5 years is a very long time in this field right now. 3 years ago, Aging Wheels made a video about how Tesla Superchargers were the only real option for a road trip. A few months ago, they released a video where they avoided superchargers because they were outdated technology.

I just checked, and it’s very doable on most EVs. There aren’t a lot of good options from Amarillo to Wichita Falls, but most can cross that gap anyway.

Road trips are certainly a weak point for EVs. If you go on more than 3 or 4 per year, EVs are not (and probably won’t be for a while) a good option.

But I do at least see it getting better in the next future. All of the pieces are there, just not in one place. When taking a long trip, you’re already supposed to stop every 2 hours to stand up and walk around for a bit. You or your passengers probably also need to use the restroom. Every 2-3 of these, you need to stop for food.

Currently, it’s a PITA to link these with fast charging. You should be able to pull into a truck stop (etc), easily and conveniently, and plug in while you do the rest. Except the fast chargers aren’t usually at truck stops, and apps like ABRP don’t have an option to set stops by time.

If this all lined up, and you have a car with reasonably fast charging (like the Ioniq 5), I don’t think you’d have to wait on charging very much at all.

To own an EV, you basically have to be able to AC charge at home or at work. The good news is that all of the new 5-over-1 apartment buildings (at left around here) are being built with a handful of chargers right from the beginning. As they become more popular, it’s pretty easy to add more.

But you can also get creative. My local chain grocery store has level 2 chargers in the parking lot. These don’t make much sense to use while shopping, but they’re convenient enough for all of the older apartments nearby. Most universities have AC chargers, but it’s probably not convenient and you’d have to move your car the next day.

What state(s) would that be? I just checked PlugShare, and it shows plenty of fast charging stations even through rural states like Kansas and Montana.

I guess Alaska would count, but even that’s pretty well covered from Anchorage to Fairbanks

If you’re looking at fast charging (1 hour or less) on a regular basis, you’re doing it wrong. The vast majority of charging should happen while the car is already parked, using level 2 AC charging. This means when you park at home, with, etc, you take just a few seconds to connect a charger, then walk away. When you come back ~8 hours later, you take a few seconds to unplug before leaving. This approach, believe it or not, means I spend less time dealing with fuel than if I had a gas car.

Plus, AC charging is much cheaper, and more reliable. These chargers are very simple devices, that just do a bit of monitoring and negotiation. They deliver raw 240v to the car, which has its own AC-DC converter.

DC fast charging is much more expensive - $14 for a full DC charge is very unlikely. That’s because DCFC stations are very big, complex installations. As such, they also have parts fail on a regular basis. DCFC is often more expensive than gas, but again should only be used on rare occasions.

As for batteries failing, it’s about as often as a gas engine fails. IOW, it’s extremely rare until the car is EOL anyway. Battery degradation is typically 85-90% health remaining at 100k miles.

Reduced maintenance, yes. But I haven’t (yet) found an independent mechanic that can work on my Bolt, so the little maintenance I need has to be done at the dealer.

I still took that deal, but it has room for improvement.

Countless movies/TV shows show people drinking/getting drunk. Typically, it’s water with food coloring (or similar). When someone is shown eating, the scene cuts and they spit it out.

This depends a lot more on what you plan on doing once the OS boots. I accidentally loaded Win11 on an HDD (disk 0 was HDD, not SSD) for a few hours. It was noticeably slow, but it ran my diagnostics utilities well enough.

If you’re using it for light web browsing, basic office software, etc, then it might be fine.

But something else caught my attention - you inquired about “restoring” it at shops, meaning you intend to pay money. SSD and RAM are obviously what anyone would upgrade, and you’re balking at it. More to the point, you expect to run Linux, but didn’t even install it as-is to test it out?

There’s some missing context here. Also, 2gb laptops haven’t been a thing in a very long time. You might very well get a better deal by just buying a used newer model that already has what you’re looking for.

Udm14.com is a direct link to this

Part of the challenge here is that Bambu is a Chinese company. Which means you would have to sue them in China, with predictable results.

You could try to sue them in e.g. the US, then use that victory to secure things like import bans, but that’s a very long, slow, and expensive process.

Greasel (diesel-vegetable oil conversion) is a thing, albeit uncommon. That would probably be the closest analogue.

What inspection? Nearly everything happens at the state level, if at all. The only ongoing task required from my state is plates/registration, which is just some minor paperwork, a sticker, and a fee. One that’s already higher because of EVs. And I only have to do it every 5 years. There are no inspection facilities anywhere near here.

Not idiotic. Malicious. They know exactly what they’re doing on this.

It also becomes a giant red flag to any potential applicants.

“Why is this position open?”

“We had the previous employee imprisoned for complaining too hard about how little we were paying him”

Not that it can’t happen, and similar things continue to happen, but most (and certainly the best) candidates will avoid that place for many years, and demand extremely high pay from the beginning.

The CEO reports to the board, which reports to the shareholders. This is how it always is. His goal is basically pointless - even if the board did create a policy, or a charter or whatever, it could be revoked just as easily.

If you want to be calling the shots in a way that you can’t be fired, you have to become the majority shareholder. Like he did with Twitter. But then your customers can still leave. I’m sure that’s why he’s trying for those hefty govt contracts that can’t be terminated so easily.

I upvoted for the rental suggestion. So many people get stuck on edge cases, like an annual road trip, that they lose sight of the (immense) daily benefits.

For most people, you’ll actually come out ahead by buying an EV for daily life, and renting a gas car for the week of your trip. Plus, you can get a rental that holds all of your passengers/cargo much better than your daily driver.

$20k can get you plenty of used EVs in great condition. Poor resale value is a notorious problem for EV owners. Or a massive benefit for anyone willing to buy used.

For most EVs, battery health is typically still between 85-90% at 100k miles. Meaning that if it could do 250 miles when brand new, it can still do 220 after 100k. With a few notable exceptions, battery packs rarely fail. Some models will even report it, or you can find shops to collect the data more directly.

While cost depends on your exact situation, the biggest expense in getting a home charger is running the 240v cable. $2k-3k (grand total, everything included) is common, and likely to be recouped in fuel costs alone in the life of your first vehicle. It also increases your home’s resale value, usually by more than it cost to install. Of course, this is assuming that you own your home and have the freedom to install one.

I agree with your complaints about new cars. However, that really doesn’t have much to do with EVs aside from most of them being newer. I will say that there are some encouraging signs on the horizon to watch for, and some models are better (or less awful) than others.

You have to save up to afford that pack of hamburgers to grill on Memorial Day, or the turkey for Thanksgiving. If you scrimp and save all year, you might even be and to afford to put a present or two under the Christmas Tree.

That’s one of the things that actually makes sense for a (locally rendered) site to have. Not the screen itself per se, but the usable canvas. This allows things like a static navigation bar on the left, and the remainder of the screen for text.

I see no reason for a site to have my battery status, ever. Gyroscope has limited need, and should ask permission.

Not that rare. Many larger fast charging stations (6+ stalls) have one, but it’s often shared with CCS and might be in use. Regardless, their use case is strictly charging at home. I’m seeing conflicting info on earlier years, but at least since 2018 the Leaf uses J1772.

That said, there are still reasons to avoid the Leaf. They mention snowy winters, which means cold. My experience with the Bolt means significant range loss in the winter. I find that it’s reasonable to take the required range (75 miles, as they mention) and double it to find the minimum EPA rated range for their needs. That covers wind resistance, snow, cabin heat, buffers at the top and bottom of charging, and battery degradation.

IOW, they need to get something rated for 150 miles. Which was common for the Leaf after 2018. This would now be 8+ years old, so it should be rather affordable.

The Leaf, however, is not a good car. The batteries are notoriously bad, at least in earlier years. Repairs have been a major concern for owners. OP does their own maintenance, but I don’t know how feasible that really is. The entire electric drivetrain is different from ICE, and parts may not be readily available.

A Chevy Bolt from that same era should also be fairly available and cheap. But it does come with the caveat that you have to verify that it either was not affected by the massive battery recall, or that it was already replaced.