I dissent! Just did a 2-day (each way) road trip with young children and those charging breaks are pretty great and well-spaced for letting them run around and blow off steam. It’s not such a bad idea for the adults either…
If you’re doing road trips frequently and you absolutely cannot find a charging station that coincides with a lunch break spot and you cannot afford a single extra hour, then sure, this seems like a reason to wait for things to improve.
But I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard this argument from people who are more afraid of the possibility than the reality. People who do a road trip once per year or less, for example.
But, from my house, that’s about the only trip I’ve found like this. Any of the beaches are reachable. Most cities within a day or two Drive are reachable.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=9daba0ea-ad2e-449...
Anyway, my only point was there are still some gaps, even in the relatively dense eastern seaboard. But not many.
If you prefer more primitive camp sites this isn't an option but for some kinds of camping an EV is kind of ideal.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=8c9a884e-0429-42c...
30+ mins at a supercharger doesn't need to be a thing. You get the fastest charging 0-50%, which takes about 15 mins, so that is like 180 miles range, or about 2.5 hours in the car.
So you can get about 700 miles with 2 15 minute stops, assuming you do 300 miles on the first charge if you start at 100%. With a gas car you'd be stopping once for maybe 10-15 mins to refuel and use the bathroom(or twice if you're driving with my partner), so it's really only 15 mins lost over 10 hours in the car.
I'll say that's not my natural way to do a road trip, I would previously go on longer legs with less time stopped, but I actually like taking more little breaks and would probably start doing that if I went on a road trip with an ICE.
Last summer we drove the i80 route on our way to Oregon and after Laramie (which I suspect has some super chargers) it looks like a wasteland until Rocksprings and I have no idea if they have them there either. On the southern route, after Grand Junkyard (which I imagine has super chargers) it looks like quite a spell before more. We go play in Moab periodically and it's pretty sparse out there. The distances seem manageable but if you mismanage things a little bit, you could have some trouble. I think I'd top off in Laramie and then probably think about it in Rocksprings, I assume they have chargers there. Even with an ICE out there, there are some pretty long distances between stops, seems like every time our range got below 100miles we were starting to get serious about planning a stop.
FWIW Southern Idaho and Eastern Oregon might have been worse. I think there were more people and it looked like more help if you were to have an issue but it might be farther between realistic charging stations. It's coming, it'll get there and most people aren't road tripping that much but it's still a factor.
I have been considering getting an electric car but that trip made me realize I'd have to reserve the EV for urban travel only. Otherwise I'd be uncomfortable with the risk. Even with my gas guzzling SUV I can always bring more gas just in case.
I spoke to someone who has an EV and brings a generator with them on long trips so they can charge their car. This seems so wildly impractical to me.
I really look forward to the day EVs exceed the range and energy capacity of combustion vehicles -- without having to stuff batteries in the headrest. But it's just not there today.
Carrying a generator seems very practical to me if you are putting yourself in situations where it could be not just useful but the difference between you being stranded vs self-sufficient.
Nobody said that owning an electric vehicle requires a head-in-the-sand refusal to acknowledge the benefit of liquid fuel. Plus, a generator has all kinds of other benefits in the situation you describe.
As a one-off thing, like driving into a town after a storm, might work. But it’s not a solution to range anxiety generally.
Worried about the smell of fuel from the empty generator you never use? If so, wrap it up in garbage bags. Remember - it's there for emergencies. Odds are good you'll rarely ever use it. And don't transport it with fuel - get the fuel when you can't find a charger but can find a gas station. Let's be sensible about it.
The comment is in reply to someone describing their experience driving to a town that was without power for 24 hours due to a storm. This "road tripping into the unknown" is where taking a generator is applicable, not general range anxiety.
Practically? Generators come in pretty small packages these days. They'll fit on the floorboard of your back seat (or in the back seat), or easily in the trunk just like another piece of luggage.
I mean all of this assumes a particular context - the steps you take to be prepared for risks that are medium probability and high impact are not the same steps necessary when, on a daily basis, those same risks drop to a very low probability and low to medium impact.
If it's the choice between being the guy who, after miles on the road, arrives in a storm-stricken town as GP related with his EV near dead and the townsfolk gathering around to point and laugh at a stereotype of luxurious thinking, or being someone with an inefficient yet practical solution to the lack of chargers, I'd take the latter.
Charging an EV from a portable generator is going to take 8-12+ hours. So now you need to carry enough extra fuel for the generator to run that long.
Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous. Is your typical vacation, like, traveling to Florida to experience a hurricane making landfall?
If you do a lot of travel to remote locations and camping and hiking and things like that, yes, an EV will probably be a stretch for that use right now. But most people in the US live and travel between major population centers.
Even if you are into the remote/outdoorsy stuff, an EV is a perfectly viable second car.
This has been my conclusion - the main problem at that point being the sheer cost. My household’s current secondary car is one that cost $10k a decade ago. (Two years old at the time of purchase.) There’s no EV that’s even in the same ballpark for cost-per-km or cost-per-year. (And for a second city-only car, they almost all come with far more battery capacity than is required, adding weight and expense. The Mazda MX-30 EV is probably closest from a technical standpoint with 160 km of range, but still has a cost problem, starting at $40k locally after taxes and credits.)
I'd crunch the numbers more seriously if I had to replace my secondary car today.
For some napkin math, assuming I only charge at home and my cost of electricity doesn't go up for the next decade, I'd be looking at about $3500 in electricity costs for 10k km/year for the next decade. Say the $14k car depreciates to $4k over the decade, that's $10k in depreciation. To match my existing car costs that leaves me with an average of $1720 to spend per year on maintenance (which, in my spreadsheet, includes tire changes/replacements, yearly detailing, any other misc parts) on a car that will be close to 20 years old with 200k km by the end of the decade. Might be workable? My current ICE car has run about $800/yr in maintenance after subtracting oil/engine-related costs in years 2-12 of its life. Leaf also seems higher risk - with my current low-value car, there isn't much potential for catastrophic failure (like a battery failure would be), and if there were a catastrophic failure, I'm just out the cost of the car, which isn't much.
I ran all the numbers in a big spreadsheet and determined that with fairly pessimistic numbers on the Leaf for depreciation/maintenance, and very optimistic numbers on the Civic for the same, total-cost-of-ownership worked out to approximately the same per mile. Insane.
So I bought the Leaf for $8k about three years ago. In that time it's roughly held its value or maybe appreciated due to the crazy market we're in, and I'm saving roughly $750/year (6k mi/yr, about) in fuel. More than offset the depreciation in my case, so far.
And, more importantly because all these costs are super tiny in the grand scheme of my finances, I'm driving a 2014 car instead of a 1997. More comfortable and probably much safer.
FWIW my real numbers on the Fiesta over the past decade have worked out to 9¢/km depreciation, 6¢/km in ICE-specific maintenance, 9¢/km in non-ICE-specific maintenance and 7¢/km in fuel.
My home electric costs would run around 3.5¢/km for the Leaf, so I'd only be saving 3.5¢/km (or $350/year) in fuel. (And I'm locked in to a 5-year electricity contract at a pretty low rate for the area. If I had to re-sign today, my electric costs for a Leaf would be around 5¢/km.)
1) The insane distances in the US are what make a Leaf unusable as an only-car, reducing demand (and thus resale price)
2) I can’t do the math right now to figure out your electric rate, but my electricity is $0.1/kWh, or about $0.025 per mile (mile!) with pessimistic Leaf efficiencies.
Both of those are pretty strong headwinds vs. my situation.
2) 17¢/kWh in AB, though current rates would be either 23¢/kWh on a fixed-rate contract or current floating rates are in the 25¢/kWh range.
If it were an EV then I would have had to find the nearest place to charge that did have power, which isn't trivial.
I agree if it's just travel between major population centers then it's not as big of a deal. There just happens to be a ton of travel that isn't between major population centers, and I'm not talking about camping.
Simply put an EV is just not as useful today as I wish I were. I'd just like to be able to visit family without getting stranded.
In areas where power outages are common, gas stations have their own generators to continue operating. This is common where I'm from, so very familiar with it.
> Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous.
This is very easy. I always bring a jerry can with gas (or diesel) on longer road trips, just in case. For more remote destinations (camping out in the desert/wilderness) I bring as much as four cans of diesel to be self sufficient in case plans change.
I have never taken extra gas along on a trip in the USA (I don't do long offroad treks or safaris, and neither do 99% of drivers).
The range and charging time issue with EVs are issues regardless of weird one-off events like the power being out for a day.
Gas stations tend to have generators, yes.
> I have never taken extra gas along on a trip in the USA
Well, to counter your anectode, I have never taken a road trip more than 300 miles in the USA without carrying a jerry can (or more) of fuel, just in case. It's cheap and easy insurance, why wouldn't you? Even if you don't need it you can use it later, so it costs nothing.
Only twice in the four trips did we ever have to wait for the car to finish charging. IOW it added 15 minutes to a 3 day trip.
Tesla has superchargers along 17 pretty consistently. The biggest gap is probably Sault St Marie to Wawa and that's only 230 km. The rest of the gaps are all well under 200 km (mostly around 100-150) so you don't have to stop at every location. Highway 11 is a no-go zone.
Destination charging is a little more sparse. I use a welding outlet in the family farm shop, but that's obviously not an option available to everyone. There is a single L2 charger on the whole island and it costs $5/hr which is pretty steep for 7 kW.
I wouldn't feel stressed taking a Tesla anywhere along 17 or the whole main trans-canada corridor. I'd want to plan a little ahead if my destination was a place without a supercharger to arrive with enough charge to get back to the network, but that's pretty simple.
You point out a problem with the IRA law, which subsidizes charger build out at service stations, precisely the wrong place for them. They should be building out in shopping areas, various roadside and destination attractions etc.
Chargers should be at full-service stations. Places with a deli or cafe, where it’s somewhat pleasant to rest for 20-30 minutes. Not someplace that the kids want to stay for hours.
Unless you're driving through an area where chargers are spaced really far out, you shouldn't need to be charging that long.
EVs charge faster at low state-of-charge. You'll spend less time charging if you go from 20% to 50% twice than if you went from 20% to 80% once.
I've got a trip planned from Portland to Santa Clara coming up. My longest planned charge is 20 minutes. Everything else is in the 10-15 minute range, arriving at each charging with about 15% battery.