I gotta move on.
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No, I hadn’t seen that. Thanks.
I should have seen that coming, since I had just given an example involving interstate power transmission ; )
It was due to the battery discharging, but simply recharging it didn’t work. It had to have cells redone in it to the tune of three thousand dollars or so.
BIL still loves his car, but he learned a lesson and shared that lesson with us knowing we were considering EVs in our future and knowing we take longer trips. I thought I’d share the PSA here. If folks aren’t interested, that’s fine.
Most people don’t travel for as long of periods of time as we do. Snowbirds might. At this stage in our lives most of our long trips are avoiding sections of winter. I assume if we drive to places we’d take the EV, but when we go to the Caribbean or Hawaii that’s not an option. We want our vehicle to work without needing thousands of dollars of repair when we return. So far (knock on wood), that hasn’t happened with our regular vehicles.
LOL that anyone is taking this choice of phrases seriously. My quoting Google search results was tongue-in-cheek because it doesn’t matter. These are all widely used synonyms for the same thing. It’s like having a debate over whether everyone should use “car” or “auto” or “vehicle.” I say to-MAY-to, you say to-MAH-to.
BTW, the same site you linked to has plenty of these too:
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I would guess many if not most cars, ICE included, could have a charge issue after sitting for 60 days. That’s why people get battery savers for long trips or car storage. Same happens with my boat.
While most full EV cars have software that precondition it for long storage, my guess is his battery was fully or nearly fully charged when it started its extended sitting. Which is not best for any rechargeable battery. II have an electric bike and make sure my battery is not fully charged after the last ride of the season before storage for the winter.
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Hadn’t really given this much thought, but I can start my car from my phone, so if there was a risk of the battery dying (not draining, so I agree maybe it was the 12V not the big EV battery) I could just start my car remotely from time to time. Then again I have to be sure I can turn it off too!
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Since the car is a Toyota hybrid, the issues could be different from an EV, since a (non plug in) hybrid has no external way to keep the large battery from discharging to zero during long term storage. An EV can just be plugged in and set to charge to 50% or so to maintain its large and 12V batteries.
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Wouldn’t leaving the EV plugged in long term degrade the batteries regardless how “smart” the charger is?
checking some of the toyota gas hybrid blogs, the manuals indicate that the car can be parked for up to ‘several months’. (a battery EV would not make it that long, unplugged.)
The main degradation concern is over time. Degradation is greater the longer the battery is at high state of charge. So parking it at 100% is worse than parking it at 50% or lower. Leaving it plugged in but set to charge to a lower level keeps it from draining to zero but avoids charging it to high levels that increase degradation.
For typical use when you actually need the full (or nearly full) charge, it is best to charge it so that it finishes just before you drive off.
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The 2020 Toyota Prius owner’s manual, page 85, says the following:
In contrast, the Tesla Model 3 owner’s manual says this:
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Back to the question about the grid handling a large number of EVs…
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This news makes me wonder if Gov. Newsom should reconsider his ban and include all hybrid vehicles.
Very misleading headline - they are told not to charge during peak hours. Which is a sensible thing to do, anyway.
From the the article:
“Consumers are urged to conserve power by setting thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, if health permits, avoiding use of major appliances and turning off unnecessary lights," said the California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s power grid.
Between 4:00 pm and 9:00 pm, “they should also avoid charging electric vehicles.”
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This requests that people not charge EVs between 4pm and 9pm.
In most (not all) cases charging overnight starting after 9pm should be possible.
This does seem like a strong warning that we are going to need to make sure that our power grids are updated in a timely fashion. It is not clear to me that this has been done in the recent past. I continue to be skeptical that “politics” is the same thing as “careful engineering design and planning”.
I do think that people are taking a leap of faith that enough batteries will be available (both for the EVs, and for grid storage) and that the associated pollution will not be too bad. I understand that a LOT of work is ongoing in battery technology, but “research” is not the same thing as “guaranteed to succeed”.
Given the currently shortage of materials to make enough batteries for EVs and grid storage, to me a plug in hybrid seems more practical than a pure EV. Most of my trips are very short. A plug in hybrid with a 25 mile range would handle most of my driving. Then for a few long trips the option would still be there to gas it up.
LOL. They also urged people to not use their AC’s, to turn off lights, to “avoid using major appliances,” etc. So the headline could have said, “Californians Told Not to Use Washers During Heat Wave”" Should we have a debate on how the power grid can’t handle an appliance that’s been a stable of homes for the greater part of a century too?
Or we could take the article in actual context which is the states have responded to heat waves for longer than we have all been alive by suggesting moderated use during peak hours and EV’s were simply added to the long existing list. Since you can easily use your car’s app to specify when you want the charging to occur, this seems pretty trivial.
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This. Apparently, these are some of the hottest days (ever or in September, not sure) ever recorded. Totally voluntary.
It recommends not using heavy-consumption electrical stuff from 4pm-9pm. I do not see what the big issue is.
Shall we discuss why it’s so hot? That might be more relevant.
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Note that 4pm to 9pm is the peak rate time for common time-of-use rate plans in California. So anyone on a time-of-use rate plan has incentive to avoid electricity use during that time period. Hence, those with EVs tend to schedule them to charge at other (less expensive) times of day (or night).
Given that air conditioning is the biggest factor in loading the grid during peak hours on hot days, some people with air conditioning pre-cool their houses before peak hours, then turn the air conditioning off during peak hours. Basically, this shifts their air conditioning use to the time of day when the grid has plenty of capacity and electricity is less expensive.
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Happy to report that it’s past 9pm, and all hell didn’t break loose. As per the Governor, there were no outages. We certainly didn’t have any, but we VOLUNTARILY didn’t turn on the TV or use other high-consuming electrical instruments. I am glad my family did the responsible thing that posed exactly NO ISSUES for us.
My PHEV is plugged in waiting for juice commencing at midnight. If our EV needs a charge, we have 15 hours each day to do that. No big whoop.
For the well-wishers for CA, we made it! For those who aren’t…whatever!
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