I’ll take my 2021 EV when I’m by myself, and suffer the suckage that is charging. Not only will it be 45 minutes charging, but 10 minutes each way out of my way to get to the yucky Walmart that has fast charger. Call it an hour per charge.
I’ll take my 2022 ICE when I’m with my family, and spend at most 4 minutes filling the tank, and it will be 15 seconds from the interchange.
My EV is the best car I’ve ever owned. It’s a Mustang Mach E, and I love it. Thank the old gods most of its use is local instead of long distance, though, because long distance travel sucks. Only idiots sugarcoat the issues, and charging on the road is an issue.
I love my Mach E for its use cases. I love my Expedition for its use cases. Yes, my ICE is newer than my EV, and I think that means something.
If I owned a restaurant near a freeway in rural America, I would have a Tesla and a generic charger in my parking lot. Come in and eat while you charge.
Long distance travel sucks, and charging on the road is an issue, for non-Tesla EVs. Ford and other manufacturers have had years to build a charging network and failed to do so.
earlier on, gasoline was sold mostly in pharmacies
… and on a tangent a couple of years ago I visited a smallish island just 20 miles off the pacific coast … and the driver did a stop at a hardware store and came back with a 2 liter “Coca Cola” PET bottle full of gas to top up … so this is still a thing
another analogy … some of you will recall the 90ies internet … when you had to watch how a .jpeg would load slowly on a webpage…
td;dr: infrastructure grows seamlessly with demand (if demand is backed by $$$)
hell, i thought - if it takes 10-20 sec. to transfer a 60kb jpeg how could they ever transfer those ridiculously huge 64kbp .mp3 files in real time … if people start doing that, they wil bog down the interwebs for all the others …let alone video which is another 100 or 1000 times more data to be shuffled around …
yet here we are with millions of people streaming HD/60 and 4K content in real time all over the planet
this (Nevada!) is the perfece usage case for having some 10 pv panels on your roof and be your own Exxon/Shel/Citgo … or what did I miss?
I have no practical experience, but my feeling has always been EV vehicles are best for local driving because of all the reasons you’ve stated. There are too many variables, and one is too far from home to take risks.
There are new variables, but they are on a similar class as the ones for ICE cars. The difference is that you’re not used to the new variables. Finding a charger can be an issue, but there are solutions and people seem to take long trips in EVs all the time.
But I’d suggest that for everyone, including both you and me, it’s essential to always tack the word “yet” onto the back of one’s thinking about EVs.
If we leave that word out, we tend to ossify our thinking and will become one of those very late adopters whining all the way about what’s lost while giving no value to what’s gained. And the older we each get, the stronger that human tendency becomes.
“Yet” is a very powerful word.
Perhaps interestingly, I’m going through an EV feasibility transition myself just now.
We live a mostly urban/suburban short-trip life. 0-20 miles is a typical day for us. When I do work, it’s 45 miles one-way to my job where I leave the car overnight before returning; I also retire in just a few months and that drive will be a thing of the past. 100 miles / day probably covers 360 days of our year, and 200 miles/day covers the other 5. Our region of the country has decent EV adoption, and the public charging infrastructure is OK-ish today and getting better daily.
We are now about to move from an older condo with no realistic expectation of EV charger retrofit, to a new complex with EV charging available, albeit shared. The sudden existence of home charging where there was no hope before is a game-changer. We both have fairly new ICEs, but I expect our next car will be some flavor of EV.
You don’t need to be rich; many households, particularly those with more than one driver, have multiple vehicles. So you too can have both an ICE vehicle and an EV.
In fact, the really rich don’t seem to be the ones most heavily adopting EVs. In my observation, the upper middle class seems to be the ones who are doing EVs more than any other.
People keep talking about 45 minute stops to charge. That is the worst case scenario, and is not going to be typical. From my last EV road trip I’ve listed the actual lengths of time I was charging and the percentage of fill for each charge. This is in a Tesla, at Tesla superchargers, so the current best case scenario for road trip charging.
TL;DR: If you’re going for maximum time efficiency, charging stops will be less than 15 minutes, and often 5-10 minutes.
A few important things to keep in mind:
The * represent destination charging.
Look at the “Start %” on the next line to see how much extra time was spent charging that was not necessary. Any time the next “Start %” is over 20, then extra time was spent charging where more efficient travelers would have been back on the road. For example, there is no car related reason #4 needed to be a 32 minute stop—it was people that made it a long stop.
Unlike a gas car, there is no good reason to charge until full, unless maximum range is needed, such as charge #6.
Charge speed is not linear, so the lowest times are achieved by driving to as low of a percent as you’re comfortable, and then charging only as much as necessary to get to the next charger. Charges 7, 11, and 15 are good examples of this. Those are charges where the car went from a low charge, to just the amount needed to make the next stop, with a 20% cushion.
This is true. We have a Tesla and non-Tesla EV. While both work for road trips, the Tesla is far and away the better choice. It’s effortless. (and we bought just in time for the “free supercharging for life” promotion)
We take very few trips over 200 miles, but we’ve taken a few that we wouldn’t have in an ICE vesicle, just because EV road trips are so enjoyable.
And it’s possible (whether you’re aware of it or not) that you’ve been subtly influenced by the anti-EV propaganda than is incessantly being put about. If you do get more personal experience you’ll probably be less scared
