5+ years in, and I'm still eking out just over 100kms in the summer from the Volt, down from 110ish on its best days, and around 70kms in the winter ... I figure a roughly 5% drop in range since new. Perfectly fine for my needs.
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Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?
- Thread starter PrivatePilot
- Start date
blackcamaro
Well-known member
I think anyone buying the Lightning would be crazy not to get the extended range battery. Resale alone will probably justify it. 500km range should work for most people. Quite a bit more HP with the extended range as well, same torque.
Hack
Well-known member
I still can't bend my head around thinking 500km is adequate...
Think about going on a road trip...
The estimated range coupled with the time it takes to recharge... itll take 3 days to travel from here to thunder bay...
I dunno man... I'm not convinced that electric is all it's cracked up to be.
Depends on your usage I guess. 500km is PLENTY for most people if they can recharge full overnight. Vast majority of people will not use 500km/day...hell I do most of my daily driving within the 100km range of my Volt.
But I agree...trips over 400km total start getting dicey, but are not the norm for the vast majority.
My requirement for a FULL EV (with an ICE car in the house) is approx 300km in the coldest of winters. Wasaga and back is my requirement on a single charge. Actual distance is about 250km.
EDIT: 90k for the full on FORD Lightning? LMAO....ya...good luck with that Ford.
Heard a DJ on 1 of the SiriusXM stations this morning say he got an EV and loves it. He decided to take a road trip to visit relatives in Maryland, looked up charging stations along the way and figured he'd be good to go. He gets to them and finds they're all broken ... finally found 1 at a baseball stadium that was empty.
Same issues on the way back.
I haven't needed to try and charge along the way much as I have a Volt but the few times I've tried it's been a similar experience. They need to start putting these in gas stations more and maintain them before I'll have a pure BEV without a backup gas/hybrid car.
Same issues on the way back.
I haven't needed to try and charge along the way much as I have a Volt but the few times I've tried it's been a similar experience. They need to start putting these in gas stations more and maintain them before I'll have a pure BEV without a backup gas/hybrid car.
Agree. BEV as only vehicle for many people is not great yet. Especially for someone like Hack that wants to drive over superior on a regular basis. For that use case, BEV may be decades away from the correct choice no matter what JT chooses to believe. I just can't see there being enough traffic to justify the investment in chargers (and maintenance). I expect driving through population centres (eg southern ontario) should be reasonably viable and comfortable in the next few years. Not perfect but manageable with 15-30 minute stops every four hours. As more BEV's are used for trips, more charging stations will pop up and maintenance will happen as broken chargers are lost revenue.
EV charging stations being broken is a situation that needs to get sorted out by the system operators.
Plugshare shows several fast-charging stations on the route from Toronto to Thunder Bay.
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Nipigon
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Marathon
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Wawa
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Sault Ste Marie
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Espanola (and PlugShare tells me that one of the stations is broken right now!)
PetroCanada 200kw CCS/SAE in Sudbury
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Parry Sound
Yes, there needs to be more of them. That will happen over time.
It's 1400 km from Toronto to Thunder Bay. Most people don't do that in one shot ... most people are going to stay overnight somewhere, in which case, you pick a hotel that has a Level 2 charger or a 240V outlet and charge it up overnight while you are sleeping. Or even fast-charge it to 80% and plug it into a 110V outlet overnight to top it up while you sleep. Lots of hotels have 110V outlets in the parking lot for block heaters up that way.
The long-range version of the F150 evidently has 131 kWh battery capacity ... evidently the vehicle is more efficient than most people were expecting it to be. A fast-charge to 80% on a 200kW fast-charger is a half hour while you are eating lunch.
Right now the trip is "doable". 5 years ago, we wouldn't be having this discussion, you couldn't do it. 5 years from now, you won't even have to think about it. There are still places that are EV no-go zones, but the TransCanada Highway or somewhere near its path, is not one of them.
Plugshare shows several fast-charging stations on the route from Toronto to Thunder Bay.
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Nipigon
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Marathon
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Wawa
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Sault Ste Marie
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Espanola (and PlugShare tells me that one of the stations is broken right now!)
PetroCanada 200kw CCS/SAE in Sudbury
PetroCanada 200kW CCS/SAE in Parry Sound
Yes, there needs to be more of them. That will happen over time.
It's 1400 km from Toronto to Thunder Bay. Most people don't do that in one shot ... most people are going to stay overnight somewhere, in which case, you pick a hotel that has a Level 2 charger or a 240V outlet and charge it up overnight while you are sleeping. Or even fast-charge it to 80% and plug it into a 110V outlet overnight to top it up while you sleep. Lots of hotels have 110V outlets in the parking lot for block heaters up that way.
The long-range version of the F150 evidently has 131 kWh battery capacity ... evidently the vehicle is more efficient than most people were expecting it to be. A fast-charge to 80% on a 200kW fast-charger is a half hour while you are eating lunch.
Right now the trip is "doable". 5 years ago, we wouldn't be having this discussion, you couldn't do it. 5 years from now, you won't even have to think about it. There are still places that are EV no-go zones, but the TransCanada Highway or somewhere near its path, is not one of them.
30 minute stop every three hours is brutal on a long trip. Feasible but very undesirable. If the rapid charger is down in one of those towns, your trip likely gets a day longer. If I'm trying to get somewhere, I don't want wheels stopped for more than five minutes an hour, preferably much less than that. On a typical eight to 12 hour run, I aim for one to two minutes/hr stopped. EV necessitates more like 10 minutes per hour stopped which hammers your average speed (and increases the length of the trip).
this is the reason why most people still go Tesla, their supercharging network is more reliable, tells you on the app if they are available and in key locations.
again people are talking about these long trips like you do them often. not sure about your individual use-case but 90% of people probably do one 300-400km 'long' trip a year. It's like full-size truck buyers that use the bed once a year.
again people are talking about these long trips like you do them often. not sure about your individual use-case but 90% of people probably do one 300-400km 'long' trip a year. It's like full-size truck buyers that use the bed once a year.
I'd be surprised if that was most of the problems. Normally underground service and I suspect aluminum wire as the copper would be huge and expensive.
Or the "rolling coal" imbeciles purposely break them.
Hack seems to do the trip west a few times a year. That's a long ride for square peg, round hole. At least one vehicle in every household should easily be able to be EV (and it's probably more convenient than ICE). Most houses could go with two EV's with some accommodation (eg. install Level 2 charger at distant places you often visit like cottage, parents, etc).
I suspect that is far higher than wire theft. Also poor choice of installation location (eg. picture of tesla charger farm in a pond). Ultimately, I think it comes down to economics. Many seem to go down for no obvious reason and don't get repaired for a long time. Government incentives to install them but no incentives to maintain them and charging doesn't generate enough money to cover repairs?
The savings as well. I pay 3-500$ in gas each month on my daily. that has me thinking about trading in, financing the difference and paying that instead of gas.
Bingo.
Been saying it for years on this thread since post #2 long before most people even knew what a Tesla was.
They are not perfect. But they still do it best.
The ONLY Electric car I would buy today.
The lightning charges at 150kw, and there's lots of Petro Canada stations with 200kw (future proofed to 350kw capability) increasingly across the province. There's actually a nice string of them on the Trans Canada too, with more popping up regularly.
It can be a problem for sure if you're not using connected network stations that show online/offline status in an app. In that case I look at Plugshare and see if there's recent reports of a station being online or offline.
I've never seen one cut.
Grey-label or non networked chargers, this is a legit issue. But many/most chargers now are networked and connected, so you can open the relevant app for the charging network unit you're headed to and see if the unit is online, and if it's in-use or not. It's waaaay better than it was even just a year or so back honestly, and the big advantage the Tesla network used to have in this regard is not such a big advantage anymore.
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