this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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I think that number is a bit off. Yes, there is overhead when charging a car to run its battery management system, heat losses in the wiring, etc. But it's not 20-30% of the ~kilowatt of power you'd run through level 1. A quick search says that 20% loss is at the higher end for level 1 (probably 15% on the lower end) but even level 2 has about a 10% loss.
The bigger issue is that level 1 just doesn't have nearly as much power as level 2. Most cars charge at level 1 at 8-16 amps. Most level 2 setups charge at a few times that, plus the voltage is doubled so the total power ends up being about 10x as much. But that's not to say everyone needs that power either. Honestly, for the average driver it's quite easy to make level 1 work.
No, that number corresponds to the WiFi you need to connect it to, to send all the telemetry and the LLM that will be running on some server in the US, picking data out of your telemetry and deciding which company to sell it to, while your car is powered.
Do you really think that or are you looking for an opportunity to make a statement?
Yes. Satire.
I am poking at the current trend of evolution of products.
Of course, cars are not wasting so much of energy on those things just by being turned on... Yet.
Yeah... So for those of us more or less forced into a car-dependent city plan, EVs are pretty awesome and much better for the climate than an ICE car. But they also take a different mindset than the gas-powered cars we've spent decades living with.
Muddying the waters with irrelevant comments like that, things not specific to EVs at all, doesn't help any. Yes, it happens, and yes, it's creepy. I even posted on the old site about how to disable it on my car (same username, feel free to check my posts). But when you add in stupid stuff like that, you're not helping anything.