Some people will never get it...

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Funeralsinger

Member
Joined
Jun 3, 2014
Messages
10
Location
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Just wanted to share frustrating experience I had this week...

There's a couple I know that own two big Mercedes SUVs. He commutes around 40 miles round trip to work each day, and she drives around town dropping their 2 kids at school and hitting the local shopping malls. Once in a while they make a longer trip in excess of 300 miles, but not often.

When I mentioned that I'd bought a Leaf this piqued his curiosity in EVs, and he asked a million questions. After not seeing them for a few weeks, I ran into her and she told me he'd taken a Tesla Model S for a test drive and had loved it and was going to order one, but she'd talked him out of it. I asked her why, and she said she wasn't impressed with a car that could only drive 300 miles on a charge. "We'd have to charge it all the time!" she said. "What if we have to drive farther than that?" I tried to explain that charging the car was as simple as plugging it in over night in their garage, and that they'd still have a regular car for their longer trips. In the meantime, they could save a fortune on gas and still have a great, high-end car. She said it was just too much trouble to charge it that often.

????????? Sheesh...

John
 
She's probably got this mental image of "having to do something to the car all the time", and without associating any magnitude to the effort it seems like an unfair imposition to her. She shouldn't have to "do anything" any more often than she does today. She's thrown up a barrier that stops her short of internalizing the actual efforts involved.

The truth of the matter is that plugging/unplugging is vastly more convenient than making a fuel run in the car. I myself was surprised at just HOW MUCH of a convenience this turns out to be. I have found it to be one of the most enjoyable aspects of owning an EV.
 
For most people, change is very scary. I think that's one of the biggest blocks to getting more EV sales in the world. Logic doesn't work with most people.

Bob
 
If you spend 5 seconds plugging in, and 5 more to unplug, that's an entire hour per year. Buying gas can take that long sometimes! OK, maybe 10-20 minutes is more likely, but as often as it needs to happen, that's still way more time wasted.

Clueless...
 
I find in life people focus more on the negatives than the positives. In total time, it takes longer to charge an electric car than to drive to a gas station, fill up and drive home. Yes, the time the car is charging at home you can do other things... provided it doesn't involve the car. But what if suddenly they needed the car? They would have to wait, and people hate waiting. The fact is most of us are quite spoiled. We never had to do without. This way of thinking will be the death of us.
 
yep this is a very typical reaction. I get that "you have to plug it in EVERY day? what a hassle!" statements all the time. I tell them, I'd rather plug it in every day for a year over one single trip to the gas station mostly because they both use the same amount of time but the biggest difference is being home or being at the gas station. which do you prefer??

that pretty much shuts them up
 
Well, decided to time how much extra time it took to plug in the LEAF and realized it was near nothing. I have my EVSE positioned on a storage rack that I park next to so its grab the handle as I pass by it without breaking stride. then stop long enough to plug it in and then go. roughly 2-5 seconds...

times 365 works out to as much as 30 minutes annually. I timed a round trip from the gas station and back. and it was 32 minutes. It was Costco and waited less than 4 minutes for an available pump so it was actually one of the shortest gas trips. I normally only time from the variation of my commute to the station and back to the point at which i veered from my normal route. that is usually about 14 to 18 minutes
 
Some people are just stupid. I go to 2 to 3 Car shows a week and talk about EVs all day long, If I speak to 30 people at least one says I am hurting the planet more, it's too inconvenient and one guy said it's not even a real car. LOL,

You can't get your message across to everyone.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
yep this is a very typical reaction. I get that "you have to plug it in EVERY day? what a hassle!" statements all the time. I tell them, I'd rather plug it in every day for a year over one single trip to the gas station mostly because they both use the same amount of time but the biggest difference is being home or being at the gas station. which do you prefer??

that pretty much shuts them up
But doesn't convince them to get a PEV. For those folks, wireless charging is going to be necessary, and that's fine.
 
Funeralsinger said:
...We'd have to charge it all the time!...
You should explain to her that once she gets the car she will love it and take it for herself. She will be surprised how smelly her car is and how frustrating it is to wait at a gas station. She will be surprised how irritating the vibration in her mercedes is, and how noisy it is compared to a Tesla. Ask her if she is scared of the cancerous gas fumes she is smelling at the gas station.
I suspect they will be buying the Tesla SUV anyways.
 
When I had my ice truck, I started thinking about filling up at a quarter tank. The next time I was driving by a gas station, I'd swing in there, use my credit card at the pump, and fill up. I was out of there in 5 minutes, and it took me 400 miles before I had to do it again. In my leaf, I take probably one minute to do the plug in unplug cycle. This gets me about 40 miles. For me, my fueling time has doubled. And that doesn't even take into account the time it took me to install my evse. And of course there are the times you forget to plug in and have to go back outside and do it. Im sure that's happened to everyone. Yes it takes longer and it is somewhat of a hassle to plug in.

but it's worth it. Everytime I filled up 80 bucks disappeared. Everytime I charge, 80 cents disappear.
 
johnrhansen said:
When I had my ice truck, I started thinking about filling up at a quarter tank. The next time I was driving by a gas station, I'd swing in there, use my credit card at the pump, and fill up. I was out of there in 5 minutes, and it took me 400 miles before I had to do it again. In my leaf, I take probably one minute to do the plug in unplug cycle. This gets me about 40 miles. For me, my fueling time has doubled. And that doesn't even take into account the time it took me to install my evse. And of course there are the times you forget to plug in and have to go back outside and do it. Im sure that's happened to everyone. Yes it takes longer and it is somewhat of a hassle to plug in.

but it's worth it. Everytime I filled up 80 bucks disappeared. Everytime I charge, 80 cents disappear.

5 minutes?? must be nice!
 
The maximum rate allowed is 10 gallons per minute, but most stations fill at 5. 20 gallons... 4 minutes. plus another minute to swipe my card. I remembered which stations were slow and avoided them.
 
johnrhansen said:
The maximum rate allowed is 10 gallons per minute, but most stations fill at 5. 20 gallons... 4 minutes. plus another minute to swipe my card. I remembered which stations were slow and avoided them.

still envious!
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
johnrhansen said:
The maximum rate allowed is 10 gallons per minute, but most stations fill at 5. 20 gallons... 4 minutes. plus another minute to swipe my card. I remembered which stations were slow and avoided them.

still envious!
Dave, just get gas somewhere other than Costco and pay a few more cents/gallon, and you too won't have to wait 20 minutes to get to the pump. What's your time worth? Today, someone on gasbuddy reported my local Costco at $3.63, but the Arco about the same distance away where I can pull right up to the pump from the street without stopping is $3.66, so for 15 gallons I'd save a whopping $0.45. Assuming I put 15 gallons into my Subaru at 5 gal/minute, and add two more minutes for connecting/disconnecting and paying, that's $0.09/minute, or $5.40/hour. I assume you make more than minimum wage, so wasting 20 minutes of your time waiting at Costco to save a few cents/gallon hardly seems like a good exchange ;)
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
yep this is a very typical reaction. I get that "you have to plug it in EVERY day? what a hassle!" statements all the time. I tell them, I'd rather plug it in every day for a year over one single trip to the gas station mostly because they both use the same amount of time but the biggest difference is being home or being at the gas station.

As I posted at http://www.myrav4ev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10033&sid=1ef19a256bbbb62121a623b44f173753#p10033" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (w/typos fixed):

Semi-OT, I posted this in another forum a few months ago and keep in mind we work at a tech company in Silicon Valley. I do software QA and the guy w/the crazy "needs" does dev work:
So, at lunch today w/some coworkers, one currently has a '13 HyCam and he remarked he'd like a Tesla Model X in the future and wanted 400 (!) mile range. :eek:

I and my other coworker asked why. His commute's only ~12 miles each way. Mine is too, for which my Leaf is totally fine. We get free charging @ work and could make a few round trips w/o charging @ work. My reply was that it's going to be real expensive and you're buying and carrying around WAY more battery than you'd need.

Anyhow, one of his reasons was to go to LA (from the Bay Area). His other, which is the wildest I'd ever heard was that he wanted to have to charge once every 2 or 3 weeks! Uhh... I was like, don't you charge your phone (an iPhone 5) like every night? Is it that inconvenient? He said yeah and that he hates that, he can only go 2 days on a charge.

I told him that plugging in a car isn't that inconvenient.

Then, he mentioned he'd used PHS phones in the past. I'd seen them at trade shows before, they were never deployed in the US (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Handy-phone_System). He said w/those (apparently deployed in Taiwan), he could go 30 days (!) between charges.

Anyhow, I wonder how many people who have "ruled out" EVs or are anti-EV have such a mentality...
 
Here is something I've seen work. Mention how healthy it is not to be going to the gas station and inhaling all the fumes.
 
GRA said:
I assume you make more than minimum wage, so wasting 20 minutes of your time waiting at Costco to save a few cents/gallon hardly seems like a good exchange.
On those infrequent occasions when I need to fill a gas tank when returning from a long trip, I use our "neighborhood" gas station and never wait. I don't mind paying an extra $0.20/gallon just to be in a nicer environment that's as convenient as can be. I'm pretty sure I spend more time plugging/unplugging the LEAF and messing with charging timers than if I just filled the Prius with gas a couple of times per month instead. It's well worth charging the LEAF, and I don't like smelling gasoline fumes, but I can sort of understand the mass-market objections to plugging in. Therefore, I have to agree with GRA that inductive charging is a worthwhile innovation even though it's less efficient. The key is to overcome potential EV owners' initial hesitation. Once that's accomplished, the superiority of the EV driving experience is often enough to keep owners hooked.
 
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