4 ms·

I do think that "There is a higher cognitive load than just driving around in an ICE and pulling into any of the 15 nearby gas station "within range" for 5 minu

I do think that "There is a higher cognitive load than just driving around in an ICE and pulling into any of the 15 nearby gas station "within range" for 5 minutes when your gas light goes on." is more about familiarity than anything else. People who drive regularly have routines built around fueling: I know how often I need gas and tend to get it at one of two places. There's an inconvenience and attention factor there, but we're so used to that it doesn't feel like a burden. On the other hand refueling on road trips is very natural in an ICE car. You need to stop and get out for a minute anyway, and there's stations everywhere, so you just decide when to stop and get gas while you're at it. EVs flip that. The day to day cognitive load for "refueling" is basically nothing once you're setup. Just plug it in at night like everything else in our lives today (obviously this assumes that you have a place to plug in, I'm not sure how/why one would live with an EV without that). Road trips are tricker since the stops are longer than you might otherwise want and the options are fewer. Some of that will be solved with time but I think it will always be the case that day to day is easier with an EV but road trips require a bit more planning

steveBK123 3y ago
I've driven an EV exclusively for 5 years and it's just not something I would want to suggest to my parents or in-laws and then deal with them calling me when they are stranded. Even in densely populated areas of the US, if you are on CCS, you could find yourself at a dead station with 5-10% battery remaining and the next station not in reach. Tesla this is less of an issue, outside of rural areas. Road tripping in EV I frequently find myself having to plan my stops around which rest stop shave chargers rather than what my stomach/bladder tell me. This is not the same in an ICE vehicle where you can just drive and fuel up whenever you need food/bathroom (and the highway range is higher). Also dont' forget the answer to "what's the range" is "well it depends" with an EV even more so than an ICE. Well the Tesla says it goes 350mi, but that's best case lab scenario you can't replicate so take off 5%. Oh and only charge to 80% on the go, and leave a 10% buffer at the bottom.. and your highway range going 75% is 10% worse.. so you are looking at 192mi between charges on a road trip. Discount more for cold & wet weather especially if wind is against you. That's about half the highway range of a typical ICE. It's not the end of the world, but it's a non-zero incremental cognitive load. And it's not just US. I nearly got stranded driving an EV in Europe on holiday and spent an hour on the phone with Ionity stuck at a non-operational station while they rebooted stalls and manually activated a session for me.
- kgermino 3y ago
  I agree, I'm just pointing out that you're talking about road trips. For my driving, though I don't have an EV, almost every day would be cognitively simpler than my current situation. I just don't drive more than 200 miles a day more than 2-3x a year. Road trips absolutely require more thought, but that's just not routine for most people in my experience
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    5 year EV owner, would never buy ICE again, but things in theory & in practice do not always match. Road trip can have a broad definition. My parents live 75 miles away. When you do visit your parents? Holidays.. aka winter. So the nominal 310mi Tesla should make a 150mi round trip no problem right? Well.. ermm. I've had trips where my battery was at 80%, cold soaked, snowing, a bit of wind.. but highway flow of traffic was 75mph. What should have been a routine half-battery using trip required me to top off on the way home as not to land too close to zero in freezing weather.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
The trip computer on an EV really reduces the cognitive load. If you punch in a 3000km trip it adds charging stations as waypoints. The map also makes it easy to see where the next closest charger is, and what amenities are around it. So when the kids say "I need to go to the bathroom" you can easily say "20 minutes to the next charger". Plug in while the bathroom is being used. Unplug when the bathroom break is done and the charging stops recalculates. If you have young kids, the bathroom and sanity breaks take more time than charging.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  My challenge is that even in the dense Northeast I95 corridor, chargers are in the minority rather than majority of rest stops. So you may end up taking all these bathroom breaks and then still need to take discrete charging breaks at different stations. NJTP for example has been in the evGo build out/expansion project for the last year. If you have a Tesla it's not too bad but on CCS you are screwed. Not all EVs trip computers are built the same either. I love my BMW but the thing lists gas stations as prominently as EV stations on the map in my EV, lol. The list of nearest stations lists each pedestal/stall individually so you have to scroll and scroll to see the distance between the next 1,2,5 stations is. For example yes you can rely on the computer to tell you when to stop & charge, but if you feel like you could go a bit longer before bathroom/food, you may want to know what is the next station beyond the one it is routing you to. In a Tesla you can wing it and there's probably 1..2..3 more stations before you run down to 0%. On CCS.. it could be 0.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Wow, that does sound a lot worse than the experience in our Tesla. Tesla has had this experience for at least 4 years. Can't the other car markers just point their devs at the Tesla software and say "copy this"? > you may want to know what is the next station beyond the one it is routing you to. Yes, this is easy to know on a Tesla.
    - steveBK123 3y ago

steveBK123 3y ago

I've driven an EV exclusively for 5 years and it's just not something I would want to suggest to my parents or in-laws and then deal with them calling me when they are stranded. Even in densely populated areas of the US, if you are on CCS, you could find yourself at a dead station with 5-10% battery remaining and the next station not in reach. Tesla this is less of an issue, outside of rural areas. Road tripping in EV I frequently find myself having to plan my stops around which rest stop shave chargers rather than what my stomach/bladder tell me. This is not the same in an ICE vehicle where you can just drive and fuel up whenever you need food/bathroom (and the highway range is higher). Also dont' forget the answer to "what's the range" is "well it depends" with an EV even more so than an ICE. Well the Tesla says it goes 350mi, but that's best case lab scenario you can't replicate so take off 5%. Oh and only charge to 80% on the go, and leave a 10% buffer at the bottom.. and your highway range going 75% is 10% worse.. so you are looking at 192mi between charges on a road trip. Discount more for cold & wet weather especially if wind is against you. That's about half the highway range of a typical ICE. It's not the end of the world, but it's a non-zero incremental cognitive load. And it's not just US. I nearly got stranded driving an EV in Europe on holiday and spent an hour on the phone with Ionity stuck at a non-operational station while they rebooted stalls and manually activated a session for me.

kgermino 3y ago
I agree, I'm just pointing out that you're talking about road trips. For my driving, though I don't have an EV, almost every day would be cognitively simpler than my current situation. I just don't drive more than 200 miles a day more than 2-3x a year. Road trips absolutely require more thought, but that's just not routine for most people in my experience
- steveBK123 3y ago
  5 year EV owner, would never buy ICE again, but things in theory & in practice do not always match. Road trip can have a broad definition. My parents live 75 miles away. When you do visit your parents? Holidays.. aka winter. So the nominal 310mi Tesla should make a 150mi round trip no problem right? Well.. ermm. I've had trips where my battery was at 80%, cold soaked, snowing, a bit of wind.. but highway flow of traffic was 75mph. What should have been a routine half-battery using trip required me to top off on the way home as not to land too close to zero in freezing weather.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

The trip computer on an EV really reduces the cognitive load. If you punch in a 3000km trip it adds charging stations as waypoints. The map also makes it easy to see where the next closest charger is, and what amenities are around it. So when the kids say "I need to go to the bathroom" you can easily say "20 minutes to the next charger". Plug in while the bathroom is being used. Unplug when the bathroom break is done and the charging stops recalculates. If you have young kids, the bathroom and sanity breaks take more time than charging.

steveBK123 3y ago
My challenge is that even in the dense Northeast I95 corridor, chargers are in the minority rather than majority of rest stops. So you may end up taking all these bathroom breaks and then still need to take discrete charging breaks at different stations. NJTP for example has been in the evGo build out/expansion project for the last year. If you have a Tesla it's not too bad but on CCS you are screwed. Not all EVs trip computers are built the same either. I love my BMW but the thing lists gas stations as prominently as EV stations on the map in my EV, lol. The list of nearest stations lists each pedestal/stall individually so you have to scroll and scroll to see the distance between the next 1,2,5 stations is. For example yes you can rely on the computer to tell you when to stop & charge, but if you feel like you could go a bit longer before bathroom/food, you may want to know what is the next station beyond the one it is routing you to. In a Tesla you can wing it and there's probably 1..2..3 more stations before you run down to 0%. On CCS.. it could be 0.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Wow, that does sound a lot worse than the experience in our Tesla. Tesla has had this experience for at least 4 years. Can't the other car markers just point their devs at the Tesla software and say "copy this"? > you may want to know what is the next station beyond the one it is routing you to. Yes, this is easy to know on a Tesla.
  - steveBK123 3y ago