5 ms·
Even if EVs are a smaller proportion of the vehciles on CA roads, this makes sense to me. A gas nozzle is used for a minute or two before a vehicle is refuled,
by docdeek 2y ago
Even if EVs are a smaller proportion of the vehciles on CA roads, this makes sense to me. A gas nozzle is used for a minute or two before a vehicle is refuled, while a charging station is likely at least 10 times longer per vehicle. If cars are spending longer to top up their batteries, you’ll need far more stations than gas pumps.
- thrtythreeforty 2y agoThe equivalent wattage of a gas pump is something like 1-2 megawatts, based on energy transfer per time. (Internalizing this fact is important for understanding why gasoline is hard to displace!)
- faitswulff 2y agoIt’s wild that Chinese automakers are getting to equivalent charging rates.
- sbelskie 2y agoBy this do you mean that Chinese automakers are getting close to a charging rate that would be equivalent to the time it takes to pump gasoline for the equivalent energy? If so, do you have any sources on that?
- badlibrarian 2y agohttps://insideevs.com/news/755163/chinese-evs-1-megawatt-chargers/ https://insideevs.com/news/755163/chinese-evs-1-megawatt-cha...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rafram 2y agoI just don’t buy this argument as a reason people don’t want EVs. The primary benefit of an EV is that you ~never need to stop and “refuel” it unless you’re making a long road trip. You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit, and always have a full battery in the morning. When you do need to stop on a road trip, you can use fast charging, which is ~250 kW, so somewhere around a quarter of the gas pump’s “wattage.” You’ll probably want to use the bathroom/buy a drink anyway, so charging taking four-ish times as long as pumping isn’t really a big deal.
- alephnerd 2y ago> You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit Lots of people rent, and might not have a parking space with charging available. That said, battery and charging technology is evolving, so it might be a solved problem 10 years from now - especially as Toyota and Idemetsu Kosan are on track for mass producing Solid State EV batteries by 2028 [0] [0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japans-idemitsu-build-lithium-sulphide-plant-help-support-toyotas-ev-plans-2025-02-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japans-idemitsu-buil...
- rafram 2y agoYeah, of course. I’m a renter, I understand. Some states [1] have laws allowing tenants to install chargers, although obviously not all renters have designated parking spaces. Where I live (NYC), most people rent and the idea of a “tenant parking space” is fairly foreign, but there are a decent number of EV chargers on the street in my neighborhood, so people make it work. [1]: https://americanlandlord.com/california-landlord-tenant-laws/california-landlord-must-allow-electric-vehicle-charging-station/ https://americanlandlord.com/california-landlord-tenant-laws...
- dylanmulvaney 2y ago[flagged]
- hartator 2y ago> unless you’re making a long road trip Yes, but that’s enough to really make road tripping on an EV a chore.
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoI don’t want an EV because it’s too freaking expensive. That’s basically the only reason at this point.
- tzs 2y agoIn the US if you buy before the tax credits go away you can get a Chevy Equinox EV for around $27500.
- abetusk 2y agoTo further expand on this with some back-of-the-envelope calculation, I've heard EVs are on the order of 30-40 kWh. Say the power storage of the gas tank in an ICE car and the battery storage of an EV are commensurate. Conservatively, say refueling your ICE car takes about 1 min, so 30,000 Wh / ((1/60)h) ~ 1.8 MW.
- vel0city 2y ago40kWh is a pretty small EV battery. Many are more like 70-90kWh.
- Calwestjobs 2y agofor home charging, figures are exact opposite - when i come home it "costs me" 3 seconds to plug it in, then i do literally literally nothing ( or something else rather), then it "costs me" another 3 seconds to unplug it in morning, so for 100kwh it is essentially 6 seconds. so electric car wastes 1/10 of my time compared to gasoline one. im good mathematician, but i like engineering more, because it has to take into account external factors, not "just" numbers. (intentionally not calculating travel time to and from gas station, queue, noise, smell of a gas station etc )
- abetusk 2y agoThe way you've described it, charging at your home takes 8+ hours. You can do other tasks in parallel, so the effective cost to you is 6 seconds but that doesn't change how long it takes to charge your vehicle. There are many use cases where charging at home is not an option, in which case understanding charging time becomes an important factor. I like mathematics and engineering, which is why I like to understand basic facts to better address an issue rather than contort facts to dismiss an issue.
- Calwestjobs 2y agoyou phone literally knows when you're going to sleep, when on toilet, what cake did you have on your birthday. so you can ask it to tell you exact trips you took, and you can calculate when and how you can charge and for how long, from that data.
- wopwops 2y ago"EVs convert over 77% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 12%–30% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels." https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml EV charging doesn't need to deliver anywhere near the amount of energy contained in gas to displace gas.
- coderenegade 2y agoThe ~2MW value is after taking that into account.
- cudgy 2y agoDoes this calculation account for the 10-20% electrical energy loss during transmission across the grid?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y agoProbably if you wanted to do that you would also need to calculate the energy loss of transporting the gas to the pump as well
- actionfromafar 2y agoAnd losses during burning of the gas.
- pfdietz 2y agoThe fraction of energy lost in the grid in the US is around 6%.
- zamalek 2y agoThings look even more dire for gas when you consider the entire supply chain. Remember that you burn gas as terrible efficiency to transport it to gas station.
- 2y ago
- Y-bar 2y agoOn the other hand, a significant number of trips will begin their trip with a full "tank" (battery) and will therefore not even need to stop to refill. The median distance travelled on long-distance trips is less than 200 miles in the US, which is clearly within the limit of a normal BEV battery. https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-household-travel-survey-long-distance-travel-quick-facts https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-ho...
- dingnuts 2y agoThe GP's point about the energy density of gasoline and how quickly it can be transferred is not refuted by this irrelevant statistic; indeed, reading the same statistic with a pessimistic interpretation makes my point: if the median trip distance is 200 miles, about half of trips are longer than an EV battery charge, requiring a long refuel stop. Half is a lot of trips to give up by switching to an EV!
- Y-bar 2y ago> how quickly it can be transferred is not refuted by this irrelevant statistic Of course it is refuted. No need to transfer is without a doubt faster than a transfer taking a few minutes. > if the median trip distance is 200 miles half of trips are longer than an EV battery charge The median LONG distance trip. The trip which only happens a few times per yer. That trip. There are about 2.6 billion long distance trips, and 411 billion daily trips. So this means that just over 0.5% of all trips in a year is a long-distance trip, and therefore significantly less than half of those again can be completed without a refill. 0.25% of 365 = 0.9125 So one, probably two, long distance trips in USA per year on average need a refill on the way, when adjusted for all trips in the nation. In what world is that a lot?
- vel0city 2y ago> if the median trip distance is 200 miles, This is a figure not based on reality. The normal commuter car does not have a median trip distance of 200mi. More like 20mi, if even that. How many people do you know have a 200 mile daily commute? Who normally drives 200mi to go get groceries? Absolute insanity. For most people I know their median car trip is probably <15mi. Mine is probably like 10.
- occz 2y agoDoes that figure account for the wildly inefficient nature of internal combustion engines?
- out_of_protocol 2y ago> BYD will soon start deploying its 1000 kW ultrafast charging stations in China. The first batch of 500 chargers will begin operating in early April > ZEEKR unveiled a 1.2 Megawatt EV charger So it's possible. Hard to do though, 1-10MW of available capacity is hard to come by, infrastructure is not ready. Well, gas station infrastructure was built over more than a century of gas domination
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoI’d be pleased if I could refuel in a minute or two. It feels more like ten to fifteen by the time I queue for the pump and queue to pay.
- Calwestjobs 2y agoyeah and most electric cars can pay for you automatically, without you doing anything, so no need to worry that someone sneezes on your back while in queue.
- mystifyingpoi 2y agoProbably depends a lot on the time of day and location. 19 out of 20 times when I refuel on my way to work, there is a free station and a empty queue to pay in cash, as I always do. Takes 3 minutes total.
- vel0city 2y agoNo way it takes three minutes total. It takes about that much time just to pump 15gal of gas in an average flow pump. You also need to park, walk into the store, talk to the person, walk out of the store, etc. Five minutes would be really fast. You should actually time it. I pay at the pump with tap to pay which doesn't even require me to enter my zip or a pin, and I'm still almost 10 minutes overall for a stop to get gas. And I didn't even walk into the shop! You'll need to add a bit of time to include pulling out of traffic as well, as chances are in the EV you wouldn't have even needed to make the stop in the first place.
- mystifyingpoi 2y agoOk, fine, I exagerrated a bit, but actually I'm gonna time myself next time, I'm curious, thanks for the tip. And also yeah, with EVs there is no need to stop at all if you charge at home, that matters.
- Retric 2y agoAt home charging complicates the issue, and you don’t need a level 2 charger at home here. ~10 hours per day from a wall outlet and 3miles/kWh ~= 15k miles per year which is all most people drive.
- meltyness 2y agoI feel like someone really smart who wasn't lazy could get up and figure out an expected load factor weather-adjusted range using an Erlang distribution and apply your charging time hypothesis to see if parity is over or under stasis for the current proportion of EVs.
- goalieca 2y agoIt seems to be 10x for 80% and 20x for 100% while 100% gives 50% of the range of a gas vehicle for a full-speed level 3 charger. Level 2 chargers are another order of magnitude slower (say 8 hours). I I would like to see the wattage over time for gas to compare with. The article >The commission estimates that more than 162,000 chargers are Level 2, which can provide roughly 14 to 35 miles of range per hour of charging, and nearly 17,000 are considered fast chargers
- Retric 2y agoA 13 gallon tank at 30MPG is 390 miles. Most EV’s are well past half that, Lucid Air Grand Touring breaks 500 miles for example.
- occz 2y agoMost EV charging happens at home, not at charging stations. Charging stations are the exceptions when recharging EVs.
- threetonesun 2y agoI'd be curious to see numbers on this. Currently I believe you, although as EV adoption expands and EVs get cheaper I'd expect to see more people who can't charge at home buy them and charge at work/stores. Also I don't have an EV, but if I did charge it equivalently to how I use my gas powered car, 1 trip to where I needed to recharge outside of the house would likely be equivalent to about 80 days of home charging.
- floxy 2y agoMaybe I'm not understanding your point, but here is my math. 80 days * 24 hour/day * 1.4 kW (L1 charging / 12A @ 120V) = 2688 kwh of electrical energy. If your EV has an efficiency of 3.5 miles/kWh, that 2688 kWh would let you drive 9,400 miles. Of course, if you had a 240V @ 40A L2 charger at home, that would be 18,400 kWh, or 64,500 miles (@ 3.5 miles/kWh).
- seb1204 2y agoI think this is currently right but a view heavily based on freestanding houses with garage or carport that can charge there. The whole apartment or city charging is still developing. At least in Australia.
- occz 2y agoI agree, but these are broadly the categories of people most in need of cars. The density provided by apartments often affords less inefficient modes of transport, like transit. In many places in the world, this ideal falls short however, and hence a push for installing EV chargers in apartment garages is also needed.
- vel0city 2y agoBut I need to stop and use a gas nozzle every other week or so, meanwhile I use a public charger maybe once a quarter if even that. I spend way more time waiting on a gas pump than I do waiting on a public EV charger, and I do way more miles on my EV.
- Calwestjobs 2y agoExactly! I am always confused when i see electric car review and reviewer says "you have nice big front trunk to store your charging cables." My cables are hanging on wall of my garage darling! Why the heck do i need to transport them ? XD
- cudgy 2y agoSo you don’t have to buy a new set of cables when you forget to bring them on a long trip?
- vel0city 2y agoI have the cables that came with the car and I have a different EVSE on my wall, but otherwise I've never had to buy cables. Some places in the world expect you to bring your own cable to use the charger, but in the US public chargers have cables. That said, I do keep the included charging cable in it's special spot under the trunk area. I've used it once out on the go, but wasn't really needed.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoThey're only counting "publicly accessible" EV charging stations. There are probably 10X as many EV charging stations that aren't publicly accessible, aka in somebody's garage. Or millions of times more EV charging stations if you consider that a standard 120V outlet is capable of charging a car.
- yencabulator 2y agoAlso, nobody is crazy enough to argue that office parking buildings should have gas stations in them, and a charger is not an environmental hazard needing to have the whole lot excavated later, with the dirt taken out somewhere out of sight.