- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
From the article: “About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.”
Unfortunately EVs aren’t in a place where they can be used by everyone. I owned a Model 3 LR and never got anywhere near the range it claimed. It was constantly recalculating my next stop to charge.
On long drives the range is a real problem. A 9 hour drive turned into 12 because I had to stop every 2 hours to charge for 20 minutes. I actually had to turn around go backwards an hour because it decided I couldn’t make it to the next charger. This wasn’t during extreme cold or heat… it was beautiful outside I was doing the speed limit without the AC on.
The range issues plus the dozens of phantom braking incidents on that trip caused me to trade it in for an ICE car as soon as I got back home. EVs are great for around town daily driving, but if you ever take long trips they are not ready yet. I want to own an EV and will certainly have one as my next car, but today is not that day.
I would agree that it’s infrastructure that is not in a place where EVs make sense for everyone. The US is firmly behind in the race on this point, likely hampered by a battle of plug formats between CCS and Tesla. I’ve a 58kWh (useable) VW ID.3 hatchback - perfect for Europe or just 2 people, which we are. Had it for 2.5 years now, and the difference in charging infrastructure has changed radically. In March of 2021, driving from Amsterdam to Frankfurt or Paris, I did have to plan charge stops - but now, I don’t even think about it. Everything’s CCS, available nearly everywhere on the highway or in smaller towns (at least 50kW charging).
Just did a trip to the midlands to see my brother a few weeks ago (another ID.3 owner) and he’s got a bank of CCS Tesla chargers next to his Pizza Hut and an Ionity not far from there. On the trip I had choices between FastNed, Ionity and Tesla…never thought if I’d make it, only if I could possibly go farther before charging.
Yeah, that’s a Tesla complaint I hear a lot. Don’t have that particular issue in the ID, although if the mapping database isn’t updated the car can slow down where it expects to have a exit lane or roadworks, but the swarm filtering that VW employs usually filters those exits out after a few weeks. Complete braking though? That’s scary.
In the US, people tend to drive a lot further than in Europe.
Every year, I make a few trips of hundreds of miles. My sister lives ~200 miles away (~320km) with an average highway speed of 70mph (112kph), and probably drive ~80mph most of the way (~125kph). In a gas/hybrid, I get there without having to stop and it takes 2.5-3hr. My parents live ~850 miles (~1350km) away, and my brother lives ~650 miles (~840km) away, and I try to visit one of them every year. We could fly, but I have three kids so we’d need to rent on the other side, which would be annoying and expensive.
Most of the time we drive <100 miles (160km) in a given day. Work is ~25 miles (40km) each way, and all of our shopping is within 5 miles from our house.
The problem is charging. My company doesn’t have charging, so an older Leaf won’t work for a commuter (there are stations nearby, but I’m not making a 20-30 min stop on my way home). I don’t want to spend a ton on a commuter, so that’s out (EVs with enough range are $20k+). Most of the space between my house and the rest of my family is empty, so even gas stations are few and far between (often 30-50 miles [50-80km] between stations, and those are towns with <1k people), and the charging stations that exist are often broken or slow charging only. So we can’t use an EV for a family car.
If my company gets EV charging (they’re talking about it), I can replace my commuter (hybrid getting >45mpg [~5.2 Liters/100km]). But for a family car, it’s going to run on gas until I can get >400 miles (640km) range, which would mean I could visit my parents or brother with 1-2 recharges, and my sister without a recharge. The current 200-250 miles (320-510km) range just isn’t going to work because I’d probably need to recharge even for a simple trip to my sister’s house.
I want an EV, but in the US, it only seems to work if you don’t need to do big road trips. Our rail infrastructure sucks (in the West where I live), flying is a huge violation of privacy (and super inconvenient), local transit (buses, subways) sucks in most areas, and cycling infrastructure doesn’t exist in most metros. If I lived slightly closer to work, a <100 mile (160km) range would work, but I’m worried about commuting in the winter (consistently <0C weather, so apparently range gets halved). Once I can get an EV to replace my commuter for <$10k, I’ll do it.