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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

I just completed a ~1600km drive back from visiting family. Half way through the outbound trip, in the middle of the mountains, I had to make a 300km detour due to a massive accident (two semi trucks head-on closed a mountain highway for more than a day). The detour was through a valley with no cellphone coverage for 150+km. At a rest stop I met a tesla driver in a panic. Without internet he was unable to figure out whether he should continue, turn around, or wait out the accident. That was the one and only electric vehicle I saw that day. There are some parts of this planet where it it very hard to envision mass EV adoption.

(Here is a link if anyone wants to confirm my story, but be warned. You cannot unread this. It was a horrible accident.) https://www.aldergrovestar.com/news/fatal-semi-truck-collisi...

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Europeans don't understand how sparse and unpopulated the United States is .

Even if they visit they visit the densely populated areas not realizing that most Americans regularly drive across areas where you may not see anyone for miles around. It's not that uncommon an occurrence. Most Americans will do something like this a few times a year. Many do it daily...

Canadians too

To be fair, I'd wager that the vast majority of Americans live, work and travel within 100km of a gas station at all times. That number could be pushed even higher if you include distance from any ordinary electrical power outlet that could theoretically be used to charge an EV. It's true that parts of the Canada and the US are very sparsely populated, but EV adoption could happen (and is happening) across much of the region anyway because realistically it's still only a few people who regularly spend their lives hours away from any kind of service whatsoever.

Friend of mine lives in a small town. There is a gas station. The guy that runs it is an asshole and it's expensive either way. The cheap gas station is 75 miles away in town with the grocery and big box stores. When you consider the whole cycle of gas up in town. Drive home, hope you have enough gas next week to get back to town. An EV would be less hassle and stress.

Good point. EV can be more convenient, and plug-in hybrid gives you a choice you might not have had, otherwise.

> most Americans regularly drive across areas where you may not see anyone for miles around

83% of Americans live in urban areas. Why would they "regularly drive across areas where [they] may not see anyone for miles around"...?

Are you sure you're not just extrapolating from your own experience?

Road trips between cities or drives in the countryside

No, the problem is many people cannot think within the new reality. Even in the US there are power lines almost everywhere (https://hifld-geoplatform.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/geopl...), so nothing prevents from installing chargers every 10-20 miles. It's not like a gas station!

Even then, I think most Americans overestimate their range needs. A stop every two hours is recommended for every driver to keep attention at safe levels, and even then there are bio breaks and the occasional coffee or drink or lunch.

Average trip lengths in the US are only slightly longer than in the EU. Americans like to emphasize the vast emptiness of their country, but in reality a large fraction of the trips could even be done on a bicycle. I don't think that the requirement to plop down a couple of fast chargers in remote areas should stop us from replacing almost all fossil fuel cars with EVs (or, better, public transport and bicycles).

Your facts are inconvenient and will probably just be dismissed sadly.

EVs need to win by being better without more risk, not by trying to ban people currently using ICEs.

More inconvenient facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_wildfire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E_OLgC4nV0

88,000 people in perhaps 50,000 vehicles all taking the ONE road out of town. Some kind companies setup fuel trucks by the roadside to top up tanks. Gas delivery can be scaled up and even made portable in an emergency. Had those 50,000 vehicles all been EVs, tens of thousands of people would have been stuck beside the road hoping the fire picked a different direction.

It seems like cars are the problem here though?

If people want to live in remote areas and pollute a ton, that's just fine as long as they pay to clean up the mess they make for everyone else. Direct carbon capture from the air is about $500/ton right now, which is only about $5/gallon of gas.

>> If people want to live in remote areas and pollute a ton

Well... if you want lumber, minerals, metals, petrochemicals and food, then you too will need people living "in remote areas".

Seems fine as long as they pay to clean up their mess, which means that their costs will be higher which they pass on.

The next time I see a farmer I'll pass along that it is "fine" that he continue growing the food people eat. He will appreciate having permission so to do.

I don't think you understand what I was saying "fine" too.

But people need to pay for the damage they inflict on the world. Nobody is so "special" or snowflake that they get exempted. Farmers are adults, they can be treated like any other adult in our society.

It seems that we are redefining things such that the only way to cause "damage" to the world is via carbon emissions (humans are very good at focusing on one metric to the exclusion of all others). Is there any "damage" done in having greater numbers of the world's poor die of starvation since we've reduced agricultural output in our quest to reduce carbon emissions? Perhaps we can dabble in fertilizer reduction after we've exhausted carbon capture from coal fired electricity plants (particularly in China and the US who are the largest emitters and still use a lot of coal) or at least converted those to natural gas. Messing with agriculture, particularly right now with the current geopolitical situation is very stupid.

The cost will just be passed to you anyway.

> which means that their costs will be higher which they pass on.

For that to work we'd need both a carbon tax (or something equivalent) and a heavy tariff on goods that are imported from countries without such a tax. As long as both of those things can be enacted at once, I'm in favor.

The point is that the farmer and miner become the saints doing penance on our behalf - we all benefit from the work they do, then insist that they handle all the costs of the negative externalities their work produces.

Sure, I suppose that could be priced into what they charge for their products. That may be a nontrivial challenge to work out, though, and it's possible they'll no longer be able to make a sustainable product after doing so.

Life is complicated and easy answers are often wrong.

> The point is that the farmer and miner become the saints doing penance on our behalf - we all benefit from the work they do

Seems more like this kind of take is an attempt to canonize them.

They're economic actors. Their work is very important, but that's why they, you know, take money in exchange for their output.

Excusing externalities is how we get corporate structures where officers and shareholders are richly rewarded and tax payers get to pay for (and often live in) the SuperFund site after the company leaves.

There are better optimisations for emissions than chasing farmers and miners.

Such as?

I'm generally anti-carbon tax because it's the solution to the problem that is obvious, simple, and wrong. But when there are no other solutions, charging for cleanup is the way to go.

Farmers and miners pay for their costs. They can continue to do so and pass their costs on. Some farmers, at least in the US, we massively subsidize to a ridiculous extent in a make-work program for massive amounts of soy and corn. But this is an economic choice that is relatively recent in the history of the US, and we can decide at any moment to improve the efficiency of the economy by making externalized costs internal.

Why is a carbon tax wrong? It seems very similar in principle to your proposal?

I think a tax on certain sectors can work fine. Especially those sectors with no other options, and that must simply pay to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere that they put into it. However, an economy-wide tax ignores the differing amounts of technological development difficulty, access to capital, and political influence that varies so widely between sectors.

So a carbon tax on electricity generation sources works ok to incentivize a switch and internalize the externalities, but it's pretty equivalent to the general ITC/PTC subsidies that have recently been passed, with the exception that they are sector specific.

An economy wide carbon tax does almost nothing to incentivize decarbonization of steel or concrete, as the tech isn't there, nobody has spare money to invest in a solution, and the tax wouldn't necessarily increase the price of end products much. They need very specific industrial policy in these sectors to develop alternatives and put them into production.

Finally a carbon tax creates an entirely unified political coalition, across many sectors of the economy, to oppose the tax. So setting the tax at a level that is right to incentivize change is guaranteed to be nearly impossible, because od the breadth and political strength of the opposition to it. Specific carrots and sticks for each sector are what can drive real change in each sector.

If it was 1980, I'd be supporting a carbon tax. But we need to move far more quickly now to change our economic production systems than a carbon tax could ever conceivably achieve.

I think a blanket carbon tax at least creates a situation where everyone is paying , in some way, for the externalities they're causing. If some industries don't want to decarbonize because the tax is rounding error to them, then maybe you'd need additional rules or regulations, or maybe we need public investment in some new technology.

I can't think of a case where exempting some group from a carbon tax would be good policy. There is a pretty good argument though that a carbon tax would be regressive, and probably should be compensated for in some way so that poor people don't come out worse off, such as by reducing income tax in the lower brackets.

I think the hardest sector to decarbonize is going to be the military (with the exception of some small percentage of navy ships that are nuclear powered). I could see plug-in hybrid army vehicles eventually being a thing, though. Being able to run off of either diesel or electricity provides a lot of logistical flexibility. You can save the petroleum for when you really need to move long distances.

If people want to live in remote areas

This is an easily solved problem. Just stop eating. Once you stop eating, then we don't have to have farmers and their remotely-located support communities growing food for you.

For bonus points, stop using computers. Electronics are made up of all kinds of metals that are mined in remote locations. So, stop using electricity at all, if you're really concerned about this.

And while you're at it, give up toilet paper. It comes from trees that are waaaay out in the forest. If you stop wiping, then we don't have to truck trees to paper mills to make toilet paper for people in the city to use.

Do your part.

Lot of strawmans here.

The OP suggesting rural living is entirely to blame is a strawman and absurd, and was presented with no evidence that removing all rural areas would fix any problem.

88,000 people in a town isn't rural living.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...

  Sometimes population density is the defining concern,
  in other cases it is geographic isolation.  Small population
  size typically characterizes a rural place, but how small is
  rural? Population thresholds used to differentiate rural and
  urban communities range from 2,500 up to 50,000, depending on
  the definition.

So yeah 88,000 people could be rural if your primary factor is population density.

An EV makes a great second car in Canada but the long distances and cold weather are problematic for current EV technology. Hopefully that improves relatively soon.

LoL. Don't worry. Global warming will deal with the low temperatures.

Toronto climate, average low, January: −6.7 °C (19.9 °F)

Temperature change needed for complete loss of Greenland ice sheet: between 1 and 4 °C. (That's a change by, not a change to).

Effect of complete loss of Greenland ice sheet: 7.2 meter sea level rise.

Torono isnt really typical. It is southern canada, and a bit of a heat island. Fort Mcmurray (that had to evac a few years ago) average january low: -22.5c. Places like that have almost 90c temperature swings from low to high in a given year (-50 to +35).

The Toronto region contains about 25% of the Canadian population, which is sufficient for my point.

Your attempt at nit picking, if it were valid, would actually makes it much worse: a temperature increase sufficient to turn "-22c" into "we don't need to worry about cold batteries" requires close to double the difference between today and the highest estimated average global temperature ever in the biological history of the planet, and that temperature happened before trees had evolved.

For example, naïvely adding 22 C (22.5 says Wiki) to the average so that the coldest was no longer below freezing, your Fort McMurray would have a new July average high of 46.2 C, which is above the current average of Death Valley 10 months of the year and pretty close the other two.

I think the solution for batteries in cold weather is to insulate the pack and heat the battery "coolant". Almost all modern EVs use liquid cooling of some kind. (Nissan Leaves are the exception; I don't know if they've added that in newer versions, but it's why Leaf battery packs were notorious for wearing out quickly.)

I don't know if battery heaters are a common feature on current EVs. I'd think it would be particularly useful for LFP cells, which can be damaged if you try to charge them when they're below freezing. They can be discharged safely (if not efficiently) at much lower temperatures, which means you could "bootstrap" the car in cold weather by using the battery to heat itself until it gets warm enough to charge (without which you can't use regenerative braking).

It wouldn't be that far-fetched to imagine a battery cell with a built-in heating element (e.g. an internal 1 ohm resistor across the battery terminals) that, when activated, keeps the cell at at least room temperature and shuts off when the battery gets up to temperature. Normally you'd only activate the heater when charging or driving.

Resistive heating using a battery offends my sensibilities. It takes beautiful low entropy energy and irreversibly converts it high entropy heat.

I can sympathize with that, but if the choice is between, say, using 1% of the battery capacity to heat the cell versus losing 25% of the capacity because they just don't work efficiently in the cold, going with the 1st option seems like the right move.

Although maybe that's not right... if a large amount of energy is "lost" when the battery is too cold, that energy has to go somewhere. If it ends up as heat anyways, maybe it's really functionally equivalent to having a heating element in the cell. In which case the solution is probably just to insulate the batteries better.

88,000 people in perhaps 50,000 vehicles all taking the ONE road out of town.

That's an interesting point.

We see this a couple of times a year in the United States — tens, or even hundreds of thousands of people evacuating because of an approaching hurricane.

It takes hours and hours and hours to go not very far. And when you finally get someplace with an open hotel room, it's hundreds of miles away.

Although I believe they are close, I'm not sure EVs are ready for that challenge yet. Especially since a gas station half-way to safety can fill up hundreds of cars faster than a dozen EVs can charge.

Can more chargers solve this problem? Better chargers? Both? Something else?

At a minimum we need some sort of fast charger that can add 50+ miles in 5 minutes. Granted, in a gas car that's a full tank usually, but let's be reasonable about what we can expect in the near-ish future.

Having wireless tech that can charge that fast would be even better. Maybe get on a little conveyer belt similar to an automated carwash and by the time you exit, you have 50 more miles than before. Hell, imagine these things running parallel to a road like a pit lane on a racetrack. Move on the track for 5 minutes, then they turn around and grab cars going the opposite direction.

Seems pretty inefficient and probably a logistical nightmare, but it would be cool to see it work!

We already have those fast chargers. The average EV gets 3-4 miles/kwh. 50 miles would be about 15 kwh. To deliver 15kwh in 5 minutes, you'd need 180kw charging. The fastest widely available chargers currently go up to 350kw. Kia EV6/Hyundai Ioniq 5 charge from 10-80% (>200 miles) in 18 minutes (due to battery limitations).

We can already do more than 50 miles of range in 5 minutes. For example a Tesla Model Y is rated at about 0.234 kWh/mile, round up to 0.25 kWh/mile. To get 50 miles of range you need 12.5 kWh, in order to get that in 5 minutes you need a charging speed of 150 kW. Tesla V2 superchargers already do 150 kW and V3 does 250 kW, which would only take 3 minutes to get 50 miles of range. Of course the actual charging curve depends on your battery state of charge but 50 miles in 5 minutes is very achievable in most cases, at least with Tesla.

Now doing this in a portable way is the difficult part. There are a few trucks now that can do 7-10 kW output to charge cars, but that's only about 30-40 miles of range per hour, which is still quite slow. But it might be enough to top you up for 15-20 mins to get you 10-15 miles down the road to a charger. I imagine this will improve though quite a bit as more EVs are adopted. I think if we can get to 50 kW chargers from service vehicles that's good enough. On a 50 kW charger 15 minutes of charging will give you 50 miles of range on a Tesla, and on less efficient cars it will still give you at 30+ miles.

You can do a lot better than that; just electrify the roads so that cars can recharge while travelling at highway speeds.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/worlds-f...

There's basically three options: overhead lines, which are cheap but kind of ugly and don't really work for passenger cars (they'd need a really tall pantograph to reach as high as a truck), rails embedded in the road surface which can be used by cars and trucks but are more expensive than overhead lines, and wireless charging which is much more expensive than rails and the amount of power you can reasonably transfer is pretty limited.

I'm in favor of the rail approach, like they're testing in Sweden. If some billionaire with money burning a hole in your pocket is reading this, might I suggest buying a stretch of land parallel to a busy highway and constructing a parallel road with rail-style charging, and establish an in-motion charging standard. Let people charge for free and see what comes of it.

In the long run I hope all the major highways get electrified this way. It's disappointing that Congress isn't already working on this.

Even cars are barely up to the challenge in that case.

> Especially since a gas station half-way to safety can fill up hundreds of cars faster than a dozen EVs can charge.

Logistics. A petrol station can fill up any single isolated car or truck really fast, but when the local supply is gone, it can only be returned via a delivery truck (unless I'm very wrong and they have pipes direct to refineries?)

An electric charger can recharge one car battery much slower than a tank can be refilled, but the grid can be approximated as "not running out" over that kind of timescale.

I'm not sure which would be better for mass evacuations in practice, especially given traffic jams are where EVs excel.

Something else to consider is that EVs can remain idle in traffic without consuming much battery. They're not constantly consuming fuel like most ICE vehicles.

But if you're fleeing a hurricane, chances are you have the air conditioner on. It's generally hot and humid. You. Any have the windows open because of the rain, but you need the AC to keep the windshield clear. How does that affect battery use in an EV?

Tesla has "Camp Mode" which can regulate the temperature for nearly two days on a full charge.

I don't have a Tesla, but maybe someone here does and can chime in.

You can idle a ICE car for maybe 16 hours easily with a half-tank, although this varies a lot [1]. With rationing your fuel, running for 10-30 minutes for every hour, you can maintain survivable temperature for at least double that (32 hours on half tank) to perhaps 96 hours, or 4 days. Double that for a full tank of gas.

If you want EVs to take over, get feature parity with the current technology.

[1] https://www.autotrader.ca/editorial/20190201/how-long-can-yo...

Vehicle-to-vehicle charging is starting to be a thing, and there's always the option of using another vehicle to tow you. (You could even use regenerative braking on the towed car to recharge the battery.)

Realistically, that's an extreme case and some ICE vehicles might break down too for whatever reason. In that situation if there's no other option you'd probably just ditch your car and get a ride from someone else.

Some kind companies can probably also set up generators to top up batteries.

When gas cars were first around, people carried extra gas around with them. Eventually we built gas stations, but somehow cars still got a toehold even without those gas stations pre-existing.

There are very very very few places without electricity in the world.

Are there some places where emergency conditions make travel inconvenient or uncertain? Sure, but these rare situations are narrowing daily.

If that was the only Tesla you saw that day, there's a good reason for it. Fortunately those sorts of rare areas have nearly zero population, and account for nearly zero of the miles we need to switch from gas to EVs, so if they stay gasoline powered for a few more years, it's not a big obstacle to overcome.

>> There are very very very few places without electricity in the world.

Today. Right now. This is happening. Not Africa or Antarctica. In Canada. In a national park during a busy long weekend.

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/be-prepared-officials-warn-of-po...

" Should the situation worsen, Richard Ireland, Jasper's mayor, recommended residents and visitors to the park ensure their essential electric devices remain fully charged and that their vehicles have full tanks of gas — since gas stations rely on electricity.

"We are already prepared to move to generated power for our own critical infrastructure, but that does not power lights in a residential home or your fridge or anything else," Ireland said. "So be prepared.""

Yes that is a story, but what is its relevance to what I am writing?

Perhaps because you suggest that the areas OP is referring to have near zero population when clearly that is not the case.

That is not the sort of area I was referring to. This area is served both by electricity and gas stations. And the quote has a reminder that, just as with essential electric devices getting charged, such as an EV, people should keep a full tank of gas.

And I would note that it's far easier to keep a full charge when you do your charging at home than it is when you need to leave the house to prepare and fill up on gas.

A huge number of people are about to lose electricity at precisely the time they most need it, should they need to flee in an EV. Lack of electricity is not a rare occurrence.

From the exact same quote, gas doesn't get pumped when the electricity goes out either:

> Jasper's mayor, recommended residents and visitors to the park ensure their essential electric devices remain fully charged and that their vehicles have full tanks of gas — since gas stations rely on electricity.

I think there's a huge logical gap that people have when it comes to EVs.

The number of places with functioning gas pumps but no electricity is a rounding error.

I can keep a couple jerry cans of gas around and toss them in the back of a ICE to get 150-200% of my range, or share with people in need. You cannot do this with an ev.

Sure thing, but keeping 10 gallons of gasoline is more than a couple of cans. And even then, so what? How many people need to do that, or will ever do that, except for off-roading or obscure jobs?

This is a legitimate use, but for a vanishingly small number of people. Back when LED lights were first being pushed, we saw a lot of the same resistance to a new product that was superior for nearly every single use case, except a vanishingly small number of use cases. EVs are really similar. In 10 years we will look back on the resistance to EVs and find it a bit silly and overly fearful.

LED lights burn out prematurely in over half the fixtures in my house because they are fully enclosed. The bulbs can’t take the heat. This is true even for bulbs that claim they are suitable for use in fully enclosed luminaires. I have switched back to compact fluorescents.

It seems to me that EV advocates aren’t very similar to what we see with LED bulbs. EV advocates refuse to even acknowledge that EVs are not for everyone. Instead they want to ban alternatives. At least I can still buy compact fluorescent bulbs.

It’s as if laptop computer advocates wanted to ban desktops. Surely the laptop is all anyone needs.

You say: "EV advocates refuse to even acknowledge that EVs are not for everyone."

But my comment was: "This is a legitimate use, but for a vanishingly small number of people."

20L can is half to a quarter of range, two 20L cans will fill the tank of a miata, half the tank of a tacoma.

For people in a city who never leave it? EVs are great. Everyone else not so much. Personally I think plug in hybrids are the future because they overcome this but seems everyone just wants to push pure evs.

EVs are great for anyone who hasn't had to haul around extra gas in cans to get to where they want to go. Which is easily 99% of the population.

> ensure their essential electric devices remain fully charged and that their vehicles have full tanks of gas — since gas stations rely on electricity.

They could also advise that "your EV batteries remain fully charged since EV charging stations rely on electricity."

> When gas cars were first around, people carried extra gas around with them.

There are still isolated places where this is useful. I've done it when offroading.

This is routinely necessary in my area and line of work.

> There are very very very few places without electricity in the world.

In the first world. Billions live in places with no or unreliable electricity.

And that will change as renewable energy and cheap storage make micro grids economically feasible, where transmission with centralized power generation is too expensive.

In these places, EVs will be far superior to gas vehicles because they will require less infrastructure and the EVs supplement the micro grid are an asset for it.

"Cheap storage" with the capacity for a week-long cloudy cold snap, epescially given how demanding EVs are, doesn't exist and will likely keep not existing for decades. So for now, if you want 24/7 electrity, your only option is a real large grid. Meanwhile gasoline cars just need a tank to store gas

I don't think you are talking about the same areas I'm talking about.

In areas where heating buildings interiors is a significant energy need, and has week long cold snaps, then there's extremely cheap storage in the form of therma storage, which combines very nicely with heat pumps, and it exists today. Bury insulated thermal sinks underground and a ton of summertime energy can be stored up seasonally.

However I'm not aware of any large populations of people that live in colder climates that do not yet have electricity and are looking to change their living standards in the coming decades.

In the early years of aviation, Pan America used a huge fleet of sea planes. They did that because modern airports didn't exist yet, but ships were common and harbors provided the basic infrastructure they needed to operate.

We don't use sea planes much anymore, because aircraft now have their own dedicated airports.

I think of giant batteries on electric vehicles as being basically the same thing as a giant pontoon on an airplane: it's there because the infrastructure isn't good enough that we can leave it behind. In the case of EVs, I think what we need in the long run is electrified roads so that range becomes a non-issue for almost everyone, and we can use batteries that are half the size or less.

Plugin series hybrids are becoming popular here in Australia where distances and use cases like that are common. Same approach that diesel electric trains use for similar reasons. EV drivetrain with an ICE generator. Efficiency and drivability of the EV drivetrain, with robust fueling options. You may rarely need the petrol generator in daily commuting, but then you head interstate and have all the current infrastructure to work with.

I've been in situations in an ICE where I've been diverted and had no clue where the next gas station would be (not really uncommon in Nevada or California). Heck, I've been on an actual interstate through Kansas in the middle of the night and...I had trouble finding an open gas station for our car (bad planning on my part, I thought 40 miles of range was surely enough to find the next one, I never saw gas stations close at night before!).

Part of planning for very long road trips should be to carry a spare can of gas with you to account for incidents.

I never expected to run out of gas on an interstate. We aren't talking about a highway in the middle of nowhere Nevada, supposedly Kansas is populated with little towns everywhere (which seem to close their gas stations at night).

And ya, when you are at some place like Crater Lake National Park, you don't really think too deeply about how the next gas station might be 100 miles out.

If I was going into the Australian outback, preparations are necessary, but running out of gas due to poor planning or unexpected situations is at least as common as running out of battery due to similar poor planning (or unexpected situations).

Running out of gas is an easy fix, go get a jerry can of petrol. What happens to an ev? Tow to the nearest charger?

Mobile charging is a possibility:

> Most gas-powered generators that your roadside assistance will come with provide 9.6 kilowatts and generate 240 volts. Inquire with your roadside assistance provider to know whether they offer a mobile charge. Often that not, they may be offering it.

Ya, they are coming with basically with a diesel generator that outputs 240 volts...which should give you 20 or so miles in 30 minutes?

Or towing (on a flatbed) to the nearest charger is an option if you can't bring power to the car.

Heck of a lot more involved (and expensive) then getting a jerry can filled.

> no clue where the next gas station would be (not really uncommon in Nevada or California)

When on longer road trips I always carry a portable tank of spare fuel just in case. Sure, I rarely need it, but it's been handy a few times.

This is out of California and nearby states where long stretches of emptiness are a regular occurrence. Back when I lived on the east coast I never did this as the population density is much higher.

> Without internet he was unable to figure out whether he should continue, turn around, or wait out the accident.

I think that this is an interesting corner case, but I don’t think the solution decision tree is that complicated:

1. Every Tesla has comes with an adapter that plugs into a regular outlet. It’s very slow (maybe 3-5 miles an hour charge), but it’s enough to recharge anywhere that has electricity in an emergency. This is slow and may require an extended stay at a hotel (or sleeping in your car), but we are talking about a super rare emergency situation.

2. I would default to not taking a long detour in general in an ev unless I knew where I was going to charge. That would be like taking a detour on a back road in an isolated area on a fraction of a tank of gas without knowing how far the next gas station is or whether it would be open — just not wise.

3. If he was near a charging station in the direction he was going on the main road, I would lean towards just waiting it out. Tesla’s use very little charge when not moving. 12-24 hours would be fine (if boring).

4. If he was not near a charging station in the direction he was going, then I would recommend turning around and finding the nearest charger or find a place you can charge on a regular outlet — drastic situations call for drastic solutions.

I guess I can say that I feel sorry for EV owners who lack the ability to think logically and/or analytically, but these problems, while different than ICE problems, are not terribly difficult to figure out.

I think that I have heard of one challenging charging scenario in the US that is specific to EVs…

There is a wind corridor on some highway that spans from Texas to Colorado. Cars of any kind get reduced mileage by a lot if they are driving into heavy winds that are common on this road. Not a problem with ubiquitous gas stations, but I don’t think the charger network accommodated this wind factor as of last year, so people had to drive at unusually slow speeds in order to extend their range.

That said, I heard that Tesla was building an extra charging station or two on this route to address this issue, and it wouldn’t surprise me if other charging station operators did so as well. It’s just a super weird and rare driving and charging situation that is/was easily solved.

> There are some parts of this planet where it it very hard to envision mass EV adoption.

A lot of EV's are already at 500km range. Within this decade we should see 1000km range. Add some charging infrastructure and we are gold. Just look at the chargers Tesla has built in California (and there is still a lot of potential to improve).

No EV has 500 km range when you drive it in real world conditions. If you drive it with normal highway speed - 140-160 km/h you can barely get 250.

In real world conditions the highest range Model S can do 320 miles (515km) [1]

Also 140-160 km/h aren't normal highway speed. They are in fact illegal in almost all countries.

[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36302930/tesla-model-s-lo...

Who cares if they are legal if everyone drives at them. I was cruising in Turkey lately with 170 and was often overtaken with people at 200+.

Speed limits are just glorified toll boots made to extract revenue from people with powerful cars.

In markets with significant EV adoption there's usually either section control on highways or a competent traffic police force.

Also manufacturers are moving away from providing 200km/h+ capable cars. Volvo is pioneering this citing safety concerns.

Do you have a new EV? My 2015 Model S 70D has a nominal range of 330 km and as far as i can tell it does pretty close to that unless I am running at high speed (110 km/h or more) or doing a lot of hill climbing. So I'm pretty sure that a newer EV, especially a lighter one or one with a larger battery and lower power motor would have a longer range.

140 km/h and above is not a normal highway speed in any country except Germany and even there it is not really that common. I returned from the UK to Norway last week. It was about 26 hours of driving through France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, the amount of time I spent at more than 130 was just a couple of hours.

my vacation this year was 1500 km one way, at least 80% of which was done at 130km/h or more (both ways). i was one of very many doing a trip of this length judging by license plates at the destination.

And how many of those kilometers were in areas so remote that it's impossible to build a fast charger there?

So you were exceeding the speed limit almost all the way? My journey was a similar distance and only the German stretch had any roads with speed limit higher than 130 km/h. Perhaps next time I do it I should record the speed as I go. The average speed was probably about 60 km/h so the amount of driving above 130 must have been quite small, some of it was a lot faster than that though, just for fun on the autobahn.

And of course the vast bulk of traffic on the roads is very much slower. Also quite a lot of ICE cars are not built for sustained driving at high speeds anyway.

I'm my above story, speed limit was generally 100/110kph and involved constant hill climbing. It would have been a test for any Tesla. Lots of point-of-no-return driving where the links between chargers was more than 1/2 of total range, which is scary in avalanche/fire/flood country.

Poland has around 1200 km of motorways where the limit is 140 km/h.

Thanks, I misremembered it, I thought it was 130 km/h. But that still doesn't change the fact that most driving is at far lower speeds, even on the motorway.

> There are some parts of this planet where it it very hard to envision mass EV adoption.

Perhaps, but how are they going to adapt to significantly lower CO2 emission? Through drastically increased prices? Or just accept the 4C warming and hope the fires are after your lifetime?

Sounds like a need for an offline map of charging stations. If I were Tesla I'd want to include one in the regular updates?

> driving prized cattle from a show, some of which were 4h projects

That was worse than I thought it was going to be.

Ya. The local authorities did a very good job in preventing anyone from taking pictures. I'm not for censorship, but those images do not need to be public knowledge imho.

What exactly did he need internet for?

To find the nearest charging station along the detour route. He was already down below 1/2 charge, meaning he couldn't go back the way he came.

I am surprised that that don't have an offline version for the maps. The location of the charge station does not change that often, operational status might, but few hours stale data should still be sufficient to navigate.

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