The one time I rented in Phoenix last year I had to wait twice for an empty spot. Where my mother in law lives has few quick charging stations around.
Huh. I found it much more annoying when I had the EV rental than my usual ICE car. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to it, but I’ve never had any anxiety driving my ICE (you have plenty of gas left even when it hits zero), but I was always aware of the EV, particularly because Phoenix doesn’t seem to quite have the infrastructure as good as elsewhere. At least not the southern area (Sun Lakes/Chandler.)
That said, I loved driving the EV. The overall experience was better, though I did kind of miss my manual shift.
I could do that in my ICE; I just choose not to. I can fill my tank in 4 mins & don’t need to actively do anything more than plug in & remove at the end at most gas stations (unless the handle holder is missing/broken). If I’m on a road trip; typically some of that four minutes is spent removing splattered bug guts from the windshield & then I can check email for the remaining minute or two. I only need to do that every 300ish miles, which is 5-6 hrs of driving. Once the car is good then it’s inside for a bio &/or human fuel, if desired & then back into the car & on my way
At highway speeds most of the noise is from wind & tires; a more expensive car should have a quieter cabin. Of course that all goes out the window (heh) if one chooses fresh air & having the windows/sunroof opened, or even better, with the top down!
It’s also not uncommon for me, for at least part of a trip, to choose no tolls & no highways for routing. It adds time to my trip but it’s much more fun driving (interstate driving is such a soul-sucking, boring experience; it’s getting somewhere but it sure isn’t driving - give me twisties, damnit!) & much more scenic driving, too. I might pull over on the side of the road to get a picture of something (old barns, the shortest covered bridge in the US, etc.) but I’m not doing anything other than getting a cool rural photo; no inputs or outputs to/from the body. It’s not uncommon to not have any cell service on these routes & not even see a store for 45 mins or an hour.
I do one late summer trip every year, it would be about 3 hrs straight thru on the interstate. I take the fun route & essentially do the longer two sides of a triangle with some interstate at the beginning & the end. The way I go, the whole ride takes me 5-6 hrs but I arrive with an ear-to-ear grin because my route takes me thru roads like the above link.
My brother bought a Model S in 2015.* Some years ago, 2017 or '18, coming back to Phoenix at the end of a three-day holiday he had to wait over an hour at Quartzite. I’m guessing they put in enough for such surge events.
* I’ve bought him a magnet to stick on the back: I bought this when he was still the cool space guy.
It goes beyond even that. Years ago, I explored ways to make my most frequent trip avoiding the freeway, which adds at most twenty miles (and usually an hour or two) to a shy of 200 mile route. In my Focus, I found I was averaging over 35mpg, which was quite good for that car.
Recently, I have had to use the freeway a few times, and not only is it a tedious soul-suck, but it is also annoyingly competitve. The smaller roads I take are mostly lightly used, while the freeway is full of vehicles which all seem to be jockeying for position. It is worst in wet weather, where anyone who passes me feels compelled to get over in front of me with a car-length gap, just to insure that I get their roostertail. And, do not get me started on the asshole semis, of whom I see few on the smaller roads.
No but there was a supercharger station that is always full by the airport. Fortunately there was another close for me to go to. It is a major problem in Denver when temperatures plummet and people need to recharge to get home.
I’ve read that some super charger stations will jack up the rates over 80% if there’s a queue.
There were recent instances of individuals plonking down their enormous coal-rollers at charging stations to block access to them, presumably because “Look at how minimally-endowed I am!” Fortunately, that practice does not seem to be all the rage. Or even very much at all.
yes, because Teslas and Ev’s are still new, expensive, and nerdy…so they are owned by wealthier, generally polite, nerdy people. But among non-nerdy people, road rage incidents happen. As EV’s become more common,-- and the typical drivers may be less wealthy, used-car owners, and less-polite, and less-nerdy --I wonder if we will start to see road-rage-style fights (and shootings) over charging spots?
So sometimes, say, after a long day at work, you may have to wait an hour in the snow before starting your commute home? That’s beyond my tolerance for frustration. Even if that only happens couple times a year, it would be too much for me.
(Yes, I realize that I cherry-picked a few isolated examples…a one-hour wait in Pheonix back in 2018, the airport in Denver–But still, it seems to me that “time-anxiety” is a legitimate issue which is not yet solved.). Most people want to get in their car and drive immediately, not worry about whether they might have to wait.
Sounds like my youth, as well.
I no longer trust the handle holders after 2 bad experiences.
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in which it didn’t detect the tank’s fullness and caused some spillage on the ground, nearly a gallon’s worth, before I could manually turn off the holder.
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The other in which the holder was loose and locked itself on, and I could not force it to turn off until halfway through my refill.
Hopefully, in scenario 2, even if I had not been able to turn it off until the end of the fill, it would have been able to turn itself off. But if you had combined the worst parts of Scenarios 1 and 2, you would have a locked pump holder that wouldn’t shut itself off. Nowadays, I never engage it.
Wow. In all my many years of driving and many many stops to pump gas, I’ve never encountered either of those situations. Knock wood?
The fact we grew up 1 year & ~20 miles apart might have something to do w that. 
Next time I’m out there where you are we oughta have a micro-dopefest.
If that ever happens, go back to the pump and move the lever where the nozzle / handle stows. You know, the one you had to turn on to pump gas in the first place.
Seconding this.
I’ve had both of these happen as well. #1 caused an environmental nightmare. #2 I corrected before it caused a spill (I notified the clerk of the problems…not sure they did anything about it).
An environmental nightmare is the Exxon Valdez spewing tens of thousands of tons of crude onto pristine coastlines.
A gas pump that sprays a truly 1-in-1000 malfunction of a couple quarts onto concrete in suburbia is not a nightmare; it’s a rounding error.
Sorry it wasn’t obvious, but I’ll add a /hyperbole tag in the future similar to the /sarcasm tag.
Suzuki Samurai want you to hold it’s beer.
I rolled one back in the 80’s. Got out, me and a friend rolled it back over and drove it home.
Heh, my friend barreled her Samurai into my parent’s cul-de-sac on two wheels just about every morning (we could see her enter from our breakfast table). That girl seemed to have a supernatural ability to keep that thing on the edge of rolling over, but still upright. She probably should have been a rally driver.
My car charges at about 20 miles/hour on level 2, or about 4 miles/hour on regular 110 (level 1) – other makes tend to be faster than mine. If I could plug in at or near my workplace, half of a long day’s work would give me about 100 miles on level 2, which should be enough to handle getting home. If I could only plug into a 110 outlet, a full day’s work would still gain me 30 or 40 miles. Hopefully, workplaces will start to offer charging to their EV driving employees, which will greatly reduce the congestion at commercial chargers, and probably cost the EV owner somewhat less as well.
Ok at least that one had a minimart. The one in San Ardo is in dirt lot next to a closed down shop that sells olive oil. On the plus side there’s a nice bathroom where you get the door code from the Tesla app.
In the new update, which I obviously don’t have, you can plan the charging stops for least time, fewest stops or choose stops with amenities.