13 ms·

What do you think is that magic range figure that we need to achieve, which will stop all of these range related news from being a daily thing? Imho it's 600+

by lnenad 5y ago

What do you think is that magic range figure that we need to achieve, which will stop all of these range related news from being a daily thing? Imho it's 600+ miles on a single charge, with a 300m recharge in 10 minutes.

throwaway81523 5y ago
Maybe it's less about range than having charging available everywhere.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  Well the range is shorter, towing anything reduces range further, charging is slow, few gas stations support electric, the initial car price is higher and I'm sure there are other arguments as well.
_ph_ 5y ago
I do think that the required range is much less, especially with fast recharge. What is required is to have more people actually drive electric cars and of course make sure, that there are enough recharging spots.
- pmontra 5y ago
  And trasform into electricity all the energy that we deliver as gasoline and diesel now. That could come from burning oil (probably new power plants) or from solar or whatever (new infrastructure anyway.)
sveme 5y ago
For me personally, it is 500km range under bad conditions, i.e., 120km/h speed and in winter. Alternatively 300km range added in about 15mins. Make such a stop after three hours anyway.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  You forgot to say that you need to pull a boat on a trailer and that you go uphill both ways. As they say, if an electric car can't do that, then they are not viable to anyone.
  - ianai 5y ago
    Right. The current 300 mile target is fine for cities or more dense regions. But I routinely drive around 250 miles with large uphills regions in weather that requires AC. The uphill parts are like a 2x range cost compared with the rest.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      And you drive that much without taking a break?
      - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
        250 miles without breaks is not a big challenge. I routinely drove 400-500 kms without stopping when I toured Europe. Once on the highway you only have to go straight, anybody can do that. The only secret is to not make it a strict rule, if you feel like stopping, just stop.
        speedgoose 5y ago
        It's actually unsafe. You have never been exposed to the communication campaign about taking breaks for safety ? You for example can see signs about this on the French motorways.
        peoplefromibiza 5y ago
        it's unsafe if you don't stop when you feel the need to stop. Also: never drive long distances alone. I worked as a roadie in the music business, and I would never put in danger the 5-6 sometimes 9 people I had in the van with me, with all the equipment. I just drive at a regular pace around 100 kms/h and use the cruise control whenever possible I also set the limiter to something below the speed limit, to remind me to not go too fast (sometimes you find yourself speeding without even noticing because the road allows you to) I never drove more than ~5 hours straight and of course it all depends on the road conditions, crossing the Italian Alps toward Austria with snow it's not the same as cruising on German highways (where there's always some kind of fixing going on, so you aren't really going that fast) All in all the safest safety device right now is the human driving. But modern safety technologies are more than welcome , you can set a safety distance from the car in front of you, they follow the lines on the road so they actually can correct you if you make a mistake or are distracted, it got a lot better than the 90s where I drove my dad's car for 9 hours from my house to go snowboarding on the Alps. We were a gang of four and took turns.
jeffrallen 5y ago
The petrolhead press will never stop criticizing electric cars until their range is 10 times that of a comparable weight of gasoline, and then they will choose some new strawman to battle, like cobalt or grid capacity or whatever. These guys are not interested in a fair conversation. I wish that government electric car subsidies would be retargeted at cheap cars. I want to drive an electric economy car, not a luxury car. Here in Switzerland, we kind of have that: subsidies are in the form of a 99% reduction in road tax, so that every year you get a subsidy, flashy car or boring car. I'd like to see the kind of people who have to flash their cash (ahem, Tesla buyers) pay for moderate income car owner's road taxes.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  With opex being so much lower for electric, I’ll believe they pay for themselves when corporate fleets become all electric on new fleet additions (e.g. delivery drivers/taxis). Right now; they seem to be going for hybrids. If they can’t make the economic case for electric, I don’t know how anyone that drives 1/5th or 1-10th as much can.
  - robocat 5y ago
    > delivery drivers/taxis I suspect that is an unfair comparison. Electric cars often don't make sense for high duty cycle uses, or for long distance driving around town during the time they are active. Every minute waiting for a charge is a minute the vehicle is slack and wasting the driver's time. Overnight charging works for lower km commuters, depending on specifics of opex and capex.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  The cheapest car is the one you never change or replace. Subsidizing buying new cars is not environment friendly at all, its just consumerism.
  - coddle-hark 5y ago
    My local Hyundai dealer told me that buying a new car every 6 months is the cheapest way to own an EV right now.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I think general familiarity is a bigger factor. The news won't stop when some technical or economic barrier is passed (which I'd argue has already happened) but when people generally believe it to be true. But the news won't stop, because battery, motor, charging innovations now have an even bigger market and even more people will be working on it. They'll just change from "this is the breakthrough that makes EV practical" to "this innovation will make your already more than adequate EV even better and cheaper in a relentless progress of technology".
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Range is no longer an issue for electric cars in most of Europe. Here in Norway 70% of new cars sold in November were battery electric with the Tesla Model Y being the winner. For the year as a whole more than 60% of cars sold are electric and the Model Y is the winner. Also sold are lots of Citroen, Renault, VW, Audi, Jaguar, and a substantial number of Porsche and some Toyotas. My 2015 Model S 70D has a range of 330 km in summer a little less in the winter. I use a supercharger to add perhaps 40% charge about once a week, the rest of the time I charge overnight. Hardly anyone needs 600 miles and no one seems concerned that it takes an hour to add 300 km because most people charge overnight. 14.8% of private cars in Norway are electric now, more than 25% if you include hybrids. The only thing holding most people back from buying electric is the cost and that is why we have so many in Norway, at the moment they are exempt from the purchase taxes and annual fees that ICE cars must pay.
- cosmodisk 5y ago
  What's the infrastructure like in Norway for the car owners who live in flats? As others commented, it's not the range that is an issue( I could cross my entire country with one charge in most EVs) but rather the charging infrastructure. Also the purchasing power in more than half of Europe makes EVs prohibitively expensive.
  - _0w8t 5y ago
    At least in the capital it is unproblematic. The charging places on the streets that supplies at least 3KW are common, parking garages advertise that they have many charging places (one near me states over 100 spots for about 300 parking places in total), there are a lot of fast charges with at least 50KW chargers. Still you may need to park the car 500 meters or father from the apartment on unlucky day when all the spots nearby are taken. On the other hand outside the cities the situation became worse during the last year based on my anecdotal observations. One may need to wait at charging stations for another car to leave. Clearly the pace of building those lags behind the number of cars.
- aakour 5y ago
  To counter all the whataboutism in the replies to your comment, I just wanted to say that I live in a flat in central Berlin and park on the street, and charging or range have never been actual issues. My car use consists of trips around Berlin and Germany, driving to rural Finland and back, regularly towing a trailer, etc.
fallingknife 5y ago
Range is solved. The issue now is charger density. In some more remote places you may have to go 50 miles to find a charger. Same thing was probably an issue for gas cars a long time ago and it solved itself when gas stations became profitable everywhere.
- ec109685 5y ago
  You can’t fill up a ICE car at home, so the density will be less as a result. I know people all can’t charge at home and street parking is a thing, so it seems like 400+ mile range and 10 minute fill ups 10 minute away will be needed.
streamofdigits 5y ago
this will vary a lot by region. some places are more densely populated than others. looking up regional statistics of average trip length and percentiles (like the length of 95% of trips) could give some objective metrics to complement what might be primarily psychological / behavioral hangups I think what would really clinch this is not creating gargantuan batteries but simply making batteries universal plug-n-play. So if needed you just stop a battery station and replace it. This solves also the unfortunate bottleneck of everybody charging their batteries during night-time, which (last time I checked) is when the sun is not shinning...
jillesvangurp 5y ago
There are not enough range anxious people to continue to keep ICE manufacturers going. It's more a question of when production stops rather than if. There are a few holdouts of course that might last until they actually get banned on most roads. But for most manufacturers that is going to be a lot sooner than they are hoping right now. That will no doubt upset some ICE vehicle owners with enough disposable income that they could feasibly be targeted with a lucrative product that appeals to them. Good news is that cars with 600 miles and 10 minute recharge to 300 mile (50%) are totally feasible! E.g. the hummer that GM is rumored to be working on will apparently have 200kwh. Of course it has the weight of a Tank and the aerodynamics of barn door, so it might not be enough to get to 600 miles. If Tesla ever puts that kind of battery in a Tesla it would probably end up with close to 1000 mile range and they would need to make it a bit bigger. That's 20 hours non stop driving at 50 miles an hour. Absolutely nobody should be doing that. But you could build a car that does that. That's a about 3x what they currently put in a model 3 (75kwh). It will be a bit heavier of course so maybe not 3x the range. But you get my point. Solvable problem for people with money. For the rest of us normal people, take a break & plug in, go to the bathroom, eat some lunch, stretch your legs, relax, etc. After the 300+ miles that you can get with a few decent EVs that's probably a good idea. It's not the end of the world.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I assume there are plenty of poorer people in nations with poorer electric infrastructure to keep ICE manufacturing going for a long time. At least a couple decades. The more fossil fuel consumption drops in developed countries, the cheaper fossil fuels get, which would then allow people who currently cannot afford fossil fuels to buy them and replace demand.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > There are not enough range anxious people to continue to keep ICE manufacturers going. True in some smaller countries, but in places like the United States it’s very common for people to do a road trip occasionally to visit family or go on vacation. Stopping for a 30-60 minute charge a couple times per trip isn’t terrible, but it would mean that my annual family visit would become a 2-day drive instead of a 1-day drive. I can deal with that, but many people aren’t ready for it. I doubt we’ll see gigantic batteries going into small cars for ridiculous range. The efficiency hit would be too large due to the extra weight. I think fast charging and a fast charging network is what we need. But charging networks are the real issue at this point. They’re out there, but interoperability issues means the various networks often don’t work as fast as they claim or maybe not at all with your car. Range anxiety is bad enough, but when you can’t even be sure the charging station will work when you get there it’s a different level of worry altogether.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
In the US I've driven several cross country trips (multi-thousand miles) in a Tesla with 300 miles of range. It's not only not a big deal; it's the most comfortable touring car I've ever owned. If you stick to interstates, recharging at superchargers is easy. If you travel on smaller roads you have to plan more carefully to find destination chargers, RV parks, etc along the way but so far that hasn't been a problem for me. Granted I recharge in my garage so I can commute locally without ever needing to think about range, but for purposes of long-distance driving I think range anxiety is an overblown issue, at least for Teslas in the US.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  Looking at the trip I took over Thanksgiving, there are 3 Superchargers on the route, 2 of which I would pretty much have to stop at. The 3rd one is more than 300 miles from the start, and the second one is more than 200 miles from the destination. So 2 stops, 10-15 minutes each. One stop is several miles from the freeway on a busy town road, which isn't bad, but another 10-15 minutes. The other stop is very close to the freeway, so pretty much just charge time. The largest gaps between gas stations on that trip are probably 20 or 30 miles. I would describe the Supercharging trip as very doable, but it requires following ~1 available plan vs just stopping when it is convenient (for a bathroom break or snack or whatever).
  - dreamcompiler 5y ago
    Agreed. Tesla touring requires more planning than touring in an ICE car. But the car itself (and the Plugshare app) helps with the planning process. I enjoy planning; some people might not. In general I find the supercharger locations occur at about the right interval for a pee break and a leg stretch, and more superchargers are being added all the time.
  - ec109685 5y ago
    Yeah, planning is key. We do a Bay Area to Central California trip regularly and there is no super charger at destination, nor is there one close enough on the way back along the route, so you can’t drive there and back and land at a super charger on the route. And if you use the car (or just let it sit) some power is drained at destination. Charging on the way there just doesn’t feel right since we have enough juice to get there and everyone is anxious to reach destination, but it’s the only way to ensure we don’t have to take a detour at some point. We solved this by getting an adapter so we can charge at their house using their dryer plug. Yes, these are completely first world problems but it adds just enough hassle I could see some people just wanting to use an ICE car to make the trip.
xorcist 5y ago
That's 1000 km. Which is much farther than any gasoline powered car with a full tank. Range anxiety will stop being a thing when electric vehicles are common and nobody thinks of them a something special. It's a matter of social acceptance, and the infrastructure that follows.
- ec109685 5y ago
  You can always find a gas station that will get you going within 10 minutes, so it’s a different consideration when charging is hard. Driving an EV would be terribly annoying if I didn’t have a charger at home, but I know people that rely on super charging to keep their car going (have free super charging given early Tesla adopter).
gameswithgo 5y ago
Depends, if you don’t toad trip much in a huge geography like the usa or australia, and have a house, range is already solved.
phkahler 5y ago
In city driving somewhere from 200 to 300 miles will be enough. For long trips, charge time is important and can be reduced by using higher voltage batteries. 10 minutes is still out of reach.
- ec109685 5y ago
  We did 400 miles / hour at super charger just recently on a 2018 car, so 100km in 10 mins. Yes, not there, but getting closer. 2x better than where it was a few years ago.
ksec 5y ago
>Imho it's 600+ miles on a single charge, with a 300m recharge in 10 minutes. In my opinion the Battery equation is already solved. Even for those who are at the end of longer driving range curve, we have a solid and realistic roadmap of battery technology. Pick Tesla tabless battery for example. It isn't Solid Battery like Holy Grail Battery, but it gets to the point where even if you are somewhat skeptical of EV, surely this is edging close to good enough? People often confuse range anxiety with battery capacity. I dont think that is strictly true. It is one of these things where engineers would come in and suggest we need bigger battery to solve our customer's problem. But here is an product person POV, what if you have fast charging station everywhere. From your car pack living in cities, to packing in a mall or pubic parking space. This is similar to charging smartphones. Once you can charge your smartphone even dinning in Restaurants or on a Bus. You dont get nervous about running out of battery. So as many comment have suggested, the biggest obstacle to EV isn't battery, is the abundance of Charging station. And given I actually believe City transport in the future should be micro mobility, whether that is e-bike or something else we have yet imagined, we need charging port for both bike and EV. And this needs some government planning. While this is all good discussion, I really wish we focus more on silicon carbide :) I wonder why they didn't jump straight to 300mm and only upgraded to 200mm wafers. They could have completely cornered the market with better economy of scale.
sixothree 5y ago
Serious answer I've heard many times. For anyone on the coast from Texas to Florida, it means being able to evacuate a hurricane. This means the possibility of sitting in traffic for 12 hours to travel 300 miles.
- ec109685 5y ago
  Good point. It is comforting to have access to a backup ICE car. The other thing you can get burned with is to forget to charge before a trip. If so, it’s about an hour detour to drive to super charger, wait and get back.
pornel 5y ago
I don't think it needs any new inventions, only wider rollout of what we can do already: fast DC chargers. Current EVs need a 20 min charge per 3 hours of driving. It may not be ideal for pee-in-a-bottle cannonball racers, but IMHO it's entirely reasonable for most people. It's approaching a point of diminishing returns. Compare this with charging of smartphones vs brick phones. Daily charging used to be considered a dealbreaker, but fast charging made it a no-big-deal, and people got used to it.
alkonaut 5y ago
Depends on the available charging infrastructure. If you can go 6-7 hours without passing a fast charger and it’s -20C outside then you need the equivalent of a 60L diesel tank (1000km range) to manage.
pjc50 5y ago
I wonder not so much about retail customers as commercial ones. The Hertz-Tesla deal is spectacular, but what about all those dirty diesel Transit vans? Container trucks? The latter in particular need to manage the 8-10h maximum legal shift of a driver with a full load.

by lnenad 5y ago

throwaway81523 5y ago

Maybe it's less about range than having charging available everywhere.

moffkalast 5y ago
Well the range is shorter, towing anything reduces range further, charging is slow, few gas stations support electric, the initial car price is higher and I'm sure there are other arguments as well.

_ph_ 5y ago

I do think that the required range is much less, especially with fast recharge. What is required is to have more people actually drive electric cars and of course make sure, that there are enough recharging spots.

pmontra 5y ago
And trasform into electricity all the energy that we deliver as gasoline and diesel now. That could come from burning oil (probably new power plants) or from solar or whatever (new infrastructure anyway.)

sveme 5y ago

For me personally, it is 500km range under bad conditions, i.e., 120km/h speed and in winter. Alternatively 300km range added in about 15mins. Make such a stop after three hours anyway.

speedgoose 5y ago
You forgot to say that you need to pull a boat on a trailer and that you go uphill both ways. As they say, if an electric car can't do that, then they are not viable to anyone.
- ianai 5y ago
  Right. The current 300 mile target is fine for cities or more dense regions. But I routinely drive around 250 miles with large uphills regions in weather that requires AC. The uphill parts are like a 2x range cost compared with the rest.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    And you drive that much without taking a break?
    - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
      250 miles without breaks is not a big challenge. I routinely drove 400-500 kms without stopping when I toured Europe. Once on the highway you only have to go straight, anybody can do that. The only secret is to not make it a strict rule, if you feel like stopping, just stop.
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        It's actually unsafe. You have never been exposed to the communication campaign about taking breaks for safety ? You for example can see signs about this on the French motorways.
        peoplefromibiza 5y ago
        it's unsafe if you don't stop when you feel the need to stop. Also: never drive long distances alone. I worked as a roadie in the music business, and I would never put in danger the 5-6 sometimes 9 people I had in the van with me, with all the equipment. I just drive at a regular pace around 100 kms/h and use the cruise control whenever possible I also set the limiter to something below the speed limit, to remind me to not go too fast (sometimes you find yourself speeding without even noticing because the road allows you to) I never drove more than ~5 hours straight and of course it all depends on the road conditions, crossing the Italian Alps toward Austria with snow it's not the same as cruising on German highways (where there's always some kind of fixing going on, so you aren't really going that fast) All in all the safest safety device right now is the human driving. But modern safety technologies are more than welcome , you can set a safety distance from the car in front of you, they follow the lines on the road so they actually can correct you if you make a mistake or are distracted, it got a lot better than the 90s where I drove my dad's car for 9 hours from my house to go snowboarding on the Alps. We were a gang of four and took turns.

jeffrallen 5y ago

The petrolhead press will never stop criticizing electric cars until their range is 10 times that of a comparable weight of gasoline, and then they will choose some new strawman to battle, like cobalt or grid capacity or whatever. These guys are not interested in a fair conversation. I wish that government electric car subsidies would be retargeted at cheap cars. I want to drive an electric economy car, not a luxury car. Here in Switzerland, we kind of have that: subsidies are in the form of a 99% reduction in road tax, so that every year you get a subsidy, flashy car or boring car. I'd like to see the kind of people who have to flash their cash (ahem, Tesla buyers) pay for moderate income car owner's road taxes.

Scoundreller 5y ago
With opex being so much lower for electric, I’ll believe they pay for themselves when corporate fleets become all electric on new fleet additions (e.g. delivery drivers/taxis). Right now; they seem to be going for hybrids. If they can’t make the economic case for electric, I don’t know how anyone that drives 1/5th or 1-10th as much can.
- robocat 5y ago
  > delivery drivers/taxis I suspect that is an unfair comparison. Electric cars often don't make sense for high duty cycle uses, or for long distance driving around town during the time they are active. Every minute waiting for a charge is a minute the vehicle is slack and wasting the driver's time. Overnight charging works for lower km commuters, depending on specifics of opex and capex.
ekianjo 5y ago
The cheapest car is the one you never change or replace. Subsidizing buying new cars is not environment friendly at all, its just consumerism.
- coddle-hark 5y ago
  My local Hyundai dealer told me that buying a new car every 6 months is the cheapest way to own an EV right now.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I think general familiarity is a bigger factor. The news won't stop when some technical or economic barrier is passed (which I'd argue has already happened) but when people generally believe it to be true. But the news won't stop, because battery, motor, charging innovations now have an even bigger market and even more people will be working on it. They'll just change from "this is the breakthrough that makes EV practical" to "this innovation will make your already more than adequate EV even better and cheaper in a relentless progress of technology".

kwhitefoot 5y ago

Range is no longer an issue for electric cars in most of Europe. Here in Norway 70% of new cars sold in November were battery electric with the Tesla Model Y being the winner. For the year as a whole more than 60% of cars sold are electric and the Model Y is the winner. Also sold are lots of Citroen, Renault, VW, Audi, Jaguar, and a substantial number of Porsche and some Toyotas. My 2015 Model S 70D has a range of 330 km in summer a little less in the winter. I use a supercharger to add perhaps 40% charge about once a week, the rest of the time I charge overnight. Hardly anyone needs 600 miles and no one seems concerned that it takes an hour to add 300 km because most people charge overnight. 14.8% of private cars in Norway are electric now, more than 25% if you include hybrids. The only thing holding most people back from buying electric is the cost and that is why we have so many in Norway, at the moment they are exempt from the purchase taxes and annual fees that ICE cars must pay.

cosmodisk 5y ago
What's the infrastructure like in Norway for the car owners who live in flats? As others commented, it's not the range that is an issue( I could cross my entire country with one charge in most EVs) but rather the charging infrastructure. Also the purchasing power in more than half of Europe makes EVs prohibitively expensive.
- _0w8t 5y ago
  At least in the capital it is unproblematic. The charging places on the streets that supplies at least 3KW are common, parking garages advertise that they have many charging places (one near me states over 100 spots for about 300 parking places in total), there are a lot of fast charges with at least 50KW chargers. Still you may need to park the car 500 meters or father from the apartment on unlucky day when all the spots nearby are taken. On the other hand outside the cities the situation became worse during the last year based on my anecdotal observations. One may need to wait at charging stations for another car to leave. Clearly the pace of building those lags behind the number of cars.
aakour 5y ago
To counter all the whataboutism in the replies to your comment, I just wanted to say that I live in a flat in central Berlin and park on the street, and charging or range have never been actual issues. My car use consists of trips around Berlin and Germany, driving to rural Finland and back, regularly towing a trailer, etc.

fallingknife 5y ago

Range is solved. The issue now is charger density. In some more remote places you may have to go 50 miles to find a charger. Same thing was probably an issue for gas cars a long time ago and it solved itself when gas stations became profitable everywhere.

ec109685 5y ago
You can’t fill up a ICE car at home, so the density will be less as a result. I know people all can’t charge at home and street parking is a thing, so it seems like 400+ mile range and 10 minute fill ups 10 minute away will be needed.

streamofdigits 5y ago

this will vary a lot by region. some places are more densely populated than others. looking up regional statistics of average trip length and percentiles (like the length of 95% of trips) could give some objective metrics to complement what might be primarily psychological / behavioral hangups I think what would really clinch this is not creating gargantuan batteries but simply making batteries universal plug-n-play. So if needed you just stop a battery station and replace it. This solves also the unfortunate bottleneck of everybody charging their batteries during night-time, which (last time I checked) is when the sun is not shinning...

jillesvangurp 5y ago

There are not enough range anxious people to continue to keep ICE manufacturers going. It's more a question of when production stops rather than if. There are a few holdouts of course that might last until they actually get banned on most roads. But for most manufacturers that is going to be a lot sooner than they are hoping right now. That will no doubt upset some ICE vehicle owners with enough disposable income that they could feasibly be targeted with a lucrative product that appeals to them. Good news is that cars with 600 miles and 10 minute recharge to 300 mile (50%) are totally feasible! E.g. the hummer that GM is rumored to be working on will apparently have 200kwh. Of course it has the weight of a Tank and the aerodynamics of barn door, so it might not be enough to get to 600 miles. If Tesla ever puts that kind of battery in a Tesla it would probably end up with close to 1000 mile range and they would need to make it a bit bigger. That's 20 hours non stop driving at 50 miles an hour. Absolutely nobody should be doing that. But you could build a car that does that. That's a about 3x what they currently put in a model 3 (75kwh). It will be a bit heavier of course so maybe not 3x the range. But you get my point. Solvable problem for people with money. For the rest of us normal people, take a break & plug in, go to the bathroom, eat some lunch, stretch your legs, relax, etc. After the 300+ miles that you can get with a few decent EVs that's probably a good idea. It's not the end of the world.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lotsofpulp 5y ago
I assume there are plenty of poorer people in nations with poorer electric infrastructure to keep ICE manufacturing going for a long time. At least a couple decades. The more fossil fuel consumption drops in developed countries, the cheaper fossil fuels get, which would then allow people who currently cannot afford fossil fuels to buy them and replace demand.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> There are not enough range anxious people to continue to keep ICE manufacturers going. True in some smaller countries, but in places like the United States it’s very common for people to do a road trip occasionally to visit family or go on vacation. Stopping for a 30-60 minute charge a couple times per trip isn’t terrible, but it would mean that my annual family visit would become a 2-day drive instead of a 1-day drive. I can deal with that, but many people aren’t ready for it. I doubt we’ll see gigantic batteries going into small cars for ridiculous range. The efficiency hit would be too large due to the extra weight. I think fast charging and a fast charging network is what we need. But charging networks are the real issue at this point. They’re out there, but interoperability issues means the various networks often don’t work as fast as they claim or maybe not at all with your car. Range anxiety is bad enough, but when you can’t even be sure the charging station will work when you get there it’s a different level of worry altogether.

dreamcompiler 5y ago

In the US I've driven several cross country trips (multi-thousand miles) in a Tesla with 300 miles of range. It's not only not a big deal; it's the most comfortable touring car I've ever owned. If you stick to interstates, recharging at superchargers is easy. If you travel on smaller roads you have to plan more carefully to find destination chargers, RV parks, etc along the way but so far that hasn't been a problem for me. Granted I recharge in my garage so I can commute locally without ever needing to think about range, but for purposes of long-distance driving I think range anxiety is an overblown issue, at least for Teslas in the US.

maxerickson 5y ago
Looking at the trip I took over Thanksgiving, there are 3 Superchargers on the route, 2 of which I would pretty much have to stop at. The 3rd one is more than 300 miles from the start, and the second one is more than 200 miles from the destination. So 2 stops, 10-15 minutes each. One stop is several miles from the freeway on a busy town road, which isn't bad, but another 10-15 minutes. The other stop is very close to the freeway, so pretty much just charge time. The largest gaps between gas stations on that trip are probably 20 or 30 miles. I would describe the Supercharging trip as very doable, but it requires following ~1 available plan vs just stopping when it is convenient (for a bathroom break or snack or whatever).
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  Agreed. Tesla touring requires more planning than touring in an ICE car. But the car itself (and the Plugshare app) helps with the planning process. I enjoy planning; some people might not. In general I find the supercharger locations occur at about the right interval for a pee break and a leg stretch, and more superchargers are being added all the time.
- ec109685 5y ago
  Yeah, planning is key. We do a Bay Area to Central California trip regularly and there is no super charger at destination, nor is there one close enough on the way back along the route, so you can’t drive there and back and land at a super charger on the route. And if you use the car (or just let it sit) some power is drained at destination. Charging on the way there just doesn’t feel right since we have enough juice to get there and everyone is anxious to reach destination, but it’s the only way to ensure we don’t have to take a detour at some point. We solved this by getting an adapter so we can charge at their house using their dryer plug. Yes, these are completely first world problems but it adds just enough hassle I could see some people just wanting to use an ICE car to make the trip.

xorcist 5y ago

That's 1000 km. Which is much farther than any gasoline powered car with a full tank. Range anxiety will stop being a thing when electric vehicles are common and nobody thinks of them a something special. It's a matter of social acceptance, and the infrastructure that follows.

ec109685 5y ago
You can always find a gas station that will get you going within 10 minutes, so it’s a different consideration when charging is hard. Driving an EV would be terribly annoying if I didn’t have a charger at home, but I know people that rely on super charging to keep their car going (have free super charging given early Tesla adopter).

gameswithgo 5y ago

Depends, if you don’t toad trip much in a huge geography like the usa or australia, and have a house, range is already solved.

phkahler 5y ago

In city driving somewhere from 200 to 300 miles will be enough. For long trips, charge time is important and can be reduced by using higher voltage batteries. 10 minutes is still out of reach.

ec109685 5y ago
We did 400 miles / hour at super charger just recently on a 2018 car, so 100km in 10 mins. Yes, not there, but getting closer. 2x better than where it was a few years ago.

ksec 5y ago

>Imho it's 600+ miles on a single charge, with a 300m recharge in 10 minutes. In my opinion the Battery equation is already solved. Even for those who are at the end of longer driving range curve, we have a solid and realistic roadmap of battery technology. Pick Tesla tabless battery for example. It isn't Solid Battery like Holy Grail Battery, but it gets to the point where even if you are somewhat skeptical of EV, surely this is edging close to good enough? People often confuse range anxiety with battery capacity. I dont think that is strictly true. It is one of these things where engineers would come in and suggest we need bigger battery to solve our customer's problem. But here is an product person POV, what if you have fast charging station everywhere. From your car pack living in cities, to packing in a mall or pubic parking space. This is similar to charging smartphones. Once you can charge your smartphone even dinning in Restaurants or on a Bus. You dont get nervous about running out of battery. So as many comment have suggested, the biggest obstacle to EV isn't battery, is the abundance of Charging station. And given I actually believe City transport in the future should be micro mobility, whether that is e-bike or something else we have yet imagined, we need charging port for both bike and EV. And this needs some government planning. While this is all good discussion, I really wish we focus more on silicon carbide :) I wonder why they didn't jump straight to 300mm and only upgraded to 200mm wafers. They could have completely cornered the market with better economy of scale.

sixothree 5y ago

Serious answer I've heard many times. For anyone on the coast from Texas to Florida, it means being able to evacuate a hurricane. This means the possibility of sitting in traffic for 12 hours to travel 300 miles.

ec109685 5y ago
Good point. It is comforting to have access to a backup ICE car. The other thing you can get burned with is to forget to charge before a trip. If so, it’s about an hour detour to drive to super charger, wait and get back.

pornel 5y ago

I don't think it needs any new inventions, only wider rollout of what we can do already: fast DC chargers. Current EVs need a 20 min charge per 3 hours of driving. It may not be ideal for pee-in-a-bottle cannonball racers, but IMHO it's entirely reasonable for most people. It's approaching a point of diminishing returns. Compare this with charging of smartphones vs brick phones. Daily charging used to be considered a dealbreaker, but fast charging made it a no-big-deal, and people got used to it.

alkonaut 5y ago

Depends on the available charging infrastructure. If you can go 6-7 hours without passing a fast charger and it’s -20C outside then you need the equivalent of a 60L diesel tank (1000km range) to manage.

pjc50 5y ago

I wonder not so much about retail customers as commercial ones. The Hertz-Tesla deal is spectacular, but what about all those dirty diesel Transit vans? Container trucks? The latter in particular need to manage the 8-10h maximum legal shift of a driver with a full load.