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Electric Vehicles

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One factor I think about now is how many households in the US are multi-car, especially in areas without public transit like the suburbs or rural areas.

Thinking about my own example, it would be pretty easy for my wife and I to replace one of our cars with EV and keep the other ICE. If I had any way to charge an EV, there would be very little reason, besides current cost, not to do so now. I imagine a lot of people are in a similar situation, where replacing some, but not all, cars in their household with EVs would be a pretty easy step if there were appropriate infrastructure.

I wonder if straddling the fence in this way will become common in the near future. It would certainly dramatically reduce the ICEs on the road now, and still give many people the flexibility to go on long drives should they want it.
 
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Well yes an EV is absolutely perfect second car.

Which is great if you can afford a second car.
 
Pie in the sky solution:

Start manufacturing travel trailers with EV batteries in them, feeding through to the towing vehicle.

Adds a few hundred miles range, replaces the generator at the campsite (if you are a site with no hookups). Probably not really practical though, as it would spike the cost of the trailer and there could still be issues with the geometry of the charging station/vehicle/trailer combination and issues with mixing and matching the trailer's batteries and connectors with different brands of towing vehciles.

It might, however, be worth pointing out that RV hookup stations are easily adapted as charging points. If you are RV camping at a site with hookups, there is a charging station right at your destination.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Well yes an EV is absolutely perfect second car.

Which is great if you can afford a second car.
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That's the rub with the whole EV thing. It assumes that our current system of transportation that is primarily built around private vehicles is the best way forward.

I don't even know if there's any way back from our current situation of sprawling suburbs, tedious traffic jams, and endless parking surfaces gobbling up all our public space. It kinda sucks, but I doubt that's going anywhere anytime soon. The climate crisis seems like a pretty good opportunity to reassess the primacy of the car in our society and reinvest in public transit, but I doubt that's going to happen.

According to the statistics, 58% of households had at least 2 vehicles in 2017.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
That's the rub with the whole EV thing. It assumes that our current system of transportation that is primarily built around private vehicles is the best way forward.
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Not to beat a dead horse (because hey why not just go back to horses and get rid of cars...) but it's easy if you just ignore people who don't live close to everything and actually need a car.

Once you get outside the city limits; hell the dense urban cores, a car (not a bike, not a ride share, not public transportation) is as essential as a home.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Not to beat a dead horse (because hey why not just go back to horses and get rid of cars...) but it's easy if you just ignore people who don't live close to everything and actually need a car.

Once you get outside the city limits; hell the dense urban cores, a car (not a bike, not a ride share, not public transportation) is as essential as a home.
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Sure, but rural people also have advantages when it comes to EV that urban places don't.

Single family homes are more common in rural areas, so there's likely going to be much less free-for-all street parking than in urban centers. Installing charging spots into existing single family homes, which likely already have dedicated parking, seems like an easy lay-up. Parking at businesses tends to be abundant too, and adding EV stalls wouldn't be too tricky if they really wanted to.

My point is that in urban and suburban areas, where the vast majority of Americans live, pollution is only one part of the downsides of car-centric transportation. Living in Atlanta or LA would still be hell if all the ICEs magically poofed into EVs.
 
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cullennz said:
Sorry to sound like a broken record, but what happens with the people which are the majority, that don't have off street parking to charge.
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Long term solution is going to have to be a major change in infrastructure with the installation of charging points along the street. Think parking meters with charging points on them. That's a lot of wire to run, but it's gonna have to happen.

It's gonna have to work its way from the suburbs in towards densely populated areas.
 
bonzombiekitty said:
Long term solution is going to have to be a major change in infrastructure with the installation of charging points along the street. Think parking meters with charging points on them. That's a lot of wire to run, but it's gonna have to happen.

It's gonna have to work its way from the suburbs in towards densely populated areas.
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You're getting way ahead of yourself. Long before street chargers, you're going to need a hell of a lot more electric generation and grid capacity.

And realistically, that means either a lot more coal or a lot more nuclear. Solar and wind won't cut it.
 
With all these new stalls going in I have a pressing investment question: is Ditchwitch still the leader in trenching technology and who owns that brand?
 
Ziggurat said:
You're getting way ahead of yourself. Long before street chargers, you're going to need a hell of a lot more electric generation and grid capacity.

And realistically, that means either a lot more coal or a lot more nuclear. Solar and wind won't cut it.
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I remember hearing that there is a hard limit on how much wind and solar power can be generated in the US, but I forgot the number.
 
The sprawling suburbs and their need for long drives to get to anything don't need to be the way they currently are, and undoing the zoning laws (and cultural factors) that have made them this way would improve life in ways that have nothing to do with our vehicles' power source. But it would also take years for those changes to have their effects.
 
By the way, I’m a huge advocate for EVs and one of those edge cases that will be harder to solve. My wife and I really like to travel by RV and that means towing a trailer 300-500 miles a day when we are on the road. Stopping every 125 miles in rural western states would be a bit of a pain in the ass. So, any future tow vehicle is going to at least be a hybrid. I’d prefer a plug-in hybrid truck.

Otherwise, our longest travel days are about 300 miles. Six hours is a long time to spend driving in a day. (Despite our high speed limits I still find that most trips average about 50 mph once you factor in traffic and rest stops.) if we gave up the travel trailers we could probably do without gas. Or, if there were more fast charging capabilities in rural areas I could plan on going electric when the batteries get a bit better. I think 200-250 miles of towing range would be enough to get me into a showroom.

As to adding trailer batteries, I think that could happen. The issue is that most travel trailers are fairly light weight frames with rather lumpy construction. Adding thousands of pounds of batteries would require a redesign from the ground up. I’m sure there are DIY folks doing it right now. I wonder how long it will take for a major manufacturer to give it a shot now that the F150 Lightning is out there.
 
And if we move the continents back into Pangea we won't need giant container ships either.
 
This seems relevant:

Tesla’s first-ever Semi ‘Megacharger’ to be installed at Frito-Lay’s Modesto plant

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Frito-Lay would be receiving 15 Tesla Semis before the end of 2021. It was a massive announcement because Tesla has delayed the Semi project on several occasions due to battery constraints. Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced last year to company employees in a leaked email that it was time to begin “volume production” of the Semi. However, nothing really ever came of it because the demand for Tesla’s passenger vehicles was through the roof. Instead, the automaker chose to focus on ramping up the production of the Model 3 and Model Y and expanding its production footprint to Europe and Texas.

Now, documents reveal that Frito-Lay is planning for the imminent delivery of the Tesla Semi units. @MarcoRPTesla uncovered several planning documents that indicate Frito-Lay will install the first-ever Tesla Semi Megacharger at its Modesto, California, plant. According to the documents, Frito-Lay is also plotting out some space for designated parking areas for the Tesla Semi.
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(Note that the photo in the article doesn't show the semi-megacharger, it looks more like a semi parked in front of a bunch of regular superchargers. )

Anyway, back to the subject of towing - if these Megachargers get installed in enough places, that might be an option for a regular car/trailer combination to charge there without unhooking the trailer, assuming the voltage and connectors and software can allow a Megacharger to be used on a vehicle designed with Superchargers in mind (that is to say if the power can be reduced depending upon what sort of vehicle is attached).
 
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Dr. Keith said:
By the way, I’m a huge advocate for EVs and one of those edge cases that will be harder to solve. My wife and I really like to travel by RV and that means towing a trailer 300-500 miles a day when we are on the road. Stopping every 125 miles in rural western states would be a bit of a pain in the ass. So, any future tow vehicle is going to at least be a hybrid. I’d prefer a plug-in hybrid truck.

Otherwise, our longest travel days are about 300 miles. Six hours is a long time to spend driving in a day. (Despite our high speed limits I still find that most trips average about 50 mph once you factor in traffic and rest stops.) if we gave up the travel trailers we could probably do without gas. Or, if there were more fast charging capabilities in rural areas I could plan on going electric when the batteries get a bit better. I think 200-250 miles of towing range would be enough to get me into a showroom.

As to adding trailer batteries, I think that could happen. The issue is that most travel trailers are fairly light weight frames with rather lumpy construction. Adding thousands of pounds of batteries would require a redesign from the ground up. I’m sure there are DIY folks doing it right now. I wonder how long it will take for a major manufacturer to give it a shot now that the F150 Lightning is out there.
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Switch to a motor home and tow a Tesla or Leaf!
 
Or even better. Just get two Teslas and wield them together front to back. You drive to work one way and the Tesla charges the other Tesla, then you drive home the other way and the second Tesla charges the first Tesla.
 
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