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Yeah, the best thing about my M3 is I almost always leave home with a full “gas tank”, even though I’m using the level 1 charger for now: it’s mildly less convenient for road trips, but three to four hours between charges means you can charge while getting lunch and dinner, and it doesn’t actually effect your total drive time all that much (at least, if you’re like me and try to stop every so often anyways).

You don't have to put "gas tank" in quotes when you drive a BMW!

I think M3 was short for (Tesla) Model 3 here.

> You go, unplug, drive out, drive back, plug in, and that's it. Weather, infrastructure, DC fast charging, are all irrelevant aside from when you want to take cross-country trips.

A couple hundred miles is hardly "cross-country". If you're in the San Francisco, just drive to Monterey and back, and Google Maps tells me you'll log some 240mi (assuming you don't hit traffic or diversions)...

But a trip of couple of hundred miles should not be an issue.

If you're driving a 240 mi round trip, at the half way point you will be taking time away from the car on whatever business brought you there in the first place.

In that time your car will be sitting idle and it can be topping up ready for the return trip.

Business? Like you mean the aquarium, assuming they have free charging spots? Does everything have to be for business? What if you're going for a hiking trail or something? Is there really no scenario where you could drive that far and not be greeted with a charging spot waiting for you at the right location? Use your imagination.

When I said "whatever business brought you there" it could be anything.

For example you could be visiting friends, your mother, taking your girl out for dinner or going to a business meeting.

> assuming they have free charging spots

Why does it have to be a free charging station?

Now, you obviously need to use something like google maps to plan your trip, to make sure the place you're going to has a charging station.

But I was commenting on your 'San Francisco to Monterey' trip.

And as time goes on as more charging options become available, those '240mi round trip' options will also grow.

> Why does it have to be a free charging station?

I think he means unoccupied.

> Now, you obviously need to use something like google maps to plan your trip, to make sure the place you're going to has a charging station.

What if the place you're going doesn't have a charger? I run into this issue a lot. I got on a trip that only requires one charge in between but, if I'm going to a family members house, they don't have a dc fast charger at their house. That means, even though my car is sitting in their driveway for a few hours, I still need to stop for 45 minutes on my way home.

Can I ask how it works out for you? Are you happy with the car overall? Or does it make you regret getting an EV?

I have a Kona EV and I really really like the car. There is, however, currently a recall on the main battery that sounds like it's going to be fully replaced.

For me, personally, all the little caveats of driving an EV work out okay. In the situation I described, I'm okay with hitting a charger on my way home and spending the time waiting. I've taken it on a couple 2 or 3 stop trips (depending on how long you want to stop) and it's not really a big deal. I'm planning a trip next month where the drive will be two days with a total of 3-4 stops on each leg. I'm generally an early adopter and I kinda just think it's cool so I like it. But I don't have a family and I have some free time.

However, when I talk to people about it, I always mention it and I would never flat out recommend and EV to someone because of the charging situation. I think an EV would make a great second car for just about any family or couple but having it as your main and only car has drawbacks.

That makes sense! I actually had the same hunch—that it would make for a great second car. It's nice to see I wasn't off the mark. I hope the battery stays safe until you can get it replaced ;) thanks for the info!

"Whatever business" -> could be anything

"Free charging spots" -> not free as in beer, but free as in available

What did the op mean by this: Does everything have to be for business?

> In that time your car will be sitting idle and it can be topping up ready for the return trip.

The example was to Monterey, a trip I do (did) very often to take the kid to the aquarium.

Parking on the street, there's no charging to be had, so no, car isn't topping up.

I never took the electric car to Monterey, I'd be stranded.

Don't use the environment to justify full EV. From that perspective, Tesla, ID.4, Mach-E, these are all a waste of precious battery resources. For the environment, all that matters is increasing total aggregate EV miles driven. One Tesla battery can be used in four PHEVs. 95% of single trips are under 30 miles. A 50 mile PHEV could easily cover this on pure electric even with cold weather. Instead of wasting a 80kwh battery in a Tesla, that could go into building four PHEV, basically increasing total EV miles driven four times faster.

So don't talk about the environment and say full EV is better than PHEV. Make other arguments if you want, but don't use climate change for your position, the math is clear, one Tesla = four PHEVs and 95% of trips are under 30 miles.

One counter-argument to that is that many (I won't say most since I don't have sources) PHEVs don't get plugged in too often and are only bought for the tax advantages. An issue in some countries which give tax advantages to PHEV buyers, especially for company cars, where the driver doesn't have to pay for petrol.

You have to account for a round trip where you can’t charge at destination, that charging above 80% is substantially slower, and driving under ~15% damages the battery faster (or so they say in some manuals).

That gives you 20%-80% of your quick and safe usage of your battery.

Also rated at 50 miles is more like 30 highway in real life. Adding all these things up makes 80mi as low as you want to go for normal US cities. In Europe it wouldn’t be an issue perhaps.

A broken-in real-world Leaf won’t finish a 60mi highway round trip without making you sweat towards the end. And that’s for perfectly planned trips, but a crash that makes you take a detour could put you in a risky situation. I’ve had to tow my GF more than once because something unexpected happened and she just simply ran out of juice. Not because of poor planning, but because life just happened that way.

> The solution is to have chargers at home, even slow ones. Then you have zero range anxiety.

This doesn't follow at all. Range anxiety is not being able (or worrying about cutting too close) to make it while out on the road. If you stay so close to home that you can go back and charge that's not the scenario.

Like when I took (pre-pandemic) our Fiat 500e to work and whether I can run an errand after work depends on the lottery of whether I can get a charger spot at the office.

Or having to come up with elaborate schemes to get the car to the dealer because it's too far on one charge.

The car is awesome for short errands near home but anything farther out becomes a project to manage.

>Like when I took (pre-pandemic) our Fiat 500e to work and whether I can run an errand after work depends on the lottery of whether I can get a charger spot at the office.

According to a cursory google search the Fiat 500e has a range of 320km. Make that 250 due to overstated advertising if you want. Surely this has to be enough to ride your car to and back from work and pick up a bunch of groceries on the way? How long is your commute?

The previous gen 500e only has half of that range, ~135km. The new gen still isn't available in the US.

Okay, that is a bit low.

The realistic range is 80 miles (with some hills here) and that commute was about 36. Unable to score a charging station at office meant no detours and a nervous slow coast back home.

EV's are great for big cities, but about half of US pop lives in rural areas. Outside major highways EV chargers don't exist in the sticks.

In rural places 50 mile trips are normal. It's not unusual to drive 90 miles each way in a day. And chances are you won't find an EV charger on either end.

And in rural areas you have single phase electric, slowing down charges. And in the same places, power goes out for days at a time most years.

If you think the US is ready to go EV-only you live in an urban bubble. In much of the US, EV's are still wildly impractical.

In the country you may need to go 500 miles with no electricity when power is out for a week. Only a fool would buy an EV in sparse areas where long outages happen (most of rural US)

I grew up in rural Canada, and perhaps the U.S. is a much more undeveloped country than I thought, but almost nothing you say applies to where I grew up.

Perhaps. Canadian population is concentrated in southern areas. Majority of continental US is habitable and has population density less than 10 people per square mile.

I did not live at all near the U.S. border. I've no doubt that you can find places such as you have described in the U.S. (and in Canada), but I think you are vastly over-estimating the percentage of the population who lives there. Even in rural areas, reliable electricity is the norm, and people's typical daily commute is well within the range of an EV. The availability of public chargers is growing, too.

Yeah, I haven't lived in the sticks for some years and EV chargers might be more widespread than I thought. Rural folks still love their ICE cars though for sure

What proportion of carbon emissions are made by rural drivers?

What fraction of the cars are driven in such areas? We could probably go a long way to reducing carbon emissions by replacing ICEs with EVs for the people who have reliable electricity. Cars are parked almost all day. If we can ensure that there is a kW or two available at most parking spots, I'm pretty sure that 90% of the charging needs are met.

Probably about half are deiven rurally, and they are more likely to be trucks with worse fuel economy. The cybertruck has a 300 mile range for the mid tier anf costs about as much as a new fullsize. The power outage thing is real though. A week a year sometimes un the cold, and there is no gas out there, but you have fire. Worse is when its 100 outside and you cross your fingers and eat dry food cooked on a fire so you don't have to open a fridge. Getting a generator big enough to run the fridge for a week was a nice upgrade for us.

I'm trying to convince people of this :) . In rural areas a car is frequently your only lifeline when power fails. It's a source of heat, power, and transport. Making that all dependant on electricity which you won't have when you need it most is a non starter

That isn’t true. Rural areas served by the grid don’t have down times weeks for weeks. Maybe you are referring to a few area in California last summer during fire season?

Rural areas off the grid usually have some way of getting their own electricity, like solar or small hydro. These places typically also lack roads so Tesla charging isn’t much of an issue.

America is greater than 80% urban, not as urban as Canada and Australia, but urban enough that even if rural dwellers had vastly different electric resources, there would still be a huge market for EVs. If anything, urban users have a disadvantage because many of them don’t have their own parking in residence to charge overnight, which is not really a problem in rural America.

I believe the claim was days and week(singular). It is true. Tornados, hurricanes, heavy winds, ice storms, snow storms, etc. I have had my power go out for days at least once in the last 10 years. I don't think there is a year which goes by where there is not multiple instances of areas around here loosing power for days. Most of the areas are not what I would call rural either.

Ya, I experienced that also. But the gas pumps run on electricity also.

> But the gas pumps run on electricity also.

I can't say I have ever experienced a situation where I could not drive a short distance and pick up gas. Even when I was without power for days, there was no issue getting gas.

Because those gas stations still had electricity. Guess how you charge an electric car?

I grew up in the country. Outside urban areas it's normal to have multi day power outages in the US. The less people your circuit serves the lower it's prioritized for repair.

Our longest outage was a bit over a week. Several days was normal.

And backup power is never enough to charge EV. You would need to run typical 120v 1500w generator for days.

We used our gas car for backup power. Many others did too. Idle and hook an inverter to battery and it will do 1000w output for a couple days.

Rural is a bad sell for EV's because they don't have 80kw supply needed for charging stations or reliable enough electric.

I went without power for two weeks in Vicksburg Mississippi when I was a kid and we got hit by an ice storm, that isn’t even rural. But that was like a once in a twenty year event. And since the gas pumps at many stations didn’t have power either, well, I don’t think EV would have made a difference.

"about half of US pop lives in rural areas." that doesn't seem plausible at all; US has 15-20% rural population depending on how exactly you define "rural" (e.g. https://www.hrsa.gov/rural-health/about-us/definition/index....)

I guess it depends on if you consider suburbs rural too. There's plenty of ~40,000 pop cities in the middle of nowhere

EVs are good for suburbanites, maybe.

A fair amount of city drivers do not have a dedicated off street parking space where they can install a charger. There are basically zero street parking spots in any American city with charging. It is not going to be possible to retrofit most multistory garages to have even a significant minority of spots with chargers.

I live and work in fairly new multistory buildings, and there aren’t many EV spots. My coworkers with EVs move their cars around constantly in hope of getting their one hour ration of charging in the office garage.

> The solution is to have chargers at home, even slow ones.

So screw everyone not having either their nice American suburban home or their nice luxury apartment complex with a parking spot and a charger for each flat ?

Mass charging infrastructure may sound daunting, but at least it's not several tons of flamable substance that produces toxic and explosive fumes, contsminates soil and must be stored deep underground

At first, yes, let the richer segment adopt the new technology first. Use the time to turn street lights into chargers.

>This is the wrong perspective on EVs.

No, it's the practical and realistic one. There is nothing wrong with a transitional strategy such as range extenders. Indeed, it will provide the strongest natural incentive to expand the charging networks - demand!

You can try to top down force things all you want - good luck with that. It's far more effective to figure out how to get people to naturally go - or heck willingly run to - where you need them to be then beat them over the head and lecture them about how stupid/wrong/wasteful they are. Yeah, people just love to engage with folks berating them for how bad they are (i.e. keep the overheated ravaging rhetoric to a minimum if you want normal people to engage with you).

Compromise - it works. If you play a zero sum game you more often than not will get zero results.

>EVs already have enough battery capacity for 90% of trips

Until it's 100% it's irrelevant for all but the most devout faithful. No one in their right mind buys a partial solution to their pressing problems. Which is why range extenders are brilliant. Fill up with a tank of gas or plug in at a reduced cost with an offset of it requiring more time? I get to make the choice? Brilliant!