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> 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 majorit
by 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 agoWhy 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 agoBecause 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 agoYeah ya, EV range is just fine as is. No need to improve that at all.
- rsynnott 1y agoI mean, sure, more would be better, but it's _fine_ for the vast majority of users at this point.
- HDThoreaun 1y agoPeople dont want to go to the gas station. Advantage of EV is you can charge at home