EVs

[giant_mtb]

Gotta compare electric grid capacity per capita.

I have no clue where to find that data.

Not only grid capacity, but just the number of chargers necessary. We'd need truckstop-sized charging venues dotted all over the place if everybody had an EV (because it takes forever to charge up compared to an ICE, so you need lots of charging stations). And the millions of people that live in cities where they can't just run an extension cord out their 4th story apartment window and onto the street or across a parking lot to charge their EV at night...aka, massive infrastructure necessity for street-level charging to be commonplace.  The whole "well, you just charge it at home at night" thing only really applies to people with houses/garages at this point.

[giant_mtb]

1902: they had all these new horseless carriages but it was literally impossible to build specialist outlets that might have been called "gas stations" to fuel & service them.
This is why, in 2022, we still have to go to the nearest general store to buy petroleum spirit in gallon cans. Also I'll have 3 lbs of flour with that please, a ball of sisal string, and a fly swatter.
Coming right up sir.

The difference is that a gas station can fuel you up in 5 minutes. If it takes 30-45 minutes to charge up an EV at 400V or 800V or whatever at a charging station, you need a shitload more charging stations to accommodate the demand. It's a lot of infrastructure that will take years to get here.  The six Tesla Superchargers at my local Meijer store aren't gonna cut it.

[CaminoRacer]

Not only grid capacity, but just the number of chargers necessary. We'd need truckstop-sized charging venues dotted all over the place if everybody had an EV (because it takes forever to charge up compared to an ICE, so you need lots of charging stations). And the millions of people that live in cities where they can't just run an extension cord out their 4th story apartment window and onto the street or across a parking lot to charge their EV at night...aka, massive infrastructure necessity for street-level charging to be commonplace.  The whole "well, you just charge it at home at night" thing only really applies to people with houses/garages at this point.

Over half the country's housing units have a garage or carport according to this:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-958-january-2-2017-sixty-three-percent-all-housing-units-have-garage-or-carport

And if you can charge at home, you rarely charge in public. It's been months since we've used a public charger for our Bolt.

Of course that's actually a bit detrimental to quickly building out charging networks, because it's not as profitable as people might hope for, and the chargers won't be used as often as generally expected.

[CaminoRacer]

The Smoking Tire podcast episode with Reilly Brennan (aired back in March) brought up a good point - reliable chargers are more important to EV owners than the total number of chargers. Nothing is worse than pulling up to a charger with low battery and having an issue with the app, or the charger shuts off after 30 seconds and says it's done charging, etc. All of which is more common right now than all the chargers being full (except for in California maybe) Making the charging networks 99.99% reliable should be goal #1 before they're expanded much further, but unfortunately that's not the case. I'd also be fine with a slower expansion because we might want faster/new chargers in 5 years and they're hefty investments. Better to take it a bit slower than have a ton of "outdated" chargers not long after expansion

[r0tor]

The difference is that a gas station can fuel you up in 5 minutes. If it takes 30-45 minutes to charge up an EV at 400V or 800V or whatever at a charging station, you need a shitload more charging stations to accommodate the demand. It's a lot of infrastructure that will take years to get here.  The six Tesla Superchargers at my local Meijer store aren't gonna cut it.

If you start up every morning with a "full tank", how many times a year will you need to do a full fill-up during the day?

[veeman]

Meh, I think those problems are overblown in the video above.

Norway has a 90% adoption rate of EVs for new cars and that works out perfectly fine without any nassive investments in infrastructure.

In practice most cars are charging during the night when the load is low on the power grid.

As others have said what works in Norway or Iceland won't work, IMHO, in the USA.  Norway has higher home ownership rate, higher per capita income, lower population density, less personal vehicles per capita, less average daily miles/km driven, less vandalism, higher taxes, and higher cost of gasoline. 

[veeman]

Over half the country's housing units have a garage or carport according to this:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-958-january-2-2017-sixty-three-percent-all-housing-units-have-garage-or-carport

But that means that a significant percentage (1/4 to 1/3) of housing units don't have their own garages/car ports.  So when California decides that all new cars starting in the year 2035 must be EV, how is that going to work for a state with 15 million registered cars? 

[Morris Minor]

The difference is that a gas station can fuel you up in 5 minutes. If it takes 30-45 minutes to charge up an EV at 400V or 800V or whatever at a charging station, you need a shitload more charging stations to accommodate the demand. It's a lot of infrastructure that will take years to get here.  The six Tesla Superchargers at my local Meijer store aren't gonna cut it.

How often will you charge at Meijer vs plugging it in at home?
How many gas stations would there be if we could fill up at home?
For the few who travel beyond home radius, public charging will evolve. We'll figure it out.

[giant_mtb]

How often will you charge at Meijer vs plugging it in at home?
How many gas stations would there be if we could fill up at home?
For the few who travel beyond home radius, public charging will evolve. We'll figure it out.

Well, currently, I can't plug in at home because I live in an apartment and park on the street. So, I would need.......infrastructure. So, just like I can't fill my gas tank at home...

[CaminoRacer]

I charged our Bolt at my office when we lived in an apartment. Only needed to charge once or twice a week. Those level 2 chargers are pretty cheap and easy to install everywhere

[Morris Minor]

Car and Driver mag is all about EVs this issue. The Ioniq 5 is their EV of the Year.

[giant_mtb]

I charged our Bolt at my office when we lived in an apartment. Only needed to charge once or twice a week. Those level 2 chargers are pretty cheap and easy to install everywhere

Combination parking meter/charging stations on streets could be nice.  Pay to park and charge at the same time. Would keep people from sitting on a charger more than they need else they get ticketed.

[afty]

In MA they are putting EV chargers on light poles: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/05/30/national-grid-installs-pole-mounted-ev-chargers-in-massachusetts/

[veeman]

Californians told to conserve electricity this upcoming long weekend due to current heat wave from 4pm-9pm including no charging of electric cars during that time period. The electric grid cannot handle it.

Currently 4% of cars in California are electric...

Governor Newsom has mandated that all new cars sold in California by the year 2035 be electric.

Hmm...

[CaminoRacer]

I used twice as much energy for air conditioning my house in August as we did for charging the EV.

And potential blackouts caused by heat waves caused by climate change (shifting jet stream and stalled weather fronts) are a pretty good argument for EVs and green energy.

[GoCougs]

In MA they are putting EV chargers on light poles: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/05/30/national-grid-installs-pole-mounted-ev-chargers-in-massachusetts/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkgkxn/copper-thieves-are-cutting-electric-car-charging-cables-and-stealing-them

With the rise of property crime through the US - esp. in cities - this will be a major problem.

[GoCougs]

Californians told to conserve electricity this upcoming long weekend due to current heat wave from 4pm-9pm including no charging of electric cars during that time period. The electric grid cannot handle it.

Currently 4% of cars in California are electric...

Governor Newsom has mandated that all new cars sold in California by the year 2035 be electric.

Hmm...

I used twice as much energy for air conditioning my house in August as we did for charging the EV.

And potential blackouts caused by heat waves caused by climate change (shifting jet stream and stalled weather fronts) are a pretty good argument for EVs and green energy.

It's the macro numbers: assuming ~14k miles/year, an EV will consume 394 kWhr/month. The average household; sans EV charging; consumes ~900 kWhr/month. So charging that EV boosts average household consumption by ~44%. If there are two EVs in the household, that's ~88% vs. nominal.

As demonstrated since forever, power consumption is a major problem to widespread EV adoption, and will take many years and $1T+ to remedy, leaving global warming sins (more power plants, more substations, more metal transmission lines, more non-recycled "green" energy, etc.) in its wake.

[Morris Minor]

Californians told to conserve electricity this upcoming long weekend due to current heat wave from 4pm-9pm including no charging of electric cars during that time period. The electric grid cannot handle it.

Currently 4% of cars in California are electric...

Governor Newsom has mandated that all new cars sold in California by the year 2035 be electric.

Hmm...

Nukes, clean, modern nukes.
More nukes, fewer kooks.

[afty]

Californians told to conserve electricity this upcoming long weekend due to current heat wave from 4pm-9pm including no charging of electric cars during that time period. The electric grid cannot handle it.

Currently 4% of cars in California are electric...

Governor Newsom has mandated that all new cars sold in California by the year 2035 be electric.

Hmm...

Who charges their EV from 4-9 pm?  Most people schedule charging in the middle of the night, when electric rates are less than half of peak.

[SJ_GTI]

Nukes, clean, modern nukes.
More nukes, fewer kooks.

I think I just read that they extended the life of their Nuclear power plant (which supplies ~10% of their electricity in the state), which had previously been scheduled to close. IMHO it makes sense to keep investing in new nuclear as well, but not shutting down existing power plants is probably a good idea.

[Laconian]

Who charges their EV from 4-9 pm?  Most people schedule charging in the middle of the night, when electric rates are less than half of peak.

Folks just keep forgetting this very important piece of trivia...

[Morris Minor]

I think I just read that they extended the life of their Nuclear power plant (which supplies ~10% of their electricity in the state), which had previously been scheduled to close. IMHO it makes sense to keep investing in new nuclear as well, but not shutting down existing power plants is probably a good idea.

Yup. I think we have to mix it up... have an array of choices: nuclear, solar, wind, coal & gas for emergencies.

[Eye of the Tiger]

Nukes, clean, modern nukes.
More nukes, fewer kooks.

I like nukes. It's clean power. Just bury the waste deep in a mountain or shoot it into space.

[Eye of the Tiger]

If they can put little nukes in submarines, why can't we have them in cars? I'll go back to school and learn how to work on them.

[GoCougs]

Folks just keep forgetting this very important piece of trivia...

Charging at work? Shift workers? Weekend? There's nothing that prevents it. Plus, the total energy drawn from the grid; not just peak; is a major capacity issue that has to be accommodated.

[CaminoRacer]

California and Texas electric grid issues aren't even caused by EVs. I remember brown outs in LA as a kid. If anything this is all just a wake up that we need to continually improve our infrastructure, not an argument against EVs. America is supposed to be a world leader not a place of crumbling infrastructure.

[veeman]

I've never heard of a state wide prohibition on use of gas pumps between the hours of 4pm - 9pm.  Just saying...

People take available 24/7 fueling for granted across the nation. 

Now with EV you compromise because you can't quickly and often easily charge up when outside of range of your house and on top of that now you can't easily charge during 20% of a given 24 hr period of the day during extreme weather events.  And this is with only 4% of vehicles in California being EV.

It has been demonstrated, I think, that California is not ready for Gov Newsom's declaration that all new car purchases by the year 2035 be EV.

This doesn't really affect the well off.  They can always conduct their work from home by zoom.  Tell that to the school teacher who commutes 50 miles each way to work because they can't afford to live anywhere near their workplace. Used car market is going to be really expensive in 2035 because no way can they rely on an EV.

Fiasco in the works.

Of course these extreme weather events currently annually happening will likely not persist or worsen in the future...

[veeman]

Anyways none of this really matters because these rules have a habit of not getting enforced or scrapped when the time comes for them to go in effect.

[Morris Minor]

On the subject of Newsome's edict. Something's got to give. Califormia doesn't like petrol cars... and it doesn't like PG&E, who it needs, but is one of its chosen whipping boys.

One of the the topics Adam Wadecki has talked about on his (excellent) Rare Classic Cars channel, is the Malaise Era. The decline of the Big Three was caused largely by the government's stretch goals of emissions reduction and CAFE rules. The basic idea was laudable but the timeline was about that of what it took them to design & develop a SINGLE new model. They certainly did not have the resources to do this across all of their lines simultaneously. SO they ended up with rushed-to-market poorly-designed garbage: cheap, unreliable, low quality. This was the gift the Japanese & the Europeans had been looking for: they were ready to go.

[GoCougs]

California and Texas electric grid issues aren't even caused by EVs. I remember brown outs in LA as a kid. If anything this is all just a wake up that we need to continually improve our infrastructure, not an argument against EVs. America is supposed to be a world leader not a place of crumbling infrastructure.

Anecdotes aren't macro facts however.

It's simple math - equate private transportation fossil fuel energy usage into electrical energy usage.

It's absolutely an augment against EVs - from the (probably false) premise of chemical batteries as the final solution to the global warming sins need to expand grid capacity in such short order.