I think because in the US at least it has been fairly expensive for its capabilities, and it doesn’t qualify for the federal tax credit which adds another $7500 to the price difference for many shoppers.
I like Volvo’s designs a lot, but it’s hard to justify a $20k net difference over a decently equipped VW ID.4.
Forming a queue and respecting it is nice etiquette, but I wouldn’t expect it to work perfectly or scale well especially when chargers are just in random corners of parking lots.
We either need software queuing solutions as a stopgap, or enough chargers - and connected charger routing - to minimize wait times.
I think any effort spent on improving the queuing process is really better spent on charger buildout and reliability.
As for the charge failure I think that’s really up to the owner and their car. Some cars can send a notification if charging stops, and some charger apps will do this as well. But there’s really nothing you can do as an observer.
Thankfully I’ve only had to wait for charger once, and there wasn’t any organized queue. I just parked and waited a bit until I saw a spot open up.
You can search for “EV cradle to grave emissions” to find analysis comparing the total lifetime emissions of EVs versus other vehicle types including the initial manufacturing emissions. This is typically lower for EVs even when the emissions from manufacturing and the power grid are included. This gets better over time with manufacturing efficiency and more renewable energy in the power grid.
Of course “Environmentally friendly” is a spectrum. Walking or riding a bike or taking an electric train to work are all going to have a lower lifetime emissions than buying a new EV.
Electric motors are cheaper, smaller, and simpler devices than ICE engines.
Two electric motors probably is cheaper - both in parts and assembly steps in the factory - than one motor plus a transfer case / center diff, a driveshaft, and another rear diff.
Electric motors are small and can be packaged down near the axle, so the rear motor doesn’t take up all the cargo room.
The place the driveshaft would go through is also the best place to mount the battery pack. So no driveshaft means better packaging for the battery.
Also you can use two smaller electric motors to get the combined power output you want, rather than one large motor that has to produce all of that power and then deal with drivetrain losses from the AWD system.
3 phase 208 is very common in commercial buildings and apartment buildings in the US. We just only deliver two of those phases to a single apartment giving effectively single phase 208v power.
Lots of public L2 chargers are actually 208V instead of 240V because of this. For example a 6.6kW L2 charger is likely 208V / 32A.
I dunno. It’s charged to 80% every morning, and something less than that when I get home and plug it back in.
Tesla have said they are working on a cheaper next generation car.
Any details about that car are so far unconfirmed. Including when or where it will be made.
Since we haven’t seen any prototypes or progress on production lines it is probably still at least two years from release at this point.
A car built in Berlin is not European?
I’m 6’5, 280lb, and pretty broad-shouldered. Of course an F-150 is going to have more room in general, but I fit fine in a Model 3 as long as nobody needs to sit behind me.
EV crossovers can be slightly more cramped than ICE versions due to the battery pack under the floor plus low rooflines for aerodynamics. I found the Mach-E to feel a bit compact, but the Ioniq 5, ID.4, and Model 3/Y were more spacious. The EV6 feels like crawling into a coffin, but it might have been reduced headroom from the sunroof in that trim.
So most of your sources for hydrogen involve using the same dirty energy sources that you criticize EVs for using.
And hydrogen vehicles use more of that energy for every mile driven for the life of the vehicle.
PHEVs can be low emissions if the battery is really large enough to cover your daily commute and you can charge it every day at home or work. At which point it’s really just a small battery EV. This isn’t a solution for anyone who can’t charge at home or work though.
Where does the hydrogen come from?
Gas stations don’t do this. They just built enough gas stations that it isn’t an issue.
The number of EV chargers needed to make this not an issue is even less than the number of gas stations due to the amount of charging happening at home and work.
I agree that this is an issue today. But if each of those scenarios you are thinking about where one person is taking a long time to charge to 100% had 16+ chargers that dynamically shared power between the chargers, and each town had several of those charging stations, it wouldn’t be an issue.
The manufacturers that have said they are switching to NACS and getting Supercharger access have said they will make adapters available to their existing customers.
Seems like Tesla is going to be adding more built-in adapters going forward, but they probably aren’t going to go back and add them to the 15,000 existing chargers, or if they do it will take a few years.
It will take time, years, to update all existing US Superchargers with magic docks.
That may yet be part of the plan, but vehicle adapters will let CCS vehicle drivers start using all of the existing V3 chargers in 2024 instead of waiting until 2026 or beyond.
Ford has said their customers will be able to use 15,000 Superchargers (basically all the V3 chargers) starting in “early 2024”
I’m hoping they’re prioritizing Adairsville because Fort Valley already has V3 SC’s that will be open to Mercedes vehicles next year anyway.
The Adairsville Buc-ee’s has V3 Superchargers as well.
I’ll say that a 1400 mile road trip on a holiday weekend in the snow in an EV that isn’t known for its road tripping prowess is basically the worst case scenario.
I don’t know how frequently you make such trips but that’s like a once a year thing for me. So a bit of inconvenience there is offset by the other 363 days of the year when my car is charged each morning in my garage.
In a Model 3 in non-snowy weather my usual pace is a 10-15 minute stop every 2 hours or so of driving. With the Supercharger network on similar drives I have had lower costs as well.
As others have mentioned usually charging to 100% along the way is slower than charging to 50-60% and continuing on. The percentage at which charging slows down depends on your car. Some chargers charge per minute instead of per kWh so those longer charge sessions may have contributed to the cost.