Where people live, the infrastructure exists. The US grid can handle existing load if almost 80% of current light vehicles moved to electric today (per DOE and NREL). This regulation is a cop out because the US is lazy.
There is neither the power, nor the electric lines, to carry all of the electricity needed. Making all of that needs to happen and happen fast but AFAIK it's not happening.
Have you tried using non-Tesla charging stations? It's a disaster! Those charging terminals are hastily thrown together pieces of junk, frankly. The hardware, software, billing, everything.
Most people should be doing most of their charging at home. As someone pointed out downthread, level 1 (120V/15A) charging should be sufficient to cover most people's daily driving needs as long as they can keep the vehicle plugged in while they're not driving it. Obviously this is much easier for some (people who own a home with a garage) than others (people who do not have a garage or other fixed parking spot) but that's a problem we can fix gradually as electric cars gain market share.
>Have you tried using non-Tesla charging stations? It's a disaster! Those charging terminals are hastily thrown together pieces of junk, frankly. The hardware, software, billing, everything.
I've used public CCS charging for several years and I think your assessment is more than a bit harsh. Is the Tesla network more refined, reliable, and widespread? Yes. Is the CCS option "a disaster"? Absolutely not. I would call it a mixed bag. Level-2 charging has just worked 99.999% of the time. DC fast charging there are stations that can be out of service more often than I would like, but if you use the plugshare app you will almost certainly be able to reliably find chargers that are both working and available.
It is extremely annoying to potentially have to use more than one app, but I would hope that will slowly change over time. The best thing the government could do is mandate some sort of centralized billing option for all of the various providers. For and GM are trying to do it through their apps but the problem is they only cover a subset of networks.
> Level-2 charging has just worked 99.999% of the time.
If Level 2 charging worked all but 1 in 100K trials, neither you (in several years) nor I (in 10 years) should have expected to be a favorite to have experienced even a single Level 2 charger outage. Instead, I've experienced multiple such failures every year.
I'm a pretty big supporter of the potential of EVs, and been very happy with mine (even having bought the cheapest and worst one: a Nissan Leaf). But, I'm also a fan of using correct estimations and data when confronting the problems with EV-related infrastructure and I estimate public Level 2 charging to be closer to 99.5% than 99.999% (1 in 200 failures vs 1 in 100K failures). That might even be a slightly generous estimate.
I've literally never come across an L2 charger not working anywhere in my state. I have seen one offline in the last 4 years. Looking at plugshare I see one site that had an outage for 2 days across all L2 chargers in the last 90 days.
Presumably you've got a database that you just forgot to link that you can reference for your information since you're a fan of correct estimations and data, and not just using your personal anecdotal experience. Because otherwise you're just being pedantic.
That's a common response I get from people who only have lived experience in the US west. You may not be aware but east of the Mississippi all the land is lived in, all of it. It's not empty like in the west outside of cities. Living in Wisconsin in one of the vast areas you assume people don't live in I've never even seen an EV station. I live in a duplex and would not be able to charge an EV car (no outside outlets, no way to run an extension cord across the shared parking lot, only one NEMA 50 outlet used by my oven). Forced EV policies unintentionally discriminate against the poor. And yes, 50% of people might be in large cities, but 50% are not.
Looking at that supercharge.info map I see the EV stations are 50 miles apart and only on major interstates. There are significant fractions of the population (ie, probably 1/3) more than 75 miles from any charging station. And the vast majority of destinations are just as far from them. There's literally only 30 for the entire state of Wisconsin and half are clustered in the two moderately large cities in the south. Why link the map when you knew it didn't confirm your assertion?
edit: I was wrong about the grid not being high capacity enough and I am happy to be corrected and learn I am wrong about that.
Yes, we'd need about 20% more electricity generation if all cars were EV's.
Even if 100% of all new cars sold today were EV's, it'd still take 20 years before essentially all cars were EV's. Add the 10 years to get to that point. So we have 30 years to add 20% more electricity generation capacity.
We're currently adding 50GW of capacity per year to our 1.3TW current capacity. IOW, about 4% per year. At that rate it'll take about 5 years to add enough capacity to handle a 100% EV fleet.
I have to laugh - yes, on paper, the US is ready in many areas.
In reality - it's not even close. The charging experience is a disaster. The grid? I'm not confident, to put it mildly. Politically? Nobody wants to drive what feels like a Prius - light-duty vehicles are unpopular, and the last thing EVs need is anything that feels like politicization.
I think by "light duty vehicle" the OP meant ordinary passenger vehicles. Under US law, essentially every vehicle with four or more wheels, under 10,000 lbs gross weight and no more than 10 passenger seating positions counts as one: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.3 That includes everything from smaller vehicles like the Mazda Miata or Mini Cooper all the way to large vehicles like the Cadillac Escalade or a Ford F-250.
Correct. I was referring to how almost everyone seems to want an SUV or a Truck. We can discuss the merits of that, or why that is, another time - however, forcing people to go back to small cars would breed resentment and turn EVs into a national political issue overnight.
Edit: And by "force," I mean "price out of the market" relative to gas-powered vehicle prices.
Almost every company making EVs these days has truck or SUV models planned if they do not already have them for sale. Even the most recent round of US subsidies for electric vehicles favors trucks and SUVs over cars by having a signficiantly higher price cap for those types of vehicle to qualify for the subsidy vs cars. For better or worse, the EV transition (in the US) is not going to force people to buy smaller cars.
I actually even reject that premise, because that comes with an implicit "I know better than you, because I read the science."
Science is only a small factor in everyday decision making for most people. Art is not scientific. "Feel" is not scientific. The feel of "safety" is not scientific. Etc.
When 37% of Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency expense, there are other things that need to be fixed first. Make Americans feel like they can afford more expensive vehicles - and they will buy expensive vehicles.
I'm quite happy with my Prius. I think it's a skill issue. Roof racks and a tow hitch on a normal sized car handle the vast majority of cases where people imagine they need a truck or SUV. But I remember a young couple showing up to buy a mattress from my roommate, and being flummoxed when the mattress wouldn't fit inside their Subaru Forester with built-in roof rails. I had to show them how to tie it on the roof. They never did return my rope... If you can only imagine putting things inside the vehicle or in the bed of a pickup truck, then having a truck or a big SUV must seem essential. What makes it even weirder is that the Prius has more interior space than a lot of SUVs.
https://supercharge.info/map (all automakers have adopted the NACS Tesla standard)
https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/blog-can-the-g...
https://www.6sqft.com/50-of-americans-live-in-the-countrys-1...