Slashdot Mirror
Charge Rage: Electric Cars Are Making People Meaner In California
HughPickens.com writes: Matt Richtel reports that the push to make the state greener with electric cars is having an unintended side effect: It is making some people meaner. The bad moods stem from the challenges drivers face finding recharging spots for their battery-powered cars. Unlike gas stations, charging stations are not yet in great supply, and that has led to sharp-elbowed competition. According to Richtel, electric-vehicle owners are unplugging one another's cars, trading insults, and creating black markets and side deals to trade spots in corporate parking lots. The too-few-outlets problem is a familiar one in crowded cafes and airports, where people want to charge their phones or laptops. But the need can be more acute with cars — will their owners have enough juice to make it home? — and manners often go out the window. "Cars are getting unplugged while they are actively charging, and that's a problem," says Peter Graf. "Employees are calling and messaging each other, saying, 'I see you're fully charged, can you please move your car?'"
The problem is that installation of electric vehicle charging ports at some companies has not kept pace with soaring demand, creating thorny etiquette issues in the workplace. German software company SAP installed 16 electric vehicle charging ports in 2010 at its Palo Alto campus for the handful of employees who owned electric vehicles. Now there are far more electric cars than chargers. Sixty-one of the roughly 1,800 employees on the campus now drive a plug-in vehicle, overwhelming the 16 available chargers. And as demand for chargers exceeds supply, there have been notorious incidents of "charge rage." Companies are finding that they need one charging port for every two of their employees' electric vehicles. "If you don't maintain a 2-to-1 ratio, you are dead," said ChargePoint CEO Pat Romano. "Having two chargers and 20 electric cars is worse than having no chargers and 20 electric cars. If you are going to do this, you have to be willing to continue to scale it."
The problem is that installation of electric vehicle charging ports at some companies has not kept pace with soaring demand, creating thorny etiquette issues in the workplace. German software company SAP installed 16 electric vehicle charging ports in 2010 at its Palo Alto campus for the handful of employees who owned electric vehicles. Now there are far more electric cars than chargers. Sixty-one of the roughly 1,800 employees on the campus now drive a plug-in vehicle, overwhelming the 16 available chargers. And as demand for chargers exceeds supply, there have been notorious incidents of "charge rage." Companies are finding that they need one charging port for every two of their employees' electric vehicles. "If you don't maintain a 2-to-1 ratio, you are dead," said ChargePoint CEO Pat Romano. "Having two chargers and 20 electric cars is worse than having no chargers and 20 electric cars. If you are going to do this, you have to be willing to continue to scale it."
Or another alternate headline: "Rich people fight over free lunches"
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
That will be the end of humanity
It would seem electric cars are simply giving mean people another way to express just how mean they can be.
That's just friendly collaboration. (also the ChargeBump app helps) - Charge Rage is when you find a Tesla parked at an EV spot, not plugged in as they've got 200km of range left, or when someone is sat hogging a precious Rapid charger for more than the 25 minutes it can actually rapid charge a battery for, because they don't get how the chargers work.
You bought a car which needs to be plugged in, you knew there was a shortage of available public charge spots and now you're mad that you can't find one?
If you knew of the problem before you bought the car, and you still bought the car, then you're an idiot.
According to Richtel, electric-vehicle owners are unplugging one another's cars, trading insults, and creating black markets and side deals to trade spots in corporate parking lots.
I've always thought that once they became sufficiently popular you might need some sort of lock on the charger while charging otherwise merry pranksters (read @$$holes) might come along and just unplug your car, effectively leaving you stranded for a period of time if your charge is low.
Way to win people over for buying electric cars. Now I feel like installing fake charging ports just to fuck with assholes like you.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
>> Employees are calling and messaging each other, saying, 'I see you're fully charged, can you please move your car?'
Um...isn't this the way the world is supposed to work? Or is getting someone's attention and letting them know that it's time to move along now considered a microaggression?
A "free" resource becomes a scarce resource. Solution: charge $ per time unit for a parking space with a charger. Increase price till shortage disappears.
[Insert pithy quote here]
lol
...how hard would it be to transmit power to the cars through the roads? A few years back wireless power was the big thing at consumer electronics shows, with demonstrations of televisions without power cables. Since then I've been wondering if this could be implemented for cars. If you got rid of the batteries it would vastly reduce the cost and weight of the cars, plus eliminate the issues related to recharging (range anxiety, charge times etc). You could have a small battery in the cars for driving on roads that are "off the grid" with the option for larger batteries for people who do a lot of off the grid driving. Is this technically viable or is there some reason it couldn't be implemented?
Californians are just terrible people in general, and no amount of "green" technology or reduction in fossil fuel consumption can change their nature.
What I see on the other coast is that many times ordinary gas cars are taking the electric car charging spots making it impossible for the electric cars to charge. The electric car spots (at least over here) are like the "parents with infant" spots and have no enforcement.
Why don't these electric cars come with a solar panel built into the roof and any other upward-facing panels? It may not charge the battery as quickly as a charging station but it will at least be a trickle to keep things going. It's simple enough to pull off, isn't it?
If there were a simple way to suck gasoline vapors out of the air as you drive, don't you think that would be "a thing"?
Even smarter, install two fake charging ports next to each other. One has an "Out of Order" sign on it. The other one says "FREE CHARGING!".
Wire them up so the "FREE" charger discharges the battery of anyone who plugs into it while feeding the power to the "Out of Order" charger your own electric car is plugged into.
It isn't rocket science.
Sounds like a ripe opportunity to make some money. This is not a problem.
I remember a while ago, as some people predicted that 30-minute charging times would be a problem. A lot of people formed a chorus to shout them down, referring to how long cars usually sit while people are at work, etc. But what those people didn't take into account is that a charging station is not at all like a normal parking spot. The charging equipment is expensive, as is installation of it...and like most things electrical, there are incredibly difficult challenges when you try to scale things. At first blush it may seem like a simple matter to simply run more wiring to build out more spots...but at some point you hit the stage where the line running to the building simply isn't big enough. So what...you get another transformer? It goes down the rabbit hole very quickly.
Despite appearances, a charging station isn't a parking spot with a plug for your car. It's a spot at a gas pump that takes half an hour to use. And that's the real challenge with electric cars...not range, not cost. Those are solved or about to be solved.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I would love to see the fights: kale smoothies splattered on hemp clothing, dreadlocks being pulled.
Trolling is a art,
Compounded certainly by the relatively well-documented issue about people who feel they're doing "their part" (driving green cars, using shopping totes, whole foods customers, etc.) being entitled assholes.
-Styopa
My wife's Nissan Leaf has a switch to either lock the port or 'auto' lock it. Which means it will unlock it when it is charged.
I still get laughs over this self-righteous Prius owner ragging on a truck driver.
Trolling is a art,
So you'll resort to vandalism to get your point across? If you worked for me you'd be fired on the spot.
Oh, waah, cry me a river. I live in Ohio, and the only place I have ever found to plug in my car is in my own garage, at my home. There ARE no public charging ports, anywhere. They don't exist here. So when I hear about Californians crying because they can't conveniently find enough public charging ports, excuse me if I don't get all weepy about their struggle.
If your electric car doesn't have the range to get you to work and home, you shouldn't use it.
or you could park in a spot your car is allowed in?
Obviously you have not yet become familiar with the consequences which can arise from
vandalizing someone else's property.
Is that kim davis?
We have over 40 chargers herespread over many different buildings, usually no problem to get one. There are 4 spaces for each dual-plug station. There is a posted 4 hour limit, so and the employees are really good at moving charge cables around when charging is finished. You can be fairly sure that if you park in a charging spot even if you can't plug in you will be full by EOD. If you really need to make sure you are charging you can check your Leaf app and see if you've been plugged in by lunch, if not you go out and move it (and any others that need to be moved).
This is example where being independent dinosaur in pickup has its advantages.
I am paying for my fuel and can go whenever i want. With ethanol mix as fuel it might be even more independent.
wait when EV users notice that they have to buy new battery pack. every 3 years.
You wanna new fancy feel good toy - pay from your pocket . Or buy horse (Oh no, that methane generator!)
Yeah, because clearly vandalism is a fantastic way to get your message across and not cause further problems.
I hope you get caught on camera causing someone financial harm, so that you and your pretentious bullshit can spend some time in jail and learn what real hardship is like.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
All that wasted energy getting pissed at your co-workers only makes the oil industry execs smile as they see their lead in efficiency pulling ahead and widing the gap even more.
This is proof! When is this scourge of patriarchy going to end???
I'm sure you're right. I bet that not one of those six charging points mentioned was reserved for gay black trannies
Tragedy of the Hipster Commons
I particularly like the hang tag for gas cars parking in EV charging spaces.
"EV charging spaces are functional reserve spaces, just like disabled drivers spaces.”
If the rest of the parking spaces are full, then there is no reason for the EV space to go empty hoping that an EV will show up.
Also, unlike a disability, the situation is self inflicted.
So what was the question of how well the Star Trek economics would work in the real world?
Seems like a few dash cams are next.
...have the same problem. They don't multitask.
One user at a time, and there's a minimum amount of time for it to be useful.
Chalk this pretentious hipster Thunderdome shit up as the Comedy of the Commons.
Easy work to move cars into charging stations and shuffle them around as the day goes by, put keys in a kiosk. A bit of coding and scheduling algorithms and a smartphone app would allow the valet to move cars efficiently and make the best use of a limited number of stations. And could be price competitive with adding many more charging stations.
People begin to use the charging stations as their personal parking spaces. Instead of charging their vehicle and moving to a regular parking space, they park there all day long. Around here I know a few people who live very close by to a charge station, and do exactly this when they go to work. Nobody else can use the spots because they're always occupied.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Ah, what is the world coming to! After spending $100000 on a Tesla, people can't find recharging spots. Obviously, "for the environment", we must mandate more more recharging spots, so that the poor, environmentally conscious "middle class" of Silicon Valley can recharge their cars.
(Actually, a far bigger problem with Teslas and other electric cars is that people get quiet "insane" acceleration and start driving like mad men.)
First I own an electric car (Ford Focus Electric). I'm not wealthy but when gas was high I leased one before the cost of the lease and insurance would be less than my monthly fuel cost in my 2005 SUV. My company also just installed chargers so I had free electricity from my office.
We had some issues at work when we only had two spaces for 3 fully electric vehicles and 1 plug in hybrid. We talk on our internal communication tool to try and move so everyone can charge. The real issue is while my vehicle can charge in 3 hours from empty two of the vehicles took 7 hours as they did not have 6.6kwh onboard chargers. The plug in hybrid also could charge in about an hour (Prius plug in) and as they could make it home without charging it was rather upsetting to those who might need the charge to get home. This did cause some issues and made us group together into those that switch spots. I volunteered to plug in during the afternoon and the other two full EVs plugged in during the morning. We kicked the Prius to using a regular outlet as he could easily charge off of that. This worked until they added two more charging spots which allowed us all to plug in. I can understand people being upset even if it costs money because some could not get home without plugging in.
Right now with how things are I really think any vehicle that is full EV should always get the plug and if a plug in hybrid is there you should be allowed to unplug them. Why because those with an EV might not be able to get home where as the car with an engine could even if it costs more money. Also I really think we need 6.6kwh chargers in all the cars 3.3kwh takes too long to share spots in many cases because of how slow they are. Last would be adding more spaces to deal with demand!!
My vehicle was a test and while I love having an electric vehicle and hardly ever getting gas (I still have an SUV for long trips) I'm not sure I will be getting another one until the range is better, 80 miles can go quick and when it is cold out that turns into 50 miles of range which I wasn't aware of when I leased the car.
In Austin, we have recently had a network of super charges installed through-out the city. I own a Nissan leaf, and 10 ~ 15 minutes is all the charging I ever need, so I just wait in my car while charging (with the AC running, which EVs allow guiltlessly and, since I work from home, working from car for a little bit is no issue).
However, some owners don't seem to understand how short the optimal charge time is or how slow they are charging after they hit 80% (if they want to hit 100% at that point, they should move to a 6kw charger), so they go have lunch or go shopping, blocking the only super charger for others. Some people may know and don't car.
Eventually, the chargers will start charging by the minute (they are free right now). People who hog the chargers will fund the next set of new chargers that will be installed and people who don't hog will pay the least to charge their EV. The "tragedy of the commons" is a well studied phenomenon and the solutions are well tested.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Extension cords. Your welcome.
Wow, Cali is _so_ fucked if anything like the 1973 oil shock comes round again If this is what a handful of electric car owners behave like when there's not enough juice to go around.
You mean "none at all"? It is very rare that vandals are actually caught and actually have to pay for what they've done.
So let them pay for the charging spot. Running wire is pretty cheap.
Accurate analysis from the very first post. This is a classic economics problem, overuse of a good that is given away for free; and has a classic economic solution: put a price on it.
This is silicon valley. Make an ap for them them to sign up for their spot online.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It make it sound like environmentally friendly companies need to set up a charger at every single parking slot. At least that is the impression I get here. However on top of being expensive, it would cause a whole lot of other problems.
Let's take Palo Alto campus as an example. It has 16 chargers for 61 cars. Say we want to plug in all at once. According to an electrician I spoke to, the electric car chargers delivers 8 A @ 400 V using 3 phases, or 5500 W. 16 cars then use 128 A. 61 cars use 488 A. If everybody get an electric car, 1800 cars use 14400 A. That would be able to use 10 MW if all cars are plugged in at once.
Clearly, the powerlines can't handle this, not to mention the powerplants if all companies do this. Maybe this is a marked for a device, which turns charging stations on and off depending on load, meaning all parking slots have an outlet and everybody can plug in the car. The system then cuts power to demanding cars when overloaded. When cars finish charging, the demand goes down and power is enabled for the cars, which lost the power. This way 61 cars can be plugged in at once and all charge during the day even though the powergrid can only handle 16 cars at once. Better yet, it's more efficient because it moves the charger automatically without waiting for people to notice that it can be moved. Adding 1800 cars without increasing from the 16 cars at once would still be an issue though as most cars would not get through the queue before people go home.
Perhaps it can be expanded to reduce charging if the grid has problems maintaining the voltage, either by measuring the voltage or get info from the powerplants. This would help causing the grid power demands more constant, which is what is needed to make powerplants run efficiently as well as environmentally friendly. There has been talk about intelligent power grids with adjustable demands, but so far the concept is flawed with one major security flaw. If a hacker tells everybody that power is really cheap, everything starts using power at once, which can cause the powergrid to fail completely, with blackouts to follow. Checking grid voltage could be a decent hacker avoidance system. Add/remove one car at a time and check voltage reaction also prevents huge sudden changes in power usage, which is another issue.
Textbook irony. Not the retarded lady with the Prius, the douchbag dad with the child with allergies that drives one of the dirtiest vehicles possible. Gee, my child has allergies, maybe I should make the air worse?
People who find this interesting are maybe too young to remember what it was like during the oil embargo last century when gas stations would run out of product. There were long lines at the gas pumps, fights and shootings. Local governments had to enact "odd/even" day refueling to prevent riots at the gas stations.
And this story? Here's an example of how insufficient charging stations has made people "meaner":
This is apparently what millennials think is "mean". I mean, for chrissake the guy said "please". In my day, if you wanted to be mean to another driver, you broke his headlights, cracked his windshield and pissed in his gas tank. Now THAT was mean.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Employers don't pay for your gas, so why should they pay for your fuel? Why should the burden be on employers to provide more electrical charging stations? Presumably they should also build a gas station. If EV drivers are going to start demanding all of these privileges at work, then employers are going to start discriminating against hiring them, or at least pay them a lot less.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
[Obama] said CLIMATE CHANGE is the most important thing, not all of the current disasters!"
Don't we want more people using electric cars? Isn't that in everyone's best interest? Sure, bad behavior is bad, but there are worse things to fight over. So now we have motivation for more companies to building more charging stations. Doesn't that increase demand, and lower prices? Low prices would promote city wide adoption, and eventually more stations in rural areas.
Dude! You're like totally harshing my mellow. You can't just expect me to drop everything and move my car, that's so rude.
I just don't understand why you have to be so passive aggressive like this. Why won't you respect my personal boundaries? Why do you choose to hurt my feelings? You're like some old republican or something. So harsh.
#UnderAssault #Triggered #dae
Bring Your Own Generator. Pack a Honda generator and a 5 gallon portable tank of gas. Then you can charge it up anywhere in the parking lot.
What's the matter, can't affford the goddam electricity for your car? Fucking twat.
...and one I find much more solvable than, I dunno, scraping off titan's atmosphere for sufficient amounts of hydrocarbons to sate current usage rates for even the short term, much less as permanently as things like solar power will remain available.
All these Silicon Valley *geniuses*, flush with millions of dollars of venture capital... And nobody saw this coming?
I remember speaking to engineer after engineer about putting solar cells all over the roof and trunk and hood of every electric car -- and they all ignored my ideas, saying that the panels couldn't generate enough -- but that's not the point -- the point is that a car spends MOST of its life parked, and while it's parked it could be generating some power.
That's like the time I'm at the NY Auto show and my GF and I notice all these SUVs come with glass roofs, and my GF complains to the salesman that these cars are too tall, it's hard to get the snow off the roof. So I suggest to the sales guy that they run the wires through the roof like they do with the rear windows to heat up the glass and melt the snow. Dude whips out his iPad and starts typing furiously. I suspect the auto industry owes me a check.
Anyhow, point is: Sometimes the obvious escapes people.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Don't worry, they're full of shit and probably don't even own an EV. They're far to cowardly to engage in that behavior. You see it a lot online. They're right full of shit.
Do you really want to live in a country where people get jailed for scratching a paint job on a car?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Why are they giving away the electricity? Is it difficult to meter or something?
Free is the key thing here. Yes, the solution is just charge for time on the charger, and used that money to put in more chargers. But humans are uniquely curious when it comes to free stuff. Give away free stuff and everybody wants some, and they hate it when someone else gets free stuff and they don't. Charge just a little bit for it, and then it changes the whole attitude.
What is interesting is that most EV drivers probably don't need the charge to get home and carry out their daily errands. If they do then they probably made the wrong vehicle choice. They just want to charge up on someone else's dime.
Of course, there will be a few who would somehow feel entitled and would see such a change and respond.... "can you believe they are taking away our free charging!".
Hey, man. I thought those people with crazy Christmas light displays already solved this problem. Power strips and extension cables. Just keep a fire extinguisher handy!
Despite appearances, a charging station isn't a parking spot with a plug for your car. It's a spot at a gas pump that takes half an hour to use. And that's the real challenge with electric cars...not range, not cost. Those are solved or about to be solved.
The range is part of the problem. An electric with a 1000 mil range could be charged entirely at home for all travel scenarios except a cross country road trip, which I'd expect expect will remain the gas guzzler's domain. The alternative is fuel cells, which can be refueled at gas pump speeds, something which could put a brake on Musk's lithium-ion ambitions.
Just have a valet for car charging. A minimum wage guy that puts cars in chargers at the optimum pace to charge all users. If the problem is seen as a simple value for upscale users, the solution is simply a little labor.
JJ
People act like complete d-bags when faced dealt scarce resources? No way.
Wow.
Where I live, that dumb bitch would've shut up when the truck owner fed her the barrel of a shotgun and told her to get the fuck out.
In my mind, that is the real truth behind the canard "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
The reality is that almost all people were already corrupt, and the power merely revealed the corruption, rather than caused it.
Similarly, when your ex cheated on you, they were ALWAYS the type to cheat - and you should have been able to see it when you met them. (My sister met a married law professor, who left his wife for her. Guess what, he cheated on her too.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
We need legislation. We cannot allow the early bird to get the worm. Its an antiquated concept and it is not fair. It is clearly discriminatory.
Why should your company be giving you this for free?
At what point does gaining "green credentials" falter under the expensive?
Do you really think that KW's of charging power available on demand throughout the day by allowing any significant percentage of your parking lot spaces to be able to charge is cheap or even possible? Honestly, you're into MW before you even get out of SMB territory.
Your electric cars are SO GOOD that you can't make it to work and then home before you need a charge?
There's just too much common sense missing from the article here. If your engine-based car conked out in the parking lot, would your company pay to put in fuel pumps or (worse) even pay the fuel for you? Not unless they were a HUGE company, and it would come with so many usage caveats.
If you're installed electric points and you are OVERSELLING them, how different is that to those ISPs oversubscribing their broadband connections, etc. and yet we moan about them?
The companies have a choice - install more capacity at great expense for a minority of users who can't be bothered to manage their recharging so it happens at home instead of work (at the saving of pence to them, and lots of money to the employer), leave things as they are and let people moan, or take all the chargers away.
I know which one I'd choose.
"Employees are calling and messaging each other, saying, 'I see you're fully charged, can you please move your car?'" That is so insulting. I would cry myself to sleep if they spoke to me that way.
They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their expensive cars are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, charging ports, put their commutes in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes.
No need to assume everyone else is as greedy as yourself. There's plenty of benefit to having your electric car at a higher charge more of the time so regardless of money it shouldn't take a genius to realise that people would value being able to charge at a location where they park their EV. I'm sure the majority of EV owners would be happy to pay for the electricity, they already chose to buy an EV which can't yet be justified on purely financial terms.
I've lived there three times and moved away three times and was glad to get out each time. California's culture of competition and desperation is just awful. It's a great place to be if you're rich enough not to have to work or be anywhere on a specific schedule, but for everyone else, LA, SD, and SF areas are misery. I don't know why anyone who isn't filthy rich wants to be there.
Do you really want to live in a country where people get jailed for scratching a paint job on a car?
You already do. Graffiti (vandalism) is a felony in many states. I would not be surprised if deliberate vandalism against other types of property (vehicles) was as well if the damage is over a certain value.
http://criminal.findlaw.com/cr...
No in California commutes are long for most people who still have to work every day because they can't afford to live anywhere near where they work. Also, range numbers for a charge are based on continuous driving on an uncongested roadway. Throw in traffic jams and start and stop driving while running AC and stereo, etc., and that 300 mile range drops fast.
No assumptions. I am sorry you took it personally, but if you have ever seen how people act when free stuff is being given away, you would understand my point.
Companies are finding that they need one charging port for every two of their employees' electric vehicles. "If you don't maintain a 2-to-1 ratio, you are dead," said ChargePoint CEO Pat Romano. "Having two chargers and 20 electric cars is worse than having no chargers and 20 electric cars. If you are going to do this, you have to be willing to continue to scale it."
There will ALWAYS be a shortage of chargers, it's the nature of the beast. They cost money to buy, money to run and money to maintain and at this point are generally free to use. Where this is altruistic and helps the environment by encouraging folks to drive their EV's (or actually making it *possible* for them to extend their range) they are a "cost center" for companies, like other employee benefits, and take away from their bottom line. There will always be a shortage. But the above quote comes from a guy who makes his living SELLING chargers. Somehow I get the idea he's more motivated by the prospect of making money selling chargers, not saving the environment. Why do I say this? He's advocating a charger for every TWO EV's. This is WAY to many.
At first glance it seems reasonable, but in reality it's not even close. The proper ratio at most one charger per FOUR EVs, and likely more like one to eight or more.
1. First we need to understand that 1 charger can easily service FOUR parking spaces if you orient the spaces correctly (with two side by side on each side or a row of cars). With long enough cables and drivers parking so the charging port is nearer the charge, this would be EASILY extended to SIX spaces
2. Few EV's require more than a few hours of charging to regain a significant amount of range, some can recharge to 80% in less than an hour. This should make it possible to charge more than the four EV's which can be reached by each charger and giving each of the EV's per charger more than an hour each during a standard 8 hour work day.
3. Staggering start times would only extend the ability of a single charger by a couple more hours per day, extending the effective charging time available from 8 to about 12 hours or more (2 hours on each side of standard office hours). This would afford 6 parking spaces 2 hours each from a single charger.
4. Nobody is at work every day. One can assume that out of 52 weeks, vacation, sick leave will consume about 4-5 weeks or about 10% of an employee's work hours. This means that the number of EV's goes down by a similar percentage.
5. Two hours of charge time is nice, but for most EV's it is more than necessary to restore 80% of it's range. This means that if you *require* half day parking and regulate charger use to a maximum of 1 hour pre EV you can likely service 8 to 12 EV's PER charger. Of course this would require a corporate culture adjustment and a bit of policing to make sure your EV owners where making the best use of the chargers.
So, all of the above tell me that this guy is just trying to sell chargers. He knows what he's saying isn't really valid and that one charger could easily provide service to more than 2 EV's per day. He's just trying to sell the stuff he builds and the sad part is he's packaged it in the "being green" marketing slogans. The sad part is some folks don't see this for what it really is, just some shady marketing campaign which makes it to Slashdot.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Those certainly don't sound like the ideal circumstances for a pure EV owner.
If people who hosted charging stations would charge for the electricity. That would make it a business, and they would pop up everywhere.
EV charging infrastructure is different from gasoline infrastructure in that you cannot "fill up and go." Charging stations have to be located in places where people will be parking for a while. That makes shopping areas and commercial parking lots the places to put them.
No, electric cars are NOT "making people meaner" any more than "spoons are making people fat".
People just have a new thing to fight over, that's all this is. Whoopdeedoo.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Now I feel like installing fake charging ports just to fuck with assholes like you.
FYI, in order to make that work your fake charging station would have to actually charge cars. Otherwise car owners would realize as soon as they connected that it wasn't working. Even if you charged their cars for a few minutes, then shut off the juice, you still wouldn't fool them for long. EV owners use smartphone apps to exchange information about the chargers around, and yours would quickly get flagged as broken.
Regarding the AC's comment, it is pretty rude for ICEVs to park in charging spots. Not that keying their cars is at all an appropriate response. I usually just leave a note on their windshield, pointing out (nicely) that they're just like the guy who parks in front of the gas pump at a busy station, and then goes into the convenience store to shop and eat lunch -- but worse, because odds are there are enough gas pumps and stations so that you can actually get to one. Charging stations tend to be much harder to find in many areas.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That's a great question, so I thought about it for a while.
my answer is maybe, depends on the intent of the action.
if you are keying a car, yes, maybe a day or 2 in jail. You don't have the right to damage another persons property
in the above situation, the parking lot owner or manager, should have a publicly posted policy about the negative side effects of using the wrong spot. IE: Towing
you bump your door and scratch the other guys car by accident, then no.
See a long time ago, someone keyed my car, and I caught them. Why, because they were jealous of my little piece of shit car ( it did make that sound putt putt putt every morning till it got warm, a hole in the floor board so when it rained I got a bit wet LOL ) that worked amazingly well and never gave me an issue and I took great pride it trying to keep it clean. the keying of my car caused me to become amazingly angry at them, and went out of my way for a long time to see that they had no advantages ever. Never offered them help, asked my neighbors not to help them, never offered to shovel the driveway or if I was on a grocery run, knock on their door and ask if they needed anything. They moved 2 years later.
so yes, 1 day of jail would have been the right amount of punishment for getting caught keying.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Wire them up so the "FREE" charger discharges the battery of anyone who plugs into it while feeding the power to the "Out of Order" charger your own electric car is plugged into.
EVs won't discharge power through their charging ports. The charging ports aren't just dumb connections.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Case in point: The a-hole at costco who punched out an old man for complaining that he was grabbing all the samples for himself! http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/23/...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And then all the people in gas cars start keying the electric cars driven by the snooty bastards. See how things spiral? I'm sure there is a better way to handle the situation.
Just put them everywhere. A couple of bucks for a few yards of cable and an outdoor socket per parking spot too costly for Silicon Valley multi-nationals? Connect them through load-shedding relays if the total power consumption is a problem: As soon as one car has finished charging, the load is switched to the next one. How hard can it be?
The best option would be to charge for energy used directly to your home electricity bill. Add on a small surcharge or percentage to cover maintenance and up-keep, or just roll it into the taxes that pay for highway maintenance.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They don't, do they? Perhaps someone with that sort of commute ought to look at gassers? Maybe a nice hybrid?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Assholes fighting douchebags... Totally on topic.
Anyways, parking in a charging spot without using the charger (it includes unplugged EV) is often illegal. So if it pisses you off, call the tow truck, or, if it is in a corporate building, notify the hierarchy.
EVs won't discharge power through their charging ports. The charging ports aren't just dumb connections.
So you are saying that this requires modifications to the vehicle itself? Because that makes it sound like the car requires no modifications at all.
EVs won't discharge power through their charging ports. The charging ports aren't just dumb connections.
So you are saying that this requires modifications to the vehicle itself? Because that makes it sound like the car requires no modifications at all.
That requires cryptographic authentication from the interface. I suppose if you could extract the key from one of those, you might be able to make a fake charger. Or you could buy one of those units and put a fake front on it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Nearly every company parking lot, the University's parking lots and even the Walmart parking lots have miles of outlets for people to plug in their blockheaters on those -40 days.
That could work. You just need a system to know who is who.
It would be fairly straightforward to issue RFIDs to each driver to keep in the car, and to sense the time that car is at the charger and know who to charge to.
With that disclaimer out of the way, the three things that I believe need to eventually happen are:
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I figured it's because they're bending over to huff their farts.
Do I really want to live in a country where people get jailed for causing criminal damage?
Yes I do.
He probably did the "coal rolling" crap with his truck, and that is what set her off. Of course that part wasn't in the you tube video.
Very suspicious that he had the camera already going when the lady walked up to him.
Verdict: truck driver is a douche and obviously instigated that entire encounter.
The lack of pirates is causing global warming.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Yes but there are plenty of people who commute ten miles to work but make sure never to charge at home.
Throw in traffic jams and start and stop driving while running AC and stereo, etc., and that 300 mile range drops fast.
You've got it backwards.
Stop and go driving and traffic jams are where electric cars shine the most. AC takes, at the very most 3kW; much less once the cabin is cooled down. Even at full blast, 3kW saps about 12 miles of range per hour.
EPA range numbers for electric cars are based on highway speeds. Electric cars easily get 150% of the EPA range at traffic jam speeds of 30-50 MPH.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
2h limit can be enforced (same to downtown parking) by an automatic self driving to/from recharge station?
Then let the AI fight over who was first?
"real men do not use fists, they use their AI" :-)
4wdloop
You haven't seen the outrage expressed by some big-rig RVers when walmart decides they can't park overnight anymore.
I've never seen or heard of it. I live in California.
It's rockstar parking, I'll park there if it's free.
Key the primer if you want...it's a beater for a reason.
What if I started keying EVs because they weren't paying their fair share of road tax?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Exceptions don't prove a rule.
There are many more cameras in public places now. I wouldn't do anything so childish anywhere near work, if at all.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How do you know? Have you done a survey?
I doubt there are many people with a daily commute long enough to make much dent in a Tesla's max range. But for all the people that can't afford that, yes, a plug-in hybrid is a particularly good compromise right now. Electric on most short journeys so long as you drive steady. But no chance of running short of power.
What is interesting is that most EV drivers probably don't need the charge to get home and carry out their daily errands. If they do then they probably made the wrong vehicle choice. They just want to charge up on someone else's dime.
TFA actually addresses this very issue. There seems to be an assumed, implied pecking order. If you've got an all electric car that gets less than 100 miles/charge, you're at the top. Below that are gas-elec hybrids. Below that are the 250+ miles/charge Teslas.
I do think (as it seems you do) that making the folks pay for the charge would help sort this quickly. Tesla owners might be less inclined as they don't need it to get home, whereas folks with smaller battery packs might be willing to pay a premium. Etc.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
To all those folks complaining about how hard it is to do accurate trustworthy billing for electricity at public outlets, how about this:
Since electric cars are all relatively new models, I'm guessing they have a modern CANbus. Let every public electric charging station have a unique ID which is readable via a couple data pins on the charging cable. Combine that ID with the amount of joules (or kWh if you insist) the automobile itself records having received, shoot that data via a cellular or similar (OnStar) connection to Central Billing.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Did they really think this through considering an employee is expected to be at work for 8+ hours and won't need all 8 to charge the car? Two spots would be better or even 4. Provide the charger with a charge cable/plug for each spot/vehicle and a first come first serve(FIFO) mechanism of charging each vehicle.
There could also be mechanisms for sensing a vehicle in the charge spots(capacitive loops) and sensing when getting unplugged before fully charged to prevent others from unplugging someone's car to get theirs to the top of the FIFO. Something like requiring a RFID tag pairing when starting a charge and another pairing hit of the RFID tag when unplugged before fully charged.
One charge plug per parking spot was not a good plan.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm afraid the ICE guy who parks in the charging spot is the person who started the assholishness.
I'll just wait until all these silly problems are figured out (and the price of the cars come down to reasonable levels)
free food tastes better than lunch you brought from home
Have a Day!
Why don't they buy an electric generator to charge their cars? There is quite a lot of choice in diesel or petrol electric generators, and many easily fit in the trunk of the car. They can even be used as a back up for the electricity at home. You could even ask your dealer to let the generator charge your car without having to 'plug in the cord'.
The charging station is just a proxy, the prime parking spot is what they are really after.
Convert 50 percent of all parking spots to solar-powered charging. Charge a carbon surtax on all non-electric parking.
Problem solved.
Why are we subsidizing fossil fuels anyway? Cheap federal and state land/sea leases, allowing on-street parking for fossil fuel vehicles, just end that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
At work, supply hasn't yet caught up with demand.
Depends on where you work. Some places it is the other way around. Near where I work EVs aren't really a common thing yet but there are a few chargers here and there which mostly sit unused. Supply currently exceeds demand though I hope that changes someday.
The problem isn't that chargers are expensive, it's that they're stupid, and so is their physical configuration.
Currently there is one charger, one cable, and one parking spot.
If the work day is 8 hours, and the charge time is 30 minutes, that one charger should be able to charge 16 vehicles.
So have one charger, and 16 parking spots, each with a cable. The charger keeps track of the order the cables are plugged in. When the first one is done charging, it moves on to the second, and so on.
By lunch time the first 8 cars (at least) are 100% charged. By the end of the day all 16 (at least) are fully charged. And it was all done with 1 charger, not 16.
Oh, waah, cry me a river. I live in Ohio, and the only place I have ever found to plug in my car is in my own garage, at my home. There ARE no public charging ports, anywhere.
There are hundreds of charging stations in Ohio. If you haven't found any it's because you haven't looked. Heck there are even 6 Telsa supercharger stations in Ohio.
I work at a tech company campus in Palo Alto. I was the company's first EV driver, and at our first startup-warehouse office (before we had the campus) I jury-rigged a charger using two 110v circuits and a combiner (with HR and Facilities' permission). It was a hit, and the 2nd and 3rd EV owners and I traded off as needed.
When we moved into the campus, at my urging, they finally installed a bank of 12 chargers. It took us three years, but now we have about a 2.5:1 EVs:chargers ratio. We recognized early on that this would be a high-demand, limited resource, so we started an internal email list for sharing chargers. It doesn't help that the rest of the campus is about 110% full on parking, so giving up an EV spot means possibly having to park off-campus and walk a good distance, making people not want to give up their chargers unless they truly have to.
Luckily all these issues came up and were talked about company-wide on those EV lists, and we've been able to come up with some decently polite practices; no charger rage so far, though it is still high competition. A hierarchy was established to help solve disputes: charging preference goes to small-battery EVs (Leafs, Fiats, etc) first, then large-battery EV's (teslas), then plug-in hybrids (volts, prii, etc). Within those categories those who have an actual charge need vs. those who just want to top off covers most of the rest. Since the chargers have access cards even though they're free, a user risks losing their access card if they're a jerk about it. It's been decently accountable so far.
My only real complaint is that facilities cheaped out and went with chargers with simple yes/no card controls. I really wish they'd used Chargepoint or something similar where we get visibility into who is using which station when, and we can charge for time, power or per-use access if we need to start limiting use. That would also permit public use (for an appropriate fee) on the weekends and evenings when the chargers are empty, though that's not a big thing. (Like most tech campuses, it's stupidly empty all weekend and not near anything the public would want or need to park at.)
The earlier poster who mentioned a 2:1 sweet spot has it right, and we're past that We're still all polite and finding ways to get around resource contention, but it's more effort than it should be. Facilities knows this and wants to expand, but our overall parking lot has usage issues and losing more spaces to dedicated EV isn't an option right now. That's a bigger problem in general than parking stations that I really hope they solve.
FWIW, 90% of our EVs are of the small-battery-only type (leaf, fiat, focus, soul, etc). Most of our employees commute from somewhere on the peninsula which means they don't have to charge; it's more of a convenience than a need. But there's at least a dozen who commute from the far-south bay area or across the bridges that only squeak by without a midday charge, so it removes charge-anxiety. And for at least three of us, we often have to drive between the two main campus sites and the two datacenters around the bay and having midday charging means we can use an affordable EV (I'm no exec, I can't afford a Tesla!) to great effect. At this point I only have to drive the gas-burner on weekends, which has been a huge cost savings. Plus the use of the carpool lane to get through the gridlock of the south bay freeways is a great benefit... though within the last year or so the carpool lanes are just as crowded as the regular ones, at least during prime time.
OK, I'm all for green solutions, but I'm just curious. Why is it that those who own electric vehicles automatically assume the burden to fuel their personal vehicle is suddenly on the employer?
Would it become more clear if I walked into that same business as an employee demanding they install a gas station on premise? You know, since we're all about PC equality in the workplace and all.
The burden of fueling YOUR car is on you regardless of technology, not automatically everyone else. If you fuel your car for free, then learn to understand that charging outlet is a gift, not a mandate.
Do you really want to live in a country where people get jailed for scratching a paint job on a car?
If it is my property they are vandalizing then yes I would like them to see a brief time behind bars. Clearly that is someone who lacks the maturity to live in a civilized society. Plus restitution of course for the paint job.
Charging for time at the charger would not necessary reduce the demand, but may reduce the resentment and anger. Then again, if a person can't make it home because he chose the wrong vehicle for his needs, he should only be angry with himself.
You're welcome to your coal-burning car... I prefer to burn my hydrocarbons directly, though.
My electric car would be nuclear powered. Where's your Mr. Fusion?
This is actually one of the few problems that has mostly a tech solution.
1) No parking in charger space without being plugged in. Do so and get ticket, towed, booted, etc. Even rich people cannot drive a car that is not there. Would be trivial to install a sensor/camera on each charging station that could detect a car in the space but not connection active, and notify appropriate authorities.
2) Pay for charging. In the midwest, many hybrids have a lower carbon footprint using gasoline than do plug in electrics because we still make the electricity with coal.
3) Pay even more to stay in the spot, plugged in, after you are charged. I'm thinking 5-10 fold surcharge so rich people would not use it as a parking meter. You could pay for charging with an App (like many cities do for parking meter). The station could notify your app of your charging status and time to full charge.
Drivers are always jerks when resources become scarce. Nothing new here.
If most of your EV drivers don't need to charge at work, most of them won't want to pay for it, and that will free up spaces for the long-distance commuters. I don't think the free market is the magic bullet that solves every problem, but in this case it seems like the right tool.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I doubt there are many people with a daily commute long enough to make much dent in a Tesla's max range.
Then that free charging spot isn't important enough to fight over, is it? Yet here we are.
Worse, I saw a Tesla parked at the airport the other day, in a charging spot, not charging.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Way to win people over for buying electric cars. Now I feel like installing fake charging ports just to fuck with assholes like you.
They can be even better than just fake. Add some circuit to detect if the cable is attached to a car. If attached, add a delay and then put text on a screen "Connectoin to battery charger failed. Please update car firmware and try again" and then facebook and whatever will be full of people trying to figure out how to update their car firmware.
I thought one of the benefits of the Tesla was that it didn't have a tranny?
Recently I was talking to an electrician that was upgrading the charging ports at a parking structure. He was telling me that only government recognized utilities can meter the electricity (PUC's). Parking garages are getting around the issue by charging a higher flat rate for parking in a spot with a charging station. They also have NFC cards to turn on the charging stations for people that are paying extra for the spot. The thing is, in a commercial building, the employer is usually paying for the spot. This creates a bit of an issue because it incentives people to charge their cars only at work when the grid is in high demand instead of at home when the demand is lower at night. The told me there is a company called Freedom (you'll have to look it up). That is making grid aware charging stations that will turn off the stations during high demand grid. That is when the fun really begins! The charging stations will turn off the power automatically and people can't override it by grabbing the wire in the next space over.
By many accounts, owners of gas-powered cars often take up desirable parking and charging spots that companies and cities reserve for electric cars.
The biggest mistake was to put the chargers at the closest parking spaces. Why are we treating electric car owners like the handicapped? They should have put the chargers out at the farthest parking spots to limit the chances of ICE cars parking in the prime spots. And before you complain about making them walk farther, consider this obvious fact: They are using those spots to charge their car, which takes a lot of time. The time spent walking to and from the car is insignificant compare to the charging time.
A Google computer manager said he had sold 9,000 of the EV Etiquette Survival Packs that he created. For $15.99, a pack includes hang tags for vehicles that urge fellow drivers not to unplug others’ cars while charging.
BWAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Seriously? People paid $15.99 for a sign?
More public chargers are the obvious long-term solution.
Is it? Where are you going to put these chargers? In existing parking spots? The more regular parking spots you convert to EV, the more likely it is that regular parking spots will not be available for non-EV people. This increases the chances of non-EV people parking in EV spots.
some people assume their environmental impact is lessened when they adopt certain practices or technologies, when it reality, more often, it's trading one problem for another.
Of course it is trading one problem for another but the goal is to get a better sort of problem. Everything has its drawbacks but that doesn't excuse doing nothing. There are always problems but we can minimize the ones we deal with.
Often enough, something is burning to generate it, not to mention environmental impacts from spent nuclear fuel, or damming rivers, etc.
Certainly but it's generally easier to deal with one big exhaust port than a whole bunch of little ones PLUS we aren't tied to hydrocarbons so much. Like I said, we're looking for a better sort of problem. We're not going to solve the problem in one fell swoop. The big advantage of electric vehicles aside from their relative energy efficiency is their fuel supply gets an abstraction layer. Can be powered with coal, oil, natural gas, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, etc. You can pick the most eco friendly combination of economically practical fuel supplies. With a gasoline engine you are tied to hydrocarbons like it or not.
There are way more spots with electric chargers than there are with gas pumps. Let these self-entitled whiners pay for their own electricity just like the rest of us are responsible for our own gas costs...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If it's a completely malicious act performed by someone who feels entitled to a particular patch of asphalt that they don't even own, that causes me thousands of dollars worth of damage and depreciation, then yes, they should see the inside of a jail.
If it's an actual accident, then no. The difference should be astoundingly clear - he's not talking about a simple scratch or door-ding, he's talking about rubbing a key down the entire length of the car in order to 'teach someone a lesson'.
Intent matters.
For the record, I don't park in spaces with EV chargers available to them. But costing someone thousands of dollars because you are an entitled prick is not an option in civil society.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What if I started keying EVs because they weren't paying their fair share of road tax?
I'm not advocating keying anyone's vehicle. As for the taxes, if you don't like it, talk to your representatives.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I haven't done a large-scale survey the way somebody with grant money would, but I have observed this behavior in action. Do I know how prevalent it is, of course not. But I have seen the frenzy over the free chargers in office buildings. In the meantime I'm also an annual Disneyworld ticket holder. They have electric vehicle charging. About twelve spots the same as the office building of which I'm thinking. Cost id $0.35/kWH of electricity. Always plenty of "pumps" available! If Disney had free charging, I would be one of those people I just described. I'd pay for my annual ticket in electricity recovery. I would even go charge up come back and run my house off the thing!
Last week was the first time I saw a Tesla in person - driving next to me on city roads it sounded like a small jet engine when the driver hit the gas! Not as bad a motorcycles, but yeeesh!
The best option would be to charge for energy used directly to your home electricity bill. Add on a small surcharge or percentage to cover maintenance and up-keep, or just roll it into the taxes that pay for highway maintenance.
The problem is that electricity is so cheap that the cost of the metering device and accounting vastly outweighs the actual cost of product.
There was a story in my local news a year or two ago about a guy arrested for plugging his car into a school charger while he was there for a meeting of some sort. The best anyone could figure, after a week or so of number crunching, he "stole" about a nickel worth of electricity.
I wonder if there's a certain amount of buyer's remorse -- people who thought "I really only drive 70 miles a day, this $electric_car has a range of 120 miles, and I can charge it at home easily".
Then they discover well, they actually do drive past the range frequently, don't get the range they thought they would, or if they did take those things into account, thought that "all those free charging points" would make up for it.
Now they're pissed -- they made a big commitment to an electric car, combined with a lot of self-righteous praise of their choice to everyone who would listen, and they're finding out it that it's not panning out like they thought it would.
Now they have a whole new set of hassles to deal with on a daily basis because their car doesn't have the range they need and recharging on the go has turned into a Mad Max situation.
Poor Planning and Limited Infrastructure Creates Obvious Yet Unanticipated Resource Scarcity Battles.
It's going to be like the walking dead, but instead of zombies it's e-cars with broken charge ports and instead of brains it's private electrical sockets.
Come to think of it, it's pretty much the same as outlets in airports and coffee shops. I've heard some downright nasty stories about coffee-shop-power-hogs.
On purpose? Yes. It makes for a more civil society when people can't cause significant damage to other property.
Repainting cars is expensive and terrible for the environment!
You don't own the parking lot and you can't dictate who can park where.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The problem is that installation of electric vehicle charging ports at some companies has not kept pace with soaring demand
Get on this, Musk. NOW!!! This was an obvious problem before you even started this exercise, and the whole thing is going to be futile if it's not fixed.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
We always charge our Leaf at home. The only exception was at the dealership following warranty work. I know where the Chargepoint stations are and never see anyone at them.
I do. Only time I've seen poor behavior is at the free ports at my local mall, most of which involves unplugging your finished car and leaving a message on PlugShare's site. My wife and I both own plugins and we pay for our charging. We use mostly ChargePoint, our cars message us when they are done as does ChargePoint. They also message us if someone unplugs us, thankfully ChargePoint stops billing us when this happens. Because we don't want to pay for being connected and not charging and not wanting to be a$$'s we are also quick to unplug and move our cars when finished. This is just like everything else in life, you must give and take and respect your fellow human. Most every E.V. owner I've met has been very nice.
3kW?! For vehicle A/C? That's more power than the cooling system for my whole house.
You're off by an order of magnitude. 300 watts at most and that's not even one of the newfangled modern efficient ones in electric cars.
I may have been off by a few hundred watts, but not an order of magnitude.
Over the ODBII port using Torque for Android, I can monitor electrical consumption of my Volt.
At idle, with no accessories running, the car consumes about 500 watts. When it's 120 degrees outside with the AC cranking that usage easily climbs to above 3kW. It's more than just a compressor and fan. The car also cools and pumps liquid coolant through the battery system.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Way to win people over for buying electric cars
I don't think there's any intent to "win someone over." It's just someone being a dick while punishing someone else for being a dick.
you are human garbage and the world would be better off without you
Nothing like this *makes* a person meaner. It just brings out their true colors.
50MPH is a traffic jam? My commute is over urban roads with 30-40mph speed limits and an urban highway with a limit of 50mph. So 30-50mph is with no traffic. I can pretty much match that for the first 90% of the distance (50% by time). My average speed over the full commute with normal rush hour traffic is 15mph.
Recently I was talking to an electrician that was upgrading the charging ports at a parking structure. He was telling me that only government recognized utilities can meter the electricity (PUC's). Parking garages are getting around the issue by charging a higher flat rate for parking in a spot with a charging station. They also have NFC cards to turn on the charging stations for people that are paying extra for the spot. The thing is, in a commercial building, the employer is usually paying for the spot. This creates a bit of an issue because it incentives people to charge their cars only at work when the grid is in high demand instead of at home when the demand is lower at night. The told me there is a company called Freedom (you'll have to look it up). That is making grid aware charging stations that will turn off the stations during high demand grid. That is when the fun really begins! The charging stations will turn off the power automatically and people can't override it by grabbing the wire in the next space over.
Unlike the way I can override your mom's sexual inhibitions by unzipping my fly and popping out my GIANT COCK for her to see? You should see how eager she can get when she "gets a load of" this COCK. She loves the size of it, it's huge! Your mom loves the PENIS. I love every bone in her body, especially mine!
Electric cars easily get 150% of the EPA range at traffic jam speeds of 30-50 MPH.
I'm not sure you understand the definition of the word "jam," which implies something is halted or stopped or nonfunctional ("that machine is jammed!").
While I've heard the word applied to stop-and-go traffic where the average speed might be 5-15 mph or so, if your average speed is over 30 mph, I can pretty definitely say that you're NOT in a traffic "jam." You may be cruising in heavy traffic. Oh, and most people would probably consider the upper range of your numbers (50 mph) to BE "highway speed," hardly a traffic jam.
Excuse my ignorance. I live in a rural area where traffic isn't a thing.
That said, your commute would be perfect for an EV. While gas cars lose efficiency while idling and being stuck in sub-optimal gear ratios, EV efficiency is much more uniform at speeds below 50MPH where wind drag has little effect.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
It's called a Chevy Volt
Ken
If by "here we are", you mean at the stage where writers are writing articles about a supposed problem, then yes. But what's new. Whether it's a significant problem in the real world, is another matter. It's the first I've heard anyone complain about it. If you search for it on Google, like any other thing, you'll find examples. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a general problem.
Worse, I saw a Tesla parked at the airport the other day, in a charging spot, not charging.
Some people park badly in every sort of car. Is there a parking restriction that EVs that aren't charging shouldn't park there? If so, it should be ticketed. If not, an airport needs to be sure they have LOTS of charging points. Were all the other's busy?
I live near Cleveland. For a reasonable sized city, there are pathetically few. I see 7 stations within a 40 mile radius from me
Then you haven't examined it closely. There are dozens of public chargers within 40 miles of downtown Cleveland.
and every one of them is located at a car dealership
No they most assuredly are not all at car dealerships.
There were plenty of other charging spots available, but that is beside the point. The spots are intended for EVs that need a charge, not EVs driven by lazy fucks. A Tesla parked there but not plugged in is no different than me parking my gasser there, but the moral outrage at parking my gasser there is vlear, several people commenting on this story have already said shit like that will get my paint keyed. Where are the key marks for the Tesla needlessly takin the spot, then?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That *is* the point. In order to encourage desirable behaviour by drivers, some get privileges. The car pool lane is a classic example. They get an extra lane so they can travel faster, because they are sharing a car with others.
Long term, chargers will be a standard feature of pretty much all parking spots. Charge if you need the electricity, don't if you don't. But that would be pointless right now as there aren't enough EVs yet. In the meantime, having reserved parking spaces that ICE cars can't use is one of the intended privileges of EVs. Along with lower taxes, or the ability to use in congestion charge areas without paying a fee.
Where there are not enough charging spots for the people that want to charge, then it makes sense to restrict to those that are actually charging. But where there are plenty of chargers, that's not necessary, and EV users are fine to park there.
I'm not saying you're wrong, it always kills me a little bit inside when someone says someone else's opinion is wrong because opinions don't work that way, but clearly more Tesla owners share my view than yours. Actually, no, I will say your wrong about one thing:
That *is* the point.
Yes, of course, I have no idea what my own point was.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Settle down, Morbo... :D
Why are they giving away the electricity? Is it difficult to meter or something?
Free is the key thing here. Yes, the solution is just charge for time on the charger, and used that money to put in more chargers. But humans are uniquely curious when it comes to free stuff. Give away free stuff and everybody wants some, and they hate it when someone else gets free stuff and they don't. Charge just a little bit for it, and then it changes the whole attitude.
Our bulk prices for electricity are at 4 cents per kwhour. Our electricity is generated from our James Bay reservoir.
We can provide Vermont and New Hampshire with electricity at around the same rate.
What is interesting is that most EV drivers probably don't need the charge to get home and carry out their daily errands. If they do then they probably made the wrong vehicle choice. They just want to charge up on someone else's dime.
Of course, there will be a few who would somehow feel entitled and would see such a change and respond.... "can you believe they are taking away our free charging!".
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Why is the blame being put on companies' parking lots? I've never seen one with a gas station in it. Maybe the angst should be placed on the government for not having enough public charging stations around?
Thanks for the tip, did not know this existed. Haven't needed it but one never knows. Cheers!
Traffic jam speeds of 30-50 MPH? Apparently someone doesn't know what a real traffic jam is. NYC suburbs' rush hour commuters can expect speeds averaging about 15 MPH (4.5MPH in the Manhattan,) peaking at about 40 occasionally and with frequent stops. This is not an anomaly; this is every work day. Even the HOV lanes are stop and go.
Also, I think your 150% EPA range is for hybrids, not electrics. They do get better gas mileage in stop and go situations, only because they rely more on the electric engine and therefore don't use as much gas. However, even with regenerative braking, the electric charge does eventually run out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Employees are calling and messaging each other, saying, 'I see you're fully charged, can you please move your car?'"
The author lists many real problems, but why present this in a negative light? A perfectly reasonable and polite way to address the issue.
Also, I think your 150% EPA range is for hybrids, not electrics
Apparently someone doesn't know what a real traffic jam is.
Yeah, yeah. I live in a rural area.
I took the side roads once on my monthly trip to Costco just to see if I join the mythical "50 mile club" in my Volt. I kept it between 45-50MPH. Even with the 6 stop signs on the way, I logged 53 miles before the engine kicked in. The EPA rating is 38 miles.
That's 147% of the EPA rating.
I doubt if you could get 150% of EPA rating in a dense urban area though. Too many stops. Too much inertia wasted.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Then why do I have a meter on my house? And office? And data center within that office? The "too cheap to meter" myth is complete bullshit. Meters are cheap. Power plants are REALLY expensive.
I remember that story. He was REPEATEDLY told to not do that. (plus, he was known to charge his car there when he had no business even being there.)
That's 147% of the EPA rating.
*facepalm*
I mean 139%
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I thought I'd add an OT but hopefully humorous comment about how a good percentage of the Prius drivers here (Northern Ca) are the most arrogant drivers I've ever seen in many decades of driving. They have no qualms about cutting you off at a very slow speed, iow without merging, then accelerating ever so slowly, or perhaps I should say in the most environmentally friendly fashion - to eventually get up to the speed of the other vehicles in the lane. I do everything I can to avoid getting cut off by Prius drivers.
Case in point: The a-hole at costco who punched out an old man for complaining that he was grabbing all the samples for himself! http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/23/...
Good! This generation of old people are particularly self-important, entitled blowhard fucks. They singlehandedly brought down this great nation, with their fiscal irresponsibility and attitude of MINE MINE GIMME IT'S FUCING MINE!, something even the Soviets couldn't manage to do. Glad to see one of them got what was comin to him. Too bad the guy who did the deed will probably go to jail.
What kind of insane world do you live in where a light verbal disagreement is grounds for manslaughter/murder?
I've been driving EVs for a few years now, and it is quite different than most people assume that do not own or drive EVs. As, for "free" and "charge-to-charge", anyone that drives EVs eventually realizes that "free" won't last forever, and the "free" is in large part to encourage and reward drivers for making the big step to change from ICE to EV. One of the curious aspects of this evolution is that the roads and bridges and related infrastructure is, paid, for by gas taxes; that means we EV drivers are paying nothing to drive on public roads since we buy no gssoline. But as the numbers of EV drivers swell, that has to change at, some point-- the cost of a new EV from the showroom will continue to drop due to the continuous drop in the cost of the batteries that power them, since billions are being spent yearly to tweak and, refine and research battery tech. In a few months, Tesla's 5 billion - dollar battery factory ("Gigafactory") will be online, and so batteries-- and, EVs-- will suddenly start to drop in price even more. It is expected that EVs-- which are more powerful, far simpler, less expensive to maintain and more convenient in many ways-- will creep lower and lower in price until they may eventually be even less expensive than ICE cars. Long before they hit that point, though, there will be a huge shift to abandon gasoline in favor of electrons. There will be a certain degree of growing pains, but as EVs become more commonplace, many things will change for the better, including the collapse of the Oil Gluttons... many people will be driving EVs with power they generate on their own roofs, and living expenses will dramatically decrease. One likely problem will be an increase in road traffic, due to lower costs of driving, but traffic accidents will drop significantly because of computerized collision avoidance and other similar tech... self-driving cars.
I drive a 2011 Nissan LEAF which came from the factory with an extension cord that plugs into any 120 volt AC socket that can supply 12.5 Amps of current. That is basically any electrical socket in the USA, Canada and many other areas. From a plain old 120 socket, the charge rate isn't fast, adding about 9 miles of driving per hour of charging. None the less, staying plugged in for an average work day should be able to charge the car from almost empty to almost full.
Companies could simply install weather proof 120 volt sockets in parking spaces instead of costly and unjustly over-priced charging stations. It isn't completely as simple as stringing wire and sockets in the parking lot. All of the sockets need to be able to supply full current to all the electric cars that are charging, so sufficient electrical wiring infrastructure and power feed to the building must be present.
The problem with BYOC (bring your own cord) is that cars don't have a locking mechanism to prevent any random passer by from disconnecting the cord from the car and socket and taking the charging cord.
I live in the mid-west section of the USA where there are hardly any public charge stations, and so far I haven't had any range anxiety or charge rage in the couple of years I've had the LEAF. I think this story is mostly media hype.
If that's true, that is the worse design ever. Racers have been adding electric A/C to cars for decades and they only pull a few hundred watts or so as stated. Fans and pumps absolutely would not make up the difference. Neither would cooling the batteries. If it did then you would be consuming insane power cooling the batteries; power provided by the batteries, in turn making them hotter; this design makes no sense.
I'd be interested in hearing from an engineer that designs electric cars. How much power does the A/C really use and why?
If that's true, that is the worse design ever.
Every EV that has active liquid battery cooling takes up about the same amount of power. Perhaps you should be submitting your resume to GM or Tesla, since you appear to be smarter than all their engineers.
Racers have been adding electric A/C to cars for decades and they only pull a few hundred watts or so as stated.
I bet that hobbyist electric AC is powered by a lead-acid battery which is not cooled and has an average life of 3-5 years before it completely craps out. I'm talking about modern EVs, not riced out Honda Civics with oversized alternators.
If it did then you would be consuming insane power cooling the batteries; power provided by the batteries, in turn making them hotter; this design makes no sense.
Insane power? You don't comprehend how powerful these packs are. The Volt's traction battery can safely put out a steady 111kW of power. A 2.5kW draw to cool it is 2.5% of its power output.
The BMW i3 pack puts out 160kW and the Teslas are in the 300+ range. In the context of these cars, 2.5kW is next to nothing.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.