Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Share the pain of a deep green activist politician who desperately wants to attend a climate change rally, but misses out because of her useless electric vehicle.
SLO climate change activist Heidi Harmon’s electric car calamity
January 24, 2022
By KAREN VELIE
Former San Luis Obispo mayor and climate change activist Heidi Harmon attempted to “do the right thing,” and travel to a rally in San Francisco in an electric car. After multiple attempts to find a working charging station in San Jose, Harmon realized charging the car would take up to seven hours and there was no way she could make the rally.
…
Read more: https://calcoastnews.com/2022/01/slo-climate-change-activist-heidi-harmons-electric-car-calamity/
The video (h/t Cal Coast News):
I love this story, because it offers a microcosm of why green try to waste so much of your money.
“We need some transition support squads”.
If Harmon wasn’t such a deep green, it might have dawned on her that her experience is unequivocal evidence that EVs are useless.
But the green belief system does not seem to permit such thoughts.
Greens start from the assumption that their vision is inevitable. Then they try to work backwards, to figure out how much of your money they need to throw into the bottomless pit, to fund all the “transition support squads” and other useless green props they hope will help advance society towards their vision of a green nirvana.
Even if their green vision is an economic and engineering impossibility, they don’t hesitate to spend your money, because their belief system does not allow them to accept such negativity. So they just keep spending and spending, until someone cancels their ability to plunder your future financial security.
Dumber than a rock!!! Yeah, call for a gas guzzling chopper to come save your “sorry” self.
There be geologists on this site; one more insult to rocks and you’ll be in danger of getting stoned.
“Stoned?” California? That figures.
Simply incapable of proper prior planning. She needed to allow for multiple stops of 8 hour increments to get from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco in time to attend the rally.
She should have stopped and spent the day in King City, then stopped again and spent the night in Moragn Hill. Day two would take her to San Bruno for an 8 hour recharge then continue to San Francisco the night before the rally.
Is 2 days to get from San Luis Obispo to SFO really too much to ask?
“Harmon realized charging the car would take up to seven hours …” What did she think – there would be a fast charge station on every corner, and available?
And she was mayor of SLO? Says a lot about the residents of that community.
Most kittens do better planning.
Proper planning is too much arithmetics for green brains…
Only 3 kinds of people! Those that count and those that can’t!
It’s only 232 miles via 101. Should be at most 2 charges. Extended range EV’s might make it on one. Unless I’ve missed something?
The livery stable was out of horses.
Teslas with Extended range batteries can do it without a recharge. But if you don’t havea fully charged only or have the standard range model stop at a tesla charging station which will get you 80% charge in about 20 minutes.
Of course, your mention of Tesla fast charging station goes to the heart of the problem. There are actually 3 distinct types of fast chargers in the USA and they are not interchangeable.
A Nissan Leaf, or Chevy Volt can only slow charge at a Tesla fast charging station, and visa versa.
Each fast charging unit costs upwards of a 100K. Leaving construction costs, support structures, and land leasing aside; a station of 10 will cost a million bucks.
Who will blink first, or if ever in adopting a single standard for fast charging.
Problem two: If it takes 20X longer (I’m being generous) to fast charge than fill up; you would need 20X more charging units than petrol pumps.
Problem three: The current electrical grid is antiquated, under stability pressure from the vagaries of renewables, and incapable of handling a meaningful increase in load from increased adoption of EV’s.
Problem four: too much fast charging degrades your battery.
Dave,
That is absolutely right.
Fast charging on the road should RARELY be used.
Normal charging should be from 15% full to 80% full, if you want your battery to have the least loss of range over time
READ THIS, ALL EV FANBOYS AND GIRLS:
–> “… it takes 20X longer [] to fast charge than fill up…”
Problem 5 – Tesla chargers only support Tesla cars
Yes quite. This is a non-story with a modern EV. And especially with the Tesla Supercharger network
I could do that and make it half way back with my fullsize V8 powered pickup before I needed fuel….
And refuel in less than 10 minutes
My little Fiat gets almost 50 mpg on the highway and with my 10.5 gallon fuel tank, I could make the round trip and still have enough gas for a day two of commuting before having to visit the pumps.
My little Fiat gets almost 50 mpg on the highway
My Silverado gets 15 mpg and I’m in about the same position.
If my Fiat had a tank the size of your Silverado’s, there wouldn’t be any room for me in it.
My Silverado’s tank is probably the size of your Fiat 🙂
Round trip no problem in my 1 ton diesel. At 80 mph.
My Grand Caravan would easily do that on 3/4 of a tank, plus carry a bunch of other people, food, beer, canopy and chairs and assorted other items. Go figure, a greentard can’t figure out how to actually do, well, anything.
And a under half a tank in my Skoda Fabia Diesel. About three and a half gallons for that run.
And have the aircon/heating on, be able to drive in the dark and the rain, be able to crank out some Ted Nugent on the sound system.
Average driving range is approx 3-4 miles per kWH of charge so a 25kWH charge will give you about 100 miles. Realistically charging at 240V will give you about 25kWH charge in 8 hours. If she was looking at 7-8 hours to recharge she wasn’t parked at a rapid charger and was likely pumping in electricity at 240V.
I wouldn’t drive farther than 80% of capacity so was calculating recharging at +/- 70-80 mile intervals to allow for driving around to locate an unoccupied charging station
Thank you for clarifying your assumptions. Now I understand.
Not if you don’t charge it a day ahead.
7:45AM
Supervisor: Hey! Mignon! Inkblot just called in sick. We need you to take his place at that conference today.
Mignon: Uh, oh.
S: What do you MEAN, “uh, oh??!!!”
M: Well, when does it start?
S: At 9AM. You’ll miss the opening remarks, but, that’s okay.
M: Is it okay if I don’t get there until around 11:30?
S: No! As if. What a DUMB question. Now, get going!!
M: Sorry. I can’t.
S: #@!!#%%!&!
M: BECAUSE MY CAR TAKES AT LEAST 1 HOUR TO HAVE ENOUGH BATTERY TO MAKE IT THERE. 😖
S: Well, that’s okay, M. You take today off and charge your car. And the next day. And the next day. And, hey, how about forever? I’ll have Tony go. His pick-up takes less than 10 minutes to fill up.
One interesting consequence of E vehicle use with their range problem is that it becomes harder to conceal if your actual route – and activities en route – are not the same as those claimed for the journey.
I thought the average electric car could do more than 200 miles on a single charge.
There is a standard test for range the same as there is for determining fuel consumption. However, these are comparators so you can compare and are not indicative of real life. In the nasty big wide world reality means that more of the average battery cars can only manage barely 100 miles. Which as James May of Top Gear pointed out was about the same as the first battery cars of the 1890s which was why they did not catch on.
Consider the area of land needed for a large fuel service station and then the area of land needed for an average drive-in movie theatre.
Now consider peak traffic periods and holiday periods and if the fleet of vehicles was EV, assuming that the electricity grid could cope with that high demand, to accommodate EV recharging the drive-in movie land area would be needed many times over around a nation.
Then consider so called renewable energy installations, wind turbines and solar commercial, and the vast areas of land they require, and how much more would be needed if the transition to renewable energy was viable. Suitable locations of course.
Mission impossible?
Mission insanity.
So why didn’t the SLO mayor just take that multi-billion dollar train instead of driving?
He may be stoned already, who knows
She sure knows WHINE
wow, a stoner geologist!
What insult to rocks?
Brad just compared rocks to an alleged sentient being. Well, phrased the other way round, but it makes rocks sound brilliant compared to green activists.
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned
R. Zimmerman
Could be married to Simon or Griff?
One can only hope that those laughing at this chapter of “EV Hell” won’t be condemned to such a fate by karma and such.
That said, karma and such in the same situation is calling AAA, getting 5 gallons of gas, and being on your way.
Good answer, but the way karma bites, the unlucky one would run out of gas in an area with zero phone reception. Then, you’d accept a ride from the first car to stop after an hour, which would be a woman in a car like that. On your way to the nearest gas station, her electric ride flames out (still in the phone dead zone) and you would have not only had to endure her vapid and non- stop prattling about the evil fossil fuel cars for the past ten miles, but now, she’s much more animated and blaming you and your extra weight, for causing her issues.
And there will be many issues…
Maybe you can run the first mile into town and gain some distance on your tormentor.
If you run out of gas then you’re an idiot. Especially on a 232 mile trip.
The closest I’ve come to running out, I was driving somewhere in east Texas and I was planning on filling up at the next exit. When I got there the offramp was closed and the next exit was 50 miles down the road. I ended up putting over 10.5 gallons into a 10 gallon tank when I finally got to a station
If so, they deserve one another!
I thought Simon and Griff were already married to each other. Has Plural Marriage been legalized?
Back in the day, federal workers did field work by helicopter to get around Jimmy Carter’s fuel ban, since the ban was not on jet fuel.
Rather than realizing that maybe EVs are not quite practical, she’ll be clamoring for the taxpayers to build charging stations on every street corner, without regard to where the electricity will come from.
The Brandon “Build Back Better” stalled program includes building many free charging stations, without regard to the origin of the electricity. Free in this case means free to Green Fruit-Loops, because the taxpayers are going to get hosed, and not much of the electricity will be Zero Carbon..
Behind said charging stations, enclosed, and out of sight, will be humongous diesel-operated generators belching train loads of CO2 and other things which are actual pollutants. All so people can do their greenie virtue signalling.
Hahaha
You think he’s joking?
It’s already been tried.
California has already started that – but at the rate-payer’s expense. 7,000 charging station are mandated in Southern California.
sure has
Where?
Fat lot of good it’ll do as she tries to install them on every street corner in SLO all the way out to San Francisco.
I’m curious about her transition support squads. Will we get to march in odd uniforms? Is goose-stepping an option?
Hey wait! Those San Jose EV golf cars are electric! They can do even 19 holes!
https://images.cloudofgoods.com/items/146/20210316054613/item-2-750w.webp
for example :
This would do better job :
Not on a golf course though.
Look at that, a VW from Wolfsburg is the hero 😀
What model was the car? I bet it wasn’t Tesla who had the foresight to establish a decent charging network from the outset.
You mean there is no standard charging infrastructure?
You are correct, they are becoming more compatible, but it might take a while. My girlfriend has a Tesla and begged me to have a charging station at my house. I’ve got a second 220 service for my shop, so it wasn’t a big deal. But that’s the only value I’ve seen from EV’s, they got my girlfriend to beg.
I thought you were going to say “Now she really gets charged up about coming over”
Nope.
In the same way that printer manufacturers make their money out of refill cartridges rather than the actual printer, Tesla sees selling time & watts from proprietary charging stations as the long term main payoff.
Charging IMO, is one of the biggest debacles. GM will be coming out with slightly new LG Chem battery packs that’ll charge faster on their hummer and pickup. So the batteries will be 200kWh and can charge with a 350kW DC fast charger. Needless to say, you probably won’t be charging it [fast] at home. Do we add more infrastructure? Do we replace all the existing chargers again?
Next step, Al-Ion batteries may come soon which developers tell us can charge 60x faster than Li-Ion. So now we will need MW chargers. Chargers are literally obsoleted the moment they are installed. So do we add new infrastructure? Or replace all the existing chargers again?
How often will we have to replace all this immature tech, and at what cost?
Next step, decades down the road when everyone supposedly has an EV. All these 100s of millions of chargers (literally) will have a failure rate requiring millions to be replaced every year. Another grand waste of human productivity and energy.
Yes. Everything to do with “renewable energy” and “battery cars/busses, etc.” are a NET loss of production that could benefit the entirety of mankind.
This waste of resources is costing the global society houses, reliable energy production and infrastructure, roads, bridges, supply chain build out, etc., etc.
Surely the charging network is the same for all EV’s, it’s the adaptors that are different
(Judging by the wing mirror, it’s a Chrysler Volt)
You mean Chevy Volt?
opps, yep
serves me right for trying to show off doesn’t it!
Speaking of which . . . whatever happened to Elon Musk’s
promise“comment” that ALL of his Supercharging stations (for exclusive use by Tesla owners) were going to be powered by now using only solar PV electricity?Sic transit gloria.
We’ve had 2 clear days in January, so good luck with that, (and there are more Tesla’s here all the time).
A long time ago, the UK looked at the possibility of electric cars as a general replacement for ICE cars. One of their conclusions was that for it to be successful a requirement would be a standardized, quick exchange battery system. All cars having the same batteries, and the same quick connect/mounting systems.
Battery is low? Pull into a battery station where your battery is removed and replaced with a fully charged one. In about the same time as filling your gas tank.
No need for home chargers, fast chargers, re-building the entire electrical distribution system etc.
If governments are serious about EVs, this is a route they will have to go down.
A 75kw Tesla battery weighs almost 1200 lbs. I don’t think swapping one out would be a ten minute job.
Forklift 😉
Electric forklift! I operated one almost fifty years ago.
Do NOT try that at home. Tesla’s are no-go’s – not just the ECM’s but the stored energy….
Forlift batteries weigh 3000+ lbs and last for eight hours in my experience. Lead is heavy.
It’s unfair to compare forklifts to EVs. The electric forklifts that I used had 5 tons of lead weights at the rear end so that the forks could lift 2 tons at the front end and not tip over.
In general I agree that batteries are useless for long hauls or vacations, but they do have utility for 2 mile hauls to the grocery stores, so do legs.
I’m happy that forklifts have a lot of ballast. It is central to them being fit for purpose in undertaking their primary design goal.
EVs though………
I’ve seen a lot of forklift prong holes in a lot of places.
I doubt insurers would cheaply insure those forklift drivers against damages to vehicles and their occupants.
Think about a 12 pump station.
Let’s also take them at their word that the batteries can actually be changed in 10 minutes. That’s 6 batteries per hour at each changing position.
If we assume the station is going to use fast charge (and destroy the batteries that much faster), then they are going to be changing 3 batteries in that 30 minutes times 12 positions. That means the station is going to pull enough electricity to be continuously charging 36 batteries in fast charge mode.
According to this site (https://electrek.co/2021/11/03/how-long-does-it-take-to-charge-a-tesla/) fast charging a Tesla takes 250kW, though there are plans to increase this to 300kW.
250kW x 36 = 9MW. That’s more than an entire sub-division of standard sized homes. Each charging station will need a dedicated sub-station with sizeable wires connecting it to the grid backbone.
Beyond that, can you imagine how hot that battery is going to get with 250kW being pumped into it? Remember that LiIon batteries can’t be charged if they get above 60C. In addition to the 9MW being consumed for charging, you are going to need powerful active cooling in order to keep those batteries from melting down. Think of a sizeable cooling tower next to every station.
Charging slower decreases the amount of power that each battery needs, but it increases the total number of batteries that have to be charged at any one time. It’s pretty much a linear relationship. Charging at half the rate, means the station will have to be able to charge twice as many batteries at the same time. Net result is that the total energy needed for charging does not change.
And that’s before we get into the difficulties of building equipment that can quickly AND ACCURATELY maneuver a 1200 pound battery without damaging it. (If the battery gets damaged, the chances of it self igniting in the near future go way up.)
Where’s Griff when u need him? I’d like him to weigh in on the feasibility here…Griff?
griff don’t do math, he just regurgitates press releases and whatever was printed in the Guardian recently.
also the BBC.
And then we can take pictures of the “CO2” coming out the top of the cooling tower?
Are you trying to say that golf carts aren’t scalable to meet all the personal transportation needs of modern society?
Who knew ?
As everyone else says, A big reminder to plan ahead & plan to NOT charge above 80% SOC wastes time. Just get to the next charge point when <25% SOC & keep topping upto 80% SOC.
9MW is the transformer capacity for about 1000 to 1200 homes (eg. 11x 1000kVA, 800kW@0.8PF).
Most fast charging don’t operate at full rate below 10% SOC & tapper (reduce) as they approach 80% SOC, then last 5% is more like a trickle.
Then you have the drive in / connect / disconnect / drive out non-charging time so the average is less than the peak.
You still have conversion losses & other overheads.
The faster the charging rate the greater the losses for supply & in the battery.
Capacity of charging stations/locations can be designed for peak but many hours of day they will be under-utilised. Having excess capacity wastes money vs having people occasionally queue for upto 10mins. If charging stations become cheaper to build (or higher utilisation) then more will be built.
The green brigade always want someone else to pay for the infrastructure, technology transitions & virtue signalling rewards. It will probably be better in the future but it’s currently uneconomical to roll these out faster than we are in many places. As always, YMMV.
According to Car & Driver Magazine, it cost more to “refuel” their Tesla than a comparable ICE. 55% of the time the Tesla was charged at home/at night and 45% at a super charger.
A removable 1200 pound battery would require some heavy duty hardware to hold it in place on the vehicle. It wouldn’t just “snap in” like your phone battery. That would require heavy equipment at the battery swapout site, with a full time maintenance staff. Each of those recharging stations would be like a small factory.
Given the safety record of these lithium batteries, I’m wondering if the passengers will be required to exit the vehicle before swapping.
I’m also wondering how swapping mechanism is going to handle the reaction of the car’s suspension once that 1200 pound weight is removed from the vehicle.
There you go with that math stuff again
Back in 2013, Elon demonstrated such a system concept here in Los Angeles – specifically at an event in Woodland Hills, an affluent suburb that is the demographic he targets. It was a splashy event where Elon crowed endlessly that his automated battery swap station could beat a full fill-up of a gasoline car. Indeed his demo did succeed in swapping the battery in just about 2 minutes, while a car was being refueled simultaneously at a nearby gas station that took about 4 minutes. Some gas station owners later chirped that his guy probably set the gas nozzle at the lowest volume to take longer to fill.
At any rate, it appeared he was dedicated to building a network of swap stations to rapidly advance acceptance of Tesla EVs. A few years later, Tesla quietly buried the project because it would cost too much to operate profitably.
Not to mention the car will probably go at least twice as far on that tank of gas than the EV will on it’s “fully” charged battery.
Tesla only built the one battery swap station and it never opened for business. They went to using higher capacity batteries and eliminated the smaller capacity ones from the options.
Chattanooga, TN has been operating electric shuttle buses since the 1990’s. They started with lead-acid and had a battery swap station at the old railroad station. When the next generation buses were put into service with Ni-MH batteries they no longer swapped them out. A bus could almost run a full day’s shift on one charge and they’d charge quick enough that a short top up would get them through the day. A few years ago they had almost all of them replaced with ones using Lithium-Ion batteries with enough capacity to go all day. Should by now be all Li-Ion.
The only public funding the shuttle buses received was a Federal startup grant in the 1990’s. Since then it’s all been funded by donation boxes on the buses, at the two stations, and a cut of the downtown parking fees. Seems like a system that would work for many similarly sized metro areas that could use a bunch of buses circulating around their main downtown shopping area and stopping at many of the hotels.
Isn’t the issue that size of vehicle (ie car vs bus, or train or ship etc etc) dictates how big a battery it can accommodate?
If Chattanooga’s busses don’t rely on subsidies from the city, then they are the only bus system in the country that doesn’t.
You missed the part that they are subsized by part of the downtown parking fees.
Old info, old costings
https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/chatt_cs.pdf
https://noogatoday.6amcity.com/cartas-electric-shuttle-celebrates-20th-year-in-operation/
Recent addition of wireless charging
https://www.sustainable-bus.com/components/momentum-dynamics-byd-buses-carta-tennesse-chattanooga-electric-bus/
Check out the more recent costings..
https://energynews.us/2019/07/17/chattanooga-looks-to-extend-electric-bus-range-with-wireless-charging/
The Chattanooga busses don’t travel as far as some bus routes in other cities. Climate & the time of year can also affect the battery requirements. I heard of a city adding diesel fueled heaters to extend battery range of EV busses.
Wait a minute, do you really mean donation boxes? Or do you mean “donation” boxes? The city is asking for money like the Salvation Army?
Rhee, when I heard about the swap station idea way back in 2013, it gave me pause to ask, “Hey, if Musk can find a way to put battery swap stations at every corner, like a gas station, there might be substance to the claim that EVs will replace ICE vehicles in the near future.”
He’s brilliant at passing all of his technology costs on taxpayers.
Tesla actually moved the production battery installation equipment from their plant to the location of the demo. They used a brand new Tesla on production machinery and everything went well. Imagine bringing a Tesla in with snow and ice accumulation on the bottom of the vehicle on a day when it’s -15F. See how well the process works then.
Tesla built ONE Model S battery swapping station circa 2012 but never opened it for business. They moved to higher capacity batteries.
Did you notice the Tesla model names in the order they were introduced spell S3XY ?
The original model S Tesla had a battery designed to be swapped. And they did test it in the field The robot did the swap and 1 minute. Another company was doing the same thing. Both concluded that battery swapping wasn’t financially viable. DC fast chargers however were and test has installed a lot of them.
Don’t drop or bump the battery pack, exothermic reaction and fire hazard.
A new battery is expensive and batteries lose their ability to hold a charge as they get older. A six year old battery is worth less than a new battery and it won’t hold a charge as well as a new battery.
When you buy a new car your car comes equipped with a new battery which is at the peak of its performance and which is at the peak of its monetary value. Exchange your battery at the local exchange station and who knows how old your replacement battery would be.
Who is going to pull into a battery exchange station to replace their new battery with an older battery? The result would be that the only people using the battery exchange stations would be people who already have older than average batteries in their cars or people who are really stupid.
For swap out systems its highly unlikely you would be paying for the full price of a new battery when you purchase the car? Something like a subscription model or mileage based payment system.
The large change in vehicle performance depending on the age of the battery you swap into would be a major issue in any sort of trip planning for an EV.
Battery swap stations would also need to be spaced so as to accommodate the lowest performing battery, another massive capital investment needed to make renewable based energy systems fit the real world from the cosy fantasy of averages.
How many batteries would a service station on the M25 have to store?
Then how many batteries would every ‘fuelling’ station around the country have to store.
Multiply that up across countries, then continents and there isn’t enough rare earth materials on the planet to have that lot sitting idle, just charging up 24/7.
Then there’s the fire risk.
Let’s see, the battery packs are thousands of dollars. I buy a car and pay for a new one. It has a certain life and may have a longer life if I charge it and use it correctly. And then I’m supposed to swap it out for a battery that some idiot overcharged, has used up etc. etc.
Only socialists like the Brits would think that’s a reasonable idea.
Take it easy mate, we’re discussing crazy Californians here.
You have a 10 year old car, and you get a 2 month old battery at the next exchange. Swings and roundabouts.
But the proposal wasn’t that simplistic. Batteries would carry information on how many cycles it had served, what it’s capacity currently is, etc. At specified trigger points it is withdrawn from service and re-built. You pay for this in your exchange fees – in the same way that you pay for extraction of crude oil, refining, distribution and overhead of running the gas station when you buy gas. Instead of a $20k bill every ten years or so, you essentially pay for that spread over those 10 years.
Actually that is a great idea. That would show the EV fanatics how expensive their vehicles really are.
But from where would the power to recharge come?
Although I like the idea of standardizing chargers, there’s a major problem with the battery swap idea. The most expensive single component of an EV is the battery, costing literally tens-of-thousands of dollars. And it’s a depreciating asset. How long it will last is determined by how it gets treated throughout its lifetime. For example, is it typically “slow charged” on a level 1 or level 2 charger or more frequently “supercharged” on a level 3 charger? EV batteries don’t enjoy level 3 all that much, and that will reduce its operational life.
This is also why the “let’s use parked EVs and their batteries to back up the renewable grid shortfall” scheme is a loser for EV owners.
Would you really want to swap the brand new battery in your EV with one that might be years older with hundreds or thousands of charge/discharge cycles and has less than 80% of the capacity of your new one? Would people who have older, worn out batteries use the battery swap as an opportunity to replace their now used up ton of toxic waste for your fresh, new battery?
how difficult would it be to have a gauge on the battery indicating age and charging history? those with more wear would be cheaper? just fantasizing- or, just some direct measure of the current performance level?
I had this all worked out for my unpublished blockbuster 4-volume science fiction trilogy.
My silvide batteries were the size of 6-gallon jerry cans. Each battery has two gauges, state of charge and percent life remaining. You swap batteries, then have two costs. Replacements are always 100% charged, so if yours had 20% left, you have a juice cost of 80%. The tare cost is for the difference in life remaining between the batteries, and can be either a cost or a credit.
The cost of the energy in the battery is inconsequential (literally pennies) compared to the depreciation of the battery itself.
Many planets were short on petro fuels, so electricity was the only practical option.
The electricity is actually too cheap to meter, seeing as how it’s pulled from the ether using field engines. Field engines, though, are a bit too big to put in a car, so we use batteries.
The silvide battery was far superior to the ion batteries it replaced, greater capacity, longer life, less expensive, and wouldn’t catch fire or explode. No drawbacks, so ion batteries disappeared completely.
The point of the post was that there are workarounds for most problems, maybe not all, and maybe not on this planet.
The couple negative tags were probably from unvaxed buggy whip holdouts.Or engineers with real world experience.
From what I have read, fast charging takes 250kW to fast charge a Tesla battery.
I don’t have enough information to calculate how hot 250kW would make a Tesla sized battery, but it’s enough to require active cooling to keep it from melting.
Teslas have liquid cooling for their batteries.
Do you know why?
The danger of thermal runaway as heat increases, massive fire risk.
Which dramatically increases the cost of the battery, the weight of the battery and the energy to run that cooling system lowers the efficiency of the battery.
It gets far worse when you realise that most EV’s simply don’t have batteries designed to be swapped out – they are usually installed under the floor throughout the main cabin of the car – if you want to take them out you need to do some extensive work to the car itself; not a simple 5 min job.
Naturally, the vehicles would have to be designed to accommodate the standardized battery pack from the beginning, which would impose substantial limitations upon engineers and the forms that vehicles using these could take. And a one-size-fits-all approach would not be acceptable. (A Tesla-sized battery in a Fiat 500-sized vehicle would be too big, but a Fiat 500-sized battery would be woefully inadequate for anything bigger) But having multiple battery pack sizes would eliminate the efficiencies of standardization. This would substantially reduce enthusiasm for adopting this approach outside of certain fleet-wide applications.
I don’t remember the model or brand, but I’ve seen cars around that make my little Fiat-500 seem spacious. They have a front seat for two, and no back seat, just a tiny little trunk and the two front seat passengers are practically touching shoulders.
One impossible idea to make another impossible idea work.
It’s one thing for politicians to decide that we need to be able to swap batteries.
It’s another thing altogether for engineers to make such an idea work.
The many problems with the idea of battery swapping stations have been repeated so many times that there is no need to go over them yet again.
Suffice it to say that the engineering challenges are impossible to solve at a price that the average consumer will be able to afford.
Roughly a decade ago there was a company in Europe that tried to make this work. It was a station that resembled a typical quick-lube place, where the EV was driven into a garage where a lift would remove a standardized battery from the bottom of the car and swap with a charged one. The advantage was that it took roughly the same time to do this as a typical gas stop. The disadvantages were many, including the notion that all cars would have to utilize a standard battery and the depreciation issue I mentioned above. The company folded in short order.
Actually on a Tesla station it doesn’t take very long to recharge. We have Tesla chargers at Meijers, a large grocery-variety store in the midwest. You hook up your car, go shop and you’re good. At my girlfriend’s condo it takes about 4 1/2 hours for a full charge, at my house, (cheapest charger I could find at 220v), it takes about 6 hours. On a 110v charger it takes about a month.
The problem with those fast chargers is that they heat the battery so much that it dramatically reduces battery life.
One of the very good reasons regular recharging to 80% of capacity only is recommended.
And loss of range which is theoretical range as quoted in sales brochures etc.
Here In Arizona fast charges must not be fast, 40C is our average summertime temperature. I would guess a lot of charge will be spent on cooling the battery.
From the data sheets that I’ve been reading, the chargers shut down completely if the battery temperature reaches 60C. Even with active cooling, I don’t see how you could fast charge when ambient reaches those kinds of temperatures.
PS: Batteries don’t care if it’s a dry heat.
As long as there as many chargers as there are shoppers.
The one Meijers close to me that has the supercharger is quite interesting. There are 6 or 8 bays and I’ve never seen more than one Tesla charging. Convenience for shopping did not seem to enter into planning. It would be a long walk through the parking lot (the farthest point from the store) with the wind whipping off the freeway. On a cold winter day that would be a nasty walk.
And how would the condition of a battery pack be costed at each changeover, and how could the next user know how the pack has been treated over time in past installations?
That factor could be important when trade-in time arrived.
We have overcome these sorts of pricing difficulties for many billions of products out there.
I’m sure the market “organism” will come up with a series of models which progressively reduce the cost in order to attract customers. It is absolutely fantastic at solving these sorts of problems.
You’re sure, huh? Well, the rest of us better just get with it. Right, master?
In other words, you are counting on miracles to make your plan work.
That’s much better said. Thank you.
Only practical way. Batteries charge while waiting for changeover.
Click, release Click replace weight not an issue once designed.
Only will need a lot more batteries than trucks and cars
It’s 1200 pounds, not a phone battery. There are some safety issues involved with the installation. If that battery pack is not installed absolutely correctly what will happen in an accident? How do you ensure the installation on an old vehicle with corrosion and/or with ice or water from weather? These are just engineering considerations but could be very expensive engineering considerations. Most great ideas that never make it are because the engineering makes it too expensive to work in the real world.
Others above have detailed all the problems that you gloss over.
Care to actually address a mechanism for solving all the problems listed?
Ok, angech. There are many millions of trucks and cars on the road in the U.S. Rod Serling Voice: “Imagine all ICE vehicles have been replaced by all-electric cars, trains, planes, ships . . . ”
You, yourself say a lot more batteries than vehicles will be needed. I suggest that number will have to be multiples of the vehicles to be serviced. The electric grid of today won’t handle the demand. The grid required to do so is fantasy at this time. Let’s hear it, where will the power to charge and re-charge come from? Oh, and rare-earth-minerals, what are those?
So when you have a duff battery due to too many rapid charges you nip along and get it replaced? OK, so what if someone beats you to it and you wind up with another duff battery?
The Lawyers will love it.
I reccomend walking next time.
Buy a horse!
Horses generate another kind of pollution… that city dwellers are guaranteed to complain about.
City dwellers love nature. Except when it’s on their doorstep.
Exactly! On their doorstep or closer, like their shoes or cuffs.
An occasional full face down in road apples would be nice for alarmists and green activists. Makes them feel at home trolling on science sites.
I remember when Horse and Cart deliveries were made when I was a small child and we were sent with shovel and bucket to collect the “fertiliser” for the vegetable garden.
Won’t be noticed in San Francisco
It’s always fun to watch Progressive activists get hit by a 2×4 of reality.
As long as the capabilities of EVs are oversold, people will be disappointed. In their current state of evolution, EVs are still no where near direct replacements for conventional automobiles, and placing charging stations all over the place will not change that.
Nobody (beyond those who wish to do so for their eco-vanity virtue signaling) who regularly requires their car to travel more than 100 miles a day is going to seriously consider an EV, even if charging stations are available anywhere. So placing charging stations all over really isn’t going to make EVs substantially more popular than they are. Not going to happen.
EVs are optimal for repetitive daily commutes of a finite distance; a scenario where a user can confidently leave home with a full charge, drive it to work or errands during the day safely within its range capability, and return home to recharge again overnight. Nobody is going to be satisfied with a car that they must constantly monitor for range and then find a place to charge, and then wait a half-hour or longer for it to do so. Not when a conventional auto can for a fraction of the price travel 5 or 6 times the distance and can be refueled in 5 minutes.
EVs will only retain popularity with short-range commuters or for wealthy people considering a 2nd or 3rd car. EV evangelists who are overselling the EV’s capability is doing their movement a disservice, and are actually discouraging EV adoption.
Bless the evangelists!
“EVs are optimal for repetitive daily commutes of a finite distance”
get a bus!
If buses in your area are anything like they are where I live, they drive around all day long moving 2-4 people between stops. What a huge waste of diesel and big polluters.
Even putting aside the efficiency/waste side of things. If you live in the city, you might have no problem finding a bus (or train) going where you want, close when you want to be there. But for those living in more rural areas, there most likely isn’t a bus route that matches where you want to go or a schedule that matches when you need to be there. Its often literally a case of can’t get there on a bus from here.
If taking the bus was always the solution, car ownership would not have taken off the way it did and the commuters would already be taking the busses all the time rather than driving themselves. Fact is buses have limited routes and limited schedules – which is fine when where you have to go is covered by a bus route and when you have to be there lines up with the bus schedule. However, if your “repetitive daily commutes of finite distance” doesn’t line up with bus routing and scheduling, what then? Hmmm?
Unless you get an express bus, the ride will also take a lot longer as the bus has to repeatedly stop to let people on and off.
Will EV’s remain popular when renewable energy means they may not have a chance to recharge overnight?
Don’t laugh, on a crazy blog where renewable energy freaks spread manure regularly one commented that she would buy an EV and recharge it overnight from solar panels.
She was serious.
EVangelists.
The polls I’ve seen indicate that the average EV is typically used as a second car, more for running errands like grocery shopping and the like. Folks that commute leave the EV at home and drive their ICE.
And my son who is a builder told me about younger clients who regularly buy carbon credits for virtue signalling, that would also be for driving the ICEV.
Carbon credits can be purchased from a friendly banker, and like emissions trading schemes are wealth creation vehicles based on climate hoax politics. Another example of the farce.
“Folks that commute leave the EV at home and drive their ICE.”
Depends on the commuting circumstances. For example, My brother has a plug-in hybrid. His workplace has free charging. He commutes in the plug-in and charges it up for free at work. a pure electric would equally be usable in that commuting situation.
This is a solution that will only work so long as the percentage of the work force that drives EVs stays very small. As the percentage increases, the cost to the company goes up, and the workers who don’t drive EVs start getting restive as they have to suffer through smaller raises to pay for all that free electricity and charging stations.
I live in a small town in flyover country. My typical trip downtown on errands is well less than 10 miles round-trip. An EV would be great for that. Unfortunately, everything else is a long trip. For me, and EV would be a 2nd car.
I’m in a similar situation, I drove less than 2000 miles in the last 12 months. We do have a second car, my wife’s Versa. However we live in an apartment and recharging just isn’t an option.
“EVs will only retain popularity with short-range commuters or for wealthy people considering a 2nd or 3rd car”
Spot on. The limitations of EVs relegates them to limited use cases, which limits the desire to own one to the niche of the market for whom those use cases most apply.
I for one have no problem with someone who can make use of an EV, buying one.
Just don’t force me to subsidize your choice.
Careful, publicly demonstrating flaws in EVs can get you excommunicated from the Gaia Church. Pope Gore says so.
The idea of renting a car must have been too obvious to ponder but that is a dangerous idea to get stuck with when her cultist friends see the heresy of a “fossil” car in their midst when she arrived in it.
Better to stay home and wait for her car to get charged up and miss seeing her cultist friends.
Wouldn’t have been more “green” to attend by video conference? Perhaps all EVs could be equipped with video conferencing devices in case this happens again.
What powers the video conferencing equipment ?
Seriously, that’s a good question. How much energy would be used by an equivalent video conference vs. her commute.
A hand-cranked generator?
She was a hand-cranked Green generator,mostly methane operated.;-[
Maybe there’s a business based on renting out EV’s for short trips.
How about for long distances staging posts, like coach travel and horse exchange posts, but drop off an EV and drive away in a fully charged EV?
sarc.
Just like the Pony Express, which lasted for about a year and a half.
There are also buses and taxis by which one could have easily travelled from San Jose to San Francisco (and back), but eco-warriors are often above using environmentally-friendly mass transportation.
What? Mix with the common folks? . . . Who, me?
A good support system would have been to hire an ICE vehicle to get her there ; but with her confused thinking that wouldn’t have occurred to her.
She can rent an ICE, and have it tow her EV. Then when she gets to her hotel, park the ICE and drive the EV to the conference so she can show off her green credentials. Then use the ICE to tow the EV back home when it’s all over.
IIRC someone demonstrated towing a Tesla with an ICE vehicle to use the Tesla’s regenerative braking to charge it.
Maybe she could tow a trailer with a diesel generator as the “Support System”?
What about phoning for a roadside assistance flat top tow truck with diesel engine to carry her EV?
lol
Check the worry in my eyes.
Schadenfreude! Stupid fanaticism is often its own punishment.
OT, at the other side of the globe,
Istanbul airport shuts amid snow havoc in southeast Europe – from phys.org
Not known how many climate activists are there….
just watched a video saying its economy is collapsing- mostly as part of the European energy crisis- it’s not getting enough gas
for any geologists out there- does Turkey have any fossil fuels? does it frack? are they being exploited or not?
https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/TUR
amazing, zero mention of wind and solar
Sure does, I worked on some brown coal projects in the South East of Turkey. Generally pretty low grade coal, but very suitable for mine mouth power stations.
Availability of cooling water was one of the serious issues to solve.
“Not known how many climate activists are there….”
probably about as many as openly gay atheists
Video called a friend who lives in Istanbul yesterday, its not just the airport.
All that snow on the palm trees; just like Christmas all over again.
Greece in snow lockdown
Rare Snow Blizzard Causes Traffic Chaos in Athens
The Army has been sent out with food, water, and blankets, to rescue the thousands of stranded motorists. Typical snow fall for Athens is less than an inch per year. Yesterday they got over 3 inches. Which wouldn’t be that much of a problem in North Dekota, but Athens is another matter.
Obviously all the fault of CO2. /sarc
Is Al the climate Gore visiting the area?
James Bull
Plunder and deceit are the twin pillars of American Marxism.
Not just American Marxism.
Punder and deceit and false flag attacks.
Plunder and deceit are the twin pillars of
AmericanMarxism the world over.Fixed that for you
And probably other worlds as well. If we ever get that far.
When their Green schemes fail, as they inevitably do because they are not grounded in reality, they blame not having spent enough money and demand even more spending in a do-over.
Right Joel! They always think that some “tipping point” must be met and exceeded, and then the technology will survive by itself, so if it is failing, then we must do more of it. Always a losing proposition.
Oh my. Ruined her day. All those plans of virtue signaling her trip to a climate change rally being appropriate because she used an EV went right down the drain. Schadenfreude.
Because travelling 500 km round trip to protest climate change is the “right” thing to do.
Driving a car fuelled by coal……..
no buses out there?
A bus requires you to rub shoulders with the unwashed masses, don’t you know? Considering that there’s a good chance that she is also a member of the Branch Covidians…
A trip to protest shared/shifted responsibility in an electric vehicle with shared/shifted responsibility that is out-of-sight and out-of-mind by design.
EVs, solar panels, windmills, and other “green” technologies are only useful in niche applications. It is obvious this activist is clueless and expects everyone else to pay for her ignorance.
At one time I was interested in an EV but only because it was a sportscar capable of doing 0-60 mph in under 3 seconds. I never imagined using it for a long trip. This large expansion of a niche product has totally turned me off from EVs.
Audi raced a couple of EV in the last Dakar Rally across deserts, I wonder how they were recharged in those remote areas, diesel fuelled generators I guess.
Which does result in an EV promotion exercise in futility.
Audi didn’t race a pure electric, it was a hybrid.
Audi’s RS Q E-Tron Dakar rally cars take multiple stage wins in Saudi Arabia – Roadshow (cnet.com)
“Audi is hoping to revolutionize rallying with the RS Q E-Tron just as it did in 1981 when it introduced its Quattro all-wheel-drive system. However, the company knows current battery technology just can’t compete in a long-stage, multiday rally like the Dakar. The range just isn’t there. So the car’s 52-kilowatt-hour battery is charged on the go by a gas-powered 2.0-liter I4 turbocharged engine.”
Fantasies tripped up by reality. She appears emotionally unstable as a result.
SLO to SF is 231 miles via US 101. She made it to San Jose, 184 miles. Too stupid to know that in winter with heat on, battery range is significantly less. Ditto summer with AC on. She had no hope of making it on one charge in January in NoCal. Nice illustration of EV range anxiety.
And to show how EV makers pretend there is not a problem, following the ‘official’ specified MY 2022 one charge mileage ranges:
BMW I4 301
Tesla M3 272
Chevy Bolt 259
VW iD4 240
Heidi probably believed them.
By comparison, at 70mph my 2007 Ford hybrid Escape gets 360 with the AC on on using 12 gallons of regular
Plan your EV trip carefully. No long distance in winter or in summer.
Long distance trips, to me, are those trips that take more than one day in an ICE carrying goods.
Not, afternoon outings or easy drives cross country.
The longest one charge mileages in Rud’s list is 301 miles; approximately 5 hours at 60mph; 4.3 hours at 70mph and 4 hours at 75. All within speed limit speeds I’ve driven on interstates.
California’s speed limit on interstates is 75mph, 55mph for commercial trucks and vehicles towing something.
231 miles, SLO – San Francisco, at 75 that is a 3 hours five minutes drive. In my truck that is a shade over half a tank of fuel which doesn’t include the reserve.
On my retirement holiday in 2012 driving the CPH I had a leg from SLO to San Fran. I didn’t remember it being that long in my convertible Chevy. Didn’t realise it was over 230 miles, but I was more concerned with the scenery, wind in my hair and walking across the Golden Gate Bridge than my carbon footprint.
I dread to think what San Fran to the Avenue of the Giants and back was, but it was fun.
Design capacity deja vu.
Even without using the heat, cold reduces the how much of the batteries charge you will be able to extract. Cold can also make it hard, to impossible, to charge the batteries.
Actually the cold charging difficulty heats the battery up so that it will eventually charge. Unfortunately that also shortens battery life.
While looking for charging current for a Tesla, I found information the claims that when between 0C and 15C, the tesla reduces battery charging to a fairly small amount. Below 0C, it doesn’t permit charging at all.
I would assume that in addition to the active cooling elements, there must be heating elements as well. These elements could be powered from the charger to warm the battery enough for charging to start.
Might be true. Teslas are selling in Norway, where winter charging is a definite problem.
This is what they think of Teslas in Finland!!
Electric cars will have a permanent share of the marketplace. Their strongest niche is as expensive sports cars, or commuting vehicles where round-trip range is not an issue. You have to be able to charge overnight at your own home, and you need a second vehicle for longer trips.
As renewables become a larger fraction of the grid, the assumption that there will be free electrons available for overnight charging becomes problematic.
I read about a commercial and residential building located in Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and the body corporate consulting electrical contractors regarding provision of EV recharging points in the basement carpark.
The advice was that according to inquiries with the electricity suppliers to that local area grid there was insufficient supply to cope with the extra demand for EV recharging without major upgrading including a sub-station in addition to the costs of wiring and connectors in the basement carpark.
Many cities are banning charging in underground parking areas for safety reasons.
In Australia the Federal Government in office during 2016 and with support from the opposition introduced a subsidy to vehicle leasing firms, A$300 million in total, to help those businesses promote EV to fleet leasing clients.
So I suspect that of the not very many but expensive EV on the roads here most are company executive vehicles.
One of the strongest niches is providing a means to virtue signal.
Wouldn’t have to signal your virtue if you actually had any
That’s their second strongest niche. The actual strongest niche is virtue signaling.
You might not be able to overnight recharge in the UK as the government want you to have a separate smart meter for home charging so they can control demand on the grid so you may find yourself coming down in the morning to a flat battery. Also the distribution network (wires in the streets) aren’t up to having fast charge fitted so at best you’d have slow charge.
James Bull
EV are so impractical. I fail to see the interest in such useless technology. The cost vs benefit is simply not there except those who see it as a novelty and don’t plan on driving much further than the grocery store and back. I won’t waste my time or money on EV technology.
But the virtue signaling benefit is paramount.
Inner city taxis would be a practical use of EVs. Just have enough vehicles to be able to rotate them between driving and charging.
pretty expensive have the majority of your vehicles not “working”
Renewable energy/climate hoax fans usually have little or no understanding of profit, or even the difference between revenue and profit before tax, let alone a return on investment of shareholder’s funds.
This video sums up EV’s at work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBwcwnKHVJA
James Bull
Depends on how much subsidy farming once can do for having them.
The problem there is that you have just doubled the number of vehicles each taxi company has to buy, plus EVs are more expensive to begin with.
You have also doubled the amount of parking that is going to be needed as well.
You also need a place to charge it. Which leaves out most apartment dwellers.
According to the International Energy Agency there were 10.2m EVs/BEVs in the world at the end of 2020 with 4.5m of them in China, 3.2m in Europe, 1.7m in US and others 0.7m.This was after several years of such cars being available to buy
Meanwhile in 2020 alone sales of ICEVs in China (27.5m), Europe (17.6m) and US (14.3m) totalled 59.9m.
It would seem that many car buyers feel the same as you and bear in mind that there are at least 1.4 billion ICEVs already worldwide. EVs will be niche vehicles for a very long time and sooner or later politicians are going to have to face that reality.
No charge has a completely different meaning now
Marvelous story! Perfect example of leftist idiots thinking they can operate just as they did with fossil fuels. Hilarious!
“EVs are useless”. Hmm… let’s see how that’s holding up in a few years time. Meanwhile… anyone want to buy a buggy whip?
I’ve always been fascinated by those who actually believe that since ICE replaced the horse, therefor EV’s will replace the ICE.
Care to address how the many problems associated with EV’s are going to be addressed? Or are you one of those who just assume that somebody is going to invent a miracle battery that will save the day?
You’re into flagellation?
(I guess that fits with an attraction for an EV)
Adrian, if companies ever produce a useful EV I’ll buy one. I don’t have an idealogical bias against them, I’m just concerned about the current state of the technology – the short range, the long recharge time, and their tendency to spontaneously combust.
These 3 point’s aren’t a bug, but a feature, and it seems these points will stay a ™ for EV over a longer time.
Exactly my concerns, and I too would changeover to EV if equivalent to my ICEV including price, range and recharging time.
If an EV suited my needs, and was able to do it at a lower cost than my current diesel vehicle, then I would be all in.
Its always a comparison between options, and currently EV’s are useless at meeting my requirements compared to my other options.
If EV technology can improve to be the best overall option then I will buy one.
Electricity grids would need substantial upgrading and supply from reliable nuclear power stations if hydro is not viable because of water supply problems.
That’s a general left wing trait. They never admit that their ideas don’t work, they just conclude that government isn’t doing enough to make it happen.
If she was truly committed to fighting climate change, she would have telecommuted to the conference in the first place.
Another failed book marking attempt on my part concerend an elderly couple living the outskirts of London and who bought a Renault Zoe, talking to the BBC.
The car was primarily to visit their children who lived on the diagonal opposite side of London.
The woman was doing the talking in interview and she was ever so ever so pleased about dodging all the Congestion and Pollution (the ULEZ) charges in London.
I did wonder why she had to spend £31,000 in order to do that, why not simply take the bus at £3 for the round trip.
No matter
She then recounted the long distance journeys she’d been on in the car and her story is exactly as this story – a whole litany of broken and non-functioning chargers stretching from London to Bristol and beyond.
It was obvious though she didn’t actually say the words, that anything more than a ride across town stressed her out so much she simply wouldn’t go there again
Doesn’t she know that you just park your armored Suburban a couple of blocks away and ride your bike?
Ah, Mayor Pete. Trans Sec got caught out.
Hmmmm . . . Heidi Harmon is not the brightest bulb on the street, is she?
Just how long had she owned her EV before this event caused her first become aware of the multi-hours charging time required to drive it distances over 250-300 miles?
Hey, an EV’s driver’s manual? . . . what the heck is need for that???
RTFM is out of date 😀
This morning I looked at the PJM Interconnect website. Two things caught my eye. One was the load and generation mix–109,000MW with less than 5000MW of wind power. The second was a fact sheet on how they plan to provide power for the large number of EVs in their territory. These would be charged with excess renewable energy, as they phase out fossil fuel.
With the current mix it seems there is no excess renewable energy at any time, and little chance of getting to that point any time soon.
Oh, and they also think that your EV could be used to stabilize the grid. How will that work out in the morning when you have to go to work?