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It really makes me think an electric car future is going to happen. This possibility was dismissed all my life (“what about road trips?) but the demand is there

It really makes me think an electric car future is going to happen. This possibility was dismissed all my life (“what about road trips?) but the demand is there.

willio58 3y ago
That dismissal held some water until we hit a point where batteries were cheap enough, high capacity enough, and there were enough chargers. We’re still just at the beginning. In 10 years it’ll all be much better
baron816 3y ago
We’ve known for a while now that it was going to happen, right? And that all those countries that are committed to phasing out ICE cars by 2035 are being way too conservative. Isn’t it estimated that within a year or two, you’re going to have to pay a premium just to purchase an ICE car? And that premium is just going to keep growing as battery costs continue to shrink.
- SirMaster 3y ago
  God I hope it's not that soon. There's like nowhere to charge an electric car near me. They really need to work on charging infrastructure before they convince me to buy an electric car. And the cost still needs to come way, way down. It seems like every electric car that has any decent range is a luxury car. I don't want a luxury car, I just want a super basic cheap car to get me from point a to point b.
  - arc4n0n 3y ago
    you only charge on road trips. Charging at home has no analogue with gas cars... It's just something that's intrinsically better about EVs
    - SirMaster 3y ago
      I have no way to charge at home though, being in an apartment. I don't plan to change that any time soon. I am certainly not changing where I live just for my car when a gas car works fine.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      Yea, one of the current ironies is that the folks most able to use/charge an environmentally friendly car are the people living in environmentally unfriendly single-family homes. I've yet to see an apartment complex with more than 2-3 charging points for a building of hundreds of units, and plenty of older condo/apartment housing stock can't even easily retrofit chargers into the lot without spending tens of thousands of dollars on it, assuming your local power system supports it. Having to drive five to ten miles and wait for most of an hour to charge is just a bad experience.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        I have friends who own EVs without access to home charging who charge at the grocery store once a week while shopping. The car is done charging before they’re done shopping for groceries. The trick is to distribute chargers everywhere, because your car is going to be parked somewhere long enough to charge unless you’re a taxi or some other high utilization use case. Most will charge at home and or work, but some cannot.
        noirbot 3y ago
        Yea, it's what I'd have to do, I suppose, but it would mean driving to a grocery store 2-3 times further away, and my average trip to the store these days is only 10-20 minutes which I doubt is long enough for a full charge. My office and home don't have chargers and probably won't for a while, so I'd essentially have to make a special trip out on the weekends to charge my car while I get lunch nearby or something.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        For an L3 charger, 20 minutes is a lot. If you are 20%, it should get you to 70% or so, it takes longer to go from 70 to 100% given how battery charging works.
  - brianwawok 3y ago
    Do you have charging where you live? (Private garage or parking spot?) All you really need is charging where you live, and charging along highways. I have literally never gone to any of the chargers within 30 miles of my house. Hardest part is for apartment buildings. No big incentive to install chargers for public use.
    - SirMaster 3y ago
      No, There is no charging anywhere "near" my home. I park in an uncovered open apartment parking lot. Same thing for at work. And checking the charging maps shows very few options anywhere near me and the few places that do only have a couple plugs. Would be annoying to find it's in use by the time I get there so I would have to wait for them and then me.
      - phinnaeus 3y ago
        Is it feasible to have charging installed at your home or office? To reiterate what GP said, I basically never charge anywhere except at home (currently in a private carport that I got a charger installed at, previously in an apartment building with a single shared charger for ~50 spots, 4-5 EVs).
        SirMaster 3y ago
        I don’t really see how I could convince my apartment or the company I work for to install chargers any time soon. Sure maybe in years it will be common enough, but that’s my entire point. It doesn’t seem common at all around me yet, and I’m not going to buy an EV before charging is reasonably available.
        pjc50 3y ago
        Some jurisdictions are going to start mandating this for large car parks. The transition is definitely going to be very uneven; the closer you are to the centre of a big city with an air quality problem, the sooner it will arrive.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    The cost is a big issue for me still. I get it, but I paid $15k for a car 10 years ago - small hatchback that's been more than enough for my needs. The only options I have for EVs are either 2-3x the size (Rivian, F150, Model X) or 4-5x the cost (Tesla, Lucid, Polestar), or both. I barely drive a hundred miles in a week, and often less, but having range to do a 2-3 hour road trip is a big bonus. You can't even get a quality EV with a shorter range though for less than 50-70k. I'm not even sure I've spent that much on my car over the last decade, including gas, insurance, repairs, and initial cost. Makes it hard to justify the upgrade.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
      There were lease return iMiev, 500e, etc for about $4k-$10k in 2018, but the supply of those dried up.
      - noirbot 3y ago
        Yea, there was a brief experiment with smaller stuff 5ish years ago, but that seems to have dried up hard and left us with 2-ton trucks and SUVs or high end luxury sedans being the only options in the US for EVs. Seems like there may be 500evs coming back next year, so may look into that.
        telotortium 3y ago
        It's good that the Tesla charging port (NACS) is well on its way to becoming a cross-manufacturer standard in the US, so it may make more sense soon to have smaller EVs that don't need to have as large of a capacity to find the few Electrify America stations.
    - foogazi 3y ago
      > You can't even get a quality EV with a shorter range though for less than 50-70k. Bolt EUV is around 30k
      - defrost 3y ago
  - pornel 3y ago
    The charging infrastructure can improve literally overnight. Around me there were very few places until McDonald's suddenly decided to have a charger at every drive-thru, and now I have as many chargers as McDonalds' around me.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      The charging infrastructure will take years to improve. "Literally overnight" is a laughable exaggeration. Pretty sure even McDonald's can't install EV chargers at each drive-thru "literally overnight".
      - pornel 3y ago
        But they do. Commercial locations like malls already have power available, so it's not a large-scale infrastructure project, but a matter of digging a cable and hooking up a box.
- troupo 3y ago
  In Sweden (at least) you're already paying multiple premiums to drive an EV: - the price is easily 1.5x compared to an equivalent ICE car - shorter driving ranges - nearly non-existent charging infrastructure
ne0flex 3y ago
I recently drove a 2019 Tesla Model 3 from NYC to Montreal via Vermont. Personally, I wouldn't do the route I took in a Tesla (/EV) again. The 'range anxiety' set definitely in during the trip because, when departing NYC, I entered my destination in Vermont and the navigation system showed I'd have 47% battery remaining upon arrival... I ended up arriving with 19% battery and I was in the middle of the nowhere. Due to the prevailing weather conditions (the car kept saying the battery was cold) and it was raining I guess the battery dropped quicker than it should have? I was stressing out because my wife would be late to meeting her client had I went to the nearest supercharger and I didn't know if I would have enough battery to make it to the charger if continued and dropped off to the client, given how fast the battery was dropping. After dropping her off, I had to charge the car a further 3 times at superchargers, adding an extra 1h45m to the whole trip to Montreal. I also charged the car once going from NYC to Brattleboro, which was another 30m, so almost 2h15m in spent charging the car.
- brianwawok 3y ago
  I got used to this by my second road trip and it’s a nonissue. You control discharge rate Tina large extent. Battery on track to hit 0? Low speed from 74 to 69 and you do just fine and arrive at 12%. Have near 50k miles in road trips and won’t ever buy a Dino bone burner again.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
    Yup. The sane applies to ICEs, but fast refueling means people don't need to think about it.
    - ggm 3y ago
      Battery swap (please, don't swamp this with statements about greshams law and batteries) would eliminate this anxiety/speed thing too.
      - anonu 3y ago
        Battery swap is probably not the way. My prediction is charging times will get much faster with better battery tech in the next 5 years. We might be able to get a full charge in under 10 minutes - which starts to match the convenience of a gas fillup.
neodypsis 3y ago
I thought hydrogen was the future of cars.
Philip-J-Fry 3y ago
The overwhelming majority of car trips are possible in even the budget EVs. Road trips are a problem, but charging infrastructure will eventually handle it. During the cross over period you could rent an ICE car. I don't think 1 road trip a year is enough to sway most people off the idea of an EV if they want one. It's only going to sway those who are already skeptical.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
The first major evacuation event that hits a primarily electric-vehicle city is going to sorely test that idea. Batteries need to hold about 3-4x the charge that they currently do to make that plausible without endangering thousands.
- foobazgt 3y ago
  EVs are probably in a better position than most ICE vehicles in that situation. You won't consume fuel while at a dead stop in the traffic jams. You'll have peak efficiency when moving at low speeds in the traffic jams. You'll already be charged up at home, while everyone else will be waiting in line at gas stations to fill up. Some people won't even be able to get gas, because the stations will run out in the rush.
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    Except they aren't remotely in a better position. Vehicles travel for hundreds of miles in the event of a major storm. Some places may be up to 6 weeks without power upon returning. So you drive your battery powered car back home, and now it's dead, and you have no way to recharge it. Guess what you're going to be relying on to get basic essentials given that FEMA vehicles are NOT coming to you to deliver food? Someone else's ICE. So when it's 100 degrees and 90 percent humidity outside and your neighbors with the ICE vehicles have gone to the gas stations for refills to both their vehicles AND their generators so that they can run a portable AC unit, you're utterly out of luck with your electric paperweight. I suppose you have a shot if you still have working solar panels, but in the situations I mentioned... LOL. Even if the winds don't shred them, the debris will.
- ryzvonusef 3y ago
  When hurricans etc are about hit an area, Tesla sends out an update to over-ride charge limits and fully charge the cars pre-emptively, sends notifications and alerts on the app, and makes super charging on the route free. This would not be possible on ICE vehicles, IMHO.
  - 3y ago
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
Electric cars have a lot more problems than range. Toxicity and pollution of producing the battery is an immediate one. And the fact it's junk in 5-6 years, obsoleting often the entire car (or requiring an extremely expensive replacement). The fact BEV are much heavier and are wearing down the roads much faster. And while ICE are of higher risk of a fire, an ICE fire seems like child's play compared to a BEV fire. This thing is impossible to put out and turns everything around to fine (and very toxic) dust (including, again, the road below).
- belltaco 3y ago
  Batteries don't turn into junk in 5-6 years. Where are you getting your information from?
bdcravens 3y ago
Did a long road trip in a Kia EV6. (Houston to San Diego and back) Stops weren't always super convenient, but it wasn't that long ago that trip wasn't even possible.

It really makes me think an electric car future is going to happen. This possibility was dismissed all my life (“what about road trips?) but the demand is there.

willio58 3y ago

That dismissal held some water until we hit a point where batteries were cheap enough, high capacity enough, and there were enough chargers. We’re still just at the beginning. In 10 years it’ll all be much better

baron816 3y ago

We’ve known for a while now that it was going to happen, right? And that all those countries that are committed to phasing out ICE cars by 2035 are being way too conservative. Isn’t it estimated that within a year or two, you’re going to have to pay a premium just to purchase an ICE car? And that premium is just going to keep growing as battery costs continue to shrink.

SirMaster 3y ago
God I hope it's not that soon. There's like nowhere to charge an electric car near me. They really need to work on charging infrastructure before they convince me to buy an electric car. And the cost still needs to come way, way down. It seems like every electric car that has any decent range is a luxury car. I don't want a luxury car, I just want a super basic cheap car to get me from point a to point b.
- arc4n0n 3y ago
  you only charge on road trips. Charging at home has no analogue with gas cars... It's just something that's intrinsically better about EVs
  - SirMaster 3y ago
    I have no way to charge at home though, being in an apartment. I don't plan to change that any time soon. I am certainly not changing where I live just for my car when a gas car works fine.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    Yea, one of the current ironies is that the folks most able to use/charge an environmentally friendly car are the people living in environmentally unfriendly single-family homes. I've yet to see an apartment complex with more than 2-3 charging points for a building of hundreds of units, and plenty of older condo/apartment housing stock can't even easily retrofit chargers into the lot without spending tens of thousands of dollars on it, assuming your local power system supports it. Having to drive five to ten miles and wait for most of an hour to charge is just a bad experience.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      I have friends who own EVs without access to home charging who charge at the grocery store once a week while shopping. The car is done charging before they’re done shopping for groceries. The trick is to distribute chargers everywhere, because your car is going to be parked somewhere long enough to charge unless you’re a taxi or some other high utilization use case. Most will charge at home and or work, but some cannot.
      - noirbot 3y ago
        Yea, it's what I'd have to do, I suppose, but it would mean driving to a grocery store 2-3 times further away, and my average trip to the store these days is only 10-20 minutes which I doubt is long enough for a full charge. My office and home don't have chargers and probably won't for a while, so I'd essentially have to make a special trip out on the weekends to charge my car while I get lunch nearby or something.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        For an L3 charger, 20 minutes is a lot. If you are 20%, it should get you to 70% or so, it takes longer to go from 70 to 100% given how battery charging works.
- brianwawok 3y ago
  Do you have charging where you live? (Private garage or parking spot?) All you really need is charging where you live, and charging along highways. I have literally never gone to any of the chargers within 30 miles of my house. Hardest part is for apartment buildings. No big incentive to install chargers for public use.
  - SirMaster 3y ago
    No, There is no charging anywhere "near" my home. I park in an uncovered open apartment parking lot. Same thing for at work. And checking the charging maps shows very few options anywhere near me and the few places that do only have a couple plugs. Would be annoying to find it's in use by the time I get there so I would have to wait for them and then me.
    - phinnaeus 3y ago
      Is it feasible to have charging installed at your home or office? To reiterate what GP said, I basically never charge anywhere except at home (currently in a private carport that I got a charger installed at, previously in an apartment building with a single shared charger for ~50 spots, 4-5 EVs).
      - SirMaster 3y ago
        I don’t really see how I could convince my apartment or the company I work for to install chargers any time soon. Sure maybe in years it will be common enough, but that’s my entire point. It doesn’t seem common at all around me yet, and I’m not going to buy an EV before charging is reasonably available.
        pjc50 3y ago
        Some jurisdictions are going to start mandating this for large car parks. The transition is definitely going to be very uneven; the closer you are to the centre of a big city with an air quality problem, the sooner it will arrive.
- noirbot 3y ago
  The cost is a big issue for me still. I get it, but I paid $15k for a car 10 years ago - small hatchback that's been more than enough for my needs. The only options I have for EVs are either 2-3x the size (Rivian, F150, Model X) or 4-5x the cost (Tesla, Lucid, Polestar), or both. I barely drive a hundred miles in a week, and often less, but having range to do a 2-3 hour road trip is a big bonus. You can't even get a quality EV with a shorter range though for less than 50-70k. I'm not even sure I've spent that much on my car over the last decade, including gas, insurance, repairs, and initial cost. Makes it hard to justify the upgrade.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
    There were lease return iMiev, 500e, etc for about $4k-$10k in 2018, but the supply of those dried up.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      Yea, there was a brief experiment with smaller stuff 5ish years ago, but that seems to have dried up hard and left us with 2-ton trucks and SUVs or high end luxury sedans being the only options in the US for EVs. Seems like there may be 500evs coming back next year, so may look into that.
      - telotortium 3y ago
        It's good that the Tesla charging port (NACS) is well on its way to becoming a cross-manufacturer standard in the US, so it may make more sense soon to have smaller EVs that don't need to have as large of a capacity to find the few Electrify America stations.
  - foogazi 3y ago
    > You can't even get a quality EV with a shorter range though for less than 50-70k. Bolt EUV is around 30k
    - defrost 3y ago
- pornel 3y ago
  The charging infrastructure can improve literally overnight. Around me there were very few places until McDonald's suddenly decided to have a charger at every drive-thru, and now I have as many chargers as McDonalds' around me.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    The charging infrastructure will take years to improve. "Literally overnight" is a laughable exaggeration. Pretty sure even McDonald's can't install EV chargers at each drive-thru "literally overnight".
    - pornel 3y ago
      But they do. Commercial locations like malls already have power available, so it's not a large-scale infrastructure project, but a matter of digging a cable and hooking up a box.
troupo 3y ago
In Sweden (at least) you're already paying multiple premiums to drive an EV: - the price is easily 1.5x compared to an equivalent ICE car - shorter driving ranges - nearly non-existent charging infrastructure

ne0flex 3y ago

I recently drove a 2019 Tesla Model 3 from NYC to Montreal via Vermont. Personally, I wouldn't do the route I took in a Tesla (/EV) again. The 'range anxiety' set definitely in during the trip because, when departing NYC, I entered my destination in Vermont and the navigation system showed I'd have 47% battery remaining upon arrival... I ended up arriving with 19% battery and I was in the middle of the nowhere. Due to the prevailing weather conditions (the car kept saying the battery was cold) and it was raining I guess the battery dropped quicker than it should have? I was stressing out because my wife would be late to meeting her client had I went to the nearest supercharger and I didn't know if I would have enough battery to make it to the charger if continued and dropped off to the client, given how fast the battery was dropping. After dropping her off, I had to charge the car a further 3 times at superchargers, adding an extra 1h45m to the whole trip to Montreal. I also charged the car once going from NYC to Brattleboro, which was another 30m, so almost 2h15m in spent charging the car.

brianwawok 3y ago
I got used to this by my second road trip and it’s a nonissue. You control discharge rate Tina large extent. Battery on track to hit 0? Low speed from 74 to 69 and you do just fine and arrive at 12%. Have near 50k miles in road trips and won’t ever buy a Dino bone burner again.
- omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
  Yup. The sane applies to ICEs, but fast refueling means people don't need to think about it.
  - ggm 3y ago
    Battery swap (please, don't swamp this with statements about greshams law and batteries) would eliminate this anxiety/speed thing too.
    - anonu 3y ago
      Battery swap is probably not the way. My prediction is charging times will get much faster with better battery tech in the next 5 years. We might be able to get a full charge in under 10 minutes - which starts to match the convenience of a gas fillup.

neodypsis 3y ago

I thought hydrogen was the future of cars.

Philip-J-Fry 3y ago

The overwhelming majority of car trips are possible in even the budget EVs. Road trips are a problem, but charging infrastructure will eventually handle it. During the cross over period you could rent an ICE car. I don't think 1 road trip a year is enough to sway most people off the idea of an EV if they want one. It's only going to sway those who are already skeptical.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago

The first major evacuation event that hits a primarily electric-vehicle city is going to sorely test that idea. Batteries need to hold about 3-4x the charge that they currently do to make that plausible without endangering thousands.

foobazgt 3y ago
EVs are probably in a better position than most ICE vehicles in that situation. You won't consume fuel while at a dead stop in the traffic jams. You'll have peak efficiency when moving at low speeds in the traffic jams. You'll already be charged up at home, while everyone else will be waiting in line at gas stations to fill up. Some people won't even be able to get gas, because the stations will run out in the rush.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Except they aren't remotely in a better position. Vehicles travel for hundreds of miles in the event of a major storm. Some places may be up to 6 weeks without power upon returning. So you drive your battery powered car back home, and now it's dead, and you have no way to recharge it. Guess what you're going to be relying on to get basic essentials given that FEMA vehicles are NOT coming to you to deliver food? Someone else's ICE. So when it's 100 degrees and 90 percent humidity outside and your neighbors with the ICE vehicles have gone to the gas stations for refills to both their vehicles AND their generators so that they can run a portable AC unit, you're utterly out of luck with your electric paperweight. I suppose you have a shot if you still have working solar panels, but in the situations I mentioned... LOL. Even if the winds don't shred them, the debris will.
ryzvonusef 3y ago
When hurricans etc are about hit an area, Tesla sends out an update to over-ride charge limits and fully charge the cars pre-emptively, sends notifications and alerts on the app, and makes super charging on the route free. This would not be possible on ICE vehicles, IMHO.
- 3y ago

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

Electric cars have a lot more problems than range. Toxicity and pollution of producing the battery is an immediate one. And the fact it's junk in 5-6 years, obsoleting often the entire car (or requiring an extremely expensive replacement). The fact BEV are much heavier and are wearing down the roads much faster. And while ICE are of higher risk of a fire, an ICE fire seems like child's play compared to a BEV fire. This thing is impossible to put out and turns everything around to fine (and very toxic) dust (including, again, the road below).

belltaco 3y ago
Batteries don't turn into junk in 5-6 years. Where are you getting your information from?

bdcravens 3y ago

Did a long road trip in a Kia EV6. (Houston to San Diego and back) Stops weren't always super convenient, but it wasn't that long ago that trip wasn't even possible.