rk911 wrote:
John & Angela wrote:
rk911 wrote:
well, when I can run 400-miles on a full charge and re-charge in the time it now takes to fill my tank i'll consider electric. till then I'm happy with what we have.
I think that is a criteria shared by many. We have family members who literally need to do exactly that in the course of their jobs. But at some point it will a matter of budget for some. Spending 250 bucks a month on gas looks expensive when you can do the same on 40 bucks worth of power. And of course that depends on how much the power costs and the gas costs where you are.
my buddy was looking at a Tesla...ultimately changed his mind...but he was telling me that Tesla maintains lots of free/semi-free charging stations but to install one at his home so a depleted battery would re-charge in an hour or two was gonna be big, big bucks. overnight charging was not so bad but he has two special needs kids and needs his vehicle up and ready to go 24/7. looking forward to the Tesla he began planning a trip and discovered he had to plan based upon where he could re-charge and not where he wanted to go. as these cars become more popular the freebie re-charging stations will disappear and the cost to re-charge will start heading north. and with the push by the greenies to shut down nuclear and fossil fuel power generating stations from where is the power to re-charge all of these vehicles going to originate??? and what do we do with all of the batteries at the end of their life? nice idea but it's got a long way to go before it's practical for the American way of life.
Well, I certainly don't have all the answers but I can share a few things that come with being an EV only family.
So yah. We installed a 450 dollar EVSE (charge station) in our garage that takes about 4 hours to charge our car. We also had to pay 250 to have an electrician install a stove plug in the garage. We charge two or three times a week depending on how far we go etc. But as far as where the power comes from, keep in mind that the average north american EV uses the equivalent of about an electric water heater per year, so really not that much additional load. BC hydro estimates that if tomorrow morning every vehicle in BC was to magically turn into an electric vehicle the total grid requirement would go up 19 percent...well within the reserve of our grid.
Batteries at the end of their life of course would be 100 percent recycled just like car batteries are now. That could be awhile though. After 12 years if you have lost a third of the capacity of the battery (the way it looks right now) the battery will almost certainly find a new home as grid or micro grid storage. This market already exists and at this point other than test facilities the industry in general feels the need for large scale recycling of batteries won't even be a need for 25 to 30 years. Time will tell.
And yes, we have had to make changes from the way we did things when we were driving gas and diesel cars. Mostly only when we travel on longer out of town trips which for us is not very much. And yes there are some places we can simply not travel to.... but then again we didn't go to those places before either so again it hasn't affected us. We are still working so we are commuters. If we were retired I think an electric vehicle might cramp our style a bit and curb our wander lust some. I suspect by the time we retire in 5 years the charging infrastructure will be good enough where it wont't be an issue. It is growing pretty rapidly. It is considerably better in Europe though...generally speaking.
Yes. EV's are not a pancea...yet. :)
Here is a pictures of a typical EV household garage (ours). The EVSE on the left is plugged into a 15 amp 120 socket. It is a slow all day all night charge process, but its free and comes with the car. The one on the right is plugged into a 50 amp NEMA 50 stove plug (yes exactly the same as 50 RV plug. It can charge at a maximum of 10 KW but the charger in my car is only 6.8 KW. Teslas are 9 KW.
To have the speed of a commercial charging station in a house you would need 208 volt three phase power and a 15000 dollar charge station that does the AC to DC conversion outside of the car. The car then charges with DC not AC and at a rate of anywhere from 50 to 125 KW. Apparently the new generation is north of 150 KW although neither of our cars could utilize that speed. I know of no one who has done this though. Most people would never need this. Charge while you sleep works good. If you need a quick charge just go to a commercial charging station. It'll look like this if you are a non tesla owner
And like this if you are a Tesla owner.
