Americar hit the nail on the head…The electrical service in most residential homes can’t deliver that kind of power…If you want to charge many of these cars in 5 minutes you will need industrial scale charging stations…
@RobS11
Actually, I’d be inclined to get an electric car because it would almost necessitate putting coal “back in the mix” to handle the grid loads…putting my fellow Pennsylvanians back to work. You DO realize that most of our e-s are produced by burning [something] to make water into steam?
Little off the subject…But watching Motor Week this past Sunday. Seems national grid has installed 50 electric car recharge stations in Rhode Island…and plan on installing many more all the way to Canada. BTW charging is FREE.
Who pays for the electricity?
New England get a bit over 50% of their electricity from burning natural gas and coal. Not clear to me this is a big win for the environment, CO2-wise.
Who pays for the electricity?
Not sure. Probably RI taxes.
New England get a bit over 50% of their electricity from burning natural gas and coal. Not clear to me this is a big win for the environment, CO2-wise.
Probably not.
Keep in mind even the Tesla 85 kW-hr battery never drops below about 40% state of charge to prolong its life. That means you need to only add 51 kW-hrs to recharge a depleted battery. With losses at the charger (5-10%) and losses in the battery, 3-10%, you will need 60 k-W-hrs to charge.
One other bit of info beyond the big wires and huge current you need to quick-charge, you need serious cooling to manage the up to 10% losses (released as heat) when quick-charging those lithium batteries.
And the charger better communicate with the battery because you don’t EVER want the battery to overheat. The charger must shut down if the battery gets too hot. If not, it will consume itself with fire if the plates short circuit from heat damage. And the car. And likely the garage it is parked in, and maybe the attached home, too!
The losses at the charger should be more like 0.5 to 1.5%. Transformer efficiency has improved quite a bit in the last 10 years.
Edit: that would be for a large scale public charging station using the higher voltages. A home charger should not exceed 2.5% in losses.
New England get a bit over 50% of their electricity from burning natural gas and coal. Not clear to me this is a big win for the environment, CO2-wise.That's assuming the impetus for driving an electric car is ecology. Other valid reasons would include domestically-sourced energy inputs (i.e. telling OPEC to take a hike), and lower per-unit energy costs associated with electricity. (Gasoline is a really pricey way to get a given unit of energy: "Gasoline is to coal...as filet mignon is to beans" for this SAT-esque analogy.)
Granted there USED to be more merit to my arguments…presently, we have more domestic petroleum than we previously thought, at lower prices, too…but there may yet be more merit to these arguments shortly. In any event, it’s not fair to assume the only reason to buy an electric car is to be green…unless you’re referring to the kind of “green” you fold in half and put back in your pocket!
I have no problem with someone wanting an EV. My problem - PAYING for the electricity, for a big chunk of the car, for the roads they use, all through our taxes. If the benefits to society aren’t significant, why pay?
Road user fees(rate based on the registered GVW of the vehicle the technology exists,not that hard to implement) a EZ Pass system if you will)people would be more aware of ways to save money and the the chunk the govts get.No cheating on fuel type either,I guess then everybody that uses a public road could be made to pay their fair share for the use of these systems;
And no subsidies for electrics,because the market will sort out what works.
My benchmark for an EV being useable to me ?
The day-trip to Albuquerque for doctor, shopping and dinner, MUST be do-able in a single pass without hours of waiting for recharge.
This kind of trip is 140 miles one-way with an un-knowable number of miles in the city. But the average for this round trip being a 350-400 mile day .
Plus, it needs the space for my family of five ( three big kids and all their stuff ) AND all the purchases we accumulate at Costco. ( my 08 Expedition does this with ease and I don’t even need to put more gas.)
I would need to also have enough guaranteed reserve to never need to worry or wonder about getting home.
Only then would I consider an EV.
Here we go again with bad policy. If electric and high mileage cars are not paying their fair share of road costs, it is a simple matter of a yearly surcharge for that use when plates are renewed. Do average, actual mileage, whatever, doesn’t matter.
Instead, they want to do it to ALL cars instead of the targeted problem group. Why? Because they on the one hand subsidize buying the high mileage cars and when they have the unintended consequences of reducing road revenues, they can’t go after the real targets but have to go after everyone instead. Its the unelected policy wonks that create these problems over and over and then require the same wonks to correct the problems they created in the first place.
Throw the bums out. Not the elected folks but the behind the scenes career workers actually calling the shots and doing the research.
@Bing - exactly. No need to start tracking miles on all cars, just on ones that aren’t paying the per-gallon gas tax.
Maybe there is a reason. Vehicles that burn a taxed (road tax) fuel get significantly better mileage than they used to, but fuel taxes have hardly increased over time. One way to handle that huge shortfall is to have a road user fee. License plate sensors are a lot more prevalent and could be used to assess a fee as @kmccune suggested. I think some states implement EZPass this way. I can’t imagine how all roads could be monitored efficiently and fairly, but highways certainly could be handled as Kevin suggested.
Or they bump the tax $0.20/gallon, problem solved.
Per mile seems fair to me,that way guzzlers arent unfairly targeted,why should somebody with an old 70s model car pay more then a new econobox?(they will both wear the road at about the same rate)I shudder to think about an extra 20 cents a gal for the Feds to squander.Why pretty soon it would make it impossible to save any money at all,by trying to conserve,I dont want to penalize the poor people.
@kmccune :
- Per gallon taxes produce an economic incentive towards using less fuel. “We” want people to conserve fuel; people respond to incentive structures; less fuel is used overall.
- The alternative, CAFE requirements, DECREASE the marginal cost of using a car–so miles driven goes UP, partially consuming the theoretical savings of the more-efficient vehicles (basically, 1) is a more economically-sound way of reducing fuel use than 2) is.)
- Fuel economy is at least a rough proxy for vehicle weight. As heavier vehicles tend to do more road damage, it’s logical that they should pay more road taxes.
Here’s the problem with this article,…in the last 7 years I have read at least 3 or 4 major battery breakthroughs…super fast charging times/ much higher capacities…but I have yet to see any of this new technology come to market. Just do an internet search on “new battery technology”.
Yep, I’ll believe this new breakthrough when I see it on the market. Remember when battery swapping was going to change everything? Didn’t happen. Tesla go lots of positive publicity from it, now they’ve given up.