Charging associated with hotels seems like a good idea for road trips.
For day-to-day local use, do you primarily drive an EV where you use L1
charging at home or are you talking theoretically?
I'm coming from a perspective of practical experience with an electric
car as our main vehicle. Approximately 22 hours of L1 would be a long
time to be plugged in. Even 10 hours for a lesser charge would be
unworkable for us. Such long charge times take the car out of commission
when it's needed.
Having only L1 charging at home wouldn't work for us because it wouldn't
cover our maximum range needs within a workable amount of time. In
addition to over night charging opportunities, we also need to be able
to replenish the charge during the day in a reasonably short amount of
time.
We don't view our LEAF as just a simple commuter car, it's what we use
for everything except long road trips. And no, we don't want to stop at
public chargers unless absolutely necessary. Reasonably fast home
charging and jumping into a ready-to-go topped up car is very practical.
I'm not convinced that L1 is sufficient for "most people" as a practical
matter. It could work for a predictable commuting pattern, but L2,
especially 6.6kWh+, makes EVs more practical for life's unexpected
twists and turns.
If the goal is just to provide a simple commuter car, sure, that could
work, but if the goal is to upgrade the general car fleet to electric
power, faster home charging is part of that equation.
I know a volt owner who started out with L1. But even for the Volt, with
its gas generator backup, he soon realized home L2 made his car more
practical (BTW a lot of Volt owners I know suffer from "gas anxiety" -
they want to avoid burning gas). Count me among those who would like to
see GM up the V2 Volt's L2 support to something faster than 3.3kW.
Cheers,
-Jamie
On 5/13/15 2:00 PM, Ben Goren wrote:
On May 13, 2015, at 12:44 PM, Jamie K via EV <[email protected]>
wrote:
But real range needs are based on maximums.
I'd agree with that. And I hope I'm not coming across as suggesting
that in-home L1 charging is the only way that an EV would ever be
charged.
My point is that most people don't need more than L1 chargers in
their home, if we're assuming that there are faster charging options
on the road. But the resulting problem is that that sets an
expectation of, say, at $0.10 / kWh and a 50 kWh (usable) pack and
250 wH / mile...a 200-mile range that costs $5 in "fuel" in the
"tank." And what roadside rapid charger of any capability, let alone
a supercharger, can compete with costs like that?
That big gap between the cost for most cars to mostly be charged and
the minimum cost for profitability for rapid charging stations is
going to be a challenge.
If batteries were cheap, one solution would be cars with even bigger
batteries. If you drive a few extra miles in a day and more than your
charger can top off overnight, no big deal so long as you don't do
that every day for several days on end. But batteries aren't cheap,
and you've still got a problem for multi-day road trips. Maybe the
hotels invest in rapid chargers that're comfortable putting a
500-mile charge into a typical car over the course of eight hours,
and the expense is included in the room rate? Because, even at 250 wH
/ mile, you're still looking at 70A @ 220V for that, more than is
realistic for any home charger.
b&
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