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Meanwhile, the number of gas stations continue to increase - a new BP gas in the HT parking lot on Maynard and High House, new Eagles opened up on Highway 55, and new 7-11 with gas pumps on Green Level Church Rd. Those are just the ones I know from people talking on nextdoor.
You can charge EVs at home but what about all of the people who don't live in houses or townhouses?
West Cary is underserved for fuel. It takes a long time to get past NIMBY's who don't want gas too close to home.
So, people drive for miles to fill up.
HT Fuel has been in the works at Maynard Crossing for a couple of years, I believe. I will also believe it is a BP when the sign goes up.
The Shell station across the street would be wise to partner up with Rocket Wash to cross-promote. HT Fuel will impact them, for sure.
You can charge EVs at home but what about all of the people who don't live in houses or townhouses?
1. A growing number of apartment buildings, workplaces, and shopping centers also have 240V chargers. (They're encouraged by green building rating systems, for instance, which are common for new office and retail buildings.) These take several hours to recharge.
2. 480V fast charging stations are also available, sometimes at rest stops but often at shopping centers and, strangely, at car dealerships. They're better for road trips than for everyday charging, since it's 2-3X pricier (though still much cheaper per mile than gas) and may impact battery life. Examples include the Tesla Superchargers at North Hills and Parkside Town Common, Electrify America at the Crossroads Target, or EVGo at Woodcroft and Brier Creek. These can recharge a car in minutes.
EV chargers are much more subtle than gas stations with their huge signs and neon, so you might not notice them if you don't know where they are. Most folks charge at home or work (lots of apartment dwellers have this option too) and when those aren't options they use an app to find the chargers. Plugshare is the oldest and my favorite, but there are many. "A Better Route Planner" app currently has a lot of buzz in the EV community.
My 21 yr old apartment dweller likes to charge the C-max energi while grocery shopping. Wegman's and Aldi are nearby and both have chargers. Go do your big grocery shop and come out to a full battery. Pretty sweet.
Charging is really a different mindset from filling up your gas tank. It's much more like plugging in your phone. Only on big road trips (like more than 250 miles) does the gas station mentality come into play. For the most part we just plug in our car at night like we plug in our phones and then wake up to a full battery. I might use a public charger once or twice a month if that. Depends on how many road trips I do.
Oh I've definitely noticed them and know where most of them are since one of my dream machines was a Model Y.
It's just I don't see the EV volume picking up the pace as quickly as the news stories made it out to be with long charging and the ability to build charging stations.
At Parkside Town Commons, I see many start their Tesla charging and walk to Target or some are reading a book in the car.
1. A growing number of apartment buildings, workplaces, and shopping centers also have 240V chargers. (They're encouraged by green building rating systems, for instance, which are common for new office and retail buildings.) These take several hours to recharge.
2. 480V fast charging stations are also available, sometimes at rest stops but often at shopping centers and, strangely, at car dealerships. They're better for road trips than for everyday charging, since it's 2-3X pricier (though still much cheaper per mile than gas) and may impact battery life. Examples include the Tesla Superchargers at North Hills and Parkside Town Common, Electrify America at the Crossroads Target, or EVGo at Woodcroft and Brier Creek. These can recharge a car in minutes.
Car dealerships have chargers because often manufacturers require them to be installed to allow the dealer to sell EV's, plus the dealers need them to charge the EV's prior to delivery, just as one has a full tank of gas with an ICE car.
It seems like most people who have to drive 1000 miles regularly get the car they need (not an EV for that use-case), or the EV is their second car with an ICE being first for road trips.
Some who only have an EV may rent for the occasional road trip. (I know a few people who do this with their ICE too, either because their car is not reliable, or they don't want to put the miles on it.)
I guess for the few people that didn't think it out, they have a LONG trip to Florida, but I stand by my observation, I'm not seeing them wait in line, so they are so rare that there are still no lines.
Seems like you are just looking for some 'facts' to support your closed view on this topic. Look at it with an open mind. Maybe you can tell US how many long-lines you've seen at the charging stations? Either here in Raleigh, or along the interstate?
It makes zero sense to have a gas powered car for road trips and an expensive electric car for going to work. One car will do both and one will not. That's not going to be very popular.
Just because you aren't seeing any long lines doesn't mean its not happening or not GOING to happen. As of right now 30k people in this state have electric cars. That's 30k people out of 10.4 million. They are pushing for 60% of the population to drive EV by 2030 so we're talking a little over 6 MILLION EVs on the road. How long does it take to charge an EV? 15-20 min on a super fast charger? I can fuel up my car in about 3-5 min. so 3-4 times longer wait times. I guess if you had 4x as many chargers as fuel pumps that could be a solution.
What about the power grid? How much electricity is consumed charging millions of cars every day? I get emails now from Duke energy wanting me to conserve energy during peak times by turning my a/c off or up during the day.
Maybe someone here knows how much power is currently being consumed in this area and can do the math on it. Sharron Harris Nuclear plant has a capacity of 928 megawatts. Not sure how close it currently is to that, but the emails mean something.
It makes zero sense to have a gas powered car for road trips and an expensive electric car for going to work. One car will do both and one will not. That's not going to be very popular.
Just because you aren't seeing any long lines doesn't mean its not happening or not GOING to happen. As of right now 30k people in this state have electric cars. That's 30k people out of 10.4 million. They are pushing for 60% of the population to drive EV by 2030 so we're talking a little over 6 MILLION EVs on the road. How long does it take to charge an EV? 15-20 min on a super fast charger? I can fuel up my car in about 3-5 min. so 3-4 times longer wait times. I guess if you had 4x as many chargers as fuel pumps that could be a solution.
What about the power grid? How much electricity is consumed charging millions of cars every day? I get emails now from Duke energy wanting me to conserve energy during peak times by turning my a/c off or up during the day.
Maybe someone here knows how much power is currently being consumed in this area and can do the math on it. Sharron Harris Nuclear plant has a capacity of 928 megawatts. Not sure how close it currently is to that, but the emails mean something.
Yer just workin it all WAY too hard.
Most couples have two cars.
Wife has a hybrid CMax. It could just as easily be an EV. 17,000 miles in 5 years.
I have the road vehicle. Couldn't get Hybrid/plugin or otherwise for what I want. Nor EV.
I would have done either.
Ok. I said I would answer questions about driving an EV on road trips, but I will try my best at some of your questions here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CalypsoNotch
It makes zero sense to have a gas powered car for road trips and an expensive electric car for going to work. One car will do both and one will not. That's not going to be very popular.
I road trip in my Bolt. But Mike has a good point that plenty of couples have two cars. I think lots of people road trip in their EVs (that's what we usually choose to do), but it's also not weird at all to have two cars for two or more people. They might take the 4wd if they plan on going off road or take the sedan if they want more comfort. If a family has more than one vehicle they pick and choose which car to take for all sorts of reasons.
Tesla (not my brand) is by far the best selling EV in the US (over a 100k Model Ys and 3s sold) and the Tesla charging network is very robust. I see lots of these folks when I am on my own road trips in my Chevy Bolt EV (#4 best seller, 25K sold, behind the Ford Mustang Mach E, at 27K). I think plenty of people road trip in their Teslas. I don't know why they wouldn't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CalypsoNotch
Just because you aren't seeing any long lines doesn't mean its not happening or not GOING to happen. As of right now 30k people in this state have electric cars. That's 30k people out of 10.4 million. They are pushing for 60% of the population to drive EV by 2030 so we're talking a little over 6 MILLION EVs on the road. How long does it take to charge an EV? 15-20 min on a super fast charger? I can fuel up my car in about 3-5 min. so 3-4 times longer wait times. I guess if you had 4x as many chargers as fuel pumps that could be a solution.
It's not like going to the gas station. Most people do 90% of their charging at home. We don't go to public chargers like you go to gas stations. How often do you plug your phone in somewhere that's not work or home? That's about how often most EV owners plug in away from home. So think about 10-15% of the number of cars that currently go to gas stations — that's roughly how many would need to go to a public charger, if that many.
And we don't sit around at home waiting for it to charge up, either. It really is like plugging in your phone. You plug it in at night and wake up to a full battery and then you don't worry about it until the next night or until it gets low. If I'm not driving much I might charge my car at home in my garage once or twice a week. And that's just because I like to keep it pretty full. If I'm not road tripping I could probably go 2 or 3 weeks before I had to charge, maybe a month. I don't drive that much if I'm not traveling.
And it's great to have a full battery when the power does go out in a storm (hurricane, ice storm, whatever). You can power many devices off your car. The Ford F-150 Lightning can work as a generator for your whole house or for your power tools on a job site, etc. We just usually use our Bolt for charging our phones in a power outage and maybe for the heated seats if it's winter and the house starts to get really cold (rare, but it's happened occasionally). No worries about running your EV as a generator in your garage — there's no exhaust so no carbon monoxide build up.
The government has a goal of 50% of NEW vehicles sold to be EVs by 2030 and GM has made it a goal to produce only new electric vehicles by 2035, but obviously there would be still be plenty of older gas and diesel vehicles on the road. How many 2022 vehicles are you seeing out on 440 these days? That's about how many EVs you'll see in 2035 if things go the way they want. They're not going to force everyone to give up their old gas guzzlers any more than they are going to tell you to quit eating burgers and drinking soda. They might point out how it is better for your health to more fruits and veggies, but that's about it. They'll make some nice infographics and show you how much money you could save and how much better it would be for the planet if your next car was an EV, but don't worry you can still drive your old ICE vehicle in 2035 and beyond.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CalypsoNotch
What about the power grid? How much electricity is consumed charging millions of cars every day?
In NC the electric grid is good. We're not like Texas or something. And it's not like we're going to wake up tomorrow and find that every car in every garage has magically changed to an EV. The grid will adapt to EVs just like it is adapting to all the new people who move to NC every single day! Housing those folks and providing electricity for them is much more of a drain on the grid than plugging in a few cars. HVAC is the most energy intensive usage. All those people moving here want AC. That's a bigger drain on the grid here than EVs will ever be and Duke Energy and the other providers seem to be handling that fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CalypsoNotch
I get emails now from Duke energy wanting me to conserve energy during peak times by turning my a/c off or up during the day.
Maybe someone here knows how much power is currently being consumed in this area and can do the math on it. Sharron Harris Nuclear plant has a capacity of 928 megawatts. Not sure how close it currently is to that, but the emails mean something.
Don't know much about the amount of power currently being consumed in NC beyond what anyone can do a search on, but the emails from Duke are nothing to worry about. I get emails from them all the time suggesting I buy a smart thermostat (already got one) or LED lightbulbs (already use them) and offering me tips on saving energy and how to find a plumber (just last week). I have never gotten an email from them asking me to turn off my AC. I think that would be a pretty poor way to communicate in a real blackout/brownout crisis.
As an analogy, you can think about the evolution of the phone or TV or typewriter/word processor/computer .
Those of us over 50 might remember old landline phones that plugged into the wall. You can think about those like the ICE vehicles. Then we thought we were pretty fancy when we got cordless phones and could walk around the house while talking or even out in the yard (but not down the street). That's your hybrid. (My aunt hated cordless phone because she thought the government might be listening — little bit like Dale Gribble.) Then came the first mass adopted cell phones, the little Nokia and Motorola flip phones (that's my Chevy Bolt) and your Blackberries (that's the Teslas, etc). And what's coming next for EVs are the smart phones and mass adoption of them.
You can still plug in your old rotary phone to your phone jack if you've got one, though. I have an old rotary that I grew up with, but no landline to plug it into any more.
Likewise, companies that went along with the phones and typewriters had to adapt themselves. Ma Bell used to be all up in everyone's wires in their house with a phone jack in every room, but AT&T has evolved. Same with the International Business Machines going from the IBM Selectric to PCs to cloud computing, etc. Where you used to get three networks on your little old B&W TV, and then you got "cablevision" with 20 channels, now there are endless streaming shows on 70' 4K or 8K TVs.
Gonna be the same thing with electric vehicles. There will be people who want to hang on to their old rotary phones for awhile, but eventually 99% of people will be driving EVs. And you can bet that Exxon and the rest have seen the writing on the wall and are busy adapting themselves as fast as they can.
It makes zero sense to have a gas powered car for road trips and an expensive electric car for going to work. One car will do both and one will not. That's not going to be very popular.
Just because you aren't seeing any long lines doesn't mean its not happening or not GOING to happen. As of right now 30k people in this state have electric cars. That's 30k people out of 10.4 million. They are pushing for 60% of the population to drive EV by 2030 so we're talking a little over 6 MILLION EVs on the road. How long does it take to charge an EV? 15-20 min on a super fast charger? I can fuel up my car in about 3-5 min. so 3-4 times longer wait times. I guess if you had 4x as many chargers as fuel pumps that could be a solution.
What about the power grid? How much electricity is consumed charging millions of cars every day? I get emails now from Duke energy wanting me to conserve energy during peak times by turning my a/c off or up during the day.
Maybe someone here knows how much power is currently being consumed in this area and can do the math on it. Sharron Harris Nuclear plant has a capacity of 928 megawatts. Not sure how close it currently is to that, but the emails mean something.
To the bolded, again displaying a very closed mind. Why does that make zero sense? My wife likes her SUV, and like you, is very anti-EV. She'll always have a ICE as long as she can. Her choice.
So why does it make zero sense for me to have an EV, and to drive her car on the occasion I have a solo road trip. This is a COMMON strategy, has been discussed in this thread, and on the many threads on the P&OC forum. Most multi-driver families have more than one car. How does not NOT MAKE SENSE to be strategic in the cars you buy?
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