I uber just fine to work the few times I go in, when I need a car it is to drive long distances and it sucks waiting every few hundred miles in a queue then an hour to charge. It sucks getting stuck in the middle of nowhere because the mountain road took too much energy than what the battery meter anticipated. It sucks being late to important appointments if I forgot to charge or there is some technical issue with the charging. All of this and more can be avoided by just swapping the batteries and they are already doing this in china.
> Imagine how much more the car will cost to support this complexity, and for what benefit? Saving a few hours per year? I won't pay the additional thousands of dollars for the "swappable battery" ...
Ugh, NIO is already doing this in China and I'm pretty sure it's cheaper. Also, the government is literally spending hundreds of billions to subsidize electric car infrastructure so if it wasn't for the sentiment you and others have that convinced politicians we could be getting swappable batteries.
Until then, as much as I am for climate change prevention I will fight against electric cars the way they are. Maybe when charging a car fully takes less than 5 minutes and charging stations are at least have as abundant as gas stations (regardless of how far a full charge takes you) I can support this. China and all the countries that follow them will beat us again on this as well because while we are busy debating why not they are actually getting things done.
I live in a condo actually. I'll tell you how: we passed laws in my province that say the condo must assist me when I decide to install a charger. Other jurisdictions are following this pattern. Also: not millions. As I said, it's relatively inexpensive to install a level 2 charger. For a 200 unit parking lot, you'd be wildly overcharged at a million dollars. And providing level 1 charging is as cheap as running extension cords from Walmart.
And hey, don't all your arguments work just a well for when electric lighting and heating first appeared? And yet somehow, all apartments today have it.
> Ugh, NIO is already doing this in China and I'm pretty sure it's cheaper.
They aren't on any real scale, and it's not cheaper overall- just massively subsidized. You know what is cheap? The ubiquitous electrical system that's already everywhere.
> Also, the government is literally spending hundreds of billions to subsidize electric car infrastructure
Source on those numbers? And what is "electric car infrastructure"? You mean the standard electric grid that's already ubiquitous? The EV subsidies are drying up quickly. Adoption of the tech is at the inflection point that the free market is handling the problems just fine.
You've decided how the world "ought to be" and don't care much that the rest of us have solved these problems just fine and have moved on.
Assuming a common work schedule, that would put you into plugging in at the most expensive peak tier pricing ($0.72c/kW here in PG&E land).
When we had the EV I had a timer on the charger to only turn on at midnight when the off-peak rates kick in. If one had to leave early in the morning, the car was never fully charged.
It worked ok most of the time as my partner could charge it up to 100% for free at work, but without that perk it was iffy.
For almost all EV owners, a level 2 (240V 20amp) charger at home is all that's needed[0]. It charges slowly, but given the car sits for 12+ hours every night, it's more than enough. You get home, you plug in, you go eat dinner and go to bed. When it's time to go in the morning, you have a full charge. "Refilling" isn't a discrete event that takes place in a given place. You just plug in whenever you aren't driving.
DC fast charging, which charges the car in an hour or less, that's a rare event. It's what you use when you're on a long trip somewhere that takes more than one charge of the battery. But most owners might do that a few times per year.
So the problem you're trying to solve with this "swappable battery" solution is tiny. Imagine how much more the car will cost to support this complexity, and for what benefit? Saving a few hours per year? I won't pay the additional thousands of dollars for the "swappable battery" car, and I won't pay the cost of maintaining the swappable battery stations. It's just not worth it vs spending that time getting lunch.
[0] My wife and I did the math on our own driving patterns and realized we could probably get away with a level ONE charger- literally a standard 120V extension cord - for the EV we're on a waiting list for.