I think this is a good point, if overall cost of ownership is important. My plan was minimizing recurring costs for the long term. An EV was a possibility in the solar panel roof project, but not the primary factor. Considering the high energy costs around here, you have to address the issue. You would be foolish not to.
That's odd that it does that it doesn't give actual miles. Even the tiny Fiat 500e gives miles, and it's not really useful for much more than around town. Is there an update or menu option to force it to display the miles?For Christmas we drove to my mom's for Christmas Eve, my aunt's for Christmas morning, then to my partners family for Christmas dinner. We did have to stop at an Electrify America station in between. Me being impatient I got just enough juice to get us through the day.
Note on that... if you have a Prologue/Blazer EV/Equinox EV/related vehicle, it tops out at 150kw, but you need to go to the 350kw charger to get those speeds. Due to amperage limitations, you'll only get a bit over 100kw on the 150kw stations. And on our charging session the 350kw chargers were in use by a BMW charging to 100% and a Bolt getting like 50kw so we were stuck on the 150kw chargers. Hence why I didn't want to get any more juice than required. Our local EA station is 2x 350 and 2x 150. I have the Tesla Supercharger adapter, but it was in the Bolt, which was at home, and picking it up would have taken an extra 15 minutes, so we opted to just deal with the 150kw EA station.
Anyway, we got home with about 10 miles left (once you shut the car off, it tells you the actual miles to E, not just LOW). I hate that all GM EVs do this LOW thing. My Bolt is the same way. I think 15mi is the cutoff point. I'd rather have the estimated mileage even if its like 3 miles vs just LOW. Because the difference between 14 miles to E and 2 miles to E is a big deal depending on your situation and if it just says LOW how do you know how desperate you really are? The initial "Charge Vehicle Soon" notifications is at 30 miles. I would prefer a warning at 50 miles, 25 miles, 10 miles, 5 miles, etc. vs just one at 30mi and then at 15mi it flips out.
If I remember right, at the same time it went from 15mi to E to LOW, I had got this "Reduced Acceleration" message along with a flashing turtle icon. I wonder what it really does, but I was going like 60mph when it went into this mode. It was VERY obvious. The entire vehicle jerked for a second. I'm wonder if it disconnected the rear motor and made it FWD only? Does anyone know how this works?
I really need better charging at home. We share a single level 1 charger (normal 120V wall outlet) across two EVs. If we had proper home charging, we could have recharged fully between Christmas Eve and Christmas day and wouldn't have had to go charge at EA. We make it work, but it's a little frustrating. Oh, and our PG&E bill was like $700 last month. I hate PG&E. Maybe @JeffKeryk can run a line from his solar panels to our house?
Anyone else here with an EV let it get down pretty low? I still love the car btw. Super comfy even after what felt like a day full of driving.
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I'm not sure we have the data to answer that. But recent studies have been promising, at least as compared to the early EVs.
I don't think it necessarily hurts doing that if it's not left sitting at 10% or 90% regularly. I've never charged past 80% until the trip I took recently and with the cold I've been charging to 85%-95% to leave more buffer when I'm parked back at the hotel. One of them was a Supercharger, but I knew I wasn't going to make it back to the car by the time it hit 80% while I was in a store so I removed the 80% limiter and left with 87% on that one. I level 2 charged to 95% two days ago just to leave the car on the charger in the extreme cold so it didn't take so long to warm up the battery when I left work.
Here in Arizona I save since home electricity is still cheaper than gasoline. Also, since I only charge on sunny weekends, I am charging with even cheaper solar power. I have had my Mach E just over three years and still have never charged it anywhere except at home.
I guess I should have modified for EV. When I was seriously considering I planned to operate in the 80-20 range pretty much exclusively with the exception of prior knowledge of upcoming long range use in which case I'd let it charge to >95% and depending on most convenience run it down to 10-12%. So I guess in that case I'd be thankful to not feel the need to prove something by using all but the last 700 yards of range vs. 7 ounces of fuel.
It's the nature of lithium-based battery chemistries. They don't like to be left at high charge states for long periods of time. It's not really an issue for daily driving, because unless you have some crazy 1% edge case where you're doing 200+ miles per day, you won't use the full capacity of the battery. On road trips, fast charging above 80% slows down substantially, so most people depart around that charge level.
That is correct. I have a 45 kWh LFP battery bank to supplement my solar system. The nominal voltage of each cell is 3.2V, but the max recommended charge is 3.65V. I think the absolute peak is 4.2V. Once they near full charge, the internal resistance really goes up. Charging over 3.65V is possible, but will reduce the lifespan of the battery. The crazy thing with this chemistries is that at .2 or .1 C discharge rates they'll see for solar, nothing will degrade them faster than than like calendar aging. Because they are cycled daily, they don't stay at peak voltage very long.
Up to Las Vegas, actually Henderson, is basically down hill. So, back to Kingman is basically up hill. Also, the winds are often out of the south and that makes a difference both ways.
