehicle replacements. But the corporations will be happy with your purchase. Lol.
People paying for luxury goods isn’t what made cars take off back in the day. It was Henry Ford demanding his company produce a car that anyone could afford. As long as people keep buying expensive luxury EVs, they will always be out of reach of the regular person. You’ve been brainwashed. Lol.
Besides–I’m not against electric transportation. Bring on the electric powered buses and trains. Instead of morally pressuring people to make expensive purchases, why don’t you lobby your government to invest in city infrastructure and design to reduce the need for personal transportation in the first place?
Now are you going to stop acting so upset now that I’ve set you straight, or are you going to come back with another unwarranted, unnecessarily snarky remark?
Oh another “this solution won’t solve the problem so we should stop trying” take.
Electric transit can remove 75%+ of transportation emissions by definition. I never said personal electric vehicles will.
Investment in electric transportation technologies will drive the innovation we need to cut greenhouse emissions in the transportation sector.
Not investing in electric transportation, and sticking with the ICE status quo will NEVER help reduce emissions. A view that discourages investment in electric transportation is regressive because the current default fallback is ICE. If the fallback was electric trains I would agree with you.
No one is morally pressuring you into buying an electric car, people are getting excited that there are finally electric car offerings that meet their needs. If you can’t find one, don’t buy one. Stop discouraging people from doing something good just because it’s not yet perfect.
My understanding is that if you own a Honda, you can do basically nothing but oil changes and tire/brake maintenance and the car will still last forever lol.
This is true. From my perspective, I’m buying time and peace of mind. Not having to bother with oil changes, water pumps, belts, O2 sensors, emissions subsystems, emissions checks, and gas stations with ad-encrusted pumps, amounts to fewer maintenance intervals to track, less mental anguish, and less transactions to fuss about. And I’ve had rock-solid reliable ICE vehicles before, and still have been routinely burned by sketchy people in the auto industry. I get that things are better compared to even 20 years ago, but I think we can still do better.
Ultimately, I want a tool, not a relationship with a mechanic or dealership. Everything I can do to move the needle in that direction is worth it.
I’ll add that I got a corded lawnmower 7 years ago and it’s still going strong. No messy oil changes, no clogged air filters, no pulling muscles trying to start the thing, no smelly gasoline stinking up the garage, no last minute runs to the gas station just to do yard work. I just plug it in and get to work. And even with that, I’m looking into getting rid of the grass entirely… somehow.
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How’s mining lithium and moving 6 tons around all day help with it?
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I mean, I’m a nut for EVs, but they are correct. EVs are likely better in the long run, but producing them still produces a ton of greenhouse gasses and other environmental concerns. The best bet is to encourage people to drive less, build better infrastructure so fewer people have to buy cars, and focus on reduction of reliance on driving as a whole.
Hell, even for me, my whole plan was to drive my EV into the ground, using it as long as possible to offset it’s upfront environmental costs, but my battery failed after 38k miles. I got a lemon :(. Thankfully, it’s covered under warranty and they built me a new battery, but now my car has the battery environmental cost of two EVs so it’ll likely never be as efficient as if I’d just bought a damn Honda Civic. Admittedly, I’m a statistical outlier, but it still sucks :(
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They can both be bad, even if one is less bad. I’m all for EV adoption. It’s better in the long run. However, less driving altogether would be more impactful.
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Tell that to the child slaves mining resources for first world consumers. Unfortunately, the citizens of less developed countries’ opinions don’t matter if their government is corrupt.
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You’re right, so we might as well exploit those less fortunate than us because they were unlucky enough to be born where they were born.
Building a carless society will take time but we need to get rid of gas right now. The difference of emission for the use and manufacturing of an EV is absolutely not close to the cost of use and manufacturing of an ice vehicle PLUS literally burning gallons just to move it.
Oil companies, their assets and the assets of the barons who own them should be violently seized and used to offset the cost of what they created. Until that happens, we will have to suffer a bit or we will be stuck suffering so much more probably sooner than we think.
People already have ICE vehicles, and they’re going to last for decades to come. I have a diesel Mercedes from 1980 that still runs and works just fine. No battery is going to last 40+ years, and the move to battery powered vehicles is unwittingly entering us all into a “subscription” based transportation society, much like literally every other device in the world that takes a battery. Oil and gas emissions aren’t ideal, but neither are the environmental issues that originate from mining. Mining causes massive amounts of environmental damage to wildlife and the surrounding natural ecosystem, watersheds, and has its own brand of air pollution. Read up on the Questa moly mine is Northern New Mexico if you wish. We’re talking rivers that turn blue, depleted salmon populations, -permanent- groundwater contamination, acid ponds, and heavy metal dusts blowing into nearby towns and exposing people to lead, uranium, and cadmium, among whatever else. Why are people so eager to attack oil “barons” nowadays when the health, tech, and banking industries are bleeding us dry at every corner? At least we’ve got remote work options nowadays–can you say the same for your home loan?
Ice vehicles still need mining to produce. The one time cost is practically the same and quickly becomes unimportant when you compare the cost of running them. It’s fine if you want to keep using your old vehicle or if the only vehicle you can afford is the cheapest ICE, but buying an ICE vehicle when there are evs at the same price literally means you are part of the problem. Whatever extra cost there is after that in terms of battery replacement pales in comparison to the constant cost of gas so it isn’t a valid reason.
Do not minimize the effects of constantly burning gas. It is more than not ideal, it is leading to a complete collapse of our ecosystem.
Do you close your eyes every year whenever a new spill happens, or another thousand acres get burned? Call me when the tech industry is causing shit like that. Not that they aren’t doing bad things, but saying “what about them” when the crimes of the oil barons is soo much greater is farcical.
Disposability and lack of proven reliability are massive factors in my late adoptor attitude. When a 10 year old EV sells for $10k, I’m in. I’m not going to pay a $20k premium for a car that needs a $??k battery replacement (or it’s scrap) every 10 years.
How much money do you spend in gas every ten year? Do you really think it’s less then a new battery? Not to mention the price of batteries are dropping like a stone.
I can budget for gas because that’s a known. I have no fucking clue what a battery costs, do you? I’m not interested in paying a premium for an unknown. I’m in the wait and see camp. Some internet strangers throwing comments at me will not make me change my mind. I’ve listed my reasons many fucking times in this thread.
The cheapest Tesla battery is 5k. The average American spends 2k a year on gas. You have to budget for gas for 3 years to have the price of your battery. Gas will keep costing you forever. The batts are rated for 200 000 km, and there are warranties if they start losing their charge too early so it’s very hard to have to pay for a replacement before you come into your money.
Its impossible to not come out on top if you factor in the gas, it just seems like a no brainer to me. I haven’t seen your other comments, I just now the reasons you listed under mine simply aren’t valid.
If you can’t afford or need a new vehicle, that’s completely fine. The used market for EVs is just not good and keeping your old car is always better than getting a new car, regardless of how it runs.
I live in a small town in a rural area. There is one charger in my town, but it’s at the county building and is for county employees. There are chargers at grocery stores, but those are 50kms away.
My house still has a fuse box, I don’t have any available holes. The whole system needs changed and I will, but that’s $10k and that’s not a very exciting purchase.
I guess I didn’t mean lease, I meant financing. I definitely hope to have a vehicle at least 7 years. I just upgraded my paid off corolla because we needed all wheel drive vehicle for our winters here. Otherwise I’d have kept it till it died in 20 years (corolla joke). The electric car would have to be comparable to that and I’m not sold that they will be. We bought one of the few cars available to us without a multi month wait.
I’m sure many of my fears are unjustified, but I require further evidence. I’m not an early adopter type.
I get the old house rural life. I wouldn’t worry about the lasting 7 years right now. That being said driving a relatively efficient car for a couple decades is definitely environmentally friendly by comparison to getting a new truck every 5 years. Probably not too far from buying a new EV every 7 years once you add the embodied energy.
In a few years things will come around so make sure you’ve upgraded your electrical panel by then.
It saddens me when I read things like this because you’re either a troll, or very misinformed on EVs. I’m a diehard gasoline boosted 500hp+ kind of guy but I’m not an idiot. Electric is the future and there is nothing wrong with it. I’m not going to go out and buy one (mostly because I’m not buying anything new that reports how I drive or where I’m going) but in the future I will for sure being doing electric swaps into my hotrods.
Well that went from 0-100 fast.
You really only have 1 problem (aside from perceptions), but it’s a real one. You need to be able to charge at home, and it sounds like you probably can’t do that. You’d be stuck on trickle charging (3 miles of range per hour on the charger), and even that’s questionable.
The car will keep the battery warm whenever it’s plugged in. If you take care of the battery (rarely let it go all the to 0% or 100%), it will easily last over 100k miles, and probably to 200k. When it does start to wear out, it’s not a hard cutoff- just like your phone, you’ll notice the capacity (range) starts to drop.
FWIW, there are very significant federal rebates/tax credits in the US for EVs. That specifically includes upgrading electrical service to support an EV charger. But given that you said kms, I have to assume you are in a different country. Many have their own incentives, but you’d have to check into those yourself.
From what I understand our incentives ended a couple years ago and my Premier is a dick. I’m definitely not against electric cars, but I think the car we bought was a good choice for our current situation. I hope our car is the last ICE we buy. Much of my needs are met with my ebike and I try to structure my life to need a car as little as possible. Winter’s a bitch though.
I had a 87 corolla for the longest time. I sold it to a teenager a over a decade ago and I still see it rolling around town. Great car if you are only worried about going a-b and don’t need fancy things like usb chargers or A/C.
Mine was a '16 and had more features lol. Great car. The only “repairs” it needed in 7 years were the brakes. I was sorry to let it go.
Most ev’s dont charge with more than 7 kwh and habe active battery themp controll.
Dont worry your phone is not blowing up in under 3 years and those batterys get mistreatet.
I also highly recomend lobing your employer for a charger at the workplace.
My boss is a total asshole. I’m self employed.
But, makes the lobying easier
Good news! I’ve got information relevant to you. I grew up in a locale that would drop below 0F for most of the winter. It was NORMAL to get an oil heater and plug it into your 110v 15amp outlet outside.
Well with EV’s you get that same cable, and plug it in and it accomplishes basically the same goal but for the battery instead of the oil. Even better it trickles “fuel” into your “tank” over night.
Or if you splash out dolla bills, you can get a dryer plug installed (240v 50amp) which fully charges your EV in a couple hours and keeps it nice and warm all night.
Everything else is the same, you put snow tires on it, drive to the slopes, skii all day, drive home…one difference though, its heat is available within seconds unlike my old car which took 10+ minutes in subzero temps to heat up and blow warm air. Heck, my EV has heated wiper fluid. That’s pretty cool.
oh… and here’s some extra cool parts… if you do the Airbnb thing somwhere, your “fuel” is included. Just plug it in to their 110v outside outlet. When driving back down the slopes, you know what it does? It CHARGES THE CAR! You get free “fuel”, just for driving back down the hill.
In all seriousness, a couple road trips with mine, in both 100+F and below 32F, I found out that all of those things don’t matter. Yes winter tires wreck the efficiency, yes cold wrecks the efficiency, but it’s still well over 200+ miles. All the extra convenience is so nice, that you really don’t want to go back.
One example, I drove the same route to the beach at different times, one in the winter, I got there with 31% battery remaining. The same trip in the summer I had 55% batter remaining. So, like 1/3rd a tank of gas left, or half a tank of gas. Both are FIIIIINE. Know what I didn’t do? Go to the gas station. I just plugged it in to the slow ass 110 wall outlet since… I’m at the beach for the weekend, in an airbnb… I don’t know how long it took, because it was charged when I was ready to leave. Honestly, how do people not see how convenient this is?
Battery life is pretty widely available for Tesla’s at least since they’ve been around for over a decade now. And like any car, it depends on how the owner drove it and maintained it. Some last forever, some are trash within years.
It’s not a oil heater, it’s a block heater, it heats the prestone.
I had one that went in the oil dipstick slot.
The closest chargers are at least 50 km away in other towns
Most people would never use a charger only 50km to their homes, since they charge it overnight at home. Most EV owners only use public chargers a handful of times a year, actually.
How will it be fully charged at home in the morning if the last time I charged it was a minimum of 50kms away?
Because you plugged it home every night prior. Even on a normal outlet, 10 hours of charging can give you 40 miles (about 65km) per day. That’s over 14,000 miles (22,500km) per year. And I’d hazard a guess that most people are usually home more than 10 hours a day, especially on the weekends. And that’s for a barebones level 1 setup. When you go into the world of 240 volts you at least double your power, and can easily go from 0-100 in 6 hours or less with a fairly common 40A setup.
So why would you need a charger nearby?
Dude edited his comment. I was replying to a nonsensical reply he made that he resensed later.
Charging off a standard wall plug is perfectly adequate for most people. I never leave my house without out a full battery and I’m just plugged into a standard 110 outlet
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What?
People think of chargers like they do gas stations - you want it close by so you can fill up conveniently (and without wasting what you just filled up on to get home after). But with EVs, you typically plug in at home and have a full charge every day, meaning you don’t need a nearby charger. Better to have some a hundred-something miles away so you can use it on road trips, which is really what DCFC is for.
That is, of course, in an ideal world. Plenty of urban areas have DCFC partly because of people from out of town passing through, but mostly for people who can’t charge at home for whatever reason (ancient wiring, apartment living)
The earlier commenter unfortunately has neither home charging nor DCFC readily available, so that’s a problem. Maybe they can get by on level 1 (normal 120V outlet) but not everyone can.
I think stuff like this is why dealers are having trouble selling them. With ICE cars the only question is “do you have a parking space big enough for it.” But with EVs it’s “Do you have enough amperage in your service? Do you have 240V lines available in your breaker box? Do you have a way to get the electricity to where you park?”
As EVs get more prevalent these will work themselves out, but switching to electric has more caveats than sticking to gas.
Those questions really don’t need to be asked. I charge off of a regular outlet, level 2 charging at home is nice but unnecessary. If those questions keep coming up, it’s likely from dealers that are fearmongering.
Is your house 60amp service?
I have no idea, and that’s kind of my point. I’ve never bothered checking, because charging off of a regular outlet is enough for me, and it will be enough for a lot of other people too.
And it won’t work for some people. What a world.
The questions aren’t totally invalid, but they are overblown. Virtually every house in the US has 240V (sometimes 208, but cars can handle that too) available - they generally just need a second adjacent slot. Technology Connections (YouTube channel) has a great video explaining it. The wiring is the same, even. Service amperage is easy to work around, especially with one reasonably-priced option that pauses charging if your whole-house is about to trip (unlikely if you charge overnight, but this works with code)
Yes, it’s easy to stick with what you know. And I’ll admit I have a gas car too, but it rarely gets used. But I have to say, it sure is nice to have a quiet car that’s fun to drive and never needs to go to the gas station.
I think a good start would be to have all car dealers watch a few Technology Connections videos. The Biden administration should pay him to do a Super Bowl commercial or something. He’s just great.
But these are all questions that require you to go home and look at your fuse box, or hire an electrician to verify that you have what you need. Or do some research.
Now, I love doing a ton of research before I buy a car. But most people don’t need or want to know a hubcap from a head gasket, and the added of complexity of “this needs to connect to your house” is a hurdle that ICE cars don’t have, and will be a growing pain for EVs.
