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Comment by nicoboo | Hacker News Reader

The funny thing is, I made the trip from Lille, France (near where I live) to Poznan in Poland, a few stops required all along and no problem - more than 2000km on a few days.

In the summer, in France, Lille to Alps then Ardeche and no problem.

Same for my past vacations here in the South of France (Ardeche, France), around 1000 km long trip and same for getting back here.

I've been using my Tesla (TS85D) since Nov2015, and the only time I had a short stress was while I went seeing Elon Musk in Paris because there were hundred of Teslas in the same area.

So, frankly, I respect the author of this article, but I think if you're following what is displayed on board and adding a little logical thinking and planning a bit your trip in some remote areas (Britany for example) (with OpenChargeMap or ChargeMap applications among others), then it's all good.

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That's the problem. The author admits to not using the onboard charging navigation but instead used Google Maps to plan the trip. She's intentionally being obtuse to make the article clickbait and make EVs look bad.

If EVs are going to go truly mainstream, people are going to have to be allowed to use the navigation app of their choice.

When I ask my car to find the nearest gas station, it gives me the same results as Apple Maps.

Whether this is Tesla's fault, or Google's fault, or someone else's is complex.

That's totally fine and I agree with that but the car's in-built navigation tells you where the stops are when you get to a point that your car won't make it. She had to ignore those prompts in order to get into the situation she's in. Granted, she admits to driving an older model Tesla that she rented but it's really unlikely that the cars operating system hasn't been updated to include that feature.

Granted, she admits to driving an older model Tesla that she rented

If my eight year old Leaf has that functionality, I'm confident that the skankiest of Model Ss will.

>skankiest

I like your moves.

Agreed. You reaaaaaly don’t want to be driving around France without Waze telling you where the photo radar is.

Probably true of Germany as well.

Why? Unless you constantly drive too fast?

Speed limits change far more frequently than I’m used to.

And the signs are different than what I’m used to, so they don’t jump out at me.

Do all cars come with a trip planning feature? IE, if she had rented a BMW or Volvo, would she be able to use the Tesla app or similar?

From my perspective, people are used to being able to pull off the highway just about anywhere and fill their tanks. Having to plan everything down to the mile, even for a mostly highway trip through populated areas, is a major change of thinking.

For example, take this trip... https://www.tesla.com/trips/#/?v=MS_2017_100D&o=Reston,%20VA...

In my ICE car, I usually stop in Richmond or Williamsburg to get a snack and use the restroom. Based on Tesla's app, I now have to stop twice (once to pee, again to charge). And that second stop is longer than a 5 minute fuel fill. Not the end of the world, but different. Also, there is no charging station at the destination, so I now need to manage my mileage while at the beach to ensure I can get to the closest charge 10 miles to the south (which then adds time to the start of the return journey). Again, not an insurmountable obstacle, but it sure does add complication to a trip I make several times/year with a car full of family and pets.

Edit - I'm not trying to be snarky or difficult. I really have no idea how people plan their EV trips, as I don't own one (and probably can't any time soon, as I don't have a dedicated parking spot to install a charger at home).

Edit2 - if I change the charger routing to the smaller battery pack, it recommends two stops, adding even more time. This would likely be the case for any EV except Tesla, or possibly a Bolt?

It's built in to the Tesla's on-board navigation. It's not a separate app. The interface on a Tesla shows a big map and it displays Supercharger locations on the map when your range is inadequate or you can also manually show the locations via an icon. It also automatically routes directions to Superchargers if the route doesn't include enough charge to reach the destination.

I don't think you are being totally fair here (and most people aren't when making the long distance EV vs ICE comparison). If you have a car full of kids and pets, are you really only stopping for 5 minutes in your ICE during a 5+ hour trip?

And in your hypothetical EV scenario, when you make the first restroom stop, there is no reason you can't do that at a charging station and top up, cutting some time off of your second refuel stop.

Another thing to consider, most people who get an EV can charge at home or at work, so they likely eliminate all gas stops during their day-to-day commutes. And that can add up to a lot of time savings (the optimistic refueling time is 5 mins, but I have had plenty take closer to 20 due to lines, traffic, out of the way, etc...). So yeah, maybe long trips require a little more planning, and a marginal amount of extra time, but it feels like nitpicking.

When they were little? You’re right. Once they were in their pre-teens? We tried to stop as infrequently, and quickly, as possible. So, 2x 15-20 minute charges wouldn’t be much change, if any.

Still doesn’t help when I get there and the nearest charger is 10 miles from the house (though I suspect home-owners will start installing chargers before too long).

Anyway, I was mostly interested in how non-Tesla EV owners plan their trips, as most of the other respnses were along the lines of “use the Tesla’s belt-in planner”.

If I can figure out how to charge at home, I’ll likely own an EV for our next secondary car. Used Leafs are pretty tempting for cheap around-town cars.

Use plugshare.com to search for chargers, or abetterrouteplanner.com to plan trips.

Thanks for sharing abetterrouteplanner.com. Planning a couple long distance trips that I commonly take seems much less odious than I would have expected. Although the last time I seriously considered buying a Tesla their network was much less well developed. I'm two years away from making that decision again and it seems much more likely that I'll consider a Model S or X then. Although there are still many aesthetic intangibles that make Teslas less appealing to me. But at least range anxiety seems more manageable.

I was assuming one could trickle charge at their destination. If there is a 220V outlet than that should be sufficient, but if you are doing it on 110v, then yeah, you would have to probably swing by a charging station.

I agree regarding the used Leaf, I have been keeping my eye on those. And I think for now, the optimal situation for most folks is to have one ICE and one low capacity EV assuming you can charge at home or at work. And for apartment dwellers, I think e-bikes and scooters are a fun alternative (I am an e-bike owner).

The destination above is a beach vacation destination. Hotels/motels/condos would all be hit or miss for any outlet. Rental homes might have a 110V outlet on the exterior (for lawn maintenance, etc). Chances of a 220V would be near zero, unless the homeowner added one for their own EV (or is trying to attract EV owners). That'll change over time, but slowly.

The whole point of the article was that EVs (in this case, specifically Teslas) are not yet ready to be driven like normal cars, i.e., without regard to planning refueling stops.

It's not clickbait, it's literally the point of the test and the resultant article.

So it's ok for the article to be misleading and purposely misstate facts because the point of the article is sound? It's not sound. Plenty of people make those road trips with their Teslas and have tons of fun doing so.

EVs in general, and specifically NOT Tesla. If it was specifically about Tesla, she'd have used the superchargers exclusively and had a much better experience. OTOH, if she had used another EV with the same range, and not bothered to sign up for the various public charging networks' cards, she'd have had a much worse experience. This is.. a weird hodgepodge.

What exactly are you going on about? There are significantly less superchargers available in Europe, so how could she use them exclusively?

What's the use of a car that can only drive around a few places where superchargers exist?

There are 8 superchargers between Paris and Mannheim, no more than 160km between the furthest apart, and in most places there are 2 near each other. (just from looking at Tesla's map).

I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt that she was trying to make a non-Tesla-specific example by also trying out other public charging stations, so that the article could analyze not JUST Tesla's network, but also the state of public charging in general.

If I wanted to be more critical, I'd have said it was stupid to bother trying to use other public charging facilities (other chargers or random wall outlets) when it would be far faster and more convenient (not to mention automatically planned for her) if she had just used the car's nav system to automagically plan the route and charging stops for her.

Your last sentence is not meaningful as there is no electric car that can only be driven "a few places where superchargers exist".

If I wanted to be really critical of your comments, I'd point out that she was quite frank about her article being about taking an EV on a European road trip, and just happened to choose a Tesla because it had the most range of the EVs available for rent. Because it was about EVs in general, she went out of her way to try and avoid using superchargers because those are Tesla-specific.

Her editor chose the headline, and presumably chose to specifically cite Tesla because it would draw in the eyeballs...which it did.

That's exactly what I was trying to point out.

I'd like to see the opposite story: where a reporter drives an ICE car around town for a week and then it suddenly dies in the middle of the road because you have to go to a special station to refuel it instead of doing it in your garage every night.

It's true that road trips take a bit more care. (Although not much; all you have to do is put your destination into the car's navigation system, then make charging stops where it tells you to.) But "normal" cars aren't free of hassle either.

You just hit the nail on the head. Anything can be made to seem like a hassle if framed a certain way and that's my problem with this article. Everything is framed to make it seem worse than it is while simultaneously ignoring the benefits.

It is also quite apparent she drives with zero regards for energy management. The energy usage gauge is prominently displayed in the dash, for similar reasons that you use a fuel gauge. If you are at all concerned that your range may be questionable for a leg, then it is quite trivial to drive more efficiently. The author seems to not care about this at all and wants to drive wastefully. This is fine, but it takes away a lot of weight when whinging about range and poor planning.

If you want range but don't care about speed, just use a bike.

Speed is pretty irrelevant. It’s actually acceleration and deceleration that matters.

This is pretty much backwards. Energy use per distance goes up as the square of the speed. Acceleration uses energy too, but deceleration recaptures most of it.

The tricks to really increase range are to keep speed moderate, follow a safe but close distance behind a large vehicle, and speed up and slow down gently.

“Speed up and slow down gently” - ie acceleration and deceleration.

Indeed, the resistance losses in an electric motor increase as the square of the current, torque increases linearly with current, so running higher current to produce more acceleration or deceleration is less efficient.

But, I^2 resistance is not a large effect compared to the losses from air resistance at high speeds. That is, slowing down from 75 to 65 will have more effect on range than how quickly you accelerate to 75.

> planning a bit

The joy of petrol cars in Europe: you don't have to plan where to recharge. And recharging will rarely take more than 15mn.

Yeah well, nobody's arguing that the electric charger network is as developed as the gas station network yet. It's getting better and better though

You cut a part of my sentence but still. "Panning a bit" in remote areas where you know that even Fuel Stations are hard to find.

> the only time I had a short stress was while I went seeing Elon Musk in Paris because there were hundred of Teslas in the same area

That's the scenario in which mobile charging stations make a lot of sense. They allow for a temporary increase in charger availability for the duration of some popular event like a sports final or a concert:

https://forbes.com/sites/sebastianblanco/2018/12/27/vw-mobil...

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