Hacker News Reader

Comment by MrRadar | Hacker News Reader

How often do you drive that far? The farthest I drive in one go is 350 miles and I only make that trip once every other year because it's exhausting. (If I could fly there I probably would.) A vehicle with a 100 mile range would cover pretty much all the other driving I do regularly.

View on HN

I'm curious... are you in the US? 350 miles is definitely within the realm of reason here-- a couple friends and I made an impulsive 250-something mile trip a couple weeks ago, and my family took a road trip to Florida over the past summer (normally we'd fly, but COVID)-- that trip was actually in an electric car and ended up being about 4 hours longer than it would be in a gas car.

Depending on where you are, 350 miles might not even get you out of Texas!

> ended up being about 4 hours longer than it would be in a gas car

We did some relatively long trips in our BMW i3 last couple of summers. Even though the charging added about 1-1.5hrs to each trip, my SO, which did all the driving, said she preferred it that way. She felt significantly less exhausted when she arrived, thanks to the charging stops.

So not clear cut for all drivers it seems.

You know you can stop in a gasoline powered car and take breaks if you want or feel tired. But I cant imagine being forced to take an extra 1-1.5 hours whether I want to or not.

Of course. But she doesn't feel tired while driving. It hits her later, after we've arrived and unpacked.

Again the i3 isn't a great car for long distance driving due to small battery, and a big part of the extra 1.5 hrs was due to waiting in line for charging (summer vacation, yay). Both of those issues have gotten better and will continue to improve.

Actually not even half way, depending on origin and direction of travel. IIRC highway I-10 starts around milepost 810 on the Texas/Louisiana border. It's a big state.

Off-topic but Texan inhabitants I know used to measure the length of the drives in number of beers consumed en route. Austin to Waco was a comparatively modest 5 beer trip, for example.

880 not 810. And surely given TX open container laws applying to a six pack even then they’d shotgun the sixth

Thank you. I saw it only once, from the front seat of an 18-wheeler in 1979 while hitchhiking to Austin. It was impressive.

I struggle to see how an electric car added four hours to a 250 mile trip. Unless you are counting both ways maybe? Even then, a 250 mile range EV would need one or two charging stops. Fast charging could just be 2-3 hours for both stops. At most.

I think they meant it added 4 hours to the total one way trip. "a trip to florida". Electric is pretty good in many cases. But long road trips is not one of them. A full recharge is on the order of an 30-60 mins. You can refuel an ICE car in 5-10 mins and get the same range. 4 stops in a long trip is not unheard of. It would put them in the middle of the united states somewhere going to florida.

For local travel electric is decent and you can work around the 1 remaining issue for electric with some planning. For long road trip the refuel is the bottleneck. I think when electric cars can recharge a 300-400 range in 5-10 mins you will see people switch very quickly.

That was the trip to Florida! It came out to about 1,250 miles and was actually rather enjoyable in the Kia Niro EV. We used the Electrify America charger network the whole way there and back so each stop was 20-40 minutes, perfect to stretch your legs, use a nearby restroom, and grab a bite to eat. Admittedly it got to a bit of a lull at night since it was a 20-something hour trip.

I think it would have been better to have a little bit more range so the stops are spaced farther apart, but charging was cheap and rather fast. The worst part was dealing with some of those chargers; there's usually at least one charger offline at EA stations and some charge really slow (which sucks when you pay by the minute) so there's a bit of trial-and-error.

I honestly kinda liked these forced breaks... usually when we take a long road trip I feel stiff as a board when we arrive, but I felt fine when we got there.

Funny. I would not fly for a trip of 350 miles. Being at the airport early, going through security, checking in luggage, all of those are unpredictable. Most of the time i leave home 3 hours before scheduled flight, it can take 1 hour to get to the airport (depending on traffic, usually 20 minutes), and then all of the above. 3 hours can get me almost 200 miles away, and then I'm left with 150 miles of driving.

NorCal to SoCal using regional airports (avoid sfo lax etc) can be less than 2 hours door to door. Online check in + no checked bag means you can show up at small airports 30 minutes before takeoff. 50 minutes in the air, 10 minutes to deplane and leave the airport, and less than 15 minutes driving on either end and you have 2 hours door to door (and a lot more leg stretching than driving the 5).

plus adding in (I think) the magic number is 400 miles when flying becomes safer than driving.

If I drive somewhere 2 hours away for the weekend, drive around town while I'm there, and then drive home, that's easily 350 miles between home-charging opportunities.

With less range than that, EV charging becomes a constraint on which lodging I can choose or else how I'm going to spend ~hours of my vacation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com