EV charging education

[Bill55]

I am very happy with Lucid's announcement regarding NACS and how they are going to implement.

Discussion on this site where there are many people who are charging and are informed or are seeking more information only reinforced in my mind that there is much work to be done to inform the public at large.
There is an enormous amount of misinformation and unfortunately disinformation about EV charging.

How to better educate people considering an EV is very important question. I don't think we can count on dealerships or journalists who spend a day or 2 in an EV.
We do not need to replicate the gasoline model.

Level 2 charging at night is a big part of the solution. There is adequate power in close proximity to where people park their cars over night.
Level 2 could be built on an order of magnitude or more for same cost as level 3. 1000s to 100s or 10,000s to 1000s.

Thank you to all for the discussion on "When will Lucid announce change to NACS?" I learned a lot from all the posts!

 

[Haggy]

For me, level 2 is far more important, not only for day to day charging, but because with the Lucid I don't know if I'll ever drive close to the maximum range in a day. As long as I stay in a hotel with charging, I'll probably try to charge on the road if there's a charger near where I plan to stop to eat or use the restroom, but if there's nothing available, I will likely be able to get away with not charging at all.

I think that the biggest misunderstanding is that people need to compromise to take road trips. Before I had an EV, I had taken road trips where I had driven nonstop, with the exception of buying gasoline, for trips that would now take a charging stop or two in my Tesla. But I also learned that even if I can make it without stopping to charge, the trips are a lot better with the stops. Plus, if I eat at the end of the trip, the total travel plus mealtime is just as long. And if I eat, a restroom stop is inevitable.

So some of those trips wouldn't be any faster in my Lucid or in an ICEV, with which stopping for gasoline and doing nothing could actually make the trip longer. But for those sorts of trips, arriving with low remaining range was an issue. With the Lucid, I should arrive with plenty of range to spare, especially if I charge while I'm stopped for meals and restrooms. With the Tesla, finding a hotel with free charging of similar quality and price to one I would have stayed at anyway wasn't generally a problem. One place even had Superchargers in the garage, and with valet parking it meant starting the return trip with a complete charge.

The other thing is that articles tend to focus on road trips only. It leaves out the tremendous amount of time saved day to day. Plus, for some EVs, the rated range is a combination of local and highway driving that's more than the highway range. So road tests make it look as if the cars won't achieve rated range. That should be less of a problem with Lucid but I've yet to go on a long road trip.

Still, there's the "how long does it take to charge" question. The real life answer is generally under an hour each day in the middle of the night, but people need to change their frame of reference.

 

[hydbob]

Recently, I've stayed at locations with Tesla destination chargers and brought my TeslaTap with me. Leaving each morning with 80-100% charge is great and that's part of the EV charging education, especially for travel. Using Plugshare and filtering near your location will help you find the location of destination chargers.

 

[joec]

It's good to remember that charging to 100% at home on an L2 charger puts less strain on your battery than DC fast charging up to 100% as well. Far less heat involved. I wouldn't worry aobut the battery degradation in this case for the occasional road trip.

I almost always begin any road trip at 100% for this reason. But then I have to remember on the way back, my plan might need to be revised, since then I'll likely be starting at 80% from a fast charge instead of 100%.

Unless, as stated above, I manage to find a hotel with a L2 charger. in which case, I will likely be able to start again at 100%.

You also have to remember that darn loss of regen thing when you are at 100%. Gets me every time. (I do hope Lucid eventually puts up a warning about this in the UX when you are in this state.)

But don't underestimate the power of that extra 20%. It's a lot of miles. Not worth waiting an hour for at a fast charger, but if you can get it overnight on L2, always go for it.

More and more hotels are putting chargers in their parking lots. I can't wait until they are ubiquitous enough to count on. But until then, always have a backup plan.

 

[Haggy]

It's good to remember that charging to 100% at home on an L2 charger puts less strain on your battery than DC fast charging up to 100% as well. Far less heat involved. I wouldn't worry about the battery degradation in this case for the occasional road trip.

I almost always begin any road trip at 100% for this reason. But then I have to remember on the way back, my plan might need to be revised, since then I'll likely be starting at 80% from a fast charge instead of 100%.

Unless, as stated above, I manage to find a hotel with a L2 charger. in which case, I will likely be able to start again at 100%.


More and more hotels are putting chargers in their parking lots. I can't wait until they are ubiquitous enough to count on. But until then, always have a backup plan.

Tesla was saying the same thing about battery degradation a decade ago -- sort of. What they actually did was recommend best practices that were known not to cause excess degradation such as staying between 20% and 90%, using Superchargers only when needed, not staying at 100%, etc. But what they were really saying was that staying within the guidelines was good, not that everything outside of them was bad. There were simply too many variables. A person staying at 100% and topping off whenever things drop, not leaving the garage for a month is different from charging to 100% right before a trip, but spelling out each and every circumstance in between would be impossible. So they said what was definite despite many things outside of the guidelines not being harmful at all.

As for high speed charging, more recent studies have shown no significant difference for Tesla. That doesn't necessarily mean anything definitive for Lucid, and staying within recommended ranges won't hurt, but I doubt that given the good battery management system, the car would let anything get to the point that it's harmful. For people who aren't taking constant road trips, it's not likely to be an issue, especially since people tend not to charge at high speed chargers and sit around at 100% very long.

Finding hotels with charging might be easy. When I drove an EV through Arizona and Utah, relying on enough chargers on the route worked out much better if I found hotels with chargers. It was easy enough to find ones with similar prices and of similar quality to ones without it, with no surcharge for EV charging. On the other hand, I just checked Los Angeles, and am seeing about $11 in addition the standard valet parking rate. In the scheme of things it might not be an issue, and there will be enough public high speed chargers in the area. That means that you might be able to go 2-3 miles to charge at high speed, adding only an hour of round trip travel time depending on the time of day.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to plan trips with L2 at hotels as much as possible with EA as a backup plan, unless I'll be stopped near a station anyway. I think that as EVs become ubiquitous, merely not listing EV charging could cost bookings.

 

[suchluke]

How many times folks noticed cars pulling to EA charger that is currently in use and trying to use another cable at the same station to charge their vehicle?
Also just yesterday new Tesla Model Y owner (based on the registration) pulled up to the EA station. First he tried to grab another cable from the same station Ionic 5 was charging (charging to 100% by the way SIGH!!!) then he looked at CCS plug, paused for a second, and went to his trunk to grab J1772 to Tesla adapter. He tried forcefully plug it to the CCS cable. At that point I said to myself enough and went to educate him before he would hurt himself. I did mention there is a CCS Combo 1 adapter that Tesla is selling now for more options other than Superchargers.

 

[Haggy]

How many times folks noticed cars pulling to EA charger that is currently in use and trying to use another cable at the same station to charge their vehicle?
Also just yesterday new Tesla Model Y owner (based on the registration) pulled up to the EA station. First he tried to grab another cable from the same station Ionic 5 was charging (charging to 100% by the way SIGH!!!) then he looked at CCS plug, paused for a second, and went to his trunk to grab J1772 to Tesla adapter. He tried forcefully plug it to the CCS cable. At that point I said to myself enough and went to educate him before he would hurt himself. I did mention there is a CCS Combo 1 adapter that Tesla is selling now for more options other than Superchargers.

Tesla does sell an adapter, but the car itself might need an upgrade to use it. Newer Teslas use the NACS protocol, which is essentially the same as CCS under the hood. A Tesla will work with a J1772 adapter, which does no good for DC charging. Older Teslas use their single-wire CAN bus protocol, so their Superchargers need to be compatible with that and with CCS. It also means a potential mess as CCS stations add NACS cables unless they support more than just CCS under the hood. Otherwise, they will work with newer Teslas and not older ones.

 

[Tesla2.0]

Tesla does sell an adapter, but the car itself might need an upgrade to use it. Newer Teslas use the NACS protocol, which is essentially the same as CCS under the hood. A Tesla will work with a J1772 adapter, which does no good for DC charging. Older Teslas use their single-wire CAN bus protocol, so their Superchargers need to be compatible with that and with CCS. It also means a potential mess as CCS stations add NACS cables unless they support more than just CCS under the hood. Otherwise, they will work with newer Teslas and not older ones.

- Tesla CCS1 Combo to NACS adapter is $175

- If you have a Tesla older than October 2020, you need to bring to Tesla Service Center to get new charging ECU installed. ($450?)

 

[Tesla2.0]

Best practice for battery longevity is

Most optimal - SOC stay mostly in between 30~70%.
More Optimal - SOC stay mostly stay in between 20~80%
Less Optimal - SOC stay mostly between 10~90%
Damaging - SOC hit close to 0% or 100% and stay there long time.

Daily driving charge to 70~80%
Long distance overnight charge to 95~100%

I will occasionally go to 5~10% for fast charge in road trip.

But ideally, you want battery to be charge slowly in tickle, lower kW speed is actually better for battery.

 

[Haggy]

- Tesla CCS1 Combo to NACS adapter is $175

- If you have a Tesla older than October 2020, you need to bring to Tesla Service Center to get new charging ECU installed. ($450?)

$450 including adapter. I don't know if there's a price for just the upgrade but there should be.