I like this one-line summary. I'm seeing more and more of these on HN. At first I went into "Get off my lawn" mode, i.e., "Just read the article!" But then I thought about the fact that for one reason or another — paywalls/technical issues/time constraints/language barriers/etc. — many people can't, or can't at the moment. These brief descriptions serve many.
Specifically, the author's worried there aren't enough charging stations to travel all around the state of California.
I know there's efforts to build more charging stations, so that may improve somewhat. But my question is how do you charge an electric car if you live in a small apartment building? If we're all going to drive electric cars in the future, we're going to need viable ways for everybody to charge them.
But competition within an apartment building car park will be limited - I'd assume there is only a single supplier today and it wouldn't be economically viable for a second supplier to build on top so it's a quasi-monopoly. If the building owners are alive to this then they would probably have negotiated a price cap of some form in the contract but I'd be surprised if theres any incentive to cut prices.
Indeed. I ultimately ended up purchasing a Toyota Mirai (a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle) for this reason; my apartment has no charging units and my landlord has no plans to install them. There is public charging about an eight minute walk away from me, however, which I did consider when evaluating my car purchase options last summer.
It’s actually working out; my job is located near hydrogen fuel stations, and while there were hiccups with the supply back in December and January, I’ve had no problems refueling my car since. Refueling takes about five minutes, compared to 30 minutes when using a fast charger with a battery-backed EV. Another thing that helps is Toyota has been subsidizing fuel costs for purchasers of new and certified used Mirais; I have a $15,000 fuel card valid for up to six years after purchase, though I anticipate the card running out of money well before then unless hydrogen prices drop substantially.
Yes, long-distance drives that are outside the limited refueling network are out of the question, but Toyota provides 21 days of complimentary car rentals for owners of new Mirai models.
So far I enjoy my Mirai. While I wish hydrogen prices were cheaper (prices went from a maximum of $19.70/kg in November to $26.75/kg in January and have remained at that level since), the Mirai is the best car I’ve driven in terms of its drive feel, comfort, and technology; it’s a dramatic upgrade from the Toyota Prius c I used to own, and I even prefer it to the Subaru BRZ I had years ago.
Once newer high density batteries make it into cars and we can get 500+ mile ranges I think it will help with a lot of these concerns. When your car's range is longer than most people are willing or able to drive in a single day then you can charge overnight at your destination without worrying about finding charging stations on the road.
But you still need finding charging stations at your destination.
This sounds a lot like an intentionally exagerated article, but the underlying issue might be real, if the (publicly available) charging stations do not increase in number according to the increase of number of EV's circulating there will be problems.
On the other hand if many more charging stations are created than what is needed, there might be a waste of resources.
I don't think that is an easy task to "balance" (at a state/country level) the amount of infrastructures as a function of EV's increasing adoption and - besides the numbers - deciding where exactly they are to be placed is another non trivial problem, there is the concrete risk of having many little used or unused charging stations while having queues in many others.
Huge waste when the average driver goes for < 40 miles a day
The 200+ miles of range are more than enough for most people, lugging 1000%+ of the average range "just in case" is crazy, epecially given the weight of these things
My car does a sub 4 second 0-62mph; my wife's car is probably 8 seconds. Where I actually notice the difference though is the 40-70 speed when overtaking - accelerating hard from a standing start basically never happens in real world driving in my experience.
Well, there is also the instant response to the gas pedal. A gasoline-powered engine, especially with a turbocharger, takes a while to respond, and the gearbox might need to switch gears. That could be up to 2 seconds until you start accelerating, and another 2 seconds until you reach top power output. In an EV, you press the pedal and everything happens instantly. Instant torque. All this makes a big difference in practical driving.
> All this makes a big difference in practical driving.
It really doesn't, it's just a side effect. We already have massive tailgating issues across the US, and most folks have zero idea what the limits of their commuter EV are. Kind of a recipe for disaster.
If you haven't tried pedal-to-the-floor from a dead stop in an EV (in the appropriate "sport" mode, if there is one), you really should. No, you won't get to 60 faster than everyone else, but you will get to 10, 20, 30, 40 faster than almost anyone. Off the line the amount of acceleration available is crazy compared to an ICE car, even a really fast one. It consistently shocks people how fast my Bolt can accelerate even though its 0-60 and top speed are nothing special.
Specifically the author is talking about a non-Tesla EV, one that had the known defect of lack of a proper charging infrastructure at point of purchase. Nothing to see here.
[Talking about Teslas and “EVs” as if they are the same category is like talking about Computer Science and “STEM” in a single category. Often disingenuous and draws the wrong conclusion.]
> one that had the known defect of lack of a proper charging infrastructure at point of purchase.
Is the charger adapter that you plug in on a Tesla or a non-Tesla not standardized like USB-C to the point where you can go to any station (as long as you have any brand of EV and not an internal combustion engine gasoline/diesel car or whatever) and benefit from it/use it/plug it in? Sorry, out of the loop, I've dodged electric cars.
Tesla uses a proprietary plug, for now; they are moving to support CCS (and already ship CCS cars in Europe) because they want federal funding for their chargers, and because in Europe it’s the law.
You can buy an adapter to use destination chargers (hotels, etc.) but not super chargers.
You can now buy an adaptor on the Tesla website [0] that lets you recharge a Tesla at a CCS DC fast charger (e.g. Electrify America etc). I have one and it works great -- or as great as EA ever works I should say. I only use it on routes where a Tesla supercharger is not available but it's quite handy for those situations.
(The third major standard for DC fast charging, CHAdeMO, is unfortunately dying out even though it is in many ways technically superior to CCS. Tesla previously sold adaptors for CHAdeMO but no more.)
EDIT: This adaptor only works on Tesla cars built after ~2020. Search "how do I determine whether my Tesla can support CCS" before buying the adaptor. The issue is about whether the car can speak the powerline carrier protocol that CCS uses.
Nonsense. Superchargers are packed; while they work, you’re waiting in line for a charge.
Meanwhile, while some folks have had issues with EA, I haven’t, and even if I did, I’d just use a Chargepoint, EVGo, Shell Recharge, or any number of other chargers as needed.
Not to mention that I can buy a Tesla charger adapter for like $60 that lets me use destination chargers at hotels, and that Tesla is opening up to CCS charging because they want that sweet federal money.
Basically: a Tesla is an EV, and Tesla is no longer on top of the EV game, as evidenced by the recent six price drops in the last year, because they are outinnovated and now trying to outprice their competition instead of innovating.
You let me know how your FSD, which is “coming by the end of the year,” does for you. I’ve got some bridges to sell in Brooklyn.
Anecdotally, even in Tesla heavy Northern California supercharger wait times are often zero or close to zero unless you consistently hit the peak times. I don’t know if you have stats or bad first hand experience or simply generalizing reports from holiday peak times off hand.
The expansion of superchargers to non-Teslas may indeed cause problems. So far I have seen perhaps one total non-Tesla vehicle. If anything, that should be a new point in favor of EVs compared to the time the author purchased their vehicle, which makes the article even further disingenuous.
I don’t know why you brought FSD into a very specific argument about EV ownership experience. I don’t disagree. Sounds like a canned message from a Tesla hater though.
The implication that Teslas were somehow superior and outside the category of other EVs. I don’t hate Teslas; I just consider them another EV, with some pros (the supercharger network) and some cons.
Elon and the FSD nonsense is one such con. I only brought it up because he just promised it again by the end of this year, and it set off a spate of people going “Tesla is the best” when we’ve all seen this story before.
I credit Tesla with kicking off the revolution; I don’t even dislike their cars. I’ve enjoyed when I’ve rented them.
I just think they’ve stopped innovating in recent years, and frankly, I wish they would. More competition is always good.
Are you arguing that FSD will never come? Or just that it will likely be delayed again? Or that they’re not even working on it? If you’ve seen any of their AI presentations in recent years, I’m a little confused by your comment. I know some of it is marketing but it is incredibly impressive what they’re building. I would be surprised if anyone else is even close to how advanced they are. I just think the problem, the last 5% anyway to get it fully working and reliable, is 10x+ harder than anyone thought.
Now when it comes to specific physical features on the car or something, I don’t know, haven’t been following that very closely.
I’m arguing that Tesla is no longer the obvious leader in EVs. That’s all.
FSD may or may not come eventually. I’m doubtful. But as it stands, other makers are improving rapidly and Tesla has produced little innovation to compete with them in recent years, instead choosing to focus on touting features that seldom come (2016 was the first year FSD was coming “by the end of the year”) and cost-cutting measure to improve profits at the cost of customer experience.
That’s not a jab on Tesla as a company as much as it is just disappointment. Their lead is dwindling, and I wish they’d focus on innovating instead of whatever else is happening right now.
FSD is a disaster and Elon an AH, but it’s a simple fact that Tesla supercharger are their biggest competitive benefit, and superior to anything else on the market?
Tesla is still very much at the head of the pack for range, efficiency, and charging speed (thinking of the Model 3 and Y especially). These are the fundamental factors that probably matter the most in determining the convenience of a regular-use EV.
Some manufacturers (hat-tip to Hyundai in particular) are starting to come close or match them in some or all of these (which is great!) but it’s absolutely not the norm.
I think their innovations are mostly going towards scaling supply and manufacturing now. They’ve scaled their large-can batteries, they’re finally starting in earnest on Semi and Cybertruck. And FSD has been improving.
To your earlier point, I have literally never once had to wait to get a supercharger, the route planner takes number of open stalls into account. The non-Tesla experience, idk, and we only use them on road trips, so we’re generally not going to any inside big cities, so maybe that’s the difference. Also not in the Bay Area, so they’re not the local “Camry” yet.
Maybe I'm exceedingly lucky, but I've only had to wait in line once. I make frequent trips between Oakland/SF and Los Angeles, and charge at stations nearly exclusively since I live in an apartment.
This is what’s hard about it - personal experiences vary. We need an outside entity somehow keeping track of uptime and availability of chargers, and the infrastructure bill will hopefully help with that.
Cool. I think what this shows (your experience at superchargers vs mine, and my experience at EA vs the article) is that personal experiences vary, and we need better stats.
How do destination chargers at hotels work? It seems like only seedy motels have parking spaces right outside the room where you could use its outlets. Are nicer hotels starting to build a few dedicated chargers somewhere in their parking lot? Do you reserve one when you book a room?
It’s almost always first come first serve, and they’re either Tesla wall chargers or Chargepoint or similar wall chargers, usually maxed out at 48 amps or so.
Destination chargers are Level 2, so while not superchargers they are much faster than a (Level 1) generic US 120v outlet. They're fast enough to recharge the car overnight. They're fairly common at mid-range and better hotels. Sometimes I call ahead to reserve one but usually I find one open when I arrive. The Plugshare app and website (among others) can help you find them, as can the Tesla website.
I don't see their numbers growing as fast now as 3-4 years ago because there are so many more superchargers now that destination chargers don't give a hotel as much of a competitive advantage, except in places where there is still not a supercharger nearby.
I think the attitude of the CEO trickles down in the kind of people that buy Teslas. This translates in the way the drive their car around. Not everyone of course, some just are interested in the EV, But is almost that like buying a car allows you to have the CEO attitude, is maybe that what they are selling?
Or ... trade it in for a better EV (i.e. a Tesla). The Supercharger network is much denser and more reliable than the patchwork of non-Tesla chargers. My anecdotal experience matches the author's of roughly a quarter of all public (non-Tesla) charging stations simply not working.
This is the chicken and egg issue. No one will build and/or maintain chargers unless there are lots of EVs. No one will buy EVs unless charging stations are easy to find/use.
I do not know why the US Gov did not choose to subsidize existing Gas Stations to build these. Instead they are putting these in places that are close to impossible to find.
I have said this before, until charging is as convenient and fast as getting gas, EVs will only be niche.
I've had an EV for two years and in that time alone charging infrastructure has massively expanded. Just the growth of Electrify America has been phenomenal. Beyond that, charging stations are easy to find and use: PlugShare is probably the most useful app.
This to me is still the weak link. It’s not just chargers, it’s 30+ minute charge time. As great as electric is, an extra hour in the car on a road-trip with 3 kids is a tough sell. More chargers would help but it’s really battery tech and charge times that need a few more innovations before I’d consider for a car I might take a road trip in.
I recently went on a trip where the power was out at our destination for over 24 hours due to a storm. The nearest town was ~20 minutes away and likely did not have any fast charging infrastructure. Even if it did, it's a pretty bad spot to be in, especially if you have young kids.
I have been considering getting an electric car but that trip made me realize I'd have to reserve the EV for urban travel only. Otherwise I'd be uncomfortable with the risk. Even with my gas guzzling SUV I can always bring more gas just in case.
I spoke to someone who has an EV and brings a generator with them on long trips so they can charge their car. This seems so wildly impractical to me.
I really look forward to the day EVs exceed the range and energy capacity of combustion vehicles -- without having to stuff batteries in the headrest. But it's just not there today.
I don’t know that it’s wildly impractical. Some people carry battery-powered emergency jump starters for their ICE car. This just seems like the reciprocal backup power solution.
Carrying a generator seems very practical to me if you are putting yourself in situations where it could be not just useful but the difference between you being stranded vs self-sufficient.
Nobody said that owning an electric vehicle requires a head-in-the-sand refusal to acknowledge the benefit of liquid fuel. Plus, a generator has all kinds of other benefits in the situation you describe.
How are you going to carry a generator in a typical sedan or crossover? In the trunk, next to your luggage? Now your clothes smell like fuel. On the roof? Now your range took a 15% hit. On a trailer? Range hit, plus you have to store the trailer at home.
As a one-off thing, like driving into a town after a storm, might work. But it’s not a solution to range anxiety generally.
Re: size - you can buy 2kW generators that are scarcely bigger than a regulation piece of carry-on luggage, so yeah, store it in the trunk.
Worried about the smell of fuel from the empty generator you never use? If so, wrap it up in garbage bags. Remember - it's there for emergencies. Odds are good you'll rarely ever use it. And don't transport it with fuel - get the fuel when you can't find a charger but can find a gas station. Let's be sensible about it.
The comment is in reply to someone describing their experience driving to a town that was without power for 24 hours due to a storm. This "road tripping into the unknown" is where taking a generator is applicable, not general range anxiety.
A 2kW generator will get you like 6ish miles per hour running. A gallon of gas will get you less than three hours of running, so probably less than 18 miles or so.
Maybe conceptually they're kind of the same, but not practically. Something that fits in your hand is different than something that fits in your trunk.
Yes, they are conceptually the same - backup power source to get you out of a situation that would otherwise leave you stranded.
Practically? Generators come in pretty small packages these days. They'll fit on the floorboard of your back seat (or in the back seat), or easily in the trunk just like another piece of luggage.
I mean all of this assumes a particular context - the steps you take to be prepared for risks that are medium probability and high impact are not the same steps necessary when, on a daily basis, those same risks drop to a very low probability and low to medium impact.
If it's the choice between being the guy who, after miles on the road, arrives in a storm-stricken town as GP related with his EV near dead and the townsfolk gathering around to point and laugh at a stereotype of luxurious thinking, or being someone with an inefficient yet practical solution to the lack of chargers, I'd take the latter.
> Carrying a generator seems very practical to me if you are putting yourself in situations where it could be not just useful but the difference between you being stranded vs self-sufficient.
Charging an EV from a portable generator is going to take 8-12+ hours. So now you need to carry enough extra fuel for the generator to run that long.
If the power is out at your destination you're unlikely to be able to operate the gas pumps either.
Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous. Is your typical vacation, like, traveling to Florida to experience a hurricane making landfall?
If you do a lot of travel to remote locations and camping and hiking and things like that, yes, an EV will probably be a stretch for that use right now. But most people in the US live and travel between major population centers.
Even if you are into the remote/outdoorsy stuff, an EV is a perfectly viable second car.
> Even if you are into the remote/outdoorsy stuff, an EV is a perfectly viable second car.
This has been my conclusion - the main problem at that point being the sheer cost. My household’s current secondary car is one that cost $10k a decade ago. (Two years old at the time of purchase.) There’s no EV that’s even in the same ballpark for cost-per-km or cost-per-year. (And for a second city-only car, they almost all come with far more battery capacity than is required, adding weight and expense. The Mazda MX-30 EV is probably closest from a technical standpoint with 160 km of range, but still has a cost problem, starting at $40k locally after taxes and credits.)
A Used Nissan Leaf with ~70-80mi range can be had in the US in the $6-10k range. My family has two, they're amazing for everything within a ~30mi radius (which, it turns out, is 98%+ of driving we do)
Taking a look at online listings for used cars in my province, the cheapest Leafs are in the $14k range for models that are about as old as my existing secondary car.
I'd crunch the numbers more seriously if I had to replace my secondary car today.
For some napkin math, assuming I only charge at home and my cost of electricity doesn't go up for the next decade, I'd be looking at about $3500 in electricity costs for 10k km/year for the next decade. Say the $14k car depreciates to $4k over the decade, that's $10k in depreciation. To match my existing car costs that leaves me with an average of $1720 to spend per year on maintenance (which, in my spreadsheet, includes tire changes/replacements, yearly detailing, any other misc parts) on a car that will be close to 20 years old with 200k km by the end of the decade. Might be workable? My current ICE car has run about $800/yr in maintenance after subtracting oil/engine-related costs in years 2-12 of its life. Leaf also seems higher risk - with my current low-value car, there isn't much potential for catastrophic failure (like a battery failure would be), and if there were a catastrophic failure, I'm just out the cost of the car, which isn't much.
Personally, I went from a fully-owned 1997 near-mint Honda Civic to a 2014 Leaf. It handles all my driving needs (and the family still has a gas car for the _very_ rare long trip).
I ran all the numbers in a big spreadsheet and determined that with fairly pessimistic numbers on the Leaf for depreciation/maintenance, and very optimistic numbers on the Civic for the same, total-cost-of-ownership worked out to approximately the same per mile. Insane.
So I bought the Leaf for $8k about three years ago. In that time it's roughly held its value or maybe appreciated due to the crazy market we're in, and I'm saving roughly $750/year (6k mi/yr, about) in fuel. More than offset the depreciation in my case, so far.
And, more importantly because all these costs are super tiny in the grand scheme of my finances, I'm driving a 2014 car instead of a 1997. More comfortable and probably much safer.
Yeah, looks like a clear win there. The market wonkiness over the past few years doesn't help my scenario - for $14k (upfront, minus whatever I could sell the old car for) I could go from a 2011 Ford Fiesta to a 2011 Leaf with comparable mileage. Due to said market wonkiness the Fiesta hasn't depreciated much, but since it wasn't worth much to start, those savings are limited.
FWIW my real numbers on the Fiesta over the past decade have worked out to 9¢/km depreciation, 6¢/km in ICE-specific maintenance, 9¢/km in non-ICE-specific maintenance and 7¢/km in fuel.
My home electric costs would run around 3.5¢/km for the Leaf, so I'd only be saving 3.5¢/km (or $350/year) in fuel. (And I'm locked in to a 5-year electricity contract at a pretty low rate for the area. If I had to re-sign today, my electric costs for a Leaf would be around 5¢/km.)
From your use of kilometers, I’m guessing you’re not in the US. Feels like that’s a double whammy because:
1) The insane distances in the US are what make a Leaf unusable as an only-car, reducing demand (and thus resale price)
2) I can’t do the math right now to figure out your electric rate, but my electricity is $0.1/kWh, or about $0.025 per mile (mile!) with pessimistic Leaf efficiencies.
Both of those are pretty strong headwinds vs. my situation.
1) Canada. Similar distances, I expect resale price is more affected by supply of older models. The US had 115k Leafs sold through 2017, Canada had 5.5k sold through 2017, or about 40% on a per-capita basis. Not sure why such a discrepancy. (Though from a quick check, after currency conversion, the starting price of a 2023 Leaf in Canada is 8% higher than in the US before taxes. Compare to e.g. a Corolla which is 11% lower before taxes.)
2) 17¢/kWh in AB, though current rates would be either 23¢/kWh on a fixed-rate contract or current floating rates are in the 25¢/kWh range.
I've been in my Tesla on a 2hr road trip with a planned stop at a supercharger along the way. A message popped up on the screen of my Tesla that there was a power outage at the supercharger I had planned to use - I was seamlessly rerouted to a different supercharger. Not an ideal situation, but very well handled by Tesla.
Perhaps I should have clarified, but I didn't need to pump gas. I had plenty of range to leave. The point I apparently failed to make was that the range of my ICE meant I didn't have to consider or plan for this contingency. In fact I used my car to charge some electronics and still had ample range to get back to civilization a few hours away.
If it were an EV then I would have had to find the nearest place to charge that did have power, which isn't trivial.
I agree if it's just travel between major population centers then it's not as big of a deal. There just happens to be a ton of travel that isn't between major population centers, and I'm not talking about camping.
Simply put an EV is just not as useful today as I wish I were. I'd just like to be able to visit family without getting stranded.
> If the power is out at your destination you're unlikely to be able to operate the gas pumps either.
In areas where power outages are common, gas stations have their own generators to continue operating. This is common where I'm from, so very familiar with it.
> Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous.
This is very easy. I always bring a jerry can with gas (or diesel) on longer road trips, just in case. For more remote destinations (camping out in the desert/wilderness) I bring as much as four cans of diesel to be self sufficient in case plans change.
> If the power is out the gas pumps aren't working either, though it's possible some fuel stations have standby generators.
Gas stations tend to have generators, yes.
> I have never taken extra gas along on a trip in the USA
Well, to counter your anectode, I have never taken a road trip more than 300 miles in the USA without carrying a jerry can (or more) of fuel, just in case. It's cheap and easy insurance, why wouldn't you? Even if you don't need it you can use it later, so it costs nothing.
> As great as electric is, an extra hour in the car on a road-trip with 3 kids is a tough sell.
If you’re doing road trips frequently and you absolutely cannot find a charging station that coincides with a lunch break spot and you cannot afford a single extra hour, then sure, this seems like a reason to wait for things to improve.
But I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard this argument from people who are more afraid of the possibility than the reality. People who do a road trip once per year or less, for example.
A very specific example… I live outside DC. I like to visit Canaan Valley WV to go camping. There is no charge infrastructure anywhere nearby. So, it’s a 2 hour detour on the return leg to recharge on what is normally a 2.5-3 hour trip (each direction).
But, from my house, that’s about the only trip I’ve found like this. Any of the beaches are reachable. Most cities within a day or two Drive are reachable.
Gaps do exist but you also mentioned camping. For me camping means a national or state park that has RV campsites. I plug in the car at such a site and wake up to a fully-charged car.
If you prefer more primitive camp sites this isn't an option but for some kinds of camping an EV is kind of ideal.
There's a Sheetz in Stephens City that adds like 10 minutes to get to. Add 15-20min for actually charging. If you do it both ways, that's probably less than 1 hour extra on a 6 hour drive. Hardly a "multi-hour" detour. And if your camping area has power, you probably don't even need to stop at all.
Maybe ABRP isn’t aware? If I route a Tesla 3 base, it sends me through Cumberland. I’ve also had it route me through Hagerstown with non-Tesla. In both cases, it wasn’t charge time that was the problem - it was getting to the charger.
People way over estimate how often they do 300+ miles in a day. I think it’s partially them not realizing that every time they leave the house with an ev, you’re leaving with a full tank.
I have family in SLC and live in Denver(520 miles), so I've done that road trip probably a dozen times in an ICE and EV, so I'm speaking from experience.
30+ mins at a supercharger doesn't need to be a thing. You get the fastest charging 0-50%, which takes about 15 mins, so that is like 180 miles range, or about 2.5 hours in the car.
So you can get about 700 miles with 2 15 minute stops, assuming you do 300 miles on the first charge if you start at 100%. With a gas car you'd be stopping once for maybe 10-15 mins to refuel and use the bathroom(or twice if you're driving with my partner), so it's really only 15 mins lost over 10 hours in the car.
I'll say that's not my natural way to do a road trip, I would previously go on longer legs with less time stopped, but I actually like taking more little breaks and would probably start doing that if I went on a road trip with an ICE.
Last summer we drove the i80 route on our way to Oregon and after Laramie (which I suspect has some super chargers) it looks like a wasteland until Rocksprings and I have no idea if they have them there either. On the southern route, after Grand Junkyard (which I imagine has super chargers) it looks like quite a spell before more. We go play in Moab periodically and it's pretty sparse out there. The distances seem manageable but if you mismanage things a little bit, you could have some trouble. I think I'd top off in Laramie and then probably think about it in Rocksprings, I assume they have chargers there. Even with an ICE out there, there are some pretty long distances between stops, seems like every time our range got below 100miles we were starting to get serious about planning a stop.
FWIW Southern Idaho and Eastern Oregon might have been worse. I think there were more people and it looked like more help if you were to have an issue but it might be farther between realistic charging stations. It's coming, it'll get there and most people aren't road tripping that much but it's still a factor.
> an extra hour in the car on a road-trip with 3 kids is a tough sell
You point out a problem with the IRA law, which subsidizes charger build out at service stations, precisely the wrong place for them. They should be building out in shopping areas, various roadside and destination attractions etc.
Maybe, but the last thing I want to do mid-trip is get off the highway and go shopping or whatever else. I want to top up the car, use the restroom, grab a drink, and get back on the road. I want to get wherever I’m going ASAP.
Chargers should be at full-service stations. Places with a deli or cafe, where it’s somewhat pleasant to rest for 20-30 minutes. Not someplace that the kids want to stay for hours.
> it’s 30+ minute charge time. As great as electric is, an extra hour in the car on a road-trip with 3 kids is a tough sell.
I dissent! Just did a 2-day (each way) road trip with young children and those charging breaks are pretty great and well-spaced for letting them run around and blow off steam. It’s not such a bad idea for the adults either…
Maybe but a lot of my family road trips are haul ass to Disneyland or San Diego (from Phoenix) where we leave at 6AM and want that travel day to be usable at our destination. We usually have about a 10 minute stop for gas fill up and snacks or lunch.
I made 4 3000km trips in a Tesla with young children. (Ottawa to Saskatoon and back, twice). The battery lasts longer than a child's bladder, and a restroom stop with young children requires at least 20 minutes, enough time for a substantial charge.
Only twice in the four trips did we ever have to wait for the car to finish charging. IOW it added 15 minutes to a 3 day trip.
That’s been my EV road trip experience too; the car is pretty much always ready before you are. People under-estimate how long they actually spend stationary by the time everyone goes to the bathroom, gets a snack and stretches their legs.
I've taken my Tesla to the Manitoulin a number of times to visit family with no issues from Southern Ontario. Not super north, but enough to get a good sense.
Tesla has superchargers along 17 pretty consistently. The biggest gap is probably Sault St Marie to Wawa and that's only 230 km. The rest of the gaps are all well under 200 km (mostly around 100-150) so you don't have to stop at every location. Highway 11 is a no-go zone.
Destination charging is a little more sparse. I use a welding outlet in the family farm shop, but that's obviously not an option available to everyone. There is a single L2 charger on the whole island and it costs $5/hr which is pretty steep for 7 kW.
I wouldn't feel stressed taking a Tesla anywhere along 17 or the whole main trans-canada corridor. I'd want to plan a little ahead if my destination was a place without a supercharger to arrive with enough charge to get back to the network, but that's pretty simple.
On one of my trips the Sault charger was out of service. Not a big deal because the car warned us about it ahead of time and we made sure to charge up at Blind River, but that would have been problematic if we were driving a Standard Range Tesla. It's a tough stretch because it's almost completely Provincial Park between the Sault and Wawa.
Both Tesla and Petro Canada have the Trans Canada covered. I'd recommend getting a TT-30 and a 14-50 adapter for your charger so you can charge at camp sites.
> It’s not just chargers, it’s 30+ minute charge time.
Unless you're driving through an area where chargers are spaced really far out, you shouldn't need to be charging that long.
EVs charge faster at low state-of-charge. You'll spend less time charging if you go from 20% to 50% twice than if you went from 20% to 80% once.
I've got a trip planned from Portland to Santa Clara coming up. My longest planned charge is 20 minutes. Everything else is in the 10-15 minute range, arriving at each charging with about 15% battery.
I regularly go on ~300-mile drives that need only a single charging stop, lasting 15-20 minutes, on my Tesla EV. By the time I've gone to the bathroom and gotten a drink, the supercharger has added 100-150+ miles of range and the EV is ready to go. All the stalls always work.
No other EV brand offers a comparable fast-charging experience in the US.
For city driving, I charge at home for around 1/3 the cost per mile compared to filling a comparable ICE vehicle with a poisonous combustible liquid.
I have been to electrify america stations twice. One had a broken charger at once of the two super fast stalls. The second time I had to wait in line because it was full, and then when I got in the card reader wasn't working. I had to install the app to be able to pay and get electricity. It was very stressful as we thought we might be totally effed.
Compared to Tesla, where you just pull up and plug in. No app, no card reader. It just works. I've encountered 1 bad stall out of like 50 visits to superchargers, and since there are typically 10 to 20 stalls it wasn't a big deal.
Yep, I switched from Tesla to BMW EV and am happy, but I don't road-trip much & can charge at home.
The problem with EA (and CCS networks in US in general) - 10x more likely to encounter a broken stall, and that stall will be at a station with 1/2 to 1/3 the stalls of a typical Tesla station, and if the whole station is out.. the next station is probably 2-3x as far as the next Tesla station would have been.
I find EA roadtrip planning to be more nerve wracking than Tesla was 5 years ago, and Tesla continues to build more stations at a rapid pace... so the lead is not closing.
> Compared to Tesla, where you just pull up and plug in. No app, no card reader. It just works.
This has been 100% of my Electrify America experiences as well, along with a few other brands. Some have been able to take payment by tap to pay credit card as well without an app.
Mach E. I've had plug and charge work every time I've used an EA charger on the first try. I've never failed to charge on an EA charger nor have I ever had to use an app to pay for it.
Most EVgo charging experiences have been plug and charge. I did have one experience a while ago that needed an app but that was one of their older chargers which even still had their old logo on it. All their newer chargers have successfully done plug and charge.
I've had tap to pay work with Google Wallet at Road Ranger (Freewire) and Francis Energy chargers.
> You mentioned taping a card, not just plugging in
That's why I included the language "as well". I've used a number of different brands of EV chargers.
Out of all the times I've used a public DCFC, I had to use an app maybe 10% of the time. And of that, it was only earlier into my ownership, I haven't had to use an app in about a year. Every charger I've used in the last year has been either plug and charge or supported credit cards directly.
The point is that 90% is not good when the alternative is 99.99%.
For gas stations, 99.99% of the time the pump works. So much so that I don’t even consider that it doesn’t work. That’s the level of reliability that I expect.
I see plastic bags over pump handles way more than 0.01% of the time. In fact over the last year I've had more experiences with gas pumps being broken than EV dispensers not working.
Most gas stations have more then 2-4 pumps, and whatever number they have, you aren't at risk of waiting 30min for previous user to finish, or driving 30 miles to find the next pump.
I say this as an exclusively EV driver for 5+ years myself... let's not defend the indefensible (EA's CCS network).
I'm just sharing my personal experiences. Every time I've charged at a DCFC in the past year all dispensers appeared to be working and I was able to either plug and charge or tap to pay with Google Wallet on my phone. I did not wait in a line once nor did I fail to charge on the first try.
Meanwhile in the last year I've waited in lines several times to get gas, and I've pulled up to a pump only to find it out of order three times this last year and seen many others with bags over the pump handle signifying they're out of order.
I've gone to pump gas multiple times in the last year. On a few occasions, I pulled up to a pump and found out it wasn't working after I got out of my car and tried to use the pump. On other occasions, I waited in lines to access pumps.
I have on several occasions. Power outages, being out of gas, having to clean tanks because of a bad batch of gas, a gas station I used to go to on road trips going out of business, credit card processing issues, getting tired of lines so I go elsewhere, and just being closed for the night are all failure modes of gas pumps I've personally experienced. Some of these way more than once.
I haven't personally experienced any failures to get a charge on CCS chargers though. I do agree if the power can't run the pumps it won't run the chargers either, but there hasn't been a similar major power outage since I got an EV and tried to charge on a public charger.
That reminds me, I've experienced bad gas require me to make repairs on my cars. I've never personally had an EVSE break my car, but I do contend it could happen.
I guess you’re unlucky or maybe I’m lucky. I think I’ve filled up 1500 times and never had to leave a station and go to another because it wasn’t working.
And I’ve never experienced bad gas requiring repairs.
I’d say 95% of these fillups were in the US if that matters.
1500 times is almost every week for 30 years. I'm probably only at 600-700 or so fill-ups personally, practically all US.
One occasion my fuel filter got badly clogged a few miles from a gas station on a road trip. I've had it happen to one of my vehicles and I've seen it happen to a few friends as well.
The power issues or just being completely out of gas were usually from hurricanes or the big freeze in Texas.
You've also never encountered or seen a gas station that was closed for the night? Every pump has always been 24/7 operations? I'm not even talking about full service stations, but I've encountered many gas stations where the store closes at like 2 or 3 AM meaning no attendant so they can't leave the pumps on. Its the worst when you're running low on gas on a late night road trip, you just have enough gas to roll into town, and the first gas station you roll up to, the only one you can see from the highway, is closed for the night. Bonus points, that small tiny town in the middle of no where also has absolutely abysmal cell reception so no phone maps. Better hope the TomTom shoved in the glove compartment eight years ago knows a couple of other gas stations in the few miles you've got left in the tank and that those stations still exist and are not also closed. Fun times. I've had this happen way more than once.
And its definitely happened more than once to me where credit card processing was down so they were asking everyone to pay cash. I don't usually carry cash on me, so buying gas wasn't happening.
And then finally I'll plan on getting gas at a Costco or Sams Club, see the massive lines, and decide to go drive another mile or two and pay more. Are there never lines at Costco or Sams Club stations near you?
And then finally I've definitely pulled into a station only to realize every handle has a bag on it.
Living in the west coast of the US I spend a lot of time driving around desert areas which are pretty remote. Many times I've rolled into remote gas stations in the middle of nowhere at ~3am where everything was dark but the pumps were operating.
You are either supremely unlucky, or vastly exaggerating the issue. It is very difficult to not find a working gas pump in the US, they're everywhere.
Anecdotes are anectodes, but I've been driving 35+ years and I have many cars and I drive a lot including much time in remote areas and yet, I have not even once experienced any of the problems you assert are common.
In order to promote EVs it is important to be honest about the advantages but also the disadvantages.
> Many times I've rolled into remote gas stations in the middle of nowhere at ~3am where everything was dark but the pumps were operating.
Many states require someone to be working at the station to quickly respond to any issues. If there's not enough business at 3am to justify paying someone to work all through the night, they won't keep the pumps on all night long. This will definitely vary from state to state. And places like Costco, those pumps shut off at like 9:00PM.
And I do agree, most of the times where I was unable to get gas at one station I was able to find another working station within a few miles, especially in suburban areas. In times of natural disasters though, I was definitely unable to find any working gas pumps, at least not without potentially risking getting stranded continuing to drive around wasting gas to try and find a different pump. I do agree those are disaster situations and not indicative of the normal state of affairs, and that CCS chargers would probably also have not been operational at those times.
> You are either supremely unlucky, or vastly exaggerating the issue.
Or maybe I just don't have as selective of memory or pay more attention to things around me than some other people. All of these issues work out to a little over a dozen failures for me to get gas over the 600-700ish times I've probably pumped gas, so yeah a pretty low failure rate overall. We should be honest about the disadvantages of pumping gas though, of which there are many.
> It is very difficult to not find a working gas pump in the US, they're everywhere.
I'm not saying I couldn't find any working gas pump, I'm saying I've found pumps not working on many occasions and needed to go find a working one elsewhere. Those are two very different concepts. It may be hard to not find any working gas pump, but given about 30 minutes in any urban or suburban area I could probably find at least one pump not working at the moment.
> In order to promote EVs it is important to be honest about the advantages but also the disadvantages.
I am being 100% honest. I spend more time waiting to charge my ICE car (driving to a gas station, starting the pump, pumping the gas, leaving the gas station, about every week and a half) than I do my EV, by hours a year. I've personally experienced more challenges and frustrations getting my ICE car fueled than I have charging my EV. And I spend more on energy costs for my ICE car than I do my EV, with those costs being extremely variable. Meanwhile my EV's energy costs are largely fixed due to 1-3 year electricity contracts.
> I've been driving 35+ years and I have many cars and I drive a lot including much time in remote areas and yet, I have not even once experienced any of the problems you assert are common.
In 35 years of driving you've never once seen a broken pump? You've never once seen a gas station closed? You've never once seen a line of people at a gas station and decided the wait wasn't worth it? Who's not being honest here?
I realize I'm just one data point in a sea of many, but it doesn't make my experiences dishonest. I'm being 100% honest sharing my experiences here. People don't often make YouTube videos of their experiences when things just go smoothly and right when charging. I'm not going to upload a video every time I plug in my car in my garage and it just charges. I'm not uploading videos every time I plug and charge on some public DCFC. Someone probably is going to make a video when it doesn't work for them though. People are going to share the headlines of "DCFC stations have high failure rates (in this limited geographic area we surveyed, briefly)". If the only reports are the times it doesn't work, you're not going to have a very "honest" set of reports. And I agree, different corridors are going to be differ...
I actually had yet another failure to get gas today for my ICE. Pull up to the gas station near my office, cars at every pump except one. I circle around to get to that pump and find out why, it's out of service. I guess I'll wait for someone to leave one of the other pumps.
A few minutes later, someone moves. I get to that pump. I try tap to pay. Declined. I put in a chipped card. Declined. Try another card. Declined. I go inside, cash only today for some reason. I don't carry cash with me often, so no gas for me.
There's like 10 minutes of my day wasted and I didn't even end up getting any gas. I'll have to try going to some other pump later.
Meanwhile my wife with the EV left the house with a full tank, just like every day. Zero minutes spent waiting or failing to dispense energy this week for that vehicle.
> I see plastic bags over pump handles way more than 0.01% of the time.
Yes, I do see those often enough. Maybe once a week, so way more than 0.01%
But of course, even the tiniest of gas stations has multiple pumps, four is the smallest I recall seeing and the smallest one around here is 8 pumps.
One or two may be out of service regularly, but in more than 35 years of driving I have never pulled into a gas station where all 4/8+ pumps were out of service simultaneously.
And then, even if that happened, given the way gas stations congregate, there is another one across the street which will be working.
That is not necessarily true. The outliers are widely reported, because successful experiences do not generally cause people to post online about how great their experience was.
You’re going to hear about the negative experiences because that is what people commiserate about. It’s human nature.
With most rental cars giving you unlimited miles, I'm very much of the opinion that when you factor in mileage and wear and tear on the car plus vehicle depreciation due to the long miles on the road trip--that renting a car for long trips is the way to go.
Especially when compared to owning a second care with an ICE just for the occasional trip.
I know a lot of women who own a beater and when they want to drive long distance rent a car. I think because they know it's cheaper and the idea of being stuck on the side of the highway makes them anxious.
And then there is my friend on a fixed income that's realized it's cheaper to rent a compact car for long drives. Same as above because having the car break down in nowheres is expensive quick.
1. Flexibility. For a rental car you need to plan ahead, pick it up on time and return it on time. Traffic jam delaying you? too bad. You now pay a surcharge.
2. Cost: the rental cost is actually only a small portion of the cost. Extra insurance and other fees end up more than the rent itself.
Your car will depreciate regardless of that road-trip, just by virtue of time passing. Rental companies won't subsidize the wear and tear for you, so you have to pay that anyway.
I actually like my car and have a bunch of my stuff in it. Renting another car just to save a few dollars on a road trip is ridiculous. Plus when I show up at the rental agency they often don't even have the car that I reserved. Now what?
I am not sure when the car industry reaches that iteration where you can swap out batteries. It already happened for the electric rollers and it is freakin amazing. I think many of the electric car skeptics would convert if there was a way to "re-charge" the car within 5-10 minutes. The batteries would be also happier.
Battery swap seems unlikely. It's just an excuse for "skeptics".
The use case for swaps is small. The vast majority of trips are short. Trips long enough to require a recharge often require a long stop for the driver.
People have priced in the notion of spending some time each week pouring flammable liquids into their vehicle. If we had started with electric cars everyone would find it disgusting and far too frequent. The speed of it for rare use cases would not impress.
Swappable batteries will not change that. They are too expensive and they limit design too much. Reducing the charge time to five minutes or even zero minutes would not change the minds of people who would simply swap to their next excuse.
Tesla tried it. There was no point Tesla building more swap stations because so few people paid the premium to get a swappable battery. It turns out that people who won't buy an electric car unless they can swap the battery will find some other reason not to buy an electric car if that reason is removed.
Since the battery is one of the biggest expenses to replace when it no longer holds charge, the economics of it would be tricky. Nobody would want to swap their good battery that they've carefully looked after for one that holds much less charge. Not to say that it's not possible to solve, but it's not so straight forward.
Also, I've used lots of chargers greater than 100 kw, and they really don't take that long to charge a car. Combine it with a meal, even a fast food meal and they've generally charged more than I needed in that time anyway.
Fast charging is an outlier anyway. >90% of the time you slow charge at home for a third of the price per mile, and it's lovely to only need to visit a filling station on rare long drives.
Financially for swapping to make sense, I think you need to be renting the batteries from the swapping company, not own them as part of the car purchase.
I was trying to make a trip work from Seattle to John day Oregon. It still isn’t very viable, well, it might work now but the range anxiety is there, even for a Tesla.
This was the only reason I got a Tesla instead of literally any other EV brand. I make frequent trips between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Electrify America is now an alternative, but it's not as reliable when it comes to availability and uptime.
How long does that trip take in a tesla? Charging included.
When I need to make that trip (with more than one person. If just one traveler it's cheaper to fly) I just rent a gas car and can make the trip in just over 5 hours. I'd say that includes gas stops but often I don't even need to stop for gas. One tank will get me all the way across. It's still a good idea to stop for gas because you can find cheaper stations outside of the big metro areas. But a gas stop is 5 minutes offramp to onramp.
I feel like all this comparing of charging times and ranges of various EVs misses the point that NONE of them offer a better experience that a gas vehicle yet. Sure, it's a trade off some people are willing to make already and that's great. But it needs to get even better.
It's hard to explain how much better the Tesla charging experience is to someone that hasn't tried both. As frustrating as the company (and the leadership) can be, the car is great and the charger network is outstanding. There are superchargers everywhere. You can get anywhere in the US without having to worry about it. You type your destination into the car and it plans a route for you. It picks stops strategically to minimize charge time (charging 20%-50% can take less time than charging 20%-80% once). Range on most Teslas is 300 miles + and you're never more than 150 miles from a supercharger, even deep in the desert.
But beyond that, when you pull into a supercharger, you know it's working. If it wasn't working it would say so on the dash. You park, pick up the cable, point it at your port and the port opens. You plug it in. You walk away. Your phone gets a notification when it's time to go. And it charges your card automatically. No goofy app required, no NFC/authorization, no noodling with the charger to make it work, no effort. It's really really nice.
Chargepoint stuff works fine. Stations are often broken (and like the author said, there's no way to know without going there). You have to use an app which thankfully supports an Apple wallet card. Before I figured that out it was super fiddly. I've had stations on other networks that are unusable because they have poor cell service. Then there's a whole "reload your card" thing where you get charged in $20 increments. And adapters, chunky connectors. To be fair I've never tried DC fast charging with anything but a supercharger.
- evgo was decent, but had limited capacity (usually 2 L3 per location)
- chargepoint was usually pretty decent, but mostly was an L2 charger network
- blink was L3, but their chargers were ALWAYS broken.
that was 3 years ago, and switching to a tesla changed a few things:
- the range of the car was higher
- superchargers were in more locations
- had more stalls per location
- were faster at charging
- were more reliable
- one small detail worth mentioning - the other systems had payment networks that were frequently part of the problem - either preventing charging, or having you fiddle with things, or calling in to manually start things
People have forgotten when gas stations didn't used to be every 100 feet.
There was a reason why people stayed on the interstates and turnpikes and regularly spaced gas stations was one of them. Many of these were subsidized.
My brother's new Tesla cost $76,000 more than my used Fiat 500. The fiat gets something like 26mpg in the city and 34 on the highway. If gas is $5/gal, then it's going to be 400,000 miles or so before the cost of gas equals the $76,000 price differential.
(It occurs to me I didn't even factor in the cost of the electricity to pay for miles his Tesla drives.)
I'm also driving a car with about half to one fourth the environmental impact to construct (if you think the impact is proportional to the construction cost)
I'm about 60,000 miles into owning the car and aside from typical maintenance and a fuel recirc solenoid that had to be replaced, it's not been that expensive to operate.
It has the benefit that no one seems to want to steal it, so my anti-theft package is just to park it next to a Mercedes or BMW.
My battery has never spontaneously ignited and it doesn't cost $24k to replace every xxx-thousand miles.
But it's not all roses, I don't get to ride in the HOV lane, but that's fine. I'm a socialist and prefer the HOV lane be used for HOVs which are CONSIDERABLY more eco-friendly than ANY single-occupant electric or hybrid.
My Fiat is pretty peppy for an ICE vehicle, but yes, not nearly as good at low end torque as EVs. But it's much better than the '71 VW bug I learned to drive on.
But I think my point is... the upfront cost and TCO differentials between ICE and EVs make it difficult to support the argument "EVs are cheaper than ICEs"
They will be, someday. But that day is not now and that vehicle is not a Tesla.
Except that the Tesla he wanted at the time he wanted to purchase it was $76,000 more than my Fiat. The existence of $30k Teslas at other points in spacetime do not change that fact.
If we rework the example with a $30k Tesla, that's still $26k more than my used car, which brings the break-even point down to about 150,000 miles (if you assume electricity going into the EV is without cost) or somewhere around 225,000 miles if you go with the previous poster's assumption that price per mile is one third of an ICE engine.
I (absolutely) got a cranking deal on my Fiat. But if you compare a new Tesla at $35,000 with a new Camry, it (the Tesla) is starting to look more compelling, but as long as ICE vehicles have functionality left in them, it's probably more environmentally conscious and economically sound to drive them.
That being said... if you want a Tesla, get a Tesla. But if your objective is to drive around cheaply, I don't think it's the cheapest option.
But if you're comparing the break even costs you should really be comparing a cheap used version of the car instead of a high end version as you're comparing it to a ludicrously cheap counterexample.
His $80k Tesla was $2M cheaper than a Bugatti Veyron. Clearly Tesla's are way cheaper than gas cars. I don't understand how anyone can afford the millions of dollars gas cars cost.
Or maybe $4k cars that aren't absolutely falling apart and Veyrons aren't the most useful yardsticks of car pricing. I definitely understand the $4k used unicorn, I drove one for years. But IME the vast majority of $4k cars are priced that low for a reason.
I can find a used Bolt for ~$20k pretty easy. Most decent used gas cars are probably going to be around $10-14k. Let's say $10k price difference. At $3.50/gal, 25mpg, 12,000mi/yr, that's $1,680 in gas. At 4mi/kWh, 11¢/kWh, same mileage that's $330. $1,350/yr cheaper, so from energy cost differences that's a seven and a half year break even on 10k difference. If your ICE was $14k, that's only four and a half years.
And that Bolt probably just got a brand new battery from the recall, meaning it'll probably last at least a decade (probably more) without any major maintenance issues. Meanwhile that $10k ICE probably needs a new timing belt soon, probably has some aging motor mounts, and maybe it isn't always shifting into third gear very well.
I'm definitely not telling you to throw away your $4k unicorn. It's good you're getting a lot of life in it. I'm just suggesting that acting like EVs cost $80k and ICE cars cost $4k is stretching those markets to the point where it's pretty unrealistic to most buyers.
Also, that point about batteries spontaneously igniting, I've seen neighbors houses burn down from ICE cars spontaneously igniting. I see gas cars burning on the highways pretty regularly. I've had cars have recalls telling me to park outside. Gas cars catch on fire all the damn time.
> His $80k Tesla was $2M cheaper than a Bugatti Veyron. Clearly Tesla's are way cheaper than gas cars.
Silly comparisons are fun I suppose, but for someone who is poor ultimately the only comparison that matters is how much will it cost this year.
The cheapest non-salvage Tesla I see on craigslist right now is 30K. I also see tons of 2K-4K Honda/Toyota/Mazda cars that will give someone plenty of low-cost miles for years to come. It is not realistic to think a poor person will buy a 30K car on the hope that in a few decades the operating costs will break even and eventually save them money.
> At 4mi/kWh, 11¢/kWh
Here with PG&E they charge 33c/kWh after midnight, or 56c/kWh during peak hours.
Even if electricity was free, it would take 10s (if not 100s) of thousands of miles to make up for the initial price difference. But the future isn't written yet. It's entirely possible that gasoline will be $10/gallon next year and electricity may be free. In which case, it will only take 175,000 miles to break even.
Also, I think we're conflating two stories here. The first is about the SPECIFIC example of me and my brother. He bought an expensive car, I bought an inexpensive car. It's going to be at least another 300k miles before my gas expenses meet the price difference. At that point he can certainly start teasing me about how expensive my car is to operate. But I will still be able to call him a reactionary imperialist whose only interest is cheating the proletariat out of their right to travel in the HOV lane unimpeded by bourgeois singletons.
The second story is the general case, where someone who needs a car wants to compare the total cost of ownership of a Tesla vs. some other random non-EV. Let's also make the other random non-EV reasonably nice because if you're bougie enough to consider a Tesla, you would NEVER be seen in a Hyundai Accent. Bing tells me the MSRP on a 2023 Camry is $27k which is DANG CLOSE to a current Tesla after you throw in government credit. But the Camry can go 500 miles on a tank of gas and if you get the long range Tesla, the price starts going up. So there is a bit of a question here about how you might use your car (I mostly only drive city-to-city and use a bus in town, like any civilized person would.) But, I think the point here is the break-even point is MUCH lower than in my case.
There's also a third story I think is a little outlandish because we're comparing frightfully expensive cars with Teslas. This is where we compare the 2022 Rolls Boat Tail at $28M to the standard Model 3 after all the price cuts Elon's been talking about lately. If you can afford a Rolls Boat Tail, you don't care about how much gas (or electrons) cost. You would probably NEVER be seen in a standard Model 3. I think you would have to get a plaid and then gold plate every surface. Or maybe palladium plate every surface because someone told you gold was passé.
It's silly to compare the cost of operation of two cars that aren't in competition to be purchased by the same person. You should compare the kinds of cars you'd be likely to buy against each other, or the kinds of cars your brother is likely to buy against each other.
A model 3/Y purchase price is pretty much at the average new car price, so a person looking for a new sedan or mid sized SUV would look a step further and look at things like total cost of operation.
Again. My original comment was in response to someone who asserted it was ALWAYS less expensive to operate an EV than to operate an ICE vehicle. Which is all manner of wrong.
I gave a specific example involving an expensive EV my brother bought and a remarkably inexpensive used ICE vehicle I purchased. I did not say that every comparison of EVs with ICEs would exhibit the same relative costs. I was talking about a SPECIFIC example.
We're I logician I might refer to this as an existential: there exists one. I am not arguing it is a universal.
But if someone says "all EVs are less expensive to operate than all ICEs," then to disprove that statement you only have to find a single counter-example, which I did.
Finding a single counter-example to the universal does not imply the obverse of the universal. In other words, saying "hey, I bought a cheap used ICE vehicle and it is considerably less expensive to operate than my brother's EV" does not mean I am arguing "All ICE vehicles are cheaper to operate than all EVs."
I am happy that you like the model 3/Y and wish you many years of happy driving. <snark>At least until you have to sell your children to afford the replacement battery.</snark>
> For city driving, I charge at home for around 1/3 the cost per mile compared to filling a comparable ICE vehicle with a poisonous combustible liquid.
That's all the person you originally replied to says about cost. You emphasize ALWAYS and use the keyword operate, but you've self inserted the extreme always condition and ignore what operate means.
You're adding the word "always" and completely ignoring the "comparable" aspect. These two words radically change the meaning of the comment you're arguing against in your mind and what's actually written in the comment.
> all EVs are less expensive to operate than all ICE
The only comment in this thread with that language is your comment right here.
> At least until you have to sell your children to afford the replacement battery.
I guess ICE cars never have substantial drivetrain failures which ultimately result in the cost of repairs exceeding the value of the vehicle? The transmission in my 2000 Accord was starting to experience issues, how much would that have cost to replace? And then on top of that, it probably needed an EGR cleanout again along with a new water pump and timing belt. I don't know how many more years the catalytic converter would have lasted, those are cheap though right?
I guess all of those things are pretty cheap, what maybe $50 each right? Wait, rebuilt transmissions are like $2k before labor? Having someone replace the timing belt and water pump is almost $1k these days, and that's something I'm just supposed to do every 60,000mi or so? How many thousands of dollars was already spent keeping that car running?
Meanwhile the battery is practically the only real drivetrain wear item on an EV. No catalytic converter to rust or walk away, no EGR system getting clogged up, no timing belts to fail and destroy the valves, no valves getting gunked up, no piston rings to foul, any seals are under way less stress and far less prone to leak, coolant systems are practically never stressed and under way less pressure and aren't a tiny seal away from making forbidden milkshakes, etc.
If your argument about EV battery life is based around the battery only having a 10 year 100,000mi warranty, I'd hate to break it to you about ICE car warranties these days. Clearly just about every ICE car is just going to fall to pieces at about 60,000mi. Or maybe many vehicles vastly outlive their stated warranty times.
> My battery has never spontaneously ignited and it doesn't cost $24k to replace every xxx-thousand miles.
> But it's not all roses, I don't get to ride in the HOV lane, but that's fine. I'm a socialist
Can't tell if joking. I guess you read about exploding Tesla batteries in Pravda?
People with families can't load their kids and dogs and luggage into a cute clown car like a Fiat 500. If it suits your needs better that's great. I downsize even more and ride a motorcycle. These things aren't comparable.
The market for $75,000+ cars is small by definition there's really no need to throw shade like this comrade, the comparable cars are in the decadent luxury segment to begin with - which Tesla happens to be dominating for a reason. Horses for courses.
Sure. Every singleton I see in the HOV lane really has a dog and two kids stuffed in the trunk. I just can't see them.
If you want a $75k+ luxury car, by all means, get one. But you're crazy if you say it's cheaper than a $4k used ICE vehicle, which was the initial claim. It's also crazy to say a $75k+ luxury car has a lower TCO than a $40k 2023 Camry.
Also, socialists don't call each other "comrade." You're thinking of European communists [*], and I suspect South American communists. But when I talked with South American communists, they just called me "Amigo."
Interesting fact I just learned: they're apparently still publishing Pravda, but that is not where I heard about Tesla battery fires. I learned about them from living down the road from a power station where Tesla batteries caught fire. Sort of a "Hey! I wonder where those fire trucks are going? Is that smoke coming from Moss Landing?" sort of moment. And while I often wonder if NBC, CBS and CNBC are crazy, they are not, as you suspect, outlets for Pravda.
* Or possibly French social democrats. It's hard to keep up with French political fashion.
Stop that. I did not say never. Gasoline cars explode too, I saw it in a blues brothers movie. Same as you, I've also seen a car fire in real life with the trucks and sirens and everything. Fires are a thing, the night is dark and full of terrors.
Sometimes civilian planes drop out of the sky or even get shot down. Even humans on occasion "spontaneously combust". I can link you news stories demonstrating such events, yet here you are in the day to day not paralyzed by fear of it happening to you. I assume.
> Also, socialists don't call each other "comrade."
Astute. I am not a socialist, amigo. Myself, I was actually thinking of good natured, how you say, Humor[*].
> Sure. Every singleton I see in the HOV lane really has a dog and two kids stuffed in the trunk. I just can't see them.
Never said that either. I said you can't fit that stuff into a little Fiat 500, it is not the same vehicle category. This isn't an opinion. It literally isn't.
> But you're crazy if you say it's cheaper than a $4k used ICE vehicle,
Never said that either!
> It's also crazy to say a $75k+ luxury car has a lower TCO than a $40k 2023 Camry.
Nor that.
Is this a reading comprehension issue or just a relentless insistence on throwing shade?
Once again: If you actually want to compare used ICE vehicles like a Camry to a Tesla, you'd compare to a comparable used Tesla model not a brand new $75,000+ one. Used Toyotas are extremely reliable and affordable, it is a great option! May very well be the best option depending on what is available in your location at a given moment.
Most people don't buy new, you might not want/need to, that is a separate discussion. Depending how much you drive, as fuel is expensive, eventually you'll break even - maybe around 10 years / 100k miles, you can look it up and do the calculation yourself.
It may or may not be the right option for somebody but surely has nothing to do with the completely different category of $75,000+ cars.
* Worldly socialists are often unfamiliar with the concept. Ymmv.
> I charge at home for around 1/3 the cost per mile compared to filling a comparable ICE vehicle with a poisonous combustible liquid.
Tesla batteries are filled with poisonous combustible electrolyte. The cost of batteries easily dwarfs the fuel cost savings with appropriate discount rate. And the electricity probably comes from coal or low efficiency nat gas turbine.
I wonder whether autogas (LPG) systems are the cleanest alternative as of now. Until recently the main problem with sequential autogas was sudden explosions of cars with faulty units. Did it get safer as well?
The Supercharging network is the most under-appreciated, under-advertised feature of a Tesla.
3rd party charging stations are usually only 2-4 stalls. Tesla stations are usually 8-16, with a couple monster stations on I-5 having 50+.
> All the stalls always work.
I wouldn't go quite that far. I have been to a station that had a dead charger. But that's been once. And Tesla from what I've heard, Tesla is usually pretty quick about getting repairs done.
America seems really bad at basic infrastructure things.
They're in some weird kind of panglossian mindset where, if it's not working in the USA then that proves that it is in fact literally impossible.
So rather than sort themselves out and install some more plugs, they just shrug and give up.
I imagine a Chinese General pointing to this article and saying "see, their army will topple like Russia's in Ukraine did, it's all bluster, as a failing nation they can't even install plugs"
Yeah, we did things like standardize the size of a gas nozzle so they're universal in all cars and trucks (and lawnmowers, and...) regardless of make/model or brand of gas. Then we just allowed anyone who wants to make an electric to have a proprietary system.
It's a standards problem, not infrastructure, per se.
One day, the infrastructure will arrive, and I think gov’ts should worry 80% about infrastructure, and 20% EV incentives. Until then, PHEVs are often a great choice in the current (pun unintentional) situation.
Also, I wish all level 2 chargers cost money, a reasonable rate of course. Tesla owners are part of the problem. A large contingent of them are annoying cheap bastards. Typical parking lot: Paid level 3 charging, vacant. Free level 2 charging beside it, filled with Teslas.
Unlike this author, I did research before buying an electric car and determined PHEV was by far the best choice for me. It was 2016, the car has been perfect for me and literally the most trouble free, and low maintenance vehicle I’ve owned.
The problem here is one of someone not doing their research, electric charging challenges, and apparently not knowing how maps work.
Is CCS charging unreliable today? Yes, compared to gas station or Tesla Super Chargers... CCS has a ways to go. They are the weak link.
The author doesn't discuss ANYTHING positive, like how its super easy to have a fully charged vehicle all the time because you charge at home overnight. This was just a rant on a few specific points.
Speaking of, plugshare? Is very handy and very decent. Yes, sometimes chargers are hidden away in slightly odd locations, but plugshare has generally had VERY accurate maps. Zoom in and you will see the pins on the map on are on a specific side of the map, or in a very certain location of the parking lot - and in reality that's where the chargers are.
The descriptions also say things like "I-80 exit 156. Four stations along the side of the building.". And the comments will include useful statements like "April 21, 2023 - Still only one (Amelia) of the four is working.". Do you want to read sub-optimal news like that? No, but at least you can plan accordingly.
Also also, Last road trip I did in my Tesla Model Y (about 250mi each way), I stopped more for food/drink/bathroom/etc than I did for charging. Yes, I probably could have drive the entire way (one way) on an ICE vehicle without stopping for gas, where I did have to stop for a charge... but that was an extra 10mn or so. Wooptydo. Keep in mind that during the average week (of non-road tripping) I stop at a gas station exactly never, so I'd say I still stop less with an EV overall.
And yes, if you a doing a lot of long road trips. Going places a little more off the grid. Or generally hate stopping because you're ok peeing in a bottle... then please stick with ICE for now. EV's are still in the early adopter phase and they don't work great for everyone. Apartment dwellers are, for example, very hit or miss (if their garage doesn't have EV charging, it's not a great experience).
> I love how I never have to buy gas. I love how it glides quietly up the street. I love that it has so much pickup that I can easily blow past gas-powered muscle cars if I want to. I love having stickers that allow me to drive solo in the HOV lanes. I love that routine maintenance consists of little more than rotating the tires.
The author states repeatedly that they love their EV, but the inconvenience/uncertainty around charging on longer road trips is enough to be a deal breaker for them.
> And yes, if you a doing a lot of long road trips… then please stick with ICE for now.
I feel like the tone of your comment is overly dismissive of the author’s complaints, considering that you essentially end up agreeing with them at the end.
What is the reason for a failing charger? When one fails do all the ones in an installation fail (common failure?)
I wonder if the cars could help here: if you plug in and are unable to charge the car could report that à la waze. Though there is a possible false positive if your credit card is declined.
From my experience it is often software incompatibility between charger and a car. I can often see that charging company will charge my debit card for charging credit (20-50EUR) and then charger will refuse to charge my car.
That's just the "pre-authorization" on your card. It gets released again when you end the charging session, minus the charging cost for the kWh you used. Same thing as gas stations where you use your card before using the fuel pump.
If you didn't end the charging session (e.g. by pressing a button or presenting the same card again), you may have given the next person a free charge?
Last week found myself in Palm Beach with my hybrid mini. Driving down was almost out of gas but thought, I'll just get there, meet my partner and buy gas later.
Next day found a place to charge but only have 17 miles on a good day. But assumed that would be enough to get me to a gas station.
But the gas shortages because of flooding in port everglades extended even up to Palm Beach. They only got four inches of rain not the two plus feet that they got in Miami and no flooding. But, still were affected. I went to a dozen gas stations and called a few, and they had no clue when they would have gas.
We circled around different charging stations within ten or fifteen miles heading north. It was crazy.
We checked again a few hours later and there was a station that had gas.
Feels like climate change might make it complicated for both EV only and gas only. Hybrid seems like the right option but even that was complicated. My mini doesn't use the same plugs as the Tesla chargers. Oh well.
I think part of the problem here is that the public and government officials don't treat lack of charging infrastructure and broken chargers as an emergency.
If a tree falls across a major road, you can bet there will be work crews showing up within hours to cut it up and move it aside to restore access, because a road with a tree across it doesn't function as a road anymore.
We should treat lack of working charging infrastructure the same way: a road without the necessary infrastructure for EVs to traverse it with the confidence that they can charge when they need to isn't a road either.
If EV owners really wanted to press the issue, they could protest by blocking roads. If, say, there's a dozen or so EVs all stuck at one charging station because the chargers are down, they could move their cars to the middle of the adjacent highway and form a roadblock. Unfortunately this isn't safe, as it would probably lead to violence from angry ICE drivers.
I'm actually not sure what the legal criteria are around blocking roads. I mean, it's not unusual for protests to block roads, but there's usually some amount of rule-bending when it comes to protests -- that's often the point. I don't know if you can literally apply for a permit to have a protest that blocks a highway in most jurisdictions. I'd imagine in most cases you'd have the police come and give everyone a ticket and/or tow their vehicles.
There is a significant recent precedent when it comes to vehicles blocking roads: there was the
> "Beginning January 22, hundreds of vehicles formed convoys from several points and traversed Canadian provinces before converging on Ottawa on January 29, 2022, with a rally at Parliament Hill. The convoys were joined by thousands of pedestrian protesters. Several offshoot protests blockaded provincial capitals and border crossings with the United States."
...
> "Between February 17 and 20, a large joint-operation police presence in Ottawa arrested organizers and protesters, removed parked vehicles, and dismantled blockades from Ottawa streets. By February 21, most of the protesters had been cleared from Ottawa."
So, if you're right wing, you can shut down major cities for weeks with minimal consequences. I don't think EV owners protesting the sorry state of infrastructure would get the same treatment.
Come to think of it, that's probably going to happen eventually. There's no future for internal combustion ground transportation, and eventually most of those gas stations are going to be closed. I wouldn't be surprised if, when parts of the country begin to be unreachable by ICE vehicles because of lack of gas stations, some irate ICE truck owners block the roads in protest.
It doesn't happen now because petroleum is available basically everywhere. "I had trouble locating an open gas station" is a problem that's happened to me I think once about twenty years ago, and even then we didn't have to go all that far to find an open gas station. (That I remember it at all had to do with the circumstances of the event. I was on a road trip through the deep south, and the police showed up at the second gas station and questioned us because someone apparently thought we were trying to rob the first gas station we stopped at which was closed.)
We have a long way to go before this happens. EVs are still a small percentage of cars, we haven’t solved long haul trucks and many already exist (and are expensive to replace), charging times prohibit many scenarios, rural areas are going to be hard pressed for chargers, and EVs don’t do well with cold which a majority of people experience with winter (not everyone is in coastal west coast).
Those things can all be solved with current technology. Batteries can be insulated and heated to optimal temperatures in cold climates. There are already some roads in Sweden and Germany where trucks can charge from overhead lines while moving. One of the roads in Sweden uses rails embedded in slots in the road surface, which can be used by cars as well.
The current fleet of cars will take a long time to replace, just because cars usually take a long time to wear out. I think we'll hit an inflection point soon, though, where it just doesn't make financial or practical sense to buy an ICE vehicle anymore.
Infrastructure is a pretty big hold-up at this point. Battery manufacturing is also a bottleneck, but at least lithium prices have dropped quite a lot. There's nothing stopping companies from building a lot more factories for LFP cells.
I just spent a week with a Chevy Bolt while one of our family cars was in the shop. The good: nice small car, everything is pretty easy to use. The meh: without hardware installed in my home, keeping the car charged up for regular family use is problematic. Sometimes there is just not 2 hours to swing by a charging station, and so we spent most of the week with the Bolt showing under 40 miles in range. The bad: hitting the charging station for 70 miles in range costing $13 (this was consistently the deal for the week). My Subaru Crosstrek has a lifetime average of 27Mpg, so at $3.80 per gallon of gas, the cost to get the same range would have been $9.86. I was pretty surprised that it was 25% more expensive to charge the Bolt. Note: I was charging between 4pm-6pm, and my understanding is charging rates are lower in the evening... but, apples to apples, the Bolt was more expensive to fuel.
Exactly my experience with Enyaq in Europe. Now add unique and stupid applications for each charger which were probably made by a guy with phd in Crappiest UX design and regularly broken or incompatible chargers (yep, same CCS plug but car will refuse it...) and I am really skeptical to any BEV future.
This is the dirty secret of EVs (or one of them): public charging costs as much as gasoline for an equivalent ICEV, or more.
Whenever I run the numbers to decide between an EV or an ICEV, I get payback periods in the hundreds of years. (I can't charge at home. YMMV.)
Edit: This would change if a battery-swapping industry model were widely adopted. If the battery was not included in the cost of the car but amortized over 10 or 20 years by a swapping station, the NPV of an EV looks much better.
For the few that do very long trips, and where a route planning app says it's genuinely not possible, then I'd definitely say go back to hybrid or gas.
But for most city drivers just going to work and back, overnight charging and basically never fast charging is the way to go.
Yes, electric cars are not viable unless you can charge at home. Meaning, in your garage / driveway.
This means they're not that useful for people who live in apartments, and most people who live in a city like SF and park on the street(*).
They're also not viable for road trips. Teslas can make it work but you still have to be willing for your trip to take 20 - 30% longer than it would with a gas car.
For people who have a garage or driveway, and don't need to take a road trip that often (or can own a second car for that purpose), they're fantastic! A better experience in almost every way compared to a gas car.
we had a chevy bolt, lived in condo, parked in a parking garage in Cow Hollow in SF. Had no problems charging either at work, or at a charging station down by the marina. We drove it to Yosemite a couple times, drove to Paso, and Napa all for fun. Got rid of it because we didn't need a car while working from home.
Long story short, it was useful and viable even though we didn't have charging.
I charge about once a couple of weeks when using it around town on a Tesla supercharger while shopping in a mall.
Having a garage is definitely the best way, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessary. Driving it like an ICE car where you go to the gas station to fill up every couple of weeks is perfectly acceptable.
And on longer journeys, yeah it’s annoying to have to stop every 2ish hours, but I find that by the time I get back from the bathroom, I usually have enough to continue.
Is it perfect? No. Is it an adequate substitution for ICE - definitely.
I have a Tesla, no home charging, and I can't underscore how much of a non-issue it is. I charge once or twice a week at a shopping plaza I'd be visiting anyway.
When I roadtrip (I regularly do 150-250 mile road trips around New England), I'm usually stopping at a supercharger within a mile of the highway at a location equivalent to one I would have stopped anyway. Most times I only need to charge for 20 minutes to finish my trip with plenty of range to spare. I would have stopped at some point anyway so it's adding 5-15 minutes max on a 3 hour trip.
Obviously location and situation dependent, but for me it couldn't be any less of an issue.
My question would be more about availability and waiting. If everyone at the grocery store is using their once-a-week trip to charge the car at the same time, you're going to need a lot more chargers.
I do have a home charger, but I also take more road trips in the Tesla than I do in my ICE car because the Tesla is more comfortable. The Tesla is quieter, the seats are better, and with occasional use of autopilot I can stretch my arms and legs while driving. In addition, if I get sleepy I just pull over and take a nap in the back (Model Y here) in air-conditioned comfort. Can't do that in an ICE car without running the engine and generating CO.
Trips do take a bit longer but only because refueling typically takes 20 minutes rather than 10. It's a non-issue. There's no "make it work": The Tesla is an easier road trip car for me than my Audi, full stop.
Ha! Tesla wouldn't like what I have to say about FSD. It's an expensive scam that I strongly recommend you not buy. Other than that it's the best car I've ever owned.
I absolutely believe that Tesla will eventually figure out FSD. It's still 5+ years away, though. I would definitely agree with recommending people don't buy it, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a scam.
> They're also not viable for road trips. Teslas can make it work but you still have to be willing for your trip to take 20 - 30% longer than it would with a gas car.
In my experience, 5-10% longer is more accurate.
Very little of my charging time is spent waiting for the car to charge. While the car is charging, I'm using the bathroom or eating.
Within the next 10 years I think we’ll have 1,000 mile ranges and ~30 min charge times. CATL just announced a doubling of the current best energy density, that alone could get a Tesla Model 3 to over 600 miles on a charge. At that point I think this conversation will stop and people will all switch. I agree though, at the minute if you don’t have the ability to charge at home you’re missing out on one of the absolute best features (always leaving the house with a full tank).
I had assumed the intent is that until infrastructure changes, electric cars are for people who live in houses, and have 2+ cars. You use the electric car to commute, make errands etc, and use the other car to travel etc.
I read a report from an insurance outfit. People that live in urban areas drive about 6000 miles a year average vs suburbanites that drive 12000. That matches my living in SF experience. Bonus about 1/3 of that 6000 miles was long distance.
So I think not having a dedicated charger in the city isn't as much of a problem as one might think. Probably can charge here and there or every two weeks if needed. Hassle yes. But living in a city with a car is a hassle.
> That means mapping out charging stations in a comprehensive, thoughtful way … not leaving it to the whims of the commercial sector, … It will require cities to develop plans for how and where to locate public chargers
I spoke at public hearing last year in favor of an EV ordinance that my city passed. I believe that if we are to involve government with EV adoption, which is necessary, we need to be prepared for backlash and controversy, and it will require non-insignificant effort to arrive at consensus required for government action. After the ordinance was passed I exited the council chambers and I was approached by a middle aged woman who identified her self as a property developer. She told me how unfair the code amendments were because of how much it was going to cost her business. I told her that solutions like this are necessary because people are concerned with range anxiety. She responded that she was concerned with “regulatory anxiety” and the encroachment of government, and briefly grabbed my shoulder during her tirade. After that I quietly and uneventfully left the area.
I realized that if people are edging into getting physical with a small city ordinance that requires developers to provide limited charging stations for EVs, our civilization is woefully unprepared to address climate change, which will require reforms to many institutions, and the retirement of others. We need to make big changes in a lot of areas, and I don’t see the leadership, technical expertise, and outreach required to do that.
Threatening someone’s livelihood is not a good way to get them on your side. It has a real “some of you may die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take” feel. On the other hand, if you really are willing to leave these people behind in your march of progress, be prepared to defend tourself.
Government has been doing this for decades, with minimum parking requirements. I don't ever hear businesses complain about how those cut into profit margins.
A thing to think about is: Do we in fact need top-down government mandates to do this? People with gas cars have range anxiety, too, and you need to be strategic about placement of gas stations to ensure that they don't get stuck in a place where they can't charge. And yet... this turns out to be a problem that largely solved itself without a centralizing authority, because "people want to buy gas/electricity for their car, and they want to buy it more in certain places, and there is money to be made by serving that demand" is where the market does well.
Market failures are real, the need for regulation is real (there are, quite sensibly, piles of regulations around how you can store the tanks of toxic chemicals needed to fuel a legacy gas car, and there will be regulations around EV charging as well), but in terms of making sure EV charging places exist where needed, this is probably a place where just "get out of the way, and don't let zoning regulations block necessary construction" gets you 90%+ of the way to where you need to be.
> People with gas cars have range anxiety, too, and you need to be strategic about placement of gas stations to ensure that they don't get stuck in a place where they can't charge.
Right? But I can’t buy 5x20l canisters and fill them up with x kWh of electricity. I can to that with diesel or gasoline.
Aha, 2770kg for a jcb bobcat and roughly 550kg for a battery pack. Let me guess - on a trailer? What would towing that do to the range on the first battery pack? Or are you being sarcastic?
You may not need government to mandate EV chargers. You may need government to remove barriers to deploying them, and that will require some nice encouragement and some not-so-nice arm twisting.
To install EV charging, unless you’re planning on generating your own energy on site, you’re likely going to procure power from your local utility, most of which are monopolies that are heavily regulated by your state utility commission.
Some estimates say it could cost utilities up to $5,380 per EV to upgrade the electrical infrastructure to support them [1]. Although utilities will earn more revenue through selling electricity, this will not completely offset the infrastructure investment. Will the costs be paid by ratepayers, some of whom may not have an EV? Your state utility commission may balk at that.
Of course federal incentives exist to offset costs, but many programs require participation by your state executive branch, who may not be in lock step with federal policy. Your state utility commission may not be in lock step with your state administration. If you can get agreement with your state policy makers, your utility will have to be employed to expand grid access. They may expect certain amount of consumption to make it worth their while, which you may not be able to provide for a few years until EVs gain adoption. Some utilities will charge you extra too if you use too much electricity, called demand charges, to disincentive consumption. Utilities will have their own schedule to build out the infrastructure, which may not match yours. They’re also a monopoly, so you can’t exactly shop around. Then you have the code and permitting requirements of the municipality your setting up the infrastructure in. The permitting process also follows their schedule, not yours.
With EV charging we have a massive coordination problem, with actors you can’t choose who aren’t strictly driven by market incentives. You’ll need some kind of combination of carrots (tax breaks and grants) and sticks (fines and penalties for slow walking a process) to make the infrastructure needed to support wide EV adoption.
Our civilization is a joke, really. We can't seemingly get anything done if someone is making money off of it not being done, and anything actually getting done is in severe danger of being dismantled so someone can make money off of it not being done.
338 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 234 ms ] threadIf I leave a comment, I can look in /threads more easily than /new or navigating to profile > upvoted.
I know there's efforts to build more charging stations, so that may improve somewhat. But my question is how do you charge an electric car if you live in a small apartment building? If we're all going to drive electric cars in the future, we're going to need viable ways for everybody to charge them.
Moreover, in the Lucid, I only have to charge once (maybe twice, if it’s convenient) to make the trip.
I'm speechless.
Yes, long-distance drives that are outside the limited refueling network are out of the question, but Toyota provides 21 days of complimentary car rentals for owners of new Mirai models.
So far I enjoy my Mirai. While I wish hydrogen prices were cheaper (prices went from a maximum of $19.70/kg in November to $26.75/kg in January and have remained at that level since), the Mirai is the best car I’ve driven in terms of its drive feel, comfort, and technology; it’s a dramatic upgrade from the Toyota Prius c I used to own, and I even prefer it to the Subaru BRZ I had years ago.
This sounds a lot like an intentionally exagerated article, but the underlying issue might be real, if the (publicly available) charging stations do not increase in number according to the increase of number of EV's circulating there will be problems.
On the other hand if many more charging stations are created than what is needed, there might be a waste of resources.
I don't think that is an easy task to "balance" (at a state/country level) the amount of infrastructures as a function of EV's increasing adoption and - besides the numbers - deciding where exactly they are to be placed is another non trivial problem, there is the concrete risk of having many little used or unused charging stations while having queues in many others.
Huge waste when the average driver goes for < 40 miles a day
The 200+ miles of range are more than enough for most people, lugging 1000%+ of the average range "just in case" is crazy, epecially given the weight of these things
My hatchback does 0-60 in about 7ish seconds, and that's pretty fun to do. I'm not likely to win too many drag races, though.
It really doesn't, it's just a side effect. We already have massive tailgating issues across the US, and most folks have zero idea what the limits of their commuter EV are. Kind of a recipe for disaster.
Ferrari of most eras, until recently, were a "go fast slowly and in the style of a Ferrari" type of car.
[Talking about Teslas and “EVs” as if they are the same category is like talking about Computer Science and “STEM” in a single category. Often disingenuous and draws the wrong conclusion.]
Is the charger adapter that you plug in on a Tesla or a non-Tesla not standardized like USB-C to the point where you can go to any station (as long as you have any brand of EV and not an internal combustion engine gasoline/diesel car or whatever) and benefit from it/use it/plug it in? Sorry, out of the loop, I've dodged electric cars.
You can buy an adapter to use destination chargers (hotels, etc.) but not super chargers.
(The third major standard for DC fast charging, CHAdeMO, is unfortunately dying out even though it is in many ways technically superior to CCS. Tesla previously sold adaptors for CHAdeMO but no more.)
[0] https://shop.tesla.com/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter
EDIT: This adaptor only works on Tesla cars built after ~2020. Search "how do I determine whether my Tesla can support CCS" before buying the adaptor. The issue is about whether the car can speak the powerline carrier protocol that CCS uses.
Meanwhile, while some folks have had issues with EA, I haven’t, and even if I did, I’d just use a Chargepoint, EVGo, Shell Recharge, or any number of other chargers as needed.
Not to mention that I can buy a Tesla charger adapter for like $60 that lets me use destination chargers at hotels, and that Tesla is opening up to CCS charging because they want that sweet federal money.
Basically: a Tesla is an EV, and Tesla is no longer on top of the EV game, as evidenced by the recent six price drops in the last year, because they are outinnovated and now trying to outprice their competition instead of innovating.
You let me know how your FSD, which is “coming by the end of the year,” does for you. I’ve got some bridges to sell in Brooklyn.
The expansion of superchargers to non-Teslas may indeed cause problems. So far I have seen perhaps one total non-Tesla vehicle. If anything, that should be a new point in favor of EVs compared to the time the author purchased their vehicle, which makes the article even further disingenuous.
I don’t know why you brought FSD into a very specific argument about EV ownership experience. I don’t disagree. Sounds like a canned message from a Tesla hater though.
Elon and the FSD nonsense is one such con. I only brought it up because he just promised it again by the end of this year, and it set off a spate of people going “Tesla is the best” when we’ve all seen this story before.
I credit Tesla with kicking off the revolution; I don’t even dislike their cars. I’ve enjoyed when I’ve rented them.
I just think they’ve stopped innovating in recent years, and frankly, I wish they would. More competition is always good.
Now when it comes to specific physical features on the car or something, I don’t know, haven’t been following that very closely.
FSD may or may not come eventually. I’m doubtful. But as it stands, other makers are improving rapidly and Tesla has produced little innovation to compete with them in recent years, instead choosing to focus on touting features that seldom come (2016 was the first year FSD was coming “by the end of the year”) and cost-cutting measure to improve profits at the cost of customer experience.
That’s not a jab on Tesla as a company as much as it is just disappointment. Their lead is dwindling, and I wish they’d focus on innovating instead of whatever else is happening right now.
Tesla needs to start building something new again, or improving their cars in meaningful ways, or their lead will dwindle.
And the cybertruck ain’t it. (I have a reservation for one, but there are better options now)
Tesla is still very much at the head of the pack for range, efficiency, and charging speed (thinking of the Model 3 and Y especially). These are the fundamental factors that probably matter the most in determining the convenience of a regular-use EV.
Some manufacturers (hat-tip to Hyundai in particular) are starting to come close or match them in some or all of these (which is great!) but it’s absolutely not the norm.
My point isn’t that Tesla sucks. It’s that they’re not inherently superior anymore.
(And yes, Hyundai and Kia are great. Merc and BMW are also giving them a run for their money, though I don’t like their styling.)
To your earlier point, I have literally never once had to wait to get a supercharger, the route planner takes number of open stalls into account. The non-Tesla experience, idk, and we only use them on road trips, so we’re generally not going to any inside big cities, so maybe that’s the difference. Also not in the Bay Area, so they’re not the local “Camry” yet.
I don't see their numbers growing as fast now as 3-4 years ago because there are so many more superchargers now that destination chargers don't give a hotel as much of a competitive advantage, except in places where there is still not a supercharger nearby.
I do not know why the US Gov did not choose to subsidize existing Gas Stations to build these. Instead they are putting these in places that are close to impossible to find.
I have said this before, until charging is as convenient and fast as getting gas, EVs will only be niche.
The closest charging station to me is about 20/30 miles away. So EVs are out of the question. And this is true or even worse for many places.
I have been considering getting an electric car but that trip made me realize I'd have to reserve the EV for urban travel only. Otherwise I'd be uncomfortable with the risk. Even with my gas guzzling SUV I can always bring more gas just in case.
I spoke to someone who has an EV and brings a generator with them on long trips so they can charge their car. This seems so wildly impractical to me.
I really look forward to the day EVs exceed the range and energy capacity of combustion vehicles -- without having to stuff batteries in the headrest. But it's just not there today.
Carrying a generator seems very practical to me if you are putting yourself in situations where it could be not just useful but the difference between you being stranded vs self-sufficient.
Nobody said that owning an electric vehicle requires a head-in-the-sand refusal to acknowledge the benefit of liquid fuel. Plus, a generator has all kinds of other benefits in the situation you describe.
As a one-off thing, like driving into a town after a storm, might work. But it’s not a solution to range anxiety generally.
Worried about the smell of fuel from the empty generator you never use? If so, wrap it up in garbage bags. Remember - it's there for emergencies. Odds are good you'll rarely ever use it. And don't transport it with fuel - get the fuel when you can't find a charger but can find a gas station. Let's be sensible about it.
The comment is in reply to someone describing their experience driving to a town that was without power for 24 hours due to a storm. This "road tripping into the unknown" is where taking a generator is applicable, not general range anxiety.
Practically? Generators come in pretty small packages these days. They'll fit on the floorboard of your back seat (or in the back seat), or easily in the trunk just like another piece of luggage.
I mean all of this assumes a particular context - the steps you take to be prepared for risks that are medium probability and high impact are not the same steps necessary when, on a daily basis, those same risks drop to a very low probability and low to medium impact.
If it's the choice between being the guy who, after miles on the road, arrives in a storm-stricken town as GP related with his EV near dead and the townsfolk gathering around to point and laugh at a stereotype of luxurious thinking, or being someone with an inefficient yet practical solution to the lack of chargers, I'd take the latter.
Charging an EV from a portable generator is going to take 8-12+ hours. So now you need to carry enough extra fuel for the generator to run that long.
Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous. Is your typical vacation, like, traveling to Florida to experience a hurricane making landfall?
If you do a lot of travel to remote locations and camping and hiking and things like that, yes, an EV will probably be a stretch for that use right now. But most people in the US live and travel between major population centers.
Even if you are into the remote/outdoorsy stuff, an EV is a perfectly viable second car.
This has been my conclusion - the main problem at that point being the sheer cost. My household’s current secondary car is one that cost $10k a decade ago. (Two years old at the time of purchase.) There’s no EV that’s even in the same ballpark for cost-per-km or cost-per-year. (And for a second city-only car, they almost all come with far more battery capacity than is required, adding weight and expense. The Mazda MX-30 EV is probably closest from a technical standpoint with 160 km of range, but still has a cost problem, starting at $40k locally after taxes and credits.)
I'd crunch the numbers more seriously if I had to replace my secondary car today.
For some napkin math, assuming I only charge at home and my cost of electricity doesn't go up for the next decade, I'd be looking at about $3500 in electricity costs for 10k km/year for the next decade. Say the $14k car depreciates to $4k over the decade, that's $10k in depreciation. To match my existing car costs that leaves me with an average of $1720 to spend per year on maintenance (which, in my spreadsheet, includes tire changes/replacements, yearly detailing, any other misc parts) on a car that will be close to 20 years old with 200k km by the end of the decade. Might be workable? My current ICE car has run about $800/yr in maintenance after subtracting oil/engine-related costs in years 2-12 of its life. Leaf also seems higher risk - with my current low-value car, there isn't much potential for catastrophic failure (like a battery failure would be), and if there were a catastrophic failure, I'm just out the cost of the car, which isn't much.
I ran all the numbers in a big spreadsheet and determined that with fairly pessimistic numbers on the Leaf for depreciation/maintenance, and very optimistic numbers on the Civic for the same, total-cost-of-ownership worked out to approximately the same per mile. Insane.
So I bought the Leaf for $8k about three years ago. In that time it's roughly held its value or maybe appreciated due to the crazy market we're in, and I'm saving roughly $750/year (6k mi/yr, about) in fuel. More than offset the depreciation in my case, so far.
And, more importantly because all these costs are super tiny in the grand scheme of my finances, I'm driving a 2014 car instead of a 1997. More comfortable and probably much safer.
FWIW my real numbers on the Fiesta over the past decade have worked out to 9¢/km depreciation, 6¢/km in ICE-specific maintenance, 9¢/km in non-ICE-specific maintenance and 7¢/km in fuel.
My home electric costs would run around 3.5¢/km for the Leaf, so I'd only be saving 3.5¢/km (or $350/year) in fuel. (And I'm locked in to a 5-year electricity contract at a pretty low rate for the area. If I had to re-sign today, my electric costs for a Leaf would be around 5¢/km.)
1) The insane distances in the US are what make a Leaf unusable as an only-car, reducing demand (and thus resale price)
2) I can’t do the math right now to figure out your electric rate, but my electricity is $0.1/kWh, or about $0.025 per mile (mile!) with pessimistic Leaf efficiencies.
Both of those are pretty strong headwinds vs. my situation.
2) 17¢/kWh in AB, though current rates would be either 23¢/kWh on a fixed-rate contract or current floating rates are in the 25¢/kWh range.
If it were an EV then I would have had to find the nearest place to charge that did have power, which isn't trivial.
I agree if it's just travel between major population centers then it's not as big of a deal. There just happens to be a ton of travel that isn't between major population centers, and I'm not talking about camping.
Simply put an EV is just not as useful today as I wish I were. I'd just like to be able to visit family without getting stranded.
In areas where power outages are common, gas stations have their own generators to continue operating. This is common where I'm from, so very familiar with it.
> Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous.
This is very easy. I always bring a jerry can with gas (or diesel) on longer road trips, just in case. For more remote destinations (camping out in the desert/wilderness) I bring as much as four cans of diesel to be self sufficient in case plans change.
I have never taken extra gas along on a trip in the USA (I don't do long offroad treks or safaris, and neither do 99% of drivers).
The range and charging time issue with EVs are issues regardless of weird one-off events like the power being out for a day.
Gas stations tend to have generators, yes.
> I have never taken extra gas along on a trip in the USA
Well, to counter your anectode, I have never taken a road trip more than 300 miles in the USA without carrying a jerry can (or more) of fuel, just in case. It's cheap and easy insurance, why wouldn't you? Even if you don't need it you can use it later, so it costs nothing.
If you’re doing road trips frequently and you absolutely cannot find a charging station that coincides with a lunch break spot and you cannot afford a single extra hour, then sure, this seems like a reason to wait for things to improve.
But I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard this argument from people who are more afraid of the possibility than the reality. People who do a road trip once per year or less, for example.
But, from my house, that’s about the only trip I’ve found like this. Any of the beaches are reachable. Most cities within a day or two Drive are reachable.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=9daba0ea-ad2e-449...
Anyway, my only point was there are still some gaps, even in the relatively dense eastern seaboard. But not many.
If you prefer more primitive camp sites this isn't an option but for some kinds of camping an EV is kind of ideal.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=8c9a884e-0429-42c...
30+ mins at a supercharger doesn't need to be a thing. You get the fastest charging 0-50%, which takes about 15 mins, so that is like 180 miles range, or about 2.5 hours in the car.
So you can get about 700 miles with 2 15 minute stops, assuming you do 300 miles on the first charge if you start at 100%. With a gas car you'd be stopping once for maybe 10-15 mins to refuel and use the bathroom(or twice if you're driving with my partner), so it's really only 15 mins lost over 10 hours in the car.
I'll say that's not my natural way to do a road trip, I would previously go on longer legs with less time stopped, but I actually like taking more little breaks and would probably start doing that if I went on a road trip with an ICE.
Last summer we drove the i80 route on our way to Oregon and after Laramie (which I suspect has some super chargers) it looks like a wasteland until Rocksprings and I have no idea if they have them there either. On the southern route, after Grand Junkyard (which I imagine has super chargers) it looks like quite a spell before more. We go play in Moab periodically and it's pretty sparse out there. The distances seem manageable but if you mismanage things a little bit, you could have some trouble. I think I'd top off in Laramie and then probably think about it in Rocksprings, I assume they have chargers there. Even with an ICE out there, there are some pretty long distances between stops, seems like every time our range got below 100miles we were starting to get serious about planning a stop.
FWIW Southern Idaho and Eastern Oregon might have been worse. I think there were more people and it looked like more help if you were to have an issue but it might be farther between realistic charging stations. It's coming, it'll get there and most people aren't road tripping that much but it's still a factor.
You point out a problem with the IRA law, which subsidizes charger build out at service stations, precisely the wrong place for them. They should be building out in shopping areas, various roadside and destination attractions etc.
Chargers should be at full-service stations. Places with a deli or cafe, where it’s somewhat pleasant to rest for 20-30 minutes. Not someplace that the kids want to stay for hours.
I dissent! Just did a 2-day (each way) road trip with young children and those charging breaks are pretty great and well-spaced for letting them run around and blow off steam. It’s not such a bad idea for the adults either…
Only twice in the four trips did we ever have to wait for the car to finish charging. IOW it added 15 minutes to a 3 day trip.
Tesla has superchargers along 17 pretty consistently. The biggest gap is probably Sault St Marie to Wawa and that's only 230 km. The rest of the gaps are all well under 200 km (mostly around 100-150) so you don't have to stop at every location. Highway 11 is a no-go zone.
Destination charging is a little more sparse. I use a welding outlet in the family farm shop, but that's obviously not an option available to everyone. There is a single L2 charger on the whole island and it costs $5/hr which is pretty steep for 7 kW.
I wouldn't feel stressed taking a Tesla anywhere along 17 or the whole main trans-canada corridor. I'd want to plan a little ahead if my destination was a place without a supercharger to arrive with enough charge to get back to the network, but that's pretty simple.
Unless you're driving through an area where chargers are spaced really far out, you shouldn't need to be charging that long.
EVs charge faster at low state-of-charge. You'll spend less time charging if you go from 20% to 50% twice than if you went from 20% to 80% once.
I've got a trip planned from Portland to Santa Clara coming up. My longest planned charge is 20 minutes. Everything else is in the 10-15 minute range, arriving at each charging with about 15% battery.
https://www.tesla.com/findus
I regularly go on ~300-mile drives that need only a single charging stop, lasting 15-20 minutes, on my Tesla EV. By the time I've gone to the bathroom and gotten a drink, the supercharger has added 100-150+ miles of range and the EV is ready to go. All the stalls always work.
No other EV brand offers a comparable fast-charging experience in the US.
For city driving, I charge at home for around 1/3 the cost per mile compared to filling a comparable ICE vehicle with a poisonous combustible liquid.
The thing is, when there is an issue, it’s at minimum a huge pain in the ass, and a complete nightmare at worst.
Compared to Tesla, where you just pull up and plug in. No app, no card reader. It just works. I've encountered 1 bad stall out of like 50 visits to superchargers, and since there are typically 10 to 20 stalls it wasn't a big deal.
The problem with EA (and CCS networks in US in general) - 10x more likely to encounter a broken stall, and that stall will be at a station with 1/2 to 1/3 the stalls of a typical Tesla station, and if the whole station is out.. the next station is probably 2-3x as far as the next Tesla station would have been.
I find EA roadtrip planning to be more nerve wracking than Tesla was 5 years ago, and Tesla continues to build more stations at a rapid pace... so the lead is not closing.
This has been 100% of my Electrify America experiences as well, along with a few other brands. Some have been able to take payment by tap to pay credit card as well without an app.
Most EVgo charging experiences have been plug and charge. I did have one experience a while ago that needed an app but that was one of their older chargers which even still had their old logo on it. All their newer chargers have successfully done plug and charge.
I've had tap to pay work with Google Wallet at Road Ranger (Freewire) and Francis Energy chargers.
> You mentioned taping a card, not just plugging in
That's why I included the language "as well". I've used a number of different brands of EV chargers.
Out of all the times I've used a public DCFC, I had to use an app maybe 10% of the time. And of that, it was only earlier into my ownership, I haven't had to use an app in about a year. Every charger I've used in the last year has been either plug and charge or supported credit cards directly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15118
Now if they could just support it for my i4...
Other stations require payment, but EVGo plug and charge works too if you’ve set it up ahead of time.
Is my experience universal? Of course not.
However, the data on that page has massive sampling bias.
Imagine a light switch or sink faucet working "90% of the time".
Or the gas pump working "90% of the time", knowing that there are no other pumps in a 30 mile radius.
For gas stations, 99.99% of the time the pump works. So much so that I don’t even consider that it doesn’t work. That’s the level of reliability that I expect.
I say this as an exclusively EV driver for 5+ years myself... let's not defend the indefensible (EA's CCS network).
Meanwhile in the last year I've waited in lines several times to get gas, and I've pulled up to a pump only to find it out of order three times this last year and seen many others with bags over the pump handle signifying they're out of order.
It's definitely not 99.99% of gas pumps working.
I haven't personally experienced any failures to get a charge on CCS chargers though. I do agree if the power can't run the pumps it won't run the chargers either, but there hasn't been a similar major power outage since I got an EV and tried to charge on a public charger.
That reminds me, I've experienced bad gas require me to make repairs on my cars. I've never personally had an EVSE break my car, but I do contend it could happen.
And I’ve never experienced bad gas requiring repairs.
I’d say 95% of these fillups were in the US if that matters.
One occasion my fuel filter got badly clogged a few miles from a gas station on a road trip. I've had it happen to one of my vehicles and I've seen it happen to a few friends as well.
The power issues or just being completely out of gas were usually from hurricanes or the big freeze in Texas.
You've also never encountered or seen a gas station that was closed for the night? Every pump has always been 24/7 operations? I'm not even talking about full service stations, but I've encountered many gas stations where the store closes at like 2 or 3 AM meaning no attendant so they can't leave the pumps on. Its the worst when you're running low on gas on a late night road trip, you just have enough gas to roll into town, and the first gas station you roll up to, the only one you can see from the highway, is closed for the night. Bonus points, that small tiny town in the middle of no where also has absolutely abysmal cell reception so no phone maps. Better hope the TomTom shoved in the glove compartment eight years ago knows a couple of other gas stations in the few miles you've got left in the tank and that those stations still exist and are not also closed. Fun times. I've had this happen way more than once.
And its definitely happened more than once to me where credit card processing was down so they were asking everyone to pay cash. I don't usually carry cash on me, so buying gas wasn't happening.
And then finally I'll plan on getting gas at a Costco or Sams Club, see the massive lines, and decide to go drive another mile or two and pay more. Are there never lines at Costco or Sams Club stations near you?
And then finally I've definitely pulled into a station only to realize every handle has a bag on it.
You don't need every pump to be open, just one.
Living in the west coast of the US I spend a lot of time driving around desert areas which are pretty remote. Many times I've rolled into remote gas stations in the middle of nowhere at ~3am where everything was dark but the pumps were operating.
You are either supremely unlucky, or vastly exaggerating the issue. It is very difficult to not find a working gas pump in the US, they're everywhere.
Anecdotes are anectodes, but I've been driving 35+ years and I have many cars and I drive a lot including much time in remote areas and yet, I have not even once experienced any of the problems you assert are common.
In order to promote EVs it is important to be honest about the advantages but also the disadvantages.
Many states require someone to be working at the station to quickly respond to any issues. If there's not enough business at 3am to justify paying someone to work all through the night, they won't keep the pumps on all night long. This will definitely vary from state to state. And places like Costco, those pumps shut off at like 9:00PM.
And I do agree, most of the times where I was unable to get gas at one station I was able to find another working station within a few miles, especially in suburban areas. In times of natural disasters though, I was definitely unable to find any working gas pumps, at least not without potentially risking getting stranded continuing to drive around wasting gas to try and find a different pump. I do agree those are disaster situations and not indicative of the normal state of affairs, and that CCS chargers would probably also have not been operational at those times.
> You are either supremely unlucky, or vastly exaggerating the issue.
Or maybe I just don't have as selective of memory or pay more attention to things around me than some other people. All of these issues work out to a little over a dozen failures for me to get gas over the 600-700ish times I've probably pumped gas, so yeah a pretty low failure rate overall. We should be honest about the disadvantages of pumping gas though, of which there are many.
> It is very difficult to not find a working gas pump in the US, they're everywhere.
I'm not saying I couldn't find any working gas pump, I'm saying I've found pumps not working on many occasions and needed to go find a working one elsewhere. Those are two very different concepts. It may be hard to not find any working gas pump, but given about 30 minutes in any urban or suburban area I could probably find at least one pump not working at the moment.
> In order to promote EVs it is important to be honest about the advantages but also the disadvantages.
I am being 100% honest. I spend more time waiting to charge my ICE car (driving to a gas station, starting the pump, pumping the gas, leaving the gas station, about every week and a half) than I do my EV, by hours a year. I've personally experienced more challenges and frustrations getting my ICE car fueled than I have charging my EV. And I spend more on energy costs for my ICE car than I do my EV, with those costs being extremely variable. Meanwhile my EV's energy costs are largely fixed due to 1-3 year electricity contracts.
> I've been driving 35+ years and I have many cars and I drive a lot including much time in remote areas and yet, I have not even once experienced any of the problems you assert are common.
In 35 years of driving you've never once seen a broken pump? You've never once seen a gas station closed? You've never once seen a line of people at a gas station and decided the wait wasn't worth it? Who's not being honest here?
I realize I'm just one data point in a sea of many, but it doesn't make my experiences dishonest. I'm being 100% honest sharing my experiences here. People don't often make YouTube videos of their experiences when things just go smoothly and right when charging. I'm not going to upload a video every time I plug in my car in my garage and it just charges. I'm not uploading videos every time I plug and charge on some public DCFC. Someone probably is going to make a video when it doesn't work for them though. People are going to share the headlines of "DCFC stations have high failure rates (in this limited geographic area we surveyed, briefly)". If the only reports are the times it doesn't work, you're not going to have a very "honest" set of reports. And I agree, different corridors are going to be differ...
A few minutes later, someone moves. I get to that pump. I try tap to pay. Declined. I put in a chipped card. Declined. Try another card. Declined. I go inside, cash only today for some reason. I don't carry cash with me often, so no gas for me.
There's like 10 minutes of my day wasted and I didn't even end up getting any gas. I'll have to try going to some other pump later.
Meanwhile my wife with the EV left the house with a full tank, just like every day. Zero minutes spent waiting or failing to dispense energy this week for that vehicle.
Let's be honest about the pros and cons of each.
Yes, I do see those often enough. Maybe once a week, so way more than 0.01%
But of course, even the tiniest of gas stations has multiple pumps, four is the smallest I recall seeing and the smallest one around here is 8 pumps.
One or two may be out of service regularly, but in more than 35 years of driving I have never pulled into a gas station where all 4/8+ pumps were out of service simultaneously.
And then, even if that happened, given the way gas stations congregate, there is another one across the street which will be working.
You’re going to hear about the negative experiences because that is what people commiserate about. It’s human nature.
Especially when compared to owning a second care with an ICE just for the occasional trip.
And then there is my friend on a fixed income that's realized it's cheaper to rent a compact car for long drives. Same as above because having the car break down in nowheres is expensive quick.
2. Cost: the rental cost is actually only a small portion of the cost. Extra insurance and other fees end up more than the rent itself.
Your car will depreciate regardless of that road-trip, just by virtue of time passing. Rental companies won't subsidize the wear and tear for you, so you have to pay that anyway.
The use case for swaps is small. The vast majority of trips are short. Trips long enough to require a recharge often require a long stop for the driver.
People have priced in the notion of spending some time each week pouring flammable liquids into their vehicle. If we had started with electric cars everyone would find it disgusting and far too frequent. The speed of it for rare use cases would not impress.
Swappable batteries will not change that. They are too expensive and they limit design too much. Reducing the charge time to five minutes or even zero minutes would not change the minds of people who would simply swap to their next excuse.
Tesla tried it. There was no point Tesla building more swap stations because so few people paid the premium to get a swappable battery. It turns out that people who won't buy an electric car unless they can swap the battery will find some other reason not to buy an electric car if that reason is removed.
Also, I've used lots of chargers greater than 100 kw, and they really don't take that long to charge a car. Combine it with a meal, even a fast food meal and they've generally charged more than I needed in that time anyway.
Fast charging is an outlier anyway. >90% of the time you slow charge at home for a third of the price per mile, and it's lovely to only need to visit a filling station on rare long drives.
I think Renault used to do something like that?
When I tried to charge my previous EV (a non-Tesla) at public chargers, half they time they didn’t work, or charged at unpredictably slow rates.
Yes, that's my experience too. I never worry about range.
It was a key reason for me too. I considered BMW, MB, and Audi EVs, but ruled them out due to horrendous state of non-Tesla charging in the US.
Another reason was software. Tesla's UI has a lot of issues, but it's the only car UI that feels smooth and responsive to me. And now I'm looking forward to this: https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1362/tesla-update-2023-12-...
When I need to make that trip (with more than one person. If just one traveler it's cheaper to fly) I just rent a gas car and can make the trip in just over 5 hours. I'd say that includes gas stops but often I don't even need to stop for gas. One tank will get me all the way across. It's still a good idea to stop for gas because you can find cheaper stations outside of the big metro areas. But a gas stop is 5 minutes offramp to onramp.
I feel like all this comparing of charging times and ranges of various EVs misses the point that NONE of them offer a better experience that a gas vehicle yet. Sure, it's a trade off some people are willing to make already and that's great. But it needs to get even better.
https://www.tesla.com/support/non-tesla-supercharging
But beyond that, when you pull into a supercharger, you know it's working. If it wasn't working it would say so on the dash. You park, pick up the cable, point it at your port and the port opens. You plug it in. You walk away. Your phone gets a notification when it's time to go. And it charges your card automatically. No goofy app required, no NFC/authorization, no noodling with the charger to make it work, no effort. It's really really nice.
Chargepoint stuff works fine. Stations are often broken (and like the author said, there's no way to know without going there). You have to use an app which thankfully supports an Apple wallet card. Before I figured that out it was super fiddly. I've had stations on other networks that are unusable because they have poor cell service. Then there's a whole "reload your card" thing where you get charged in $20 increments. And adapters, chunky connectors. To be fair I've never tried DC fast charging with anything but a supercharger.
- evgo was decent, but had limited capacity (usually 2 L3 per location)
- chargepoint was usually pretty decent, but mostly was an L2 charger network
- blink was L3, but their chargers were ALWAYS broken.
that was 3 years ago, and switching to a tesla changed a few things:
- the range of the car was higher
- superchargers were in more locations
- had more stalls per location
- were faster at charging
- were more reliable
- one small detail worth mentioning - the other systems had payment networks that were frequently part of the problem - either preventing charging, or having you fiddle with things, or calling in to manually start things
There was a reason why people stayed on the interstates and turnpikes and regularly spaced gas stations was one of them. Many of these were subsidized.
That needs to occur again for EV chargers.
(It occurs to me I didn't even factor in the cost of the electricity to pay for miles his Tesla drives.)
I'm also driving a car with about half to one fourth the environmental impact to construct (if you think the impact is proportional to the construction cost)
I'm about 60,000 miles into owning the car and aside from typical maintenance and a fuel recirc solenoid that had to be replaced, it's not been that expensive to operate.
It has the benefit that no one seems to want to steal it, so my anti-theft package is just to park it next to a Mercedes or BMW.
My battery has never spontaneously ignited and it doesn't cost $24k to replace every xxx-thousand miles.
But it's not all roses, I don't get to ride in the HOV lane, but that's fine. I'm a socialist and prefer the HOV lane be used for HOVs which are CONSIDERABLY more eco-friendly than ANY single-occupant electric or hybrid.
My Fiat is pretty peppy for an ICE vehicle, but yes, not nearly as good at low end torque as EVs. But it's much better than the '71 VW bug I learned to drive on.
But I think my point is... the upfront cost and TCO differentials between ICE and EVs make it difficult to support the argument "EVs are cheaper than ICEs"
They will be, someday. But that day is not now and that vehicle is not a Tesla.
If we rework the example with a $30k Tesla, that's still $26k more than my used car, which brings the break-even point down to about 150,000 miles (if you assume electricity going into the EV is without cost) or somewhere around 225,000 miles if you go with the previous poster's assumption that price per mile is one third of an ICE engine.
I (absolutely) got a cranking deal on my Fiat. But if you compare a new Tesla at $35,000 with a new Camry, it (the Tesla) is starting to look more compelling, but as long as ICE vehicles have functionality left in them, it's probably more environmentally conscious and economically sound to drive them.
That being said... if you want a Tesla, get a Tesla. But if your objective is to drive around cheaply, I don't think it's the cheapest option.
His $80k Tesla was $2M cheaper than a Bugatti Veyron. Clearly Tesla's are way cheaper than gas cars. I don't understand how anyone can afford the millions of dollars gas cars cost.
Or maybe $4k cars that aren't absolutely falling apart and Veyrons aren't the most useful yardsticks of car pricing. I definitely understand the $4k used unicorn, I drove one for years. But IME the vast majority of $4k cars are priced that low for a reason.
I can find a used Bolt for ~$20k pretty easy. Most decent used gas cars are probably going to be around $10-14k. Let's say $10k price difference. At $3.50/gal, 25mpg, 12,000mi/yr, that's $1,680 in gas. At 4mi/kWh, 11¢/kWh, same mileage that's $330. $1,350/yr cheaper, so from energy cost differences that's a seven and a half year break even on 10k difference. If your ICE was $14k, that's only four and a half years.
And that Bolt probably just got a brand new battery from the recall, meaning it'll probably last at least a decade (probably more) without any major maintenance issues. Meanwhile that $10k ICE probably needs a new timing belt soon, probably has some aging motor mounts, and maybe it isn't always shifting into third gear very well.
I'm definitely not telling you to throw away your $4k unicorn. It's good you're getting a lot of life in it. I'm just suggesting that acting like EVs cost $80k and ICE cars cost $4k is stretching those markets to the point where it's pretty unrealistic to most buyers.
Also, that point about batteries spontaneously igniting, I've seen neighbors houses burn down from ICE cars spontaneously igniting. I see gas cars burning on the highways pretty regularly. I've had cars have recalls telling me to park outside. Gas cars catch on fire all the damn time.
Silly comparisons are fun I suppose, but for someone who is poor ultimately the only comparison that matters is how much will it cost this year.
The cheapest non-salvage Tesla I see on craigslist right now is 30K. I also see tons of 2K-4K Honda/Toyota/Mazda cars that will give someone plenty of low-cost miles for years to come. It is not realistic to think a poor person will buy a 30K car on the hope that in a few decades the operating costs will break even and eventually save them money.
> At 4mi/kWh, 11¢/kWh
Here with PG&E they charge 33c/kWh after midnight, or 56c/kWh during peak hours.
Also, I think we're conflating two stories here. The first is about the SPECIFIC example of me and my brother. He bought an expensive car, I bought an inexpensive car. It's going to be at least another 300k miles before my gas expenses meet the price difference. At that point he can certainly start teasing me about how expensive my car is to operate. But I will still be able to call him a reactionary imperialist whose only interest is cheating the proletariat out of their right to travel in the HOV lane unimpeded by bourgeois singletons.
The second story is the general case, where someone who needs a car wants to compare the total cost of ownership of a Tesla vs. some other random non-EV. Let's also make the other random non-EV reasonably nice because if you're bougie enough to consider a Tesla, you would NEVER be seen in a Hyundai Accent. Bing tells me the MSRP on a 2023 Camry is $27k which is DANG CLOSE to a current Tesla after you throw in government credit. But the Camry can go 500 miles on a tank of gas and if you get the long range Tesla, the price starts going up. So there is a bit of a question here about how you might use your car (I mostly only drive city-to-city and use a bus in town, like any civilized person would.) But, I think the point here is the break-even point is MUCH lower than in my case.
There's also a third story I think is a little outlandish because we're comparing frightfully expensive cars with Teslas. This is where we compare the 2022 Rolls Boat Tail at $28M to the standard Model 3 after all the price cuts Elon's been talking about lately. If you can afford a Rolls Boat Tail, you don't care about how much gas (or electrons) cost. You would probably NEVER be seen in a standard Model 3. I think you would have to get a plaid and then gold plate every surface. Or maybe palladium plate every surface because someone told you gold was passé.
A model 3/Y purchase price is pretty much at the average new car price, so a person looking for a new sedan or mid sized SUV would look a step further and look at things like total cost of operation.
I gave a specific example involving an expensive EV my brother bought and a remarkably inexpensive used ICE vehicle I purchased. I did not say that every comparison of EVs with ICEs would exhibit the same relative costs. I was talking about a SPECIFIC example.
We're I logician I might refer to this as an existential: there exists one. I am not arguing it is a universal.
But if someone says "all EVs are less expensive to operate than all ICEs," then to disprove that statement you only have to find a single counter-example, which I did.
Finding a single counter-example to the universal does not imply the obverse of the universal. In other words, saying "hey, I bought a cheap used ICE vehicle and it is considerably less expensive to operate than my brother's EV" does not mean I am arguing "All ICE vehicles are cheaper to operate than all EVs."
I am happy that you like the model 3/Y and wish you many years of happy driving. <snark>At least until you have to sell your children to afford the replacement battery.</snark>
That's all the person you originally replied to says about cost. You emphasize ALWAYS and use the keyword operate, but you've self inserted the extreme always condition and ignore what operate means.
> all EVs are less expensive to operate than all ICE
The only comment in this thread with that language is your comment right here.
> At least until you have to sell your children to afford the replacement battery.
I guess ICE cars never have substantial drivetrain failures which ultimately result in the cost of repairs exceeding the value of the vehicle? The transmission in my 2000 Accord was starting to experience issues, how much would that have cost to replace? And then on top of that, it probably needed an EGR cleanout again along with a new water pump and timing belt. I don't know how many more years the catalytic converter would have lasted, those are cheap though right?
I guess all of those things are pretty cheap, what maybe $50 each right? Wait, rebuilt transmissions are like $2k before labor? Having someone replace the timing belt and water pump is almost $1k these days, and that's something I'm just supposed to do every 60,000mi or so? How many thousands of dollars was already spent keeping that car running?
Meanwhile the battery is practically the only real drivetrain wear item on an EV. No catalytic converter to rust or walk away, no EGR system getting clogged up, no timing belts to fail and destroy the valves, no valves getting gunked up, no piston rings to foul, any seals are under way less stress and far less prone to leak, coolant systems are practically never stressed and under way less pressure and aren't a tiny seal away from making forbidden milkshakes, etc.
If your argument about EV battery life is based around the battery only having a 10 year 100,000mi warranty, I'd hate to break it to you about ICE car warranties these days. Clearly just about every ICE car is just going to fall to pieces at about 60,000mi. Or maybe many vehicles vastly outlive their stated warranty times.
Sounds like a good reason to avoid areas served by PG&E.
Again.
If your objective is to drive around cheaply, neither a Bugatti Veyron nor a Tesla are your best bets.
Can't tell if joking. I guess you read about exploding Tesla batteries in Pravda?
People with families can't load their kids and dogs and luggage into a cute clown car like a Fiat 500. If it suits your needs better that's great. I downsize even more and ride a motorcycle. These things aren't comparable.
The market for $75,000+ cars is small by definition there's really no need to throw shade like this comrade, the comparable cars are in the decadent luxury segment to begin with - which Tesla happens to be dominating for a reason. Horses for courses.
* https://batteriesnews.com/fully-involved-tesla-car-fire-take...
* https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/tesla-electric-car-fire-...
And not in cars, but still batteries manufactured by Tesla:
* https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/05/tesla-megapack-fire-highligh...
* https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/20/tesla-megapack-battery-caugh...
But sure, Tesla batteries never catch fire.
Sure. Every singleton I see in the HOV lane really has a dog and two kids stuffed in the trunk. I just can't see them.
If you want a $75k+ luxury car, by all means, get one. But you're crazy if you say it's cheaper than a $4k used ICE vehicle, which was the initial claim. It's also crazy to say a $75k+ luxury car has a lower TCO than a $40k 2023 Camry.
Also, socialists don't call each other "comrade." You're thinking of European communists [*], and I suspect South American communists. But when I talked with South American communists, they just called me "Amigo."
Interesting fact I just learned: they're apparently still publishing Pravda, but that is not where I heard about Tesla battery fires. I learned about them from living down the road from a power station where Tesla batteries caught fire. Sort of a "Hey! I wonder where those fire trucks are going? Is that smoke coming from Moss Landing?" sort of moment. And while I often wonder if NBC, CBS and CNBC are crazy, they are not, as you suspect, outlets for Pravda.
* Or possibly French social democrats. It's hard to keep up with French political fashion.
Stop that. I did not say never. Gasoline cars explode too, I saw it in a blues brothers movie. Same as you, I've also seen a car fire in real life with the trucks and sirens and everything. Fires are a thing, the night is dark and full of terrors.
Sometimes civilian planes drop out of the sky or even get shot down. Even humans on occasion "spontaneously combust". I can link you news stories demonstrating such events, yet here you are in the day to day not paralyzed by fear of it happening to you. I assume.
> Also, socialists don't call each other "comrade."
Astute. I am not a socialist, amigo. Myself, I was actually thinking of good natured, how you say, Humor[*].
> Sure. Every singleton I see in the HOV lane really has a dog and two kids stuffed in the trunk. I just can't see them.
Never said that either. I said you can't fit that stuff into a little Fiat 500, it is not the same vehicle category. This isn't an opinion. It literally isn't.
> But you're crazy if you say it's cheaper than a $4k used ICE vehicle,
Never said that either!
> It's also crazy to say a $75k+ luxury car has a lower TCO than a $40k 2023 Camry.
Nor that.
Is this a reading comprehension issue or just a relentless insistence on throwing shade?
Once again: If you actually want to compare used ICE vehicles like a Camry to a Tesla, you'd compare to a comparable used Tesla model not a brand new $75,000+ one. Used Toyotas are extremely reliable and affordable, it is a great option! May very well be the best option depending on what is available in your location at a given moment.
A new model 3 can now be had for ~$39,900 vs a new Camry for ~$29,900. (https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#overview)
Most people don't buy new, you might not want/need to, that is a separate discussion. Depending how much you drive, as fuel is expensive, eventually you'll break even - maybe around 10 years / 100k miles, you can look it up and do the calculation yourself.
It may or may not be the right option for somebody but surely has nothing to do with the completely different category of $75,000+ cars.
* Worldly socialists are often unfamiliar with the concept. Ymmv.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Tesla batteries are filled with poisonous combustible electrolyte. The cost of batteries easily dwarfs the fuel cost savings with appropriate discount rate. And the electricity probably comes from coal or low efficiency nat gas turbine.
The Supercharging network is the most under-appreciated, under-advertised feature of a Tesla.
3rd party charging stations are usually only 2-4 stalls. Tesla stations are usually 8-16, with a couple monster stations on I-5 having 50+.
> All the stalls always work.
I wouldn't go quite that far. I have been to a station that had a dead charger. But that's been once. And Tesla from what I've heard, Tesla is usually pretty quick about getting repairs done.
They're in some weird kind of panglossian mindset where, if it's not working in the USA then that proves that it is in fact literally impossible.
So rather than sort themselves out and install some more plugs, they just shrug and give up.
I imagine a Chinese General pointing to this article and saying "see, their army will topple like Russia's in Ukraine did, it's all bluster, as a failing nation they can't even install plugs"
"The government is finally getting round to the basics and will probably fuck it up" is not the attitude that put men on the moon.
'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
It's a standards problem, not infrastructure, per se.
Also, I wish all level 2 chargers cost money, a reasonable rate of course. Tesla owners are part of the problem. A large contingent of them are annoying cheap bastards. Typical parking lot: Paid level 3 charging, vacant. Free level 2 charging beside it, filled with Teslas.
Unlike this author, I did research before buying an electric car and determined PHEV was by far the best choice for me. It was 2016, the car has been perfect for me and literally the most trouble free, and low maintenance vehicle I’ve owned.
Is CCS charging unreliable today? Yes, compared to gas station or Tesla Super Chargers... CCS has a ways to go. They are the weak link.
The author doesn't discuss ANYTHING positive, like how its super easy to have a fully charged vehicle all the time because you charge at home overnight. This was just a rant on a few specific points.
Speaking of, plugshare? Is very handy and very decent. Yes, sometimes chargers are hidden away in slightly odd locations, but plugshare has generally had VERY accurate maps. Zoom in and you will see the pins on the map on are on a specific side of the map, or in a very certain location of the parking lot - and in reality that's where the chargers are.
The descriptions also say things like "I-80 exit 156. Four stations along the side of the building.". And the comments will include useful statements like "April 21, 2023 - Still only one (Amelia) of the four is working.". Do you want to read sub-optimal news like that? No, but at least you can plan accordingly.
Also also, Last road trip I did in my Tesla Model Y (about 250mi each way), I stopped more for food/drink/bathroom/etc than I did for charging. Yes, I probably could have drive the entire way (one way) on an ICE vehicle without stopping for gas, where I did have to stop for a charge... but that was an extra 10mn or so. Wooptydo. Keep in mind that during the average week (of non-road tripping) I stop at a gas station exactly never, so I'd say I still stop less with an EV overall.
And yes, if you a doing a lot of long road trips. Going places a little more off the grid. Or generally hate stopping because you're ok peeing in a bottle... then please stick with ICE for now. EV's are still in the early adopter phase and they don't work great for everyone. Apartment dwellers are, for example, very hit or miss (if their garage doesn't have EV charging, it's not a great experience).
The article begins with:
> I love how I never have to buy gas. I love how it glides quietly up the street. I love that it has so much pickup that I can easily blow past gas-powered muscle cars if I want to. I love having stickers that allow me to drive solo in the HOV lanes. I love that routine maintenance consists of little more than rotating the tires.
The author states repeatedly that they love their EV, but the inconvenience/uncertainty around charging on longer road trips is enough to be a deal breaker for them.
> And yes, if you a doing a lot of long road trips… then please stick with ICE for now.
I feel like the tone of your comment is overly dismissive of the author’s complaints, considering that you essentially end up agreeing with them at the end.
I wonder if the cars could help here: if you plug in and are unable to charge the car could report that à la waze. Though there is a possible false positive if your credit card is declined.
Good luck getting those money back, loser.
If you didn't end the charging session (e.g. by pressing a button or presenting the same card again), you may have given the next person a free charge?
Next day found a place to charge but only have 17 miles on a good day. But assumed that would be enough to get me to a gas station.
But the gas shortages because of flooding in port everglades extended even up to Palm Beach. They only got four inches of rain not the two plus feet that they got in Miami and no flooding. But, still were affected. I went to a dozen gas stations and called a few, and they had no clue when they would have gas.
We circled around different charging stations within ten or fifteen miles heading north. It was crazy.
We checked again a few hours later and there was a station that had gas.
Feels like climate change might make it complicated for both EV only and gas only. Hybrid seems like the right option but even that was complicated. My mini doesn't use the same plugs as the Tesla chargers. Oh well.
http://www.umc-j1772.com/index.php?route=product/product&pro...
When I sold my Leaf and moved across the country I gave mine to a guy charging his Leaf near a supercharger. He was so excited
You need a Tesla to CCS2, and then a CCS2 back to Tesla. I've only seen videos of this, haven't had the opportunity to test myself.
Makes me wonder what could be done to trick it into charging another EV for free.
B) When ICE cars are banned, then what? Get a horse?
If a tree falls across a major road, you can bet there will be work crews showing up within hours to cut it up and move it aside to restore access, because a road with a tree across it doesn't function as a road anymore.
We should treat lack of working charging infrastructure the same way: a road without the necessary infrastructure for EVs to traverse it with the confidence that they can charge when they need to isn't a road either.
If EV owners really wanted to press the issue, they could protest by blocking roads. If, say, there's a dozen or so EVs all stuck at one charging station because the chargers are down, they could move their cars to the middle of the adjacent highway and form a roadblock. Unfortunately this isn't safe, as it would probably lead to violence from angry ICE drivers.
There is a significant recent precedent when it comes to vehicles blocking roads: there was the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest
> "Beginning January 22, hundreds of vehicles formed convoys from several points and traversed Canadian provinces before converging on Ottawa on January 29, 2022, with a rally at Parliament Hill. The convoys were joined by thousands of pedestrian protesters. Several offshoot protests blockaded provincial capitals and border crossings with the United States."
...
> "Between February 17 and 20, a large joint-operation police presence in Ottawa arrested organizers and protesters, removed parked vehicles, and dismantled blockades from Ottawa streets. By February 21, most of the protesters had been cleared from Ottawa."
So, if you're right wing, you can shut down major cities for weeks with minimal consequences. I don't think EV owners protesting the sorry state of infrastructure would get the same treatment.
It doesn't happen now because petroleum is available basically everywhere. "I had trouble locating an open gas station" is a problem that's happened to me I think once about twenty years ago, and even then we didn't have to go all that far to find an open gas station. (That I remember it at all had to do with the circumstances of the event. I was on a road trip through the deep south, and the police showed up at the second gas station and questioned us because someone apparently thought we were trying to rob the first gas station we stopped at which was closed.)
The current fleet of cars will take a long time to replace, just because cars usually take a long time to wear out. I think we'll hit an inflection point soon, though, where it just doesn't make financial or practical sense to buy an ICE vehicle anymore.
Infrastructure is a pretty big hold-up at this point. Battery manufacturing is also a bottleneck, but at least lithium prices have dropped quite a lot. There's nothing stopping companies from building a lot more factories for LFP cells.
[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA2qJKU8t2k
Whenever I run the numbers to decide between an EV or an ICEV, I get payback periods in the hundreds of years. (I can't charge at home. YMMV.)
Edit: This would change if a battery-swapping industry model were widely adopted. If the battery was not included in the cost of the car but amortized over 10 or 20 years by a swapping station, the NPV of an EV looks much better.
That was the eye opener for me: the cost of charging and eventual battery replacement made the ICE a long term better spend.
For the few that do very long trips, and where a route planning app says it's genuinely not possible, then I'd definitely say go back to hybrid or gas.
But for most city drivers just going to work and back, overnight charging and basically never fast charging is the way to go.
This means they're not that useful for people who live in apartments, and most people who live in a city like SF and park on the street(*).
They're also not viable for road trips. Teslas can make it work but you still have to be willing for your trip to take 20 - 30% longer than it would with a gas car.
For people who have a garage or driveway, and don't need to take a road trip that often (or can own a second car for that purpose), they're fantastic! A better experience in almost every way compared to a gas car.
Long story short, it was useful and viable even though we didn't have charging.
Vehicles are bought to make life more convenient. To introduce constraints and time waste you can just use public transportation.
Having a garage is definitely the best way, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessary. Driving it like an ICE car where you go to the gas station to fill up every couple of weeks is perfectly acceptable.
And on longer journeys, yeah it’s annoying to have to stop every 2ish hours, but I find that by the time I get back from the bathroom, I usually have enough to continue.
Is it perfect? No. Is it an adequate substitution for ICE - definitely.
When I roadtrip (I regularly do 150-250 mile road trips around New England), I'm usually stopping at a supercharger within a mile of the highway at a location equivalent to one I would have stopped anyway. Most times I only need to charge for 20 minutes to finish my trip with plenty of range to spare. I would have stopped at some point anyway so it's adding 5-15 minutes max on a 3 hour trip.
Obviously location and situation dependent, but for me it couldn't be any less of an issue.
Trips do take a bit longer but only because refueling typically takes 20 minutes rather than 10. It's a non-issue. There's no "make it work": The Tesla is an easier road trip car for me than my Audi, full stop.
I absolutely believe that Tesla will eventually figure out FSD. It's still 5+ years away, though. I would definitely agree with recommending people don't buy it, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a scam.
In my experience, 5-10% longer is more accurate.
Very little of my charging time is spent waiting for the car to charge. While the car is charging, I'm using the bathroom or eating.
On average, people urinate about 7 times a day. If you're awake for 16 hours, that's once every 2.28 hours. I'm diabetic so I go a little more often.
I'll only eat about every 4-5 hours though, which means every other or every third charging stop.
So I think not having a dedicated charger in the city isn't as much of a problem as one might think. Probably can charge here and there or every two weeks if needed. Hassle yes. But living in a city with a car is a hassle.
I spoke at public hearing last year in favor of an EV ordinance that my city passed. I believe that if we are to involve government with EV adoption, which is necessary, we need to be prepared for backlash and controversy, and it will require non-insignificant effort to arrive at consensus required for government action. After the ordinance was passed I exited the council chambers and I was approached by a middle aged woman who identified her self as a property developer. She told me how unfair the code amendments were because of how much it was going to cost her business. I told her that solutions like this are necessary because people are concerned with range anxiety. She responded that she was concerned with “regulatory anxiety” and the encroachment of government, and briefly grabbed my shoulder during her tirade. After that I quietly and uneventfully left the area.
I realized that if people are edging into getting physical with a small city ordinance that requires developers to provide limited charging stations for EVs, our civilization is woefully unprepared to address climate change, which will require reforms to many institutions, and the retirement of others. We need to make big changes in a lot of areas, and I don’t see the leadership, technical expertise, and outreach required to do that.
Market failures are real, the need for regulation is real (there are, quite sensibly, piles of regulations around how you can store the tanks of toxic chemicals needed to fuel a legacy gas car, and there will be regulations around EV charging as well), but in terms of making sure EV charging places exist where needed, this is probably a place where just "get out of the way, and don't let zoning regulations block necessary construction" gets you 90%+ of the way to where you need to be.
Right? But I can’t buy 5x20l canisters and fill them up with x kWh of electricity. I can to that with diesel or gasoline.
To install EV charging, unless you’re planning on generating your own energy on site, you’re likely going to procure power from your local utility, most of which are monopolies that are heavily regulated by your state utility commission.
Some estimates say it could cost utilities up to $5,380 per EV to upgrade the electrical infrastructure to support them [1]. Although utilities will earn more revenue through selling electricity, this will not completely offset the infrastructure investment. Will the costs be paid by ratepayers, some of whom may not have an EV? Your state utility commission may balk at that.
Of course federal incentives exist to offset costs, but many programs require participation by your state executive branch, who may not be in lock step with federal policy. Your state utility commission may not be in lock step with your state administration. If you can get agreement with your state policy makers, your utility will have to be employed to expand grid access. They may expect certain amount of consumption to make it worth their while, which you may not be able to provide for a few years until EVs gain adoption. Some utilities will charge you extra too if you use too much electricity, called demand charges, to disincentive consumption. Utilities will have their own schedule to build out the infrastructure, which may not match yours. They’re also a monopoly, so you can’t exactly shop around. Then you have the code and permitting requirements of the municipality your setting up the infrastructure in. The permitting process also follows their schedule, not yours.
With EV charging we have a massive coordination problem, with actors you can’t choose who aren’t strictly driven by market incentives. You’ll need some kind of combination of carrots (tax breaks and grants) and sticks (fines and penalties for slow walking a process) to make the infrastructure needed to support wide EV adoption.
[1] https://www.bcg.com/publications/2019/costs-revving-up-the-g...