Range is not a real issue for electric cars. Charging time is, though, and there are massive improvements happening for that right now.
Wild fucking west right there.
You can buy BYD vehicles without airbags.
They’re Chinese market vehicles.
It’s like DJI drones, they work, and they cheap, some are even decent performance on paper, but they aren’t “real” in a sense that serious users would demand.
It’s OK if a BYD is bricked with a bad OTA. It’s less OK for the auto industry in the rest of the world.
It’s taken Tesla a LONG time to figure out building computers is easy, and cars are hard. Same for BYD.
At the same time, western manufacturers are closing factories and begging for EU bailouts.
Not sure what you trying to say about BYD. I don't like them as cars, my friends do indeed have reliability issues and early ones are super uncomfortable. Latest ones are tacky with crappy software. IMO there's a lot of hype about them for some unknown reason. You can get vastly better deals over here.
Anyway there's only 1 car with over 500kW charge rate, only 5 over 400kW you can buy here - https://evdb.nz/evs?dcCharging=350%2B&mega=true
So they are not as common as you think they are. They'll probably come tho. Fastest charging BYD you can get here is 150kW lol.
Anyone who’s ever driven between Seattle and Portland and seen the e16b charging lots of people sleeping in their cars knows there is a whole different side to your rosey picture.
EV owners are still internalizing their range anxiety into a benefit.
I get it; I like EVs for their around town purpose, but man it’s almost fantasy to sell it as “5-10 minutes every two hours”.
What? I said no such thing. I would hate to wait two hours at a refueling station.
> it’s almost fantasy to sell it as “5-10 minutes every two hours”.
I guess I live in fantasy land then.
Maybe the non-Tesla charging story is crap, but I made conscious choices not to participate in that circus.
I have no range anxiety. I point the car where I want to go, it tells me where to charge and for how long, and it’s earned my trust over many road trips. It hasn’t been wrong yet.
There is virtually no EV sold on the market today that takes two hours to charge to 80% at a HVDC charger.
"I get it; I like EVs for their around town purpose, but man it’s almost fantasy to sell it as “5-10 minutes every two hours”."
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 takes about 20 minutes to go from 10% SOC to 80% SOC in about 18 min with an 800v charger. That equates to about 3 hours of driving on the highway.
So when you say it’s got a 350 mile range, but then make the point you only need to charge to 40% that you would be fine with a single vehicle that had a 140mile range?
I swear buying an EV in 2026 breaks brains. The push back has been so bad because the mfgs pushed the single car lie… but the people that jumped in now need to defend their $60,000 purchases.
I get it, but please don’t think you guys are sneaky about it. We all know what it is.
“5-10 minutes every two hours” … lol, that’s good when you’re going from LA to San Diego. If I had to stop every two hours on a road trip I’d get a train ticket, it would feel a lot faster.
Sorry, now you're spewing nonsense. LA to SD does not require charging at all.
I did more than 120000 miles of road trips in my EVs across the US and Canada, even before they were fully covered with charging networks. So I know a thing or two about that.
A good way to think about charging is not in kilowatts but in miles per hour. Tesla Model 3 peak charging rate is 1000 miles per hour, and the average on 10-80% is around 600 mph. The state-of-the-art Chinese cars can charge at 3000 miles per hour and more than 1200 mph on average.
So if you want to do a 500-mile road trip (~8 hours of driving), that's about 45 minutes of charging time for a Tesla and less than 30 minutes for modern Chinese cars.
But wait, there's more! For a 500-mile road trip, you will have at least 200 initial miles covered by your home charging or if you stay overnight in a hotel with a charging station. So that's even less time spent charging.
And yeah, people usually prefer to do more frequent charges rather than drawing the battery down to 10% to alleviate the range anxiety and just as a safety buffer.
I mean, you can, because you are clearly emotionally tied into your purchase. But I can’t as an engineer.
I think you should not get an EV. But I like mine.
And even if you totally forget about charging and you really need to go, that's just an additional ~20 minutes or so. You don't even need to plan the route anymore, with so many charging stations available: https://supercharge.info/
> as an engineer.
I have doubts about that.
But I can't assume every time I go leave in my gas-fired Honda that the tank is going to be completely full.
I might decide to fill up before I leave town on a long trip, or I might decide to just head out and start it with whatever's already in the tank.
And either way: Refilling will need to happen at some point, just like with an EV.
And that's fine. I'll probably be stopping every couple of hours or so anyway, if I'm doing it right.
---
There was a time when I'd cannonball every trip as hard as I could, but it was exhausting to do that. I'd work so hard to minimize travel time ("I must not waste time!") that I was basically useless once I finally arrived at my destination. It was terrible. When I'd finally finish the trip, I would often be in such a bad way that my brain would be fried, my abdominal muscles would hurt, and I was very drained of energy; I was always a dysfunctional asshole who needed a proper nap.
But nowadays, I grant myself the time to take things a little easier and take breaks. This method's on-road time takes longer than a cannonball, but that's OK: It allows me to still be a functional and sane human once I arrive where I'm going.
I mean: I'm not delivering paid-by-the-mile packages here. Rather, I'm going somewhere because I want to enjoy myself when I get there, or because I have work to do (or sometimes a combination of both). Therefore, I do not have to race.
And now that I'm not trying to race from A to B anymore and I choose to take it easy periodically as I go, the trip itself isn't such an exertion.
I can get some fun and/or constructive stuff done once I finally arrive, or if it's appropriate I can lay down for some properly-restorative sleep like a sane person who isn't feeling like they just pulled an all-nighter working on some deeply-involved project that they stubbornly refused to pull myself away from.
The overall time investment of a road trip (including eventual wind-down and recovery) is about the same, but I find that the results are better for the entire duration.
And that's me, with my gas-powered van that can go an astounding 500 miles between refuelling stops.
I don't need that much range to take a long trip; it doesn't help much there at all. And in my normal daily life, the big fuel tank mostly just stretches out the time between visits to my favorite gas station between home and work.
With the long-trip prerogatives I've described, an EV would normally do fine.
And the rest of the time, at least for those whose living situation can allow it: Plugging in at home can often completely eliminate refueling stops during any series of normal weeks. (When EV owners laugh about not being able to remember when the last time they needed to stop at a gas station was, they aren't joking. It works.)
First, you're not assuming good faith.
Second, I got a used Model 3 for $16k. I also have an F150. I _choose_ to drive the 3 on road trips. I am not suffering from whatever mental illness you think EV drivers are.
Ev's are not 60,000 purchases anymore. They should be significantly cheaper than ICE cars since they are fundamentally simpler
"“5-10 minutes every two hours” … lol, that’s good when you’re going from LA to San Diego. If I had to stop every two hours on a road trip I’d get a train ticket, it would feel a lot faster."
I would be interested to know where you are located in the USA that a train is faster than driving on the highway, its very rare.
meanwhile ICE has gotten ridiculously clean and efficient over the years it is more efficient at the shaft does not settle total-system efficiency, cost, weight, resource use, grid losses, battery production, or suitability for every operating env. Comparing an engine with a motor while ignoring the battery and electricity supply chain is silly
I still do not trust that sitting on a pile of lithium batteries is safe. NMC does not mean non flammable or consequence free. LFP cells can still enter thermal runaway, release toxic gases, reignite, and require difficult firefighting procedures. They also generally trade energy density and cold-weather performance for that improved safety. Also the speed charging ? That dramatically reduces the stability and lifespan of the batteries. Ton of used EVs not being sold because the battery replacement is somewhere between 40~60% of the car's value.
we had ICE for over a century now, its just like a software that gets continuous updates ICE systems are highly optimized, repairable, energy-dense, fast to refuel, and supported by enormous infrastructure. EVs are improving faster partly because they still have major weaknesses to solve. A steeper improvement curve does not prove that the present technology is superior for every use case neither is using the latest javascript framework.
Internal combustion is not clean, and is inherently significantly less efficient than an electric motor.
Also, LFP chemistries are incredibly safe compared to NMC, which is what you're concerned about in terms of thermal runaway.
ICE is mostly stagnant tech. Meanwhile EV tech is rapidly improving!
Depends on your definition of cold. California cold sure. Wisconsin cold you are looking at losing 40%-60% range.
but its rare you say ?
Oh? Show me a model of EV that has it is going to lower capacity battery heating and cooling systems.
I’m an automotive EE… I can’t name any. I’m working on things that will go in 2032 vehicles. Surprise, most are ICE, but of the EV vehicles the battery protection systems are becoming more rugged, not less.
Where does your supposition come from?
A person who really needs an ICE car would encourage others to buy EVs because it would reduce oil demand, and with demand destruction, considerably lower oil prices. With lowered demand, Saudi Arabia can supply a barrel for $5 - $10/barrel from Ghawar Field. Which means a gas-head who commutes every day from Yukon, Canada to Guadalajara, Mexico has a significantly lower gas bill.
The only people who wants everyone to buy ICE are fossil fuel shills.
so you admit EV is a cult if ICE is a religion ? that's not okay.
The whole world is in a transition phase. For some it will make sense to jump to pure EV use, for others it won't. That whole “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” thing...
I have one of each. They work well for different reasons.
EV is the charge-at-home city car that is preferred for every day use.
The ICE is for when two cars are needed and long distance travel because charging stations here are not well sorted yet.
My plan for the future: The ICE car will be replaced with a hybrid with a significant emphasis on battery. Then eventually it'll be an EV as well. We'll get there.
The EV push back is because the MBAs decide to market them as replacement daily drivers. And despite the people that went all in being part of the same reality that has caused the massive pushback against EVs… they will defend their purchases to the death.
I have had two EVs for around town. Love em. But not real for only car outside of California.
Tell that to the millions of people in EU and China who have EVs as their only car. I swear Americans live in the 50s in 2026.
a) 37% of US households own two vehicles. This is the biggest demographic and they can definitely have one EV.
b) College students and professors/administrators who live close to campus. They drive a lot less, ~5K miles/year instead of 12 - 15K miles/year.
c) Retired people, very old people who only drive around town for shopping, doctor appointments.
As adoption increases, most Americans would have seen first hand that EVs work and they can charge anywhere, electricity is not scarce and every building has electricity (don't need to go somewhere special just to charge it), electricity is not the work of the devil, it is okay to use EVs.
Europe is mostly urbanized it's almost boring. Dunno about China, but I guess they cracked charging infrastructure.
“Oh, but Norway uses EVs a ton!” … cool, Norway is the size of an average US state, the population of Connecticut, over an extremely thin area which optimizes one vector of infrastructure automatically. And makes the majority of its money on oil.
Geez, almost like EV ultra-success stories aren’t even remotely comparable the rest of the world.
No one has ever said “man, I love this gas station and wish I could stay here for two hours”
… idk, I guess people like Buckeys for some reason.
If you live your life in a hurry it can def be a problem.
Could you ELI5 these basic physics? I've heard many people make claims like this but there's never any physics that actually follows. I've had most of an undergraduate curriculum of physics, so if it's beyond basic, then don't be afraid to refer to those physical ideas.
> meanwhile ICE has gotten ridiculously clean and efficient over the years it is more efficient at the shaft does not settle total-system efficiency, cost, weight, resource use, grid losses, battery production, or suitability for every operating env
Is 30% "ridiculously clean and efficient"? 35%? I'm not sure I can agree with that at all.
Battery production? That's ridiculously efficient. For a very small amount weight, there's an insane amount of Wh that get shuttled through that material, which can then be recycled into even more kWh of storage than went into the recycling process, due to the continual improvement in battery production efficiency.
Meanwhile, every single gallon of gas results in 20 pounds of CO2 emissions. Fracking oil requires disposing of 2-10 gallons of dirty waste water for every gallon of gas. That's a massive amount of waste for only 20-50 vehicle miles.
These EVs, are they in the room with us?