This car covers 99.99% of your current car usage. If you want that extra .01% (driving all day without stopping), you can rent a polluting vehicle in 5 mins on your phone.
Lots of hills. Hills everywhere. Going to the grocery store a mile away involves more elevation changes than people living in Florida go through in a year. Seriously, tons of hills in every direction.
Driving around the city, my current compact ICE, 1.6L turbo, tiny hatchback, gets around 22 miles to the gallon.
My other car, ICE, subcompact, 2L engine, 140 horse power, barely hits 20 MPG.
For my city's topography, EVs make a ton of sense.
> For my city's topography, EVs make a ton of sense.
I thought your conclusion would be the opposite. Hills kill EV range.
I've had a few Fiat 500e EVs, with a flatland range of about 90 miles. But commuting here involves some good hills (~2000ft elevation change) so the true range was more like 40 miles. Which was just about barely enough to get to work. Good thing there was free charging at the office.
It sounds like your source is your personal experience? EVs are far better than ICEs at navigating hills, because the moment you can no longer coast and must apply friction braking (either through your brake pedal or engine gearing) you lose 100% of the energy going to friction. In comparison, EVs typically recover the majority of the breaking energy (mine recovers 70-80%). This is the same reason that both EVs and hybrids substantially outperform ICEs in city driving - lots of application of friction brakes.
In addition, EVs tend to have a better coefficient of drag, so if you were tempted to go higher speeds down a hill, you'll find EVs get substantially better efficiency than ICEs there too.
I'm struggling to think of a hill-traversing scenario that doesn't overwhelmingly favor EVs for efficiency both in theory and practice.
Perhaps I misunderstood your complaint, and your concern is just the range and not the efficiency? In which case, I would offer that a 90m range EV is a local transportation vehicle not designed for that kind of travel. That kind of take is becoming fairly niche nowadays.
With the Fiat, it would use up about 30-40 miles of indicated range to go uphill less than 10 miles. But it would only recover 2-3 miles on the downhill side.
> is a local transportation vehicle not designed for that kind of travel
This is local travel, it's just that the area is hilly so going anywhere is going to inevitably involve hills.
> Perhaps I misunderstood your complaint, and your concern is just the range and not the efficiency?
To be fair, that's precisely what I said: Hills kill EV range.
Yeah, if you aren't riding the brakes, I agree with you that it sounds related to the Fiat. 35mi of range for 20mi of hills seems off.
> To be fair, that's precisely what I said: Hills kill EV range
Sure, but efficiency is a factor in range. What I'm saying is that, unless your EV range is so small that it can't get up the hill in the first place, hills shouldn't have a substantive impact on its range (much less so than an ICE).
I don't know a lot about the Fiat, so perhaps something strange is going on with its regen breaking. For example, with its smaller battery capacity, it's likely to have a lower max regen limit. Perhaps you're driving in cold weather and it poorly regens under those conditions. It looks like the Fiat does blended braking, so perhaps your using more of the friction brakes than you expect. Etc.
While I have not driven some of the most recent EVs and have no doubt they are better, the above statement surely contradicts physical reality.
It takes more energy to go up a hill than to drive on flat ground, so it is inevitable that a trip uphill will drain available range far faster than driving on flat ground.
Yes, but real world trips that involve hills tend to be somewhat balanced (round trips rather necessarily so) and it takes less energy to go down a hill than to drive on flat ground (and, while some of that advantage is wasted by excess speed from gravitational acceleration, regenerative braking can get a lot of that back, too.) So, the range impact on a trip with an uphill component will often not be substantive if you have enough energy to handle the uphill portion itself, if you have a car and driving pattern that uses things like regenerative braking efficiently.
All I can say is that didn't match my experience as an EV owner (leaser) at all.
At 100% battery, indicated range was 90 miles and on level ground that estimate was just about right.
But on the commute over a hill, 30 miles, I'd arrive at work with only ~10 miles left. So it used up 80 miles of indicated range to travel only 30 miles! Due to the uphill portion. Recovery on the downhill is minimal as mentioned in earlier post, just a couple miles of indicated range.
I pay zero for my fueling because I do it at work or a local free level 2 charger where I'll drop it off then walk home and do other things for a few hours and come back. I'm in an apartment btw.
It's not the same as pulling up to a gas station but it's just about as easy, the cars handle better and it's a smoother ride.
You might have to be a little cheap to bother to logistically coordinate free charging, but when I drove a gas car I never got free fuel. It's pretty remarkable that it's an option.
Also they're way cheaper to maintain. I literally do not know where I'd even take my EV to get it repaired because its never happened. I'm on year 5 of EV driving btw.
People believing in FUD over EVs, I have given up on. Whatever, be wrong, it's fine. Also, I don't like Teslas. There's lots of great options on the market, Hyundai and Kia's lineup are fine choices. I'm considering an Ioniq 6 myself, probably mid-next year just to make sure there's no issues.
I haven't had to pay for fuel in half a decade. Theoretical abstractions and rhetorical slights of hand don't change that.
You can do whatever the heck you want.
>people don't appreciate the new patterns you use with an EV
The pattern you describe is not available.
Some work from home and there's no charger at the office and so they can't do what I do.
This is like if I said I charge my smartphone on my nightstand when I go to sleep and you say "aha, what about people without nightstands! Checkmate!"
A diversity of exacting detail doesn't make something infeasible. We still all say eat meals or communicate with words despite vast differences in how these things look and operate among all of humanity
Again it's not my personal responsibility to itemize all theoretical dimensions here.
And then not seem to understand why they wouldn’t…
It's that you can't define one system in another's terms.
Someone who lives in say Tokyo would probably see private car ownership as incredibly expensive and inconvenient while someone living in rural Montana probably can't conceive of how to live their life using public transit.
An inability to imagine new ways is inherent to any system change. I'm sure people can adapt just like I'm sure someone from Montana can get used to using trains if they went to Tokyo.
I don't know all the patterns but I've got faith that people can modify their behaviors as required by at least this amount.
But I get it. You can't really see it until you do it and then it's obvious and easy.
Read me bitch about it over 4 years ago https://kristopolous.medium.com/authorizing-a-charge-with-oc...
I had a bunch of conversations after that with people at greenlots, chargepoint, evgo about bringing sanity into things ... The industry is smaller than you think here and my impact is nonzero. Near zero, but certainly nonzero!
A Bolt to be insured to the exact same level is $$4200 a year. A Tesla Model 3 would ring me $5700 a year. A Porsche Taycan is $7300 a year. None of these are as expensive as the NSX.
And the cost for me to install the additional circuits to the garage went up significantly since my last quote; it's now $2500 to run an additional circuit into the garage. I don't know what it would cost to upgrade the mains panel as well if it's needed (I have only a 100A) but I've heard it's averaging about $5000 or so.
So yeah... not exactly FUD at least from where I'm standing.
My costs went down so substantially when I switched to electric they are for all intents and purposes, effectively 0
Sorry if you can't figure it out.
>Sorry if you can't figure it out.
I'm honestly not sure if you're genuinely sorry if it's not working out for me, or if you're snarking.
The garage is detached one fed by a single 120V circuit buried in PVC conduit, and it is enough for everything in there at the moment. But if a car's charging at the same time say someone open's the garage door, it's going to trip the breaker.
So at least I'd have to pull a second circuit dedicated for charging. To do that, the old conduit needs to come out and be replaced with one that is up to code for handling either more then one circuit, or can handle a 240V circuit. The cost of digging the old one out and installing a new one is a very substantial portion of that quote.
Now granted this was a quote for a full 240V circuit with a subpanel; the quote last year was around $2000 ish. Inflation rate, increasing labor costs, and continuing supply chain issues caused the jump. I didn't get a chance to ask what the quote was for just a second 120V circuit though.
The mains upgrade cost is just what I've heard second hand from others upgrading their 100A service to 200A. I haven't gotten a quote for myself but it doesn't sound wrong to me. Just filing the paper work for the permit from the is a $160 fee. The permit itself IIRC is an additional $200 or $300. I suspect the electrician would have to get the utility involved as well to disconnect and upgrade the main lines coming from the street to the house to accommodate the increased possible amperage.
I pay $1200 a year to insure my Tesla Model S at the max liability coverage, with comprehensive and collision. Admittedly, I've filed that I drive a max of 6k miles a year and I have the highest deductible set on both comprehensive and collision, but I have strong doubts it'd quintuple in price to insure if I went and set those to more typical settings.
From what I understand the older you are the less you pay.
Also if the issue here were age, I assume that GP would also pay more for an ICE car.
Doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone else.
The range expectations are also completely crazy - driving more than 2 hours without a break is just unsafe and advised against. I wonder when the GP even goes to the bathroom.
Filling my (non economical, okay mileage) car takes ~5 minutes. I get ~300mi range from it. 30 minutes waiting for my car to charge up to 1/4-1/2 the mileage is a hard sell for some folks, depending on their workflow. I unfortunately can't run 240 at home, don't have ability to charge at work, and often find myself places that don't have many chargers in the area.
For many, EV totally works. But to say it's 20 vs 30 minutes is a little silly, IMO.
Not to mention that many people drive more than 2 hours without a break. I get that it's advised against, but I still want that ability in my car without being forced to stop.
Your median wait to “fill up” an ev for many/most people is 0 minutes, because they do it at home.
> Not to mention that many people drive more than 2 hours without a break.
This is standard in teslas, it’s standard in the Ioniq 6, and it will be standard in most mass market EVs in the near future (there may be a niche market for local-only cars).
EVs are only an issue for two types of folks:
1. Folks who can’t charge at home/work, and don’t have a natural place to charge while they are doing something else. Imho, this is an infrastructure issue that will be solved.
2. Folks who frequently take long road trips in a cannonball run style. Even this will be solvable with advance in battery tech (rumors are that Tesla have this tech in hand). 500-600 mile ranges with reasonable battery weight will be a thing.
My Tacoma only has 380 mile range and I still get range anxiety sometimes with finding gas. RAV4 Prime with 600 mile range is the dream, but you can't buy them unless you pay $10k markup.
Driving a lot + urban (not suburban) living makes electric cars a tough sell.
Quite frankly, many people can't buy a RAV4 Prime at any price regardless of markups due to availability. My local dealer just quoted me a wait time of up to 18 months for a non-pluggable RAV4 Hybrid because there are simply no chips to go around.
I'll grant that going to the Olympic national forest is 122 miles one way, so some range issues there for sure.
> AV4 Prime with 600 mile range is the dream,
Boise is 500 miles one way!
The entire point of living in Seattle is to that nature is insanely close by. (Sure as heck isn't for the friendly faces on the street or the affordable tasty food!)
This isn't an important use case for a lot of people, but's it's much more important to me than commuting :)
There are many more of these "destination chargers" in the US than fast DC chargers.
People like your parents are edge cases, although even their daily medical trip is just about feasible with an EV today. The number of people living in very rural West Texas or southwest are relatively small (and the mountain west is rapidly urbanizing unfortunately).
EVs don't have to meet every use case just like an ICE diesel pickup truck or a steel crusier bicycle wouldn't fit everyone's transportation needs today.
But they definitely can already meet the majority of Americans driving patterns today.
I have a Spark EV that did 130 miles new, now ~100 highway miles after 6 years.
The warranty on the battery lasts another two years and they don’t make that battery anymore anyway. Replacement car would be a $27K Chevy Bolt, which is much longer range and way more expensive than I need.
I’d love to see a standard battery back that was around 100 miles range that cars would use 1-4 of them to achieve whatever range is desired.
Not to mention a standard form factor that would be available for 2-3 decades to prevent a car like my Spark EV with just 50K km from becoming landfill in a few years.
Someone will provide aftermarket battery servicing, if the market is big enough (it isn't, most likely. Protip: don't buy compliance cars for long term ownership...)
Nothing stops you from buying a used Bolt (or used EV from Nissan, Kia, Hyundai, VW, etc).
GM extended the battery warranties on Bolts that were recalled by something like 8-10 years.
And given GM probably sells more Bolts in a month than the entire production run of Sparks and has for years now, there's almost certainly going to be a large aftermarket scene for battery repair, just as there is for Priuses.)
I never had any problems with it, and returned it at the end of it's lease because I had started a family, and needed a bigger car. I still get letters from lemon-law firms asking if I need help with a car I haven't had for years.
- https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/
- Updated with the Hummer EV: https://insideevs.com/reviews/612030/hummer-ev-range-test/
The Lucid Air meets and the Mercedes EQS very nearly meets your 400 mile benchmark. The BMW iX xDrive50 did 345 miles, so a 600 mile trip could be done with only one charging stop with enough buffer to find a charger.
Due to the nature of EV charge curves it can be faster to stop multiple times and charge from a low state of charge to a maximum of 80%. The remaining 20% will charge slower to protect the battery pack.
The ideal would be a battery pack capable of a high and flat charge curve. A 100 kWh pack that could sustain 500 kW for the whole curve would charge 0-100% in 12 minutes. Still not as fast as fueling, but 12 minutes for a full charge would be very practical.
https://www.slashgear.com/the-weird-thing-about-epa-car-econ...
That being said, inevitably someone will start with a question of, "Why do you NEED 1500 miles of range?", point out that most people commute less then that and state that you can rent an ICE for when you need it, and proclaim that's all you really need.
I have almost the opposite desire! I want something that is maybe 100-200km range at a much lower price point. If I could buy something like an electric Mazda 3 with that sort of range at anything like the price point of the ICE version I'd buy one tomorrow. It would suffice for 99% of my driven distance, easily.
I think this car will sell for over $70k here in Australia, from a quick websearch. This pushes it straight into luxury car [tax] territory; I am not a car person & have no interest in dropping that much on a car.
Check this, https://www.j-spec.com.au/lineup/all/Leaf/ZE1/id-D49
Then click "See prices", they're importing for around 30k AUD (which includes all shipping costs and compliance).
For me I still need a bit of extra range for inter-city trips (for those playing at home, that's thousands of KMs per trip), so I am looking at a Nissan Note Nismo, which is a series hybrid (electric drivetrain with a tiny petrol generator).
If you know for sure that you'll only be doing city driving and you won't need fast charging then it doesn't matter as much.
How on earth is that worth it when a similar era e.g. mazda 3 is $13000?
Some stats indicate that second hand car prices are plummeting at the moment now that supply chains are normalising. I suspect this won't extend to electric cars which kind of have their own supply-side problems though!
You're also likely to spend significantly less in maintenance due to simpler systems with less wearable parts.
I have a mate with a Leaf and have been meaning to ask him how it's going. But definitely keeping an eye on them.
They look like "normal" cars (since the same body was used for their PHEV version) and aren't that expensive.
The one with the smaller battery can do ~150-200km reliably, but charges really fast. The bigger battery one does an easy 250km in the summer, but has a hobbled charging speed.
A model 3 standard is $60k and the savings for most people on fuel is why you see them everywhere.
MG have a car for $45k that fits your requrements though.
I think the reason people "get triggered" is because you're throwing around a lot of claims about EVs that at best are not any different from mileage/range numbers in ICE vehicles and at worst are not true...not just because you want over 400 miles of range. I mean, dude: Tesla drivers aren't speed demons but they're no hypermiling prius drivers. Every time I see one, it's being driven unremarkably - ie just like everyone else.
Also, there's such a thing as buying based off the vehicle you need +99% of the time, and renting for the 1%. I know someone who owns an SUV that doesn't get great gas mileage, and they rent a more fuel-efficient sedan for when they have to drive on a long business trip, saving miles on their own car and also making the writeoff really easy.
>My goal would be only making one charging stop a day on a road trip for going at least 600 miles.
Averaging 70mph (which is generous given traffic and probably having some travel on slower secondary roads) that's 8.5 hours. That's a lot of driving for just one stop. My car warns me around 2 hours in that I should take a break, for example. Around the three hour mark, I'm usually ready for a leg-stretch, bathroom break, and giving my brain a bit of a rest.
Given humans generally like 2-3 meals a day, maybe, just maybe, "I wanna drive for 8-9 hours with one stop and until I can do that in an EV, I'm not buying one" is just a tad on the side of excuse-making?
An Ioniq 5 (and most other 800v architecture cars) will recharge 80% of its range in under 20 minutes on a 250kw charger (which are spreading pretty rapidly, even in the US)...that's not a lot more than what "everyone hit the bathroom, grab some food/drink, stretch your legs, and meet back at the car" takes.
Given most EVs these days come with lots of trip planning and there are numerous websites to help with it as well - allowing you to specify you want to stop at chargers near certain amenities, for example - I really don't get the concern.
People seriously need to get over this range anxiety stuff.
Yeah that's a complete non-starter for the average person.
People just don't care about EV any more they care about diesel vs mid-grade vs premium. What they do care about is not having to have a second car for the couple-times-a-year use cases, especially since the first car tends to be one of the biggest purchases they've ever made.
>" is just a tad on the side of excuse-making?
If the product is inconvenient, the only customers you'll get are fanboys. You're just not gonna get adoption without feature parity.
(Also, it is not smart to put family in a vehicle and drive with only a single charging option for hundreds of miles around the area where you will exhaust your battery. What do you do if that charger is closed/out of service?)
I hear your push-back, but there are valid reasons to be concerned about using a technology that is still in the "deploying" phase. Everyone will adopt when it is comfortable to them.
That some people drive into nature where there is no electricity whatsoever?
I wouldn't hold out if I were you. 400 miles range will eventually come but what's the point in waiting? EV cars are more pleasant to drive than ICE ones, full stop. Don't hold up, just upgrade to the 400 miles one when it comes out.
Currently leading solutions for fast road trips are rapid charging or battery swaps, but you will have to stop a couple of times.
Here's timing of 1000KM (~620mi) trips:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6ucyFGKWuSQzvI8lMzv...
When you make the battery really big, you increase the weight of the car. The number of miles of range per kWh goes down.
Actually, it’s not optimal to use the entire range between each stop, because the battery car charge faster between (very roughly) 20% and 80%.
The most important thing is to have a lot of charging stations in spots that you can very quickly access from the highway. Then you can stop when optimal and minimize the amount of wasted time (your car’s navigation should tell you when).
At some point, putting even more batteries in the car will not get you there faster. Barring some big breakthrough in battery tech (or swaps), gas cars will have the advantage in miles per minute added during fueling.
There are cars with 400 mile range, but think hard about whether that is really what you want.
Nio's cars can swap 100 kWh packs in 6 minutes. The swap station charges the packs to 90% so the swap is equivalent to charging the car at 900 kW for 6 minutes:
And batteries are not interchangeable, because they’re structural and to maximise packing. So you need to stock batteries for every car brand if not model at every station. And in the right capacities do you don’t downgrade users (or upgrade them).
Battery swaps make sense on scooters because the cell packing is a lot less critical, so you can have a standard which is resilient and easy to manipulate and eat the loss of cell volume. The same might happen with trucks. If manufacturers can settle on standards in order to maintain travel rates.
They only have to scale to the number of cars that want to swap at a given point in time at a given location. EVs with swappable packs can also charge as normal. It's not exclusively swapping or charging, it's both swapping and charging.
> And batteries are not interchangeable, because they’re structural and to maximise packing.
They are if you develop battery swap standards:
https://cnevpost.com/2021/05/10/battery-swap-national-standa...
And while you're making those calculations in your head, carefully weighing each % of remaining charge against factors such as wind, rain and speed, you drive past tens of not hundreds of dino-soup stations that you cannot stop at because they don't have a power outlet you can plug into.
2) charging to max range is bad for the battery
3) the rated range isn't the actual range in real life
4) you want to drive 10mph faster
5) cold is hard on EVs
6) wind
7) less availability of charging
8) you don't take it down to 0 miles
All of a sudden, a 400 mile range car is 280 or worse in effective distance.
Further, when traveling along the freeway, a large battery just gets you a little further off the initial charge. It’s really your charging speed that sets your trip time.
I will still shell out for high range models, because I do stretch things, but I shop the charge network more than I do the range.
By the time you account for the range being exaggerated, then that you’re not supposed to charge to 100%, and then that you want to be able to drive fast on the highway, your available range is dropping fast.
My goal would be only making one charging stop a day on a road trip for going at least 600 miles.