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Old 01-14-2019, 05:13 PM   #11
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This is a good place to have the discussion -- considering that there are 5 of us who have an EV (with a couple of us on our 2nd or 3rd one…)

- Most charging will be at home. In my case, ~90% of my EV mileage has been charged at home. Nearly all the remaining was during road trips, and nearly all of that on L3 chargers. I charge occasionally at freebie chargers around town, but that easily could have been at home. I've only had to pay for charging once after forgetting to charge one night and not having enough juice to make it home (so I hit a paid L3 charger on my way home).

- For most people, 150 mile range will be sufficient for commuter and weekend needs. Just charge back up overnight. But it looks like all the recent announcements are for minimum range of ~250 miles. That's great.

City dwellers will be the hardest group to provide coverage -- but some thoughts:
- Many of them already don't own cars and just rent if they need one. Car sharing and ride sharing works well for them. I work with some people that no longer have a car and just take Uber/Lyft when they need a ride (and they walk to work).

- Some cities are already putting charging in on the street -- just like parking meters. These are all over Paris for example. There's even an EV-only car sharing service in Paris that parks that cars on the street at dedicated chargers.

- Its not a surprise that the European automakers are focused on 800V L3 DC, putting out 400kW. Once the batteries can take the full power of these chargers, it means doing an 80% charge in <10 min. That's 3-4x faster than Tesla's current Superchargers.

- Tesla has been putting in "Urban Superchargers" over the last 18 months. These are a bit slower (72kW max), but are not shared -- so you get the max avail from the start (the traditional 120kW Superchargers have 2 outlets share each charging stack -- so the first car to arrive gets max power, and the 2nd car gets the remainder, min 10kW and ramps up as the other ramps down).

- As for the grid requirements of L3 charging, many L3 sites have battery packs to pull juice off the grid evenly, but discharge the batteries faster when needed. Tesla has many superchargers with this, and there are reports of other L3 sites that already do this. VAG was in the news recently with a "mobile" L3 charger that includes a battery pack and the charger -- it could be put on site and used immediately with no grid connection (at least until the battery drains…)
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Old 01-14-2019, 05:19 PM   #12
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Originally Posted by ZBB View Post
This is a good place to have the discussion -- considering that there are 5 of us who have an EV (with a couple of us on our 2nd or 3rd one…)

- Most charging will be at home. In my case, ~90% of my EV mileage has been charged at home. Nearly all the remaining was during road trips, and nearly all of that on L3 chargers. I charge occasionally at freebie chargers around town, but that easily could have been at home. I've only had to pay for charging once after forgetting to charge one night and not having enough juice to make it home (so I hit a paid L3 charger on my way home).

- For most people, 150 mile range will be sufficient for commuter and weekend needs. Just charge back up overnight. But it looks like all the recent announcements are for minimum range of ~250 miles. That's great.

City dwellers will be the hardest group to provide coverage -- but some thoughts:
- Many of them already don't own cars and just rent if they need one. Car sharing and ride sharing works well for them. I work with some people that no longer have a car and just take Uber/Lyft when they need a ride (and they walk to work).

- Some cities are already putting charging in on the street -- just like parking meters. These are all over Paris for example. There's even an EV-only car sharing service in Paris that parks that cars on the street at dedicated chargers.

- Its not a surprise that the European automakers are focused on 800V L3 DC, putting out 400kW. Once the batteries can take the full power of these chargers, it means doing an 80% charge in <10 min. That's 3-4x faster than Tesla's current Superchargers.

- Tesla has been putting in "Urban Superchargers" over the last 18 months. These are a bit slower (72kW max), but are not shared -- so you get the max avail from the start (the traditional 120kW Superchargers have 2 outlets share each charging stack -- so the first car to arrive gets max power, and the 2nd car gets the remainder, min 10kW and ramps up as the other ramps down).

- As for the grid requirements of L3 charging, many L3 sites have battery packs to pull juice off the grid evenly, but discharge the batteries faster when needed. Tesla has many superchargers with this, and there are reports of other L3 sites that already do this. VAG was in the news recently with a "mobile" L3 charger that includes a battery pack and the charger -- it could be put on site and used immediately with no grid connection (at least until the battery drains…)


Factually, all of this is intuitive. I was just trying to picture this as I was walking in Manhattan.

You’d need to tax the hell out of cars to also reduce the sheer numbers. Hope for autonomous to fill some of that.

Can the grid in old cities on the east coast handle these needs?
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Old 01-14-2019, 06:14 PM   #13
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And they will continue to buy the remaining ICE vehicles until society figures out a solution for them.
I don't think we're very far off from widespread, fully autonomous ride-hailing services (10-20 years?), which will signal the downhill slide of private ownership. Until then, like you say, people that can't set up charging stations at home will buy up the remaining ICE vehicles and make them last. People in urban areas [north of the Florida border] can also fall back to mass transit and ride-sharing services.

ICE cars won't go away overnight, but I think we'll look back at some point and be impressed with how quickly (relatively) the switch happened.
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Old 01-14-2019, 07:17 PM   #14
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ICE cars won't go away overnight, but I think we'll look back at some point and be impressed with how quickly (relatively) the switch happened.
I don't know... I think they'll be a quick surge, but they'll be a good percentage that stick around for a very long time.
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Old 01-14-2019, 07:37 PM   #15
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I don't know... I think they'll be a quick surge, but they'll be a good percentage that stick around for a very long time.
Depends. I’ve started seeing news articles about converting classics to electric... one of those was in the mainstream press, not something like CleanTechnica...
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Old 01-14-2019, 08:11 PM   #16
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I don't know... I think they'll be a quick surge, but they'll be a good percentage that stick around for a very long time.


Don’t misread me. I’m getting a 300mi EV sometime soon. I won’t give up any ICE vehicles though.

I was just wondering how we think this evolves.

I just wonder how EVs reach people who live in urban areas. It will be fun to see. But in Boston or Manhattan I’m just not seeing it.
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Old 01-14-2019, 08:53 PM   #17
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I've been able to have several meetings with representatives from Mercedes USA due to my work with electric utility companies. The topic of the meetings was that they are considering several "innovative" ideas as part of their new electric vehicle rollout.

One idea that struck me was along the lines of individual homeowners making their chargers available for use by others. So for a fee, a person could stop at someones house, front yard, etc. and give their car a charge from a privately owned charger.

This of course means that the chargers would have to be externally accessible. But is sounded like an idea that Mercedes was considering as part of their overall EQ vehicle deployment over the next 5-10 years. Maybe they would be Mercedes branded chargers, it wasn't clear. But it seems like companies are seriously considering many different alternatives to help push electric cars more into the mainstream and make charging more convenient.

When I built my house 2 years ago I had a vehicle charger installed inside my garage. I don't yet own an electric vehicle, but I figured that I would eventually and wanted to be prepared. So I guess Mercedes won't be able to leverage my charger with their grand schemes. But it's an intriguing idea, nevertheless.


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Old 01-14-2019, 08:55 PM   #18
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Greg -
That idea is already in place... go check out PlugShare and you can filter to chargers that are shared.

I’ve never used one though... don’t even have them on in the filters on PlugShare...
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Old 01-14-2019, 09:06 PM   #19
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Greg -
That idea is already in place... go check out PlugShare and you can filter to chargers that are shared.

I’ve never used one though... don’t even have them on in the filters on PlugShare...

That would be a handy thing to have. I live in a rural area, so there aren't many options near me besides a Tesla SuperCharger site about 20 miles up the highway. I just found it interesting that the auto manufacturers were thinking about mimicking Tesla's model of a network of chargers, but perhaps making them less proprietary. And if there's financial incentive for homeowners to share their chargers, maybe that helps the push for more EVs.

I'm probably not too far away from getting another spare car and it will be electric. I can charge for free at my office, and with the charger already installed in my garage, I should be ready to go. I'll admit that I already have the ChargePoint swipe card in my wallet ready to use at a charger, but I just don't have the car yet. Haha!
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Old 01-15-2019, 12:39 AM   #20
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The thing is, picture yourself 120 years ago arguing against the widespread adoption of petroleum. You'd say:

--Are we really going to build thousands and thousands of underground tanks, all across the country?

--How are we going to ship the fuel there? Where are we going to refine it? Aren't we going to need train cars and trucks and a huge amount of infrastructure to deliver it?

--Won't people object to having these things on every street corner?

--Won't people object to the inconvenience of having to make a separate stop for fuel? Or a whole separate trip?



Moving to EVs is going to require a sea change in the way that we think about using cars and building infrastructure, but it's only hard to imagine because we haven't done it yet. The actual work necessary to build that infrastructure out is time-consuming and expensive, but it's fairly straight-forward. All it requires is a commitment to do it.
I don't think anyone here is arguing against the modern equivalent adoption of petroleum. I know I'm certainly not. If it was 1900 today, this is what I'd basically be saying is this:

1) The size of the petroleum powered vehicle market will be artificially capped at a fraction of its full potential size until the petroleum transport/delivery system is adequate.

2) Using the wealthy and lucky few that can
a) purchase a new petroleum powered vehicle;
b) purchase a portion of the petroleum delivery system themselves;
c) live in a rare, isolated location where petroleum delivery is possible before a full system exits; and
d) also own a horse and buggy, steam powered, or other self-sufficient transport for those times when a petroleum powered vehicle will not be an option
as a representative sample of the entire population set is ill-advised

3) That everyone (consumer, manufacturer, and government) would be best off if all manufacturers adopted standards for petroleum blends to power their vehicles and how to move petroleum from the delivery system into the vehicles.

I'm not saying don't do it.

(OTOH, if steam power beat out petroleum 120 years ago, perhaps the climate change crisis would not be upon us today.)
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