I’ve driven exclusively electric cars at home for the last three years. While they certainly make me happier on a day-to-day basis, longer trips are much more stressful.
I look forward to the day of common 1000 volt architectures and megawatt charging.
Megawatt is so useless doe
Plugin hybrid is great for road trips. Ev only standard days and had for road trips
That said the latest Gen with 80% charging in like 10 minutes is crazy good. Once there are more chargers like that sounds it will make ev only just as quick as gas fill up
I managed to hit some v4 superchargers on my most recent trip, and 20 minutes from 14-78% was refreshing.
I take a 6 hour trip twice a month with my EV. It really isn’t bad because I know where to stop. But the first few times was stressful just because there isn’t the abundance of chargers.
But also there were two times I’ve had to wait for a charger and that really sucka.
I will say, for me, charging speeds are fast enough. Make everything 150+ kw and more of them at each location, and I think thats good enough for 90% of road trips.
I betcha that EV drivers pass by gas stations nearly every time they go on a drive, reminding them of the costs they no longer have to pay to keep their car moving.
It’s not even the cost, it’s never having to divert from my commute to put fuel in the car because I’ve been putting it off for a week and now it’s both critical and more inconvenient than ever.
And the smell.
That’s actually the one thing I kinda miss. I always liked the smell of a mechanic’s garage, and it made me feel more like a mechanic because my garage had that smell.
I just learnt this in the last few months.
We got a Rav4 Prime and I had only put gas in it for the first time for our normal drive two weeks ago.
What a pain in the ass and it was only a few minutes for the detour.
Around me avast majority of the chargers are at Sheetz. So you go from getting gas at Sheetz. To charging your car there. Same business and location.
I wouldn’t recommend an EV to anyone that can’t charge at home. Unfortunately, that excludes most people in apartments.
I can’t charge at home and it’s fine. Fifty minutes at a public charger twice a month isn’t that much of an inconvenience.
Do you not have electric outlets at home?
You can do both.
At the start, then they stop looking at the signs unless the gas prices have been in the news recently.
I see the lineups at fuel stations in Russia and think about how happy I am to have solar panels and an EV.
Until a road trip where they wish chargers were as obvious as gas stations. Enough exist to make the trip, but are not as common and are not on the beaten path so you need an app to find them.
When I make a road trip I’m often traveling on roads I’ve already looked up and I don’t wasn’t that voice yelling at me so I’m not using a GPS most of the time. We still use the gas car for road trips, but I often play the game “it had been 150 miles where is the nearest charger without using an app” I typically don’t find it the next 50. An app would find one in sure but that isn’t something I should need.
For short trips my EV passes them all and like you say I’m glad I’m not paying those prices. Until I pull into a charger because it is there and discover they have weird pricing systems. yesterday has would have been cheaper because I didn’t know I would have to move so fast and so I paid a minimum charge more half hour worth of charge was worth. (The group tour said meet here I thought it was to unload not drive into normally of limits areas.)
Rented an EV once on a vacation. First time ever with an EV. Intentionally to force myself to learn. I spent the nights on that trip researching chargers and looking for charge stations on my path next day that can do fast charging. Definitely there was a bit of range anxiety throughout and slightly inconvenienced. But it was agood learning experience. Would do it again 😀
Not a compelling argument for an EV of you have to spend that much effort planning the trip. There is freedom knowing your gas car is never more than 15 minutes from a refuel - it costs a lot more for that, but it is also liberty knowing you can safely change plans on a whim.
I just took a decent trip in mine. It was fine.
Trips are absolutely doable. However they are not as easy.
this is… an interesting argument. as an EV driver, you’re essentially saying ‘I want giant signs and chargers on every corner’ which is how you’d find them without needing a map. this seems unlikely to really ever happen because we simply have better options now, but I guess we’ll see.
I guess Im old because having charging stations like gas stations where you can simply pay with cash or card and no app sounds so, so much better than the current situation.
You guess right. Unfortunately many of you around to drag down improvements for the younger generations.
EDIT: I read this comment as only wanting cash payment, which I find unreasonable. App use should be optional or non-existent, I agree (but connected infrastructure is necessary, just not having an app for each charging network)
I don’t think charging stations requiring an app to use/pay is an improvement, but you do you I guess.
I’m dumb and read the comment to which I replied as only wanting paying with cash “with no card or app”… I’m all in for avoiding app fragmentation and just use one card (cash is a real stretch… pretty unreasonable).
UK has a law (or similar) that you have to be able to pay with contactless on new charger or older ones above 50kw
Infuriatingly, that law only applies to charger 8kW and up. A lot of chargers, especially smaller destination chargers, are 7.5kW.
im driving a ev for 2 years now and not even once used an app to pay. also i havent searched once for a charging station manually. (but that means that the car has internet access wich opens another can of worms. i really dislike that part since the car uses google services for that functionality and wish car manufacturers would allow alternative software for the infotainment system)
In a lot of European countries, rest stop signs (along the highways) announce what amenities are available at the rest stop. Those signs include symbols for things like toilets, restaurants, gas stations as well as charging stations. Here’s a German example. Pretty solid solution in my opinion.
In the USA most exits have those signs. Most places that target travelers will have a large sign some place. Gas stations though are always right on the end of the ramp so they don’t need a sign.
rest stops are a public good that won’t have gas though.
If you want fast charging (which you usually do during a Road Trip, and only during a road trip) you usually need to pre-condition the battery, so driving by signs alone limits a lot the vehicles capabilities.
Data from CDN chargers says fast charging is only used 10% of the time. It’s as if the media has overblown charging times and range anxiety, or something.
It’s essential for long distance viability of EVs, though. I agree on the overblown part, but it’s a real matter, especially for edge cases like towing a trailer and frequent travelers. It’s one of those things that is seldom used but actually essential. Exactly like… a car? :D
Furthermore: what is CDN?
Country code for Canadian.
EVs are the wrong vehicle for towing.
BC Hydro has been very good about adding high speed chargers on all the hwy routes and many gas stations also have added chargers. It keeps getting easier to use an EV although 90% of my charging is at home.
I’m old enough to remember when driving long distances in an ICE car had some of the same range anxiety due to low milage and small tanks, which is why there are abandoned gas stations all over the place. Imagine having as many charging stations around as there are, or were, gas stations?Meanwhile in Ontario…the feds put chargers in, Doug Ford rips them out.
You might have to worry about that, like at most, once a month, for going places where you wouldn’t already have been familiar with charging places including backups if one is closed.
I’m thinking of yearly trips. My in-laws live far enough away that it is a major trip to visit. Flying the family is expensive so often we make it a two or three day road trip. We try to see something weird everyday so it won’t be the same roads or stops. The general plan is head southwest until we hit i10, about 3 pm we book a hotel that we will arrive at around 6, and use GPS to ensure we do, but otherwise there is no reason for using any particular road.
I just use a better route planner and with ionna building out new good chargers I never worry on trips, I make the same 5 hours trip almost every 2 months and the only time I got worried was when my normal spot was filled and took a chance on a circle k charger and they don’t accept payment on the machine. Thankfully they are getting replaced.
Anecdotally, this is not really the case any more in Sweden. There’s a fully sufficient amount of fast chargers along the road for all the road trips I participate in on a regular enough basis.
Basically this is a problem that goes away as EVs continue to get adopted
I expect the same here, but we haven’t reached that yet. I have no doubt in twenty years finding gas will start to become a similar effort.
BC Hydro chargers are like Crown Corporation Petro Canada pumps but better.
EV owner. Can confirm.
gas cars: what companies push on us to suck in our gas and repair money
EVs: what customers really need to go from A to B.
The first year is great. Then it becomes the new normal and driving ICEs is only possible with physical discomfort.
I’m on vacation and rented a plug in hybrid. It’s been 4 days and my brain is still not quite grasping that I need to press the brake pedal to make it slow down.
Regenerative braking has to be the best innovation in driving in decades.
Public charging is still annoying as hell, though.
One pedal driving is the tits
What do you think will happen to all the gas stations when the ICE vehicles go away?
They just become convenience stores, which is all they are anyway.
Convenience stores are called that because you are already getting gas anyway, so they provide the convenience of grabbing a couple things while you’re stopped
The problem is the gas is what brings people into the convenience stores.
We’d need far fewer of them. Many will transition to also providing charging stations, then, as these can be placed pretty much everywhere without any complicated infrastructure (huge underground gas reservoirs), parking buildings will provide charging services.
99.999% of commuters can do so with a single over night charge. Many will be able to charge their cars at home.
Didn’t answer my question.
They did actually?
Me: what will happen to gas stations
Them: we don’t need them
How does that answer the question?
Um, read again, they didn’t say that.
Bruh your gaslighting efforts are unsuccessful, sorry
How so?
It was a love story until I got stranded twice at ungodly hours due to the 12v battery failing on my EV6.
ICE cars can and will strand you with mechanical issues just the same.
I’ve had serpentine belts fail on 3 old beaters, sure, but in each case I could drive for a while after that at least (enough to get home in two cases, one was too far from home but I got to where I needed to go and then got towed and fixed at friend’s workshop, I already had the belt in the car, just hadn’t changed it yet). But these were all nearly 20 year old cars. And could’ve easily been prevented by me not being too cheap to spend 100 euros on a new belt, tensioner and pulleys - however, each of those happened when I was way too broke to get a lease on a brand new EV, so 100 euros on a belt kit was also an expense I didn’t want without knowing first that I do indeed need it.
You bring up an excellent point highlighting why on-the-road repairability is important and cheaper
Probably. Never happened to me though. I had to call assistance for that battery which is a known issue in EV6. Which also happens to be a 3 or maybe 4 years old car - typically not within a normal failure range.
As a “known issue” all you have to do is put a 12v battery booster in your car for those emergencies. Or put your 12v battery on a trickle charger occasionally.
New cars are often sold with shitty tires and batteries to lower the purchase cost. 4 years is not unreasonable to replace them on a new car.
My Lexus hybrid has the original 12V battery now for 10 years.
My old Alfa Romeo Giulia ICE car did this once, luckily while I was at home. The car was a little over year old and overnight somehow flattened the battery. Nothing was left on, no open doors/boot open, just some kind of software glitch.
That’s called a parasitic drain, typically happens from cheap accessories like phone chargers.
I am sorry for you but the 12V battery failing in EVs with a huge high voltage battery slotted just next to it is pretty funny. I know it is relatively common and there are reasons, but c’mon 😆
That’s exactly why I was pissed. Apparently it’s also « just » a regulatory safety feature that the system must detect the 12v before switching to the main battery…
It was not fun being stranded after midnight in a boat ramp until 2am…
And for some reason, manufacturers still use lead acid 12V batteries. Tesla makes trash, but their 48V standard makes much more sense than 12V systems.
Must not have a GM without car play support. I made that mistake and constantly hate it. In not playing another subscription for my car.
That’s got nothing with it being an EV though. Buy a gas GM and you still get no car play.
Seems like GM is the actual problem
Having money does tend to do that.
