I think until you have one you don't realise quite what having a range of 200+ miles means in practice. You don't actually drive for 500 miles without a break, that is 8-10 hours of constant motorway speed driving and its not safe to drive that long. So when you take 30 - 60 minutes for lunch on a long drive like that and charge the vehicle you are going another 200 miles before again really taking a break. As it stands the breaks will have to be a bit longer than you might like and it could add 30 minutes to your journey but that is about it for most people.

The other part that not a lot of people realise is if your journey is 300 miles and your car does 200 you don't charge another 200 miles into the battery, you charge 100 and then charge at the destination instead. With ICE vehicles if your going to get fuel typically you fuel it to the top but you don't do that with battery cars you want to charge them as little as possible while mid travelling and charge them while they are sat still at home or destination.

Its charging at home that really changes the experience too. The weekly trip to the fuel station disappears, depending on how often you exceed the range of the car you only really get exposed to the charging network and times when doing those journeys, you spend a lot less of your life in fuel stations!

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hellisothers 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I would add one thing my family has complained about wrt road trip charging is it’s not just the time you wait to charge, it’s the time and games/anger dealing with all the people in line waiting to charge.

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asdff 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

And this is with marginal EV adoption. Imagine if it was full scale the headaches that would come. I mean think of the current amount of gas stations around, that would be insufficient to cover EV demand due to the fact EVs need to linger for so much longer. So good bye to whatever in your town needs to be destroyed in order to park more cars and charge them. So much for walkable cities.

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pornel 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It gets exponentially better with bigger adoption, because chargers being in use pay for installation of more chargers (and batteries got cheaper, so charging stations have their own storage and are less limited by the size of their grid connection).

Service stations on my route in the UK went from having 2-3 medium-speed chargers total in 2019 to having 2 rows of 20 high-speed chargers, and another parking doubling that is under construction. The same happened all over Western Europe - grew from a few singular chargers at supermarkets and hotels to many large charging hubs along highways.

Reliability and ease of payment also got better, partly because regulations started requiring it, but also because the stations don't sit idle any more, and it started to matter for revenue.

Also in EU there's enough charger coverage now that there's competition. I don't have to sit in line to the only charger in town, I can drive few miles to the next station.

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MandieD 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The big difference between public EV chargers and gas stations: you can put an EV charger anywhere you have electricity, and with far lower space requirements. My city is slowly converting a few street parking spots in busy areas to EV charging, and it takes very little room - I have no complaints as someone who mostly uses sidewalks and bike lanes. Where did you think people were parking their cars in cities before?

Parking garages are also getting EV chargers. My office garage just added a couple dozen, and I don't think it would be hard for them to convert more once the demand shows up.

And I've seen them starting to go in at the little rest stops on the Autobahn that up to now only had unattended toilets; they're being added to the big, nice rest stops with gas stations, too, of course.

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asdff 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not sure how cleanly that is going to scale when each and every charger is going to cost a couple grand to install. Think of all the street parking spots there are, that is an enormous amount of money. In LA county it is estimated there are 3.6 million on street and 15 million off street parking spots as of 2010 (1). Lets assume its 2k for one of these chargers assuming no further upgrades to grid infrastructure that it would just work on existing lines. Unless I fudged the numbers that's $7.2 billion dollars just for the street parking. That would buy a whole lot of bike and bus lanes that cities claim they don't have the funding currently to roll out. Probably make a good dent in rail projects as well.

https://la.streetsblog.org/2015/12/01/18-6-million-spaces-an...

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ivanche 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You forgot just one teeny tiny thingy - it's illegal to park ICE car on EV charging spot on the streets, in garages etc. So if the number of EVs grow the number of EV spots would grow which would take more space, not less.

	▲	toast0 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you take existing parking and make some of it EV charging, it doesn't take up much extra space; the charging equipment does take some space, of course, but sometimes there's room to be found for that. Depending on EV adoption and how much charging people want/need, you can start with a couple spots that are active charging only, and see what that looks like. If the chargers are always full, consider adding more and/or having several spots for each charger and standards and practices to move your car and the charging plug when yours is full, etc. If the chargers are underused, consider making the spot open when the lot is full, etc.
	▲	eloisant 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If the number of EVs grows, ICE will shrink by as much so we can just convert regular parking spots to EV charging spots.

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rootusrootus 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is very regional, and I suspect is more of a problem for SoCal that most anywhere else. I've been driving EVs since 2019 and I have experienced a line exactly one time.

I would agree, though, that if you do run into a situation where you have to wait, the current system does not deal with it well. They need a better way to fairly manage a queue if it forms.

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loeg 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Admittedly I don't use public chargers often, but I have yet to experience any kind of line.

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jmcphers 4 days ago | parent [-]

I had to use public chargers for a while when my house was being worked on and it was pretty miserable. They were frequently broken, and lines were common.

The real problem with public charger lines is that there is no social protocol for them yet. At a gas station, it is fine to pull up behind a car currently fueling to indicate that you would like to fuel at the pump next. Charging stations, however, are not built with pull-through spots. There's no place to form a queue at all, so people park nearby, circle, and sometimes snipe a spot when it isn't their turn (because who can tell whose turn it is?).

	▲	loeg 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I mean, it's not like I've never had to use public chargers. They just didn't have lines when I was there. Also, haven't encountered a broken charger. (Seattle area.) The thing that actually bothered me the most is needing a different stupid app for every one of the ~5 different networks to pay, instead of just inserting or tapping a credit card. But this is mostly an occasional-user problem; the pain probably falls off dramatically once you've already registered for everything. Charging at home is a great experience.

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laughing_man 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree with you on the drive time. A buddy of mine has a Model X, and he occasionally will make the 400 mile drive to visit. He stops about halfway to stretch his legs and eat lunch, the same thing he did when he had an ICE powered SUV. The only difference is now the car is charging while he eats.

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angarg12 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We drove from Seattle to SF and back on a Model 3, and I would say there were only a couple of situations where I wish we could keep driving instead of recharging. Otherwise almost all breaks for charging aligned with breaks to go to the toilet, eat, walk the dog, or simply have a rest.

Definitely a very minor inconvenience. And, compared with frequent trips to the gas station vs charging at home overnight, a total net positive in time saved (if you want to measure it that way).

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NegativeK 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have a 300 mile range EV, and some of my friends also downplay charging on road trips. It seems to be a common narrative. I find it patently false. When I drove long distances in an gas car, I didn't take breaks to stretch my legs. I want to get to my destination earlier and have the driving be done.

I find EV charging on road trips to be annoying, and I can't wait until technology improves to the point where I don't have to worry about missing a charging station and being hosed and I don't have to worry about adding an hour to an hour and a half onto a road trip.

I think that gas vehicles are irresponsible for most uses and the charging at home makes having an EV great, but gas vehicles are better at road trips if only for the fact that those of us who don't want to take longer don't have to.

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richwater 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> that is 8-10 hours of constant motorway speed driving and its not safe to drive that long

[citation needed] considering plenty of people do it all the time (truck drivers)

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Symbiote 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

In Europe, lorry drivers are required to take a 45 minute break after 4.5 hours of driving.

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BLKNSLVR 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think having to resort to citing such a niche as truck drivers kinda makes the opposite point fairly well.

Having said that, I've taken lots of road trips in my day and it would be a change up to how they're planned, and I would have some concern about placement / availability. But then that's why, when we bought an EV for the 99% of our family use case we didn't immediately scrap yard our previous cars, which seemed to be what some family members expected when we told them we were considering getting an electric car.

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laughing_man 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Aren't truck drivers required to take breaks by law?

	▲	somerandomqaguy 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		By Canadian law IIRC it's 30 minutes every 8 hours or so. However it can still be split up to 2x 15 minute breaks, and it's only a break from driving; loading/unloading, inspections, hooking up or unhook, paperwork, etc is counted as as taking a break. The lower provinces allow up to 13 hours per day of driving and a total 14 hours per day on duty time before you're required to take a 10 hour rest in a single 24 hour period. The northern territories I believe legally allow up to 15 hours driving per day. That's just what I've read so take it for what it's worth.