Does it make sense to get a hybrid or plug-in hybrid if you don’t drive a lot? I’ve heard that even if you are using less gas that the battery manufacturing is bad for the environment. So how did you decide what’s best for you?
We are getting rid of our minivan and are looking to get a CRV or RAV4 sized SUV. Thanks.
I buy about 20 gallons of gas/year for my hybrid—every few months i buy like 4 gallons to get my tank from 1/2 full to completely full. The rest of the time, we are running on electric. I have PV on our roof.
We keep cars forever and our 2018 has 25,000 miles total on it.
Have heard multiple stories (from friends and family, and very recently) that chargers were either broken or cars were parked there and not moving (tesla chargers often charge the car owner if they stay plugged in after the car is finished charging, but it doesn’t seem that the other EV chargers do this, so there is no incentive to move a car if one chooses to park overnight). DIL recently (over xmas) had to drive their leaf at night with a sick 2 year old on zero percent for 10 miles b/c the charger she tried to use was broken. Friend was visiting a friend in CHarlotte and had to borrow her friends’ car and leave hers to trickle charge for 52 hours b/c there were no chargers working near her (she tried 3 or 4). Another friend in MA had to drive to multiple chargers b/c people plugged in and parked there and left them at the EV charger.
I guess having a hybrid just feels better to us—we mostly charge at home — 4 hrs on regular current. If I chance upon an open FREE charger while I’m out and about, I will plug in. If I go further than the electric battery is charged for, the car effortlessly switches me to gas and there’s no stress. If I ever were to run out of gas on the road, AAA can give me a few gallons to get to a gas station. We tend to mostly do lots of short drives.
For those interested in comparing charging connectors…(IMO, CCS will become the North American standard. )
The Leaf uses the deprecated CHAdeMO charger. Most non-Tesla chargers are CCS-SAE. CHAdeMos are fewer and farther between but Nissan dealers may still have a few. It’s really not surprising that she had trouble finding a working charger but there’s an app for that. CHAdeMO vs CCS-SAE is like Betamax vs VHS if you’re old enough to remember that. Just not the winning technology.
Leafs also have batteries that degrade faster due to being air cooled rather than liquid cooled. The Chevy Bolt is a superior vehicle at the bottom end price point. We had a Leaf, loved it, have a Bolt now and it’s much better. The Leaf uses old tech. Chevy Bolt does too compared to Kia and Hyundai and others with super fast charging but it’s a lot better than the Leaf.
Also of note is that Level 2 public chargers are also becoming fewer and farther between, so plug-in hybrids don’t have as many places to plug in if you can’t plug in at home (like if you live in an apartment). This is the case for our kids who drive plug-in hybrid Ford C-maxes. Many of the new charging stations going in are all DCFC, level 3 fast charging only.
The people who block the chargers (often ICE vehicles, sometimes “rollin’ coal” pickup trucks who do it on purpose) are rude jerks. It’s like parking in a handicapped spot, or our local supermarkets have spots designated for parents with children, pregnant moms, and veterans. Yeah you could probably get away with parking there but you’re a jerk if you do. I don’t think Tesla can do anything about a ICE pickup truck that blocks a supercharger either.
As someone who has racked up over 100k miles of EV driving in the rare instances you need to charge in public, CCS is totally fine. It’s not hard — don’t need two hands — it’s similar to pumping gas in terms of the weight and unwieldiness, but not smelly or greasy.
But remember, unlike gas vehicles, 90% of my fueling is done at home. It’s like plugging in your phone — mostly you do that at home, right? Once in awhile maybe you forget to do it overnight and you might have to charge your phone at work, or maybe you go on vacation and you charge in a hotel, but 90% of your phone charging is at home and not at a random public location. That’s how it is with driving an EV, too.
Our EV is our main car, our everyday driver. I think the last time I charged at a public station is when I took my daughter back to college for the spring semester. I have charged many times since then, but in my garage at home. I just park, plug in, go inside and forget about it. Wake up in the morning to a fully fueled car. And honestly I don’t charge every night. Maybe twice a week, if that, just depends on how much driving I’m doing.
So Tesla charger vs CCS charger is a bit of a red herring since for most folks you charge at home. For apartment dwellers it can be tricky but for folks who live in a SFH, be it rented or owned, you can usually plug in at home. And more and more apartment communities are adding chargers too.
Of course, but charging at home is not gonna achieve the EV adoption that the Goverment is seeking. So no, not red herring.
This is the same with our son. He rarely needs a public charger, only on longer trips. The vast majority of the time it’s easy to find one. He used to drive his ICE vehicle on trips to avoid charging, but has since swapped to his EV because it’s easy and saves him money.
I’m looking forward to someday never needing a gas station again personally. That day isn’t now for us, but I think about it whenever we gas up.
And in posting this, you repeated the other automakers spin on this. Remember that Tesla had already made its intellectual property available to others in the industry almost 10 years ago as long as they agreed not to sue Tesla for possible infringement of their patents. This type of agreement was pretty common back when I was in the tech industry working on creating industry standards. In making the connector available, their initial starting point for the negotiation should have been that other manufacturers do the same. However it sounds like asking for trademarks was an overreach.
Tesla seems to have realized that its connector is not going to replace CCS in the US any time soon, so it started adding CCS capability to its cars in the last few years, started selling a CCS adapter for Tesla cars to charge at CCS stations, and is just starting to convert Supercharger stations to have both Tesla and CCS connector capability. However, the converted Supercharger stations that were sighted appear to have short cords, so they may not be able to reach all makes and models of CCS vehicles that are parked properly.
Hmmm, maybe there’s a better phrase I could have used, but my point is an argument pitting Tesla’s supercharging network vs CCS is not very important overall. It just really doesn’t matter for most folks. Charging at home is the way EV ownership works for most people and the car manufacturers and/or the government would be much better pushing that narrative. People who are new to EVs are imagining that we need as many EV charging stations as we have gas pumps and that’s just not how it works. I’ll take a wild guess and say we really we only need maybe 10% as many charging stations as we have gas stations but that may be wildly overestimating. Maybe it’s just 1%.
Here’s a great article that talks about the fallacy of comparing gas stations to EV charging stations: Stop Comparing The Number Of Gas Stations To EV Charging Stations - CleanTechnica
Really worth a read as it is much more eloquent than I can be right now.
I understand your point, and the Government thinks it to be incorrect. Yes, most folks charge at home today. But the whole point of EV adoption is to make it easier for all folks, including those who don’t own a driveway or garage, to charge. (Not cool or safe to be running extension cords across the front sidewalk, although I have seen it done.). The feds clearly want to make it easy to charge and that is why the $$ needs to go to systems that are open to all.
Except that narrative would discourage millions of non-homeowners from considering an EV.
btw: I’m not one who ever considered comparing charging stations to gas stations.
The leaf was one example. The other examples (of situations friends had) were in other EVs. Glad you experience worked out. But not so for these friends. The people I know who are hesitant to get an EV argue about the challenge/ inconvenience on long trips. We have only taken a handful of long trips requiring use of the supercharger (round trip maybe 4-5x) but to me the ease of finding the superchargers and the speed they charge outweighed the potential hassle of finding the other chargers ( and I have many apps for charger locations on my phone). I also noticed , as an aside, that several of the chargers near my home were either broken or removed. I do also charge mostly at home. But for the road-trips I am currently sold on the ease, convenience and speed of rhe superchargers. And the car maps itself right to them .
And the ice holes who block chargers are a different breed from the lazy jerks who plug in and leave their cars overnight. Or park in an ev spot b/c they have an ev but aren’t charging their car.
We were discussing hybrids yesterday and someone brought up the point that if you fuel up less than once a month you should add additive to the tank, as the ethanol in the gasoline absorbs water. We do this routinely to our mower/snowblower gas can.
That page says “Its most popular cars, the S and the Model 3, are both sedans — a body style the rest of the industry left in the dust some five years ago.”
Technically, the Model S is a hatchback, and Tesla’s largest selling model is the Model Y, followed by the Model 3.
We are looking at EVs and we are not even considering Tesla…at all. But that’s our personal preference. Folks we know who have Tesla actually really like them. They just aren’t what we are looking for.
typical stuff from a Detroit homer, and thus, not surprised that the author ignored the recent comments from Ford’s CEO on how Ford has to be more like Tesla, including vertical integration & sales model, and more importantly, Operating Margins.
Am surprised that an article in a Business journal ignores dollars and cents. (Ford is losing money on its EV sales.)
btw: EV’s require 40% less labor to manufacture, and that’s hard to accept for a former Detroit Labor journo.
Most actually do charge the owner money if you stay plugged in. Nothing to stop a car from just unplugging and staying in that spot, though. But that can happen at gas stations too. I recently went by a gas station and saw a distinctive car parked at a pump. Went back an hour later and it was still there at the same pump, just hanging out. Maybe they had car trouble? Just looked like the driver was talking on the phone. I guess you could park overnight at a gas station that was closed for the night too, but not sure why anyone would want to. Don’t know why anyone would want to park overnight at a level 3 charger either. Wouldn’t they want to get back on the road?
I have seen people park in an EV spot w/o charging, but only occasionally. The usual problem is the ICE-holes who block the EV spots. That’s pretty common.
Not “non-homeowners”. People who rent a house or duplex wouldn’t usually have problem charging at home as long as they have a driveway. It’s really the driveway that is key, so you are not stretching a cord across the sidewalk. If you are a homeowner and own your own condo or townhouse or brownstone, but only have on street parking that is problematic, also.
People in apartment complexes that don’t have charging stations are the main group that people think about when they say renters are left out. One of my kids lives in an apartment and doesn’t have a place to plug in their Ford C-max energi PHEV at their apartment complex so they come over to our house to charge or charge at the grocery store (Wegman’s near them has chargers). There is a new set of Electrify America chargers at another grocery store right by the apartment, but it is only level 3 chargers and the C-max can’t handle that (just level 2 or level 1). Lots of Electrify America chargers are located at Walmarts and Sam’s Clubs across the country, so folks can shop while they charge. There’s an incentive for retailers to include chargers to bring in business. We have friends whose apartment complex has chargers, too, so that is very cool and an incentive for folks with EVs to choose that apartment complex. My kid is moving out of their apartment in May and will be looking to rent (not buy) a house with a yard for the dog and a bonus will be at home charging for the car. You can trickle charge a PHEV in 3 or 4 hours depending on the EV battery capacity, so no special home charger station needed.
I think another thing that might help is for new apartments to be mandated to include chargers. My town already has requirements for developers to include affordable housing in new developments. Seems like including charging stations could be a pretty easy add on and lord knows we have apartment complexes popping up like mushrooms around here.
Yeah, I agree. It’s pretty much a done deal that CCS is the standard. The government is not going to install Tesla chargers, but they’re not going to stop Tesla from doing it. I imagine we will continue to have two systems for awhile, which is okay. CHAdeMO is deprecated and won’t be supported soon although Nissan dealers should keep some chargers for the older Leafs. Electrify America has a few, but it’s usually just like 1 out of 8 or 10 if they have it. I think EVGo may have some, but CCS is definitely the way it’s all going. Tesla can do their own thing, but all the other car manufacturers are doing CCS. Nissan is converting to CCS, too. There will be some old Leafs around that use CHAdeMO, but new Nissan EVs going forward will be CCS. The new Nissan Ariya EV is CCS.