Thanks for the perspective. I don't own an EV, but I have taken road trips in a friend's Tesla. My impression was that the supercharger network (at least in the Northeast US) is dense and reliable enough and the route planning software good enough that road trips basically anywhere in the region are reasonably practical, though you'll be spending much more time at superchargers than you would at gas stations in an ICE car and have less ability to choose any route you like. Interesting to know that that's actually the highest level of EV practicality and many other models are substantially worse.

Would be great if we could use antitrust law to force Tesla to let other EVs use the supercharger network too. Would open up a lot of competition and help reduce pollution.

You must have missed this news from last year?

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/the-tesla-supercharger-netw...

It’s also a little limited. The supercharger cables are too short to reach many cars and you have to park weirdly and block other stalls. There’s also no OEM trip planner to make use of them to ensure batteries are preconditioned , you distribute load across nearby superchargers, etc.

I test drove the Ariya and I think it had a 4 menu deep manual precondition option. Its OEM charging locator (not planner) was offline and typical legacy manufacturer built-in nav garbage.

Tesla is building new super chargers for a world where every car isn’t a Tesla. Car makers that aren’t Tesla are also standardizing on port placement to exist in a world where Tesla provides the only reliable charging option.

There's an adapter shortage, so that doesn't really work yet.

I don't know anything about that, but that's not really a problem for antitrust.

> And EA is basically always broken.

This was the case a year ago, but they have really stepped up their game, at least in the Northeast. I now find the EA chargers to be (almost) always functional.

I don't understand why we even need an app. Isn't the car is app already? With a reliable cable connection to the charging station. Cannot the car negotiate the payment on it's own?

That might happen if the car makers could charge a 30 percent commissions from the EV charging companies.

You just described how Tesla supercharging works.

You don't in Europe. Regulation now requires contactless payment for chargers. Even Tesla's new chargers support contactless payment with no Tesla account or app:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yflZN0dLT8s

CCS also supports plug and charge if you want to set up automatic payments via your car. Even works in North America:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BgWBPfmefE

On the newer Nissan Ariya model: at home, battery SOC says 99%, predicted range 290 miles. We go on family day trip to the beach, 30 miles later and SOC says 70% with 260 miles predicted range. I am no expert and I'm sure these systems are hard to build but we have got to be able to do better than this.

Similar situation to the phone and laptop batteries, except it is an order of magnitude harder and more expensive to compensate for crap predictions by manufacturer.

It’s very late here and/or I‘m dumb, but isn’t 290 minus 30 equal to 260…?

I think they meant the percentages were wildly inaccurate. 99% at 290 miles would give a 100% range of 292 miles. 260 miles should be 89% remaining, not 70%.

I have a Renault Megane E-Tech, which shares platform with the Ariya, and I've noticed the range estimation seems to be heavily biased to recent driving.

That's almost always too and from work in the city, so when I take it to the highway the estimated range drops like a brick. Especially speeds above 100 km/h (~60 mph) really drains the battery.

That said, if I enter the route in the Google Maps-based navigation, I find that it fairly accurately predicts SOC at the destination. So I tend to use that, or just do my own estimation.

Though, AFAIK the Ariya has an Amazon-based system, so not sure how that relates.

I wonder why I don't perceive a similar issue with my gas car. Two reasons come to mind:

1) Gas consumption does not have as much variance as EV. Actually there are canceling effects because gas engines are more efficient on highways, but drag is higher. As a result the amount of fuel consumed is more predictable and therefore the range is more predictable.

2) The safety net of the "I'll fill up when pointer is near empty" habit. This can be harder for EV in exceptional trips i.e. not predictable daily commute, which is exactly where the chance of being further away from fast charging is higher.

I think 2) will get better over time and as we get more used to it. And about 1), it's pretty cool that EV are so much more efficient at slower speeds - it's a real testament for the technology.

Yeah I do think your first point is a big factor.

I think I'd be more happy if my car split my range estimates into "city driving" and "highway driving", and provided those two different estimates side by side.

Since my car doesn't know where I'm going, without telling it through the nav system, that would be a much more useful approach.

Of course, that would also mean people would see the much lower range, so I guess it would affect sales to first-time EV buyers.

More populated cities are making EV harder, because apartments are mostly missing charging spots and only in some new building a handful of parking sport per building have AN OPTION to pay to install charger. And offices are also mostly missing charging spots too, plus remote work factor. The leaders of EV adoption are countries with rich people in personal houses with cheap (per kW) personal chargers. Or simply rich people.

A smart government would mandate that all new apartment blocks have at a minimum the electrical infrastructure in place to support the installation of charging points.

I was recently renting an apartment and when I asked building managers about this kind of thing they just blinked at me slowly like they had just now heard of electric cars existing.

EA is such a shitshow. Volkswagen committed two crimes against the US government: First they got caught falsifying their diesel emissions, and as penance the USG forced them to build the EA network.

Second, after VW built the EA network they allocated basically no money to maintain it. AFAIK the USG has not found a way to punish them for that. It's not clear to me that the USG is even aware this second crime was committed.

EDIT: Based on comment from @cure below, my information may need updating.

As an EV owner with a bit of mileage I can't agree at all, cities are the worst place to own an EV. Modern EV have at least 400km WLTP range (248 miles EPA range) and we typically have to move for much less during the day, BUT we need to charge at home, and in cities most people do not have a place to charge at home. In cities you have often tight spaces, maneuvering an EV is less comfy and an ICE in tight space, and eventual "ADAS" makes it even worse.

At least in the part of the EU I'm living public chargers are spread enough and they are rightly meant for just recharging when you are on a trip longer than the return range, issues are from their mandatory crapplications instead of just accepting a bank card, and having also an incredible price delta depending on the app/card you use (check chargemap.com/map choosing some chargers to see the prices).

The main issue is the absurdly high price of EVs HERE, because in the BRICS cost less than ICEs, the absurdly level of invasive crapware as a service, the absurd level of yearly check, actually a sw update we can do alone, prices. All this, the push toward no ownership and sucking money like a leech push people against EV because they fails to separate the child from the dirty water.