Adventure in EV charging (2023 Update)

I use the rest stop facility to discharge my body as well. I stop-by the EZ-trip station to look at their chargers, but end of just buying the hot dogs. I would have charge it there if it's free.

How much total time did you spend charging?

Perhaps 20 hours, including time at Target, Walmart and Home Depot, as well as Taco Bell, McDonald, etc.

They usually have free L2 charger nearby while shopping or eating.

Just idle curiosity. Are the chargers on the far corners of the parking lots? I'm asking because I read an article long ago about Americans getting fat. We just don't get any exercise. The article suggested things like using stairs when we can and parking as far from a building's door as we practically can.

I guess it depends on cost of electrical works. some are right next to the handicap spot, and you know they have the best.

I prefer far from buildings anyway, so they don't get ICED.

That means, given what you saved, you aren't even worth minimum wage.

If I wanted to skimp every penny and didn't care what my time was worth, I sure wouldn't be driving my Audi.

Free, free, free. I prefer fun.

These questions have all been answered before. You just choose to ignore the real world and live in your curmudgeon existence.

A lot less than for ICE gas stations and fuel infrastructure. Most charging will happen at home meaning less miles driven to get fuel.

For most people they will approach zero as their use of charging stations drops toward zero.

No country is in trouble because of EV charging. EVs can be charged anytime, any where. When the electrons are available they can be absorbed into the batteries.

You only need as much as an electric hot water heater, how do they manage to take baths outside of cities?

Rare earth metals are not rare, but you most likely know that. There is lots and lots of lithium, we simply need to plan ahead for the quantities we will need going forward to build the production infrastructure just like everything else we produce. No rocket science. Looks like the hard part is going to be obtaining enough silicon with the right mix of impurities and strips of metal on top. How on earth will we manage to pull that off? I guess we'll have to steal from our grandchildren's tablet and phone legacies.

I hope everyone reading this understands that Ed Lee is just one step from being declared mentally incompetent and does not represent the EV buying community in any way, shape or form. His car has a range of something like 50 miles while real EVs mostly will reach 200 to over 300 miles. They all take the same time to charge because it is a limitation of the cells and not of the size of the battery.

I charged the other day on my way to the airport and didn't have enough time to eat fast food (that admittedly wasn't all that fast). It took 15 minutes for them to cook my food and that didn't leave time other than to walk back to the car and check my phone only to find my flight was delayed. lol

The point is charging is something an EV does while the owner is doing something else. Normally people charge at home at night when power is much in supply. Or in California, they can charge at midday sucking up the solar generated electrons that would otherwise need to be shipped off to another state. EVs and renewable energy are a great match.

I know with the Tesla chargers in shopping centers they do tend to be further away from the shops so that ICE drivers don't park in them and block them. It provides some exercise, but not nearly enough to be useful. It's not like they get used even every other day. I use chargers pretty much exclusively and that's only once a week or twice in some cases. I try to charge where I get the best food. I found a Dominican restaurant by the chargers in Eastern Market in DC the other day. The place sounded better than it was actually, but it wasn't bad, just not as good as it could have been.

There was a Jamaican restaurant in Takoma Park many years ago that had "paddies", small pies with spicy fillings, of several meats and veggie. The veggie was the hottest, but all were great! I'm really sorry that place is gone. I haven't found another like it yet, 30 years later.

Mental competency is just a state of mind. Sometimes it takes extreme thinking to get things done.

But there are still almost hundred thousand of us, limited range drivers. You can't force us to just junk our cars. Say what you want, but CalTran listen to me, at least they did more than what i asked and hoped for.

I am going to inspect the CalTran chargers on CA-58 and I-15 in the coming weeks. There are minimum necessary chargers right now, but more would be appreciated. Will report here and to CalTran management. I still have their email list.

I don't consider it as work, so it doesn't bother me. Your posting here don't earn anything either, so $0 wage, much less than minimum.

Industrialized civilization with 10, 15, 20 billion people on the planet all desiring to live at an American standard of living and American levels of resource consumption don't "scale" very good, in general

It's obvious, isn't it? Right-of-way and interstate linkages of different distributors and producers is a potential nightmare without a federal oversight agency, at least in the US. Rural electrification only went smoothly because of an extensive loan program, even before grids were connected.

Free markets, by the way, never did get gasoline unleaded. They weren't a big success in that regard. They did, however, brag incessantly about... platformate.

And the gasoline you are burning is mostly from countries who want to hurt, damage or kill us. We are just doing our best to avoid using gasoline.

Yeah not buying from the damn Saudis seems like a sensible idea. Why keep sending the bastards money? I don't want to send them a nickel and I do my best not to.

Also Russia and Iran. Although we are not buying from them directly, it's all coming from the same global pool.

afaik the US is currently a net exporter of oil

Doesn't matter. Every drop we use will end up needing one drop from Russia or Iran. Butterfly effect.

In case people haven't notice. Blend Oil is at USD 78 today.

I have made some valuable connections here. It happens now and then.