Comment by raddan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raddan | Hacker News Reader

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Why without charging? Are there time constraints?

I often find that I want to take a break after a couple hours of driving, and even when I drove a gas vehicle, those breaks would be 30-40 minutes long unless it was an exceptionally long day of driving. With a little planning I’ve found that I can do 90% of the trips in my EV that I used to do in my gas car. I probably can’t replicate the couple 1000-mile-in-one-day trips I did in my previous vehicle, but those experiences also made me not want to.

FWIW, in the last two years alone I have driven my EV from MA to Nova Scotia and back, MA to Iowa and back, MA to MD and back, and all over the eastern seaboard (trips to the Adirondacks, WV, etc). Lately I have not even had to plan anymore. It was surprising to discover that I could plug my car (a Bolt) into a GM charger in Indiana this summer and not even need to fiddle with an app. Things have improved dramatically for road trips in the last two years, and I have probably one of the slowest charging cars out there. Really, the only thing stopping me from buying an EV pickup is that I don’t want to pay that much for a vehicle with such an absurdly small bed. My Bolt can pull a small trailer just fine.

Because he can tow 300 miles easily with a ICE vehicle, and he can fill up anywhere in 5 minutes or less. Once you can charge cars in 5 minutes or less, I doubt he’d have made that a requirement.

I started looking at camping trailers recently to tow with my Rivian. I quickly went off the idea when I realized that each time I’d need to charge en-route I’d have to find somewhere to park the camper, unhitch, go charge, then do it all in reverse. That’s going to add at least 20 mins to each charging session. None of this is necessary if I were filling with gas. For typical places I go camping here in CO that could be two or three times per journey direction.

My in-laws tow a heavy, non-aero homemade camping trailer on their Rivian in Colorado. Two things make this work: they don't haul it long distance like you do, and they drive uphill to campsites, and then on the way home they're just charging the whole way back. I realize that there are no free lunches in energy conservation, but this diminishes range anxiety for them I think. Or I misinterpreted our convo and it's just a funny quirk of getting around the mountains.

That’s good to know actually. The distance I travel is certainly not necessary, there is closer camping, but I just tend to prefer areas that are all the way across the mountains from me. Do you know what sort of range they get while towing?

Yeah I asked when we went camping together and I remember them saying that it's a bit better than half the normal miles/kWh. The site we went to was about 22 miles and 3,600 feet of climbing from their driveway, so they were not at all worried about range. If you really want to make sure you make it home, load up your camper with rocks at the campsite so you are charging more on your way home, then dump them when you reach the lowest point on your drive home.

The camper is a cabin with cedar shingles on top of a 5'x10' Harbor Freight trailer. Heavy and not at all aero haha.

Because I travel to places without charging infra.

I hear you. I love to go to very remote places. But I guess I see it more of a personal challenge.

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