Is a 2015 Limited right for me?

[JoulesThief]

deleted, double post.

 

[JoulesThief]

The short answer is he can't make that trip and charge his car overnight at L1 rates.

You lost me there. Let's say for the sake of argument that a 35 mile commute eats 50% of battery and he needs to recover 11 kWh overnight to get back to full.

At 120v / 12a, you're putting in about 1.2 kW per hour. That works out to slightly over 9 hours.

So if he plugs in at 9 PM, it's close to 100% by 6 AM.

Until there's that one day when he has an emergency, or has to shop for groceries, or pick something up on the way home that's an emergencie, or... any myriad of potential problems that crop up. I'm just saying.... it's iffy, until he has faster means of recharging at home.

 

[RonDawg]

The short answer is he can't make that trip and charge his car overnight at L1 rates.

You lost me there. Let's say for the sake of argument that a 35 mile commute eats 50% of battery and he needs to recover 11 kWh overnight to get back to full.

At 120v / 12a, you're putting in about 1.2 kW per hour. That works out to slightly over 9 hours.

So if he plugs in at 9 PM, it's close to 100% by 6 AM.

Until there's that one day when he has an emergency, or has to shop for groceries, or pick something up on the way home that's an emergencie, or... any myriad of potential problems that crop up. I'm just saying.... it's iffy, until he has faster means of recharging at home.

This is why I earlier said "40%" and not 50%. You get stuck in BAD traffic and it's cold out and now your heater (because it's an LE it doesn't have the heat pump) is sucking up precious kWH. Or the highway patrol has your route closed and now you have to take a lengthy detour (which will often have bad traffic, because everybody else has to on top of that detour's normal traffic). Now you arrive at your destination having used 60 or even 70% of your battery, and there's no L2 or CCS a reasonable distance away.

 

[bizzle]

The short answer is he can't make that trip and charge his car overnight at L1 rates.

You lost me there. Let's say for the sake of argument that a 35 mile commute eats 50% of battery

He wrote that he is going to commute 35 miles on the freeway. Unless he lives and works next to the onramp and offramp he's going to have to drive an unmentioned number of miles to get to and from the freeway.

What's the gamble? 5 miles on each end? 10 miles on each end? It's an unknown.
Now we can sit here and create all kinds of possibilities that make his plans viable (construct an example where he's always locked down in rush hour traffic traveling at 40mph in the HOV lane, or maybe he's only going to go 20 miles on his commute one day...whatever).

The short answer is that he needs to know traveling at posted speed limits doesn't get him the full range and traveling at normal southern California freeway speeds significantly cuts his range down. There's also a longer answer, and that's to reconfigure his commute.

If someone is really locked to a travel rate of 40mph then it's a false economy to buy an EV simply to sit in rush hour traffic in a HOV lane. He could take surface streets at close to those travel rates and explore changing his commute time to a less congested hour. If he was able to travel the 20 miles each way of his commute on surface streets at a rate around or less than 40mph he probably could make that work on a daily basis.

But in terms of buying an EV to drive in the HOV lane, it's been a great many years since I've seen the HOV lane travel at an appreciably faster rate than the travel lanes in Southern California. The freeway is either clear or locked up. I don't think it's realistic to plan on a commute where you are going to be locked down to a point where speed doesn't impact your range yet you're going faster than the standard lanes to justify buying a new car to travel in the HOV lane.

Do you see the difference in discussing realistic expectations and commute patterns on our freeways versus hypothetical mathematical equations in order to try and justify this purchase?

 

[bizzle]

Isn't there a way to combine 2 110v power sources to get the 220v he needs. Granted it has to be on 2 separate breakers, but its an option.


Actually that probably isn't a very good idea!

Ask an electrical contractor, but yes, you pull 2 hot legs from the main panel, and a neutral, and a ground, off of a 50 or 40 amp dual pole circuit breaker. Each leg to neutral is 120V. Each leg to each leg, single phase, is 240V. Run it on a dedicated circuit to a NEMA 14-50 outlet. Plug in a 30 amp 240V capable EVSE unit. Adds $700 to $2000 or more as an upgrade to your home, and to it's basis value, when you sell your home. And now you can recharge at a 7.2kwh rate to the charge controller on the vehicle, not 1.2kwh like with 120V.

It sounded more like he's referring to a quick220, which isn't necessarily a bad idea for any reason other than he's unlikely to find two outlets on separate breakers in an apartment setting close enough to plug into without using extension cords.

 

[johnnylingo]

He wrote that he is going to commute 35 miles on the freeway. Unless he lives and works next to the onramp and offramp he's going to have to drive an unmentioned number of miles to get to and from the freeway.

I interpretted "35 miles round trip on crowded SoCal highways" to mean it's 35 mile commute with the vast majority of those miles on the freeway, not that it's 35 miles on the freeway and then some arbitrary distance. Perhaps the OP could clarify.

Do you see the difference in discussing realistic expectations and commute patterns on our freeways versus hypothetical mathematical equations in order to try and justify this purchase?

I do computer Networks for a living. Yes, I am intimately familiar with the concept of "real world" vs. "ideal conditions", and that a combination of factors will affect performance.