Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?

LBV said:
Case in point, again: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/mani...metres remaining,finish their trip to Chicago.
Click to expand...
Very long-distance family trips with a BEV are not going to be a fun time for quite a while. Tesla has the lead but still slower and more painful than ICE. Realistic useful range is more like Brian P is doing where you are less than two batteries to get out and back.

I am slightly surprised that manufacturers aren't pushing the dealerships to install at least one level 3 charger. That expands the network substantially and gets well-heeled people waiting at the dealership for a bit where they may buy some swag or a Mustang.
 
GreyGhost said:
Very long-distance family trips with a BEV are not going to be a fun time for quite a while. Tesla has the lead but still slower and more painful than ICE. Realistic useful range is more like Brian P is doing where you are less than two batteries to get out and back.

I am slightly surprised that manufacturers aren't pushing the dealerships to install at least one level 3 charger. That expands the network substantially and gets well-heeled people waiting at the dealership for a bit where they may buy some swag or a Mustang.
Click to expand...

Dealers have been doing that ... in fact, here's one near where they stopped at Gilleland Chevrolet Cadillac | St Cloud, MN | EV Station - about 20 miles before on their route.

I'm pretty sure this is the location that they had a problem with: Albertville Premium Outlets | Albertville, MN | EV Station

Browsing the check-ins at that location suggests an isolated problem between 14 and 19 June 2023.

It's a 50 kW location, which is fine for a Bolt or other smaller EV, but the GM dealer 20 miles earlier has a 120 kW charger, which their vehicle could have made use of.

The US Midwest is sparse for charging locations and for now, it's better to charge up whenever you can within reason, keeping enough reserve distance to get to the next one in case the one you're planning for, doesn't work.
 
I've been preaching hybrids and tesla since post 2 of this thread back in 2017

Still stand by that statement today.

Plug ins are ridiculously expensive and have low range. Tesla still does electric best.
 
Think you are a bit out of step.

Hybrid car sales fall despite 9.4% rise in new car market ...​

https://www.irishtimes.com › business › 2023/02/01 › hy...
Feb 1, 2023 — Sales of new regular hybrid cars fell 16 per cent in January, despite a 9.4 per cent rise in the new car market compared to the same month last year.

Prices are dropping on pure EV and ranges going way up. I was also of the same opinion as you but the massive jump in charging stations, quicker charging and much longer range changed my view.
 
MacDoc said:
Think you are a bit out of step.

Hybrid car sales fall despite 9.4% rise in new car market ...​

https://www.irishtimes.com › business › 2023/02/01 › hy...
Feb 1, 2023 — Sales of new regular hybrid cars fell 16 per cent in January, despite a 9.4 per cent rise in the new car market compared to the same month last year.

Prices are dropping on pure EV and ranges going way up. I was also of the same opinion as you but the massive jump in charging stations, quicker charging and much longer range changed my view.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, the obscure Irish Times.

Bellwether of today's automotive trends....

Hybrid Vehicle Market Size, Share & Growth Analysis [2030]

The global hybrid vehicle market size was valued at $227.94 billion in 2022 & is projected to grow from $271.80 billion in 2023 to $443.91 billion by 2030
www.fortunebusinessinsights.com www.fortunebusinessinsights.com
 
MacDoc said:
Think you are a bit out of step.

Hybrid car sales fall despite 9.4% rise in new car market ...​

https://www.irishtimes.com › business › 2023/02/01 › hy...
Feb 1, 2023 — Sales of new regular hybrid cars fell 16 per cent in January, despite a 9.4 per cent rise in the new car market compared to the same month last year.

Prices are dropping on pure EV and ranges going way up. I was also of the same opinion as you but the massive jump in charging stations, quicker charging and much longer range changed my view.
Click to expand...
That is regular hybrid. I suspect most hybrids these days will be plug in with a +/- 50 km range.
 

PHEV Sales Drop to 20% of Total EV US Sales Through ...​

EVStatistics
https://evstatistics.com › 2023/01 › phev-sales-drop-to...

US sales of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in 2022 are expected to decline to less than 20%, the lowest share of total electric vehicle (BEV +
Click to expand...

Plug-in hybrid sales stumble in Europe: Do they have a ...​

Green Car Reports
https://www.greencarreports.com › News › Hybrids
Aug 2, 2022 — But recent sales data shows plug-in hybrids trending downward as EVs trend upward. In June, plug-in hybrid sales fell 28% in France and 16% in ...

Plug-in hybrids once dominated EV sales. Now their ...​

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
https://www.abc.net.au › news › science › how-clean-a...

Jul 5, 2023 — When they arrived in Australia about 10 years ago, PHEVs were ... PHEV sales are still rising, but their market share is falling sharply.

EV sales overtake hybrids in Australia, grab 6.8 pct of ...​

The Driven |
https://thedriven.io › 2023/04/05 › ev-sales-overtake-...

Apr 5, 2023 — Plug-in Hybrid vehicles – dominated by the Mitsubishi Outlander – saw an 33% increase in March with 569 sales compared to 427 being sold .
 
The recent announcement of several auto manufacturers getting together to put in 30,000 DC fast-charging locations across USA and Canada should nudge things along. That's more than the total number of Tesla Superchargers (currently about 17,000) and more than the number of CCS DC fast-chargers (currently about 20,000). The CCS reliability issues are recognised and a couple of charging networks in the USA (Chargepoint and EVgo) have made recent commitments to address that, and I'm sure the coalition of auto manufacturers is doing that specifically because existing charging networks have dropped the ball.

I'm quite okay with having skipped hybrid to go straight electric ... and I'm quite okay with not giving money to Elon Musk in the process.
 
Call me a skeptic. Even if true, I doubt if there's enough to make a difference. If there was, we would have run into it by accident long ago while poking holes looking for natural gas or anything else.
 
Last edited:
Quote from "driving.ca":
The notion of trouble-free transportation in the electric era doesn’t seem to jibe with the experience of existing electric vehicle owners. For example, Tesla, an EV-only brand, is ranked 19th among auto brands in Consumer Reports’ rankings. And two of the best-selling affordable EVs in Canada — 6,372 Chevrolet Bolt EVs were sold in Canada in 2022 plus 5,250 Hyundai Kona Electrics — are among the least reliable vehicles on the market. Consumer Reports scores the Bolt at just 17 on the reliability scale; the Kona at just 5.
 
Consumer Reports is useful as bird-cage liner. I'm on Chevy Bolt internet forums and facebook groups, for obvious reasons. Both the Bolt and the Kona were subject to main battery replacement (same supplier) and this means someone whose battery was replaced has to answer that the car was in the shop because of it. Black mark.

In the facebook groups, the most common "actual problem" seems to be a bad 12V battery. These cars have been on the road for up to 6 years ... 12V batteries are same as any other car, and they don't last forever. Undervoltage from a dying 12V battery causes all sorts of wierd things to happen, and the symptom of slow cranking doesn't make it apparent before it goes critical as with a combustion-engine vehicle. (Other EVs including Teslas have the same situation.)

They have some glitches; it seems that if you press power-on and too quickly select reverse or drive, it gives a "conditions not correct for shift" fault and you have to power down and try again. Yeah that's probably a programming glitch. But waiting for the "ready" indicator to actually light up "ready" before doing this, works okay. As someone who grew up with VW diesels ... waiting for an indicator light to say that the car is good to go before doing the next step, is something I already do by habit. (Diesels you have to wait for the Rudolf Diesel memorial moment of silence a.k.a. glow plug warning lamp to go out before cranking it, or it won't start)

There's an abundance of complaints like "I plugged into a 350kW charger and the car only draws 52 kW" (Duh, that's all the car is gonna take, no matter how big the charger is), or "How come it's only drawing 20 kW from a fast-charger" and subsequent inquiry finds that it's already at 80% state of charge (The fuller the battery is, the slower it charges, that's just how these things go), or "My charger <the GM supplied one that comes with the car> has a yellow warning light on" (means ground-fault or connection-fault, probably because the cable isn't plugged in all the way, or because you're hanging the charger upside down from the cable or some other stupid thing), or "I can't get the Electrify America / EVgo / Chargepoint / etc charging station to work" (yeah because that's not the car's problem that charging stations suck, either because of being broken or because of wanting "their app" on your phone)
 
I could go on about the stupid things people bellyache about on internet forums, many of which show up in Consumer Reports ratings.

They complain in winter that charging doesn't "add as many miles of range" as in summer. You're not charging "miles", you're charging "kWh", and how far you make each kWh go depends on your driving ... and on the weather.

They complain that the hatch doesn't have power open and close. Meh. It's easy to open, and it has a nicely shaped handle to pull it down and close it. Those power hatches are all SLOW. I can open and close mine by hand faster than any power mechanism can do it. Don't see the value in this. In any case ... the car was built to a price. I'm happy that they didn't do this!

They complain that there's no numerical state-of-charge indicator. (It's a perfectly-good bar graph with 5% increments.) Cry me a river.

Someone complained that anyone can walk up to the car and press the unlock button. (Or open the hatch by pressing the release.) Uhhh ... it's doing that because it's detecting your key fob in your pocket. Lock the car and walk 20 metres away, set the key fob down, then go back to the car without your key fob and see if you can unlock it now. LOL
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom