Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2

[Grumpycat]

If your definition of nice is "runs, usually", then maybe. Kia, hyundai, honda, toyota are automatically off the list. I had a chevy trax as a rental once, and it was embarrassing.

Toyota Yaris! Drove 500 miles home that day, first 300 on white roads.

 

[Grumpycat]

Looks like some new Tesla owners ran the cars batteries down to the ragged edge and then all converged on a few SC stations. If you can't charge at home an EV may not be for you... especially if you have low situational awareness of the vehicles requirements.
Then they freaked out do to poor planning.

Does seem they did just that, but also very suspiciously there were widespread Supercharger failures in Chicago, and Chicago only.

Some theorize ice in the NACS connector. Some say hot water remedied.

 

[Grumpycat]

Not just Chicago with dead EV's right now. All over up here too and not just Tesla's either. Everything battery powered is DOA presently. Must be nice making a payment on a rock.

Good thing ICE vehicles never have issues with cold starter batteries!

I feel for the owners actually. It's real cold here and I'd not want to be without heat in my car because the battery won't charge.

Why do you say that? Heater works great when plugged into shore power.

 

[Grumpycat]

Ah the smugness of our " know it all" Tesla Church goer !

Rather than attack me, attack the facts.

 

[Grumpycat]

Many of the charging stations I've installed at schools have had the same problem, with drivers waiting to long to recharge instead of topping off the charge. There definately is a learning curve.

If the driver is teachable it resolves itself quickly.

Yes, the right thing to do is charge every night at home even if it is only adding 30 miles to the battery.

 

[wawajake]

I bought a 60A Square-D QO breaker on Amazon recently to upgrade my 50A circuit. Darn, I paid $33, is currently $25.

50' of 6/3 UF Stranded CU is $185 at Lowes.

A NEMA 14-50R outlet is $10. $10 more for a metal box. $5 for cover plate.

Add a few more dollars for hardware to clamp the wire to the box and distribution panel.

Then double that to pay for labor.

A Tesla Mobile Connector (40A circuit required but 50A is code for a 14-50 outlet) is $235 from Tesla. This is something the renter should be providing.

Wow the master twister sure conveniently misses to list so many other line items to upgrade a home to have a dedicated 50 amp charge plug......first and foremost a majority of homes will need a upgrade the size of the service panel in their home going from a 100 to a 200 A ouch $$$ ....sure new builds amperage will be okay but that leaves the millions of North American homes that need to upgrade, and that might even include a increase in the line size from street transformer to the house meter. Ouch $$$ .....now add in the Electric Company Inspection permit approval that many city/ county jurisdictions and maybe even Insurance companies demand. Ouch $$$ ........but then I keep forgetting ....only the world Grumpy lives in is the one that will apply to everyone else.

 

[wawajake]

Electric power generated and sold at night is easy money for the utility. Rather than increasing rates "due to the evil EV demand" this serves to lower rates for all.

Wow.......hilarious you win the internet today ! The EV world will actually lower the electricity rates for all !!! Hilarious . We all will wait with giddy anticipation for the Church of EVs to let us know when that begins to happen !

 

[WM75Guy]

You would think NYC residents would be early adopters of BEVs but I guess not.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Rather than attack me, attack the facts.

No one is attacking you. The fact is you're our " know it all" Tesla Church goer !

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I think this podcast may have been posted earlier about the charging problems in Chicago, but I just watched it and it is very good and there is a lot of learning for people to charge EVS in unusual weather and that includes me for sure.

The lack of liquid water has been the big thing on my mind of late. We have about 15 animals outside. Nine mini horses, a mule and a quarter horse Arabian mix the mother of the mule Our surface water system fails well before +3F but we are coping.

The Chicago charging stories raises a lot of questions so I have experimenting some with the Tesla battery heating features. For heating there is the heat pump system and I also read for the model y 2023 has resistant heat in the battery as well.

If I go to defrost mode in the current temperatures it defaults battery heating mode like as if you was going to a supercharger. When I exit defrost mode and just go to regular heat mode and tell it to maintain a temperature of 60 f the battery heating element. I assume in the battery it's got the three squiggly lines just like for the electric seat heaters etc. It keeps burning and and by case I did the defrost for maybe 5 minutes. Then went to regular heat mode of about 30 minutes before the three squiggly lines went away, which meant the battery was not heated. So I'm assuming the squiggly lines is involving battery heating using
the resistant heating elements. The Tesla only has access to 16 oz of 2 20 because I tap in one leg of my 220 to run a long distance extension cord to a barn for water trough heating and do not want to risk any of the system to overload in these perilous times.

The battery pack drops at the rate similar to driving 60 mph down the road so that resistant heat plus the heat pump must be putting a pretty good load on the battery to pull that kind of amperage.

I do understand wanting to charge to 100% if you have no other access to charging your Tesla sure. By 2050 these kinds of issues should be a thing from the distant past.

For people with access to at least a 20 amp 220 volt outlet which can give you up to 16 amps should have no problem managing. Access to a 40 amp 2. 20 volt outlet would be awesome.

Today informed money knows to only buy Tesla if you're going to work the daylights out of your EV. Things may get interesting as ever. Tom, Dick and Harry has access to the Tesla charger Network, but I expect to see many more high-speed superchargers added to the network across the USA.

Personally, if I could not charge it home economically I would not want to own an EV just yet. Our leaf does just fine with 120 volt connection because that gives you gives us 6 miles per hour of charging. So driving 30 mi a day would not be a problem but you still are seriously limited.

Heck, if I didn't have the equivalence of an engineering degree in electronics, I'm not sure that I would have an EV today. 50 years ago when I was in the naval A and B schools, I never dreamed EVs would come to the forefront like today. In fact, I didn't even know what EV was. . Our 2007 golf cart with regen was really the first time I thought of the concept of EVS as being viable to go in at speeds of 200 mph or over long distance.