Not all BEV owners feel as you do. Case in point: At our local Drive Electric Week the organizer was describing to me a trip he took in his FFE from his home near Ann Arbor, MI to Stratford, Ontario (a 189 mile trip). He used four different public charge stations along the way and took about 8 hours to do the entire trip.hybridbear said:I wouldn't depend on public charging. For example, we'd like to take the Focus Electric on an upcoming trip to Rochester (about 85 miles one-way). There are EVSEs in the parking ramp we'll be using. The cost to use them would be less than the cost for gas in the Fusion Energi. However, without those stations we would be stranded in Rochester. For that very reason we will not take the Focus Electric. We don't want to be in a situation where we would need a public charge to get home.
Do you find many 240 stations on Plugshare? Almost all the residential stations I see on there are 120V outlets.michael said:As I've mentioned here in the past, I originally installed a 220 outlet at a friend's house on the other side of town so that I would have a satellite charging location that I could count on. Based on my success with the FFE, she has since gotten a RAV-4 EV and I installed an EVSE at her house. So now I get 6 kW charging there instead of just 3 kW.
That's sort of the idea of the residential side of Plugshare...a community of locations around town usable when needed for travelling or emergencies but not for everyday charging.
I'm with Jmueller...I frequently make trips beyond my basic range, but I make sure I've got backup charging spots available in case my primary is unavailable. So far, there's never been a problem. Occasionally this involves making a phone call to someone with a residential charger listed on plugshare, asking if I can count on them as a backup to a public charging station. They have always been beyond helpful, even to the extent of leaving their garage open if they need to leave the house when I expect to be passing by.
As one plugsharer put it, "if you charge up at my station, I get to breathe cleaner air"
Most Plugshare sites are 208 or 240v. You can filter the view to eliminate the 120v outlets. We often make trips beyond the range of the FFE. You just need to have a backup for each place you plan to charge.hybridbear said:Do you find many 240 stations on Plugshare? Almost all the residential stations I see on there are 120V outlets.
Public charging stations are very expensive per kWh. The cheapest one I've found (that requires payment) around here is $0.30/kWh plus a $1.00 access fee. Many are $2.00/hr plus a $2.00 access fee. That's quite pricey to charge the car.hcsharp said:Your assessment of owning a Tesla vs PHEV misses a few points. First, if your car goes 200+ miles between superchargers, then you generally need more than a 10 minute break. You need a meal at that point and time to stretch your legs or the rest of the trip is actually more difficult in my experience. A supercharger stop is usually only 30 - 45 minutes. Also, you mentioned the "free" supercharging pays for any lost time there. Really? The cost of the electricity is almost nothing. But if it's that important, more surprising is that the extra cost of electricity for a PHEV over a BEV doesn't seem to bother you at all. Most PHEVs consume about 30% more electricity per mile than a similar BEV.
The best solution is more range so drivers don't have to plug in except perhaps on long trips. That will come. PHEVs will become less convenient for local driving because of greater electric consumption and smaller batteries. They might make up for it on long trips if a quick-charge DC network is not available.
According to the EPA the Energi consumes about 20% more electricity per mile. Sorry I over-estimated at 30%.hybridbear said:I am keeping detailed records of trips we make frequently between the Focus Electric and the Fusion Energi to see how their electricity consumption compares. I don't have a very large data set yet, only about 20 trips, but from what I see so far there is no statistically significant difference in Wh/mi averaged over many trips.
hybridbear said:Do you find many 240 stations on Plugshare? Almost all the residential stations I see on there are 120V outlets.
Exactly. That's what I'm trying to test in the real world with owning both.hcsharp said:According to the EPA the Energi consumes about 20% more electricity per mile. Sorry I over-estimated at 30%.hybridbear said:I am keeping detailed records of trips we make frequently between the Focus Electric and the Fusion Energi to see how their electricity consumption compares. I don't have a very large data set yet, only about 20 trips, but from what I see so far there is no statistically significant difference in Wh/mi averaged over many trips.
If that works for you then that's fantastic. However, there are many times where we need to drive 120-200 miles round trip from the city out to the country or small towns in rural MN. There are ZERO charging stations around here. Thus the need for a PHEV. Renting a car isn't practical when we're making trips like that at least once a month. If we could afford a Tesla then we could make all those trips in an EV, but considering that a Tesla would cost more than both our cars combined it doesn't make sense.EVA said:I'll never understand hybrids - plug in or otherwise. You're hauling around a gasoline engine that has to be maintained, weighs a lot, adds a level of complication to something incredibly simple - for what? In my pea brain, the for what is for the time when you might drive farther than the range of an electric car.
Seems like a lot of stuff to carry around for those times. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is rental cars when you want to go farther. Why bother hauling all that weight around? When you need to go someplace farther, just rent a car.
In our particular case, yes an FFE could be our only car - if we only had one driver. Daily commute of 30 miles round trip. Need to run some errands that day, fine enough range. Need to go out that night, fine - the level 2 charger will take care of enough range. Need to go on a trip farther away - Hertz, and Enterprise all have offices very near my house. Not complicated at all. Problem totally solved.
They simply can't give up the "security blanket" of the gas engine.michael said:The Volt drivers rarely exceed their 40 mile AER, and try as I might to explain that, this being the case, they would have been better off with an 80 mile BEV. They ain't buyin' it.
Right! When I told my dad I was buying an all-electric vehicle, he said the exact same things:jmueller065 said:Friends and family were totally flummoxed when we told them I had ordered a BEV. I was told all of the cliches: "Aren't you afraid it will strand you?" "Its going to cost a fortune in electricity" "How will you charge it?" "Why don't you try an Energi first just in case?" They simply cannot make the mental leap required.
People have such misconceptions about electricity.studio460 said:It's gonna make your electricity bill skyrocket.
At first, I didn't realize how acclimated I would come to driving a vehicle with only a 76-mile range. But, I wanted a car with style. A car not too many people had. I must see six Teslas a day in my commute--they're getting common (at least in L.A.). I've only seen one Ford Focus Electric on the road in the last three months I was considering the car. A Prius? I might as well drive a Honda Civic or a Toyota Camry.
WattsUp said::roll:FlufferMew said:Yeah I was sitting in my car charging, with a Volt next to me. Another guy drove up and parked next to the Volt and unplugged it for his Leaf.
If I saw that, I'd probably swap his plug back to the Volt before I left. And I'd leave a note, "Ahhh.. so you don't like being unplugged mid-charge either? I'm not the Volt owner, but I saw your jerk-ass move, and corrected it".
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