I don't care about electric cars, but I care about electric motorcycles. As a long range traveler, there are a few issues that are left unaddressed:

* My bike has a 500 kilometre range, which is about the maximum I'll ride in a day. Electric bikes have a smaller range than what I usually cover in a day. On the highway, the range drops so much that I'd need to take an extended lunch to finish my journey.

* I can extend my range by 200-300km by carrying extra fuel. This is not possible with electric cars.

* I can fuel up in 5 minutes. Refuelling does not dictate my schedule.

* I don't need to find a gas station that's within walking distance of my hotel (I have two heavy boxes to schlep around). Refuelling does not dictate where I can sleep.

* If I run out of fuel, I can ask someone to bring some from a gas station. I don't need to tow the car.

* I can't begin to imagine the logistics of finding a convenient power outlet everywhere I stop.

Asking in good faith - why would you even drive 500 + 300km on a bike in one go? This sounds like a terrible ordeal to me.

300 kilometres is a standard driving day on backroads, accounting for lunch and breaks. 500 kilometres is a sustainable maximum for highway driving. I only do the latter when I really have to. On long trips I estimate 200 kilometres a day, or 2 days on, 1 day off.

With a comfortable motorcycle this is perfectly reasonable. I have a 2017 V-Strom 650 and it's perfectly suitable for the task.

There are plenty of things that can be done to make it comfortable. For many bikes, if legs get stiff you can just stand up. There are some models that would be arduous, some that would be so comfortable as to put one to sleep, and some that are a good mix of comfort and performance. Either way, being in the landscape as opposed to in a car is a different and wonderful experience.

7 hours of driving a day for a long distance trip is hardly excessive, I know plenty of people who go 12 or even 14 hours when they wanna get somewhere quickly.

Fuel energy density is a hell of a problem. On car you have some room to wiggle as anyway you're getting some weight reduction by just changing from a combustion to an electric engine.

Motorbikes on the other hand are optimized on a specific setting (think how an enduro handles different than a superbike and so on) which makes it really hard to add weight and you end up with a much bigger trade-off between fuel volume and range.

Bikes vs. cars also gets hit with the squared-cubed law. Energy storage scales with the cube of vehicle size, while frontal area scales with the square. Air drag accounts for the majority of energy usage at highway speed, so for the same vehicle shape, range scales with size. Add the fact that bikes have a high Cd compared to cars and range is always going to be markedly less.

> I can extend my range by 200-300km by carrying extra fuel. This is not possible with electric cars

I've wondered about this. What if for a long EV car trip you put a small gas or propane generator in the trunk or a small trailer, and ran it to provide some charging while you are driving and/or when you stop to rest or sleep?

Could that provide enough extra to overcome the losses from carrying the generator and fuel for it, and if so, could it be enough to make a noticeable difference?

You've heard of hybrids, right?

> put a small gas or propane generator in the trunk

I'd prefer you didn't pass out from carbon monoxide poisoning while operating a vehicle on public roads, thanks.

That's a very common setup in Europe and in central Asia. LPG tanks in cars are a nice way to save money on gas. They're ubiquitous in Uzbekistan.

EV bikes with solar panels offer something gas cannot.

That's only viable if you ride your bike very little or very seldom.

My buddy has a Zero S[1], which has a battery pack of about 6kWh nominal. Using a portable 120W solar panel and a total efficiency of 50%, that's 100 hours of sunlight to recharge the battery.

And that 120W panel is pretty darn big to lug around.

[1]: https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/model/zero-s

What exactly? Solar panels can barely charge my phone. How is it supposed to charge a 15 kWh battery before I starve in the middle of nowhere?

Even with a power socket, it takes 5-9 hours to charge an electric bike.

Excessive wind resistance?

But they look awkward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HbAEPdrvAI

EVs themselves are ready, the infrastructure is still a limiting factor. We need to keep working until range anxiety isn't an issue

I think range anxiety is more of a psychological/imaginary disorder than a technical challenge. I come from the Netherlands. Most EVs there have a range that would put you way past its borders no matter where you are in the country. Even the cheap & shitty ones. This is of course not something most people do very often in any case. So, you'd expect range anxiety to be less of a concern in the Netherlands.

It's not. People are somehow really dreading having to (predictably) stop for a 45 minute charging stop in the rare case they actually do have their trip exceed the maximum range (again, unlikely if you leave on a full charge and don't plan to leave the country).

It will tell you when you step into the car what your range is and you can plan right then and there where to stop for lunch/coffee. Most EV drivers do exactly that. Problem solved.

ICE car drivers don't do that and typically just have unreliable data instead. You might have 70 km of range or 20. Hard to tell when the needle is close to 0. You might be going up hill or downhill and that might affect what the needle says. It doesn't even indicate range, just fuel volume.

So, premature/redundant fuel stops are probably more common than running out of fuel, or indeed battery. By the time you run out of battery, your car will have been drawing your attention to that for quite some time. So, you'd be right to feel anxious about that happening to you because you'd end up looking like the fool you are.

Most drivers take the annoying planned charging stop over that some tens of miles before they'd run out. It's more a case of range annoyance than anxiety. In the end everything has a price and if you can afford to fill up your gas guzzling SUV to burn way more fuel than you'd strictly need to get from A to B, that probably has more to do with other forms of anxiety than with the actual range of the car.

It reminds me a bit of (some) people who think they need a truck. We were going to buy a truck for our (very small) farm, but when we really sat down and thought about the amount of times we'd use it, the number turned out to be 0-3 times a year. In this situation it makes sense to rent, and most of the time, our tiny subcompact does 100% of what we need a car to do. For those few times I may really need a truck, I can probably rent one, or find some other accommodation.

Range anxiety is the same -- most of the time, people drive between home and work. For most people, this fits in the range for an electric. If you really want to drive across the country, you can just rent a car, and this will be much cheaper than owning an ICE for how often you'll actually need to do it. If you're lucky enough to have the space and money, and need two cars in the first place, then it makes sense for one to be electric: the one driven most often, and then the ICE vehicle for when electric is not appropriate.

This depends a lot on where you are. In the US most travel is pretty local just like yours, but just the state I live in is more than 3x the size of the Netherlands (~150k km2 vs ~42k km2) and it's not that uncommon to have need to travel to areas of adjacent states. At least twice a month I'm at customer offices that are 40+ km away, so a short range combined with possible winter capacity reductions could be a real concern.

Also, if I'm driving with what I call the "idiot light" (low fuel) on, then I'd best go fill the tank. When that warning appears if I have less than 50 km of range I'd be surprised. A low range BEV would feel to me like always having that light on.

Americans, in my experience, tend to do some really crazy drives. Some people just casually might drive 2-3 hours to some random restaurant and the same amount back.

In many European countries, that would be a border-to-border trip.

But as the saying goes: Europeans think 100 miles is a long trip and Americans think that 100 years is old =)

The driving to a restaurant happens, but it may just be an excuse (kind of like private pilots flying somewhere for a hamburger). The restaurant isn't the reason for the trip.

Not just range anxiety, I literally wouldn't know where to charge my electric car since I live in a city and have neither my own garden nor a garage, I would have to put some cable out of my window across the street.

There are a few charging stations around my neighborhood but there are a ton more cars.

Same problem in Manhattan. An electric car would be great for quick trips to nearby mountains for snowboarding/hiking, but finding _any_ parking spot near home can be a nightmare, let alone having to find one near one of the few charging stations we have.

Don’t own a car in Manhattan? One can always rent an EV for road trips.

I have the same situation, I can't charge it at my apartment.

Usually, I end up just spending ~40 minutes at the local KIA dealership that has a level 3 charger.

If I had access to the office, I'd end up charging there as well.

In my apartment complex the electric utility installed about three dozen charging stations (which is massively overbuilt for how many electrics there are). It probably makes the most sense for the local utility to wire up any large parking structures and some percentage of street parking. Suburbanites can install a car charger on their property, and is not a massive expense. Also, most-if-not-all electrics can charge over 110v, it just takes forever.

There is, literally, an app for that. Dozens in fact. Plugshare and A Better Route Planner are the least bad ones.

Also many cars have a built-in POI list for charging points.

This was my issue as well until I had a home. Work had two charging spots for a 25 story building (13 story parking structure). To be honest, the spots are work were often used only by people needing to charge but I would always be scared of forgetting and making someone else's day worse.

Here in London people do run cables out of their windows (or at least from their house) to cars parked on the street. The more considerate ones will use a safety cover but I also just see cables running out of houses across the footpath to an EV.

You are literally confirming his point - we need charging stations at all parking spots.

If you own the parking spot, you can usually install a car charger.

> If you own the parking spot, you can usually install a car charger.

That's not always the case. Even in Silicon Valley, where electric cars are popular, a lot of condo HOAs will not allow chargers to be installed. They require upgrading the electrical infrastructure of the property in some cases -- most buildings cannot handle installing 10 or 20 chargers, which might all be in use at the same time. As a matter of scale, it's very different from installing a charger or two in the garage of a house.

Of course, even if that problem went away, that would still only solve the problem for people who own their parking spaces. What are renters supposed to do?

Until the infrastructure problem is solved, electric cars only really make sense for homeowners.

Yup, it needs to be city wide and nationsl effort.

Plugshare can help with that.

Considering how quickly Tesla built up an infrastructure without having much money, it should not be a huge task given the money the large companies even spend for advertising only.

I’m hoping society gets off its laurels and seriously invests in infrastructure ASAP.

I also wish someone was looking for work for the displaced workers from electrification. I did have an idea - “Electrification as a service.” But you’d probably have to be Tesla to go down that path.

It is not just range anxiety. Most people do not want to wait the length of time it takes to charge up. And IIRC, 'fast charge' has very negative effects on battery life.

And nobody can bring you a container of electrons if you do run out of juice on the road.

Most people won’t be waiting for a charge since you do it over night and have what you need each morning. DC fast charging can be bad but it depends on a lot of factors - it’s also a lot faster than people think. Often your car will be charged enough before you have time to eat a quick snack or use the restroom.

There’s also this misconception that you have to charge all the way up. Doing so will do more long term damage to your pack and take forever the higher the SoC.

The Chinese auto maker NIO already has battery swap stations and a service that will drive a charger to your location with a container of electrons and charge your car.

Fully Charged on YouTube had a video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTsrDpsYHrw

In Germany, they are working on "containers of electrons":

https://www.inside-digital.de/news/hyundai-adac-mobile-charg...

That is interesting but seems like it would be impractical from a business perspective. Unless I misunderstand the translation, it could only charge one, maybe two vehicles, enough to (hopefully) make it to a charging station.

A regular tow truck/wrecker can carry 20 gallons of gas in just 2-4 containers to provide 10 cars 2 gallons each, probably good for 50-60 miles in most vehicles.

Small Tesla seems to be in the works. https://electrek.co/2020/07/10/tesla-small-electric-hatchbac...

The thing is, its expensive to make EV. Most manufacturers make negative money when they sell them, or at least don't have good margin.

Also, the amount of battery capacity that currently exists is nowhere near where it needs to be. Most manufactures now try to expand and secure supply, but supply growth is simply not growing fast enough for large companies to switch to EV fast.

Tesla doesn't have a smaller car because even for them making a smaller car would mean that compared to other smaller cars it would be massively expensive. They have to further improve cost to be able to make a competitive small car. ICE industry had 100+ years to reach the scale it has.

Which is why most governments issue tax incentives and credits to induce demand. If you removed the tax credits EVs would be a negative even for Tesla.

In the US, Telsa no longer receives any federal tax credit as of January 2020. A few states (including California) still have incentives. In any case, losing the tax credit doesn't seem to have slowed them down.

You only get 250k of tax credits, and both Tesla and GM have already used them. Ford still has some.

To make money with EV you need to produce way more then 250k of cars, so you can absolutely not relay tax credits to improve margins.

Also, Tesla is now competing successfully without tax credits against many companies who still have theirs. Tesla is actually making a pretty good 20% automotive margin, and that is with Model Y still being a small part of sales (and we know that Model Y has better margin).

If you want a small electric car, at least in Europe, there's the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, and BMW i3.

I think they are starting now and when the big boom of EV starts with the traditional manufacturers I guess we will not have issues with spare parts. Although I think the automotive market is going through a huge transformation and it might be that a car will become something like a mobile plan or smartphone contract where every 2-4 years you exchange cars.

Btw... Have you seen the new VW ID3 ? I guess it’s the closest thing to a mass market small car you can get nowadays.