Battery powered cars a tough sell.

As it happens, just this morning, I was reflecting on my usage pattern and see how the scenario described above applies to me perfectly.

I work from home two or three days a week and commute about 60 miles round trip on the other days. When I work from home, I always have short errands around the town - mostly dropping off and picking up kids from school.

I get great milage from my Prius v when commuting but much lower, of course, around town. The culprit is the relatively high amount of gas used to warm up the engine when its cold.

Our other car is a 2005 V6 Camry which may come up for replacement in a few years time - we tend to keep our cars for about 11 to 12 years. The PIP will surely be high on my list of candidates. However, there may well be some other plug in hybrids on the market by the. Should be interesting.

 

The failure here is both you and Austin not understanding the argument made.

This is not the matter of 'sucking it up', Austin, or that it does not 'favor' my particular driving needs. The failure here is both your understanding that it would affect the decisions of people looking at getting a battery powered cars.

The fallacy here is the belief that the best decision is to have two cars for this situation. THIS IS A POOR ARGUMENT with regards to this. Not all groups are going to settle with the 'two or more car' option, it is basically saying, "Hey, have craptons of disposable income." That does not fuel incentive to buy, that fuels the "Hey, get a cheaper, gas using car." Even with the 7.5k federal incentive to try and bring the price down, the overall look will be what is the most convenient with regards to the vehicle.

The next thing that plays into how convenient that vehicle will be, for people putting the money down, is what get the most bang for the buck. With the battery vehicles it will be taking advantage of the charging capability, not just at home but beyond that. This means, being able to recharge at places you will be spending significant time at, namely shopping areas, public parking areas near said shopping areas, community areas and even the amusement park. There will also be 'pit stops' between destinations for opportune recharging to also get 'the most bang for the buck'.

The thing both of you keep ignoring is putting in those opportune points, to grow out the infrastructure. Austin seems more inclined to "No, don't want to put in anything at all into the building, because it is a waste of money and time." I keep pointing out that gee... What would be more wasteful? Moving into the building, finding nothing properly setup for the thing, try to work without the proper infrastructure, not really encouraging people to really want to work in the facility... Then when you don't have a choice, do a mad scramble to get people to use the facility by moving crap out again, do the job that could have been done earlier and even easily retrofitted for newer situations with less effort than throwing the kid with the bathwater after he has gotten 5 years old.

This is the patent problem being failed to grasp. Over and over again. The simplest solution and what motivates people, just as we have craptons of gas stations out there and why there are very few alt fuel based vehicles beyond Diesel that seem to float around. Consumer-wise, it is about basic convenience. If it isn't there, it will be harder to sell. If the effort isn't put in... It is HARDER to sell. The vehicles make sense to lessen the fuel issue, but the cost isn't worth the effort if there isn't something to make the convenience of the vehicle worth while.

 

op2:

Yeah....it's interesting reading as long as you don't take it too seriously....

 

These will vary from place to place. In Austin the public L2 chargers that charge are $2/hr and are renewable energy. In some places they are $3/hr. On a volt this is 10-13 miles for $2, on a focus EV or 2013 leaf it might be twice that. The public quick charger at Stanford mall in Palo Alto, California is $7 for 30 minutes, and provides about enough power for 50 miles in a leaf.

In texas there are utility plans for fixed price per month for unlimited charging at home and on the public chargers. This doesn't make financial sense unless you have a big battery like a tesla or charge the leaf more than once in a day. The rates may drop or go up.

 

For the time being, we should stop thinking of todays EVs as long range highway cars. Yes, they can keep up on the highway, and yes with quick chargers dotting the landscape they could get around. But the reality now is 75-100 mile range (Leaf, iMiev), which is good for the two car family, with a driveway, that runs around town on 5-10 mile trips.

When we have battery technology that can get 250 mile range in the $30k range then we can start imposing highway car qualities on them. For example, why lug around enough batterys for 250 miles when you are only going to go 50 miles per day? Why do you need thick heavy seats if you are only sitting in the car for 10 minutes? Why do you need navigation when you are probably going to stay within a 35 mile radius of your house?

Stop thinking of an EV as a "normal gasoline car"

 

Yes, L3 is more expensive than gas which is more than L2 charging at home. The L3 power is a spike in power and costs the utility more than L2 charging and the vendor needs to pay for the equipment.

Japan has a much larger L3 network. We should be able to learn more about the popularity of this option from the Japanese, but culture and driving are different.

 

My theory is if you have driven your EV far enough that you have to pay to use a high priced public charger...you should have driven your hybrid that day. At $7.00 for 50 miles, it is much cheaper to use a Prius...not that it is always about cheaper...But again, we should not impose long range car qualities on our current breed of EVs. We should use them for what they are and not run around trying to "fill em up" like a gasoline car.

 

The culture of Japan pretty much makes it difficult to really 'gauge' anything, as their more popular mode of transportation is either Motocycle or Train. Don't forget, in their situation, especially in their cities, the density makes it difficult to really get around by car. While there are quite a few cars, the country, in and of itself, has much better mass transit system than compared to California when you look at their major cities and small cities.

As for the comment of expecting the EV cars to be like normal gasoline cars, again, that goes to the convenience part. US people will treat any car as a 'convenience', be it the gas guzzling SUV to the eco centric type BEV vehicle. The problem here, though is the buying into the EV type cars. At best, they are for the small fleet, short range usage, but as a mainstream vehicle, it isn't currently practical at a cost and range.

At best, it is a short range commuter vehicle, but can become a medium range one with a more mature infrastructure. The PHEVs, while helping with the range, would still benefit more from a mature charging infrastructure as well.

The high costs at charging stations, such as the $7 for half an hour would not only be due to spikes in the power grid to charge up said cars, but also to justify the initial install of said chargers. As time goes by and more chargers are available, I am sure the price will come down as it will encourage more owners to spend time in those locations, allowing additional revenue to be generated.

For now, I believe they have the prices at a higher rate for limited number of chargers and also to avoid 'squatting' as one poster pointed out when he would park his Leaf at SFO, the 8 charge points were almost all taken up.