When your trips are drive-across-the-country, so you need to recharge multiple times en route, that's when it starts becoming substantially harder to find something else to overlap with your need to recharge. Even just doing Midwest-to-Mid-Atlantic drives, I'd complete my lunch pitstop (including eating, filling gas tank, and emptying bladder) before an EV charge could fill up again, even discounting the fact that the lesser range of an EV means I'd need to squeeze in another charging pitstop uncomfortably early to overlap with dinner.
What this means is that if you fill gas 1-2x a week to handle the average 20 mile commute, you've saved 10 minutes because the refill of the electric is at home, with little effort.
Now you bank that 10 minutes every time you take any one way <~200 mile trip with electricity at the ends.
If you're doing regular multi region drives you are not average, you're likely in the top 1% of consumer long range trips.
To add, the longer and "more often" stops are healthier for you and your passengers; very few cars have a less than 200 mile range now, and if you're sitting for that period of time, moving (or at least not sitting) is a good idea to prevent deep vein thrombosis, the longer the better.
Good thing I do well less than 1 of those on average every year, along with practically every other passenger car in America.
Is driving from San Diego to New York City really a common thing people do here? Is that what the average driver does on a weekly basis? Is that really what we should be targeting our cars to do?
EDIT: This is with a Hyundai Ioniq 5, not my current Mach E. The Mach E doesn't charge as fast as this most recent generation of EVs, so it would be a bit over 4 hours each way in the Mach E. However, if my plans for a car was "go on a yearly road trip", I would have probably bought an Ioniq 5 exactly for this reason. Personally though I'd probably just fly for either of those distances instead of spending 20+ hours in a car each way. Which is why the standard range version of the Mach E is perfectly fine for me.
That depends, one person probably isn't doing that in a single shot, but a three people driving in shifts might.
If that's not what you're suggesting then that was not done in any commercially available EV in the US today. Even starting closer to the California border like El Centro and only making it to fringes of Houston like Katy is ~1330 miles, so ~665mi a leg. No generally available EV in the US has that range. So I take it you did a number of like 10-60% or whatever charge jaunts.
Even then though, if you were to sum up all of those shorter charging sessions you probably had to recharge your car a total of at least four charges energy-wise. If you get 300mi of range on a full.charge, 1,330 / 300 = 4.4333...
It’s more just that it really, really matters time-wise that the car is not charging up to full on any given stop, because that means the charging stops are significantly faster.
People who latch on to the idea of judging EVs on their time to get “fully”‘charged are going to get such a distorted idea that they will never believe current EVs could be a good option. But, they would be mistaken.
You also have to think about the AC / heat, how you're driving, battery degrading after first year or so. It's an anxiety I don't need.
Plus in my case I would have to get my Tesla towed 3 hours away with major issues. I now minor ones the traveling repair can deal with. A neighbor had a collision and didn't have his Tesla for 4 months. The facilities are so backed up. No one knows how to work on them except Tesla.
Electric is the future, but it's like 4 to 5 years out. Hybrid is good enough right now.
With ICE you literally pull of an exit, take 5 minutes to fill up and you're back.
Its objectively the reality I live with. I definitely spend more time pumping gas in my Santa Fe than I do my Mach E. A bit over 5 minutes every week and a half versus 0 minutes so far in my Mach E. 34.666 * 5 = 173.33 minutes of waiting, as a lower bound, in the ICE means just shy of 3 hours a year I spend waiting on my gas car. Meanwhile, the amount of time I spent waiting on my Mach E to charge last year was 0 minutes. This is objective and factual.
> You also have to think about the AC / heat, how you're driving, battery degrading after first year or so.
If you want to, you can stress about these things. I don't, I practically always have way more range than I need every time I leave my garage. Meanwhile I do regularly get frustrated about getting a low tank of gas and think "ugh, gotta stop by the gas station sometime on this trip, even though I'm in a hurry and would really rather just get to where I'm going".
You could also stress about things like AC or how you're driving in your ICE, these things impact your gas mileage and will impact what you spend. Which your per-mile energy cost is waaaaaaaaay higher in an ICE than an EV, so you'd think you want to conserve even more. Having a lead foot in an EV is a lot cheaper than in an ICE.
> No one knows how to work on them except Tesla
No one knows how to work on my Mach E than Tesla? Only Tesla can repair a Ioniq 5? That sure seeems strange to me!
Cool, now consider that lots of people make very few longer drives.
They're not deluding themselves just because they use a car differently than you do!
I and many people I know own an EV, and it is literally zero stress. In fact it's less stress than with my old ICE car, because I effectively always have a full tank in the morning. I don't even have level 2 home charging, but it's still a complete non issue.
I've done longer drives too, and I would describe those as "slightly inconvenient." In all honesty I sort of appreciate the breaks, but I know it annoys my girlfriend who likes to keep rolling. It definitely adds time, that's a fact!
But realistically owning an EV today is incredibly straightforward and stress free. I an everyone I know who has one would agree.
In the mean time, if you're in this situation, I personally wouldn't fault you for getting a gas-powered car. EVs are still more constrained by supply than demand.
USA is not the only country in the world.
Other countries can have wildly different situation and setup, and in fact building home charging stations might be problematic for significant portion of future buyers that Toyota might want to grab.
P.S. A bit under 30% of worldwide Toyota production goes into USA - that still leaves a huge chunk of sales that might have wildly different needs to cater to.
I realize not every car buyer can have their own charger at home, that's obvious. But let's not act like it's a rare thing for people to have the ability to charge at home. Over half of all households in Europe and US can probably add home charging for little cost. That's a ton of EVs to sell, an absolutely massive market able to be addressed now.