8 ms·

Wyoming EV Road Trip Hell: Cheyenne to Casper in 15 Hours

16 points by qwertyuiop_ 4y ago

Bostonian 4y ago
An implication is not to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035, as California and other states have announced.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  If the US is so incompetent and unmotivated as to not be able to fix this in 13 years, we deserve to fail. This reads as a hit piece, not as a realistic telling of the EV story for vehicles with the largest US market share [1]. China has 65% of all fast DC charging stations in the world, and it did not take them 13 years to build them all [2]. Tesla spent $1B to build its own global fast DC charging network [3]. This is not hard. It is work, and it does cost resources, but it is not hard. Tangentially, there is a Tesla Supercharger station halfway between Cheyenne and Casper in Wheatland, WY [4], strangely not mentioned. Rolling into that station on empty would require no more than a 20-40 minute charge to continue to Casper, assuming worst case charge curve of the smallest current production battery pack and a 150kw max charge rate of that station. "Ideally, before getting stranded in an EV, one could pull off to a public charging station. Unfortunately, there are no Level 3 charging stations between Cheyenne and Casper." (I have driven 100k miles cross country over the last 4 years in my Tesla) [1] https://electrek.co/2022/08/15/tesla-tsla-dominates-us-electric-car-market-share/ https://electrek.co/2022/08/15/tesla-tsla-dominates-us-elect... ("Tesla (TSLA) still dominates US electric car market with 68% market share") [2] https://www.thebuzzevnews.com/china-public-ev-charging-stations/ https://www.thebuzzevnews.com/china-public-ev-charging-stati... ("According to the latest data on Statista, China has a total of 1.15 million publicly available EV charging stations. Of China’s total figure, 677,000 stations are slow-charging ones, while 470,000 are fast-charging stations. Thus, 41% of stations in China have a fast-charging capability. If these numbers are correct (which, is always hard to say for sure when it comes to China), China has a disproportionately high number of stations compared to the rest of the world and a comparatively high share of fast-charging stations. The United States finds itself in the second spot worldwide. According to the data, the U.S. has only 113,527 charging stations, of which only 21,752 are of fast-charging capability. Hence, a massive 81% of stations in the U.S. have only slow charging capability.") [3] https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map [4] http://www.tesla.com/findus/location/supercharger/wheatlandsupercharger http://www.tesla.com/findus/location/supercharger/wheatlands...
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > Tangentially, there is a Tesla Supercharger station halfway between Cheyenne and Casper in Wheatland, WY [4], strangely not mentioned Are Supercharger stations able to charge non-Tesla vehicles? If not, then it hardly seems "strange" to not mention an option that's entirely useless to someone driving a non-Tesla vehicle (in the article's case, that vehicle being a Nissan Leaf).
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Tesla vehicles, for better or worse, are the majority of EVs in the US currently. Sure, if you want to complain a specific brand of vehicle with limited charging options and a lower range versus competitors can’t make it between towns quickly, that is a story. Is it an honest story? It isn’t. The majority of EVs in the US have access to Tesla’s fast DC charging network. This is cherry picking to shape a narrative to a rural audience. > But despite the attractive price point, the Leaf never really achieved full liftoff. First released in 2010, Nissan has only sold around 170,000 Leaf EVs in the US over the last decade. Compare that to the total number of Tesla vehicles sold in the US in just 2022 — 564,743 — and you can start to see the headwinds facing Nissan. (The automaker said in 2020 that 500,000 Leafs have been sold globally since the launch in 2010.) It it’s true that if you buy an EV from a legacy automaker, your charging story is going to be depressing currently. That would’ve been a fine story to run with full context provided, instead of generalizing all EVs as having a poor experience. A little more honesty is all I’m asking for. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23219044/nissan-leaf-phase-out-discontinue-ev-pioneer https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23219044/nissan-leaf-phas... https://www.statista.com/statistics/801337/chevy-bolt-ev-sales-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/801337/chevy-bolt-ev-sal... https://www.electrive.com/2021/06/28/bmw-i3-to-end-sales-run-in-the-usa-in-july/ https://www.electrive.com/2021/06/28/bmw-i3-to-end-sales-run...
      - yellowapple 4y ago
        > Tesla vehicles, for better or worse, are the majority of EVs in the US currently. That doesn't mean they always will be. Not everyone can afford a Tesla; if your response to "not everyone drives a Tesla" boils down to "lol just buy a Tesla", then your response is the precise opposite of useful to the vast majority of current drivers in the US.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
It's weird that America actively advertises this kind of incompetence. Imagine being Chinese and reading this. It's like the leader of a pack of hyenas openly limping. https://theicct.org/2022-update-ev-sales-us-eu-ch-aug22/ https://theicct.org/2022-update-ev-sales-us-eu-ch-aug22/
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Are you advocating for crushing dissenting voices?
  - 8jef 4y ago
    It's hard to conceive that freewill only can solve chaos when seing others as packs of limping hyenas.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Probably less crushing of dissenting voices is the real remedy. You can only publish this kind of thing in America because people are so ignorant of what is possible and what is already being done in other nations.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > can only publish this kind of thing in America because people are so ignorant of what is possible and what is already being done in other nations Like not publishing bad GDP numbers during a party conference [1]? The comparison to China is doubly misplaced: the problem here is range—most Chinese EVs have reduced range in favour of a cheaper price. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/93daf530-14c1-4877-8d59-d4f184fec0d6 https://www.ft.com/content/93daf530-14c1-4877-8d59-d4f184fec...
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        I would be genuinely surprised if there was any EV stat that China trailed the US on. Obviously some stats can be gamed, but people are aware of this and try to confirm via other methods. Being a world leader in the manufacture and deployment of EVs is a pretty big thing, it's not like climate change that you can fake up with a couple of poor post-grads on the payroll. edit: after doing some digging it seems China has about 4x as many EVs and a slightly higher average battery capacity. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1258399/china-bevs-average-power-accumulator-battery-capacity/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1258399/china-bevs-avera... Which makes sense, as they make most of the batteries too: > Currently, Chinese companies make up 56% of the EV battery market, followed by Korean companies (26%) and Japanese manufacturers (10%). The leading battery supplier, CATL, expanded its market share from 32% in 2021 to 34% in 2022. One-third of the world's EV batteries come from the Chinese company.
clintonb 4y ago
This is a strange article that has an anti-EV tinge at the very least. As with other similar articles, it tosses a bunch of charging-related numbers around to confuse readers. It doesn’t acknowledge the fact that planning will be required for road trips to ensure optimal charging times. It also fails to acknowledge that some makes and models are simply better than others in terms of charger compatibility and battery range. A Better Route Planner estimates a Model 3 can complete the trip in 2 hours and 20 minutes with no charging, assuming you start at 100% charge. I hate to blame the consumer, but Alan bought the wrong car. Also, AAA definitely has charging trucks. That’s the only reason I’m a member.
- patrick451 4y ago
  > It doesn’t acknowledge the fact that planning will be required for road trips to ensure optimal charging times. Why should it? If I need to become an amateur logistician just drive my car across the state, that car is not fit for use outside the realm of dedicated hobbyists.
  - fdewrewrewf 4y ago
    I subscribe to the EV conspiracy theory that a major part of the planned CO2 reductions will be because getting anywhere by car will be much harder.
  - clintonb 4y ago
    You don’t need to become an amateur anything. You put your starting point and destination into one of numerous apps, and they tell you where to charge.
  - Arrath 4y ago
    You could say the same about planning to drive an ICE vehicle from Seattle to Anchorage, or across Australia.
  - mint2 4y ago
    There were a lot of areas in the 60s where a road trip would require substantial advance planning to go well. (I guess people should never have done them back then…even although that helped pave the way for making it easy today. But this isn’t my main point, it’s an aside) And this doesn’t even touch on the way just a few decades ago many ethnic groups had to plan extensively for road trips for their safety. Nowadays it seems like we’re on the path to WallE’s world where even a modest amount of planning is unthinkable for some. What has google maps done to our perspective? Although I have hope, it used to be single use plastic bottles were the complete standard because no one wanted to plan slightly ahead. Now substantial numbers of people fill up a reusable bottle in advance like good amateur logisticians.
maherbeg 4y ago
I've driven across Wyoming in a Tesla Model 3 LR and it was totally fine. This was part of a larger road trip starting in Texas, to Wyoming, then over to Illinois 3 years ago. The density of chargers has only gotten better since! Wyoming was definitely a little tricky because the charger density was the bare minimum to get across but otherwise was manageable.
- dpifke 4y ago
  The gas station density is also the bare minimum to get across, especially if you're not traveling on I-80. And good luck finding lunch. (Source: I live in Rapid City, South Dakota, and have driven across Wyoming many times, in both ICE vehicles and EVs.)
rasz 4y ago
>Nissan Leaf is all you need to know
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

16 points by qwertyuiop_ 4y ago

Bostonian 4y ago

An implication is not to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035, as California and other states have announced.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
If the US is so incompetent and unmotivated as to not be able to fix this in 13 years, we deserve to fail. This reads as a hit piece, not as a realistic telling of the EV story for vehicles with the largest US market share [1]. China has 65% of all fast DC charging stations in the world, and it did not take them 13 years to build them all [2]. Tesla spent $1B to build its own global fast DC charging network [3]. This is not hard. It is work, and it does cost resources, but it is not hard. Tangentially, there is a Tesla Supercharger station halfway between Cheyenne and Casper in Wheatland, WY [4], strangely not mentioned. Rolling into that station on empty would require no more than a 20-40 minute charge to continue to Casper, assuming worst case charge curve of the smallest current production battery pack and a 150kw max charge rate of that station. "Ideally, before getting stranded in an EV, one could pull off to a public charging station. Unfortunately, there are no Level 3 charging stations between Cheyenne and Casper." (I have driven 100k miles cross country over the last 4 years in my Tesla) [1] https://electrek.co/2022/08/15/tesla-tsla-dominates-us-electric-car-market-share/ https://electrek.co/2022/08/15/tesla-tsla-dominates-us-elect... ("Tesla (TSLA) still dominates US electric car market with 68% market share") [2] https://www.thebuzzevnews.com/china-public-ev-charging-stations/ https://www.thebuzzevnews.com/china-public-ev-charging-stati... ("According to the latest data on Statista, China has a total of 1.15 million publicly available EV charging stations. Of China’s total figure, 677,000 stations are slow-charging ones, while 470,000 are fast-charging stations. Thus, 41% of stations in China have a fast-charging capability. If these numbers are correct (which, is always hard to say for sure when it comes to China), China has a disproportionately high number of stations compared to the rest of the world and a comparatively high share of fast-charging stations. The United States finds itself in the second spot worldwide. According to the data, the U.S. has only 113,527 charging stations, of which only 21,752 are of fast-charging capability. Hence, a massive 81% of stations in the U.S. have only slow charging capability.") [3] https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map [4] http://www.tesla.com/findus/location/supercharger/wheatlandsupercharger http://www.tesla.com/findus/location/supercharger/wheatlands...
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > Tangentially, there is a Tesla Supercharger station halfway between Cheyenne and Casper in Wheatland, WY [4], strangely not mentioned Are Supercharger stations able to charge non-Tesla vehicles? If not, then it hardly seems "strange" to not mention an option that's entirely useless to someone driving a non-Tesla vehicle (in the article's case, that vehicle being a Nissan Leaf).
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Tesla vehicles, for better or worse, are the majority of EVs in the US currently. Sure, if you want to complain a specific brand of vehicle with limited charging options and a lower range versus competitors can’t make it between towns quickly, that is a story. Is it an honest story? It isn’t. The majority of EVs in the US have access to Tesla’s fast DC charging network. This is cherry picking to shape a narrative to a rural audience. > But despite the attractive price point, the Leaf never really achieved full liftoff. First released in 2010, Nissan has only sold around 170,000 Leaf EVs in the US over the last decade. Compare that to the total number of Tesla vehicles sold in the US in just 2022 — 564,743 — and you can start to see the headwinds facing Nissan. (The automaker said in 2020 that 500,000 Leafs have been sold globally since the launch in 2010.) It it’s true that if you buy an EV from a legacy automaker, your charging story is going to be depressing currently. That would’ve been a fine story to run with full context provided, instead of generalizing all EVs as having a poor experience. A little more honesty is all I’m asking for. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23219044/nissan-leaf-phase-out-discontinue-ev-pioneer https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23219044/nissan-leaf-phas... https://www.statista.com/statistics/801337/chevy-bolt-ev-sales-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/801337/chevy-bolt-ev-sal... https://www.electrive.com/2021/06/28/bmw-i3-to-end-sales-run-in-the-usa-in-july/ https://www.electrive.com/2021/06/28/bmw-i3-to-end-sales-run...
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      > Tesla vehicles, for better or worse, are the majority of EVs in the US currently. That doesn't mean they always will be. Not everyone can afford a Tesla; if your response to "not everyone drives a Tesla" boils down to "lol just buy a Tesla", then your response is the precise opposite of useful to the vast majority of current drivers in the US.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

It's weird that America actively advertises this kind of incompetence. Imagine being Chinese and reading this. It's like the leader of a pack of hyenas openly limping. https://theicct.org/2022-update-ev-sales-us-eu-ch-aug22/ https://theicct.org/2022-update-ev-sales-us-eu-ch-aug22/

CameronNemo 4y ago
Are you advocating for crushing dissenting voices?
- 8jef 4y ago
  It's hard to conceive that freewill only can solve chaos when seing others as packs of limping hyenas.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Probably less crushing of dissenting voices is the real remedy. You can only publish this kind of thing in America because people are so ignorant of what is possible and what is already being done in other nations.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > can only publish this kind of thing in America because people are so ignorant of what is possible and what is already being done in other nations Like not publishing bad GDP numbers during a party conference [1]? The comparison to China is doubly misplaced: the problem here is range—most Chinese EVs have reduced range in favour of a cheaper price. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/93daf530-14c1-4877-8d59-d4f184fec0d6 https://www.ft.com/content/93daf530-14c1-4877-8d59-d4f184fec...
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      I would be genuinely surprised if there was any EV stat that China trailed the US on. Obviously some stats can be gamed, but people are aware of this and try to confirm via other methods. Being a world leader in the manufacture and deployment of EVs is a pretty big thing, it's not like climate change that you can fake up with a couple of poor post-grads on the payroll. edit: after doing some digging it seems China has about 4x as many EVs and a slightly higher average battery capacity. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1258399/china-bevs-average-power-accumulator-battery-capacity/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1258399/china-bevs-avera... Which makes sense, as they make most of the batteries too: > Currently, Chinese companies make up 56% of the EV battery market, followed by Korean companies (26%) and Japanese manufacturers (10%). The leading battery supplier, CATL, expanded its market share from 32% in 2021 to 34% in 2022. One-third of the world's EV batteries come from the Chinese company.

clintonb 4y ago

This is a strange article that has an anti-EV tinge at the very least. As with other similar articles, it tosses a bunch of charging-related numbers around to confuse readers. It doesn’t acknowledge the fact that planning will be required for road trips to ensure optimal charging times. It also fails to acknowledge that some makes and models are simply better than others in terms of charger compatibility and battery range. A Better Route Planner estimates a Model 3 can complete the trip in 2 hours and 20 minutes with no charging, assuming you start at 100% charge. I hate to blame the consumer, but Alan bought the wrong car. Also, AAA definitely has charging trucks. That’s the only reason I’m a member.

patrick451 4y ago
> It doesn’t acknowledge the fact that planning will be required for road trips to ensure optimal charging times. Why should it? If I need to become an amateur logistician just drive my car across the state, that car is not fit for use outside the realm of dedicated hobbyists.
- fdewrewrewf 4y ago
  I subscribe to the EV conspiracy theory that a major part of the planned CO2 reductions will be because getting anywhere by car will be much harder.
- clintonb 4y ago
  You don’t need to become an amateur anything. You put your starting point and destination into one of numerous apps, and they tell you where to charge.
- Arrath 4y ago
  You could say the same about planning to drive an ICE vehicle from Seattle to Anchorage, or across Australia.
- mint2 4y ago
  There were a lot of areas in the 60s where a road trip would require substantial advance planning to go well. (I guess people should never have done them back then…even although that helped pave the way for making it easy today. But this isn’t my main point, it’s an aside) And this doesn’t even touch on the way just a few decades ago many ethnic groups had to plan extensively for road trips for their safety. Nowadays it seems like we’re on the path to WallE’s world where even a modest amount of planning is unthinkable for some. What has google maps done to our perspective? Although I have hope, it used to be single use plastic bottles were the complete standard because no one wanted to plan slightly ahead. Now substantial numbers of people fill up a reusable bottle in advance like good amateur logisticians.

maherbeg 4y ago

I've driven across Wyoming in a Tesla Model 3 LR and it was totally fine. This was part of a larger road trip starting in Texas, to Wyoming, then over to Illinois 3 years ago. The density of chargers has only gotten better since! Wyoming was definitely a little tricky because the charger density was the bare minimum to get across but otherwise was manageable.

dpifke 4y ago
The gas station density is also the bare minimum to get across, especially if you're not traveling on I-80. And good luck finding lunch. (Source: I live in Rapid City, South Dakota, and have driven across Wyoming many times, in both ICE vehicles and EVs.)

rasz 4y ago

>Nissan Leaf is all you need to know

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]