> Nothing done by choice is annoying obviously.

Right, so that covers approximately 100% of EV owners.

Maybe its tiring for you. What’s tiring for me is that in every single one of these threads, people bring up the most extreme, outlier situations (500 mile trips) as a cudgel against EVs.

EVs (or having a car in general) aren’t for everyone. Or aren’t for everyone yet.

But you’re now talking about the lack of adequate charging infrastructure in an urban setting. That’s a different conversation. It’s a worthy conversation, but not all that related to making 500 mile road trips.

This summer I made two 500 mile trips (round trip each time) to drop off (and pick up) a kid at a summer camp. It was a week long camp, so I drove up and back on two weekends. I drove an electric car up the first time and a hybrid SUV up the second time.

It was fine to do in my electric car. I spent about 5 minutes making sure I had a good charging plan, which turned out to add about 10-15 extra miles to the trip. It wasn’t a problem to stop to charge, and I really wanted to stop to eat and stretch when I needed to charge, so everything worked out well timing wise. The trip in the hybrid was a little faster, but not by much. I still stopped the same number of times regardless of what car I drove.

Note: I would have happily had made the trip in my EV both times, but I had another person with me for the second trip. She hated the seats in my EV, so we took the car with more comfortable interior for the second trip. The trip in the hybrid was “nicer”, but that was because it was a more comfortable car in general, not because of the difference between an EV and hybrid.

I have never been in a queue for charging in my 5 years of ev ownership. This includes 3 long roadtrips (Denmark to southern France so 1800 km to 2200 km each way) during summer vacations.

I've been doing EV road trips for four years now and I've never had to queue for a charger.

A recent road trip I went on about a month ago, I pulled up to the place I was planning to charge (an EA station attached to a Walmart, was going to go to the deli for a snack while it charged). It was completely full and seemed like there were a few people waiting. I just drove to another charging location about 2mi away (a 7/11 station I think?) and charged there and had a snack. No big deal.

That's about the closest I've had to queue in the past few years. Other than that, there have usually been multiple open chargers available. And once again that's only when I've road tripped. I've had to waste far more of my life pumping gas in my non-EV than I've spent waiting on charging despite my ICE getting far fewer miles.

Of course if you don't have a plug at home, and have to do all your charging at a station, buying an EV now is not a great idea.

If you do have a plug for charging, which you could have even if you live in an appartment (personal parking spot with a plug at your residence), then you're trading a small inconvenience for another.

Yes during your occasional long trip you'll have to spend 20 minutes charging instead of 5 minutes filling your tank, but when you're around your home doing short trips (most of the time for most people), you no longer have to do the occasional visits to the gas station. You just plug your car at home and be done with it.

A hybrid can do that by running the ICE (or not).

An EV can do that how exactly, refusing to run? Mugging the elderly for loose kWh?

No, I know, I was just kind of detailing the general experience. Urban driving is entirely seamless (I exclusively charge at home), long trips are the only slightly inconvenient bit, but I ~never do those.

I mean the funny thing is that I've never driven or wanted a car with more than a 10-gallon tank, so my "ICE" (it's a Prius, so it actually does better than a full ICE car would) range is already <400 miles. Having to stop at a "gas station" for 30 minutes instead of 10 minutes every 4-6 hours really doesn't seem like that big of an ordeal, especially since I'm probably going to be stopping for meal breaks on that interval anyway. And if you just need a top-off to make the last 100 miles rather than a full charge, you can probably do it in 10-15 minutes anyway, right?

I am not intending this as a backhanded way of suggesting your experience is invalid. I get that it's quite possible in some areas.

However, I think the point of the GP is that the number of people who say this is their typical experience is going to be larger than the number of people for whom it actually is their typical experience.

By that I mean: your story is quite common in discussions like this, both online and offline. Yet, if the mean distance is 8 miles, and we know it's going to be skewed high due to the 0 bound, it can't be all that common.

To be honest, I'd be curious to see the median here.

Still less than 170 miles.

Remember that you would usually charge at home so you start every day with a full battery.

Maybe you're just richer than the average person, that affluence buys you a lot of convenience that others can't access.

It's easy to forget the budget issues faced by many families when you're not facing that constantly yourself, but it's basically an existential consideration for a not insignificant proportion of the population.

You're circa $1700/year more expensive in fuel with your minivan[1] than with a comparably sized EV.

Your 5 hour / 300 mile journey takes around 30 mins more in the EV end to end (time spent stationary at a charger somewhere near the mid point of your route). Equiv of driving at 55mph average vs 60mph average over that time. I'd happily use the time to drink a flask of tea i brought with me and then go for a comfort break.

[1] assuming $4.80/gallon in a 25mpg minivan, vs an inefficient EV that only averages around 2mi/kwh at $0.30/kwh. Obv the 1700 excludes servicing, tyres and depreciation

Meanwhile in Korea: https://driving.ca/auto-news/crashes/hyundai-ioniq-5-666000-...

It sounds like you can't find a used minivan-like EV, with 250+mi range. A 2022 model y has 330mi range new (probably around 300mi now). You can get them for $23K after federal rebate. Seems like a good deal that would be "doable" for you.

I mean, I don't disagree with you. But a lot of people have two cars if both adults work and have to drive to work - so it makes perfect sense for the second car to be electric. We have a little VW e-Up with "just" 120-150 miles of range and in day to day use we never get anywhere close to running out. In fact my wife uses it to commute every day and we charge it once a week from a regular plug at home. It saves considerable amount of money over a petrol Polo she had before, to a point where the car pays for itself(almost). But yeah, we also have another car(a PHEV Volvo) that we use for long trips.

> I do 100mi/day

You are an extreme outlier, you should wait until the technology develops further. To use your parlance, no need to screech about people clutching their pearls at you.

The P3 Charging Index attempts to quantify this, and also documents progress over the years as they've been publishing it for 6 years now:

Porsche Kia Hyundai are currently top of the list

https://www.electrive.com/2024/12/20/p3-charging-index-2024-...

The e-GMP cars (Hyundai Ioniqs, Kia EV6) can do it in 13 minutes or so under ideal conditions. They have decent range but not top of the line.