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 @SpaceJellyfish @jan @davidho That's why these things are installed by certified electricians. I wouldn't let my father in law do it. I wouldn't let my father in law touch anything electric actually. @bartvdpoel @jan @davidho Off grid PV can be done DIY by anyone who has built a model railway for instance, at least the DC side, and with the help of some prior literature, technical and bureaucratical, sigh. The cables are thicker :-) AC side, as well as everything ground fault should definitely be checked by an electrician, and if it is just to have that stamp. If you find one these days ... @SpaceJellyfish @bartvdpoel @jan @davidho not usually a problem with air flow. Sure on really hot days may be an issue, but it's normal only a problem on a reel “10A is enough to charge an average EV for 100km of range in 7 hours. “ Ouch. Therein lies the adoption problem. Until I can “gas up” in under 10 mins, EVs aren’t going to reach critical mass. Hybrids are ready now. EVs…I don’t know what the future looks like. The charge:drive ratio has to be much different than it is now.  You do have to switch away from the mindset of "full tank in 5 minutes" to "I'll charge when I can". I topped up friday evening while at a rehearsal, wednesday at work, etc.  @jan @jonw @evolvable @davidho there are other problems with Ev's but your reasoning doesn't work unless you only drive in dense populated areas.
I drove my diesel to the middle of nowhere in Luxembourg and back without issues. I can't do that with an EV. And I resist driving in something that has cloud connections for controls 🤷♂️ @jan @jonw @evolvable @davidho its a lot harder to change your mindset than you think. I know dozens of people who bike 100+kms every weekend for training, but drive everywhere in town. They tell me they don't know how I bike everywhere around town 🤷 @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho The median car doesn't move on any given day. The small subset of people who drive a lot think that their experience is representative, but it isn't. @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho "Until I can “gas up” in under 10 mins, EVs aren’t going to reach critical mass. " If you say so 😉 Hybrids? Are top notch green-washing, and squeezing out the last penny of a long since deprecated technology. @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho Rhe Idea here is to slowly charge during most longer parking occasions. The hassle is less than setting a parking meter. Effectively you no longer have to waste time on filling your tank. @jonw @jan @davidho Imagine if everyone was already driving cars they could fill up slowly at home cheaply or even for free, and someone tried to convince them to switch to expensive petrol only available at select locations that change the price every day based on events on the other side of the world, just because it’s really quick. They’d be a laughing stock. @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho exactly. Having whatever version you want of a 100% charge always available at the start of your commuting day is a huge mindshift that people used to filling up with gas every few days don't appreciate. "Will I have enough gas before I need to refill" is the gas version of range anxiety.  @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho the difference, I think, is that you can carry a can of fuel to your car, fill it, and move it immediately. An EV doesn't have any such means of moving the thing *right now* in an emergency sense. (besides towing, or course) @draeath @evolvable @jonw @davidho I've *never* seen that being a thing here where I live.  @draeath @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho OK but when was the last time you ran out of gas by accident and had to utilize a can of gas you were carrying around with you? I have ADHD and MECFS so when I remember to plan ahead I don’t always have the energy to actually do it. And even I have never had this problem. @maggiejk @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho I see some poor sap doing that on the commute to/fro work at least once a month. I don't let it get that empty, though. I have been in the "reserve" once or twice, where I had "0" gallons left, but I have a fuel flow monitor and know how much tank space I actually have. Habits from learning to fly.  @draeath @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho Lithium batteries may take slightly longer to self discharge, but as far as I know they rarely survive when it does happen.  @draeath @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho Actually the equivalent is charging from any ordinary grid socket. There is a standard cable for that coming with every EV. It is not recommended except in an emergency and only gives 3.7 kW. Yes, you should *never* go to zero charge, or close to it. That means towing. The thinking with an EV is really different... much more forward looking. A bit like flying. @MikeFromLFE @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho I didn't say you kept it in the car, but that you could obtain one quickly if you had a problem. @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho However, for street lighting, as opposed to slow charging from one's residential installation, there are costly complications: 1. Street lighting circuits are usually un-metered. Adding meters is a costly investment with under-powered results. When you charge from home this is already taken care of, since your private installations are billed. 1/4 @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho 2. Street lighting was already efficient before LEDs. Most street lamps are/were one of the discharge gas variants. They are slow to start but in the same range as LEDs for efficiency. It's not really the case that there is untapped capacity in these circuits. 2/4 @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho 3. Slow charge at home may be OK, but if all the cars along a busy row-house street attempt it at the same time, it becomes unfeasible. Again, the circuits feeding homes are larger and can usually cope with night-time simultaneous charging, but street lighting circuits would struggle in most areas where the spatial need makes the idea attractive. 3/4 @evolvable @jonw @jan @davidho 4. There are safety issues regarding the earthing (grounding) and protection offered by street lighting circuits. In the UK they cap individual loads on these circuits to 2KW (9Amsp) to get around that cheaply. If you want to connect bigger loads, then you'll need to invest in compliant earthing, which may make the concept unfeasible. Once all of those issues are addressed, the whole concept withers on the vine due to costs. 4/4 @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho street lamp "level 2" charging is for your overnight I'm going to bed and my apartment / house has no driveway and I always park on the street use cases. Your scenario is the "level 3" fast charging that's already being installed along major highways in any jurisdictions that care. 5 to 20 minute charges depending on need are easy, and for the sake of your bladder, a nice thing to do since you can leave your car unattended unlike at a typical gas station. @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho I just completed a 2,400 km journey by EV without the slightest inconvenience and at a lower cost than doing so in an ICE vehicle -- by charging when stopped to eat or have a cup of coffee. The idea that it's necessary to fill up in 5 minutes is absurd unless you need to exceed the vehicle's range several times a day.  @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho If you woke up every morning to a 70% charged EV (let’s call it a 250 mile range car, giving you 125 miles usable range without dropping below 20%), how many days a month would you need to “charge on the road”? How often are you driving over 200, 250 miles a day? (1/2) In the past 20 months I’ve only done one long trip (1500 miles) where I had to use public fast charging extensively. My more common 300-350 mile round trips rarely occur more than once a month, and require either two short charges or one longer charge. The rest of the time I charge overnight at home at a fraction of the cost of petrol/gasoline. For those with longer daily drives, an EV may not be a good choice these days. (2/2) @bplein @vanitarium both.gif :D Improved mass transit for the 90% of trips that shouldn't need a car at all, and EVs for the remaining 10% that still require driving. @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho He was specifically talking about slow charging. For driving hundreds of km, you're supposed to take a break every couple of hours anyway, and many EVs will now take enough charge in a short break to keep going for the next couple of hours.
@jonw @jan @evolvable @davidho So you park your vehicle in the evening and in the morning it has enough gas for driving the day. A car typically stand for 23 hours/day so there is enough time for charging. Hybrids pollute CO2, so they have no future. The future are busses, trams, trains, bicycles and BEV.  @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho primarily to avoid crashes, but also for slow charging @jonw @evolvable @jan @davidho The issues that I run into are: 1. Why are we even focusing on EVs in cities instead of just switching dense urban environments to public transportation + bike and foot traffic? 2. The places were you really do need a vehicle are in rural environments where, in western U.S., we are looking at 100 km distances just between towns. @evolvable @jan @davidho Hopefully in real life most „nights“ (locking the car until unlocking it again) also are longer than 7 hours…  another worry: people will damage the cables or just unplug the car because lulz that doesn't mean this shouldn't be set up but we'll see the emergence of charging ports that lock and steel clad cables do you mean electronic lock controlled by the car? if so, fantastic not "lock" as in something that anyone can just unlock because vandals will  |
@jan @davidho They are normally only slow charging 230V/16A connections (aka a normal home socket). And there is probably also a form of load balancing so when all sockets in the street are used they probably downthrottle to 6 or 10 amp for a while. Takes a while to fully charge the car but enough to add +150 km in a night of charging.