Move over Tesla, it’s the Sony Vision-S

We got sensitive when communication went written. This is not new. In the absence of body language, it's all we've got and so it's important. This has been the case in online communication since the Usenet days. The difference is that a higher percentage of the average person's communication is now written and immediate, whereas back in the Usenet days it was a smaller group and everyone else yelled at each other via the letters section of the newspaper.

Not all EVs have Elon Musk involved, that's an important thing to remember. It's possible to talk about EVs without also bringing any Tesla-related baggage to the table. Well, it is if you try.

We do have 220V all over the place. Any power line can supply it, so it's just a matter of a hookup. And there are hookups everywhere: RV parks. Borrow a 50A plug for a while and you've got yourself basically a Level 2 charger. It's not as fast as a Supercharger or a hotrod Electrify America CCS hookup, but it's literally an order of magnitude faster than you'll get off 110V. And yes, the RV parks are realizing this.

We've talked about this in other threads as well - but EVs have a different behavior than ICE vehicles. The only time you really have to worry about charging speeds is when your daily usage exceeds the range of the vehicle. Otherwise, you just plug it in at night and you have full range in the morning. Doesn't matter if you're rural or urban. Not everyone has wrapped their head around that. Sure, if you want to drive cross-country you have to do a bit of planning. If you rack up 400 miles every day, EVs aren't there yet. But the average driver only covers 37 miles per day (source: NHTSA and a calendar) so it's fairly apparent that this doesn't apply to everyone. Wyoming drivers cover more ground than any other state, at just under 60 miles/day, BTW. I didn't get an average for Alaska :)

In reply to Gingerbeardman :

Most everyone here knows this- I'm a product development engineer at Ford.  Specializing in very low emissions vehicles.  Having grown up in the 70's, I'm a HUGE proponent of clean technologies, as the air and water we consume is light years better than it was when I was a kid.

My company builds all types of cars- full gas, all ranges of hybrids, and electrics.  Soon we will even have an E-F150.  

That's where my perspective of this comes from.

I'll be retiring in just over 2 years- you can have my job then....  

But in the mean time, I do my best to point people here to be more environmentally friendly, as if you do business in that plane, you will have a lot more success in the long run.  I've been repeating my issues with EV's for at least 5 years now, so I see no real need to repeat it.  Many here think my issues are not important, and I don't think I've seen any realistic change to move the needle enough.

Musk does rub me very wrong, as he calls my entire industry morons.  But now I see that he thinks that a tech/software model of development and release saves so much time and money that he can be more nimble and make money.  Sad thing is that he still has not seen how doing that has really hurt Tesla.   But time will tell, and I really think the only company who will really kick the crap out of that attitude is Toyota.  The rest of us are fumbling with what the future means.

Unless people actually use the electric scooters here...  

I musta lost the point in the conversation where this went sideways... 

EVs are going to develop and improve until one of two things happens- The tech hits a wall and fizzles out (nuclear cars, anyone?), or, the tech improves to the point where they are a viable competitor with internal combustion technology. 
 

Either way, competition will help sort out issues, it always does. From the current look of things, the technology will eventually be comparable to an ICE powered car. In cities, it basically is...

Keith Tanner said:

We got sensitive when communication went written. This is not new. In the absence of body language, it's all we've got and so it's important. This has been the case in online communication since the Usenet days. The difference is that a higher percentage of the average person's communication is now written and immediate, whereas back in the Usenet days it was a smaller group and everyone else yelled at each other via the letters section of the newspaper.

Not all EVs have Elon Musk involved, that's an important thing to remember. It's possible to talk about EVs without also bringing any Tesla-related baggage to the table. Well, it is if you try.

We do have 220V all over the place. Any power line can supply it, so it's just a matter of a hookup. And there are hookups everywhere: RV parks. Borrow a 50A plug for a while and you've got yourself basically a Level 2 charger. It's not as fast as a Supercharger or a hotrod Electrify America CCS hookup, but it's literally an order of magnitude faster than you'll get off 110V. And yes, the RV parks are realizing this.

We've talked about this in other threads as well - but EVs have a different behavior than ICE vehicles. The only time you really have to worry about charging speeds is when your daily usage exceeds the range of the vehicle. Otherwise, you just plug it in at night and you have full range in the morning. Doesn't matter if you're rural or urban. Not everyone has wrapped their head around that. Sure, if you want to drive cross-country you have to do a bit of planning. If you rack up 400 miles every day, EVs aren't there yet. But the average driver only covers 37 miles per day (source: NHTSA and a calendar) so it's fairly apparent that this doesn't apply to everyone. Wyoming drivers cover more ground than any other state, at just under 60 miles/day, BTW. I didn't get an average for Alaska :)

Yeah, I'm old enough to remember BBS but young enough not to have dealt with it. 

I hear you and I agree with you, but much like Kleenex or Windex, when you say electric the vast majority of non-GRM folks think Tesla. It's become synonymized with the tech in layman's eyes.

Yes, again I agree with you about line voltage at the main service, but unless you live in some kind of power-happy nirvana, the average home only has 220V at the plug for their stove and for their dryer. Some might even have a jacuzzi/pool outlet for pumps and what-not. They might have a rando socket in the garage for welding, but it's either a holdover from a previous tenant or placed there by them. So without bringing out an electrician to every house in America, that magical 220V outlet isn't just laying in wait to be used by anyone with a cord. We live in a very tourist-heavy area, and I can count on one hand the number of RV parks within 2 hours drive. That leads to my next point...

I know that I keep bringing up "edge cases" but around here businesses and homes would get mighty grumpy if you just thought you could knock on their door and siphon some juice, no matter how cheap the Kw/hr unit price is. They'd look at it the same as I would...if I wouldn't expect to beg a can of gas off someone, why should I be able to charge wherever I dang well please?

And again, you are right. Plug-in and charge at night, ready to go in the morning. Unfortunately my wife's daily commute is 120 miles and other than an honest-to-goodness Tesla charging station at her work, it would suck to have her charge go flat because it was another -20*F day in February and the wind was blowing a steady 30mph to and fro, and she forgot to top off that night. I'm not sure my generator would be able to get her recharged on a rescue mission, The Fast Lane Daily did a video where they tried to charge with an inverter generator and it wouldn't.

Gingerbeardman said:

All I know is that no one in Barrow AK is dailying a Tesla...maybe Anchorage, but that's practically the same climate as Seattle.

You may be surprised at the number of electric vehicles I see every day in a Minnesota winter.  Certainly, the cold weather will reduce their range, but there are still a heck of a lot of them running around.

alfadriver said:

In reply to Gingerbeardman :

Most everyone here knows this- I'm a product development engineer at Ford.  Specializing in very low emissions vehicles.  Having grown up in the 70's, I'm a HUGE proponent of clean technologies, as the air and water we consume is light years better than it was when I was a kid.

But in the mean time, I do my best to point people here to be more environmentally friendly, as if you do business in that plane, you will have a lot more success in the long run.  I've been repeating my issues with EV's for at least 5 years now, so I see no real need to repeat it.  Many here think my issues are not important, and I don't think I've seen any realistic change to move the needle enough.

Musk does rub me very wrong, as he calls my entire industry morons.  But now I see that he thinks that a tech/software model of development and release saves so much time and money that he can be more nimble and make money.  Sad thing is that he still has not seen how doing that has really hurt Tesla.   But time will tell, and I really think the only company who will really kick the crap out of that attitude is Toyota.  The rest of us are fumbling with what the future means.

I'm old enough to know about but too young to have seen when the Hudson caught fire...but I can tell you that when I lived there in '96 it was a pretty decent river.

Unfortunately around here "environmentally friendly" is mostly buzzwords and not a lot of follow-through. We're not exactly dumping crude on the ground and kicking dirt over it, but it's not that long ago that that was commonplace.

Yeah, I could rant about Musk for pages, but I won't.

Thanks by the way, for what you and guys like you have done for the industry. Some really smart cookies working in quite a few places no one really thinks of as being green or techy.

Bringing out an electrician to every home is a legit solution. Heck, my first home was built with gas lights, and at some point an electrician visited every home and wired it up. The effort in adding a charging point will vary widely by house of course, but it would not surprise me to see a charging 220v outlet in all new construction in the near future. 
 

I do live in a power nirvana, I have at least 7 220v circuits that I can think of off the top of my head :) Hang on, 8.

I never said that businesses had to give out electricity for free, just that the infrastructure is in place. If a business decides to add a charging station, it's fairly inexpensive to do so - around $500 for the hardware. How they profit from that will vary. It may end up being the WiFi model, where having charging on the premises is viewed as a competitive advantage. Or it may get metered. RV camps are already used to renting power outlets, so there's no transition at all. Regardless, the infrastructure is there. 
 

The thing about edge cases is that they are outliers by default. You can't expect any tech to address them all, especially when it's still relatively immature. That example of the Lunar Rover was more legit than you think, it's an edge case where ICE doesn't work. Same with that mining equipment. Or, back to WiFi, if there's a source of major interference nearby it won't work. But that doesn't mean that it's a bad idea for other applications. Dismissing a tech because it doesn't fit all edge cases isn't logical. 
 

As for Musk - he's done amazing things for space exploration and I've got a lot of respect for that. That industry has been truly transformed. In the case of Tesla, I wish he'd just keep his mouth shut and let the tech do the talking because it derails the conversation.  

9? I need to go count breakers. 

My house has 400 amp service and my workshop has a separate 200 amp service. Maybe I should start renting 220v outlets. 

Gingerbeardman said:

dculberson said:

And Gingerbeardman, this has been a bit of an epic tantrum to read. "Relaxed" does not even begin to apply. 

Meh, if you think this is me being excited or throwing a tantrum, you wouldn't want to be within range when I actually get upset. I didn't even get into K-5 level ball-busting or shave your nuts for being late a 2nd time this week.

You'll know when I'm actually upset, because I won't engage. Or worse, your at the table when I flip it before walking away.

Oh I see.  You're the THAT guy.  Tough macho rural oil man coming through!  Everyone pay attention!  

Quite frankly, as so many have mentioned here, your edge cases are irrelevant for what will actually be produced.  Sucks to not matter, doesn't it? 

Wow I just caught up.

Musk is king.

*checks his Tesla stock* yep Tesla seems hurt. 

stuart in mn said:

You may be surprised at the number of electric vehicles I see every day in a Minnesota winter.  Certainly, the cold weather will reduce their range, but there are still a heck of a lot of them running around.

Got it, electric cars are all that and a pallet of chips. They're running thousands of miles a day and only charging once a week! Never break down and guaranteed to make yer pecker longer too!

I thought it was if you have 3 wires coming down from the electric pole you have 220v , 

what is it for 220v 3 phase ? is that the same as 440V ?

Keith Tanner said:

Bringing out an electrician to every home is a legit solution. Heck, my first home was built with gas lights, and at some point an electrician visited every home and wired it up. The effort in adding a charging point will vary widely by house of course, but it would not surprise me to see a charging 220v outlet in all new construction in the near future. 

As for Musk - he's done amazing things for space exploration and I've got a lot of respect for that. That industry has been truly transformed. In the case of Tesla, I wish he'd just keep his mouth shut and let the tech do the talking because it derails the conversation.  

Good business, if'n yer an electrician. Nevermind that the actual grid can't support even 20% increase in charge capacity, but I'm sure a magic bullet (with a name like Musk, you know it's gotta be good!) will fix that no problemo! Nothing to see here folks, we got no infrastructure problems that can't be solved with a sprinkling of tech dust and an IPO!

Musk piggybacked SpacEx off NASA tech served up on a gold-plated tray with no competition because NASA wasn't funded for what, a dozen years? I'll admit that landing used booster shells IS impressive, but I'm not seeing the jump that we had from 1947-1967.

californiamilleghia said:

I thought it was if you have 3 wires coming down from the electric pole you have 220v , 

what is it for 220v 3 phase ? is that the same as 440V ?

 

220V is technically only 2 wires from the pole, the third wire is the ground added at the service entrance, the fourth wire is the neutral for circuits that use 110V and 220V like a stove.

220V 3 phase is one leg of 440V from the pole, but it's split at the service box.

Oddly enough, there is a certain car company that is also working on solar and power storage at both the local and the grid level. At least one of the GRM members has solar and an EV. It's not going to be a step change, so there's time to keep building the grid out. And I believe the numbers are closer to 20% of the vehicle fleet, not 20% of the current amount of charging going on. That's not going to happen overnight. These cars are smart, smart enough to schedule their charging so that it takes place at low demand times and even work together to coordinate. 

And yes, good business if you're an electrician. Nothing wrong with that.

NASA doesn't build rockets. Never really has. They farmed them out to companies like North American Aviation. And the funding never went away, but it certainly is lower than it was at the peak of Apollo days. What SpaceX did was take on an industry that had changed from innovation  and clear goals to pork production. They dropped the cost of access to orbit dramatically using engines that were developed in-house. Heck, they're the only guys to actually fly a full-flow engine. I get it, you don't like Musk. But you cannot dispute the fact that SpaceX has completely revitalized a moribund industry.

Anyhow, this has devolved into the level of a barroom BS session. I'm out. Have fun guys.

Gingerbeardman said:

I'd make a joke about your beta-ness reading way too much into some banter, but I'd rather poke fun at someone pokin' your ol' lady for fun while you're getting mad on the internet.

I'm not mad at you.  I'm sad for you.  Clearly you feel the need to vent, and perhaps this was a safe space for you where you thought others would also rag on EVs b/c they don't work as well in -50 degree weather, only to find out that in fact there are people on GRM who are open to the idea of EVs in certain situations.  I don't know what set you off about this Sony car, but given what you shared about your life, I think I'd be pissed at the world if I were in your shoes too. 

Keith Tanner said:

Oddly enough, there is a certain car company that is also working on solar and power storage at both the local and the grid level. At least one of the GRM members has solar and an EV. It's not going to be a step change, so there's time to keep building the grid out. And I believe the numbers are closer to 20% of the vehicle fleet, not 20% of the current amount of charging going on. That's not going to happen overnight. These cars are smart, smart enough to schedule their charging so that it takes place at low demand times and even work together to coordinate. 

So let me get this straight, on top of the line losses from powerplant to substation, the plan is to not only feed in modified AC converted from DC  (solar), but then convert AC back to DC (battery bank) so we can then dump re-converted DC to AC into the grid on demand? Those must be some StarTrek level conversion components, because that's looking like an even worse conversion rate than from burning fuel to make steam to spin a turbine to turn a dynamo and pipe it down aluminum cables...

And yes, good business if you're an electrician. Nothing wrong with that. 

Nope. You're right. Hopefully done on a long enough timeline that we can get enough trained, because nationwide there is a shortage.

NASA doesn't build rockets. Never really has. They farmed them out to companies like North American Aviation. And the funding never went away, but it certainly is lower than it was at the peak of Apollo days. What SpaceX did was take on an industry that had changed from innovation  and clear goals to pork production. They dropped the cost of access to orbit dramatically using engines that were developed in-house. Heck, they're the only guys to actually fly a full-flow engine. I get it, you don't like Musk. But you cannot dispute the fact that SpaceX has completely revitalized a moribund industry.

Yeah, again I get that. But all of SpacEx tech is borrowed from existing tech, they haven't designed new thrusters, they've modified existing designs and pulled out some that were drawn up but never put into production. Something after the Saturn, designed during the rush to put a warhead on anything vaguely phallus shaped. One could also argue that companies like Scaled Composites and other lesser-knowns have done the bulk of that heavy lifting on behalf of SpacEx, but let's not let technicalities get in the way of a good heroic-myth story.

Anyhow, this has devolved into the level of a barroom BS session. I'm out. Have fun guys.

Sorry, not sorry.

Gingerbeardman said:

bcp2011 said:

Oh I see.  You're the THAT guy.  Tough macho rural oil man coming through!  Everyone pay attention!  

Quite frankly, as so many have mentioned here, your edge cases are irrelevant for what will actually be produced.  Sucks to not matter, doesn't it? 

I'd make a joke about your beta-ness reading way too much into some banter, but I'd rather poke fun at someone pokin' your ol' lady for fun while you're getting mad on the internet.

Oops!

bcp2011 said:

I'm not mad at you.  I'm sad for you.  Clearly you feel the need to vent, and perhaps this was a safe space for you where you thought others would also rag on EVs b/c they don't work as well in -50 degree weather, only to find out that in fact there are people on GRM who are open to the idea of EVs in certain situations.  I don't know what set you off about this Sony car, but given what you shared about your life, I think I'd be pissed at the world if I were in your shoes too. 

Yes, let me bask in the golden rays of your sympathy to warm the cockles of my cold, dead heart. 

Ignore everytime I mentioned in at least 8 posts that I don't have a thing against EV's, just that they're not the panacea they're claimed to be, while being put on a pedestal as they are.

Ignore entirely realistic points about cold sapping power which equates to miles/work done/heat supplied/etc that's NOT available, the absolute toxic mess that short-term battery packs are, that they are rolling test beds for gimmicks and prepping the populace to hand over their autonomy while being whisked about in Jetson pods, etc.

Let's focus on how I'm feeling, Dr. Freud...shall I tell you about my relationship with my mother?

All because I'm not a fanboy. You adults sure do like your fantasy and as Adam Savage put it: "I reject your reality and substitute my own". One where the Magic Musk Fairy sprinkles his tech goo all over your face as you stare up, chanting in adulation "One of us, one of us, one of us!"

Gingerbeardman said:

californiamilleghia said:

I thought it was if you have 3 wires coming down from the electric pole you have 220v , 

what is it for 220v 3 phase ? is that the same as 440V ?

220V is technically only 2 wires from the pole, the third wire is the ground added at the service entrance, the fourth wire is the neutral for circuits that use 110V and 220V like a stove.

220V 3 phase is one leg of 440V from the pole, but it's split at the service box.

Virtually all residential electric services in the US are 120/240vac single phase.  There are three wires coming from the utility, two hots and a neutral - you get 240vac from hot to hot, and 120vac from either hot to the neutral.  The neutral wire is connected to ground at your main disconnect.

Commercial or industrial three phase services are commonly 120/208vac or 277/480vac (there are also higher voltages available, but they are generally only used in large manufacturing facilities.)  There are still some 220/440vac services around but that's an old voltage that's pretty uncommon these days.  Some areas may still have 120/240vac three phase service available as well, but again it's generally not seen very often anymore.  Three phase services will have four wires coming from the utility, three hots and a neutral; for a 120/208 service you get 208vac from any hot to any other hot, you get 120vac from any hot to neutral.

Geez, chill out people.  It is possible to have a healthy debate on the topic without resorting to playground insults.

stuart in mn said:

Virtually all residential electric services in the US are 120/240vac single phase.  There are three wires coming from the utility, two hots and a neutral - you get 240vac from hot to hot, and 120vac from either hot to the neutral.  The neutral wire is connected to ground at your main disconnect.

Commercial or industrial three phase services are commonly 120/208vac or 277/480vac (there are also higher voltages available, but they are generally only used in large manufacturing facilities.)  There are still some 220/440vac services around but that's an old voltage that's pretty uncommon these days.  Some areas may still have 120/240vac three phase service available as well, but again it's generally not seen very often anymore.  Three phase services will have four wires coming from the utility, three hots and a neutral; for a 120/208 service you get 208vac from any hot to any other hot, you get 120vac from any hot to neutral.

So the transformer does some kind of witchcraft to condense three phase into single phase? Or does it simply pull a phase and "assign" it to the single phase wire? I have no idea how transformers work. I know they are cooled with some kind of dielectric goo and that's about it.

Okay,  I have changed my mind on whether or  not there should be an EV sub forum.  Please create one,  so these threads are easier to avoid.  What a dumpster fire.