Electric cars are excellent if you fit their use case but AWFUL if you don't. You have to go into the purchase of an electric with your eyes wide open.
They are NOT as versatile as ICE vehicles.
On top of that, I always leave my house with a "full" tank and 90% of the time I charge at home...when I need to charge out in the world I've never had a problem finding a fast charger. The "damage" from fast charging over the lifetime of the car is minimal at best, most older Teslas (10+ years) still retain more than 75% of their capacity despite using superchargers regularly.
Why wouldn't it improve over time from here, which is pretty good and acceptable for most people's usage? It seems odd to assume that the technology won't get a lot better quickly, as it has in the last few weeks. It might take thinking about it for 5 seconds longer than an ICE car at the start of the trip, but overall it's not changed much about the realities of roadtrips for me.
Don't they eat? Get tired? Need to relieve themselves?
The Ioniq 5 can charge itself from 10% to 80% (400km+ range) in 18 minutes. That's about the time it takes to stuff a gas station sandwich in your face and do a quick toilet run. Is that really a dealbreaker? Even when it's 80% cheaper to drive that way?
Oh wait, that happens every day at Costco.
Tesla already does this: their systems automatically know where you need to charge and will reroute if all stalls are taken. The car will even heat the battery to optimal charging temperature to save charging time at the cost of range. But they have better vertical integration than other manufacturers.
Other manufacturers are slowly following. The tech is there, it's just an API call. But for now it's all in the hands of lawyers and MBAs.
I do think that it would be worth providing an incentive for businesses with big parking lots to cover at least some of the area with solar. The ground temperatures decrease (less heat island effect), less AC for nearby buildings, less AC in cars (which won't be as hot to begin with), and of course more solar power for the grid.
I also assume that you don't have kids or other family when you drive - or you have trained your family extremely well :)
My new electric car takes like 30 mins for a "refuel" on decent charging infrastructure. And you know what? That's like 100% completely fine. I do like one of those massive road trips a year. Who cares if it adds like an hour or two to my total travel time. The electric is better in so, so many ways that it's the easiest tradeoff in the world to take a slight inconvenience once or twice a year.
My wife, kid, and dog and I drove from Sacramento area to Denver area to move. No big deal, it often offers a few choices for charging. Arrive at X with 30% battery, Y with 20% battery, or Z with 10% battery. Sure sometimes it would pop a notification and say "Keep it under 75 mph to get to charge with 15% left".
Cross country trips are easy, sure the stops are 10-15 minutes longer than I'd do personally. But often with 3 people + dog in the car that we wouldn't all be settled until after the car had plenty of range for a few options. Part of the dynamic is that low batteries recharge more quickly so we'd often go only 180 miles, but a stop ever 3 ish hours wasn't bad. Car often say charging at 550 miles/hour, so it's not particularly long to get most of a 300 mile range quickly.
Eh, not exactly true. Sure, if I take my Leaf's battery and somehow jury-rig a quickcharger delivering twice the current, assuming I won't fry any contacts, the battery would die a very early death.
However, note that batteries are made out of cells. They all can charge in parallel. If you compare older EVs with small batteries against more modern ones with much more range, you'll notice that the charging times haven't changed all that much, as long as the charge can provide the current requested. Newer EVs generally have larger batteries, with more cells.
Sure, if your metric is filling back up to 100%, that's a problem. But if the metric is getting enough range for your next leg, then the charging times have been _decreasing_
They ended up buying a Tesla 3 years ago, and has had no problems since.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1042-augu....
The refueling problem is big though. Maybe if they can cut it to 15 mins for a 15-90% charge it'll be good enough.
By having a bigger battery, you can charge more cells at the same time. Say you need 100 miles to finish your trip. If your range is 160 miles you are going to spend about 30 minutes to get the mileage you need, and you are going to stress your battery. But if your total range is 400 miles? You can pump way more power, charge the 25% you need, in just a few minutes.
Generally I save WAY more time not going to gas stations, oil changes, smog checks, and related than I do occasionally hanging out for a 550 mile/hour charger to give me enough range to get home/next charger.
Most people think of the extra time at a charger as a weekly thing, in reality it's pretty rare for most. Often if you've been driving for 5 hours at 60 mph you are ready for a snack/bathroom break anyways.
I do wish that gas stations didn't waste so much time. What kind of gas? Oh did you want the weather? How about a car wash? Prepay for a drink inside? Donate to a charity? Oh, did you want to see another ad? What is your zip code? Oh, insert your credit card.
Tesla is literally grab the handle, push the button, and insert to charge in the car.
When equipped with a level 1 120-volt outlet, it takes approximately 50 hours of charging time to go from 0 to 100% charge. A level 2 240-volt outlet takes an estimated 7.5 hours while the DC fast charging battery charges from 0 to 80% in just 38 minutes.
You have to be lucky to find a fast charger for this vehicle, and even if you find one, charging is not cheap, and you permanently damage your battery by charging the battery this quickly.
Visiting family with a road trip across Germany is still a hassle with these things and you permanently damage the expensive battery by fast charging
Many European megacorporations also offer electric cars as a job perk because personal car ownership is heavily taxed in many countries. The megacorps will choose home market manufacturers run by their friends preferentially.
This issue is improving with every new EV generation. And it's not even always true. On my Leaf, with a passively cooled battery, I need to be careful with temperatures. High temps will cause damage. I wouldn't quick charge every day. An occasional road trip is fine.
Newest EVs? Even a 250KW charger won't make a lick of a difference for a battery that can accept 4x that amount of power.
By the time EVs are widespread I don't expect to see many ID.4 in the streets.
Source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-939-august-22-2016...
If you go anywhere in Africa you're screwed too. It's all about optimizing for the appropriate use case. ICE cars are the most versatile, period. I can get gasoline for my car delivered to remote African villages in Coca Cola bottles cheaply.
Sure there will be always a market for ICE vehicles, but that doesn't mean everyone should buy M1 Abrams because they might need something for a trip to Afghanistan.
To be honest, this just logically leads to hotswapping car batteries. If a car manufacturer was able to make their batteries quickly hot swappable and then sell spares to gas stations (who could have large charging racks) then you could solve the charging time problem nicely.
I drove nearly half way across the USA (1200 miles) in an EV, it's just not a big deal. Sure it took 21 hours instead of 19 or some such, not a big deal unless you do it often. I save many more hours with avoiding trips to the gas station, smog testing, oil changes, and related.