EVs – Charging and the Rest

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EVs – Charging and the Rest

As I was playing catch up reading through Astrid’s Park News, I find that nearly every other article focused on EVs, mostly on charging. I’m not entirely sure what that means. GM is killing off the Bolt but setting up a company to build a charging network. There are a number of articles comparing EV and ICE vehicles. Plus there is an interesting piece on the fact that at least half of the drivers of both EVs and ICE cars have range anxiety when it comes to EVs. Hmmmmm.

I was particularly intrigued by the last one. During my sojourn at the local hospital, I had an interesting conversation with a med tech. He had an Audi EV and simply loved it. His wife had a Tesla. The only problem he saw was range and charging. They took a trip from LA to Mammoth this winter and drove the Tesla (it had a longer range, he said.) Nevertheless he was grousing about the number of times they had to stop to charge (on the 400 mile trip) and how it extended the travel time – although his next sentence said how much he ‘loved his EV.’

That conversation seemed to back up the article. I might also add, from looking out my window, my neighbor down the street has a Tesla, but also hosts two, count em, two ICE SUVs. Now this fellow is as green as it comes, with solar arrays on his roof and barrels to collect rainwater. However he still has back up.

An aside – When I got home from a week away my car’s battery was flat. I had left one of the doors slightly open and the interior light was on. I simply called triple A and within an hour I was jumped and on the road. By the end of my trip my battery was back to normal and all was right with the world. I wonder how long it would have taken to get an EV in the same situation back to normal? At least with today’s technology you can’t call someone to bring a bucket of electrons if your battery is flat. Just Sayin..,

I go back to an article I read recently –  EVs will never compete with ICE vehicles until they can compete on a feature by feature basis, and that means speed of fueling, cost, and range between fueling. I commented before that automobile companies advertising  EVs on the Super Bowl were hawking their beautiful cars, but were selling features found on ICE vehicles. Except for commenting that they were electric cars, the benefits of electricity weren’t mentioned. Could that be that the EV part was a negative rather than a positive?

Everyone I know that has an EV, and they are legion, cannot stop telling me how much they love the vehicles. When they talk about range, like my med-tech friend, they talk about how wonderful the cars are for bopping around town, you know, short 10 mile trips. They just love them. When pressed on longer trips, they change the subject.

The Med-tech’s travel to Mammoth was not hampered by lack of charging stations. Elon Musk has solved that problem for Tesla owners. However he STILL had to stop every so often, at least three or four times on the round trip, and spend time charging. His frustration wasn’t from lack of chargers, but from having to stop for over half an hour at a super charger, while those driving ICE vehicles stopped for 10 minutes, filled their car once, and that was it.

Considering all this, I wonder if charger availability is the solution. Will EVs become the way to go when technology catches up. Time will tell.

JVH

 

Picture of John Van Horn

John Van Horn

2 Responses

  1. Just like the advances in the last two decades in your heart surgery so will EV development. EV charging time will go down to 10 minutes and the average vehicle will have a 500-mile range. If not EV’s will be a car that you drive to and from work and to the grocery so the price will have to come down.

  2. NOT FOR PUBLICATION
    Just to update the information you have about EV sales, attached is the US DOE website with MONTHLY sales by vehicle type. This is the original data source of the graph Dale showed at PIE, but his didn’t have 2022 on it. Contrary to your (and Dale’s) perception about HEVs always being more popular than PEVs, the latter exceeded HEV sales last year.
    HEV: 766,170 (down slightly from 2021)
    BEV: 744,876
    PHEV: 184,008
    Total Plug ins: 928,884 (6.7% of Light vehicle sales. Through march it is running over 8%. )

    https://www.anl.gov/esia/light-duty-electric-drive-vehicles-monthly-sales-updates

    Mary

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