I recently (2021/2022) sold my gas cars and bought two EV’s. Though I kept my two motorcycles. I’ve been compiling my thoughts about how it’s been so far, and realized I have compiled pages and pages of notes and those notes are all over the place. Just tons of little tiny differences to massive differences in the driving experience. I’d like to share that with this community in a useful way.
I’m not exactly an EV enthusiast, I’ve had a very long list of enthusiast cars/bikes and when I was young I used to race both autocross and quarter mile. So this basis is where my brain is at.
So my questions for everyone here:
- What should I test/measure?
- What do you want to know?
- What data do you want to see (within reason, I’m not a data scientist)?
EDIT: You guys gave me a great list to start with. Some I’ll need to start tracking my driving better so I can answer. I’ll get back to you all.
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I’d say the major stuff is:
- miles driven per charge and the average speed (mph/kph) per charge (preferably getting as low as you’re comfortable before recharging)
- control for variables like always keeping regenerative braking on or off
- average outside temperature between charges
- how many chargers or charging stations were out of commission? What number and what percent?
- how far out of your way did you need to go, on average, to get to a charging station?
- how much time did you spend charging, on average?
- what charging speeds were you able to charge at? If your car can fast charge, how many of the fast chargers were unavailable (occupied or out of order), and how often did you need to charge slower as a result?
And not related to data: how is the drive feel? How are the driving dynamics? EVs are heavy. How did it feel in inclement weather vs dry?
Great list, thank you.
I’m going to follow you so I’ll see any data you happen to post. Thank you for thinking of this; the data is going to be very interesting!
Thanks, I downloaded my PGE electricity right after this post. It lets me go back to Jan 15, 2021 which is before I sold all my gas cars. I’m trying to see if I kept data for them. I threw the PGE data into a juypter notebook and did some quick visuals on it. It’s pretty obvious when I switched to electric.
Jan 15, 2021
Here the rest of us are sitting obsessing about insurrection consequences, and there you are, out front to save the world! You’re a good person, OP :)
Oh… Don’t get me wrong, the anxiety from that is, super high!
I was in a rental Bolt EUV for an extended period several months ago and realized that miles per kilowatt hour are a much more useful metric than MPGe that shows on the official documentation. Of course, there’s a formula to pull that from MPGe info, but I’m not filling the car with Gallon Equivalents, I’m putting Kilowatt Hours in. So I would really like to know real-world mi/kWh numbers.
I think I can do that
I’ve started collecting data and writing about it. Here’s my first article: https://open.substack.com/pub/imakethingsforu/p/i-sold-three-gasoline-vehicles-and?r=2cd24g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I’ve pictured an EV as something you’d treat like a cell phone - once you are home and not using it anymore, you plug it in to charge. Is this what you do, or do you use charging stations? It seems like a great way to avoid standing in the cold pumping gas.
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Yeah pretty much. I’ve got a 50amp j1772 at home, charges from basically nothing to 80% in a few hours. I also built an offrid solar battery to try and charge them. I’ve also taken a few road trips and used tesla superchargers, electrify America chargers, blink, evgo et al…
For almost all of my driving, I could almost get away with a 120v wall outlet for charging. Less than 20 miles per day.
