Its the cost to refuel over the life of the car that counts. The roadtrip to so-cal won't be that much less, but in daily use, you have a full charge in the morning, and it costs a fraction of gas. At 80mph, a Tesla will only get ~75% of its rated EPA range and will be about 15% less efficient than at 65 mph. On average, I drive about 150-200 miles and charge for 15-20 minutes per charge on a roadtrip. Most EVs will take an hour to charge 0-100% at a fast charger but given the way charging curves work, most people charge when they get low on charge (around 15-20%), then only charge to 80% as the charging curve slows down noticeably after that. A 20 minute stop after 2-3 hours of driving isn't that much longer than what I do in my minivan with the kids. Some people may be sensitive with that, a lot of people won't care that much. Overall, that inconvenience seems greatly exaggerated.

 

I would love to be the cause of a neighborhood wide black out! That would really make me popular!! My wife drives the Ioniq probably 14k or 15k a year... that's a lot of driving in my book, I only do about 10k on my Lexus

 

^
MB rep told me its not good to use fast charging for battery and also not good to have it too low or too high as it ruins the battery. Preference is to charge overnight for 10+ hours.

 

There has been a ton of data on DC fast charging vs. overnight charging. Basically, if your car has a good battery management system with good cooling, its not that detrimental. think like 7% degradation after 3 years vs. 5%. If the car's cooling system isn't great though or the manufacturer screwed up the charging curve, then DC fast charging could be pretty bad for the battery. It seems the EQS has a very conservative charging curve so I bet DC fast charging won't be that bad. Tesla has a scaling charging curve and data indicates that the owners that use DC fast charging at Superchargers don't have much more degradation than home charging but, those Teslas that use DC fast charging from 3rd parties seem to have worse degradation.

Its complex and it seems degradation can be impacted from both the infrastructure as well as the charging curve of the car. Overall though, if you charge at home mostly, the occasional roadtrip won't impact the car at all.

 

I see a lot of Tesla's, Model S, 3 and X when I travel between Northern and SoCal, so EV's can be used easily for traveling, with some additional planning. One issue I've seen a few times stopping for a bathroom break in the Harris Ranch area off of the hwy 198 exit where there are Tesla chargers is people ICEing charging stations. Once a guy parked his truck and giant car trailer in front of a bunch of Tesla chargers, blocking several of them on purpose. I guess they do issue licenses to 12 year olds...

The EQS is a great start for Mercedes, but way above my price range. BTW @bitkahuna , Level 3 Charging stations for homes are not really that expensive: https://whywelikethis.com/best-level-3-ev-chargers/ Of course you would need to make sure your fuse box can handle it, and you would need to have a dedicated circuit. If I installed one right now with my current fuse box, I would most definitely blow the power in my house

 

Thanks, but i smell b.s. on that lame website article...



If you go to the amazon link again it says it's level 2.

while 'real' level 3...

https://www.forbes.com/wheels/advice...arging-levels/

 

It doesn't really matter because the majority of people who charge at home don't need a level 3...or even a Level 2. On average just plugging into a 110v "slow charger" it can take 8 to 10 hours. Come home from work, plug in and sleep while you "fill up". Even if it reaches 70 or 80 percent because you were really low on charge, that's plenty of charge for the day. Now if you live in Sacramento or Tracy California and commute to Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose, or any of the major cities here, than most likely your company will have chargers. If not, there are fast chargers within 10 minutes, at least in the Bay Area. One of my wife's relatives lives in Tracy, CA, commutes to Menlo Park (works for Facebook) which is 70 miles one way in his Model 3. Leaves his house fully charged, plugs in a charger at FB (thank Mark Z!) goes home, rinse, repeat

BTW, I just picked that article randomly doing a Google search, didn't read it. Maybe I should read the links I post LOL

 

That wasn't what i heard, and i checked... says here a model S will add 5 miles per hour on 110v. So adding just 100mi, range will take 20 hours. Pretty bad.

https://www.cars.com/articles/how-qu...1420663044658/

glad it works out for your wife though. I still don't really see how she does 15k mi. a year by charging off 110.

quick math... driving 250 days a year to cover 15k mi. Means 60mi. Per day. At 5mph charging that's still 12 hours of charging.

 

You're absolutely correct. Charging at 110V is such a waste of time and is also very inefficient - the car does not get the "full" charge it can get when charging at 220V. Something related to the lower voltage.

When I got my S two years ago, I was charging at 110V (while getting my 220V charging setup) and it was such a royal pain in the rear - 3 days to charge the damn car. 64 km in 8 hours..... So that's 50 hours to charge it fully.

 

She actually drove 13,040 miles so far this year. We will have the Ioniq for 1 year as of November 21. That's still a lot of miles. We charge it right now on 110v. If I decided to buy a Tesla, I would definitely buy a level 2 charger and add a 240v dedicated circuit as we would be driving it longer range then the Ioniq. I plan to do that next year as I will have two EV's, one of them will be long range. That said, it works for us perfectly at this point in time. Even if it takes 12 hours, so what? It's not like we are hand pumping electricity. As long as the car is between 60 and 80 percent charge, she has plenty, and she can always plug in at work for free where they have lots of Level 2 chargers

 

It works for us, as this car only has a 38 Kwh battery. My wife comes home from work in the evening (usually with around 65-75 percent battery), we plug in around 9pm and the next morning its at 100 percent. On the days that it was driven more, it will be around 80 percent in the morning which is plenty. That said, I do plan to put in a 240v dedicated circuit as next year I will have at least two EV's

 

Alex on Autos got only 345 miles of range out of a full battery (around the 19:30 mark).


So no, the EPA wasn't wrong.

 

He lives in the Santa Cruz mountains, which has steep winding roads where he tests most of his cars

 

Remember that EPA numbers can vary.

 

Winding roads and low speeds have no affect on EV range, it's long highway runs and fluctuating climates that really hammer the battery. In this case the only unusual aspect was that Alex had to use the heater for his entire run and the car has no heat pump (really, Mercedes?) which means that probably consumed a bit of juice.

Either way, the folks at Edmunds were probably fingering the throttle the whole time. Alex's numbers are far more believable than theirs.