Comment by ars
4 days ago
> if you can buy an electric vehicle with similar performance for the same money
It's because you can't.
Electric vehicles cost more. And I personally would never buy an electric vehicle with less than 600 miles range - and even then I would hesitate because I'd have to figure out how to charge at my destination.
Superchargers on the road or whatever don't meet my needs - I'm not willing to wait to charge. I eat in the car, and any rest stop that takes more than 10 minutes is no go for me.
Personally I'd be most interested in a plug in hybrid, with 100 miles (or even less) of battery range. Use battery for city trips and gas for long trips.
> since you can easily install a charger into your home
No you can't. People in apartments can't install them at all, people with only on-street parking can't install them (for example most of New York City is basically without chargers for that reason), and people in houses need some expensive work to run the necessary wires.
Where I live only about 1/4 of the houses on my street (mostly single family) can install chargers - parking is too unpredictable to be able to charge with on-street parking, although some of my neighbors try, and beg other neighbors to not "take their spot".
There's a reason EV sales are dropping.
> and any rest stop that takes more than 10 minutes is no go for me.
You're pretty uncompromising. There are already BEVs that need 18 minutes to recharge. That's close to a 10-minute rest stop + gas station stop.
In real world scenarios good BEVs are currently about 10% slower on long-range road trips than ICE. Not ideal, but also you can relax a bit and not piss in a hurry.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42203545
> there's a reason EV sales are dropping.
You've been reading some sensationalized headlines. Outside of short-term fluctuations, only the second derivative of EV sales has been dropping — the rate of growth has slowed down, which means the sales are still going up and share of EVs is growing, just not as quickly as it used to.
I’m curious what ICE vehicle you drive now that has a 600 mile range?
@ars is not saying that; @ars is stating a minimum range threshold to buy an Electric Vehicle (EV).
I completely understand why would someone have such a threshold in USA.
For example, a round trip starting and finishing from/to a place that is a few hundred miles away from a big city. With ICE vehicle fueling during the trip is not a no-brainer. With EV, charging during the trip would take non-trivial planning if EV's range is, say, 300 miles. With 600 miles range it is easy -- just do it beforehand.