It's such a shame that other manufactures have taken the "oh we make cars, we can't fix the infrastructure" approach to EVs, which is so short sighted. Really hope they quickly figure out that they need to invest in EV infrastructure, not just EV R&D. With a bit of luck Tesla Model 2 will hit its price point, then the old auto manufactures are going to have a really bad time selling EVs.
When I'm traveling, time is money, and I'm happy to pay for the charge. Electrify America saved my butt on my recent odyssey by mostly providing 100 kWh fast charges, but the semi-broken fast chargers in Grants Pass and Albany, Oregon both cost me an unnecessary additional hour delivering only 33 kWh apiece.
https://electrek.co/2021/07/26/elon-musk-explains-tesla-open...
You are not happy to pay for gas that is a lot quicker?
The Department of Energy gave a resort town in my state a grant to add a bunch of charging stations. The thought was that people from the city would be more willing to use their EV to travel to the resort town if there were plenty of chargers. But after a year almost all of them were broken. On review sites, there were also complaints about ICE vehicles sitting in the EV charging spots all day and no one would do anything about it. Even the chargers outside City Hall were broken. Most (all?) EVs won't allow you to drive off while they're plugged into a charger, so I doubt it's vehicle collisions, at least not EVs, causing the charging stations to need frequent maintenance.
The average EV charger is an uncovered exposed pedestal made out of unreinforced nylon with a barely thought out cable retention or ux incentive to return cables. Like so much in tech its all about image and not engineering and user experience design fundamentals and it shows.
I visit my parents who are ~200 miles away several times a year. The drive, during the day, averages 4 - 4.5 hours without stopping. At night it can come down to about 3 hours, but that's not always practical or - if I'm too tired - safe.
Factoring in a charge along the way, assuming everything works, and I don't need to queue for a charger, would add 30 - 45 minutes. I'd have to do this because my parents live in a flat with no charging facilities onsite.
Fuel efficient driving might add another 30 - 60 minutes to the journey, so suddenly we're into maybe a 5 - 6 hour drive each way even for the night driving option. Bearing in mind I'm often only able to go and visit them for a weekend, and that's a lot of time being sucked up just getting there and back.
Shoddy charging infrastructure here in the UK is one of the main reasons I went plug-in hybrid in the end. I can charge at home overnight and do the journey to the office and back (not that I'm doing that very often) on electricity alone, and then the petrol engine is good for longer trips. Also, the car's pretty quick in "power" mode because it uses both electric and petrol together.
(I'd also observe that fuel efficient driving can be aggravating for other road users and may not be practical or safe on some types/classifications of road.)
Hell, I wish ICE car makers would advertise MPG at higher speeds.
Every weekend I head up around 200 miles away, and it's on an empty mountain pass with a 80MPH speed limit.
In town, my sports sedan gets the same fuel economy as my old Tacoma, but on that trip the Tacoma consumes over 50% more if driven even remotely comparably (80+). The sports sedan has surprisingly little variance between 70-90MPH.
While the truck's aerodynamics aren't helping, I've experienced the same in other "fuel-efficient" vehicles, where the fuel economy falls off a cliff once you go above 60MPH. A Chevy Aveo I owned was actually one of the worst offenders, you'd get on the highway and get SUV-tier fuel mileage.
A more powerful engine consumes more gas in general, but is operating in a much more efficient range at 80mph because it is not under much load.
I wonder if they design specifically for that speed, as it's the speed on most highways in america (someone correct me if not true)
Should of bought a Tesla. Competition is cheaper for a reason.
I drove it ~900 miles and I had to recharge seven times. This added 3.5 to 4 hours to the trip. I'd say the first 2 of those were good for my mental health but the remaining 90 minutes were spent at broken charging stations with low charging rates or just broken.
Love the car, hate the current charging infrastructure. And the anxiety induced when power drops below 20% and you're approaching the next charger sucks, doubly so when you get there and it's broken and now you have to find another fast charger before you run out of juice.
There's fancy route planning software (ABRP for example) that will try to minimize charging times and total travel time but it seems to make the assumption that you will always hit a perfectly functional fast charger and it doesn't seem to take weather into account.
I was averaging 3 to 3.5 miles per kWh until I approached the Bay area in 100+ degree weather and it dropped to 2 miles per kWh.
Fortunately having been burned many times already (every single Fred Meyer seemed to have a broken charger for example but the navigation software kept directing me to them), I had instituted a hard rule to always charge to 80%. So I made it to Richmond and the next charger before I ran out of power. America's clean electrical future remains a work in progress.
So what you really seem to need is about ~400 miles of range which translates to ~300 miles of range at an 80% charge or so. I think we're getting there.