Charging and OBC discussion split from Nissan Ariya thread

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I get that. But real world I don’t know. We are typical drivers. We have a 12 amp outside station and a 32 amp inside station. Both 240 volts. Wether we plug in outside or inside, every morning the Tesla is at 90 percent. I suppose if we came back from a trip on empty that wouldn’t be the case, but real world for folks who plug in every night it really doesn’t matter.

Jmho.
 
GRA said:
WetEV said:
Time needs to be considered. Yes, there might be a problem starting a decade or more in the future.

If BEV sales continue to double roughly ever 2.5 years, then sometime around 2030 BEV sales will be the majority of new cars. If the lifetime of cars on the road continues at 20+ years and that's true for both BEVs and ICEs, then sometime around 2050 BEVs will the majority of cars on the road.


Assuming BEV sales actually do double every 2.5 years, and they aren't doing that here yet. Sure, time needs to be considered. Sometime around 2050 will probably be far too late, which is why more and more states are panning to ban sales of them by 2030 or 2035.

GRA has car sales and cars on the road confused. Among other things.


GRA said:
WetEV said:
Apartment dwellers usually don't buy new cars. So in twenty years, give or take 5-10 years, this problem needs to be solved. Solving it now likely leads to unwanted, unused and decaying infrastructure.


Well, no, because used BEVs (which had inadequate range even when new) with seriously degraded batteries

Notice that "inadequate range" is based on GRA's idea of adequate range, and not the range needs of someone that need reliable transportation to work, shopping, and such. Notice that GRA is stuck in 2011 with the original LEAF chemistry. Yawn.


GRA said:
WetEV said:
If this is market forces only, then higher end units will get charging first (which is already happening) and the units where almost everyone takes the bus or drives a 40 year old junker will get charging last. Why would a landlord install charging? Hint, the landlord doesn't get to compel tenants to stay.
Charging facilities will have to be mandated for most rental property, because most landlords get no benefit, and the tenant isn't going to pay.

Right now, most landlords get no benefit, as almost no renters drive an EV. Time is needed again. This will change.


GRA said:
WetEV said:
Unless your goal is to prevent the spread of electric cars, then forcing charging to be installed where it is unwanted, will be unused and will decay isn't useful.

Uh huh, and the whole reason for mandating charging and ensuring adequate battery life/range is to make BEVs a viable option for people who have much less choice in where they live or what cars they buy.

BEVs are in short supply. If the world ran on GRA's values, perhaps low income people is where BEVs would be allocated.


GRA said:
In any case, as another poster has noted we've wandered far off-topic here and we've had this argument before, so I'll close by re-iterating that I consider the Ariya's OBC power inadequate, both as to its competition and the need, for the reasons I've stated.

Ah yes, the horse rider explaining why a two barrel carburetor just isn't acceptable.

Daily miles driven do not increase proportionally with pack size increase.

Suppose you are limited to just 6 hours overnight by utility rates. At 3m/kWh, 6 kW charging and 6 hours, then driving 100 miles per day is realistic, and a few percent of drivers do this much or more daily driving. That few percent might not want an Ariya.
 
Actually gaining 100 miles per day means 700 miles per week which means a longer commute than 100 miles could be done. This is the issue I had with my 2011 before I went to 240 volts. We were sharing the car based on which would be cheapest to drive so she was driving 62 miles a day while I was only going 25 miles a day. So needless to say, she could barely make 3 days in a row despite the car being plugged in 100% of the time it was home so we would switch for that day and yeah; the LEAF pretty much did all the side trips which were mostly very short but it was fun and interesting planning the car's use for the day.

Now... my car is quite boring. I am rarely over 65% SOC and might consider a charge plan a few times a month. I have a 28 mile commute and try to maintain a minimum of an 80 mile buffer just in case. TBH, the lack of stress is quite boring.
 
SageBrush said:
. . . you probably violate NEC if all your loads were on one main breaker and you did not use NG. And so far as I know, NEC requires an estimate.
It is widely recognized that the NEC load calculations for a residence are extremely conservative (except possibly for the contribution of EVSEs). If you have a load calculation of 200A and a 200A service, that service will rarely or never see above 100A. If you instead provided a 125A service, the only possible downside is that your main breaker could trip. If that doesn't happen, there's no safety or other problem. Of course, if that did happen, then it could be a lot of trouble to address by upsizing the service or removing loads, perhaps one of the reasons the NEC is so conservative here.

In a mild climate it's certainly possible to power a small (under 2000 sq ft) all electric house on a 100A or 125A service. I think it may even be possible to get the NEC load calculation to pencil out, but haven't looked at it closely.

Cheers, Wayne
 
SageBrush said:
johnlocke said:
My point still stands. Even with my large house and numerous loads I still manage to charge my car off that 100 amp main breaker. If you're talking about a typical apartment with a 12000 BTU AC and a small electric stove, you're looking a peak load of 25-30 amps and average load of 10 amps or less. In all but the most unusual circumstances, charging an EV is not going to be a problem. Putting the wiring in would be more of problem than the load calcs. The Fudge factor you allude to is just that. A guess as to what typical loading is. .4 is just a rule of thumb meant to get you into the ballpark. To be really accurate, use an ammeter to measure actual loading.
Your point is that you probably violate NEC if all your loads were on one main breaker and you did not use NG. And so far as I know, NEC requires an estimate.
County Inspector signed off on all the work so I expect that I passed all the code requirements. Only real reason that I'm on a 100 amp breaker is that my automatic transfer switch is limited to 100 amps and the backup generator is only 20KW.

Go look at the surge ratings for breakers. They don't trip instantaneously at the rated current. It can take over 2 minutes to trip at twice the rated current. It's still over 10 seconds at 10 times rated current. That's why you burned the tip of your screwdriver when you shorted the lines. Breakers exist to keep the wiring from burning up. You can pull 17 amps from a 15 breaker forever without tripping it and several hours at 20 amps before it trips. Most motor surges at startup are less than 5 seconds and the breaker will never notice it.
 
johnlocke said:
Go look at the surge ratings for breakers. They don't trip instantaneously at the rated current. It can take over 2 minutes to trip at twice the rated current. It's still over 10 seconds at 10 times rated current. That's why you burned the tip of your screwdriver when you shorted the lines. Breakers exist to keep the wiring from burning up. You can pull 17 amps from a 15 breaker forever without tripping it and several hours at 20 amps before it trips. Most motor surges at startup are less than 5 seconds and the breaker will never notice it.

I don't dispute the other stuff posted, but I will mention my disagreement with this part.
I agree the breakers keep the wiring in your house from catching fire and burning it down, but they are a lot more sensitive to over-current draws than you lead on.

A 15 amp breaker can easily trip on loads above 12 amps given enough time. Just the 12 amp EVSE gives people enough headaches with tripping the breakers due to heat build up. 17 amps from a 15 amp breaker will trip it fairly quick. Just plug a 16 amp EVSE into a 15 amp circuit and watch it trip after a few minutes of charging. If a breaker is allowing power draw above it's own rating for extended periods of time, then something is wrong with the breaker and it should be replaced.

Having said all that, not all breakers are created equal. I wouldn't want a breaker that tripped instantly at 15 amp installed either, you want one that can handle the surges for a brief period, but only for a brief period. If the breaker is allowing 16 amps or more for extended periods of time, that just means heat build up is happening somewhere in the circuit. Maybe at the breaker where it is a little safer or maybe at a bad "bend" of wire the electrician did by accident 40 years ago when he/she wired up the house. There is a ton of fudge factor for wiring and breakers to account for this, the 80% rule, etc. It's a safety net of sorts, but it's not perfect. It really does put reliance on the breaker to do what it's rated to do, trip around the current level you want for safety reasons.

Way off topic I know.....

but yeah the Nissan Ariya! Looks nice, I saw a tester build in person with both ChaDeMo and CCS quick charging ability last week. :D
 
johnlocke said:
You can pull 17 amps from a 15 breaker forever without tripping it and several hours at 20 amps before it trips.

knightmb said:
A 15 amp breaker can easily trip on loads above 12 amps given enough time.

Both of these scenarios are possible, so there's not actually a disagreement here.

The trip behavior of a breaker is not a single curve, it's a region showing allowed behavior. A 15 amp breaker is not to trip at 15A continuous when tested by itself in open air (not a real world scenario) at 40C ambient. But if you stick it in a panel with lots of other breakers generating heat at an ambient of 30C, the local breaker temperature can exceed 40C, causing it to trip below 15A continuous, hence the 125% oversizing rule for continuous circuits. Conversely, if you stick the same breaker in a lightly loaded panel, maybe separated from other breakers in the panel, at a 20C ambient, it may hold continuously at 17A.

Cheers, Wayne
 
johnlocke said:
Go look at the surge ratings for breakers. They don't trip instantaneously at the rated current. It can take over 2 minutes to trip at twice the rated current. It's still over 10 seconds at 10 times rated current. That's why you burned the tip of your screwdriver when you shorted the lines. Breakers exist to keep the wiring from burning up. You can pull 17 amps from a 15 breaker forever without tripping it and several hours at 20 amps before it trips. Most motor surges at startup are less than 5 seconds and the breaker will never notice it.

I'll stand by my suspicion that 32 Amp EV charging, let alone more, is outside of the ability of a vast number of households in the USA without a panel upgrade (if that is even possible) . By vast, I'm guessing 30 - 50%. What say you, @wwhitney ?
 
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
Time needs to be considered. Yes, there might be a problem starting a decade or more in the future.

If BEV sales continue to double roughly ever 2.5 years, then sometime around 2030 BEV sales will be the majority of new cars. If the lifetime of cars on the road continues at 20+ years and that's true for both BEVs and ICEs, then sometime around 2050 BEVs will the majority of cars on the road.


Assuming BEV sales actually do double every 2.5 years, and they aren't doing that here yet. Sure, time needs to be considered. Sometime around 2050 will probably be far too late, which is why more and more states are panning to ban sales of them by 2030 or 2035.

GRA has car sales and cars on the road confused. Among other things.


GRA said:
WetEV said:
Apartment dwellers usually don't buy new cars. So in twenty years, give or take 5-10 years, this problem needs to be solved. Solving it now likely leads to unwanted, unused and decaying infrastructure.


Well, no, because used BEVs (which had inadequate range even when new) with seriously degraded batteries

Notice that "inadequate range" is based on GRA's idea of adequate range, and not the range needs of someone that need reliable transportation to work, shopping, and such. Notice that GRA is stuck in 2011 with the original LEAF chemistry. Yawn.


GRA said:
WetEV said:
If this is market forces only, then higher end units will get charging first (which is already happening) and the units where almost everyone takes the bus or drives a 40 year old junker will get charging last. Why would a landlord install charging? Hint, the landlord doesn't get to compel tenants to stay.
Charging facilities will have to be mandated for most rental property, because most landlords get no benefit, and the tenant isn't going to pay.

Right now, most landlords get no benefit, as almost no renters drive an EV. Time is needed again. This will change.


GRA said:
WetEV said:
Unless your goal is to prevent the spread of electric cars, then forcing charging to be installed where it is unwanted, will be unused and will decay isn't useful.

Uh huh, and the whole reason for mandating charging and ensuring adequate battery life/range is to make BEVs a viable option for people who have much less choice in where they live or what cars they buy.

BEVs are in short supply. If the world ran on GRA's values, perhaps low income people is where BEVs would be allocated.


GRA said:
In any case, as another poster has noted we've wandered far off-topic here and we've had this argument before, so I'll close by re-iterating that I consider the Ariya's OBC power inadequate, both as to its competition and the need, for the reasons I've stated.

Ah yes, the horse rider explaining why a two barrel carburetor just isn't acceptable.

Daily miles driven do not increase proportionally with pack size increase.

Suppose you are limited to just 6 hours overnight by utility rates. At 3m/kWh, 6 kW charging and 6 hours, then driving 100 miles per day is realistic, and a few percent of drivers do this much or more daily driving. That few percent might not want an Ariya.
Just to be fair here, some people don't have access to a home charger. They would need to use public charging and therefore need a battery large enough to last 3-4 days between charges. Once a week would be even better. With an average commute of 30mi/day, you'd need a range of 120-150 mi. To go for a week, 200-220 mi. If your commute is longer and you don't have home charging then perhaps an EV with 300-350 mi range is needed. There is the possibility that an EV doesn't fit your needs at all. If charging at home is an option, then overnight charging even on a 120vac/15a outlet is adequate, adding 50-60 miles per night. Not ideal but usable. Battery size doesn't matter much as long as the car is capable of 100 mi or more. In either case, an OBC with more than 9.6KW rating is irrelevant. Our infrastructure is not set up for more than 50a/240vac service. The idea that people who live in apartments are going to move their cars to another parking spot once charged is not practical. Every apartment parking lot I've seen is designed to have just enough parking to be barely adequate. Spare spaces generally don't exist. I suspect that EV charging spaces would be regularly blocked.
 
SageBrush said:
I'll stand by my suspicion that 32 Amp EV charging, let alone more, is outside of the ability of a vast number of households in the USA without a panel upgrade (if that is even possible) . By vast, I'm guessing 30 - 50%. What say you, @wwhitney ?
I have no data or experience on what size services homes have across the US, vs what their NEC calculated load is.

I will say that if "ability" means "NEC compliance" you have some chance of being correct; if it means "will work without tripping the main breaker or actually exceeding the current rating of the service" then I doubt it is true.

Cheers, Wayne
 
johnlocke said:
Just to be fair here, some people don't have access to a home charger. They would need to use public charging and therefore need a battery large enough to last 3-4 days between charges. Once a week would be even better. With an average commute of 30mi/day, you'd need a range of 120-150 mi. To go for a week, 200-220 mi. If your commute is longer and you don't have home charging then perhaps an EV with 300-350 mi range is needed. There is the possibility that an EV doesn't fit your needs at all. If charging at home is an option, then overnight charging even on a 120vac/15a outlet is adequate, adding 50-60 miles per night. Not ideal but usable. Battery size doesn't matter much as long as the car is capable of 100 mi or more. In either case, an OBC with more than 9.6KW rating is irrelevant. Our infrastructure is not set up for more than 50a/240vac service. The idea that people who live in apartments are going to move their cars to another parking spot once charged is not practical. Every apartment parking lot I've seen is designed to have just enough parking to be barely adequate. Spare spaces generally don't exist. I suspect that EV charging spaces would be regularly blocked.

Pick the fruit easy to reach first before fetching a ladder.

Over half of the people have access to a home charger. Yes, the rest of the people are harder to get charging to and will need to be worked out over 10 to 30 years from now or so. A few are much harder. By focusing on them today, we could make the whole thing more complex and costly.

Dirty Hydrogen would like us to make BEVs more complex and costly.
 
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
Time needs to be considered. Yes, there might be a problem starting a decade or more in the future.

If BEV sales continue to double roughly ever 2.5 years, then sometime around 2030 BEV sales will be the majority of new cars. If the lifetime of cars on the road continues at 20+ years and that's true for both BEVs and ICEs, then sometime around 2050 BEVs will the majority of cars on the road.


Assuming BEV sales actually do double every 2.5 years, and they aren't doing that here yet. Sure, time needs to be considered. Sometime around 2050 will probably be far too late, which is why more and more states are panning to ban sales of them by 2030 or 2035.

GRA has car sales and cars on the road confused. Among other things.


No, I don't. Last year in the U.S. we were at 1.8% of sales, and for the first half of this year, 2.5%, both years with total car sales constrained by outside factors which drove up the median price of cars, causing sales at the lower end of he the market to drop off, thus skewing the results.


WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
Apartment dwellers usually don't buy new cars. So in twenty years, give or take 5-10 years, this problem needs to be solved. Solving it now likely leads to unwanted, unused and decaying infrastructure.


Well, no, because used BEVs (which had inadequate range even when new) with seriously degraded batteries

Notice that "inadequate range" is based on GRA's idea of adequate range, and not the range needs of someone that need reliable transportation to work, shopping, and such. Notice that GRA is stuck in 2011 with the original LEAF chemistry. Yawn.


Notice that WetEV continues to pretend that most people buy cars based solely on their routine needs, and continues to ignore the actual ranges of the top-selling cars, despite having been provided with that info. Perhaps if you spent less time yawning and got more sleep you would find it easier to absorb that fact, along with the fact that people don't consider an 8-year/70% capacity warranty adequate for a car that should last at least twice that long. Which is why California is considering requiring 80%/15 year warranties starting in the 2026 MY, although how they figure they can do so when no current battery tech can achieve that is puzzling. You can't mandate technological developments, so maybe they're just hoping solid-state or some other tech will appear in time.


WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
If this is market forces only, then higher end units will get charging first (which is already happening) and the units where almost everyone takes the bus or drives a 40 year old junker will get charging last. Why would a landlord install charging? Hint, the landlord doesn't get to compel tenants to stay.
Charging facilities will have to be mandated for most rental property, because most landlords get no benefit, and the tenant isn't going to pay.

Right now, most landlords get no benefit, as almost no renters drive an EV. Time is needed again. This will change.


At the high end, sure. At the low end, no; they'll have to be forced (and/or subidized) to do so, just as they had to be forced to provide hot and cold running water, stoves, flush toilets, bathing facilities, heating, lighting, electricity, garbage collection, etc.


WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
Unless your goal is to prevent the spread of electric cars, then forcing charging to be installed where it is unwanted, will be unused and will decay isn't useful.

Uh huh, and the whole reason for mandating charging and ensuring adequate battery life/range is to make BEVs a viable option for people who have much less choice in where they live or what cars they buy.

BEVs are in short supply. If the world ran on GRA's values, perhaps low income people is where BEVs would be allocated.


Which is of course one of the reasons I believe PHEVs are so important to spread the battery supply in the interim, along with their price, utility and longevity advantages. They make opportunity charging more practical for people without guaranteed charging, because they know they won't be stranded if they can't charge.


WetEV said:
GRA said:
In any case, as another poster has noted we've wandered far off-topic here and we've had this argument before, so I'll close by re-iterating that I consider the Ariya's OBC power inadequate, both as to its competition and the need, for the reasons I've stated.

Ah yes, the horse rider explaining why a two barrel carburetor just isn't acceptable.

Daily miles driven do not increase proportionally with pack size increase.

Suppose you are limited to just 6 hours overnight by utility rates. At 3m/kWh, 6 kW charging and 6 hours, then driving 100 miles per day is realistic, and a few percent of drivers do this much or more daily driving. That few percent might not want an Ariya.


Note that I'm not talking about homeowners who have dedicated charging and can put in whatever charging they find adequate (and can afford). But this is an easy argument to resolve - we can just wait on sales and see how the Ariya does vs. the competition, which at the moment all offer higher-power OBCs, and also see if in a few years Nissan ups the Ariya OBC's power,or the competition all reduces theirs. Most companies have charged extra for higher-power OBCs over a base model, and go out of their way to advertise their charging times, so they must think there's a demand.
 
johnlocke said:
[Snip]

Just to be fair here, some people don't have access to a home charger. They would need to use public charging and therefore need a battery large enough to last 3-4 days between charges. Once a week would be even better. With an average commute of 30mi/day, you'd need a range of 120-150 mi. To go for a week, 200-220 mi. If your commute is longer and you don't have home charging then perhaps an EV with 300-350 mi range is needed. There is the possibility that an EV doesn't fit your needs at all. If charging at home is an option, then overnight charging even on a 120vac/15a outlet is adequate, adding 50-60 miles per night. Not ideal but usable. Battery size doesn't matter much as long as the car is capable of 100 mi or more. In either case, an OBC with more than 9.6KW rating is irrelevant. Our infrastructure is not set up for more than 50a/240vac service. The idea that people who live in apartments are going to move their cars to another parking spot once charged is not practical. Every apartment parking lot I've seen is designed to have just enough parking to be barely adequate. Spare spaces generally don't exist. I suspect that EV charging spaces would be regularly blocked.


I'm glad to see that you unlike some aren't ignoring those who don't have guaranteed charging and have to opportunity charge, where faster charging matters but routine FCs are undesirable.

Re apartments, until charging is provided at every space, which will be decades off, I suspect what will happen will be assigned charging days during the week for the limited number of chargers available, possibly with coded cards or phone activation. Maybe weekends will be left first-come first-served or reservable. Inevitably there will be lazy people, and complaints to the landlord will be necessary. Ideally you can put the chargers somewhere that isn't a normal space for a specific apartment, but that's often not possible. And often, there's overflow that has to park on the street, which is why a mix of L2 and DCFCs (the latter initially at grocery and drugstores) will be needed.
 
GRA said:
WetEV said:
GRA said:
In any case, as another poster has noted we've wandered far off-topic here and we've had this argument before, so I'll close by re-iterating that I consider the Ariya's OBC power inadequate, both as to its competition and the need, for the reasons I've stated.

Ah yes, the horse rider explaining why a two barrel carburetor just isn't acceptable.

Daily miles driven do not increase proportionally with pack size increase.

Suppose you are limited to just 6 hours overnight by utility rates. At 3m/kWh, 6 kW charging and 6 hours, then driving 100 miles per day is realistic, and a few percent of drivers do this much or more daily driving. That few percent might not want an Ariya.


Note that I'm not talking about homeowners who have dedicated charging and can put in whatever charging they find adequate (and can afford). But this is an easy argument to resolve - we can just wait on sales and see how the Ariya does vs. the competition, which at the moment all offer higher-power OBCs, and also see if in a few years Nissan ups the Ariya OBC's power,or the competition all reduces theirs. Most companies have charged extra for higher-power OBCs over a base model, and go out of their way to advertise their charging times, so they must think there's a demand.

Notice again that most of the people likely to buy a new car of any type are homeowners, and can likely install dedicated charging if needed.

The success or failure of the Ariya isn't likely to be determined by the OBC.
 
GRA said:
johnlocke said:
[Snip]

Just to be fair here, some people don't have access to a home charger. They would need to use public charging and therefore need a battery large enough to last 3-4 days between charges. Once a week would be even better. With an average commute of 30mi/day, you'd need a range of 120-150 mi. To go for a week, 200-220 mi. If your commute is longer and you don't have home charging then perhaps an EV with 300-350 mi range is needed. There is the possibility that an EV doesn't fit your needs at all. If charging at home is an option, then overnight charging even on a 120vac/15a outlet is adequate, adding 50-60 miles per night. Not ideal but usable. Battery size doesn't matter much as long as the car is capable of 100 mi or more. In either case, an OBC with more than 9.6KW rating is irrelevant. Our infrastructure is not set up for more than 50a/240vac service. The idea that people who live in apartments are going to move their cars to another parking spot once charged is not practical. Every apartment parking lot I've seen is designed to have just enough parking to be barely adequate. Spare spaces generally don't exist. I suspect that EV charging spaces would be regularly blocked.


I'm glad to see that you unlike some aren't ignoring those who don't have guaranteed charging and have to opportunity charge, where faster charging matters but routine FCs are undesirable.

Re apartments, until charging is provided at every space, which will be decades off, I suspect what will happen will be assigned charging days during the week for the limited number of chargers available, possibly with coded cards or phone activation. Maybe weekends will be left first-come first-served or reservable. Inevitably there will be lazy people, and complaints to the landlord will be necessary. Ideally you can put the chargers somewhere that isn't a normal space for a specific apartment, but that's often not possible. And often, there's overflow that has to park on the street, which is why a mix of L2 and DCFCs (the latter initially at grocery and drugstores) will be needed.
Obviously, you have never owned an apartment building. Why would I put in a service guaranteed to cause me headaches, cost me money, and piss off some of my tenants? If I had garages for each tenant and It didn't cost me much to install the service, maybe. But the truth is that I can fill every unit I have without offering charging. If the apartment has a garage, it probably has a utility outlet and a light but not 240vac unless there's an electric water heater or washer/dryer setup in the garage (condos sometimes do that). In either case, the 240vac service is not likely to be more than 30a. A larger OBC isn't going to help.

Regarding DCFC, the batteries are getting better. If you charge twice a week, that's 100 charges a year. If you figure 1500 charge cycles before the battery dies, that's 15 years. Note that I said dies, not 70%. After 10 years, that car is going to be reduced to a second hand commuter vehicle used by someone who just needs to go to work.
 
johnlocke said:
GRA said:
johnlocke said:
[Snip]

Just to be fair here, some people don't have access to a home charger. They would need to use public charging and therefore need a battery large enough to last 3-4 days between charges. Once a week would be even better. With an average commute of 30mi/day, you'd need a range of 120-150 mi. To go for a week, 200-220 mi. If your commute is longer and you don't have home charging then perhaps an EV with 300-350 mi range is needed. There is the possibility that an EV doesn't fit your needs at all. If charging at home is an option, then overnight charging even on a 120vac/15a outlet is adequate, adding 50-60 miles per night. Not ideal but usable. Battery size doesn't matter much as long as the car is capable of 100 mi or more. In either case, an OBC with more than 9.6KW rating is irrelevant. Our infrastructure is not set up for more than 50a/240vac service. The idea that people who live in apartments are going to move their cars to another parking spot once charged is not practical. Every apartment parking lot I've seen is designed to have just enough parking to be barely adequate. Spare spaces generally don't exist. I suspect that EV charging spaces would be regularly blocked.


I'm glad to see that you unlike some aren't ignoring those who don't have guaranteed charging and have to opportunity charge, where faster charging matters but routine FCs are undesirable.

Re apartments, until charging is provided at every space, which will be decades off, I suspect what will happen will be assigned charging days during the week for the limited number of chargers available, possibly with coded cards or phone activation. Maybe weekends will be left first-come first-served or reservable. Inevitably there will be lazy people, and complaints to the landlord will be necessary. Ideally you can put the chargers somewhere that isn't a normal space for a specific apartment, but that's often not possible. And often, there's overflow that has to park on the street, which is why a mix of L2 and DCFCs (the latter initially at grocery and drugstores) will be needed.

Obviously, you have never owned an apartment building. Why would I put in a service guaranteed to cause me headaches, cost me money, and piss off some of my tenants? If I had garages for each tenant and It didn't cost me much to install the service, maybe. But the truth is that I can fill every unit I have without offering charging. If the apartment has a garage, it probably has a utility outlet and a light but not 240vac unless there's an electric water heater or washer/dryer setup in the garage (condos sometimes do that). In either case, the 240vac service is not likely to be more than 30a. A larger OBC isn't going to help.


I've never said that the typical landlord is going to do this voluntarily (only those serving the high end will), in fact in a reply to WetEV I specifically pointed out that they would have to be forced to, just as they have with every other amenity that provides little or no benefit to them.


johnlocke said:
Regarding DCFC, the batteries are getting better. If you charge twice a week, that's 100 charges a year. If you figure 1500 charge cycles before the battery dies, that's 15 years. Note that I said dies, not 70%. After 10 years, that car is going to be reduced to a second hand commuter vehicle used by someone who just needs to go to work.


And therein lies the problem. Those at the lower end need an all-around car, not commute only. A 10 or 15 or 20 year-old ICE that's been reasonably maintained will still go just as far as a new one; a BEV won't. Besides, seeing as how many companies (VW, Hyundai and Kia come to mind, but there are others) still don't provide any capacity warranty, you are a lot more confident in battery longevity than they are. When all companies producing BEVs are willing to back adequate battery life with their money, we can talk again.
 
GRA said:
And therein lies the problem. Those at the lower end need an all-around car, not commute only. A 10 or 15 or 20 year-old ICE that's been reasonably maintained will still go just as far as a new one; a BEV won't. Besides, seeing as how many companies (VW, Hyundai and Kia come to mind, but there are others) still don't provide any capacity warranty, you are a lot more confident in battery longevity than they are. When all companies producing BEVs are willing to back adequate battery life with their money, we can talk again.

Not always true. My Ex drives a car I bought her back in the day but when she takes her nearly annual trip to California, she rents a car and mostly because she doesn't trust her car (only 12 years old) to make it and she has extended warranty, full service schedule done at the dealership, etc.

So is that range anxiety or simply a car not road trip worthy? and is there a difference?
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
GRA said:
And therein lies the problem. Those at the lower end need an all-around car, not commute only. A 10 or 15 or 20 year-old ICE that's been reasonably maintained will still go just as far as a new one; a BEV won't. Besides, seeing as how many companies (VW, Hyundai and Kia come to mind, but there are others) still don't provide any capacity warranty, you are a lot more confident in battery longevity than they are. When all companies producing BEVs are willing to back adequate battery life with their money, we can talk again.

Not always true. My Ex drives a car I bought her back in the day but when she takes her nearly annual trip to California, she rents a car and mostly because she doesn't trust her car (only 12 years old) to make it and she has extended warranty, full service schedule done at the dealership, etc.

So is that range anxiety or simply a car not road trip worthy? and is there a difference?


Of course it's not always true, and depends on emotional factors as well as rational ones. If I've taken the time to choose a car that's above average in reliability, preferably know how it's been maintained and it's rarely or never let me down, I'm more likely to trust it.

I've owned four cars in 40+ years of driving, two bought used, two new. As long as they were drivable, I trusted them for any trip I might take they were suited for (which is to say I didn't drive the 2000 when I needed high clearance or had to carry lots of people and gear).. Their ages when they finally passed out of my hands or when I know they were retired? '65 Impala, 23 years/240k miles, sold while still going strong; '69 Datsun 2000 Roadster, 32? years, sold after it sat in my dad's driveway unused for about 10 years after I bought my first Subaru wagon, to a friend who fixed it up, drove it for a couple of years more then gave it to his wife's teen-age nephew, who proceeded to total it shortly thereafter; '88 Subaru GL Turbo 4WD wagon, stolen after 14.5 years & 140k miles; 2003 Subaru Forester 2.5 XS, still going strong after 18.5 years but only 71k miles, owing to my lack of need for a car for local use.

All of these cars had the routine maintenance done on schedule, and needed few or no unscheduled maintenance or repairs. Many cars don't get that kind of treatment, others are simply unreliable to start with - does anyone expect a Fiat to be as reliable as the average Toyota?
 
GRA said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
GRA said:
And therein lies the problem. Those at the lower end need an all-around car, not commute only. A 10 or 15 or 20 year-old ICE that's been reasonably maintained will still go just as far as a new one; a BEV won't. Besides, seeing as how many companies (VW, Hyundai and Kia come to mind, but there are others) still don't provide any capacity warranty, you are a lot more confident in battery longevity than they are. When all companies producing BEVs are willing to back adequate battery life with their money, we can talk again.

Not always true. My Ex drives a car I bought her back in the day but when she takes her nearly annual trip to California, she rents a car and mostly because she doesn't trust her car (only 12 years old) to make it and she has extended warranty, full service schedule done at the dealership, etc.

So is that range anxiety or simply a car not road trip worthy? and is there a difference?


Of course it's not always true, and depends on emotional factors as well as rational ones. If I've taken the time to choose a car that's above average in reliability, preferably know how it's been maintained and it's rarely or never let me down, I'm more likely to trust it.

I've owned four cars in 40+ years of driving, two bought used, two new. As long as they were drivable, I trusted them for any trip I might take they were suited for (which is to say I didn't drive the 2000 when I needed high clearance or had to carry lots of people and gear).. Their ages when they finally passed out of my hands or when I know they were retired? '65 Impala, 23 years/240k miles, sold while still going strong; '69 Datsun 2000 Roadster, 32? years, sold after it sat in my dad's driveway unused for about 10 years after I bought my first Subaru wagon, to a friend who fixed it up, drove it for a couple of years more then gave it to his wife's teen-age nephew, who proceeded to total it shortly thereafter; '88 Subaru GL Turbo 4WD wagon, stolen after 14.5 years & 140k miles; 2003 Subaru Forester 2.5 XS, still going strong after 18.5 years but only 71k miles, owing to my lack of need for a car for local use.

All of these cars had the routine maintenance done on schedule, and needed few or no unscheduled maintenance or repairs. Many cars don't get that kind of treatment, others are simply unreliable to start with - does anyone expect a Fiat to be as reliable as the average Toyota?
I too tend to drive my cars into the ground. Doesn't mean that I'd be willing to drive a 10 year old car with 150000 miles on it cross-country. Lots of people just need to get to work in the morning and home at night. A used EV might fit their needs even if it needs to to be recharged at a public station a couple of times a week. Range might be down but the likelihood of a major mechanical failure would be a lot lower than an ICE. Your older ICE is likely to have lost 10% or more of it's original range just due to wear and tear. Not as bad as an EV but it's still there. A 30KWH Leaf probably won't work for them but a 60KWH Leaf+ with a 30% degraded battery might. If you are buying a 3-4 year old car, you expect more out of it than if you buy 8-10 year old car. If you buy anything older than10 years old, you're just buying a beater to get you to work or school.

None of this explains your fixation on higher L2 charging rates (above 40a) or inadequate L2 charging in public spaces. Here in California, the utilities have been trying to give away L2 chargers to apartment buildings and other public areas. Not many takers. L3 chargers are proliferating fairly rapidly. EA and EVGO both are expanding urban locations. Some of this is due to Volkswagen's Deal with CARB but some is just opportunistic trying to catch an increasing EV population. EVGO in particular is after the Tesla market adding Tesla adaptors to existing stations and improving their point of sale hardware.
 
johnlocke said:
[Snip]

I too tend to drive my cars into the ground. Doesn't mean that I'd be willing to drive a 10 year old car with 150000 miles on it cross-country. Lots of people just need to get to work in the morning and home at night. A used EV might fit their needs even if it needs to to be recharged at a public station a couple of times a week.


Again, the issue isn't what car might suit someone's needs, it's whether it suits their wants. So far even new BEVs meet only a small fraction of the U.S. public's wants (and we still need to bribe most of them), and given the range loss suffered by used BEVs the value for money proposition is even lower.


johnlocke said:
Range might be down but the likelihood of a major mechanical failure would be a lot lower than an ICE.

That depends on the company, don't you think? Given Tesla's QC and lack of long-term testing, I'd be less likely to trust one of theirs than some others to hold up over time.


johnlocke said:
Your older ICE is likely to have lost 10% or more of it's original range just due to wear and tear. Not as bad as an EV but it's still there.


That hasn't been my experience. Given break-in most cars gain some range from new, so any subsequent loss is from that. Even if there is some loss it's minimal, from a value that was more than adequate, and given both the ubiquity of gas stations and the very short refueling time it makes little difference to almost everyone. The BEV DCFC infrastructure may eventually grow to eliminate the infrastructure density disadvantage, but barring a battery breakthough it seems unlikely that the charging times will ever be equal to a gas fill-up for the same range.

If battery range (and longevity) increase enough they may not have to equal the short time for a gas fill in order to satisfy most people. Alternatively, it will cease to be a problem once everyone with experience of a liquid-fueled car has died, so no one will have anything to compare battery charging times with.


johnlocke said:
A 30KWH Leaf probably won't work for them but a 60KWH Leaf+ with a 30% degraded battery might. If you are buying a 3-4 year old car, you expect more out of it than if you buy 8-10 year old car. If you buy anything older than10 years old, you're just buying a beater to get you to work or school.

As to that, the Impala was 12 years old when I got it, and I drove it everywhere, daily as well as on trips to the mountains fully loaded with scouts and their packs. Of course, it was sold to me by my dad, who kept full logbooks showing every dollar spent and maintenance ever done to the car, a practice I've continued with all my cars. The 2000 was nine years old when I bought it, and I lacked all that info prior to then, but had records of everything subsequent to that.


johnlocke said:
None of this explains your fixation on higher L2 charging rates (above 40a) or inadequate L2 charging in public spaces. Here in California, the utilities have been trying to give away L2 chargers to apartment buildings and other public areas. Not many takers. L3 chargers are proliferating fairly rapidly. EA and EVGO both are expanding urban locations. Some of this is due to Volkswagen's Deal with CARB but some is just opportunistic trying to catch an increasing EV population. EVGO in particular is after the Tesla market adding Tesla adaptors to existing stations and improving their point of sale hardware.


Here's the issue as I see it. We need both public and private L2 plus FCs, but cost-wise DCFCs are at least 10 x L2. California alone projects they'll need to add more than 1 million new chargers by 2030 if they're to be able for PEVs achieve 50% of sales by then. Regular DCing increases degradation rates, something that batteries really don't need any more of. OTOH, public L2s that can give you 2-4 days of range in a couple of hours will enhance opportunity charging, while allowing each charger to serve more cars (definitely need occupied but not chsrging fees) while reducing or for some eliminating the need to regularly FC (which should also cost more per kWh than L2).

As to landlords not being interested in installing L2s even if subsidized, of course not. It doesn't benefit them, so as I've noted most will have to be compelled to install them, just as they had to be compelled to provide off-street parking and all the other amenities I've listed that renters now expect to be universal. All of them had to be mandated. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_water_flat

I can't even imagine such a thing, yet within my lifetime there were cities in the richest country in the world where it was legal for landlords not to provide hot running water to their tenants.
 
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