I want to talk about Tesla the product rather than Elon. It’s a luxury status item, similar to other expensive cars (think BMW, Mercedes and Acura.) Like those brands, there’s an “entry-level” vehicle (the Model 3), but the base sticker price for that car is $40K.
Yet, even though Teslas cost $40K and up, the range of even the best one is similar to the range of any vehicle on the road on one tank of gas. Once the “tank” is empty, then filling up your Tesla (or any other electric vehicle) is a far, far bigger hassle than filling up a tank of gas. A gas fill is usually a five minute task, easily accomplished at gas stations everywhere. Charging an electric vehicle is a logistical exercise, requiring locating a working charger and then, depending on the charger and the amount of charge required, waiting 30-60 minutes. This is true even with the rapid charging capabilities of the Tesla or other electric vehicle manufacturers. There are also other issues, such as poor lithium battery performance in cold weather, manufacturers recommending keeping the vehicle at 80% charge, and the double whammy of poor mileage from snow tires combined with bad battery life in cold weather.
Realistically, when you buy a Tesla, you’re buying a vehicle best suited for commuting and driving around town. Every night you can plug it in at your home, and in the morning you have a fully “fueled” vehicle.
Around here, the commuter car role for a lot of suburban couples with kids is definitely not a Tesla — it’s usually a relatively inexpensive, relatively small car like a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla. The adult with the longest commute gets that, and the other adult gets the family truckster, usually a minivan or a larger SUV.
This family is generally not interested in a $40K+ commuter vehicle. But, they might be interested in a $17K electric commuter vehicle, if one existed. Well, starting this year, it’s possible to get a decent electric commuter for $17K, after tax credits — the Chevy Bolt. The Bolt starts at $26K. If you have an adjusted gross income of $225K or less as head of household, and the car has a MSRP of less that $55K, you’re eligible for a $7,500 tax credit. In a number of states (including Colorado and New York), you’re also eligible for an $2,000 state tax credit. After that $9,500 tax break, your net cost is around $17K. Here’s a video showing the car and explaining the tax credit.
The Bolt is a decent EV. It has a range around 250 miles, a big electronics screen to show Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, and a bare-bones but acceptable interior. It is fine as a commuter and weekend errand-runner. Of course you can get a nicer car, but I think this is the kind of vehicle that, combined with the tax credit, will push people over the edge into an EV as a second car. This is the niche that makes sense for EVs as the technology stands today — a practical, affordable vehicle, not a status item.
Baud
I’ve been on the wait-list, but it’s hard to get. Note that this is the last year they’re making the Bolt. I’m not sure what new model GM will have to replace it.
bbleh
Not … not a status item?! But, but … what are cars for? How else will I overcome my feelings of inadequacy, which are fed every day by a constant barrage of lifestyle advertising? Not to mention the new car those full-of-themselves neighbors just down the street just got.
Omg, omg. I need to go truck shopping. For a big truck.
randy khan)
I think that we’ll see more commuter and regular family car TVs as GM’s new battery platform is rolled out across all its product lines. (And I understand that the GM technology is pretty impressive, among other things squeezing an extra 10% of mileage out of a charge.)
West of the Cascades
It probably goes without saying, but Tesla is also screwed because its CEO is actively pissing off and driving away the consumers who make up very small niche market that would be attracted to its products. I’m going to buy an EV sometime in the next few years, but I would not buy a Tesla if it was the last EV brand on the market, which of course it is not.
cleek
Average new car price in the US is $48000.
On the contrary, I plug it in at home once a week.
sdhays
@cleek: He’s talking about road trips where you aren’t charging at home overnight.
Shawnb
@cleek: yes +1 to this, this completely misses the point.
mix clearly has no first hand EV experience.
Locating chargers is a hassle off the main highways but the rest of these arguments are thin. Charging at home is wildly superior to dealing with gas stations, and my experience with charging on trips is that it’s actually pleasant to stop regularly and not have to wait with the car. We have kids and they take longer to recharge than the car, every time.
Momentary
Here are some things I am curious about so am jumping on the thread in case more knowledgeable folks reply. I’m a small rural farmer in Wales driving a diesel Hilux and presuming its eventual replacement will be either electric or hydrogen, some years from now.
Regarding the battery charging time problem/limit, is it possible that a better solution is batteries that are highly standardized and quickly swappable, so instead of pulling into a station to charge you would pull in to swap your drained battery for a charged one, kind of like swapping propane canisters?
What about hydrogen? I understand a general barrier to hydrogen adoption is that the natural gas pipe networks are not fit for purpose for hydrogen, but it seems like that’s much less of a problem for fuel tanks. How do the challenges of hydrogen stack up against the challenges of batteries for a car or a pickup truck?
For a vehicle with a big battery in it, it seems like a major benefit is incorporating that into your home electrical system as storage, rather than buying a big standalone battery to go with your solar panels etc. That seems to be the main appeal for people I talk to. Not sure that applies in suburbia though?
VOR
@West of the Cascades: Ditto. I strongly considered the Tesla Model Y in my last car purchase. I’m targeting late 2024 for my next car purchase and would love to buy an EV. But I’ve taken Tesla off my shopping list after seeing the CEO’s poor decision making abilities.
cleek
@Momentary:
the Chinese have cars that allow you to swap batteries. they have relatively short ranges because the battery packs have to be small enough to be removed and replaced easily.
hydrogen has one huge problem: it takes energy to make it and then to deliver it, before it gets used to generate electricity to drive your car. and it’s far more efficient to just use that energy to charge a battery in your car. it’s a similar situation with fossil fuels – it would be far more energy efficient to just burn crude oil in power plants and use that electricity to charge EV batteries than it is to turn that oil into gasoline, then put it in energy-inefficient cars (ignoring the pollution from burning crude oil).
NotMax
First, $40k is now the average price of U.S. car sales.
EVs are a maturing industry. From a purely bean counting standpoint one can understand the current emphasis on luxury inventory to recoup some of the costs of R&D and retooling, Personally I find it short-sighted in not directing such energies to the entire line of product; entrenching the concept that EV automatically equates to high end.
Shall once more give a mention to the potential for a $23k (after incentives) Fisker. Note that the higher end but still relatively affordable in-production models are already sold out.
Taking into account the premise of the post, so far as the current landscape, hybrids offer a viable alternative, especially for those millions in apartments or whose only option is to park on the street (i.e., cannot readily and/or conveniently plug in at home), Whether or not hybrids represent a transition phase or a long lasting market segment remains to be seen.
Full disclosure: domicile renter and owner of a recently acquired non-plug in hybrid.
Another Scott
Interesting timing. I was using the Chevy web page to look at a 23 Bolt EV (the car-like one, not the SUV-like one). With options and $995 destination charge it was $31.5k list. There supposedly are 4 similar ones (without the options I want) within 250 miles. The only dealer willing to give a price on the page wants $35.5k – without the options.
We don’t qualify for the tax break (and I have no problem with that).
People are still going to have to shop carefully if they want an EV this year. (Non-Tesla) Dealers know that they have hot items and are going to want you to pay dearly for them for a while, maybe more. Even if they are available…
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
dmsilev
@Momentary: I don’t think battery swapping will be practical; a lot of EVs are built with the battery pack as part of the structure of the car and to replace the battery you’d have to lift the chassis off the underlying frame. Certainly doable in a repair shop, but it’s not a five minute job…
MagdaInBlack
@sdhays: And those of us who live in condo’s with no way to charge at home, unless we string a big orange drop cord from our balcony to the parking area.
Also too, apartment complexes.
geg6
My commute one-way is 4 miles. On weekends, I might drive a couple dozen miles or so running errands and that would be on the high side. All my closest friends and relatives live within 10-15 miles or so of my house. This could be my primary vehicle and may very well be the next time I buy. Charging stations are scarce around here though, so it’s a good thing I won’t be buying any time soon.
dyspeptic
My son has been driving a Bolt for 18 months. He bought it used and paid 25K. He is delighted. It is small but these vehicles are much larger inside and so 4 – avg. 6’3″ 250 – adults fit comfortably. You need far less ‘car’ so some of these comparisons are not quite apple=orange.
Cameron
@cleek: There was an experiment back in the ’90s in California (I forget which university) in which they used solar power to generate hydrogen for vehicles via water electrolysis. I haven’t followed this much since then (naturally, since I don’t even have a driver’s license), but I did hear recently that there are some hydrogen cars on the road out west and they apparently get fabulous mileage.
Fake Irishman
@cleek:
This. It’s still a challenge to take an EV on a road trip through South Dakota, but for most Americans (not all) the vast majority of trips, even fairly long commutes of 30 miles one way are well within range of a standard EV that can plug and charge at home at night.
Ohio Mom
@MagdaInBlack:
“Big orange drop cord from our balconies.” Haha, I can hear the condo board’s emergency meeting being called to order.
Ironically, I am guessing that people like you could be considered a prime market for EVs — you live in a fairly densely populated area where most of your regular trips such as work, groceries, restaurants, miscellaneous errands and so forth, are well within in the range of a battery charge.
But as an apartment dweller, as you point out, you have no easy way to recharge. Somebody is going to have to think of a way to retrofit buildings like yours, technically and financially.
Stuart Frasier
@cleek: Yep. In the best case, hydrogen is merely very inefficient. It takes something like 3x the energy to go a mile in a fuel cell car compared to a BEV (assuming “green” hydrogen from electrolysis using renewable energy sources). In reality, most hydrogen fuel is steam reformed from natural gas and is just a form of green-washing fossil fuel. It’s also incredibly expensive.
The range issue is something of a red herring. Road trips are only a tiny portion of the miles most people cover. The cold weather performance is another. Over 85% of all new cars registered in Norway are all-electric now.
Tesla is screwed, but not because of anything inherent to electric cars. It’s because the rest of the auto-making world is rapidly catching up in production capacity, while bringing better build quality. And because Elmo is busy alienating his core customers.
Kirk Spencer
@Shawnb: i live in a rental with street or lot parking as my options. I don’t have half an hour to an hour of time to charge an ev, and I can’t charge at home or work. From what I’ve read I’m typical of the majority of urban dwellers, and evs are not yet right for rural life.
Please don’t dismiss the points because they don’t apply to you. I want an ev, the cost point argument is very valid, and the recharge issue is why the decision is still “no”.
caring & sensitive
Lat summer I bought a plug in hybrid. It has a 30 mile range on straight electric before switching to hybrid mode. I have spent about $20 in gas since I’ve owned it. Most trips are under 30 miles and I plug in every time I get home. When I am in hybrid mode it appears to be getting about 55 mpg. Considering that when I go on a road trip, which I expect to do this spring, I will not have any range anxiety, I think in the immediate future PHEV is the way to go.
cliosfanboy
One of my colleagues has a Bolt. He found a spot in the parking garage next to an existing electrical outlet. Fortunately there’s not a lot of competition for it. Yet.
Falling Diphthong
We have a Bolt. So long as you plan ahead to fully charge it, it is fine for both commuting and our routine trips that are 1.5 hours away (e.g. 3 hours round trip to take youngest to his college, and then plug it in again).
My husband took it on a 1200 mile trip each way, which required planning ahead with the charging station apps. He took our dogs, and would walk the dogs while charging.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Yuppers. ADMs (additional dealer mark-ups) are an ongoing and intransigent carbuncle on the market complexion. Until legislation alters the entire auto buying regimen (don’t hold your breath), dealerships hold the trump hand.
MagdaInBlack
@Kirk Spencer: Yup.
cliosfanboy
@caring & sensitive: I agree. It’s not the everyday driving that worries me, it’s the longer trips of 500 miles I make to visit friends or to very isolated areas. A PHEV would work best for me.
Another Scott
@Momentary: Swapping batteries is being done with some motorcycles, but, as mentioned, it’s not practical right now with current batteries because they take up too much volume and are too heavy and the car has to be designed around them.
Higher system voltages is coming and that’s the way to reduce the charging time. Power = Current x Voltage. Increase the voltage and you need less time for the same battery charge (Current x Time). KIA and some others have 700-800V systems. 1000-1200V systems are being worked on (they need cheap, reliable electronic switch devices. More development is needed to know that they will work for 10+ years in the harsh environment of a car and be cheap enough). Early adopters will pay a premium, but 10-20 years from now a 5-minute charge for a decent range should be possible.
Hydrogen affects the composition of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If too much leaks (and hydrogen is a tiny atom so some leakage is going to happen) it will make climate change worse even if less fossil fuel is burned. It’s still not clear if wide scale use of hydrogen is a good idea.
These are tough problems and the transition is going to be long and more difficult than many expect. It’s good that the US is finally getting serious on getting started.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
justawriter
Well it was 27 below with two feet of snow here right before Christmas so a full EV probably isn’t in my future. Throw in my very rural location and how I average a 500 mile trip about once a month and a 1000 mile trip once a year, I think a hybrid would be a more practical choice for me. Or I could just keep buying cheap little used cars that are old enough to buy beer.
Jager
We have had Chevy Volts since 2012, we are now on our 2nd one. The combined (gas and electric) mileage over the last 12 years has been 135 mpg. We have driven the Volt from LA to San Francisco, On the gas-only portions of the drive we averaged 35 mpg driving 75 mph. We wish Chevrolet had kept the Volt around a little longer, I think it was the perfect car for the gas to electric transition. My wife is the primary driver of the Volt, she knows all the electric car tricks. As for me, I enjoyed blowing away a kid in a Honda with a garbage can sized muffler in a stoplight drag race. Both our Volts have been excellent cars and we’ve had no problems with either one. My wife had a Mercedes before she got her first Volt, the only thing negative she had to say was her Mercedes had a much better leather interior. She hates the look of the Bolt. She has 91,000 miles on her Volt and is looking forward to the Mercedes electric C Class.
Baud
EVs and EV infrastructure will take years to roll out. I don’t think there’s any getting around the logistical challenges.
MagdaInBlack
@Ohio Mom: I am sure the charging infrastructure will eventually catch up, but until then, straight EV is not an option.
I realize there were not always gas stations on every corner; that too had to catch up with the vehicle technology. And it will, in time
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Do the jackals think increasing EV prices in the short to medium term will be a barrier to entry for mass adoption?
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Higher prices usually indicate high demand.
Ten Bears
We ordered an eMini early September with the promise of a three month wait, which I didn’t think was realistic. Day or two ago Donna got grumpy about it and told me to cancel the order, and when I called the dealer, they miraculously found one almost like available in New Jersey, which supposedly is to be delivered sometime in the next week. We shall see.
I am actually, having installed the 50 amp circuit, making final comparisons for a level two charger purchase. My issue is the fifty-foot driveway. There may just be a red cord laying alongside the house.
Rest areas would be great places to charge …
azlib
As the EV market matures, Tesla will be bought by one of the big players. Tesla just does not have the capacity or the size to survive as an independent car manufacturer.
cleek
@Cameron:
if they’re using solar to produce electricity to split water into H and O2, it’s still more efficient to just use that electricity directly in an EV battery. i know people are working on trying to find ways to do that split directly (without needing electricity), but AFAIK , there’s nothing outside of small-scale lab results so far.
if someone finds a way to do direct electrolysis on a large scale, that will be a game changer, though.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Aside:
On The John Laroquette Show in the 90s he won an electric car in a raffle (a THINK, if memory serves) which charged through a cord attached to the nose,. Kept it on the street with a gray car cover, ran a thick cord out from where he lived. Upshot was a male elephant escaping from a circus, spotting it and finding instant lust, resulting in a flattened vehicle when he came out to go to work in the morning.
Omnes Omnibus
@cleek:
There are a lot of people who cannot afford a new car, let alone an average priced one. For now, EVs are the province the financially comfortable and those who are willing to make sacrifices to buy one. It will take a while before that changes.
Tom Levenson
@Baud: Just checked cars.com. There are 10 new Bolt EUVs and 5 Bolts for sale w/in 50 miles of my location in Boston. Not a lot, but not zero.
I suspect New England may be a little less supply constrained than much of the country because of the winter issue.
Anoniminous
There should be a law requiring apartment buildings and condos to have a charging station for every residential unit.
Jager
@Baud:
So Cal Edison’s electric car program is great. We slow charge the Volt every time it’s in the garage. $28 bucks a month. The fast chargers at some of the shopping malls will put 11 miles on the Volt in 15-20 minutes.
H.E.Wolf
I think this is a question that answers itself. :) [ETA: Re-upping “The Worldly Philosophers”, if these are questions that interest you.]
An interesting sidelight is the gradually increasing number of (non-trolley-style) buses and bus fleets that are hybrid or fully electric. Mass transit, in cities and towns where it’s feasible, has a role to play in decreasing reliance on fossil-fueled transport.
cleek
@Stuart Frasier:
it’s a miracle that Tesla’s board hasn’t staged some kind of revolt by now. he is truly single-handedly ruining their brand. because build issues are fixable, but public image is hard to get back.
Baud
@Jager:
My driving habits are well suited for EV. I’m looking forward to never going to a gas station again.
Lapassionara
@MagdaInBlack: There are vehicle charging stations on numerous Streets in Paris, usually in groups of three’s. I think the technology to provide these in urban areas exist, but the city government has to make vehicle charging stations a priority.
Omnes Omnibus
@H.E.Wolf: That would be huge. As is the USPS switching to electric for its urban and suburban routes.
NotMax
@https://balloon-juice.com/2023/01/08/tesla-is-screwed/#comment-8730334“>Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Increasing prices on anything represents an entry barrier. Heck, nowadays there are laptops (formerly a primarily budget-geared option) selling for above $2000.
Another Scott
@Anoniminous: Why? Why should renters who take the bus or don’t have an electric car have to pay for that?
TANSTAAFL.
I’m in favor of some national incentives, but every subsidy means that something else is more expensive and we have to think carefully about the consequences.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kirk Spencer
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): kinda, but more speed bump than full barrier.
$8 blue check mistermix
@cleek: Yes, I’m aware that the average price of a car in the US is over $40K but that isn’t what my neighbors are paying for their commuter car. We’re talking $25-30K at most, often less if they get it used.
And the plug in hassle is for longer trips – my point (which I made in the piece) is that the sweet spot for EVs is for those who can plug it in at home.
The channel that hosted the video I linked about the Bolt also has some real-world experiences where charging was hard to find in places that aren’t that rural — including the front range of Colorado due to chargers out of service and lack of chargers even in bigger urban area like Colorado Springs.
Tony G
The current status of electric vehicles is probably similar to the status of gasoline-powered cars around 1910. The cars exist, but fueling stations are few and far between. As automobiles became more affordable in the early twentieth century there started to be more gas stations (and better roads), which increased the popularity of automobiles. In addition, as you point out, “fueling” an electric vehicle takes about six or eight times longer than fueling a gasoline-powered vehicle., making them impractical for people in a hurry. Some kind of battery-swap system would partially resolve the second problem, but that would depend upon an agreement among manufacturers to standardize batteries between makes and models. Until those problems are solved, electric vehicles will remain a niche market. Also: in the category of anecdotes-are-not-data, I had an “interesting” experience with a Honda Civic Hybrid about 15 years ago. I was very happy with the car until one night the entire battery system had a catastrophic failure in the middle of nowhere. The cost to replace the system was about a thousand dollars, wiping out any savings from gasoline expenditures. I’m not sure whether this technology is ready for practical use yet; but Tesla will probably remain the worst.
Stuart Frasier
@cleek: The board is basically all Musk lackeys. They have promoted Tom Zhu to run things while Elmo is focused on wrecking Twitter and publicly lighting his nutsack on fire.
Matt McIrvin
We own a home but it doesn’t have a garage, and our only means of charging a car right now would be an outside 110v socket–which I’m given to understand will do in a pinch but is not a great way to charge a car. Moving to an electric is practically going to involve some changes to our home wiring, unless we only plan to drive it infrequently.
It seems to me that the people best positioned to make the move without installing any new hardware have a home garage with a 220v socket in it. That’s not uncommon but it’s also a relatively privileged segment to begin with.
Anyway, for those reasons, I ended up buying a hybrid instead of an electric when I needed a new car. One thing I don’t have is range anxiety–the thing goes nearly 600 miles on a tank, and it’s not a big tank.
Bill Arnold
@West of the Cascades:
Betty Cracker was similarly noting the rebranding of Tesla as a seller of “rolling $100K MAGA hats” a while back.
sdhays
@Fake Irishman: That’s MM’s point. Cars like Tesla with longer ranges aren’t that much better than cheaper cars with shorter range. If you want to go really long distance, the choice really isn’t between a Tesla and a Bolt, it’s between a Bolt and a gas-based vehicle.
The extra range on the Tesla isn’t helpful for most people.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony G: Battery-swap systems are not going to happen–it’s a nightmare when the battery is a huge thing that is a considerable fraction of the mass and cost of the entire vehicle. Tesla had dreams of making it work; they didn’t make it work.
I think the solution to the recharging problem is going to be a combination of longer-range vehicles, and wider availability of charging at home and at the destinations you’re going to. On a road trip, you won’t stop at charging stations, you’ll use a charging station at the restaurant where you stop for lunch.
NotMax
@$8 blue check mistermix
There are public chargers here where the cost per kw is significantly less in daylight (solar panels, don’tcha know) than during nighttime hours.
Make of that what you will.
ceece
I’ve had a Bolt since 2017 and I’m very happy with it. Any service issues have been handled well under warranty. Mostly we use it for work and weekend trips, but we have taken a few longer trips (700 miles each way) which do require some planning.
Normally with a 10 hour drive, we want to take a few breaks or stop overnight, so we plan those around charging stations. It definitely adds a few hours total to the trip but it is totally doable.
Anoniminous
@Another Scott:
Who said renters who don’t use a charging station must pay for electricity they aren’t using? Can pay for the use of the charging station the same way you pay for gas at the gas station: plug in, swipe the card, power-up, system automatically shuts down when the battery is full.
NotMax
@Tony G
Curiously, about the last time electric cars were a dominant alternative.
Miss Bianca
How many of you all live in…towns, or cities, as opposed to, say, a frontier county with a population of fewer than 5,000 year-round residents? I would venture a guess that it’s most of you.
For me, who has to commute over dirt roads, haul trailers full of horses and hay up and down mountain passes – and, setting aside the trifling consideration that there’s no affordable EV that’s actually up to the challenge of living where I live and doing what I do – heck, I don’t even have a garage where I can install a charger. In short, an all-electric vehicle is simply not an option for me.
Sure, I could *maybe* charge one in town – if town had an EV station, but so far I have watched the two towns in my county dither literally for years about installing EV charging stations with no current progress in sight. And those charging stations they are talking about are Chargepoint stations, which according to what I’ve read, are notorious for not servicing their chargers on the grounds that once they’ve sold them, maintenance is no longer their responsibility.
My friend who has a lot more money than I do, who can afford to install solar panels just to have a charger in her garage? Sure, she has a brand-new EV that only set her back 48k. And she loves it, except when it’s too cold to actually drive it. Or she has to haul *her* horse trailer. Then out comes the diesel flat-bed truck.
I would love to have another hybrid like my little old Honda Civic that bit the dust on a stretch of black ice ten years ago. But 4WD hybrids are expensive too.
ETA: Now, an e-bike, just for commuting back and forth to town, would be an interesting option. However, it’s going to need some *extremely* fat tires for the trip.
Bobby Thomson
After the price drops into economically rational territory and the CEO is forced to liquidate his holdings, Tesla will be bought by a PE firm that will sell off everything but the battery business, which ultimately will be bought by one of the bigs.
JustRuss
@Jager: I wish Chevy still made the Volt. Electric for around town, gas for long hauls. Better than paying for thousands of dollars worth of battery capacity that I’ll rarely use.
Another Scott
@NotMax: I would suspect that the pricing difference is more system load related than solar-boosting. Say 200kW medium-fast charger example. Common new high-efficiency solar panels are around 400W so you would need roughly 200000/400 = 500 panels for each charger. (Ignoring the losses in stepping up the voltage, etc., etc.) That’s a lot of panels for one charger. ;-)
Corrections welcome.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
Which is something we ought to be doing with smart-sized cars. (Or public transportation, for that matter.) Instead we’re doing it in SUVs and pickup trucks.
Bobby Thomson
A couple years ago the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled that notwithstanding his minority stake in Tesla, it is objectively reasonable to doubt that the board is independent.
cliosfanboy
@bbleh:
that’s what guns are for. Maybe we should bring back men wearing a cod piece. Then we could cut back on guns and huge trucks.
Origuy
@Anoniminous: The average cost of installing a Level 2 EV charging station is $6000. I own a townhouse with a detached garage and one outside parking space. If the homeowners association were required to install a station for each of 60 units in my complex, that is a $360,000 special assessment. Granted there is some economy of scale when a large number are installed at the same time, but most of my neighbors or their renters cannot afford that. The power in the detached garages is paid for by the HOA as it is on the same circuits as the exterior lighting. Hence, I could not charge an EV on my garage power, but a new 220V line would have to be run from my meter.
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
Huh? Oxidizes to H2O.
I’m not a hydrogen advocate, at least not until both high-density(and comparable to/better than electrical storage/batteries) and safe storage, and mostly-green production (e.g. using surplus daytime solar) are in play. But given solutions, it could be viable for transportation, though supply infrastructure would need to be built out from scratch.
Bobby Thomson
The Chevy Tardis
RepubAnon
@Kirk Spencer: EVs for apartment/condo dwellers without a garage require chargers at places such as supermarkets or motels. Rather than our gas/diesel model of fueling at the fueling station, EVs for those without home chargers (or on road trips) require a change to a multi-tasking model.
The supermarkets near my house have charging stations in their parking lots. Pull in, plug in the EV, go shopping, come back to an 80% charged car (going from 80% to 100% takes about as much time as going from 15% to 80%)
On road trips, I look for roadside restaurants with charging stations. Same deal – plug in, eat, come back to a recharged car.
More and more motels have Level 2 chargers that will charge your car overnight.
Meanwhile, I expect higher end apartments/condos are going to start putting chargers in their parking lots. It’ll still be an issue for big city apartments where everyone parks on the street – until the grocery stores with parking (or the parking garages) install charging stations.
As for Tesla, the big turn-off is poor build quality and lack of replacement body parts. A few years back (pre-pandemic), getting replacement body parts for Teslas was difficult. This is why my EV is not a Tesla.
Another Scott
@Anoniminous: The cost of the electricity is in the noise. The cost is the wiring and upgrading the cable from the pole and upgrading the circuit breaker box and all the rest. Landlords will want to charge higher rent for units with chargers to make up that cost, and because they can because the unit is more valuable. Everyone in the building will pay more even if they don’t use the chargers. You can address this with subsidies, but the money could be spent other ways that might not hurt renters as much and give the same result faster (like maybe more public fast chargers, etc.)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anoniminous
@Origuy:
From your cite:
Emphasis added
Scuffletuffle
@Omnes Omnibus: I would like to see a government grant direct to the consumer, rather than a tax credit, to allow the non-rich to purchase a hybrid. I would also like it to be targeted at folks who drive older, less fuel efficient and “dirtier” cars…ie bad for the environment.
I also want a unicorn pony that farts teaberry air…
Sister Golden Bear
Actual Tesla 3 owner here (I know, I know… [insert Cersei walk of shame gif]). In general the point is correct, but 200+ plus range* is more than just “in town.” Case in point, I can drive down to Monterey and back from the SF Peninsula without requiring a charge. I was also enough to get me over the Sierras.
Also, Tesla and other charging networks have mostly done a good job of placing charging stations near shopping centers, or Starbucks, etc. So a quick charge (say to halfway “full”) on a road trip isn’t that onerous. Though for a lengthier road trip the extra charging time is A Thing. But in general here in California locating a charger isn’t a bit deal — and with a Tesla (don’t know about other brands) — if your trip requires a charge, the on-board map will automatically suggest charging stops for you.
I do agree that if you’re a single-car household and do take longer trips on at least a semi-regular basis, you’re better off with a hybrid. But overall owning an EV is nowhere near as problematic as described.
*Technically max range is 234 miles, but it’s both bad for the battery to charge to this level regularly and the charging slows dramatically at the end to protect the battery. So I only do it rarely, like the Sierra trip where I was taking one of the more obscure passes (Ebbets Pass), where there weren’t any charging stations once I got into the mountains.
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed. That said, at least in the Bay Area, there’s enough chargers at shopping centers that a combination of home 120v charging supplemented by charging while shopping (for groceries, etc.) is doable.
Tom Levenson
@Origuy: The article at that link does note that there are lots of subsidies currently available that may make installing a level 2 charger in an apartment building effectively free. If that’s the case for any particular location, seems like a no-brainer to do it. If not, then, of course, not.
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: I think that if EVs don’t penetrate to rural/far exurban areas but dominate in cities and suburbs… that is still a huge number of EVs. Getting the rest of the market is a problem for further down the road.
Mustang Bobby
Teslas here in South Florida are as common as pig tracks, and so are the drivers. Miami is a commuting nightmare, and I can imagine that the people who bought them (including the dude with the personalized plate UBUYGAS) is wondering why they dropped $40K on a golf cart with doors.
Brent
@Anoniminous: Its the charging station itself that costs. And if a landlord has added costs then eventually it will be reflected in the rental price.
I actually think this is the sort of thing best handled at a city level or maybe say requiring the landlord to be required to provide a charging station at a capped cost if requested.
As a person who doesn’t own a car and hopes never to own a car, I would like to be kept out of paying for car infrastructure as much as possible. Indeed, I am of the strong belief that public dollars should be prioritized on minimizing reliance on cars at all, electric or otherwise.
TaMara
@Shawnb: , @cleek: OMG, so much this.
@sdhays: My friends take road trips all the time in their EV. They plan the charging around events like hikes, lunch, dog walking and sightseeing. EVs actually tell you where to find a charging station.
Myself, knowing I needed longer range because of the long drives across CO and NE**, chose a PHEV, which gives me great gas mileage when it’s strictly hybrid (long trips) and gets me around town all week on electric. Because most of my trips are not 250 miles in a day.
For those who live in urban areas without charging options, A. no one is saying an EV is right for you with the current technology, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good options for many, and B. If you want to see climate change action, this would be the issue to bring to your legislators and say, “hey, this needs to be required and paid for” to bring about real change in the climate crisis.
None of this is saying there are not economic obstacles to owning an EV, which need to be addressed quickly if we are to solve the climate crisis. But misinformation about EVs range and performance is not helping on any front.
**was very surprised and PLEASED to see that charging stations in NE are popping up in fast food and Walmart parking lots. Found 23 charging stations in the small, remote town of North Platte, NE
NotMax
@Another Scott
it’s not so much the panels providing capacity as tweaking capacity enough to lessen demand on the grid.
All I can report is the cost for plugging in at night at those particular chargers is around 150% that of plugging in when the Sun shines. May be a local eccentricity, may not so be.
Interestingly, there were two chargers in the parking lot of the electric company headquarters, both of which sported “out of service” signs on them something like three weeks a month when I used to go there before the electric company did away with in-person bill paying.
YY_Sima Qian
Teslas were always overhyped & overpriced for the quality of design & build. It has served its purpose in catalyzing the EV market outside of China (& to a significant extent catalyzing the rapid improvement in EV supply chain & ecosystem w/in China). However, for EVs to truly become ubiquitous, there need to be cheaper & “good enough” options for the consumers. Outside of China, Tesla is coming under pressure from some of the legacy automakers. In China, Tesla is under increasing pressure from a slew of Chinese players (state owned & private, legacy & start up) & European/Japanese/Korea legacy automakers. Outside of the US, the European/Japanese/Korean legacy players are coming under further pressure from the Chinese players, who are seeking to undercut the former by providing better value in the mass market.
The global EV market & industry is in huge flux. Interesting times.
RepubAnon
@Origuy: Or, the homeowner association could install one or two fast DC charger stations in the public parking areas – and the HOA could charge a fee for their use (as is common). Not ideal, but better than having everyone plug their cars into their garage’s 120V 60hz circuit every night. (I did this while waiting for my 50 amp 220v home charger install. It did help charge the car enough to drive to work, where they had Level 2 chargers. Now, I’d just drive across the street to the local supermarket and use one of their fast DC chargers.)
Anoniminous
@Another Scott:
From Origuy’s cite:
Running 110 is hardly a Big Deal.
MagdaInBlack
Is it naive or uninformed of me to think there might be some way to have a solar panel in the roof of a car so it would (almost) always be charging when out and about or sitting in a hot parking lot all day at work?
SamR
He also disemboweled the customer base who could buy a Tesla. My current car is a 2012 (I run them into the ground), and I intend to buy electric next time. But it won’t be Tesla now.
Butch
My niece owns a Tesla, and I’ve found it thoroughly unimpressive. One issue if your home is older: we found out just short of starting a fire that the wiring in our old home won’t support charging an EV, and the cost of the upgrade is prohibitive.
TaMara
For solid information about EVs, subsidies, and batteries, I highly recommend David Roberts
I’m sure there are other excellent sources out there to challenge the general misinformation about EVs, battery life, range, etc…
Another Scott
@Bill Arnold: Hydrogen affects the composition and interplay of gases and heat in the atmosphere. Since nobody knows how much hydrogen will leak if production and use is scaled up, we don’t know how big a problem it might be. If leaks are bad enough, it could make the problem worse.
This Guardian story has links to original reports on the problem.
To be clear, I agree with Cleek that unless there is an efficiency breakthrough, hydrogen will be a niche solution. I don’t think that we’ll get to the point of, say, hydrogen replacing gas or diesel for road transport, or even for airplanes (energy density is too low there; probably some sort of green JP-4 will be used on planes).
We’ll see!
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold:
I looked this up–it’s subtle and complicated.
Hydrogen is not, directly, a greenhouse gas. Water vapor is, but water vapor emissions aren’t really a problem because the water cycle means that the level of water vapor in the lower atmosphere is effectively a function of temperature (technically speaking, it’s a feedback, not a forcing).
But… because of various chemical reactions with emitted hydrogen gas, leaking H2 does alter the stratospheric distribution of water vapor, methane and ozone in ways that effectively make it a greenhouse gas. So H2 leaks actually are a thing to worry about from a climate perspective.
Sister Golden Bear
@TaMara:
I suspect the Ford-150 EV will accelerate that. My brother is a contractor, who just got one and loves it. It’s got enough range to check in with all his on-going jobs, meet potential clients, etc. and is far cheaper to run than his prior gas-guzzling truck. Plus being able to use the battery to run tools, and serving as a back-up battery to power the house if needed, are big pluses.
Also being a truck, it’s still “manly” enough for men who care about such things, and they can also point to the economics.
Brent
@MagdaInBlack: There are some cars designed this way. The SONOS Sion and the Aptera both use solar to constantly trickle charge their batteries. Under ideal conditions this can provide about 40 miles of charge a day. So many people may never have to charge their cars under this circumstance.
NotMax
@Bobby Thomson
Just shy of ten months of ownership later, still pleasantly astonished with how much more capacious my humble hybrid Maverick is on the inside than it appears from without. Roomier in the interior (no contest) than its more muscular Ranger cousin.
TaMara
@Sister Golden Bear: Gotta tell you, despite my “green” credentials, I love a good pickup truck. I would so have one if I had the $$ to buy one.
I loved Rachel Maddow’s confessions on her love of her F-150 when the electric was announced. I’m right there with her.
H.E.Wolf
When I was on vacation in Germany in 1999, I noticed that the majority of city cars (and small-business-owner vans) were tiny compared to cars in the USA. So many more cars could park along a city block than in the US!
It was a pleasant change from a pedestrian’s standpoint, too. And tangentially, there may be another change when/if fewer gasoline-powered vehicles are in use: reduced noise levels.
Cameron
@cleek: I’m not a techie; the only reason I know anything about this is that the nonprofit I worked for back then was looking into different sustainable technologies for economic development in Philadelphia. I did get to ride Georgetown’s fuel-cell bus a couple of times, which was fun.
MisterDancer
Yep. Pretty sure Ford and others wouldn’t be shoveling out EVs as fast as they can make them, if they thought ownership would be painful for many buyers.
lee
Another aspect of Tesla being screwed is that while they like to position themselves as a luxury car, the Tesla’s quality is not very good. And by most accounts its service department also sucks especially for a supposed ‘luxury brand’.
Another tidbit: The last I read was that most of Tesla’s sales & profit is now in China. If you notice the Musk is very careful not to do anything that might annoy Xi Jinping.
Our next car will be for my wife to commute to/from work and will probably be an electric car (more than likely an all electric Mini Cooper). We will still need something for our 651 mile trip to New Mexico. There is a lot of empty space out there without a charging station close.
MagdaInBlack
@Brent: I like it. And I’m sure that range will improve as they tinker with the technology.
Anoniminous
@TaMara:
I’m pushing really hard for my New Mexico desert mountain town to put in a charging station. 50,000 cars a month go screaming through town. I would be nice to get more of them to stop. Once they’re stopped we can sell them marijuana, allied products, e.g., Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and various other consumer goods and services.
Sure Lurkalot
@different-church-lady: The barriers to entry in retooling our built environment to strictly EV transportation have been elucidated by several commenters here but what are the barriers to downsizing our upsized CE automotive market? I have often noted that the huge pickups in my former workplace parking lot were driven by the professional class and were almost all spotless including the cab. Sure, a truck comes in handy from time to time, but it’s an absurd vehicle to commute to your law office in.
BruceFromOhio
Neighbor pulled up riding in the passenger seat of her friends Bolt. I asked them both how they liked it, neighbor said it was a comfy ride and the driver friend said she loved it. It sat there humming and clicking while they stopped, rolled down windows, backed up and then drove away after a moments chat. It looked and and behaved like a cool little car, a perfect replacement for my 2011 Honda Fit that I will probably trade in for a Bolt one day soon. Or something like it.
Matt McIrvin
@Anoniminous: It’s running 110, but at a power level that could be dangerous if your home wiring isn’t up to snuff–it’s recommended that you at least have an electrician check it out thoroughly before trying it.
And “three to five miles an hour” means that if you commute, say, 30 or 40 miles each way every day, that charging rate isn’t going to cut it. I’ve been in that situation and would not be able to use an EV without a better solution. On the other hand, if you can charge at 220v or with a Level 2 charger, that’s good enough for the vast majority of commuters.
Miss Bianca
@Sister Golden Bear: How much is he hauling on a trailer with his electric F150? One ton of weight? Two or more
ETA: From everything I’ve read, Emo’s boasts notwithstanding, that’s the real weakness with an electric truck – if you have to haul anything substantial, it eats your charge so fast that you can’t go any real distance.
Doug R
@Shawnb: Yeah, since you’re supposed to stop every hour or so- you can jack in the car at a lot of rest areas to squeeze a few more miles in and every 3-4 hours you should take a meal break which gets you the 20-30 minutes for a full rapid charge.
The rest of the time, you just jack into your 220 volt charger at home.
Denali5
I am happy with my Prius hybrid. I can charge it at home overnight, and I have only bought one tank of gas since bringing it home with a full tank. It now has over 1,000 miles. Of course, it is best for driving around town rather than long trips. It cost a little over $31,000 with a $500 from the state.
Origuy
@RepubAnon: We have no public parking area, except for two spaces in the back. Those are currently rented by owners for second cars. Many people, including me, use their garage for storage. I’ve seen how EV owners have conflicts about limited chargers in office buildings.
@Anoniminous: Note that the page is owned by a company that does installations, so they are going to promote idea of getting something for nothing. I’m skeptical that 100% of the costs would be covered.
@Anoniminous: Whether it’s 110 or 220, the cost to run a line from the meter at the end of a building under sidewalks and possibly pavement is the same.
dmsilev
@MagdaInBlack: I’m on the board of my condo building, and one of the things on our to-do list over the next couple of years is to redo the building wiring to allow people to install car chargers in their parking spots (we have a garage with parking spots designated for each unit in the building). That entails (a) upgrading the service from the utility to the building (including new meters and distribution buses to replace the existing units in the garage) and (b) putting in a little sub-panel for each apartment immediately after the meter, still in the garage, with one circuit going up to the unit and the existing sub-panel and space for one or two circuits that stay in the garage. That way, when a given owner wants to add chargers for one or both of their spots, they just need to get an electrician to tap into their sub-panel and run a conduit across the garage ceiling to the right location.
Still doing the research on it, so I can’t give any cost numbers or anything like that, but it’s all possible.
NotMax
@YY_Sima Qian
Also too, India (a huge market). Lack of enforceable safety restrictions there a primary impediment. to expansion of players such as Tata, methinks.
Doug R
@NotMax: We’re going to need legislation that “encourages” apartment owners to include a plug in for all spots. Cities could include chargers on parking meters, then paid parking makes more sense.
MagdaInBlack
@Sure Lurkalot: With regard to those big-ass spotless trucks, the barrier is ego.
BruceFromOhio
@Baud: short term inconveniences that can be overcome, and worth the build in the long run? I guess we’ll find out.
Tom Levenson
Our only car now is a 2013 Prius plug-in hybrid, bought used as a 2 year old car. In retrospect, it was a bit silly to pay up for the plug in–10 miles range in summer and 8.5 in winter, and, worse, it doesn’t automatically stay in EV mode, so all those short trips around town (at least 50% of our driving) don’t actually turn out to use all electrons. At some point our son will get his driver’s license (he’s only in his early 20s. What’s the rush?) and, assuming that the Prius is doing what Priui do (run till you shoot ’em), we’ll give it to him.
When we do, or maybe before if our finances work out, we’ll get an EV, again, as our primary/only car.
Which is to say, Mix’s account of the use case is not ours. We have two longer drives that we do regularly: a ninety mile round trip to Boston’s north shore, and the ~200 mile round trip to our son’s college. That implies we need an EV with a roughly 300 mile range to be sure we could do that longer trip without recharging. If we’re willing to plan on a short recharge while we’re dropping off the spawn at school, then the current cheaper-EV range more-or-less standard of 250-260 miles is fine–and note, that’s a trip we take four or so times a year (and sometimes we need to rent a large mini-van anyway, if we’re moving the kid from one apartment to another).
If the Prius turned its tires to the ceiling today and I had to buy a new car? I’d look at the Bolt EUV (~$30K_ the cheaper Hyundai crossover (~$34K), and maybe the Kia Niro ($39K). Within a year there will be several more options in the low 30s with range that for most urban/suburban folks could plausibly be good enough for a primary vehicle. (Chevy Equinox, Fisker Pear (believe it when I see it), and I’m sure others I’m not aware of.)
TL:DR–Mix is right that EVs are not an everyone solution. I don’t think he’s correct that they remain a niche/second vehicle for an awful lot of Americans–or if so, they won’t within 2-3 years.
Doug R
@MagdaInBlack:
In the prairies, almost everyone plugs in their block heater in winter-you’ll just look like us.
Matt McIrvin
@Sure Lurkalot: Indeed, there are people who really need heavy-duty pickup trucks or vehicles with off-road capability, but most of the ones out there are being used as suburban commuter cars 99% of the time and could probably be replaced with a Honda Fit.
Anoniminous
@Matt McIrvin:
The topic was MUDs.
Single family dwellings are another matter. Having just re-wired our 1910 built Museum of American Domestic Electric Systems – including powered Knob-and-Tube circuits! – I am very aware of the issues.
Hungry Joe
EVs aren’t for everyone … yet. But they’re definitely for us. We have a charger ($700) attached to the wall of the house for our 2020 Bolt (we paid about $30K) and 2015 Leaf. The Bolt’s range is 250-260 miles; the Leaf’s has gradually dropped from 95 to about 75, still plenty for around-town (San Diego) shlepping. Last year we drove the Bolt to the Bay Area, and yeah, because of charging issues it took us a couple of hours longer each way. Big freakin’ deal. It probably also saved us around $50 (gas vs. charging expense), so there’s that.
It also helps that we rarely have to use the heater, a major energy suck. Heated seats & steering wheels (VERY minor energy sucks) do the trick around here.
The main inconvenience of EVs — for us, anyway — is that the cars’ windows are always dirty: no free gas-station squeegees. It’s a hard-knock life.
wmd
I’ve had a Ford C-Max energi for 5+ years now. Plug in hybrid. About 20 miles electric range in colder weather. My most recent work offered a commuter bus with pick up about 8 miles from my house, so driving for work was within round trip range. I received a federal tax credit when I bought it, also one from the state of California. Total cost was about $20,000 after credits; I opted for some trim upgrades.
Over the time of owning the energi I’ve become somewhat neurotic about not burning gas in it if possible. Most recent gas purchase was in October 2021, I’ve driven about 6400 miles and have over a 1/4 tank. The in dash display claims I’m getting over 700 mpg; it says 6170 miles driven on electric only. Last time I filled it the calculated mpg was a bit below the dashboard’s readout…
If I’m working in California later this year I’d be looking at a longer range EV for the full commute. For religious reasons (Chevy? I drive Ford) a Bolt is unlikely. Mustang Mach E looks possible, as does F150 lightning, with the latter possibly providing back up power. Tesla isn’t in the mix.
jayne
@Anoniminous: So when the landlords raise the rent because Now They Have Charging Stations! they’ll make a bigger profit. Cool for them. People still wind up homeless.
artem1s
I’ve been seeing these BS hot takes about EV’s and hybrids since about forever. There are plenty of hybrids and EVs that are in the same price range as their gas counter parts. Honda’s been testing and putting multiple models of hybrid’s on the road in the US for 4 decades now – longer in Europe and Japan. They are committed to taking the interim step of hybrid to plug ins and then full EV’s. They will have several plug in models, including an SUV, on the road starting in 2023. They were less successful with their hydrogen fuel cell models but did about 15-20 years of road testing that they will be take back into R&D for the next steps. Toyota’s arc is similar. The Lexus hybrid is 40K+ but their Toyota brands are similar in price to the gas version. Both companies have capacity to ramp up production to take full advantage of this tax credit too. And they have decades of customer loyalty due to their reliability and high trade in value. So there will be a glut of certified used ones on the market once customers start trading in to get the credit on the new ones.
People want hybrids and EV’s. They will buy them and will buy a lot of them from the companies that produce affordable ones. They already are. A quick search of hybrids within 50 miles for under $25K show over 200 to choose from.
Matt McIrvin
@Tom Levenson: I’ve been seeing the backlash against Musk causing some backlash against EVs in general–and there are also people like Martin arguing that many of the people looking to switch to EVs should instead be thinking about reorganizing their lives to not have a car. I think the latter is still a pipe dream for most Americans outside of very urban areas, but whatever we can do to hurry it along is good.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Tesla is screwed as long as it’s being CEOd by Musk since his whole business scheme depends on him having a monopoly so the consumer is forced to buy what ever BS he comes up with.
Bodacious
Just my uneducated $.02, I live in the woods, out on the Olympic Peninsula. We really have 2 shopping options – Safeway and Walmart (bleh!). Both have multiple EV chargers. Are they functional at all times? I’m not sure – but my shopping often is 20 min, so it intrigues me to consider a change next time around.
Change is hard. Change involves expense. This is a privileged position for many, but it’s a start.
MagdaInBlack
@Doug R: Having grown up in the cornfields of northern Illinois, I am familiar with that look 😉
Bill Arnold
@Origuy:
That is a point in time, and I suspect wildly inflated at least in many cases. (The linked article has a low of $2000, and the hardware itself is considerably cheaper.)
Around 5 years ago I had an entire house breaker box replaced (120 -> 200 amp upgrade) for (IIRC) $2000.
For those talking about plug-in hybrids, does anyone have experience with newer plug-in hybrid models?
Doug R
@Another Scott: I can understand putting on the brakes on an actual charging unit but in the 21st century I think we can put an electrical outlet almost anywhere.
I suspect there will be an aftermarket for portable adapter/charger units.
Jager
@JustRuss:
A few years ago a guy in Silicon Valley bought a nice motorcycle trailer, put a Honda generator in the trailer, and hooked it to his Tesla S, in other words, he built a 120,000 dollar Volt.
Matt McIrvin
@lee:
This, to me, is the issue with Tesla specifically. I do think the legacy automakers will eventually beat them in the EV market and it’s because they’re better at making cars.
Jager
@Bill Arnold: Our Volt is the final generation, we have always used the charger that came with the car. Plugs into a standard home outlet, take around 6-7 hours to fully charge, depending on the temperature.
Anoniminous
@Origuy:
The cost to run a line is the same. The cost of the charger for the vehicle varies. All mass-produced electric vehicles today include a 110-volt-compatible (Level 1) charging unit which is able to be plugged into any standard 110v household outlet. Will it completely charge an electric car over night? Nope. Will it charge enough to get the thing to a faster charging station? Yup. Is it perfect? Nope.
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: My friend who just bought her EV was telling me about her FB feed being full of people trashing EVs in general (I don’t see such things on mine, maybe I just don’t know enough of the “right” people).
Myself, I’d be partial to a diesel hybrid. Since ATVs are actually allowed as road vehicles in our county on non-highway roads, we’ve allowed ourselves to fantasize about tinkering with a side-by-side – dropping a small diesel engine in it and rigging up a regenerative braking electrical system.
Tom Levenson
@Bill Arnold: Not me (see 2013 plug in). But one of my closest friends recently bought the RAV Prime (plug in)–which gets about 40 miles electric range.
He flat out loves it. He got a little windfall, and so bought the absolutely maxed-out version, and it is extremely comfortable, performs well, does all his daily driving on electrons and delivers decent mileage for his frequent road trips to see his sons and his first grandchild.
I’d be very tempted by the upcoming 2023 Prius Prime also, except I suspect it will be just a smidge too small for us. (Needing to transport two cats when we do a company move puts a lower bound on how small a car we can deal with.)
CaseyL
@MagdaInBlack:
There are a couple of companies working on solar-powered cars. The one closest to a production model is Aptera – and you should see that one: it looks nothing like the box-on-wheels we think of when we think “car,” It looks like a motorcycle and a kite had a baby.
The problem with solar cars is that solar tech simply isn’t there yet. The Aptera’s outer skin is entirely solar panels – and yet its range is only something like 50 miles.
But solar cars are a thing people are working on.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ll need to read a paper to believe that. Link? Otherwise I can look.
Omnes Omnibus
@artem1s:
I don’t think anyone here is doubting that EVs will become the future of cars (pace Betsey), but there currently are barriers to entry for a significant number of people. Will these barriers disappear over time? Almost certainly, but let’s not pretend that they do not exist at the moment.
NotMax
@artem1s
Caveat is that major carmaker dealer inventory listings, as currently configured, include customer ordered vehicles (presumably) already sold, not only ones destined for the lot. Upshot is that just because it is listed does not necessarily translate to it being actually available for sale.
Doug R
@Origuy: At $100 a month which is what some places charge for INDOOR parking, an apartment owner would make that $6000 investment back in 60 months=5 years.
Add government incentives, it’s all gravy.
MagdaInBlack
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you.
Momentary
Appreciate the replies. You may be surprised to hear that rural Wales has plenty of EV chargers, I don’t think access is much of an issue, just recharge time. Especially for drivers on a schedule, delivering a load of something.
The hydrogen example I’ve been reading about is Orkney, https://www.surfnturf.org.uk/ where they are isolated from the mainland and have an excess of wind and water generation to make it with.
I’m expecting I’ll be swapping my quad bike (currently petrol Honda 4trax) for something battery powered long before the truck, that’ll be the obvious first step.
Craig
@$8 blue check mistermix: 2 stories. I do a lot of work for a big tech company in the Bay Area. There are so many chargers and EVs in the parking lots/garages and hardly any one I know there has to plug in at home. I was just at my mum’s house in rural Virginia and was surprised how many of her friends and neighbors have bought EVs, or plug in hybrids. Lots of them are fixed income retired folks and not going to the gas station is huge for them. The strip mall with the Food Lion that’s a couple miles away has installed 6 charges in the parking lot and whenever I went by were always cars plugged in. This might be a thing going forward, shop for food and charge up. That said, TSLA is definitely screwed. The luxury and SUV markets are going to go to Mercedes, Audi, BMW etc., and all those have been racing EVs and hybrids and developing tech for years. Not to mention the number of my mum’s friends and neighbors who are lusting after the F150 Lightning.
Sister Golden Bear
@Miss Bianca:
He owns the company, so most of his driving is to check in on jobs, so I suspect he’s probably not hauling much.
It does make sense that hauling heavy loads would reduce mileage. Heading east over the Sierra, which is uphill for many miles — a somewhat analogous situation — definitely did reduce the mileages. Although coming back there was so much downhill that the range actually increased because I was in regen mode most of the way.
CliosFanBoy
@Doug R:
I lIKE that idea!!!!
Origuy
@Anoniminous: If you’re spending the money to run the line, why not use 220? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but there are issues that “they should make a law” doesn’t address. And as far as subsidies, how far will that go when every apartment and MUD has to install chargers?
Omnes Omnibus
@Momentary:
Your diesel Hilux is probably the closest thing to an immortal vehicle as has ever been made. Obviously, you will be replacing other things first.
Another Scott
@Anoniminous: The fact that it hasn’t been done illustrates that it is in fact a deal of some size. ;-) 120V charging is a last resort kinda thing because it is so slow, and even that can require upgrades to meet code (can’t run a 20A load on a 20A circuit continuously – there has to be a capacity margin in the wire and breaker).
All change involves choices and costs.
Cheers,
Scott.
tobie
My husband’s late father bought the REVAi prototypes in 1999. It was a Bangalore company and he was trying to bring solar powered water pumps to India, so he knew the folks involved in green industries. A cousin still has the cars. One is in Bangalore, one in Chennai. They don’t drive fast but you don’t ever really pick up speed in Indian cities.
Doug R
Back in 2019:
LA adds hundreds of EV chargers to streetlights, giving renters a place to plug in
Craig
@RepubAnon: yes,Tesla build quality and spares both suck. Coworker got t-boned in his model 3 and it took 2 months for the shop to be able to get spare body panels.
Nilnoc
For the past five years, I’ve been a BJ lurker. And I’ve also been a Tesla driver. I’ve gone 60 thousand miles now, and it’s been a better (and way funner) car than the Hondas and Toyotas I previously owned. I mostly charge in my garage in a far DC suburb on a 110 Volt outlet, but we’ve been on numerous long trips. Winter and summer. At times, we also pull a 21-foot travel trailer.
For me, the key differentiator for Tesla versus another brand is the Supercharging network. On a long trip we drive two hours and charge just enough to travel the next two hours. Takes about 20 minutes – long enough to use the rest room and check the email. When you’re our age, two hours between potty stops is just right. The car’s navigation system knows where all the chargers are and how many plugs are working and available. Over five years, we have visited a Supercharger 184 times in the US and Canada. Over five years, the number of Supercharging stations within 50 miles has grown enormously. When you plug in, the system recognizes your car and charges your account. So simple.
Since we got our Tesla, the car’s software has updated over the air 54 times, occasionally bringing useful new features and maps updates.
In five years, our out of pocket costs have been for new wiper blades, a $50 door sensor, and two sets of tires. I could say more, but let me just say as an N of one: in my experience Teslas are good vehicles and the Supercharger network on the East Coast is super. As the Tesla that went off a cliff in California last week and kept everyone alive showed, they are very crash worthy. Others may have different circumstances and a different experience. There are sure a lot of folks with no experience expressing a lot of ignorance and hostility.
It is a shame Elon has come out as such an asshole.
Matt McIrvin
Another problem I’ve personally noticed with EVs is an odd one: car dealers don’t want to sell them, probably because they require relatively little regular maintenance, which is a huge source of revenue for the dealers.
I noticed this the last couple of times we went shopping for a car: even if there were EVs sitting right there on the lot, expressing interest in them made the salesmen act like you were planning to buy poison. I presume the car company was forcing them to put them on display but the sales reps didn’t get commissions on them.
Supposedly this is why Tesla went through different sales channels. I wonder if things will change as EVs become more mainstream–the lack of a need for regular oil changes really ought to be a selling point.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Forget what it was but there was a Russian military vehicle which could run on most anything – gasoline, kerosene, cooking oil, you name it. Even vaguely recall a test run where they claimed it was running on urine.
Lousy mileage, though.
Matt McIrvin
@Craig: That’s not unique to Teslas though–these days nobody can get parts. If you get in an accident your car is going to be in the shop for months waiting for them.
Gravenstone
Well, Dodge (Ram) just release their promo for their upcoming electric pick up. I like the looks, but there is not nearly enough technical info at this early juncture to tell me if it’s more than just a pretty face.
CaseyL
@Matt McIrvin: “These days” is the key phrase. Getting Tesla parts has always meant months-long waits,
Which I guess means Tesla has been leading the way on that innovation, too!
MisterForkbeard
@wmd: The Mustang Mach-E is a great car. I bought a Volvo (C40) and a hybrid XC60 in 2022 and I love them but they’re on the more expensive side.
Before I bought those, I was considering the Bolt EUV and the Kia equivalent. The Mustang was also in there
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold:
https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/hydrogen-twice-as-powerful-a-greenhouse-gas-as-previously-thought-uk-government-study/2-1-1200115
http://www.ghgonline.org/otherhydrogen.htm
It sounds like the main thing is that H2 emissions reduce the level of free hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere, which in turn reduce the rate at which methane is removed, increasing the concentration of methane.
Hob
@Bill Arnold:
Based on your earlier comments, I think there’s a basic misunderstanding here. You’ve twice said it can’t be a problem because it “oxidizes to H2O”. Which is true— you get water vapor if you burn hydrogen. But the subject in this case is the hydrogen that doesn’t get burned.
H2 gas by itself, when it leaks into the atmosphere, does not spontaneously react with O2. You need heat for that. What it does spontaneously react with are hydroxyl radicals (OH). That reaction doesn’t produce any harmful by-products, but it competes with another gas that also reacts with OH: methane. Thus the more H2 you have floating around, the longer it takes for methane to go away.
Here are some links:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35419-7
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1067144/atmospheric-implications-of-increased-hydrogen-use.pdf
[oh, I see Matt beat me to it anyway]
Momentary
@Omnes Omnibus: LOL I certainly hope that’s the case, I love it very much!
Matt McIrvin
@MagdaInBlack: That already exists. Even in some hybrids. The top-of-the-line model of Hyundai Sonata hybrid (above the one I bought) replaces the sunroof with a solar panel that charges the battery.
But it’s a bit of a gimmick. The amount of power it collects only gives you a few miles’ driving per day. That’s something, but not much.
Basically, the surface area of a car’s roof is small enough that for solar panels to provide enough energy to power the car, it has to be a far lighter and lower-power vehicle than we expect from present-day cars. But it can help, and I do expect this kind of thing to become more common.
cain
I owned a Model S for many years, it is by far the most fun car I’ve ever had. That was before the whole self driving stuff (I missed it like a week) Tesla re-imagined the car, and proved that EVs can be viable. If they did anything they got the car manufacturers to start doing EVs.
I got into an accident and the car protected me, and I walked away from a T bone situation. It is a very safe car. I think we criticize the self driving stuff which I think we will never get right and U.S. consumers are way too trusting. I’m a software developer, and I know software is full of bugs. I’d never trust my life on self driving – however, the assisted stuff like following another car, detecting objects and people around them – that’s gold. That’s why other cars now have that same augmented car experience.
Of course, now all these car manufacturers and high tech people know our driving habits. I think that’s something we need to be concerned about – robots whether vacuum cleaners or cars have a view of everything we do and that data gets monetized.
FastEdD
I guess I’ll wade into this. I’m an experienced EV driver from SoCal. My partner (my gf who passed away in October) bought a Model S about 5 years ago and we have solar panels and Tesla Powerwalls as battery backup and they are wonderful. Out in rural SoCal the Powerwalls are essential when the power goes out, as the well pump runs off of them too. In a storm, our neighbors have no power and no water for days, and we don’t even notice a difference. Road trips (at least in CA) aren’t any problem. Forget about the BEV angle for a moment and you realize the car is better than anything you have ever driven. So smooth, so quiet, so fun to drive. You fly up a hill like it isn’t even there, no shifting, breathtaking instant torque. If you spend some time in one you never want to go back to an ICE.
The reason Tesla started with luxury vehicles at high prices was to get the startup established as a company before getting wiped out with development costs. You can’t argue with that strategy-it worked and they are the ONLY new car company that has succeeded in the US for decades. Expanding too fast has wiped out all the others. I fervently wish they would get rid of Elmo and be run as a normal car company.
That being said, I am not a Tesla/Elmo fanboy by any means. Not at all. Elon has turned out to be one of the biggest assholes on the planet and I am not surprised. When I put in an order for a new EV a year ago, I bought a Ford MME. I’ve been driving it for a couple months and I love it. It is perfect. No, it isn’t a “Mustang” and I wish they didn’t call it that, but it is a terrific car. Carries all my shit, goes faster than almost any gas car out there, perfect build quality, just a great machine. I compared it with a Model Y and I liked it better because you have actual physical knobs and handles to control things. Don’t give me that “everything belongs on the screen” philosophy. The Mach E cost me $59K, which sounds like a lot, but it is a high spec car with all the modern driver assistance that I have come to appreciate. With state and federal rebates and selling my old gas hog Jeep, my total cash out of pocket was $38K. And the average new car cost is $48K.
Charging at home is the way to go, if you have the setup for it. During the pandemic I was really glad not to visit gas stations at all. Public chargers will improve. We hear new networks announced every day and even on a road trip you don’t do a full charge every time.
Yes I am aware of efficiency issues in cold weather-I grew up in Chicago long ago. What is rarely mentioned is that EVERY car on the road is junk within a few years, destroyed by salt and rust. My “golf cart” does 0-60 in 4.8 seconds and still hauls people, dogs, and guitar amps. I love it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Momentary:
Did you ever see the Top Gear attempts to kill a Hilux? Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
cain
100% they are very safe.
I been involved in two Tesla related crashes. One where I was driving my Tesla and another where a Tesla driver rammed into me. Both times the driver walked away unscathed.
Tesla does give you a feeeling of invulnerability and I think for younger drivers they take more risks than you would with another car.
Matt McIrvin
@FastEdD: It’s always amazing for me to go out West and see all these really old cars still on the road. Here in New England they just get destroyed by weather and road salt. It’s a tough environment for cars.
Victor Matheson
At the current electricity prices in MA, charging my EV at home is like paying $4.50/gallon for gas. (Fortunately I can charge at work for the equivalent of $1.50/gallon.)
I bought a Hyundai Kona in 2021 for about $27k after about $9k in incentives. Most of those incentives disappeared under the anti-trade measures in the build back better act which limited EV tax breaks to only US cars.
Of course, the flip side my previous investment in solar panels is currently earning me an annual rate of return of about 35% thanks to the absurdly high electric prices here.
Eric K
The main issue for Tesla is that Mercedes, BMW, Audi and the rest of the luxury car makers are going all in on electric, even Porsche. And they are vastly better at the “luxury car” part of the car than Tesla.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: What do you think about the whole “whompy wheels” business–wheels and axles literally falling off of recent Teslas? Is it a case of isolated incidents being blown out of proportion by haters?
FastEdD
@cain: Totally agree with you about “Full Self Driving.” Not Gonna Happen. Although the driver assist features are wonderful. You can look down on the car from a bird’s eye 360 degree view and park it right between the lines. Amazeballs.
cain
Elon has destroyed the reputation of that company – even though I suppose he was the reason why it might have succeeded in the first place.
I wish there was a play they could use to kick him out. But I think he’s pretty much DNA merged with the company. Only going bankrupt and him forcing to sell Tesla to another party is it going to survive. Fucker will weep when that happens and he has only himself to blame.
cain
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t know – it might be a design flaw? My wheel came off when I got into my accident. (it was pretty bad, I’m lucky to be alive)
wmd
@Sister Golden Bear:
When I first got my plug in hybrid I had a 35 mile commute over the Santa Cruz mountains. I’d drive on electric for the first 12 miles, switch to gasoline for the steep grade sections in the next 10 miles so I’d have a depleted battery at the summit. The descent from 3000 feet above sea level to 200 feet over the next 7 miles would charge the battery enough to drive the remaining distance to work. It took me about 6 weeks to figure out a near optimal pattern to do as much on electric as possible.
being able to change modes between battery only, gas only or car algorithm choice (hybrid) is a nice feature for my car, not sure if brands offer this feature.
Victor Matheson
@MisterForkbeard: my spouse bought a hybrid XC60 about 2 months ago. She loves it. In fact, she loves it so much that I have literally not been allowed to drive it even once!
Momentary
@Omnes Omnibus:
Tempting but I think my loathing of Jeremy Clarkson is standing in the way ;)
cain
I’m not really that worried. I think those companies are forced to copy Tesla. The driver augmented features all come from Tesla. The mature car companies know how to leverage supply chains and put good cars together but coming up with new features? They don’t have that experience because these car companies need to have a software division – not something they are used to. There will be a period of a decade or so to incorporate software as part of their supply chain.
FastEdD
@Matt McIrvin: True. Out here old cars are rotting from the inside, elsewhere they rot from the outside. I have a keepsake from my 1972 Vega, an envelope with rust flakes. Traded it for a case of beer. RIP Vega.
Victor Matheson
@Bill Arnold: I installed a lvl 2 charger in my house for under $1,500 and I bought an expensive charger. If you were lucky you could easily get under $1,000 in a garage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Momentary:
Understood. Basically, they sink the truck, drive it though buildings, hit it with a wrecking ball, set it on fire, and finally place it on top of a tower block that is being demolished. It does not die.
Momentary
@Omnes Omnibus:
That is excellent. I fear my truck is in more danger from being parked in the rain for ten years. At least it doesn’t go on salted roads much.
Another Scott
@FastEdD: Thanks for the report. I’m still just looking and noodling about what will replace my 2004 VW Jetta TDI Wagon. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Mach-E. The Kia EV6 sounds a little more future-proof (has higher voltage electrical so can charge faster, in principle). But it is kinda big (114.2″ wheelbase, 185″ long) and I really don’t want anything much bigger than my Jetta Wagon (100″ wheelbase, 174″ long). Even the Mach-E is on the big side too (117.5″ wheelbase, 186″ long)…
There will be more overall choices in ’24 and ’25, but it may still be a while before there are lots of good choices in the smaller-end of the market. And there’s going to be the tradeoff between size and weight and range for the foreseeable future. And real-world range is probably going to be substantially less than the EPA rating for anyone who lives anywhere other than San Diego. ;-) So that’s another thing to keep in mind.
I’m hoping to upgrade our 1963 electrical panel to 200A, add solar panels, add some sort of battery backup (not Tesla), replace our gas water heater with a heat pump water heater, and add a 50A circuit for a 40A charger sometime this year. We’ll probably have to replace the 15+ year old EPDM roof too (it’s not leaking, but I don’t want leaks a few years down the road under the solar panels…) Still have to do some figuring and get quotes and figure out how much is possible (I assume electricians will be very busy) this year.
Enjoy! I hope it treats you well.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
My in-laws just love their shitty death trap teslas. But they live in Silicon Valley and never go to Tahoe, which is one of the few contexts in which Teslas make sense…
One of them got totaled in a crash. They wanted a new Tesla and had to wait eight months… and it was immediately recalled… lol
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: Diesels lost some of their “green” cred when Volkswagen’s lies about emissions were exposed–and after a period when diesel had rough price parity with gasoline, now it seems like it’s more expensive, which wipes out the cost savings from those engines getting such high gas mileage.
But the highest-efficiency petroleum-powered cars I’ve heard of were diesel hybrids. Several of the European manufacturers make them but they don’t seem to sell them here.
pacem appellant
Very little mention here of the Nissan Leaf, which is priced similarly to the Chevy Bolt. That’s my commuter vehicle. When the kids learn to drive, it’ll be theirs (and I’ll move on to a Mini Cooper SE :-) ).
My Leaf has the extended-range option for its year, so I can get to SF and back to the South Bay and still have half a charge left.
But at least here in California, I can super-charge along 101 in twenty minutes (to 80%). Which means that the car will finish charging before I finish ordering my coffee and using the restroom.
Matt McIrvin
@pacem appellant: The Leaf was the car that I saw make a car salesman go into a “no, no, you don’t want to buy that!!!” fit when I so much as looked in its direction on the lot, which made me think a lot about the reasons why that happened. The dealership sells the car but actually doesn’t want me to buy it? Odd.
Ruckus
There are a number of EVs sold in the US but the choice is much bigger in other places. Places where petroleum is not in the same range of cost/profit. Places where buying a full sized 4×4 pickup to drive around in empty is not a status enhancer. And one of the reasons for that is expensive gasoline, often based upon the taxes collected. We also are a country with our own auto manufacturing, several brands/many models. And yes those big pickups can do a lot of work, but just as often seem to be just dick enhancers. We in this country are used to gasoline. We had car manufacturing when many countries were recovering from WWII. Many other countries have efficient, well functioning rapid transit, and have had it for decades. I rode trains in Europe 5 decades ago, that were better transit than most places here have now. I ride public rail transit across LA county, 50 miles each way to go to the VA. It’s cheaper than gas and I have a car that can get over 40 mpg. And has on that trip. But far more often it’s upper 20s because of traffic and takes the same time as the fully electric train/subway system. In a year or two it will be even faster because the subway is being extended and ends up on/under VA property, right in front of the entrance 150 or so feet in front of the door.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Low profit margin? I bet that salesman’s boss would’ve been happy to move it
Though when I bought my first hybrid in 2015 (Higlander), the salesman was pretty much trying to talk me out of it because with gas prices so low I’d never get back the extra money I was paying, and his commission was, I believe, based on that higher sticker price.
Embra
@CaseyL: My priorities in a vehicle are economy and efficiency, so I’m excited about getting an Aptera. One correction: while the daily gain from solar charging may be close to 50 miles/day (probably more like 30-40 depending on latitude and such), they are so efficient that range will be from 250 miles up to 1000 miles per charge, depending on battery size.
We leased a 2013 Leaf for several years–with about 85 miles of range I thought of it as our second car that we drove 80% of the time. It worked well for most driving needs, but not all…a nice complement to our Forester. I bought a used Bolt a couple years ago, and it’s worked well as my [now] only car (with some compromises, to be sure).
I think that EVs are a good solution today for those who can do level 2 charging at home or work; others will probably want to hold off until charging solutions are worked out. An Aptera might be an EV solution for some apartment dwellers–but it’s only a 2-person vehicle.
Kent
The market solution to your urban living problem is private lots with charging. We aren’t there yet but there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to rent a parking spot in some off-street parking garage that provides you own private charging site. Or even concierge service where you drop off the car and it gets parked and charged at the same time. The fact that such service doesn’t exist today doesn’t mean it is implausible. It will probably require public subsidy of some sort, at least to start. But that is normal for technological change.
About 100 years ago we went from horses to cars in about 10 years time. Change is possible
We need to get rid of free off-street car storage on most city streets anyway. That is an enormous subsidy for cars. We should be using that public space for other mobility options like e-bikes, scooters, ordinary bikes, transit, and improved pedestrian use.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
Thanks. Here’s the main 75 page paper.
Atmospheric implications of increased Hydrogen use (April 2022, Nicola Warwick, Paul Griffiths, James, Keeble, Alexander Archibald, John Pyle, University of Cambridge and NCAS, and Keith Shine, University of Reading)
Seems to be an honest attempt, that has already attracted a lot of citations. Model shows increased risk of methane leaks when H2 is also leaked.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=5864173701960933237&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
Diesel here in SoCal is quite a bit more expensive than gas, in some places as much as $2/gal more but often at least $1.25/gal more. Pretty much eliminates any monetary advantage from the possible better range.
FastEdD
@Another Scott: Thanks Scott. As a lurker I have enjoyed your take on things-you seem to be a calming influence. The car I replaced was a Jeep Grand Cherokee. It suited my needs for 11 years, AWD (I live on a steep hill.) The Ford is actually shorter, smaller, and lighter than the vehicle it replaces, although all EV’s are heavy. I am aware that Henry Ford was an awful person too, but that was a long time ago!
Jager
@wmd: The Volt has a ‘Mountain Mode” to save energy in hilly country. We can go see the kids in the Bay area on 2.2 tanks of gas, less than 18 gallons for a 770 mile trip.
Kent
Hybrids made more sense 20 years ago when battery technology was much worse and much more expensive. Today there is something of a belt and suspenders effect to having a car that has both an EV system with electric motor/battery and an IC system with gas engine and drive train.
And I say this as a Prius owner which I am largely happy with. My Prius is a 2015 model with about 100,000 miles on it and when it finally reaches the end of its useful life in another 100,000 miles I will definitely not replace it with another hybrid, but full EV instead.
Jager
@Kent: The most valuable real estate in cities is on-street parking.
Kent
The Leaf is the car I would buy today if I suddenly had to replace my Prius. But I’m hoping there are many more similar small car EV options in a few years when I really have to replace it.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My theory was that Nissan forced them to offer Leafs but they didn’t want to sell them because of the near-zero maintenance business they got from them–so the salesman maybe got zero commission.
Kent
@Matt McIrvin: Also, all the incentives dropped the purchase price so less financing, which is where many dealers actually make their money. They would rather you drive out with a Pathfinder costing $50K that you to finance up the butt.
Bill Arnold
@Hob:
Thanks. I was dreading reading the paper Matt linked indirectly; your explanation is much shorter, and that Nature paper is helpful (Risk of the hydrogen economy for atmospheric methane (13 December 2022))
Geminid
@Bodacious: I’m looking forward to when the Dayton, Virginia Walmart has a line of EV chargers next to its line of hitching posts. Dayton is in the Shenandoah Valley near Harrisonburg, and the local Amish people take their horse-drawn wagons to Walmart.
The larger Mennonite population can drive automobiles, but there are certain restrictions. A friend told me about when his college classmate, a Mennonite, was showing off his new muscle car. “You mean they let you drive these things?” Ricky asked. “As long as there’s no chrome,” the guy replied.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent: If I had a convenient way to do level 2 charging at home I’d have bought an EV for my current car. As it is, I don’t, so I got a hybrid.
But my wife’s Nissan Juke will only last so long and now she’s thinking about taking the jump for her next car, and doing the home improvements we’d need to have decent charging infrastructure here.
Matt McIrvin
…The discussion of charging at work reminds me of a weird thing that happened: my previous employer actually had electric-vehicle chargers in their employee lot, but they ordered us not to use them! Claimed it was some kind of tax issue, that if we were allowed to use them it would be taxed as an employee benefit and that this would be bad for them or for us in some unspecified way. So the EV chargers were for visitors only (and went unused). I think they just straight-up didn’t want to pay for us to use the chargers.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
Some decades back, a friend interviewed with IBM in Burlington, Vermont. The story was that he commented during the interview that people must be pretty well off in the area because all the cars were new.
He was told about salt… :-)
Other MJS
@Miss Bianca: I follow several clean energy and EV groups on FB (and the algorithm shows me more), and it amazes me how the trolls dutifully respond to the most wonky, obscure, and non-advocacy topics, suddenly very concerned about recycling and generally acting like they are being forced to buy EVs at gunpoint.
Jager
A VW Prototype now holds the record at Nurburgring (and Pike’s Peak), Number 2 is another Prototype from, the Nio EP9, the Nio is a fantasy car. In the world of real cars, a production Porsche Taycan is the fastest production car, followed by a Tesla S Plaid, then a Mercedes AMG Coupe. The production electric record is 7 minutes and 33 seconds
way2blue
@NotMax:
I have a 220V wall charger installed at home, didn’t require any re-wiring. And schedule charging to begin at midnight when PG&E rates are lowest. No build issues. Lots of super chargers along major routes. Charger stations at local libraries, hotels, hospitals, shopping centers, and even gas stations…
Did have a challenge driving to Kennedy Meadows in July 2020 as there aren’t any superchargers on Hwy 108. Fine on the way up, stopped at a B&B on the way down for a charge while we shared a bottle of wine on the back deck (except for the driver). Great to not need to stop at gas stations. In fact, I use a bicycle pump to pump up the tires when needed. EVs won’t fix rapid climate change, but are a vast improvement over ICE cars.
Jager
@Bill Arnold: On my block, there is a 1969 big block Camaro, perfect, a 1941 Ford, perfect, one block over a 55 Chevy Belair, perfect. There’s a 1950 Ford F2 pickup restored as a Ventura County Highway Department truck, it started life as one 72 years ago.
Geminid
I think commercial delivery fleets will be out front in the transition to EVs. UPS and Amazon are two of the companies planning to replace their current gas andiesel powered vans and trucks with electric delivery vehicles (UPS intends to have hybrids for longer routes).
School buses will also be electric. The Infrastructure bill has funding to convert 20% of the nation’s school bus fleet to electric this decade. I think that number will be exceeded; once people see the benefit of kids breathing cleaner air everyone will want them. Rural districts with longer routes will use plug in hybrids.
Another Scott
@Jager: VW’s engineers can do amazing things. Bugatti is part of the VW group. And VW demonstrated 261 mpg in a diesel/hybrid prototype in 2011. Impressive!
Then I think about all the news stories over the decades about the new VW Bus coming back “real soon now!” Apparently they’re, finally, actually, really bringing it back as an EV now, but it will cost a fortune and the aerodynamics mean that it will have poor range. But it might be a good vehicle for city folks who need to move bunches of stuff. I’m keeping an eye on that too…
Cheers,
Scott.
Kelly
We have an ideal situation for an EV. Majority of our trips are under 50 miles. The electric panel is in the garage and can support a new 220 plug. We have a Highlander which can pull our popup camp trailer and take the WW raft trailer to the sometimes rough launch points. Comfy for long road trips. Also a good ski bus. Mrs. Kelly drives a Pontiac Vibe which is a rebadged Toyota Matrix which is a Toyota Corolla under the sheet metal. It would be the car to swap for an EV. Mrs. Kelly expresses considerable disdain for swapping the Vibe before wearing it out. It’s a Corolla. It’ll last the rest of our lives.
Kent
Just yesterday I noticed a strange-looking Amazon delivery van on my street that turned out to be a Rivan electric. I asked the driver about it and he said it was WAY nicer and more fun to drive than their older vans: https://www.motortrend.com/news/checking-in-on-the-rivian-amazon-edv-electric-van/
It is happening. I think the next place where we will start seeing electric is with school buses. They do a lot of diesel idling in residential neighborhoods and have short range so it makes sense. Plus they have large parking lots that could easily have chargers installed.
WhatsMyNym
@cain:
“2017 Mercedes-Benz E300 – Putting Autonomous to the Test”
Stuart Frasier
@Kent: The new FedEx vans around here are BrightDrop EV600s (GM’s BEV van). Amazon is still using Transits, but looking forward to the Rivians.
Another Scott
@WhatsMyNym: +1
Toyota had self-parking working in 2003 and sold it on a Lexus in 2006.
All of the big car companies have been working on this augmentated driving stuff for a long time. They shouldn’t be underestimated, even if they are conservative about introducing it to the market.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
I live in a rather urban area, the eastern edge of LA county. I have rapid transit options, Metro and MetroLink, and the local bus. The local bus can take me to the Metro rail system which I can ride all the way to Santa Monica or Long Beach, or if I have the/a lot of time, to Orange County. I can ride MetroLink to Lancaster, Ventura, San Diego, Redlands. It’s less than a half mile walk to a station. But it’s diesel/electric, so is it cleaner than driving? It is cheaper. It often isn’t as convenient as the Metro system and doesn’t always take me where I need/want to go. But LA’s rapid transit system does work and often better than driving. But one has to either be unable to drive or at least adventurous to try it. And yes I have ridden one of the Metro trains with a girl gang member standing in front of me holding a closed pocket knife in her hand. Once. Anyone live in NYC? Or worked near downtown LA? Or numerous other less than perfect places? A lot of normal humans do. Ever been in a traffic accident? Ever been hit head on in a vehicle accident – literally? Life isn’t always easy, as most of us can attest. And likely will never be with humans in it.
rosalind
Re. Condos/EV Charging: my condo building is dealing with this issue right now. Our electrical capacity is just about tapped out. The current estimate from the Power Company to upgrade the system is: $250K
Burnspbesq
@sdhays:
And he’s dead wrong about that, too.
Superchargers are pretty much anywhere a Tesla driver would want them (although they might face a wait at notorious bottlenecks like Baker, CA). And the well-known issues with Electrify America are a bit overblown IMO; I’ve done Austin – Denver and Austin – Chicago in my Taycan without incident, and had a blast doing it. When all is said and done, it’s still a Porsche, with all that entails.
jehrler
@caring & sensitive: totally agree about plug-in hybrids being the sweet spot.
We are on our second Chevy Volt (leased first then bought). With 60 mile summer range in MN we don’t buy gas from March to October. In winter when below 20 engine will come on occasionally (even with plenty of charge) as more efficient to get heat and propulsion from engine running. Still only buy a tank or two in winter
And, come February, we can drive to San Diego with no worries about charging and getting 40 mpg.
Burnspbesq
@Origuy:
$400 for the charger and $1,000 to run a 50 amp, 240 volt line through the attic from the panel to the front of the house—what I paid—is a far more realistic than $6k.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus:
Almost certainly yes. If the trains are running at all full, the economies of scale make it so. And if they’re not running full, the marginal effect of you riding the train is minuscule and effectively makes it cleaner by getting a car off the road.
In that connection, there is a death spiral that sets in with public transit where people say “if not many people are riding, is it really that clean/cost effective?” and reduce frequency–but reduced frequency makes it less convenient and still fewer people ride.
Frequency is key. My region has a bus system that recently went fare-free, and there’s a stop a short walk from my house, a bus that goes downtown to a hub where others depart–but the buses around here only come once an hour, which makes it hard to use for the short-range casual travel I’d want to use it for. If it was, say, every 10 minutes, I’d probably use it. High frequency means you no longer have to plan ahead for the times when the train or bus comes and worry about missing one.
Geminid
@Kent: Vice President Harris was in Rocky Mount, North Carolina the day after the Infrastucture bill was signed, visiting an electric school bus plant.
I looked up electric school buses around that time. If I’m remebering correctly, they cost around 80% more than their diesel counterparts, but over their life cycle are less expensive because of lower fuel and maintenance costs. So like many other components of the clean energy transition, this is a matter of financing and not cost.
I also found that the Cummins company sells power system packages that convert gas or diesel trucks to electric.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott:
I remember that. Note that the vehicle is a really stripped-down thing, not street-legal in most places and lacking a lot of the amenities we expect from a car. At some point physics means you have to introduce tradeoffs, but given that, amazing things are possible.
I remember a New Agey woo site linking to that story as proof that all the “100 MPG carburetor” conspiracy stories were real because they clearly could have done this all along. But actually reading the story gave the lie to that.
Burnspbesq
@cain:
Nope. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Anecdote: I’m in the Taycan owners forum on Le Livre des Visages. I recently asked my fellow owners whether they wished they had one-pedal driving (a feature of Teslas). Response was overwhelmingly negative.
People who want what Leon Skum is peddling know how to get it, and those who don’t want it will find ways to avoid it like the plague it is.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: +1
Frequency is very important.
But, fortunately, everything being on the web now means that (at least around here) you can install the company’s transit app and know exactly when the next bus/train/trolley is going to be at your stop. So you can spend less time waiting around at the start of your trip.
HOWEVER, if you need to make connections, then you really, really want frequent vehicles. Waiting for connections kills transit efficiency for real people.
It’s a 20 minute drive to work for me, door to door, here in NoVA. Transit (walking+bus+subway+bus+walking) would increase that to about 3 hours. Each way. :-( Because the buses and trains don’t run frequently enough.
Cheers,
Scott.
Starfish
@Kirk Spencer: You are experiencing an understandable problem, and there are places where government is building out to fix this problem by subsidizing the charging stations in particular areas.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: My employer wants me to start coming back to the office, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it. The horror of parking in the city makes driving every day out of the question, even if everything else about it didn’t.
I live near the terminus of an MBTA commuter rail line. Unfortunately, the MBTA commuter rail is in two disconnected pieces, that line goes to North Station, and the Boston office is near South Station. So on top of the hour and a half or so to get to the station and ride the train, I need another half hour or so to get from North Station to South Station, which seems to be about the same amount of time whether I ride the famously dysfunctional subway, a bus, or just walk (definitely doable if the weather is nice).
The best way to do it that I can figure out is the same thing I was doing pre-pandemic: to drive 20 minutes away from the city to a park-and-ride in Salem, New Hampshire, and ride the Boston Express bus in from there, a semi-private service subsidized by the state of New Hampshire as part of the environmental mitigation plan for a highway project. That goes right into the South Station bus depot. The bus still has to battle Boston rush-hour traffic, but at least I’m not the one driving, and the parking at the station is free. It still seems absurd.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Wow. That’s a horrible commute. :-(
When I started working where I am now, 30-mumble years ago, there were stories about a few people commuting every day from NC to their job in DC. Maybe 3-3.5 hours each way, maybe substantially less given it was probably easier to speed on I-95 back in those days. ;-)
I assume employers are realizing – after people’s experiences working remotely during the pandemic – that things have to change going forward and employees aren’t going to put up with insane commutes if they have options…
Good luck!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: I only have to go in a couple days a week.
I’ve had far worse: my previous job was at a completely transit-inaccessible office park in a town that was one of the most notorious traffic chokepoints in the region, so it was at least an hour drive each way and on really bad days it could be 2 hours to drive home, crawling the whole way in a continuous traffic jam of on-edge assholes. (And they required being in-office all day every day, for security reasons.) Being able to use any kind of mass transit at all feels like a luxury.
Ivan X
Mix, you’re a smart guy, but this is a dumb take. First off, you present the post credit price of the Bolt but not that of the Tesla 3. You do disclose the pre credit price of the Bolt, but by comparing $40k to $17k, you’re still spinning to make your argument rather than analyzing. Second, sure, Tesla might not be the brand that makes the masses buy an EV, but there is obviously a market for luxury cars that ain’t going away anytime soon. Why can’t Tesla live happily in that space? And why are you so dismissive of the real-world benefits of home charging and the relative ease of electric charging when the car’s computer tells you when and where along your route to do it?
Obviously, there are use cases where EV’s aren’t good ideas, so there will probably be gas cars for some time coming, but the reasoning here is lazy, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that this argument is not in fact about the car, because it seems unlikely to be made if it weren’t for Tesla’s owner being such a fucking tool.
Btw I drive a 13 year old gas car, so I’ve got no skin in this one. My brother has been a long time Tesla enthusiast and his cars have impressed me, though I wouldn’t really want all my controls to be on a screen.
Fair Economist
@JustRuss: The problem with hybrid is that the ICE car bits it has to have ( engine, transmission, emissions control, etc.) cost thousands *more* than the extra batteries for a BEV. GM went to all-electric because of those economics.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I got used Bolt for 17k a couple years ago. It’s our #1 ride if we’re going somewhere within its range. It’s the nicest car I’ve owned. Tesla’s advantage is their DC fast charging infrastructure. There really isn’t any in upstate NY for other car brands. I’d love to be able to go to Ithaca and know I could charge enough to get home even if it took 30 minutes.
Ruckus
@cliosfanboy:
Last apt building I lived in the owner put in a car charging station for 5 cars. There is a charge to use it of course and there was one Tesla in the underground garage when it was installed. Before the installation was finished a second Tesla showed up. Sure, if every one brought an electric car 5 chargers would likely not be enough but I don’t see that happening for a while and another 5 chargers could be installed as there were more spaces than necessary.
The world of cars is changing and will change more but I’d bet it will be a while before gas cars are no longer sold.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
I made the point of the diesel/electric mainly because I do have a choice of trains to take, both of which end up at exactly the same place, Union Station in LA. The cost is enough different that the diesel/electric costs more than the all electric. And the reason the D/E is not a lot more to operate full or empty is that the diesel engine and fuel add a lot of weight to the overall, and it has to have an engine at each end because there is no way to turn the entire train around. So the train costs more and moves a lot more weight, which costs more. But for me it’s walking distance to the D/E and the all electric is 2 1/2 miles away. I’ve walked it before but am not usually in the mood in heat or rain. Here we don’t normally have a lot of that rain stuff but OTOH the heat…..
J R in WV
@CliosFanBoy:
I lIKE that idea!!!
Charleston WV now has credit card payment on almost all the parking meters… so I imagine they could alter those meters to bill a user’s credit card for the charging cost while they are parked at a meter. If there was a charger on the meter…
mquirk
So… Hybrid plug-in EV owner here.
I’ve got a Honda Clarity. I used to have VW Beetle until the engine literally dropped out of it after 19 years and 249k of service.
The Clarity is exactly what I need in an EV hybrid vehicle.
95% of the time I’m doing simple work and errand commute driving, 40-50 mile range and then back home. Plug it in overnight and I’m good to go for the next day.
Holidays and summers I do a long drive. The gas generator kicks in for extra range. I fill up at a gas station for 5-6 gallons of gas and I’m good to go for another 250 miles.
I’ve been tracking my refilling stops and I’m well over 110 miles per gallon.
Socolofi
Late to the thread here.
OP is right but for the wrong reasons. 10-year owner of a Model S here. Looking for the next car, won’t be a Tesla.
Tesla showed how to make non-sucky EVs. Now everyone is. Still maturing but lots of competition. Means people want EVs. Infrastructure still building so not for everyone yet but getting there.
Why Tesla is screwed:
1. Build quality. I’ve replaced 5 door handles. Yes, one twice. Nobody replaces door handles. Interior build is crap, and that is stuff we can see. I knew buying v1.0 I’d have this, but 10 years later it’s still an issue. Points to a failure for great QC and doesn’t bode well.
2. Crap service. 10 years ago when i took the car in for service, car was cleaned and detailed – including doing whatever to get a Tesla logo in the carpet in the rear. Loaner would be a high end model. Fast forward, car comes back dirty, loaners are from Enterprise. I got an Altima. Chevy is better (we have a Sonic for the kid).
3. Loss of focus. How many car companies build semis? Right. Because the customer needs are radically different. Or solar roofs? Same deal. And what we all see now is that Elon is a shit boss that can’t scale himself – he has to do it. So Tesla won’t focus and is already slowing way down. Competition catches up and then they’re dead.
my $0.02. Oh and likely getting the BMW i7.
Bupalos
@sdhays: Road trips can’t even be 5% of car utility for most people.
I’m definitely not a Tesla honk, anymore I would very much hesitate to buy one because of Elmo-stench. And I’m getting a bolt. And as far as companies or stocks go, that GM is already producing a better value BEFORE having really optimized things for electric (their own ultium battery platform comes in next year) is indeed a sign that Tesla is in major trouble because it’s valued as if it’s going to continue being the dominant brand in an expanding market and that’s very very unlikely to be the case if you ask me.
But the 3 is probably the 2nd best overall value electric car on the road, and there are a lot of great things about it. Funny note though, one of the nicest things about the 3 is the big glass roof, which I initially though of as a feather in the design/engineering cap of Tesla. It really changes the whole driving experience for not that much of an investment. What a great idea! Then I saw the old 2014 bolt prototypes…guess what it had.
Bupalos
[warily eyes up 2006 TDI beetle with 235K lurking in driveway]
Bupalos
@Ruckus: ELECTRIC UNICYCLE!!!
Bupalos
@Origuy: First I’d say that is way high to begin with. Second, it’s covered by Rewiring America. Third SOME economy of scale? I’d suggest something like a factor of 2 at least. Cut your estimate in half and then in half again. And factor in that it’s covered by the IRA.
Bupalos
@Miss Bianca: I’m not quite understanding the arrangement, but the f150 lightning can definitely do anything any other pickup can do and quite a bit more. Electric is inherently higher torque and more robust. Not cheap, but neither is any other pickup, and when you figure actual cost of ownership…
Bupalos
@CaseyL: 50? The Aptera’s minimum range version is 250 miles, the max is 1000.
That said, yes, it isn’t really a car in the sense that we think of. Which I think of as a very good thing. In a broader perspective, we’re all pretty much acting insane by acting normal.
Bupalos
I’m not sure what this expresses. Most people would be much better served by a plug-in hybrid today than what they are driving today. A strong minority would be better served by a full EV. I don’t see any logistical challenges getting in the way of 5 years being pretty much the outside limit where the vast majority of miles driven by new cars in the US come via electric. Not sure if folks are aware of what Rewiring America is set to do, starting a week ago.
One of the biggest barriers is people need to TRY full EV’s, because once they do they tend to realize they are much better cars to drive, and it’s well worth taking on the new hassles for that payoff. The high-trim bolt you can get in for maybe 27 out of pocket for me is overall a better experience than any car I’ve ever driven up to at least double that price. People generally do not go back.
Chris T.
I have mentioned this before, but:
and I had charging circuits installed in my garages (three different garages at this point). It’s not difficult, but many years ago you had to tell the electrician “install a 40 or 50 amp electric dryer socket” because telling them to install an “EV charging socket” confused them. 😀 It’s gotten a lot better. Price for this socket varies a lot based on where you live and whether you’re getting anything else done (this last one, we put in a heat pump at the same time, to get air conditioning, and that was the really big expense). The only time I had it done “stand alone” it was ~$1500 but that included adding a new sub-panel for the solar PV as well.
Charging with the 120 (or 110 or whatever you want to call it) “convenience charger” is possible—I’ve done it, repeatedly until I could get the 240V charger circuit installed—but painful. You don’t need anything special for this as the units usually have a 12 amp mode (super-slow) and a ~7 amp mode (super-duper-extra slow) so you can use them on any old circuit, but the 12 amp mode means nothing else significant should be on the circuit. It turns out that your standard “15 amp” circuit is only rated for 12 amp continuous.
Longer trips have gotten far easier as there are now plenty of ChargePoint, EA, etc., chargers in most major areas on the west coast. In the early days (ten years ago) the PHEV was necessary. It’s less of a problem now, though it’s not completely solved everywhere. Also, sometimes some EV charger units just aren’t working. The EA station at the Target that I use for trips to/from the Seattle airport had one of its 3 units dead one time, and it’s popular enough that this was a minor problem: I waited an extra 5 minutes for someone to finish up at one of the working units to plug in. If they hadn’t been almost done I would have just gone further though, as there are more sets of chargers closer to where I live, it’s just that I like to plug in and then go into the Target store.
My personal limit on how far I can go between charges is about 200 miles—after that I need a rest stop myself, whether or not the car needs charging! But that’s something of a function of getting old; when I was much younger I used to drive up to 400 miles between rest stops (at ~27-28 mpg average with a 16 gallon fuel tank, at the time).
I did look at the Tesla (model S, back then) but it was luxury priced with an econobox interior: yuck. So, I kind of lucked out in terms of hating the Telsa interiors enough not to be stuck with the giant MAGA hat problem…
Paul in KY
I have a 2016 Genesis. Looked at the big Tesla and while I do like the styling, I just didn’t want a car that I’d have to go to the geek squad for maintenance on or that I took to my regular mechanic and he said ‘Fuck if I know’.
Also, the batteries do run out after 10 years or so & have to be replaced (my understanding).
Emily B.
While there’s definitely room for improvement, more charging infrastructure exists out there than people think. See https://www.plugshare.com/ And chargers are often in places where people might be spending some time anyway. Electrify America, for example, has placed high-speed chargers in Wal-Mart parking lots—which are often close enough to interstates to serve travelers as well as local shoppers. Many towns have installed chargers in municipal lots or garages.
Once you have an EV, it alters your habits as a consumer. Since acquiring an Ioniq 5, on the road we’re MUCH more likely to choose hotels and restaurants based on their proximity to a charger. Some car models will help you locate the closest chargers—and if it turns out that the Dunkin’ Donuts five miles down the road has a charger, that’s where we’re stopping for coffee. In 2023, it’s going to be a really smart marketing move for shopping centers, restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, etc. to install electric chargers.
The Lodger
@NotMax: In America, they’d refer to urine as “biologically processed alcohol.”