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Kind: captions
Language: en

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Yeah. You saw the thumbnail.

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Every electric car, every single one

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can be charged with a standard household outlet using a cable like this, which they often come with for free,

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or which can be purchased for about 100 bucks.

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Electric cars don't need a special kind of electricity.

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They need the same electricity you have at home.

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The only thing that matters is how much electricity they'll need,

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and that depends almost entirely on you and how much you drive.

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And if you have a typical commute,

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this is probably all you need.

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Hi.

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If you've been considering an electric car

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a little more closely
than you might have in the past due to world events

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and the precarious nature of oil prices,

00:00:43.543 --> 00:00:44.944
well, you found the right video.

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If you don't know who I am, my name is Alec,

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and I run the channel Technology Connections.

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This is my second channel Technology Connextras, where I make stuff more off the cuff.

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But I have had to script this one because I've tried

00:00:57.390 --> 00:01:00.560
too many times to film this,
and it has been a disaster each time.

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And today I would like to help you form

00:01:03.596 --> 00:01:08.034
some technology connections between your daily life and an electric car

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because as you saw from the title,

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it's really easy to overthink them.

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And yet we are also not thinking about them enough

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because as technology has progressed,

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we appear to be focusing all of our time and energy

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on what I would claim is the wrong thing.

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Right now, we're approaching this exactly backwards,

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because all you really need to charge a car is wires.

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And if we were smart about it, we would be doing the easy thing.

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But instead we're doing the hard thing because it's flashy and cool

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and we're just pretending it's smart

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because it makes more people more money.

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I'll explain what I mean by that shortly,

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but first I want to talk about who my intended audience

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for this video is, and also who it is not.

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I am very aware that not

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everyone can charge their car at home.

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Perhaps you live in an apartment building,

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or you live in a neighborhood with on street parking.

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When I talk about how easy it is to charge an electric car at home,

00:02:09.762 --> 00:02:12.465
I'm not intending to deny your reality.

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In fact, I'm trying to demonstrate

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how ridiculous it is that you are stuck in a situation

00:02:18.104 --> 00:02:19.873
where you cannot charge an electric car

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somewhere that's convenient to you,

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because all you need is wires.

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And if I were in charge, we'd be doing things quite differently,

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which is kind of the point of this video.

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But also, if I were in charge,

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I wouldn't want to just give everybody
an electric car and call it a day.

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I am very plugged in to conversations about car dependency

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and how frustrating our built environment is,

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because it caters so heavily to the car and is often

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hostile towards other modes of transportation,

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like transit or biking, or even our own two feet.

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I make videos about electric cars

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because I think they are better and less destructive cars,

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not because I think they are the solution to all of our problems.

00:03:02.448 --> 00:03:03.783
I just wanted to put that on the record,

00:03:03.783 --> 00:03:06.119
as I often get accused of that very thought.

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But right now we have a severely car

00:03:09.222 --> 00:03:11.324
centric infrastructure here in the US,

00:03:11.791 --> 00:03:13.560
which I believe is going to take longer

00:03:13.560 --> 00:03:15.962
to unwind than a lot of people wish it would.

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So we need to walk and chew gum at the same time.

00:03:18.965 --> 00:03:20.767
And my desire is to help people.

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Today, activism is not a zero sum game,

00:03:24.671 --> 00:03:26.372
and I say this with respect.

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I think activists would do well to remember

00:03:29.242 --> 00:03:31.110
that in conversations on the internet.

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With that out of the way, it is not really my intention to debunk

00:03:35.515 --> 00:03:38.418
a bunch of misinformation about EVs or anything like that.

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I will touch on a few of those things,

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but what I really want to do here is to reframe the conversation,

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to try and help you get over some of the common mental hangups.

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I know many people have when it comes to using an electric car.

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I'm also making this as a sort of test video for a remake

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I want to do of my EV charging guide.

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Some information in that video is out of date,

00:04:01.908 --> 00:04:04.444
particularly the information on charging connectors.

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But there's actually great news there,

00:04:06.546 --> 00:04:08.715
and I'll be talking about it towards the end of this video.

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But I'm going to start with a mental hang up,

00:04:11.818 --> 00:04:15.054
which is the result of a bit of misinformation

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and that is battery pack lifespan.

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Way too many people still believe
that the battery pack in an electric car

00:04:23.162 --> 00:04:25.098
is something of a consumable item,

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which is going to need replacement down the road.

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This is not true

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and has essentially never been true.

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But the good news for people who might be watching this video

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is that this misconception has depressed the value of used

00:04:39.245 --> 00:04:40.813
EVs quite heavily,

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or at least it did.

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One of the reasons I'm trying to rush this video

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out, though I clearly didn't do that good of a rush job,

00:04:48.421 --> 00:04:51.658
is that if you are considering a used electric car,

00:04:52.025 --> 00:04:53.626
you might want to do that soon.

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More and more people are waking up to the realities

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of what might happen to oil prices,

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and it already looks like the value of used

00:05:00.900 --> 00:05:02.435
electric cars is going up.

00:05:03.436 --> 00:05:05.338
Now, if you are worried about

00:05:05.338 --> 00:05:08.074
assessing the battery health of a used electric car,

00:05:08.074 --> 00:05:10.076
there are tools you can use to do that

00:05:10.076 --> 00:05:12.312
and I will link some information in the description.

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But truly, you should not be worried about buying a used EV.

00:05:18.017 --> 00:05:20.486
I would avoid used Nissan Leafs for reasons

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I will talk about later in the video,

00:05:22.955 --> 00:05:24.590
but pretty much any other model

00:05:24.590 --> 00:05:27.660
is likely to be a great choice and serve you very well

00:05:27.660 --> 00:05:28.895
for many years to come,

00:05:28.895 --> 00:05:31.831
even if it was made before the world ended in 2020.

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But anyway, this video is not really about the wrong things

00:05:35.868 --> 00:05:37.470
people believe about electric cars.

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It's more about understanding all the different ways

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they can be charged because there are so many opportunities

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we're just not taking advantage of right now.

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But I'm going to say something

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now which will probably get some people upset with me.

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Yet I believe it to be true.

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The last people you should be getting advice

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from when it comes to electric cars are electric car enthusiasts.

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They can be really good at keeping up with new information

00:06:02.929 --> 00:06:05.798
and knowing what the best of the best might be at any given moment,

00:06:07.166 --> 00:06:09.669
but they largely do not know what is important

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to normal people at this point, and will likely steer you towards things

00:06:13.373 --> 00:06:15.341
you almost certainly don't need.

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A lot of those people get very obsessed with optimizing

00:06:18.644 --> 00:06:20.113
their electric car experience,

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and they don't necessarily have a very good grasp

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of how off putting their preferred strategies

00:06:25.585 --> 00:06:28.621
look to those who aren't familiar with electric cars yet.

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What I'm saying is they mean well,

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but they can make it seem a lot harder than it actually is.

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Also, it's not important right now,

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but Tesla enthusiast is a very distinct subset

00:06:40.299 --> 00:06:43.703
of electric car enthusiasts, and, well,

00:06:44.170 --> 00:06:47.240
they have a bad habit of giving advice, which is not relevant

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because they don't keep up with what
the other industry players are doing.

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If they did, they'd be embarrassed by the fact that Tesla currently

00:06:55.181 --> 00:06:58.918
has just four 800 volt capable DC fast charging stations

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in the entire world, but they're not embarrassed about that

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because they're not actually interested in the technology,

00:07:05.291 --> 00:07:06.793
which makes electric cars work.

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They're just interested in their Tesla.

00:07:10.163 --> 00:07:13.366
anyway, something that I think can be very confusing

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to people outside of the electric car world

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is that today's electric cars can operate in two

00:07:19.305 --> 00:07:22.875
radically different but complementary paradigms.

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One of those paradigms is the one you are already used to,

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where you use the car like a car,

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and once the battery charge gets low,

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you take it to a place to refill it quickly.

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We have made great strides here and now.

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Charging times for electric cars are getting close to refueling.

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Time for gasoline.

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My car, for example, only takes 18 minutes

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to charge from 10% to 80% in good weather.

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It gets slowed down a bit in the cold,

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and at the same time I'm releasing this video.

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I'm releasing a trip report where I drove my car from Chicago

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to Cincinnati in very cold January temperatures

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with terrible wind conditions.

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So if you want to get a sense of what that looks like today,

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you can watch that.

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It's really not a big deal.

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The only real issue I have is my car's terrible navigation software,

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but that's not important in any context, but a road trip.

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And now that we have charging networks like Ayana,

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which are freeing us from the tyranny of app based charger activation,

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using an electric car like a gas powered car

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is actually a pretty normal experience these days,

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and this is only going to improve.

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Lots of people are getting excited by the headlines

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coming out of China about their latest cars, which can charge

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in just about five minutes.

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But I would like to argue

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very strongly that you should care a lot

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less about that than you currently do because the much better, cheaper,

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and more convenient way to charge an electric car

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is the other operating paradigm they offer us, and always have.

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Charging them slowly while they're parked and you're not using it.

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This is something that seems obvious once somebody tells it to you.

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But it might not be obvious if you haven't thought about it before.

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Your car spends a lot of time parked and not going anywhere.

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It's parked when you are sleeping.

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It's parked when you're at work.

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It's parked if you've been bad or good.

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So plug it in for goodness sake.

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I'm sorry.

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I don't know why I'm like this.

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The point is, you've got a lot of time where your car could be charging

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without actually waiting on the car.

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And the beautiful thing about electric cars

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is that we can charge them with incredibly simple infrastructure,

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which doesn't cost very much money at all.

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And what is that infrastructure?

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Wires.

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This is the second operating paradigm,

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which, ironically, is the one that early adopters

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of electric cars were very excited about,

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but which has been getting far too little attention in recent years.

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So let's give it some more attention,

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because it really is the smarter way to do this.

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As I said in the intro, electric cars

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don't need a special flavor of electricity.

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They just need electricity.

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The stuff you have at home and to give them access

00:10:06.939 --> 00:10:09.909
to that electricity, all they need is wires.

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And I do mean that literally.

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Electric car charging infrastructure can be as simple as a power cord.

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In fact, lots of electric car charging infrastructure

00:10:19.819 --> 00:10:22.855
literally is a power cable and nothing more.

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This is the case for AC charging, which has two categories

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level one and level two.

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For those outside of North America, this is a naming convention

00:10:31.731 --> 00:10:34.133
unique to us and our weird split phase power.

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But for those of us who have 120 volt household power,

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well, that's what level one means.

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It simply means charging a car on 120 volt AC power.

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It has a few flavors, though.

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Almost always we use the term level one to mean

00:10:48.814 --> 00:10:51.550
charging a car on a standard household outlet

00:10:51.784 --> 00:10:53.919
using a portable charging cable such as this.

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To reiterate, every electric car can do this.

00:10:58.691 --> 00:11:00.059
Every single one.

00:11:00.893 --> 00:11:03.329
This is the slowest way to charge a car.

00:11:03.562 --> 00:11:07.166
However, it is much more impactful than many people realize.

00:11:07.633 --> 00:11:11.070
In fact, level one charging can work for the majority of people

00:11:11.070 --> 00:11:13.973
as their exclusive source of charging energy.

00:11:14.774 --> 00:11:15.975
And I'm serious.

00:11:16.042 --> 00:11:18.477
This charging cable, even with a car like mine

00:11:18.477 --> 00:11:19.845
that has a very large battery

00:11:19.845 --> 00:11:22.782
pack, is all most people actually need

00:11:22.782 --> 00:11:25.751
to keep their car charged up for commuting and errands.

00:11:26.519 --> 00:11:28.487
However, it requires a pretty radical

00:11:28.487 --> 00:11:31.457
reimagining of what refueling a car is like

00:11:31.791 --> 00:11:34.193
and can be quite frustrating to certain brains.

00:11:35.227 --> 00:11:38.531
See, a modern electric car will take several days

00:11:38.531 --> 00:11:40.933
to get a complete charge on a cable like this,

00:11:41.667 --> 00:11:45.671
but a complete charge and a modern electric car provides

00:11:45.671 --> 00:11:47.773
a few hundred miles of driving range.

00:11:48.040 --> 00:11:50.910
And unless you actually drive that far in a day,

00:11:51.577 --> 00:11:53.713
you can simply charge it up little bits at a time

00:11:53.713 --> 00:11:55.548
and replenish what you used.

00:11:56.015 --> 00:11:59.151
There's no consequence to battery pack longevity or anything like that.

00:11:59.618 --> 00:12:03.189
The only practical downsides to level one charging for most people

00:12:03.489 --> 00:12:07.026
are that it is less energy efficient due to higher charging losses,

00:12:07.026 --> 00:12:09.528
which makes it slightly more costly than level two,

00:12:09.795 --> 00:12:12.131
though it's still going to be way cheaper than gas.

00:12:12.598 --> 00:12:16.202
And if you're electric, utility offers time of use discounts.

00:12:16.469 --> 00:12:18.904
Taking advantage of that is very difficult with level

00:12:18.904 --> 00:12:21.073
one charging, where your car has to be charging.

00:12:21.340 --> 00:12:22.708
Basically, whenever you're at home.

00:12:23.676 --> 00:12:24.977
But here's the brass tacks

00:12:25.444 --> 00:12:27.713
for a mid-sized car and smaller,

00:12:27.813 --> 00:12:30.549
you can expect a charging cable like this to provide

00:12:30.549 --> 00:12:33.853
40 miles of driving range with every overnight charge.

00:12:34.386 --> 00:12:37.289
So if you drive 40 miles or less each day,

00:12:37.423 --> 00:12:40.292
which is the case for the majority of commuters in the US,

00:12:40.826 --> 00:12:44.363
then you will replenish all of the energy you used to commute

00:12:44.930 --> 00:12:46.899
simply by plugging your car into this thing.

00:12:46.899 --> 00:12:48.100
When you get home.

00:12:48.534 --> 00:12:51.270
now remember that thing I said about how electric cars

00:12:51.270 --> 00:12:53.739
operate under two complementary paradigms?

00:12:54.540 --> 00:12:56.509
If you decide to try using level one

00:12:56.509 --> 00:12:58.377
charging for your electric car at home,

00:12:58.978 --> 00:13:00.746
you can still use DC fast

00:13:00.746 --> 00:13:02.982
charging for quick top ups when you're out and about.

00:13:03.716 --> 00:13:07.386
Whatever limitation you might have for your charging situation at home

00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:10.823
is not a limitation for how far you can drive your car.

00:13:11.190 --> 00:13:14.226
It's just a limitation for what you can do with the power

00:13:14.226 --> 00:13:15.427
you have at home.

00:13:15.928 --> 00:13:19.765
But if you're even more adventurous with your mental framing,

00:13:19.899 --> 00:13:23.869
you can drive more than 40 miles a day without visiting a fast charger.

00:13:24.170 --> 00:13:26.772
So long as you have extra idle time on the weekend.

00:13:27.439 --> 00:13:29.942
Say, for example, you had a 60 mile commute

00:13:29.942 --> 00:13:32.144
and you left home on Monday with a full charge.

00:13:32.912 --> 00:13:33.846
When you get home,

00:13:33.846 --> 00:13:37.449
you might be down to 75% state of charge in a car like mine,

00:13:37.883 --> 00:13:38.717
and a level

00:13:38.717 --> 00:13:41.353
one charger is not going to be able to completely

00:13:41.353 --> 00:13:42.822
recharge the car by morning,

00:13:44.156 --> 00:13:46.325
but it might get you up to 92%.

00:13:46.859 --> 00:13:50.696
And that means you're only operating with a deficit of 8% per day.

00:13:51.597 --> 00:13:55.901
On Friday morning,
your car might only be at 68% state of charge, meaning

00:13:55.901 --> 00:13:58.270
you'll get back home with 43% that night.

00:13:58.904 --> 00:14:01.240
But now you've got the entire weekend

00:14:01.240 --> 00:14:04.043
to keep your car plugged in and charging whenever you can.

00:14:04.276 --> 00:14:08.280
And there's a very good chance
it will be back to 100% by Monday morning.

00:14:09.281 --> 00:14:12.284
To be clear, I am not suggesting this is ideal,

00:14:12.852 --> 00:14:14.954
but I am saying it is possible.

00:14:15.187 --> 00:14:18.157
And if you've got a DC fast charger near your home,

00:14:18.157 --> 00:14:21.627
which you can easily
find out by looking at the plug share app or website,

00:14:22.795 --> 00:14:25.497
you can just try this out without risking much at all.

00:14:25.931 --> 00:14:28.901
Worst case scenario, you have to run down the street to charge up

00:14:29.501 --> 00:14:30.703
like a normal car.

00:14:31.537 --> 00:14:34.540
Now, there are two remaining caveats to level one charging.

00:14:34.907 --> 00:14:36.876
The first has to do with electrical safety.

00:14:37.376 --> 00:14:38.944
This is a very minor issue,

00:14:38.944 --> 00:14:40.880
and I don't want to make it sound too serious,

00:14:40.880 --> 00:14:42.548
but you should be aware that plugging

00:14:42.548 --> 00:14:44.683
in an electric car charging cable to the wall

00:14:45.017 --> 00:14:48.654
requires the same level of attention as plugging in a space heater,

00:14:48.921 --> 00:14:51.891
because the car will draw 12 amps through an outlet.

00:14:52.925 --> 00:14:54.026
This means you should pay

00:14:54.026 --> 00:14:56.695
attention to the connection between the plug and the socket.

00:14:57.329 --> 00:15:00.032
If the connection is poor, the plug may overheat

00:15:00.032 --> 00:15:01.834
and could potentially start a fire.

00:15:03.035 --> 00:15:05.070
Engineers are smart and decent.

00:15:05.070 --> 00:15:07.206
Charging cables now have temperature sensors

00:15:07.206 --> 00:15:10.376
in the plug to detect this is happening and will slow down

00:15:10.376 --> 00:15:12.544
or even stop charging in that case.

00:15:13.145 --> 00:15:15.214
But cheap charging cables

00:15:15.481 --> 00:15:19.652
may not do that, so make sure the outlet holds onto the plug tightly.

00:15:20.319 --> 00:15:23.289
If it feels loose, the connection is likely to be poor,

00:15:23.289 --> 00:15:26.592
and you should replace that receptacle before charging a car with it.

00:15:27.459 --> 00:15:31.163
And if you're worried, just feel the plug to see if it's getting hot.

00:15:31.163 --> 00:15:33.933
After the car has been charging for a half hour or so,

00:15:34.500 --> 00:15:36.335
it's normal for it to feel a little warm.

00:15:36.735 --> 00:15:39.905
But if it's uncomfortable to touch, there is a problem.

00:15:40.739 --> 00:15:41.239
Also,

00:15:42.841 --> 00:15:44.610
you really shouldn't use level

00:15:44.610 --> 00:15:47.079
one charging cables with extension cords.

00:15:47.513 --> 00:15:49.615
I'm not saying it's not possible,

00:15:50.082 --> 00:15:54.186
but I am saying you need to be extremely cautious about doing that.

00:15:54.186 --> 00:15:56.255
And if you don't understand the fundamentals

00:15:56.255 --> 00:15:58.557
of electrical safety and wire gauge,

00:15:59.391 --> 00:16:00.859
you probably just shouldn't.

00:16:01.760 --> 00:16:02.294
Oh, right.

00:16:02.294 --> 00:16:05.798
Also kind of related the 12 amp draw from an electric car

00:16:05.798 --> 00:16:09.635
charging on this will max out a 15 amp circuit's capacity.

00:16:09.635 --> 00:16:13.572
So if you've got other things on that circuit like a fridge or freezer,

00:16:13.973 --> 00:16:16.675
it's possible the car will cause the circuit breaker to trip.

00:16:17.443 --> 00:16:19.845
It's not a big deal, but it's something to be cognizant of

00:16:20.145 --> 00:16:21.981
and this is less of a concern

00:16:21.981 --> 00:16:24.383
if you have a 20 amp circuit to charge your car.

00:16:25.184 --> 00:16:27.152
the other larger caveat with level

00:16:27.152 --> 00:16:29.421
one charging is cold climates.

00:16:29.822 --> 00:16:32.257
You probably know by now that cold weather reduces

00:16:32.324 --> 00:16:34.693
electric cars driving range, and this is true.

00:16:35.294 --> 00:16:38.430
It is getting better with the addition of heat pumps to electric cars,

00:16:38.764 --> 00:16:40.366
but it is still quite significant,

00:16:40.366 --> 00:16:42.468
especially when the weather gets extremely cold.

00:16:43.335 --> 00:16:45.537
This is one reason you may want to upgrade

00:16:45.537 --> 00:16:48.207
to level two charging, which I will be discussing next.

00:16:48.707 --> 00:16:50.909
But the other important part of this caveat

00:16:50.909 --> 00:16:55.681
is that if your car is parked outside in extremely cold conditions,

00:16:55.681 --> 00:16:58.751
a level one charging cable may not actually add

00:16:58.751 --> 00:17:00.586
very much energy to the battery pack.

00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:04.056
This is because the car will be using an electric heater

00:17:04.056 --> 00:17:07.659
to keep its battery pack warm in those extremely cold conditions,

00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:10.829
and the power it needs to do that takes away

00:17:10.829 --> 00:17:13.032
from the power available to charge the battery.

00:17:13.699 --> 00:17:15.601
However, the impact of this depends

00:17:15.601 --> 00:17:18.270
a lot on the car and even the situation.

00:17:18.904 --> 00:17:21.240
For example, back when I had a Chevy Volt,

00:17:21.540 --> 00:17:24.943
I plugged that thing in at work to a standard outlet outside,

00:17:25.511 --> 00:17:28.414
and I never saw a slower charge than I expected.

00:17:28.414 --> 00:17:30.249
Even when the weather got quite cold.

00:17:31.150 --> 00:17:35.220
And if you're parked in a garage that's freezing temperature or above,

00:17:35.454 --> 00:17:37.890
you probably won't ever see slower charging happen.

00:17:37.923 --> 00:17:39.124
But I wanted to mention it.

00:17:39.892 --> 00:17:42.694
So now let's talk about level two charging.

00:17:43.228 --> 00:17:46.765
All that level two means is 240 volt charging.

00:17:47.099 --> 00:17:49.301
And I'm saying this because not enough people

00:17:49.301 --> 00:17:51.937
appreciate how flexible level two charging is.

00:17:52.404 --> 00:17:54.640
And a lot of electricians don't know this either.

00:17:55.507 --> 00:17:57.876
You're going to hear a lot of advice from people,

00:17:57.876 --> 00:18:00.546
which says to install a Nema 1450

00:18:00.546 --> 00:18:02.815
receptacle, the matching one for this plug,

00:18:03.148 --> 00:18:07.653
and that's capable of providing 9.6kW of charging power to a car.

00:18:08.720 --> 00:18:09.888
And let me be clear,

00:18:09.888 --> 00:18:12.458
if you can do that, I would recommend it.

00:18:13.192 --> 00:18:16.528
But what an electric car enthusiast is not likely to tell you

00:18:16.662 --> 00:18:19.832
is that it's overkill for almost everybody.

00:18:20.365 --> 00:18:22.301
A charging circuit like that will offer you

00:18:22.301 --> 00:18:25.437
the ability to completely recharge most cars overnight,

00:18:25.637 --> 00:18:28.640
which is something a lot of people would like to have.

00:18:29.174 --> 00:18:31.877
But very few people genuinely need.

00:18:32.211 --> 00:18:33.979
And the reason I think this is important

00:18:33.979 --> 00:18:35.948
is because we have to deal with people

00:18:35.948 --> 00:18:38.817
who have a limited electrical service in their home.

00:18:39.718 --> 00:18:41.954
I'm hoping we see electric code reform,

00:18:42.254 --> 00:18:44.490
and I'm probably going to make a main channel video about this,

00:18:44.490 --> 00:18:47.593
because there are some very artificial limitations here,

00:18:47.593 --> 00:18:49.161
which only matter on paper.

00:18:49.528 --> 00:18:53.432
But for now, an electrician is going to have to do a load calculation

00:18:53.432 --> 00:18:55.601
to determine how much available capacity

00:18:55.634 --> 00:18:57.536
your electrical panel actually has.

00:18:58.003 --> 00:19:01.039
And in many homes, that capacity is limited

00:19:01.240 --> 00:19:04.877
such that you cannot install a name of 1450

00:19:04.877 --> 00:19:08.680
without getting a very expensive electrical service upgrade.

00:19:09.681 --> 00:19:12.217
But this does not necessarily mean

00:19:12.217 --> 00:19:14.753
you cannot have a level two charging station.

00:19:14.953 --> 00:19:17.089
With the electric service you already have,

00:19:17.523 --> 00:19:20.125
because you can put a charging station on a 30

00:19:20.125 --> 00:19:22.294
amp circuit or a 20 amp circuit,

00:19:22.628 --> 00:19:24.830
or even a 15 amp circuit.

00:19:25.264 --> 00:19:27.533
And even that weedy little 15 amp

00:19:27.533 --> 00:19:30.969
circuit will give you eight miles of driving range for every hour

00:19:30.969 --> 00:19:32.137
your car is plugged in.

00:19:32.304 --> 00:19:35.541
Meaning even 100 mile commutes become feasible.

00:19:35.541 --> 00:19:37.709
Using that charger exclusively.

00:19:38.443 --> 00:19:39.645
But let's back up a bit.

00:19:39.878 --> 00:19:42.347
The reason I said to charge an electric car.

00:19:42.347 --> 00:19:43.649
All you need is wires

00:19:45.217 --> 00:19:47.819
is that that is literally what this thing is.

00:19:48.187 --> 00:19:50.422
The technical term for this is EVs

00:19:50.689 --> 00:19:52.691
or electric vehicle supply equipment.

00:19:53.091 --> 00:19:55.894
But all it really is, is a fancy power cord.

00:19:56.195 --> 00:19:58.830
In fact, this is the exact same thing

00:19:58.830 --> 00:20:00.832
as the level one charger right here.

00:20:01.600 --> 00:20:04.503
It just has thicker wires so it can carry more current.

00:20:04.503 --> 00:20:08.407
And it has a Nema 1450 plug so it can accept 240V.

00:20:09.107 --> 00:20:12.010
Otherwise, it's doing the exact same thing.

00:20:12.277 --> 00:20:14.980
It sends a signal to the car which announces its presence

00:20:14.980 --> 00:20:18.517
and tells the car
how much current the charging cable can safely provide.

00:20:18.884 --> 00:20:21.153
In the case of this cable, that's 32 amps.

00:20:21.820 --> 00:20:24.156
And when the car requests power from the cable,

00:20:24.389 --> 00:20:28.126
it closes a switch inside this box and provides AC power

00:20:28.493 --> 00:20:30.529
directly to the car's charging port.

00:20:30.996 --> 00:20:32.497
That is, all these things do.

00:20:32.898 --> 00:20:34.900
The car is what actually handles

00:20:34.900 --> 00:20:37.736
battery charging, and it has an onboard charger

00:20:37.736 --> 00:20:40.239
which will convert the AC power coming from the wall

00:20:40.539 --> 00:20:43.475
to the DC power necessary to charge its battery cells.

00:20:44.276 --> 00:20:47.145
And since this thing is really just a long range cord

00:20:47.145 --> 00:20:50.449
with a car charging connector on one end and a fancy box in the middle,

00:20:50.983 --> 00:20:52.751
you might guess that they're pretty cheap.

00:20:53.485 --> 00:20:54.386
And you're correct.

00:20:54.386 --> 00:20:57.656
These things can be had for less than 200 bucks these days,

00:20:58.056 --> 00:21:00.993
though I might go for something a little more expensive to avoid.

00:21:00.993 --> 00:21:02.160
Amazon sludge.

00:21:03.228 --> 00:21:04.796
The only expensive

00:21:04.796 --> 00:21:07.733
proposition to installing an electric car charging station

00:21:07.733 --> 00:21:10.335
is getting wires from your electrical panel

00:21:10.469 --> 00:21:12.838
to where you want the charging station to be.

00:21:13.739 --> 00:21:17.142
And the reason I get pretty frustrated and cranky about this

00:21:18.010 --> 00:21:19.711
is because nobody bats an eye.

00:21:19.711 --> 00:21:22.748
When we think about running wires for appliances.

00:21:23.181 --> 00:21:25.050
For instance, when we're building a house

00:21:25.050 --> 00:21:27.386
and we decide to put in an electric dryer,

00:21:27.819 --> 00:21:29.955
it's just taken as a given that the electrician

00:21:29.955 --> 00:21:32.491
is going to install a two pole 30 amp breaker

00:21:32.491 --> 00:21:36.328
in the electrical box and run ten gauge wire to the dryer outlet,

00:21:36.328 --> 00:21:37.496
wherever that might be.

00:21:38.430 --> 00:21:41.066
And yet, for some reason, when people imagine what it takes

00:21:41.066 --> 00:21:43.135
to install an electric car charging station,

00:21:43.602 --> 00:21:46.138
they often think it's more complicated than that.

00:21:46.138 --> 00:21:49.708
Despite the fact that it is literally the exact same task.

00:21:50.042 --> 00:21:53.578
In fact, there are electric car charging cables like this

00:21:54.012 --> 00:21:55.647
which plug into dryer outlets.

00:21:56.048 --> 00:21:58.850
And this means if you have an electric dryer in your garage,

00:21:58.850 --> 00:22:03.522
or maybe in a utility room next to a carport or something, congrats!

00:22:03.522 --> 00:22:07.859
You already have a very powerful circuit to charge an electric car.

00:22:08.360 --> 00:22:11.530
And there are even devices out there
which will let you plug a car charger

00:22:11.530 --> 00:22:13.799
and a dryer into the same receptacle,

00:22:14.066 --> 00:22:16.501
and it will automatically stop your car from charging

00:22:16.501 --> 00:22:17.869
when you need to use the dryer.

00:22:19.471 --> 00:22:20.706
It's just wires.

00:22:21.273 --> 00:22:24.843
And the thing about wires, right, is that they just sit there

00:22:24.843 --> 00:22:29.247
in your walls undisturbed and will last 50 years or longer.

00:22:30.148 --> 00:22:33.185
If you elect to run a new circuit for a charging station.

00:22:33.352 --> 00:22:35.120
You only have to do that once.

00:22:35.554 --> 00:22:37.923
It's essentially permanent infrastructure.

00:22:38.090 --> 00:22:40.158
And while the charging station or cable

00:22:40.158 --> 00:22:41.927
might fail at some point down the road,

00:22:42.728 --> 00:22:45.697
you already did the hard part and replacing it is a snap.

00:22:46.264 --> 00:22:48.700
If you go with a receptacle and cable like this,

00:22:48.700 --> 00:22:51.937
you literally just have to unplug a dead one and plug in a new one.

00:22:52.971 --> 00:22:55.774
I don't know why the world isn't getting excited about this.

00:22:55.807 --> 00:22:58.643
You can literally have a gas station at home

00:22:58.944 --> 00:23:02.647
using the exact same technology that operates your clothes dryer.

00:23:03.482 --> 00:23:05.484
And because, as I have already said,

00:23:05.484 --> 00:23:08.887
your car can charge while you do other things like sleep.

00:23:09.488 --> 00:23:13.291
You do not have to care if your car takes five, six, seven, eight,

00:23:13.492 --> 00:23:15.794
even ten hours to charge.

00:23:16.161 --> 00:23:19.731
All you need to care about is whether you can recover the energy

00:23:19.731 --> 00:23:22.534
your car needed to do your commute, errands, and whatnot.

00:23:22.834 --> 00:23:24.569
In the time you have to do that.

00:23:25.270 --> 00:23:28.340
And what I'm trying to say is you have a lot of time.

00:23:28.607 --> 00:23:30.575
So do not stress too much over

00:23:30.575 --> 00:23:33.211
how much power your charging station can put out.

00:23:33.712 --> 00:23:36.014
There is no need to go overboard.

00:23:36.281 --> 00:23:39.151
And if all you can install is a 20 amp circuit,

00:23:39.618 --> 00:23:41.420
you are almost certainly going to be fine

00:23:41.453 --> 00:23:44.790
so long as your household doesn't drive more than 100 miles a day.

00:23:45.624 --> 00:23:50.028
Yeah, that's right, you can charge two cars with one cable.

00:23:50.595 --> 00:23:52.831
Electric cars have such a large range

00:23:52.831 --> 00:23:55.434
now that they don't need charging every day.

00:23:55.700 --> 00:23:57.836
So if you've got two cars in your household,

00:23:58.203 --> 00:24:01.039
you can charge one one night and the other the next.

00:24:01.206 --> 00:24:02.407
Imagine that.

00:24:02.841 --> 00:24:06.044
And again, I know Midwesterners are very confusing

00:24:06.077 --> 00:24:08.079
to a lot of the rest of the world, so let me just stress.

00:24:08.647 --> 00:24:12.818
I am not saying you should not desire a more powerful charging station,

00:24:12.818 --> 00:24:15.854
or that a more powerful charging station is not useful.

00:24:17.055 --> 00:24:20.025
I am saying you probably don't actually need one,

00:24:20.025 --> 00:24:22.994
and you should think through your needs before you spend lots of money

00:24:23.028 --> 00:24:24.229
you don't need to spend.

00:24:24.496 --> 00:24:26.331
It's good to be smart and frugal.

00:24:27.065 --> 00:24:29.367
Which reminds me, there's probably going to be some talk

00:24:29.367 --> 00:24:32.471
in the comments about technological solutions available to us,

00:24:32.671 --> 00:24:35.440
which allow us to install higher current charging stations

00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:37.809
even when we have limited electrical service.

00:24:38.210 --> 00:24:41.446
I've even talked about these on my main channel and they're really cool.

00:24:41.880 --> 00:24:43.615
What they essentially do is monitor

00:24:43.615 --> 00:24:46.418
how much current is being pulled by your entire home,

00:24:46.418 --> 00:24:50.422
using inductive clamps on the main feed wires in your electrical panel,

00:24:50.755 --> 00:24:53.291
and then they'll automatically tell your car to slow down

00:24:53.291 --> 00:24:56.628
its charging if other electrical loads appear in your house.

00:24:56.995 --> 00:25:00.932
For instance,
if your water heater switches on or you use the dryer, etc..

00:25:01.967 --> 00:25:05.470
But here's me with my frustrating Midwestern energy

00:25:05.470 --> 00:25:08.073
saying you probably don't need that.

00:25:08.507 --> 00:25:11.977
I would rather you keep it simple, stupid, and install a smaller

00:25:11.977 --> 00:25:14.646
charging station and just live with that.

00:25:14.646 --> 00:25:18.617
Especially since we now have DC fast chargers popping up everywhere,

00:25:18.783 --> 00:25:22.053
which can provide a quick charge should that need arise.

00:25:22.854 --> 00:25:25.023
In fact, you could ask an electrician

00:25:25.023 --> 00:25:28.493
to install a 240 volt Nema 620 plug.

00:25:29.127 --> 00:25:32.330
These look just like our normal plugs, but they're all a little wonky.

00:25:32.764 --> 00:25:34.766
And charging cables for these exist

00:25:35.133 --> 00:25:37.536
and they'll provide ten miles of driving range

00:25:37.536 --> 00:25:39.271
for every hour your car is plugged in.

00:25:40.071 --> 00:25:41.673
If you actually need to drive

00:25:41.673 --> 00:25:45.110
more than 100 miles a day, then that won't work for you.

00:25:45.243 --> 00:25:47.913
But I just got a message from someone on Patreon

00:25:47.913 --> 00:25:50.682
telling me that they've been charging their Chevy Silverado

00:25:50.682 --> 00:25:52.851
EV, a gigantic truck

00:25:53.285 --> 00:25:55.887
exclusively on one of these Nema six 20s,

00:25:55.887 --> 00:25:59.024
and it has not been a problem for them because again,

00:25:59.357 --> 00:26:01.927
your car spends a lot of time parked,

00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:04.729
and if it can be charging whenever it's parked,

00:26:04.996 --> 00:26:06.932
you're going to get a lot of range back.

00:26:06.932 --> 00:26:08.600
Even if you have limited power.

00:26:09.467 --> 00:26:12.604
But as much as it annoys me when electric car enthusiasts

00:26:12.604 --> 00:26:15.807
spend so much time on optimization to the point of paralyzing people

00:26:15.807 --> 00:26:17.776
who are not very familiar with electric cars yet,

00:26:18.276 --> 00:26:20.946
I am going to give you one piece of optimization,

00:26:21.146 --> 00:26:24.382
which you can do if you have higher power charging available

00:26:24.549 --> 00:26:27.719
and which I take advantage of, and that is time of use rates.

00:26:28.386 --> 00:26:30.822
Many utilities offer variable rate plans,

00:26:30.822 --> 00:26:33.158
and my electricity is dirt cheap.

00:26:33.158 --> 00:26:34.926
Between the hours of about 10 p.m.

00:26:34.926 --> 00:26:38.496
and 5 a.m., pretty much all electric cars

00:26:38.496 --> 00:26:41.166
allow you to schedule charging to take advantage of this,

00:26:41.466 --> 00:26:44.469
and I have my car set up to start charging at 11

00:26:44.669 --> 00:26:46.237
and it will stop charging at five.

00:26:47.339 --> 00:26:49.541
If I had a slower charging station,

00:26:49.541 --> 00:26:51.176
I might not be able to do that,

00:26:52.744 --> 00:26:55.113
except here I am being a midwesterner again,

00:26:55.447 --> 00:26:57.849
I actually could, I would just need to plug my car

00:26:57.849 --> 00:26:59.718
in more frequently than I currently do.

00:27:00.452 --> 00:27:03.355
At this point I charge my car about weekly.

00:27:03.855 --> 00:27:06.558
I do have a shorter than average commute, so keep that in mind.

00:27:06.891 --> 00:27:08.693
But if you have a 40 mile commute,

00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:11.129
a full charge on an electric car sold

00:27:11.162 --> 00:27:13.465
today is going to last you for the bulk of the week.

00:27:14.199 --> 00:27:17.602
So I personally don't think there's much of a point

00:27:17.602 --> 00:27:21.072
trying to install a charging station,
which could get you an entire charge

00:27:21.072 --> 00:27:22.474
in seven hours or whatever,

00:27:23.575 --> 00:27:27.479
when you could simply plug your car in 2 or 3 times a week

00:27:28.079 --> 00:27:29.948
and still take advantage of cheap overnight

00:27:29.948 --> 00:27:33.018
electricity or whatever, the rates are cheap in your area,

00:27:33.018 --> 00:27:34.753
that's probably going to start changing

00:27:34.753 --> 00:27:36.621
as more solar power ends up on the grid.

00:27:36.621 --> 00:27:40.125
But here in Illinois,
we've got quite a lot of nuclear power on the grid,

00:27:40.325 --> 00:27:42.227
and I'm happy to use it in the dead of night.

00:27:43.128 --> 00:27:44.796
And to give you some additional context,

00:27:45.063 --> 00:27:46.164
my charging station

00:27:46.164 --> 00:27:49.968
actually takes about 12 hours to completely refill my car,

00:27:51.202 --> 00:27:52.137
but that's not a

00:27:52.137 --> 00:27:54.806
situation I ever actually encounter

00:27:54.839 --> 00:27:57.409
because I limit my charging to 80%,

00:27:57.575 --> 00:27:59.244
which is believed to prolong the life

00:27:59.244 --> 00:28:01.279
of a nickel manganese cobalt battery pack

00:28:01.813 --> 00:28:05.550
and I plug it in when the car is down to 30%,

00:28:05.850 --> 00:28:08.553
which means the actual time it takes my car to charge

00:28:08.953 --> 00:28:10.588
is just six hours.

00:28:11.456 --> 00:28:13.124
I haven't explicitly said this yet,

00:28:13.124 --> 00:28:16.227
but this is why I think it's kind of foolish to focus on

00:28:16.227 --> 00:28:19.798
how quickly a charging station can get a car charge from empty to full.

00:28:20.932 --> 00:28:24.803
That's just not a thing that actually happens
if you're charging your car.

00:28:24.803 --> 00:28:29.240
That way, you either drive a terrible commute
or you're being very silly.

00:28:29.941 --> 00:28:33.244
And at this point, I'm going off script for the rest of the video.

00:28:33.244 --> 00:28:34.446
So buckle up.

00:28:35.080 --> 00:28:36.648
Really, I just want to get this done

00:28:36.648 --> 00:28:38.550
and we'll make the rest of my points from my notes.

00:28:39.150 --> 00:28:42.320
The reason I keep saying all you need is wires,

00:28:42.320 --> 00:28:46.324
and we're doing this exactly backwards, has to do with the opportunities

00:28:46.324 --> 00:28:50.295
we are not taking, which would make this so much cheaper and easier.

00:28:51.062 --> 00:28:53.798
The way we appear to be solving the problem of

00:28:53.798 --> 00:28:55.567
I cannot charge my car at home

00:28:55.867 --> 00:28:59.370
is to try and replicate the old fueling paradigm

00:28:59.370 --> 00:29:01.206
with DC fast charging.

00:29:02.140 --> 00:29:04.476
And again, this is technically possible,

00:29:05.043 --> 00:29:07.011
but it's far from ideal.

00:29:07.011 --> 00:29:09.280
In fact, it is the opposite of ideal.

00:29:10.215 --> 00:29:12.517
This is a $300 charging cable.

00:29:13.151 --> 00:29:17.122
The DC fast chargers you see out and about are five figure machines,

00:29:17.122 --> 00:29:20.458
which require enormous electrical hookups from the power grid.

00:29:20.792 --> 00:29:23.261
And that means every DC fast charging site

00:29:23.261 --> 00:29:27.332
you see was probably a six figure affair at minimum.

00:29:27.599 --> 00:29:29.534
Or if it's a larger charging site,

00:29:29.734 --> 00:29:31.469
a multi-million dollar affair,

00:29:32.070 --> 00:29:33.938
and somebody has to pay for that,

00:29:33.938 --> 00:29:35.707
and the people that are going to pay for that

00:29:36.341 --> 00:29:39.110
are the drivers who use those charging stations.

00:29:39.677 --> 00:29:42.213
And that means the electricity you get from a DC

00:29:42.247 --> 00:29:46.151
fast charging station is often 3 to 5 times as expensive

00:29:46.284 --> 00:29:47.886
as retail electricity.

00:29:48.753 --> 00:29:51.189
So not only are we saying renters

00:29:51.189 --> 00:29:54.459
who can't charge at home
should just have to deal with a worse experience,

00:29:54.592 --> 00:29:57.562
but it's also a much more expensive experience.

00:29:58.363 --> 00:30:01.432
I've already identified several scenarios where having DC

00:30:01.466 --> 00:30:04.636
fast charging available close to your home is useful,

00:30:05.103 --> 00:30:08.673
but something that I need to stress is that if we do this right,

00:30:09.073 --> 00:30:11.609
we should not be using those except

00:30:11.609 --> 00:30:13.545
when we go on road trips.

00:30:14.212 --> 00:30:17.048
Because I have this charging cable at home.

00:30:17.048 --> 00:30:19.584
Well, really, I use a different charger than this,

00:30:19.584 --> 00:30:23.688
but it's exactly as powerful as this
because I have one of these at home.

00:30:24.422 --> 00:30:27.659
I do not use DC fast charging in my local area.

00:30:27.659 --> 00:30:32.497
The closest DC fast chargers I use are in Wisconsin and Indiana.

00:30:33.164 --> 00:30:36.734
I have used a local DC fast charger one time

00:30:36.901 --> 00:30:37.969
because my plans

00:30:37.969 --> 00:30:40.471
suddenly changed and I didn't have enough range

00:30:40.471 --> 00:30:43.808
to get to the city and back in the winter, but actually I did.

00:30:43.808 --> 00:30:45.643
I was just being overly paranoid about that,

00:30:45.643 --> 00:30:48.613
and I figured, why not have that charging station there?

00:30:48.613 --> 00:30:50.081
It's about five minutes from where I live.

00:30:50.248 --> 00:30:52.050
Spent five minutes on that charger

00:30:52.050 --> 00:30:53.918
just to give myself a bit of a security blanket.

00:30:54.285 --> 00:30:55.486
And there we go.

00:30:55.753 --> 00:30:59.123
But that is literally the only time I have used

00:30:59.123 --> 00:31:02.093
DC fast charging infrastructure in my local area,

00:31:02.493 --> 00:31:05.797
except for making YouTube videos about DC fast charging.

00:31:06.497 --> 00:31:07.899
And this is what I mean about

00:31:07.899 --> 00:31:10.535
we are not thinking enough about electric cars,

00:31:10.535 --> 00:31:12.937
because for someone who understands them, well,

00:31:13.238 --> 00:31:14.272
I can tell you

00:31:14.272 --> 00:31:17.342
we are going to need to have the density of electric car

00:31:17.342 --> 00:31:21.946
charging that we see today for gasoline on interstate corridors.

00:31:22.347 --> 00:31:24.816
Basically, truck stops are going to have

00:31:24.816 --> 00:31:27.185
to install a bunch of DC fast charging

00:31:27.318 --> 00:31:28.486
so people like me

00:31:28.486 --> 00:31:31.489
can make trips at the drop of a hat to wherever we want to go.

00:31:32.190 --> 00:31:34.626
But when we're at our destinations,

00:31:35.226 --> 00:31:37.595
we shouldn't be using those things,

00:31:37.595 --> 00:31:41.766
because every building in this country has electricity.

00:31:42.667 --> 00:31:43.935
This is the thing, right?

00:31:44.569 --> 00:31:47.572
I keep saying all you need is wires because

00:31:48.539 --> 00:31:50.208
all you need is wires.

00:31:50.642 --> 00:31:52.744
And one of the ways we could be solving

00:31:52.744 --> 00:31:55.213
charging for people who can't charge at home

00:31:56.247 --> 00:31:58.116
is to let them charge at work.

00:31:58.583 --> 00:32:00.752
I am sitting in a commercial building

00:32:00.885 --> 00:32:03.755
which has, I just checked a 500

00:32:03.755 --> 00:32:05.857
kVA pad mount transformer.

00:32:06.291 --> 00:32:10.361
That means that transformer
can supply half a megawatt of charging power.

00:32:10.728 --> 00:32:13.131
And I know for a fact that this building

00:32:13.131 --> 00:32:15.233
is not using anywhere near that capacity.

00:32:15.400 --> 00:32:16.734
This is an industrial building.

00:32:16.734 --> 00:32:17.969
It has that transformer

00:32:17.969 --> 00:32:21.005
because people could be using industrial machinery or whatever.

00:32:21.105 --> 00:32:24.309
And every unit in here has 203 phase service.

00:32:24.642 --> 00:32:26.945
But based on the businesses that are in this building,

00:32:26.945 --> 00:32:30.515
I can guarantee nobody is using anywhere near that.

00:32:30.815 --> 00:32:34.285
So right here we have the electrical capacity

00:32:34.285 --> 00:32:36.754
to install a few dozen

00:32:36.754 --> 00:32:39.357
powerful charging stations in the parking lot,

00:32:39.857 --> 00:32:43.895
and we could charge people minimal amounts of money to use them

00:32:43.895 --> 00:32:46.798
because it is basic electricity rates.

00:32:47.465 --> 00:32:50.101
Now, it's a little bit more complicated than that

00:32:50.101 --> 00:32:51.903
because that's a commercial power bill

00:32:51.903 --> 00:32:53.271
and there's going to be demand charges.

00:32:53.638 --> 00:32:54.973
But what I'm saying here is

00:32:55.807 --> 00:32:57.508
we have the opportunity

00:32:57.508 --> 00:33:00.945
to simply trench some wires out to the parking lot,

00:33:01.145 --> 00:33:05.583
install a bank of chargers, and solve the problem that way.

00:33:05.984 --> 00:33:08.486
Now, obviously, I know a lot of people work from home these days.

00:33:08.486 --> 00:33:10.054
That doesn't solve the problem for anyone.

00:33:10.421 --> 00:33:12.423
Everyone. But my point is

00:33:13.358 --> 00:33:15.727
all we need is wires.

00:33:15.727 --> 00:33:18.396
And if your car is going to be parked for eight hours,

00:33:19.263 --> 00:33:22.934
you don't have to care how fast it charges.

00:33:23.134 --> 00:33:26.137
This is the thing I'm really trying to get more people to understand,

00:33:26.137 --> 00:33:28.773
because those of us that were early adopters

00:33:28.773 --> 00:33:31.376
of electric cars just intuited this very quickly,

00:33:31.376 --> 00:33:33.845
and we see this as an obvious benefit.

00:33:34.245 --> 00:33:37.048
But I keep encountering people who are very hung up on

00:33:37.048 --> 00:33:39.751
the fact that their car will take hours to charge.

00:33:40.351 --> 00:33:41.686
They just haven't yet thought through

00:33:41.686 --> 00:33:43.488
that you don't have to wait on the car.

00:33:43.488 --> 00:33:44.856
You can do other things.

00:33:45.556 --> 00:33:47.825
and another reason I personally think it's important

00:33:47.825 --> 00:33:49.427
to get chargers at workplaces

00:33:49.761 --> 00:33:52.964
is because as more solar power gets put on the grid,

00:33:53.264 --> 00:33:57.168
it would be most useful if we can use it while the sun is up.

00:33:57.468 --> 00:34:01.039
And a great way to do that is to be charging electric cars.

00:34:01.539 --> 00:34:03.608
Because I charge my car in the middle of the night,

00:34:03.841 --> 00:34:05.643
I can't take advantage of that.

00:34:06.044 --> 00:34:08.279
Whereas if I had a charging station here

00:34:08.279 --> 00:34:11.282
in the parking lot, I would probably plug in here

00:34:11.549 --> 00:34:14.719
assuming the electricity was,
you know, cheaper than I can get it at home,

00:34:14.719 --> 00:34:17.455
which again, it may not be, but my point is

00:34:17.688 --> 00:34:21.292
we are not going to be able to do things like utilize solar energy

00:34:21.292 --> 00:34:23.895
during the day and vehicle to grid technology.

00:34:23.895 --> 00:34:28.466
If we don't get charging cables like this installed, where people work.

00:34:29.233 --> 00:34:30.935
So if we do that,

00:34:30.935 --> 00:34:34.639
we are also going to have a more sustainable charging infrastructure

00:34:34.639 --> 00:34:37.909
and will solve the problem of people who cannot charge at home.

00:34:38.910 --> 00:34:40.344
What I imagine happening is

00:34:40.344 --> 00:34:43.047
that a lot of workplaces will start saying, okay,

00:34:43.247 --> 00:34:45.650
we offer EV charging as a perk,

00:34:45.917 --> 00:34:49.821
but if you have charging at home, please don't use it.

00:34:50.121 --> 00:34:52.190
It might be difficult to manage, but

00:34:52.690 --> 00:34:55.093
probably the charging at home is still going to be cheaper

00:34:55.093 --> 00:34:57.562
for people who can access it than charging it at work.

00:34:57.995 --> 00:35:01.699
But charging even charging at work on a slow charger like this,

00:35:01.999 --> 00:35:05.369
even if it cost twice as much as retail electricity at home,

00:35:06.037 --> 00:35:08.840
that's still cheaper than a DC fast charging station.

00:35:09.540 --> 00:35:10.741
To give you some context,

00:35:10.741 --> 00:35:14.712
Ayana is one of the cheapest DC fast charging providers right now,

00:35:14.946 --> 00:35:16.314
and this station in Janesville,

00:35:16.314 --> 00:35:19.784
Wisconsin is charging $0.33 per kilowatt hour.

00:35:20.251 --> 00:35:23.988
That is triple what I pay for electricity at home on average,

00:35:24.155 --> 00:35:25.456
and six times

00:35:25.456 --> 00:35:28.493
what I pay for electricity for my car by charging it overnight.

00:35:29.093 --> 00:35:31.996
So yeah, some charging stations are over

00:35:31.996 --> 00:35:35.566
$0.50 per kilowatt hour or even $0.70 per kilowatt hour.

00:35:35.933 --> 00:35:40.404
And it is not fair to force renters into using those things

00:35:41.172 --> 00:35:43.641
when if we just ran some wires

00:35:43.641 --> 00:35:46.277
from the building to the parking lot,

00:35:46.444 --> 00:35:49.380
they could take advantage of cheap charging infrastructure,

00:35:49.380 --> 00:35:52.150
which is cheap to install and cheap to operate.

00:35:52.617 --> 00:35:56.387
So that is why I've been saying we're doing this exactly backwards.

00:35:56.621 --> 00:35:58.656
Our attention is on the technology

00:35:58.656 --> 00:36:01.959
which is enabling road trips because that's important.

00:36:03.027 --> 00:36:05.229
But unless you drive professionally,

00:36:06.130 --> 00:36:08.032
you just need a charger like this.

00:36:08.032 --> 00:36:11.502
And this is what we should be prioritizing in my opinion.

00:36:11.869 --> 00:36:13.271
But I believe I'm correct.

00:36:13.838 --> 00:36:16.240
and now I'll finish up by returning to used

00:36:16.240 --> 00:36:19.944
EVs and talking about the charging connector change
we are going through,

00:36:19.944 --> 00:36:23.114
but which miraculously doesn't actually matter.

00:36:23.814 --> 00:36:26.617
To be clear, this is only for North America.

00:36:26.617 --> 00:36:28.886
The rest of the world is not going through this nonsense

00:36:28.886 --> 00:36:30.655
because y'all are smarter than us.

00:36:30.955 --> 00:36:33.424
But here we are making a transition

00:36:33.424 --> 00:36:37.595
from the old J1 77261 charging connector

00:36:37.895 --> 00:36:42.533
to the Tesla connector, which is now an SRT standard.

00:36:42.934 --> 00:36:44.735
You're probably going to hear it referred to

00:36:44.735 --> 00:36:48.306
as the Tesla connector or Max Nax.

00:36:48.339 --> 00:36:50.141
The North American charging standard,

00:36:50.541 --> 00:36:54.512
or three 3400, because that is the new Seiki standard.

00:36:55.680 --> 00:36:56.480
That's good thing.

00:36:56.480 --> 00:36:58.416
Number one, it is no longer proprietary.

00:36:58.416 --> 00:36:59.884
It isn't as a standard.

00:37:00.384 --> 00:37:03.287
But good thing number two is the miraculous bit

00:37:03.888 --> 00:37:05.957
in the process of creating the standard,

00:37:06.324 --> 00:37:10.261
the SRT decided to have new max chargers

00:37:10.261 --> 00:37:14.065
speak the exact same language as the old CCS chargers.

00:37:14.365 --> 00:37:17.802
So the signals that go on the communication pins are identical.

00:37:18.236 --> 00:37:21.606
And that means we can simply use these passive adapters

00:37:21.606 --> 00:37:24.275
to go from one charging standard to the other.

00:37:24.809 --> 00:37:28.045
All this thing is, is a big it's two big bus

00:37:28.045 --> 00:37:30.715
bars connecting these two pins to these two pins,

00:37:30.948 --> 00:37:33.351
although they have to flip around because the polarity is different.

00:37:33.551 --> 00:37:34.752
Isn't that fun?

00:37:35.186 --> 00:37:36.487
And it's just a dumb adapter.

00:37:36.487 --> 00:37:40.024
It just passes power and signals from the charging station

00:37:40.224 --> 00:37:41.826
to the car through this thing.

00:37:42.660 --> 00:37:45.363
But you'll notice I have two of them.

00:37:45.596 --> 00:37:47.431
And it's not just commitment to the bit.

00:37:48.466 --> 00:37:51.402
You will need two adapters, and this is the one thing

00:37:51.402 --> 00:37:54.805
which is a little bit frustrating about the transition,

00:37:55.406 --> 00:37:56.641
but we'll make our way through it.

00:37:57.141 --> 00:37:59.977
So the cool thing about the Tesla connector,

00:37:59.977 --> 00:38:03.714
which I, I still have reservations about, but it's apparently fine,

00:38:04.482 --> 00:38:07.585
is that it uses the same two pins

00:38:07.585 --> 00:38:10.354
for both AC and DC charging.

00:38:11.055 --> 00:38:13.724
That is why the Tesla connector is so small for J.

00:38:13.958 --> 00:38:15.159
For cars one.

00:38:15.192 --> 00:38:17.695
They added these two chunky boys down here

00:38:17.695 --> 00:38:19.797
to accomplish a DC charging.

00:38:20.197 --> 00:38:22.366
And so in the case of my car,

00:38:22.366 --> 00:38:24.835
there's a little flap which covers these two pins.

00:38:24.835 --> 00:38:27.405
You pull that thing out and then you can charge DC

00:38:27.571 --> 00:38:29.006
or else the top of the connector,

00:38:29.006 --> 00:38:31.108
you just use a standard AC charging cable.

00:38:32.009 --> 00:38:34.412
Because Tesla combines the functions.

00:38:35.146 --> 00:38:37.648
I need these two adapters and just say no.

00:38:37.648 --> 00:38:39.817
Adapters for the other direction

00:38:39.817 --> 00:38:42.987
also exist in fact, Teslas have been coming with them forever.

00:38:42.987 --> 00:38:44.755
So you can use a charger like this.

00:38:45.589 --> 00:38:47.792
Stick an adapter on there and plug it into a Tesla.

00:38:48.059 --> 00:38:50.561
So if you're installing a charging station at home,

00:38:51.329 --> 00:38:54.432
just pick the connector that the car you're looking at has.

00:38:55.733 --> 00:38:56.867
In the end, you'll just slap.

00:38:56.867 --> 00:38:59.036
If once you get a new car, you'll just stick an adapter on there

00:38:59.036 --> 00:39:00.237
and it's fine.

00:39:01.472 --> 00:39:02.873
But the fact that we're going to need

00:39:02.873 --> 00:39:05.543
two adapters is a little bit confusing.

00:39:05.543 --> 00:39:08.846
So the small one is only really going to be needed.

00:39:08.846 --> 00:39:12.683
Like if you're visiting someone and they have a Tesla charger,

00:39:12.817 --> 00:39:17.621
or I've used this a couple times at hotels
which had Tesla wall connectors

00:39:17.788 --> 00:39:19.690
and was able to charge overnight at a hotel.

00:39:21.125 --> 00:39:22.927
This is the one that you use for DC

00:39:22.927 --> 00:39:24.995
fast charging, and I have only

00:39:25.696 --> 00:39:27.865
I haven't actually needed to use this.

00:39:29.367 --> 00:39:32.870
And I will explain why, which has to do with the thing I mentioned

00:39:32.970 --> 00:39:36.941
at the start where Tesla is crazy behind with charging technology,

00:39:37.241 --> 00:39:39.477
but their fans don't know that

00:39:40.211 --> 00:39:41.746
and they forgive them for it.

00:39:42.279 --> 00:39:43.481
Even when you tell them,

00:39:44.348 --> 00:39:46.884
because Tesla fans are a special breed.

00:39:47.518 --> 00:39:50.788
So my car is an 800 volt native car.

00:39:51.722 --> 00:39:54.024
This is not important for most cars,

00:39:54.024 --> 00:39:56.761
but this is some weeds that you might be interested in knowing.

00:39:57.661 --> 00:39:59.930
My car is an 800 volt native car.

00:39:59.930 --> 00:40:03.601
That means the battery pack voltage is about 800V.

00:40:04.034 --> 00:40:06.036
It's not really, it's a little lower than that, but we

00:40:06.137 --> 00:40:08.839
we classify between 400 and 800V.

00:40:09.840 --> 00:40:12.309
And when you DC charge these pins

00:40:12.610 --> 00:40:15.212
directly, connect the off board charger

00:40:15.212 --> 00:40:16.680
to your battery pack.

00:40:17.782 --> 00:40:21.152
This means the charging station has to be able to put out

00:40:21.152 --> 00:40:25.089
at least 800V to charge my car as quickly as possible,

00:40:25.389 --> 00:40:30.594
and because almost none of Tesla's charging infrastructure can do that,

00:40:30.995 --> 00:40:34.331
it does not make any sense for me to go to Tesla Superchargers.

00:40:34.598 --> 00:40:37.601
So for the most part, I've been using other charging networks

00:40:37.601 --> 00:40:40.571
which have six one connectors, because even these

00:40:40.571 --> 00:40:44.308
even the oldest chargers out there from,

00:40:44.575 --> 00:40:48.579
Electrify America, they have all been 1000 volt capable from day one.

00:40:49.313 --> 00:40:50.514
What really happened here?

00:40:50.748 --> 00:40:53.651
And again, Tesla fans, just forgive them for everything.

00:40:53.651 --> 00:40:56.587
Was Tesla made a very big strategic error

00:40:56.587 --> 00:41:00.558
when they designed the original connector because it was not capable

00:41:00.558 --> 00:41:03.093
of handling voltages higher than 500V,

00:41:03.461 --> 00:41:07.131
and they have made a hardware revision, which has made that possible.

00:41:07.631 --> 00:41:10.801
But Tesla basically just thought we don't need higher voltage.

00:41:10.801 --> 00:41:11.669
It's fine.

00:41:11.669 --> 00:41:14.605
And the rest of the industry understands

00:41:14.605 --> 00:41:17.842
higher voltages allow you to charge the battery pack faster,

00:41:18.042 --> 00:41:22.646
because resistive heating is cut almost in a quarter.

00:41:22.680 --> 00:41:23.881
When you double the voltage.

00:41:24.882 --> 00:41:25.783
But again,

00:41:25.783 --> 00:41:29.186
Tesla fans are not that interested in the technology of electric cars.

00:41:29.186 --> 00:41:30.654
They're interested in their Teslas.

00:41:31.021 --> 00:41:32.890
Sorry, I don't want to keep beating that dead horse,

00:41:32.890 --> 00:41:34.525
but seriously, do not listen to them.

00:41:34.525 --> 00:41:35.159
They will tell you.

00:41:35.159 --> 00:41:37.628
For instance, they will tell you advice about charging a car

00:41:37.628 --> 00:41:40.498
to get it down to like 5% before you plug in.

00:41:40.764 --> 00:41:43.133
Because Teslas charge faster that way.

00:41:43.434 --> 00:41:44.635
My car does not.

00:41:44.802 --> 00:41:49.240
My car's fastest charging window is between about 30 and 55%.

00:41:49.473 --> 00:41:52.009
So if you're trying to optimize on a road trip,

00:41:52.076 --> 00:41:55.646
the advice someone will give you for a Tesla is exactly wrong.

00:41:55.646 --> 00:41:58.949
For my car, you don't want to get it down to 5%.

00:41:58.949 --> 00:42:00.150
You will waste time.

00:42:00.217 --> 00:42:02.720
It's ideal to plug it in around 20%.

00:42:03.187 --> 00:42:03.687
But again,

00:42:05.155 --> 00:42:06.590
let's not beat that dead horse.

00:42:07.258 --> 00:42:10.327
I'm just saying I haven't actually really needed to use this thing,

00:42:10.327 --> 00:42:13.430
because the most useful thing it would do for me

00:42:13.430 --> 00:42:16.834
is unlock Tesla Superchargers and my car.

00:42:16.834 --> 00:42:20.037
While it can charge on those things, it has to do a

00:42:20.271 --> 00:42:23.607
this really cool trick
it does with the rear motor inverter, where it uses

00:42:23.607 --> 00:42:25.476
the rear motor as a buck converter.

00:42:26.110 --> 00:42:27.678
I think that's the right term and steps.

00:42:27.678 --> 00:42:30.381
It steps the voltage up, but it can only do that

00:42:30.548 --> 00:42:32.917
at about 80 to 100kW of charging power.

00:42:32.917 --> 00:42:35.853
So it's very slow to use a Tesla Supercharger because again,

00:42:36.820 --> 00:42:40.090
they are way behind when it comes to charging technology.

00:42:40.558 --> 00:42:43.527
But also something which is important for people

00:42:43.527 --> 00:42:45.963
that might be looking at used electric cars to know

00:42:47.064 --> 00:42:49.099
this adapter only works on version

00:42:49.099 --> 00:42:51.535
three and version four superchargers.

00:42:52.136 --> 00:42:55.873
It does not work on version two or version one superchargers.

00:42:55.873 --> 00:42:58.309
So if you've if you're aware

00:42:58.309 --> 00:43:01.278
that the Tesla Supercharger network is opening up to other cars,

00:43:01.845 --> 00:43:04.682
a good deal of their existing charging stations

00:43:04.848 --> 00:43:07.484
do not work with non Teslas.

00:43:07.952 --> 00:43:09.520
And this

00:43:09.520 --> 00:43:12.156
I think is actually the most confusing thing about the transition.

00:43:12.656 --> 00:43:14.491
And this is entirely Tesla's fault

00:43:14.491 --> 00:43:17.328
because they never update their old charging hardware.

00:43:17.328 --> 00:43:20.998
They maintain it well,
but they never update their old charging hardware.

00:43:21.298 --> 00:43:23.634
So that so a lot of their earliest charging stations,

00:43:24.535 --> 00:43:26.804
they're still there and usable to Tesla drivers,

00:43:27.204 --> 00:43:29.940
but they are not usable to non Tesla drivers.

00:43:30.240 --> 00:43:33.410
And I my friend Robert has shared several pictures

00:43:33.410 --> 00:43:37.581
with me of non Tesla drivers plugged into version two superchargers

00:43:39.149 --> 00:43:40.818
and they left their car there.

00:43:40.818 --> 00:43:43.220
They apparently just thought they could plug it in and walk away.

00:43:43.220 --> 00:43:45.489
But no it is not charging so

00:43:47.491 --> 00:43:48.726
that's that's not great.

00:43:49.093 --> 00:43:52.129
But every other charger that uses

00:43:52.129 --> 00:43:56.900
the new connector is going to work directly with a car with CSS.

00:43:56.900 --> 00:44:00.170
And I have used this adapter at that ionize station to test it.

00:44:00.604 --> 00:44:03.374
Even though the ion station had plenty of CCS one chargers

00:44:03.374 --> 00:44:06.210
available, I didn't need to use this adapter,
I just wanted to test it out

00:44:07.011 --> 00:44:10.881
and also again, this is weeds stuff nobody needs to care about.

00:44:10.881 --> 00:44:12.383
But Hyundai cheapened out.

00:44:12.383 --> 00:44:13.917
They gave me this adapter for free.

00:44:14.718 --> 00:44:15.853
That's nice of them.

00:44:15.853 --> 00:44:18.555
But this adapter can only handle 350 amps,

00:44:18.789 --> 00:44:20.991
which is not a problem for my car at all.

00:44:20.991 --> 00:44:23.027
But if you tried to use this adapter

00:44:23.027 --> 00:44:25.929
with a different car, it could be a problem. So

00:44:26.930 --> 00:44:27.898
again, we're

00:44:27.898 --> 00:44:29.433
we're kind of it's going to be a little bit

00:44:29.433 --> 00:44:30.801
fine as we go through this adventure.

00:44:30.801 --> 00:44:33.037
But I don't I don't really care about that.

00:44:33.037 --> 00:44:35.806
A lot of people got really up in arms about Hyundai's decision,

00:44:35.806 --> 00:44:37.574
but this lives with my car.

00:44:37.574 --> 00:44:39.176
It's going to stay with my car forever.

00:44:41.045 --> 00:44:44.882
Is it silly that they cost cut this a tiny little bit?

00:44:44.882 --> 00:44:46.183
Sure, but it doesn't matter.

00:44:46.850 --> 00:44:49.053
So the important thing of this nonsense section

00:44:49.053 --> 00:44:53.090
I've been rambling about is that if you get a car with A61 connector,

00:44:53.090 --> 00:44:57.494
do not feel as if you bought a car with an obsolete charging connector.

00:44:57.795 --> 00:45:00.831
It will work just fine on new charging equipment.

00:45:01.699 --> 00:45:06.403
The only exception is a car with a CHAdeMO connector,

00:45:06.770 --> 00:45:09.339
and this is basically just the Nissan Leaf.

00:45:09.339 --> 00:45:12.376
There were a couple other cars that ended up here with that connector,

00:45:12.376 --> 00:45:14.845
but the CHAdeMO connector is big in Asia,

00:45:15.245 --> 00:45:17.881
and Nissan brought it over.

00:45:17.881 --> 00:45:20.617
And basically it's now obsolete.

00:45:21.351 --> 00:45:25.289
So if you want to buy a used Nissan Leaf, you certainly can.

00:45:25.289 --> 00:45:27.891
But understand especially the first two model

00:45:27.891 --> 00:45:30.360
years, had a very poor battery pack design

00:45:30.360 --> 00:45:33.063
and a lot of them have really degraded quite badly.

00:45:34.765 --> 00:45:37.434
But even the better later ones with longer ranges,

00:45:37.768 --> 00:45:40.237
it is not really going to be possible

00:45:40.237 --> 00:45:42.372
to DC fast charge them in the future.

00:45:43.207 --> 00:45:45.442
Somebody has developed a

00:45:45.442 --> 00:45:47.344
CHAdeMO two wks one adapter,

00:45:47.978 --> 00:45:50.347
but that thing is a wild contraption

00:45:50.347 --> 00:45:52.883
because it has two actually translate

00:45:53.083 --> 00:45:56.286
the CHAdeMO signals coming from the car

00:45:56.553 --> 00:46:01.125
to CCS to tell the charging station what the car wants and back.

00:46:01.358 --> 00:46:03.627
I believe it has batteries inside there.

00:46:03.627 --> 00:46:05.095
It's it's amazing

00:46:05.095 --> 00:46:06.964
that somebody went through the effort to make this thing.

00:46:06.964 --> 00:46:08.332
And I've seen tests.

00:46:08.332 --> 00:46:09.533
It appears to work,

00:46:09.666 --> 00:46:12.202
but it's very clunky and you don't want to be dealing with that.

00:46:12.202 --> 00:46:16.306
So if you want to look at a used Nissan Leaf, just understand

00:46:16.306 --> 00:46:19.176
that car is only going to be a runabout.

00:46:19.176 --> 00:46:21.945
You're probably not going to want to take that on a road trip.

00:46:22.546 --> 00:46:24.782
But you know, one of the arguments

00:46:24.782 --> 00:46:27.217
EV people have been making for a long time is

00:46:28.285 --> 00:46:30.454
you could rent a car to go on a road trip.

00:46:30.454 --> 00:46:33.123
You don't have to take your own car to go on a road trip

00:46:33.557 --> 00:46:36.193
if you want to go on a road trip, so that's an option.

00:46:36.193 --> 00:46:39.062
I understand that's an option a lot of people wouldn't want to take,

00:46:39.062 --> 00:46:40.564
but it is an option.

00:46:41.131 --> 00:46:42.299
So that's pretty much it.

00:46:42.299 --> 00:46:43.767
I'm going to end the video here.

00:46:43.867 --> 00:46:45.602
Please ask questions in the comments.

00:46:45.602 --> 00:46:47.738
Because as I said earlier, I want to

00:46:47.938 --> 00:46:50.340
I need to remake my EV charging guide.

00:46:50.340 --> 00:46:51.909
And I want to do that fairly soon.

00:46:52.476 --> 00:46:55.045
But and so I'm using this

00:46:55.045 --> 00:46:58.048
as a test of that kind of see what things

00:46:58.048 --> 00:47:00.484
I might have missed in here that people are curious about.

00:47:00.484 --> 00:47:02.519
So, please ask your questions below.

00:47:03.120 --> 00:47:06.456
But seriously, the most important thing I want to stress is

00:47:06.990 --> 00:47:09.927
this is different, but it's not difficult.

00:47:09.927 --> 00:47:12.729
It only seems difficult because you haven't tried it yet.

00:47:13.163 --> 00:47:15.299
Once you get used to plugging your car

00:47:15.299 --> 00:47:18.135
in at home or at work somewhere, you park it.

00:47:18.368 --> 00:47:20.604
You're going to wonder why on earth

00:47:20.604 --> 00:47:22.439
you would want to have a gas powered car.

00:47:22.439 --> 00:47:26.109
Again, this is an almost universal experience for EV drivers,

00:47:26.376 --> 00:47:30.013
but that experience does not happen for people who purchase an EV

00:47:30.247 --> 00:47:32.716
and expect to use it like a gas car.

00:47:33.483 --> 00:47:35.152
And I know there's a lot of people

00:47:35.152 --> 00:47:37.554
doing that, which saddens me, quite frankly,

00:47:37.888 --> 00:47:39.089
because they may not realize

00:47:39.089 --> 00:47:42.092
they are signing up for a less than ideal experience.

00:47:42.659 --> 00:47:44.561
And it just frustrates me to no end

00:47:44.561 --> 00:47:48.565
because the ideal experience is cheap as chips.

00:47:48.565 --> 00:47:50.767
It's literally just wires.

00:47:50.767 --> 00:47:56.306
And if we had smart policy, we would be getting wires in more places

00:47:56.306 --> 00:47:57.908
and we wouldn't be encouraging

00:47:57.908 --> 00:48:00.377
multi-million dollar fast charger installations

00:48:00.744 --> 00:48:02.446
within the city limits.

00:48:03.180 --> 00:48:05.115
As I said, we're always going to need some.

00:48:05.115 --> 00:48:09.086
But you know, circle K is installing a lot of DC

00:48:09.119 --> 00:48:11.788
fast chargers at the shell stations around here.

00:48:11.788 --> 00:48:13.590
I think they're doing it all across the country,

00:48:14.224 --> 00:48:16.627
and it almost just feels like a

00:48:16.960 --> 00:48:20.030
like a waste because I'm never going to use those.

00:48:20.430 --> 00:48:21.365
And,

00:48:21.365 --> 00:48:24.701
the only people that I can think of in my life that might use

00:48:24.701 --> 00:48:28.739
those are people that I know from out of town that are going to visit,

00:48:29.106 --> 00:48:31.174
but also they can use my charger.

00:48:31.341 --> 00:48:32.009
So it's

00:48:33.310 --> 00:48:34.544
yeah, it's it's

00:48:34.611 --> 00:48:36.179
frustrating how we're doing this

00:48:36.179 --> 00:48:38.215
because like I said, we're doing it backwards.

00:48:38.382 --> 00:48:42.719
We're getting very excited about the headlines of faster charging cars,

00:48:42.953 --> 00:48:45.422
but not enough people are realizing

00:48:45.422 --> 00:48:48.191
that context only matters on road trips

00:48:48.625 --> 00:48:51.728
or for professional drivers, and that is one caveat to say

00:48:52.663 --> 00:48:54.865
that is professional

00:48:54.865 --> 00:48:57.567
drivers, rideshare drivers, delivery drivers, etc.

00:48:57.567 --> 00:49:01.471
are going to be the main users of DC fast charging

00:49:01.471 --> 00:49:03.173
infrastructure in a local area,

00:49:03.173 --> 00:49:05.909
and we will need that infrastructure for them.

00:49:07.044 --> 00:49:09.813
But for typical car driving,

00:49:10.681 --> 00:49:13.617
you should not be using DC fast charging

00:49:13.617 --> 00:49:17.554
unless you're going on a road trip or you have an oops moment.

00:49:17.554 --> 00:49:21.959
So this is what I meant by there's two different paradigms.

00:49:21.959 --> 00:49:25.295
We're focused on the wrong one, and I hope you understand what I mean.

00:49:25.829 --> 00:49:26.997
But thanks for watching

00:49:26.997 --> 00:49:29.533
and I hope you consider driving an electric car soon.

00:49:30.067 --> 00:49:32.369
If you're wondering why I haven't talked about hybrids,

00:49:33.437 --> 00:49:34.972
well, I'm going to talk about hybrids

00:49:34.972 --> 00:49:39.142
soon on the videos
I'm doing on my main channel with, engine management.

00:49:39.142 --> 00:49:40.510
But here's something I will say.

00:49:40.544 --> 00:49:42.245
And I just realized I should have said this earlier.

00:49:42.946 --> 00:49:45.282
If you cannot charge your car at home,

00:49:45.816 --> 00:49:47.718
don't buy a plug in hybrid.

00:49:48.218 --> 00:49:51.989
I'm noticing this thing now where a lot of people think

00:49:51.989 --> 00:49:55.058
the word hybrid means the car has a plug.

00:49:55.492 --> 00:49:59.863
I don't know how this happened because hybrid cars don't have plugs.

00:50:00.030 --> 00:50:02.332
They just have a small battery pack

00:50:02.432 --> 00:50:04.968
and electric motors, which assist the engine.

00:50:05.502 --> 00:50:08.972
Plug in hybrids are a recent category of car,

00:50:08.972 --> 00:50:11.675
but now I'm seeing more and more people

00:50:11.675 --> 00:50:14.277
assume the word hybrid means the car has a plug.

00:50:15.145 --> 00:50:17.881
And I'm telling you, if you cannot charge at home,

00:50:18.115 --> 00:50:20.684
don't buy a plug in hybrid because the use case

00:50:20.684 --> 00:50:23.153
for those makes absolutely no sense

00:50:23.620 --> 00:50:25.122
except home charging.

00:50:25.555 --> 00:50:29.192
Even workplace charging with a plug in hybrid is arguably kind of silly.

00:50:29.626 --> 00:50:30.360
Because,

00:50:31.628 --> 00:50:34.131
as I said, public charging tends to be more expensive.

00:50:34.664 --> 00:50:36.466
Now, the math might be changing,

00:50:36.700 --> 00:50:39.169
but plug in hybrids do not make sense

00:50:39.169 --> 00:50:41.271
unless you can regularly charge them at home.

00:50:41.271 --> 00:50:44.908
So if you cannot charge at home, don't consider a plug in hybrid.

00:50:44.975 --> 00:50:45.876
Just don't.

00:50:45.876 --> 00:50:47.277
It is a worse hybrid.

00:50:47.310 --> 00:50:49.679
You're going to pay more money for more battery capacity

00:50:49.679 --> 00:50:50.881
you won't ever use,

00:50:50.914 --> 00:50:52.516
and they get worse fuel economy

00:50:52.516 --> 00:50:54.217
because they're carrying around more batteries.

00:50:54.751 --> 00:50:56.286
So I will say that

00:50:56.586 --> 00:50:57.821
if you're wondering why I'm not talking

00:50:57.821 --> 00:50:59.589
about hybrid cars, it's because ultimately

00:50:59.589 --> 00:51:01.825
I think the combustion engine is a dead end

00:51:01.825 --> 00:51:03.994
and we need to move away from it as quickly as possible.

00:51:05.195 --> 00:51:08.632
But I understand that during the transition period,

00:51:08.632 --> 00:51:10.867
a lot of people would be better suited to have hybrids.

00:51:11.768 --> 00:51:13.970
Frankly, hybrids should have been the default

00:51:13.970 --> 00:51:16.440
drivetrain technology for the past 20 years.

00:51:16.907 --> 00:51:19.209
But again, there's a lot of misconceptions about them.

00:51:19.209 --> 00:51:20.577
People have.

00:51:20.577 --> 00:51:22.512
I'm noticing people have wild

00:51:23.647 --> 00:51:27.117
imaginations of what hybrid drivetrains are like.

00:51:28.618 --> 00:51:31.054
The reason why Toyota's hybrids are so bulletproof

00:51:31.054 --> 00:51:34.758
is because that drivetrain is simpler than a transmission.

00:51:35.759 --> 00:51:38.028
People think it's like two separate drivetrains,

00:51:38.028 --> 00:51:40.497
but it's actually an engine connected to a transmission,

00:51:40.497 --> 00:51:42.032
which isn't really a transmission.

00:51:42.032 --> 00:51:44.067
It's two motors and a planetary gear set.

00:51:44.367 --> 00:51:45.435
That's why they're so reliable.

00:51:45.435 --> 00:51:48.605
There's way fewer moving parts in the transmission.

00:51:49.272 --> 00:51:52.309
A and they're simpler cars

00:51:52.309 --> 00:51:55.378
than a car with an even like a four speed automatic transmission.

00:51:55.378 --> 00:51:57.080
Hybrids are much simpler cars.

00:51:57.080 --> 00:52:00.684
It's just they have more complicated electronics to drive those motors.

00:52:01.318 --> 00:52:03.787
But anyway, I will actually end now.

00:52:03.787 --> 00:52:04.654
Thanks for watching.

00:52:04.654 --> 00:52:05.856
Hope this helps.

00:52:06.256 --> 00:52:08.158
Let's move towards a better future, please.

00:52:08.425 --> 00:52:11.394
I'd rather we spend less money moving about the country.