4 ms·

I might consider a Tesla, but for the logistics of using one. I live in a western Chicago suburb and commute to a northern suburb. Despite the many commuting ro

I might consider a Tesla, but for the logistics of using one. I live in a western Chicago suburb and commute to a northern suburb. Despite the many commuting routes I take, I have never seen a charging station. I cannot charge at work, nor can I charge at home (I park in a garage in a apartment building that has no EV charging abilities or even 120v outlets available).

eropple 10y ago
That won't be the case in a decade, though, yeah?
samcheng 10y ago
If you can't charge overnight, you really shouldn't have an electric vehicle. You end up MORE inconvenienced than a gasoline/diesel driver, instead of LESS inconvenienced. Apartment landlords are coming around, quickly, though - it's a selling point and not all that expensive to install a few 240V outlets in the garage. If you CAN charge overnight, waking up to a full 'tank' every morning is amazing! It's a surprising benefit that isn't immediately obvious to the new EV driver.
- tzs 10y ago
  > If you can't charge overnight, you really shouldn't have an electric vehicle. That's true now, but may not be so in a few years if aluminum-air battery technology continues to improve. Aluminum-air batteries have much higher energy density than lithium ion, but they cannot be electrically recharged [1] so when they are out you have to swap them. The idea is that you build car with both a small lithium ion system and a large aluminum-air system. Lithium ion has higher power output, so you want that to actually drive the vehicle. You use the aluminum-air to recharge the lithium ion, to extend the range. Current experiments with this approach add about 1200 miles to the range of the car compared to a pure lithium ion system. If starting from full on both batteries you got 1400 miles, that would be enough to let a lot of city drivers go a month between having to go have the aluminum-air batter swapped out in the worst case where they are not able to do any plug in charging. That would be quite feasible for many people, assuming that there was a battery swap place within reasonable distance. [1] In other words, you cannot recharged them by forcing a reverse current through them like you do normal rechargeable batteries. They essentially have to be rebuilt with new anodes, and the old anodes become scrap for recycling.
  - james-watson 10y ago
    Sounds complicated. Musk has said that Lithium batteries are improving at a rapid enough pace that they expect impressive increases in capacity and duty cycles by the third iteration of the Model 3.
- tachyonbeam 10y ago
  A friend of mine drives a Tesla. She can only charge at work, and that was enough for her. For context, we're in the bay area, where long drives are quite common.
- Angostura 10y ago
  I live in London. What garage would that be? Most houses don't have one.

eropple 10y ago

That won't be the case in a decade, though, yeah?

samcheng 10y ago

If you can't charge overnight, you really shouldn't have an electric vehicle. You end up MORE inconvenienced than a gasoline/diesel driver, instead of LESS inconvenienced. Apartment landlords are coming around, quickly, though - it's a selling point and not all that expensive to install a few 240V outlets in the garage. If you CAN charge overnight, waking up to a full 'tank' every morning is amazing! It's a surprising benefit that isn't immediately obvious to the new EV driver.

tzs 10y ago
> If you can't charge overnight, you really shouldn't have an electric vehicle. That's true now, but may not be so in a few years if aluminum-air battery technology continues to improve. Aluminum-air batteries have much higher energy density than lithium ion, but they cannot be electrically recharged [1] so when they are out you have to swap them. The idea is that you build car with both a small lithium ion system and a large aluminum-air system. Lithium ion has higher power output, so you want that to actually drive the vehicle. You use the aluminum-air to recharge the lithium ion, to extend the range. Current experiments with this approach add about 1200 miles to the range of the car compared to a pure lithium ion system. If starting from full on both batteries you got 1400 miles, that would be enough to let a lot of city drivers go a month between having to go have the aluminum-air batter swapped out in the worst case where they are not able to do any plug in charging. That would be quite feasible for many people, assuming that there was a battery swap place within reasonable distance. [1] In other words, you cannot recharged them by forcing a reverse current through them like you do normal rechargeable batteries. They essentially have to be rebuilt with new anodes, and the old anodes become scrap for recycling.
- james-watson 10y ago
  Sounds complicated. Musk has said that Lithium batteries are improving at a rapid enough pace that they expect impressive increases in capacity and duty cycles by the third iteration of the Model 3.
tachyonbeam 10y ago
A friend of mine drives a Tesla. She can only charge at work, and that was enough for her. For context, we're in the bay area, where long drives are quite common.
Angostura 10y ago
I live in London. What garage would that be? Most houses don't have one.