I don’t hit the pedal hard except when necessary for merging, etc. Nonetheless, range isn’t an issue 99% of the time, as I return to my garage at the end of the day with significantly more than 100 miles of range left in the tank.
I agree that range isn’t an issue for EV owners. Range is still very much an issue for EV potential buyers, EV marketers, and especially EV naysayers. And for the for-profit FUD-sprayers in Reactionary Wacko media. I am not suggesting range should be a concern for those folks, just that the FUD is thick enough that it is an issue. Despite all the fine folks such as yourself telling anyone who will listen that no, range really isn’t an issue.
So the engineers are encouraged by the marketers to give the cars the best possible range. Which ISTM include providing / encouraging a granny mode so the car can be tested that way.
I drive a 700hp ICE. Gas mileage is … poor. One whose engine shuts off at traffic lights to save fuel. Yeah right. Like I or anyone else buying one of these beasts gives a shit about that. It’s there so marketing can claim a smidgen more greenery and the EPA numbers look slightly better.
Yes, you can switch that feature off. But it’s not hidden deep in the computer UI menus like most features; it’s a physical button in an area of high value panel real estate with a big LED on it. One that, paradoxically, is lit up when the feature is off and is dark when the feature is on. IOW it’s a reminder that glares at you 24/7: “I’m lit up and that means you’re a profligate wastrel of our precious marketing cover story and I (car) hate you (driver) for that.”
Bastards.
To be fair, it’s annoying when it’s really hot and you lose the AC every time you’re at a red light. When I had my hybrid, on hot days, I was in the habit of coming to a stop and then tapping the gas (with a foot still on the brake) so the engine and AC would start back up.
At least with newer Priuses the AC compressor is electric and can run while the car is stopped.
Eventually the ICE will start up if the battery gets too low.
My prius does everything I want except tow (at some point I will switch from tent to small trailer camping) – hopefully there will be a Corolla Cross plug in hybrid (or similar vehicle) by then.
Brian
Car and Driver lurvs them the Cadillac CT-5V Blackwing, but they were seeing an observed 12 mpg in spirited road driving (with a 20 gallon tank I might add) and 4mpg!!! on the track. Hitting the pedal-formerly-known-as-“loud” takes energy! Especially in a forced-induction engine.
My 2015 Prius is like that … for AC. I don’t think it’s like that for heat. In fact, even if the battery is 80% full, the point where it normally switches over to electric driving if your speed is low enough, if the heat is on, it will sometimes keep the motor on yet continue to charge the battery until it is completely full.
plus, (just to add to your misery 
)…
… this feature prob. cost you $2k
ducks-and-runs
There’s a lot of that in high end cars. Don’t look to close; that sound you hear behind you is your wallet curling up into the fetal position and crying.
Anecdote - Mid 1990’s, 3 kids under 5. I had to semi-bully my wife into paying whatever the (easily affordable) cost was to get remote locks on the new minivan. “Why would I want that? It’s a waste of money!” A couple of daycare drop-offs and she loved it.
Interesting and ongoing thread on reddit about OP’s kid getting trapped in a Mach-E earlier today.
ETA; TLDR: He had AAA and a Ford Tech come out and still ended up having to break the window.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachE/comments/1hss7c6/mach_e_completely_disabled_with_child_trapped/
Down in the replies folks are saying there’s no mechanical way to open the door on the Mach-E. My Bolt EV has electric door locks but mechanical latches (except the hatch in the back). If need be you can pry a cover off of an exterior lock on the front doors and open it with a key pulled out of the fob.
The Bolt owners message board I peruse says not to do it often as the tabs that hold the cover on are not robust. I had to use the mechanical key as part of the procedure to program the spare fob I bought. The car came with only one.
As far as I know, no, there’s no mechanical way to get into this car with a dead battery. In fact, it doesn’t even come with a physical key. What they have is a body panel that pops out to reveal two wire terminals. And instead of a car key inside the fob, it’s a key blank you can use to pry the cover off. You put 12v on the terminals and it pops the frunk, with the frunk open you can access the 12v battery. Put 12v on those terminals and you should be able to unlock the doors.
But, as we saw, if there’s more going on than just a dead battery, you’re in trouble. Hopefully Ford will address this soon. They need to put a physical lock cylinder on the car somewhere. Even if it’s just on the passenger door or the hatch, just something so you can get into the car.
Someone in the comments mentioned that at least one step in the right direction, not that it would’ve helped here, would be to remove the terminals that you can use to pop the frunk and replace them with a cable that you can pull. That way you can keep a jump pack in the frunk, but still be able to access it.
I feel like if they used a latch that could also operate at 5v, people could use a USB power source to do it as well. However, that would mean carrying around some sort of USB breakout cable, and who’s going to carry that around given that they’ll probably never use it.
I plan on getting an electric vehicle when it doesn’t contain a battery. The perfect electrical vehicle would contain electric motors and a large induction coil. All the roadways would supply the electricity buried just under the pavement. The car would pick up whatever energy it needs as it passes over the pavement. I lived off-grid for many years with solar panels and grew to passionately dislike batteries.
Detroit has some electrified roads which can “charge up” the batteries of EV cars which drive by. I’m old but very patient… I’ll wait until the road can directly power the entire vehicle without involving batteries at all. Such a system would actually deserve to be named after Nikola Tesla.
Lol, i had that problem (without worrying about human safety) with my Ford c-max. Did i mention i got rid of it because it was buggy? Anyway, it died one day on a random suburban road. I was still eligible for free technical service from Ford, so i called, and they sent a tech out. He said, “can you open the hatchback for me?” I replied, “no.” He looked at me, annoyed, and said, “i need to get in there, that’s where the main battery is.” I replied, “i know that, but no, i can’t open that door. There’s no way to open it without power.”
He eventually got my car to work again, i don’t remember what he did. Probably, he opened the hood and charged the 12v battery so we could open the hatch.
It left me very suspicious of innovations like replacing the rear window with a screen. I like fail-safes.
So you’re not just hoping the government installs, maintains and powers a network of underground induction coils that allow you to drive more or less normally. Meaning all lanes, including parking lanes, of every road. But also every private landowner does the same. Every business parking lot, every residential driveway, every parking garage etc.
Even if all that could be done, what happens when there’s a power outage? What happens when a pothole exposes these high voltage wires just under the surface?
I’ll give you that one and I won’t be surprised if charging (stationary) EVs via induction starts showing up in the consumer market in the next decade or so. That could certainly pave the way for more induction charging roads, but I’d be surprised if you’d ever be able to drive an entirely electric car without a method for storing the power on board.
At best, maybe either an ICE/induction or Battery/induction hybrid.
Related question: Would water or a thick layer of ice/snow/slush cause any problems for a system like this? Even just on the level of at home induction charging?
What I am hoping for is that Nikola Tesla’s vision of world-wide, distribution, of wireless power did not die with him. The problems you rightly imagine are just the sort of details that rare talented men like Elon Musk are so good at working through and eliminating. Watching and re-watching videos of his SpaceX Falcon 9 making a vertical landing… convinced me that he can design anything to work under all sorts of circumstances.
The mere fact some difficult things can be done does not mean any impossible thing can be done. You will be dead for centuries before there are meaningful roads built with buried power supplies in them.
Worldwide wireless distribution of meaningful quantities of electrical power is not really possible. Tesla, while brilliant, was not universally correct about everything. As with many innovators, many of the ideas he came up with after age ~35 were not so great and almost none of the ones after age ~45. You can discount more or less anything new he worked on after the turn of the 20th century.
Wireless power distribution on that scale is one of those ideas that we now know is not feasible. Actually we knew that within his lifetime.
While it may be possible to supplement EV charging via some sort of built-in road network, basic engineering and safety practices would strongly recommend at least some sort of battery for off-grid use. Otherwise, it becomes the same question of why we inflate rubber tires to use on hard roads instead of inflating rubber roads and using hard tires.
I know that I would want the safety of a battery in my EV even if most of my charging came from the road. That’s just common sense. It’s the same reason I used to keep a gallon of emergency fuel in my trunk when I had an ICE.
It didn’t die with him, because it never had any life. Wireless transmission of power has never been practical, and never can be practical. The only ways to do it are near-field, which means that the separation between the antennas has to be very small compared to the sizes of both antennas, or radiation, which means that, with the power required, you’d kill anything that got in the beam.
Now, it is possible to make near-field power supplies, but there’s very little advantage to them over wired power. If you really want electrified roads, it’d be much simpler to do them via overhead power lines, with a contact bar going up from the vehicle to them (the way we currently do electric trains).
Of course, even if we did have electrified roads, you’d still need a battery, because you’ll sometimes need to go at least a little way off road. You could get away with a much smaller battery, but you’d still need something.
… and while we are destroying all existing roads to put the coils in there, we could also put solar into the new road, to … you know … produce the energy for the coils …
if there is one thing good about this “higher inflation / higher interest rates” situation - is the fact that all those stupid startup-ideas got flushed out pretty soon …
→ solar roadways …