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You're imputing a lot of malice into what I've written that I didn't intend - I'm a big fan of EVs and would love to get one in the near future. I'm just outlin

You're imputing a lot of malice into what I've written that I didn't intend - I'm a big fan of EVs and would love to get one in the near future. I'm just outlining the sort of issues and complexities that come up if you live outside of the US east coast in terms of normal distances that you need to travel. On average, I drive about the same amount as you. I have a 8 year old car with around 50,000 miles on it. The issue is that there's a range of common-enough activities outside of my day to day driving that make a 300 mile range more difficult. I bring up my friend's Tesla situation only to point out the complexities. For a lot of the more rural midwest, there's not charging options that aren't bringing your own cables and hoping there's a plug you can use near where you can park your car. The reason he does it is that the closest charging station that's meant for EVs is nearly 50 miles in the wrong direction, so unless he wants to spend most of 3 hours recharging his car for the drive home, he has to get creative. I certainly didn't mean it as a slight to anything but the US EV infrastructure. The reason I bring up the distances involved is not to brag about my driving or anything, but to illuminate the differences between EV viability in the US vs. Japan or the UK in the earlier replies. If I had an EV, this trip (to see my family for the first time in 3 years, and an old friend for the first time in 10) would be thousands of dollars in plane flights that are quite a bit worse for the environment. For right now, as you point out, relying on an EV puts constraints on your life. The long drive to see my family again would go from 14 hours to 16+ if I had to work in stops to fully re-charge my EV. Or I could take a flight, but wouldn't that nearly undo all of the environmental benefit of having driven my EV for the rest of the year?

maccard 4y ago
> For a lot of the more rural midwest, there's not charging options that aren't bringing your own cables and hoping there's a plug you can use near where you can park your car. Sure, so EVs aren't for the rural midwest then. Living in actual rural areas means travelling with jerry cans in case you get stuck, and keeping emergency packs in case you're caught without transit. > Or I could take a flight, but wouldn't that nearly undo all of the environmental benefit of having driven my EV for the rest of the year? Unless you're driving a hyper efficient vehicle already, for a drive that long, depending on how many people you're driving, you would be better off flying. It's ~1.3 tonnes of CO2 for a 2500 mile drive and about 0.6kg CO2 per person to fly the same distance. Cars are a remarkably bad way to travel. > The long drive to see my family again would go from 14 hours to 16+ if I had to work in stops to fully re-charge my EV That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, to be honest? Driving 14 hours has got to be in the top percentile of non-commercial trips, and it only being ~15% longer on probably the worst case imaginable is pretty good.

maccard 4y ago

> For a lot of the more rural midwest, there's not charging options that aren't bringing your own cables and hoping there's a plug you can use near where you can park your car. Sure, so EVs aren't for the rural midwest then. Living in actual rural areas means travelling with jerry cans in case you get stuck, and keeping emergency packs in case you're caught without transit. > Or I could take a flight, but wouldn't that nearly undo all of the environmental benefit of having driven my EV for the rest of the year? Unless you're driving a hyper efficient vehicle already, for a drive that long, depending on how many people you're driving, you would be better off flying. It's ~1.3 tonnes of CO2 for a 2500 mile drive and about 0.6kg CO2 per person to fly the same distance. Cars are a remarkably bad way to travel. > The long drive to see my family again would go from 14 hours to 16+ if I had to work in stops to fully re-charge my EV That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, to be honest? Driving 14 hours has got to be in the top percentile of non-commercial trips, and it only being ~15% longer on probably the worst case imaginable is pretty good.