EV-based road transportation is not viable

[themadhippy]

In the uk your only allowed to keep 30 litres of fuel at home unless you let some council bod know,then you can have 275 litres,above  that you need a licence

[bdunham7]

You have this the wrong way around. Charging at home is just a crutch due to lack of charging infrastructure. Charging at home or street level should never be a goal. It just doesn't scale well economically. Just look back at car history and you'll see why. The reason there are gas stations is that these work better compared to having a tank of gasoline in each home. You can still have a tank of gasoline at home; all you need to buy is a tank and a pump. I'm quite sure that you can find an oil company that comes over to fill it for you. However, once you get the bill (including delivery costs), you'll quickly see it is cheaper to go to a gas station. Economy of scale.

Even if if were true that gas stations are less expensive than delivery (which IMO is a dubious claim since home heating oil and propane seem to get delivered to rural homes here without any signficant additional expense), you've overlooked the fact that most of us already have sufficient electrical capacity so the only additional requirements are a parking space and a relatively inexpensive EVSE.  Without charging in my garage or driveway, I wouldn't even have considered a BEV.  The EVSE is cheap, unobtrusive and safe.  A large tank of gasoline and the related equipment is not going to be any of those.

[tom66]

You have this the wrong way around. Charging at home is just a crutch due to lack of charging infrastructure. Charging at home or street level should never be a goal. It just doesn't scale well economically. Just look back at car history and you'll see why. The reason there are gas stations is that these work better compared to having a tank of gasoline in each home. You can still have a tank of gasoline at home; all you need to buy is a tank and a pump. I'm quite sure that you can find an oil company that comes over to fill it for you. However, once you get the bill (including delivery costs), you'll quickly see it is cheaper to go to a gas station. Economy of scale.

Why would I *not* want to charge at home?  My car spends 12 hours sitting on my drive.  It's nice to have a charged battery every morning.  As I said before, charging takes 30 seconds... 15 to plug in, 15 to unplug.  Parallel task, I don't care how long it takes once it's there, I'm done with the car.

You can't practically do the same thing with any other technology.  You could install a fuel tank under your home to refuel on demand (indeed, this is what e.g. police stations do to fill up their fleet), but good luck with that in a domestic application.  Meanwhile every home has an electricity supply and you really don't need that much extra capacity to charge up for normal usage.

[MadScientist]

Surveys here showed that many Bev owners do not regularly charge at home they prefer fast chargers to an extent many Bev owners never bother getting night rate meters

It’s evident that many people have far lesss weekly mileage then they predict them selves. I have sister in law that only charges her Konz once a week

PhEVs are merely a short term transition tech too expensive and delivers  neither one or the other Bev is the future let’s accept dino juice is over

With good fast charging infrastructure BEVs are entirely practical for a wife range of private and business uses. Already we have tow tated BEVs and increasing choice . More and more places of work have charging infrastructure too and often people use this over home charging

We used to use our Bev to do a daily 130km round trip commute with free work place charging , we saved a blooming fortune and paid for the car in three years

There’s no doubt in many proples mind  BEVs are the way forward. In my case several family members are  now. Bev owners and many friends have bought BEVs recently. It’s a very common sight on our roads these days and the guy first away from the lights is increasingly a Bev.

[MadScientist]

BEV cars are a good idea while society and the supporting infrastructure works but leave you up shit creek without a paddle when it collapses.

Nicely ignoring all the supporting infrastructure for gas cars, which is far more difficult to replicate at home.

You have this the wrong way around. Charging at home is just a crutch due to lack of charging infrastructure. Charging at home or street level should never be a goal. It just doesn't scale well economically. Just look back at car history and you'll see why. The reason there are gas stations is that these work better compared to having a tank of gasoline in each home. You can still have a tank of gasoline at home; all you need to buy is a tank and a pump. I'm quite sure that you can find an oil company that comes over to fill it for you. However, once you get the bill (including delivery costs), you'll quickly see it is cheaper to go to a gas station. Economy of scale.

Agreed the grid operator here has changed its view over the last 8 years of monitoring Bev usages , initially home charging was seen as a key factor. Increasing people are not using home charging and using local fast charger stations these are now very common and one is within reach of a lot of people

In fact I know a women that pulls out of her drive every Sunday to go to the local fast chargers and armed with a coffee and a Sunday  Newspaper she passers a comfortable 30 mins yet she has a Evss in her drive

Here domestic evese is 50 % subsidised yet nearly 25% of new BEv Owners don’t bother seeking the subsidy

The other factor is that BEV owners are 4 times more likely to install PV systems and PV owners are 2x likely to be BEV owners !!!!

Arguments about “ prepping “ are so niche and frankly “ bizzzare “ as to simply deflect from the mainstream reality. In 35 years I d lost my electricity supply for 4 hours total !!!!

In my view within 10 years it will be like public smoking ie unacceptable to drive a dino juice car. You’ll be afraid to admit it in polite company !!!, you’ll go red faced when asked what you drive !!!! If it’s an ice

[vad]

Here is how distant traveling looks like in BEV. The guy travelled 2,000 miles. Driving time was 30 hours, sitting in a car in the middle of nowhere while the car was recharged took another 8 hours. Almost a day of a lifetime wasted.

https://youtu.be/UskzfQJt2Bc

[MadScientist]

Here is how distant traveling looks like in BEV. The guy travelled 2,000 miles. Driving time was 30 hours, sitting in a car in the middle of nowhere while the car was recharged took another 8 hours. Almost a day of a lifetime wasted.

https://youtu.be/UskzfQJt2Bc

Yet my friend in his Tesla went from London to Spain France and and Luxembourg with no issues. That’s the reality of a proper Bev and good infrastructure

Not to mention only a complete idiot drives non stop for 30 hours. Most people find a roadside hotel , perfect for recharging your Bev too

Edge cases are just that not representative

[nctnico]

You have this the wrong way around. Charging at home is just a crutch due to lack of charging infrastructure. Charging at home or street level should never be a goal. It just doesn't scale well economically. Just look back at car history and you'll see why. The reason there are gas stations is that these work better compared to having a tank of gasoline in each home. You can still have a tank of gasoline at home; all you need to buy is a tank and a pump. I'm quite sure that you can find an oil company that comes over to fill it for you. However, once you get the bill (including delivery costs), you'll quickly see it is cheaper to go to a gas station. Economy of scale.

Why would I *not* want to charge at home?  My car spends 12 hours sitting on my drive.

The problem is that if everyone is doing that, you'll need to upgrade the grid connection. In the NL we have far more BEVs and in some places they can't add chargers because the grid can't handle it. THAT is where things start to become expensive and where economy of scale for single, large fast charging stations starts to kick in.

[james_s]

You can only store gasoline or diesel fuel for 6 months or something. It degrades at fast rate.

That depends. Gasoline containing ethanol goes bad after just a few months. Pure gasoline with fuel stabilizer added is good for at least a year properly stored, longer is possible but it does get a bit stale. Diesel can be stored for years in a tightly sealed can.

[james_s]

Here is how distant traveling looks like in BEV. The guy travelled 2,000 miles. Driving time was 30 hours, sitting in a car in the middle of nowhere while the car was recharged took another 8 hours. Almost a day of a lifetime wasted.

https://youtu.be/UskzfQJt2Bc

That's called an edge case. When was the last time you drove 2,000 miles non stop? Most people go their whole lives without ever doing that. If he were smart he could have spread the charging out and plugged in every time he took a break or ate food, then the charging is not just wasted time.

[james_s]

The problem is that if everyone is doing that, you'll need to upgrade the grid connection. In the NL we have far more BEVs and in some places they can't add chargers because the grid can't handle it. THAT is where things start to become expensive and where economy of scale for single, large fast charging stations starts to kick in.

Well that's a whole lot easier than installing an entire new infrastructure from scratch such as hydrogen. It's unfortunate that your grid capacity is inadequate, so far we have had no such issues here. The standard American home has a 200A 240V service which provides ample capacity. Electric resistance heat was once much more common than it is today so many homes have a lot less load than they did originally.

[james_s]

Why would I *not* want to charge at home?  My car spends 12 hours sitting on my drive.  It's nice to have a charged battery every morning.  As I said before, charging takes 30 seconds... 15 to plug in, 15 to unplug.  Parallel task, I don't care how long it takes once it's there, I'm done with the car.

You can't practically do the same thing with any other technology.  You could install a fuel tank under your home to refuel on demand (indeed, this is what e.g. police stations do to fill up their fleet), but good luck with that in a domestic application.  Meanwhile every home has an electricity supply and you really don't need that much extra capacity to charge up for normal usage.

Literally every EV owner I know charges almost exclusively at home, every single one of them. It is the most compelling feature these cars offer, I can't even comprehend why anyone that was able to do so wouldn't. Why would anyone want to go out of their way to plug into a charger somewhere else and pay more when they have electricity piped right into their own home enabling them to top up when they're not using the car? It's the mobile phone model, second nature to most people now, plug in the device when you set it down and it's fully charged by morning. Not everybody has the facilities to charge a car at home, that is what high powered charging stations are for, they are the crutch, not home charging.

[vad]

That's called an edge case. When was the last time you drove 2,000 miles non stop? Most people go their whole lives without ever doing that.

Nobody said non-stop.

I travel to Florida 2,600 miles round trip every year.
It takes 2 days to reach to the destination, and 2 day to get back home. In BEV it would take 3 days in each direction.

[nctnico]

That's called an edge case. When was the last time you drove 2,000 miles non stop? Most people go their whole lives without ever doing that.

Nobody said non-stop.

I travel to Florida 2,600 miles round trip every year.
It takes 2 days to reach to the destination, and 2 day to get back home. In BEV it would take 3 days in each direction.

Same here! And we do trips like that several times per year. And for those that want to eat along the highway, try to find decent food along the highway in Europe. The best food you'll find is at McDonalds or Burger King. The rest is just salty and overcooked crap. I see lots of truckers cooking their own, healthy meal using some eggs, vegetables, etc instead of eating in the highway restaurants.

[vad]

The standard American home has a 200A 240V service which provides ample capacity. Electric resistance heat was once much more common than it is today so many homes have a lot less load than they did originally.

I doubt electrical grid would have a capacity if every home in New England would start drawing 200 Amps during evening hours.

[james_s]

Nobody said non-stop.

I travel to Florida 2,600 miles round trip every year.
It takes 2 days to reach to the destination, and 2 day to get back home. In BEV it would take 3 days in each direction.

You are a very unusual case, the vast majority of people do not do that. If you only do it once per year then a really simple solution to that is rent a gas or diesel vehicle for the trip, or plan it properly so you can stop at a supercharger at the same times you stop to get food or get out and walk around. You can add quite a few miles of range in 10-15 minutes. That's about enough time to stretch your legs, take a leak and maybe grab a snack. It's not *that* much more time than filling a fuel tank. Or just fly and get there in 6 hours instead of 2 days.

[Marco]

The problem is that if everyone is doing that, you'll need to upgrade the grid connection. In the NL we have far more BEVs and in some places they can't add chargers because the grid can't handle it. THAT is where things start to become expensive and where economy of scale for single, large fast charging stations starts to kick in.

Even relatively small villages have a fuel station, by the time you extend the grid to turn those into hyperfast chargers with megawatt connections, you could probably just have improved the village infrastructure too.

The actual wires in the ground can usually take the load if not everyone plugs in at exactly the same time, it's the distribution nodes which have to be upgraded. They have to be upgraded any way for residential solar.

[james_s]

I doubt electrical grid would have a capacity if every home in New England would start drawing 200 Amps during evening hours.

Why on earth would they be drawing 200 amps? EV charging is typically 15-30 amps, a high speed home charger is around 70 amps. When you can charge at home you don't run it down all the way before charging, you just top it up each night so you only need enough charging to cover your average amount of daily driving. This really is a complete non issue for 99% of people.

[Monkeh]

That's called an edge case. When was the last time you drove 2,000 miles non stop? Most people go their whole lives without ever doing that.

Nobody said non-stop.

I travel to Florida 2,600 miles round trip every year.
It takes 2 days to reach to the destination, and 2 day to get back home. In BEV it would take 3 days in each direction.

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that the car can charge without you sitting there guarding it. Perhaps when you're sleeping so that you're fit to drive?

[tom66]

Surveys here showed that many Bev owners do not regularly charge at home they prefer fast chargers to an extent many Bev owners never bother getting night rate meters

What survey? I'm quite active on a UK EV forum and from the posts on there, it seems the mainstream attitude right now is (with a few exceptions, like London) don't buy an EV if you don't have home charging, it ain't all that much fun.

There are so many EVs charging on night rates now that this can be seen in the frequency data, e.g.
https://data.nationalgrideso.com/system/system-frequency-data/r/november_2022_%E2%80%93_historic_frequency_data

Just go to page 19 for 00:30:00 onwards for any given day and watch how the frequency dips by about 0.15-0.2Hz as all the EV chargers switch on... this is all planned in with ESO, one major provider has a cheap rate starting at 00:30 to 04:30 so the capacity fills back in to supply this pretty quickly and the frequency stabilises. I've heard upwards of a GW going on at any one time (660,000 EVs in the UK * 1-in-6 charging * 7kW typ = 771MW so it seems plausible.)

Side note, this is one reason I program my off peak time to be 5 minutes later than the actual start time, feels like we need to distribute these times better. Many cars now can set the time from GPS or DAB radio, so their charging timers will be bang on accurate.  Maybe a random distribution of a few minutes around the cheap period?  I know my car does have random start for power interruptions, it starts between 1 and 2 minutes after AC power is applied (only if the charging cable is connected but no power is available or a charge session is interrupted by a power cut though), it doesn't seem to do that for the charging timer.

[vad]

Why on earth would they be drawing 200 amps? EV charging is typically 15-30 amps, a high speed home charger is around 70 amps.

Most houses in my neighborhood have double and triple garages. High speed charging for all families cars would definitely require a major upgrade to 400A service.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Side note, this is one reason I program my off peak time to be 5 minutes later than the actual start time, feels like we need to distribute these times better. Many cars now can set the time from GPS or DAB radio, so their charging timers will be bang on accurate.  Maybe a random distribution of a few minutes around the cheap period?  I know my car does have random start for power interruptions, it starts between 1 and 2 minutes after AC power is applied (only if the charging cable is connected but no power is available or a charge session is interrupted by a power cut though), it doesn't seem to do that for the charging timer.

The spec for the recent Uk Smart Charging regulations includes randomisation of start times

[james_s]

Most houses in my neighborhood have double and triple garages. High speed charging for all families cars would definitely require a major upgrade to 400A service.

Why? Wouldn't it be easier to simply charge at a lower rate if you need to charge multiple cars at once? I know people that charge from a standard 15A 120V receptacle, it is adequate for them since they only need to add enough charge each day to keep up with their driving. I can't think of many situations where you'd need to be charging 3 cars at once from high powered chargers set to full power at home. I guess if you have 3 people living there that are all going to leave on road trips first thing in the morning and they've all let their cars get low on charge? In the real world you would just set all 3 cars to charge at 20 amps or so, or stagger the starting time, or set the car that needs to be ready first to the highest current and set the others to use the remaining power. Most of the high powered loads like clothes dryer, stove/oven, welder, etc are not going to be running in the middle of the night. This is not rocket science, it's just basic load management. A requirement to charge 3 cars simultaneously at maximum current is a rather extreme edge case.

[Monkeh]

Most houses in my neighborhood have double and triple garages. High speed charging for all families cars would definitely require a major upgrade to 400A service.

Why? Wouldn't it be easier to simply charge at a lower rate if you need to charge multiple cars at once? I know people that charge from a standard 15A 120V receptacle, it is adequate for them since they only need to add enough charge each day to keep up with their driving. I can't think of many situations where you'd need to be charging 3 cars at once from high powered chargers set to full power at home. I guess if you have 3 people living there that are all going to leave on road trips first thing in the morning and they've all let their cars get low on charge? In the real world you would just set all 3 cars to charge at 20 amps or so, or stagger the starting time, or set the car that needs to be ready first to the highest current and set the others to use the remaining power. Most of the high powered loads like clothes dryer, stove/oven, welder, etc are not going to be running in the middle of the night. This is not rocket science, it's just basic load management. A requirement to charge 3 cars simultaneously at maximum current is a rather extreme edge case.

He has a textbook case of range anxiety.

[vad]

Why?

Because you scale capacity to the maximum current draw in the worst case scenario. It does not make sense to install two 70A fast chargers and keep a 200A service. Unless it is a dedicated service into your garage only, and the rest of the house - air conditioners, electric ranges, tumble dryer, etc. are powered from a different 200A service.

On the other hand, getting Tesla and not getting fast charger is dooming yourself into charging times of 24+ hours. It is cruelty. You could buy a better (more spacious, more luxury, less expensive - you choose) petrol car and have ability to refuel it in 5 minutes at any gas station.