I was watching this person’s videos on the matter. And was wondering what your experience has been with EVs and your opinion on the different connectors?
As an electric car owner:
- We need more fast chargers on Interstates. Preferably at places travelers would want to stop for thirty minutes. Places like Starbucks or McDonalds. NOT gas stations or WalMart. People just want somewhere clean they can use the rest room and grab a bite or drink while they wait for the charger to finish.
- If you are living in a house or duplex, you don’t need a 240v charger. Plugging your car into a normal outlet overnight is usually enough to add 40 miles back onto the car.
- The Tesla connector feels like the right choice. I’m glad the industry settled on it in North America. It’s much lighter and easier to handle.
40 miles overnight? Goddamn I commute 50 a day.
That just means you would need a level 2 charger for your house instead of the 120v ones.
A weekend is like four nights strung together so really you’re getting 840 = 320 miles of charge per week and using 550 = 250 miles per week.
People just want somewhere clean they can use the rest room and grab a bite or drink while they wait for the charger to finish
But that’s WalMart
Pointlessly politicized. They are metal tools designed to move people around. I can’t imagine how anyone thinks that the future of private transportation isn’t EVs. That being said, they’re far from the savior against climate change that many people think they are. The only way to sustainably move forward is with public investment in public mass transportation.
They are a step in the right direction, though.
Climate is already and is going to continue to change and we cannot stop it via anything we do.
Best car I ever had, so much nicer to drive than any deisel or petrol car I ever drove, and much faster. Second hand as usual. Cheap to run £4/wk vs £20/wk. I charge it at home at night when the electricity is cheap because it’s all wind power at that time of night. Even charging on long journeys is cheaper than fossil fuels.
I don’t like to drive for too long without a proper break anyway so it hasn’t made much difference to us. I just plan it so that 250-300 miles into the journey is early lunch or tea time when we go on holiday. In the UK, the public chargers are pretty good and there’s loads of them. You want to arrive early for lunch if you’re at a motorway services because they get busy, but if you go for a macdonalds or shopping centre, you’ll be fine.
The rest of the year, who cares about range or charging or anything? Just plug it in when you get home if it gets a bit low, and the car’s timer starts the charge when the tariff switches to cheap night electricity. You never need to go to a petrol station again.
Seriously, best car ever. Smooth, FAST and good looking. Makes me happy every day.
I haven’t watched the video sorry. I watched some but it’s an hour long, and I couldn’t find the section about connector types. But most people will charge at home 99% of the time. How long it takes or what plug you have then doesn’t matter.
My personal experience charging when out and about is that I have a car with a common connector and never have had to worry about if it’s supported. The charging stations normally support multiple types, and the apps that tell you where the charging stations are also tell you the connector types so you don’t waste your time.
But most people will charge at home 99% of the time.
Only about 65% of American households are owners.
I would charge at home if I could but since I rent and therefore can’t I pay 4x market rate for the electricity and have to take hours out of my day to do so.
The video addresses this. But they basically address it in a focus on what needs to change.
Regardless, not owning your home doesn’t prevent you from charging using a wall socket. More important is accessibility (whether you can get your car and your electricity to the same place), which can be a problem whether you own or not.
But there’s huge opportunity for things like charging at work, if only we embraced it.
I rent an apartment and the inability to park the car inside my apartment prevents me from charging using a wall socket.
Yes, exactly my point. It wouldn’t matter if you owned the apartment, you still wouldn’t be able to charge.
Electricity is available almost everywhere, so we need to embrace this to get the most out of electric cars. There’s no reason malls couldn’t give free charging to people who spend over a certain amount or just generally discounted charging for those shopping there, workplaces could include charging in salary packages, attractions could have free charging while you ride roller coasters. Electric vehicles have the opportunity to be so much more convenient than ICE, if only we’d let it.
I’ve driven several, they are all great, quiet, much cleaner, obviously much better for the environment, and can be continually improved, iiii like EVs.
It’s irritating that there are different connectors, but understandable since it’s a new innovating field, they’ll probably be widely standardized like the way gasoline is standardized for cars after the market is large enough.
TC’s video is specifically about North America, particularly the US. Here, we currently have 3 (well, 3.5) connectors. They are Chademo, j1772/CCS, and Tesla.
Chademo is already dead on new cars, and was never very widely adopted. Tesla is of course the connector used on most Teslas. J1772 (Level 1/2 AC) and CCS (Level 3 DC Fast) charging connectors are used on everything else. J1772 is electrically compatible with level 1/2 Tesla, requiring only dumb/passive adapters. CCS and Tesla supercharger is more difficult. This is the standard for almost all new EVs that aren’t Tesla.
BUT, there been a more recent development! The Tesla connector has been standardized as the North American Charging Standard (NACS). Most major manufacturers have already signed on.
Which means aside from a transition period with adapters, the future here is a clear standardization on NACS.
ETA: He also has a later video where he covers why that ends up being a good thing.
Personally, I think that they are here to save the car industry, not the climate. There is no where near enough lithium to replace most ICE cars with EVs.
The amount of concrete production (for infrastructure) combined with a wave of EV production will be terrible for the climate. I do not believe it is sustainable for all adults to own any type of vehicle, and to build and maintain the roads to drive on. Public transport is necessary for a green transition.
Change my mind because honestly my own opinion makes me sick.
I agree, the amount of damage car infrastructure is doing is severely underestimated. All that concrete needs to be made, regularly maintained and disposed of in the end. Not to mention heat absorption in hotter parts of the world. I don’t know how people in desert areas handle it it seems like hell.
This is the pill that seems impossible to swallow for society at large. We have built a civilization on the assumption that we can keep adding more cars. I checked the manifestos of the recent UK general election candidates, only one explicitly mentioned provision of cycling infrastructure and that party won virtually no support. We are sleepwalking into an ecological collapse, with old conservative people leading the way.
Impossible to own unless you have a dedicated parking spot. In the city where I live it’s cutthroat street parking with 4x/week street cleaning. It’s hell. The only people who have them are those rich enough to own their own property.
Well, good thing urbanists want to get rid of parking minimums then!
We don’t have those here. Our main mode of transportation is the subway, cars are a luxury.
It’s display port vs HDMI, easy to adapt either direction, both have their merits, and downsides. Pointless to argue just use the one you like / have.
EV owner in the US with home charger. It’s the best. The convenience of never having to go to a gas station is huge. I was so worried about range and charging speed before I got the car, but it’s all bullshit. The reality is that I wake up in the morning and I’m ready to go wherever I want to go. I take a few longer trips a year, and I’m always able to find a charging station along the way. The apps make it pretty easy to know where to go. I have a CCS plug, and we’re supposed to get the Tesla adapter sometime this year. But even without it, we just took an 800 mile road trip, and there’s a CCS fast charging station at least every 80 miles, so it’s not like we were ever in danger of not making it. The only thing I don’t like about the CCS plug is that they’re so damn heavy. The Tesla ones are supposed to be nicer, so there’s that to look forward to.
So the road trip item you’re talking about is incredibly subjective. I just had an ev for a few months, yes I was able to find CCS on the highway, but you’re looking at ~1hr charging per 3 driving (give or take). That’s a deal breaker for a lot of people.
But youre right, leaving every morning with “a full tank” was wild.
I actually don’t think it is a deal breaker. How many 300+mi road trips does a person take? So what if it takes longer a few days out of the year?
And you can always prioritize fast charging when shopping EVs, if that’s important. We knew full well we weren’t getting the fastest charging EV when we bought ours. But, like I said, it was fine on our big trip, and really we didn’t stop more often than we usually do, even if our stops were a bit linger, and it didn’t have a negative impact.
You are right, it is incredibly use dependent. In a weird way, EVs kinda of outline a lot of the cultural divide in America right now. The majority of America is freaking BIG. If you live on the coast, and are road tripping on the coast, odds are 300 miles seems like a lot because it was settled by horses, but that just doesn’t work for a lot of people. At least 3-4 times a year I do 400+ miles one way.
So EVs do make a ton of sense for a LOT of people, but it’s definitely not all people. From what I can tell, most of the people that have that need for that range are also 2 car families, in which one EV and one ICE works perfectly. It is so close to almost there, and in many, mannnny use cases it already is. But adding 20% to my travel time was not acceptable when I was shopping for a new vehicle.
I’m in Norway, and let’s say electric car charging could be better. The main issue we face is that the car charger systems are too fragmented, meaning you have to have an app and account for pretty much every car charging company, and guess what… There’s not a dozen of them, but hundreds.
Another issue we’ve faced a lot is that you’d plug your car into the fast charger, get charged money but the charging won’t start. You get a choise of navigating the ad filled terribly designed apps that barely work and try to cancel or restart charging, or give up and look for another charger in the near vicinity. As far as I can remember, gas pumps have never had these issues, but even a decade into norway’s EV development, these companies still struggle setting up proper working infrastructure.
One thing that’s nice are the toll prices, we pay about NOK 7 kr to pass tolls, while gasoline vehicles pay NOK 29kr, and diesel pay about NOK 65kr to pass tolls.
As of July 23 2024, the conversion for that is:
NOK 7kr = USD $0.63 NOK 29kr = USD $2.63 NOK 65kr = USD $5.89Also if you drive at the wrong time and at the wrong place, those prices might as well be doubled
Until the government successfully establishes a standard charge port (republicans go “reeeeeeeee!”) then I will want a out in hybrid that can still use gas in an emergency. I have never found a compatible charger for my Chevy Volt, but I can still road trip since my gas tank will take me hundreds of miles. Daily driving though? Never use a drop. I even keep my gas at 1/4 tank just to save a couple lbs of weight because I can charge it in the normal outlet in my garage.
Price-wise, I got it used, 4 years old for 20k. I think you can get a 2017 now for about 10-15k so they’re not crazy pricey
Assuming you’re in North America, the North American Charging Standard (NACS) is now a thing and manufacturers are starting to move to it.
Until the government successfully establishes a standard charge port (republicans go “reeeeeeeee!”) then I will want a out in hybrid that can still use gas in an emergency.
I suppose that one could hypothetically tow a trailer-mounted generator.
True. At that point though just carry some kind of universal adapter
Does your Chevy Volt use a Chad plug?
You mean Emo Chad?
Funny enough, its pretty rare these days but one of the first EV charging ports was named funny.
It was one of the first two
EVs: too expensive, I can’t afford one. Chargers: there are no chargers where I live.
That’s it. Fix those problems and people will buy.
If you need a car, EV is a better choice. At least it doesn’t spew fumes directly on the street, although it’s far from ideal since electricity generation and lithium mining are also polluting. In balance slightly less harmful than ICE.
Choose whichever connector is the most standard where you live. CCS2 in Europe, NACS in North America, CHAdeMO in Japan, the standard in China is usually listed as GB/T. No idea what is used in South America. The point is to make sure you’ll be able to resell the car easily in the future.
I drive a 2023 VW id4. It’s the best worst car I’ve ever owned.
The good parts: good mileage. No charging issues. Don’t have to buy gas which is something people understate dramatically when talking about EVs. Very comfortable luxury ride quality.
The bad parts: the software in the infotainment system is horrific. I would say that I have a 10% downtime on average as I struggle through crippling lag and random black screens and resets. VW has announced a recall for this issue with no repair. I’ve had the car for over a year.
The connector is functional but bulky and I would prefer they standardize the Tesla connector which in my opinion is significantly better.
