Home Charging vs. Electrify America

[borski]

I’m in the same boat in the North Bay. It’s nuts. When did you get your panels? The lady I’m dealing with says she can’t get the 400+ panels but I’m a little skeptical.

Also, if you’re in the north bay join the telegram group!

 

[Tesla2.0]

We have highest number of wind turbines in the nation for cheap clean generation which accounts for 21% of all Texas generation. But this year we have record low wind and transmission infrastructure issue causing price to spike up this year.

Climate change is real. Texas has record low wind on open plain, Europe has record forest fire, Las Vegas has record rainfall and hottest place in North America, Death Valley is being flooded.

 

[zkhan2]

Which Autel Maxicharger do you have, the 40 or the 50? I only have the 50A service to the NEMA 14-50 plug in my garage (so max 40A output). Would it make a difference in safety/stability having the more compact model which plugs in to the NEMA 14-50 outlet vs having the charger hardwired and having a separate holster? How long have you had the charger (just since you received your Lucid or did you use it for a prior EV also)? Any issues or drawbacks? Since I have Off-peak charging rates, I want to make sure that I can set both the start and stop times. (Tesla only allowed a start time or a departure time, which I wasn't a fan of.) Thanks in advance.

I have the Autel 50 AMP Maxicharger hardwired into the wall. Chargers are all about AMP available and the resistance from the source to the target. Chargers adjust to the proper amp - even if you can adjust the amp (like with the Autel), you will not be able to force it to use a higher draw on AMP than what its sensors detect. Prior to the Lucid, I had a Tesla MX with a Tesla in-wall charger. Even with the Tesla Tap, the Tesla charger was not working all the time, mostly I got the blinking errors that hint towards communications error. I went with the Autel since the Lucid in-wall was not ready. I also realize that with more and more EVs coming out, it is better to get a really good charger that is not tied to an EV brand.

The Autel home charger is the same charger Autel uses for their commercial chargers with the exception of the user interface for payment info and on-screen charge rates, etc. The Autel app is very nice and very flexible and you can schedule charges. The app is relatively new and but comes with a lot of options. If my charger was mounted outside the garage, I could even program RFID cards and gives those out to my children or close friends so when they are at my house they can charge by taping the card on the charger.

 

[hmp10]

Climate change is real. Texas has record low wind on open plain, Europe has record forest fire, Las Vegas has record rainfall and hottest place in North America, Death Valley is being flooded.

Yes, it is. Although the state government in Florida will not openly acknowledge sea level rise for political reasons, they have quietly applied for all available federal funds to adapt the infrastructure to deal with it. Miami is building its new roadbeds two feet higher. Palm Beach County has added tens of millions to its budget to deal with salt water intrusion into its water and sewer systems. Just before I started construction of my current home, the county raised the slab elevation requirement from 14.8 to 17.0 feet above sea level to address the relocation of the 100-year flood line over 20 miles further inland. All the water drainage canals in our vicinity are being re-engineered, and a huge (and unsightly) canal gate structure is under construction at the far end of the lake on which we live. I talked to the on-site engineers about why all this work. They said that they used to be able to control canal gates manually by moving from one to another as the storm waters filled the canals. However, in recent years the canals back up so quickly due to impaired drainage due to water level rise in the Gulf of Mexico that they are having to install larger gates that are motorized and remote-operated along with housing structures for the generators and mechanicals. So the gates are having to be closed more quickly to keep the storm waters in the canals longer so that it can bleed off more onto surrounding land than into the Gulf of Mexico. This, in turn, has caused flooding in neighborhoods that have never seen it before, hence the need to raise road beds and slab elevations . . . and so on and so on. (When we built a few years ago on a 5-acre lot, we were required to build berms to create three retention areas to keep rainwater on our lot until it could percolate through the ground rather than flow into the lake and thus into the canals. We were the first to build in our area under this new requirement, and we had to get two civil engineering studies done before our plans met state approved.)

We just got back from a trip to Iceland where we saw several photographic exhibits of how quickly and how far their glaciers are receding. We stood on the edge of two glaciers while our guide showed us the elevation up the mountains to which the glaciers had once risen during his personal memory. It really brought home all the other photographs I've seen of temples on Asian islands that have now disappeared under the waves, and crabbing villages in Chesapeake Bay that are being abandoned as streets succumb to the tides.

Yes, it's real, all the politics-driven denial notwithstanding.

 

[zkhan2]

Yes, it is. Although the state government in Florida will not openly acknowledge sea level rise for political reasons, they have quietly applied for all available federal funds to adapt the infrastructure to deal with it. Miami is building its new roadbeds two feet higher. Palm Beach County has added tens of millions to its budget to deal with salt water intrusion into its water and sewer systems. Just before I started construction of my current home, the county raised the slab elevation requirement from 14.8 to 17.0 feet above sea level to address the relocation of the 100-year flood line over 20 miles further inland. All the water drainage canals in our vicinity are being re-engineered, and a huge (and unsightly) canal gate structure is under construction at the far end of the lake on which we live. I talked to the on-site engineers about why all this work. They said that they used to be able to control canal gates manually by moving from one to another as the storm waters filled the canals. However, in recent years the canals back up so quickly due to impaired drainage due to water level rise in the Gulf of Mexico that they are having to install larger gates that are motorized and remote-operated along with housing structures for the generators and mechanicals. So the gates are having to be closed more quickly to keep the storm waters in the canals longer so that it can bleed off more onto surrounding land than into the Gulf of Mexico. This, in turn, has caused flooding in neighborhoods that have never seen it before, hence the need to raise road beds and slab elevations . . . and so on and so on. (When we built a few years ago on a 5-acre lot, we were required to build berms to create three retention areas to keep rainwater on our lot until it could percolate through the ground rather than flow into the lake and thus into the canals. We were the first to build in our area under this new requirement, and we had to get two civil engineering studies done before our plans met state approved.)

We just got back from a trip to Iceland where we saw several photographic exhibits of how quickly and how far their glaciers are receding. We stood on the edge of two glaciers while our guide showed us the elevation up the mountains to which the glaciers had once risen during his personal memory. It really brought home all the other photographs I've seen of temples on Asian islands that have now disappeared under the waves, and crabbing villages in Chesapeake Bay that are being abandoned as streets succumb to the tides.

Yes, it's real, all the politics-driven denial notwithstanding.

I am originally from Bangladesh and I go back yearly to my parents home village. Bangladesh is ground zero for rising waters and this is happening there in a very fast and dramatic fashion. The village I am at is at the Bay of Bengal along with the intersection of the Padma and Meghna rivers. The erosion of the river banks and the increase in sea level is displacing many who live close to the water ways.

 

[WJA]

Now that it is September, are there any updates on the release of the Lucid Home Charging System?

 

[kirpal]

Since we get free charging for 2-3 years, does it even make sense to charge at home?

Agree with others that there is no right answer to this question. I am waiting on my Touring. But we upgraded our second car to BOLT EUV few months ago and i have been charging about twice a week (upto 80%) once at home (solar) and once at work (free). we drive about 250-300 a week. The only time I have used the public charger (EVgo) was when I made trip to LA recently.

I have the solar installed at home allowing excess production to accommodate the use of about 1-2 EVs depending on how much you drive. Last year, when we did not have an EV, we produced about 4500KW in excess that is sent to SDGE (so cal) . Allowing for 3 miles per KW, it gives me about 13.5 K miles per year of driving (which is what our family's historical average has been for many years). Plus, i have level 2 charger at work as well which is free to use and I end up going about 1-2 times a week on site.

 

[Bill55]

These are all fantastic responses. Thank you. Do you have any wisdom that can be shared about always keeping the car charged (e.g. charging every night and keeping the car plugged in) versus running it down to 20%?

If you want to optimize battery life, level 2 charging between 40-60%. That’s obviously limiting. I plug in when I’m below 50% and charge to 80%, unless I’m going out of town.

 

[Bill55]

i charged at home the first time just to see how it would be. It charged overnight at adding about 35 miles per hour of charge. There is a EA station in good condition near my office and I was able to add 250 miles in 35 minutes (i did not precondition the batteries, it may have been faster if I did). Last night I added about 150+ miles in 20 minutes. I may just do this once a week or so and charge at home when necessary.

No picking on E lucid.

Charging is in kW and you add kWh to the battery.

No one says I got 60 miles of gas. The same amount of gasoline can result in a wide variety of miles, same with kWhs.

 

[PoZulu]

Picked up my GT this weekend. Love the car but there are some things that have me scratching my head.
The biggest one is that you can not schedule the charging time. I am using a juice box charger which is scheduled to start the charge at midnight. As soon as I plug it in the car starts conditioning the batteries which looks like it will use about 13 miles an hour. My habit with the model y I have been driving is to plug it in whenever I am at home so that I don't have to think about it. I did not realize it but the charger had lost its wifi connection and timer settings a month ago, not a problem with the model Y as it did not try to charge until the time that was programmed into the car.
As mentioned by others in this thread PG&E rates are ridiculous, and you pay according to the time of usage. It is generally a good idea to minimize electricity usage between 4 & 9 PM for both financial and stress to the grid reasons. I fondly remember the days of PG&E bills under $1000, the last 2 have been over $1200! I typically get home around 6:30 which means the car will use about 90 miles of range as a result of "getting ready to charge" before the scheduled midnight charging. Peter R talks about saving the planet by building efficient EVs,s but forgetting the timed charging is going to waste a lot of energy.

BTW make sure you have enough charge in the battery to support the power loss to charging prep if you were to deplete the batteries before the charge starts I was told they will not start to charge from Zero.

 

[borski]

Picked up my GT this weekend. Love the car but there are some things that have me scratching my head.
The biggest one is that you can not schedule the charging time. I am using a juice box charger which is scheduled to start the charge at midnight. As soon as I plug it in the car starts conditioning the batteries which looks like it will use about 13 miles an hour. My habit with the model y I have been driving is to plug it in whenever I am at home so that I don't have to think about it. I did not realize it but the charger had lost its wifi connection and timer settings a month ago, not a problem with the model Y as it did not try to charge until the time that was programmed into the car.
As mentioned by others in this thread PG&E rates are ridiculous, and you pay according to the time of usage. It is generally a good idea to minimize electricity usage between 4 & 9 PM for both financial and stress to the grid reasons. I fondly remember the days of PG&E bills under $1000, the last 2 have been over $1200! I typically get home around 6:30 which means the car will use about 90 miles of range as a result of "getting ready to charge" before the scheduled midnight charging. Peter R talks about saving the planet by building efficient EVs,s but forgetting the timed charging is going to waste a lot of energy.

BTW make sure you have enough charge in the battery to support the power loss to charging prep if you were to deplete the batteries before the charge starts I was told they will not start to charge from Zero.

Hm, it shouldn’t drain while plugged in if it isn’t charging. My Wallbox is set to charge only after 9pm and I don’t lose significant charge while it’s plugged in (which is basically all the time).

 

[PoZulu]

Hm, it shouldn’t drain while plugged in if it isn’t charging. My Wallbox is set to charge only after 9pm and I don’t lose significant charge while it’s plugged in (which is basically all the time).

Are there any settings in the car to schedule the 9PM charge or is that done on your Wallbox?

I will test again this evening to see if I get a drop in miles during the standby time before the charge starts at midnight. Didn't drive it to work today so I will have to head up Hwy 9 so I can deplete the battery a bit. It looks weird to plug the car in after 100+ miles of driving and still have more miles available then what I start with on the model Y.

 

[PoZulu]

No picking on E lucid.

Charging is in kW and you add kWh to the battery.

No one says I got 60 miles of gas. The same amount of gasoline can result in a wide variety of miles, same with kWhs.

Can I change the display from miles available to KW available?

 

[borski]

Can I change the display from miles available to KW available?

You can change it to percentage in the settings.

 

[borski]

Are there any settings in the car to schedule the 9PM charge or is that done on your Wallbox?

I will test again this evening to see if I get a drop in miles during the standby time before the charge starts at midnight. Didn't drive it to work today so I will have to head up Hwy 9 so I can deplete the battery a bit. It looks weird to plug the car in after 100+ miles of driving and still have more miles available then what I start with on the model Y.

On the Wallbox. The car doesn’t have a way of scheduling yet.

 

[Bill55]

Are there any settings in the car to schedule the 9PM charge or is that done on your Wallbox?

I will test again this evening to see if I get a drop in miles during the standby time before the charge starts at midnight. Didn't drive it to work today so I will have to head up Hwy 9 so I can deplete the battery a bit. It looks weird to plug the car in after 100+ miles of driving and still have more miles available then what I start with on the model Y.

I used the EA home charger software to schedule charging from 12-6 (super off peak in San Diego). I plugged in whenever I got home and never noticed any significant drain while the car was plugged in, but not charging. Now in SC electricity is Nuke power at $0.115 kWh all the time. Scheduling is not critical for the grid or the wallet.

 

[agleventhal]

I’m on the fence about going out of my way to charge at EA. I just got a PGE bill for $1,000, so I’m now heavily invested in getting solar. I’m also going to make a few changes that will help bring my bill down, but I do not want to change my life style, which is why I’ll invest in solar. I really like to run my AC, which PGE considers a crime against humanity. Lol

I’ll probably charge at EA once a week if I’m in the area of a charger. After my panels are installed I probably won’t.

PGE considers using AC a crime against humanity cuz of how much load it puts on the grid. Just like there reaction to EVs (2x the power compared to running an average 2500 sq foot house). Go with solar to reduce your bill ($1000 per month is outrageous!) and to put less carbon in the enviro. That is why you went EV after all, no?

 

[Steveinarizona]

PGE considers using AC a crime against humanity cuz of how much load it puts on the grid. Just like there reaction to EVs (2x the power compared to running an average 2500 sq foot house). Go with solar to reduce your bill ($1000 per month is outrageous!) and to put less carbon in the enviro. That is why you went EV after all, no?

For PGE to call anything a customer does "a crime against humanity" is a joke.