Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think

Re:Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think by Retric on Sunday August 28, 2016 @10:34PM (#12379622)

Electric cars can do 800+ miles a day easily with sold charging infrastructure. Sure, if you want to do a cannon ball run rent a car, but 4 hours of driving, get lunch, another 4 hours of driving, take a 30 minute break, 2 hours of driving, dinner anther 4 hours of driving get some sleep. That's an extra 30 minute break for 14 hour road trip.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think by hammock on Sunday August 28, 2016 @10:45PM (#12379668)

That's a lot of downtime. Most people I know, including myself, when doing a 14 hour roadtrip would stop as infrequently as possible, for a total of 30-60min over the course of the trip. And that figure is including pee break stops, which your calculation presumably didn't.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think by Retric on Sunday August 28, 2016 @10:52PM (#12379703)

It's actually really dangerous to do that kind of driving without taking significant breaks on a regular basis. But, sure if you do this regularly enough you can't either rent a gas car or spend an extra hour or 2 then fine. However, nobody I knew has done a trip like that in the last decade.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think by tempestn on Monday August 29, 2016 @12:33AM (#12380026)

I think "really dangerous" is overstating it a bit. Driving while fatigued is dangerous, yes, but 14 hours with a 30-60 minute break is hardly that extreme, especially since we could be talking about road trips with multiple drivers.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think by Retric on Monday August 29, 2016 @07:38AM (#12381216)

It's a question of repetition not fatigue. People are just really bad at paying attention to limited stimulus. Swapping drivers every 4 hours or so is a good counter to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis. But again if you have multiple drivers you only need one car that takes gas.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think by honkhonkpants on Sunday August 28, 2016 @10:40PM (#12379643)

There's only one car that can go 4 hours on a charge, and that's the Tesla S. If you charge it for 30 minutes, it can go about another 2.5 hours.

My VW Golf TDI goes more than 750 miles on a tank at 65MPH. That's an entire days' driving for 5 minutes of fueling. Yes, the filthy Volkswageneers have to buy my car back, but it was certainly nice on the range.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think by Retric on Sunday August 28, 2016 @10:48PM (#12379680)

While true, that range is from a 12,000$ battery pack which could be put in a 35,000$ car. So, really these cars don't have great range because they don't need to have great range.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think by toomuchtodo on Sunday August 28, 2016 @11:37PM (#12379858)

How far does a TDI travel on a tank when it's not cheating on its emissions?

[ Parent | on HN ]