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Comment by sillyfluke | Hacker News Reader

Don't really follow the secondhand EV market, but it seems to me firsthand buyers are still taking on considerable risk due to the range situation. People who have bought them abroad are sometimes advised to keep the battery between 20%-80-90% full. Following this advice, one person I know told me if they drive like they did their old car they have to recharge after roughly 170 miles, which is super annoying for them if they're driving over 500 miles on a trip. They regret buying the car they bought. When and if there is a sudden jump in range innovation that reaches the entire market and not just flagship brands, I don't see how these cars driven now won't be dead weight or dirt cheap. It seems super risky to keep one of these cars more than a couple of years.

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I've driven an EV on 500 mile trips. Getting out and stretching your legs for 20-25 minutes once every three hours isn't "super annoying." If all I did was drive around all day, every day for 500 miles at a stretch, it might be, but not nearly as annoying as routinely driving for 500 miles.

For most people, the vast majority of their driving takes place well within the range of the typical BEV and range anxiety is a total non-issue. The fact is, even accounting for the occasional long trip, I spend less time at charging stations than I did at gas stations when I owned an ICE car, because the vast majority of the time, I just plug the car in at my house and let it do its thing.

This is tiring. Not everyone lives in the suburbs with a plug at ground level and getting out and stretching your legs is great when you choose where you do it but not when you do it in the queue for charging...

Maybe its tiring for you. What’s tiring for me is that in every single one of these threads, people bring up the most extreme, outlier situations (500 mile trips) as a cudgel against EVs.

It’s not an outlier for a lot of people in the USA or the western part of Canada.

Citation please. It takes over seven hours to drive 500 miles non-stop at 70mph. I’d love to see a credible source that documents “a lot” of people are routinely driving this far in their personal vehicles.

Lots of people regularly drive 500 miles. The question is, how many drive 500 miles without 15 to 30 minutes of stopping? That I suspect is the small number. Doing so is illegal for commercial drivers in many jurisdictions, for darn good reasons. It's downright dangerous.

As I said before, “citation please.”

You know what's a lot stronger comeback than "citation please"? Doing your own Googling, and then posting the results with a "hah, you're wrong".

I'll keep that in mind.

Without stopping.

First, the quote from the parent post is "people bring up the most extreme, outlier situations (500 mile trips) as a cudgel against EVs"

There are plenty of people, myself included, who routinely take trips in excess of 500 miles.

Next weekend I will be visiting family 1100 miles away - I will drive, stay 2 weeks, and then drive back.

I can fill up in about 15 minutes and drive 350 to 400 miles, so, over 1200 miles my total "recharge" time is 45 minutes.

The Leaf gets ~212 minutes and then takes 35 minutes (minimum) to charge to 80%.

To go 1100 miles will take at least 5 stops at 35 minutes each = 165 minutes; realistically, longer because you have to find your charging stations and drive to them; plus that only takes you to 80% instead of 100% (which I get when I fill up with gas) which reduces range. So I am being generous to the Leaf in my estimates.

So for 7.5 hours of actual drive time, I have to add in 2 hours (165 minutes minus 45 = 120 minutes) additional because of the EV. That's adding about 25% more time on the trip.

It seems 90% of people in the US travel for the holidays[0], in europe its around 70% [1], pretty easily searchable. The person you were replying to didn't use the word "routinely", you yourself added that word. It's bad form. If I'm doing 4-5 round trips over 500+ miles a year with a family I for one don't want an added hour, hour half to the trip each way every time. It's a legitimate thing to look at when deciding to buy a car.

[0] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2024/12/year-end-forecast/

[1] https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/explainers-and-insights/how-...

I have never been in a queue for charging in my 5 years of ev ownership. This includes 3 long roadtrips (Denmark to southern France so 1800 km to 2200 km each way) during summer vacations.

It's pretty common in California. Even though I was worried about charging on my first EV road trip, I've had an easier time in rural areas with lower EV ownership. Not as many Uber drivers using their freebie Electrify America charging.

Queuing is common at non-Tesla sites in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah in my experience.

EVs (or having a car in general) aren’t for everyone. Or aren’t for everyone yet.

But you’re now talking about the lack of adequate charging infrastructure in an urban setting. That’s a different conversation. It’s a worthy conversation, but not all that related to making 500 mile road trips.

This summer I made two 500 mile trips (round trip each time) to drop off (and pick up) a kid at a summer camp. It was a week long camp, so I drove up and back on two weekends. I drove an electric car up the first time and a hybrid SUV up the second time.

It was fine to do in my electric car. I spent about 5 minutes making sure I had a good charging plan, which turned out to add about 10-15 extra miles to the trip. It wasn’t a problem to stop to charge, and I really wanted to stop to eat and stretch when I needed to charge, so everything worked out well timing wise. The trip in the hybrid was a little faster, but not by much. I still stopped the same number of times regardless of what car I drove.

Note: I would have happily had made the trip in my EV both times, but I had another person with me for the second trip. She hated the seats in my EV, so we took the car with more comfortable interior for the second trip. The trip in the hybrid was “nicer”, but that was because it was a more comfortable car in general, not because of the difference between an EV and hybrid.

Of course if you don't have a plug at home, and have to do all your charging at a station, buying an EV now is not a great idea.

If you do have a plug for charging, which you could have even if you live in an appartment (personal parking spot with a plug at your residence), then you're trading a small inconvenience for another.

Yes during your occasional long trip you'll have to spend 20 minutes charging instead of 5 minutes filling your tank, but when you're around your home doing short trips (most of the time for most people), you no longer have to do the occasional visits to the gas station. You just plug your car at home and be done with it.

I've been doing EV road trips for four years now and I've never had to queue for a charger.

A recent road trip I went on about a month ago, I pulled up to the place I was planning to charge (an EA station attached to a Walmart, was going to go to the deli for a snack while it charged). It was completely full and seemed like there were a few people waiting. I just drove to another charging location about 2mi away (a 7/11 station I think?) and charged there and had a snack. No big deal.

That's about the closest I've had to queue in the past few years. Other than that, there have usually been multiple open chargers available. And once again that's only when I've road tripped. I've had to waste far more of my life pumping gas in my non-EV than I've spent waiting on charging despite my ICE getting far fewer miles.

>Getting out and stretching your legs for 20-25 minutes once every three hours isn't "super annoying."

Nothing done by choice is annoying obviously. But a lot of people are fine with stretching their legs on a five minute bathroom break. Adding an extra an hour or hour half for unwanted stops due to forced recharging is what annoys them.

> Nothing done by choice is annoying obviously.

Right, so that covers approximately 100% of EV owners.

> People who have bought them abroad are sometimes advised to keep the battery between 20%-80-90% full.

You want to keep batteries roughly in that range to maximise their lifetime health. That doesn't mean the battery will explode if you do otherwise once in a while e.g. you charge limit the car to 80% for your daily drive and before a big trip you charge to 100%.

Route planners will generally keep you in that band anyway because charging speeds fall off a cliff as charge exceeds 80~90% (depending on the manufacturer's usable % standard), and it's rarely worth wasting 30mn charging to full to save 5~10mn extra at the next stop (the same occurs to a lower extent at very low states of charge, plus you want some spare, so the lower 10% are generally treated as a reserve).

> You want to keep batteries roughly in that range to maximise their lifetime health.

Huh? The car isn't doing that for you? Prius hybrids sure are (the old ones using NiMH batteries tried to keep charge between 40% and 80%).

A hybrid can do that by running the ICE (or not).

An EV can do that how exactly, refusing to run? Mugging the elderly for loose kWh?

Well, stopping the car at 40% (20% for Li-ion) capacity or alternatively at 0% with dead batteries, I know what I prefer (ideally there would be an option for emergencies, perhaps disabled in rental cars ;-} .

No need to get sarcastic. My phone and laptop have this feature.

Wow your phone and laptop have a feature which makes the battery never run out? The wonders never cease.

I keep the car at 20-80% when at home and driving around the city, I charge once a week. Before a trip, I let it charge to 100%, then charge to 80% on the trip (otherwise you waste time on the slow parts of the charge cycle).

It's really not a hassle at all. What's a hassle right now is finding a charger, as there aren't enough fast ones along the trip, but I've had the car for a year and have never needed to do a trip that long yet.

Just to clarify, the hassle is needing mutiple recharges on a longish trip, not urban driving. The regret is due to unmet expectations based on advertised range as opposed to pratical range.

No, I know, I was just kind of detailing the general experience. Urban driving is entirely seamless (I exclusively charge at home), long trips are the only slightly inconvenient bit, but I ~never do those.

I mean the funny thing is that I've never driven or wanted a car with more than a 10-gallon tank, so my "ICE" (it's a Prius, so it actually does better than a full ICE car would) range is already <400 miles. Having to stop at a "gas station" for 30 minutes instead of 10 minutes every 4-6 hours really doesn't seem like that big of an ordeal, especially since I'm probably going to be stopping for meal breaks on that interval anyway. And if you just need a top-off to make the last 100 miles rather than a full charge, you can probably do it in 10-15 minutes anyway, right?

Less than 10-15 minutes in a decent car. Tesla charges at 200kW+ in the lower SoC ranges; that’s approaching 1000 mph.

> recharge after roughly 170 miles ... these cars won't be dead weight or dirt cheap

The average car journey is 8 miles. Being an average with a finite lower limit of 0 it is skewed higher by the people who for various reasons drive long distances.

You don't need a 1,000 mile range to get to the shops at the end of the street. It helps, but not that much.

You can screech about averages and means all you want but the fact of the matter is that if you're exceeding your vehicle's capabilities on a weekly or monthly basis the inconvenience of ownership goes up exponentially. I do 100mi/day but I all but need the ability to make that 200 on a weekly basis and am doing a 300 on a monthly basis. With charging at work and home those numbers become 50, 150 and 250 between charges. So a "nicer" electric car is doable in the summer for me but it still falls on its face when those longer trips involve substantial cargo.

So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.

For people who just want a dedicated commuting vehicle used EVs with 80% battery are a pretty good option.

I mean, I don't disagree with you. But a lot of people have two cars if both adults work and have to drive to work - so it makes perfect sense for the second car to be electric. We have a little VW e-Up with "just" 120-150 miles of range and in day to day use we never get anywhere close to running out. In fact my wife uses it to commute every day and we charge it once a week from a regular plug at home. It saves considerable amount of money over a petrol Polo she had before, to a point where the car pays for itself(almost). But yeah, we also have another car(a PHEV Volvo) that we use for long trips.

> I do 100mi/day

You are an extreme outlier, you should wait until the technology develops further. To use your parlance, no need to screech about people clutching their pearls at you.

Counterintuitively, driving a lot of miles regularly on a daily basis is pretty much ideal for switching to EV as you maximise fuel savings (and minimise pollution if you care about that).

This has different impacts depending on your local gas to electricity price ratio.

It's his weekly and monthly longer trips that complicate matters but in many jurisdictions he'd still be saving enough to make it worthwhile.

Meanwhile in Korea: https://driving.ca/auto-news/crashes/hyundai-ioniq-5-666000-...

What is that even supposed to be a rebuttal to? I didn't complain about the longevity of small EVs (they're generally quite good in that regard).

Not to pick on you personally but I think it speaks volumes about the type of people who make up HN community that I can come in here with a fairly narrow and niche critique of a product (inflexibility basically), hedge that comment with a "but it's still good for a lot of people" statement and a bunch of act like I'm dismissing the entire product category and then act like completely tangential things disprove that. It's like I've offended a religion.

> You can screech about averages and means all you want

> So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.

These antagonistic statements are unnecessary and the reason you are being downvoted.

Maybe you're just richer than the average person, that affluence buys you a lot of convenience that others can't access.

It's easy to forget the budget issues faced by many families when you're not facing that constantly yourself, but it's basically an existential consideration for a not insignificant proportion of the population.

You're circa $1700/year more expensive in fuel with your minivan[1] than with a comparably sized EV.

Your 5 hour / 300 mile journey takes around 30 mins more in the EV end to end (time spent stationary at a charger somewhere near the mid point of your route). Equiv of driving at 55mph average vs 60mph average over that time. I'd happily use the time to drink a flask of tea i brought with me and then go for a comfort break.

[1] assuming $4.80/gallon in a 25mpg minivan, vs an inefficient EV that only averages around 2mi/kwh at $0.30/kwh. Obv the 1700 excludes servicing, tyres and depreciation

It sounds like you can't find a used minivan-like EV, with 250+mi range. A 2022 model y has 330mi range new (probably around 300mi now). You can get them for $23K after federal rebate. Seems like a good deal that would be "doable" for you.

The magnitude of person-to-person variation makes it tough to get signal out of averages.

I read a blogger say a 40-mile trip is exceptionally log for him, so why worry about EV range?

Meanwhile we put 160 miles on our EV yesterday doing ordinary errands that all got stacked on the same day. 100+ mile days happen a few times a month for us¹.

That 160 miles is 65% of our 0–100 range, or 108% of the 20–80 range. And we have a level 1 charger, so it'll take 26 hours in the driveway to recoup that charge.

¹ In my area a normal daily commute is 30–40 miles round-trip. Throw in some extra errands, or two people sharing a car, and you don't have to be an outlier to routinely have 100+ mile days.

I am not intending this as a backhanded way of suggesting your experience is invalid. I get that it's quite possible in some areas.

However, I think the point of the GP is that the number of people who say this is their typical experience is going to be larger than the number of people for whom it actually is their typical experience.

By that I mean: your story is quite common in discussions like this, both online and offline. Yet, if the mean distance is 8 miles, and we know it's going to be skewed high due to the 0 bound, it can't be all that common.

To be honest, I'd be curious to see the median here.

That's fair. FWIW my city lists the mean commute time as 23.6 minutes, p90 26.6. Travel in my area is dominated by freeway arteries, so 15-ish miles each way is a fair estimate for the mean.

https://raleighnc.gov/planning/services/city-profile

A typical Bay Area commute (e.g. to SJ or San Mateo/Redwood City) is 40+ miles one way. A typical weekend drive (e.g. to Half Moon Bay or Sonoma) is a 100-mile roundtrip.

Still less than 170 miles.

Remember that you would usually charge at home so you start every day with a full battery.

I did a 6500 mile ev road trip and battery capacity means next to nothing. All that matters is the charging curve between 3% and 60%. Literally all other variables disappear over a road trip.

Nice tip. Are there lots of cars with shittier ranges but sota 3-60% charging curves? What is your acceptable target number for this metric?

The P3 Charging Index attempts to quantify this, and also documents progress over the years as they've been publishing it for 6 years now:

Porsche Kia Hyundai are currently top of the list

https://www.electrive.com/2024/12/20/p3-charging-index-2024-...

The e-GMP cars (Hyundai Ioniqs, Kia EV6) can do it in 13 minutes or so under ideal conditions. They have decent range but not top of the line.

> When and if there is a sudden jump in range innovation that reaches the entire market and not just flagship brands

I've read/heard about this innovation coming to the market in six months every few weeks for about ten years and it has never materialized. There are continuous, slight and consistent improvements to battery technology which add up over time, but none of the wunderwaffe battery technologies ever materialized into the market and produced any huge jumps.

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