@VOLVO-V70. How can you you not know how many people took the survey and that 5% marked it NO?
@thewonderful90s. So you extrapolate from that video about one charger to “chargers” being unreliable. It’s like someone saying posting one stupid comment means all that person’s comments are stupid.
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For a lot of people driving is a necessity of life. My solution doesn’t require that you give it up. It’s plausible that one could hold onto a gas/diesel burner for at least another decade and half, if you wanted to. And not have to deal with the EV charging issues mentioned in that article for that period of time. It’s unlikely it would be an indefinite solution as sooner or later it’s going to be universally less practical to drive a gasoline/diesel vehicle than EV. But that point is still just a speck on the horizon for a lot of people.
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Dad would love to have an EV but needs a 300+ mile range for trips to visit family, the Ford Mach-E has just enough of a range now but he’s still waiting to see if someone comes out with something even better. With a 2yr old Honda CRV he’s in no hurry to get another car.
My wife owns a 14yo Lexus and she’s in no hurry to get a new car.
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Do you suppose there will be a high bill for returning the vehicle with little to no charge on the batteries?
Hmm. Good question @Dean-in-Des-Moines. I’m guessing the answer is yes. One thing that I think we can all agree on, these companies will take most every opportunity to charge you more, if they can… 
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I guess there could be, but that would be a BIG reason for me not to rent an EV. Two minutes to gas up, fine, but 2 hours to charge up before I turn in the rental? No way!
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+1
If it takes even a half hour to charge the EV before I return it, that’s a killer for me. When I return the car, I just want to turn it in and get to the airport. I want all my dawdling after I get through security.
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He may still keep the CRV until either it dies or he and mom stop driving. It will depend on what comes on the market in the next few years.
While looking for something else, I ran across this short You Tube video about Germany testing a system for charging electric semi trucks via overhead lines similar to electric trains.
What a marvelous coincidence: Those speeds, ~55 mph and ~70mph, are what my freshman college physics professor calculated / demonstrated in lecture as the best and a horrible highway speeds for fuel efficiency. Note, this was back long before the Prius was a gleam in Toyota’s eye, most cars were non-aerodynamic long brickyboxes, and the highway speed limit was still 55 mph from the recent gas crisis.
The wind resistance for the same given car shape doubled between 55 and 70 mph.
Some physics principles defy car redesign.
Until Feb 1st 2022 Hertz Tesla rentals include free charging on Tesla’s network, but it would not suprise me to see rental companies charging a premium if you don’t recharge the car. Just like they offer to let you prepay for fuel and just return the car without filling the tank.
We are the proud owners of two KIA Niro’s. One is a hybrid and the other is an EV which we bought just two months ago. We live in an apartment complex which is why we initially bought the hybrid, new, in the beginning of 2019. It replaced an 04 Golf diesel and an 02 Camry both starting to act up mechanically. I’m retired but my wife still works about six city miles away. That’s an ideal situation for an EV but for lack of charging infrastructure we bought the hybrid instead. 22/mpg went to 58/mpg summer and about 52/mpg winter.
This past year we first wanted to get one of the new Venza’s but lack of inventory and gouging dealers kept deflecting us from the purchase. On a whim we test drove a Tesla Model 3 and we were impressed enough to think about considering an EV again. Also the state of NJ was offering a max of $5000 cash towards the purchase of an EV, no sales tax, and $7500 off of Federal taxes. So I downloaded an app called PLUGSHARE and checked to see if we could practically include an EV into our lives and more importantly a safe dependable ideally suited car for my wife’s commute. One afternoon we drove around to all the charging spots in our general area to see what they look like, where they were and what shape they were in. We found that chargers do break, some in sad shape perhaps vandalized. Plugs wear out from repeated insertions and removal. Like any electrical appliance they go on the fritz. At a local mall PLUGSHARE showed 8 L2 chargers that were free for shoppers. Two hours are free but operating hours are limited to when the mall is open. Because of blue laws they are inop on Sundays. Three are currently ‘out of service’ and the rest can vary in output between 6 kwh to 7.6kwh. This is what a typical home charger would produce and is more or less an ideal charging rate at least as far as battery life is concerned if not for it’s impatient owner.
Fast charging, Supercharging is hard on batteries. Repeated fast charging degrades capacity and reduces overall life of the battery. Typical protocol calls for keeping the SOC(State Of Charge) between 20 and 80 percent. The Niro EV has a 64kw battery. Following the above SOC protocol that gives you 38kw that is practically useable. A ballpark consumption rate of 4 miles per kw equals152 miles. Niro EV can take a Max theoretical charge rate of 100 kwh although the max I’ve seen it take is 75kwh, mostly a lot less. In cases where you need to charge to 100% for the added range it can take almost as long to charge from 80% to 100% as it takes 20 to 80%. Just the nature of the beast.
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Do you have a preferred charging location? The mall?
I was at the Mall at Rockingham Park in Salem NH for the first time in awhile. They are putting in 4 Tesla charging stations on the entrance near the Food Court.
Whether intentional or not… Great Pun!
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Fast chargers are harder on the battery life than slow chargers. And that’s true of other battery types too.
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1000 ft of AWG 10 copper (or #8 aluminum) for a 500’ away location has a resistance of 1 ohm. For a 4.8kW (20A) or 3.8kW (16A) Level 2 charger, a 240VAC 20A circuit with 16A drawn would drop the Voltage by 16 Volts or down to 224V, a 6.7% loss. At 20A it would be 20 Volts or 8.3% loss. The output would be 4.4kW or 3.5kW. That’s fairly close to the N. E. Code requirement of 5% drop at full load.
A 1000’ reel of single conductor AWG 6 direct bury aluminum wire is only $0.37 per foot. That’s only $370 for a 500’ run that would be close to or meet the <5% Voltage drop that the NEC requires.
Double the Voltage to 480V with a step down transformer at the end and now the distance can be 2000’ instead of 500’.
You don’t know transformers. For the last 11 years, I worked for a large distribution transformer manufacturer developing OJT training and running the testing department. Even the slightest increase in resistance on the secondary causes the load losses to go way up. I had a case where six 500kVA three phase transformers in a row failed the load loss test by well over the tolerance of 10% of design. It was all due to the new assembler using an impact gun to run down the internal connections on the LV bushings instead of a torque wrench.
The connections required 75 ft lbs of torque, the impact wrench was only putting about 15 ft/lbs. Passed at lower than design LL the next round after tightening the bolts.
Edit: a 7200:240 transformer would be cheaper than a 480:240 transformer. The cable cost would be higher though as it has to be shielded cable. Although shielded cable for LV may not be required, unshielded direct bury single would have very high losses due to radiation. A direct bury pair would have much lower losses.
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