Why don’t they just test drive one they have on the lot?
I never found 10 minute test drives to be very informative. Rent one for a week, you have to shop around rental car locations; there are many locations other than the airport, and prices W.I.L.D.L.Y vary between airport and off-airport. Like 3:1 ratio.
Not rah-rah Tesla, this is just what happens when your company ONLY makes EVs.
All Teslas were built from the ground up to be EVs. Every design decision in them aligns with them being an EV. Aerodynamics was job 1 (that’s why all Teslas are exactly the same shape) and that has a huge impact on highway range. Close attention was paid to HVAC and cabin insulation, because that effects winter range.
It’s like the difference between a 1990s EV1 (scratch built to be an EV) and a 90s Toyota RAV4-EV (a complete afterthought, battery packs slapped onto an ICE frame). Of course the EV1 got better mileage.
So when you are heating or defrosting a car, you have two choices. Outside air, or Recirculate.
Recirculate means you are keeping the air in the cabin instead of taking in new air and pushing the old air outside. Don’t worry, you still get some air exchange. On an EV, recirc is important so you aren’t throwing overboard air you spent battery to heat. On a gas car, recirc is less important since heat is free.
However, recirc has a problem: your breath and perspiration and wet clothing are adding water to the air, and when you recirc, the humidity gets higher and higher. Hot air can hold more water than cold air, so when it hits the cold windows, they fog or frost.
The cure for that is to run the air conditioner (i.e. normal A/C mode). The cooling element is before the heating element in the heating ducts, so this acts as a dehumidifier, chilling the air, removing humidity, then re-heating the air. Obviously, running the A/C when it’s below freezing outside is “pumping downhill”, so it’s rather efficient. It also provides a source for the heating you do next. That’s why some cars have separate A/C evaporators and heat pump condensers in the ducting.
When water evaporates, it cools you. That’s what sweating and wind chill are all about. When water condenses, you get heat. You gain about 300 watt-hours for every pound of water you condense. And this water evaporating in your lungs, skin and clothes was chilling you, making you want cabin heat, so the dehumidification of the cabin earns that heat back. That’s why it’s nice to recirc and dehumidify instead of tossing that moist air overboard as you might do in an ICE.
Yes, they have a patent on that, they describe it as intentionally using the motor inefficiently.
I wonder if they can use that and the heat pump for dynamic brakes. (Regen but without the ability to put it in the battery, because it’s full).
There’s a Technology Connections for this.
You need to try it again with a Tesla. CCS is in a deplorable state right now.
I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%
That actually made things much worse. Batteries are most efficient charging in the 10-80% range. I would only push it to 100% if I had a BIG frontier to get across, like Rawlins-Evanston Wyoming.
Yeah, probably the tech said “bad battery” and the quote writer said “battery? OMG” and the tech never got an opportunity to say “not THAT battery!”
Get used to the new reality. The opening gambit for every supplier is to ask you to pay a fortune. Want to change an electric socket from beige to white? Oh hey, you need a $10,000 service upgrade. You heard about the K-shaped recovery, some get richer and others get poorer, and the rich just have too much money to really care. Suppliers have learned they’re leaving money on the table if they don’t quote like you’re one of the rich ones.
So ignore that nonsense, it was just them hoping to get a yes.
Already, auto plants get minor retoolings every model year during the summer shutdown (that being a tradition that went back to when it was too expensive to air condition a factory and too damn hot to work in the summer). And then every 4-12 years they do a total retooling from scratch, when they go to the next generation of car. E.g. going from the 5th generation Camaro to the 6th generation Camaro is not really a different exercise than going to an e-Camaro.
And that’s about how things are going, they are changing gas models to electric at about the interval they would be doing generation changes anyway.
Auto buyers already pay for the cost of these retoolings, and will continue to do so.
Actually they never stopped making Model T’s. They continue to make them for quasi-internal use at the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village as taxicabs within the complex, they’ll give you a ride in a real Model T for a few bucks.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be rah-rah Tesla, but this is reality in 2023, being worked on…
If you rent a Tesla, your on-board nav will make sure you stop in the right places, and you just plug into literally any Supercharger and the electricity charge shows up on the credit card you gave the rental car firm.
If you rent a non-Tesla, you’ll need Plugshare.com to look at performance ratings of stations, ABetterRoutePlanner.com to plot routes based on available EV charging, and a different phone app for every brand of station you stop at. Expect 20 minutes of “screwing around with your phone” the first time. And at the most popular chains, you’ll be queued up behind locals collecting free charging, because someone thought that would be a good idea.
If you get the impression that a team of people worked their ass off to make the Tesla rental experience smooth and seamless, and precisely no one worked at all to make the CCS car rental experience seamless, that is exactly what happened.
There’s still not nothing to do with Tesla, you still need to be on PlugShare to scope out each Supercharger for what’s near it to kill time. E.g. you have gone through your last drive-thru. Now, you select restaurants because they are an easy walk from DC chargers: plug in, walk into the restaurant and order at the counter. The “sitting in line at the drive thru” and “pumping gas” time-burns are deleted, and in its place is a pleasant meal. This broadens your options, because there’s no line at the inside counter at places infamous for monster drive-thru lines, like Culvers, Raising Cain or In-n-Out. And you have access to nicer places with no drive thru at all, like Chipotle, Panera, Mod Pizza etc.
When’s the last time you replaced the 12 volt battery? In 2014 nobody was fooling around with lithium 12-volt packs, they were just using bog-standard lead acid batteries If it’s more than 5 years old, it’s probably done.
And if you’re wondering why there is so much public anxiety about EV battery life, this is why. Everyone over 30 has had to replace an ICE car battery at least once. People just assume EV battries are made of the same stuff.
OK, so the "free"travel charger has 2 modes: Too slow and too fast. (too fast, as in “the official quote for $1700 installation”.)
The advantage to a wall unit is it unlocks intermediate speeds, such as 240V/15A - 3kW (a little over 2x level 1 speed) which you can run with cheap white 14/2 Romex… or 240V/20A - 4kW (3x level 1) which runs with cheap yellow 12/2 Romex. And from what you’re saying, either one is plenty. These are not expensive circuits to run.
The problem is you’re being conned by electricians into thinking “you gotta go 50A” which you do not.
Now if you really want 240V/20A in a travel unit, that’s available from DeWalt. But it’s not as much savings as you’ll need to add a $140 GFCI breaker if you don’t hardwire it.
Depends, kbb sell to dealer is a lower number than KBB private sale.
It’s worse than that. Cars wreck cities by encouraging anti-walkable sprawl development that cannot ever be served by transit (by design), and taking up disproportionate amounts of space for traffic and parking. Wide boulevards with few intersections (for flow) are poison to pedestrians. Having nowhere to walk has calamitous effects on health due to people being sedentary. The wealth people pour into cars robs them of wealth in other areas.
Throw that in their face. If they want to say EVs are unsustainable, it’s all unsustainable bro.
Except I figure half the dispensers will be broken…
Look into hypermiling or how to get better mileage. I don’t mean drive 20 MPH and draft trucks, but just the basics so you can make minor tunes to your habits.
which is actually kinda cool and enjoyable to drive
It’s only fun until you need to charge, if you’ve been slammed into a rental EV.
I urge you: Get into full Incredible Hulk angry and return the car to the nearest location and take a gas car. You’re just going to repeat all the same novice mistakes. Just return the car now before it poisons you for EVs forever.
our hotel (which unfortunately does not have charging)
No. That does not work. This is the root of your pain. Charging at the hotel is absolutely critical to travel success with an EV. It brings the car to 100% while you sleep and is typically free. Every single non-consensual renter who’s come on here has been “I can’t (don’t want to) change hotels”. Of course you don’t, but refusal will be costly.
OMG I feel sick to my stomach at what charging is going to cost us.
But on the bright side, you don’t have to change hotels! LOL! Seriously. This mentality “I won’t change hotel” is corrosive. It’s going to force you to chunk out 2-3 hours out of every day to go deal with charging. You might be able to parley it into a family outing to a restaurant, but it’ll take planning and luck. Better to use PlugShare and its reviews (and a phone) to pick a better hotel.
Nearby chargers are “$5 fee plus $0.50/minute” or even “$10 per hour”.
Those private charge stations - e.g. who intend it for internal or customer use, but will begrudgingly help a traveler in a jam. Thus the price is deterrent mode. Treat these stations as if they do not exist.
Set a few filters in PlugShare: Turn off plugs you can’t use - Tesla(fast), and Tesla if a Tesla Tap wasn’t provided. Also go “Hide restricted access” to cross off many private sites.
As far as stations that really want to be players in public charging, look for many stalls - I see City Mattress at 2421 Tarpon Bay Blvd in the Target parking lot near Chilis and Panera (and more restaurants on the wrong side of a non-crossable road) – and Electrify America at 9885 Collier Blvd in the Walmart parking lot near another Chilis and a few other restaurants. These are both DC fast chargers, going 50 kW on a Bolt, so ~1 hour to charge. These are orange in PlugShare. “Walmart and Target are too far, I don’t want to spend an hour there” -> but again, think of the money you’re saving on hotels! Seriously, carefully research what is nearby and find a way to include activities. Do not sit there at or in the vehicle, go do something!
In Palm Beach they’re all over the place. Look for the orange in Plugshare.
And these stations are going to be pretty much break-even with the cost of gasoline.
A warning about Electrify America: they’re owned by Volkswagen, and they convinced several automakers to give away X years of free electricity with new cars. As such, EA stations tend to be choked with locals only there for the free juice. Don’t go “there’s a queue of 8 cars at the EA station, surely all will be the same” - nope, only EA.
Interesting. Fun fact about McDonalds… most stores are franchisee operated… however, McDonalds corporate owns the real estate underneath the restaurant. Since they do, it’s easier for corporate to get the franchises to conform with a large rollout.
Now all they need is to get dispensers that move on rails so you can charge as you move through the drive-thru. Otherwise 3/4 of Americans will have to learn how to actually walk into a restaurant and order at a counter LOL. Actually, a slick thing they could do is let you order with the “app” and specify “deliver curbside to the charging gray Hyundai Ioniq 5” because that will narrow it down.
I’d like a citation on that.