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Comment by BrandoElFollito | Hacker News Reader

I would love to have an electric car but beside nearby trips (office, some grocery) I also drive say twice a year for vacation.

I just checked the way from home (western suburb of Paris) to a ski resort (Val Thorens)

2 x 40 min stops, on the same way as all of the region driving to ski with me.

This is simply impossible, I spend maybe 4 minutes at the pump, there are 10 of them at the station.

To have the equivalent in electric chargers, there should be 40 or 50 of them, with a nuclear plant nearby to bring in the amperes.

By then if batteries are 3 times the capacity and 10 times the charging speed, this will be competitive to fuel. Otherwise it stays as a second car solution, for regional (local) trips

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You could rent an ICE car for your long trips. Depending on your regular usage it could still be cheaper for you than paying for gas.

I understand that. I was rather trying to point out hiw far, logistically, we are from mainstream adoption - just because of life constraints (such as vacation)

Exactly the reason why pickups are so popular. You never know when you might need to transport your washing machine or a fridge.

I don’t really understand the strength of your response, it’s a 6-7 hour trip, wouldn’t you want to stop anyway? Stop off at a restaurant near a 50kW charger, the fuel savings will pay for a good meal, and then you’ll only need another 20 minute top up to stretch your legs at some other point of the trip. And even if you never wanted to stop, this is, what, five hours over the course of a year, it just doesn’t seem that important, for instance what about the time you save from never having to visit a petrol station in daily use of the car?

No, what I meant is that this is not going to be 2x30 minutes, but 2x(30 min charge + n x 30 min waiting in queue for the chargers because there are not enough of them). Vs 10 fuel pumps where people spend 3 min.

When the proportions are reversed then EV make sense for trips with other purple taking the trip at the same time on the same road (as this is the case in France for school holidays)

I did three 12-hour road trips Norway this year, 2 of them in a borrowed Tesla Model S. The Model S trip was less tiring than the fossil car trip. Same amount of stops, only difference is we plugged in the Model S the two times we had a 30-minute break.

If 60 minutes of stopping on a 12-hour drive is a dealbreaker to you, you should go with a fossil fuel car.

When the proportions are reversed then EV make sense for trips with other purple taking the trip at the same time on the same road (as this is the case in France for school holidays)

We had 10 free chargers to choose from every time we stopped, but I obviously can't say anything about the state of Tesla's charging network in your location.

Non-Tesla chargers are usually over capacity in Norway though. No manufacturers or companies have the guts to actually exploit the market dynamics here, by charging enough to get the free capacity right and building out more total capacity if a location is very profitable.

I do see your point wrt. national school holidays and other ("a few times a year") peak times, but I'm not sure this would be enough of a disadvantage to negate the positives of EVs (economically speaking) in the long term. A typical Model 3 stop will be 15-20 minutes (not 30) if you're able to stop at the right time, and some sort of peak rate could limit the demand at annual peak times if necessary. Roadside charging is only used for road trips when travelling longer than your vehicle's range, and proper EVs have a >400km range in the first place.

There are usually available chargers in my area as well. The problem is when, on one single route (such as Paris to the Alps where there is basically one or two reasonable routes) everybody drives exactly at the same time (which is the case during school vacation).

In that case there will be a queue for the chargers - even if there are as many of them as fuel pumps, the fact that you need to spend 30 min at it vs 3 minutes makes the whole "stop for recharge" very long, at least twice.

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