Electric Car Charging Sucks
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Broken EV chargers and janky software
D Power surveyed 11,554 electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid vehicle owners from January through June 2022 for its second annual Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study. Despite big growth in the number of public EV chargers in the US, EV owners say the overall experience still sucks.
The consumer research firm measured customer satisfaction with EV charging on a 1,000-point scale. According to respondents, charging at a public Level 2 charger is worse than it was last year, with satisfaction dropping to 633 from 643 in 2021. Meanwhile, satisfaction with the speedier DC (direct current) fast charger segment remains flat at 674.
“Not only is the availability of public charging still an obstacle, but EV owners continue to be faced with charging station equipment that is inoperable,” Brent Gruber, executive director of global automotive at JD Power, said in a statement.
Finding a public charger has never been easier, but finding one that works remains a serious problem. According to the survey, one out of every five respondents ended up not charging their vehicle after locating a public charger. And of those who didn’t charge, 72 percent indicated that it was due to the station malfunctioning or being out of service.
There are approximately 41,000 public charging stations in the United States, with more than 100,000 outlets. Of course, public chargers are only half of the equation. Most EV owners do their charging overnight while parked in their driveway at home. But if EVs are to become a more attractive option to car buyers, charging stations are going to need to become more pervasive and reliable like gas stations.
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EV's will only work under certain circumstances, providing we have enough electricity to charge them. I can see them in urban settings and maybe densely populated areas such as Europe or New England. That electricity part sucks, since we do not have enough grid capacity and we seem determined not to build it.
We really do need something else. Probably hydrogen or some other form of portable fuel that can be stored in bulk and put into vehicles with the ease of gas or diesel.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion.
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Speaking of transportation in urban settings...
Mass transit is an effective and energy conserving way to move people in urban areas. But a funny thing happened during COVID lockdown...More people started working from home. People started migrating away from cities. Less people rode mass transit. Revenues from riders fell. Systems are facing some budget problems. Cutbacks are coming.
What happens when the primary reason for EV's - individual transportation in urban areas - is less needed? And there's inadequate mass transit to get you into the city when you need to go into a city?
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I don't much care which way they go, although I think EVs will be a fairly brief period to be replaced by hydrogen.
Why do I not care, you ask? Because I am a bit of a Luddite. Y'all early adopters get all the bugs worked out and THEN I will consider switching.
My friend in Texas hit a deer with his Tesla Y. It will be at the body shop for a month trying to get parts. He said there were a hundred other Teslas on their lot waiting for repair.
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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EV's will only work under certain circumstances, providing we have enough electricity to charge them. I can see them in urban settings and maybe densely populated areas such as Europe or New England. That electricity part sucks, since we do not have enough grid capacity and we seem determined not to build it.
We really do need something else. Probably hydrogen or some other form of portable fuel that can be stored in bulk and put into vehicles with the ease of gas or diesel.
@Jolly said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
We really do need something else.
That is why I think having a standard battery pack that is easily located on every vehicle would solve the problem. But I know that there are a lot of obstacles that will not all ow this to happen..
Pull up to the battery pack station, old battery pack out, new battery pack in, and you are on your way in the time to fill you tank with gasoline.
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@Jolly said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
We really do need something else.
That is why I think having a standard battery pack that is easily located on every vehicle would solve the problem. But I know that there are a lot of obstacles that will not all ow this to happen..
Pull up to the battery pack station, old battery pack out, new battery pack in, and you are on your way in the time to fill you tank with gasoline.
@taiwan_girl I may be wrong here, but it is my understanding that the problem with batteries is that they lack the energy density to become easily interchangeable.
There is lots of work being done right now to improve the energy density of a battery, but we are not there yet – not by a long shot.
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I don't much care which way they go, although I think EVs will be a fairly brief period to be replaced by hydrogen.
Why do I not care, you ask? Because I am a bit of a Luddite. Y'all early adopters get all the bugs worked out and THEN I will consider switching.
My friend in Texas hit a deer with his Tesla Y. It will be at the body shop for a month trying to get parts. He said there were a hundred other Teslas on their lot waiting for repair.
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@Jolly said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
We really do need something else.
That is why I think having a standard battery pack that is easily located on every vehicle would solve the problem. But I know that there are a lot of obstacles that will not all ow this to happen..
Pull up to the battery pack station, old battery pack out, new battery pack in, and you are on your way in the time to fill you tank with gasoline.
@taiwan_girl said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
@Jolly said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
We really do need something else.
That is why I think having a standard battery pack that is easily located on every vehicle would solve the problem. But I know that there are a lot of obstacles that will not all ow this to happen..
Pull up to the battery pack station, old battery pack out, new battery pack in, and you are on your way in the time to fill you tank with gasoline.
Battery packs on a Tesla weigh from close to 1000 pounds, to over 1300 pounds. Slinging around 1300 pounds ain't easy.
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@taiwan_girl said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
@Jolly said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
We really do need something else.
That is why I think having a standard battery pack that is easily located on every vehicle would solve the problem. But I know that there are a lot of obstacles that will not all ow this to happen..
Pull up to the battery pack station, old battery pack out, new battery pack in, and you are on your way in the time to fill you tank with gasoline.
Battery packs on a Tesla weigh from close to 1000 pounds, to over 1300 pounds. Slinging around 1300 pounds ain't easy.
@Jolly said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
Battery packs on a Tesla weigh from close to 1000 pounds, to over 1300 pounds. Slinging around 1300 pounds ain't easy.
Too lazy too look it up, but I saw a video of a large, large, automated device that would swap out the battery pack on a Tesla. Basically, it lifts the car onto its ass, pulls the pack, and installs another.
Clever as hell, but for "I need to charge up," it's a non-starter.
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Batteries aren’t the answer They’re dirty in themselves and they don’t really change how the energy is actually produced. It’s the energy production method that needs to change, not the storage
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Batteries aren’t the answer They’re dirty in themselves and they don’t really change how the energy is actually produced. It’s the energy production method that needs to change, not the storage
@Doctor-Phibes said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
Batteries aren’t the answer They’re dirty in themselves and they don’t really change how the energy is actually produced. It’s the energy production method that needs to change, not the storage
It’s both. And the charging technology. And the Software. So basically everything.
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@Jolly said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
We really do need something else.
That is why I think having a standard battery pack that is easily located on every vehicle would solve the problem. But I know that there are a lot of obstacles that will not all ow this to happen..
Pull up to the battery pack station, old battery pack out, new battery pack in, and you are on your way in the time to fill you tank with gasoline.
@taiwan_girl said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
That is why I think having a standard battery pack that is easily located on every vehicle would solve the problem. But I know that there are a lot of obstacles that will not all ow this to happen..
Pull up to the battery pack station, old battery pack out, new battery pack in, and you are on your way in the time to fill you tank with gasoline.
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@George-K said in Electric Car Charging Sucks:
@Jolly ...
"Inspected by a cloud-based battery management system."
What's not to like?
The CCP will make sure there is no unauthorized privacy invading hardware/software being attached to the battery that’s swapped into your vehicle.
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Interesting video, by the way. 3-5 minutes to swap a battery out is impressive.
However, I see capacity as a big problem. These batteries are large and bulky. The narrator says that the Norwegian stations hold 13 battery packs. That's not a lot. I'll bet the average gas station sees that many visits in half an hour.
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At the end of the day, whether charging at home, at a charging station or swapping out for a charged battery pack, the electricity for the batteries has to come from somewhere. Solar and wind ain't gonna do it.
BTW, anybody seen Greta, lately?
Or has the useful idiot outlived her usefulness, as Europeans contemplate a cold, dark winter?
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Seen on FB:
A quick search shows that that might be an inflated price.
Might.
