As "early adopters" are no longer the focus, EV sales are falling across the U.S., for a wide variety of reasons, many of which are utterly reasonable. The push was too soon, too fast, and the existing transition mandates are now being recognized broadly as being unrealistic.
@lauren I knew EVs were doomed when I had to explain to my parents over the phone how to download an app and register an account to charge the EV they rented on their vacation, just to see what all the hype was about (mid 2022)
At the end of the whole thing the charger was broken anyways (stopped charging after a few seconds). They will probably never use an EV again, and I don’t blame them.
@mkoek@rootbeerdan While there are apparently efforts to bring more direct credit card payment capabilities, most U.S. public chargers require smartphone apps to pay, and there are a variety of incompatible versions for different chargers, etc. Lots to go wrong.
Never owned a Tesla but I think they just plug in to a supercharger and it charges. Plug and charge is being worked on by others. Don't expect that at the gas pump although Mobil used to have a key fob that handled the credit card info.
It's still early days and you shouldn't try the tech if you expect everything has been worked out already.
@Brendan@mkoek@rootbeerdan It's not a matter of tech "not working" -- it's a matter of unrealistic scaling issues across the entire ecosystem from electric generation and distribution to charging, not to mention massive overhyping that is now finally coming home to roost.
I would love to see how much electric energy is being consumed by crypto and AI compared to how much we need to replace all cars and trucks.
Personally we installed solar a year or so after we bought the first EV and have produced 2.6 more mWh than we have consumed and still have money in the solar bank and have only paid the grid fee ($6.40 per month I think) in 3.5 years. Never owned a Tesla car but they were 2/3 the price for solar in 2020 so we have Tesla solar
@Brendan@mkoek@rootbeerdan It's not just a matter of total energy, it's a matter of energy distribution, crypto and AI tends to involve lots of energy use in highly concentrated locations such as data centers. Vehicular electricity use is extremely distributed and requires vastly more distribution infrastructure.
But it mostly happens at night when the grid is mostly under used.
I think all DC fast chargers have battery storage to reduce the kW demand.
We should be building out home charging so that the load is spread out over night more evenly in each neighborhood but that will probably happen eventually. Why do it right up front. Our Niro let's me reduce the kW to 60% of max which I do since we usually have much more time to charge than we need.
@Brendan@mkoek@rootbeerdan Except that vast numbers of people can't charge at home, and never will be able to do so. Depending on the public charging infrastructure alone is foolhardy at best in many areas.
@lauren@Brendan@rootbeerdan The place where I work has a roof full of solar panels. They installed a long line of slow chargers that are pretty cheap. Usually I charge there. Yes the grid needs major upgrades to support large-scale EV usage, but that's no reason not to move forward - upgrade the grid then!
The AC at our house draws as much power as our EV does when I set it at 60% charge rate. I'm not sure the grid can't handle EVs if we're smart about it.
@Brendan@mkoek@rootbeerdan Especially in hot climates this is the dilemma. A/C running all day (and in some places, at night too!) and EVs charging at night. No time for transformers and other equipment to cool down. They're not built for 100% duty cycles like that. The money for upgrades at scale simply does not exist.
Denver is hot in the summer. Usually not humid which reduces the ac load.
Replaced our furnace and AC a few years ago with a variable speed system. Greatly reduces the system load.
Car charging can do the same, greatly reducing the load on the grid. Technology can balance ac use and charging within the house and eventually in the neighborhood. Probably cheaper than overbuilding the grid.
Vehicle to grid can also supplement the grid when necessary. More solar on houses with battery storage can also help.
Our 120 volt charger can add 17 kWh in 12 hours or about 70 miles. That's what we did for the first 3 weeks before installing a 50 amp outlet. Works most of the time. With the proper incentives and technology I think the home charging problem can be solved.
@mkoek@Brendan@rootbeerdan Most of the government incentives (tax breaks, etc.) have been rolled back, as have been programs to pay people to feed excess power back to the grid. Also in some cases unscrupulous dealers who have roped people into expensive systems that didn't work properly and didn't provide the value anticipated.
Educating owners would help but I'm not sure most will ever get it. Ran into an Audi EV owner that was tying up a charger going to 100 percent. EVs slow the charge way down as the battery gets closer to 100% so he was barely charging but he had no clue and I could not get him to understand even though the charger was displaying the very low kW rate. Probably thought I just wanted the spot (which I did).
But that's true about a lot of things. I'll bet many/most users reuse passwords, does that mean we should shutdown the Internet? Trying to explain the risk to the average person usually gets me blank stares.
Clearly displaying the current cost per kWh on the charger as the battery gets closer to 100% would help if you raised the price enough to make it painful. If it costs you $20 to go from 40% to 80% and $10 to go from 80% to 90% and $20 to go from 90% to 100%...
@Brendan@mkoek@rootbeerdan Actually, in areas with higher EV usage, night use is already approaching or exceeding daytime power use. This has all sorts of negative implications. Reduced use at night is important for grid components to cool down -- they are not generally designed to stay at high usage rates 24/7. This is especially true during the summer in hot climates, when the cool down phase at night is critical to avoid breakdowns. Much of the grid is very old, and funding for upgrades is sparse. Attempts to push even more upgrade fees on electricity users -- in some areas already faced with very high rates, is likely to trigger political pushback that could undermine EV adoption in major ways by electing politicians who are antagonistic to the tech.
Fine airport parking in Denver has a bunch of Tesla superchargers (24 or more I think) and about a dozen L2 (240 volt) chargers. I suspect that most Teslas have a full charge before the owner's flight takes off and most L2 charges are done before the person lands.
When I suggested that they switch to L1 (120 volt, 15 amp) chargers of which they could probably provide 100s of them with the same load, they had no clue what I was talking about.
Most cars would charge at L1 rates before the owner returned for their car and it would be far better for the life of their battery and many more customers would be served but they don't get it.
There is also the branding issue where some people probably think Supercharger power is better for their Tesla than generic power. Now with Techron to keep your charging port clean😄
@lauren@Brendan@mkoek@rootbeerdan Strange. I’ve been driving electric since January 2020 and have never experienced charging issues. Also I would call it under-hyped rather than over-hyped: drove a regular rental car last week and my god that feels slow and clunky. Not going back to fossil fuel cars that’s for sure. But I never see that mentioned: electric is just a lot quicker, more comfortable, and easier to drive.
All EV owners that I know feel the same about never going back to ICE. I also know people that considered an EV but chickened out and bought a PHEV instead. Understandable but they lose most of the driving benefits and fun.
In-laws PHEV Niro is boring compared to our Niro EV which is boring compared to the EV6 I wanted but was not available at the time.
Too much EV FUD in the media, probably paid for the obvious special interests.
@Brendan@mkoek@rootbeerdan I understand the tech (both on the vehicle side and infrastructure side) in rather great detail. No way I'd buy or drive an EV.
@lauren The statement “EV sales are falling across the US.” appears to be false. EV sales in the US grew 40% YOY in 2023.
The rate of growth is declining. A few plausible macro factors have been put forward for this. The TL;DR: being “higher interest rates hit Hertz and the mostly-luxury market segment driving US growth”. (Also crappy non-Tesla DCFC infra.)
Still, genuinely stalled growth would be troubling. Am watching this with interest.
@lauren There does seem to be a tremendous appetite for the statement “EV sales are declining in the US.” to be true, so much so that “declining growth” is being reported and/or interpreted as “absolute decline in sales” in some places. I wonder why this is.
@lauren It would indeed be easier to argue that EVs are hype if EV sales were declining. The problem with that argument is that EV sales are not declining. Arguments that governments are overreaching would also be supported by a decline in EV sales in spite of incentives. The problem, again, is that EV sales are not declining.
@iansmcleod You can get a certain percentage of the population to buy into almost anything. EVs in their current state are a toy for people who don't REALLY have to depend on them (I think I saw a stat that 85% of EV owners have a second car that is ICE). EVs are a quintessential example of green hype that isn't even really green. To hell with it in its current form. Maybe down the line.
@lauren OK. We may have to leave it there in that case. I'm genuinely interested in understanding the recent vibe shift. I'm naively trying to re-center on the actual sales and adoption numbers. I think our disagreement here is deeper than that. I am part of a two person, one car EV family for 4 years, including numerous long distance trips. I do, however, have a garage, albeit with a standard 120 volt plug.
@iansmcleod I think your calling it a "vibe shift" is accurate. I think it's a complex of issues. Each one adds to what I call the "hassle dynamic" -- that is, how much hassle is involved in using the tech routinely as opposed to alternatives. Personally, I think the charging issues are an even bigger impediment in the long run than pricing of the vehicles. There's just no way to ever get coverage of vast areas for charging as we've done with gasoline. You can (in theory) plant a gas station pretty much anywhere. You set up the tanks, you fill them from a truck that comes by at intervals -- done. But for charging beyond the lowest common (slow) denominator, you need a lot more infrastructure. Setting up charging systems that required use of apps to work was NUTS. Many people don't want to fumble around with phones just to use their car. And even worse, incompatible apps and chargers that are broken much of the time when someone gets there. Even the fast charging times are too long compared with filling a car with gas in a busy location. I just don't see how one gets out from under all this. And I won't even start on details of the grid issues and electricity cost issues right now, which are real killers.
@lauren I couldn't agree more on the charging issue, which I'd split into very distinct long-distance versus home-base concerns. The difference in the US in the long-distance space between the dominant vendor and everyone else is stark. I selected an EV from the dominant vendor (one I am not otherwise particularly fond of) because they solved this issue. I can, and have, long distance driven wherever I want with a roughly 5% time penalty over ICE.
@lauren And I don't have to deal with an app. I'm hopeful that this part of the landscape will change rapidly due to the soon-to-be-realized NACS standardization. FWIW-This reminds me very much of the US versus Europe differences in mobile phones, and I've explained it in those terms to many people. The European consumer experience of having an EV or a mobile phone is simply better because of forward looking public policy decisions.
@iansmcleod Clearly the European experience is different, both for technical and geographic reasons, not to mention policy reasons. But everything over here is always a mess in the technology space. Phones, Internet, electricity, etc. etc. Government always makes this all worse here, and many of the problems go back 100 years or more and remain intractable (and in some cases, getting worse as the political environment becomes ever more toxic).
@iansmcleod There are lots of factors. For example, personally, I wouldn't be willing to drive a Tesla even if it were free. I wouldn't want to be seen in public having anything to do with anything Musk.
@iansmcleod The semantics are important in purely economic terms and accuracy is of course best, but in terms of the foundational issues involved, the bottom line is the same. The well has been pretty much tapped out when it comes to early adopters. Not just pricing but all the attendant issues with charging, from lack of home charging ability for a vast number of people, to massive grid issues, to the unreliable and complex U.S. public charging infrastructure are in play. And the most fundamental question of all has yet to be answered. For MOST ordinary people, what possible advantages are there in dealing with all the new hassles of an EV as opposed to a conventional ICE, especially when rising electricity prices are eliminating any financial advantages in many places. The answer is pretty much none, that's why governments have been trying to force the issue with mandates. The danger there is push-back from people who don't appreciate being bullied by the government in their personal lives -- and that includes lots of Democrats too! And that's how you end up with pretty awful people elected who are very anti-EV.
@lauren Sent my prior reply before I saw this. There's a lot to unpack in what you've said. I worry about many of the issues you describe here. We'll know if early adopters are tapped out if sales growth actually declines. It hasn't and so I think that conclusion is premature. The operations cost in much of the country remains lower than ICE. I don't know where the bullying vibe comes from. There are no personal mandates for EVs. It's all carrots, no sticks.
@iansmcleod It's a stick if you really can't buy an ICE after a fixed date. Of course those dates will never hold. Inventory is piling up at dealers, manufacturers are cancelling entire EV production plants. I know enough about how the tech works (especially the grid related issues) that I know this has all been pushed too far, too fast. And more and more people are realizing it. There's just no real upside to an EV for most people who don't simply have cash to burn and can't charge at home anyway.
Charging mostly done at Electrify America due to locations and free charging that came with the Niro. We only paid about $30 to $40 for charging the entire trip.
Most chargers were working except the closest one to Denver which was out of service for updates for a month or so before our trip. One other location had screen issues in the hot afternoon sun on the way out but was fine in the cool night come back.
I did a lot of planning so we were ready for most issues and had none.
@lauren the problem I have with that narrative is that car dealers, who tend to be very Republican, have been talking it up without mention of how much their profits depend on ICE maintenance. I think there’s some truth to the charger concerns but most of the explanation is probably centered around the manufacturers pushing the prices into premium territory. GM discontinued their bestselling EV, which was also the cheapest, facing buyers with double the price on a high-margin SUV.
@acdha You can put everything else aside and the charging issues overwhelm everything. If you can't charge at home EVs are a nonstarter for most people. No pun intended.
@lauren home charging is a non-issue for a ton of people, though, unless you’re doing hundreds of miles daily in an F-150 you don’t need to charge daily with a high-end circuit. I think the main thing holding the median driver back is limited sub-$30k options.
@acdha Almost nobody is going to depend on the public charging infrastructure. It's a joke, and will be for many years. If you can't charge at home, it's a nonstarter for the vast majority of people. They won't even consider it. Period.
@lauren if you have an outside power outlet or a garage, not even a type 2 drier line, you get 4 miles an hour on a Chevy Bolt. We have a ton of people who don’t do 50 miles every day, and that’s the market we should be targeting - zero-emissions taking the kids to school, going to the office, etc. rather than road trips in large vehicles which maximize the battery drawbacks.
I generally want less driving in cities but smaller vehicles are at least safer and less noisy.
@acdha BTW, especially in hot climates, EV charging is making already horrible grid problems far worse. During the summer in hot climates when A/C is going all day stressing the grid, it's during the night that the infrastructure has a chance to cool down. EV charging can put a load similar to daytime use on the grid at night, and it's deadly to the old infrastructure. And good luck finding the money to replace it. In many places electricity is already very very expensive and makes EVs uneconomical and that's getting worse in many areas. Try to saddle the ratepayers with more fees for massive upgrades and you're going to see every pro-EV politician booted out of office in those areas. Seriously.
@PJ_Evans@acdha Exactly. There will never be enough chargers at workplaces or for people who park on streets, etc. Here in L.A. there apparently is an effort to build some chargers into street lights, but it can never be more than a drop in the bucket. Just doesn't scale.
@elysegrasso@PJ_Evans@lauren again, I’m not saying it works for everyone, only that there are many millions of people who have access to a power outlet and could use a modest-sized EV for local travel, saving money and reducing pollution. Detroit wanted to push more profitable luxury designs which cost twice as much and that extra mass necessitates high-capacity chargers, too.
@PJ_Evans@lauren I’m aware, yes. That’s why I did not say everyone could do so. The population of people who can is already a big multiple of the current EV market, so there’s a ton of room for decarbonization even if only people who can charge at home switch.
@acdha@PJ_Evans There's virtually no upside to switching unless you want to do it simply because you're fascinated with the tech or have money to burn on multiple cars. Most people don't live in Green Fantasies.
@acdha@PJ_Evans It's not just about money -- though rising electric rates are indeed involved -- but the level of hassle involved in just getting from place to place. EVs are nuts for anyone who isn't a techie, and as techie myself I have far more important things to worry about than playing the EV game.
@lauren@PJ_Evans I have heard nothing but the opposite from local owners - cheaper, more convenient not to need to stop for gas ever, etc. The one guy I know who had issues was doing cross-country road trips, which is why I think the effort should focus on second car replacement for the massive percentage of American car trips within 30 mile of home.
@lopta It hasn't, but availability, reliability, and ease of use and payment are other key factors. Nor do many people want to stand around for even 15 minutes when they can fill their car with gas in 5 minutes without any of those other issues.
@lauren From the point of a Tesla owner who wants to get away from Tesla and its weirdness the big problem is that the CCS charging system pretty much meets the old story about a camel being a race horse designed by a committee.
The CCS charging system basically sucks. The plug is mechanically big, clumsy, and heavy. (Tesla's is small and light.)
And the deployment of CCS has been an exercise if Potemkin Village making - one or two chargers at a location, often broken, often provisioned to provide only low amounts of charge current.
@karlauerbach Nonfunctioning chargers and chargers using different payment networks and requiring different apps appears to be another major problem. It's hard to visualize anyone who can't charge at home really being willing to depend on an EV using only public charging infrastructure. Consumer Reports is also now saying that in general EVs are less reliable than gas-powered vehicles. Basically the technical term for the entire situation is: CRAZY. I have zero interest in EVs personally. None.
@lauren@karlauerbach Have you ridden an electric motorcycle? With a bit more range, I would love one. Instant acceleration, super smooth, and quiet. But I like to do a couple hundred miles in a day and it is much easier to refill with gas than electrons.
@dsmdexter@lauren My office is a five minute walk from Zero Motorcycles.
As for EVs being less reliable - we've seen the opposite with our Tesla. The basic car is very solid - it is the driver interface that is awful. There's so many fewer mechanical systems that it is hard to think that the drivetrain is less reliable than a gas powered car, especially a hybrid. (My old Chevy Volt had an amazingly "intricate" motor system including a planetary gear system that could bend minds.)
Wait, aren't camels really well designed though? They can do horse stuff but like... across a literal desert with no water and their eyes are custom designed to deal with brutal sandblasts from sandstorms.
If the race is across a desert, yeah I am 100% picking the camel.
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