Comment by whatever1
10 hours ago
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.
10 hours ago
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)
I think there's a common misconception by non-EV drivers that every charge you have to wait until the battery is full - you don't. You just have to charge enough to get to your next stop.
If you're in a small town with a level 2 charger at a city park, you just charge enough to get back to civilization. Then hit the fast charger when you're back to the main highway.
Yeah, it takes a little planning to hit charging stops - but it's not actually much planning. And the built-in navigation takes care of most of it for you anyway. I was genuinely surprised on my first trip (again, through not-EV-friendly territory) how much of a non-issue it was in practice, and how much I didn't feel like I was waiting on chargers (even relatively slow "fast chargers"). I just took my time using the restroom, grabbed a fresh drink, checked my notifications on my phone, and it was time to head out again.
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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.