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Motor Trend magazine has passed 15K miles with their long term Chevrolet Bolt test car. The latest report http://www.motortrend.com/cars/chevrolet/bolt-ev/2017/2017-chevrolet-bolt-ev-review-long-term-update-6/ discusses charging away from home and work -- availability and use of Level 2/3 chargers in and around Los Angeles.
I've used public chargers from several companies, including ChargePoint, EVgo, Blink, and EV Connect, but a cursory internet search turns up at least 15 providers operating in the U.S. Every single one of them would prefer you sign up for a membership and download their app, but every one I've tried also allows for guest use. There are perks for membership, including better rates, quicker payment, and quicker activation at the charger, but the real benefit is not having to deal with guest access. At minimum, it requires entering a credit card number either online or through their app, which you'll have to download. At worst, it requires calling the customer service line, waiting on hold, then reading them the charger's ID number and your credit card number over the phone. Some EVgo stations I've used have credit card readers, but every one I've found hasn't worked. Prices vary wildly as the charging networks generally let the owner of the station set the rates. Some charge a flat fee, some charge by total time or electricity used, and others do both.
(discussion of the author's experiences over the 15K miles including trips that required charging at the destination and also airport runs with the Bolt full of people and luggage)
I've waited to address public charging until my time with the Bolt is nearly up so I could provide as complete a picture as possible. Here in Southern California, where EVs are popular and public chargers are fairly common, public charging is workable if mildly inconvenient. So far, the number of chargers seems to have mostly kept pace with the popularity of EVs, but we're already seeing lines forming at Tesla Superchargers. As EVs become more common, the public charging network is going to need to grow at the same or better pace to keep up, and whether that happens is anyone's guess. If electric cars are ever going to be ubiquitous like some people predict, we're going to need a lot more chargers, and we're going to need them everywhere, at nearly every parking space, so people who can't charge at home or are running low can top up. That's going to take a lot of investment from a lot of people, and it remains to be seen if supply keeps up with demand.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday March 15 2018, @01:55PM (19 children)
In the long run public chargers are likely to become something like RV dump stations, rare and weird and most people will have no idea where they are located. Useful for long distance travelers, or maybe homeless people, but ...
Another good analogy would be cell phone charging stations. A public one where the business model is selling all your private data after installing an app and fees fees fees everywhere is very interesting and headline grabbing, but its infinitely easier to use the "charging station" beside my bed, or on my desk.
A final novelty is its "well known" for all battery chemistries that the faster you discharge OR charge the battery, the more damage. Currently EVs mostly sell to twitter poster type people or folks really into the technology both of whom don't care about the cost. But your average driver, my wife perhaps, is going to learn:
1) The battery costs $25K essentially "buy a new car"
2) Each time you fast charge, you'll kill maybe 500 miles of lifespan from the theoretical lifespan of the battery. You can fill a "tank" worth of range fast, but it'll kill two tanks worth of total battery lifespan.
I anticipate public fast charging to be very popular among the "twitter LOOK AT ME" crowd who crave attention complaining how fast charging suxs, but the general public is not going to be interested in this whole class of service.
What will probably end up selling very well, is all my vehicles have trailer hitches (even the wife's Prius) and we can stick the bike rack on any vehicle very quickly and easily. You can buy beer cooler strap down thingies for hitches with considerable weight ratings. I suspect "real world" E-vehicles will have hitch and plug on the back of the car to charge off a generator while driving down the highway. Every watt generated pushes the car downrange more miles until the car would arrive with a dead battery 16 hours later and maybe 1200 miles away, any more and the car would arrive with at least a partial charge at the hotel or home to be topped off overnight. If you can't afford $600 for a honda generator that'll last at least 20 years or $400 for a harbor freight generator that'll last maybe one trip, you'll be able to rent one from the uhaul place for probably $25/day or similar.
Or more likely you'll just rent a car for long trips or large objects. My wife owns a Prius and had no trouble moving an older relative from one apartment building to another in one big trip; she simply drove the prius to the uhaul guy two miles from my house, paid $50 for a truly gigantic truck that seems to get less than five MPG, and did the work. Its just not a big deal. Likewise with trips. I could drive 26 hours each way to the Grand Canyon and refill the gas tank over and over which I could never do with a E-car, but thats idiocy, I'll take a plane and rent a car. Somehow, spending 52 hours behind the wheel, just to take my car because its mine on a commute, isn't my idea of a vacation.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 15 2018, @02:39PM (4 children)
Or more likely you'll just rent a car for long trips or large objects. My wife owns a Prius and had no trouble moving an older relative from one apartment building to another in one big trip; she simply drove the prius to the uhaul guy two miles from my house, paid $50 for a truly gigantic truck that seems to get less than five MPG, and did the work.
According to the anti-EV people I've argued with, what you describe here is completely and utterly impossible.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:20PM (3 children)
Another good one is "Everyone needs 500 mile range every single day which will be unaffordable battery size".
Yet, assuming $5 per mile for a bizjet and pilot, the cost savings of buying a 100 mile range car instead of a 500 mile car mean that instead of sitting in a car with me for 56 hours to visit the Grand Canyon, it would be cheaper to buy the shorter range car and charter a Lear 31 for our family trip. I could spend a huge stack of money to sit in a car for 56 hours, but I'd rather spend the same stack on a cheap car and three hours in a chartered lear jet. Reality is I'd probably get plain old airline tickets and save tens of thousands, but whatever.
Another good one is I had a coworker with one of those $80K dualie pickup crew cab all leather 4x4 trucks expressing how horrible it was we had to pay to get paver bricks delivered from Home Depot... For the price difference between the wife's Prius and his truck, I could have not only paid for delivery, but hired groundskeepers to do all the patio labor multiple times. Sometimes HD will have a coupon deal to waive your delivery charge if you spend enough which makes the ratio of cost infinite.
Another fascinating ratio is a good rule of thumb is a limo costs about $100/hr around here, so limo service from my front door to the grand canyon and back, would theoretically only cost $6K or so, which sounds much more vacation like and relaxing than paying $50K for a battery pack big enough for me to drive myself.
Taking my entire family one way from my house to downtown Chicago is $36 on a bus, About $70 total for car including tolls and some hours of parking, $100 on train, $200 in a limo, $500 in a chartered plane (back before they destroyed Meigs Field twenty years ago). Given the traffic I wouldn't even consider driving there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Thursday March 15 2018, @04:10PM (1 child)
Interesting math you have there, where in your theoretical large-battery EV, you only do one long trip during the entire time that you own the vehicle. I guess that makes as much sense as most of your posts here.
Electric vehicles are here to stay. More car manufacturers are installing charging stations. EV stations are going to become more prevalent, and, as EVs become a larger proportion of the total vehicle fleet, gas stations will shut down (or perhaps they will become combined gas/charging stations)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday March 16 2018, @12:58PM
Its a matter of time. I can't commute 2000 miles daily to work for sheer chronological limits.
Likewise I just can't do major family vacation more than maybe once a year, although for practical reasons there's always something going on such that we'd be lucky at every other year. I think for the vast majority of people the "national lampoon" movie drive across america comedy is just that, a movie comedy, not real life.
Also we went to Ireland one summer, and no matter how hard I'd want to drive there, I'd have to fly over the ocean, so that was about 15 mile drive to the airport even though Ireland is really far away.
Also the USA is large. This summer it looks like we can spare time and coordinate schedules for about one week for all family members to visit Glacier Natl park. Probably. Its not even sure yet. If we drive, we'll pretty much have to turn around and go home once we get there, so we certainly won't drive. I don't even see the point of going there for less than three full days, or spending more time on the road than at the park.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 15 2018, @05:02PM
Another good one is I had a coworker with one of those $80K dualie pickup crew cab all leather 4x4 trucks expressing how horrible it was we had to pay to get paver bricks delivered from Home Depot... For the price difference between the wife's Prius and his truck, I could have not only paid for delivery
Would he really put a load of paver bricks into an $80K all-leather truck? Won't that scratch up the bed liner?
For bricks from Home Depot, can't you just rent a pickup from HD for like $25, if you're local? That'd be the really cheap way to do it. $25 is probably less than the difference between a single fill-up between the Prius and the $80k dualie. But yeah, free delivery if you buy enough is even better.
It's really astounding how bad a lot of Americans are at basic math, and calculating whether it makes more sense to buy something to have the capability at any time or just rent occasionally.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:08PM (5 children)
Perhaps it's simpler in the USA than in the UK, but it's not so quick and easy here. Car and truck hire places here seem to be geared to corporate and regular customers.
For a start you will need to pre-book, and unless you do that weeks in advance you will be lucky to find an available slot. Then once you find a slot you will need to spend some time on the phone or their website while you answer endless questions. Then you will need to drive to the place (2 miles?? and the rest, and you are lucky if you manage to book with the nearest) and arrive with at least half an hour to spare because they will want to go through all the questions again, and more including an accompanied detailed inspection of the hire car at the end of which you must sign that the paintwork is perfect. They will also examine your driving licence, and expect to be rejected at this stage if there is something they don't like about it. You will need to find somewhere to park your own car, possibly in the hire yard but don't be suprised if it gets dinged while there especially as there will be other customers manouvering big trucks around it, drivers who are unaccustomed to driving them; and the company disown any responsibility for damage. BTW, forget any idea early start, 9am is about the earliest.
Then before you return (at least 30 minutes before their office closes at 5pm), you must refuel as close as possible to the hire place (which could in fact be several miles in the wrong direction), because if they can put a fag paper between the fuel gauge needle and its upper stop they will take the value of a couple of gallons fuel from your credit card to "refuel" - at an inflated price. Oh, they do that anyway.
Then on return, repeat the vehicle inspection to their satisfaction before you get your own keys back.
Oh, I forgot, if you got the car dirty, include a visit to a car wash on your way back.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:38PM (2 children)
Wow, admittedly this is kind of like comparing local cell phone service over the internet or local apartment landlords over the internet, but more detail:
For uhaul in the USA, my wife went to the website, picked out what she wanted and where its in stock and paid everything online by credit card, nothing much harder or easier than e-commerce in general. Then I drove her there (I was helping out as muscle with the move) and it was about five minutes for the clerk to pull up her rental and print the forms before she walked out and drove away. For a modest fee they provide no fault insurance such that she doesn't need to inspect the truck or anything. I'd say the total investment from "do it" to driving to her relatives house was a good ten minutes. I think she spent about fifty bucks.
Now in Ireland a couple years back I rented a car one day using the hotel concierge service and I asked the front desk for a rental the night before and the next morning it was a good ten minutes of printing and signing paperwork and photocopying license and passport and such before I drove away. Returning the car was as simple as leaving the keys with the front desk.
I remember in my bachelor pad days I had a great experience with renting an apartment but my SiL was trying to "save money" and she did in fact pay about 20% less than I did, but only two burners on her stove worked, windows were painted shut or had no screens, no air conditioning, generally kinda dumpy, but it was worth a couple bucks per month to her, although she complained a lot.
I suspect this is a similar situation where you can pay $10 to avoid an hour of agony; or not, as the choice may be, but the agony or lack thereof has nothing inherently to do with the transaction itself in general. I bet you could have coughed up an extra $5 for excellent service, or saved another $5 for even worse service, but its not an industry wide problem.
To burger-post in honor of the colonies being known as ameri-burger-land to you UK people, its sort of like the proven existence of McDonalds "hamburgers" does not disprove the existence of beef tenderloin steaks, or even fairly decent Culver's burgers.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:15PM (1 child)
Yes, but that comes into my category of the hotel being a corporate and regular customer of the hire car company. I have had many car hires arranged by own company and there has been no problem there either - the hire company would not want to upset a big customer. The problems came when you approach the hire company as a private individual; they seem to assume that you need it for a ram raid.
As for paying $10 more to avoid the agony, you rarely get the choice. When I wanted to hire a large Transit type van recently, there was only one company in North Bristol that had one available on the day I wanted, and I would not have described them as down-market anyway. The idea of going through the hassle and time of hiring a larger vehicle every time I wanted to fetch some bricks (as Grishnakh has suggested here) or fence posts is simply a non-starter.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday March 16 2018, @12:48PM
Whoa, sorry, dude. The way it works this side of the pond is the national chain store who sold you the bricks also sells delivery service (often free) and also rents you trucks for $20 for two hours with the purchase. Often the cost is waived via coupon or time based marketing promotion.
The reputation is across the ocean you don't need a giant vehicle, but in practice it sounds like you do, due to lack of infrastructure. However the reputation here in burger-land is everyone has giant dualie crew cab pickup trucks (actually very few people do...) because there's no infrastructure, but if you have a sub-compact commuter car like mine, you're sensitive to life above 5 miles per gallon, and we actually have excellent infrastructure to work around having a small vehicle.
The biggest problem we have in the USA is for marketing reasons any vehicle sold in the USA has perhaps 10% of the towing capacity of the same model sold anywhere else in the world, google the "great towing conspiracy". Gotta protect those monster truck sales.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Thursday March 15 2018, @04:02PM
Huh, I've been through that song-and-dance with the paperwork and over-priced "service" in order to hire a vehicle. Somehow they manage to make you feel like you've stolen your girlfriend's father's car and taken it for a spin - there's always that panicky feeling just below the surface that you'll scratch the duco.
Luckily there is this cheap truck rental place close by. You turn up, flash your driver's license and they point you to a truck in the paddock. Those trucks certainly have character! Sometimes the clutch requires the strength of a rhinoceros, and mostly you need to keep a firm grip on the wheel to prevent the truck from wandering across lanes, but it's simple, cheap and gets the job done. And when you take it back, they ask "ya filled it up, right?" and you say "yep" and that's that.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 15 2018, @05:04PM
Here in the US, we now have services like ZipCar that make it trivially easy to rent a car.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:12PM (4 children)
There is so much BS in that post.
Firstly, the life of batteries varies with the chemistry.
The one study I found on Lithium Ion batteries showed that what reduces their charge capacity is leaving them fully charged at elevated temperatures. So as long as you use the charge immediately, fast charging should not be a major issue. Also, most fast chargers slow down as they get the battery to over 90%.
Batteries won't cost $25k. The battery in a leaf costs about $5k to replace (30kWH).
Battery chemistry is improving. Lifetime of batteries is improving.
I do agree that fast charging is really only for long trips, and hence limited use for most drivers. Overnight charging is so convenient.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:56PM (3 children)
I think we're aggressively agreeing with each other.
Yeah I saw the same google search that a leaf battery is $5499 (plus a couple hours labor) for 100+ mile range, but I was thinking of Tesla cars and also the people who insist that a car is worthless unless it can be driven more than 500 miles at a time, where four or five leaf batteries give four or five times the range and cost near my estimate.
Possibly car mfgr PR departments claim fast charging is no more damaging than trickle charging but I don't think the RC car/aircraft/drone people would agree. Its hard to believe anything electrochemical isn't less stable when pushed harder.
I would much rather have a 100 mile car to make my 40 mile commute and $15K in my pocket, than a 400 mile car to make my 40 mile commute and $0 in my pocket, and I don't care about fast chargers because I'd use the charger at home and work such that I only need a 20 mile car, technically. I can do a heck of a lot of luxury traveling with $15K that doesn't involve driving my car.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday March 15 2018, @04:14PM (2 children)
I don't agree with your premise that people want or need 500 mile range EVs. I think that the key number is about 250 miles (~ 4 hours driving).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @09:30PM (1 child)
250 miles is nowhere near enough if it can't be refilled near as quick or easy as gas. Most of the time I only drive 10 miles a day max. A few weeks a year I drive 2000+ miles/week. I don't want to have two cars or wait 30 minutes every few hours.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday March 16 2018, @12:51PM
And there you go, its been a law for decades now that no matter if its lead acid batteries with 40 mile range or a 400 mile Tesla, the standard anti-EV comment will be its never, ever enough. If you could sell a Mr Fusion with 200,000 miles of tritium pre-installed at the factory, someone on the internet would shit on it because they sometimes need to drive 200,001 miles for business and they don't got no time for refueling.
There is no value X where anti-EV rants will disappear. None. X could be two hundred thousand miles as per above and someone will complain they need to drive a quarter mil at a time so that car will never sell.
(Score: 3, Funny) by lentilla on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:46PM (2 children)
What are they going to charge? A bar heater to stave off the winter chill? Or perhaps a portable suicide booth, Futurama-style?
Can you imagine the aggression that will be unleashed when the great unwashed start plugging in their appliances to charge when other, more important people have to actually wait to charge their personal conveyances?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday March 15 2018, @03:59PM (1 child)
Well, yeah, right now the average $100K+ Tesla owner isn't homeless, but someday there will be people sleeping in the e-vehicle equivalent of a rusty old van down by the river, and they're not going to have a home to plug their home charger into, so they'll be sponging off business chargers or whatever public infrastructure exists.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Thursday March 15 2018, @04:11PM
That's why I've got anubi [soylentnews.org] working on a solution to charge my eTruck by wireless power transmission. I won't have to line up and wait for a spot at the charger - I'll park in front of the nearest Maccas, raise my antenna, and get a charge for free!