Are we in the Golden Age of electric cars

[AKgrampy]

Like the Ford Model T I believe the golden age will be when the masses can both afford a BEV and easily charge it. I am by no means an expert but right now BEV’s are a bit expensive and the charging access for apartment dwellers is abysmal at best. They also need access to the same cost of power we who charge at home have. Here in Alaska electricity is fairly expensive but fairly inexpensive in most of the lower 48. If apartment dwellers can only have access to public chargers where the costs are quite a bit more than at home then I am not sure the golden age will ever occur. BEV’s may take over but it is not so “golden” when forced to pay 30 cents per kWh while home chargers are less than 10 cents. As for overloading the grid that is kind of a bogus thing. All you have to do is defer charging from the peak, say 5 - 9 PM, and there will not be an issue as far as power delivery. The cost of power during the night may rise as there may no longer be an off-peak power demand as exists today. I am an old fogey so I may not live to see it but It would be awesome to charge my car at night for 6 cents or so and then sell some of it back to the utility during peak at 12 cents (for example - purchase at off peak and sell back at peak). That would be golden!

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[TGIF]

4. (Time to refuel) Is a bit tricky and this is something I point out to people who ask about it.

With an ICE car, the ONLY way to refuel is to visit a service station and wait for it to refuel. You might be doing this by finding a station along the way without doing a detour -- but I don't know many people who own a gas pump in their own driveway. So it always involves some effort.

While you *can* (and on a road-trip you would) do this with an EV ... for everyday use, that's not what we do.

I arrive home. I plug in the car and walk inside to enjoy the rest of my day. I do not wait for the car. If it is raining outside, I do not stand in the rain while fueling. If it is 5°F outside, I do not stand in the cold while waiting for the car to "refuel".

I plug-in ... and ignore it.

I tell people who drive ICE cars that I spend less time refueling my car than they do --but my "time spent" is the time -> I <- have to invest. I don't count the time when I ignore the car and go enjoy doing whatever I want while the car takes care of itself. For ALL of my around-town needs, without a single exception, I NEVER stop to recharge ... ever. This is a claim that I can't make when driving my ICE car -- when the needle says I need fuel, I have to go find a station.

If we are road-tripping beyond the range of the battery ... then the tables are turned. But again ... not as badly as you might suspect. I *just* had this conversation with someone on Sunday. I have a friend who lives 285 miles away and just slightly over a 4 hour drive.

While the 285 miles is just barely beyond the range of the car ... it's not the range, but the time. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am not going to sit in a car for 4 hours without stopping for a break. At some point I'll want to use a bathroom and maybe get food or beverage along the way.

The last time I road-tripped with the car, I'd take advantage of the recharge stops to give myself a break and some food. And more than once the car was ready to go again *before* I was. By the time I ordered and got food ... and had time to eat it ... the car was ready to go again.

This was not always the case. On some stops I'd get back to the car -- having used a restroom and grabbed a drink or snack -- and the car still needed another 10 minutes before it was ready.

If the only thing you do is stop and wait with the car while it charges, then sure ... waiting 30-40 minutes for a charge takes longer than fueling. But since you don't have to wait with the car and can grab a break -- it's really not that long. I should point out that this is not true of an ICE vehicle. You are legally required to supervise the refueling process -- it is not legal to walk away while the car refuels (even though I fully know people do this.)

Agree. I just took my first 300 mile one way road trip. I think it added about 10-15 minutes over the same trip in an ICE vehicle. The car could have made the trip in one stop but I couldn’t have, so I mapped out the trip using two chargers. It was through a bit of a charging desert so I topped off before the long haul as it was my first road trip. I used the extra charging time to make a few phone calls and check my emails. Public charging still cost me less than gas, too. Change your expectations, embrace the ”downtime “, and you will be pleasantly surprised.