We thought we know all the problems that could face the plug-in EV. As there are cost, range, charge time, unavailability of charging stations for apartment dwellers, road tax, the unexpected emergency while the car is on the drip, and sundry others.
Gas 2.0, a site very sympathetic to anything that helps the “world coming to terms with its oil addiction,” found yet another problem that hadn’t even occurred to us:
“Let’s say I buy a Chevrolet Volt, and in a few years I sell my home to a Focus Electric owner. Sure, it should still charge your car, but do you want to charge your Ford with a Chevy charger?”
Why not? The Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and Ford Focus Electric all share the mandated (US-) industry-standard five-prong Level 2 charging connector, in the industry lovingly referred to as the “SAE Surface Vehicle Recommended Practice J1772, SAE Electric Vehicle Conductive Charge Coupler.” (Developed by the Japanese Yazaki company, by the way.)
Sure, the wattage of the charging unit can be different, but it’s a free charger, no?
It’s a problem, says Gas 2.0:
“If you’re a member of Generation Y and you see a big ol’ Ford symbol glaring back at you every time you pull into your garage with your Nissan Leaf, it could conjure up memories of that time the family Ford Windstar broke down on your way to soccer practice. So do you replace it, or suffer through it?”
What’s wrong with those Gen Y types? This Boomer would go on the Internet. He would find out that the Ford Focus Electric uses a 6.6 kw 240-V charger, whereas the Leaf comes with a puny 3.3 kw 240-V charger. Just to be sure, this Boomer would ask whether the Ford charger will make the Leaf go boom. This Boomer would either hear that the Leaf charges faster than with the factory-issued charger, or that it will take the same time. But for Gas 2.0, it remains a problem. Although they concede that this problem will not “derail electric car acceptance.” Phew.
Don’t these guys have anything positive to say? They sure do. Gas 2.0 sings the praises of one company that shows great foresight in charger branding:
“It should be noted that the GM symbol is conspicuously absent from its “Voltec” home charger. Wise move, General.”
A true blue Ford Focus Electric owner will wrinkle his nose at the Voltec though: “My Ford charger does 6.6 kw, this thing does only 3.3!” Out goes the Voltec charger, in goes the Ford-tough charger. With the wiring already in place, a matter of less than an hour – if the previous owner didn’t skimp on the wire gauge.
A bit of a stretch by Gas 2.0, no? Unless the muscle car wars are going to be replaced by the electric car wars. I suppose it is possible, look at Apple versus PC, but I don’t know that it will extend to “I don’t want a Ford charger connected to my Nissan Leaf”. What happens when certain municipalities or companies start installing chargers in parking lots and garages? Are electric owners going to refuse a free top-off because the charger says Siemens or GE on it? I suppose they could but it all seems so silly.
“free top-off”
lol, right…
I certainly hope they don’t chip the chargers somehow to prevent their use with other brands of cars.. And I’m thinking that without a plugin hybrid that the Ford charger won’t sell nearly as many as the Voltec :p
I’m not sold on EV’s as “reducing dependence on oil” because electricity is less efficient than oil.
I have better ideas for saving energy.
#1 how about using home PC’s to tele-work rather than forcing people who don’t have to – to drive to work just to work on a computer?
#2 How about closing public schools and government buildings during winter storms? All that heat in those buildings costs energy.
We waste so much energy just commuting long distances to work.
Public Schools and government buildings are generally closed during winter storms, but you still have to heat the building, whether there are people in it or not. Otherwise pipes burst and other more expensive things happen.
But you can heat them to a much lower temperature while there are no people there.
Which they may or may not do. Depends on the municipality I guess.
Electricity rarely comes from oil. Most electricity comes from coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro. Those sources are relatively abundant in the US and would displace oil imports. So, even if electricity were less efficient, then it would still be a different fuel source. Everything that I’ve heard makes it sound like even with transmission losses and whatnot, electricity is more efficient than gas or diesel.
Of course, your other points are good. Why do we have so many people commute so far? If people can work remotely, then that would be great. Similarly, if people could live closer to work and travel less per day, that would be great too. We can take people’s existing behavior and do it more efficiently or we can change to more efficient behaviors. Let’s do both.
Why do we have so many people commute so far? If people can work remotely, then that would be great…
Simply because I can make a much better income working in the city than I can locally, which is where I started. An employer provided car helps to. But like everything in life there is a tradeoff. A fifty hour work week coupled with 3.5 hours of commuting a day makes for very precious weekends…
This is kind of like a gas station unilaterally deciding to use a different shaped nozzle on its pumps.
For many years US households have had two standard electrical outlets. The 110V outlet spaced every few feet along your walls near the floor, and the 220V outlet into which heavy appliances like clothes dryers and electric ovens are plugged.
Electric car chargers should be like laptop chargers: the proprietary part is not a house fixture but is between the wall outlet and the laptop or within the laptop itself.
The North American plug is standardized: SAE J1772.
In the grand tradition of international plug-confusionitis, there are other standards. Japan has one, Europe has one. China probably has one as well. The Japanese and the Euros are trying to agree on a common plug.
What about warranty issues?
Supposed you have a warranty issue with your Leaf, the dealer asks you what you are charging with, “a Ford charger” you say … uhh, “sorry to hear about your bad luck, using that charger voids your warranty”, is the response you get. Now what?
Won’t happen—it’s a standard charger. It’s the same reason they can’t deny warranty claims if you use aftermarket parts that meet manufacturer specs.
On the other hand, if you wired it in yourself and did a piss-poor job of it they’re certainly within their rights to deny you warranty service for the same reason they’d do so if you filled your gasoline-powered car with diesel.
The people who will buy electric cars would probably prefer not to have brands on their cars at all. I can see “Car 2.0” as the brand…available only in silver, white and black. After all, it’s a glorified kitchen top appliance. Just another tool for them.
If I am going to pay $26k for a plug-in version of a car that would have cost me $21k with an ICE… I am taking that charger with me when I move! So the only way that my house would get sold with the charger included is if I’d already sold the car!
Incorrect brand names could always be fixed with a home made P-Touch label if someone is that concerned about it. Gas 2.0 seems to be grasping at straws for article content. As long as it works, who cares what brand it is. Stupid young whippersnappers. (I’m 33 BTW)
The charger capacity may not be the only issue.
The carmakers will each have different charge rates, so attaching a 6.6 kW charger to a car that only charges at 3.3 kW will make no difference at all. This would be part of the design intent, so that you don’t damage the batteries. If the reverse happens, you’ll have a car that can accept 6.6 kW charging being charged too slowly to fill it in time.
But here’s a problem nobody has considered: What happens when an EV appears with a 500-mile range? We lament the 100-mile range of the Leaf, but what charging system can handle 5x of that capacity that in an overnight charge? It will get to the point where homeowners will need to get new/special electrical service to own such a car. Moreover, having consumers handle that much current in a connector sounds like a very dangerous recipe. Today’s chargers are akin to an electric dryer, but something 5x more powerful would be pretty fearsome.
Aw, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for 500-mile-range electric cars.
I have now seen that the fullest and greatest expression of how the Internet makes one stupid will be seen in relation to the stillborn electric car craze.
This question is like hearing someone ask if they can use Texaco gas instead of Shell.
We are lost as a nation. When do the Chinese take over, again?
“Stillborn electric car craze?” If you can’t see the writing on the wall, then I’d suggest you not be so hasty in applying the “stupid” label to others.
Especially since your reading comprehension isn’t quite up to snuff. Gas 2.0 isn’t raising the question of compatibility (which isn’t that stupid in the first place, considering charge rates can and do matter) but rather that of branding. Younger generations are much more brand aware and much more strongly brand identify than previous generations, which again, makes this a not-so-stupid question.
BTW, the reading comprehension fail means that your analogy is a fail as well. See what I did there? “Fail” was used as a noun. Welcome to teh Internets.
Man, I’m so glad I’m not from “Generation Y” who are made suffer so easily. They probably slit their wrists from all the plugging of Dell laptop into Netgear switch.
P.S. Maybe this explains the popularity of WiFi. Hide the router and its sadistic badge in the closet…
I’m as into muscle cars as I am electric cars. I’ve seen automotive bias literally transcend generations of families over vehicles built 40 years ago. I know people who would have a minor heart attack at the mere mention of dropping a SBC into a Fox-body Mustang, or putting a HEMI into anything but a Mopar.
So why shouldn’t that be the same for electric cars? Generation Y isn’t into cars the way previous generations have been, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hold automotive bias’s, mostly against the Big Three, despite how much better these cars are from the automotive atrocities of the 90’s.
And hey, maybe I’m grasping at straws for content, but that post got a helluva lot of hits, so thanks TTAC and everybody else! I always wanted to see something I wrote show up on this site.
Chris, but don’t you think your article helped reinforce some of that automotive bias with your hypothetical unreliable soccer mom’s Windstar?
This may be more of an opportunity than a problem. I’m imaging some sort of decal that can be applied to the face of the charger featuring a devilish Calvin peeing on the offending logo.
This is indeed a terrifying problem for the maybe 1 in 1000 people who will have an electric car any time soon
Why would you leave your charger when you move? Just like people take their TV, Washer, Dryer, and to a lesser extend refrigerator and stove.
That is probably the best point in this entire thread. How does the installation work on these things? Are they hard wired to your breaker panel or does it plug into a 220v outlet (like an electric dryer or range) which is wired to the panel?
In the case of what appears to be the GM unit it appears that it is hard wired to the surface mounted box, not just plugged in. However you could certainly still shut off the breaker, disconnect the wires, cap them and put a install a blank cover plate. Sure there are lots of people who wouldn’t want to do that themselves and call an electrician. Even if they did since it would be a 15 min job at most you’d just be paying the electrician’s minimum charge which won’t even come close to the price of the charger which you’ll need at your new home anyway if you still have the car.
I learned from my wife the Realtor that if a piece of equipment is hard-wired into the house’s electrical system it becomes a fixture, which normally transfers with the house on sale. The Volt charger would have to be specifically excluded in the terms of the listing if the seller wanted to bring it with him. Or…the seller could include the Volt with the house. This is all highly theoretical anyway, since most home sales for the next few years will be foreclosures or short sales.
Yes being hard wired may imply that it is a fixture but as you noted it is simple enough to exclude it in terms of the deal. I’ve seen more than a few listings where the hard wired hot tub was noted as excluded in the listing. Unlike the hot tub that anyone could use the charger wouldn’t do much good to a buyer who didn’t own an electric car which at this point would be just about everyone. So not including the charger likely wouldn’t be a deal breaker.
The plugs may match, but are the voltages the same? Not to mention whatever charging curve each EV maker specifies. Just asking….
This is not like making a ’32 Ford hot rod with a SBC. Electrons are electrons.
Note, also, the gratuitous slam at a domestic automaker, using a model no longer in production, the Windstar minivan, as an example of poor quality.
Of course, since there are people who are allergic to the notion of having anything to do with the Big 3, it’s possible that some Nissan drivers might freak out at the sight of a blue oval.
It amazes me the way some people think that Toyota, Honda and Nissan are not big corporations who act pretty much the same way as American companies act.
Who needs an electrician? Just shut off the circuit breaker for the 220V outlet by the electric clothes dryer, run some romex out to the garage and install another outlet.
For safety reasons I don’t think it’s a good idea to hardwire any appliances directly to the circuit box. Having experienced a fire caused by an internal short circuit in an electric stove, it’s nice to have a switch or an outlet that can be disconnected.
You wouldn’t want to connect to the same circuit as the dryer you would want to add a new breaker. However many Americans are afraid of such things so they will call an electrician. In the case of a short in a Stove or Drier unplugging it isn’t practical since most times you have to move it to access the plug so running to the panel and flipping the breaker is the safer thing to do.
Uh, your insurance company will deny your fire claim in total if the cause was your “electrical” work.
Plus, 220 work here requires a permit.
Do you really think a used electric car without a charger is worth anything, idiots. No point in hard wiring the charger if you ever plan to sell the car.
Do you really think a used electric car without a charger is worth anything, idiots.
I’m rubber, you’re glue… :-)
Idiots?
First, according to the spec/code, a level 2, 240V charger MUST be hardwired, with a few exceptions.
Second, what good does a hard wired 240V charge station do for an apartment/condo dweller? Or for that matter, anyone an urban setting who doesn’t have a personal parking space?
Maybe outside the subject, excuse me! The Chevy Volt has been tested in Sweden. It was -8 degrees celsius (17,6 F). The instrumentation indicated an all electric range of approx. 50 miles. The gas engine turned on after 900 meters and never turned off. The mileage for this great vehicle was approx. 23 MPG!!! Europe is full of similar diesel cars that easily gives 45 MPG!