Buying a Tesla now is pretty much an ironclad statement of fascism support.
@lauren Those of us who have a T-car (does the 'T' now stand for Tesla or TFG?) kinda wonder when we will replace it, and with what.
Until the charging network/plug wars settle down it's not a good time to buy an EV.
@karlauerbach @lauren All of the anti-EV sentiment is amusing. Ford announced high profits last quarter, driven by EV sales. Hmm.
Here's the thing that Trump is overlooking. Put these facts together:
ICE is a dying technology and is being phased out by all automakers. EV's are outselling everywhere except the USA. The USA is by no means the biggest auto market. Ford sells more cars in China than in the USA.
EV's are cheaper and easier to make. ICE engines are complex and expensive. If USA trade laws and blockades allowed it, high quality Chinese EVs would be selling here for $12,000.
This means that if you REALLY want an ICE engine vehicle in the future it's going to be either very expensive or unavailable. Ford isn't going to make ICE engine vehicles just for the USA market. It's not worth it.
EV's are catching on in the USA. We're way behind the rest of the world but it's catching on. Gas stations operate on very thin margins so a reduction in demand means they will start going out of business. This is already starting to happen. Finding gas will become difficult and expensive, a long drive to buy fuel. Why do this when you can charge your EV at home? Makes no sense.
So like everything else Trump says, it makes no sense and won't happen.
@shuttersparks @karlauerbach Except about half the country CAN'T charge at home. And all other aspects aside, if you can't charge at home, the value proposition collapses. AND YOU KNOW WHY.
@lauren @shuttersparks I agree that the lack of charging in apartment buildings is a serious problem.
And after having dealt with shared chargers I can say that sharing does not work - it is a real nuisance to have to move a car in the middle of the night after charging is done.
Bringing charging into an existing multi-residence building can be expensive - the power draw can be impressively high, so it's going to take engineering that involves the utility company. (We though of having a separate power meter for our car chargers but PG&E wanted to charge us $thousands just to do the preliminary engineering study.)
@karlauerbach @lauren @shuttersparks Why does power draw need to be so high? Our wallbox could do 22KW, but we limited it to 3.7KW. This is enough to charge the battery from 20% to 100% over night. And it even makes the battery live longer.
This is a compact car, but by going to still very reasonable 11KW you could do the same with the biggest SUV.
@masek @lauren @shuttersparks We also limited our charger to about 3.5KW. This was because the original car that used couldn't use more than that and our house is inadequately wired and I did not want to risk pushing a large power distribution cable running under the house beyond 50% of its nominal capacity (100amps - but it is feeding a lot of things other than the car charger. I should really measure its draw when everything is turned on.)
I am just beginning to consider a load balancing charger system so that I can add a second unit and have them allocate that 3.5KW draw. (Or I may have that long cable replaced, but that means some ripping up of walls or some big conduit on the outside of the house, but we may need to do that anyway because we want to install a home battery system.)
@karlauerbach How is your chance on PV? Our greatest drawback is the distance between house and wallbox, so I cannot feed it from the PV or my house battery.
@masek We do have some (aging) solar panels and they are on that secondary breaker panel (the one with the limited feed capacity.) But our panels are old and we don't have a lot of roof space - we added skylights that seemingly were precisely located to have maximum negative impact on the number of panels we could fit. We are also in a redwood forest - the world's tallest species of trees - so we do get a lot of shading.
@karlauerbach LOL, we added a dormer at that space 15 years ago 😢
@karlauerbach @masek @shuttersparks More examples why EVs are impractical for so many people, even in many cases when they (in theory) could charge at home!
@shuttersparks @lauren My old Honda Crosstour is fading and I need something a) good for short trips, b) good for very long trips to the Eastern Sierra or equally unpopulated areas (and on unpaved roads), c) to carry a lot of garden stuff (I'm now buying things in several cubic yard quantities, but that comes in a dump truck.)
So I'm looking a a plug-in hybrid, such as the Hyundai Tuscon.
I am avoiding anything with a CCS plug as I see that as a dying technology. So I'm sticking with J1772 AC charging for the hybrid and NACS for whatever we get to replace our Tesla.
Going EV can be a bit of a surprise - I normally drive an ICE 1800 lb Miata with 155hp. It's kinda a shock to hop into the Tesla which is approaching 5000lbs and has roughly 1000hp. EV's eat tires.