Edmunds EV Charging Test: How fast does each EV charge? | Hacker News Reader

Edmunds EV Charging Test: How fast does each EV charge?

edmunds.com

34 pointsbelter68 comments

I think that's an underappreciated statistic.

Everyone's worried about the range, but the reality is that the range doesn't matter at all in city driving, and OTOH no BEV will have range long enough for a serious road trip, and it will have to recharge multiple times. And then the difference is whether the charging stops will be quick coffee breaks, or add frustrating hours to the trip time.

Here's another data source of 1000km trips in various BEVs with charging time:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6ucyFGKWuSQzvI8lMzv...

- With a fast-charging EV, a 1000km trip can be only half an hour slower than a cannonball run in an ICE car, or can be 5 hours slower in a Nissan Leaf, or 3 hours slower in a Toyota bz4x.

These tests are interesting to me as someone in the traffic congested Northeast US.

You can see cars with varying battery size x efficiencies competing similarly on the list. A variance of 40min on an 8-9hour trip isn't really that much considering I hit a 30min variance in a 90min trip around here due to traffic.

However in the US the problem you have is a much less mature charging network, especially for non-Tesla. An ideal future state is that EV fast chargers are as plentiful, well located, and closely spaced as gas stations.

Actual 150kW vs 350kW charge rates have never in practice been a problem for me versus fumbling with broken charging network apps, inoperable credit card readers, broken chargers, de-rated chargers, congested chargers, veering 10miles off the highway to find a charger, etc. Another factor is chargers being too far apart such that I need to take bathroom breaks in between rest stops that have chargers, and therefore double-stop. This would not happen with an ICE vehicle.

Ideal charging curves, conditioned battery, and max charge rates will be dividing factors in performance once the above is sorted out in US..

Long range EV’s are already at 5+ hours of driving at highway speeds, adding a single 60% charge (20% to 80%) and your talking well over 8 hours or ~1,000km which is longer than what most people do in a single day.

As such battery capacity is a huge deal on road trips assuming you can charge to full overnight and don’t excessively speed.

Not sure where you get these numbers, bjt a 600km range is 480km when charging to 80%, and you don't wait until 0 range to try to find a working fast charger.

That means 600km becomes 400km or less at 80% charges, and when you drove 140km/hr or more, the acceptable speed in many US states, that means less than 3hrs, and 600km isn't rated at 140km/hr speeds!

In other words, EVs don't work for long range driving.

Some may drive slow, or not count the 10 minutes to get on/off road and find a charger, and the 20 minutes to hook up and charge, and the potential to not find a free charger.. but I did.

And when I used these sensible, real world values, a trip from Quebec to California, which I take from time to time, changed from 3 days, to 8.

Lots of people drive like this. Lots. Especially Canucks wanting to escape snow, darkness, and wolves.

I've seen all the replies before, and all of them take some random thing, which I base on reality, averages, and fact, and try to pretend that ot doesn't matter.

But it does.

As others have said, if you are city driving only? Great! And many families have two cars, and that's another great place for an EV. One EV, on gas.

And we will get there range wise. We're just not even close yet, for long drives.

My personal experience (model y lr) is 4 hour trips are the sweet spot and anything over 6 hours becomes a drag. I can reliably go over 200 miles @ 80mph without charging but after the first charge you have to stop every 100 miles or less. When we do long cross country trips (8+ hours per day) we take the gas car.

140km/h is automatically reckless driving in many states like VA. In only 15 out of 50 states can you hit 140kph without doing 17+ mph over the speed limit.

Also, if all you’re doing is speeding down interstates all day what’s the point? Might as well just fly.

I've seen all the replies before, and all of them take some random thing,

See, this is the problem.

Two random things this time, which are not based upon reality.

1) Driving distance

You missed the part about being a Canuck, and escaping the winter.

This means I, and more than a million other Canadians, typically take our cars. Why? Well if you're gone for 3 or 4 months, a car rental is far more expensive than just taking your own car.

And this applies for even shorter timed trips too. Not to mention, the amount of luggage you can haul.

And no, you don't have a better way. And no, renting a car doesn't make sense. I know. We know. We're the ones doing it, and we're not dumb.

It's an enormous cost savings to drive.

(Love how you tried to invalidate my statement that electric cars have no legs, by instead saying it's just silly to drive long distance(just fly!))

2) Speed limit

It may be reckless driving in your state, and perhaps others, but it sure isn't everywhere. Otherwise, 25% of the cars I drive with on my trips are all looking for that same charge. And by that I mean, I'm barely speeding.

But it doesn't really matter, now does it? Because a) everyone is doing at least 10 mph over, and b) I do 140km/hr.

And you still hit extra wind drag, and therefore reduced range specs as a result. And yes, moving from 100 to 140km/hr makes a massive time distance on long trips.

Always, people with random points that really aren't relevant.

There is no need to defend electric cars. They have their place, people are buying them, and range is slowly extending.

But for now?

Not for long trips.

If you really want to do those distances in an EV you can get about a 30% range boost from drafting. But for a trip you’re making twice a year an extra hour is hardly that big a deal. If you have both then sure use an ICE, but over 6 months you’ll save more time charging at home and avoiding gas stations than you spend on that road trip.

> Love how you tried to invalidate my statement that electric cars have no legs, by instead saying it's just silly to drive long distance

I was saying doing a road trip for well past 1,000km is an odd choice. It seems odd that 1 million Canadians can be gone from home for 3-4 months and what have second houses?

Edit: Looks like 40% of Canadians wintering in Florida drive. So yea it’s a thing, but not the most common choice. https://www.thestar.com/life/travel/travel-smart-driving-sou...

But for a trip you’re making twice a year an extra hour is hardly that big a deal.

That's not your call, for it's my deal. And 3 days to 8 days, as I said, is indeed a big deal.

And here we are again, with you hand-waving away my needs and requirements.

No, your way isn't better. It's worse. For me.

But that's not the point. The point is, electric cars have no legs.

And at a 40% estimate, that's 1/2 a million Canucks driving. And you try to wave away this number, by arguing as if this the only reason anyone ever drives long distances!

It's rare you claim. Well, no it isn't.

It's very common to drive more than 1000km, for many many people, although I realize you're not used to it.

Here's the thing, when people say they need the range, and that electric cars currently don't make sense for them?

They're absolutely, unarguably correct. They're correct, because requirements aren't met, and that's that.

8 days is silly, stock EV’s can do 2,800 miles in 2 days at the limit with multiple people doing so. I say 1,000 km per day as the edge of comfortable cruising because I know people that break up 700km trips over 2 days and I that’s roughly the point where most people I know fly.

Anyway, US electric cannonball run using a stock Tesla 3 stands 2,835 miles in 48 hours 10 minutes set in 2019. It’s easily beatable, but people have generally swapped to other models.

Using a stock and in fact rented Tesla Model S Long Range on October 22, 2021, Manhattan to Portifino Inn in Redondo Beach, CA 42 hours, 17 minutes. Lucid air was 44 hours 32 minutes, but they ran into issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_challenge

Of course modified cars can beat this, lowering the model 3 shaved 3 hours and there’s plenty of options to push things further. But that’s well outside of what a normal road trip represents.

I said Quebec to California. That's farther that US coast to coast.

And how on Earth can you compare a cannonball run, with meticulously chosen routes?

Have you ever driven 3 days at 14 hours, at 130 to 140km/hr, each day? While eating, staying in hotels, refueling and so on? Yes, that turns in 8 days in an EV.

Look, I'm basically done with this thread.

>I said Quebec to California. That's farther that US coast to coast.

Ontario Quebec to Sacramento California is 2,809 miles just under the cannonball run distance. So your specific trip might be longer, but Quebec to California isn’t necessarily that far.

> Have you ever driven 3 days at 14 hours, at 130 to 140km/hr, each day? While eating, staying in hotels, refueling and so on? Yes, that turns in 8 days in an EV.

I’ve done 35 hours of driving out of 36 hours in a row only leaving the car at gas stations and even using a piss bottle.

As to EV’s over 3 days it might increase your trip by 3-6 hours depending on what stops you normally make and force you to pice a hotel with charging, perhaps pushing you to 4 days but that’s about it. There’s simply no way you’re seeing 8 days while driving an EV 130kph vs 130-140kph for an ICE.

Not sure I have a long range EV with the Ioniq 5. But in the winter with precoditioning I basically only get 2 1/2 hours. You can't run the battery to 0, precoditioning sucks up a ton of energy, and you need to get to a fast charger.

IMO long range starts at 400+ EPA meanwhile the Lucid air is over 500. But 2.5 hours vs a 303 EPA EV is low. Resistive heaters at 32f can cost you 25% range vs 6% with a heat pump so that could be your issue.

Two tips that may help is preheating your car while still plugged in and doing a partial preconditioning before charging on your road trip. That or your driving habits, speeding has diminishing returns when it costs you range.

Most people I know do 12 hour days when they roadtrips. They often pull into a drive through for lunch and then right back down the road.

Some will do 30+ hours straight, only stopping when they get gas. That is your baldder better make it to the next gas station and once there you need to not only use the restroom, but also find whatever you are going to eat - when the gas tank is full the car leaves. This is not safe, but it is done often.

Time to add 100 miles is probably the best gauge of road trips. That is a good number to stop at for a break (cars are 200-300 - but this is too long). 15-20 minutes every 100 miles is a good amount of time to force someone to walk around to charge - this time is about health. However if your times to much above that people have places to be and EVs are getting in the way. (I'm assuming that charging infrastructure supports that - it isn't quite there everywhere but that is coming fast)

Car are cheap once you have one (most of the costs are fixed so even if it sits in the driveway you still pay the cost), and so where I live in the mid west long road trips like the above are common - flying ends up being very expensive and doesn't save a lot of time at best, and at worst you miss a transfer and end up someplace you don't want to be for a few days. Trains are in theory possible, but also expensive and doesn't run great schedules.

When you start talking 10+ hour road trips flying or even taking the is more competitive as you need to include maintenance on your car. And really would you drive that long for such low pay as a job? It’s just not worth it in my social circle.

On the other hand spending a day casually driving back roads is kind of fun, and you’re going to spend time traveling either way so more reasonable road trips still exist.

Flying my family out visit my inlaws over christmas this year would cost $5000. I'd like to avoid the time driving, and if it was me I probably would, but the additional costs of the whole family make it not affordable. Car maintenance doesn't cost that much. While flying is a day faster in the best case, I've been stuck in a city I didn't want to be at because weather caused a missed connection (the airline wouldn't have 5 empty seats on a plane for a week - lots of last minute headache trying to find a different option to get to the funeral on time - driving puts me much more in control of this)

When I'm at work my company paid for flights, but even then many will tell you if it is only 12 hours to drive, just rent a car: flying is a headache and doesn't really save enough time to be worth it. (if you are going to/from a major hub then flying is great, but we often go between minor cities, which means several hours at various airports)

Ouch, 5,000$ for a family of 5 to travel ~1,000 miles x 2 with lots of notice seems crazy to me, but I live near a major airport.

So for me it’s generally fly to whatever the closest major airport is then rent a car and drive the last leg. That shaves most of the driving and avoids layovers etc while adding 3-4 hours for the flight + airport.

I can see you driving up to say 15h, but even then for a 20+ hour drive you might as well drive to a major airport fly and then drive the last leg.

In a few 7 or so hour drives in our ev, charging stops added probably an hour total. For how we drive it actually wasn’t bad at all and the chargers were (almost) all in nice spots where we could grab a coffee and use the restroom. I wish I could squeeze a bit more range out at interstate cruising speed though.

Has anyone done the math for how much "coffee" EV drivers consume vs ICE drivers? Wonder what the extra costs are for EV drivers while waiting for a charge.

haha I'd be surprised if I'm drinking more coffee than usual during those drives.... but any road trip I am definitely consuming more snacks and candy due to very poor self control.

Bjorn is the GOAT for EV testing

This doesn’t account for going on a road trip during a popular time. During the holidays my socials are full of people queuing up to an hour to get a spot at a Tesla charger to then start charging.

It appears they purposefully did not precondition any of the batteries. In fact, they don't even mention preconditioning. Why not?

On top of that, it appears that they conducted the tests using only CCS adapters, which in the US are now being dumped by every manufacturer in favor of NACS adapters, i.e., what Tesla uses. NACS isn't even mentioned. Why not?

I routinely take road trips on two long-range Teslas, and typically 1000+ miles/hour when the battery is preconditioned and has no more than 20-25% left.

In practice, I just type or say a destination and the car figures out if, when, and where it should charge to minimize travel time, automatically preconditioning the battery on its own. My usual experience is that I arrive, go to the bathroom, grab a drink and/or a snack, come back to the car, and voilà, the car has added 120-180 miles of range.

EDITS: Added comment about NACS.

This is Edmunds. They are better at making pretty graphs that look like they would be informative, than at actually informing.

The Out of Spec Motoring 10%/15 minute challenge is a much better practical measure: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_jw_Q1ikuE93fZjRZyx0...

It also highlights a lot of issues being mentioned by others here. The Taycan is amazing... when it isn't being let down by their sibling company (EA). The Model 3 base is really a bargain, with competitive speeds and one of the lowest prices.

And Tesla's 4680 batteries so far? Terrible.

> They purposefully did not precondition any of the batteries.

Where are you seeing that?

It looks like they use P3 for the testing, and while I'd like it if P3 was clearer about their testing approach it sounds to me like they do precondition? https://www.p3-group.com/en/p3-charging-index-comparison-of-...

NACS is just CCS charging over a differently-shaped plug.

Tesla charging is not NACS charging - older Tesla supercharger hardware generations will not support NACS.

1000+ mph? Must be a Tesla plaid.

The Model 3 can do that, and the Model Y as well on some occasions... but the catch is that it is 1000 rated miles. Real world mileage is much lower.

They can do their rated mileage -- if you don't mind driving 55.

Yeah, I know. It makes perfect sense too, since "rated" is basically like "combined mileage". But I rarely supercharge in situations where I will be doing 55 mph.

I probably need to look at their methodology, but my Model 3 hit 1017mi/hr at a 250kW station this month. With Tesla, on a long trip, the battery will pre-condition itself (heating I believe) to allow for faster charging rates. To be fair the number I quoted above, was with a single-digital SOC and a pre-conditioned system. Nevertheless, my real world experience is nearly 2x what Edmunds is reporting.

I routinely take road trips on two long-range Teslas, and that's my experience as well: 1000+ miles/hour when the battery is preconditioned and has less than 20-25% left.

The beautiful thing is that, when I'm driving, anytime I tap the supercharger button on the screen and click on a nearby supercharger, the car will precondition the battery on its own for maximum charging efficiency. I don't have to do anything!

for road trips, I just type or say a destination and the car figures out if, when, and where it should charge to minimize travel time, and it automagically preconditions the battery on its own. My usual experience is that I arrive, go to the bathroom, grab a drink and a snack, come back to the car, and voilà, it's added 120-180 miles of range.

Isn’t that true only if

1. You plug the Supercharger into the navigation system, so it knows it’s going to one? If you just hit up a convenient stop, it won’t.

2. Your trip to the Supercharger is long enough for it to matter. If it’s nearby, the preconditioning doesn’t seem to get it warm enough by the time you get there.

At least that was my experience in a rental.

Yes. I was editing my comment to say the same as you were writing your response!

In practice, I just type or say destinations and let the car figure out if, when, and where to supercharge.

Is that the “peak” rate? Or your average rate? The article is about the latter. Additionally, it uses the actual measured average efficiency of driving for calculating miles, not what the car itself reports (teslas tend to be far too optimistic here)

Exactly - one of the important things about actually testing the average rate is that different cars will have very different charging curves. Over a 30 minute charge, one car may have a high peak rate but will taper off quicker leaving a slower overall charge.

Knowing starting battery temperature would go a long way to interpreting the results here. You could assume they all started the same, but it would be nice to know for sure.

Nowhere do they describe initial starting conditions for the batteries / vehicles besides saying 10% SOC at start.

This is a nice chart, but what we need with EVs is modularity of the batteries. Imagine you're buying a 100kWh battery equipped EV when it's 15 year's old and the battery has 20% of its capacity, but it still weights the same as it was new. The rest of the car except few cosmetic issues is in great shape. If the battery consisted of 10 modules 10kWh each, you could sell for scrap all 10, add some money and buy let's say two new packs for a total of 20kWh (because you can't afford more now and you need a car for a 20 mile commute only). Your car becomes a lot lighter, you have an option to add capacity gradually, but even more importantly all the raw materials from the old battery that had only 20% of its capacity can now be recycled into 10 new 10kWh batteries.

If we are serious about moving to electric cars for environmental reasons we have to look beyond co2 and this could be one of very good first steps.

This is interesting although ostensibly charge speed matters only when driving past the full charge range as presumably most consumers charge overnight.

Presumably most consumers charge overnight on a day to day basis (because otherwise buying an EV probably doesn't make a lot of sense). But charging matters a lot on longer trips.

True, max charging speed is mostly theoretical and probably not experienced by most owners regularly. Until all of the car companies switched to the same plug, you need to look at the distribution and availability of fast chargers compatible with each car.

Even though some of these cars have charge speeds much higher than Tesla, it seems to be pretty difficult to actually find a compatible fast charger that is also working.

In all the reviews I've watched of new non-tesla road trips, everyone has awful charging experiences where they are stuck waiting at slow chargers.

Many people simply cannot charge over night. Many reasons for this. For example :living in an apartment building with no private parking and no charging.

Where does the huge difference in charging losses come from? Tesla, for example, is 10x lower than most of the cars at the top.

I think they tested without preconditioning the battery. Teslas integrated nav and charging network are both designed to make that not happen on a road trip. Also, those at the top of the list are 800v instead of 400v. Which means you need to find a 800v charger, which is a whole other aspect of the issue. Lastly we don't know to what degree any of these cars are protecting battery longevity.

> I think they tested without preconditioning the battery

This sounds feasible, I didn't think of that one!

Aerodynamics mostly if you're talking about the Kw/h per 100 miles column

Probably because Tesla lies about their stats like actual range

This test is probably the most critical for everyday users IMO. The next wave of Graphene batteries are supposed to be able to charge significantly faster while handling the heat that goes along with it.

There’s a company in Australia working with Bosch that I’ve been watching for a couple of years for this reason. I believe they are projecting 2025.

Fast charging is important. However, getting the most out of a level 2 charger is also important. My Ioniq 5 can't pull more than 6.5kw because of faulty hardware in the vehicle (I think the inverter over heats and the circuitry shuts off, or with more recent firmware will rate limit the power). You should be able to pull 9.6kw (I think) with a 40A circuit - so Hyundai's hardware problem leaves a lot of juice on the table. And that matters if you want to charge with a level 2 while when you are traveling.

When would that actually matter for a road trip? 6kW vs 9.6kW, both should charge your car overnight, if you’re at a hotel or something.

well, as someone who has used my EV at ski mountains - every hour of charge counts!

This is neat and all, but in my experience in the northeast, the bottleneck isn't the car, it's the fast charger itself.

I've done EA, EvGo, and sometimes ChargePoint with one of the cars in the upper half of this list. I never see the 250 or 350kW fast chargers go above 120-160.

The bottleneck isn't the car, it's the charger network. I'd like to see them test the various networks at different times of day with different occupancy rates and tell people what they would really expect.

For eGMP cars the temperature makes a lot of difference.

I regularly hit the advertised 18 minutes/230kW charging when it’s >20C outside, but in colder weather it’s stuck at 80kW until it the battery heats up.

I love the effort Ford is putting into their EV offerings, and Farley seems to get it better than the other legacy auto CEOs. Ford leveraged their two most powerful brands (F-150 / Mustang) to enter the EV market. I contrast this to GM's resurgence to the space with hummer... A brand they discontinued after a tumultuous 2008.

That said, Ford aligning on 150kW chargers across their EV portfolio is a miss. I really hope 250kW is road mapped for next gen Ford EVs when they adopt NACS.

Their vehicle architecture & derating setup only seems to max out at 150 kW so far?

I've been researching the ford mustang mach-e and the NCM li-ion batteries max out around 115kW charging and the newer LFP ones max out at 150 kW. Expect the next gen to be different though.

At least in the earlier models there's supposedly less temperature sensing to figure out a higher speed compared to say Tesla.

Unfortunately they didn't publish the testing conditions. This might not match your own experience with any of these cars, charging speed depends on battery temperature.

Edmunds is mostly in California and so while they do real world testing, it is real world for where their editors live. (they need everyone to do long term testing and report how it really did as they drive in the real world).

The above is all as I can figure out from reading articles. Their about page doesn't actually state any of that. As such I might be wrong.

This kind of obsessing is kind of incongruous with reality given the fact that there is already one known clear leader in terms of massive, growing, and healthy charger network and overall real world charging speed.

If there is a winner already not only in terms of charger network and speed, but also in terms of the best features, many enabled by for example network connectivity, cameras, an onboard beast of a computer, and a great software ecosystem with feature filled updates.. why even dive into one admittedly important aspect of the also-ran cars?

The only reason this information would be helpful is if someone for some reason was walled off from buying the one brand of car that is far and away beyond the others in most aspects.

Too bad they only have these high-spec cars. Many small and/or cheaper EVs barely support more than 100 KW charging.

This is a bad chart that really tells you nothing. Could you imagine, for example, measuring how fast you can fill up a car in miles/hour? It's a nonsense measure.

A better measure is the 0 to 80% time with a 350kW charger. That'll actually tell you how long you can expect to wait at a charger. But that's also not as flashy a number as "1000 miles per hour charging!"

> A better measure is the 0 to 80% time with a 350kW charger. That'll actually tell you how long you can expect to wait at a charger. But that's also not as flashy a number as "1000 miles per hour charging!"

No it's not, because different cars have different capacities. This measure standardises that.

It also isn't a number I can use to compare cars. Each car will have a different battery. A car with a large battery may fill much faster if you give it a 800kw charger, but since the charger is the limit it takes a while - but in the amount of time it takes to charge a car with a small battery the large battery car would take more charge and get farther. Or something else.

Once I've selected a car I'm interested in the 20-80% charge time (that seems to be the recommended fill levels), but until then I'm comparing cars with different batteries and I need something use to compare and 0-80% at 350kW time is not that.

This is a fantastic unit, because it normalizes charging speed and vehicle efficiency.

It’s directly proportional to time you’ll have to wait to drive X distance.

If they reported time to fill up the battery, it would vary between battery sizes, and overall time spent charging would be different due to different number of charging stops.

If they reported charging power (kW), it would mean different range depending on vehicle efficiency.

This is the best unit. You know how far you travel, you can easily calculate how long you will charge.

> Could you imagine, for example, measuring how fast you can fill up a car in miles/hour?

No. First, an ICE car's fuel tank is filled up in a small fraction of an hour; "miles/minute" would be a more relevant unit. But more importantly, because the speed of fuel fill up depends only on the fuel station's pump, not on any engineering feature of the car itself.

> measuring how fast you can fill up a car in miles/hour

But that’s exactly what my EV’s app shows. (-:

Then the Prius would win hands-down since it can fill up it's tiny hybrid battery in like 30 seconds on a downhill.

Yeah, these are theoretical lab tests. Good luck actually finding a series of working, available fast chargers on a real road trip anywhere. I really want an Ioniq5 but I'll wait until they switch to the Tesla style plugs because the support is currently not there.

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