This article paints a false image of EV life. We have owned a couple EVs for 6 years now and have only had to charge at charging station a few dozen times and never had to wait. I’m sure we spend dramatically less time refueling overall, since we refuel at home, overnight, once or twice a week.

Actually, we did have to wait once for charging in the middle of Oklahoma (at the time a bit of a charging desert). It was at a casino, and a fellow Tesla owner had shot the place up with an assault rifle. It took almost 2 hours for the crime scene techs to collect bullet casings and clear the chargers (no one was hurt - the shooter was on LSD and defending the rest of us from space aliens). Law enforcement offered the shooter a ride - so he didn’t even need the charge.

> This article paints a false image of EV life.

Do you genuinely believe that everybody owns a house and/or have a dedicated parking spot with an accessible charger?

I know about 7 EV owners. All have single family homes and garages; none have home charging.

Have you talked to them about it? All in it is usually under $1k to get one installed and would be cheaper in the long run and better on the battery.

> All in it is usually under $1k to get one installed.

Where I'm at (outside of Philly) $1K is the bottom end. Depending on the distance from the panel, access to the garage and the house service it can be lots more. I had mine done (panel on the other end of the house) and it was $2200

It's common but rarely necessary for people to get the largest circuit they can imagine rather than evaluate cost / benefit clearly.

I have a 240v / 20a plug next to my drive way. It cost $300 for the electrician work and $150 for the EVSE. It uses inexpensive romex, didn't require me to beef up my house's 100a service, and 95% of the time recharges the car overnight. On the rare situations where I get home from a long drive late in the evening, with the car under 10%, and drive it the very next morning, the car will have not gotten back to the "normal" charge level, but it's still perfectly usable for 99% of driving requirements... And if I'm in a rare situation where I need to charge it more than I'd get from an overnight drive I can L3 charge it.

Sure, if you're putting 200 miles a day on the car consistently, or if you've got several EVs, or if you've got a huge price difference in your "time of use" power metering contract, having a big pipe between the car and the grid is helpful.

But just as often, spending more than $500 for an EVSE hookup is just not going to be a good way to spend money. Do it if it makes you feel more comfortable, but it's rarely necessary.

Can you plug an EV into a wall outlet? I imagine it will charge extremely slowly, but isn't there a way to do that?

You can, but it's quite slow to charge within the confines an an ordinary outlet.

I have primarily supercharged my 2018 Model S (100kw) over ~140k miles and only have 8% battery degradation.

That assumes the battery degradation number calculation is 1) accurate and 2) isn't lying as to not discourage people without access to regular slow charging from buying their cars.

Provided by a third party, not Tesla.

You mean a third-party is giving you that number? How do they obtain/calculate it? Do they just read a data parameter via the car's diagnostics port? If so the lying argument applies just as well.

And you might have less degradation if you had L2 charged it primarily.

The evidence does not support this when scoped to Tesla battery packs.

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/impacts-of-fast-charg...

What puzzles me is how these people can stay and live with these conditions. Adding an extra outlet isn't hard to DIY and them owning the home means there isn't anything preventing them from doing so.

Roughly where in the world do you live that garages don't have power?

An ordinary 120v/15a household circuit can only provide about 2 miles of charge per hour. I run an unusually car-lite lifestyle for an American and that wouldn't do it even for me.

You need an electrician to run a new 240v circuit and, in many cases, a new main service for the house to accommodate it.

Depends on your car. If you have a particularly inefficient/large EV then maybe, but if your car can do 3mi/kwh then you’ll get a little over 3 miles of charge per hour. That doesn’t sound like much but it’ll get you 36 miles in 12 hours, so could work for short commutes or if you have a hybrid WFH position it’d almost certainly be fine.

I only ever charge on 120V personally and have no problem, though anyone who was going to buy an EV planning on charging that way should run the numbers with the EV they’re looking at. ABRP can do a pretty good job of it.

There are 82 million single-family homes in America, and this does not include parking spots available at employer parking lots where chargers are provided, nor condos where you can run an EV charger circuit to the parking spot. Airport parking and other long dwell parking can supply 120V 20A circuits, which is more than sufficient for more than a day of parking.

Everyone else can fast DC charge (~20 min 0-80%) at the grocery store or Walmart, or at traditional travel stops during road trips. Electricity is ubiquitous, chargers can be everywhere.

Or at work.

In the USA, in public areas where there are 120v 15a or 20a outlet -- I 100% guarantee that if you had more than one oaf with an EV charging from those plugs at the same time you'd pop a circuit breaker. Those plugs are almost always for convenient maintenance of the site and share several outlets to a single circuit breaker -- if 2 thieves tried to steal power at the same time they'd overload the circuit.

Public EV charging is going to need to be much better than it is currently; part of that means having lots of public EVSEs that properly share a common backhaul without popping their breakers, and it also means figuring out how to bill people for the power they need.

I've been able to get by solely with my EV for 6 years, and it's only occasionally been a minor inconvenience (mostly having to spend 20-30 minutes charging per 3ish hours driving on long distance trips); I've had to wait for charger capacity only when foolish enough to drive into or out of an eclipse totality path, and even then I was forced to wait a total of 20 minutes before getting a charging stall.

I'm lucky -- I also have access (10 months out of the year) to a parking place with a dedicated 240v/20a charger. For 2 months of the year I charge at a L3 station when I go grocery shopping; (in those 2 months I also have access to L1 charging and a dedicated parking spot but it's more convenient to charge at the grocery store.)

In North America, non-tesla L3 charging seems to be managed by organizations mostly dedicated to making people foolish enough to buy a non-tesla EVs miserable.

L3 charging, btw, is really exotic, or at least really heavy duty technology -- you can't trivially drop 8 stalls of 400v / 200a just anywhere; many of the tesla superchargers near where I live have local power generation facilities (big natural gas fuel cell setups) to do peak shaving.

Largely I agree with you -- electricity is everywhere, and it should be possible to make L2 evse plugs available to 20-30% of street parking spots and put L3 charging in lots more places than it is. It's not trivial but it also isn't insurmountable.

Just because you have a single family home does not mean you can install a charger circuit. Not every single family home has driveway. Half the houses on my street lack a driveway/ (The two houses on the east side of mine were built in 1898 and didn't need a driveway.) There is street parking only on one side of the street, as well; so, running a cord from the house could mean crossing the street with it.

I have an EV. I always charge at home-- other than on longer trips or just at free chargers that happen to be at the right place.

When I got the EV I just installed the charger, it wasn't even a thing I thought much about: I saw it as just part of having an EV. The ability to charge overnight at home was a reason to have an EV or at least a reason that having an EV wouldn't stink.

And I am shocked by the fact that I can talk to a dozen EV owners and not encounter a single other one who charges at home.

Sometimes it's because the owner doesn't own their home and can't add an outlet. Other times they do but believe they are blocked by city permitting, or they abandoned the idea after an electrician quoted them thousands of dollars. Less often it's because they've tried using the 120v 12a or whatever charger thing that came with the car and found it unhelpfully slow and don't know that charging at 240v/40a would be oodles faster.

I think it's insane. But in my experience it is the vast majority.

Presumably the people selling EVs downplay the importance of charging at home since the extra requirement would cost some sales? No idea.

It’s interesting, because I admittedly don’t drive so consistently, I do 80 miles round trip a couple times a week and might not drive at all on off days, but I’ve found 120V 12A to be completely sufficient. That’s true even with the charge limit typically set to 85% SoC. Of course, if I drive a bunch and then drive again the next day it’s not full, but it’s no big problem once the initial range anxiety wears off.

I'd be less perplexed if I heard comments like yours from people: It's enough for me. But I've not encountered many (any?) other regular 120v charger users.

I only have L1 / 120V charging at home. Have never used any other charging method for my Nissan Leaf, which I've owned for two years. I have a 20 mile (total) commute, and really only charge every other day or so. I've never reset the efficiency calculator, and the average report is 4.3 miles/kwh. I don't think I really engage in any hyper-miling behavior, but I might drive more efficiently than most.

This is one of those "your experience differs from mine and therefore you're wrong".

I don't think the author was lying, that was the experience they had which seemed suboptimal and quite rightly pointed out a need to improve the charging experience.

I rented a Tesla for a short holiday and I have to admit I found the charging situation frustrating. Driving to a charging station only to find that its being used is a frustrating experience.

EV's are wonderful and the charging experience is cheaper or sometimes free compared to petrol, but it does need to improve.

This issue will go away with time, right now there are a few reasons for this issue.

1. EA does not have enough charger stalls, there is a lot of demand but utilites make it hard to build so they take a lot of time.

2. Some people are new to EVs and have charge anxiety / dont really understand how it works, they will get it in time.

3. Some people have free charging so they charge until 100% because its free, companies introduced these programs to sell cars and as these programs expire (usually 2 or 3 years max after purchase of the vehicle) it will get better.

We are still in the beginning process of adopting this tech and there will be some growing pains but we will get there.

Note: The one thing I can't understand is why Elon is handicapping the supercharger expansion. Tesla has by far the best charging experience and their chargers are packed. Now is the time where they can swoop in and take over the market. They can even spin out supercharging as an independent company and take it public.

There is a 4th reason. EA is not investing in features to prevent this.

They have added an 80% cap to a handful of busy chargers in California.

What they should do is add an electronic queue for the chargers, and automatically add the $0.40/minute idle rate to any charging above 80% when someone is queued for your charger.

They also need to do something about people with low voltage cars taking the high voltage spots. Something like a time factor in the price for the high voltage stations, to discourage low voltage cars using those unless necessary.

Teslas are 400v up until the CyberTruck. You probably mean low kW. If I pull up to a charging station and it’s open and 350 kW, you better believe it I’ll be charging my 100 kW max car in that spot, and I shouldn’t haven’t to pay more for the same kWh.

It's both.

Some new cars have 800V architecture and will be able to benefit from high voltage chargers as they roll out.

There are also cars that can't charge at 350kW, but still take a 350kW charger.

Charging a 100kW car in the 350kW bay is fine, but these owners should be given some reason to prefer a 100kW or 150kW charger if it's available. I like the idea of using someone being queued for the charger to trigger an infrastructure charge if you are underutilizing the charger, just like we already do if you are simply parked there and not charging.

At the very least, require that drivers at least try to use the charger that best matches their car if it's available. Require that they plug in, or that they document a non-EV in the space before connecting to an over-spec charger.

>Charging a 100kW car in the 350kW bay is fine, but these owners should be given some reason to prefer a 100kW or 150kW charger if it's available. I like the idea of using someone being queued for the charger to trigger an infrastructure charge if you are underutilizing the charger, just like we already do if you are simply parked there and not charging.

...or just charge a premium for using the fast chargers. That way you're not you're not checking your phone every 5 minutes to see whether you're racking up additional charges and whether you need to move your car or not.

How about no. I’m not going to fill out a form to charge my car. I use the 150 kW chargers when available, 350 kW when not. I rarely DC fast charge anyway.

Edit: yeah feel free to downvote me. I believe in not just the rich being able to fast charge without issue.

>I believe in not just the rich being able to fast charge without issue.

What about the competing interest of making charging fast and convenient, which surely would drive EV adoption? Is slowing the energy transition a worthwhile cost in the pursuit of equity?

Most EVs now can charge at over 100 kW peak, and that means most EVs will be able to in five years. I don’t see how it’s that big of a deal to allow people with older, used EVs to charge at all stations. Even charging companies have this stance.

The base principle I want to see is that if you have a 100kW car, and 2 stations are available, 150kW & 350kW, you have to at least try the 150kW station first, and move to the 350kW if it's not working or available.

People already do that.

Yes

Definitely agree with this, last time I was at the EA charger I thought it was comical seeing Rivans and Audis waiting for an IKEA truck (ford van) that was creeping up from 95%.

While these measures will help, the reality is that EA did not invest in enough chargers per location.

Re Tesla superchargers - because Tesla is currently valued as a tech company at multiples of PE. Chargers are utility companies and command very low margins high upfront costs and high maintenance so are usually priced pretty low. In many instances utility companies that are private don’t even make profits and have to be rescued by the government and taxpayers in the long run so yeah that’s why.

Also here probably foresees being forced to open up the Tesla charger network (maybe that's always happening?) so why bother to invest?

I hear you, but gas stations make money, right? Can't Tesla adopt the same model and lease parcels of Supercharger land to convenience stores?

If you are correct that they are a utility and should be priced low, then Superchargers would be detrimental to Tesla's stock price and should be spun out as a separate utility company with lower margins. This would create a better EV experience, thus furthering Tesla's goal.

> as these programs expire (usually 2 or 3 years max after purchase of the vehicle) it will get better.

Won't next year's batch of new EV owners be doing the same thing? Or have companies stopped offering the incentive?

Yeah your right, I thought car manufacturers would slow this down considering how expensive this has to be for them but here is a link showing all the offers available today if you buy a new EV https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/evs-with-free-charging.html

This is really annoying and should stop

I don't think the proposed measures really help

Myself and many others walk away from their vehicles while charging

Finding out that my car stopped charging for some reason doesn't make me rush back to a charging station because 9 out of 10 times that reason is that the station broke for me and anyone else that would show up. So there is no reason to move my car.

The only solution would be for stations to charge a base fee for every minute spent on a charger (excluding malfunctions). But I suspect many EV drivers would be against such measure.

Some stations do charge an idle fee.

> I was waiting behind people with batteries that were 92%, 94% and even 97% full, as I could see on the charger screens. Still, they stayed there. I made my own situation worse by giving up on one location and going to another with more chargers, but there were even more EVs waiting there.

It sounds like marginal charging past 80% is too cheap per percentage point. If you want to encourage throughput, you have to make it expensive to be a "hog" in TFA's parlance.

For my 2015 Leaf, 80% means about 15 kWh. Sometimes I need more than that to get home, or even to the next charger.

Percentage charge is not the best measure here. I appreciate that charge rates slow down after around 80% regardless of capacity, but sometimes I have no choice but to continue charging to 90%. That extra 10% is significant for me!

FWIW, it's now possible to retrofit later model year batteries to older Leafs, giving you a replacement path which is much cheaper than the factory solution and will substantially expand your capacity-- something to keep in mind as you tire of fighting with the diminishing range. :)

Indeed, although our fear is that something unrelated will fail, so it's a bit of a risk on the capital expenditure.