Posted on 10/24/2010 7:31:35 AM PDT by 6SJ7
When I embarked on the Volt press launch, I made a public promise to keep my impressions of the car itself separate from concerns about its overall viability. My review of the Volt is coming on Monday, but a new issue is already raising its head to confront GM’s extended-range electric car. The Volt’s home charger costs $490 on top of the Volt’s $41,000 (pre-tax credit) price, and costs another $1,500 to install. But, according to BNet’s Jim Motavelli, money isn’t the only obstacle to obtaining the home charger that’s necessary to tap the Volt’s 40 miles of electric range. EV advocate and Volt Customer Advisory Board member Chelsea Sexton, of “Who Killed The Electric Car? fame, is one of the first Americans to live with the Volt, and despite enjoying the backing of GM, she’s run into a problem that she and other EV advocates worry will blunt enthusiasm for home-charged EVs like the Volt: she needs a “time of use” meter.
Motavelli explains the conundrum
California puts its electricity users in pricing categories based on their usage patterns. Since Sexton uses a “stunningly low” amount of electricity, she’s on the lowest tier. But the addition of the Volt would push her into a higher bracket, making it likely that EV charging “would be more expensive than putting gas in my Saturn.” With the time-of-use meter, the EV is billed separately and doesn’t count as part of her home use.
But California’s public utilities commission requires all of its customers’ electric meters to be grouped together, and that meant running a one-inch thick metal conduit along the face of her building. The other option is to punch through three neighbors’ walls. “I can just see the homeowners’ association going for that,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thetruthaboutcars.com ...
LOL I looked it up. But, having installed miles of conduit in my life I know that "one inch conduit" is bigger than an inch.
It was pretty stupid to make an electric car where the charger is separate equipment that requires most people to run new wiring.
Are they expecting California to buy their equipment to build charging stations around the state for the car?
It’s one thing to require a 230-volt 50-amp outlet (I’m guessing that’s what they are usiny, although they could use 30-amp I guess). That’s not all that weird, there are home appliances using those plugs now, and you can do it yourself or get your own electrician to run the wiring.
But by separating the charger, and then having the charger somehow built-in to the house, it means you can’t even through the charger in the trunk and carry it with you on vacation, much less charge your car anywhere but home.
I presume this was both a cost-savings measure, and a weight reduction effort.
But once again it proves why standard hybrid non-charging technology was the smartest move for companies looking to do gas/electric.
Although I’m betting this means a LOT of Volt customers are NEVER going to use their car as electrics, and it just becomes a very expensive and less-efficient hybrid car.
Makes me want to puke.
“We will build NO car BEFORE it’s time!” Winston Chruchill
Sounds like it's time to start up a chain of EV MOTELS. Or are people just going to hang around the EV Charger parking lot for 8 hours while their car charges?
I heard they plan to build them underwater so they won't spoil the view.
No. Californian Politicians expect you to pay for it. And you are.
Actually shade is at a premium in the city. This may be the single most valuable contribution of this technology.
Long after the panels are rendered useless, the shade will still be welcomed.
I was wrong, it really doesn’t pull that much current.
“The Voltec 240V charger can recharge the Volt from depleted to full in about four hours, drawing 3.3 kw of power.”
3.3kw can be handled with a standard 240-volt, 20-amp circuit. I ran the equivalent to my porch for about 30 bucks for the wire and breakers (I say equivalent because i have it divided into 2 120-amp circuits, one on the top and one on the bottom of a standard outlet, so I can do my christmas lights — but I could easily add a 240-volt plug).
So I can’t imagine why anybody is running a 1-inch conduit, other than they needed a 1-inch pipe to run a 12-gauge wire, which really you could stick in a 3/4 inch outdoor pvc pipe. Maybe they are using 10-gauge just to be safe, but that’s still a pretty small wire.]
Supposedly this charger is the cheapest car charger ever, but it’s seems pretty expensive, and it’s a cheap trick to not put it IN the car and give you a standard 10-foot 240-amp cable to plug it in.
If they did that, you could probably buy a longer cable and a lot of people would be able to just plug the car into their existing electric dryer outlet.
Selling someone an electric car and not including a charger is like a car company telling you that your car is only $40,000 but a steering wheel is an optional extra.
Sorry, NIMBY!
No stinkin’ windmills here. If they want to put them in Jon Carey’s backyard, fine. But not mine.
OK, now I have a correction. This article is kind of misleading.
“The 240-v charger is optional as the Volt can be recharged using the standard 120-v wall socket charger that comes with the car. This would take about ten hours.”
So we are talking about a special charger for people in a hurry. The car CAN just be plugged in anywhere. I apologized for the errors earlier. But I don’t understand why one of their essentially sales-people didn’t make this more clear.
I also don’t understand why if they were going to include a charger in the car, they didn’t spend an extra hundred bucks and make it capable of doing both 120/240.
And I wonder now if this means the volt has two plugs, one for the 120 regular charger and a separate socket for this 240-volt charger.
I live about 170 miles from Seattle, which I can drive in my car in a little over 3 hours, depending on traffic. One way is four complete charges in a Volt, and a complete charge on 220 volt electric service takes 8 hours while a so-called “quick charge” is reputed to only take 4 hours.
All of the media coverage that I have seen always shows a hand simply “plugging in” the car. It appears that you can just plug the car into any convenient electrical outlet for a charge, but that is obviously not the case. You have to mount the charger near where you park, and have it hard-wired into your electric box, or into a separate meter all it’s own.
How much power will that charger use? Depends on the amps, but I’ll bet you could simulate that charger’s usage by running your 220 volt electric dryer on high for eight hours every day for a month, and see how much your electric bill goes up. I’ll bet the result will be close.
EV cars and EV motels.. The bath houses will be back in business.
On the other hand, it turns out you and I and every other taxpayer are paying half of the cost of this charger:
“Volt and Leaf buyers who also buy a charging station are eligible for a 50 percent tax credit on up to $2,000 for installation.”
I can’t believe how much us taxpayers are paying to provide electric cars to these people.
Drive 40 miles and then stop to charge for four hours?
Yeah, sign me up for that sh!t. Not!
I was wondering what effect this would have on productivity but then it dawned on me that only morons will be driving these things so it won’t matter much.
California would be best served using it's electricity for executions rather than automobiles.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.