4 ms·

That’s exactly the problem. I’d be happy to use an EV daily, as I drive short distances. But when I drive longer, then I don’t want to waste hours on charging.

That’s exactly the problem. I’d be happy to use an EV daily, as I drive short distances. But when I drive longer, then I don’t want to waste hours on charging. The other day I drove 700km in just about 5.5 hours (German Autobahn). Few stops to pee. With EV that would be few hours more (!). If this doesn’t bother you, then it’s fine. It matters to me though. Sometimes I also drive early in the morning 600km, and in the afternoon back, so I’m home until 22:00. With EV, that’s just impossible.

plorkyeran 9mo ago
As long as there's a fast charging station somewhere along the route you'd need more like 30 minutes to charge midway through, not multiple hours. You also surely recognize that your driving patterns are very atypical and a car not working for them says very little about how suitable the car is for the market as a whole.
- mdavid626 9mo ago
  Assuming car can charge that fast. This is why I said “price and range”. Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW.
- bluGill 9mo ago
  A fast charging station that is working, that has the correct connector for your car (including adapters you carry), that your car will work with (Tesla hasn't opened their superchargers to call cars with the NACS connector), that you have an account with... There are too many things that just are not there. One top of that you need to find a charger. They are all over, but many of them are slow speed chargers. There are also a lot of gaps, if you pass a charger with 50% battery remaining you can't be sure you will make the next one. (most cars can pass several gas station with 5% gas in the tank and still make it to one). You need to ensure you will get back to your car when it is charged so they don't charge extra (this is a problem if you are at a concert or something and are trying to charge while doing something else that can't be interupted) Someday all the above will be fixed. Everyone agrees NACS is the future connector, but it isn't rolled out. Someday every "gas station" will have a charger with the gas pumps (or perhaps something else?) - at least along routes where people often make long trips. Someday you won't need a phone/account, just swipe a card - or so I hope. But someday isn't today.
  - dalyons 9mo ago
    someday is today in california at least. there are so many superchargers everywhere that i have never worried about the problems you mention.
Workaccount2 9mo ago
In your typical 475km EV sedan, you would only need about 20 minutes of charging to do that 700km. This is why I am like a broken record repeating that EV misconceptions kill EVs. You are applying gas car logic to electric cars, which is what people do, and stops them from getting an EV. But it's wrong.
- mdavid626 9mo ago
  Are you assuming 250kW chargers? …and cars which can charge that fast? Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW. This is the size of car I need.
  - Workaccount2 9mo ago
    If you often mowed a town park, you wouldn't buy a hand-push lawnmower and then be upset about lawn mower technology. The Renault 5 is a town car. Its specs are closer to a golf cart than a motorcar. It fills a niche, but if you are traveling often, a different EV would suite you better.
    - mdavid626 9mo ago
      I see the confusion now. People assume everyone has the same resources as they do. Your point would be fine, if Renault 5 would be very cheap. But it’s not. It’s the car what many people can afford. Thinking that people have “misconceptions”, because they don’t buy expensive EV-s, which have good capabilities, is very strange. You say EV-s are good and people just don’t get it. But people who buy EV-s for 25k, their experience is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than in EV-s for 50k. These people are buying those cars, because that’s what they can afford, not because they are stupid to see that a more expensive car can do better. Look at 25k ICE cars. They offer lot more comfort regarding “charging”, as same price EV-s. They work in a city and outside city as well. No trade-offs. That’s my point, when I say “price and range”. ———- Renault 5 EV is a pretty normal car in Europe regarding its specs. Why would it be a golf cart?
  - ac29 9mo ago
    > Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW. This is the size of car I need. AC only EVs dont exist in the US market any more AFAIK. Looking at the Renault 5 models currently available in the UK market, they dont have any AC only models either (maybe they do in other countries though).
rootusrootus 9mo ago
You are perhaps an edge case. For many people (the vast majority), you end up spending way, way less time refueling, even if the occasional road trip takes a little longer. It depends on how important time is to you.
tzs 9mo ago
> The other day I drove 700km in just about 5.5 hours (German Autobahn). Few stops to pee. With EV that would be few hours more (!) If you got an EV with fast charging (and there were fast chargers on your route) it would actually be under 20 minutes more. For example Ioniq 5 has a range of ~480 km. Let's say you started at 100% and drive down to 10%. That gets you 430 km, so 270 km left to go. At a 350 kW charger the Ioniq 5 goes from 10-80% in 18 minutes. Assuming you do not want to take it below 10% that's 340 km before you next need to charge, more than the 270 km you need to reach your destination. You arrive with 70 km left before needing to charge again. Let's do the round trip extra time. That's 1400 km for the trip. Again assuming we start at 100% and we don't let it go between 10%, then we get 430 km using before the first charging stop. At that point we've got 970 km left that will have to be powered by our charging stops. Every 20 minute stop is giving us 340 km, so we'll need 3 stops, or one hour of stop time. You might also need a stop, most likely shorter, at your destination if you are going to do a lot of driving there before returning home. In a majority of cases with EVs charging speed is a bigger factor in how much time you spend stopped than range. Many people overlook this and might be a longer range EV when they would actually have faster trips if they got one with a much higher charge rate even if it had a substantially lower range. The way to think of it is once you get past the range you got from charging before you left, every km travelled on the trip comes from stops during the trip. If EV X charges twice as fast as EV Y and they both need a stop at the same place, Y is going to spend twice as much time on chargers for the rest the trip as X no matter how many times they have to stop. If the fast charging X has half the range it will stop twice as often, but an X stop will be 1/4 the time of a Y stop actually charging. Y making few stops does mean less time spent on stop overhead, by which I mean the time when you are off the highway but not actually charging. That should only be a couple minutes or so per stop though since you can overlap time consuming stop activies like visiting the bathroom with the actual charging. On most trip that saving from less total stop overhead can't come anywhere near the savings from faster charging and so fast charging meh range will usually beat crap charging but great range unless the trip is short enough that only the short range car needs to stop. The great range car also does got farther before needing the first stop, so it doesn't need to add as much mileage during the trip put that too usually doesn't make much difference either other than fairly short road trips.
- 9mo ago

plorkyeran 9mo ago

As long as there's a fast charging station somewhere along the route you'd need more like 30 minutes to charge midway through, not multiple hours. You also surely recognize that your driving patterns are very atypical and a car not working for them says very little about how suitable the car is for the market as a whole.

mdavid626 9mo ago
Assuming car can charge that fast. This is why I said “price and range”. Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW.
bluGill 9mo ago
A fast charging station that is working, that has the correct connector for your car (including adapters you carry), that your car will work with (Tesla hasn't opened their superchargers to call cars with the NACS connector), that you have an account with... There are too many things that just are not there. One top of that you need to find a charger. They are all over, but many of them are slow speed chargers. There are also a lot of gaps, if you pass a charger with 50% battery remaining you can't be sure you will make the next one. (most cars can pass several gas station with 5% gas in the tank and still make it to one). You need to ensure you will get back to your car when it is charged so they don't charge extra (this is a problem if you are at a concert or something and are trying to charge while doing something else that can't be interupted) Someday all the above will be fixed. Everyone agrees NACS is the future connector, but it isn't rolled out. Someday every "gas station" will have a charger with the gas pumps (or perhaps something else?) - at least along routes where people often make long trips. Someday you won't need a phone/account, just swipe a card - or so I hope. But someday isn't today.
- dalyons 9mo ago
  someday is today in california at least. there are so many superchargers everywhere that i have never worried about the problems you mention.

Workaccount2 9mo ago

In your typical 475km EV sedan, you would only need about 20 minutes of charging to do that 700km. This is why I am like a broken record repeating that EV misconceptions kill EVs. You are applying gas car logic to electric cars, which is what people do, and stops them from getting an EV. But it's wrong.

mdavid626 9mo ago
Are you assuming 250kW chargers? …and cars which can charge that fast? Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW. This is the size of car I need.
- Workaccount2 9mo ago
  If you often mowed a town park, you wouldn't buy a hand-push lawnmower and then be upset about lawn mower technology. The Renault 5 is a town car. Its specs are closer to a golf cart than a motorcar. It fills a niche, but if you are traveling often, a different EV would suite you better.
  - mdavid626 9mo ago
    I see the confusion now. People assume everyone has the same resources as they do. Your point would be fine, if Renault 5 would be very cheap. But it’s not. It’s the car what many people can afford. Thinking that people have “misconceptions”, because they don’t buy expensive EV-s, which have good capabilities, is very strange. You say EV-s are good and people just don’t get it. But people who buy EV-s for 25k, their experience is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than in EV-s for 50k. These people are buying those cars, because that’s what they can afford, not because they are stupid to see that a more expensive car can do better. Look at 25k ICE cars. They offer lot more comfort regarding “charging”, as same price EV-s. They work in a city and outside city as well. No trade-offs. That’s my point, when I say “price and range”. ———- Renault 5 EV is a pretty normal car in Europe regarding its specs. Why would it be a golf cart?
- ac29 9mo ago
  > Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW. This is the size of car I need. AC only EVs dont exist in the US market any more AFAIK. Looking at the Renault 5 models currently available in the UK market, they dont have any AC only models either (maybe they do in other countries though).

rootusrootus 9mo ago

You are perhaps an edge case. For many people (the vast majority), you end up spending way, way less time refueling, even if the occasional road trip takes a little longer. It depends on how important time is to you.

tzs 9mo ago

> The other day I drove 700km in just about 5.5 hours (German Autobahn). Few stops to pee. With EV that would be few hours more (!) If you got an EV with fast charging (and there were fast chargers on your route) it would actually be under 20 minutes more. For example Ioniq 5 has a range of ~480 km. Let's say you started at 100% and drive down to 10%. That gets you 430 km, so 270 km left to go. At a 350 kW charger the Ioniq 5 goes from 10-80% in 18 minutes. Assuming you do not want to take it below 10% that's 340 km before you next need to charge, more than the 270 km you need to reach your destination. You arrive with 70 km left before needing to charge again. Let's do the round trip extra time. That's 1400 km for the trip. Again assuming we start at 100% and we don't let it go between 10%, then we get 430 km using before the first charging stop. At that point we've got 970 km left that will have to be powered by our charging stops. Every 20 minute stop is giving us 340 km, so we'll need 3 stops, or one hour of stop time. You might also need a stop, most likely shorter, at your destination if you are going to do a lot of driving there before returning home. In a majority of cases with EVs charging speed is a bigger factor in how much time you spend stopped than range. Many people overlook this and might be a longer range EV when they would actually have faster trips if they got one with a much higher charge rate even if it had a substantially lower range. The way to think of it is once you get past the range you got from charging before you left, every km travelled on the trip comes from stops during the trip. If EV X charges twice as fast as EV Y and they both need a stop at the same place, Y is going to spend twice as much time on chargers for the rest the trip as X no matter how many times they have to stop. If the fast charging X has half the range it will stop twice as often, but an X stop will be 1/4 the time of a Y stop actually charging. Y making few stops does mean less time spent on stop overhead, by which I mean the time when you are off the highway but not actually charging. That should only be a couple minutes or so per stop though since you can overlap time consuming stop activies like visiting the bathroom with the actual charging. On most trip that saving from less total stop overhead can't come anywhere near the savings from faster charging and so fast charging meh range will usually beat crap charging but great range unless the trip is short enough that only the short range car needs to stop. The great range car also does got farther before needing the first stop, so it doesn't need to add as much mileage during the trip put that too usually doesn't make much difference either other than fairly short road trips.

9mo ago