“My EV gave me freedom from the pumps, but took away my freedom to roam” (CBC)

[RUFF BEEST]

Even at a fraction of the distance you would still need to be more aware of your next charge compared to your next fill up.

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You don't really. The car figures in the charging stops you should take for you if you just enter GPS directions. If anything that is less worrying about energy than the "oh shit I better keep an eye out for a gas station" mindset you enter into every few hours in an ICE vehicle.

A myriad of apps can do that too, also with GPS integration.

And all the complaints about lack of reliable chargers have about a 2 year shelf life before the NACS compliant cars start rolling out.

This article is the purest of bullshit.

 

[DarthMasta]

It's a matter of infrastructure. It's like complaining that it's hard to do coast to coast in the US before highways and pumps everywhere. Well, yeah, you gotta plan.

EV's are also a bit of US middle class cars in that ideally you'll have a house with a garage that you can park at and charge.

But around here in Portugal, the infrastructure is going from decent to good, and if you're doing mostly highways, there's plenty of chargers, and they're always adding more. Homes with garage, less so. But still, I've seen people with EV's doing Coimbra to Seville, which is close to 500 km's, no issue, you just gotta stop and charge a couple of times, it's less expensive than gas here.

But yeah, you need to plan a bit.

 

[rudeboyoslo]

EV cars are one of the worst product in history. They provide no real benefit to consumers while being more expensive.

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Jesus christ are you serious with that shit

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

I don't think anyone is pretending otherwise. But also it won't change if people don't bring it up.

I like EVs, I want my next car to be one. But I find the extremely defensive response to people just mentioning a legitimate con of them to be very odd. Yes, people take road trips at least in the US. And no, an EV cannot do those well yet. It is what it is.

Click to shrink...

I also hate when people get dismissive with "well just stop and rest for 20/30/40 minutes". Yes that is what should happen but for a lot of people, myself included, it can be hard to break to habit to just keep moving. I find it incredibly convenient still that I can just pop off for gas and be back on my way in under 10 minutes.

 

[plagiarize]

I love my EV but I would never even consider using it for long road trips until the infrastructure is much better. Also, having to stop for half an hour every 200 - 300 miles kind of sucks

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I stopped about that often in my ICE when I had one. I think most people would be stopping for lunch and dinner etc on a long drive.

 

[SixPointEight]

EV cars are one of the worst product in history. They provide no real benefit to consumers while being more expensive.

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Worse than New Coke….

 

[Gay Bowser]

The PHEV market is so frustrating, I would have one now if they weren't impossible to find with such huge markups.

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Honestly, from a resource allocation/emission mitigation standpoint, our current EV rollout strategy makes no sense. There aren't enough batteries to go around. With the batteries required to make one EV and reduce one person's tailpipe emissions by 100%, you could make ten plug-in hybrids and reduce ten people's tailpipe emissions by 90%, while we build out the infrastructure for full EVs. Heck, you could use those same batteries to make one hundred standard hybrids and reduce 100 people's tailpipe emissions by 20-30%, which would arguably be even better. Like, that is not an exaggeration, these are roughly the amounts of battery each type of these vehicle requires. But that's not as sexy as jumping to pure EVs, as the one early adopter getting to buy a Tesla.

People knock on Toyota for being late to the whole EV thing but (doomed FCEV initiative aside) their strategy of focusing on hybridizing everything, and then moving to plug-in hybrids, and then moving to EVs is the most pragmatic approach if you actually care about reducing the most emissions possible across the most people.

People want hybrids but there just aren't enough batteries for them. Ford launched the Maverick Hybrid as the base engine, cheaper than the more powerful but less efficient turbo engine. Everybody wanted the hybrid and there weren't enough to go around. The next year they raised the price of the hybrid so it was the same price as the turbo engine. Everybody wanted the hybrid and there wasn't enough to go around. On the new model year, the hybrid engine is now a premium option, more expensive than the turbo engine, and I expect there still won't be enough to go around, even though the price of that base hybrid Maverick will have gone up by something like 25% across just two model years. Meanwhile, Ford is putting a ton of batteries into Mustang Mach-Es…and now stories are starting to come out about those vehicles languishing on dealer lots, now that the finite wave of early EV adopters have an over-abundance of choice.

Meanwhile, the next Toyota Camry is set to be hybrid-only, which is going to have a huge positive impact — the Camry is still an enormously popular vehicle. The Toyota Avalon's replacement, the Crown, is now hybrid-only. The Toyota Sequoia full-size SUV is now hybrid-only. The Toyota Sienna minivan is now hybrid-only. The Toyota Venza crossover is now hybrid-only. On the Lexus side of things, the Lexus UX small crossover is now hybrid-only. All of this adds up to a meaningful reduction in tailpipe emissions without really requiring consumers to learn new behavior or honestly give up much of anything. And for consumers interested in learning new behavior, Toyota has started to introduce more and more plug-in hybrid vehicles too.

I don't think Toyota gets as much credit as they deserve for their pragmatic approach. A lot of times EV people are snobbish toward hybrids and plug-in hybrids. They're just "greenwashing" icky ICE vehicles. They're just half measures. But when it comes to reducing emissions, half measures matter. And when it comes to changing consumer behavior, gentle "half measures" are essential. There are a lot of people who don't see how an EV could fit in their life but they're open to a plug-in hybrid. And maybe after owning that plug-in hybrid for a while they realize that they really don't ever exceed the EV range in their daily driving, and they're fine with their next car being an EV.

Plug-in hybrids are EVs with a backup plan. And a lot of people who aren't EV tech enthusiast early adopter types really want that back-up plan. If people want EVs to become virtually universal, they should applaud companies like Toyota and Stellantis for their plug-in hybrid initiatives, because those companies are building a bridge for many buyers who likely wouldn't otherwise consider making the leap to EV ownership.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

I stopped about that often in my ICE when I had one. I think most people would be stopping for lunch and dinner etc on a long drive.

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200-300 miles? That's like a sub 25mpg average on a normal tank.

 

[Surakian]

Solution: rent a gas vehicle

 

[Rizific]

not an EV owner yet so i cant speak first hand, but i dont think i needed an article to tell me that any long drive in an EV would be a nightmare.

 

[plagiarize]

200-300 miles? That's like a sub 25mpg average on a normal tank.

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300 miles is 5 hours of driving if you average 60 mph. Do you skip meals or something when road tripping? Most people I'd imagine are taking breaks every 4 to 5 hours to eat, stretch legs, not be in the car for a bit etc.

I know I did.

 

[androvsky]

15,000km road trip in a CCS vehicle in the U.S. Yeah, EVs aren't perfect.

But sometimes it's annoying to hop in an ICE car to run a quick errand and realize I'm going to have to fill it up before I can realistically go anywhere.

It's rather remarkable that after barely a decade of having non-Tesla EVs on the market, we're at the point where a significant road trip like that is even possible considering none of those non-Tesla EVs have sold particularly well. And this is before the infrastructure bill kicks in.

The chargers being consistently broken seems crazy. Is the tech really remote mental? Or is there not as much incentive for keeping them well maintained as ai thought?

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The CCS networks in the U.S., Electrify America especially, are notorious for being garbage. It's why a lot of people are excited about car makers using Tesla's NACS port. The downside is that we'll see Electrify America chargers with the NACS connecter, but at least they'll be in more direct competition with Tesla's Supercharger network which is widely considered to be quite reliable. Location is still king, but where people have a choice the charge networks are going to have to work for it.

 

[Hrodulf]

I mean, petrol-based infrastructure has had how long to expand compared to EV?

Makes sense that you wouldn't be able to travel as far, especially considering everyone is dragging their feet on electric infrastructure.

 

[LorentzFactor]

So the author did this before or after Tesla started allowing non Teslas use superchargers? obviously this is a very specific problem that's not easily generalizable. I've gone on a 1500 mile road trip in a model 3 and it was a breeze and relatively cheap

 

[captive]

EVs are still such a dumb ultra American solution that solves relatively few problems in the process of their existence...

But also, how very American the article is to obsess over personal freedom and convenience of luxury options essentially on an insanely long route lol.

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yea we need more trains.
However, I find these posts from non Americans to be ridiculous.
I dont think some of y'all understand how massive the country is. Yes we need high speed rail across the country.
But theyre never going to build trains all over so you can go to random places like state and national parks for instance, which are almost always off the beaten path.
Like great I took a high speed rail from Atlanta to Austin. But I still want to go to big bend national park, how I get there? Or schlitterbahn near Austin?
It's frankly a logistical nightmare just trying to think about it.

I don't think anyone is pretending otherwise. But also it won't change if people don't bring it up.

I like EVs, I want my next car to be one. But I find the extremely defensive response to people just mentioning a legitimate con of them to be very odd. Yes, people take road trips at least in the US. And no, an EV cannot do those well yet. It is what it is.

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Thank you

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Cause it's not really that legitimate. At all. It's simply people not doing research and or not setting expectations.

Go watch youtube/twitter you'll find lots of videos of people going cross country in EVs. Not only that, you can find people towing RVs IN EVs.
Again, if you want to drive 85 without ever stopping, EVs won't be it for you.

 

[Einbroch]

Rent a car for a road trip. It's what we do. And it saves the wear and tear on our EVs.

 

[UltimateHigh]

yeah this is a special case, which is fine, all pros and cons of owning your daily driver should be known. it's a thing until there's way more quality charging stations out there like gas stations.

for me though? 200+ miles on a single charge is more than enough. I still think I'd prefer hybrid if I had a choice.

 

[turbobrick]

I stopped about that often in my ICE when I had one. I think most people would be stopping for lunch and dinner etc on a long drive.

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To me its less the fact you have to stop, but more of the time you have to spend stopped. 5-10 minutes every 250-300 or so miles isn't too bad, but if its 30+ minutes every time then it gets annoying.

 

[BossAttack]

What's the percentage of people taking a 15,000km trip on a whim on a regular basis?

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.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

200-300 miles? That's like a sub 25mpg average on a normal tank.

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Alternative fuel vehicles are measured differently. They have MPGe (Miles Per Gallon Equivalent), which helps to indicate to people how far an equivalent gas powered car could travel on a gallon of gas.

Many EVs have combined MPGe of 100 or more. Indicating that the efficiency would be equivalent to a standard gas car getting 100 MPG.

So if that gas car had a range of 300 miles, it would mean it would need just a 3 gallon tank to accomplish that.

 

[Vark]

And all the complaints about lack of reliable chargers have about a 2 year shelf life before the NACS compliant cars start rolling out.

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It'll still be a problem. Everyone using Tesla Superchargers ups reliably but creates crowding and logistic problems on frequent routes and just swapping out CCS for NACS handles doesn't actually solve issues with non Tesla charger maintenance.

We need several robust and well maintained options in the space before the problem goes away.

That being said I've done a 3,000 miles road trip in less than ideal conditions and it's not great but also not a complete travesty on the CCS network.

I actually enjoy the more frequent stops but it does add time.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

Alternative fuel vehicles are measured differently. They have MPGe (Miles Per Gallon Equivalent), which helps to indicate to people how far an equivalent gas powered car could travel on a gallon of gas.

Many EVs have combined MPGe of 100 or more. Indicating that the efficiency would be equivalent to a standard gas car getting 100 MPG.

So if that gas car had a range of 300 miles, it would mean it would need just a 3 gallon tank to accomplish that.

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Ok and what does that have to do with what I said? It was about being in an ice car, stopping 200-300 miles not anything to do with EV's

 

[Reinhard]

Plug in hybrid is ideal. Would have one right now except 1.5 years ago chip shortages meant there was no guarantee to get a powered tailgate so we went with a different vehicle.

 

[TheDestructiveSquirrel]

15,000 KM?!?!

That just sounds insane for an EV right now

 

[GoldenEye 007]

Ok and what does that have to do with what I said? It was about being in an ice car, stopping 200-300 miles not anything to do with EV's

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I was just explaining that the 25mpg isn't really the correct way to look at it. Just trying to inform how alternative fuel vehicles are measured due to the inherent differences in technology.

As far as stopping, I have to stop at about 300mi for my gas car anyway without risking being in an area with no or few gas stations. And that's a Mazda3. That's about 4 hours of driving averaging 70mph the entire way with zero stops. And at that point, I'm going to the bathroom, stretching, eating anyway. And that's with being well beyond the suggested resting interval to help ensure alertness while driving.

 

[Zyrokai]

I love my EV but I would never even consider using it for long road trips until the infrastructure is much better. Also, having to stop for half an hour every 200 - 300 miles kind of sucks

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I can barely go more than 2 hours without needing a break. 30 minutes sounds perfect to me. Even with a gas car, I break for 15-30 minutes every 2-3 hours. Probably the safest thing to do as well, considering fatigue.

 

[EricTheGamerman]

yea we need more trains.
However, I find these posts from non Americans to be ridiculous.
I dont think some of y'all understand how massive the country is. Yes we need high speed rail across the country.
But theyre never going to build trains all over so you can go to random places like state and national parks for instance, which are almost always off the beaten path.
Like great I took a high speed rail from Atlanta to Austin. But I still want to go to big bend national park, how I get there? Or schlitterbahn near Austin?
It's frankly a logistical nightmare just trying to think about it.

Click to shrink...

I'm an American who thinks the infrastructure of this country is at best, completely pathetic. As for all of the "America is too big and massive"... no, just no.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=576s

And for major state parks, you can always design transit options from the nearest population centers. Really big attractions like say Yellowstone could even get their own trains from the nearest transit centers, while consistent bus services could be designed for many major national parks. And of course at some point, you'll need a car like even the best designed transit places in the country. Good transit networks have never and never will be about serving every single possible place, just the ones that are convenient to do so between population centers and where there can be natural demand for them such as at the most popular state parks.

My derision of EVs is building so much of the conversation around a sustainable future on them. Car dependent infrastructure at the cost of all other infrastructure is the fundamental problem, not the existent of gas powered vehicles to access more remote places. The focus on EV infrastructure and the conversations around mileages ignore or even worse yet, supersede points about transit networks, high density development, walkable spaces, and the reality that most people don't actually do big road trips that often. EVs end up sucking all the air out of the room for the real solutions to the vast majority of America's problems, and that is Americans fell for car propaganda and rebuilt their cities around car dependent infrastructure and now have internalized that to the point that the US and the people living there will spend a fortune on inefficient, difficult to build, "clean" cars rather than address the problems on any level.

Which I mean, post-Covid, that's not surprising anymore, but always supremely disappointing.

 

[IDreamOfHime]

They drove the same distance as London to Perth, Australia.....

 

[Funkybee]

That 15,000km reminded me of my best friend who got his first car as a gift for 20th birthday. Now he's 35 and the car should have around 10,000 km (almost half driven by me in the first few years) lol. Who the fuck drives those distances on a regular basis..c'mon now.

 

[Septy]

I like to take multi long hour trips in the remote mountains. When I see a supercharger on one of those routes I'll get an ev. The infrastructure is currently good enough if you're traveling city to city. But it's not good enough to where you can go far out into nature and feel at ease about your fuel.

 

[Veliladon]

I don't know why service stations don't just have pay per kWh EV car bays alongside the pumps.

 

[killerrin]

This is mainly a problem brought on by two things

• North America has yet to choose a fucking Charging Standard
• Governments here in Canada have turned the installation of changing stations into this huge political mess.

Also on some cases it's just impossible to build chargers because a company already bought "Exclusive Rights to fuel vehicles" and Electricity stupidly counts under that. Which is exactly why it took so god damned long for Ontario to build Chargers at the OnRoutrs along the 400 series highways, because fucking Canadian Tire had exclusively to fuel there and throse rights had to be negotiated away and they were hesitant due to Chargers competing with their Gas Pumps.

Also here in Ontario, Ford stupidly removed the requirement that all new homes with garages or carports, had to be built with a 40AMP 240v Outlet capable of supporting Cast Charging.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

I don't know why service stations don't just have pay per kWh EV car bays alongside the pumps.

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Some do. But it is an investment and it's still early going with EV adoption. While there are tax incentives, it still may not make sense for every location to go through with it. I want to say installing DC fast charging is around $20,000-$100,000+ or so before tax rebates.

 

[pokeystaples]

This is the reason my household has been holding back a bit. We like to camp and get off the beaten path and I'm scared we'll be stuck somewhere. Since I already commute via public transit for work and my wife is permanently WFH, it didn't make sense to have two cars. Until the infrastructure gets better or we pivot to solar somehow I'm out on this one.

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

Honestly, from a resource allocation/emission mitigation standpoint, our current EV rollout strategy makes no sense. There aren't enough batteries to go around. With the batteries required to make one EV and reduce one person's tailpipe emissions by 100%, you could make ten plug-in hybrids and reduce ten people's tailpipe emissions by 90%, while we build out the infrastructure for full EVs. Heck, you could use those same batteries to make one hundred standard hybrids and reduce 100 people's tailpipe emissions by 20-30%, which would arguably be even better. Like, that is not an exaggeration, these are roughly the amounts of battery each type of these vehicle requires. But that's not as sexy as jumping to pure EVs, as the one early adopter getting to buy a Tesla.

People knock on Toyota for being late to the whole EV thing but (doomed FCEV initiative aside) their strategy of focusing on hybridizing everything, and then moving to plug-in hybrids, and then moving to EVs is the most pragmatic approach if you actually care about reducing the most emissions possible across the most people.

People want hybrids but there just aren't enough batteries for them. Ford launched the Maverick Hybrid as the base engine, cheaper than the more powerful but less efficient turbo engine. Everybody wanted the hybrid and there weren't enough to go around. The next year they raised the price of the hybrid so it was the same price as the turbo engine. Everybody wanted the hybrid and there wasn't enough to go around. On the new model year, the hybrid engine is now a premium option, more expensive than the turbo engine, and I expect there still won't be enough to go around, even though the price of that base hybrid Maverick will have gone up by something like 25% across just two model years. Meanwhile, Ford is putting a ton of batteries into Mustang Mach-Es…and now stories are starting to come out about those vehicles languishing on dealer lots, now that the finite wave of early EV adopters have an over-abundance of choice.

Meanwhile, the next Toyota Camry is set to be hybrid-only, which is going to have a huge positive impact — the Camry is still an enormously popular vehicle. The Toyota Avalon's replacement, the Crown, is now hybrid-only. The Toyota Sequoia full-size SUV is now hybrid-only. The Toyota Sienna minivan is now hybrid-only. The Toyota Venza crossover is now hybrid-only. On the Lexus side of things, the Lexus UX small crossover is now hybrid-only. All of this adds up to a meaningful reduction in tailpipe emissions without really requiring consumers to learn new behavior or honestly give up much of anything. And for consumers interested in learning new behavior, Toyota has started to introduce more and more plug-in hybrid vehicles too.

I don't think Toyota gets as much credit as they deserve for their pragmatic approach. A lot of times EV people are snobbish toward hybrids and plug-in hybrids. They're just "greenwashing" icky ICE vehicles. They're just half measures. But when it comes to reducing emissions, half measures matter. And when it comes to changing consumer behavior, gentle "half measures" are essential. There are a lot of people who don't see how an EV could fit in their life but they're open to a plug-in hybrid. And maybe after owning that plug-in hybrid for a while they realize that they really don't ever exceed the EV range in their daily driving, and they're fine with their next car being an EV.

Plug-in hybrids are EVs with a backup plan. And a lot of people who aren't EV tech enthusiast early adopter types really want that back-up plan. If people want EVs to become virtually universal, they should applaud companies like Toyota and Stellantis for their plug-in hybrid initiatives, because those companies are building a bridge for many buyers who likely wouldn't otherwise consider making the leap to EV ownership.

Click to shrink...

Yup, I think I read some article on some car website that basically said all this the other day- how it would be way more effective if you're worried about emissions to allocate more battery resources to getting people to switch over to hybrid and plug in hybrids than pure EVs, just because you'd be able to make so many more of them.

I just recently got a regular RAV4 Hybrid after having to wait a long time for one and I love it. It drives better than my old ICE RAV4, has more power and gets much better gas mileage. I'll probably go for a plug in Hybrid next time I get a new car when they're not so scarce. I think that's the best way to do it if you're coming from an ICE vehicle- ease people into regular hybrids then Plug Ins and then EVs, by which time hopefully the charging infrastructure is better and the battery technologies have advanced too.

 

[construct]

I used to drive from the Bay Area to LA every other month in my EV and the extra hour starts to add up. There's always chargers unless it's the holidays or a station is offline but the time to charge is kind of inconvenient because it's not enough time to fully stop and eat somewhere. Places to buy snacks or whatever are not always confidently close.

 

[Coyote Starrk]

Yep. Lack of range along with price are the main reasons I won't be switching to an electric car anytime soon.


Hopefully things improve in both departments in the coming years.

 

[Mcfrank]

Drove my Tesla from LA to Wichita and back. Tesla makes this not a problem. Hopefully the other evs rapidly switch to Tesla charging.

 

[Pwnz]

We'll keep my 2019 pilot until it's 2030 for this reason. Wife's sedan will be EV first. By the time it's 2030 there will probably be lots of hyper charge stations, 15 minute charge times and gas stations going more for a dine in or shop experience like buccees to kill the slightly longer stop most people aren't used to.

Batteries will get a lot cheaper by then too.

 

[effingvic]

Ideally Id like to have an EV for errands and day to day driving and keep my gasoline for anything beyond that like going hiking or road trips etc. For now, gas it is.

 

[Skiddo]

Owning a BEV (exclusively) in any state that isn't California, is a fool's errand IMO. Of course If you have the privilege of a two car household (one ICE) then my point is moot.

As a Michigander, the current state of public charging is pathetic. Thusly I went the way of the PHEV ('21 Honda Clarity) and could not be happier. 47 miles on battery, with a gas tank if I ever need to go on a long haul trip. 15k miles and I have averaged 125 MPG, filling up the tank once every two months.

Unfortunately most PHEV have miserable range (looking at you Jeep) giving the whole segment a bad rap. The exceptions (Prius Prime, Rav4 Prime, or Clarity) command absurd markups or are no longer in production.

 

[yongeandcollege]

We're a one car family and neither of us drive to work. We use our car for long trips almost exclusively. I have no plans to go the EV route until it's as convenient as gas.

 

[Johnny956]

We'll keep my 2019 pilot until it's 2030 for this reason. Wife's sedan will be EV first. By the time it's 2030 there will probably be lots of hyper charge stations, 15 minute charge times and gas stations going more for a dine in or shop experience like buccees to kill the slightly longer stop most people aren't used to.

Batteries will get a lot cheaper by then too.

Click to shrink...

That's basically our plan. Keep the 2018 CRV for at least 10 years. We've did a 1800 mile roundtrip for spring break and last Christmas a 2300 roundtrip trip as well and we did longer stops for meals but quick stops were 10 minutes. That adds up especially when we wanted to make both trips in decent times.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

Owning a BEV (exclusively) in any state that isn't California, is a fool's errand IMO. Of course If you have the privilege of a two car household (one ICE) then my point is moot.

As a Michigander, the current state of public charging is pathetic. Thusly I went the way of the PHEV ('21 Honda Clarity) and could not be happier. 47 miles on battery, with a gas tank if I ever need to go on a long haul trip. 15k miles and I have averaged 125 MPG, filling up the tank once every two months.

Unfortunately most PHEV have miserable range (looking at you Jeep) giving the whole segment a bad rap. The exceptions (Prius Prime, Rav4 Prime, or Clarity) command absurd markups or are no longer in production.

Click to shrink...

Eh plenty of people outside of California can have a great experience with an EV. Even if we were a 1 car household, it being an EV would be fine. It's the car we take on trips outside of the city now.

If you go forward with a level 2 charger at home, it absolutely can easily be the daily. Or in our case when our Mazda3 is ready to be retired, we could get a second EV and be golden. And this is in Texas. Costs me $0 to $6 per charge.

PHEVs are intriguing. But they seem to be worse to find than BEV - or have crazy markups with little to no tax incentives. For those that definitely do those frequent road-trips with a usual commute of under 30-40mi, it would be a good option.

 

[DevilMayGuy]

Just rent a car for road trips?

 

[Joshua]

Drove my Tesla from LA to Wichita and back. Tesla makes this not a problem. Hopefully the other evs rapidly switch to Tesla charging.

Click to shrink...

Ford, GM, Mercedes, Rivian, Polestar, and Volvo have all announced the switch to the Tesla standard in the last 12 weeks. 2025 until it's native in cars, but adapters will be rolled out sooner.

The $7.5 billion that Biden's infrastructure act dumps into building EV chargers is starting to produce actual stations out there.

Personally I feel the future is looking good here. The article in OP's post highlights a valid concern, but trips like that are doable with planning and anxiety. Hopefully the anxiety aspect will be gone by the end of this decade.

Just rent a car for road trips?

Click to shrink...

Kinda funny you make this comment because similar EV hit pieces are targeting their adoption by rental car companies!

Car-Rental Companies Are Ruining EVs

Good luck charging your surprise electric rental car.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Darren Lamb]

I have a few thoughts:

1) Battery EVs may never be quite as convenient for road trips as ICE cars, and at some point people will need to accept a level of service that gets most ICE cars off the road. It's not a great idea for the environment or pedestrian safety to stick 200kw+ batteries in loads of cars to get over 700 miles or range in an efficient design, and even the switch to solid state batteries may necessitate a safe charging time that exceeds a gas pump stop. That being said, the Ioniq 5 charges 10-80% in 18 minutes at a really fast charger, and for me that's basically negligible to the 10 minutes or so I'd take in an ICE car to get some snacks, walk and use the bathroom every 3 or so hours. I find the people who want to drive 6 hours without stopping to be bizarre, or at least quite uncompromising.

2) However, EVs are way better for pretty much all other types of driving. Even when I couldn't fill up at home, I still loved being able to precondition my car (i.e heat it or cool it) without feeling guilty or breaking my state's idling laws, using one-pedal driving in stop and go traffic, and getting the quick torque if needed. Now my car can be full every morning if I want it to be since we installed a charger last year.

3) The charging infrastructure itself is an issue, both in capacity and in up-time. I don't have a Tesla, and I have experienced machines that are not working, not working to the speed they should be, or full of other cars that would require a much longer wait to use than I ever experienced at a gas station. I think this is fixable for sure, but it may require some alternate assumptions and will take some time to build up. I'd like to see more roadside stops that have something like 20 charging stations, 10 really fast ones (350kw) for people who just want to get back on the road, and another 10 (50-100kw) for when you want to eat and hang for a bit.

4) In this interim period, I've been occasionally renting ICE cars if I need to drive a long distance, and have a zipcar membership if we ever need to use two cars at the same time. My Chevy Bolt is pretty cheap for an EV, and sucks as a road tripping car, but when I was doing the math I realized that if I paid for a car that could road trip better (like a Model Y), the cost difference was at least a week or so of a car rental every month. Didn't see worth it when we'd take maybe 2-3 trips a year where charging would be annoying. I think lots of people would be better off buying the car they need for 98% of the time, and renting one for the 2% they'd need that functionality.

Owning a BEV (exclusively) in any state that isn't California, is a fool's errand IMO. Of course If you have the privilege of a two car household (one ICE) then my point is moot.

Click to shrink...

In the northeast, we have OK infrastructure and trains as options for travel. It's fine having EVs here, I see lots every day.

 

[plagiarize]

Owning a BEV (exclusively) in any state that isn't California, is a fool's errand IMO. Of course If you have the privilege of a two car household (one ICE) then my point is moot.

As a Michigander, the current state of public charging is pathetic. Thusly I went the way of the PHEV ('21 Honda Clarity) and could not be happier. 47 miles on battery, with a gas tank if I ever need to go on a long haul trip. 15k miles and I have averaged 125 MPG, filling up the tank once every two months.

Unfortunately most PHEV have miserable range (looking at you Jeep) giving the whole segment a bad rap. The exceptions (Prius Prime, Rav4 Prime, or Clarity) command absurd markups or are no longer in production.

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It's totally fine in the North East where I live, and I'm sure it's fine in Washington state too based on traveling there quite a bit.

I road tripped my EV from Cape Cod up to Vermont and back a few weeks back and it was without any drama. Next month I'm taking it to NYC and back. Much further than that I'd be flying.

 

[Gay Bowser]

I just recently got a regular RAV4 Hybrid after having to wait a long time for one and I love it. It drives better than my old ICE RAV4, has more power and gets much better gas mileage. I'll probably go for a plug in Hybrid next time I get a new car when they're not so scarce.

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Yeah, Toyota's hybrid system is some brilliant engineering. It really is almost completely compromise-free. The only real drawback compared to a traditional ICE vehicle is a slightly higher cost for the vehicle, which they've been able to drive down to the point where they're discontinuing some of the traditional ICE versions, at least outside of developing markets. It's just a no-brainer to get the hybrid; you'll make that money back at the pump.

The next-gen Corolla will probably be hybrid-only in many markets. The Corolla! Taking an incredibly popular vehicle like the Corolla and taking it from 32 mpg in the city and 40 in the highway to about 50 in both is going to do far more to reduce emissions than a lot of buzzy EV luxury vehicle startups like Lucid and Rivian. Lucid and Rivian make great cars, and I'm glad they exist and I hope they survive and succeed, but rich people buying greener lifestyle SUVs is not going to be enough to save us.

I think that's the best way to do it if you're coming from an ICE vehicle- ease people into regular hybrids then Plug Ins and then EVs, by which time hopefully the charging infrastructure is better and the battery technologies have advanced too.

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Exactly. And yet a lot of other EV proponents get mad when at me when I say exactly that. Of course, a lot of those people also thought Tesla would have released their mythical $25K EV for the masses by now, too.

After the initial bluster has subsided, we're already seeing some companies sort of walk back their initial EV commitments. The Chrysler brand was supposed to be Stellantis's EV "innovation lab" or whatever the fuck and go all-electric by like 2028, and now Stellantis is sort of distancing themself from that, because it turns out 2028 is actually really soon and Chrysler mostly sells minivans and most people want a minivan that can go further than 200 miles. Lincoln was supposed to rapidly go all-electric with a slew of new EV models and now their new CEO is walking that back, saying they'll introduce new EVs over time and transition as it makes sense. EVs are definitely the future but automakers were acting like they were the present, for everyone, and they're just not. You can't just ignore that some people live in apartments.

 

[Xeonidus]

My next car is going to be electric. Waitlist will be long though. My wife has a hybrid we would use if we were to do longer roadtrips. At least until the infrastructure is better.