We are a one car family, That car has to do around town, road trips Summer and Winter. I live in Western NY State. Do you know what winter temps do to electric car range? Suppose a snowstorm closes the Thruway while I am on it and we are stuck overnight or longer. we would have a choice of freezing to death or not being able to move when the road is cleared. The State Police can’t bring us a 5 gallon can of electricity.
As far as getting a huge conversion of cas to electric, where are we going to get the addotional electricity from and how are we going to distribute it? Our electric grid ia aging , overstressed and failures are increasing and yet we have no plans to spend the TRILLIONS of dollars to replace it, nor do we have the plant capacity to produce it. Solar and wind power can produce some of the electricity but don’t reduce needed plant capacity because there are times the wind doesn’t blow, or blows too hard and solar has similar problems. Cheektowaga , a town near Buffalo had to rip out their new solar street lights because the whole area went dark when we went about a month without sunlight a few years ago.
A young relative of mine just took delivery of his Tesla 3 Electric car. This young man is a nuclear safety specialist and works all over the world on nuclear power plants. He normally lives in the Great Lakes Rust Belt, and would find some other means of transportation if he had a really dead battery.
We have had many discussions on this topic, and most conclusions were that electric cars made sense as second cars, or purely urban commuter cars. Your situation is exactly wrong for an electric car.
In our medical center there is a highly paid doctor who owns one of the original $100,000 Teslas. He has a plug in at the office, and a second car at home. So, no worries about lack of transportation. He could also take a cab to work if necessary.
Around me, it costs about $2000 for a 240v charger wired to my circuit box. The wiring has to be run through a finished basement to a garage on the opposite side of the house. In my state, I get a $700 tax credit for this installation and a $3000 tax credit when I buy a plug-in hybrid or electric car. The federal tax credit is up to $7500 for the plug-in or electric as long as total sales are less than 200,000 vehicles. Those tax credits easily pay for the charger and there are lots of chargers all over the place. I counted five in Western NY currently and three more on the way for Teslas.
Wow, a whole 5 in Western NY ! That is about one for every 6000 square miles.Oh, every real world road test of electric cars the real world range is much less than claimed, even in warm weather. And heaven forbid if you have to use the heater or A/C or climb a hill.
As a second car for urban use , sure. But not as an on;l car. We drive 150 mile round trip to meet friends for unch. We drive 730 miles one way to see a granddaughter throuh Canada and the UP of MI. Think there are many chargins stations along the way?
If I leave home with a full tank, I can go 1000 miles on on 5 minute fill up without my gas light coming on.
I agree with your position. A single car family would have to make concessions to own an electric car that even the cheapest ICE would not need to concede. If you don’t need or want to take long car trips, but fly instead, the EV works or if you rent a car once a year for the trip.
I am retired and live in a sunny state that is ripe for solar panel installation. I plan to do that when I need a new roof. The break-even point was about 18 years, 3 years ago. I expect break even to be about 10 years when I need a new roof.
At that point, an EV, as an around town, second car, would be perfect. Solar could power my home use and my EV charger with enough left over to net-net my nighttime use.
Perfect, IF the cost was competitive. A $35K Bolt is not competitive, even with a rebate, with comparable ICE cars. Especially the '14 Audi A4 we just bought for that purpose. The $35K Teslas in all practicality, don’t exist. Wait times show 6 - 12 months and we KNOW how accurate Tesla delivery dates have been.
I’m at a point in my life where all I want is a commuting vehicle. I’d rather rent a touring vehicle when I travel than buy a car based on needs I only have once or twice a year.
I read that to mean it can go 1000 with one 5 minute fill up so TWO tanks of gas. Rounding up a bit but an accord can go 488 on a tank.
How many stops and what time delay for the electric car to go same distance under worst case for e car? Worst case for e car having minimal effect on range of gas car btw…
I agree with the comments that an electric car is good for urban use or a second car. My normal driving is a few 5 or so mile trips each day. A few times a week a little farther. Every few months a 6 hour trip to visit relatives. The short trips are well suited for an all electric car. Longer trips not so much.
When Florida was hit by a hurricane a while back, the roads were clogged and at a stand still. Many all electric cars were in a world of hurt as the batteries were dying with no where to stop and recharge in the normal range of the car. Gas stations (plentiful) were swamped. Public electric charging stations not to be found. Tesla did their magic that bypassed a low battery shut off to extend the range a bit. I would hate to be stuck in an endless traffic jam with my low battery light flickering. (didn’t some one just post about a dead battery light? Maybe run by a candle and wick )
When gasoline powered cars came on the scene, gas was hard to find. In due time gas stations popped up everywhere. If the economics and practicality of electric cars blossoms the same way, we will see electric charging stations everywhere, problem solved. A Residence Inn in my area has several electric charging stations in the back parking lot. CNG is the same way, filling stations are few and far between. There are a number on the highways well positioned for over the road truckers, but not enough for the daily driver. Our local garbage hauler uses CNG that comes from their own landfill, but well within range of their normal route. As new technology develops the infrastructure will follow if it makes economic sense. Sometimes it won’t.
I can see OP’s point, for a single car family living in an area where winter-time long duration road closures and extremely cold temperatures are a common occurrence, a totally electric vehicle is too risky. A conventional IC or hybrid would be a better choice. But here in the more mild-climate San Jose area, electrics, especially Teslas, have become very popular, and very common. I doubt a person could drive more than a mile in this area without seeing at least one of them on the road.
You fill up at home and only need to buy electricity when you travel. I typically fill my gas tank before I travel and then get gas as needed. Going more than 300 miles means getting electricity on the road, and that is where the supercharging stations (for Tesla) come in. You need to plan the route to pass one, but it isn’t all that hard IMO.
Edit: that’s correct, @Nevada_545. I was only counting the Tesla supercharging stations.
I talked to a guy from Ohio visiting Florida. He drove a Tesla down and back. He had to plan 7 stops of significant duration and 2 days to make that trip. He was a bit defensive about that since I asked if he had the car shipped down.
When we made the last trip down from Ohio when we moved, I did it straight thru in 16 hours with 3 stops for gas, 2 for bathroom and one drive-thru burger joint for a total of 30 minutes.
Going by the change in my Garmin Navigator’s estimated time of arrival, you have to really hustle to have a 5 minute pit stop delta when filling gas, have an open pump available, fill up, and pay at the pump and leave.
Pit stop delta includes the time lost in slowing down, leaving the highway, stopping, the actual fueling, paying for the fuel, leaving the station, waiting for right of way traffic to clear, re-entering the highway, and accelerating back to cruising speed.
An F1 pit stop may be only a couple of seconds long, but the pit stop delta is around 20 seconds.
I heard about the Tesla ranged being remotely extended during some of the recent hurricanes. It is my understanding that they allowed the batteries to be charged to a higher capacity than normally allowed as well as be discharged deeper than normally allowed. This would cause a slight reduction in battery life but well worth it given the circumstances.
Yes, it does use the power grid to recharge. I saw an interesting offer a while back. Electric utilities were making the offer of free or cheap power to charge electric cars in exchange for being able to tap into these cars and drain their batteries during times of peak electrical demand. In this way the electric cars were actually reducing the load on the power grid. There are actually several power plants that serve to store electric power on a mass scale in this country. These are called pumped storage and are essentially a form of hydroelectric power plant. Water is pumped uphill at night when wholesale power rates are low and run downhill through turbines to generate power during periods of peak demand and higher power costs on the wholesale market. This process is not 100% efficient but they make money doing it due to the fluctuating costs. This makes sense especially if there are a lot of nuclear plants on the grid. You don’t need as many power plants if you can store the power for use when it is needed. They are doing the same thing on a smaller scale but with the batteries in electric cars. This type of storage can respond to power demands almost instantaneously and helps stabilize the power grid. Hopefully they would allow you enough power in reserve to drive home and then allow you to recharge at night with their cheap off peak power.
I agree a pure electric car is more of a commuter vehicle and not an everyday go to, especially in bad weather. I think eventually they will need to have like 5 minute battery charges or battery exchanges much like we exchange LP cylinders for our gas grills and such instead of having them refilled each time. Some type of standard would need to be created so anyone could do this with any brand or model of car. Hybrids are a good compromise if you ask me. The plug in series hybrids like the Chevy Volt are a more aggressive form of hybrid as well. These do not power the wheels directly. The engine is optimized to a single RPM for max efficiency and power generation. The engine never directly powers the wheels. It runs a generator and then that power is run to a motor to run the car.
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