This is what a single trip to the hardware store looks like out where my parents live.
Notice the miles driven, time it took, and remaining battery status (started this at 100%).
But by all means, please keep telling us electric cars only work in cities.
Oh right, and I should add that to recover this charge on a 7.2 kW charger would take about 2 and a half hours.
Again - you really don't need a giant charger.
@tebrown @TechConnectify I had a winger try to tell me once that electric cars couldn't work because of the lack of charging stations.
I told him I had faith the free market would provide a solution.
And towing. Towing things is not very effective for full electrics. But is theoretically a great place to use hybrids.
@tebrown @Ancients They *can* tow right now but range loss is severe. Like, depending on the trailer, it can exceed 60%. Aerodynamic affects are monstrous.
It's about the same as a liquid-fueled car, to be clear, but towing rigs have big gas tanks and can refuel quickly.
Add to that the fact there there's essentially no pull-through rapid charging infra and even I, a person who thinks EVs can work for just about anyone with a tiny bit of work, will admit they are shit for towing right now.
@TechConnectify @tebrown
Even medium haul. Doing a long trip into the city from a rural area with a load is gonna be pretty terrible.
But day to day in-city work trucks are gonna handle the transition to electric pretty easily.
@TechConnectify @tebrown @Ancients all the people i know who do day to day in-city work hauling live 30-60 min outside the city.
so i don’t see it working for that either.
@amy @TechConnectify @tebrown @Ancients I know a few contractor friends who live in the city\suburbs. It'd work great for them, for any job also in the city. Depending on the specific friend, they'll range as far as a hundred miles from the city (or further, if the money is right to get hotels). I think it'll be a bit before they change over.
I'm curious to see if we'll see battery packs in the trailers to supplement the trucks battery when towing.
@amy @TechConnectify @tebrown @Ancients I still agree that it isn't ready for most people doing a lot of towing, but its getting more viable for more people.
Zach (JerryRigEverything) had a recent video on cold weather towing, Rivian R1T. It isn't much better on that side. It really highlights the charger problem for tailers.
@TechConnectify @tebrown @Ancients
I wonder if we'll start seeing trailers with their battery and motors in wheel to offset these issues.
@TechConnectify We at @show took our Bolt EV to Texas from Portland, our Niro EV from Seattle to Los Angeles...and that same Bolt from Portland to Las Vegas many times.
EVs are ready for nearly all use cases, and have been for several years. The charging networks still need work but honestly the times I charge en-route are vanishingly small - driving to Portland and back, if I need to, I just top up at my friend's house.
@Jessica I have mixed feelings about plug-in hybrids. I suppose that's appropriate ;)
If they all worked like the OG Volt, where the car could offer 100% power at any time without using the engine, I'd be more receptive to them. But way too many will start the engines up for more power, and are compromised as EVs.
They're also just... really hard to get people to use correctly, unfortunately. A lot of the Gen 1 Volts just don't get charged at all by their second and third owners.
@Jessica That's the trouble, though, a plug-in hybrid that never gets charged is worse than a conventional hybrid. They're almost always less-efficient on gas because of the added weight.
So unless you can *and will* charge them, you're better off with an ordinary hybrid.
This isn't to say there aren't plenty of folks charging theirs as often as they can, but it's a complication to consider on a lifecycle basis.
@catgirl @Jessica It's a little too complex for a toot, but basically most cars use engines that are really big and inefficient because accelerating a big hunk of metal is hard. They lug that engine around all the time and even use it for cruising.
A hybrid, though, will use a small engine running on the more-efficient Atkinson cycle which basically only has a bit more power than you need for high-speed cruising. An electric motor supplants it when accelerating.
@jake_arkinstall @TechConnectify @krssctt Don't mix up your units in the furlong firkin fortnight system.
(Curiously you could use attoparsec per microfortnight as a substitute to measure tape speeds and the numbers would be almost the same as ips.)
@krssctt @TechConnectify it gets more amusing: “MPGe” exists and is the figure that the US government typically uses to report their efficiency
(which is really miles per 33.7 kWh, the approximate energy content of a gallon of gasoline using the lower heating value)
@betazed @krssctt @TechConnectify Tons of TNT! That's a good unit of energy for Freedom-lovers!
kWh IS a funny unit, converting a unit of power back into a unit of energy, but it's what we're billed in, so it's really the only logical thing here.
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