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Comment by lelag | Hacker News Reader

So infuriating to read. I guess "We took a car to go from point A to point B and everything went fine" does not make for a good article.

Those idiots goes on a thousand miles journey and don't bother doing the slightest research. 2 minutes with ABRP (abetterrouteplanner.com) would have showed them where the fast charging station were, allowing to take advantage of the great charging speed of their KIA.

Had they done so, they would have been able to do the 1000 miles with less than 2 hours charge total (ABRP claim 1 h 34 min), very little in comparison of the 17h drive...

I wonder who pays for having such crap published...

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>Given our battery range of up to 310 miles, I plotted a meticulous route, splitting our days into four chunks of roughly 7½-hours each. We’d need to charge once or twice each day and plug in near our hotel overnight. The PlugShare app—a user-generated map of public chargers—showed thousands of charging options between New Orleans and Chicago. But most were classified as Level 2, requiring around 8 hours for a full charge. While we’d be fine overnight, we required fast chargers during the days. ChargePoint Holdings Inc., which manufactures and maintains many fast-charging stations, promises an 80% charge in 20 to 30 minutes. Longer than stopping for gas—but good for a bite or bathroom break.

This is how the "idiots" "didn't do any research". It's not going to help your cause if you get angry at people who do significantly more research than normal to do a road trip, but who are not experienced enough with the intricacies of owning an EV to know just how detailed those plans need to be.

Well then the story should be that KIA should improve their routing software and maybe license ABRP algorithm...

I don't ever do any planning when leaving for a road trip in my Tesla: I just let the car tell me where I have to stop... Nothing complicated there.

Or maybe the EVs currently on the market have not yet reached the level of range needed for use-cases that fossil fuel car drivers currently expect. There is virtually no downside to building EVs with longer range if cost can be reduced sufficiently.

> Those idiots goes on a thousand miles journey and don't bother doing the slightest research. 2 minutes with ABRP (abetterrouteplanner.com)...

You're seriously calling these people idiots for not knowing about some specific four-word domain site that I've never heard of in my life.

This is why I don't touch Twitter with a ten-foot pole. People like this, calling other people idiots, because they wrote an article with a contrary opinion to their own. Perhaps the only idiotic thing here is the suggestion that someone is required to visit "abetterrouteplanner.com" to properly use a product that costs tens of thousands of dollars.

ABRP is good but tends to over-optimize. I prefer the navigation app built into my Tesla.

In their KIA, ABRP might have been the best option. However, not mentioning it in WSJ article about EV road trip is criminal. The article is just FUD.

Nah, they're idiots because they didn't spend 30 seconds googling "map of best electric car chargers for travel" or something.

> or something

Did you try what you just suggested? I did. It didn't pull up ABRP.

Why don't you try all the different permutations you can think of until you get the right one.

"electric car trip planning" and it's on the first page of results along with other sites I bet would work just as well.

I cannot take this "reporter" serious when her "planning" was to write down a handful of stops in a paper notebook.

It’s funny that people seem to be missing the irony in the fact that someone needs hit some specific website to have a successful EV road trip.

I am less inclined to give any slack to those WSJ "journalists" writing about EVs in a widely read publication than I would a random person.

Not doing the most basic effort of finding out about ABRP when writing about long trip in an EV while claiming they did extensive planning and research is bullshit.

I'm very inclined to think that they knew very well about ABRP but needed a good story so decided not to use it and look for troubles instead.

I have been checking these EV threads lately because of considering an EV purchase. There seems to be always an EV owner or five on here doing their best “Nick Burns, your company’s computer guy” impression.

It’s frankly a little disturbing.

Also, they do state that charging at Electrify America in Walmart was a good experience. Well, had they planned properly they could have had this good experience at 6 different Walmart along their route over the 7 stop they needed.

But again, that would not have make an interesting read...

> Had they done so, they would have been able to do the 1000 miles with less than 2 hours charge total (ABRP claim 1 h 34 min), very little in comparison of the 17h drive...

My gas car would require one or stops to refuel in order to travel 1,000 miles. That would be a maximum of half an hour total, which is one-third the time it would take to charge. That extra hour to charge is one-eighth of the travel day (I do not drive more than eight hours per day on a road trip if I can avoid it).

Right now, today, an electric vehicle is not suitable for road trips IMHO. That's fine! They are great for daily commuting. But given that I do take road trips, and don't commute daily, my gas-powered car is good enough for me today.

Meanwhile my car has 1000-1200 km range and it takes me total of 3 minutes to refuel.

There are so many things to plan when doing a roadtrip that I sure as shit won’t be adding charging the fucking car to the equation until I’m forced to.

Meanwhile I spend 0 minutes refueling my Tesla. 95% of the time it charges overnight and I start every day with a full tank. On a road trip I plug it in, go to the bathroom, grab a coffee, unplug and drive on.

Good for you. It looks like you don't have children. I know than for me, accounting for restroom time, any stop is a 20 minutes stop...

Also, I strongly suggest you stop for a bit longer than 3 minutes when driving 1000km in the same day...

A story brought to you by the owners of Fox News.

I canceled my WSJ subscription 6 months ago.

It’s a climate change denying, EV hating, and proponent of other popular right agenda ideas

The point is: You don’t need all this extensive and careful planning in a gasoline car.

You just drive away and that’s it.

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