Mark_K5LXP
Senior Member
I drove my lead sled EV for 10 years, 50K miles. That's with a nominal 55 mile range and zero charging stations. My takeaways:
Leaving home every day with a full charge and never having to stop for gas is nice. It was not transformative, meaning it would not entice me to get an EV for that reason.
There were a few times I would run the heater an hour before I drove to clear ice or snow. My EV did not have A/C but had it, I might have done that more often (more >100F days in ABQ than <32F ones).
Handy to have a high voltage source of DC. It could run 120V resistive loads (incandescent lamps) and brushed motors directly so if power was out I had lights and could run fans, vacuums, power tools and most anything with a switching power supply like computers and electronics. I powered my ham radio Field Day operation from it one year, which was fun (radios, lights, computers).
My EV did not have regen. It turns out, and I suspect modern EV's might present this data, you net very little energy back to the batteries via regen. Two factors contribute to this - regen energy requires propulsion energy, meaning you won't get regen without some form of energy input to begin with. Hills don't usually factor for much because if you end up at the same place you started every day (e.g. home) then you have as much uphill as downhill on that round trip. Except for some cases of extreme stop and go driving, like maybe a bus that accellerates to speed and stops every 2 blocks, you don't brake a lot in normal driving, unless you're a speed demon. I studied my Ah use over many trips to work (same route and speeds hundreds of times) and estimated the energy lost to braking (speed delta vs time) and it worked out to 10% braking loss. For my typical range, getting that back would only net me under 10 miles, not really a game changer. The second factor that makes regen not amazing is efficiencies. Every step of energy conversion has losses, from mechanical to electrical to chemical. If you can get regen for "free" in the form of a simple electrical process (e.g. induction motor and existing inversion/conversion) then there's no reason not to have it, but in terms of range gained it won't be a lot. If you drive conservatively there is negligible gain, if you drive aggressively it won't make a huge difference, your range will still suck, just maybe a bit less.
EV advocates then, as now promote the lack of EV maintenance and repair. Sounds plausible but during the time I drove my EV I compared operating costs of it vs my wife's car at the time, a Mercury Grand Marquis. Frankly, the car didn't need much in the way of maintenance and repair either. A biannual oil change, a serpentine belt, tires, some consumable parts like lamps and wiper blades. When that car hit the 180K mile mark I had to do more in the way of hard repairs like seals, a radiator, brakes and such but even those jobs on that chassis were not very expensive or difficult. I drove that car to the moon (230K) before it cracked a head and I walked away from it after almost 20 years in service.
What few EV (and solar power) advocates will acknowledge is lost opportunity. There are more and less expensive ways to get into an EV but they're all more expensive compared to ICE. That ownership/acquisition premium is revenue lost for any other use. One can extrapolate and anticipate fuel or other cost savings but that break even point is way out there, likely longer than most people keep a car. Buying a $60K EV to save a a thousand bucks or whatever a year on gas never breaks even. More power to you (pun intended) if you can hit that sweet spot and net some savings years later but it requires a narrow path of everything working perfectly, mechanically, financially and logistically, for that to happen. That's not my world nor most people's. I would rather spend that money today on things I need or want to do than bet I might break even 15 years or whatever from now.
There's nothing wrong with owning an EV because you like it, just like owing a corvette vs a camry. My observations from years ago haven't fundamentally changed if economics are the motivation - the EV has to solve a problem you have otherwise it's entertainment. I know exactly two people in my social circles that have EV's, a husband and wife that are techno-gadget addicts. I noticed he had an apple ipad mounted to his dash and asked him what that was all about, apparently the car infotainment center wasn't compatible with whatever streaming service he wanted so he has to strap on a separate gadget to get it. Thought that was kind of funny, not unlike me having to suction cup a GPS to my dash because the factory one sucks. Anyway, I find all of this EV banter somewhat amusing because after 30 years or whatever there's nothing new under the sun. Range has improved 10x but it's still not enough, EV's are reliable and capable cars but so are ICE's, and no matter how many charging stations you put in it will never be enough. Probably the practical answer going forward are hybrids, where most of the time you plug in at home and on the trip to grandma's house you gas up in the hinterlands. No matter how bad you want something like an EV RV you can't get around the need for megawatts of charge infrastructure out in the boonies, where today you don't even have gas stations. Kinda fun to think about having a house battery big enough to run your RV for weeks at a time but the hard reality is that many watt hours of battery is large dollars to buy, above what the rest of the RV costs to build and operate. That's not to say it couldn't change when the Back to the Future Mr. Home Fusion comes around but all the wishing and rationalization for it will not make it so, today.
Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM
Leaving home every day with a full charge and never having to stop for gas is nice. It was not transformative, meaning it would not entice me to get an EV for that reason.
There were a few times I would run the heater an hour before I drove to clear ice or snow. My EV did not have A/C but had it, I might have done that more often (more >100F days in ABQ than <32F ones).
Handy to have a high voltage source of DC. It could run 120V resistive loads (incandescent lamps) and brushed motors directly so if power was out I had lights and could run fans, vacuums, power tools and most anything with a switching power supply like computers and electronics. I powered my ham radio Field Day operation from it one year, which was fun (radios, lights, computers).
My EV did not have regen. It turns out, and I suspect modern EV's might present this data, you net very little energy back to the batteries via regen. Two factors contribute to this - regen energy requires propulsion energy, meaning you won't get regen without some form of energy input to begin with. Hills don't usually factor for much because if you end up at the same place you started every day (e.g. home) then you have as much uphill as downhill on that round trip. Except for some cases of extreme stop and go driving, like maybe a bus that accellerates to speed and stops every 2 blocks, you don't brake a lot in normal driving, unless you're a speed demon. I studied my Ah use over many trips to work (same route and speeds hundreds of times) and estimated the energy lost to braking (speed delta vs time) and it worked out to 10% braking loss. For my typical range, getting that back would only net me under 10 miles, not really a game changer. The second factor that makes regen not amazing is efficiencies. Every step of energy conversion has losses, from mechanical to electrical to chemical. If you can get regen for "free" in the form of a simple electrical process (e.g. induction motor and existing inversion/conversion) then there's no reason not to have it, but in terms of range gained it won't be a lot. If you drive conservatively there is negligible gain, if you drive aggressively it won't make a huge difference, your range will still suck, just maybe a bit less.
EV advocates then, as now promote the lack of EV maintenance and repair. Sounds plausible but during the time I drove my EV I compared operating costs of it vs my wife's car at the time, a Mercury Grand Marquis. Frankly, the car didn't need much in the way of maintenance and repair either. A biannual oil change, a serpentine belt, tires, some consumable parts like lamps and wiper blades. When that car hit the 180K mile mark I had to do more in the way of hard repairs like seals, a radiator, brakes and such but even those jobs on that chassis were not very expensive or difficult. I drove that car to the moon (230K) before it cracked a head and I walked away from it after almost 20 years in service.
What few EV (and solar power) advocates will acknowledge is lost opportunity. There are more and less expensive ways to get into an EV but they're all more expensive compared to ICE. That ownership/acquisition premium is revenue lost for any other use. One can extrapolate and anticipate fuel or other cost savings but that break even point is way out there, likely longer than most people keep a car. Buying a $60K EV to save a a thousand bucks or whatever a year on gas never breaks even. More power to you (pun intended) if you can hit that sweet spot and net some savings years later but it requires a narrow path of everything working perfectly, mechanically, financially and logistically, for that to happen. That's not my world nor most people's. I would rather spend that money today on things I need or want to do than bet I might break even 15 years or whatever from now.
There's nothing wrong with owning an EV because you like it, just like owing a corvette vs a camry. My observations from years ago haven't fundamentally changed if economics are the motivation - the EV has to solve a problem you have otherwise it's entertainment. I know exactly two people in my social circles that have EV's, a husband and wife that are techno-gadget addicts. I noticed he had an apple ipad mounted to his dash and asked him what that was all about, apparently the car infotainment center wasn't compatible with whatever streaming service he wanted so he has to strap on a separate gadget to get it. Thought that was kind of funny, not unlike me having to suction cup a GPS to my dash because the factory one sucks. Anyway, I find all of this EV banter somewhat amusing because after 30 years or whatever there's nothing new under the sun. Range has improved 10x but it's still not enough, EV's are reliable and capable cars but so are ICE's, and no matter how many charging stations you put in it will never be enough. Probably the practical answer going forward are hybrids, where most of the time you plug in at home and on the trip to grandma's house you gas up in the hinterlands. No matter how bad you want something like an EV RV you can't get around the need for megawatts of charge infrastructure out in the boonies, where today you don't even have gas stations. Kinda fun to think about having a house battery big enough to run your RV for weeks at a time but the hard reality is that many watt hours of battery is large dollars to buy, above what the rest of the RV costs to build and operate. That's not to say it couldn't change when the Back to the Future Mr. Home Fusion comes around but all the wishing and rationalization for it will not make it so, today.
Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM
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