The Electric Car Thread
- Thread starter Skoop
- Start date
Opposite end of the spectrum! Though most of the "green" vehicles I dealt with were buses or trolley cars (or a cross between them, as in this recent "Heritage Days" photo from streetcar.org).
You did watch the video (or already knew the reference)? Because I wasn't talking about the Mustang and I can't tell from your response whether that intent came across.
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Dad's '63 VW was red ... and the paint oxidized so fast in the SF climate that it had to be constantly polished to minimize the misconception that it was covered in rust. Weekly job for a teenager.
As for the reference, when I count vehicles, there are about 1/2 dozen "extras" that show up in most of the scenes, including that one green VW that's in nearly all of them. Need to freeze frames and try to read the license plate. Growing up in SF, there were VWs everywhere, so it's expected for them to be in a lot of the scenes, but you're right: that ONE is really the sole representative of the local (?) population.
Of course when I tried it with a friend in the car it didn't even work. Just stopped at like 45º only about 1/2 way into the space (parallel parking).
Circling back to home charging - think I’m not going to bother with the street side charging and just mount it on the house. That said - any recommendations on actual chargers aside from Tesla? I know it’s nice and has some benefits, but I just can’t.
Does your utility offer any rebates on specific units?
Chargepoint home flex and the empora are both popular.
Chargepoint home flex and the empora are both popular.
I've heard good things about Grizzl-E although I haven't used one myself. Made in Canada!
Emporia has been great for me, it has a pretty easy to use app that can do ToU control of the charger if your utility has ToU rates.
I have a Grizzl-E at my dad's place, haven't had any issues with it either but they did seem to have some growing pains/bad period of quality control for a bit as there were a number of people reporting poorly torqued internal connections.
I have a Grizzl-E at my dad's place, haven't had any issues with it either but they did seem to have some growing pains/bad period of quality control for a bit as there were a number of people reporting poorly torqued internal connections.
There's OpenEVSE if you want to go the open-hardware/open-source DIY way. With interchangeable cables.
The main advantage of the Tesla one is it integrates nicely with the other Tesla products, all in one app, tesla solar, tesla powerwalls, etc. Beyond that the charger it not special, you control the charging timing settings through the car anyway.
I think pretty much all the other EVSE are comparable and competitive, maybe just make sure it's from a company that will stay in business. Chargepoint is not profitable but has been around and will probably continue to be around. I think that one is nice if you also use Chargepoint elsewhere and already use the app.
The two main benefits are it's NACS native with a built in J1772 adapter, and it can load share with up to 8 (?) others on a single circuit, a really nice thing to have if you have multiple EVs and can't or won't run multiple high amperage circuits.
Most other EVSEs don't do that.
It's also compact, inexpensive, and reliable. They're surely not making that much margin on those things, so it's not like you're financially support Elon to any significant expense by buying one.
It’s still support.
There are other perfectly good options.
I see both sides, unlike their cars the EVSE is pretty much the best option technically for a lot of use cases. If you don't want to fund them that's understandable.
Also, second hand TWCs are everywhere and you can easily reskin them. You don't need to fund nazis and still have a TWC, all you really need to worry about is vandalism and people making remarks.
Those kind of people can fuck right off. Go vandalize the oil fired powerplant or something, not trespass on my land. It's not like they have never bought anything for convenience regardless of the perceived political views of the company that made the item. Does Tesla even make their branded EVSEs in house? Next thing you know, they'll be picketing in front of Chik-Fil-A or something...
In case the temperature of the country wasn't obvious yet, people are a bit on edge right now and it's a serious consideration for buying anything Tesla. I'd be pretty pissed off if I had a Tesla anything and it got vandalized, don't get me wrong. But it's the thing right now.
I like their dumb model but they really fucked people over with their smart EVSE. They dicked around with half baked firmware for awhile then came out with a new revision and told everyone with the old version tough shit.
I returned my smart for a dumb and it has been flawless for ~2 years.
Dumb has the advantage of simplicity. The fewer things that can go wrong, the fewer things will go wrong.
Murphy's law should have been phrased as a commandment.
Murphy's law should have been phrased as a commandment.
I wouldn't have had a lucrative career if people just did things the simple way. Most of my career is "You don't need any of that stuff - it just boils down to this. Remove all that stuff because it's unnecessary complexity, it keeps breaking, and you get nothing out of it."
I really put our Leaf through its paces last week. I went from Ann Arbor to Royal Oak and back both Thursday and Friday. Due to extremely poor planning on my part, Friday was a lot tighter in terms of range than it should have been. I was counting on hitting the ChaDeMO charger in Farmington Hills on my way back to Ann Arbor, and the ChargePoint app said that it had free spots when I left Royal Oak. Unfortunately when I got there every spot was taken up. None of them were using the ChaDeMO of course, because everyone else drives cars that have a better connector).
I should have hit the Meijer at 14 Mile & Coolidge for fast charging instead, but it was in the opposite direction from Ann Arbor from where I was, and I ended up being way tighter on time to get to where I needed to be than I expected. Again, poor planning on my part. Thankfully last week it was warm, so the Leaf was reporting 130-140 miles on a full charge. Round trip was ~84 miles, and Thursday I got back to Ann Arbor with 20% left on the battery. Friday I got back with 15% on the battery.
The Leaf only has ~12k miles on it (and is fully paid off). Our oldest child is going to be driving soon, so we'll probably just let him take the Leaf, I'll start driving our PHEV Pacifica, and we'll get a new car for my wife. I randomly ended up at the Polestar dealership on Woodward because the L2 charger in their lot shows up on the maps of chargers, but it's not really a public charger. They would have let me charge for like half an hour, but they weren't going to let me leave my ugly Nissan next to the bright and shiny Polestars for a few hours.
I should have hit the Meijer at 14 Mile & Coolidge for fast charging instead, but it was in the opposite direction from Ann Arbor from where I was, and I ended up being way tighter on time to get to where I needed to be than I expected. Again, poor planning on my part. Thankfully last week it was warm, so the Leaf was reporting 130-140 miles on a full charge. Round trip was ~84 miles, and Thursday I got back to Ann Arbor with 20% left on the battery. Friday I got back with 15% on the battery.
The Leaf only has ~12k miles on it (and is fully paid off). Our oldest child is going to be driving soon, so we'll probably just let him take the Leaf, I'll start driving our PHEV Pacifica, and we'll get a new car for my wife. I randomly ended up at the Polestar dealership on Woodward because the L2 charger in their lot shows up on the maps of chargers, but it's not really a public charger. They would have let me charge for like half an hour, but they weren't going to let me leave my ugly Nissan next to the bright and shiny Polestars for a few hours.
I just found out, kind of too late for it to matter for my work, that pretty much all Teslas before 2019 support V2G with a CHAdeMO adapter. I'm building a V2G box for work and my guinea pigs - ahem - valued prototype users are asking everybody with a CHAdeMO connector on their car to test.
Pretty surprising since this wasn't an advertised feature.
Pretty surprising since this wasn't an advertised feature.
Doing my “what’s nearby for charging” search for an upcoming trip where I again maybe could need to fast charge. Oh good, a bank of CCS chargers right by hotel.
“Rivian vehicles only”
Guys, this is stupid!
There’s a NEVI charger nearby “coming soon”, I wonder if that’ll get finished, although it’s Tesla so not preferred.
“Rivian vehicles only”
Guys, this is stupid!
There’s a NEVI charger nearby “coming soon”, I wonder if that’ll get finished, although it’s Tesla so not preferred.
Doubly stupid for such a small volume manufacturer.
Really frustrated at the NEVI boondoggle. After telling people "charging is going to be way better soon" it being murdered as chargers were finally deploying sucks.
This drive is one of the routes that NEVI was covering (see above mentioned station).
Now, this is only because the details are fun, and because I'm leaning into the "never used fast charging".
Route is a little over 200 miles round trip so the Niro might make it with no charging. Or, if needed, on the way back I could stop for 10 mins at an EA spot 50 miles from home. Or I could stop for 10 mins on the way out, too. EA charging doesn't cost anything...nah, I'll spend way more time and energy to aim for the free L2 chargers dotted around the area!
This drive is one of the routes that NEVI was covering (see above mentioned station).
Now, this is only because the details are fun, and because I'm leaning into the "never used fast charging".
Route is a little over 200 miles round trip so the Niro might make it with no charging. Or, if needed, on the way back I could stop for 10 mins at an EA spot 50 miles from home. Or I could stop for 10 mins on the way out, too. EA charging doesn't cost anything...nah, I'll spend way more time and energy to aim for the free L2 chargers dotted around the area!
I've had pretty good luck with choosing hotels that have L2 chargers on site. It's often just the Tesla wall chargers, but they're sufficient when you have hours, which is fine at your hotel.
Yup, same. Hotel has a pair but it’s pay and plugshare says very unreliable.
This is a more rural area.
Fortunately not essential at all.
I keep seeing tesla chargers on PlugShare that say Tesla only. Is that still a thing? It seems I am driving my kid to ~Annapolis next weekend for a robotics thing, and the nearest charger to my hotel is a Tesla charger.
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There are a lot of V2 superchargers that will never support non-Teslas. At least not until the hardware is eventually replaced.
If the charger is a NACS plug but not a supercharger, it'll work with an adapter. If it's a Supercharger station you'll need the adapter, your car make on the whitelist, and the station to be new enough to support it.
All V1/V2 superchargers do not have the hardware to talk CCS and thus indeed are Tesla only.
Most V3 superchargers have been CCS enabled. Trust what the map says. Tesla only means it.
Doesn’t help my confusion that I’ve seen some with comments that say ”I don’t know why this says Tesla only, I charged my <whatever> there just fine.” Anyway, thanks. There is an electrify america station not far away that should work (though it’s only 150kwh rather than the 350 that the one near my house is).
It's even more egregious if you know that literally every supercharger in Europe now works with all brands.
Tesla-only chargers are definitely a thing even outside USA/NACS land. I call them Teslarsehole chargers.
There is a bank of chargers at a local shopping centre. They look like your garden variety Tesla wall-mount level 2 chargers, Mennekes plug and all, physically the plug fits, but it refuses to release power to anything other than Teslas.
There is a bank of chargers at a local shopping centre. They look like your garden variety Tesla wall-mount level 2 chargers, Mennekes plug and all, physically the plug fits, but it refuses to release power to anything other than Teslas.
The generation 2 Tesla Wall charger EVSE with Mennekes connector (AC half of a CCS type 2) only works with Tesla :/ I found this out the hard way.
A few years ago various places (hotels etc) in Australia had the gen2 installed as destination chargers, limiting them to Tesla.
The Tesla generation 3 EVSE (WiFi enabled, grayer colour ?) should work with non Tesla.
The generation 1 apparently have an internal switch to allow non Tesla.
When we upgraded to an EX30 (after 4 years of a model 3), I had to replace the gen 2 with something that would charge it. We went with a more expensive Zappi rather than buy a gen3 from Tesla.
The Zappi actually integrates with excess solar monitoring when charging. The Tesla EVSE will only charge from excess solar if you have a Tesla car and Powerwall, and that was only enabled a year or so ago.
(I have a 4 year old used gen 2 Tesla EVSE going cheap in Australia now. PM me)