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> One is that pickups are a weirdly-politicized lifestyle choice in the US Based on my personal experience traveling, there's a more practical reason for the p

> One is that pickups are a weirdly-politicized lifestyle choice in the US Based on my personal experience traveling, there's a more practical reason for the political divide. I spend a good portion of my life in rural parts of the US these days, where most of the residents are pretty conservative. But these are also parts of the country where I get nervous when I'm on 1/4 tank of gas. If you're routinely out in places where the nearest gas station might be > 50 miles away, you also see a dip in e-vehicles for very practical reasons. When I'm at home in a city, it makes perfect sense to own an e-vehicle: typically I'm only driving a few miles a day, and the car spends most of it's time at my house or in a parking garage. When I'm out on business, and driving across hundreds of miles of barely inhabited land, I cannot imagine the stress of having an electric truck. It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that. In rural parts of the country, especially when you're out working, you can easily be putting on mileage combined with being far enough away from a charger that it just doesn't make sense to have an e-vehicle.

ghaff 10mo ago
I do know someone who bought a Tesla after debating it for a long time. And it was only after getting comfortable with the range for a mostly weekly drive into the country.
cyberax 10mo ago
Try this map: https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map , it has a feature called "range circles". If you set it to 50 miles, you'll see that most of the country is well within 50 miles of the nearest supercharger. Including almost all of Texas. At 100 miles of range, you only have a couple of blank spots. With third party chargers, there's really only one blank spot in Montana. At this point, the range is already a solved problem. Earlier this year, I did experiments with placing stations manually on the map and using the US road networks to calculate the isolines. With just about 70 more stations, you can make any point on the public road network in the entire contiguous US lie within 50 miles of the nearest charger. So the charging availability is likely going to be solved completely even during the current shitty admin. > It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that. At 325kW charge rate (common on recent chargers), you're looking for maybe 20 minutes to get enough charge to reach your destination.
- EgregiousCube 10mo ago
  “There’s at least one spot within 100 miles where you can wait 20 minutes to get enough charge to get to the next charger” is not an argument that will convince someone to give up the convenience of the gas station.
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    What exactly is convenient about gas stations?
    - wkat4242 10mo ago
      They're everywhere and you can get a full charge in 5 minutes.
      - nandomrumber 10mo ago
        And you don’t need to fill up again at the next one.
        wkat4242 10mo ago
        Yeah that's what I meant by full charge. Most fast chargers only give you a topup in 20 minutes.
        tguvot 10mo ago
        usually you don't need to fill up again at next 100 or so, given how much of them there are
  - rootusrootus 10mo ago
    The convenience argument works for a small segment of the population that road trips a few hundred miles at a time regularly. For the rest of us, EVs are far more convenient. I don't ever go to a gas station, and every day I start out with 320 miles of range. I stop at the EV equivalent of a gas station two or three times a year. I've saved a lot of time not having to get gas every week.
WalterBright 10mo ago
You're also likely to have to wait in line to charge.
- foobazgt 10mo ago
  I know congestion can be an issue at some sites, but I have never waited in line to charge in seven years of EV ownership. In addition, for superchargers, you can see real-time stall availability, so if a particular site was crowded, you could just opt for the next. (Easy enough to do since there are so many).
- NetMageSCW 10mo ago
  Unless you are going a long way, you charge at home. And rural areas have a lot of independent housing and outdoor power so it’s easier than for city dwellers.
dalyons 10mo ago
The vast majority of truck owners do not live in these sparse / long distance situations. There just aren’t that many people as a % of the population that live that rural. Whilst a real factor for some, that is not the main reason behind the political divide over trucks.
- NetMageSCW 10mo ago
  What do you think constitutes “many”? The US Census says 20% (e.g. 60 million) are rural, and places like where I live (a small city of 50k surrounded by lots of farm land) don’t count, but it’s very rural when it comes to things like Superchargers.
  - dalyons 10mo ago
    i tried to find some data that isnt chatgpt. [1] & [2] show that about 60-65% of pickups are owned by people living in urban/suburban settings. of the rest, its kind of hard to find a breakdown for situations like your own, but lets guess that roughly half live in towns that are big enough to get superchargers in the near term. That makes, ~80% of pickups sold in places where you can expect to have charging infrastructure either now or soon. [1] https://www.americantrucks.com/pickup-truck-owner-demographics.html https://www.americantrucks.com/pickup-truck-owner-demographi... [2] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/04/21/suv-and-pickup-purchases-soar-but-whos-buying https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/04/21/suv-and-pickup-purcha...

ghaff 10mo ago

I do know someone who bought a Tesla after debating it for a long time. And it was only after getting comfortable with the range for a mostly weekly drive into the country.

cyberax 10mo ago

Try this map: https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map , it has a feature called "range circles". If you set it to 50 miles, you'll see that most of the country is well within 50 miles of the nearest supercharger. Including almost all of Texas. At 100 miles of range, you only have a couple of blank spots. With third party chargers, there's really only one blank spot in Montana. At this point, the range is already a solved problem. Earlier this year, I did experiments with placing stations manually on the map and using the US road networks to calculate the isolines. With just about 70 more stations, you can make any point on the public road network in the entire contiguous US lie within 50 miles of the nearest charger. So the charging availability is likely going to be solved completely even during the current shitty admin. > It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that. At 325kW charge rate (common on recent chargers), you're looking for maybe 20 minutes to get enough charge to reach your destination.

EgregiousCube 10mo ago
“There’s at least one spot within 100 miles where you can wait 20 minutes to get enough charge to get to the next charger” is not an argument that will convince someone to give up the convenience of the gas station.
- cyberax 10mo ago
  What exactly is convenient about gas stations?
  - wkat4242 10mo ago
    They're everywhere and you can get a full charge in 5 minutes.
    - nandomrumber 10mo ago
      And you don’t need to fill up again at the next one.
      - wkat4242 10mo ago
        Yeah that's what I meant by full charge. Most fast chargers only give you a topup in 20 minutes.
      - tguvot 10mo ago
        usually you don't need to fill up again at next 100 or so, given how much of them there are
- rootusrootus 10mo ago
  The convenience argument works for a small segment of the population that road trips a few hundred miles at a time regularly. For the rest of us, EVs are far more convenient. I don't ever go to a gas station, and every day I start out with 320 miles of range. I stop at the EV equivalent of a gas station two or three times a year. I've saved a lot of time not having to get gas every week.

WalterBright 10mo ago

You're also likely to have to wait in line to charge.

foobazgt 10mo ago
I know congestion can be an issue at some sites, but I have never waited in line to charge in seven years of EV ownership. In addition, for superchargers, you can see real-time stall availability, so if a particular site was crowded, you could just opt for the next. (Easy enough to do since there are so many).
NetMageSCW 10mo ago
Unless you are going a long way, you charge at home. And rural areas have a lot of independent housing and outdoor power so it’s easier than for city dwellers.

dalyons 10mo ago

The vast majority of truck owners do not live in these sparse / long distance situations. There just aren’t that many people as a % of the population that live that rural. Whilst a real factor for some, that is not the main reason behind the political divide over trucks.

NetMageSCW 10mo ago
What do you think constitutes “many”? The US Census says 20% (e.g. 60 million) are rural, and places like where I live (a small city of 50k surrounded by lots of farm land) don’t count, but it’s very rural when it comes to things like Superchargers.
- dalyons 10mo ago
  i tried to find some data that isnt chatgpt. [1] & [2] show that about 60-65% of pickups are owned by people living in urban/suburban settings. of the rest, its kind of hard to find a breakdown for situations like your own, but lets guess that roughly half live in towns that are big enough to get superchargers in the near term. That makes, ~80% of pickups sold in places where you can expect to have charging infrastructure either now or soon. [1] https://www.americantrucks.com/pickup-truck-owner-demographics.html https://www.americantrucks.com/pickup-truck-owner-demographi... [2] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/04/21/suv-and-pickup-purchases-soar-but-whos-buying https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/04/21/suv-and-pickup-purcha...