Nikola and GM team up to make 900 HP Electric Supertruck.

[Viajeros]

My puzzle is if I want to go 400 miles in a day and the range (accounting for terrain and cargo in the car) is less than 400, I have to stop and wait for a charge. I am ignorant of charge times but it seems it might take hours not minutes like at a gas station.
So, if my trip is 1600 miles (MA to Chicago) then I either have to have 4 very long days, or make it 5 days with an extra overnight?

Good morning Lynx.  I'll give you our experience with that kind of trip as it is roughly close to what we do.  In kilometres,  400 miles is about 600 km.  Our car has an EPA range of 518 KM but we live in a mountainous region so best to count on about 450 KM.  So I'll preface this with a statement.  We don't stop to charge, we charge while we are stopped.  For us that kind of trip is typically a 3 stop trip.  And every stop you take 5 seconds to hook to a supercharger or occasionally a public Chademo or whatever is available.  Heads up, Charging infrastructure is good in the places we travel.  From what I understand that is not the case everywhere.  I would suspect EV ownership is lower in those areas for that reason.

First stop after 2.5 to 3 hours on the road for a 10 to 15 minute walk of the dog, pee and maybe a refill of the coffee cup. 
Second stop is usually lunch a couple hours later.  Maybe 20 or 25 minutes as we bring our own lunch in a 12 volt cooler.  We don't like to go into a restaurant as we would have to leave the dog in the car. 
Third stop is usually like the first stop.  Dog walk, pee and definitely a coffee cup refill so 10 to 15 minutes. 

End of day is in a hotel with destination charger and a continental breakfast so car is full in the morning.  Rinse and repeat. 

Essentially no extra time required for charging, no gas stops, no gas stations and the trip takes no longer than when we did the trip in a Jeep Grand Cherokee.  I recommend to anyone if thinking about buying an EV they do their homework regarding this.  Don't look at infrastructure where you live, look at infrastructure where you travel.  Where you live is irrelevant as 95 percent of the charging you do will be in your driveway or garage. 

Typically road trip travel for us is about 20 percent of the cost it was in our Jeep Grand Cherokee.  Cost for the EV was probably 20 percent more though.  Our main reasons for buying was not economics based.  Performance and convenience rated higher.   

And one more thing, not a Tesla pump but at least for the moment its mostly just Teslas that are suited to long road trips both because of range and the Supercharger network.  This is however changing quickly with the various companies like FLO, Chargepoint, EVGO, Electrify America/Canada, Shell and PetroCanada building out their public charging networks.  In europe the public networks are already surpassing the Tesla network, but remember, Teslas can use the public networks but non Teslas can't use the Tesla network.  The present advantage of the Tesla network is the speed and the automatic billing.  No credit cards or RFID cards etc.  Just hook up, the car transmits its serial number to the network and you are charging.  Billing is direct to your credit card on file. 

Hope that helps.  An EV is not suited to every ones lifestyle but it works very well for some.

Cheers. 

 

[Rob&Deryl]

Thanks for the education.

So, with a supercharger, how much (% of full) do you get in 15 minutes or so? What about other chargers?

 

[Viajeros]

Thanks for the education.

So, with a supercharger, how much (% of full) do you get in 15 minutes or so? What about other chargers?

Its actually a tough question to answer, and this is why.  It depends.... 

* on the car model.  (S X Y or 3)  This is because the model S and X have different battery construction than the Y or 3.
* the year of the car.  The older S and X have slower charger rates dependant on a couple things.
* size of the battery...and this kind of comes back to the model, eg standard range model 3 has a max charge rate of 170 kw versus long range at 250 kw. 
* how full the battery is when you charge.  The emptier the battery is the faster it will charge.  Most try to charge when the battery is between 20 and 50 percent as then it is the fastest. 
* the Supercharger itself.  There are three main Superchargers,
      1. 80 KW Urban superchargers; usually found in the burbs or around malls or outlet shops etc.  These are 80 KW units and meant to give you a reasonably fast charge experience while shopping etc.
      2. 150 KW Superchargers found on main routes the all over.  These are the first generation of main route superchargers. 
      3. 250 KW Superchargers.  Most of the main route superchargers being installed now are of these variety.  Last year when the cross Canada network was put in most are these units. 

Soooo, what does that all mean in practical terms...and using our car as an example as it is the car I am most familiar with. If you hook up to a 250 KW Supercharger and you are at 20 percent full on the battery it will pin pretty quickly at 250 KW and then start to throttle back once you get around 50 percent.  We have never connected to one of these for 15 minutes as the dog is walked and we are ready to go before then but I would guess you would be around 60 percent.  If that was a 150 KW station probably around 54 percent.  But here is the kicker, if you arrived at your first stop with around 50 percent the charger would be slower and you would probably be around 75 percent.  This is always the situation with us on our first stop of the morning because we have only been travelling a couple or three hours.  Charging over 90 percent is slow and is usually only done at home or hotels etc with overnight "destination" chargers which are essentially the same units we all have in our houses...just screwed down to a post in the parking lot of a hotel. 

Onto part two of your question.  Public network charging speeds.  Most public networks from the companies I mentioned in the other post are 50 KW or 100 KW units.  Thats because most non Tesla EV's can only charge at rates between 50 and 100 KW vs Tesla at 250 KW max.  So for example Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, Jaguar Ipace, Volkwsagen e-golf etc etc.  Some of the new stations will have one "pump" (charge handle) that can charge at 350 KW as the new Porsche Taycan can charge pretty close to 300 KW.  Going forward I think you will see more of these although they are still kinda rare. 

There are two formats on all of these.  EG there are two different connectors fed by the same charger.  Only one can be used at a time.  Chademo (Japanese brands like Nissan etc) and CCS (everybody else).  Tesla is Tesla.  It has its own format/connector.  It is the most versatile as it can do both AC and DC charging with the same plug/connector.  No other car brand can use Tesla Superchargers as none have wanted to commit to the development of the Tesla network although Tesla has left it open to them.  However Tesla can use a Chademo station from any of the Public networks.  They have to use an adapter to do this.  The first picture below is of our car hooked to a Chademo station using an adapter.  It adds an extra minute to the hookup but it is handy.  Billing is much more complicated on public networks though and is similar to gas stations.  Credit card use etc. 

EVGO is starting to add built in adapters as this gives them access to the biggest customer base of EV's.  Tesla owners. 

I have attached a few pictures of Tesla and non Tesla chargers.  Tesla charge sites are sometimes quite elaborate, sometimes have a lounge or are co-located with other services etc.  Usually bathrooms available with other business agreements etc. 

Enjoy. 

Pic 1.  Our car with Chademo adapter
Pic 2  Shell station with two DCFC fast chargers
Pic 3  Tesla Supercharger location
Pic 4.  Non Tesla public charger showing the Chademo, DCFC and J1772 (ac charging) handles
Pic 5  Tesla Supercharger location.  The first 3 spots are drive in spots for Teslas pulling a small trailer.  They are ging to have to rethink this when the cybertruck is out.  The rest are back in.
Pic 6  DCFC chargers at Petro Canada gas station.  These guys were the first to put a cross country fast charge network in Canada.  They even beat Tesla...buy a week. 
Pic 7  Another Tesla Supercharger location. 
Pic 8  Yet another Supercharger location

 

[TheBar]

I read a Car and Drive article last spring showing a 2020 Tesla 3 driving at 70 mph and using the A/C or heater drops the range to 200 miles.

 

[Viajeros]

I read a Car and Drive article last spring showing a 2020 Tesla 3 driving at 70 mph and using the A/C or heater drops the range to 200 miles.

That hasn?t been our experience at all but I can?t speak for others. Generally vehicles either gas or electric don?t achieve EPA numbers although we seem to come close with our driving habits. Speed limits are slower here though so that probably helps.

The nice thing with our car is a lot of the guess work is gone. The car figures out what your arrival charge rate will be at any given charger so it?s very easy to plan.  The cars software pretty much looks after the planning.  Range has not been a problem with our car and driving habits.

Winter and cold can affect our range by about a third where we are. But gas and diesel cars are also affected by winter conditions according to EPA. Closer to about 15 percent though. Regardless, it has no affect on the cars ability to suit our needs. It?s actually been a huge improvement over our gas days. The car is almost instantly warm in winter, can be preheated anywhere including in the garage with the phone App. All wheel drive and traction control are better than our grand Cherokee was by a long shot.

Again. Everyone has different needs. Be informed and choose according to your needs and preferences.

Cheers.

Cheers.

 

[Lou Schneider]

Electric cars can use a HUGE amount of electricity compared to normal home or small commercial usage and widespread electric car charging will create problems for an electric infrastructure that currently runs at 80-90% or more of it's capacity during peak hours.  If you charge during the day you're adding to the peak load on the power grid.

A common way of expressing the length of time it takes to recharge a car is recovered "miles per hour".  For example, if a car replaces the energy it uses in 50 miles of driving with a one hour charge it's charging at the rate of 50 miles per hour.  Teslas read this out directly on their instrument panel while charging.

Charging from a 120 volt 20 amp household outlet recharges at the rate of about 2 miles per hour.

A 240 volt 50 amp outlet like you'd find in an RV park can charge at about 50-90 miles per hour.  Less if you're also using it to run other stuff in an RV like air conditioning, etc.

A couple of 250 Kw highway Superchargers in a truck stop can draw as much power from the grid as the rest of the travel plaza.

https://www.pluglesspower.com/learn/tesla-model-s-charging-home-public-autonomously/

The load charging places on the electric infrastructure hasn't been an issue so far because electric cars are pretty much a niche market.  But wholesale adoption will require wholesale upgrading of the power grid and generating capacity to handle the load.

 

[TheBar]

Who pays for the infrastructure upgrade? Solar on every rooftop sounds good until your car sucks the solar batteries dry before sunset. My house is total electric but I have an old propane tank that is still functional. Propane will get really cheap after oil demand drops. I'll install propane lights in my house like my dad's trailer had back in the 60's. And I won't freeze during the rolling blackouts.

 

[Viajeros]

Who pays for the infrastructure upgrade? Solar on every rooftop sounds good until your car sucks the solar batteries dry before sunset. My house is total electric but I have an old propane tank that is still functional. Propane will get really cheap after oil demand drops. I'll install propane lights in my house like my dad's trailer had back in the 60's. And I won't freeze during the rolling blackouts.

I would imagine power companies that want to sell power will pay for the equipment they need to make their product.

A typical North American commuter uses 6 to 8 KW of power per day. Our provincial utility estimates a total increased grid load of 20 percent if every private personal vehicle in the province went electric overnight. So yah. They have some upgrading to do.

 

[Mark_K5LXP]

Much like what is done during the summer with remote disconnects on A/C units to manage peak demand it's easy to envision a similar setup with charging infrastructure.  Doesn't entirely make up for lagging generating capacity but the idea of having your car charge at some utility determined point, and maybe not in one contiguous block while you're sleeping or working at the salt mine all day can allow existing infrastructure to go quite a ways.  Could also be seen as a scheme to "ration" power so just because the energy may not be coming from countries that don't like us, doesn't mean "someone" won't try to capitalize on controlling it.  One can be independent of the grid but that has it's own associated overhead.  It's always something, if we were riding horses there'd be an oat supply problem, not to mention the emissions.  No free lunch...

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

 

[Viajeros]

Much like what is done during the summer with remote disconnects on A/C units to manage peak demand it's easy to envision a similar setup with charging infrastructure.  Doesn't entirely make up for lagging generating capacity but the idea of having your car charge at some utility determined point, and maybe not in one contiguous block while you're sleeping or working at the salt mine all day can allow existing infrastructure to go quite a ways.  Could also be seen as a scheme to "ration" power so just because the energy may not be coming from countries that don't like us, doesn't mean "someone" won't try to capitalize on controlling it.  One can be independent of the grid but that has it's own associated overhead.  It's always something, if we were riding horses there'd be an oat supply problem, not to mention the emissions.  No free lunch...

Mark B.

Good analogy. .

We typically plug in a couple tunes a week when we get home but the actual charge timer is set to charge between 1 and 5 in the morning. We do this for a couple reasons which nobody probably wants to hear about but suffice to say charging during off peak hours is easy with any EV. They all have the software to do it.

 

[Rob&Deryl]

I would imagine power companies that want to sell power will pay for the equipment they need to make their product.

A typical North American commuter uses 6 to 8 KW of power per day. Our provincial utility estimates a total increased grid load of 20 percent if every private personal vehicle in the province went electric overnight. So yah. They have some upgrading to do.

In the US or at least the northeast, it is common for the electric company that sells you power to not actually generate any. They buy it. More solar provides more daytime generation and can help defer the peak afternoon A/C demand. More wind will help too. Pretty interesting driving across the prairies and seeing the hundreds of turbines. We really have not tapped ocean wind like Europe has.
So, residential solar can reduce the infrastructure upgrade cost for the power selling company.

Side swerve... it bugs me when folks get all up in arms to shut down local power plants to reduce fossil fuel burning and want us to move to electric cars & busses but somehow think the electricity will magically be there. Just switch to renewable power they say. Ok... Solar in a New England winter and wind on calm days... now what?

 

[TheBar]

if we were riding horses there'd be an oat supply problem, not to mention the emissions.  No free lunch...

Great analogy!