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I'm in a suburb of Philadelphia. I've driven round trip to Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Atlantic City NJ, Baltimore MD on those CHAdeMO chargers. Always 50 kW avai

I'm in a suburb of Philadelphia. I've driven round trip to Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Atlantic City NJ, Baltimore MD on those CHAdeMO chargers. Always 50 kW available, always working, never blocked, for the 3+ years I've driven two different EVs (currently an '18 Leaf). The networks all have realtime status via their apps/websites, there's no guessing about whether a charger is working or in-use. The distribution is fking fantastic: most of them are right at the rest stops on the PA turnpike or I95 and other highways, so you don't even get off the highway to charge. Tesla puts theirs in strip malls, so you have to go through a toll, exit the highway, drive through a town, charge, drive back to the highway, go through the toll again to resume your trip. I work from home with no commute, but I put over 1000 miles a month on my Leaf because it's a great road trip car: a smoother, quieter ride than most luxury cars, that drives itself most of the time with ProPilot, with a nearly 10x larger charging network than Tesla's. Nissan throws in two years of free charging with new Leafs, so for the most part these road trips cost nothing too.

mikeash 8y ago
Those aren’t exactly long trips. A long range EV can do those without charging at all. 50kW is still slow. I consider Supercharger speeds to be the bare minimum.
- dangrossman 8y ago
  Those are the longest trips people realistically take by car. Philly to Baltimore is 2-3 hours each way. There are vanishingly few trips taken longer than 2-3 hours from home by car, in your own car. People choose closer destinations, or switch to another mode of transportation like plane or train. I don't care to rehash in-detail conversations we've probably had already on reddit, so I'm not going to dig up the National Household Travel Survey reports, but that's essentially what they show. Not that there's any reason you can't continue on from any of those destinations to another further one; the entire eastern and western coasts are covered by several CHAdeMO chargers for every Supercharger. As for Supercharger speeds, most of the time spent plugged in to one is spent at less than 50 kW, it's really not that different. Especially if we talk about the Model 3, where the standard range battery is going to be similar to the old Model S 60, which would spend less than 5 minutes above 50 kW starting from low SoC on a Supercharger before the charging rate would be no better than any CHAdeMO station. I doubt my 15-20 minute charging stops are much different from yours with your Model S 85 most of the time, except that I have a lot more options for where to charge without an adapter around here, and they're a lot more conveniently located. Most of the population lives around cities along the coasts, and those cities and coasts have excellent CHAdeMO/CCS coverage. Bolts and Leafs are viable for single-car households for a heck of a lot of people, not just Teslas.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    The Model 3 has a much better battery chemistry. The LR version stays at 120kW for a remarkably long time. The SR version will not be as fast, but it won’t be like the old S60. If your charging stops are 15-20 minutes then they’re similar to mine... except mine take me twice as far and thus happen half as often. If you don’t want to consider trips over 3 hours then the whole issue of fast charging disappears for long range EVs. You can do those trips without charging in the middle at all. This discussion is completely pointless unless we look at longer trips.
  - com2kid 8y ago
    > There are vanishingly few trips taken longer than 2-3 hours from home by car, in your own car. Out here on the west coast, cities are much more spread out. Getting between major cities is at minimum 2 hours. 99.9% of my trips aren't that long, but a couple times a year I go well over 3 hours. Heck I'm planning a 10 hour trip soon. I'll be meeting in the middle with some friends in LA who are driving up 8 hours.

mikeash 8y ago

Those aren’t exactly long trips. A long range EV can do those without charging at all. 50kW is still slow. I consider Supercharger speeds to be the bare minimum.

dangrossman 8y ago
Those are the longest trips people realistically take by car. Philly to Baltimore is 2-3 hours each way. There are vanishingly few trips taken longer than 2-3 hours from home by car, in your own car. People choose closer destinations, or switch to another mode of transportation like plane or train. I don't care to rehash in-detail conversations we've probably had already on reddit, so I'm not going to dig up the National Household Travel Survey reports, but that's essentially what they show. Not that there's any reason you can't continue on from any of those destinations to another further one; the entire eastern and western coasts are covered by several CHAdeMO chargers for every Supercharger. As for Supercharger speeds, most of the time spent plugged in to one is spent at less than 50 kW, it's really not that different. Especially if we talk about the Model 3, where the standard range battery is going to be similar to the old Model S 60, which would spend less than 5 minutes above 50 kW starting from low SoC on a Supercharger before the charging rate would be no better than any CHAdeMO station. I doubt my 15-20 minute charging stops are much different from yours with your Model S 85 most of the time, except that I have a lot more options for where to charge without an adapter around here, and they're a lot more conveniently located. Most of the population lives around cities along the coasts, and those cities and coasts have excellent CHAdeMO/CCS coverage. Bolts and Leafs are viable for single-car households for a heck of a lot of people, not just Teslas.
- mikeash 8y ago
  The Model 3 has a much better battery chemistry. The LR version stays at 120kW for a remarkably long time. The SR version will not be as fast, but it won’t be like the old S60. If your charging stops are 15-20 minutes then they’re similar to mine... except mine take me twice as far and thus happen half as often. If you don’t want to consider trips over 3 hours then the whole issue of fast charging disappears for long range EVs. You can do those trips without charging in the middle at all. This discussion is completely pointless unless we look at longer trips.
- com2kid 8y ago
  > There are vanishingly few trips taken longer than 2-3 hours from home by car, in your own car. Out here on the west coast, cities are much more spread out. Getting between major cities is at minimum 2 hours. 99.9% of my trips aren't that long, but a couple times a year I go well over 3 hours. Heck I'm planning a 10 hour trip soon. I'll be meeting in the middle with some friends in LA who are driving up 8 hours.