All-electric households?

kltye

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My girlfriend and I live in an apartment in downtown Chicago, and we only have one car, and no garage charging. Her family lives 600+ miles away in W. Va. The additional planning doesn't bother us, since we used to hunt for cheap gas along the route anyway, and all of the DCFC stations aren't really out of the way. I used to drive a 2013 Fusion, and she drove a C-Max Energi PHEV; we sold both to finance the MME. So far, no complaints. We don't road trip that much anyway - 600+ miles every few months is about more than I'd want to do in any type of car. We don't enjoy dealing with poor drivers, and rather get to our destination more quickly, i.e., flying :)
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dtbaker61

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My '09 Escape Hybrid is starting to show it's age and I'd like to replace it with a PHEV. I wish the Maverick were available in PHEV ... or even a Transit Connect. We need something to haul my telescopes (big crates) and bikes. Part of the desire for a PHEV over a full EV is that astronomy destinations (dark sky areas) are rural and wont have 240v power available for Level 2 charging. So we'd be stuck with Level 1 at best. But with a PHEV that wouldn't matter.
The was (briefly) a BEV eTransit Connect around 2011-2012. Unfortunately the drivetrain and battery implementation was done as a Joint Venture w Azure Dynamics.... and went belly up since they had low volume, high cost, lost money on every unit and not much support from Ford Corporate. Volume never went up and the project died a quiet death leaving about a thousand of these things without support.
 

JamieGeek

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My '09 Escape Hybrid is starting to show it's age and I'd like to replace it with a PHEV. I wish the Maverick were available in PHEV ... or even a Transit Connect. We need something to haul my telescopes (big crates) and bikes. Part of the desire for a PHEV over a full EV is that astronomy destinations (dark sky areas) are rural and wont have 240v power available for Level 2 charging. So we'd be stuck with Level 1 at best. But with a PHEV that wouldn't matter.
Michigan Dark Sky locations usually have a campground nearby with available 14-50 plugs...

Lake Hudson Recreation Area has a campground and Headlands International Dark Sky Park has Wilderness State Park nearby--not to mention a KOA in the vicinity as well.
 

Nklem

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I am not mid west. I am coastal but with no infrastructure in rural Maine. The closest fast charger (Singular, 50 KW, Charges Mach E at 42 KW) is 116 miles and the next bank (EA, 100+ KW) 156 miles and finally the next (EA, 100+KW) 200 miles from me.

I am all electric and have no ICE cars anymore. It all works since 95% +of my charging it at home or work and I have no complaints/regrets/concerns. I am a Mechanical Engineer as well.

Having the Extended Range, makes me a lot more confident, to be totally honest. While my Select would have got me to the closest DCFC in the Winter for southerly trips, the 1 hour wait for charging was crazy (due to available charger sizes). If it was a 150KW unit, I may have second thought my upgrade decision.

I was concerned with reliability too. Having my Select for 6 months and 11,000 trouble free miles, including a few 700+ mile road trips, proved to me how good the Mach E was. Fingers crossed the ER holds up just a well. My Hyundai EV has been flawless for 20,000 miles.

It's nice to know that Maine is adding 6 DCFC chargers within 15-80 miles of me in two directions. The bad news, they are all 50 KW units and will not be online until Mid 2022.
 

generaltso

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We need a 7 seat SUV, so currently we are looking at PHEV. XC90 Recharge is about the only option right now.
If you can wait until next year, the new Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV looks promising.
 


imstriker

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As we sit right now, we could not even go all electric for travel. There are several reasons that keep us with at least one gas vehicle today...
  • High school/travel hockey requires driving to places where the infrastructure is not ready. We made a trip to Evansville two weekends ago and are off to Fort Wayne this weekend. Neither have enough charging on the way or there to be feasible. Hopefully coming soon.
  • We have a camper and a boat that need to move. It will be interesting to see how electric towing goes with range, but I think we are still a long way away from it being feasible.
 

blazinazn

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I would love to go all-electric but right now it's not feasible due to hobbies which require long drives to areas with no shot at charging infrastructure probably in the next 10 years. Ideally after my wife gets here MME we would look into getting a PHEV SUV as I work from home so it would be rarely used for long trips and for most errands it would run on battery except for those long trips.
 

jjhenry

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We need a 7 seat SUV, so currently we are looking at PHEV. XC90 Recharge is about the only option right now.
The 2022 Lincoln Aviator is available in a PHEV version as well.
 

connoisseurr

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A former colleague of mine has a Model X and a Mach E (is planning to replace the Model X with a Lightning). Their family lives in Wyoming on about 400 acres of land - in the middle of nowhere. They have about a 3000 sq ft house with a 15Kw solar array and energy backup solutions. They've been without power for up to a week at one point, and have sustained exclusively on solar power, including charging vehicles during the day with excess solar production. I envy them :)
 

TruWrecks

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I only have an EV. I live 68 miles from the nearest public charger. I charge at home. I have solar going in next year to make sure I don't have power outages.

I don't miss dino fuel.
 

Awmustang

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I love driving electric, but my wife has no interest in the planning required for road trips in an EV. I think we've found a good compromise with my MME and her RAV4 Prime. We've had the RAV4 for 3 months and 2000 miles (including a 350 mile road trip) and still have never put gas in it, so it's working out pretty well so far.
Wait... you did a 350 mile road trip in a RAV4 Prime in 40 mile chunks so you never used gas?! Or you used the initial full tank from the dealer for that trip and now don't have much gas in the tank?
 

TheVirtualTim

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Michigan Dark Sky locations usually have a campground nearby with available 14-50 plugs...

Lake Hudson Recreation Area has a campground and Headlands International Dark Sky Park has Wilderness State Park nearby--not to mention a KOA in the vicinity as well.
I used to camp or get a nearby hotel when going out to dark-sky areas. But I've also rented an RV -- originally for the Solar Eclipse back in 2017. But I liked it so much that I started renting them each year. Via websites like Outdoorsy.com you can can arrange to rent an RV or camper ... and even have the owners deliver them to your campground so you don't even have to tow it ... it's there waiting for you when you arrive (Outdoory is sort of like Airbnb ... but for campers & RV's instead of condos & houses.) You arrive with your own car ... but need a way to charge the car if it's electric.

I go up to Gladwin each year for the Great Lakes Star Gaze ... the campground there only has 110v service with 30 amp RV hookups ... but that would still only get you level 1 charging because they don't have any 240v service available. I could only find Level 2 charging in the area ... and that would mean driving to a charger and waiting hours and hours for the charge. No DC Fast Charging was nearby. With a PHEV ... we wouldn't need to worry about it (and level 1 charging is fine for a PHEV because the battery pack is usually pretty small ... you really only get about 25 miles of range anyway ... so an overnight at 120v/12amps is good enough.

Some campgrounds will have (often a limited number) "high amperage" sites that have a NEMA 14-50 plug. You have to check ... because many campground do not.

I'm not yet familiar enough to offer a guess as to what percentage of campgrounds have 240v NEMA 14-50 outlets... but it seems like a minority of them. Everyone seems to have the standard "RV hookup" which is a 30 amp outlet ... but only at 120v service.
 

TheVirtualTim

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As we sit right now, we could not even go all electric for travel. There are several reasons that keep us with at least one gas vehicle today...
  • High school/travel hockey requires driving to places where the infrastructure is not ready. We made a trip to Evansville two weekends ago and are off to Fort Wayne this weekend. Neither have enough charging on the way or there to be feasible. Hopefully coming soon.
  • We have a camper and a boat that need to move. It will be interesting to see how electric towing goes with range, but I think we are still a long way away from it being feasible.
Oh... you HAD to mention Fort Wayne. I ranted about this in another post. There is literally NO public accessible DC Fast Charging anywhere near there.

As for towing... the F150 Lightning tows 10,000 lbs. It's 300 mile range is based on assumption of having 1000 lbs of payload.

In simple physics, it takes energy to overcome inertia and get the load moving. But once it is moving, it wants to maintain that velocity ... so it's no big deal to keep it in motion. Other forces (friction) create drag and MOSTLY that will be air resistance. So it really depends on (a) how aero are your trailers and (b) how fast are you moving through the air. The apparent density of the air increases relative to the square of the velocity. Driving a little slower will help a LOT.
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