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It does seem that for the average person, an EV is only going to be an "add-on". You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip so the EV should just be a l

It does seem that for the average person, an EV is only going to be an "add-on". You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip so the EV should just be a little, low cost, grocery getter. Maybe once we start seeing 1000+ km ranges that will change. The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off.

StopDisinfo910 1y ago
Modern EV ranges are in the ballpark of 350km which charging time under one hour. That's more than enough for most nowadays especially in Europe where long trips are not the norm and well past grocery getter. You can cross most European countries with one stop.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. I don't think that works at scale. Charging stations would be like event parking at a Taylor Swift concert. Gas cars are still objectively better which is sad and unexpected. I never would have predicted this insanely low rate of improvement 10 years ago. In terms of trucks / tow vehicles, it is even further off. The Cybertruck laughably has 250km of tow range. Disconnecting every 2 hours to charge for an hour is absurd. Until we see a step change in battery technology, EVs are grocery getters in my books. So, might as well double down and make them super cheap with 100km range.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    There's no "objectively better", just "objectively better given some set of constraints". If my commute is less than 100km, I can charge at home, have free solar energy, and only go on long trips once or twice a year, would you still say that gas cars are "objectively better"? If you regularly go on 400km+ trips or have nowhere to charge an EV overnight then by all means, avoid EVs.
    - osigurdson 1y ago
      From some objective function a hot wheels car is superior. It all just depends on everything else - my mental model for the universe is a marble rolling on an impossibly flat surface.
  - dreamcompiler 1y ago
    I typically recharge my Model Y every 200 miles for about 20 minutes. Which is similar to how I drove in an ICE car: I like a break every 200 miles so I stop for gas, spend 5 minutes refueling and then 15 using the facilities and having a snack. The difference is that in the Tesla the refueling takes place in parallel to me using the facilities and having a snack. The car refuels itself unattended and it will notify me on my phone when it has enough charge to continue.
    - osigurdson 1y ago
      how often do you have to wait around for a charge station to be available? This is the one thing that I can see if we were to have very wide scale adoption of EVS with current battery technology this would essentially become intractable.
      - dreamcompiler 1y ago
        Never. The car routes me to the nearest charge location with free space. I have heard this can be a problem in California but I rarely go there.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    > So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. ... How many people _regularly_ make 400km trips, though? Like, the vast majority of the cars on the road at any given time are not making 400km trips, or anything like it. Some countries in Europe are not 400km across. (Also that's probably ~4 hours driving; most people are probably stopping for a bit after that anyway).
    - osigurdson 1y ago
      Why then is the range of a basic car (like a Camry) 700+ km even with extensive refuelling network. If 99.9% of drivers never need this range they have smaller tanks.
      - rsynnott 1y ago
        Because increasing the range of a petrol car is practically free (and in many cases the tank sizes were kind of notionally set 50 years ago when engines were far less efficient; as engines got more efficient no reason to make them _smaller_). Like, virtually no-one is driving 700km non-stop (that's going to be probably eight hours unless you have excellent roads the whole way; it's arguably _unsafe_, and certainly most people would want to at least eat in that time), but, really, there's no downside. For electric cars, there _is_ a serious downside to having huge range; it makes them expensive (and heavy). So manufacturers will tend to stop at "sensible for most use cases". I'm sure there are some people for whom electric car range is still a problem, but it's a niche market, especially in _Europe_ (again, you can drive across many countries in Europe in 400km).
        osigurdson 1y ago
        Yeah ya, EV range is just fine as is. No need to improve that at all.
        rsynnott 1y ago
        I mean, sure, more would be better, but it's _fine_ for the vast majority of users at this point.
  - tzs 1y ago
    > So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. Someone who takes long trips is going to get something that charges fast like in IONIQ 5 or 6. The IONIQ 6 long range RWD model charges from 10 to 80% in 16 minutes at a 250 kW charger. That would be about 350 km of range at freeway speeds in Europe. On a long trip then, once you've used up the charge you started with and have make the rest of the trip on energy from charging breaks that would be a 16 minute break every 350 km. 350 km is about 2.8 hours of travel, so about 8% of your remaining trip time after you reach your first stop would be spent charging.
    - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
      > That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. To be fair, 20 minutes for an L3 charge from 20 to 80% is technically under an hour.
Spivak 1y ago
This is why I'm hoping that bare-bones short range EV truck catches on because I would love for my "hauling" vehicle to be an EV.
dreamcompiler 1y ago
> You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip... In the US, I've traveled about 50k miles on long road trips in a Tesla and I haven't used my ICE car for a road trip since I got the Tesla. Long range and Tesla's excellent network of superchargers made that possible. I would imagine it's even more doable in Europe since "long distance" road trips there are on the order of 100 miles, while in the US they're more like 1000 miles.
- tzs 1y ago
  The US is an interesting case because there is so much variation state to state (or even county to county within a state) of both gas prices and electricity prices. The ratio of gas prices in $/gal and electricity prices in $/kWh range from around 9 to around 34. (This is for residential electricity). Does Europe have that much variation? In areas where the ratio is low a non-EV can be cheaper than an EV, especially if that non-EV is a hybrid. In about 1/3 of the states a Prius beats an average EV in highway driving and in around 1/6th the Prius wins in city driving. In around 1/6th the Prius will even beat the most efficient EVs in both highway and city. It's opposite in places with a higher ratio where even a Prius cannot come near the low energy costs of an EV. In roughly 1/5th of the states gas would have to fall to below around $1.70/gal for the Prius to match a typical EV for highway driving, and to around $1.50/gal to match the most efficient highway EVs. Those are gas prices that even Trump probably can't fantasize about. Note that the above was all using residential electricity prices. Commercial EV chargers usually charge quite a bit more. I'm in one of the states with a high gas/electricity price ratio and I think EVs still win here with commercial charger prices but not by much. Without having run the numbers, my guess is that for most road trips that span several states, especially if the are going east/west, a Prius is going to be the energy cost champion. I'm curious if there are any road trip planners that can take all this into account? Say you've got an EV and a non-EV. Are there any where you can give your destination, places along the way you want to see, what cars you have available, and how much extra time you are willing to spend to save money, and it will figure out which car can do the trip for with the least energy costs?
  - dreamcompiler 1y ago
jqpabc123 1y ago
The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off. Current range is more than adequate. The missing piece is public fast recharge stations. A 30 minute recharge on a 600 mile trip is not a real issue. You probably take a break anyway for food, rest and bathroom. Most people can't last 10 hours without it. Like or not, electric is not only viable now but also inevitable --- mainly due to economic forces, some of which remain to be fully developed. And Walmart and BP/Waffle House are leading the charge with plans to add public recharge stations to their locations. https://theevreport.com/bp-pulse-waffle-house-boost-ev-charging https://theevreport.com/bp-pulse-waffle-house-boost-ev-charg... https://insideevs.com/news/757648/walmart-ev-charging-network-revealed/ https://insideevs.com/news/757648/walmart-ev-charging-networ...
ben_w 1y ago
The routes to most destinations 1000 km from my house in Berlin, usually involve passing at least three international borders. I've heard that the US has a lot of "food deserts" where you have to go a long way to get groceries, but is it really that bad? More importantly, the route Google Maps gives me to Paris (1051 km from city to city) is supposedly 11 hr 31 min. Even if the car could do that in one trip, neither my bladder nor my stomach could.

StopDisinfo910 1y ago

Modern EV ranges are in the ballpark of 350km which charging time under one hour. That's more than enough for most nowadays especially in Europe where long trips are not the norm and well past grocery getter. You can cross most European countries with one stop.

osigurdson 1y ago
So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. I don't think that works at scale. Charging stations would be like event parking at a Taylor Swift concert. Gas cars are still objectively better which is sad and unexpected. I never would have predicted this insanely low rate of improvement 10 years ago. In terms of trucks / tow vehicles, it is even further off. The Cybertruck laughably has 250km of tow range. Disconnecting every 2 hours to charge for an hour is absurd. Until we see a step change in battery technology, EVs are grocery getters in my books. So, might as well double down and make them super cheap with 100km range.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  There's no "objectively better", just "objectively better given some set of constraints". If my commute is less than 100km, I can charge at home, have free solar energy, and only go on long trips once or twice a year, would you still say that gas cars are "objectively better"? If you regularly go on 400km+ trips or have nowhere to charge an EV overnight then by all means, avoid EVs.
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    From some objective function a hot wheels car is superior. It all just depends on everything else - my mental model for the universe is a marble rolling on an impossibly flat surface.
- dreamcompiler 1y ago
  I typically recharge my Model Y every 200 miles for about 20 minutes. Which is similar to how I drove in an ICE car: I like a break every 200 miles so I stop for gas, spend 5 minutes refueling and then 15 using the facilities and having a snack. The difference is that in the Tesla the refueling takes place in parallel to me using the facilities and having a snack. The car refuels itself unattended and it will notify me on my phone when it has enough charge to continue.
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    how often do you have to wait around for a charge station to be available? This is the one thing that I can see if we were to have very wide scale adoption of EVS with current battery technology this would essentially become intractable.
    - dreamcompiler 1y ago
      Never. The car routes me to the nearest charge location with free space. I have heard this can be a problem in California but I rarely go there.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  > So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. ... How many people _regularly_ make 400km trips, though? Like, the vast majority of the cars on the road at any given time are not making 400km trips, or anything like it. Some countries in Europe are not 400km across. (Also that's probably ~4 hours driving; most people are probably stopping for a bit after that anyway).
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    Why then is the range of a basic car (like a Camry) 700+ km even with extensive refuelling network. If 99.9% of drivers never need this range they have smaller tanks.
    - rsynnott 1y ago
      Because increasing the range of a petrol car is practically free (and in many cases the tank sizes were kind of notionally set 50 years ago when engines were far less efficient; as engines got more efficient no reason to make them _smaller_). Like, virtually no-one is driving 700km non-stop (that's going to be probably eight hours unless you have excellent roads the whole way; it's arguably _unsafe_, and certainly most people would want to at least eat in that time), but, really, there's no downside. For electric cars, there _is_ a serious downside to having huge range; it makes them expensive (and heavy). So manufacturers will tend to stop at "sensible for most use cases". I'm sure there are some people for whom electric car range is still a problem, but it's a niche market, especially in _Europe_ (again, you can drive across many countries in Europe in 400km).
      - osigurdson 1y ago
        Yeah ya, EV range is just fine as is. No need to improve that at all.
        rsynnott 1y ago
        I mean, sure, more would be better, but it's _fine_ for the vast majority of users at this point.
- tzs 1y ago
  > So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. Someone who takes long trips is going to get something that charges fast like in IONIQ 5 or 6. The IONIQ 6 long range RWD model charges from 10 to 80% in 16 minutes at a 250 kW charger. That would be about 350 km of range at freeway speeds in Europe. On a long trip then, once you've used up the charge you started with and have make the rest of the trip on energy from charging breaks that would be a 16 minute break every 350 km. 350 km is about 2.8 hours of travel, so about 8% of your remaining trip time after you reach your first stop would be spent charging.
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    > That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. To be fair, 20 minutes for an L3 charge from 20 to 80% is technically under an hour.

Spivak 1y ago

This is why I'm hoping that bare-bones short range EV truck catches on because I would love for my "hauling" vehicle to be an EV.

dreamcompiler 1y ago

> You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip... In the US, I've traveled about 50k miles on long road trips in a Tesla and I haven't used my ICE car for a road trip since I got the Tesla. Long range and Tesla's excellent network of superchargers made that possible. I would imagine it's even more doable in Europe since "long distance" road trips there are on the order of 100 miles, while in the US they're more like 1000 miles.

tzs 1y ago
The US is an interesting case because there is so much variation state to state (or even county to county within a state) of both gas prices and electricity prices. The ratio of gas prices in $/gal and electricity prices in $/kWh range from around 9 to around 34. (This is for residential electricity). Does Europe have that much variation? In areas where the ratio is low a non-EV can be cheaper than an EV, especially if that non-EV is a hybrid. In about 1/3 of the states a Prius beats an average EV in highway driving and in around 1/6th the Prius wins in city driving. In around 1/6th the Prius will even beat the most efficient EVs in both highway and city. It's opposite in places with a higher ratio where even a Prius cannot come near the low energy costs of an EV. In roughly 1/5th of the states gas would have to fall to below around $1.70/gal for the Prius to match a typical EV for highway driving, and to around $1.50/gal to match the most efficient highway EVs. Those are gas prices that even Trump probably can't fantasize about. Note that the above was all using residential electricity prices. Commercial EV chargers usually charge quite a bit more. I'm in one of the states with a high gas/electricity price ratio and I think EVs still win here with commercial charger prices but not by much. Without having run the numbers, my guess is that for most road trips that span several states, especially if the are going east/west, a Prius is going to be the energy cost champion. I'm curious if there are any road trip planners that can take all this into account? Say you've got an EV and a non-EV. Are there any where you can give your destination, places along the way you want to see, what cars you have available, and how much extra time you are willing to spend to save money, and it will figure out which car can do the trip for with the least energy costs?
- dreamcompiler 1y ago

jqpabc123 1y ago

The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off. Current range is more than adequate. The missing piece is public fast recharge stations. A 30 minute recharge on a 600 mile trip is not a real issue. You probably take a break anyway for food, rest and bathroom. Most people can't last 10 hours without it. Like or not, electric is not only viable now but also inevitable --- mainly due to economic forces, some of which remain to be fully developed. And Walmart and BP/Waffle House are leading the charge with plans to add public recharge stations to their locations. https://theevreport.com/bp-pulse-waffle-house-boost-ev-charging https://theevreport.com/bp-pulse-waffle-house-boost-ev-charg... https://insideevs.com/news/757648/walmart-ev-charging-network-revealed/ https://insideevs.com/news/757648/walmart-ev-charging-networ...

ben_w 1y ago

The routes to most destinations 1000 km from my house in Berlin, usually involve passing at least three international borders. I've heard that the US has a lot of "food deserts" where you have to go a long way to get groceries, but is it really that bad? More importantly, the route Google Maps gives me to Paris (1051 km from city to city) is supposedly 11 hr 31 min. Even if the car could do that in one trip, neither my bladder nor my stomach could.