People ask me how long it takes to charge my car. They are particularly concerned with how long it takes to charge the car when I am away from home, on a road trip.
Honestly, I don’t really care how long it takes to charge my car.
Oh, sure. I could figure it out. When I am at home, I charge the car overnight and it is ready to go when I wake up in the morning. That is all that matters to me.
When I stop to recharge away from home, it does take longer than visiting a gas station. I figure that I have saved well over 100 hours by not stopping at gas stations over the last eight years. I can spend a little longer recharging my EV on a road trip and still be way ahead of the game.
This little video shows you how trivial it is to recharge my car.
Glad to learn that you have an electric car, Art! Buying an electric car is on my list, too. I have an electric motorbike, made by local (Scott’s Valley, CA) company Zero.
Like you, the charge time on my Zero electric motorbike doesn’t concern me at all. It takes about an hour to charge it enough to go 10 miles, when I charge from a regular electric outlet. In practice, I charge it up to 80%, and let it run down to 20% before recharging. I do this to extract the maximum lifetime from the batteries.
The bike carries enough batteries for a range of 100 miles, if I charge it to 100% and let it run all the way down. That’s fine for a vehicle that I just use for local errands. However, that would not work at all if I wanted to ride the bike to Lake Tahoe. That’s a 4.5 hour trip in my gas-engined car, but it would be 2 hours plus 10 hours of charging plus 2.5 hours on my Zero motorcycle.
To give another example, you can buy a fully electric Mini Cooper today for about $34,000. However, the range of that Cooper is a pathetic 100 miles. I think that e-vehicle range is a very important factor to consider. That Mini Cooper will only be useful for local errands.
All the best, Peter
Peter,
Last fall, I bought a Volvo XC40 Recharge. It is my fourth electric car, three of which have been 100% electric. First was a Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which had so little range that it was truly limited to in-town use. Then I got a plug-in hybrid Ford C-Max because I needed additional cargo area for a wheelchair. I replaced that with a Chevrolet Bolt EV. Chevy bought that back as part of their battery recall fiasco.
The XC40 Recharge has a bit more than 200 miles of range, which is more than enough for in-town use. I have had it on several short road trips and it looks like there are finally enough high speed charging stations that I can drive it almost anywhere.
You’re right. 100 miles would not work. 200 miles is plenty. 300 would be better but I can live without it.
As a tiny bit more context, I’ll say that once you get over ~200 miles of range, the range no longer matters and it is driving efficiency + charging rate that matters. The range only comes into play when you’re talking about going from one charge stop to zero charge stops. But, if you’re driving 700 miles, it doesn’t much matter whether you start with 200 or 300 miles “in the tank.” It only matters how many Wh you use to drive those 700 miles and how quickly you can replace them.