It really makes me think an electric car future is going to happen. This possibility was dismissed all my life (“what about road trips?) but the demand is there.
I recently drove a 2019 Tesla Model 3 from NYC to Montreal via Vermont. Personally, I wouldn't do the route I took in a Tesla (/EV) again. The 'range anxiety' set definitely in during the trip because, when departing NYC, I entered my destination in Vermont and the navigation system showed I'd have 47% battery remaining upon arrival... I ended up arriving with 19% battery and I was in the middle of the nowhere. Due to the prevailing weather conditions (the car kept saying the battery was cold) and it was raining I guess the battery dropped quicker than it should have? I was stressing out because my wife would be late to meeting her client had I went to the nearest supercharger and I didn't know if I would have enough battery to make it to the charger if continued and dropped off to the client, given how fast the battery was dropping. After dropping her off, I had to charge the car a further 3 times at superchargers, adding an extra 1h45m to the whole trip to Montreal. I also charged the car once going from NYC to Brattleboro, which was another 30m, so almost 2h15m in spent charging the car.
YMMV but I think the obvious thing to do for anyone who worries about range is to use an EV for daily and hire the right car for a long trip. I don’t buy a car for my 1% trips, I buy a car for my 99% trips.
When I need a 4x4, I hire. When I go on a weekend away with lots of gear, I get a trailer or larger car. Big family outing, people carrier. Fetch furniture, Uber van. Getting a huge car and using it for shopping or dropping kids off is allowing the rare use case to dictate how you experience the typical use case. Harder to park, fuel, maintain.
Hiring also means I don’t have the “wrong” large car which doesn’t fit the rare holiday where I need more seats or storage.
You've inadvertently made me feel better about purchasing an ICE car last year. I'd been having some regrets that I hadn't worked harder to find an EV (or at least a plug-in hybrid) that met my other requirements.
Since I don't commute to work, and usually take transit or walk for local trips, the bulk of my driving is longer trips. Range anxiety would kill me in an EV.
I do think there are some cases where it makes sense to at least choose the features of a car with some minority-trips in mind. For example, I drive to a snowy, mountainous region 2-3 times a year. I decided to buy an AWD car (sedan, as I dislike driving larger vehicles like SUVs). With the trips I've made since then, the added cost between the AWD and non-AWD versions of my car has already been covered by the savings in not having to rent a vehicle with AWD.
Tangential, but I was also offered an EV when I rented a car last week (after flying across the country), but I had no idea what the charging situation would be at my destination, so I turned it down and got an ICE car. Turned out to be the right call, as there were no charging facilities where I was going.
A cheap and easy way to increase the size of the car you already have is to buy a roof box. Our previous car was a small hatchback and interstate trips with our three kids in the back would have been impossible without the roof box. I only bought a bigger car when my oldest kid was pushing 6 feet and running out of legroom in the back seat of the hatchback.
Sure, but I only used the roof box on occasional long trips when we had lots of luggage (e.g., visiting the grandparents interstate for Christmas). So I might have paid a few tens of dollars extra in fuel, but it was certainly far cheaper than buying a bigger car when we otherwise didn't need the extra space.
The roof rack and Thule box cost maybe $1200 AUD. But the rack was also useful for attaching bicycle carriers.
A larger car is likely going to have worse fuel economy and/or range than a smaller car. If you get the larger car, you take that hit every single time you drive it. If you get the smaller car and a roof box, you take that hit only when you mount the roof box. If that's most of the time, then sure, it probably makes sense to get the larger car. But I don't think that's the GP's use case.
The larger car is likely more expensive to purchase in the first place than the smaller car plus the roof box.
Meh, I'm currently on a cross-island road trip with. Family of four in a >10 year old, manual, brown diesel grandtourer/station wagon. Trunk and roof box fully loaded.
Long range fuel consumption at 5.3L/100kms, as usual at summer conditions.
A plug-in hybrid could be a good choice for probably most people. There are quite a few with an EV range of 30-45 miles (e.g., Prius Prime is 44 miles). In the US the average driver drives 37 miles per day which would be mostly or completely covered by EV mode.
I rented an Ionic PHEV a while back when I was in LA and was surprised how efficient it was! I drove the entire day, from West Hollywood to Santa Monica and then down to LAX and only used about 1 gallon of gas. It blew my mind at how efficient it was.
People are not gonna buy 5 cars or hire cars just for every use case. They want one car that can handle most of their needs. If the range on these vehicles doenst increase we will never see true mass adoption.
But i dont see how a road trip is an outlier. I get that needing a 4x4 is one, but most people go on some form of long trips a few times every year i would think.
It all depends on what kind of EV you have. Top of the line Model S has 400 miles of range and add to that supercharging. You will be able to drive almost as quickly as with an ICE car - you loose like 20 minutes on 620 miles.
The limiting factor then becomes the driver of the car - rest stops, food and so on.
You're replying in a thread where the issue at hand was more than two hours of recharge, and a bunch of stress around the car's trip planner being way too optimistic about the range of the vehicle in the first place. Maybe your statement is true in some cases, but clearly not all.
Even before owning an EV, whenever I would do a road trip, I would rent a car/SUV. it gave me a piece of mind. I wasn't putting 100s of miles on my car. It was much easier.
A road trip is an outlier for me. I go on maybe 1-3/yr. The other 360 days, my driving is local, and with home charging I never worry about filling up.
This strategy is not working if many people go long trip at the same time. This is happened for a long time in Japan, highway (and train) get jammed about 10 days every year. This is also pain for EV fast charger usage, so govt should encourage people to distribute holidays.
You must have very limited use cases, I tried to do that but ended up with a vehicle that was heavily compromised because half my use cases are at odds with the other half.
I was driving to my office job in an F150, burning enough gas to finance and fuel a new Civic, all while being terrible to drive.
So I did the logical thing, and added a vehicle that was efficient and enjoyable to drive, a motorcycle.
But it's agility made me only further resent the truck during the winter months, so I also added a compact luxury sports sedan.
Worst part was the F150 was both "too much" truck to daily drive, but never enough when I needed to do truck stuff.
Tried to landscape my home with some crushed rock, had to do 9 trips bottomed out because of it's paltry payload. Couldn't tow enough to borrow a friend's skid-steer. Had to buy my bricks a half-pallet at a time, a full pallet bottomed it out before the forklift had even finished putting the full weight on.
Downsized the F150 to a Tacoma, anything over 1200lbs and it's more practical to pay for delivery using a proper commercial truck anyways.
In the end I ended up with 3 vehicles, and if I had the means I'd have 4, I'd split the compact luxury sports sedan into a small sports car and a full sized luxury sedan for long highway travels. And this is all before even adding an EV.
tldr: In the motorcycle community they say the correct number of bikes is always 1 more than what you have. I strongly feel that applies to cars/trucks too.
I recently drove my electric vehicle through my town and saw 5 electric vehicles in a row. This is not terribly unusual now. A friend is buying a hybrid rather than a pure ICE not because of environmental concerns but because it drives better in traffic. A number of countries will make sales of new ICE cars illegal in a few years time.
True mass adoption is already here. Not to say that I don't agree that range needs to increase (although it's incredibly rare I'd want to drive more than 250 miles without a 15 minute break). But I don't think the transition to electric will stop or slow or is really in any danger.
I think at this point most EVs are bought for performance or economic reasons rather than environmental reasons. I still haven’t gotten over the acceleration on my i4.
And that's my point really. EVs have some disadvantages (although for most people these are not as serious as claimed if you can get the longer range versions), but overall they have a lot to recommend them simply as cars, even beyond their benefits to the environment. Even in a hypothetical world where nobody cared about the environment, and governments weren't penalising ICE cars, mass adoption of electric cars would still be inevitable at this point.
I don't think range is really the issue. If charging stations were as prevalent as gas stations, and charging time was much lower, that'd probably be sufficient for most people.
I got used to this by my second road trip and it’s a nonissue. You control discharge rate Tina large extent. Battery on track to hit 0? Low speed from 74 to 69 and you do just fine and arrive at 12%. Have near 50k miles in road trips and won’t ever buy a Dino bone burner again.
I regularly do a 200 mile mountain pass with a 75MPH limit, and have been explaining all this to my wife regarding our new Tesla.
But I'd have never admitted how much more efficient our old ICE car would have been at 50MPH than the usual 85MPH I preferred (it's 3 lanes wide and empty, so it's not unsafe to go slower, I just didn't want to).
Battery swap is probably not the way. My prediction is charging times will get much faster with better battery tech in the next 5 years. We might be able to get a full charge in under 10 minutes - which starts to match the convenience of a gas fillup.
I don't see manufacturers agreeing on a standardized battery pack size and shape. I also don't see battery swap stations getting built to the density needed, even if only as a supplement to charging stations. Battery swap stations would be significantly more expensive to build and maintain than charging stations.
Regardless, we don't have battery swap, and I don't think any (serious) manufacturers have plans to go that route, so it's a moot point.
What you describe is just a rookie mistake being a new EV driver. Humans learn and adapt very well. You'll get used to it very quickly if you keep driving EVs. You'll learn to do route planning better and those won't be problems.
But why would I want to deal with the hassle of better route planning when I can just drive an ICE car and not worry about it?
Sure, there's a breaking point where gas prices go up crazy high, and there are the environmental concerns, but I don't think it's surprising or even unreasonable that part of the EV push back is "have to relearn how to plan trips".
One other thing that bothers me about this is that the range of a gas car is somewhat independent of weather conditions. An EV losing a chunk of its range (completely messing up your route planning) because it was colder outside than expected... well, that's just not acceptable.
Bingo. You don't have to agree with me but in my opinion anyone who needs a car and can afford an EV but not driving one is morally reprehensible. We needed to reduce our fossil fuel usage twenty years ago. People putting their own convenience above the environment are selfish and short-sighted.
yeah no. wife yelling at the top of her lungs because of low battery. No thank you. Leased and gave up an EV, now will wait until normal-priced ev's are solidly in the 400+ miles range. I have no desire to graduate from your "rookie" to an "ev planning pro" and wait until everyone else around me does that, too.
What is additional range going to help with here? You misjudged your range, almost certainly due to Tesla overestimating remaining range (not taking into account all variables), and your wife yelled at you for it. Having an extra 100mi range will just delay that scenario, not prevent it. It takes about one longer trip to understand how speed/conditions affect range and how that necessitates an earlier departure time. Next time just plan for a quick stop after 100mi or so to give you some extra confidence. Faster charging and more stations will help out though, no doubt.
EVs are highly efficient so the driving conditions make a huge difference. ICEs have a constant base consumption that we have gotten used to. It's unsettling at first, but as your consumption goes high a lot in high speed, you can save huge quantities (much more than you expect) by driving slower. You will lose less time than you think driving slower. Last time I spent 30 min behind a fast bus and quickly doubled my reach, more than enough to arrive home safely even while driving faster again.
I think the idea of not taking an EV because in some edge case one might lose a few minutes (30m for charging most vehicles nowadays) extremely superficial and selfish in view of the huge disaster that is the climate crisis. Think about how your kids and grandkids will read such comments in 50 years.
Here's a quick derivation based on first principles in high school physics. The amount of work done against a constant opposing force (imagine air resistance) is distance times force. If we assume a constant speed, then there is no net force and no electric energy is converted to kinetic energy, then all the electric energy is for doing the work. Suppose you are driving the same distance but double the speed, that fixed opposing force (air resistance) will quadruple. So doubling your speed consumes four times as much energy but you arrive in only half the time.
This is of course a crude approximation but just drive slower if you have range anxiety.
If only there was some way to transmit the power from the engine to different gear ratios for efficiency at different speeds. That would be the future.
Not sure if you are sarcastic... Gear ratios are needed by ICE because ICEs have a much smaller RPM range, and can't go down to 0 without stalling. There are some EVs that have gearboxes, the cost/benefit of that is still unclear.
How is air resistance the issue here? We are talking about the powerband of the motor. These are two independent concerns that ought not to be conflated.
A co-worker drove to SLC from LA (abut 700 miles) in their Model 3 a few months ago. It took over 24 hours, including charging along the way, and they had to pre-plan their stops to make sure they could make each charger without their battery dying.
I recently drove to a campground in Yellowstone from LA (about 1000 miles) in an ICE SUV in less than 15 hours, including multiple rest/food breaks and traffic delays in the park due to road work. We didn't plan any stops on the way, and only got gas when we stopped for restroom breaks.
Right now, driving an EV means giving up a significant amount of freedom and turns what should be a pleasant road trip into a stress-inducing chore...and that doesn't even take into account the lack of charging options at home for those of us who don't live in single-family dwellings.
> A co-worker drove to SLC from LA (abut 700 miles) in their Model 3 a few months ago. It took over 24 hours,
....how?
HOW!?
I drive a Model 3. I recently drove from Portland, OR to Santa Clara and back 665 miles each way. Each way only took ~12 1/2 hours.
I'm sorry, but either your co-worker is lying, or they're bad at driving, or there's more to the story. Did they think they need to charge to 100% at each charging stop or something?
Portland to Santa Clara is a relatively flat drive. LA to SLC is not, plus a fully-loaded Model 3 in extreme weather (at least, extreme for EVs) and the need to charge multiple times on the way due to charging anxiety related to the lack of chargers en route, the overnight stay in a motel due to the delay related to charging...yeah, it's over 24 hours, easily.
You might want to consider that not everybody is driving themselves; some people have families with them and that changes the calculus of how you approach the drive.
Eh...I just went to ABRP, told it to map me from LA to SLC, assuming 500 kg (1,100 lbs) of extra weight, 0 C temperatures, and some extra range anxiety (Arrive at each charger with at least 30% battery), and it STILL only estimated a total of 12 hours.
> A co-worker drove to SLC from LA (abut 700 miles) in their Model 3 a few months ago. It took over 24 hours, including charging along the way, and they had to pre-plan their stops to make sure they could make each charger without their battery dying
Sorry, your co-worker is likely lying... that would mean something like 14 hours of charging per 9 hours of driving which is very far from reality. Easy way to check: https://abetterrouteplanner.com
No, they were definitely not lying, and its one of the things that turned them from a Tesla enthusiast into someone who won't be getting a Tesla ever again (ongoing issues with AP/FSD being the other).
Assuming infinite fuel/charge, LA to SLC is 9 hours of driving with good traffic, in temperate weather.
In the winter, temperatures along the way can approach or drop below freezing; in the summer most of the drive is 100+ degree temperatures. In both cases, the temperature drastically lowers range before taking AC/heating into account. This has little to no effect on ICE vehicles (except at the start of the drive when the engine is warming up) but has huge effects on EV vehicles; cold can reduce EV range by as much as 40% and the heat reduces range by about 15%. This means that a Model 3's theoretical range would only be about 200-280 miles. This means the car has to be charged at least twice for the trip to Vegas, and 2-3 times for the trip from Vegas to SLC. It turns out the charging situation is great from LA to Vegas (Barstow, Baker, and Primm) but almost non-existent past Vegas (essentially nothing past Vegas until you reach St George, hence the need to plan stops.
If you're lucky and the Supercharger is available when you need it, great.. Not so great when all the spots are taken, and you're either waiting in the cold/heat or relying on the EA station a few miles down having working charging. Unfortunately, EA stations along this route generally don't have supercharging speeds...
While in Yellowstone I encountered a handful of Teslas from Angelenos who said that it took them the better part of 2 days to get there (but otherwise weren't specific about the time, route, charging situation, etc), so it's not an isolated incident.
Long story short: just because you're a techie and can optimize your EV driving doesn't mean everyone else will. Your experience is the exception, not the norm.
I drive an EV (not Tesla) in a part of the country that is cold during the winter, there is no need to explain how it works. You can go into ABRP and change the reference consumption to 50% of the initial value and hopefully understand why no one with any experience will believe it took 24 hours to travel 700 miles on an interstate route with plenty of chargers.
> It turns out the charging situation is great from LA to Vegas (Barstow, Baker, and Primm) but almost non-existent past Vegas (essentially nothing past Vegas until you reach St George...
Both Tesla and EA have chargers 80 miles from Vegas in Mesquite? And something like 14 locations combined between Vegas and SLC?
> ...relying on the EA station a few miles down having working charging. Unfortunately, EA stations along this route generally don't have supercharging speeds...
Every EA station between Vegas and SLC has >= 1 charger at 350 kW, I don't understand what you are saying. Regardless, the charging curve for a Model 3 spends a lot of time <= 150 kW so it doesn't make a ton of difference.
> Long story short: just because you're a techie and can optimize your EV driving doesn't mean everyone else will. Your experience is the exception, not the norm.
This makes sense in parts of the country where fast charging is scarce. The route between LA and SLC is full of chargers, both Tesla and CCS. Tesla handles the routing for you, there is nothing to optimize on this route.
Both Tesla and EA have chargers 80 miles from Vegas in Mesquite? And something like 14 locations combined between Vegas and SLC?
They do...now...They did not several months ago when my coworker attempted this drive. At least, none that were working or available.
Every EA station between Vegas and SLC has >= 1 charger at 350 kW
Yes, they do. And they have on average of 0 working chargers at 350 kW, so the theoretical charging speeds are irrelevant.
Tesla handles the routing for you, there is nothing to optimize on this route.
Ah yes, Tesla does such a good job at routing. Just like how it loves to route cars into trucks and stopped vehicles. Just because your experience with your empty Tesla works for you doesn't mean it works for families with greater charging needs.
> They do...now...They did not several months ago when my coworker attempted this drive. At least, none that were working or available
The Mesquite EA location has photos on Plugshare dating back to 2019 and the Tesla locations opened in 2021 and 2022. You can check https://supercharge.info for opening dates of the superchargers along the route. EA built that interstate out quite a while ago.
> Just because your experience with your empty Tesla works for you doesn't mean it works for families with greater charging needs.
I don't drive a Tesla but I also don't understand what this means. The route has superchargers and EA chargers all over, damn near perfectly spaced out, and the navigation system includes them in routing. If your coworker took 24 hours on this route, it was not caused by driving an electric vehicle. Again, you can use ABRP, modify the variables, and check for yourself: it is not possible to get anywhere near that amount of charging time on that route regardless of conditions.
> I recently drove a 2019 Tesla Model 3 from NYC to Montreal via Vermont. Personally, I wouldn't do the route I took in a Tesla (/EV) again. The 'range anxiety' set definitely in during the trip because, when departing NYC, I entered my destination in Vermont and the navigation system showed I'd have 47% battery remaining upon arrival... I ended up arriving with 19% battery and I was in the middle of the nowhere.
I drove from Montréal to New York City in a gasoline powered car late at night, and in the 150+ miles between Plattsburgh and Albany I got range anxiety because I was getting low on gas and couldn't find any gas stations open. Of course this was in the days before smartphones and Google Maps and Gasbuddy etc.
Yeah fair enough, before pay-at-the-pump and proliferation of 24HR gas stations and navigation systems, you definitely had to think about your range more, especially in rural areas. But most gas powered cars have at least 300 miles of range. My truck has 720 miles of range. And if you always fill up at half a tank, you'd be hard pressed to find a path to travel on in the U.S. in 2023 that doesn't hit multiple gas stations with 24 hour pump access.
It's also true that running out of gas doesn't require a tow. You just need roadside assistance to bring 5-10 gallons to get you back on the road in minutes.
Source? Even as an EV owner/enthusiast I find that a little hard to believe.
I find the idea of the portable power fascinating and have watched some YouTube videos on them, but it seems like a very expensive and niche thing so far. I've seen one company on YouTube that showed it off.
I wanted an EV since back when I lived in an apartment, wished there was some sort of big capacitor on wheels I could charge all day from a normal outlet that would then fast charge my car for a few minutes.
Most actual products seem to use batteries and cost thousands, and are for some unique scenario where you somehow can't just public charge. Still find them neat though.
I think they typically just tow you to a charging station, seems a lot easier/faster/cheaper given they already own tow trucks.
In my opinion the only cost effective battery to travel around with would be the one inside an existing EV, I just hope we get beyond household outlet speeds for V2L. Would be neat if a passing EV could rescue at 50kw or something fast.
GP meant that they avoid range anxiety by filling up (to 100%) when half the tank is remaining. That way if they get into a situation where they can't find a gas station nearby, they still have a half tank remaining to burn to find one.
Sure, you've effectively halved your normal-case range, but a refill of an ICE car is much less of a hit to your trip time than a recharge of an EV, and your best-case range (if you really need it) still remains the same.
That dismissal held some water until we hit a point where batteries were cheap enough, high capacity enough, and there were enough chargers. We’re still just at the beginning. In 10 years it’ll all be much better
The overwhelming majority of car trips are possible in even the budget EVs.
Road trips are a problem, but charging infrastructure will eventually handle it. During the cross over period you could rent an ICE car.
I don't think 1 road trip a year is enough to sway most people off the idea of an EV if they want one. It's only going to sway those who are already skeptical.
We’ve known for a while now that it was going to happen, right? And that all those countries that are committed to phasing out ICE cars by 2035 are being way too conservative. Isn’t it estimated that within a year or two, you’re going to have to pay a premium just to purchase an ICE car? And that premium is just going to keep growing as battery costs continue to shrink.
God I hope it's not that soon. There's like nowhere to charge an electric car near me.
They really need to work on charging infrastructure before they convince me to buy an electric car.
And the cost still needs to come way, way down. It seems like every electric car that has any decent range is a luxury car. I don't want a luxury car, I just want a super basic cheap car to get me from point a to point b.
The cost is a big issue for me still. I get it, but I paid $15k for a car 10 years ago - small hatchback that's been more than enough for my needs. The only options I have for EVs are either 2-3x the size (Rivian, F150, Model X) or 4-5x the cost (Tesla, Lucid, Polestar), or both. I barely drive a hundred miles in a week, and often less, but having range to do a 2-3 hour road trip is a big bonus.
You can't even get a quality EV with a shorter range though for less than 50-70k. I'm not even sure I've spent that much on my car over the last decade, including gas, insurance, repairs, and initial cost. Makes it hard to justify the upgrade.
GM is ending production of the Bolt later this year. They lost money on every one they sold. GM CEO recently said they won’t be able to make sub-40k EVs until the end of this decade “maybe longer”. GM is really struggling with the transition to EVs. Ford is struggling too but at least has a plan…
I suppose my curiosity there would be if it's a smart idea to buy a car model that's getting discontinued - would it be more difficult to get it repaired in the future? Will it be hard to get replacement parts later?
Sadly it's not anticipated to return to Australia;
One reason it's shame we'll never see the Bolt on Australian roads is because it actually stemmed from an electric vehicle concept designed here by GM’s Australian design centre and went into production in 2017.
Now, of course, with GM all-but out of Australia – apart from its ties to the shrunken GMSV outfit here – it's less likely than ever we'll ever see the Bolt models here.
Yea, there was a brief experiment with smaller stuff 5ish years ago, but that seems to have dried up hard and left us with 2-ton trucks and SUVs or high end luxury sedans being the only options in the US for EVs.
Seems like there may be 500evs coming back next year, so may look into that.
It's good that the Tesla charging port (NACS) is well on its way to becoming a cross-manufacturer standard in the US, so it may make more sense soon to have smaller EVs that don't need to have as large of a capacity to find the few Electrify America stations.
Yea, one of the current ironies is that the folks most able to use/charge an environmentally friendly car are the people living in environmentally unfriendly single-family homes. I've yet to see an apartment complex with more than 2-3 charging points for a building of hundreds of units, and plenty of older condo/apartment housing stock can't even easily retrofit chargers into the lot without spending tens of thousands of dollars on it, assuming your local power system supports it.
Having to drive five to ten miles and wait for most of an hour to charge is just a bad experience.
As number of electric cars increase converting parking lots to charging stations will increase as well. Though I think currently just like we have incentives for cars we need incentives for businesses to install chargers specially for chargers with solar backend to speed up the change as more chargers are built more people will move to electric as it gets more convenient.
China this year reached $10k car with BYD introducing its $10k cars with sodium ion batteries, these are not like previous cheap cars which were practically golf carts. With the prices of batteries and solar electricity falling 10%-12% a year on avg I think electric cars are going to take over a lot faster than people are expecting. Main reason being cost ice cars are almost 3 times as expensive to run today as an electric car already. It will be 5-8 times in 5-8 years.
I have friends who own EVs without access to home charging who charge at the grocery store once a week while shopping. The car is done charging before they’re done shopping for groceries.
The trick is to distribute chargers everywhere, because your car is going to be parked somewhere long enough to charge unless you’re a taxi or some other high utilization use case. Most will charge at home and or work, but some cannot.
Yea, it's what I'd have to do, I suppose, but it would mean driving to a grocery store 2-3 times further away, and my average trip to the store these days is only 10-20 minutes which I doubt is long enough for a full charge.
My office and home don't have chargers and probably won't for a while, so I'd essentially have to make a special trip out on the weekends to charge my car while I get lunch nearby or something.
For an L3 charger, 20 minutes is a lot. If you are 20%, it should get you to 70% or so, it takes longer to go from 70 to 100% given how battery charging works.
Indeed! I literally just charged a long range model y at a 250kw Supercharger from ~20% to ~80% in 17 minutes (per Teslascope) this morning after towing a ride on trencher back to the rental shop. Was done before I had finished using the rest room and getting a coffee at the grocery store.
Ya, I think people really underestimate how fast L3 charging is, especially for cars running on empty. But not all grocery stores have L3 chargers, and they can get really busy in holiday weekends. I plan my trips around these, but I wish they had more capacity.
Tried this while in Hawaii with a rental EV (with no charging at my hotel) and it did not work at all. Hawaii is one of the states with the most EV's per person and there's frequently chargers in places like malls and grocery stores (whole foods and target in particular). However, because there's so many EV's, all of these chargers are always in use, and there are usually lines or people waiting around to snag a spot as soon as it becomes available. It was a massive inconvenience and put me off of EVs for the near future: I'd either need an sfh or to be somewhere that figures out public charging when more than a tiny fraction of the total vehicles on the road are electric.
Yea, I feel like this is also likely an issue. You can't let yourself run too low because you can't for-sure get a charger quickly if you don't have one at home. I regularly run down to a sub 10-mile range and less than a half-gallon of gas in my ICE car now because I live by a couple gas stations, so I'm never more than a couple minutes away from being able to fill my car.
If I had to drive around for a while to find an open charging spot, I'd have to be more opportunistic about where/when I charge to stay ahead on it.
This. It's weird that EV owners do virtue signaling from their house and commute by car everyday, while condo people can't afford EV and don't commute by car. Slow EV charger at condo parking is what every govt should invest, instead of huge subsidy for vehicle.
I have no way to charge at home though, being in an apartment. I don't plan to change that any time soon. I am certainly not changing where I live just for my car when a gas car works fine.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who can't feasibly charge at home, like people who have to park on the street, or who rent their home and don't have access to anything but a 120V 15A outlet, assuming they have access to an outlet at all where they park their car.
Hmm, tell that to the millions of people living in the UK in terraced/town houses where the only charging option is to drag a cable over the public footpath to the road side....if they manage to get a parking space directly outside their home.
Most people don’t understand this. They are so used to going to gas stations that they think they will have to regularly go to charging stations. All that time wasted refueling simply goes away as your car gets “fueled up” while you sleep.
Do you have charging where you live? (Private garage or parking spot?) All you really need is charging where you live, and charging along highways. I have literally never gone to any of the chargers within 30 miles of my house.
Hardest part is for apartment buildings. No big incentive to install chargers for public use.
No, There is no charging anywhere "near" my home. I park in an uncovered open apartment parking lot.
Same thing for at work.
And checking the charging maps shows very few options anywhere near me and the few places that do only have a couple plugs. Would be annoying to find it's in use by the time I get there so I would have to wait for them and then me.
Is it feasible to have charging installed at your home or office? To reiterate what GP said, I basically never charge anywhere except at home (currently in a private carport that I got a charger installed at, previously in an apartment building with a single shared charger for ~50 spots, 4-5 EVs).
I don’t really see how I could convince my apartment or the company I work for to install chargers any time soon.
Sure maybe in years it will be common enough, but that’s my entire point. It doesn’t seem common at all around me yet, and I’m not going to buy an EV before charging is reasonably available.
Some jurisdictions are going to start mandating this for large car parks. The transition is definitely going to be very uneven; the closer you are to the centre of a big city with an air quality problem, the sooner it will arrive.
Hawaii already has this rule for what it's worth. The issue there is that they have so many EV's on the road that these chargers are always in use and have lines (and aren't really that fast to begin with). Having experienced that, I still wouldn't get an EV without a guaranteed place to charge at home.
Sure, but you're missing the point that you yourself just made: "are going to start", as in, they haven't yet. Most people are not going to buy an EV today without a reasonable charging solution, banking on the idea that situation will fix itself at some point in the hopefully-not-to-distant future.
Yeah, it's always been a chicken-and-egg transition problem. There's always a least convenient link in the chain. Hence all sorts of schemes to nudge people / subsidize early adopters so the cycle of "we don't need to solve charging because nobody has EVs"/"we can't have an EV because there's no charging" is broken.
Hence why I think it will expand outward from urban centres, motivated by e.g. ULEZ requirements.
Sounds like you live in the middle of nowhere. I live in what people consider the middle of no where and there are a number of Tesla charging stations near me.
I live 10 kilometers from the center of Stockholm in a dense suburb with a population of 55 000 (Stockholm is a small center core with lots and lots of suburbs).
There are perhaps 20 chargers in total in the entire suburb. Maybe 8 of them are fast chargers. There are another 20 in neighbouring suburbs.
And no, it's not an American suburb with single family homes. It's an European suburb with apartment complexes.
The charging infrastructure can improve literally overnight.
Around me there were very few places until McDonald's suddenly decided to have a charger at every drive-thru, and now I have as many chargers as McDonalds' around me.
The charging infrastructure will take years to improve. "Literally overnight" is a laughable exaggeration. Pretty sure even McDonald's can't install EV chargers at each drive-thru "literally overnight".
But they do. Commercial locations like malls already have power available, so it's not a large-scale infrastructure project, but a matter of digging a cable and hooking up a box.
Did a long road trip in a Kia EV6. (Houston to San Diego and back) Stops weren't always super convenient, but it wasn't that long ago that trip wasn't even possible.
Electric cars have a lot more problems than range.
Toxicity and pollution of producing the battery is an immediate one. And the fact it's junk in 5-6 years, obsoleting often the entire car (or requiring an extremely expensive replacement).
The fact BEV are much heavier and are wearing down the roads much faster.
And while ICE are of higher risk of a fire, an ICE fire seems like child's play compared to a BEV fire. This thing is impossible to put out and turns everything around to fine (and very toxic) dust (including, again, the road below).
The first major evacuation event that hits a primarily electric-vehicle city is going to sorely test that idea. Batteries need to hold about 3-4x the charge that they currently do to make that plausible without endangering thousands.
EVs are probably in a better position than most ICE vehicles in that situation.
You won't consume fuel while at a dead stop in the traffic jams. You'll have peak efficiency when moving at low speeds in the traffic jams. You'll already be charged up at home, while everyone else will be waiting in line at gas stations to fill up. Some people won't even be able to get gas, because the stations will run out in the rush.
Vehicles travel for hundreds of miles in the event of a major storm. Some places may be up to 6 weeks without power upon returning. So you drive your battery powered car back home, and now it's dead, and you have no way to recharge it. Guess what you're going to be relying on to get basic essentials given that FEMA vehicles are NOT coming to you to deliver food? Someone else's ICE.
So when it's 100 degrees and 90 percent humidity outside and your neighbors with the ICE vehicles have gone to the gas stations for refills to both their vehicles AND their generators so that they can run a portable AC unit, you're utterly out of luck with your electric paperweight. I suppose you have a shot if you still have working solar panels, but in the situations I mentioned... LOL. Even if the winds don't shred them, the debris will.
I don't follow. EVs will fare much better in a city or regional evacuation.
EVs should be more efficient when driving at low speed than an ICE car, and the regenerative braking in stop-and-go traffic will help reclaim some wasted energy.
EV's don't expend power running the motor when stopped in traffic. Most ICE cars out there do not auto shut off their engines when idling (it's fairly recent that many newer cars have that feature), and even those that do need to turn the engine back on after a few minutes in order to run the car's electronics.
For the people who can charge at home (admittedly, there are many who cannot), their cars will likely already be fully charged when the evacuation order comes down. And we already know what happens with ICE cars when there's excessive demand for fuel: hours-long waits at the pump, and gas stations that run out entirely.
When hurricans etc are about hit an area, Tesla sends out an update to over-ride charge limits and fully charge the cars pre-emptively, sends notifications and alerts on the app, and makes super charging on the route free.
The first few things you mention are great, but giving away fuel for free (whether it's gasoline or electricity) is an unsustainable marketing stunt, and won't last.
