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1 in 5 EV owners in California switched back to gas because charging is a hassle

91 points by phront 5y ago

afavour 5y ago
That number is actually lower than I thought it could be...
- new_realist 5y ago
  CA has better charger infrastructure than in most places of the world, and you can use the HOV lanes. That's a powerful incentive to stick with your EV.
  - api 5y ago
    In other parts of the country homes are more affordable though, and if you have a garage you can install your own L2 charger easily.
  - mceachen 5y ago
    Unfortunately CA made the odd decision to expire all prior-to-a-couple-years-ago BEV HOV stickers, burning all the early adopters. IOW: Got a white BEV sticker? That's worthless. You need the red sticker, only available on new BEVs.
    - acwan93 5y ago
      At this point though, there’s so many EVs on the road in LA/SF that the HOV lanes aren’t necessarily faster.
potiuper 5y ago
One would think it would make more sense marketing EVs to businesses with large fleets like bussing and trucking that could help with the capital investment in recharging infrastructure that then could be built upon by individual consumers.
- aaronbrethorst 5y ago
  ...like the United States Postal Service perhaps? https://www.motortrend.com/news/oshkosh-ngdv-usps-mail-van-design/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/oshkosh-ngdv-usps-mail-van-d... The federal government is going to buy a staggering number of EVs over the next ten years, as will Amazon, UPS, and Fedex.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  Heavy duty electric vehicles are going to charge at the depot, not on public infrastructure. There's also on route chargers for buses. There's contact bars mounted on the roof of the bus and the charger drops down during the stop.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I hadn't heard of that. Interesting idea. My first reaction was 'the bus probably does not stop long enough for that to be useful.' But I'm wrong. If the charger can deliver 250kW, which seems reasonable enough, it would deliver enough juice in 10 seconds to get the bus to the next stop, on average.
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      I guess the thing that makes it work out is that a bus can then service the route with a smaller battery.
- Black101 5y ago
  School buses would be great too... They get about 4mpg.
cmer 5y ago
4 in 5 did not switch back. This says a lot!
etimberg 5y ago
Articles about anything electricity related always seem to contain many fundamental errors. Example: "120 volts of power". Volts is a unit of voltage,
- grammarprofess 5y ago
  It's not a practical error. It implies level 1 charging.
- SigmundA 5y ago
  Happens everywhere hardly anyone seems to know the difference between amps, volts, watts ,watt-hours, ac or dc. Somewhat related horsepower and torque and their relationship to each other is completely misunderstood by almost everyone I know. This stuff should really be taught at a young age, its not hard and applies to so many things around us in our daily lives.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- perilunar 5y ago
  News articles about everything contain fundamental errors, but we only notice it when we have some understanding of the field. It's the "Gell-Mann Amnesia".
rekoros 5y ago
Charging at home with solar is absolutely amazing. We used to wake up to an empty tank and drive on fumes and prayers to the overpriced Shell down the street. Now we wake up to a full tank, every time!
- ketamine__ 5y ago
  Are you comparing gasoline and solar?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- koolba 5y ago
  > Now we wake up to a full tank, every time! Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do you charge a car via solar at night?
  - nyx 5y ago
    Maybe this is a dumb answer, but batteries?
  - politician 5y ago
    They work the night shift.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sathackr 5y ago
    Maybe they work nightshift. Or more likely as with most solar systems they are "grid-tie" Your electric meter essentially runs backwards during the day when you are selling excess power from your panels to the utility. Then you "buy" it back at night when you are drawing more power than your solar panels make.
  - javchz 5y ago
    Option A) In a lot of places, you're still connected in the grid. For the sake of argument let's say, you produce 5 Kilowatt-hour in the day, and only used 2 kWh. The other 3 kWh are sold to the grid in a positive balance for you. So at the end of the month, the bill is: What you consumed to the grid in the night - what you added in the day, so depending on the sunlight you got, there could be months where you pay 0 in electricity bills. Option B) A lot of 18650 batteries and a inverter connected to your home, like the tesla powerwall.
sb057 5y ago
>Of those who switched, over 70% lacked access to Level 2 charging at home, and slightly fewer than that lacked Level 2 connections at their workplace. What in the... A Level 2 charger is less than $500 online, and requires some rather simple wiring, even if you wanted to use an electrician's services, it would only take them a couple of hours maximum. Can the people purchasing the $43,000 Mustang Mach-E mentioned in the article really not afford the extra $1000 it takes to install Level 2 charging?
- dbt00 5y ago
  You might need to: Run a new line to where you park. Upgrade your electrical box. Upgrade the electrical feed from the utility. Reroute other things near where you want to charge the car for safety reasons. (My gas meter is basically exactly where I'd want to put my charger). Rent a house you don't want to pay to upgrade. Rent an apartment with shared parking you can't control. Only have street parking available.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hamandcheese 5y ago
  At my SF apartment, a very old building in the Richmond district, I was quoted $3200 to install a 40 amp circuit to my parking spot. It is my legal right in California to have this installed (at my own expense) but... is it worth it? I don’t even know how long I will stay here.
- DrScump 5y ago
  You need a licensed electrician and a building permit here.
hkarthik 5y ago
A lot of folks in here in CA rent homes and apartments because the cost of living out here is so insane. You can't really get a 240V EV charger installed in your garage or driveway unless you own a home /w vehicle parking and can make such modifications. Having charging infrastructure nearby becomes very critical for anyone in this situation. Charging infrastructure has not kept up with the EVs that are now on the road. A lot of folks also leased their EVs and got great deals on charging with the lease. As these leases have expired along with their charging discounts, it's not surprising that these folks are returning the cars and switching back to gas powered vehicles with better ROI. More government incentives are needed to build charging infrastructure and make EV ownership more viable for people that don't own a single family home. Otherwise the EV revolution will be dead in the water.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  You don’t need 240V. 120V works just fine (and this is MORE true for large battery EVs than small), but landlords don’t let you do use them for charging your car. What we need is for landlords to allow charging on 120V outlets. Normalize it. Actually mandate it be allowed. And cheaply, too. (Landlords would quickly discover affordable ways to accommodate charging.)
  - drivingmenuts 5y ago
    For apartment complexes, they would just raise the rent for everyone to cover installation, maintenance, service fees, etc. even for the people who didn’t use them, turning them into a profit point.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      And if they could raise rates more to get more profit, they would do it right now. (But this is why we need EVERYONE to have EVs. At least plug in hybrids.)
  - kmonsen 5y ago
    Yeah, I have a house and an ev in the Bay Area and have not bothered to install a 240V charger. There are cheap’ish EV’s now with a large enough battery for this. We have the Kia Niro and the battery is more than large enough for this.
danhak 5y ago
Very curious about what the breakdown of that 20% is by manufacturer. A friend of mine traded his i3 for a Model Y and said the experience has been like night and day. Access to Supercharger network is a game charger. No other fast charging network is really even close.
- asdfaoeu 5y ago
  The study seems to be here[1]. Notably Tesla has the lowest discontinuation rate (9.6%) except for Cadilac which only three had vehicles in the survey. [1]: https://escholarship.org/content/qt11n6f4hs/qt11n6f4hs_noSplash_a18cd013f8739cfa5d4937358fe94414.pdf?t=qs7ss2 https://escholarship.org/content/qt11n6f4hs/qt11n6f4hs_noSpl...
- worik 5y ago
  Interesting. You can fill the petrol vehicle at and filling station. Can you get a adaptor to use a Tesla Supercharger on other cars?
  - mceachen 5y ago
    You can charge a Tesla with a standard type-2 quick charger (if you have an adapter for the J-1772 or CCS cable), but you can't use the supercharger network to charge a non-tesla BEV, AFAIK.
    - worik 5y ago
      What a hideous anti-community person Elon Musk is. This is in his control: He could be different, but he does not care.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    The EU has mandated that Tesla Superchargers support the industry standard CCS adaptors and support non-Tesla manufactured charging (so long as non-Tesla owners pay for the charge as appropriate, of course). There's currently no political pressure at all in the US to regulate Tesla Superchargers and the game of competing charging networks is only really just getting started.
debo_ 5y ago
I suppose this isn't the time or place to suggest that the author is gas-lighting us with this title?
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Usually it’s the editor who does that gas-lighting.
  - debo_ 5y ago
    I think I either need to avoid puns, or label them when I make them.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      I did kind of wonder if you were making a pun, but it seemed too subtle to be likely. Bravo. :)
- dehrmann 5y ago
  It's more of glass half full/empty. I think they picked right because the reverse headline would sound bizarre: 80% of EV owners didn't switch back to gas because or charging hassles.
beardicus 5y ago
> Public charging stations may look like the electric version of the gas station, but nearly two-thirds of PEV drivers in the survey said they didn't use them. Exactly why they didn't use the public stalls was not specified. because they charge at home! this article is quite silly. if you cant level 2 charge at home then yes... having an EV may be quite inconvenient. but all this "i can fill my SUV in three minutes" stuff is... dumb. know what's even more convenient? never stopping at a stupid gas station ever again. i wait 0 minutes for my car to charge because i plug it in when i get home and then go inside and forget all about it.
- baby 5y ago
  So if you live in the city and you do street parking you're screwed? What if you're doing a road trip?
  - tenacious_tuna 5y ago
    I used to have a model 3; I used to live in a suburb with a garage, and we moved into downtown Chicago. We ditched the Tesla simply because we didn't want to have any car at all. To that end, if you're urban enough to not need a car, the point is moot. In my humble opinion, being urban-yet-still-needing-a-car-but-not-having-a-garage is an orthognal problem: we should put more effort into public transit or bike or walkability (e.g., more compact neighborhoods, with no street parking), with the end goal of reducing *all* car ownership. For road trips, level 3 charging *for teslas* is truly, truly excellent. About a year ago we traveled up to Michigan's upper peninsula, which at the time had no superchargers, but we were able to trickle charge off of a power socket on the porch of the friends we were visiting. We were planning a trip to family in rural Virginia before the pandemic struck, and we could either trickle charge off 110v outside their garage, or we could have backed the car up to the window outside their laundry room and used the 240v32A socket for their dryer. There's plenty of options for charging an EV, especially if you're willing to tolerate minor inconvenience. It is something you should know about, and plan around, definitely--but with the amount of effort Tesla is putting into expanding the supercharger network, and with the gradual rollout of more and more public level 2 charging, it's not nearly the issue I think many people make it out to be. Edit 10:36 CDT: spelling
grepLeigh 5y ago
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I would pay higher taxes to subsidize this infrastructure. I haven't switched from a hybrid (Prius) to an EV because I'd have to treat the EV as a second "luxury" vehicle.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s an especially unpopular opinion. The President has recently proposed exactly that. I’m tentatively opposed because it’s regressive and I’m suspicious of the total cycle net benefits of EV, but it’s a perfectly reasonable position.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    How would it be regressive if it's going to come from a tax increase on people making over $400k/year? (AFAIK).
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      It’s regressive in isolation. Only rich people are buying electric cars. I don’t think saying the money comes from rich people in the first place changes the analysis.
      - kmonsen 5y ago
        It’s regressive, but it also makes it possible for less wealthy people to get EVs so in that way not really. Also not everything is about that, we have other priorities as well like mitigating climate change.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Get a plug in hybrid. This is really the best foot in the door for most people who want to go electric.
voidfunc 5y ago
I was wondering about this lately. I lease an ICE car in a major northeast metro where I use on street parking often several blocks from my place. If I went to an EV where would I charge my car?
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Large battery EVs (like Teslas) can be charged quickly and have similar range to an ICE. But really we need to install 120V outlets near all on-street parking.
  - tzs 5y ago
    Assuming 120 V 20 A, that would charge a Tesla model 3 at about 9 miles per hour. If you can use a Tesla Wall Connector on a 240 V circuit with a 60 A breaker, it charges at 44 miles per hour (if extended range model--standard range model maxes out at 30 miles per hour charging) [1]. You've got to have access to a Supercharger to get anywhere near the "charge" rate of an ICE. A Supercharger can do 1000 miles per hour. That's still slower than an ICE, but at least it is almost within an order of magnitude. An ICE that gets 25 miles per gallon can be "charged" by a standard gas pump at 15000 miles per hour. [1] https://www.tesla.com/support/home-charging-installation/wall-connector https://www.tesla.com/support/home-charging-installation/wal...
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      This is just not an important issue for home charging. This is why: You just use a Tesla like you use a Plug-in hybrid like a Volt. Charge at 120V every night for about 12 hours or whatever (worth about 60 miles a day and 400 miles a week) and you’ve got a buffer of about 300 miles, which is the same as my Volt. If you ever drop too low, just fill up at a fast charge place. I fill up my Volt maybe once every 6 months and it has just 35 mile electric range. A trip to the Supercharger every 6 months is not a problem, and I’d never need to do it except on road trips (unlike my Volt which occasionally uses up its 35 mile EV range on errands and I need to dig in to that 300 mile buffer). Even with just a 120V charge. Beats going to the gas station every two weeks like y’all have to do. Comments like this really show that non-EV owners simply don’t understand what owning an EV is like. Buy a plug-in hybrid (one with at least 35 mile range and capable of going highway speeds pure electric), which has no risk of “range anxiety”, and you’ll understand why you really spend almost no time charging compared to how much time you have to spend going to gas stations with an ICE vehicle. The issue with people switching to non-EVs is they either have a small, pure-electric EV, they have life events that mean there isn’t an EV available that fits their requirements (frustratingly, no one offers a plug in pickup truck today), or they had to live in a place that won’t let them plug in (which is a good reason to consider a plug-in hybrid).
Robotbeat 5y ago
Apartment landlords often now disallow anyone to charge in garages that they pay rent for. They have to use provided charging spots, which absolutely sucks for every day use and is totally unrealistic unless you have a large battery EV. There are outlets everywhere but folks aren’t allowed to use them. Electric cars are not normalized. Teslas and PHEVs are the only electric cars I can unreservedly recommend. Teslas (new ones at least) have substantial batteries, often comparable to standard gas cars, and extensive charging networks at high speed. Still kind of sucks if you can’t charge at home or work, but possible. PHEVs are really where we need to go to massively normalize EVs. We could, today, replace everyone’s vehicle with a PHEV version (like a Volt) & everything would work fine. People would nag landlords to let them plug in, and it’d become a legitimate differentiation if apartments allowed plugging in (as it’d reduce the cost of energy for transport by a factor of 2-3), so competitive pressure would accomplish what landlords currently don’t allow because they’re lazy, poorly informed, and/or ambivalent about it. Pure EVs should be at LEAST ~250 miles in range, and probably at least 100kW charge speed, too. What we need is a mandate that by 2030, all new vehicles must be at least plug in hybrid. That’s way better than the 60% zero emissions cars by 2030 I’ve seen going around.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  The cost of electricity for landlords would go up quite a bit if everyone was charging their car all the time. It is cheaper than gas, but it isn't free.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    It’s really pretty cheap. The cost of the electricity is less than the fully burdened cost of a parking space; certainly than a full garage space. And people already have to pay for that. So if it was normalized (ie everyone did it, not just 5% of renters), then it wouldn’t be a problem as you just roll that into the rent for the spot. And if it was significant they could add a cheap submeter or a timed smart outlet (there’s a startup opportunity here, BTW...).
    - cortesoft 5y ago
pengaru 5y ago
Back in my gearhead-while-renting days I constructed a massive HD extension cable to access the indoor split-phase dryer outlet from out in the garage for non-invasively running my TIG welder. If I had an EV back then the same practice would have worked perfectly fine. But judging from the amount of negativity I received back then WRT powering my welder, I wouldn't be surprised if very few are being resourceful in this way. Even if they have an attached garage and access to appliance outlets somewhere in a rental, people seem to have an irrational fear of electricity.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >But judging from the amount of negativity I received back then WRT powering my welder, I wouldn't be surprised if very few are being resourceful in this way. Even if they have an attached garage and access to appliance outlets somewhere in a rental, people seem to have an irrational fear of electricity. It seems like the only topics that can be discussed on the internet are ones that are so far removed from practical application that they are immune to people showing up and crapping all over the discussion in search of virtue points for caring about other people's safety/money/health/whatever. We can discuss code compilers no problem but god forbid you ask a question about tiling your bathroom and you will be inundated with people singing praises to GFCIs, quoting the building code, citing statistics about slip and fall injuries. It all makes more sense when you realize they don't actually want to answer your question, discuss bathroom tiles or provide anything of value. You've simply provided them an opportunity to signal to each other. But making sense doesn't make it any less frustrating. I bet if you had opened up your welder and installed the long cord as though it were the OE power cord those people wouldn't have said anything. I would have wired up a 220v cord that plugs into two 120v outlets just to piss them off. (And it should go without saying that your extension cord is perfectly safe if sized properly)
hbarka 5y ago
As an EV owner with the luxury of having a charger in my garage, one of the joys is having a “full tank” in the morning, as EV owners like to say. It truly is life-changing. I was ready to dismiss this article as nonsense. There must be some reform for those living with a condo association.
8bitsrule 5y ago
Hassle? "over 70% lacked access to Level 2 charging at home." Maybe dealers could help out with a (mandatory?!) at-cost installation. Many/most homes have access to 220v service. 80 amps at 220v will supply 40kW in 2-1/2 hours. http://garagechargers.com/ev-charging-calculations http://garagechargers.com/ev-charging-calculations Edit: This site estimates EV-station install costs by Zip code. (US average $750. Or about 200 gal of $4 gasoline.) https://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/garages/install-an-electric-vehicle-charging-station/ https://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/garages/install-an-electric...
- masonic 5y ago
  This site estimates EV-station install costs by Zip code It requires details including your exact home address with no privacy policy. No thank you.
AgentK20 5y ago
Honestly this sounds more like what I'd regularly expect for _any_ new purchase of high value. Many people rush into buying "the hottest thing" without doing their proper research ahead of time, determining what the impact on their life will be, etc. This says less to me about EV charging being a "hassle" and more about humans being resistant to change, not to mention the lack of general public acceptance (landlords) of charging infrastructure.
throwitaway1235 5y ago
Charging stations will be as easy to find as gas stations are now, when EV's go beyond niche. They most certainly will, but folks who adopt new technologies first usually run into daily usage hassles.
elihu 5y ago
I'd like to know what their criteria for "abandoning" EVs is; is it that twenty percent buy an EV and then sell or return it in favor of owning only gas-powered vehicles, or are they also including people who buy an EV and then buy a gas-powered car in addition to the EV they already have? There are a lot of reasons for people to do the latter that don't necessarily mean they're dissatisfied with their EV. The article links to an abstract which is ambiguously worded, and the article is paywalled.
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago
My neighbor asked to rent a parking spot from me for an EV. She was planning to set up a charging station. That would involve a double (220 V) breaker, outdoor rated outlet AND some 50 feet of 4 conductor cable, conduit and trenching. $3,000 would be ballpark. I turned her down because once my son gets a car, I'd have to take the spot back and she'd be out the installation cost. I've heard the term "garage orphan". There's lots of inner city neighborhoods where the closest legal parking spot is too far to run an extension cord. Here in Canada there's a number of creative arrangements to run extension cords to block heaters in the winter if you need to get to work in a -30C morning. Bylaws can be an obstacle.
electriclove 5y ago
Does anyone here know someone (in California) who purchased an EV between 2012 and 2018 and then went back to a gas car? The results of this study do not jive with my anecdotal experience.
- x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
  I _almost_ sold my brand new EV a few months into the pandemic, because work was the only place that I was at long enough to properly charge it. It wasn't until I moved out of an apartment and bought a house that I started driving it again. My wife has an ICE, and we did all of our pandemic shopping with it.
- masonic 5y ago
  My next-door neighbor. They ditched their Leaf at the 3-year mark and use just their ICE Mercedes. They have a garage and fast charger, too.
ram_rar 5y ago
I m curious, how many in 4/5 are home owners? I love EV cars. But the biggest pain point is my apartment doesn't have charging spots. So, I need to factor in car charging into my day to day. Thats another decision/plan to make in my life. I dont have to worry about gas at all.
KozmoNau7 5y ago
I can understand why a lot of apartment dwellers would find it a hassle, currently. I live Copenhagen, and I've been looking at buying a car again, due to a job offer from a company a little ways outside the city, 25 minutes by car. Due to an unfortunate combination of where I live, the location of the company and public transit route planning, that same trip would necessitate going by bus, then two trains and another bus, a little over 1 hour in total. So with that commute in mind, an electric car would be absolutely perfect. Even a smaller model with basic range would be plenty, if only I had somewhere to reasonably charge it. As with most other apartment buildings in Copenhagen, there is no dedicated parking, so we share a bunch of street parking with the surrounding buildings. I can't even park a car beneath my apartment window and run a power cable, since I would have to drape it across a sidewalk and a bike path. Perhaps a nearby charging point could make it work, but the nearest public charging point is around 1km away, so I'd have to plug in the car, walk home, wait a bit, then walk back and get the car, since you can't just block a charging point forever once your car is charged. If I had a garage, carport or dedicated parking spot, I would absolutely install a charger and drive an electric car, but that's not possible when you're not the owner of the spot where you park your car. Instead I'll probably get a hybrid of some sort, but it feels like a cop-out when I absolutely could drive an electric car, based on my commute and even the 1,5-hour drive to visit my family. We need more charging infrastructure, especially for apartment dwellers.
lumberingjack 5y ago
Can't wait till everyone comes home from work and tries to plug in all of their batteries at the same time that's really going to work out well
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  There's plenty of excess capacity at night. The grid is provisioned for peak demand during the day which is dominated by heavy industrial usage that it will take a lot of cars to match at night even a fraction of the heavy industrial stuff the grid sees most working days. Some of the electric utility companies are very hopeful to see more of the "bathtub" filled (the chart of electric usage over an average day looks like it has a sharp "bathtub" at night) because there's efficiencies to gain as that happens (taking generators offline during the bathtub and then bringing them back online in the mornings takes a bunch more effort than just leaving them running).
rasputnik6502 5y ago
First reality check?
vannevar 5y ago
Note that the survey included owners who purchased between 2012 and 2018. The article doesn't specify, but it's possible that the 20% who switched were weighted towards early adopters who purchased in the first few years of the survey window. It would be interesting to see whether that switch-back rate is declining over time, and whether the decline is accelerating. I would bet yes on both.

91 points by phront 5y ago

afavour 5y ago

That number is actually lower than I thought it could be...

new_realist 5y ago
CA has better charger infrastructure than in most places of the world, and you can use the HOV lanes. That's a powerful incentive to stick with your EV.
- api 5y ago
  In other parts of the country homes are more affordable though, and if you have a garage you can install your own L2 charger easily.
- mceachen 5y ago
  Unfortunately CA made the odd decision to expire all prior-to-a-couple-years-ago BEV HOV stickers, burning all the early adopters. IOW: Got a white BEV sticker? That's worthless. You need the red sticker, only available on new BEVs.
  - acwan93 5y ago
    At this point though, there’s so many EVs on the road in LA/SF that the HOV lanes aren’t necessarily faster.

potiuper 5y ago

One would think it would make more sense marketing EVs to businesses with large fleets like bussing and trucking that could help with the capital investment in recharging infrastructure that then could be built upon by individual consumers.

aaronbrethorst 5y ago
...like the United States Postal Service perhaps? https://www.motortrend.com/news/oshkosh-ngdv-usps-mail-van-design/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/oshkosh-ngdv-usps-mail-van-d... The federal government is going to buy a staggering number of EVs over the next ten years, as will Amazon, UPS, and Fedex.
maxerickson 5y ago
Heavy duty electric vehicles are going to charge at the depot, not on public infrastructure. There's also on route chargers for buses. There's contact bars mounted on the roof of the bus and the charger drops down during the stop.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I hadn't heard of that. Interesting idea. My first reaction was 'the bus probably does not stop long enough for that to be useful.' But I'm wrong. If the charger can deliver 250kW, which seems reasonable enough, it would deliver enough juice in 10 seconds to get the bus to the next stop, on average.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    I guess the thing that makes it work out is that a bus can then service the route with a smaller battery.
Black101 5y ago
School buses would be great too... They get about 4mpg.

cmer 5y ago

4 in 5 did not switch back. This says a lot!

etimberg 5y ago

Articles about anything electricity related always seem to contain many fundamental errors. Example: "120 volts of power". Volts is a unit of voltage,

grammarprofess 5y ago
It's not a practical error. It implies level 1 charging.
SigmundA 5y ago
Happens everywhere hardly anyone seems to know the difference between amps, volts, watts ,watt-hours, ac or dc. Somewhat related horsepower and torque and their relationship to each other is completely misunderstood by almost everyone I know. This stuff should really be taught at a young age, its not hard and applies to so many things around us in our daily lives.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
perilunar 5y ago
News articles about everything contain fundamental errors, but we only notice it when we have some understanding of the field. It's the "Gell-Mann Amnesia".

rekoros 5y ago

Charging at home with solar is absolutely amazing. We used to wake up to an empty tank and drive on fumes and prayers to the overpriced Shell down the street. Now we wake up to a full tank, every time!

ketamine__ 5y ago
Are you comparing gasoline and solar?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
koolba 5y ago
> Now we wake up to a full tank, every time! Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do you charge a car via solar at night?
- nyx 5y ago
  Maybe this is a dumb answer, but batteries?
- politician 5y ago
  They work the night shift.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sathackr 5y ago
  Maybe they work nightshift. Or more likely as with most solar systems they are "grid-tie" Your electric meter essentially runs backwards during the day when you are selling excess power from your panels to the utility. Then you "buy" it back at night when you are drawing more power than your solar panels make.
- javchz 5y ago
  Option A) In a lot of places, you're still connected in the grid. For the sake of argument let's say, you produce 5 Kilowatt-hour in the day, and only used 2 kWh. The other 3 kWh are sold to the grid in a positive balance for you. So at the end of the month, the bill is: What you consumed to the grid in the night - what you added in the day, so depending on the sunlight you got, there could be months where you pay 0 in electricity bills. Option B) A lot of 18650 batteries and a inverter connected to your home, like the tesla powerwall.

sb057 5y ago

>Of those who switched, over 70% lacked access to Level 2 charging at home, and slightly fewer than that lacked Level 2 connections at their workplace. What in the... A Level 2 charger is less than $500 online, and requires some rather simple wiring, even if you wanted to use an electrician's services, it would only take them a couple of hours maximum. Can the people purchasing the $43,000 Mustang Mach-E mentioned in the article really not afford the extra $1000 it takes to install Level 2 charging?

dbt00 5y ago
You might need to: Run a new line to where you park. Upgrade your electrical box. Upgrade the electrical feed from the utility. Reroute other things near where you want to charge the car for safety reasons. (My gas meter is basically exactly where I'd want to put my charger). Rent a house you don't want to pay to upgrade. Rent an apartment with shared parking you can't control. Only have street parking available.
deleted 5y ago
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hamandcheese 5y ago
At my SF apartment, a very old building in the Richmond district, I was quoted $3200 to install a 40 amp circuit to my parking spot. It is my legal right in California to have this installed (at my own expense) but... is it worth it? I don’t even know how long I will stay here.
DrScump 5y ago
You need a licensed electrician and a building permit here.

hkarthik 5y ago

A lot of folks in here in CA rent homes and apartments because the cost of living out here is so insane. You can't really get a 240V EV charger installed in your garage or driveway unless you own a home /w vehicle parking and can make such modifications. Having charging infrastructure nearby becomes very critical for anyone in this situation. Charging infrastructure has not kept up with the EVs that are now on the road. A lot of folks also leased their EVs and got great deals on charging with the lease. As these leases have expired along with their charging discounts, it's not surprising that these folks are returning the cars and switching back to gas powered vehicles with better ROI. More government incentives are needed to build charging infrastructure and make EV ownership more viable for people that don't own a single family home. Otherwise the EV revolution will be dead in the water.

Robotbeat 5y ago
You don’t need 240V. 120V works just fine (and this is MORE true for large battery EVs than small), but landlords don’t let you do use them for charging your car. What we need is for landlords to allow charging on 120V outlets. Normalize it. Actually mandate it be allowed. And cheaply, too. (Landlords would quickly discover affordable ways to accommodate charging.)
- drivingmenuts 5y ago
  For apartment complexes, they would just raise the rent for everyone to cover installation, maintenance, service fees, etc. even for the people who didn’t use them, turning them into a profit point.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    And if they could raise rates more to get more profit, they would do it right now. (But this is why we need EVERYONE to have EVs. At least plug in hybrids.)
- kmonsen 5y ago
  Yeah, I have a house and an ev in the Bay Area and have not bothered to install a 240V charger. There are cheap’ish EV’s now with a large enough battery for this. We have the Kia Niro and the battery is more than large enough for this.

danhak 5y ago

Very curious about what the breakdown of that 20% is by manufacturer. A friend of mine traded his i3 for a Model Y and said the experience has been like night and day. Access to Supercharger network is a game charger. No other fast charging network is really even close.

asdfaoeu 5y ago
The study seems to be here[1]. Notably Tesla has the lowest discontinuation rate (9.6%) except for Cadilac which only three had vehicles in the survey. [1]: https://escholarship.org/content/qt11n6f4hs/qt11n6f4hs_noSplash_a18cd013f8739cfa5d4937358fe94414.pdf?t=qs7ss2 https://escholarship.org/content/qt11n6f4hs/qt11n6f4hs_noSpl...
worik 5y ago
Interesting. You can fill the petrol vehicle at and filling station. Can you get a adaptor to use a Tesla Supercharger on other cars?
- mceachen 5y ago
  You can charge a Tesla with a standard type-2 quick charger (if you have an adapter for the J-1772 or CCS cable), but you can't use the supercharger network to charge a non-tesla BEV, AFAIK.
  - worik 5y ago
    What a hideous anti-community person Elon Musk is. This is in his control: He could be different, but he does not care.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  The EU has mandated that Tesla Superchargers support the industry standard CCS adaptors and support non-Tesla manufactured charging (so long as non-Tesla owners pay for the charge as appropriate, of course). There's currently no political pressure at all in the US to regulate Tesla Superchargers and the game of competing charging networks is only really just getting started.

debo_ 5y ago

I suppose this isn't the time or place to suggest that the author is gas-lighting us with this title?

Robotbeat 5y ago
Usually it’s the editor who does that gas-lighting.
- debo_ 5y ago
  I think I either need to avoid puns, or label them when I make them.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    I did kind of wonder if you were making a pun, but it seemed too subtle to be likely. Bravo. :)
dehrmann 5y ago
It's more of glass half full/empty. I think they picked right because the reverse headline would sound bizarre: 80% of EV owners didn't switch back to gas because or charging hassles.

beardicus 5y ago

> Public charging stations may look like the electric version of the gas station, but nearly two-thirds of PEV drivers in the survey said they didn't use them. Exactly why they didn't use the public stalls was not specified. because they charge at home! this article is quite silly. if you cant level 2 charge at home then yes... having an EV may be quite inconvenient. but all this "i can fill my SUV in three minutes" stuff is... dumb. know what's even more convenient? never stopping at a stupid gas station ever again. i wait 0 minutes for my car to charge because i plug it in when i get home and then go inside and forget all about it.

baby 5y ago
So if you live in the city and you do street parking you're screwed? What if you're doing a road trip?
- tenacious_tuna 5y ago
  I used to have a model 3; I used to live in a suburb with a garage, and we moved into downtown Chicago. We ditched the Tesla simply because we didn't want to have any car at all. To that end, if you're urban enough to not need a car, the point is moot. In my humble opinion, being urban-yet-still-needing-a-car-but-not-having-a-garage is an orthognal problem: we should put more effort into public transit or bike or walkability (e.g., more compact neighborhoods, with no street parking), with the end goal of reducing *all* car ownership. For road trips, level 3 charging *for teslas* is truly, truly excellent. About a year ago we traveled up to Michigan's upper peninsula, which at the time had no superchargers, but we were able to trickle charge off of a power socket on the porch of the friends we were visiting. We were planning a trip to family in rural Virginia before the pandemic struck, and we could either trickle charge off 110v outside their garage, or we could have backed the car up to the window outside their laundry room and used the 240v32A socket for their dryer. There's plenty of options for charging an EV, especially if you're willing to tolerate minor inconvenience. It is something you should know about, and plan around, definitely--but with the amount of effort Tesla is putting into expanding the supercharger network, and with the gradual rollout of more and more public level 2 charging, it's not nearly the issue I think many people make it out to be. Edit 10:36 CDT: spelling

grepLeigh 5y ago

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I would pay higher taxes to subsidize this infrastructure. I haven't switched from a hybrid (Prius) to an EV because I'd have to treat the EV as a second "luxury" vehicle.

bradleyjg 5y ago
I don’t think it’s an especially unpopular opinion. The President has recently proposed exactly that. I’m tentatively opposed because it’s regressive and I’m suspicious of the total cycle net benefits of EV, but it’s a perfectly reasonable position.
- belltaco 5y ago
  How would it be regressive if it's going to come from a tax increase on people making over $400k/year? (AFAIK).
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    It’s regressive in isolation. Only rich people are buying electric cars. I don’t think saying the money comes from rich people in the first place changes the analysis.
    - kmonsen 5y ago
      It’s regressive, but it also makes it possible for less wealthy people to get EVs so in that way not really. Also not everything is about that, we have other priorities as well like mitigating climate change.
Robotbeat 5y ago
Get a plug in hybrid. This is really the best foot in the door for most people who want to go electric.

voidfunc 5y ago

I was wondering about this lately. I lease an ICE car in a major northeast metro where I use on street parking often several blocks from my place. If I went to an EV where would I charge my car?

Robotbeat 5y ago
Large battery EVs (like Teslas) can be charged quickly and have similar range to an ICE. But really we need to install 120V outlets near all on-street parking.
- tzs 5y ago
  Assuming 120 V 20 A, that would charge a Tesla model 3 at about 9 miles per hour. If you can use a Tesla Wall Connector on a 240 V circuit with a 60 A breaker, it charges at 44 miles per hour (if extended range model--standard range model maxes out at 30 miles per hour charging) [1]. You've got to have access to a Supercharger to get anywhere near the "charge" rate of an ICE. A Supercharger can do 1000 miles per hour. That's still slower than an ICE, but at least it is almost within an order of magnitude. An ICE that gets 25 miles per gallon can be "charged" by a standard gas pump at 15000 miles per hour. [1] https://www.tesla.com/support/home-charging-installation/wall-connector https://www.tesla.com/support/home-charging-installation/wal...
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    This is just not an important issue for home charging. This is why: You just use a Tesla like you use a Plug-in hybrid like a Volt. Charge at 120V every night for about 12 hours or whatever (worth about 60 miles a day and 400 miles a week) and you’ve got a buffer of about 300 miles, which is the same as my Volt. If you ever drop too low, just fill up at a fast charge place. I fill up my Volt maybe once every 6 months and it has just 35 mile electric range. A trip to the Supercharger every 6 months is not a problem, and I’d never need to do it except on road trips (unlike my Volt which occasionally uses up its 35 mile EV range on errands and I need to dig in to that 300 mile buffer). Even with just a 120V charge. Beats going to the gas station every two weeks like y’all have to do. Comments like this really show that non-EV owners simply don’t understand what owning an EV is like. Buy a plug-in hybrid (one with at least 35 mile range and capable of going highway speeds pure electric), which has no risk of “range anxiety”, and you’ll understand why you really spend almost no time charging compared to how much time you have to spend going to gas stations with an ICE vehicle. The issue with people switching to non-EVs is they either have a small, pure-electric EV, they have life events that mean there isn’t an EV available that fits their requirements (frustratingly, no one offers a plug in pickup truck today), or they had to live in a place that won’t let them plug in (which is a good reason to consider a plug-in hybrid).

Robotbeat 5y ago

Apartment landlords often now disallow anyone to charge in garages that they pay rent for. They have to use provided charging spots, which absolutely sucks for every day use and is totally unrealistic unless you have a large battery EV. There are outlets everywhere but folks aren’t allowed to use them. Electric cars are not normalized. Teslas and PHEVs are the only electric cars I can unreservedly recommend. Teslas (new ones at least) have substantial batteries, often comparable to standard gas cars, and extensive charging networks at high speed. Still kind of sucks if you can’t charge at home or work, but possible. PHEVs are really where we need to go to massively normalize EVs. We could, today, replace everyone’s vehicle with a PHEV version (like a Volt) & everything would work fine. People would nag landlords to let them plug in, and it’d become a legitimate differentiation if apartments allowed plugging in (as it’d reduce the cost of energy for transport by a factor of 2-3), so competitive pressure would accomplish what landlords currently don’t allow because they’re lazy, poorly informed, and/or ambivalent about it. Pure EVs should be at LEAST ~250 miles in range, and probably at least 100kW charge speed, too. What we need is a mandate that by 2030, all new vehicles must be at least plug in hybrid. That’s way better than the 60% zero emissions cars by 2030 I’ve seen going around.

cortesoft 5y ago
The cost of electricity for landlords would go up quite a bit if everyone was charging their car all the time. It is cheaper than gas, but it isn't free.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  It’s really pretty cheap. The cost of the electricity is less than the fully burdened cost of a parking space; certainly than a full garage space. And people already have to pay for that. So if it was normalized (ie everyone did it, not just 5% of renters), then it wouldn’t be a problem as you just roll that into the rent for the spot. And if it was significant they could add a cheap submeter or a timed smart outlet (there’s a startup opportunity here, BTW...).
  - cortesoft 5y ago

pengaru 5y ago

Back in my gearhead-while-renting days I constructed a massive HD extension cable to access the indoor split-phase dryer outlet from out in the garage for non-invasively running my TIG welder. If I had an EV back then the same practice would have worked perfectly fine. But judging from the amount of negativity I received back then WRT powering my welder, I wouldn't be surprised if very few are being resourceful in this way. Even if they have an attached garage and access to appliance outlets somewhere in a rental, people seem to have an irrational fear of electricity.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>But judging from the amount of negativity I received back then WRT powering my welder, I wouldn't be surprised if very few are being resourceful in this way. Even if they have an attached garage and access to appliance outlets somewhere in a rental, people seem to have an irrational fear of electricity. It seems like the only topics that can be discussed on the internet are ones that are so far removed from practical application that they are immune to people showing up and crapping all over the discussion in search of virtue points for caring about other people's safety/money/health/whatever. We can discuss code compilers no problem but god forbid you ask a question about tiling your bathroom and you will be inundated with people singing praises to GFCIs, quoting the building code, citing statistics about slip and fall injuries. It all makes more sense when you realize they don't actually want to answer your question, discuss bathroom tiles or provide anything of value. You've simply provided them an opportunity to signal to each other. But making sense doesn't make it any less frustrating. I bet if you had opened up your welder and installed the long cord as though it were the OE power cord those people wouldn't have said anything. I would have wired up a 220v cord that plugs into two 120v outlets just to piss them off. (And it should go without saying that your extension cord is perfectly safe if sized properly)

hbarka 5y ago

As an EV owner with the luxury of having a charger in my garage, one of the joys is having a “full tank” in the morning, as EV owners like to say. It truly is life-changing. I was ready to dismiss this article as nonsense. There must be some reform for those living with a condo association.

8bitsrule 5y ago

Hassle? "over 70% lacked access to Level 2 charging at home." Maybe dealers could help out with a (mandatory?!) at-cost installation. Many/most homes have access to 220v service. 80 amps at 220v will supply 40kW in 2-1/2 hours. http://garagechargers.com/ev-charging-calculations http://garagechargers.com/ev-charging-calculations Edit: This site estimates EV-station install costs by Zip code. (US average $750. Or about 200 gal of $4 gasoline.) https://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/garages/install-an-electric-vehicle-charging-station/ https://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/garages/install-an-electric...

masonic 5y ago
This site estimates EV-station install costs by Zip code It requires details including your exact home address with no privacy policy. No thank you.

AgentK20 5y ago

Honestly this sounds more like what I'd regularly expect for _any_ new purchase of high value. Many people rush into buying "the hottest thing" without doing their proper research ahead of time, determining what the impact on their life will be, etc. This says less to me about EV charging being a "hassle" and more about humans being resistant to change, not to mention the lack of general public acceptance (landlords) of charging infrastructure.

throwitaway1235 5y ago

Charging stations will be as easy to find as gas stations are now, when EV's go beyond niche. They most certainly will, but folks who adopt new technologies first usually run into daily usage hassles.

elihu 5y ago

I'd like to know what their criteria for "abandoning" EVs is; is it that twenty percent buy an EV and then sell or return it in favor of owning only gas-powered vehicles, or are they also including people who buy an EV and then buy a gas-powered car in addition to the EV they already have? There are a lot of reasons for people to do the latter that don't necessarily mean they're dissatisfied with their EV. The article links to an abstract which is ambiguously worded, and the article is paywalled.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago

My neighbor asked to rent a parking spot from me for an EV. She was planning to set up a charging station. That would involve a double (220 V) breaker, outdoor rated outlet AND some 50 feet of 4 conductor cable, conduit and trenching. $3,000 would be ballpark. I turned her down because once my son gets a car, I'd have to take the spot back and she'd be out the installation cost. I've heard the term "garage orphan". There's lots of inner city neighborhoods where the closest legal parking spot is too far to run an extension cord. Here in Canada there's a number of creative arrangements to run extension cords to block heaters in the winter if you need to get to work in a -30C morning. Bylaws can be an obstacle.

electriclove 5y ago

Does anyone here know someone (in California) who purchased an EV between 2012 and 2018 and then went back to a gas car? The results of this study do not jive with my anecdotal experience.

x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
I _almost_ sold my brand new EV a few months into the pandemic, because work was the only place that I was at long enough to properly charge it. It wasn't until I moved out of an apartment and bought a house that I started driving it again. My wife has an ICE, and we did all of our pandemic shopping with it.
masonic 5y ago
My next-door neighbor. They ditched their Leaf at the 3-year mark and use just their ICE Mercedes. They have a garage and fast charger, too.

ram_rar 5y ago

I m curious, how many in 4/5 are home owners? I love EV cars. But the biggest pain point is my apartment doesn't have charging spots. So, I need to factor in car charging into my day to day. Thats another decision/plan to make in my life. I dont have to worry about gas at all.

KozmoNau7 5y ago

I can understand why a lot of apartment dwellers would find it a hassle, currently. I live Copenhagen, and I've been looking at buying a car again, due to a job offer from a company a little ways outside the city, 25 minutes by car. Due to an unfortunate combination of where I live, the location of the company and public transit route planning, that same trip would necessitate going by bus, then two trains and another bus, a little over 1 hour in total. So with that commute in mind, an electric car would be absolutely perfect. Even a smaller model with basic range would be plenty, if only I had somewhere to reasonably charge it. As with most other apartment buildings in Copenhagen, there is no dedicated parking, so we share a bunch of street parking with the surrounding buildings. I can't even park a car beneath my apartment window and run a power cable, since I would have to drape it across a sidewalk and a bike path. Perhaps a nearby charging point could make it work, but the nearest public charging point is around 1km away, so I'd have to plug in the car, walk home, wait a bit, then walk back and get the car, since you can't just block a charging point forever once your car is charged. If I had a garage, carport or dedicated parking spot, I would absolutely install a charger and drive an electric car, but that's not possible when you're not the owner of the spot where you park your car. Instead I'll probably get a hybrid of some sort, but it feels like a cop-out when I absolutely could drive an electric car, based on my commute and even the 1,5-hour drive to visit my family. We need more charging infrastructure, especially for apartment dwellers.

lumberingjack 5y ago

Can't wait till everyone comes home from work and tries to plug in all of their batteries at the same time that's really going to work out well

WorldMaker 5y ago
There's plenty of excess capacity at night. The grid is provisioned for peak demand during the day which is dominated by heavy industrial usage that it will take a lot of cars to match at night even a fraction of the heavy industrial stuff the grid sees most working days. Some of the electric utility companies are very hopeful to see more of the "bathtub" filled (the chart of electric usage over an average day looks like it has a sharp "bathtub" at night) because there's efficiencies to gain as that happens (taking generators offline during the bathtub and then bringing them back online in the mornings takes a bunch more effort than just leaving them running).

rasputnik6502 5y ago

First reality check?

vannevar 5y ago

Note that the survey included owners who purchased between 2012 and 2018. The article doesn't specify, but it's possible that the 20% who switched were weighted towards early adopters who purchased in the first few years of the survey window. It would be interesting to see whether that switch-back rate is declining over time, and whether the decline is accelerating. I would bet yes on both.