Every time she recharges after winter comes, it’s the peak of Ms. Tang’s ritual. She will bring her kindle, or download the TV series she needs to watch, from autumn clothes to sweaters and down jackets, and even put on a hat and gloves, and then a scarf, dressed neatly. Body warm, spirit rich, she dares to sit in the car, waiting for the electricity to be full. For Ms. Tang, who grew up in the northeast and lives in Beijing, winter in her life can be divided into two stages: before she owns an electric car and after she owns an electric car.
In the former stage, she never wore autumn pants, whether it was Beijing before the heating or Hokkaido in the snow and wind. In the latter stage, she only wears her autumn pants when she sits in her own car, even if that car never drives outside of Beijing’s downtown area.
Riding in her own family’s electric car in winter may be only so much warmer than outside, caused by tightly closed doors and windows and the constant release of heat from the human body. As a last resort, Ms. Tang will not turn on the car’s air conditioning, because if that happens, it will not only be triggered by the switch, but also by her own “mileage anxiety”. Watching the mileage on the dashboard keep dropping faster than usual makes her nervous.
The only two times she turns on the air conditioning is when she’s driving the kids to and from school, or when she’s fully charged and cold. In the former case, they would turn on the heater the whole time, and in the latter case, she would press the gentleman to fully charge the car, turn on the second gear heater, keep asking “how much is left”, and when the car warmed up, she would quickly turn off the air conditioner and continue to shiver. quickly turn off the air conditioning, and then continue to shiver.
Ms. Zhang and Mr. Li are both electric car owners in Beijing. Ms. Zhang owned her first car in May this year, a 162,000 yuan Rongwei. To save electricity and fight the cold, she put a fur cover on the steering wheel and occasionally turns on the heated seats – even though both require electricity. Seat heating is much more cost-effective than turning on the air conditioner, saving electricity, and as long as you ensure that your hands and buttocks are aware of the cold face is not afraid. Mr. Lee, on the other hand, has strict rules for the use of air conditioning: one gear of wind, 19 ℃. He thinks this temperature is about right, under the premise of wearing a down jacket.
We all agree that if the air conditioner is not turned on, then the battery life is still enough to meet the daily commute of a week or even more. It’s just that there are so few days like this.
On how to optimize the experience of using electric cars in winter, owners are racking their brains, and manufacturers are coming up with all sorts of tricks. Xiaopeng Auto has delayed delivery as much as possible to avoid the first winter after owners get their cars, and has set up its first experience centers in cities south of the Yangtze River. The Weimar, on the other hand, offers an optional diesel heating system: that is, a diesel-burning boiler in a purely electric car, specifically for heating.
The shadow of winter rides in electric cars has extended to the field of net cars. Auto self-publisher Wang Tonggen has answered why it is easier to get seasick in a new energy net car – because of the high torque of some models, smooth deceleration and smooth start are difficult, walking and stopping in the city itself is easy to get seasick, plus the winter closed doors and windows, air does not circulate, it will give people a New energy cars are more seasick” direct feeling.
Every time Ms. Tang calls for a car, if she gets an electric car, she will cancel the order. As an electric car owner, she has full understanding and empathy for drivers who don’t turn on the air conditioner, but the north in winter is too cold, she would rather wait a little longer.
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For owners who see electric cars as a necessity, range is everything.
Their mouths will be hung with numbers, three hundred, four hundred and fifty, five hundred – which means the number of miles of range. The higher the range, the higher the price, but also the farther you can drive.
In fact, according to the battery range of ordinary electric cars, owners would not have to be so fearful. It’s just that it’s closer to an ideal state of uniform linear motion. In most cases, charging an electric car is much more of a hassle than refueling a gasoline car.
According to the “three-year action plan to win the blue sky defense station in Beijing” released last year, the plan is to reach about 400,000 new energy vehicles in Beijing by 2020. And according to statistics released by the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, Beijing ranks first in the number of public-type charging piles owned within provincial administrative regions with 42,000 – but apparently, supporting facilities have not kept up with that number. Where to charge has become a big headache for car owners.
Mr. Li’s method of charging, saving money with a bit of desperation: his family lives on the second floor and often pulls a wire down from the window to charge the car. And when Ms. Zhang bought the car, got a free charging pile, and a box of fruit about the same size, but because there is no parking space of her own, she can not install, but has been put in the trunk, carrying back and forth every day.
In order to protect the delicate battery, Ms. Li did not dare to use the fast charging pile in the parking lot of the unit – frequent fast charging would not only damage the battery, but also affect the safety. She prefers to “dabble” with the charging pile: at a friend’s house or at a friend’s flat. Slow charging takes 8 hours, so Ms. Li will drive her car to the charging place in the morning, park and charge, then subway to work, and then make a special trip after work, and finally drive home.
Ms. Tang’s car was parked in the underground garage all year round, but without her own fixed parking space, she could not install her own charging post. There are two large shopping malls near her home, which together have 10 charging posts. Many times, the couple drove their car to charge, only to find petrol cars parked everywhere. On another occasion, they finally snagged a parking spot with a stake, the car was charging, the people were shopping, and it wasn’t long before they received a cell phone alert that charging was complete – when it was clearly not time. Confused, they went to look, only to find that someone had unplugged their charging port and plugged it into their own car.
Thus, the outdoor charging post became their last resort.
Each charge after winter arrives is the pinnacle of Ms. Tang’s ritual. She will bring her kindle, or download the TV series she needs to watch, from autumn clothes to sweaters and down jackets, and even put on a hat and gloves, and then a scarf and dress neatly. The body is warm, the spirit is rich, she dares to sit in the car, waiting for the electricity to be full.
Must we sit in the car and wait? Not necessarily. It’s just that it would be more expensive. The money for charging may be much cheaper than the gas money, but the resulting parking fees, food and drink, shopping and buying fees …… add up to a figure that cannot be ignored. The most important thing for Ms. Tang is that she feels that this money could have been spent without it.
Mr. Li has long thought of taking his family to Gubei Water Town to play, but so far have not been able to make the trip. The fear that the battery will run out of power is one of the reasons that prevented him from setting off. He thinks he is a person full of planning, because he is sensitive to numbers, he rarely has “mileage anxiety”.
But there are still moments when he is caught off guard. One time, Mr. Li drove his car with only 30% battery left, and before he came home, he was nervous while driving on the North Fourth Ring Road because he only had 2% battery left. Looking around, there was no charging post. He called a friend and asked him, and he said, “Don’t worry about it, that battery will leave a 20% margin.
Ms. Guo is no stranger to this sense of anxiety either. She drove from her home in Tiantongyuan to Daxing Airport to pick up her plane. On the way, she found that she was almost out of battery and thought that Daxing Airport was newly built and there must be no less charging piles in the basement, so she confidently went all the way to the south. As a result, after arriving at the airport, she found that there was no charging place, so she had to awkwardly drive all the way to the north again, looking for a charging post while driving. This time, I drove to the northeast fifth ring road outside the Yi Di Gang. In the basement of the Yi Di Gang, Ms. Guo waited anxiously for her car to be charged, and after charging half of it, she couldn’t wait to drive to Daxing again, making a round trip of sixty to seventy kilometers.
Ms. Guo is a senior electric car owner, and she has two electric cars in the broad sense: an electric bike and an electric car. Generally speaking, if it’s just for commuting, that e-bike is more commonly used. But Ms. Guo also has to drive the electric car every week, because the battery is easy to break if not driven often. Compared with the gasoline cars of her colleagues, this walking car is significantly more frequent. She feels that the car is just like a dog, not walking it, and walking it more often.
In contrast, Xiao Zheng seems much more relaxed. He charges twice a day, slow charging when he can, fast charging when he can’t. He also drove his electric car from Hangzhou to his home in Henan, charging it only twice in between – a feat in the eyes of private car owners. Xiao Zheng thought about it and felt this courage, not only because Hangzhou is warm in winter, the battery life is not much affected by the temperature, but also because the car is the company’s, no heartache.
3
It is perhaps not a coincidence that when asked “why do you want to buy an electric car”, all the interviewees let out a cheerful and helpless laugh and then said. “Because I can’t get a lottery number. “
According to the Beijing Small Bus Indicator Control Management Office, the winning rate for the 4th phase of the gasoline vehicle indicator lottery in 2019 was 2,622 people for 1 indicator, with the odds of winning a lottery getting lower every year. In contrast, although the winning rate for electric cars has been reduced compared to previous years, it is really friendly in terms of probability – the so-called reduction is just from 100 percent winning, to 88 percent.
Mr. Li has persistently shaken the number for 8 years since 2011, and finally in his 8th year, he bowed to reality and bought an electric car. And Ms. Tang’s statement is even more blunt: “There is not much difference in price between buying an electric car and buying a gasoline car, and if I didn’t have a number, I would have bought a proper gasoline car. “
But there are still some facts that are comforting to car owners.
The overall calculation is that the cost of using an electric car is lower than that of a gasoline car, and even lower than public transportation in some cases. Lee will keep the numbers about electric cars in mind. He did the math: If you only open the road for commuting within Beijing, then on average you have to charge three times in two weeks. If you charge them all at home, then it’s only a few cents for a 30-kilometer commute, which is cheaper than the subway.
The electric car’s starting speed is fast, and in the days of driving a net car, Zheng’s big hobby is to compare the starting speed with the cars around him. At the moment of the green light, almost no gasoline car can match Xiao Zheng’s electric Geely, and he can ride ahead of the pack, unless he runs into a sports car – and that would have to be a sports car that is determined to compete with him to beat him.
Zheng likes electric cars, especially tesla, the one with wings, cool, but he also believes that “it’s all toys bought by rich people. “He thought about it, he was used to driving an electric car in Hangzhou, he might not even adapt to gasoline cars in the future – having said that, he bought a gasoline car himself and drove it in his hometown.
Ms. Li feels that electric cars are more advanced in terms of equipment, such as the navigation that comes with the car. But this seems to be a feature common to all newly produced cars in recent years, and is not enough to cover up some other heartbreaking facts. For example, Ms. Tang’s car, because of the winter dare not turn on the air conditioning, the window glass is easy to white mist. Her response is to open the windows and let the fog dissipate as much as possible before she freezes – however, if the same situation occurs in a gasoline car, owners will generally turn on the hot air and blow on the glass for a while, and the fog will dissipate.
Owners will also console themselves with the fact that using an electric car is also making a small contribution to the environment.
All these consolations can’t dispel the fact that electric cars have a hard time in winter. No one wants to change their car, but due to the reality, they can only make do with it first. Ms. Tang also heard that the value retention of electric cars is lower than that of gasoline cars, and it is not cost-effective to sell them. So she made up her mind to drive the car until it was scrapped – after all, with only new energy targets on hand, this was the only optimal solution for now.
On December 25, the Beijing Small Bus Indicator Office announced the results of the current period of small bus indicator applications and allocation data. As of this writing, the total number of applicants for the new energy indicator exceeded 450,000, and according to current rules, new applicants will have to wait in line until 2028.
Even if you want to have one, you may have to wait for another 9 years.
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