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The article begins by contradicting itself: "To deliver an electric vehicle that’s cheaper, safer and capable of traveling 500 miles on a single charge ..." Th

The article begins by contradicting itself: "To deliver an electric vehicle that’s cheaper, safer and capable of traveling 500 miles on a single charge ..." That's not a "car". A "car", as driven by a billion people every day, takes trips whose distances have a power-law distribution falling off from ~2 miles down to 150 miles, by which point you are looking at < 0.1% of trips. A large fraction of cars have never been driven on a 500 mile trip.

lakeeffect 8y ago
I think there is an advantage of only having to charge your car once every couple weeks if you are a short distance trip taker.
- umeshunni 8y ago
  What's the advantage? Most people with EVs are charging overnight, not once a week.
  - macintux 8y ago
    Of course most people today with EVs do that, but for broader adoption it would be useful for that to not be a requirement. Many urban dwellers don’t have a garage to charge overnight.
    - ju-st 8y ago
      I think the future for urban dwellers is fast charging your EV while shopping. With large enough batteries it should only be necessary to charge the car once a week.
      - WorldMaker 8y ago
        Also, most streets and parking lots in urban settings are already by law required to be electrified for minimum lighting requirements and/or parking meters. Extending the electrification requirements to include car charging seems only a matter of time. (Potentially especially in the cases where it makes sense to push for Smart Grids at the same regulative time.) Some companies have already built interesting versions of street lamps and parking meters that double as car chargers (including at least one London company that was working to make sure that they could meet historic preservation standards of the street lamp design in London's core). Road-embeddable induction chargers could even be an option soon in urban environments (particularly large parking lots for instance) where there isn't such existing "furniture" to take advantage of.
      - trophycase 8y ago
        Gross, last thing we need is another influence pushing for parking minimums and more massive parking lot fast casual architecture. I agree this may be the future but I really hope we can come up with something better.
- mijamo 8y ago
  If you can charge your car both at work and at home that advantage is reduced drastically. On the other hand you still think about those 0.1% of trips when you buy your car, which is why people have big cars for their family to handle holiday trips even if they are half empty 99% of the time. And you don't want to have to stop every 400km to charge your car when you go in holidays, especially if it means staying in a saturated station for 30 minutes. I know you have to get some rest but many people just switch driver and only have a real break every 5 -6 hours, which means around 700km, and current EV don't have that range. In addition, you can take some rest wherever you want, for instance by a lake or in the forest, whereas if you need to charge your car you will be forced to be in an ugly fast charging station :(. I still believe in EV though and I am convinced it will take over the market progressively, those are just temporary problem that explain why their market share is still so low, but it's improving.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    How often are these long road trips though? Would you really not get an EV because very rare road trips take slightly longer, but meanwhile you're saving lots of money the whole year long on gas costs and not destroying the environment? I can't imagine letting a few longer stops during infrequent long distance road trips being the deciding factor in what kind of car I'd buy.
    - opwieurposiu 8y ago
      Like many a middle aged dad, I have become afflicted with boating disease. One of the many problems that comes with owning a boat is that you need some way to tow it. Another problem is that you want your boat to be as easy to use as possible. If I had an electric car I would have to go to home depot and rent a truck every time I wanted to tow the boat. This is too much yak shaving. In conclusion, my advice as a boat owner is: Never buy a boat.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        The vast majority of people don't own a boat though ... and it's not like ICE sedans are any good at towing either. Also, how sure are you that EVs are bad at towing? Don't they have lots of low-end torque? The Model X apparently has the highest towing capacity of any passenger vehicle. Beyond that you'd need a bigger truck anyway.
- isoprophlex 8y ago
  Maybe eventually there won't be an advantage... We might need the battery capacity to stabilise the power grid if we add more renewable sources like solar.
jsight 8y ago
I thought the same. I mean, you don't need vast technical advancements to build that anyway, though the battery would likely cost approximately $20,000 USD with current technology. It isn't necessarily obvious that really unconventional things would need to happen to get that down to ~$10k, and most uses would work with a much smaller battery than that.
prostoalex 8y ago
> A large fraction of cars have never been driven on a 500 mile trip. Consumers base buying decisions on the longest trip they expect to take. Even if 360 days a year they commute for 10 miles, and then for 4th of July / Thanksgiving / winter holidays they take an extended 300+ mile road trip, they will consider a car capable of traveling 300+ miles.
- nathan_long 8y ago
  Maybe the business model is the problem. If instead of owning a car, you use a car sharing model, you could use an EV car most days, swap for a pickup truck for a yard project, and swap for a gas car for your road trip (until EVs get that much range).
- quasse 8y ago
  That makes it sound like a marketing / consumer optics problem then, not an engineering one. When I was a kid my dad drove and older classic car daily, and for any trip longer than ~300 miles he would just get a rental and put the miles on that. If people could get accustomed to that workflow, I think the need for 500 miles+ electric range is almost non-existent. Daily drive the electric car, and spend ~$150 for a gas rental car once or twice a year for the big trip to visit the in-laws.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Yeah but rentals are extremely inconvenient. You need to arrange a ride to the rental place. Most of them close at 5:00pm unless you're close to an airport. So now you're also taking time off work. The paperwork takes at least 20-30 minutes for some ridiculous reason. They will try to upsell you on a larger vehicle, extra insurance, etc. It's a pain. Once or twice a year it's tolerable. If you get to doing it monthly or more, it's becomes a major detractor.
    - outworlder 8y ago
      > The paperwork takes at least 20-30 minutes for some ridiculous reason. I am guessing you are not in the US. Over there, most big rental companies will let you join their program, club, or whatever they want to call it, for free(online, even). Which means you are pre-screened. You can pre-decline all this stuff you are talking about. Then, you just make a reservation online, walk to the parking lot, pick your car, and just hand your id for them to check when leaving the parking lot. The whole process takes a couple of minutes really. When you are back, you just park at the dropoff location and walk away. At no point you have to bother with going to the counter. The business hours can be inconvenient, I agree.
rconti 8y ago
They'll probably never sell a 500mi EV just like they don't sell cars that go 500mi on a tank. EPA range on most cars will touch 400mi but that's about it. If anything, gas tanks are getting smaller as fuel efficiency goes up. Gas tanks take space, carry a heavy fuel that, in turn, reduces fuel economy, and so on. Batteries cost money. The only reason to make an EV with a greater range than most gas cars is if recharging is slow. The range then offsets charge time on the rare roadtrip. If you can charge your car quickly, suddenly there's not even a reason to have more than 200mi range. Already the 310mi range on our Tesla 3 seems a bit excessive when I've only had to supercharge it twice, and mostly I just get home and don't bother plugging it in because it doesn't NEED a charge every day.
- wilsonnb3 8y ago
  They do sell cars that to over 500 miles on a tank. A Prius should do it. There was also an episode of top gear where one of them went 1000 miles in a jaguar without refueling.
ams6110 8y ago
It doesn't really matter what people actually need. What matters is what they think they need. Few people are coldly logical about big purchases like cars.

lakeeffect 8y ago

I think there is an advantage of only having to charge your car once every couple weeks if you are a short distance trip taker.

umeshunni 8y ago
What's the advantage? Most people with EVs are charging overnight, not once a week.
- macintux 8y ago
  Of course most people today with EVs do that, but for broader adoption it would be useful for that to not be a requirement. Many urban dwellers don’t have a garage to charge overnight.
  - ju-st 8y ago
    I think the future for urban dwellers is fast charging your EV while shopping. With large enough batteries it should only be necessary to charge the car once a week.
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      Also, most streets and parking lots in urban settings are already by law required to be electrified for minimum lighting requirements and/or parking meters. Extending the electrification requirements to include car charging seems only a matter of time. (Potentially especially in the cases where it makes sense to push for Smart Grids at the same regulative time.) Some companies have already built interesting versions of street lamps and parking meters that double as car chargers (including at least one London company that was working to make sure that they could meet historic preservation standards of the street lamp design in London's core). Road-embeddable induction chargers could even be an option soon in urban environments (particularly large parking lots for instance) where there isn't such existing "furniture" to take advantage of.
    - trophycase 8y ago
      Gross, last thing we need is another influence pushing for parking minimums and more massive parking lot fast casual architecture. I agree this may be the future but I really hope we can come up with something better.
mijamo 8y ago
If you can charge your car both at work and at home that advantage is reduced drastically. On the other hand you still think about those 0.1% of trips when you buy your car, which is why people have big cars for their family to handle holiday trips even if they are half empty 99% of the time. And you don't want to have to stop every 400km to charge your car when you go in holidays, especially if it means staying in a saturated station for 30 minutes. I know you have to get some rest but many people just switch driver and only have a real break every 5 -6 hours, which means around 700km, and current EV don't have that range. In addition, you can take some rest wherever you want, for instance by a lake or in the forest, whereas if you need to charge your car you will be forced to be in an ugly fast charging station :(. I still believe in EV though and I am convinced it will take over the market progressively, those are just temporary problem that explain why their market share is still so low, but it's improving.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  How often are these long road trips though? Would you really not get an EV because very rare road trips take slightly longer, but meanwhile you're saving lots of money the whole year long on gas costs and not destroying the environment? I can't imagine letting a few longer stops during infrequent long distance road trips being the deciding factor in what kind of car I'd buy.
  - opwieurposiu 8y ago
    Like many a middle aged dad, I have become afflicted with boating disease. One of the many problems that comes with owning a boat is that you need some way to tow it. Another problem is that you want your boat to be as easy to use as possible. If I had an electric car I would have to go to home depot and rent a truck every time I wanted to tow the boat. This is too much yak shaving. In conclusion, my advice as a boat owner is: Never buy a boat.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      The vast majority of people don't own a boat though ... and it's not like ICE sedans are any good at towing either. Also, how sure are you that EVs are bad at towing? Don't they have lots of low-end torque? The Model X apparently has the highest towing capacity of any passenger vehicle. Beyond that you'd need a bigger truck anyway.
isoprophlex 8y ago
Maybe eventually there won't be an advantage... We might need the battery capacity to stabilise the power grid if we add more renewable sources like solar.

jsight 8y ago

I thought the same. I mean, you don't need vast technical advancements to build that anyway, though the battery would likely cost approximately $20,000 USD with current technology. It isn't necessarily obvious that really unconventional things would need to happen to get that down to ~$10k, and most uses would work with a much smaller battery than that.

prostoalex 8y ago

> A large fraction of cars have never been driven on a 500 mile trip. Consumers base buying decisions on the longest trip they expect to take. Even if 360 days a year they commute for 10 miles, and then for 4th of July / Thanksgiving / winter holidays they take an extended 300+ mile road trip, they will consider a car capable of traveling 300+ miles.

nathan_long 8y ago
Maybe the business model is the problem. If instead of owning a car, you use a car sharing model, you could use an EV car most days, swap for a pickup truck for a yard project, and swap for a gas car for your road trip (until EVs get that much range).
quasse 8y ago
That makes it sound like a marketing / consumer optics problem then, not an engineering one. When I was a kid my dad drove and older classic car daily, and for any trip longer than ~300 miles he would just get a rental and put the miles on that. If people could get accustomed to that workflow, I think the need for 500 miles+ electric range is almost non-existent. Daily drive the electric car, and spend ~$150 for a gas rental car once or twice a year for the big trip to visit the in-laws.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Yeah but rentals are extremely inconvenient. You need to arrange a ride to the rental place. Most of them close at 5:00pm unless you're close to an airport. So now you're also taking time off work. The paperwork takes at least 20-30 minutes for some ridiculous reason. They will try to upsell you on a larger vehicle, extra insurance, etc. It's a pain. Once or twice a year it's tolerable. If you get to doing it monthly or more, it's becomes a major detractor.
  - outworlder 8y ago
    > The paperwork takes at least 20-30 minutes for some ridiculous reason. I am guessing you are not in the US. Over there, most big rental companies will let you join their program, club, or whatever they want to call it, for free(online, even). Which means you are pre-screened. You can pre-decline all this stuff you are talking about. Then, you just make a reservation online, walk to the parking lot, pick your car, and just hand your id for them to check when leaving the parking lot. The whole process takes a couple of minutes really. When you are back, you just park at the dropoff location and walk away. At no point you have to bother with going to the counter. The business hours can be inconvenient, I agree.

rconti 8y ago

They'll probably never sell a 500mi EV just like they don't sell cars that go 500mi on a tank. EPA range on most cars will touch 400mi but that's about it. If anything, gas tanks are getting smaller as fuel efficiency goes up. Gas tanks take space, carry a heavy fuel that, in turn, reduces fuel economy, and so on. Batteries cost money. The only reason to make an EV with a greater range than most gas cars is if recharging is slow. The range then offsets charge time on the rare roadtrip. If you can charge your car quickly, suddenly there's not even a reason to have more than 200mi range. Already the 310mi range on our Tesla 3 seems a bit excessive when I've only had to supercharge it twice, and mostly I just get home and don't bother plugging it in because it doesn't NEED a charge every day.

wilsonnb3 8y ago
They do sell cars that to over 500 miles on a tank. A Prius should do it. There was also an episode of top gear where one of them went 1000 miles in a jaguar without refueling.

ams6110 8y ago

It doesn't really matter what people actually need. What matters is what they think they need. Few people are coldly logical about big purchases like cars.