I wouldn't be surprised if rental battery trailers become a big thing due to that.
When using the EV for every-day stuff the internal batteries will be enough. Going on a long trip? Add a battery trailer for more range and extra cargo/baggage space.
They are not. What's needed is expansion of the infrastructure. And that's not even about quick chargers. In cities you don't need them. What you need is standard level 2 chargers wherever you may want to go. Work, school, shopping, movie theaters, whatever. Most vehicles spend most of their day parked somewhere. They should be charging then.
Larger batteries are only really going to be needed in very remote regions.
I hope eventually we get to point where we start adding electrification to major highways, so that vehicles don't even have to stop to charge. Then range will be much less of an issue.
The "charger" terminology is especially confusing, since technically there is a part called the charger that goes in the car -- it converts external AC power to DC at the voltage needed to charge the battery. The chargers normally installed in conversions aren't typically capable of charging quickly. The charger I'm looking at [1] maxes out at 3KW, which could charge a 27kwh battery in about 9 hours. If I spend the money to get a second charger to run in parallel, I could get that down to 4.5 hours.
Solar doesn't really work for long trips; the power you get is just too low. I'm in favor of solar panels being installed on EVs generally, as it would reduce the amount of power you draw when you charge, especially if you only drive a few miles a day on average. It just isn't a solution to the range problem unless you're willing to wait a long time to charge (like weeks) and/or manually deploy a giant solar array any time you stop like Mark Watney.
This conversion car I think just won't be a road trip car, and that's okay. Maybe eventually aftermarket batteries and chargers will improve to the point where I can plausibly install a 200-mile range battery with a half-hour 80% charge capability and keep the whole battery pack under four or five hundred pounds.
[1] https://www.thunderstruck-ev.com/tsm2500-and-charge-controll...
Once enough people have some experience with EVs and the market grows enough, there will be more interest and a demand for cars with a limited range at a cheaper price point.
With an EV you can start each day fully charged. You just need enough battery to handle your daily commute and the few errands.
What’s missing is something to handle those few occasions when you need to drive that extra distance. It seems kind of silly to try and cram that extra flexibility into the same vehicle.