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6 hours ago

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.

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WarmWash  4 hours ago

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.

  • ssl-3  1 hour ago

    Indeed.

    I can only speak for myself, but I do get surprise trips sometimes. My phone could ring at any time and the person on the other end will tell me that I need to go to Detroit, or Columbus, or maybe some corn field in Indiana. This is a thing that happens in my life (and I do get paid for these drives).

    But I never have a surprise trip that takes more than about 2 hours. And that's... well, that's well-within EV range. I might need to spend a bit of time charging up for the return trip, but whatever: The car has a high chance of starting at ~80% charge anyway because it is plugged in while it sits in my driveway.

    I do take plenty of far-longer trips, but they always have some planning. Often days worth, sometimes whole weeks worth, but always at least a few hours. I'll have plenty of time to juice the thing all the way up beforehand (if that's even useful) and also to look at the anticipated route.

    And besides: While I can eek ~500 miles out of a tank of gas if I work at doing so, I never do that in one shot. I take breaks. Even when I've got a co-driver who I can swap with on a 1,200 mile jaunt, we walk around, hit the bathroom, refill on libations, and et cetera when we stop to trade spots. We make time to kill.

    Since I'm already taking breaks and it's not a race, then the addition of an EV to the game only affects where I take those breaks. But, really: Those intermediate points are not a big deal -- it doesn't really matter where they happen. It just matters that they do happen.

    If it is a race: If the whole point of the trip is to catch a show or a game or a ferry or some other such thing that happens at a very specific time whether I'm there or not, then I can just leave earlier. Maybe I'll get some free time to explore the area when I show up, or maybe I'll edge into a parking lot with 5% battery remaining and a growing sense of fear about getting into the venue on time, but whatever. For all 1 or 2 times per year when that's actually important and also outside of normal EV range, I can accommodate them with a grant of some extra time.

    But for the every-day stuff? Man. I could do very well with an EV. I could even do very OK with an EV if I lived in apartment, as long as I could plug into a regular wall socket for a few hours while at work (which is cheaper for the boss-man to pay for than the space heater that sits under Cindy's desk).

    (I guess an EV might cut off my access to certain routes in places like Wyoming or the Dakotas, but I'll worry about that ability after I gain a desire to go there to begin with.)

  • subscribed  4 hours ago

    Bet. Feel free to stroke your strawman, no need to ever engage with the arguments - peak "shallow dismissal" without substance.