yeah no. wife yelling at the top of her lungs because of low battery. No thank you. Leased and gave up an EV, now will wait until normal-priced ev's are solidly in the 400+ miles range. I have no desire to graduate from your "rookie" to an "ev planning pro" and wait until everyone else around me does that, too.

I'd say she was stressing about missing her business meeting because the estimates given to the users by the car about range weren't accurate.

That's on the EV, not their relationship.

EVs are highly efficient so the driving conditions make a huge difference. ICEs have a constant base consumption that we have gotten used to. It's unsettling at first, but as your consumption goes high a lot in high speed, you can save huge quantities (much more than you expect) by driving slower. You will lose less time than you think driving slower. Last time I spent 30 min behind a fast bus and quickly doubled my reach, more than enough to arrive home safely even while driving faster again.

I think the idea of not taking an EV because in some edge case one might lose a few minutes (30m for charging most vehicles nowadays) extremely superficial and selfish in view of the huge disaster that is the climate crisis. Think about how your kids and grandkids will read such comments in 50 years.

If only there was some way to transmit the power from the engine to different gear ratios for efficiency at different speeds. That would be the future.

If only gear ratios fixed air resistance. Then your comment would make sense.

How is air resistance the issue here? We are talking about the powerband of the motor. These are two independent concerns that ought not to be conflated.

Not sure if you are sarcastic... Gear ratios are needed by ICE because ICEs have a much smaller RPM range, and can't go down to 0 without stalling. There are some EVs that have gearboxes, the cost/benefit of that is still unclear.

Here's a quick derivation based on first principles in high school physics. The amount of work done against a constant opposing force (imagine air resistance) is distance times force. If we assume a constant speed, then there is no net force and no electric energy is converted to kinetic energy, then all the electric energy is for doing the work. Suppose you are driving the same distance but double the speed, that fixed opposing force (air resistance) will quadruple. So doubling your speed consumes four times as much energy but you arrive in only half the time.

This is of course a crude approximation but just drive slower if you have range anxiety.

Exact - thanks for completing my point.

What is additional range going to help with here? You misjudged your range, almost certainly due to Tesla overestimating remaining range (not taking into account all variables), and your wife yelled at you for it. Having an extra 100mi range will just delay that scenario, not prevent it. It takes about one longer trip to understand how speed/conditions affect range and how that necessitates an earlier departure time. Next time just plan for a quick stop after 100mi or so to give you some extra confidence. Faster charging and more stations will help out though, no doubt.

Better route planning doesn’t negate the need for long stops in really odd locations like abandoned mall parking lots.

Also did NYC -> Montreal in a Tesla and the charging situation was much more frustrating than I had expected.

But why would I want to deal with the hassle of better route planning when I can just drive an ICE car and not worry about it?

Sure, there's a breaking point where gas prices go up crazy high, and there are the environmental concerns, but I don't think it's surprising or even unreasonable that part of the EV push back is "have to relearn how to plan trips".

One other thing that bothers me about this is that the range of a gas car is somewhat independent of weather conditions. An EV losing a chunk of its range (completely messing up your route planning) because it was colder outside than expected... well, that's just not acceptable.

Remember that "gas" stations were not as dense when ICE cars first came out, and people had to adapt to said hassle at the time.

Critical mass generally provides the scale to solve these problems.

> there are the environmental concerns

Bingo. You don't have to agree with me but in my opinion anyone who needs a car and can afford an EV but not driving one is morally reprehensible. We needed to reduce our fossil fuel usage twenty years ago. People putting their own convenience above the environment are selfish and short-sighted.