When You get an Electronic Vehicle (EV), how will you charge it?

General Discussion
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With so much emphasis being put on the conversion to change to Electric Vehicles (EV) by the years 2030, and with some manufacturers stating they will convert completely to EVs, I have to ask, how will you charge your Electric Vehicle (EV)? Will we have to suffer more and more rolling “Brownouts” or even “Blackouts” due to their ever-increasing load on the electrical power grid.

       "Brownouts" -- an intentional or unintentional drop, or sag, 
       in voltage in an electrical grid. 

       "Blackouts" -- a large-scale service interruption that can happen 
       when there is an equipment failure at power plants 
       due to over demand)

For starters, I am not against EVs, I think they are great, and I will probably intentionally buy one, one day… But for now, there is no sweeter sound to my ears than the low, deep-throated rumble of my Harley, or the deep, resonant-rumble of the Cummins Turbo Diesel in my 2500 4x4 Dodge Ram. My Honda Fit and two Toyota Corollas are “whisper-quiet.” Therefore, I’m not all bad…

Last April, the White House announced new progress on the Administration’s goal to accelerate and deploy electric vehicles and charging stations.

The General Services Administration also announced progress on the goal to transition the federal fleet to zero-emission vehicles.

They say that most electric vehicle drivers will charge at home and work. I can’t believe your employer who expects you to answer your cell phone and respond to email long after you’ve gone home, on your own time, will willingly install charging station in the parking lot for your convenience…

They say that one of the perks of driving an electric vehicle is never needing to go to the gas station. But public charging infrastructures will be the bain for people without off-street parking and for longer trips.

I do not know about you, but I get upset if I have to wait for the person at the gas pump ahead of me to finish washing their windshield. Imagine having to wait 2 to 4-hours for the car ahead of you to finish charging, then it’s your turn to plug in for several hours; just to get home for the holidays… Or the person who just uses the Charging station as a “Parking Spot.”

Our local Library installed Free Charging Stations a while back and it soon became popular for big gas guzzling SUVs to ICE the spot, ICEing is a trend of gas powered vehicles to take a charging spot, thus preventing an EV from using the station, the ICE stands for “Internal Combustion Engines.”

But, back on point, over 30 percent of the population live in apartments or condos, this does not include rental homes or trailers. Who is going to install the charging stations for them? What about major cities like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc…, where there is never enough parking to begin with, will they install charging station on the parking meters?

I readily concede that EVs are cheaper to operate than Gas Powered Vehicles (GPV). Where GPVs range is measured by Miles Per Gallon (MPG), EVs range is measured by Miles Per Gallon Of Gasoline-Equivalent (MPGe), which is bit more ambiguous to explain and measure…

For example: the Tesla Model 3 takes approximately 50 KW(Kilowatt equals 1,000 watts of electricity), while the Model S takes as much as 100KW. Here in Virginia, the cost per KW is approximately 12 cents.

The Tesla Model 3 averages 300 miles on a charge, so a full charge (50kw times $0.12 equals approximately $6.00 “a fill-up”) or 2 cents a mile…

The Tesla Model S averages 330 miles on a charge, so a full charge (100KW times $0.12 equals approximately $12.00 “a fill-up”) or 3.3 cents a mile…

Ok, truth be told, my '01 Dodge Ram gets 18 MPG, at $2.79 a gallon diesel, costs 15 cents a mile; my '85 Toyota Corolla gets 28 MPG, at $2.68 a gallon Premium, costs 9.5 cents a mile; my '19 Toyota Corolla gets 36 MPG, at $2.47 a gallon Regular, costs 6.8 cent a mile; my '20 Honda Fit, gets 33 MPG, at $2.47 a gallon Regular, costs 7.5 cent a mile; and my '84 Harley get 40 MPG, at $2.68 a gallon Hi-Test with Lead additive/Octane Boost, 72 cents a gallon, costs 8.5 cents a mile…

Now you have to ask yourself, what is the “hidden cost” for all of these EV cheap miles, it’s “charging time…” If you use a 3-pin plug to charge your Model 3, it takes 24 to 36 hours to fully charge. If you install a 7KW charger, it takes 8 to 12 hours.

A 3-pin plug to charge your Model S, it takes 33 to 38 hours to fully charge. If you install a 7KW charger, it takes 11 to 15 hours.

A 22KW Public Charger takes from 5 to 8 hours to fully charge your EV.

The average cost of using a 22KW Public Charger is 19 cents a KW and if you leave your car plugged in after it’s fully charged, they continue to bill you approximately $.40 a minute, so do not be late…

Warning, you are now going to get a new term and acronym, its “Range Per Hour” (RPH), this refers to the miles of driving per hour of charging. The worse is 8 miles of driving per hour of charge on your 3-pin plug and the best is 57 miles of driving if you use a 22KW Public Charger…

In conclusion, how are we going charge all those EVs, Coal Fired Plants are being shut down fast and furiously, Nuclear Powered plants are aging and also going off line. Only two new nuclear plants are being built today and 39 Coal Fired Plants were taken off-line this year. Solar Power (takes up too much acreage…) and Wind Turbines (“not in my back yard”) are also facing uphill battles.

I know this Topic Is a “lightning rod” on EVs and the environment; but wait, check the weather, any thunder storms in the area? Maybe I can get a “free” charge…

Lightning

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I will charge at home overnight unless I’m on a trip. Then I’ll find a public spot for charging. I might do a web search for free charging sites, like the public libraries you mentioned.

I think employers will install EV chargers if they get a tax break. Some might do it anyway.

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Employers? We all work from home. My former job had 200+ cars in lot. 3-4 charging stations?

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All good questions without good solutions. These are all reasons why an ICE fleet that that averages 12 years old will NOT be replaced by EVs in 9 years no matter what anyone does.

EVs are 2.3 % of sales right now. If that takes 12 years to reach 100% of sales (won’t happen…) it wil, take about 20 years to replace half of the cars on the road. It will take another 12 years to get the rest. 32 years is plenty of time to install chargers. Probably not enough time to build enough energy supply to meet the roughly 30 increase we will need.

I’m retired, I’ll plug my EV into the 220v outlet in my garage.

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And that’s just the USA, Canada, and much of Europe. I suspect it will take a lot longer in the rest of the world, unless China forces car owners to go electric. They do those kinds of things, ya know. There’s a lot of people in South America, Africa, and South Asia. They’d love to have our old cars.

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Many of the employers here in Silicon Valley have charging stations in their parking lots , free for their employees to use to charge a certain amount of time each day, say 2 hours. This made Tesla Model 3’s particularly popular, no need to ever purchase gasoline. When the pandemic arrived however the Tesla 3 owners, since they hadn’t installed charging stations at home, had to drive their cars to the empty office parking to charge them. Then they had to figure out what to do while the car was charging. I’ve witnessed a lot of machinations of cars being moved around, waiting for rides, riding bicycles, etc of neighbors dealing with this issue in the past year. I hasn’t seemed to put a damper on their enthusiasm for their Teslas however.

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Outside the first world, electricity is not available 24/7/365. Much of rural India. Same for rural China. Much of central Africa. Some of South America.

EVs won’t work there for a very long time if ever. Some places they will never work.

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I assume most people who buy an EV would use it as a “city car” for short-distance trips, and charge it at home from a standard 120V electrical outlet. This will, of course, charge the car slowly at a low current draw, and will not add much total load to the electric utility. It is the use of rapid chargers, which require a dedicated 240V circuit, which would have the potential to increase peak loads significantly.

Edit to add: I considered buying a used Mitsubishi i-MIEV last year to replace my Daewoo Lanos, but ended up not buying it because I am a cheapskate. Instead, I repaired the Daewoo, and will probably drive that for short-distance trips for the forseeable future.

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The 800 pound gorilla questions to me are…
Where are the power generation stations going to come from.
What about the grid to distribute it all.
And what are people going to think when their electric bills go into the stratosphere.

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Matt Farah who hosts the Smoking Tire podcast reports that his family’s new Ford Mach-E charges at home enough to go 2-3 days without charging for their in town usage plugging into the 110V charger in the garage, using a fast charger at his car storage place about once a week.

Friend with a Kia Niro EV uses the power from his solar panels to charge the car, for the local driving he does it’s more than enough.

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As I mentioned, I do not have an EV. All that data and the specifications I listed were provided by Tesla on their sales web site or US Government web sites, so I do not have any firsthand information.

If you came home after a long trip in your EV and you had only about 20 percent remaining in your battery, how long would it take to bring your battery up to full charge using your 220V outlet?

Calling up my memory of Ohm’s Law, its Volts times Amps equals Watts, so 220V x 30A = 6,600 Watts, Right? So, is this almost like having a 7KW charger in your garage?

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I agree that the EV goals set by some states are too optimistic. Here in CA, a lot of people live in houses and can charge. But on a recent visit to NYC I barely saw any EV’s and seems like those were out of towners from Jersey or CT. And it does make sense, if you live in a high rise in NYC with street parking, an EV is not going to work.

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Something to remember is that while we may be (slowly) using more electricity for vehicles, we’re using less for other things, like appliances, TVs, lighting, etc. I know, for example, that my 70 inch LED TV using maybe $12 in electricity per year. 30-40 years ago, I suspect my old “tube” CRT TV used $12 a month.

It may not be a direct proportion, but I think this is something that’s often overlooked in the discussion of “where the electricity will come from” for EVs.

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When I moved to my current house in 1986, the population in this city was 1660 people,

We are now at 33,910. I think our city uses a lot more electricity now even with the low power consumption appliances than it did 35 years ago.

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For a 54Kw battery depleted to 20% that would take roughly 8.5-9 hours depending of the efficiency of the charger at 30 amps. But I’d likely install a 50 amp charger just to speed things along

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Gorilla, this is going to be a slow process, the power companies will keep up. In my area Dominion power is doing all sorts of wind and solar.

The Grid? It’s already there. They might have to add/upgrade it but I don’t see that as a problem.

Electric bills: Your car either burns gas or uses elec. (In my case it’s both, I drive a Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid) If your power bill goes up a little but you haven’t bought gas since you traded in your gas car you’ve just traded costs. And driving on elec is more efficient, more miles for your dollar than gas.

I bought my Volt 4 1/2years ago. Since then I’ve replaced my 20 year old house heat pump and refrigerator and my power bill is lower than when I bought my car.

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Most people that charge at home will do so at night when electric power usage is much lower than during the day. My electric utility even charges less for electricity at night. The electricity generating system is set up to provide peak power, which usually occurs during hot summer days.

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I have two engineers that work for me that have plug-in hybrids that live in apartments. One has charging stations installed at the apartment. The other guy charges his vehicle at work. The industrial park has several dozen charging stations.

Believe it or not - a very large part of the population in those big cities don’t drive. I have cousins who own a law firm in NYC and most don’t drive. In fact most of them don’t own a drivers license. The infrastructure of charging stations at apartment buildings and parking garages is growing. Almost all of the large parking garages in Boston have charging stations.

That’s not true for all public charging stations. The ones where I work don’t work that way. There are also apps for you iphone or android that let you know when the vehicle is charged.

The infrastructure will grow as needed. Renewable energy is growing very rapidly. And if I owned an EV - I’d be charging it a night when electric usage is way way down. Most people will also be charging at night. The current infrastructure can handle that night load now.

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No way I’d get an EV without a 220v charger at home. I am considering a plug in hybrid, that would charge up overnight on 110v.

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News story this week. China is already having power supply issues. They can’t make more coal plants due to worldwide emissions restrictions. And they have 1 billion + car owners coming along?