The EV news thread šŸ”Œ

They sell them under 50k, if the dealers arenā€™t marking them up, Hootie. Thatā€™s the trick right now.

As for you, you have a house. Pay someone to install a Level 2 fast charger in your houseā€¦itā€™s not super cheap but itā€™ll pay for itself in terms of convenience, quickly. Youā€™ll wake up every morning with a ā€œfull tankā€ of juice. You donā€™t need to charge it anywhere else unless you are going on a long road trip.

That one is $294, plus installation (paying an electrician, so yeah, labor is pricey).

You can park it in a Wal Mart, etc to charge it up on a road trip. Probably random restaurants and Starbucks too. Grab a drink / snack, take a leak, itā€™ll be mostly done. You have an app on your phone to setup payment for it. If you do a full sit down meal, you can probably do a full from <20% to 80-90% charge.

Pretty much thatā€™s it. Itā€™s not that hard in general but some of the chargers / apps are occasionally buggy. Go to the next ā€œpumpā€ over.

Itā€™s like gassing up your car but slower, which is why I would do it the same time as my driver breaks.

But doesnā€™t it require a 220 power source as opposed to 110?

Yeah it does, IIRC. Itā€™s like your washer / dryer. Thatā€™s what youā€™re paying the electrician for - to run that line. Costs vary based on what you already have setup and where you wanna put it.

Also, there are a couple of brands of Fast Charging for your road trips. You canā€™t use Teslaā€™s cause Elon said no. Each charger app will also be able to let you plan a trip / show you on a map where you can charge up. They also tell you if theyā€™re occupied, and what their max speeds are since there is some variety.

The way my house is built it would be a huge undertaking to get another 220 outlet in the garage, not really feasible. I would probably have to go outside and around. Not sure I would want to do that

Thatā€™s what some people do though Hootie. I havenā€™t heard anyone complain about it being difficult, but I guess it could get costly. Best thing you can do is get an estimate. Canā€™t hurt.

My breaker box is in my garage, so I already had an electrician tell me it would be pretty easy and relatively cheap to do.

Also, just in case it isnā€™t clear, it doesnā€™t matter which kind of EV you get, the Level 2 charger will work on all of them. So you can have different ones, or swap out after a couple of years, etc. Itā€™s pretty much a one time expense. I expect it to be a builder option in new homes in the future.

Iā€™m with ya Hootie - I have two driveways. One lower with a garage and one in front. Garage has motorcycles hobby cars and ambulance. The charger would go there but all the cars and truck are in other driveway. If the bronco does a hybrid I might do that for wife.

Tesla superchargers are different from other fast chargers because way back in 2012-14ish, long range EVā€™s did not exist. And therefore fast chargers didnā€™t exist, so Tesla literally invented them. Then when other chargers came along, instead of using Teslaā€™s design, they incorporated the CCS ā€œcomboā€ that allowed all these short range cars (bmw i3) etc to be able to fast charge. From the beginning, everyone really should have settled on a common cable/port, the way all gas pumps are the same.

Tesla is currently working on adding CCS adapters to their superchargers later this year so everyone can use them. That will be amazing, there are wayyyyy more Tesla superchargers than EVGO, EA, Chargepoint, etc fast chargers.

https://electrek.co/2022/07/07/tesla-preparing-open-superchargers-non-tesla-evs-us-year/

Btw, we have two EVā€™s and have no special plugs or chargers. We plug both into a regular 110 outlet. The BMW i3 is fully juiced in the morning (it has a small battery), and the ID4 usually adds about 30-40 miles, which is fine with us, for now.

It can charge in either but 110 would literally take days. It will only add about 3 miles per hour.

Iā€™m putting a 50 amp charger in my garage. Since itā€™s new construction it doesnā€™t really add any cost except the charging box itself. That will add 33 miles an hour

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Wow! Herbert Diess is ousted as CEO of VW. I knew there was a big rift between him and the board, but I thought his job was safe. This is a huge mistake and loss for VW, as he was one of the only legacy CEOā€™s who was truly taking electrification and software seriously. Fun fact that few people know, Tesla and Elon recruited him heavily back in 2015 to be ceo of Tesla, and a deal was reached, but fell apart at the eleventh hour. It will be interesting to see where he ends up.

That does happen on the show. The owners have many different reasons for wanting electric. They typically do have a completely normal external look with ā€œhiddenā€ electric propulsion.

This is set in the UK so the biggest reason for the owners seems to be environmental friendly reasons with a small subset that want increased performance.

If you like wheeler dealers you will like this show.

I am am ambivalent personally but I hear you on the soul of the vehicle.

Opening up their supercharger network sounds like another income stream to me.

If they make money then the supercharger network gets built out further faster.

Is this possibly a new revenue stream for Tesla.

Yeah, in addition to being the right thing to do, it will be yet another big time revenue stream.

Classic cars shouldnt be gutted unless there is basically nothing left of them. It drives me up the wall.

The only reason I would entertain a EV for the wife is just the lack of maintenance needs since my wife tends to ignore them anyway. To me that is the biggest selling point of the EVs before the green stuff or the performance.

Zero maintenance is an unbelievably huge and little known advantage of EVs.

Yeah the conversion route is definitely not going to be low maintenance. There is so much custom work in these conversions. It would be a fortune to maintain long term.

I do like the show though. It scratches my Wheeler Dealers itch while I wait for something new from Mike Brewer and Co.

There is actually a season 2 of Vintage Voltage that we cannot get yet in the states @*%#!

Consumer report estimated the maintenance cost of an EV to be .03 per mile and an ICE to be .06 per mile.

So if you drove 100,000 miles, maintenance cost would be $3000 less on the EV.

Average household pays .14 per kWh for power. Most EV get 3-4 miles per kWh. So letā€™s use 3.5 and Letā€™s use 3.80/gallon for gas and 25mpg.

100k miles EV
Maintenance- $3000
Charging- $4000
At home charger- $2000
Total- $9k

100k miles ICE
Maintenance- $6000
Gas- $15,200
Total- $21,200

So an EV would save you $13.2k in 100,000 miles. Average price of an EV hit $66k last month. $48k for the general market. So an $18k difference.

So your are $5k in the hole with the EV.

Forbes calculates an EV loses $5700 of value every year you own it. So $28,500 in 5 years. Average for traditional vehicles over 5 years is $16k.

So total in the hole is $17,500 over 5 years. Need to get the price of those EVs down to get people to buy.

Itā€™s kind of an unfair comparison comparing electric cars to all cars. Their primary target currently is luxury car buyers, not Honda Civic buyers.

How does cost of ownership compare to a bmw 5 series or similar?

Will not the game changer for ev in fact be the bringing to market of solid state batteries? Reputed longer life, better range, etc.