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Comment by simonbarker87 | Hacker News Reader

We had a Polestar 2 as our only car for about 8 weeks at the start of the year, we knew we’d only have it for a short time so didn’t install a charger to the house.

It was a total nightmare, we had to think days ahead to any big trip to make sure we had enough charge to get us through and if we needed to charge en route it was expensive, slow and difficult to find a working charger.

We are back with an ICE vehicle now and it’s so much easier.

It’s great that we are moving toward an EV future but right now you need a dedicated charger and also be prepared to massively pay over the odds on a per mile basis if you have to charge en route somewhere.

Also every charger needs to be tap and pay and every charger should be usable by any EV, screw those Podpoints in train stations that don’t appear in the app and clearly need you to be in some secret club to access.

EDIT: I'm based in the UK

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For sure you need at least an outdoor socket, so you can charge over night.

Google tells me the Polestar 2 has 330 miles of range, so you could do the 5h30m drive from Swansea to Norwich on a single charge - if you leave home with a full charge.

But if you can't leave home with a full charge? If you've got a complicated schedule, like using a charger at work but only working 1 day a week? I can see how that would be a lot more hassle. And public fast chargers cost 4-5x as much as charging at home too.

We found that 330 miles to be very unlikely as well. More like 270 and then you need to make sure you’ve got 40 miles spare to make sure you can make it to a working charge without going flat.

So in reality the comfortable working assumption should be 230 in my experience. We had the car in winter, perhaps didn’t help.

> We had the car in winter, perhaps didn’t help.

Yeah, especially if it wasn't the higher end model with a heat pump. Winter is definitely the biggest challenge for EV range at the moment (if you live in a place where heating is necessary for any significant part of the year a heat pump is pretty much a requirement).

The UK is about 300 miles across and about 600 miles long, so there's not that much scope for long trips. Mind you, I've done the 400 miles of Edinburgh to south coast quite a few times myself.

(Currently thinking of getting a Peugeot E208, if anyone has any experience with those?)

It's pretty hard to drive in a straight line in the UK though, so even though it's 600 miles from John O groats to Lands end, it's actually 840 miles of a drive. Longer if sections of the M6 are closed.

But, I do agree with you. Driving 400 miles here from Edinburgh to Southend is not a straight 400 mile motorway drive at 75mph like it would be in the US, it's practically guaranteed to hit standstill traffic at one point or another. I'm sure you technically _could_ do that journey in one sitting in a car, but the vast, vast majority of people will be pulling over to break, even if it's just to the bathroom.

I drove from Edi to Cornwall , which is about 550 miles. We stopped twice on the journey, once for a coffee/toilet break (15 minutes by the time the coffee was made and we had queued for the toilet), and once for food (45m). Adding 1 hour onto a 9 hour drive was not a deal breaker, and if it was then we wouldn't have made it on time because we were also delayed by numerous breakdowns, accidents, lane closures, horses on the M6. We lost more time to all of that than we did to rest stops.

I've had e208 from on.to. It's a lovely nimble city car.

The downside is that it charges at 60-80kW, and it's not especially efficient car either. Purely from BEV perspective it's a low-end performance for a mid-range price.

I've heard that e3008 is better, but the first gen EV powertrains from Stellantis just weren't good.

ID.3 is a bit better with charging speed, and Hyundai/Kia's e-GMP platform runs circles around them with 2-3x faster charging for not much more money.

BTW, if you want something for road trips, check out Bjorn Nyland's data:

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

Not especially efficient? Hmm, I'd noticed that range per kWh varies a lot but not checked in detail. That's disappointing.

The Ioniq series look amazing and are very popular, but are significantly larger cars (disadvantage for me, maybe advantage for others).

Edit: on.to? oh.no more like:

> "On 11 September 2023 Jonathan Lees and Gavin Maher of Teneo Financial Advisory Limited were appointed as Joint Administrators of Onto Holdings Limited. On the same date, Gavin Maher and Ian Wormleighton were also appointed as Joint Administrators over Onto Tech 1 Limited, Onto Tech 2 Limited, Onto Tech 3 Limited and Onto Tech 4 Limited, each a subsidiary of Onto Holdings Limited (together "the Companies"). "

It does vary a lot. In city it's easily 4mi/kWh or more. But I remember being pissed at Stellantis when in cold rain on highway the efficiency dropped to 1.7mi/kWh, and the range estimate was still calculated based on the marketing number, going down by 2 miles for every 1 mile driven (it was a version without a heat pump).

Ioniq's worst case is better than this (~2.1 in bad weather, 3.1-3.3 at highway speeds in good conditions), and it displays accurate range based on real usage. Ioniq is indeed a bit too fat for UK's parking spaces.

on.to was great. I think they took advantage of tax breaks when leasing for a business, and during lockdowns they couldn't buy new cars fast enough.

we had to think days ahead to any big trip

Were you taking a lot of big trips without thinking about them before the Polestar?

Specifically we had to plan our charging for a few days ahead because, without a home charger, we couldn’t get more than a 25% charge overnight. So unless we wanted to start our journey with an expensive fast charge we would need to plan our car usage and charge strategy so that when we left for the big trip we’d have at least 80%.

With an ICE we just fill up the night before or morning of and we’re good to go with 500 miles in the tank.

Why don't you string an electric cable from a regular socket out of the window? It's slow but it can easily charge a car overnight.

In the US, on a 120v / 12a circuit, it'll add 3 miles of range per hour.

Which is plenty for most folks (I originally planned on installing a Level 2 charger in my garage, but found it was completely unnecessary and just charge off a standard outlet)

Sure -- I use such a setup sometimes when visiting family.

It's not ideal, however; it's 66 hours continuously to add 200 miles of range to an older S; for more efficient cars (that get 4 or 5 miles of range an hour) it's still going to be 40 hours.

Such a setup is totally untenable if you're hanging an electric cord out your window and over a sidewalk or through trees or whatever, if you can even get a parking space within extension cord range of your car...

Also, broadly -- running a random outlet at 12a continuously for 60 hours may break things in unpleasant ways.

> without a home charger, we couldn’t get more than a 25% charge overnight.

Seems like a nasty issue with that polestar or with whatever you were using to charge overnight. With an actual charger you'd get to 100% overnight.

With tesla you'd also have car adding detours for you towards fast chargers when needed, so much less to worry.

Yeh we were charging from a normal domestic socket plug in charger.

If we’d spent the £1,500 on the dedicated charger I’m sure my view would be different.

Either way I can get 500 miles out of an ICE and refill it in 2 minutes. EVs are great but for longer drives that convenience is hard to beat.

> EVs are great but for longer drives that convenience is hard to beat.

No, for longer drives multiple times per week with no return home in between them, an ICE is hard to beat. If you're driving 250 miles a day and returning home then it's a no brainer - you don't even need to stop for petrol.

> Either way I can get 500 miles out of an ICE and refill it in 2 minutes. EVs are great but for longer drives that convenience is hard to beat.

Sure, but typically refill would be 30-40 min with a Tesla in a supercharger for long drives, which I usually need after driving 500-600km.

On the other hand, they're very fun to drive, the acceleration is insane. ICE cars that come close are twice the price and with much higher maintenance costs.

I'm not sure why you went with a polestar though.

> With an actual charger

Well, yeah, that's the issue. Without an "actual charger" you only get ~25% range overnight with a standard wall outlet. It's not a problem for most driving usecases, but for people who do a lot of long trips, it still an issue.

Wouldn't taking a lunch break at a faster charger elsewhere achieve the same thing?

I don't doubt your troubles, and it does sound like your usecase is indeed a decent fit for an ICE. Do you mind if I ask what kind of activities you do that involve several long (150+ mi), daily roadtrips in a 2 month period? I think that's fairly well outside the normal usecase for cars.

Sure:

- visiting family, 2 lots, both over 3 hours each away

- mountain biking, 2 to 5 hour each way

- friends wedding, 3 hours

- airport run, 4 hour round trip … twice

- overnight work trip 5 hours each way

That’s a pretty common 2/3 month period for us. Oh and when we had the PS2 there was a daily commute to one of two office between 30 and 60 minutes each way.

Wow, with that amount of driving you're going to be stuck with ICE cars for a while. I suspect you're a significant outlier though in terms of long trips per month.

With a 22kW (default European 3-phase) charger, it would be easy to have a full battery every morning. A large EV charges from empty to full in 5-8 hours.

In some places 3-phase power is very common (e.g. my small apartment in Copenhagen has a 3-phase supply), though in the UK it's less common. The upgrade might be £1000, or considerably more.

With 7kW (1-phase) it will be OK for a lot of trips — charging in 11-12 hours. This is more power than a normal domestic socket provides. In some countries there's a higher-power socket in the garage already, otherwise it's something the electrician needs to install.

A normal domestic socket is around 3kW.

Maybe, but I've got quite a few friends in that do similar amounts of driving so I might not be as far out there as you think. But I agree we are at the higher end.

It's clear that an EV has a harder time with long distance travel than a gas vehicle.

Gas: get in car, drive until light turns on, pull into next gas station and get gas, keep driving.

EV(tesla): get in car, enter destination, car will route you to superchargers as needed

EV(!tesla): get in car, consult web sites like a better route planner, verify car's charge, verify that you have the app for each of the fast charging destination payment methods, drive to the first location and it's broken in some tedious way and now you have to hope you've got range to get to your b site.

What led you to consider an EV for a temporary 2-month car intended for lots of long-distance winter trips?

Wife worked for Polestar at the time and finally had the chance to get on the company lease scheme. We knew she was leaving by this point but decided a couple of months with an EV was worth a try to see if it fit our lifestyle. Glad we did it, I'll try again in 10 years.

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