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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

I'm most curious about range anxiety, because I really feel like we're at the point where the vast majority of people's driving habits will fall into one of three categories:

1. Your driving habits make most/all EVs so clearly nonviable that you would never even consider an EV. If you're driving 400 miles a day in freezing temperatures far from any charging infrastructure, of course you're not getting an EV any time soon. 2. You don't drive that much every day, but you can't regularly charge at home or work, so you're not going to consider an EV. 3. Your driving habits are much closer to the average person, and with an EV you'd just charge at home or work a few times per week and never think about range.

The situations where you'd ever experience range anxiety seem pretty narrow to me. It would basically only happen if you were in category 3 but needed to do a rare long road trip in an area without charging infrastructure.

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My wife has raging ADHD, and even though medicated, I would expect to have to deal with empty battery family logistics pages continually were I to put her in an EV.

I'm none too fond of adding cognitive overhead to my life on top of that. I throw my bike/skis on the truck and drive out for fun times on a whim at least twice a week, and don't fancy adding a "charge the car" loop to my already burdensome family maintenance loops.

EVs and range are like someone sticking their nose into a well tuned software/laundry/dishes process, inventing a problem, and complicating things inordinately for everyone who has to deal with it.

I'll keep my 5-minute fillup for as long as I humanly can.

I shouldn't presume to know how ADHD would affect someone's preference for vehicle type. That's totally fair.

> EVs and range are like someone sticking their nose into a well tuned software/laundry/dishes process, inventing a problem, and complicating things inordinately for everyone who has to deal with it.

I completely agree that the desire to avoid significant change is a fair reason to avoid EVs. I definitely don't agree with the characterization that it's "inventing a problem" and "complicating things inordinately".

You'll spend way less of your time refueling an EV if you can charge where you already park at home or work.

That 5 minute fillup is monumentally longer than my 3 second fillup. I wait hours a year longer to recharge my ICE compared to my EV, and I put far more miles on my EV than my ICE.

What is a “3 second fillup?”

And what do you mean “Recharge my ICE”?

Are you trying to infer that Internal Combustion engine vehicles are not refilled but “recharged”?

And how does your singular personal anecdotal experience change the fact that range anxiety is a very real thing with EV vehicles?

3-second fillup: when I pull into my garage, it takes me ~3-5 seconds to grab the plug off the wall right next to the car and plug it in. I then stop waiting on it, because I've got other stuff I'm doing now that I'm home. Sure, maybe it takes it 20 minutes or a couple of hours to replenish whatever charge I used, buts its not time I'm waiting. The only time I'm waiting on my EV is just the time to plug it in for easily 95% of the miles I do. The same experience would be had for most American drivers for the vast majority of their miles.

Recharge my ICE: go out of my way to a gas station, negotiate payment, open the gas tank, pump the gas, put everything back, go back on my way. This is just all wasted time. I'm not realistically able to walk away and do some other task while all of this is happening, I'm an active participant in it all the way through or the time waiting isn't useful to actually do anything with (the several minutes of it actually pumping).

Range anxiety is largely irrational for the average US driver. The majority of US drivers would spend less time and money charging an EV than paying for gas. Sure, some people truly can't charge at home. However, the vast majority of US households live in a single family house, and then another big chunk live in townhouses and others that could probably easily add charging. Very, very few actually do the "drive off to the woods twice a week" kind of lifestyle.

And even then, depending on how far away "the woods" are, it might not have any impact at all on waiting to charge. Were you going >100mi away to go on that quick bike or skiing trip? There's lots of bike trails around me within a 100mi radius or so, and I don't even live in a part of the country known for good biking.

So, personal anecdotal experience.

You have a working garage. Good for you - however a metric ton folk don’t. Last stats I read had something like 75% of owners had access to one, compared to only 39% of renters.

In addition the Midwest seems to have a higher number of usable garages, but the moment you hit any city then you’re going to be damn lucky.

Your apparent dismissal of other people’s range anxiety based upon your personal experience, is all rather disappointing.

> So, personal anecdotal experience.

And this is what again?

> I throw my bike/skis on the truck and drive out for fun times on a whim at least twice a week

You think the average driver is more likely to be a general commuter/local city kind of driver or one throwing their skis in the back of their car twice a week? Which one is basing their view of reality more on personal anecdotes?

> Last stats I read had something like 75% of owners had access to one, compared to only 39% of renters.

The majority of Americans live in single family homes. By a large measure. The next largest category are single-family attached. That's 70% of the total housing stock. These kinds of structures can (generally) easily add some form of charging, even if only outside. Then you figure, chances are households who have zero cars are probably the ones in dense housing units, so car ownership is even more weighted towards those in these kinds of units, so for car owning households (and especially multi-car owning households) you're probably even higher than just 70%.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1042111/single-family-vs...

I'm speaking to those living in suburban/urban settings in single family homes (detached or attached) who mostly use their cars around the city and commuting. They're talking about people driving on >100mi ski trips twice a week. Which one is probably more like the average driver? Who is basing their view mostly off anecdotes and who is basing it off actual statistics?

I'm not saying EVs work for every use case -- clearly they don't! But for the majority of drivers in the US, range anxiety is irrational at this point and they'll spend more time and money pumping gas than plugging in.

Quite definitely a personal story. I'm trying to illustrate the diverse lifestyles out there in margin of USAistan that aren't going to convert cleanly.

> majority of drivers

I definitely moved to a small town with boundless access to outdoor recreation because the standard-issue American lifestyle doesn't appeal. I caution you against endorsing technologies and social structuring programs that further the monocropping of humans (but I freely admit that this is a stony crypto/anarcho/discordian philosophical bent).

It seems to me, depending on the town and where I live geographically around it, I might still find having an EV to still be easier than an ICE. If you're like 50 miles outside of the nearest town, you often don't have many options for getting gas. Depending on how things are, it could be a bit of a hassle. If most of the amenities you're going to visit (the trails and what not) are within around 100mi or so from home, the EV is going to be an easier vehicle most of the time seeing as how you can just "gas up" at home instead of potentially having to make a long trip into town.

And speaking from a self-reliance mindset, wouldn't being able to fuel your vehicle with energy you can produce off-grid be even more anarcho instead of being reliant on massive global supply chains to get your weekly/biweekly fix?

But I do get it, if you're routinely driving >100mi deep trips into the wilderness its not reasonable to have an EV. Currently. Maybe things will be better in a decade, maybe they won't. I imagine the world will look a good bit different in this regard in a decade.

It definitely all varies based on where you are and what you need. I'm definitely not one to argue all vehicles should be EVs, I do think people should be able to make the decisions which are ultimately right for them. You actually do pull a boat to the lake a good bit? You actually do hit up offroad trails? You take your horses around in a horse trailer? That's awesome, have fun. But I do see a good chunk of people who aren't honest with themselves about what their actual needs are, and overall it leads to sub-par outcomes for a lot of society. People driving giant pavement princess brodozers to their office jobs in dense urban areas all because there was that one time a few years ago where they helped someone move a couch and hey wasn't that just so handy. They impart a lot of negative externalities on the people around them.

I hear you: infernal combustion engines produce a buttload of negative externalities. So does everything. If I could wave a magic wand and get all the normies into townhomes in walkable neighborhoods, I absolutely would (in no small part because it would get them and their nightmare mass-produced suburbs out of my daily experience).

What I'm failing to convey is an opinion that homogenizing humans and their experiences is a dangerously totalitarian approach to social design. One of my favorite things about the internal combustion engine is the freedom of choice it buys pretty much everyone: an auction car is cheap, and can get you out of trouble in a pinch.

To zoom out though, I suspect that we disagree fundamentally on the cornucopian/eschatonian axis tho. Even harder to reconcile than bluecult/redcult!

Things are worse when you get to the details. The cars try to stay at 20-80% charge, so off the bat you somewhat “lose” 40% of the actual full stated range. And charging takes hours, not minutes, and charging stations don’t want you to leave the car there for a long time so you then have charge anxiety that forces you to unplug and move the car after exactly say 3 or 4 hours. The whole process is a bit anxiety producing.

> category 3 but needed to do a rare long road trip

In fact, we know people with an EV for commuting and chores, plus an ICV for long travel.

(Of course this is exactly a slice of that "cat.3" for which such arrangement makes sense - it may possibly count many, but those "cat.1" and "cat.2" do exist. To be fair, there will also exist "cat.4" people who live in environments where cars are not a daily need.)

Or 4) You could charge at home but you have a long commute and forget to charge enough that range can become a problem.

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