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Originally Posted by chad86tsi
Of you could heat just the car interior. My portable thermostat controlled heater is only 5# and cost about $40. I don't bother putting it in my car because I have heated seats and steering wheel. I don't cold idle my car, so selling this as a feature is useless to me.
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You do you there. I'll continue to plug in my PHEV and let it warm my car automatically based on my schedule. I'm not wasting time with a space heater in my garage heating my lawn mower
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A block heater is cheaper than upgrading to an EV or adding a wall charger, and block heaters don't cause major range loss. Suboptimal is a perspective.
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People aren't idling their cars to heat their engines. They are idling their cars to heat the cabin... Not sure how a block heater helps this.
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I have a smart meter, and didn't need to buy an EV to get it. Not all smart meter systems are created or operated the same.
If I wanted to, I could install an inverter in my ICE and charge the grid with it, but I don't want to kill my fuel mileage (range). Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's a good idea.
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Obviously, you don't need an EV for a smart meter. Smart meters offer a LOT of benefits that aren't limited to EVs. Like I said earlier, utilities can get real-time information for power outages and so much more.
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Originally Posted by Efthreeoh
I live rural. We lose electricity occasionally. I have a 22 year old 4.5kW Generac portable I bought for $250 (1/2 price) from a guy who bought it for Y2K. He never even put oil in the engine. I back feed my panel through a spare 220V breaker that puts 120V across both buss bars. I fabbed an extension cord to run outside to the generator. It runs my well, furnace, refrigerator, TV, and some light circuits. To run the water heater, I just drop all the other circuits for an hour or two. 15 gallons of fuel powers the house for a week. It's a setup I've had in place before Tesla was a twinkle in Elon's eye.
An EV gets you 2 to 3 days at best. I can go buy more gasoline.
BTW, all critical infrastructure in the USA is backed up by diesel power generation. All of it.
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A typical EV can power a typical house for over a month. But very few people have backup power systems available to them. The value proposition of bidirectional charging is they'll have that backup power on tap without any extra work.
Allowing us to lower the impact of power outages across large areas as the EV transition progresses.