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Comment by TheLoafOfBread | Hacker News Reader

I did trip from London, UK to Southern Italy, Brindisi in Enyaq. By Google maps it should take 2 days (24 hours of driving, so 12 hours in 2 drivers/day). Charging dragged it on 4 days and we were charging on Ionity/Enel. So your 15 minutes is some kind of a sick joke.

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A doubling of travel time is harsh. But I'm wondering how you managed to charge so inefficiently (time wise). Could it be, that you traveled with the smallest Škoda Enyaq which only supports up to 50kW of charging rate?

I checked your route with abetterrouteplanner.com using two different Enyaq models. One with 50kW charging and one with 100kW+. Here are the travel times:

- Enyaq iV 50 (50kW charging): 33 hours

- Enyaq iV 80 (100kW charging): 26 hours

- Google Maps (w/o charging time): 22,5 hours

I think you just had the wrong car model for this kind of trip.

I have Enyaq iv80. Charging rate means nothing when there are chargers in France which just won't give you juice because reasons. So then you need to slowly crawl to another charger like a clown to have even chance to get there.

Additionally it was during December, so cold weather reduced range even more, therefore your estimation would be correct but for summer time.

My experience riding over 37k km in less than a year all around Europe with my Tesla Model Y hasn't been any like it (many trips, including from The Hague to Malmö, The Hague to Berlin, The Hague to Budapest passing by Vienna, and more trips than I can count to Belgium, twice to Switzerland, and also all the way South to Barcelona).

I think your car model isn't very appropriate for long distance travels, as most EVs. But there are some EVs out there that definitely can do it, especially all Teslas.

That is part of the problem though. With petrol, you can hop into anyone old car, and go where you want, as much as you want. With 5 minute stops every few hundred miles

That's ridiculous. My trip was from Ottawa Canada to Saskatoon. It goes through some seriously unpopulated territory, unlike yours. It does follow major highways, so there are Tesla superchargers along the route every 100-150 km or so. We'd stay at a hotel with charging overnight so start at 100%, drive for 2.5 hours and then bathroom/charge for 15-20 mins, drive another 2.5 and eat/charge for 40 or so, repeat the morning pattern in the afternoon, and then drive for another couple after supper before stopping at a hotel to charge while sleeping.

Canada has some good charging infrastructure. If you are driving a Tesla, even better, super chargers are the gold standard for EV charging, everything else is kind of unreliable.

So you're not charging back up to 100% until the overnight stop?

When I think about how I would do a long trip in an EV, I envision getting a full charge, because first, that's what I currently do with gasoline, and second, I want as much range as possible to account for unplanned detours and/or other unexpected issues.

AFAIK the charging rate slows down as the battery gets fuller. That's why all the fast charging metrics are like "30 minutes to charge to 60%" rather than "60 minutes to charge to 100%". So on a trip where you want to spend as little time charging, you want to stop charging before 100%.

Once or twice we did hit 100% because supper took longer than expected, but otherwise you never charge to 100%.

A critical component is the trip computer that knows about upcoming construction and charger status. On our first trip the Sault Ste Marie charger was down, and Sault Ste Marie <-> WaWa is the longest stretch between chargers because of a huge provincial park. But the car warned us about it and told us to make sure we were above 90% at Blind River.

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