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.
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
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)
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?
Also, that place is disgusting and you have to step over the rotting corpse of 600 soft drinks poured out next to the pump, then touch a handle which is visibly soiled and often sticky, and then you will probably smell like gas for at least the next 20 minutes.
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.
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
EV brake pads can last a lot longer on one pedal cars.
Henry Ford’s wife drove an EV, she hated his gasoline cars because they were loud, stunk, and could not be started by most women.
Chiming in from experience, our EVs brake pads were rusting faster than they were wearing down. We bought used, so maybe the previous climate was humid, but around 80k miles may have been their first change.
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.
Ha, I never thought of it that way but yes, that tracks perfectly. The “inconveniences” of EVs aren’t worse than gas cars, it’s just that the gas car inconveniences are considered “normal” right now.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Yeah, that’d be nice if people could take on debt and adjust cash flows like a business, but a lot of people don’t have the financial flexibility to spend $600 in a lump payment. That’s why people keep bringing up 60+ percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I’m fortunate enough to be able to make those types of purchases a couple times a year, but I know my privilege is not the norm.
The best someone may be able to do is 12mo financing on a new credit card with 0% apr, but miss a payment and its 25% interest. If they even get approved.
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.
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
That’s a matter of location I guess. Here you sometimes have to pay a small extra fee to keep it there the whole day. But that may be also because there are plenty of public chargers around
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.
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
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.
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?
I can’t help but feel if EVs were invented first, convincing people to adopt gas cars would be impossible.
Also, that place is disgusting and you have to step over the rotting corpse of 600 soft drinks poured out next to the pump, then touch a handle which is visibly soiled and often sticky, and then you will probably smell like gas for at least the next 20 minutes.
“those fluid is VERY flammable, it’s insane people wanted to sit above one”
“it stink when it’s running.”
“leave it running in a closed garage and it will kill you in minutes with poison gas”
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.
Tbf, battery tech was also shit back then.
Many people fail to appreciate just how much consumer battery technology has improved, in their lifetime.
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
EV brake pads can last a lot longer on one pedal cars. Henry Ford’s wife drove an EV, she hated his gasoline cars because they were loud, stunk, and could not be started by most women.
Chiming in from experience, our EVs brake pads were rusting faster than they were wearing down. We bought used, so maybe the previous climate was humid, but around 80k miles may have been their first change.
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.
Ha, I never thought of it that way but yes, that tracks perfectly. The “inconveniences” of EVs aren’t worse than gas cars, it’s just that the gas car inconveniences are considered “normal” right now.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Which part of “apartment complex” did you misunderstand
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Only $600??? That’s cheap as hell! I thought you were going to say $2k at the absolute lowest
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.
That’s only $10/mo over a 5 year period.
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
Think like a business and it makes sense.
Yeah, that’d be nice if people could take on debt and adjust cash flows like a business, but a lot of people don’t have the financial flexibility to spend $600 in a lump payment. That’s why people keep bringing up 60+ percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I’m fortunate enough to be able to make those types of purchases a couple times a year, but I know my privilege is not the norm.
The best someone may be able to do is 12mo financing on a new credit card with 0% apr, but miss a payment and its 25% interest. If they even get approved.
I’m talking about apartments and workplaces.
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.
Apartments would pay for it, not individuals. Having EV chargers would be a selling point, allowing higher rent.
Poor people are generally not driving EVs yet.
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
Ugh, greedy landlords.
That’s a matter of location I guess. Here you sometimes have to pay a small extra fee to keep it there the whole day. But that may be also because there are plenty of public chargers around
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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.
Wh do you assume this is not from personal experience?
These are all actual facts here in Europe.
In other words: not all countries are the same.
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.
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.