Quote:
Originally Posted by Ximian
Having a 25 gallon fuel tank to make up for terrible fuel economy is one way to get to the 500 mile per tank benchmark.
But both examples are still affected by extra drag during extremely cold temperatures and extra power loss from running the AC in extremely hot temperatures.
The cost to get an ICE vehicle to 150k miles to maintain the same performance is going to cost quite a bit compared to an EV.
The increasing cost of new car purchases, the decreasing purchasing power of the average consumer as reflected by long financing terms, and the looming "maybe one day soon" gas price increase is going to have more people look at the long term cost benefits of ownership of EVs compared to ICE vehicles.
The "clearly cheaper to own" is the much better benchmark for EVs.
I'm sure those 7 people in the whole world where this actually applies on a regular basis won't be forced into resorting to an EV for a long time.
Every year I do a road trip that's between 600 to 800 miles in a day. In an EV, during the one or two extra stops I would make I would certainly be thinking "I would be hours ahead if I had a gas car." However, when I do stop for gas, I also stop to use a rest room, order food, buy snacks, and anything else I need to do. If I'm quick, it's 25 minutes but on average, it's closer to a 50 minute stop.
A 50 minute fast EV charge will get you quite a bit of range. There are plenty of people who make these stops in a much quicker time, but that's few people out of an already very small subset of drivers.
|
I take 300-mile road trips at least 5 times a year. These are just a day out with my wife cruising around on a "Sunday drive". One trip we took was a weekend to Virginia Beach from say 50 miles north of Charlottesville. We took scenic roads vs. main interstates. Didn't see a EV charging station anywhere on the route. Yeah, planned right and using interstates, in a 300-mile Model 3 I could have made VA Beach without stopping. Once there, no charger was within walking of our hotel. On the way out, there was a Super Charger in Norfolk. Not in the best part of town and a 15 minutes in heavy traffic diversion from our route. So while the recharge time could be 30 minutes, another 30 minutes of time to get to the charger and back to our planned route. So an hour spent recharging for a 4-hour trip. Nope. I'll take a 5-minute recharge at one of the 20 or so has stations we passed along our route. Sorry, with EV, road tripping for the pleasure of road tripping is a PIA.