Imagine every car out there today taking minimum of 20 minutes every time they pulled into a gas station.... That's the mess you're looking at if everyone had an EV that took 20 minutes to charge.
What would be an acceptable charge time at a fast charger for you?
- Thread starter ZZman
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4WD
$50 site donor 2025
480V @ 300 amps x how many …
When every house is also a gas station that scenario doesn't exist.
That’s the point, though, of home charging the EV - You avoid everything that you listed.
Everything.
Look, my neighbor’s Tesla has `a 300+ mile range. She drives 15 miles to work, then back, then dance class and soccer for the girls.
Not one ”fill up” needed during the week. Not one stop at a charger.
Because on Sunday night, she plugs the thing in (I can see the cable) and on Monday morning, she is good to go for the week. IF she had to drive more, well, plug it in a one more night. 15 seconds to pull out the cord and “fill ‘er up” overnight, while it is sitting in her driveway.
I’ll repeat this, because you’re missing the point - no stops for charging needed on her daily commute. None.
In that respect, her Tesla is more convenient than my wife’s Volvo, even though the Volvo takes only 3 minutes to fill up its modest tank. The Tesla avoids even that 3 minutes.
Really at the end of the day it breaks down to if you want to save money day to day or save time on the longer trip. Depending on the vehicle an EV is equivalent to gas cost per mile once you've publicly fast charged enough times and that time will add up. I don't think any of that is going to change in any meaningful amount very soon. I can see the merits in both of course.
Imagine every house has its own gas station. That’s a huge reduction in the mess you envision.
Look, you already charge stuff at your house - tools, computers, etc - with a 240V plug, that includes your new car.
JHZR2
Staff member
But you’re making the point that they are ok for around town use. Go anyplace substantial, with any regularity, or screw up and forget to plug the thing in once because you were running in the house in a rainstorm, and you’re done.
And I’ve lived those 15-20 minute charge times that turn out to be far more, and far worse, than the numbers suggest. There really is a lot of planning.
With a 600-700+ mile range in my hybrid, I don’t plan much. I get in and go. Even for my longer routine trips to dc (where I don’t want to buy fuel south of exit 4 on I-95 in Delaware because of huge price jumps). With an EV I’d probably need to charge for a few minutes regardless when on such voyages. Which then gets my per mile cost on par with a minivan.
The at home charging is a nice concept, until it’s not viable.
No, I’m making the point that the whole supercharger charging time discussion applies only the long trips.
The objections to charging times are all moot when we are talking daily use.
Many people keep conflating the two, and the “charging time acceptable “question that was the point of this thread applies only to long trips
I think there's some areas where that last statement has some merit, I just don't think it's the case for at least most of the US. What's happened is EPA standards have progressively tightened so many manufacturers skated into crossovers to classify them as light trucks to avoid the more strict car standards and the shuffle game has caught up to them. By default this is squeezing ICE out, but the standards were going to progressively get tighter as they always have since their inception.
I'm aware it's semantics a bit, but it's not a flat out ban. It just seems they're running out of things to do to ICE vehicles to make them meet standard on their own. EVs happen to help skew it.
Im opposed to mandates, and they arent really going to work for a number of reasons.
This sadly creates a scenario whereby people wont have rational conversations about the vehicles merit because the politics get in the way.
The gov has been telling me what to do with gasoline power my whole life and I find it equally annoying, but this part gets lost in the haze.
It's a little more in your face if you forget to plug in than that, depending on how you have your phone set up. My wife and I both have our phones set as our keys and the battery level is displayed on the home screen. You'll be aware of it if you forgot to plug in after getting home. You also get notifications if it's charging, charging is interrupted, or charging completes. It's not perfect but it's about as close to fool proof as you can get without the car having the ability to plug itself in.
I don't use it as my daily only because it's my wife's daily and it was purchased because of her short tripping and my BITOG mind was going crazy thinking of what it was doing to that poor Ford Edge's 3.7 V6. I wouldn't have a problem using it that way. My most ridiculous regular work round trip is 300 miles and I get paid for lunch, so my return trip lunch break would be charge time. Obviously much more than this if I had to do it would be a little less convenient. The stereotypical your mileage may vary definitely applies here.
I've been screaming this for years. So many refuse to see or at the very least choose to ignore how the market has been shaped by regulations and mandates on all vehicles. We lost the fight well before the EV showed up so why would anyone think this is the point where we could stop it now? I still believe most areas will never flat out ban ICE production and at the Federal level it'll regulated out of feasibility. It's nearly there for modern civilian diesels already.
I happen to like EVs, but I'm not blind to how we got here.
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AZjeff
$50 Site Donor 2023
Some are adamant that an EV be able to go from 10% to 100% in the time it takes to fill up and a range of 400 miles or more because that's what the ICE does. A more reasonable way to look at it is how far do I drive between stops and how long are the stops? For us the only way we travel anywhere is in the truck with the dogs and usually pulling the trailer. We stop between 150-200 miles or 2.5-3 hours to switch drivers, walk dogs, use toilet, gas up, grab lunch out of the fridge as we usually eat on the move. Our stops are 15-20 minutes so I'd like 200 miles of range in 20 minutes in an EV truck pulling a travel trailer.
Rather than insisting on full charge in 10 minutes maybe enough charge to get to usual stopping distance in 10-15 minutes is more reasonable. I bet not many of us drive 300-400 miles without stopping.
We could easily live with an EV for our day to day vehicle but that role is filled by the 02 Jeep and I don't want 3 vehicles and am not ready to give up the Jeep or GMC yet so an EV doesn't fit right now. I'll be looking for ways to fit one into our use case, not ways to hate them.
Rather than insisting on full charge in 10 minutes maybe enough charge to get to usual stopping distance in 10-15 minutes is more reasonable. I bet not many of us drive 300-400 miles without stopping.
This is the common opinion of EV owners it seems like. One has to weigh the added convenience of day to day use vs the inconvenience on road trips. If you regularly take road trips that require multiple fill ups an EV might not be for you. If you rarely take road trips the day to day pluses might well more than offset a bit more off highway time charging every once in a while.
We could easily live with an EV for our day to day vehicle but that role is filled by the 02 Jeep and I don't want 3 vehicles and am not ready to give up the Jeep or GMC yet so an EV doesn't fit right now. I'll be looking for ways to fit one into our use case, not ways to hate them.
People run out of gas all the time and it's the most convenient commodity outside of water.
The EV lets me flip the bird to Uncle Sam, or in my case Uncle California.
No more smog inspections, master smog inspections, no more California special emissions parts you cant get without being raped.
California cant even get a gasoline can that works - its ludicrous
I can also flip the bird to the oil companies, and power companies - because I make my own power, but I acknowledge that is a position most will never be in and as such it's rare.
They just haven't started regulating all of that yet I'm sure(doubt it would be more than electricity taxes anyway), but there's some things that are completely freeing with an EV comparing my two cars. The VW is definitely pricy to maintain, but it's more than an A to B cruiser to me. I just love never having to stop for gas in the Tesla. I've grown to hate the smell of a crowded gas station. I could do without smelling exhaust or fuel ever again. The Tesla is more than just an A to B vehicle too, but it does that part extremely well.
That's the only reason why I don't have 2 EVs right now. I could do it but I don't like leaving vehicles sitting out in the elements and I'm just not interested in parting ways with my VW. The only way I would do that right now is if something happened totaling it and I'd still be more likely to buy a new Golf R than another EV, just because I'm not ready to give up that experience yet.
Yes, and most of the EV lovers admit they still need an ICE vehicle. So their limitations are apparently real to them too, or they'd all ditch their ICE vehicles. They're still not there for a long trip, towing, off road, extreme cold weather, and as Hertz learned the hard way, rentals.
For me personally I could get on with both being EVs. I just never truly considered it until my wife wanted one, though I kind of liked some of them I never actually considered buying one for myself. I'm already this far and don't see a reason to trade vehicles again right now. Not to mention I'm not trying to prove a point with EVs. I obviously don't hate ICE vehicles. I've been a gear head since before I could walk.
