Of course, people don’t want to buy an electric vehicle until there is charging infrastructure where they need it, but of course the companies that provide the charging infrastructure don’t want to install it until there is a sufficient customer base to justify the expense. To its credit, Tesla poured a lot of money into its supercharger network to make prospective customers feel that they would be able to charge where they need to. Beyond that, this is something where government can help to jump start the industry. (And to those who say the government shouldn’t be encouraging or subsidizing business, there is a long history of that.)
AIUI, Amtrak’s trains are contracted for a specific “window” of time on the track where they get priority, said window being usable by a train running on time or at least no more than 15 minutes behind schedule.
So if an Amtrak train is running on time, it can continue doing so - but if some operational issue occurs to make it fifteen minutes late pulling out of a station, the railroad owning the tracks can offer it nothing better than “best effort” scheduling, which may put it well down the list of the railroad’s priorities
Sometimes conductors have to make tough decisions, like whether to wait half an hour to fix a toilet in a sleeper car when doing so could mean cascading delays getting to the end of the line half a day late.
I’m picturing the Gadsden flag rewritten as “Don’t inconvenience me!”.
We own an EV and live in a fairly “inconvenient” location for one in the US. The nearest interstate is about 1.5 hours away and consequently we travel a lot on state highways that don’t have fast chargers. However, we’ve found how to mostly make it work for us since we do travel quite a bit into the mountains. We are going to a cabin up in the snowy mountains this weekend and will stay long enough to destination charge at 120V (there are no higher powered chargers along the way). Other trips have a lvl 3 charger along the way when we cross the interstate and we get enough to make sure we can make it back. We also do a trip of around 400 miles each way, several times a year, and it does take 30-45 minutes longer than using an ICE, but that is worth it to us (we do most of it on said interstate). It gives us time to walk the dog, eat lunch, get coffee, etc.
The day-to-day convenience of never going to a gas station is a very nice bonus.
Yes, we did this very recently. Brought in 200 service, replaced the panel, added a dedicated socket (no charger) for level 2 service, and otherwise brought up to code. Total cost was about $8k in Colorado Springs with a reputable service (had quotes ranging from $6k to $12k+). We priced it out before buying the cars, but due to delays and near-imminent death of car, we ended up going for the PHEV route. And overnight level 1 charging covers all our needs for daily use.
ANYWAY, we have dozens of threads on why EVs are/are not good matches (at least 2-3 off the top of my head), but this thread is more about the changing market for EVs in the USA. So some minor good news, but FSM only knows how the administration is going to continue to ignore the courts or how the appeals will play out:
The administration argued it was but a temporary pause, which it later ended after the judge earlier issued a preliminary injunction and the agency issued new guidance.
But Lin said the 2021 law never contemplated even temporary pauses in funding for the construction of EV infrastructure.
“In short, Defendants defied the will of Congress by withholding funds in a manner not contemplated by the IIJA,” she wrote.
Relevant to the thread:
Ford announced today a new generation of EVs, which are intended to be lower-priced than many current EVs. The range is being developed off of a new platform (“UEV”), which was designed as EVs from the ground up, rather than being adapted from ICE vehicle designs.
The first of this line will be a midsized EV pickup, which is being touted as having a longer range (50 more miles) than current EV pickups, in part because it’s lighter and more aerodynamic.
They are planning to have the available for sale in 2027, and are shooting for a sticker price of $30,000.
We didn’t have to wait long… a couple weeks later, Congress rescinded $500 million that was supposed to go EV chargers:
This clawback is tied to how much each state has already spent on EV chargers, so the states that were slower to use that money lost even more money this time around, further entrenching the urban-rural and red-blue gaps.
Barely any of it was ever spent to begin with: Congress green-lighted billions for EV chargers. Four years later, only 2% is spent. - E&E News by POLITICO
No chance it survives meaningfully intact over the next few years.
I saw something about that new electric pick-up truck from Ford. And honestly, the failure of their F-150 Lightning surprised me. They sell a huge number of conventional ICE F-series trucks so if only a small fraction of those customers chose the electric version, they would have had a success. And I assume there’s a vast amount of accessories and add-ons available for the F-150, so all of that would have worked for the electric version. And wouldn’t the customers be able to plug in tools like saws and such into the bed?
Ford has lost billions on their EVs so far: Ford's EV shakeup leads to its worst quarterly loss since 2008
The F-150 may return in the future as a EREV, but the BEV version is dead.
Hopefully their new UEV platform will survive to see the light of day…
Directly on point to this thread, new EV sales are down, but used EV sales are up. According to this article the used market for EVs is healthy.
January’s new EV sales were down 30% from January, 2025, and down 20% from December, 2025. However, January’s used EV sales are up 20% over January, 2025, and 20% over December, 2025.
Used EVs are hitting the market as they come off lease, and average listing price for used EVs and ICE+[1] are near parity, at each about $35,000.
I’m not sure what “ICE+” means. ↩︎
My wife and I are like @puzzlegal. But we will take much longer trips. 10-12 hours in the car. Our stops are very quick. Usuall - bathroom, snacks, change driver.
Long stops really add up when you’re driving 1000 miles.
Add “pump gas” to those stops, and how long would you say you’re stopped out of every 200 miles?
In an EV, under ideal conditions, it’d be about 20 minutes. That’s about 1 hour and 40 minutes for 1,000 miles of driving–but 1,000 miles is more than 15 hours of driving. That doesn’t sound at all unreasonable to me, but obviously and literally YMMV.
I have to say, i hate road trips. But i took one recently with friends, and they stopped a lot. To pee, to buy coffee, to eat lunch. Way more and for longer than i normally would have. And it made the trip a lot less unpleasant.
I can’t speak to all segments of the population, but to my wife and I, the tax credit aspect is the deciding factor.
We’re both in our mid-70s and should be good candidates for buying an EV. We try to be environmentally conscious. We’re both retired and drive mostly short trips around town. I doubt we would need to charge on the road more than a few times a year. We live in a single-family dwelling with a carport and it would be fairly easy for us to install a charger. (Our electrical service is just inside the house from the carport.) At present, we have two cars (both 4-cylinder ICE over 8 years old) and it seems likely that my wife will soon reduce her driving to the point that we will only need one.
But we are on a retirement budget, of course, and our current cars are long-past fully paid for. Our monthly fuel expenses are so low that I can’t imagine that we would see any significant savings from reducing them…certainly not enough to justify investing in even a used EV. (I literally fuel my car only 4 or 5 times a year. In fact, I probably spend as much on registration, inspection, and property tax each year as I do on fuel.) We have driven a neighbor’s Tesla and I have to tell you that my wife is very uncomfortable with the touchscreen. Face it…we’re old and a bit shaky with anything other than knobs and switches.
Eventually, I suppose, we will have to either stop driving or buy another car. And that car may well be an EV. But it makes no sense for us to do that now, especially if we don’t get significant savings through tax breaks, rebates, or subsidies. It’s not even within our consideration if one of our cars is stolen or wrecked. Much, much easier and cheaper to find a comparable replacement ICE that will meet our needs.
You’re just a few years late or a few years too old. Your needs are collapsing just as your wants are too. By the time you’re ready for another car, you probably won’t want another car, and certainly not a brand new one with significantly novel-to-you features. And there’s no dishonor in any of that.
I’m just younger enough (67) that I can see getting an EV or two before I’m done with driving myself around. I also replace cars every ~3-5 years, not 10-12. But I also think that if I don’t get one soon, I may never. I don’t know when my patience for automotive novelty will run out, but it’s coming.
I’ve timed my stops, and if I just need gas, it’s 5 minutes or less for the entire process. A bio break would only add another minute or so although I haven’t timed it. I’m not sure how much buying snacks would add, but I don’t always have to do that.
I also don’t like stopping for a long time. I don’t mind stopping many times when with other people, but I am not one to take a lot of long breaks. Sitting down to a meal at a restaurant just isn’t refreshing to me.
With regards to the topic at hand, what is refreshing to me is stopping at a pleasant interstate rest stop for a maximum of 10 minutes to use the restroom and stretch my legs in a park like atmosphere and perhaps check my phone and plan my trip. If there were chargers there, then on those days where I had planned to only do 300 or so miles for the day, that could make the difference between having to make an extra long stop before the night versus just topping up during the middle of the day. On the plus side, I do see a lot of chargers at hotels and some even at rest stops (but rarely.) On the down side, these political events mean that there probably won’t be more chargers at rest stops in the future (whether there will be at hotels, who knows.)
And it makes it a lot longer. I’m not criticising, we all have our ways.
My wife likes long road trips. I’m sick and tired of them. But XM helps. We used to do books ‘on tape’ that helped lot.
My Wife used to be an IronMan. So instead of shipping her bike, and all her gear, we would drive thousands of miles for these races.
Flying sucks, but so does being stuck in a car for ~20 hours.
That’s right on the money. Ten years ago…good chance.
Another factor I didn’t mention is that we both need a higher seat to enter and exit a car comfortably. No more up and down if we can avoid it. This tends to push us to small SUVs, which are the more expensive EVs. (Getting in and out of the Tesla was not something we want to do all the time.) My (old) RAV4 is perfect, but we sure can’t afford a newer EV or hybrid one.
Eh, depends where you are. I can easily take a road trip generally maintaining 80 without ever worrying about the cops, probably even 85. A 12.5 hour drive plus stops is a long day, but doable, especially in the summer. But made doable by making shorter stops and putting miles down.
Oh I hear that! I find that my tendency to hold on to cars well beyond when paid off has the paradoxical effect of making me now face a greater learning curve every time (1999 vs 2009, oh look a tire sensor; 2018 vs 2026, Jeebus, where’s everything???)
They really ought to rename those to GAVs = Geezer Access Vehicles.
I’m still spry enough to drive a low-ish sports car. But I have friends just a couple years older who will not ride with me because climbing in and out of my car is too hard. So when we get together they drive their GAV and I have a built-in designated driver.
Again no dishonor in any of that; I’ll have a GAV too some day.