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But today in 2022, the only thing we consumers can purchase are vehicles on the market in 2022. Are you suggesting we wait until 2032 or 2042 for the presumed improvements that will be available then?
I was responding to C-D member guidoLaMoto, who claimed EVs would "always" be "short run use" vehicles. Very obviously many people consider EVs "short run use" today in 2022. I merely stated that it won't always be this way. Who knows how fast technology will leap? It depends on the money invested, the efficiency of research, and the diminishing return of each new technology discovered.
Some people are fine with the reduced range of EVs and inconveniences of charging in the road. Others won't accept driving an EV until it mimics the range and convenience of a gasoline-powered car. Who knows what date that will happen, if ever. I have already stated my belief it will happen, but who knows when?
Any market has a wide variety of customers with differing needs and desires. Yes, many, many people may wait until 2030 or 2040 until they even consider buying an EV, unless the government outright bans everyting else and they are forced to buy one.
What do you consider short run use? I've gone on numerous 700-900 mile road trips in my 2020 Bolt, and quite a few people have gone on much farther trips across the country (like from Michigan to Wyoming and back). I'm going to be going on a 700 mile trip in my 2023 Bolt EUV for Thanksgiving. It's just not an issue.
And a 500 mile range car uses a large, heavy, expensive battery that 99% of the time you would be hauling around to do minor daily driving with. Awfully wasteful.
Someone else said this on another forum, after determining that even with the road tripping they do, 250 was abou tthe sweet spot for range:
You didn't ask me but...
For me, "short run use" is any vehicle that requires refilling in less than 300 miles, OR any vehicle that takes more than 3 minutes to refill to maximum range capacity.
Any vehicle that cannot be refilled to 100% capacity in a few minutes would be "short range use" to me. Asking me to wait longer becomes an inconvenience. For some people, that inconvenience is minor and acceptable. For people like me, that inconvenience is major and is not acceptable.
I have been in long gas lines where it took 10 minutes to get the pump and fill the car. It always raises my blood pressure to have to wait that long, even when it is necessary and makes sense. It still chaps my hide to pull into a gas station and still be there waiting to leave 10 minutes later. Most likely I will leave and find a less busy gas station. It has been many years since I have been in the situation where it took me even 10 minutes to refill the tank on a dedicated fuel stop.
Now, if I am taking a long break at a gas station, that is different, but that is less than 1% of my gas stops these days. 99% are splash and dash.
Waiting a half-hour to charge an EV today is an unacceptable inconvenience to me. For many others, it is not. I could not imagine waiting an hours solid to recharge a car on the road. It would be straight-jacket time.
I recently went to Boone, NC for fall foliage but they were having some kind of festival in town so traffic was exceedingly heavy and parking was scarce. Boone is 250 miles round trip from home, up some steep hills and doing this in colder weather during fall. Add another 100 miles joy-riding around the NC mountains viewing fall foliage. An EV is going to need a charge.
Every single charging station in Boone was taken with a car parked and charging. No big deal in this situation to park and play while charging, but if I was in an EV and had pulled into Boone to recharge and then dash off for the Blue Ridge Parkway, I would be very impatient to have to sit and wait at a red curb or what have you, waiting to pounce on one of the few EV charging slots right when someone left. If somebody else beat me to it, I would be seeing red.
Last edited by Igor Blevin; 11-03-2022 at 05:19 PM..
The study is from Norway and I posted the ref previously on one of these other threads here. Other studies put the payback at 30-50,000 miles. The dif is probably due to a more honest accounting of the energy/carbon debt starting with mining the raw materials for the Norwegian study, not just starting at the manufacturing of the batteries.
Quote:
I was responding to C-D member guidoLaMoto, who claimed EVs would "always" be "short run use" vehicles. Very obviously many people consider EVs "short run use" today in 2022. I merely stated that it won't always be this way. Who knows how fast technology will leap?
There's only so many electrons you can shake loose and use as electricity in any given amount of material...as opposed to using the energy in ALL the inter-atomic bonds in a fuel, so energy density will always be a problem....The Voltaic cell paradigm hasn't changed significantly in two centuries despite a great deal of research into the matter, so we probably shouldn't base a total change in our lifestye, economy & sociology at this time because we hope we'll finally come up with a new, better paradigm.
Last edited by guidoLaMoto; 11-03-2022 at 05:55 PM..
For me, "short run use" is any vehicle that requires refilling in less than 300 miles, OR any vehicle that takes more than 3 minutes to refill to maximum range capacity.
Any vehicle that cannot be refilled to 100% capacity in a few minutes would be "short range use" to me. Asking me to wait longer becomes an inconvenience. For some people, that inconvenience is minor and acceptable. For people like me, that inconvenience is major and is not acceptable.
I have been in long gas lines where it took 10 minutes to get the pump and fill the car. It always raises my blood pressure to have to wait that long, even when it is necessary and makes sense. It still chaps my hide to pull into a gas station and still be there waiting to leave 10 minutes later. Most likely I will leave and find a less busy gas station. It has been many years since I have been in the situation where it took me even 10 minutes to refill the tank on a dedicated fuel stop.
Now, if I am taking a long break at a gas station, that is different, but that is less than 1% of my gas stops these days. 99% are splash and dash.
Waiting a half-hour to charge an EV today is an unacceptable inconvenience to me. For many others, it is not. I could not imagine waiting an hours solid to recharge a car on the road. It would be straight-jacket time.
I recently went to Boone, NC for fall foliage but they were having some kind of festival in town so traffic was exceedingly heavy and parking was scarce. Boone is 250 miles round trip from home, up some steep hills and doing this in colder weather during fall. Add another 100 miles joy-riding around the NC mountains viewing fall foliage. An EV is going to need a charge.
Every single charging station in Boone was taken with a car parked and charging. No big deal in this situation to park and play while charging, but if I was in an EV and had pulled into Boone to recharge and then dash off for the Blue Ridge Parkway, I would be very impatient to have to sit and wait at a red curb or what have you, waiting to pounce on one of the few EV charging slots right when someone left. If somebody else beat me to it, I would be seeing red.
Is that an exclusive or as in at least has one or the other? You can get the former with various vehicles now, but you won't generally get the latter. If you get the former though, you generally also have very high max recharge rates going hand in hand with it so while it won't charge to full, it'll generally add a lot more miles in 3 minutes time than a shorter range EV at a DC fast charger as there's usually a fairly prominent slowdown in charging after around 80% or so and that it charges even faster when closer to empty. With a higher range (really, battery capacity), then that 80% is a 80% of a larger number.
One question is what are the situations where you don't mind taking a long break and where you do get infuriated from a 10 minute wait? The idea behind charging at home or potentially at work a place where you'll be in for a while as simply part of parking is that you basically don't spend any time waiting to charge up because what you're doing is parking which you would be doing anyways. Now if you're doing a road trip, then 250 something or so miles is something like a three and a half hour drive at mostly highway driving then longer breaks might not be as annoying in some instances.
Your Boone roundtrip is an interesting way to think about how charging infrastructure should be deployed. Let's say you're heading out from a place, like your home, where you have charging and you have it at full. Presumably you'd be going to Boone to do something where you'll get out of your car at some point rather than drive to Boone, circle around without getting out of the car and go straight back. Going uphill is going to eat more energy than going downhill, so you'll eat more energy going up than going down so with a 250 mile range vehicle, you'll eat more than half of the energy the car has. This means that you'll be that much further down on percentage capacity and that much further away from that 80% where fast charging slows down when you get there. Now if there's charging where you'll presumably get out of the vehicle and park for a bit, then you may potentially, depending on the efficiency of the vehicle and the charging rate of the charger and vehicle, end up with essentially no dedicated "refueling" trip.
If it's a level 2 charger and your vehicle isn't that efficient or you don't park for very long, then you may just get a bit of a boost that's insufficient or at least not comfortably sufficient where you have pretty good peace of mind for the entire leg back even though it's downhill. In that case though or in the case that there is no charging at any place where you parked, then you'd want to have a really fast DC charger on your way back down. Now when you get to that stop on the way down, you supposedly will be at fairly low state of charge so you'll charge at a higher rate. You'll also be going downhill and less than 125 miles (maybe a lot less) away from home where supposedly you'd have home charging again, so what you would actually charge up to and how long you'd wait is the time it takes to enough miles to reasonably get back home rather than a full charge.
I agree that you don't always need a full charge in an EV. Sometimes it is just enough charge to finish the drive.
You make a good point about, when a 10-minute gas stop would irritate me. That would be normal day-to-day use around town. A long refill time on a break during a road trip or other long drive is OK, since I probably could use a short break of 10-15 minutes anyway to eat, drink, stretch, walk or use the bathroom. No foul.
The irritation would be around town which is where I spend most of my driving time. I forgot to consider that most EV charging is at night, so I shouldn't any long charges during all of that local use. You make a good point. To the extent I am absent-minded, there would be times I probably forgot to plug in the car and am low on charge, and THAT would be very infuriating. I would be to blame and only mad at myself and not the EV, but I can see forgetting to recharge the car on a regular basis and having it low on range when I want it. At those times, it would be a major irritation.
Regarding needing to recharge and EV on the road during a longer drive, I see practical capacity as 80% of rated since recharging slows down after 80% and patence wears thin. So to me, an EV rated for 300 miles max capacity would have a practical range of 240 miles, as I can see where I would become really impatient to fill above the point where charging slows down.
Life is messy. I could see doing local driving and getting used to only having to plug in only once a week. Why plug in every night if you are never near empty? Then one day, I want to take an unplanned trip to the mountains or Nashville, but I am at 30% capacity charge. Suddenly, I need much more charge than planned for. Now I have to plug in and sit and wait a half hour if I have a level 2 charger, or if I don't then I can't take that impromptu trip.
Life is messy that way. With gas, if you can pull out of your garage, you can get to a gas station and top off the tank in 10 minutes or so and take your unplanned trip. With the slower charge rate of and EV, it could be an issue, and a deal breaker if all you have is a regular electrical outlet for level 1 charging.
You make good points. Odds are strong that recharging problems would be minimal and infrequent with the occassional disaster you hopefull learn from and mitigate going forward.
I agree that you don't always need a full charge in an EV. Sometimes it is just enough charge to finish the drive.
That's how EV drivers go, charge enough to get to the destination/next charger/home. Takes a lot less time that way.
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You make a good point about, when a 10-minute gas stop would irritate me. That would be normal day-to-day use around town. A long refill time on a break during a road trip or other long drive is OK, since I probably could use a short break of 10-15 minutes anyway to eat, drink, stretch, walk or use the bathroom. No foul.
The irritation would be around town which is where I spend most of my driving time. I forgot to consider that most EV charging is at night, so I shouldn't any long charges during all of that local use. You make a good point. To the extent I am absent-minded, there would be times I probably forgot to plug in the car and am low on charge, and THAT would be very infuriating.
Your car will text you to remind you to charge if it's low (mine sends me "did you forget to plug in" message if it's reasonably low and not plugged in). And you'd really have to try to run it out of juice considering all the alarms and warnings and the like that it has. But yeah, msot of the time, I dont' need to plug in more than once a week to get my 300+ miles in (at 30 miles a day average for most people that's 10 days of driving before you HAVE to charge), but it's a good habit to "ABC" (always be charging) since teh car only takes what it needs anyhow.
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Life is messy. I could see doing local driving and getting used to only having to plug in only once a week. Why plug in every night if you are never near empty? Then one day, I want to take an unplanned trip to the mountains or Nashville, but I am at 30% capacity charge.
Why do people always try to come up with things like this? When have you EVER had to take an unplanned trip up into the mountains? Especially one right after coming home from another trip and being empty? It's just irrational to use that as the scenario that justifies a choice. Make better choices. What if you decide one day to drive across the desert and you forget to fill up your gas car (remember, your forgetful in your other scenario so that follows true here) and you next run across a sign like this:
Life is messy, oh no, no impromptu trip across the desert for you!
Who cares? Make it muscle memory to plug in every night. Plan trips more than 30 seconds in advance.
Here's what I do. I'm not taking unplanned road trips during the week. Have to work. But my weekends are free, so I make sure I'm plugged in by Friday night so that IF I want to do something on Saturday or Sunday, I'm topped off. Again, I can set an alert on my phone or the car's app to remind me. Same if I KNOW I have a day off coming up. Make sure it's been plugged in the night before.
Now, like my gas car, I usually fill up at about half tank. So in reality, even if for some reason I forget to plug in AND I decide to wake up and barely have time to get dressed and comb my hair and just up and leave on an unplanned trip, I have about 150 miles to go. My stupid lack of planning might mean I need to find a DCFC somewhere and spend a half hour or so at it, but again, that's on me for being impulsing AND forgetful. I'll use that time to actually eat breakfast (that I apparently forgot to do in my haste to get out of bed and on the road...). But it's all just silly because at that point I'd have just made a series of idiotic choices that put me in that position.
I guess I just can't understand the position of someone who wakes up quickly, sits up and say, "damn, I better get on the road for this impromptu trip to the mountains I just thought of doing, but am totally unprepared for. And I can't wait around for breakfast or letting my car top off before hurrying out the door!" c'mon, guy.
I agree that you don't always need a full charge in an EV. Sometimes it is just enough charge to finish the drive.
You make a good point about, when a 10-minute gas stop would irritate me. That would be normal day-to-day use around town. A long refill time on a break during a road trip or other long drive is OK, since I probably could use a short break of 10-15 minutes anyway to eat, drink, stretch, walk or use the bathroom. No foul.
The irritation would be around town which is where I spend most of my driving time. I forgot to consider that most EV charging is at night, so I shouldn't any long charges during all of that local use. You make a good point. To the extent I am absent-minded, there would be times I probably forgot to plug in the car and am low on charge, and THAT would be very infuriating. I would be to blame and only mad at myself and not the EV, but I can see forgetting to recharge the car on a regular basis and having it low on range when I want it. At those times, it would be a major irritation.
Regarding needing to recharge and EV on the road during a longer drive, I see practical capacity as 80% of rated since recharging slows down after 80% and patence wears thin. So to me, an EV rated for 300 miles max capacity would have a practical range of 240 miles, as I can see where I would become really impatient to fill above the point where charging slows down.
Life is messy. I could see doing local driving and getting used to only having to plug in only once a week. Why plug in every night if you are never near empty? Then one day, I want to take an unplanned trip to the mountains or Nashville, but I am at 30% capacity charge. Suddenly, I need much more charge than planned for. Now I have to plug in and sit and wait a half hour if I have a level 2 charger, or if I don't then I can't take that impromptu trip.
Life is messy that way. With gas, if you can pull out of your garage, you can get to a gas station and top off the tank in 10 minutes or so and take your unplanned trip. With the slower charge rate of and EV, it could be an issue, and a deal breaker if all you have is a regular electrical outlet for level 1 charging.
You make good points. Odds are strong that recharging problems would be minimal and infrequent with the occassional disaster you hopefull learn from and mitigate going forward.
you and cvetter63 both make good points, and I'll add a bit to that. cvetter63's points about the car reminding you if it gets low and that because it's so convenient if you have charging placed where you regularly park that it easily becomes second nature is something that current EV owners already know and have dealt with just fine so far--that's part of the mentality change where a lot of people who initially were skeptical about EVs found that this wasn't really a problem for their driving habits, but it was certainly reasonable to at least consider the issues since it's not perfectly straightforward. Where the wild west is going to be and where improvements are crucial are for people who do not have charging where they park regularly and that improvement will probably have to come from both expanding charging infrastructure so that's far less common even for people who are not homeowners with dedicated parking where they can put their charger *and* in improving the time per mile added for charging.
I think for your specific examples listed with absent-mindedness about charging can be mitigated or learned from as cvetter63 and yourself point out. I think the other part of this is that it's likely your usual daily drive if you're like most Americans just isn't that long. This means that with a ~250 mile range vehicle, you can be between 10% - 20% of charge and likely still cover the the driving for your usual day and have a warning that you should charge up overnight which will bring you back to full. If you're so low on charge and it's not enough for covering your usual daily drive, you're then back at the point where you can go to a fast charger for a few minutes for enough to do the rest of the day's driving before being back home to charge back up overnight since you're at low state of charge and thus will be charging at the top of your charging rate for those few minutes which means this scenario basically gives you a worst case of it being about equivalent to the time spent at a gas station, but likely at lower costs because you'd be paying the public charging rate for only a small fraction of your total charge with the rest being done at home now that you have enough charge to cover the rest of the day and get back home.
It's really if you have a roadtrip, continuously forgot to charge up for days prior, and then woke up for your roadtrip with very low states of charge that this becomes really annoying, but I think that's a pretty rare scenario. It would have to be a combination of both continued forgetfulness *and* an impromptu roadtrip which probably isn't that common of an occurence. More likely though is that for a roadtrip you'll have set the charging limit the night before to top off to full by the time you leave the house instead of a default 80% since very long roadtrips are quite often thought about in advance.
So gaming that out I think makes it somewhat clear that for most driving habits and situations, the 200-300 mile range EV works quite well for most people in most situations provided there is easy access to charging where you normally park. With that being said though, I do think continued battery improvements means that the median range and charging speeds* are going to keep going up for at least a little bit longer before it sort of hits a threshold where it's not much of a competitive edge to add even more range or even faster charging for the vast majority of people. Where that lands is anybody's guess.
There are at least two curveballs that can be thrown out there in your scenario for the future in addition to battery improvements yielding greater range and charge times and speeds. One thing is that wireless charging is being piloted right now and it could be that charging installations could simply be parking with no plugging in or out at all. The other is that for some conditions/climates and if both efficiency of the vehicle and solar panels continue to improve as they have been, a decent amount of your charging is simply having the vehicle in the sun at times.
*Among new vehicles, the median is somewhere above the 250 miles rated range which has some caveats to go with that and around 150 kW top charging speed now and that's with some real clunkers in the mix like the Mazda MX-30
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-04-2022 at 12:10 PM..
ICE Car: 10 minutes at the gas station once a week. 520 minutes wasted a year.
EV with at home charging: 30 minutes at a charger only on road trips. Lets say 10 times a year. 300 minutes wasted a year.
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