The Electric Vehicle Thread

[zinger1457]

I have one 240 volt circuit for my dryer. I use the dryer maybe 5 hours a week. The rest of the time it could be charging my future EV. I am one of the people who has a garage where I could park an EV and charge it overnight. It would be easy to switch power to the dryer outlet for those 5 hours, I hope. The rest of the time the 240 volt circuit (30 Amps) could be available to charge the EV if I had one.

They sell smart boxes that are made for exactly that purpose, basically splits off the dryer outlet with a EV charging cable so no need to plug/unplug when using and controls usage to either the dryer/car so the circuit isn't overloaded.
https://www.amazon.com/NeoCharge-Amp-Smart-Splitter-Electrician/dp/B09RKBXVD9?th=1

 

[Chuckanut]

You could, but you’d probably want to upgrade the circuit to 50-60 amps, and replace the receptacle with a commercials grade. 30 amps may well charge fast enough for most peoples needs, but it could be faster. Most residential dryer receptacles are cheapos that aren’t meant to plug/unplug often and they will break down quickly. Most homeowners plug in a dryer once when they buy it, and never touch it again until they replace the dryer. FWIW

Agreed. Besides the dryer outlet is located in a laundry room off the garage at least 50 feet from where I would park my FEV (future EV). But the wiring to runs to that outlet is within five feet of the parking area. So, I would need a separate outlet for the FEV and some type of switch box to direct the power to the proper outlet.

 

[yakers]

Got our Chevy Bolt a couple weeks ago and GM paid for the 240 outlet installation, no cost to us. They would have hard wired a charging station but I went with the unit that comes with the car which is a 120/240 connecting box/cable. The breaker box shows 50 AMP connection, they only promised a 40 AMP service. Plenty fast enough for us, 120 worked fine for the first week.
Not new to electric cars had a Ford Fusion Energi and before that a Ford Focus Electric BEV. Old house had a hard wired charging station.
Great car, just what DW & I wanted although I wouldn't mind less range (for less$) as it is our second around town car. Would have bought DW a Tesla but its too big, nobody seems to want to make a small BEV. I miss the Smart For2 and the Fiat500E. The Tesla I would have liked was the Miata based one.
I suspect that China will send over some small size units as there is no one else covering that market segment, GM will discontinue the Bolt in Nov 2023.(To make Silverado pick ups in the plant)

 

[REWahoo]

Got our Chevy Bolt a couple weeks ago and GM paid for the 240 outlet installation, no cost to us. They would have hard wired a charging station but I went with the unit that comes with the car which is a 120/240 connecting box/cable. The breaker box shows 50 AMP connection, they only promised a 40 AMP service. Plenty fast enough for us, 120 worked fine for the first week.

I did the same and the 120/240 EVSE (charger) that came with the car worked great - until it didn't. It died with no warning after 8 months. GM replaced it at no charge since it was still under warranty but they made honoring the warranty an unnecessary hassle. The dealer said GM required me to bring in both the car and the charger to confirm it was bad, so I had to make an appointment, drive half an hour to the dealership and spend over an hour in the service dept waiting room for them to confirm it was bad. None in stock so I had to wait a week for a new one, make another appointment to pick it up as they insisted I bring the car in and wait over an hour once again while they took my Bolt back to the service bay to "install" the new unit. Total PITA and wasted almost 4 hours of my life for something that should have taken no more than 30 minutes.

The point of my rant is you might want to have a back-up plan for home charging as others on Bolt user's groups have also reported failures on their OEM units. While waiting for a replacement from GM I purchased an Emporia charger from Amazon and have been very happy with it. It is more substantial than the OEM unit and I really like the ability to manage both the rate of charge and the charging schedule from the app.

 

[ken830]

Wow. That sounds like a nightmare to get a replacement unit that costs GM no more than $100 or so.

I used the included 40 amp portable EVSE that came with my Model S daily for over 10 years and it had no issues. Still going strong.

 

[Masquernom]

I have no experience with EV's, but can't you just plug them into a 110 VAC outlet and they'll charge over night? 12 hours or so of 110 isn't enough?

 

[REWahoo]

I have no experience with EV's, but can't you just plug them into a 110 VAC outlet and they'll charge over night? 12 hours or so of 110 isn't enough?

110v charging is very slow. From "empty" to an 80% charge can take 40-50 hours.

 

[audreyh1]

I have no experience with EV's, but can't you just plug them into a 110 VAC outlet and they'll charge over night? 12 hours or so of 110 isn't enough?

I might gain 18 miles by plugging into 110 overnight. Definitely better than nothing, but not nearly enough for a long road trip.

 

[TriumphTR3fan]

110v charging is very slow. From "empty" to an 80% charge can take 40-50 hours.

A good rule of thumb using 120 volt charging ( level 1) is 4 miles of range for every hour charging. 240 volt (level 2) charging is about 29 miles per hour of charging. That’s why there is so much talk about 240 volt charging. I’ve used 120 volt charging when I am staying in one place for several days & it works well as long as I don’t need the vehicle for a while.

 

[ken830]

I have no experience with EV's, but can't you just plug them into a 110 VAC outlet and they'll charge over night? 12 hours or so of 110 isn't enough?

Your typical 120V outlet is on a 15A circuit. At 80%, you can at best pull 12A continuous, which is 1.4kW. A today EV uses about 250 to 400 Wh per mile. So in an hour of charging, you can get about 3-5 miles of range.

A 50A 240V single phase outlet allows you to draw a constant 40A at 80%. That's just under 10kW, which gives you right 24-40 miles of range per hour. A hardwired connector on an 80A circuit would be double that if the vehicle is equipped with a higher power onboard charger.

 

[DallasGuy]

I saw this about the Texas heat wave:

Meanwhile, the need for air conditioning has seen demand for power spike – and so has the price. Electricity prices doubled, and earlier this week got as high as $5,000 per megawatt-hour. Making matters worse, especially near the Gulf Coast, is unusually high humidity. Forecasters predict the temperatures are set to rise higher and last into the week of 4 July, meaning there is no prospect of early relief.

I know you probably wouldn't charge your car during this time, but dang, $5 a kilowatt hour with an average EV getting about 4 miles per kilowatt hour means it would be like paying $25 a gallon for gas.

I live in TX and pay about 11 cents/kwh (fixed rate) and I'm about 1 year into a 3 yr contract. Charging my EV in TX is very economical. The only people that could potentially get extremely high rates in TX are those that are dumb enough to sign up for electricity with a variable rate.

 

[Masquernom]

I see. 120 VAC would work ok for a PHEV with 30 - 40 miles of electric range then. But I see an EV would want 240 VAC.
We have a 240 VAC outlet in our garage already. So I guess if we ever get an EV, it will be fairly straightforward to power one vehicle at least. Probably wouldn't be too hard to move the outlet from the side wall to a spot between where our two vehicles park.

 

[Midpack]

I see. 120 VAC would work ok for a PHEV with 30 - 40 miles of electric range then. But I see an EV would want 240 VAC.
We have a 240 VAC outlet in our garage already. So I guess if we ever get an EV, it will be fairly straightforward to power one vehicle at least. Probably wouldn't be too hard to move the outlet from the side wall to a spot between where our two vehicles park.

Depends on the rating for the outlet. If it was for a dryer outlet, it’s probably not suitable for BEV charging.

 

[Chuckanut]

I live in TX and pay about 11 cents/kwh (fixed rate) and I'm about 1 year into a 3 yr contract. Charging my EV in TX is very economical. The only people that could potentially get extremely high rates in TX are those that are dumb enough to sign up for electricity with a variable rate.

Does this include road taxes that are normally covered in the gasoline tax?

 

[REWahoo]

Does this include road taxes that are normally covered in the gasoline tax?

Nope.

TX EV owners will pay for this via an additional $200/yr fee at registration beginning Sept 1.

 

[yakers]

I see. 120 VAC would work ok for a PHEV with 30 - 40 miles of electric range then. But I see an EV would want 240 VAC.
We have a 240 VAC outlet in our garage already. So I guess if we ever get an EV, it will be fairly straightforward to power one vehicle at least. Probably wouldn't be too hard to move the outlet from the side wall to a spot between where our two vehicles park.

Should work if you have an EVSC that you can power down to a low enough AMP flow to not challenge the circuit, should be at least double the flow of 120 VAC.

 

[Sunset]

Nope.

TX EV owners will pay for this via an additional $200/yr fee at registration beginning Sept 1.

So, for us being retired, we drive ~5K per year in total. This sort of flat rate tax system is of more benefit to the person driving 20K per year.

The "nice" thing about the gas tax we pay as both vehicles are gas, is we only pay more when we drive more.

 

[Chuckanut]

So, for us being retired, we drive ~5K per year in total. This sort of flat rate tax system is of more benefit to the person driving 20K per year.

The "nice" thing about the gas tax we pay as both vehicles are gas, is we only pay more when we drive more.

The solution is to tax people on a per mile driven basis. But, to be accurate that would require tracking our driving. That is fraught with risks to privacy.



How to best administer a mileage based road use tax really deserves a thread of its own since that affects far more than pure EVs.

 

[audreyh1]

So, for us being retired, we drive ~5K per year in total. This sort of flat rate tax system is of more benefit to the person driving 20K per year.

The "nice" thing about the gas tax we pay as both vehicles are gas, is we only pay more when we drive more.

We're driving around 12,500 miles per year so far on our EV - admittedly a lot of that is out of state, but TX is so big from where I live you have to drive a real long distance just to get out of the state. I'm not going to worry about it. Much cheaper than my motorhome registration was, ha ha. C'est la vie. At least I avoided the higher new EV rate and so far two years no road tax.

 

[Texas Proud]

The solution is to tax people on a per mile driven basis. But, to be accurate that would require tracking our driving. That is fraught with risks to privacy.



How to best administer a mileage based road use tax really deserves a thread of its own since that affects far more than pure EVs.

Not really... we currently (unless a law was passed that I do not know about) have to get our car inspected annually and they know the mileage and can look back a year and figure it out...


Sure, people can do illegal things to pay less but they are doing illegal things...

 

[REWahoo]

Not really... we currently (unless a law was passed that I do not know about) have to get our car inspected annually...

Guess you missed this:

Texas drivers will no longer need annual car [safety] inspections beginning in 2025

Of course there is a catch. You will still need annual emissions testing if you live in one of these 17 counties: Brazoria, Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, El Paso, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Johnson, Kaufman, Montgomery, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, Travis or Williamson county. Happy to say I live in one of the other 237 TX counties.

 

[Texas Proud]

Guess you missed this:

Texas drivers will no longer need annual car [safety] inspections beginning in 2025

Of course there is a catch. You will still need annual emissions testing if you live in one of these 17 counties: Brazoria, Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, El Paso, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Johnson, Kaufman, Montgomery, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, Travis or Williamson county. Happy to say I live in one of the other 237 TX counties.

I knew it was out there.... just did not know if it had passed... I live in Harris..

 

[audreyh1]

Guess you missed this:

Texas drivers will no longer need annual car [safety] inspections beginning in 2025

Of course there is a catch. You will still need annual emissions testing if you live in one of these 17 counties: Brazoria, Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, El Paso, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Johnson, Kaufman, Montgomery, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, Travis or Williamson county. Happy to say I live in one of the other 237 TX counties.

I missed that - wow!

I know the legislature has tried to drop that requirement several times.

 

[steady saver]

Nope.

TX EV owners will pay for this via an additional $200/yr fee at registration beginning Sept 1.

Maybe this is an obvious answer, but is that fee only at registration or is it a yearly fee?

 

[REWahoo]

Maybe this is an obvious answer, but is that fee only at registration or is it a yearly fee?

Yearly.