Comment by fennecbutt
1 day ago
3.5kw*12=42kwh. That's like half the capacity of a fairly decent range EV.
How many people are really driving 240~ miles per day? Practically nobody...that's like 3.5 hours at motorway speeds.
Inb4 the typical response of "every American commutes 99999 miles per day!!!"
Charging at 1kw at home would be perfectly fine for average use cases.
Seems like it could get annoying if one wants a full charge but has to plan up to 4 days in advance, compared to a 10 minute gas station run.
15-20 minute charging station run*
Depending on charger power. The new Renault 5 comes in at 52kwh, 100kw charging, that's just over half an hour for a true zero to hero charge, unrealistic because they pretty much never run to 0.
And many support 150kw and over now. Some hyundais and others do 350!
So still, a nonissue. If someone pointed out that you can transport extra fuel in a jerry can then that's valid. If you're crossing Nairobi desert or something.
It sounds like you might not own an EV.
The #1 thing (in my opinion) that makes a difference in how easy it is to own an EV is whether you have a driveway or predictable parking spot overnight. Then you just stop thinking about this sort of stuff, ever.
In fact, since I got an EV (I have a two-car garage), I have forgotten to even check my gas car's fuel levels and have driven it near empty a handful of times, I simply forget to even check.
And as others have said, unless you're driving 250mi a day, a regular commute, you can recharge your car on a wall outlet. It does about 12 miles of range per hour, you can easily get about 100 miles of range every night.
> It does about 12 miles of range per hour, you can easily get about 100 miles of range every night.
I wonder if the residential 230v standard in many parts of the world contributes to EV adoption. A standard household outlet can do up to 3.5kw on 230v whereas in North America a standard outlet is 15A at 120v which only gives you a max of 1.8kw (realistically more like 1.6kw). To get increased power you need a 240v circuit which is typically only for selected appliances like dryers, induction cooktops, heat pumps, etc.
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We have had an EV for two years and it’s not a problem at all. We don’t even have a charger at home (apartment complex).
A lot of parking spots have chargers. So we only charge it when e.g. bringing our daughter to sports or when my wife is at her choir. That way the car practically always has enough juice.
When traveling, we’ve found that we are generally more efficient. We stop every three hours anyway to get a drink or eat something and hook it up to a fast charger. Since we would have these breaks with an ICE vehicle as well, we skip the separate stop for refueling.
It’s funny, the first time we made a long trip with our EV we tried to plan where to charge, etc. Now we just go without thinking about it, because there are always some fast charging options when you need it (though e.g. NL is much better than DE).
this is not a problem for you, given where you are, and your lifestyle.
Those are absolutely massive caveats.
Where i am in Canada, relying on public charging is just not practical.
What do you need to "plan"? Plug it in when you get home, and it'll be charged by the morning.
I’m a fresh EV convert, and this used to be my worry. In practice, it’s not an issue for me even though i can add close to 1000 km to my odometer on a single weekend. I typically keep my battery above 40%, and when i have a road trip planned, i start charging overnight a couple of days in advance to get to 80% or above from my 120V outlet. Let’s say i forgot to charge in advance… i simply drive to the nearest fast charger and top it up to however much i need. For context, i live in a very cold climate, and the charging infrastructure here is pretty sparse. So, basically, it’s close to the worst case scenario, and yet i’m fine. Where i could see a problem though is if i had to make my long weekend road trips in the winter. But i never had to even when i had a gas car, so it’s not really a problem. But as they say, YMMV.
That's when you drive to the nearest fast-charging station, where you can charge from nearly empty to full in <10 minutes.
It really doesn’t. Public chargers can take care of the oddball issues.
Once you have one of these things, the problems that sound insurmountable turn out to be not much.
I drive a PHEV with about 22kWh of usable battery and 80km EV only range. I typically do 50-70km a day and a 3.5kW charger covers most days handily. The stock ~1.4kW charger absolutely did not. I can always burn a little petrol if needed, though.
Faster charging gives you more options. 1kW might be fine on the average day for a small, efficient EV but it’d occasionally be limiting.
3.5kW might be enough but you conclusion that 1kW is also enough is absurd.
12kWh is 40 miles, closer to 25-30 in cold climate.
This is absolutely not a range that the average person would be happy with. And no, this isn't range anxiety or bad faith, it's literally less than the average daily commute (30 miles round trip).
Typical ivory tower armchair central planner type nonsense. You can't sell a car for "average". If people are gonna take on a $30k+ purchase it needs to also handle some fraction of use cases above and beyond the "average" and handle them without many/any shenanigans.
This is why the F150 is so popular despite the amount of shaming and screeching from blathering idiots about how "you could haul that on the roof of a wagon" and "rent a truck when you need it". This is why the vast majority of EV sales have been dedicated commuter cars or sales to people who's reasonable high end use case is still comfortably within the bounds of what they can do easily. Yes you can road trip an EV (or more realistically, do a 50mi commuting day with no charging at work and then hop in and drive 100+mi somewhere on a Friday night) same as you can haul plywood on a station wagon but it takes a level of care and planning that people don't want to put in.
People.
Want.
Easy.
As the tech gets incrementally better we're seeing incremental increases in adoption, but "oh EVs are good enough now and they would be bought more than they are if people weren't stupid and/or did the math and/or were honest about what their needs are" is not a great take.
But full-sized trucks like the F150 are some of the most amazingly inconvenient vehicles on the road currently? You can't fit them anywhere, can't park anywhere, the ride quality is dogshit without a huge load in the back or off-road, fuel costs are bankruptcy-inducing, they go through consumables like crazy and so on.
Somehow, it doesn't add up to me that people would prefer to face constant daily inconveniences for the sake of the one or two times a year it's useful rather than have a convenient time most of the time and have to come up with something occasionally.
Sales numbers seem to disagree...
Isn't Stellantis selling Ram 1500s at a pretty good clip in Europe no less.
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you do not consider most commutes in US cities are around 45 min plus and 30-45 miles one way. Also stop and go traffic drains the batter faster
"Stop and go drains the battery faster": my understanding is that it's not the case. You recover a good chunk of the energy with regen braking, and EV motor are more efficient at low speed (hyper miling drivers are driving slow).
The average one way commute distance in the US is only 14.4 miles and the median is around 9 [1]. The one way average commute time is about 27 minutes.
As such, I don't think that "most" commutes in US cities are 30+ miles and 45 minutes or more.
[1] https://truedrivingcost.com/articles/average-commute-distanc... Data sourced from US census data.
It actually doesn’t (at least for me) due to regen braking and reduced drag. I use about 10-15% less juice on a 28km trip in heavy traffic than at a steady 105km/h.