My good blogging friend, William Teach, has pinch hit for me in the past, and while I haven’t needed his help since I was forced to reconstitute this site, he just published one I have to steal reference:
Who’s Up For A 130 Mile Trip In An Electric Car That Takes 9 Hours?
By William Teach | November 28, 2020 | 3:00 PM EST
The climate cultists at the UK Guardian try to put a rosy face on this, but, ‘taint working
‘Why did it take nine hours to go 130 miles in our new electric Porsche?’
A Kent couple love their new car – but their experience suggests there are problems with the charging network
Miles Brignall | Saturday, 28 November 2020 | 3.30 EST
A couple from Kent have described how it took them more than nine hours to drive 130 miles home from Bournemouth as they struggled to find a working charger capable of producing enough power to their electric car.
Linda Barnes and her husband had to visit six charging stations as one after another they were either out of order, already had a queue or were the slow, older versions that would never be able to provide a fast enough charge in the time.
While the couple seem to have been “incredibly unlucky”, according to the president of the AA, Edmund King, their case highlights some of the problems that need ironing out before electric car owners can rely on the UK’s charging infrastructure.
The couple, who love their new fully electric Porsche Taycan 4S, which has a range of about 250 miles, contacted the Guardian to describe how difficult it is to recharge a car away from home. Their journey would have taken two and a half hours in a conventional car, they say.
In a portion that Mr Teach did not quote, the couple stated that they left Bournemouth on the return trio with 45 miles of charge remaining, so they must have burned through some electrons while in Bournemouth. Perhaps electric car owners need to be a little bit more conservative in planning their travels.[1]As I have pointed out previously, electric cars have far lower ranges when the weather is cold.
Must be nice. That car starts at $185,000. See, these very rich people don’t worry about giving up fossil fuels like the peons
“Electric vehicle consumers want more interoperability, more chargers, greater reliability and a contactless experience. To really help the revolution get to full power before 2030 we need a concerted effort from local authorities to take up the charging point grants – only one in six do, according to AA research, and for those premises providing chargers to ensure they work. Driving an electric vehicle is great fun and can save you money and save emissions. Let’s make sure the future network can help save range anxiety,” he says.
See, we need Government to really build all these charging stations and stuff, so the rich folks aren’t inconvenienced with their expensive toys
The Guardian’s story said that the Taycan Turbo 4S has a range of about 250 miles, but that’s significantly higher than EPA ratings, which state the range to be 192 to 201 miles. The Taycan 4s (not the Turbo 4S), with the upgraded Performance Battery Plus, has a slightly longer listed range of 203 miles, and is actually less expensive, at $103,800 MSRP. Note that The Guardian article wasn’t really very specific about exactly which model the Barneses owned.
A parishioner at my church has a plug in Chevy Dolt Bolt. Given that there are no electric car charging stations in our rural county, he has to have a charging station at his home. If I had a plug in electric, I do have an easy and convenient place in which I could install a 50 amp, 240 volt charging station, something within my skill set, but many, and perhaps most, people do not have a dedicated and secure garage in which they could install such a charger. And, of course, if they don’t have the knowledge and the skills and the tools to install one themselves, they’d have to shell out a couple hundred bucks to a sparktrician to do it for them.
The Guardian article noted that there are more than 11,600 public charging sites in the United Kingdom, but, as the Barneses found out, far too many of them are out-of-service at times, and it can take a long, long time to recharge the vehicle. On Black Friday of 2019, Tesla drivers in the Pyrite State found themselves stuck in hours-long lines trying to recharge.
Plug in electric vehicles might be OK for tooling around town, but if you are like most Americans and at least occasionally take longer trips in your automobile, you had better have a second, gasoline powered vehicle. The Barneses have learned that the hard way.
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Welcome Instapundit readers! And thanks to Donald Douglas, who’s probably the one who made it possible.
References
| ↑1 | As I have pointed out previously, electric cars have far lower ranges when the weather is cold. |
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Linked by Donald Douglas on American Power blog! Thanks, Dr D!
I don’t understand how an electric car an be Turbo.
Well, I guess anybody can call it what they want!
My wife and I bought a new EV this summer ahead of a two-month cross-country trip (USA). After doing some research, we found there is only one brand that has a strong enough charging network and long-lasting battery to make such a trip realistic: Tesla. You couldn’t have paid me to get one of those Porsche EVs. They’re not up to the challenge — at least not yet. Jaguar makes a nice EV now, but it doesn’t quite have the range or the fast-charging network that Tesla does. I hope and expect they will soon.
We spent time in 24 states, never once ran out of a charge. At the end of the trip, we covered about 2300 miles in just three days to get home (and, no, we didn’t drive all night to make that work.) We never had to wait for a charger to open up the whole two months, though on two occasions we snagged the last one and someone who arrived after us did have to wait 10 or 15 minutes. Tesla has its own network of “supercharger” stations across the USA, usually right off major interstates. They were reliable and usually well-located so that we could grab a quick bite to eat and use a restroom while the car charged back up.
P.S. If you haven’t test-driven a Tesla, you should. You’ll be surprised how much fun it is to drive.
I don’t own a Tesla, but a guy I know does. He likes it a lot too! 🙂
He lives in Smyrna, just northwest of Atlanta, and anytime he has to go anywhere outside the metro area, he has to plan when and where he’s going to “tank up.” He tries to arrange it so it can happen over lunch–it takes about an hour to charge up at a high-power Tesla station–so as to minimize the down-time. But still, it’s time-consuming and annoying.
Incidentally, although no one seems to have noticed, Tesla put in an entire network of charging stations as part of the rollout of the Tesla. I’m guessing they’re better placed, more efficient, and more accessible than any that state or local jurisdictions have put in…another ad for the virtues of the private sector over government! 🙂
I bought my wife a Tesla 3 back in September and she absolutely loves it. For her lifestyle, mainly driving around town, it’s perfect. We have a 48 Amp service in the garage at home where she parks and she charges it up overnight a couple of nights a week. No gas stations or oil changes needed. Now if she had to make 500 mile trips every week I wouldn’t recommend it but for again, it’s a perfect fit for her type of driving.
Your 10KW charging station will take about 5 hours to transfer the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline.
True, but that energy has already been made into a form which can be easily converted into mechanical energy, so an electric motor can be over 90% efficient. That gasoline needs half a generator (the engine) to change the fuel to heat, then to motion. You can’t get all the heat changed into motion, in a car you’ll get 15-35% of it turning the wheels.
Nothing is free: to get the electricity into the battery, some was lost as heat, and a smaller amount is lost on the way out (because you don’t use the juice nearly as fast as it can be charged in). But the 90+ efficiency of the motor, plus the lack of idling and regen while braking add up to an efficient total, especially when used for typical slog-around-town and commuting trips. For those uses, you’re charging overnight at home, not hunting for public charge spots. For a 300 mile round trip, I’d take a fuel-powered car.
Also: A Tesla SC can output up to 150KW not 10. Most of the time the car won’t take juice at that rate, batteries are more complex than a liquid tank.
Got a friend who repositions cars for dealers. I.e. A dealer in Chicago needs a car which is in Battle Creek, swaps with another dealer in Chicago and one or the other sends one back to Battle Creek.
If you like driving, not a bad gig for a retiree.
But to do an electric car he requires the following before he hits the road: A live picture of the gauge showing full up to the top. A map showing fast chargers on the proposed route. And cuts the supposed range in half if it will be in the dark or require air conditioning.
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