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My wife and I own a single family home, a gas-powered car (Toyota Rav4), and an electric car (a standard range Tesla model 3). The electric car is much more con

My wife and I own a single family home, a gas-powered car (Toyota Rav4), and an electric car (a standard range Tesla model 3). The electric car is much more convenient for us for city driving and the gas-powered car is much more convenient for road trips. Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy. For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently. Refuelling the Tesla is automatic and effortless. After you park at home, if the charge is <40% then plug it in. The next time you need to drive somewhere it will be full. It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station. Road trips with the Tesla, however, are currently impractical: we end up adding another ~30% to the drive time. With only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal. Range anxiety also becomes a much bigger factor driving through more rural areas and your route choices weigh supercharger locations above everything else. We've got used to the self driving convenience of the Tesla but the Comma[1] on our Rav4 is just about as good for highway driving. 1. https://comma.ai/ https://comma.ai/

hiddencost 3y ago
I hope you're really good to that cousin. It's damn hard to get time with skilled contractors.
tannedNerd 3y ago
I have a SR+ and have done about a dozen trips from Lake Tahoe to San Diego and back about 10 hours in a ICE car and 11.25 in my SR+ You really should never be charging past 70% (the exception being before climbing in sub freezing temps in the sierras) on road trips and instead plan to make much shorter charging stops more often. I’m normally out of a supercharger in 15-20 min if I precondition the battery before charging and it’s about the time my wife needs to stop for a pee break anyways so it’s kinda great to stop. Use the restroom and be ready to go again. If you are charging 45 min you are doing it so wrong.
- Solvency 3y ago
  This entire idea just underscores the inane mental burden for the average person just to drive their car long distance.
  - jewayne 3y ago
    Maybe it would be, if the Tesla nav system didn't do most of that work for me.
- GiorgioG 3y ago
  Great, now I need to stop even more often...where do I sign up? If your wife has to pee for 15-20 minutes, that often, she should probably see a doctor. Last week I drove my V8 F-150 from Raleigh to near Baltimore Maryland (~310 miles) with 4 adults and a child, a bed full of suitcases and hockey equipment (for a tournament) and we stopped exactly once for coffee. I filled the gas tank in Raleigh, and didn't fill it again until we were almost halfway back to Raleigh on the way home. Give me 500 miles of realistic range and a 10 minute full-tank "fill-up" in an EV and I'll consider it. Until then, it's simply not going to happen for me.
  - bsagdiyev 3y ago
    Yeah that drive already sucks, stopping more than necessary would make it worse. We drive from Raleigh to around State College a few times a year and usually make one stop to eat and stretch our legs. A four year old and a dog sitting around waiting for a charge would add on to that stress.
- jjav 3y ago
  > shorter charging stops more often But this is what makes it so painful. You need to map out available working charging station at short intervals which adds a lot of extra driving and stopping. On a road trip I drive the full range of the gas tank (~450 miles) nonstop and then stop for 5 minutes at the next exit which invariably has a working gas station.
- BeefDinnerPurge 3y ago
coryfklein 3y ago
> It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station. This is a big reason I haven't even considered an EV. How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV. My vehicles are first and foremost utilitarian; I use them to get from A to B. EVs make that simple equation "complicated", and I have other issues maintaining a household that demand my attention.
- _yb2s 3y ago
  I suppose it depends on the length of your commute and what vehicle, but I’ve found that a standard Level 1 charger plugged into a regular outlet, if plugged in all of the time, was more than enough for daily EV commuting. Slow charging is also better for the battery. A lot of people likely don’t need a high powered charger install.
  - jewayne 3y ago
    > Slow charging is also better for the battery. My understanding is that this is largely a myth, at least with modern BEVs with intercooled battery packs. My understanding is that modern battery packs can Level 2 charge with no additional degradation, because they don't get any hotter than during a Level 1 charge. Level 3 charging is different, but even then, the degradation in battery life isn't as much as you think -- I've heard numbers as low as just 3% faster degradation.
    - _yb2s 3y ago
      That makes sense, my experience is with a first gen VW e-golf which just has plain batteries- no cooling. I actually do that with my phone- I use a fast charger with a peltier cooler, that can rapidly charge the phone while keeping it cold. Family/friends think I'm crazy for caring about it, lol
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Charging at home is difficult compared to driving to a gas station? This is all moot. Sodium ion and lfp and newer battery techs will increase range and drop the initial purchase price of EVs under what an ICE can compete with Some snap in time clickbait article won't change the technological tsunami. Even if the US drags it's feet, the rest of the world will eagerly adopt them. EVs promise energy independent and cheap transport combined with wind / solar. Every automaker knows this to differing levels of organizational denial, but they all feel it coming.
citrusybread 3y ago
>ith only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal. If you ask my Eastern Europe wife, that's pretty much the way she needs to road trip lol. I think if we get it to 3hrs / 15 minutes break it would be perfect. 240km/40 minutes is a bit of a reach.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Your doctor will tell you stop more often than that. I haven't been able to find anything official though, but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons.
  - tekknik 3y ago
    > but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons DOT regulations for truck drivers is something like every 8 hours stop for 30 mins. This is the first I’ve heard stop every 2 hours which would drive me nuts if we were road tripping together.
- scarby2 3y ago
  this is how i road trip generally. i almost never drive more than 3 hours without stopping for coffee/lunch/dinner. And if its more than 300 miles 90% of the time i'm going to fly. Any time i'm road tripping more than 3 hours i'm trying to find some cute little town along the way to stop in at. Usually these cute little towns have chargers.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
This is the text version of those old infomercials where someone tries to open a jar of pickles and flubs it so badly they end up killing their small dog and going to the hospital with injuries. But for 3 easy payments of $19.99, here's a device that will save your dog and your time! you're free to describe gassing up as this arduous event that takes all this time, planning, and mental energy, but that doesn't make it true, and while your wife may have anxiety around gas stations, most women don't unless they're gassing up in a strange place late at night. It's generally a non-issue. You can be pro-EV without trying so hard to vilify gas.
- speg 3y ago
  Indeed. All I need to know about gas is that I paid $50 this morning for ~450km of range. While my EV would take multiple charges to get that range, the total cost would be only a few dollars.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    On a purely fuel cost/KM basis, but you don’t save money on the long term with an EV. You have to do a LOT of driving to make up the difference between the vehicle costs and infrastructure costs.
- stavros 3y ago
  I don't know, I really hate gas station trips. It's not, like, a dealbreaker, but if I had a car that I could just plug in in the garage, it would be a fairly sizable improvement. Plus it's expensive as hell, 10 EUR per 100km.
  - tekknik 3y ago
    But plugging into a garage outlet isnt available to everyone. Take that garage outlet away and require yourself to go to a location and sit for an hour to charge. Is it still better?
    - 3y ago
warunsl 3y ago
> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy. I have never seen anyone say fueling a gas car needs planning and mental energy. Unless the first car you ever drove was an EV, it is hard to believe that it NOT almost a second nature to drive to a nearest gas station as soon as your car beeps about remaining mile range. This is greenwashing at its finest.
- taylodl 3y ago
  But it does. Some of us have gotten burned by putting poor-quality gas in our cars. Now I have to make sure I find a "good" gas station. Guess what? Those aren't as plentiful. Usually I have to go out of my way to get to one. That's in the middle of running errands when I have other things to do and don't necessarily have the time to go out of my way to go to a gas station. I also live in an urban area that seems to have fewer pumps per capita than other urban areas I've visited. This results in lines at the pump, which are exacerbated by automakers not standardizing on which side of the car to place the fuel filler. So cars end up queuing up from two different directions for the pump - and I've seen fights break out over people believing other drivers had cut in front of them at the pump. Let's not even talk about trying to get gas during rush hour when getting in and out of the station may be problematic and exacerbates all the other problems noted above. So you go home to wait out the traffic but you still have to go back out on a separate trip just to get gas. So yeah, that requires planning and mental energy. I'd love to get an EV and just come home and plug it in and not worry about it. For the 2-3 long trips I take per year, I rent a car anyway. That way I upgrade to a nicer, bigger car than I drive on a day-to-day basis, I don't have to worry about breaking down on the trip, and if I do end up buying an EV, I don't have to worry about charging on a trip. It's the way to go.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    Yeah, people will say none of this matters, but talk to people in the gas station biz and you find out differently. Which side of the street or traffic circle the station on has a huge impact. It turns out, even 10-30 seconds during a commute matters to people. I've personally met people who don't like using a particular station that is basically within a subdivision. Why? Because like most drivers, they fuel up more often on the commute home than out, and this station requires turning left onto a residential street. It is a small annoyance, but it really is nice not having an annoyance. :)
jstarfish 3y ago
> For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently Parking lots are dangerous for women, yes. Purse-snatchers and carjackers exist. They all insist on carrying expensive iPhones that can be fenced, so there goes calling for help. Vehicles themselves are mobile rape cabins (ask Uber) and corpse storage lockers. It's a very vulnerable position for women. But if your wife thinks a 2-minute refuel at a gas station is bad, wait'll she has to recharge the EV while out and about and can't make it to Walmart. Some of those recharging lots make illicit gay cruising spots feel like Disney World-- we're talking an empty parking lot in a wooded area behind an office building after-hours, with nobody around to hear you scream. I don't feel comfortable sitting around there.
kcplate 3y ago
> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy Is there something about that RAv4 vehicle that makes fueling difficult? I have a Lexus, generally it tells me “hey! I’m low on fuel” so I stop at the next convenient gas station I see, fill it with gas in about 5 mins, and I am back on my way to wherever. Sometimes when I am feeling particularly rebellious, I happen to be driving by a gas station even before the car is low on fuel, and I stop and top it off in a few minutes and then am on my way to wherever. Also, sometimes I’m driving and want a cup of coffee and stop at a coffee shop too…
chefandy 3y ago
er... I'm pretty pro-ev, but I don't think you can reasonably generalize feeling so put-upon by the non-financial aspects of getting gas.
mlrtime 3y ago
Also using a comma3x with a rav4. Checkout frogpilot, it is much better than openpilot. https://github.com/FrogAi/FrogPilot https://github.com/FrogAi/FrogPilot
danny8000 3y ago
I agree: if you a part of a two-parent household, who lives in a home with off-street parking where you can add a charger, the best of both worlds is one EV (Tesla) and one plug-in hybrid (e.g. Prius Prime or Rav 4 Prime). Then you only go to a gas station on longer trips. What percent of the US population falls into this demographic? And what percent of this demo already has one EV?
michaelcampbell 3y ago
> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time Sure. > , planning A little. > , and mental energy. C'mon now.
tourmalinetaco 3y ago
If you hate filling up at a gas station and want the convenience of it at home then fill gas cans next time you go and bring them home. You can even keep one in the car for on-the-go refueling, something an EV can’t do.

hiddencost 3y ago

I hope you're really good to that cousin. It's damn hard to get time with skilled contractors.

tannedNerd 3y ago

I have a SR+ and have done about a dozen trips from Lake Tahoe to San Diego and back about 10 hours in a ICE car and 11.25 in my SR+ You really should never be charging past 70% (the exception being before climbing in sub freezing temps in the sierras) on road trips and instead plan to make much shorter charging stops more often. I’m normally out of a supercharger in 15-20 min if I precondition the battery before charging and it’s about the time my wife needs to stop for a pee break anyways so it’s kinda great to stop. Use the restroom and be ready to go again. If you are charging 45 min you are doing it so wrong.

Solvency 3y ago
This entire idea just underscores the inane mental burden for the average person just to drive their car long distance.
- jewayne 3y ago
  Maybe it would be, if the Tesla nav system didn't do most of that work for me.
GiorgioG 3y ago
Great, now I need to stop even more often...where do I sign up? If your wife has to pee for 15-20 minutes, that often, she should probably see a doctor. Last week I drove my V8 F-150 from Raleigh to near Baltimore Maryland (~310 miles) with 4 adults and a child, a bed full of suitcases and hockey equipment (for a tournament) and we stopped exactly once for coffee. I filled the gas tank in Raleigh, and didn't fill it again until we were almost halfway back to Raleigh on the way home. Give me 500 miles of realistic range and a 10 minute full-tank "fill-up" in an EV and I'll consider it. Until then, it's simply not going to happen for me.
- bsagdiyev 3y ago
  Yeah that drive already sucks, stopping more than necessary would make it worse. We drive from Raleigh to around State College a few times a year and usually make one stop to eat and stretch our legs. A four year old and a dog sitting around waiting for a charge would add on to that stress.
jjav 3y ago
> shorter charging stops more often But this is what makes it so painful. You need to map out available working charging station at short intervals which adds a lot of extra driving and stopping. On a road trip I drive the full range of the gas tank (~450 miles) nonstop and then stop for 5 minutes at the next exit which invariably has a working gas station.
BeefDinnerPurge 3y ago

coryfklein 3y ago

> It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station. This is a big reason I haven't even considered an EV. How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV. My vehicles are first and foremost utilitarian; I use them to get from A to B. EVs make that simple equation "complicated", and I have other issues maintaining a household that demand my attention.

_yb2s 3y ago
I suppose it depends on the length of your commute and what vehicle, but I’ve found that a standard Level 1 charger plugged into a regular outlet, if plugged in all of the time, was more than enough for daily EV commuting. Slow charging is also better for the battery. A lot of people likely don’t need a high powered charger install.
- jewayne 3y ago
  > Slow charging is also better for the battery. My understanding is that this is largely a myth, at least with modern BEVs with intercooled battery packs. My understanding is that modern battery packs can Level 2 charge with no additional degradation, because they don't get any hotter than during a Level 1 charge. Level 3 charging is different, but even then, the degradation in battery life isn't as much as you think -- I've heard numbers as low as just 3% faster degradation.
  - _yb2s 3y ago
    That makes sense, my experience is with a first gen VW e-golf which just has plain batteries- no cooling. I actually do that with my phone- I use a fast charger with a peltier cooler, that can rapidly charge the phone while keeping it cold. Family/friends think I'm crazy for caring about it, lol
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Charging at home is difficult compared to driving to a gas station? This is all moot. Sodium ion and lfp and newer battery techs will increase range and drop the initial purchase price of EVs under what an ICE can compete with Some snap in time clickbait article won't change the technological tsunami. Even if the US drags it's feet, the rest of the world will eagerly adopt them. EVs promise energy independent and cheap transport combined with wind / solar. Every automaker knows this to differing levels of organizational denial, but they all feel it coming.

citrusybread 3y ago

>ith only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal. If you ask my Eastern Europe wife, that's pretty much the way she needs to road trip lol. I think if we get it to 3hrs / 15 minutes break it would be perfect. 240km/40 minutes is a bit of a reach.

bluGill 3y ago
Your doctor will tell you stop more often than that. I haven't been able to find anything official though, but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons.
- tekknik 3y ago
  > but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons DOT regulations for truck drivers is something like every 8 hours stop for 30 mins. This is the first I’ve heard stop every 2 hours which would drive me nuts if we were road tripping together.
scarby2 3y ago
this is how i road trip generally. i almost never drive more than 3 hours without stopping for coffee/lunch/dinner. And if its more than 300 miles 90% of the time i'm going to fly. Any time i'm road tripping more than 3 hours i'm trying to find some cute little town along the way to stop in at. Usually these cute little towns have chargers.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

This is the text version of those old infomercials where someone tries to open a jar of pickles and flubs it so badly they end up killing their small dog and going to the hospital with injuries. But for 3 easy payments of $19.99, here's a device that will save your dog and your time! you're free to describe gassing up as this arduous event that takes all this time, planning, and mental energy, but that doesn't make it true, and while your wife may have anxiety around gas stations, most women don't unless they're gassing up in a strange place late at night. It's generally a non-issue. You can be pro-EV without trying so hard to vilify gas.

speg 3y ago
Indeed. All I need to know about gas is that I paid $50 this morning for ~450km of range. While my EV would take multiple charges to get that range, the total cost would be only a few dollars.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  On a purely fuel cost/KM basis, but you don’t save money on the long term with an EV. You have to do a LOT of driving to make up the difference between the vehicle costs and infrastructure costs.
stavros 3y ago
I don't know, I really hate gas station trips. It's not, like, a dealbreaker, but if I had a car that I could just plug in in the garage, it would be a fairly sizable improvement. Plus it's expensive as hell, 10 EUR per 100km.
- tekknik 3y ago
  But plugging into a garage outlet isnt available to everyone. Take that garage outlet away and require yourself to go to a location and sit for an hour to charge. Is it still better?
  - 3y ago

warunsl 3y ago

> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy. I have never seen anyone say fueling a gas car needs planning and mental energy. Unless the first car you ever drove was an EV, it is hard to believe that it NOT almost a second nature to drive to a nearest gas station as soon as your car beeps about remaining mile range. This is greenwashing at its finest.

taylodl 3y ago
But it does. Some of us have gotten burned by putting poor-quality gas in our cars. Now I have to make sure I find a "good" gas station. Guess what? Those aren't as plentiful. Usually I have to go out of my way to get to one. That's in the middle of running errands when I have other things to do and don't necessarily have the time to go out of my way to go to a gas station. I also live in an urban area that seems to have fewer pumps per capita than other urban areas I've visited. This results in lines at the pump, which are exacerbated by automakers not standardizing on which side of the car to place the fuel filler. So cars end up queuing up from two different directions for the pump - and I've seen fights break out over people believing other drivers had cut in front of them at the pump. Let's not even talk about trying to get gas during rush hour when getting in and out of the station may be problematic and exacerbates all the other problems noted above. So you go home to wait out the traffic but you still have to go back out on a separate trip just to get gas. So yeah, that requires planning and mental energy. I'd love to get an EV and just come home and plug it in and not worry about it. For the 2-3 long trips I take per year, I rent a car anyway. That way I upgrade to a nicer, bigger car than I drive on a day-to-day basis, I don't have to worry about breaking down on the trip, and if I do end up buying an EV, I don't have to worry about charging on a trip. It's the way to go.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  Yeah, people will say none of this matters, but talk to people in the gas station biz and you find out differently. Which side of the street or traffic circle the station on has a huge impact. It turns out, even 10-30 seconds during a commute matters to people. I've personally met people who don't like using a particular station that is basically within a subdivision. Why? Because like most drivers, they fuel up more often on the commute home than out, and this station requires turning left onto a residential street. It is a small annoyance, but it really is nice not having an annoyance. :)

jstarfish 3y ago

> For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently Parking lots are dangerous for women, yes. Purse-snatchers and carjackers exist. They all insist on carrying expensive iPhones that can be fenced, so there goes calling for help. Vehicles themselves are mobile rape cabins (ask Uber) and corpse storage lockers. It's a very vulnerable position for women. But if your wife thinks a 2-minute refuel at a gas station is bad, wait'll she has to recharge the EV while out and about and can't make it to Walmart. Some of those recharging lots make illicit gay cruising spots feel like Disney World-- we're talking an empty parking lot in a wooded area behind an office building after-hours, with nobody around to hear you scream. I don't feel comfortable sitting around there.

kcplate 3y ago

> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy Is there something about that RAv4 vehicle that makes fueling difficult? I have a Lexus, generally it tells me “hey! I’m low on fuel” so I stop at the next convenient gas station I see, fill it with gas in about 5 mins, and I am back on my way to wherever. Sometimes when I am feeling particularly rebellious, I happen to be driving by a gas station even before the car is low on fuel, and I stop and top it off in a few minutes and then am on my way to wherever. Also, sometimes I’m driving and want a cup of coffee and stop at a coffee shop too…

chefandy 3y ago

er... I'm pretty pro-ev, but I don't think you can reasonably generalize feeling so put-upon by the non-financial aspects of getting gas.

mlrtime 3y ago

Also using a comma3x with a rav4. Checkout frogpilot, it is much better than openpilot. https://github.com/FrogAi/FrogPilot https://github.com/FrogAi/FrogPilot

danny8000 3y ago

I agree: if you a part of a two-parent household, who lives in a home with off-street parking where you can add a charger, the best of both worlds is one EV (Tesla) and one plug-in hybrid (e.g. Prius Prime or Rav 4 Prime). Then you only go to a gas station on longer trips. What percent of the US population falls into this demographic? And what percent of this demo already has one EV?

michaelcampbell 3y ago

> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time Sure. > , planning A little. > , and mental energy. C'mon now.

tourmalinetaco 3y ago

If you hate filling up at a gas station and want the convenience of it at home then fill gas cans next time you go and bring them home. You can even keep one in the car for on-the-go refueling, something an EV can’t do.