17 ms·

EV Charging Infrastructure in America Still Sucks

78 points by reteltech 5y ago

clouddrover 5y ago
> Plus, the ChargePoint charger stubbornly refused to provide its full 150 kW payload despite 0 other vehicles charging at any linked station That's because it's a 50 kW charger. It's displayed right on the screen as the image in the article shows: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/mac06479-1619186933.jpg https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images...
namelosw 5y ago
Maybe there could be creative solutions to the problem. In China for example, domestic EV startups are trying to come up with standards on swappable batteries. If the ideas work, it could be a separation of car companies, and battery subscription companies. The former sells cars without battery and the latter rents batteries from gas stations.
xtiansimon 5y ago
Funny side note here—Was biking to the Target in Hicksville, NY and noticed a recharge station in the parking lot with the recharging cable lying on the ground. How could you even trust such a station?
Mvandenbergh 5y ago
One of the key things to understand about the relationship between charging infrastructure, range, and customer acceptability is that there are a number of non-linear relationships that lead to the experience tipping between "really bad" and "really good" very suddenly. First, it doesn't matter that most journeys are short and that the overwhelming majority of drivers will make between zero and two really long range trips a year (yes, even in the US). People size their long term capital purchases based on their perception of the limiting case, not the average. Consumer willingness to rent a longer range vehicle for special occasions will also depend on how convenient that experience is. Many Americans drive long-distance in the Thanksgiving to Christmas window which would require enough long range capacity to be reliably available for all those people every year. Again, we have to size for the extremes of the system. Also, car rental may be logistically challenging (and is certainly currently inconvenient) in most of the rural areas where people are most likely to need long distance driving regularly. Second, the amount of time that a driver will need to find an available charger is very much non-linear in the number and density of chargers. We know quite a lot about this dynamic from studies of parking. Once your parking capacity in a given area is filled by more than about 80%, the time taken to find a spot very rapidly increases from nearly zero to many minutes. I'm sure there are theoretical computer science problems which are analogous. (actually would love to hear if anyone knows of any since most of the infrastructure world has historically just looked at this empirically). The same dynamic happens with chargers. Like with parking, better information provision shifts that transition point. With perfect information. Third, the stress induced by charger unavailability is also not linear in likely time required to find a charger. This is particularly an issue for people who do not have off-street parking but do have cars. Admittedly this is much rare in the US but it is about a third of drivers in the UK and I imagine not uncommon in other European countries. That's because people need this as their default charger essentially every day so any inconvenience is substantially multiplied. Our thinking on public on-street charging for these cases is that you're much better off spending money on a lot of slow trickle chargers and absolutely saturating a neighbourhood with them rather than buying fewer 22kW fast chargers. Two reasons for that. First, 22kW is a sort of "Inconvenient Valley" for public charging in domestic areas. It's not so fast that you can stay near your car but big enough that you never have enough of them to make it ok to just leave your car plugged in. That means that effective use requires coming home, plugging in and then realising as you get ready for bed that you should move your car so one of your neighbours can also come outside and use the charger. Faster 43-50kW chargers are much better in this context because they can be "cycled" a few times in the evening before everyone goes to bed. Otherwise you might as well just save the money and get many more slow chargers fed off lamp-posts to do overnight charging. Second, You can reduce charger anxiety much more effectively by having an excess of slow chargers (even if that means that a fully empty battery is not fully charged by morning) than by having a lower probability of finding a higher power charger. That's because the slow charger effectively guarantees that you won't run out. Again, this is non-linear. An EV works just the same all the way down to zero charge but driver anxiety will start ramping at 15% or so. What all of this means is that if charger build-out strategies go right, we will find that the transition from inconvenient to "why did we ever worry about this?" will happen faster than you might think.
xyzzy21 5y ago
The nearest charge station to me is >100 miles away. Seriously any EV is NOT remotely in my future.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
What is wrong with using the adapter to tag on to the Tesla supercharger network?
cptskippy 5y ago
My takeaway from this article was that the typical car review pattern of "show up at a random location, borrow car for the day, run random errands to empty the tank, refuel and return car" doesn't work well for EVs. How would the author's experience have been different if the car was in their driveway fully charged in the morning? Do most people go to bed at night with no idea what they'll be doing the following day or no consideration for how much fuel is in their vehicle?
908B64B197 5y ago
The takeaway is that Tesla worked tirelessly into making charging (one of the major pain points of EV) as efficient and convenient as possible. And legacy manufacturers are now trying to catch up nearly a decade later.
- tapoxi 5y ago
  I think the takeaway is that we ended up with two charging standards so instead of one complementing the other, they compete. It should have been standardized, like in Europe.
  - jayd16 5y ago
    Teslas can use ChargePoint chargers. I don't think a lot of competitors make their cars compatible with superchargers, though.
    - goshx 5y ago
      They can't make it compatible with superchargers without some sort of integration with Tesla's system. When you go to a supercharger on a Tesla, all you have to do is to plug the car. No apps, not sign up, no credit card. The supercharger recognizes your car and the bill shows up on your Tesla account. This alone is ages ahead the competition.
      - magicalhippo 5y ago
        > No apps, not sign up, no credit card We have a BMW i3, and while there's a decent amount of CCS chargers around here in Norway, every other seems to be from a different company. I exaggerate, but it truly is a pain to deal with, especially since they all have different prices and price structures. For example our i3 can only handle 50kW charging, what happens when I plug it into a 150kW charger? Depends on who owns the charger, some charge per kWh delivered, some per minute. So for some it's gonna be OK, for others it's gonna cost more than filling up a gas tank.
      - mcot2 5y ago
1cvmask 5y ago
The same pangs endured when we went from horses to gas powered cars. Gas stations and their network expanded over decades. The only thing that can push this faster is the public sector. Regulatory mandates and incentives. The classic carrot and stick approach.
- EricE 5y ago
  >Regulatory mandates and incentives. The classic carrot and stick approach. What regulations drove todays adoption of the car? Good grief. How about good 'ol market forces? EVs with range extenders to bridge the shortcomings of today? If you have the time and for lower cost on a trip, plug in. If you need the speed/convenience of gas you pay for it - but most trips would convert to electric. Gas would be reserved for the edge cases. Cars will still fundamentally work like cars when people need them to, but you can also get the benefits of the EV lifestyle. Compromise without having to compromise on utility. It's win-win. Mass adoption of transitional technology will do more to galvanize support for vast charging networks far more quickly (by - here's the crazy thought - producing actual demand!) then trying to conjure them out of sheer will and regulation.
- Zhenya 5y ago
  Isn't this effectively what the Michelin guide was for (of Michelin Star fame) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Guide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Guide
bnycum 5y ago
I live in a city that’s within the top 150 by population, we have one Tesla supercharger. It’s at a nearly dead mall, only food there is a cafeteria style restaurant that isn’t great and no theater or anything. That mall borders a somewhat sketchy part of town. That’s my experience knowing EV charging unfortunately. Also the lack of charging means I could not drive an EV to visit family members, only destination charging available at hotels where I wouldn’t be staying. Obviously the supercharging network is constantly growing and it’s all still new, but in my neck of the woods its still pretty tough to have.
- ec109685 5y ago
  We drive to the in-laws, and just unplug their dryer and plug the Tesla adapter in and get back to full charge the next day.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Aren't most superchargers (at least until relatively recently) actually between cities, not in them? The idea being that superchargers are primarily meant for road trips, so if you're going from city A to city B the assumption is you can charge at your origin and destination, so superchargers are spaced so you have enough juice to get there.
  - dbt00 5y ago
    There's urban chargers at 72kw and highway superchargers at 150-250kw max charging rate. The urban ones are often at major shopping destinations in high traffic areas.
    - mcot2 5y ago
      Actually recently Urban SC development has seemed to come to almost a halt. Even in Urban settings it seems they much prefer to just put in the V3 cabinets with the 250kW max pedestals.
  - bnycum 5y ago
    That’d be fine, but it’s 400 miles between here and family with one charger 150 miles from here. I could make it there with any current Tesla, but not make it back to a charger. Could make it work renting an RV spot but that’s still a little inconvenient.
thrower123 5y ago
Of course it does. An absurd number of houses still only have 100 amp services. Not many people have a 50 amp, 220V circuit lying around to dedicate to charging. If they do there's already a welder plugged into it.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  There is (was?) a 30% federal tax credit (up to $1000) that covered the cost of installing a home EV charger (including upgrading your breaker panel/load center if needed). https://www.evconnect.com/blog/ev-infrastructure-tax-credits-incentives https://www.evconnect.com/blog/ev-infrastructure-tax-credits...
  - zbrozek 5y ago
    A panel upgrade alone is in the neighborhood of $5k. And if you have underground service and need new wires, that's another $25k.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    While better than nothing, that's like saying the $7500 credit covered the cost of a new Model S.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      What would be considered an acceptable amount of tax credit on offer? You want to reduce the burden on the person wanting to own an EV, but you also don’t want to incentivize price inflation for the upgrade and EV charger install.
      - seattle_spring 5y ago
        To be clear, my comment was referencing the use of the term "covered." Covering the cost of something means it pays for it in its entirety, not a fractional coupon. I wouldn't say, "this coupon for 3 cents off a gallon covers my next tank of gas."
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
It's for reasons like this that I'm always sad and dismayed the Chevy Volt wasn't more popular. Yes, all electric is the future, but right now, and for about the past 5-6 years, the Volt is/was the perfect car for a lot of people: 1. For me, my commute is about 12 miles one way, so my Volt has enough electric capacity for my commute plus 1 errand on a single charge. 95% of my days are 100% electric. 2. I never have "range anxiety" - if I do go slightly over my limit the gas engine kicks in. I use a tank of gas about every 4-6 months. 3. Since my car's electric range is only ~38 miles, I can fully charge in about 8-9 hours overnight on a plain 110v outlet - no custom installation required for a home charger. I bought a low-mileage used Volt - it was a great deal and the best car I've ever owned.
- dataflow 5y ago
  > I bought a low-mileage used Volt - it was a great deal and the best car I've ever owned. For how long?
  - irrational 5y ago
    How long what? How long will it be the best car he ever owned? How long will it be a great deal? What are you asking?
    - dataflow 5y ago
      How long has he had the car. Or alternatively how old is the car. If the car has only worked a couple of years I'm not exactly shocked if it's still working well... for any car.
      - sgt 5y ago
        Try buying a 7-series BMW around 2006 and say the same 5 years later.
        dataflow 5y ago
        Except I wouldn't say the same thing 5 years after a 2006 car...?
walrus01 5y ago
> since the battery charges slower as it approaches full charge This is for safety and the health of the battery. It is not widely advertised and many people don't know that the fastest levels of charging (tesla supercharge and similar) actually damage the battery a very slight amount, and will reduce overall battery life span, cycle depth ability and health if used very often. It's healthier for your battery to charge at a medium speed overnight.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  n=1, I’ve DC fast charged my Model S 100D a lot at Superchargers over roughly 40k miles of travel cross country, and I’ve only lost 14 miles of range since purchase. It’s true that, at least with the S and X, excessive Supercharging will cause the battery to throttle peak charge currents for the remainder of the battery’s life, the Model 3 and Y chemistry doesn’t seem to exhibit the same throttling.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    another factor will be whether you've set it to allow the car to often charge itself to 100% state of charge, or you commonly limit it to 80 or 85%. The length of time that a li ion battery is held at >90% state of charge voltage also has an impact on its life.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
thatfrenchguy 5y ago
If you stick to ElectrifyAmerica (not like the author), you’ll have a much nicer experience. They’re really the only 150/350kw decently priced network, all the competition is mostly slow 44/58kw chargers. They still have a bit of software ironing to do though, still feels like a beta sometimes, I’ve had to move from stall to stall 3-4 times out of 40 charges. Also, yes, obviously, if you’re in Manhattan, you’ll find less chargers. But why are you using a car there?
- xeromal 5y ago
  EVGo is all around LA and if you have a AAA membership, you can get a 23 cents a minute rate which ain't too bad.
- vwoolf 5y ago
  In the Phoenix area, on their app, I count perhaps 6 - 7 charging stations, all far away from the city centers (such as they are, yes, I know) and another 5 - 6 coming soon. Closest one is 14 miles from me right now. I'm rooting for it but it's far from prime time. Yes I have a Tesla I charge at my apt.
- goshx 5y ago
  Are they really decently priced, though? Price for Electrify America in Florida: Guest and Pass Members: $0.43/kWh Pass+ Members: $0.31/kWh + $4 monthly fee Price for Supercharger in the same area: $0.23/kWh
thedeepdive 5y ago
It's going to change soon. Plus if EVs get up to 500km in range, that makes it almost as much as an ICE vehicle and that means you can easily get around long enough to find a charger.
atweiden 5y ago
People in these EV conversations tend to underappreciate the magic of simply being able to pull into a gas station in “AnywhereTown” with an ICE vehicle, top up the tank in less than 15 minutes, and then drive another 500 miles or whatever. EVs don’t do that. In an EV, you drive for a few hundred miles at best, then you spend 30-60 minutes at a supercharger if you’re lucky; or at least several hours at a “normal speed” charger if you’re not. At which point, you can proceed cautiously forward after much delay, always checking your EV’s estimated range remaining — and mapping out when and where the next charger session will have to be. Because of the above dynamic, EV range figures can be a bit misleading. “Effective daily maximum range” is a better metric, i.e. how far one tank of fuel gets you multiplied by how many tanks of fuel you can go through in a day of driving. EVs need to have a far larger range than their ICE counterparts for true equivalence here, to offset the drastically higher downtime of seeking out chargers and using them extensively. In addition, independent charger networks are really hit or miss: those handy EV charging station locator apps often times display out-of-date information; the chargers are difficult to find; and the particular charger you end up with exhibits mechanical and/or payment issues not infrequently. Tesla’s supercharger stations are also a magnet for criminals — got the feeling I was being cased once at the Austin supercharger. (“The future is already here—It's just not very evenly distributed”) For people who have access to a regular, dedicated charging outlet at home, or at work, an EV could make perfectly good sense. Still love EVs, and I agree they’re the future — but they’re the future moreso than the present for many, oweing mainly to these infrastructural issues.
- light_hue_1 5y ago
  > People in these EV conversations tend to underappreciate the magic of simply being able to pull into a gas station in “AnywhereTown” with an ICE vehicle, top up the tank in less than 15 minutes, and then drive another 500 miles or whatever. You are driving EV cars wrong. > EVs don’t do that. In an EV, you drive for a few hundred miles at best, then you spend 30-60 minutes at a supercharger if you’re lucky If you do this, you will have a terrible experience! EVs charge ultra fast when the battery is low. You are supposed to drive them down to say 10%, then charge up to around 50% repeatedly. This takes.. 10 minutes. You drive for 200 miles or so, stop for 10 minutes, repeat. It's pretty reasonable to take a 10 minute break every 2.5 hours. On an 8 hour (500 mile) drive, you will charge for 30 minutes or so. You should start using abetterrouteplanner.com I bet, that when you go on a 500 mile drive, you are stopping that often to use the facilities and get some food already. Nothing changes. > Because of the above dynamic, EV range figures can be a bit misleading The corrected dynamic shows that EV range figures are spot on and you lose no time on long drives. > Tesla’s supercharger stations are also a magnet for criminals — got the feeling I was being cased once at the Austin supercharger. (“The future is already here—It's just not very evenly distributed”) I have exactly the opposite experience. In my city Tesla chargers are all in good malls, with plenty of people around, and lots of things to do. I've been to far shadier gas stations. > For people who have access to a regular, dedicated charging outlet at home, or at work, an EV could make perfectly good sense For sure. A charger at home is necessary. We had a few months between buying the car and getting the charger installed and the change was just astounding.
majestik 5y ago
Title needs to append “... unless you have a Tesla”

78 points by reteltech 5y ago

> Plus, the ChargePoint charger stubbornly refused to provide its full 150 kW payload despite 0 other vehicles charging at any linked station That's because it's a 50 kW charger. It's displayed right on the screen as the image in the article shows: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/mac06479-1619186933.jpg https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images...

namelosw 5y ago

Maybe there could be creative solutions to the problem. In China for example, domestic EV startups are trying to come up with standards on swappable batteries. If the ideas work, it could be a separation of car companies, and battery subscription companies. The former sells cars without battery and the latter rents batteries from gas stations.

xtiansimon 5y ago

Funny side note here—Was biking to the Target in Hicksville, NY and noticed a recharge station in the parking lot with the recharging cable lying on the ground. How could you even trust such a station?

Mvandenbergh 5y ago

One of the key things to understand about the relationship between charging infrastructure, range, and customer acceptability is that there are a number of non-linear relationships that lead to the experience tipping between "really bad" and "really good" very suddenly. First, it doesn't matter that most journeys are short and that the overwhelming majority of drivers will make between zero and two really long range trips a year (yes, even in the US). People size their long term capital purchases based on their perception of the limiting case, not the average. Consumer willingness to rent a longer range vehicle for special occasions will also depend on how convenient that experience is. Many Americans drive long-distance in the Thanksgiving to Christmas window which would require enough long range capacity to be reliably available for all those people every year. Again, we have to size for the extremes of the system. Also, car rental may be logistically challenging (and is certainly currently inconvenient) in most of the rural areas where people are most likely to need long distance driving regularly. Second, the amount of time that a driver will need to find an available charger is very much non-linear in the number and density of chargers. We know quite a lot about this dynamic from studies of parking. Once your parking capacity in a given area is filled by more than about 80%, the time taken to find a spot very rapidly increases from nearly zero to many minutes. I'm sure there are theoretical computer science problems which are analogous. (actually would love to hear if anyone knows of any since most of the infrastructure world has historically just looked at this empirically). The same dynamic happens with chargers. Like with parking, better information provision shifts that transition point. With perfect information. Third, the stress induced by charger unavailability is also not linear in likely time required to find a charger. This is particularly an issue for people who do not have off-street parking but do have cars. Admittedly this is much rare in the US but it is about a third of drivers in the UK and I imagine not uncommon in other European countries. That's because people need this as their default charger essentially every day so any inconvenience is substantially multiplied. Our thinking on public on-street charging for these cases is that you're much better off spending money on a lot of slow trickle chargers and absolutely saturating a neighbourhood with them rather than buying fewer 22kW fast chargers. Two reasons for that. First, 22kW is a sort of "Inconvenient Valley" for public charging in domestic areas. It's not so fast that you can stay near your car but big enough that you never have enough of them to make it ok to just leave your car plugged in. That means that effective use requires coming home, plugging in and then realising as you get ready for bed that you should move your car so one of your neighbours can also come outside and use the charger. Faster 43-50kW chargers are much better in this context because they can be "cycled" a few times in the evening before everyone goes to bed. Otherwise you might as well just save the money and get many more slow chargers fed off lamp-posts to do overnight charging. Second, You can reduce charger anxiety much more effectively by having an excess of slow chargers (even if that means that a fully empty battery is not fully charged by morning) than by having a lower probability of finding a higher power charger. That's because the slow charger effectively guarantees that you won't run out. Again, this is non-linear. An EV works just the same all the way down to zero charge but driver anxiety will start ramping at 15% or so. What all of this means is that if charger build-out strategies go right, we will find that the transition from inconvenient to "why did we ever worry about this?" will happen faster than you might think.

xyzzy21 5y ago

The nearest charge station to me is >100 miles away. Seriously any EV is NOT remotely in my future.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

What is wrong with using the adapter to tag on to the Tesla supercharger network?

cptskippy 5y ago

My takeaway from this article was that the typical car review pattern of "show up at a random location, borrow car for the day, run random errands to empty the tank, refuel and return car" doesn't work well for EVs. How would the author's experience have been different if the car was in their driveway fully charged in the morning? Do most people go to bed at night with no idea what they'll be doing the following day or no consideration for how much fuel is in their vehicle?

908B64B197 5y ago

The takeaway is that Tesla worked tirelessly into making charging (one of the major pain points of EV) as efficient and convenient as possible. And legacy manufacturers are now trying to catch up nearly a decade later.

tapoxi 5y ago
I think the takeaway is that we ended up with two charging standards so instead of one complementing the other, they compete. It should have been standardized, like in Europe.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Teslas can use ChargePoint chargers. I don't think a lot of competitors make their cars compatible with superchargers, though.
  - goshx 5y ago
    They can't make it compatible with superchargers without some sort of integration with Tesla's system. When you go to a supercharger on a Tesla, all you have to do is to plug the car. No apps, not sign up, no credit card. The supercharger recognizes your car and the bill shows up on your Tesla account. This alone is ages ahead the competition.
    - magicalhippo 5y ago
      > No apps, not sign up, no credit card We have a BMW i3, and while there's a decent amount of CCS chargers around here in Norway, every other seems to be from a different company. I exaggerate, but it truly is a pain to deal with, especially since they all have different prices and price structures. For example our i3 can only handle 50kW charging, what happens when I plug it into a 150kW charger? Depends on who owns the charger, some charge per kWh delivered, some per minute. So for some it's gonna be OK, for others it's gonna cost more than filling up a gas tank.
    - mcot2 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago

The same pangs endured when we went from horses to gas powered cars. Gas stations and their network expanded over decades. The only thing that can push this faster is the public sector. Regulatory mandates and incentives. The classic carrot and stick approach.

EricE 5y ago
>Regulatory mandates and incentives. The classic carrot and stick approach. What regulations drove todays adoption of the car? Good grief. How about good 'ol market forces? EVs with range extenders to bridge the shortcomings of today? If you have the time and for lower cost on a trip, plug in. If you need the speed/convenience of gas you pay for it - but most trips would convert to electric. Gas would be reserved for the edge cases. Cars will still fundamentally work like cars when people need them to, but you can also get the benefits of the EV lifestyle. Compromise without having to compromise on utility. It's win-win. Mass adoption of transitional technology will do more to galvanize support for vast charging networks far more quickly (by - here's the crazy thought - producing actual demand!) then trying to conjure them out of sheer will and regulation.
Zhenya 5y ago
Isn't this effectively what the Michelin guide was for (of Michelin Star fame) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Guide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Guide

bnycum 5y ago

I live in a city that’s within the top 150 by population, we have one Tesla supercharger. It’s at a nearly dead mall, only food there is a cafeteria style restaurant that isn’t great and no theater or anything. That mall borders a somewhat sketchy part of town. That’s my experience knowing EV charging unfortunately. Also the lack of charging means I could not drive an EV to visit family members, only destination charging available at hotels where I wouldn’t be staying. Obviously the supercharging network is constantly growing and it’s all still new, but in my neck of the woods its still pretty tough to have.

ec109685 5y ago
We drive to the in-laws, and just unplug their dryer and plug the Tesla adapter in and get back to full charge the next day.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Aren't most superchargers (at least until relatively recently) actually between cities, not in them? The idea being that superchargers are primarily meant for road trips, so if you're going from city A to city B the assumption is you can charge at your origin and destination, so superchargers are spaced so you have enough juice to get there.
- dbt00 5y ago
  There's urban chargers at 72kw and highway superchargers at 150-250kw max charging rate. The urban ones are often at major shopping destinations in high traffic areas.
  - mcot2 5y ago
    Actually recently Urban SC development has seemed to come to almost a halt. Even in Urban settings it seems they much prefer to just put in the V3 cabinets with the 250kW max pedestals.
- bnycum 5y ago
  That’d be fine, but it’s 400 miles between here and family with one charger 150 miles from here. I could make it there with any current Tesla, but not make it back to a charger. Could make it work renting an RV spot but that’s still a little inconvenient.

thrower123 5y ago

Of course it does. An absurd number of houses still only have 100 amp services. Not many people have a 50 amp, 220V circuit lying around to dedicate to charging. If they do there's already a welder plugged into it.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
There is (was?) a 30% federal tax credit (up to $1000) that covered the cost of installing a home EV charger (including upgrading your breaker panel/load center if needed). https://www.evconnect.com/blog/ev-infrastructure-tax-credits-incentives https://www.evconnect.com/blog/ev-infrastructure-tax-credits...
- zbrozek 5y ago
  A panel upgrade alone is in the neighborhood of $5k. And if you have underground service and need new wires, that's another $25k.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  While better than nothing, that's like saying the $7500 credit covered the cost of a new Model S.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    What would be considered an acceptable amount of tax credit on offer? You want to reduce the burden on the person wanting to own an EV, but you also don’t want to incentivize price inflation for the upgrade and EV charger install.
    - seattle_spring 5y ago
      To be clear, my comment was referencing the use of the term "covered." Covering the cost of something means it pays for it in its entirety, not a fractional coupon. I wouldn't say, "this coupon for 3 cents off a gallon covers my next tank of gas."

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

It's for reasons like this that I'm always sad and dismayed the Chevy Volt wasn't more popular. Yes, all electric is the future, but right now, and for about the past 5-6 years, the Volt is/was the perfect car for a lot of people: 1. For me, my commute is about 12 miles one way, so my Volt has enough electric capacity for my commute plus 1 errand on a single charge. 95% of my days are 100% electric. 2. I never have "range anxiety" - if I do go slightly over my limit the gas engine kicks in. I use a tank of gas about every 4-6 months. 3. Since my car's electric range is only ~38 miles, I can fully charge in about 8-9 hours overnight on a plain 110v outlet - no custom installation required for a home charger. I bought a low-mileage used Volt - it was a great deal and the best car I've ever owned.

dataflow 5y ago
> I bought a low-mileage used Volt - it was a great deal and the best car I've ever owned. For how long?
- irrational 5y ago
  How long what? How long will it be the best car he ever owned? How long will it be a great deal? What are you asking?
  - dataflow 5y ago
    How long has he had the car. Or alternatively how old is the car. If the car has only worked a couple of years I'm not exactly shocked if it's still working well... for any car.
    - sgt 5y ago
      Try buying a 7-series BMW around 2006 and say the same 5 years later.
      - dataflow 5y ago
        Except I wouldn't say the same thing 5 years after a 2006 car...?

walrus01 5y ago

> since the battery charges slower as it approaches full charge This is for safety and the health of the battery. It is not widely advertised and many people don't know that the fastest levels of charging (tesla supercharge and similar) actually damage the battery a very slight amount, and will reduce overall battery life span, cycle depth ability and health if used very often. It's healthier for your battery to charge at a medium speed overnight.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
n=1, I’ve DC fast charged my Model S 100D a lot at Superchargers over roughly 40k miles of travel cross country, and I’ve only lost 14 miles of range since purchase. It’s true that, at least with the S and X, excessive Supercharging will cause the battery to throttle peak charge currents for the remainder of the battery’s life, the Model 3 and Y chemistry doesn’t seem to exhibit the same throttling.
- walrus01 5y ago
  another factor will be whether you've set it to allow the car to often charge itself to 100% state of charge, or you commonly limit it to 80 or 85%. The length of time that a li ion battery is held at >90% state of charge voltage also has an impact on its life.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

thatfrenchguy 5y ago

If you stick to ElectrifyAmerica (not like the author), you’ll have a much nicer experience. They’re really the only 150/350kw decently priced network, all the competition is mostly slow 44/58kw chargers. They still have a bit of software ironing to do though, still feels like a beta sometimes, I’ve had to move from stall to stall 3-4 times out of 40 charges. Also, yes, obviously, if you’re in Manhattan, you’ll find less chargers. But why are you using a car there?

xeromal 5y ago
EVGo is all around LA and if you have a AAA membership, you can get a 23 cents a minute rate which ain't too bad.
vwoolf 5y ago
In the Phoenix area, on their app, I count perhaps 6 - 7 charging stations, all far away from the city centers (such as they are, yes, I know) and another 5 - 6 coming soon. Closest one is 14 miles from me right now. I'm rooting for it but it's far from prime time. Yes I have a Tesla I charge at my apt.
goshx 5y ago
Are they really decently priced, though? Price for Electrify America in Florida: Guest and Pass Members: $0.43/kWh Pass+ Members: $0.31/kWh + $4 monthly fee Price for Supercharger in the same area: $0.23/kWh

thedeepdive 5y ago

It's going to change soon. Plus if EVs get up to 500km in range, that makes it almost as much as an ICE vehicle and that means you can easily get around long enough to find a charger.

atweiden 5y ago

People in these EV conversations tend to underappreciate the magic of simply being able to pull into a gas station in “AnywhereTown” with an ICE vehicle, top up the tank in less than 15 minutes, and then drive another 500 miles or whatever. EVs don’t do that. In an EV, you drive for a few hundred miles at best, then you spend 30-60 minutes at a supercharger if you’re lucky; or at least several hours at a “normal speed” charger if you’re not. At which point, you can proceed cautiously forward after much delay, always checking your EV’s estimated range remaining — and mapping out when and where the next charger session will have to be. Because of the above dynamic, EV range figures can be a bit misleading. “Effective daily maximum range” is a better metric, i.e. how far one tank of fuel gets you multiplied by how many tanks of fuel you can go through in a day of driving. EVs need to have a far larger range than their ICE counterparts for true equivalence here, to offset the drastically higher downtime of seeking out chargers and using them extensively. In addition, independent charger networks are really hit or miss: those handy EV charging station locator apps often times display out-of-date information; the chargers are difficult to find; and the particular charger you end up with exhibits mechanical and/or payment issues not infrequently. Tesla’s supercharger stations are also a magnet for criminals — got the feeling I was being cased once at the Austin supercharger. (“The future is already here—It's just not very evenly distributed”) For people who have access to a regular, dedicated charging outlet at home, or at work, an EV could make perfectly good sense. Still love EVs, and I agree they’re the future — but they’re the future moreso than the present for many, oweing mainly to these infrastructural issues.

light_hue_1 5y ago
> People in these EV conversations tend to underappreciate the magic of simply being able to pull into a gas station in “AnywhereTown” with an ICE vehicle, top up the tank in less than 15 minutes, and then drive another 500 miles or whatever. You are driving EV cars wrong. > EVs don’t do that. In an EV, you drive for a few hundred miles at best, then you spend 30-60 minutes at a supercharger if you’re lucky If you do this, you will have a terrible experience! EVs charge ultra fast when the battery is low. You are supposed to drive them down to say 10%, then charge up to around 50% repeatedly. This takes.. 10 minutes. You drive for 200 miles or so, stop for 10 minutes, repeat. It's pretty reasonable to take a 10 minute break every 2.5 hours. On an 8 hour (500 mile) drive, you will charge for 30 minutes or so. You should start using abetterrouteplanner.com I bet, that when you go on a 500 mile drive, you are stopping that often to use the facilities and get some food already. Nothing changes. > Because of the above dynamic, EV range figures can be a bit misleading The corrected dynamic shows that EV range figures are spot on and you lose no time on long drives. > Tesla’s supercharger stations are also a magnet for criminals — got the feeling I was being cased once at the Austin supercharger. (“The future is already here—It's just not very evenly distributed”) I have exactly the opposite experience. In my city Tesla chargers are all in good malls, with plenty of people around, and lots of things to do. I've been to far shadier gas stations. > For people who have access to a regular, dedicated charging outlet at home, or at work, an EV could make perfectly good sense For sure. A charger at home is necessary. We had a few months between buying the car and getting the charger installed and the change was just astounding.

majestik 5y ago

Title needs to append “... unless you have a Tesla”