The Canadian Electric Vehicle thread

[lio45]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

It's clickbait bullshit then.

Your household uses 20 kWh per day, so ~0.8 kW is your average power use at any given time, therefore ~1.7 kW for two households, so if a charging EV draws about ~1.7 kW while charging, then it's fair to say that, while charging, an EV uses what two households use, typically.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by travis3000

Not sure I buy into this stat that to fully charge 0-100% an EV is the equivalent of running two households? For how long? All I know is since adding my Tesla to the grid, my hydro bill has risen about $35/month on average. And I "fully" charge my car 4x per month. Thats equal to over 2000KM of real world range. The hydro cost to run my household outside of the Tesla still well exceeds the EV added cost.

For instance my last hydro bill for the month of March was $135 (including taxes/fees/delivery, etc). About $35 of that was from my Tesla and the remaining $100 was for the rest of the house.

The way I understand it at first sight, quite literally and simply, is that they're saying that when your Tesla gets plugged then from the grid's point of view it's like two new average houses have magically appeared in Alliston and are connected to the grid and behaving like average.

Sounds plausible at first sight.

[Nouvellecosse]

It's likely that the stat the article mentions is technically true but I understand why it could be misleading. It's meant to illustrate that EVs use a huge amount of power compared to pretty much any other personal domestic machine, but the time in which power is drawn is equally or more important than the total amount of power. We've probably all encountered a time when we ran too much stuff and tripped a circuit. It's that total instantaneous energy load that some are concerned about so whether or not charging an EV battery uses more total power than an average home within 24 hours isn't really important.

Charging an EV - at least with a level 2 or 3 charger - could add more or less grid load than adding another household to the grid depending on the time interval. Overnight the EV would be drawing much more power than an average household but that's ok since the average household isn't using much, while at daytime peak the EV might be using less than an average household at that time. The possibility of it being worse in some scenarios is important to acknowledge while quibbling about the total amount of energy usage isn't that relevant. The important thing is the instantaneous load that the EV is adding. So the comparison is misleading in that it might suggest that total power usage is of greater importance than it is, but it's useful in pointing out how great the instantaneous EV power draw can be.

[Truenorth00]

Energy vs power.

EVs can require the same power as two houses when charging. But most of them consume the same amount of energy as one house when driving an average amount of kilometers.

[Wigs]

In the future it will be common for most homes to have solar panels.

That plus the vast majority of people charge their vehicles at night when rates are cheaper because the grid isn't being used much.
In Niagara we have hydroelectricity (renewable energy) from nearby Niagara Falls

Those two points nullify the argument
dO u kNoW hOw mUcH pOwEr EvS use?

When with gasoline engines we're literally burning hydrocarbons that took untold millions of years to form

[urbandreamer]

A week or so ago we were chatting about the feasibility of small EVs with swappable batteries and today I started watching some YouTube on this topic. Here's a car available today in Europe:
https://youtu.be/q1LHh6FkpuI?si=ZP3u6QpVF7eJMd9E


https://www.silence.eco/en/silence-p...nocar/#model-2

In most of urban Canada this car would work well.

[rdaner]

A question about the battery plants that we are getting. Do they produce other sorts of batteries such as batteries for scooters or the batteries that are used for energy storage?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by rdaner

A question about the battery plants that we are getting. Do they produce other sorts of batteries such as batteries for scooters or the batteries that are used for energy storage?

The plants can be retooled for different form factors. That costs money though. The form factor used in cars can be used for energy storage like home or grid batteries. That's why Tesla got into that business. But sure about scooters though.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

A week or so ago we were chatting about the feasibility of small EVs with swappable batteries and today I started watching some YouTube on this topic. Here's a car available today in Europe:
https://youtu.be/q1LHh6FkpuI?si=ZP3u6QpVF7eJMd9E


https://www.silence.eco/en/silence-p...nocar/#model-2

In most of urban Canada this car would work well.

We're a market where OEMs are cancelling their smaller models and increasingly pushing larger ones. This company wouldn't survive months here. Also, urban Canada has lower car ownership than the rest of Canada, thanks to quality transit. So that's an evem smaller market for companies like this.

[ericmacm]

Originally Posted by rdaner

A question about the battery plants that we are getting. Do they produce other sorts of batteries such as batteries for scooters or the batteries that are used for energy storage?

The automotive battery plants will be used for electric vehicles.

However, there are facilities being built in Canada for the types of batteries you are describing. Two recent announcements happened in BC for a battery plant in Maple Ridge and a battery plant in Malahat First Nation, with the former for appliance/tool/specialized device applications and the latter for home power/energy storage applications. I hope we see more of these types of facilities get built across the country in addition to the automotive battery plant facilities.

[Djeffery]

I wouldn't be shocked if a company like Toyota, if they build a battery plant here, supplied their material handling division with batteries rather than transporting them in from wherever. Toyota forklifts are one of the most popular brands I see in the course of my work day.

[Wigs]

Efficiencies in battery technology is happening as we speak. More range, more durability, longer life, better materials will be used over time. We are still in the infancy stage haven't even transitioned to toddler.

[casper]

So BC Hydro is switching their charging stations to do Energy based billing. I wonder how common this is, vrs time based billing.

https://electricvehicles.bchydro.com...-based-billing

Sounds like this is the result of a change in policy by Measurement Canada (the federal government agency that is responsible for calibrated measurement used in commerce in Canada).

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Wigs

In the future it will be common for most homes to have solar panels.

That plus the vast majority of people charge their vehicles at night when rates are cheaper because the grid isn't being used much.
In Niagara we have hydroelectricity (renewable energy) from nearby Niagara Falls

Those two points nullify the argument
dO u kNoW hOw mUcH pOwEr EvS use?

When with gasoline engines we're literally burning hydrocarbons that took untold millions of years to form

Of course everyone with a brain knows that even though EVs use a lot of power, they can draw it at night.

"When plugged, an EV uses about what two extra homes would use" goes hand-in-hand with "and of course, that extra EV / those extra two homes, can be plugged only at night, when there's plenty of excess power available".

[P'tit Renard]

Tesla doubles down and bets big on China with FSD, looks like investors are cheering:

Tesla stock jumps as Beijing backs self-driving tech
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/tesl...133811401.html

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by lio45

Your household uses 20 kWh per day, so ~0.8 kW is your average power use at any given time, therefore ~1.7 kW for two households, so if a charging EV draws about ~1.7 kW while charging, then it's fair to say that, while charging, an EV uses what two households use, typically.

A typical L2 charging station draws around 7kW. Same circuit used by your oven.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by casper

So BC Hydro is switching their charging stations to do Energy based billing. I wonder how common this is, vrs time based billing.

https://electricvehicles.bchydro.com...-based-billing

Sounds like this is the result of a change in policy by Measurement Canada (the federal government agency that is responsible for calibrated measurement used in commerce in Canada).

It seems like all fast charging entities got approval to make this switch. Tesla has been doing it for months.

There are pros and cons, but it's a lot easier to understand how much you are paying vs. how far you can drive now, more like gas and what people are used to thinking about.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

A typical L2 charging station draws around 7kW. Same circuit used by your oven.

Then that's more like nine times your household, not merely two.

I guess the most likely way to resolve the contradiction is that you have really low energy use for a Canadian household, being in SW BC where there's almost no winters, plus you're in a condo and not a SFH.

"An EV when plugged draws as much as two typical households", and the typical household uses more than four times more than you do.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by lio45

Then that's more like nine times your household, not merely two.

I guess the most likely way to resolve the contradiction is that you have really low energy use for a Canadian household, being in SW BC where there's almost no winters, plus you're in a condo and not a SFH.

"An EV when plugged draws as much as two typical households", and the typical household uses more than four times more than you do.

You're comparing apples and oranges. You're saying I have 20kWh/day usage evenly spread across every hour.

To be fair, I use approximate 5kWh/day on my vehicle, so it's around 25% of household usage.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

You're saying I have 20kWh/day usage evenly spread across every hour.

Yeah, because that's the only way to calculate how many extra households, behaving typically, the addition of one charging EV to the grid represents.

Your household's average energy consumption rate *IS* ~0.8 kW, whether you like it or not.