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Comment by OkayPhysicist | Hacker News Reader

Whether it's the first or last 20% of the battery is a software problem: People adjust their driving habits to avoid running out of charge, in the same way that people adjust their driving habits to not run out of gas. A car losing power when it claims to still have 20% left is a big problem, because it's failing to present you with the information with which to base your plan. If the readout on my car simply said that it had 240 miles of range on a full charge instead of 300, there's a good chance I wouldn't even notice.

On the exceptionally rare instance that I'm driving more than 200 miles in a day, I appreciate the half an hour to stretch my legs and grab a snack while my car's on a fast charger.

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it's only software until the hardware becomes the boundary condition.

You're right for many drivers with dense charger coverage it's a nuisance.

But there are drivers who take trips with sparse charger coverage , where the 20% loss means insecure or impossible trips.

You really need to be in the middle of nowhere for a 200 mile range to be a problem. I've made quite a few trips in my Bolt where I worried there wouldn't be coverage (rural Indiana was my biggest concern), but it consistently turned out to be unfounded. In rural areas chargers certainly thin out, but you can safely drive the interstates and the vast majority of state highway with less than 100 miles between chargers.

The fact is you felt insecure because there was a risk. And with growing degradation means more of a buffer is needed. A 300 mi range vehicle is 192mi due to the buffer, and even that dwindles.

Only half of the non-Tesla EV chargers work, so your 200 mile charger now takes 6 hours to do the next 200 miles.

Even super chargers only function well over the bottom 50% of the battery . So the usable window is shrinking and shrinking.

All of these practical insecurities will need to be fixed before EVs expand beyond just a niche product.

You can dismiss them as silly or user error, but you won't sell any more vehicles that way.

Can you please share some (non-byzantine) trips that you can't make with only 80% battery capacity? Let's assume 240mi (80% of 300), since that seems to be about the average EV range nowadays.

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