Eventually, ALL automotive production records will be held by EVs, only question is when.
Long haul trucks can do 2000 miles no problem, and extending the range is just a matter of adding more tanks. For now, there is no real competition over range in ICE cars, but if that becomes a thing, you can't win with batteries.
The only batteries that could compete would be lithium-air, and they are still in research phase, with no large scale commercial use in sight yet.
No matter how much battery you add, it's always possible to get more range with less weight in fuel, and with less diminishing returns.
In the specific case of trucks, in most places you can't demand a driver to do a 2000 mile leg on a single stretch and, with the required pause to rest, it's also easy to recharge. A limit of 700 miles should be considered a reasonable target for truck range on a single charge.
Airplanes are probably the place where internal combustion (or not quite internal, but still combustion, as turboprop and jets are not ICE's) will have a significant share for a long time. Even there, short haul small planes are already electrifying.
Semis can have 2000+ mile ranges.
I am also excited to see battery densities increase, but so far the way we're getting comparable range in EVs is by allocating a greater proportion of weight to fuel. And recharging is still relatively slow.
nothing beats the distance over time you can get with a gas vehicle, given also how quickly you can add range.
Many years ago, we used to drive from the midwest to California every year, which was two 800 mile days. We covered that 800 miles in about 13 hours, which is an average of 60 miles per hour.
A few weeks ago, we drove 800 miles in our Tesla, and did it in 16.5 hours, which is a little less than 50 miles per hour.
Which is quite respectable actually.
I know not all EVs are Tesla, but it's interesting to see where charging is going (others will follow suit).
Supercharging v3 gives you 1,000 miles of range per hour of charge (approx. if you're in the 20-80% SOC range I think). If you take a 6 min bathroom (or other) break every 100 miles (roughly every couple of hours), you can replenish those 100 miles during that break.
Personally, I find superchargers "too quick", as I tend to stop for lunch with my family when I supercharge, and I find myself having to rush to finish lunch so I can get the car out of the charger for someone else to be able to use it. I wish there was an option to say "charge slower and give that juice to the other guy" (many/most current supercharger "pods" have to share the current flow with another car).
Pumping gas, I usually do not have time to even squeegee all the windows; I've never wanted to stop for lunch while getting gas.
BMW 730Ld will do 1000 miles. Even the petrol 740Li will manage over 700 miles.
A large number of diesel cars can easily go over 600 miles. The Audi A8 and VW Jetta, to pick two random examples, can go 650+ miles on a single tank.
Basically, when not in emissions testing mode, the engine was running at higher temperatures which improves fuel efficiency but generates more NO from atmospheric Nitrogen. Also, the vehicles had insufficently sized or simply missing diesel exhaust fluid (mostly urea and blue coloring) resevoirs, so not enough was injected to react with the NO to hit targets; injecting DEF into the engine also reduces fuel efficiency. There was also something about not properly cycling the special catalytic converter for NO, which would probably show an efficiency difference on long trips.
I sold back my VW diesel and stopped paying attention, it would be interesting to see what the measured real life fuel efficiency is before and after the changes required by regulators.
When it was new (3 - 5 years old) my Dodge 2500 turbo diesel with a 120 liter fuel tank (31.7 US gallons) went 1,000km (620 miles) per tank. That's highway miles of course but 1,000km per tank is not exactly mind blowing it works out to 23.5 Imperial mpg or 18 US mpg.
An old cow-orker of mine said his old VW Rabbit diesel manual trans did 80 Imperial mpg (66 US mpg) on the highway. I have no way to verify that could be 10% BS. I've seen 50 US mpg stated (60 Imperial mpg). But who know synthetic oil, slim tires, highway miles, slow speeds all that may get it to the 70s mpg.
Many cars have 16-20 gallon tanks, so a 14 gallon is fairly small (although 600+ miles is plenty)
I have no doubt, musk will get the new roadster out there. But I have no reason to believe he isn't overpromising on the mileage.
Pretty much pickup truck with the base 6cyl engine from the days when an 8ft bed also resulted in the vehicle being equipped with two gas tanks.
Also tons of random sedans beat 600mi.
If only gas stations marketed their pumps like that. 10 gallons of gas can come out in 1.5 minutes in a Prius resulting in a fill rate of (500 miles range * 40 fill-ups per hour) = 20k mph! We won't consider the time it takes for the next user to get in and put the hose in because Tesla doesn't either.
I am a fan of EV vehicles as well but the long range fill up story is still not good.
Also it is not true that the supercharger v3 charges at full rate until 80% [1]. The curve drops off quite a bit shortly after 20%. The other points you made, well I never disagreed with that. There are a lot of benefits to an EV, but one clear downside (at the moment) is the long trip charging. This is just a fact and not an indictment about EVs in general
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/03/Tesla-Model-3-Long-R...
[0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-flow-rate-of-gasoline-stat...
600 mi at 10mi/hr is 10 hours, so probably ready for a break.
Also, it isn't a couple of hours at all. 10% to 90% charge in model 3 takes about 50 minutes using a V2 supercharger (the most ubiquitous one) and about 40 mins using a V3 supercharger.
And both take much faster to get to lower percentages, due to the charge rate curve looking more like a log(1/x) graph, with rapid charge rate at the beginning that slows down the more your car is charged.
I had the same kind of anxiety over charging too, but since getting an EV and doing multiple cross-state road trips in it and with just tons of daily usage, I found that worry to be unfounded.
If we did this in a Tesla, we would've had to stop far more times, or each stop would have to have been much longer. That's not great.
(Dodge Ram)
We made a recent long trip with our Tesla Model S, which has about a 325 mile max range. There were plenty of superchargers, but it takes time.
You also end up stopping a lot more than once every 300 miles, because the rate of charge up to 90% is very fast, but the last 10% is very slow. We usually ran down to between 50 and 100 miles of range, and charged it up to about 290-300 miles, which took between 15 and 20 minutes.
It's not terrible, but compared to a gas engine, it's a good bit slower over time.
On the upside, it forces you to have a more 'easy going' drive.
Stop the damned car and let your family out for fuck's sake.
Just because you can drive >4 hours nonstop doesn't mean you should drive 4 hours nonstop (I did on a solo road trip earlier this year. I forgot a piece of equipment and didn't realize until I was 5 miles out of town, so I had to 'make up time'. It was still a mistake.) Complaining that you can't drive 6 hours nonstop is some form of insanity that I am not qualified to diagnose.
Also, we are talking 6 hours, not "a few". And depending on your height, seat recline, and problems with lower back pain, you can bet for some people, 6 hours unable to stand up can be quite painful. Not, "bamboo shoots under your fingernails painful" but not something anyone would want to go through.
For me, the claustrophobia of not being able to stand up would be quite terrible.
Getting out of the car and getting the blood pumping makes me much more alert for the next hour or two. At first I didn't want to think about that meant about how alert I wasn't for the previous hour. Now it's kind of hard to ignore.
You see so many people in interesting jobs that have an origin story of something that happened to them, a friend, a sibling or neighbor when they were a kid. I just write software, so my stories are perhaps a bit less compelling than the oncologist down the block.