All electric vehicles?
I guess electrically powered vehicles are coming but seems to me they are presently only a rich person's toy with present technology. By that I mean, they're only good for around town and short trips ...
Forum Discussion
RoyJ wrote:
Something to think about - utilities may have incentives for EVs now, because there's little demand, and the benefits are clear. In the 20's / 30's, fossil fuel use was also highly encouraged over animal power. The problems didn't come till everyone switched over.
In my province, we're lucky to have (near) 100% hydro "clean" power; generation capacity is also not a issue. What is an issue, however, is the distribution grid and substations.
We have a lot of aging stations, and seriously aging underground grid. Some neighborhoods are maxed out in terms of power density (how many circuits we can run down a street). Couple that with a mass influx of population, I doubt we could keep up even if 50% of families goes EV.
In theory, everyone charges over-night. But in practice, a lot of people needs to get somewhere after work, and will likely plug in their cars during peak demand.
All true. But it won’t happen overnight. Lots of time to modernize. The average EV uses 8 KWh per day. Utilities compare it to everyone switching to electric water heaters as apparently that’s what the average water heater uses every day. Obviously some more and some less. We average close to about 4 to 8 kWh per day over both vehicles but our commute is shorter than some. We average around 6 km per kWh (seasonal average, less in summer and winter, more in spring and fall.
