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I bought a used 2013 Fiat 500e last year for $8k. It's perfect for my wife's commute (50mi roundtrip; comes home with 20% remaining charge). We plug it into hou

I bought a used 2013 Fiat 500e last year for $8k. It's perfect for my wife's commute (50mi roundtrip; comes home with 20% remaining charge). We plug it into household 120v overnight. It drives like a zippy little gocart. It wouldn't be ideal for a one-car family, but as a commuter it's better and cheaper.

fbdab103 4y ago
My own insecurities, but 20% remaining daily would definitely have me on a bit of an edge. Is it a smoothly linear battery consumption, or is it possible to drop from 16% to 4%, seemingly at random? Using an overly simplistic 80% used for 50 files would imply .63 miles per battery percentage. Meaning she only has slack of 12.5 miles to empty the tank. Which is less concerning when you can rely on ubiquitous gas stations.
- brewdad 4y ago
  You never let your ICE car get below a quarter tank? This is even easier to deal with than the ICE scenario where you find yourself low and still have to get yourself to the gas station. OP finds themselves low as they pull into their driveway/filling station.
  - fbdab103 4y ago
    A quarter tank of fuel leaves me with >80 miles of range remaining. That enables nearly any impromptu trip I am likely to engage, along with the ability to refill basically anywhere. Rolling the dice with ~13 miles available on a daily basis would make me uneasy. What if there is an accident that re-routes traffic? Some kind of hazard that has me stuck for hours? What if I want to go to the mall after work? I want EVs to work, and my next car is quite likely to be one, but limited locations for quick re-fueling are a real concern of mine.
    - underdeserver 4y ago
      We're talking about: 1) A 10-year-old car 2) From a time when batteries were much worse than today 3) With low original range 4) Not including the extra 10-20 miles or so that most car makers add to the "0" point, similar to how a gas tank isn't quite empty when the display says it is. I'm guessing OP bought it for relatively cheap and is saving $20-$30 a day running it like that. That's worth the taxi / tow / calling your spouse, when you get stuck twice a year.
      - stickfigure 4y ago
        Exactly. Also, while we've never needed to, you can stop at a charger and top-up. It's a small battery, it doesn't take long.
        peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > you can stop at a charger and top-up. It's a small battery, it doesn't take long the problem is scaling. gas takes on average less than a minute per car to top up the tank (gas pump emits ~0.5 liters per second, my car tank capacity is less than 30 liters), if a battery charge requires say 15 minutes (I actually don't know the real number, but I have a feeling that it's usually more than that) that's 15 times longer waiting times and 15 times less capacity per station. Or more stops.
        stickfigure 4y ago
        We don't use the Fiat for road trips, but we often caravan with friends with Teslas. Every couple hours they stop at a supercharger station for 15 minutes. It's really not that bad; we stop as often just to keep our kiddo sane. The stations usually have interesting services next door. Supercharger stations usually have dozens of spots; gas stations typically have maybe ten? An EV station just needs one parking spot per car, so they are much more space efficient than gas stations. The only real constraint is electrical infrastructure. BTW it averages much more than 1m per car for fueling. Person gets out of the car, fishes around in their purse for the credit card, fiddles with the cryptic instructions on the pump, walks into store to piss and buy junk food... if you've had to wait at a busy station, you'd be acutely aware of just how long fueling actually takes. Humans are slow.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > You never let your ICE car get below a quarter tank? A quarter tank for me is about 160-170kms. Also consider that the tank in my car is very small, but the car is small too so I make ~70-80kms on reserve alone.
  - sundvor 4y ago
    Yep. I had range anxiety far, far more often with my old petrol car than I have with my new electric. I've set my charge threshold to 70% now - so that's what I start with every single day -representing about 400km. I'd have over 400km of range only with a relatively freshly filled car before. And from there it's easy enough to put off refiling until you absolutely HAVE to have more fuel.
- ip26 4y ago
  It's extremely linear, modulo speed. It is possible to project your arrival state of charge within 1-2% even for a destination two hours away across significant topography.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > It's extremely linear, modulo speed. On flat land. Throw in hills and the number of projected range miles used by every real mile goes up very quickly. I don't remember the specific numbers anymore, but we had two Fiat 500e cars and commuting over a mountain drained a lot of projected miles even though the climb was just a few miles.
    - martijnvds 4y ago
      You regain a bunch of miles on the way down though, through gravity and regenerative braking.
      - jjav 4y ago
        Unfortunately, very little. I went back to look for my notes on this and this is what I experienced: The Fiat would use up about 30-40 miles of indicated range to go uphill less than 10 miles. But it would only regenerate 2-3 miles (of indicated range) on the downhill side.
        djaychela 4y ago
        Not my experience in my Zoe. You get nearly all of it back on the long climb and then descent which I often used to do before I moved.
    - Yizahi 4y ago
      And weather. My colleague has a Leaf, his range is cut by a 30-40% in winter, and he is saving on the heating too to save range, so it is double uncomfortable.
      - 4y ago
- pornel 4y ago
  EV batteries are very reliable at showing state of charge. Even if it says it has 1%, you can rely on having that whole 1% left. In a cellphone you have just one cell, and the phone turned on can be pulling near its maximum power draw, so it's unstable and unpredictable. In a BEV you have thousands of cells, so differences between individual cells average out, and you don't draw peak power unless you're racing (and the car is smart enough to not let you smoke tires at 1% battery).
Yizahi 4y ago
The key point is "we plug it into household overnight". So basically impossible for anyone living in the apartments (most of the Europe at minimum). At least in the next decade, looking at electrification rates.
- stickfigure 4y ago
  To extrapolate that train of thought - if you live in an apartment in a European-style urban neighborhood, why own a car at all?
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    No. I own a car and I live in the apartment. Car is parked on the underground parking or can be parked around the building on the street spots. None of those are wired for charging and it would be incredibly expensive to do it now (I've also seen several new building in process of being build, just this winter, and there were no charging stations in the parkings too). So my closest charging option is a station 25 minutes away from me (on bus). And that station has 10 posts, while in the surrounding area live maybe 50000 people, or so. Not very time friendly. Also because of the charging time it means that there is even no point to leave car at the station and take a bus home, because by the time I will get there I would need to go back immediately (25+25 minutes=50 min, and charging is about an hour or two). Also price. People charging at home use a cheap electricity, while station charges really high prices. In the EU city I'm right now, the difference is x4.5 times. So while me and a rich guy in a private house are paying the same price for the petrol now, tomorrow when we both have EVs I will be literally subsidizing him indirectly, by forced to use much more expensive public charging. I really want to own EV since early Tesla years, and often check news about the progress in this industry, but really don't see how can I do it.
pwinnski 4y ago
I have a 2017 Fiat 500e, and it's fantastic. What a great car!

fbdab103 4y ago

My own insecurities, but 20% remaining daily would definitely have me on a bit of an edge. Is it a smoothly linear battery consumption, or is it possible to drop from 16% to 4%, seemingly at random? Using an overly simplistic 80% used for 50 files would imply .63 miles per battery percentage. Meaning she only has slack of 12.5 miles to empty the tank. Which is less concerning when you can rely on ubiquitous gas stations.

brewdad 4y ago
You never let your ICE car get below a quarter tank? This is even easier to deal with than the ICE scenario where you find yourself low and still have to get yourself to the gas station. OP finds themselves low as they pull into their driveway/filling station.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  A quarter tank of fuel leaves me with >80 miles of range remaining. That enables nearly any impromptu trip I am likely to engage, along with the ability to refill basically anywhere. Rolling the dice with ~13 miles available on a daily basis would make me uneasy. What if there is an accident that re-routes traffic? Some kind of hazard that has me stuck for hours? What if I want to go to the mall after work? I want EVs to work, and my next car is quite likely to be one, but limited locations for quick re-fueling are a real concern of mine.
  - underdeserver 4y ago
    We're talking about: 1) A 10-year-old car 2) From a time when batteries were much worse than today 3) With low original range 4) Not including the extra 10-20 miles or so that most car makers add to the "0" point, similar to how a gas tank isn't quite empty when the display says it is. I'm guessing OP bought it for relatively cheap and is saving $20-$30 a day running it like that. That's worth the taxi / tow / calling your spouse, when you get stuck twice a year.
    - stickfigure 4y ago
      Exactly. Also, while we've never needed to, you can stop at a charger and top-up. It's a small battery, it doesn't take long.
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > you can stop at a charger and top-up. It's a small battery, it doesn't take long the problem is scaling. gas takes on average less than a minute per car to top up the tank (gas pump emits ~0.5 liters per second, my car tank capacity is less than 30 liters), if a battery charge requires say 15 minutes (I actually don't know the real number, but I have a feeling that it's usually more than that) that's 15 times longer waiting times and 15 times less capacity per station. Or more stops.
        stickfigure 4y ago
        We don't use the Fiat for road trips, but we often caravan with friends with Teslas. Every couple hours they stop at a supercharger station for 15 minutes. It's really not that bad; we stop as often just to keep our kiddo sane. The stations usually have interesting services next door. Supercharger stations usually have dozens of spots; gas stations typically have maybe ten? An EV station just needs one parking spot per car, so they are much more space efficient than gas stations. The only real constraint is electrical infrastructure. BTW it averages much more than 1m per car for fueling. Person gets out of the car, fishes around in their purse for the credit card, fiddles with the cryptic instructions on the pump, walks into store to piss and buy junk food... if you've had to wait at a busy station, you'd be acutely aware of just how long fueling actually takes. Humans are slow.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > You never let your ICE car get below a quarter tank? A quarter tank for me is about 160-170kms. Also consider that the tank in my car is very small, but the car is small too so I make ~70-80kms on reserve alone.
- sundvor 4y ago
  Yep. I had range anxiety far, far more often with my old petrol car than I have with my new electric. I've set my charge threshold to 70% now - so that's what I start with every single day -representing about 400km. I'd have over 400km of range only with a relatively freshly filled car before. And from there it's easy enough to put off refiling until you absolutely HAVE to have more fuel.
ip26 4y ago
It's extremely linear, modulo speed. It is possible to project your arrival state of charge within 1-2% even for a destination two hours away across significant topography.
- jjav 4y ago
  > It's extremely linear, modulo speed. On flat land. Throw in hills and the number of projected range miles used by every real mile goes up very quickly. I don't remember the specific numbers anymore, but we had two Fiat 500e cars and commuting over a mountain drained a lot of projected miles even though the climb was just a few miles.
  - martijnvds 4y ago
    You regain a bunch of miles on the way down though, through gravity and regenerative braking.
    - jjav 4y ago
      Unfortunately, very little. I went back to look for my notes on this and this is what I experienced: The Fiat would use up about 30-40 miles of indicated range to go uphill less than 10 miles. But it would only regenerate 2-3 miles (of indicated range) on the downhill side.
      - djaychela 4y ago
        Not my experience in my Zoe. You get nearly all of it back on the long climb and then descent which I often used to do before I moved.
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    And weather. My colleague has a Leaf, his range is cut by a 30-40% in winter, and he is saving on the heating too to save range, so it is double uncomfortable.
    - 4y ago
pornel 4y ago
EV batteries are very reliable at showing state of charge. Even if it says it has 1%, you can rely on having that whole 1% left. In a cellphone you have just one cell, and the phone turned on can be pulling near its maximum power draw, so it's unstable and unpredictable. In a BEV you have thousands of cells, so differences between individual cells average out, and you don't draw peak power unless you're racing (and the car is smart enough to not let you smoke tires at 1% battery).

Yizahi 4y ago

The key point is "we plug it into household overnight". So basically impossible for anyone living in the apartments (most of the Europe at minimum). At least in the next decade, looking at electrification rates.

stickfigure 4y ago
To extrapolate that train of thought - if you live in an apartment in a European-style urban neighborhood, why own a car at all?
- Yizahi 4y ago
  No. I own a car and I live in the apartment. Car is parked on the underground parking or can be parked around the building on the street spots. None of those are wired for charging and it would be incredibly expensive to do it now (I've also seen several new building in process of being build, just this winter, and there were no charging stations in the parkings too). So my closest charging option is a station 25 minutes away from me (on bus). And that station has 10 posts, while in the surrounding area live maybe 50000 people, or so. Not very time friendly. Also because of the charging time it means that there is even no point to leave car at the station and take a bus home, because by the time I will get there I would need to go back immediately (25+25 minutes=50 min, and charging is about an hour or two). Also price. People charging at home use a cheap electricity, while station charges really high prices. In the EU city I'm right now, the difference is x4.5 times. So while me and a rich guy in a private house are paying the same price for the petrol now, tomorrow when we both have EVs I will be literally subsidizing him indirectly, by forced to use much more expensive public charging. I really want to own EV since early Tesla years, and often check news about the progress in this industry, but really don't see how can I do it.

pwinnski 4y ago

I have a 2017 Fiat 500e, and it's fantastic. What a great car!