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Comment by christiangenco | Hacker News Reader

My wife and I own a single family home, a gas-powered car (Toyota Rav4), and an electric car (a standard range Tesla model 3). The electric car is much more convenient for us for city driving and the gas-powered car is much more convenient for road trips.

Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy. For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently.

Refuelling the Tesla is automatic and effortless. After you park at home, if the charge is <40% then plug it in. The next time you need to drive somewhere it will be full. It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station.

Road trips with the Tesla, however, are currently impractical: we end up adding another ~30% to the drive time. With only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal. Range anxiety also becomes a much bigger factor driving through more rural areas and your route choices weigh supercharger locations above everything else.

We've got used to the self driving convenience of the Tesla but the Comma[1] on our Rav4 is just about as good for highway driving.

1. https://comma.ai/

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This is the text version of those old infomercials where someone tries to open a jar of pickles and flubs it so badly they end up killing their small dog and going to the hospital with injuries. But for 3 easy payments of $19.99, here's a device that will save your dog and your time!

you're free to describe gassing up as this arduous event that takes all this time, planning, and mental energy, but that doesn't make it true, and while your wife may have anxiety around gas stations, most women don't unless they're gassing up in a strange place late at night. It's generally a non-issue.

You can be pro-EV without trying so hard to vilify gas.

Indeed. All I need to know about gas is that I paid $50 this morning for ~450km of range. While my EV would take multiple charges to get that range, the total cost would be only a few dollars.

On a purely fuel cost/KM basis, but you don’t save money on the long term with an EV. You have to do a LOT of driving to make up the difference between the vehicle costs and infrastructure costs.

I don't know, I really hate gas station trips. It's not, like, a dealbreaker, but if I had a car that I could just plug in in the garage, it would be a fairly sizable improvement. Plus it's expensive as hell, 10 EUR per 100km.

But plugging into a garage outlet isnt available to everyone. Take that garage outlet away and require yourself to go to a location and sit for an hour to charge. Is it still better?

That's a bit of a fallacy, because "a location" will probably be "the place where I parked my car", given how easy it is to transport electricity and how profitable it is to install a cheap charger on the sidewalk. I'd very much rather go to "a location" of "where I happened to park" than a dedicated gas station (which isn't very far, but isn't right where my car is).

> That's a bit of a fallacy, because "a location" will probably be "the place where I parked my car"

Maybe. The closest public charging station to our house is in the parking lot of a semi-abandoned office complex a mile away. It has the best rate but my partner refuses to use it, both for the boredom factor and the isolated location factor.

The second closest is 5 miles away at a Whole Food which yes, the car would be parked there sometimes anyway. But having to spend an extra hour sipping coffee at WF waiting for the car gets old pretty fast.

Sure, that's now (the closest EV charging spot is pretty far away for me too). The convenience factor for "when everyone has EVs" is much larger than the one for "when everyone has gas cars", as in the former, the refuelling station is going to be much closer, on average, than in the latter.

Yes, I can see that becoming the case at some point. For the past decade (the time we've had EVs) and even today, it's not though (at least around here). So EV ownership is still a daily logistical exercise.

True, if you don't have a garage or other way to charge when parked, it's an issue. Over here we have chargers in many super market/mall parking lots, so you can charge while shopping for groceries, which is very convenient.

If you can’t charge at home it’s an issue. Charging while running errands again will not work (what if you do almost everything online? amazon fresh, etc)

The only way this works is reducing 0-100 charge time to 5 mins.

This is the reality for me now. I have a charging station about a mile away, and another a couple miles away. But I’m still supposed to find an additional 1-2 hours per week to charge my vehicle?

I think you've never experienced a long commute without gas stops.

I take 9+ hour trips (1 way, so 9+ back) multiple times per year.

try again.

That isn't even remotely relevant to my comment, in context. :)

I think you are missing the point though.

I haven’t had to ‘go get gas’ for 4 years. People probably argued “getting water from the well isn’t that hard compared to maintaining all this infrastructure”… but none of us want to go back to that. Completely losing a class of chore is freeing, even if it wasn’t that horrible anyway.

For long distance trips, I mostly agree with you. My habit was always to stop every hour to get a drink and stretch legs so it doesn’t bother me as much. For your 11 hr trip, it would probably add 2 hours.

I'm sorry, did you compare walking miles to a well to gassing up a vehicle?

yeah, no. A minor convenience vs running water is not comparable, stop being dishonest.

I'd assume that the parent post compared walking outside your door to a well in your own yard, as used to be the common practice in the countryside, which indeed takes much less time than gassing up a vehicle but obviously not something you'd want to do if you can have indoor plumbing instead.

I hate going to the gas station

> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy.

I have never seen anyone say fueling a gas car needs planning and mental energy. Unless the first car you ever drove was an EV, it is hard to believe that it NOT almost a second nature to drive to a nearest gas station as soon as your car beeps about remaining mile range. This is greenwashing at its finest.

But it does. Some of us have gotten burned by putting poor-quality gas in our cars. Now I have to make sure I find a "good" gas station. Guess what? Those aren't as plentiful. Usually I have to go out of my way to get to one. That's in the middle of running errands when I have other things to do and don't necessarily have the time to go out of my way to go to a gas station.

I also live in an urban area that seems to have fewer pumps per capita than other urban areas I've visited. This results in lines at the pump, which are exacerbated by automakers not standardizing on which side of the car to place the fuel filler. So cars end up queuing up from two different directions for the pump - and I've seen fights break out over people believing other drivers had cut in front of them at the pump.

Let's not even talk about trying to get gas during rush hour when getting in and out of the station may be problematic and exacerbates all the other problems noted above. So you go home to wait out the traffic but you still have to go back out on a separate trip just to get gas.

So yeah, that requires planning and mental energy. I'd love to get an EV and just come home and plug it in and not worry about it.

For the 2-3 long trips I take per year, I rent a car anyway. That way I upgrade to a nicer, bigger car than I drive on a day-to-day basis, I don't have to worry about breaking down on the trip, and if I do end up buying an EV, I don't have to worry about charging on a trip. It's the way to go.

Yeah, people will say none of this matters, but talk to people in the gas station biz and you find out differently. Which side of the street or traffic circle the station on has a huge impact.

It turns out, even 10-30 seconds during a commute matters to people. I've personally met people who don't like using a particular station that is basically within a subdivision. Why? Because like most drivers, they fuel up more often on the commute home than out, and this station requires turning left onto a residential street.

It is a small annoyance, but it really is nice not having an annoyance. :)

> Yeah, people will say none of this matters, but talk to people in the gas station biz and you find out differently. Which side of the street or traffic circle the station on has a huge impact.

It certainly doesn’t bother me, but given there are people who will drive 100 MPH to save 3 mins on a commute, I can see how some would be impatient and act this way.

> I also live in an urban area that seems to have fewer pumps per capita than other urban areas I've visited. This results in lines at the pump, which are exacerbated by automakers not standardizing on which side of the car to place the fuel filler.

EVs have also not standardized the location of the charging port, and it takes substantially longer to charge an EV vs fuel a gas car, so doesn’t an EV exacerbate your issues here if you don’t have home charging?

Everybody seems to like home charging, which makes sense, but it’s not available to everybody. So what are these people to do? Spend an extra 1-2 hours a week at a charging bay? That’s a hard sell, spending an hour or more per week doing something that used to take 5 mins.

If you don't have home charging then you're probably not driving an EV right now. You're waiting for new battery tech to provide for faster charging. Meanwhile, there's only been about 6% penetration of EV's into the homeowner market so it's not like there isn't growth for years to come just in that market alone.

You didn’t answer the question.

> But it does.

I'm not anti-EV (we're on our third one, over 10 years!) but I'm not a fanboy either, I try to be very objective on them. There's good and there's bad. The expenses are higher than some will want you to believe, but there's benefits.

If you want to promote EVs it's good to be objective. Claiming that filling up a gas car is a major hassle doesn't pass the smell test. Gas stations are everywhere so you never need to plan for it or go out of your way or wait more than 5 minutes.

Doesn't pass the smell test? I commented on the real issues I have and yet you're here saying it doesn't pass the smell test? Who are you to tell me I'm not experiencing the problems I experience?

I can't presume to speak for you, so I assume you are experiencing those things as problems.

However, your experience is so far out of the norm that it does not translate to convincing people to buy an EV. For just about everyone who drives, finding a gas stations and filling up is not something that requires planning or mental energy. It's so easy that it's lost in the noise of daily tasks.

Um, don't fill up at Brand X on the road? My millennial personal trainer said her dating prospects couldn't even change a tire let alone do an oil change, now I understand just how bad the situation was for her until she married a rocket engineer.

Smaller battery EV means slower to charge (until battery tech evolved well). There should be a market for smaller battery EVs for who rarely drive long, so please don't say that every EVs should have big batteries and overkill cooling system.

I have a SR+ and have done about a dozen trips from Lake Tahoe to San Diego and back about 10 hours in a ICE car and 11.25 in my SR+

You really should never be charging past 70% (the exception being before climbing in sub freezing temps in the sierras) on road trips and instead plan to make much shorter charging stops more often. I’m normally out of a supercharger in 15-20 min if I precondition the battery before charging and it’s about the time my wife needs to stop for a pee break anyways so it’s kinda great to stop. Use the restroom and be ready to go again. If you are charging 45 min you are doing it so wrong.

This entire idea just underscores the inane mental burden for the average person just to drive their car long distance.

Maybe it would be, if the Tesla nav system didn't do most of that work for me.

Great, now I need to stop even more often...where do I sign up? If your wife has to pee for 15-20 minutes, that often, she should probably see a doctor. Last week I drove my V8 F-150 from Raleigh to near Baltimore Maryland (~310 miles) with 4 adults and a child, a bed full of suitcases and hockey equipment (for a tournament) and we stopped exactly once for coffee. I filled the gas tank in Raleigh, and didn't fill it again until we were almost halfway back to Raleigh on the way home.

Give me 500 miles of realistic range and a 10 minute full-tank "fill-up" in an EV and I'll consider it. Until then, it's simply not going to happen for me.

Yeah that drive already sucks, stopping more than necessary would make it worse. We drive from Raleigh to around State College a few times a year and usually make one stop to eat and stretch our legs. A four year old and a dog sitting around waiting for a charge would add on to that stress.

> shorter charging stops more often

But this is what makes it so painful. You need to map out available working charging station at short intervals which adds a lot of extra driving and stopping.

On a road trip I drive the full range of the gas tank (~450 miles) nonstop and then stop for 5 minutes at the next exit which invariably has a working gas station.

The Supercharger network is cool. But I can go 300ish miles in my class B RV before refueling as opposed to 120ish miles in my Mach E. It's 10 minutes to refuel my RV vs 45 minutes to 2 hours depending on the state of the charger (ElectrifyAmerica) or how long I have to wait. That was how I made the decision to wait for 400 mile range (likely a Silverado F-150 EV and yes I haul stuff, I build things, and my RV makes for a crap pickup truck but I get by) before returning to long range travel with an EV.

A friend circumnavigated the United States in a 300 mile Range Tesla so I don't doubt what's possible here.

> It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station.

This is a big reason I haven't even considered an EV. How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV.

My vehicles are first and foremost utilitarian; I use them to get from A to B. EVs make that simple equation "complicated", and I have other issues maintaining a household that demand my attention.

I suppose it depends on the length of your commute and what vehicle, but I’ve found that a standard Level 1 charger plugged into a regular outlet, if plugged in all of the time, was more than enough for daily EV commuting. Slow charging is also better for the battery. A lot of people likely don’t need a high powered charger install.

> Slow charging is also better for the battery.

My understanding is that this is largely a myth, at least with modern BEVs with intercooled battery packs. My understanding is that modern battery packs can Level 2 charge with no additional degradation, because they don't get any hotter than during a Level 1 charge.

Level 3 charging is different, but even then, the degradation in battery life isn't as much as you think -- I've heard numbers as low as just 3% faster degradation.

That makes sense, my experience is with a first gen VW e-golf which just has plain batteries- no cooling.

I actually do that with my phone- I use a fast charger with a peltier cooler, that can rapidly charge the phone while keeping it cold. Family/friends think I'm crazy for caring about it, lol

Charging at home is difficult compared to driving to a gas station?

This is all moot. Sodium ion and lfp and newer battery techs will increase range and drop the initial purchase price of EVs under what an ICE can compete with

Some snap in time clickbait article won't change the technological tsunami. Even if the US drags it's feet, the rest of the world will eagerly adopt them. EVs promise energy independent and cheap transport combined with wind / solar.

Every automaker knows this to differing levels of organizational denial, but they all feel it coming.

You realize this isn’t the first EV hype cycle yes? They’ve been tried before and as the article states the early adopter market is saturated worldwide.

There are some very real problems that can’t be solved by battery tech, and only by removing the battery and switching to an alternative fuel source.

The only reason EVs are succeeding now given all their shortcomings is because we’re being forced into them. Remove that force and I don’t see EVs seeing mass adoption.

Oh there were 400 mile cars cheaper than ice cars before?

Look Tesla can already build EVs at price parity with ices, they are currently sitting here n their profit margin. This isn't a hype cycle, Chinese EV makers and battery suppliers have 200+ wh/kg lfp and 150 wh/kg sodium ion in mass production scaling.

This isn't a hype cycle, there are entire car companies in mass production with equal to ice costs now, and the cheaper than ice can ever be is in production scaling.

Yes it won't be over night, but if you are doing production planning, financing, stock prediction and other 5-10 year planning, the writing now on the wall.

This is without solid state and sulfur techs. Im only talking about the CATL LFP and sodium ion techs. Those alone will beat ices on cost at initial purchase, to say nothing of cheaper permile "fuel" and maintenance costs.

And keep me n me and wind / solar is STILL dropping in cost, under what any old school power generation method has been. EV costs will only drop.

" Very real problems"

Please name one

> Oh there were 400 mile cars cheaper than ice cars before?

Neither gas nor electric cars got that kind of range when they first launched in the early 1900s. But as is true today, gasoline engines got about 20% more range than the electric and were easy to fill.

> This isn't a hype cycle, there are entire car companies in mass production with equal to ice costs now, and the cheaper than ice can ever be is in production scaling.

As there was before. Entire car companies went out of business because they chose to make electric cars instead of gas.

> Very real problems

I’ll name a few:

Battery decreases range with ambient temperature changes

Cannot refuel outside of a charging station

Battery degrades with every charge

Fire hazard having that much energy in a battery that it’s not an if it will fail but a when

Towing anything

>Charging at home is difficult compared to driving to a gas station?

It absolutely could be. Ever lived in an apartment?

it depends on how much charging you want. all EV's can charge off of a slower 115vac 15amp circuit. At my last place I had a dedicated 40amp 230vac socket much like you'd have installed for a big electric heater in a garage or a pool heater or a dryer. Good recharge times which I actually have only needed once in my life.

At my current place I'm just using an extension cord to my outdoor outlet and I give it the 1500 watt option. You can even cut that in half if you don't want the "my this cord is warm.." effect.

In the end, the slower charge is the better charge, so my laziness has been winning. I don't see installing a 230vac socket any time soon given how well it's been working.

I've got an older phev that originally only got 14 miles of pure electric @ up to 79 mph, it's battery is down to about 9 miles expected. And that isn't a lot, but it is enough for 90% of my trips around town. Where you REALLY see this working well is if you have to go out every day to pick something or someone up locally. The amount of fuel burned on warmup cycles and local trips is not insubstantial.

The gas tank needle just LOVES to move with every small trip otherwise.

I sometimes go months without buying gas using that tiny miniscule range.

the question I can never find anyone answering is pretty straightforward.

is it cheaper paying the electricity for charging? I can't imagine it is, but while everyone talks about things like only having to gas up once every 4 months now, it's not as if the electricity comes for free.

There are several people in this thread explaining it is about 10x cheaper.

A base Tesla 3 is 70kWh * 5¢/kWh (my Toronto overnight rate) is ~$3.50 CAD for ~400km range. Gas in my Volvo C30 would be 400km * 8l/100km * $1/l = $32 CAD.

If you drive every day, a plugin-electric can save you a LOT of money. And that's before the savings in oil, brakes, and other maintenance.

I'm stuck with street parking, so it is much less appealing to me.

EVs still have brakes.

Yes, but they wear slower since more energy is captured instead of wearing the rotors and pads.

> There are several people in this thread explaining it is about 10x cheaper.

Well, no. It depends on all the variables. It may or may not be cheaper.

Your case is quite extreme with nearly free electricity! Sure, EV will be cheaper to run for sure.

Here in California with overnight rates around 30c/kWh and day rates over 70c/kWh, the numbers come out different.

Ouch. I forget how mad California is. No wonder rooftop solar is so attractive.

Peak rates are ~20¢/kWh here, but there is a largish fixed per-customer monthly hit for various debts and obligations. And people regularly complain we're the highest cost province in Canada. 70¢/kWh (in BIG dollars!!!) is just insane.

It's "free" if you have excess solar energy you're not burning on something else.

It’s not free, you have to include the price of the solar panels you bought excess of in the cost because you can just remove those and sell them if they’re not needed. You essentially installed greater solar capacity to fuel an EV, so not free!

Selling solar panels is going to recover very little of the cost. Most of the cost is the labor and permitting. A lot of the rest is the wiring and inverters. Might as well use the excess power you generate to run a space heater/crypto miner, or net-meter it to the grid.

You could’ve avoided buying them. Point is, you can’t ignore the cost of something and proclaim that charging your EV is free.

Average US price for electricity is ~$.15/kwh. A Model 3 will use ~330 wh/mile at highway speeds, and if you charged _very_ inefficiently (level 1), you'd see gross of around 360 wh/mile.

Compared to a gas car that can get 40 mpg on the highway this works out to: 40 mpg == 1 gallon == ~$2.85 (current price here) == 0.07125/mile EV == .360 * .15 == .054/mile

Of course, if you have time of use rates, you might pay half that for the EV. If you drive in town, your efficiency might be more like 270wh/mile too.

Similarly, that MPG is... very arbitrary. But the bottom line is that most people are getting a significantly lower $/mile purely on energy usage.

Gasoline is very expensive. If it wasn't so expensive, we'd burn it to make electricity.

We do, it's called an alternator.

Well, yeah, and people use gas generators in remote places occasionally. But I meant at utility scale. :)

> is it cheaper paying the electricity for charging?

EV promoters will say it is always cheaper but you need to do the math. Depends on your fuel cost vs. electricity costs vs. your gas car mileage.

For example my first EV (Fiat 500) was more expensive to run than my gas car that got over 40MPG. This is in CA with extremely high PG&E electricity rates (but also high fuel costs).

So, it depends.

Also if you use public chraging stations they usually charge a premium for profit. You can see your local charging station rates on e.g. chargepoint website. Use the actual numbers and do the math to be sure.

> How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV.

Car dealerships will sell the hookups and have connections with local companies who will install for you. No effort required on your part .

Plug it into any AC outlet. I gain around 50 miles overnight, which is plenty for my commute/errands.

If you own a home, you should learn how to locate local trade workers you can trust. You're going to need an electrician eventually, might as well find one before an emergency.

> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy

Is there something about that RAv4 vehicle that makes fueling difficult? I have a Lexus, generally it tells me “hey! I’m low on fuel” so I stop at the next convenient gas station I see, fill it with gas in about 5 mins, and I am back on my way to wherever. Sometimes when I am feeling particularly rebellious, I happen to be driving by a gas station even before the car is low on fuel, and I stop and top it off in a few minutes and then am on my way to wherever.

Also, sometimes I’m driving and want a cup of coffee and stop at a coffee shop too…

> For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently

Parking lots are dangerous for women, yes. Purse-snatchers and carjackers exist. They all insist on carrying expensive iPhones that can be fenced, so there goes calling for help. Vehicles themselves are mobile rape cabins (ask Uber) and corpse storage lockers. It's a very vulnerable position for women.

But if your wife thinks a 2-minute refuel at a gas station is bad, wait'll she has to recharge the EV while out and about and can't make it to Walmart.

Some of those recharging lots make illicit gay cruising spots feel like Disney World-- we're talking an empty parking lot in a wooded area behind an office building after-hours, with nobody around to hear you scream.

I don't feel comfortable sitting around there.

I agree: if you a part of a two-parent household, who lives in a home with off-street parking where you can add a charger, the best of both worlds is one EV (Tesla) and one plug-in hybrid (e.g. Prius Prime or Rav 4 Prime). Then you only go to a gas station on longer trips.

What percent of the US population falls into this demographic? And what percent of this demo already has one EV?

If you hate filling up at a gas station and want the convenience of it at home then fill gas cans next time you go and bring them home. You can even keep one in the car for on-the-go refueling, something an EV can’t do.

>ith only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal.

If you ask my Eastern Europe wife, that's pretty much the way she needs to road trip lol. I think if we get it to 3hrs / 15 minutes break it would be perfect. 240km/40 minutes is a bit of a reach.

Your doctor will tell you stop more often than that. I haven't been able to find anything official though, but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons.

> but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons

DOT regulations for truck drivers is something like every 8 hours stop for 30 mins. This is the first I’ve heard stop every 2 hours which would drive me nuts if we were road tripping together.

this is how i road trip generally. i almost never drive more than 3 hours without stopping for coffee/lunch/dinner. And if its more than 300 miles 90% of the time i'm going to fly.

Any time i'm road tripping more than 3 hours i'm trying to find some cute little town along the way to stop in at. Usually these cute little towns have chargers.

I hope you're really good to that cousin. It's damn hard to get time with skilled contractors.

Also using a comma3x with a rav4. Checkout frogpilot, it is much better than openpilot.

https://github.com/FrogAi/FrogPilot

er... I'm pretty pro-ev, but I don't think you can reasonably generalize feeling so put-upon by the non-financial aspects of getting gas.

> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time

Sure.

> , planning

A little.

> , and mental energy.

C'mon now.

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