Here to help provide clarity on the transition to vehicle electrification. Looking at charging, batteries, costs, safety, and research.
Joined January 2025
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I've been working to develop and populate my new EV comparison site for true nerds:
evbench.pluginpath.com
It's still a rough work in progress as I feel out what questions it needs to answer, but I would love feedback on any and all aspects!
Plug-In Path retweeted
A classic chart to counter the wisdom of crowds idea. US Americans are absolutely clueless about how common things are. They think over a quarter of Americans are Native Americans, one in five Americans is transgender, over a quarter of the population are Muslim, one in five households earn over half a million dollars. The right answer to all of these questions is 1%. They build their worldview on totally incorrect assumptions towards reality. Data literacy matters.
Validating EVBench road trip calculations against our regular ~700-mile family trip!
We used to "one-shot" this in 9–10 hours in an ICE car. In our Gen1 R1T, it's 11.5–12 hours—and simulations show the R2 will add another 20–40 minutes to that.
Meanwhile, the Model Y L saves over an hour per trip at a lower price point, and the iX3 saves ~1.5 to 2 hours at 80 mph. Across 5 years of trips, that time difference adds up to over 100 human-hours saved as a couple.
When does faster highway travel outweigh brand loyalty, looks, or other features for you?
I could not get the Tesla app to work to initiate charging here.
Then I looked at the walls and realized they turned this garage into a faraday cage.
An update to my EV energy-sharing (V2X) comparison:
- Tesla’s Model 3/Y manual lists up to 11.5 kW for Powershare home backup, same rating as the Cybertruck
- Added GM Energy PowerShift
Tesla’s solution would lead the pack if Tesla turned on Grid Support for the 3/Y and supported the Powershare Gateway for them. The inverters are already UL 1741 certified.
GM’s system is underwhelming:
- 9.6 kW backup, for outages only
- Needs an offboard inverter plus a battery to start the system in an outage
- NACS-port GM EVs have to swap adapters to switch between charging and backup
The GM inverter is UL 1741 SB grid-certified, so the outage-only limit is a choice
The second crash was preventable.
You can see that FSD is already predicting a problem before the crash, as it starts to gives the car space.
Many human drivers would fail to avoid it, but autonomous driving needs to be held to a much higher standard than an "average" driver.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Plug-In Path retweeted
First video of a driver (accidentally) using the new emergency drive away feature.
Pretty wild to watch this guy dismiss all the warnings and prompts... Curious how much damage was done to the car and charger.
Credit to @JLeshnick for the video
Plug-In Path retweeted
We have been working on a project for the last few months that we can FINALLY share with you all! We conducted the largest EV fire frequency study to date, and the results may surprise you.
EVs are LESS likely to catch fire than gas cars. Yes, you read that right.
I've taken a quick minute to compile some information and have Claude build a handy diagram for us comparing the functionality of Ford and Tesla products.
Both are great, but the Ford solution actually has a meaningful chance at a return on investment.
At @Ford, we want to make the best technology available to the many, not just the few. We want to make products that have great tech, while still being affordable.
In 2027, our new electric truck, Ford Fathom, is going to show that it’s possible to deliver an incredible vehicle with incredible tech and incredible value. One technology I’m excited to announce is coming to Fathom is bidirectional power and the ability to use your vehicle to power your house.
Our team of amazing engineers developed a better, more efficient and more affordable way to bring more than 10 kW of home power—without a separate wall-mounted inverter—to a truck with an MSRP below $30,000.
Making the technology more accessible is one part of the work. We’re also working with utilities to make connecting these vehicles simpler and scalable.
Thanks to American Electric Power, @bchydro, @ConsumersEnergy, @Exelon, and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (@PGE4Me) for being among the first utilities to work with us.
You can read more details here: fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/a…
In the pursuit of accuracy, I spent a few hours today digging into DC fast charging efficiency.
The EPA’s MPGe assumes you charge at home.
So how much energy does a DC fast charge actually lose?
Across 9 EVs: 6% to 13%.
The spread was bigger than I expected...
🧵
The data out there was of poor quality, old, and varied wildly. So I decided to leverage @Out_of_Spec's "10% challenge” as a matched energy in -> energy out.
Whatever the charger put in that the trip meter didn’t get back was lost.
I thought I would find 4-5% losses, but I wanted to be sure, so I found 9 tests that showed DC energy delivered.
They ranged 6-13%, averaging ~9%
EVBench now prices DC charging on this figure.
Sources and caveats:
evbench.pluginpath.com/?tab=…
Subaru, Toyota, & Chevy are quite competitive with Tesla on road trip performance now.
Their early entries were so poor that many wrote them off... & valid reasons remain to prefer something else.
But charging performance is no longer an issue.
