Featured How To Sell EVs To People Who Hate Them

And if a person is waiting for EV's to reduce air pollution in their community or global CO2 emissions, they will also have a very long wait.

Personally I could move somewhere else and buy a house. I'm sure houses are cheaper in Mexico. But if the rental I have now puts a roof over my head, at what point do I give up other dreams/goals/family in an attempt to "secure my future" by moving somewhere where housing is cheaper?

I was making fun of smartphone and tablet manufacturers.

Although I do see cars that have a battery sized to work with a standard outlet as a good idea. The 24kWh Leaf we had would top up most of the time from being plugged in at home. Standard-outlet-capable-sized-battery EV's would take away the need for L2 EVSE installations in places where it would be prohibitive (e.g. appartment complexes, homes with 50 or 100amp services, etc.).

There could be three categories of them,

1. The PHEV
2. The ultra efficient (e.g. Aptera) and
3. The neighborhood electric vehicle (e.g. golf carts).

No high amp wiring needed.

 

I live in very Democrat area Fairfax outside DC can't think of anyone in my larger development with an EV or even plugin. Part of the reason Dems like to tax the crap out of new cars here (annual property tax) so they are not going to back down on needing taxes. Repub Gov Youngkin has short political life here in Va. by definition (I think Va. is only state with one-term Gov, and he staked his future on limiting abortion...dumb in a blue state ).

Before it was Youngkin it was Democrat and they already banned future Gaso car sales in Va. (we went same deadlines as Ca. with EV mandates hard coded into law and unstoppable hard deadline). Interesting to see what happens, I guess Dems will characteristically insists on keeping hard deadline, and people may buy cars out-of-state if they want a hybrid etc.

This is what irks Repubs. However, EV's are depreciating at such a fast rate, they may tend to be cheaper wheels here as the annual property tax bite is less. This could change minds. But people want cars that do what they want, car freedom.

 

I try to remind people that converting our region's water-rich agricultural lands to sprawling suburbs, means moving that food production to someplace where water is not plentiful. Like east of the Cascades, where supplies are already suffering occasional stress, like this year with a low snowpack winter. Or California, where water seems to be in short supply most of the time.

Out here, west of the Cascade mountain range, we are hemmed in. North and south are agricultural lands, west is tidal salt water, east is the Cascade mountain range. While there are still a lot of private- and state-owned forest lands, especially in the foothills, the bulk primary core mountains are a mixture of U.S. Forest Service lands and protected federal Wilderness. Most of us don't want to see those valuable assets mowed down, clearcut, bulldozed, and paved over.

Uncontrolled urban spawl is what prompted the state Legislature to adopt a Growth Management Act (GMA) in 1990. Back then, more dense housing was encouraged. Last year, it was forced.

 

My electrical panel (fuse box) is at least 30 feet and two rooms away from a cinder block wall into my garage and then another 15 feet to the ideal location for a 240 volt. Must be conduit. Quote a couple of years ago was $3-3.5k.

Could I do it? Yea. But if my total outlay for gas was $2.370k the last 5 years of driving where is the financial incentive. (doubt those figures, go to fuelly and look at Rav4h.)

Costs vary. No one size fits all.

The golf car (no it isn't a golf cart, those are push or pull carts for walkers) I use around the community on 25 MPH suggested speed limit (ha!) roads and cart paths (now why cart here) charges on 120.

So I guess I have an EV already. Cost less than $2k 18 years ago and two battery swap outs since. 6 batteries, each swap out costs $1.5k each swap.

 

^ That is one reason why I find pricing EVSE installation into the vehicle price tag, rather problematic. My installation was easy, quick, and low cost. Some others will require complete replacement of the main service panel and adding significant new wiring in difficult places.

 

If selling EV's to folks that hate 'em is important ..... there's always the China approach .... you'll buy what they let you buy. seeing how the air quality in Shanghai has improved? it makes sense.

 

It isn’t the battery size that determines the ability to use 120V plugs.
It is the range needed. My wife has a 300 mile range EV. She could easily get by with a 120V plug.
I have a 240 mile range EV. I could use a 120V plug as well.

 

i am getting 380 mile range on the guess-o-meter at 6 miles/kwh, but i only drive 10-20 miles a day

 

You could make a

Yes, I know that. But the battery plays an important role in the cost of an EV.

A 15A 120V outlet is good for around 1,440W. For 10 hours of charging that's 14,400kWh if the charger is 100% efficient. Sure, I could drive 10 miles a day in a Tesla Model S with the 95kWh battery, that would work. But I'd also be paying out my nose for a Tesla Model S.

The cheapest EV one can get right now is the Nissan Leaf with the 40kWh battery. From my experience, I'd be plenty fine with even a smaller battery for around town. I wouldn't take a Nissan Leaf on long trips any more. Now I could get the best of both worlds charging at home on a 120V outlet while owning a Tesla Model 3 or Y or something similar with over 200 miles of range. That way I could take it on long trips.

But still, I can't afford a new EV, even a used Tesla at around $20,000 is still out of my reach. I have been very tempted to get a old Leaf again though for just around town. I've seen them come way down in price. Maybe a 2013 with the heat pump option since 2013 has an 80% charge option to help extend the battery life as much as possible, but 2014 forward charge to 100% every time if you don't manually disconnect early. It wouldn't matter if it had DCQC, I'd never be more than 10 miles away from my home.

 

That is well understood.
My point wasn’t that a larger battery isn’t more expensive.

My point was that when you said

There is no “Standard-outlet-sized-battery EV”. There is only those that don’t need more range than a ‘standard outlet’ can charge overnight.
It is dependent on the driver’s needs, not the car’s battery size that determines the need for a 240V connection.

 

To be honest, you're right. The definitive factor in whether a pure and typical BEV would work off a standard outlet is the typical distance needed to be driven by the car owner.

Sadly, I don't see a close future where lots of homes have L2 charging. Not on the rental market at least, and not without some sort of government mandate. The landlords that have been interested in such changes were the Mom ans Pop landlords who have largely disappeared as large soulless investment firms have bought up, and continue to buy up, all the rental property. From what I've seen, these corporations have very little interest in improving their properties. Lots of people I know have had to go as far as getting a court order in order to force these corporative landlords to do basic repairs. One building of apartments here in town has developed mold in all the lower units, and it's been that way foe over a year, yet the landlord corporation hasn't done anything about it because it can keep charging its tenants triple what it could prepandemic even in those deplorable conditions.

On the other hand, all those apartments do have 120V outlets for all the parking, left over from the days landlords would provide outlets for engine block heaters for all their tenants. My apartment has a 20A 120V GFI outlet for that very purpose right by my parking space.

This makes me personally lean towards a PHEV single car family or a two car family with a "NEV" (perhaps a cheap Leaf with a degraded battery) for groceries and an ICEV for longer distances

 

Fixed some numbers.

... or go 57 miles in a Tesla Model 3. Or stay home ~12 hours, get 70 miles.

 

The mandate my state's Legislature adopted two years ago for new construction, which went into effect last summer, requires 40 amp service per charger. That effectively forces L2.

 

Thanks! I guess I meant Wh, not kWh.

I do lean more towards conservitive mileage numbers given my climate. A 75 mile "capable" Leaf only got me 30 miles once on a paved highway, with heater off and freezing my butt off.

That's nice. It doesn't do much for those of us who don't have such a mandate in our community and who rent in older buildings though. Mine was built in 1971.

 

May I get off my negative train and say just how encouraging this is?

I'm at home at least 10 hours a night. And I have 120V charging at work for another 8 hours. 18 hours is how much distance? And with a bigger battery and the better QC coverage than back then, getting long distance in winter would not at all be that hard anymore.

Maybe I should grab a Tesla when I get a chance. I wonder how federal and Colorado incentives would work? Decisions, decisions.

The thing holding me back is I fell that buying now would make it harder to keep saving for retirement during the short term which has become a priority for me.

 

That winter range reduction is a hard blocking factor for us having an EV for travel.

I was thinking more in terms of daily work commutes. If not for retirement some years ago, I'd have traded for a real EV commuter vehicle back then. The spouse's daily driver position is a perfect candidate for EV -- except that she still isn't ready to retire the Integra I bought for her 35 years ago. (This is a 3-vehicle household.)

While many people can go all-EV now, the ranges and QC networks don't yet cover our off-Interstate travel patterns, not even in summer, let alone winter. I need a long winter range to reach the family farm, still far away from any Interstate-centric fast charging network. One relative skipped dad's memorial service last year, in part because her EV couldn't get there in a single day but needed overnight lodging for recharging. Each way, so would have cost her two extra work days. While gassing up my plug-in car there earlier this month, I ran into a local geezer whose son did visit in a Tesla, with plans for recharging at a specific Native American casino, more than an hour away, on his way home. Oops, it was out of service, so he had to find unplanned lodging and let it slower charge overnight in order to get home. (That dad has now installed a charger in his own garage so that son can visit and have reliable charging to get home.) And my sibling there had a friend passing through, stay several days while their Tesla trickled charged from 120V before moving on. (That town now has 2 Tesla cords for overnight charging, and one J1772, all at the same motel. Don't know if they were installed after these incidents, or were out of service when needed.)

Most travelers today don't get similarly far off-grid.

 

My brother (74 yesterday) and a diehard Florida conservative who has driven high powered sports cars all of his life, is talking about leasing a model Y

 

JEEZ ! ! ... that's going to cost builders serious apartment & infrastructure with that kind of draw. It's great that they're doing that - but .... imagine a couple dozen stalls minimum at apartments what the cabling & Transformers would run. Perhaps the saving grace is very few cars charging L2 can pull over 8 KW
.

 

higher housing costs