Comment by worklaptopacct | Hacker News Reader

Comment by worklaptopacct | Hacker News Reader

I live in Germany and I've recently booked a cheap car with Hertz for a weekend trip. At the rental office, they offered me to upgrade to a premium EV for no additional cost, because most people rent a car for medium to long distance trips like I did, and the range, charging speed and charger availability makes driving an EV into too much of a hassle. We've had about 200 kilometers one way and a charger at the destination, so we went for it.

This made me think about the viability of EVs in places like Europe where inner-city driving is discouraged and there is a lot of public transit options. Among the people I know, if someone is thinking of buying a car, they plan to use it for leisure trips - public transport outside of major population centers tends to be unreliable and insufficient, and if you have kids, then it's straight out impossible to travel without a car. That's why convenience is king when people choose a car here - having to stop every 300-400 kilometers for an hour to charge your car is not something people would gladly plan for.

I guess that Americans might have different priorities, as everyone has a car that is being used within the metropolitan area most of the time, so this means more shorter trips with breaks that could be used for charging.

There are possible solutions.

There was an early Israeli car company where, rather than charging, they'd swap the battery. Faster than filling a tank of gas.

I don't think cars are worth owning unless you drive nearly every day. A car costs a couple of grand a year to own. That makes for a fair number of Uber / taxi trips and car rentals, with much less hassle. You can also get the right car for what you're doing; a 400km family trip usually wants more trunk and interior space than a trip to the Kwik-E-Mart.

If I lived in a city like you described, I wouldn't even consider owning a car. For those trips, I'd use the local car rental.

Coincidentally, my experience in the EU is the opposite: Long-distance rail is awesome, and a lot better than a 300km drive. The time I've seen people do that drive is waaay off the beaten path, where rail doesn't run anywhere close. So I guess it depends on what country you're in.

Nio has 10 battery swap stations in Germany.

https://www.electrive.com/2023/01/03/nio-counts-10-battery-s...

I was a participant in their research project, which was run somewhat like a BBS.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company) says ""Better Place filed for bankruptcy in Israel in May 2013. The company's financial difficulties were caused by mismanagement, wasteful efforts to establish toeholds and run pilots in too many countries, the high investment required to develop the charging and swapping infrastructure, and a market penetration far lower than originally predicted by Shai Agassi."

> having to stop every 300-400 kilometers for an hour

More like 20 minutes to charge that much in something like a model 3.

Indeed, that's not true that travelling long distance is too much of a hassle for most people, that's just fearmongging from the anti-EV crowd.

Sure, if you are the type with a superhuman bladder who can drive 1000 kilometers with no stop, then an EV will be slower.

But for most people, and especially if you are travelling with kids, the right EV (like the model 3 you suggest), will not make much of difference with a petrol cars. Sure you will be stopping between 20 to 30 minutes every 2 to 3 hours but you should probably do so regardless of the car engine type.

I did saw some unexpected drawbacks however:

- you have less options about where and when to stop

- Tesla chargers are often in malls and shopping centers, and I found those stops can actually become quite expensive when travelling with 2 shopping addicted teenage girls...

- stop often end up being longer than planned due to said teenagers not coming back in time once the car is ready...

What about queues in charging stations?

That 30 minute stop can easily become an unplanned hour stop.

In my own limited experience in Europe, yes, it indeed can happen occasionally, especially during the holiday rush if you are travelling a popular route. I haven't found it to be much an issue in practice. You can avoid the worse of it by planning ahead, shifting your departure time a bit and carefully choosing your route as the situation evolve in regard to charger capacity.

Still, even if that happen and each of your 3 stop adds extra half-hour wait, sure you waited an extra 1 and half hours but it's not like the ICE cars are as fast on those days either. There are traffic jams, 10 min queue at petrol station, 10 minutes queue for the restrooms, 20 minutes queue for your sandwich etc. Your stop in an ICE car will be longer too.

In the end, even on those high traffic days I found the experience of travelling with an EV more enjoyable than with an ICE car.

Can I just say, as an American who moved to Europe in 2022, the lines at gas stations are crazy to see! In the US, I had never had to wait for more than 1 or perhaps 2 cars to fill up, even right off the highway. Here, waiting seems to be common from what I've seen if you're traveling on a busy weekend. My experience driving has mostly been confined to the Benelux region, so perhaps it is different elsewhere on the continent.

I do like driving over the border to save 20% on fuel prices though!

It's really not as much of a problem as people make it out to be, at least on the US west coast where there is good supercharging infrastructure. A charging stop takes 15-20 minutes, which is the same as a gas/pee/snacks stop in a non electric car, and gets you ~200 miles of range. So you have to stop every 3-4 hours on average, which is again very normal.

In the UK and it is similar here if you live in a big city. A car is not worth the hassle, except when you have young kids (but people with kids tend to live in suburbs). I used to rent for trips.

I now live in a town, rather than a city of any size, and (apart from shopping) need a car mostly for trips between towns within the same county and a bit beyond which are fairly short but there is a lack of good public transport.

I think this is a situation that tends to get forgotten about by policy makers living in big cities - we cannot reduce car usage without either being unable to do a lot of things easily or without a huge improvement in public transport.

In Germany there's a good coverage of Ionity and Fastned, which have 300kW chargers. In Hyundai/Kia that supports these speeds recharging takes 20 minutes.

I've road tripped across Germany and France twice now, and it was easy.

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