Comment by happosai
12 hours ago
Range extender EVs made a lot more sense a decade a go when batteries were much more expensive, and fast chargers were not yet ubiquitous. Then range extenders were more affordable than EVs and could go to places EVs couldn't.
Now these EREVs are mostly luxury niche of big cars (where extra space taken by two power trains doesn't matter) for people who don't want to spend 20 minutes at rapid chargers on that yearly long trip they do. Or for people who live in some global warming ignoring backwater[1] that hasn't built out rapid charger yet.
[1] even China has ubiquitous fast charging network now
We just drove from the UK to Portugal (via ferry). They were in the electric car and anxious about the next charger almost entire time.
The only thing worse than the staple "all chargers except one broken, wait time 1h+", was the ghost charging station existing only on the map - they drove there only to see the empty field instead.
Needless to say we barely made it in time for the ferry (their refueling was about 3 hours total in the UK alone), and sadly won't make me getting EV as the main car anytime soon.
Second, small town car for errands, maybe, but that means having no comfort or equipment I'd like to have in the "main" car (and half of it is safety).
Also - note you seem to suggest the mythical ubiquity of the fast chargers is the solution to the range, but they're also so expensive to use that any savings from the local driving and charging at home (if someone is lucky enough to own a house with garage or off-street parking) is immediately burned on the first longer trip.
There exists a fringe of people who are constantly driving 5+ hours all the time in random directions and places.
These people stoke a lot of fear about EVs despite being a tiny fraction of the population.
Bet. Feel free to stroke your strawman, no need to ever engage with the arguments - peak "shallow dismissal" without substance.
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China is the first country I would expect to have ubiquitous fast charging. They are years ahead of the west in the EV rollout. Also high speed rail, robotics, high tech manufacturing in general is kind of their jam now.
> China is the first country I would expect to have ubiquitous fast charging.
Everywhere in China? China is a large place. My money would be on a small rich country that’s (almost) entirely a city. Monaco, Singapore, maybe Luxembourg.
Googling gives me https://transition-energetique.gouv.mc/en/themes/mobility/mo... which doesn’t mention fast C charging but says “Every Monegasque resident is now less than 200 metres from a free public charging point” ⇒ it wouldn’t surprise me if Monaco already meets your definition of “ubiquitous fast charging”
> “Every Monegasque resident is now less than 200 metres from a free public charging point”
Given the area of the country is 2km, even given its narrow geography that would take all of 50 charging stations to achieve...
Maybe 80% of Monaco residents are millionaires / billionaires from other countries, be it Europe or rest of the world, mostly for tax evasion purposes. This includes many many professional sport persons who launder their sponsor income thus helping then getting millionaires surprisingly quickly, while public funds in their countries where they actually live and represent ie on olympics crumble.
#1 reason why I shy away from all professional sports with serious money involved, it just turns into typical ugly business with skewed incentives, while actual sport ends up being just a necessary afterthought.
Better apartments there cost often 10-20 million euros, there are special controls in laws (ie employment) ensuring better treatment of those few Monaco citizens that are there. Most tax avoiding folks like those sportsmen rent just po box to get some sort of special residence. Most people you can actually meet there live in France and commute daily.
That place is a special bubble even within bubbles, nothing that applies there should be expected to apply elsewhere, apart from similar places (of which I am not that aware of maybe apart from San Marino, ie Singapore is more like a real tiny country with actual serious business in trading and transportation).
I's already pretty ubiquitous in many western european countries
In America we don’t have enough chargers for roadtrips.
The capacity issue is specially evident on long weekends or sundays when everyone needs to use the same few chargers.
Just got a Tesla. I was worried about travel through western Iowa, it seemed fairly worst case looking at the map of my route, because I’m not on the interstate and the Tesla superchargers aren’t near my route. To my surprise, it was a non-issue. Modern EVs have enough range and there are indeed just enough chargers.
> just enough
That is my objection. There are just enough chargers. However only if you plan around chargers. There is a gas station in nearly every small town. You can safely say any town that can't support a gas station cannot support anything else (no stores, bars, restaurants) and only rarely be wrong. Most small towns don't have a charger at all, and if they do it is often level 2 which means stay overnight to get useful range. (I don't understand these - the ones I've seen are not near anyplace you might stay overnight)
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Having done many road trips in a Tesla, I don't believe this is true. My trips were in the south west though. I'm sure there are areas where it is a problem but it depends.
I just got back from a Seattle to Yellowstone road trip with an EV and have to agree.
While it was possible to accomplish the mission, it wasn't exactly pleasant and required more planning and longer stops.
I road trip the east coast a few times per year. I haven’t had to wait at a charger for years.
I feel like this road trip thing is over exaggerated. What if we (as a society) rented a Toyota Sienna or something equally boring when we need to go on a road trip?
Every try to do that?
The cost of a rental car for a week is high - you can pay for a lot of gas for the cost of renting a car a few times a year.
More than one person I know has tried to rent a car and discovered they didn't have any on the day they went to pick it up. If your car can make the trip you avoid all the issue.
Note the above is about road trips. If you are flying (or taking the train) someplace than you will rent anyway (or have some other plans). However one of the advantages of road trips is you take your own car.