eyedrop
Active member
I own a 2015 Leaf S and love it. Its the perfect vehicle for commuting, and is capable of road trips with some extra time and careful planning. It really fits my needs perfectly.
I dont own any gas cars (no need to). However, my workplace has recently given me a driving job where I do 350+ miles a day using their company vehicle. Its a 2016 Ram Promaster city. The thing smells, its loud, vibrates, has no power, and just feels archaic like an old relic.
But one thing that has impressed me is the refueling time. I can do my 350 mile route without having to stop and refuel. And when I do refuel, it only takes a couple minutes. I had forgotten how nice of a luxury it is... The thing gets more range than my leaf on a quarter tank of fuel, and you can basically just wait until the fuel light comes on and your pretty much guaranteed to be close to some sort of gas station, where you can stop for just 5 minutes and go another 400 miles.
Its not so much the range that impresses me. Its more about the refueling time and the sheer number of available stations. Its not often you hear people complain that their new car only gets 200 miles to the tank vs. 300. When you can refuel in 5 minutes, and stations are everywhere, range doesn't really matter that much..
I feel like the range issue with EV's is blown out of proportion. The real issue is recharge time IMO. And to a somewhat lesser degree, a lack of stations...
I understand that some Tesla's can get 300+ miles per charge, which is fantastic. But your still spending atleast an hour at the supercharger just to fill it to 80% charge.
My question is, are there any plans to upgrade these charging networks to provide 5-10 minute fueling times, in line with combustion engines? It seems like as EV's become more popular, there will be a need for not only more charging stations, but faster charge times as well. Even if they come out with 500 mile range EV's, nobody is going to want to sit for hours waiting for a charge. For alot of businesses, time is money. You see long haul truck drivers easily cover 800 miles in a day. Imagine how long it would take to recharge that Tesla semi truck with its massive capacity battery, and how huge and congested the lines would be at the charge stations... I just dont see it working on a mainstream level. We will have to totally upgrade the power grid, which would be a massive undertaking. Everyone would need special breaker boxes and power nodes throughout the city which will cost a fortune and take years to implement. Heck, even a standard L3 DC fast charger costs $100k to install. It takes special permits, special installation and wiring, etc...
There are other great ideas, such as magnetic roads that charge your car as you drive. Or roads with built in solar panels to take pressure off the main grid. But again, your talking big $$$ and lots of time to redo our current infrastructure, which has taken decades for our society to build. Its just not ideal or realistic. There has to be an easier solution...
And as a side question, does anyone have insight on what current prototype/proof of concept battery designs are doing capacity wise? What kind of range will we see in 5-10 years? Maybe it will be possible to eventually far exceed the range that gas powered cars are getting. Pretty much nobody drives more that a 1000 miles in a day before sleeping. So maybe mega range batteries will help solve the recharge time issue in the sense that people shouldn't need to be inconvenienced in their waking hours to charge.
Imagine batteries that could go thousands of miles on a charge. You could basically get away with charging it at home with your 110V any time your not using it, and have such a large reserve that a spontaneous road trip across country would be no issue.
There is also the quick battery swap concept that is genious, but none of the manufacturers seem to want to go that direction for some reason. Its a real shame!
I dont own any gas cars (no need to). However, my workplace has recently given me a driving job where I do 350+ miles a day using their company vehicle. Its a 2016 Ram Promaster city. The thing smells, its loud, vibrates, has no power, and just feels archaic like an old relic.
But one thing that has impressed me is the refueling time. I can do my 350 mile route without having to stop and refuel. And when I do refuel, it only takes a couple minutes. I had forgotten how nice of a luxury it is... The thing gets more range than my leaf on a quarter tank of fuel, and you can basically just wait until the fuel light comes on and your pretty much guaranteed to be close to some sort of gas station, where you can stop for just 5 minutes and go another 400 miles.
Its not so much the range that impresses me. Its more about the refueling time and the sheer number of available stations. Its not often you hear people complain that their new car only gets 200 miles to the tank vs. 300. When you can refuel in 5 minutes, and stations are everywhere, range doesn't really matter that much..
I feel like the range issue with EV's is blown out of proportion. The real issue is recharge time IMO. And to a somewhat lesser degree, a lack of stations...
I understand that some Tesla's can get 300+ miles per charge, which is fantastic. But your still spending atleast an hour at the supercharger just to fill it to 80% charge.
My question is, are there any plans to upgrade these charging networks to provide 5-10 minute fueling times, in line with combustion engines? It seems like as EV's become more popular, there will be a need for not only more charging stations, but faster charge times as well. Even if they come out with 500 mile range EV's, nobody is going to want to sit for hours waiting for a charge. For alot of businesses, time is money. You see long haul truck drivers easily cover 800 miles in a day. Imagine how long it would take to recharge that Tesla semi truck with its massive capacity battery, and how huge and congested the lines would be at the charge stations... I just dont see it working on a mainstream level. We will have to totally upgrade the power grid, which would be a massive undertaking. Everyone would need special breaker boxes and power nodes throughout the city which will cost a fortune and take years to implement. Heck, even a standard L3 DC fast charger costs $100k to install. It takes special permits, special installation and wiring, etc...
There are other great ideas, such as magnetic roads that charge your car as you drive. Or roads with built in solar panels to take pressure off the main grid. But again, your talking big $$$ and lots of time to redo our current infrastructure, which has taken decades for our society to build. Its just not ideal or realistic. There has to be an easier solution...
And as a side question, does anyone have insight on what current prototype/proof of concept battery designs are doing capacity wise? What kind of range will we see in 5-10 years? Maybe it will be possible to eventually far exceed the range that gas powered cars are getting. Pretty much nobody drives more that a 1000 miles in a day before sleeping. So maybe mega range batteries will help solve the recharge time issue in the sense that people shouldn't need to be inconvenienced in their waking hours to charge.
Imagine batteries that could go thousands of miles on a charge. You could basically get away with charging it at home with your 110V any time your not using it, and have such a large reserve that a spontaneous road trip across country would be no issue.
There is also the quick battery swap concept that is genious, but none of the manufacturers seem to want to go that direction for some reason. Its a real shame!