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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

My friend who is not an EV driver got stuck with an EV rental (Bolt) for a semi-rural trip and boy was that a ton of drama.

I’ve been thinking hard about an EV myself and now I’m looking at PHEVs instead. I’ve gotten a crash course in EV charging around here and it’s not good. Level 2 chargers are not for spontaneous trips and level 1 chargers are fucking pointless. It estimated two and a half days to charge from 40-80% at my house. My house was wired for level 2 charging by the previous owners but the plug is 220 3 prong rather than the NEMA 14-50 plug that seems to be de rigeur lately. At least I could probably get an electrician to fix that cheap.

If anything the non CCS chargers are made by idiots.

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The Atlantic had a piece about the "surprise EV rental": https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/06/elect...

What they say is dead on -- EVs are great, but getting an EV in a rental situation that's not optimal for an EV without notice and without planning for it is a terrible, terrible situation.

Level 2 chargers are great in your garage, or in a place you're going to park for a long time anyway (hotels, say), but for quick top-offs on a road trip, yeah, not good.

Well the quarter of that article I could read seemed interesting.

The 80/20 rule made them furious. Academically I knew about it but I never had to experience it.

I have a hybrid, basically get 30 miles on a charge. It’s frankly perfect!

To put it simply, there are two types of modes I drive - short & in town or long (100+ mile round trip).

There is absolutely zero chance I’ll be using an EV to drive over 100 miles as there’s a risk I get stuck for hours or even need a tow.

For in town trips, 20-30 miles is more than fine and I never even switch to gas. There’s very little trips in between.

Tesla holds a decent spot for suburban regions where you drive 10-120 miles round trip. Arguably that’s probably fine for half of America. Particularly, if you have two cars (one gas, one electric) as most households with EVs do.

Dumb you're getting downvoted, because the charging infrastructure is bad. I was "EV curious" and recently rented a Kia EV with a 250 mile range for a trip to Northern California. I had two purposes - drive to/from San Francisco and Sacramento. Drive all around the Sacramento metro area. I figured California, probably having the best EV infrastructure, would make the experience a good one. I was wrong.

1) Half the stations we attempted to charge at were broken for various reasons. Sometimes it was the payment system. Sometimes it was charging as a whole. sometimes the CCS side was broken, sometimes the Tesla side was broken. Sometimes the screen was broken. The point is these are not-simple machines with massive amounts of electricity going through them. Many things break.

1/1 Davis 2/4 Davis 1/2 El Dorado Hills 0/3 Palo Alto 1/1 Palo Alto

2) Vendors. All terrible. All except one municipal L2 required you to download their app. Thankfully all allowed guest charging, but if I was evil, I'd require users to register. Good chance they're desperate, and good chance you're the only charger in the area.

The experience didn't put me off on EVs, and I'm still considering getting one because I can charge at home. Relying on infrastructure, though, is a terrible idea.

You just need a good EV. PHEV is like buying a typewriter with a screen when everyone is already buying computers. I have had a pure EV since 2019 and never had charging problems like that and I drive a lot. I have the 14-50 at home and it charges quickly, every morning I’m at 80% charge. Spend $100 to get an electrician to fix that for you.

I don’t have either, but it seems to me a PHEV is a great EV alternative for people who do a lot of local (city) driving and also occasionally need a vehicle to do weekend trips for camping, etc, where charging is not available or an inconvenience.

My household has an EV, a home level 2 charger, and I still wouldn't mind getting an PHEV. Not even for the weekend trips, but just because it's cheaper than another full EV, and I don't really drive enough to need the range beyond the battery on a PHEV.

The part of my brain that doesn’t understand how photovoltaics work really wants solar panels on EVs but aside from keeping the cabin at ambient, which does in fact have some mileage value, all they would really achieve is keeping self discharge at bay.

If you parked it with a 50 mile range and came back a week later, it might still have 50 miles of range.

Different people have different driving patterns and different needs.

Some parts of the country have less (and crappier) charging infrastructure. Those parts of the country coincide with areas where places are further apart and you need more range. For some of us who happily live in flyover states, a PHEV is an awesome in between.

I'm glad that an EV works out for you. Hopefully charging times (and charging infrastructure) will improve so that an EV works out for me as well. Until then, a PHEV works well for me and is far more efficient than a pure ICE.

I lived in a rural location and now in suburbs and still never had any issues, even 4 years ago when there were far fewer chargers. Here is a map of the level 2+ chargers in the country:

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/fi...

With 300 miles of range all you have to do is get to the next charger and if you're willing to spend 5 minutes in advance to plan your road trip it really doesn't add any extra time if you stop to charge while eating, using the restroom, etc. I like the extra cargo space not having an internal combustion engine gives me.

Who has a real 300 mile range? That Bolt was going to get lucky making over 180.

I've done 300 actual miles with my model 3 (long range) and now with my X as well. I've heard the Ioniq has good range as well and I'm sure more models are being released every few months from other brands with actual ranges over 300

> I lived in a rural location and now in suburbs and still never had any issues, even 4 years ago when there were far fewer chargers. Here is a map of the level 2+ chargers in the country:

As he said, different circumstances can shift the solution point. What you have someone that doesn't have a data plan on their phone, or doesn't carry a smartphone and thus doesn't have access to a mapping app? Or the charge point requires a smartphone app that I don't connectivity to use with?

For me as well an EV is questionable. My gas burning SUV is $1100 a year to insure, tax included. A Tesla Model 3 at the same level insurance would could me $6014 a year before taxes. I don't drive enough to save $5000 in gas and maintenance a year.

Then there's my garage. Long story short, the best it can do right now is 120V 6A charge speed. To properly upgrade my garage to support a full EV would cost an additional $2500. Assuming if I also have to upgrade the electrical mains from 100A to 200A, it's $15,000 to $25,000. And my electricity costs 20 cents a kilowatt hour.

Does buying an EV it still make sense after all that if you were in my circumstances?

> A Tesla Model 3 at the same level insurance would could me $6014 a year before taxes.

I find that incredibly difficult to believe. According to [1], the average cost to insure a Model 3 is $2500, which tracks with what I am paying.

Who quoted you $6k/year?

[1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/vehicles/tesla/...

TD Insurance and Intact as well as a from an insurance broker.

You must have a terrible record or something. No one is getting quoted $6k/year unless they have a felony hit and run on their record or something equally as egregious. Not even in Canada.

I just got on Intact’s website and got a quote for one John Smith, 18 year old male from Branford, Ontario. John wanted a quote on a Tesla Model 3 Performance. Their quote was $3200/year.

You want to try and explain why it is that you are getting quotes that are twice that of the highest risk drivers?

You are right. I mistakenly failed to pay the parking meter on time 7 or 8 years and was issued a ticket. Of course I threw myself at the mercy of the courts; a simple mix up of days I pleaded. It was not the statutory holiday I thought it had been that would have waived the parking fees. And I paid my ticket immediately. But they would have none of it. So unforgivable was my crime, so heinous, so far murder or rape, that there could only be one punishment that could be appropriate for my sin; to be executed.

I await on death row now. The chosen method of execution is to be killed by old age 60 or 70 years from now, being withered and worn by the ravages of time. Most cruelly in the interim, I am expected to work a 37 hour work for 48 weeks out of the year in grueling conditions. A climate controlled office with an ergonomic chair in front of a computer with Visual Studio Code open.

Sometimes it seems like if it would not have been kinder to simply kill me there and then. Those days I ask myself why they keep me here. Just to suffer?

tl;dr

No accidents, no claims, no criminal activity on record except the one parking ticket. I don't pretend to comprehend why the quotes are that way for me.

In comparison my current SUV is $1100 a year same level of coverage as that quote. Just for fun I got a quote for an 2022 Acura NSX a while ago and it was $1500 a year, and the NSX is quite a bit more expensive then a Model 3.

Yeah, you’re lying.

Sure about that?

https://ibb.co/8cjXRHc

...although yes I am lying about being on death row. Canada doesn't practical capital punishment. Certainly not for parking violations.

Yes. I am certain that you are being deceptive.

So I looked around.

For a 33 year old driver, single, male, unmarried, with no tickets/accidents/etc., living in Sudbury, ON:

Intact Insurance:

2022 Tesla Model S LR 4DR: $178.17/mo [1]

2022 Acura NSX Hybrid 2DR AWD: $535.08/mo [2]

TD Insurance:

2022 Tesla Model S LR 4DR: $232.42 [3]

2022 Acura NSX Hybrid 2DR AWD: "CALL" [4]

Rather than calling I went to BrokerLink, which lets you get quotes from different sources. The average quotes given by BrokerLink for each vehicle were:

2022 Tesla Model S LR 4DR: $360/mo [5]

2022 Acura NSX Hybrid 2DR AWD: $520/mo [6]

So no, I do not believe you are being honest. There is no reason to believe that.

[1] https://imgur.com/kCNmYDb

[2] https://imgur.com/BfkXpMp

[3] https://imgur.com/S3KH9df

[4] https://imgur.com/qBbLScb

[5] https://imgur.com/bMW5kol

[6] https://imgur.com/va47isk

I'm a little curious then, try your numbers with the 'L6R 2S5' postal code.

You need fast charging at home, end of story. If you can only get 120V at home, forget it. That being said once you do get it, it's so nice never having to stop at a gas station again.

As for insurance, you should shop around. Not sure what's on your driving record, but it was $90/mo for me to insure my brand new model 3 when I had that vehicle. But I don't have any tickets/accidents or large claims.

As for your plug, that's cheap and easy to replace (literally the homeowner can do it in most jurisdictions, be safe) - the question is the size of the breaker/wire routed to the plug.

If your breaker is fifty amps, then changing for NEMA 14-50 shouldn't be more than $100-200 even if you hire a master electrician.

If the breaker is NOT fifty amps, then you have to carefully check that the wire is the sized correctly all the way from the box to the outlet (it can LOOK right coming out of the breaker box, and look right going into the outlet box, but somewhere hidden in the walls it changes to an incorrect size).

> Level 2 chargers are not for spontaneous trips

What do you mean by this? Do you mean "public L2 chargers" or private in-home L2 chargers? If public, I agree--it would take 4 hours to charge your car on a road trip, but if private then just keep your car charged to 80-90%.

> My house was wired for level 2 charging by the previous owners but the plug is 220 3 prong rather than the NEMA 14-50 plug that seems to be de rigeur lately. At least I could probably get an electrician to fix that cheap.

There are multiple NEMA 3-prong 220V standards, at least one of which is 50V and at least Tesla sells charger adapters for all of them. If you're buying an EV though you may as well shell out the extra $500 + labor and have an electrician install the dedicated charger (so you can keep your portable charger in the car for traveling).

> If anything the non CCS chargers are made by idiots.

I'm not sure what this means either. The Tesla charger isn't CCS and I haven't had any problems with it. Also, plenty of CCS chargers suck (at least one of the CCS standards is exclusively L2).

For the large majority of driving PHEVs are superior. They offer identical efficiency for short (<50 mile) trips at a large cost savings. They can handle longish trips where a BEV would wind up dead on the side of the road. Even in the rare circumstances where BEVs are better the advantages are slight.

Hybrids are great.

There are downsides: extra weight of a gas engine, more mechanical complexity, and weird maintenance, especially if its an gas engine your not using very often. The person I know who has one went a couple months without using much gas. Does gas go bad?

That's a great point to raise, because yes, gas does go bad. Without added stabilizer, it lasts 3-6 months.

It does, but smart cars can use pretty simple math to work out how old your gas is and burn gas as needed to keep the age of your gas low enough.

A Bolt is about the worst EV someone could use for a road trip.

Oh it was terrible even by proxy. It would drop estimated range at about 2 miles per mile. Took all day to get between two metropolitan areas. Spent several hours at a level 2 to ensure they didn’t get stuck in the woods with crap cell coverage.

Eh, it's not great but it's totally doable as long as it isn't winter. My understanding is that a Nissan Leaf is much much worse than a Bolt for road trips...

I just did an NYC to Cleveland trip in my Bolt EUV, along a route with only a few DC charging locations, and never once had to wait for an available charger -- even on Memorial Day.

That said, if you need to use the heater, then yeah it's not viable for a road trip. No heat pump, so major battery drain.

The other key to a Bolt road trip is to avoid speeding too much. There's an absolutely tremendous difference in range when going 65 mph vs 80 mph.

> My understanding is that a Nissan Leaf is much much worse than a Bolt for road trips...

As a Nissan Leaf owner, yes. Because of CHADeMO (that is going to be a big problem in a few years, as existing stations fail and don't get replaced) and because of the passively cooled battery pack. I can do one DC fast charging no problem without much change in battery temps (CA weather). 2 or 3 in the same day? Might get toasty.

That said, all EVs have issues during winter(Tesla included, their EPA ranges are way overstated). It's just that, for a Tesla, it's easier to find a supercharger.

The consumption difference due to speed affects all cars, no matter their drivetrain. For ICE, that burns a hole in your pocket as it causes you to stop at gas stations more often.

re: winter range, my understanding is that EVs with heat pumps (including Teslas) tend to have much more efficient heaters than ones without heat pumps (e.g. Bolts).

re: speed and consumption, for sure. But because the Bolt's DC fast charging rate maxes out at a fairly lame 50-55 kW, and speeding => reduced range => more charging time required, so on a long Bolt road trip there's diminishing returns from speeding a ton. I suppose it depends a lot on terrain and climate though, since e.g. speeding can be more beneficial if it means you're running the heater for less time.

The Bolt's charging speed is glacial. San francisco-> Palm Springs and spent 2 1/2 hours charging vs about 50 minutes total in the Tesla.

The 50 minutes in the Tesla is the same time for a bathroom and quick food stop. The additional hour and a half in the Bolt is pure time wasted.

Add even more time if you drive faster than 65.

If your commute is less than 100 miles, you have nothing to worry, if you get a proper charger at home. Owned Tesla for 3.5 years with 60 mile commute, it has been very nice.

If this is true, what is EV replacing?

If my commute is less than 100 miles should I not be using train, light rail, trolley, bus, or similar public transport?

The historical use for me and my family and those who has a car, for generation was "road trips", anything over 100 miles.

Where do you live?

In my current city, taking a 10 mile bus ride would take more than an hour, vs. 10 minutes in a car.

I do not live in New York.

Plenty of people drive a car for short trips and those in rural areas will likely continue to do so. Also, consider company vehicles for workers transporting heavy equipment or delivery vehicles. All within the range of current EVs for a full day. EVs won't fix car traffic issues in cities, but public transit won't cover 100% of cases effectively.

For fun, I just looked up my route tomorrow using public transportation.

I typically leave around 6:30am, drive 45 miles and arrive at work about 7:15am.

Using Google and a host of websites to plan, I could walk a mile to catch a regional bus, ride and arrive there 1 hour after I began. I can then walk to another bus station, ride a local bus to a the main bus station, connect to another bus that drops me off pretty much at my workplace. I'd arrive 2.5 hours after I began this journey. The earliest I can get to work by this route is 9:30am. The regional bus system doesn't run any earlier.

Alternatively, if I take our non-ev, it's the same time, but costs 5x as much as our Model Y. The ICE car cost about the same as the EV.

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