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[–] 3 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Others already addressed battery cost, so I will address charging time:

For modern EVs, charging time is basically a non-issue outside of longer road trips. Most EV owners utilize a slower (level 1 or level 2) charging station at home, which allows them to charge the car while they are at home/sleeping. EV owners can also use charging stations near/at their destination to charge while they are doing other things anyway. And assuming your daily commute isn't like 100 miles/160 km, you really don't need to stop at charging stations at all besides the one at home, which is cheaper. Obviously this does not apply if you rent a house or live in an apartment, etc.

Even road trips aren't so bad assuming the car has an 800 volt battery pack instead of a 400 volt (higher voltage at same current = more power to charge and faster charge time). It also helps a lot if you only charge to 80 percent instead of 100 because that last 20 percent almost doubles your charge time and is harder on the battery. A lot of new EV owners don't understand this and get frustrated when they are sitting there for 40 minutes getting almost no additional range compared to waiting for 20 minutes.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

    I don't even have a charging station, I just plug that thing straight to the wall. I guess that's a level 1?

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  • [+] 3 points 5 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago*

    When I plug it in, it says it's charging at 2.4KW, which I fuzzily convert to something like 7 or 8km per hour of charging. Note that this is on 220v on its own circuit.

    The circuit could fit a full fat charging station, but I haven't really gotten to it cause it works fine as is for my use.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    1.5 kw per hour, or 30kw overnight. That's about half charge of most battery packs.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago*

    Sigh... I'm going to have to be a unit nazi.

    Power is the rate of energy transfer and is in kW. If 1kW flows for 1 hour it's 1 kWh (power x time). A US 120V socket at 12 Amps is just under 1.5kW. A 240V socket will be double that.

    1.5kW for 12 hours is 18kWh. That's not half a battery, as most cars start at 60kWh batteries now. 18kWh will get 54-72 miles depending on the consumption of the car.

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