Will Electric Vehicles Be Viable? When?

[strad]

Not true Tim
I and many of my friends have made many such trips.
I spent a great deal of my life traveling between Seattle and Phoenix on a regular basis.
How about if I want to go hunting in Montana something else we do? That would still take 3 stops.
Or Yosemite 3 or 4 stops or New Orleans 2575 7 to 8 stops, another regular trip for me.
I have a good friend outside of Gallup N.M. 1300 miles. Is that unheard of by you Tim? It's not unheard of for me and my friends.

[strad]

from Tim:

I'd still argue that the issue of EV's is not the range but the recharge time.

That was my point Tim

[Ferry]

That sounds good on the face of it 341 miles, but lets say I want to go from here to Galveston 2355 miles. Not at all uncommon.

Really? How often can you do that? That's like 40 hours of driving. Each way. Not a typical weekend trip. I have a normal day job, 0800-1600, 5 days a week. I could only do such a trip once a year, during the 3 week summer vacation.

[joshuagore]

Not true Tim
I and many of my friends have made many such trips.
I spent a great deal of my life traveling between Seattle and Phoenix on a regular basis.
How about if I want to go hunting in Montana something else we do? That would still take 3 stops.
Or Yosemite 3 or 4 stops or New Orleans 2575 7 to 8 stops, another regular trip for me.
I have a good friend outside of Gallup N.M. 1300 miles. Is that unheard of by you Tim? It's not unheard of for me and my friends.

Maybe a day will come when it will financially make more sense for you to rent a vehicle for those use cases, and the savings of limiting the utility of your primary transport will make that scenario viable. For instance, not owning a truck and paying for its fuel and wear items on a daily basis means when it comes time to tow or move, or even bring home wood from the store, it feels like renting saved me money and allowed me to get exactly what I needed for the use I had. I can rent a truck to tow a boat, or a flatbed to move a machine, and I wasn't exposing myself to their maintence costs daily all for the utility to use it randomly. I am guessing as vehicles become more technologically closer to phones in terms of ability to repair the proposition of ownership vs sharing in a fleet program may make sense and it may be far more convenient.

I could turo a Van for a mountain biking/camping trip while daily driving an i3 and overall may be in a better value proposition. Now imagine GM/Ford/Chrysler etc.. have fleets of these vehicles waiting for you to check in and drive off.

But all that is mild fantasy, because daily my friends, peers, relatives, all buy vehicles for that one days use per month and I couldn't convince them otherwise. We love to have cake twice, we just don't remember paying for it twice.

[Just_a_fan]

Not true Tim
I and many of my friends have made many such trips.
I spent a great deal of my life traveling between Seattle and Phoenix on a regular basis.
How about if I want to go hunting in Montana something else we do? That would still take 3 stops.
Or Yosemite 3 or 4 stops or New Orleans 2575 7 to 8 stops, another regular trip for me.
I have a good friend outside of Gallup N.M. 1300 miles. Is that unheard of by you Tim? It's not unheard of for me and my friends.

But you're still a very small minority of the world's population. The vast majority are not doing anything like that sort of journey length ever. On a bell curve, you're right at one side.

[Tim.Wright]

Not true Tim
I and many of my friends have made many such trips.
I spent a great deal of my life traveling between Seattle and Phoenix on a regular basis.
How about if I want to go hunting in Montana something else we do? That would still take 3 stops.
Or Yosemite 3 or 4 stops or New Orleans 2575 7 to 8 stops, another regular trip for me.
I have a good friend outside of Gallup N.M. 1300 miles. Is that unheard of by you Tim? It's not unheard of for me and my friends.

There's a difference between unheard of and not regular. 1300 miles is not unheard of. I've done it myself. I'm pretty sure that if you look at the population as a whole, there's no way that 2000+ mile trips could be considered regular which is why there is no reason why EV's need to have this capability.

[Big Tea]

Not true Tim
I and many of my friends have made many such trips.
I spent a great deal of my life traveling between Seattle and Phoenix on a regular basis.
How about if I want to go hunting in Montana something else we do? That would still take 3 stops.
Or Yosemite 3 or 4 stops or New Orleans 2575 7 to 8 stops, another regular trip for me.
I have a good friend outside of Gallup N.M. 1300 miles. Is that unheard of by you Tim? It's not unheard of for me and my friends.

There's a difference between unheard of and not regular. 1300 miles is not unheard of. I've done it myself. I'm pretty sure that if you look at the population as a whole, there's no way that 2000+ mile trips could be considered regular which is why there is no reason why EV's need to have this capability.

I wonder what would be the practicality of transporting EV's by train in the case of long distance needs?
It has never been a requirement to date, but as it would probably be be quite small numbers in most places not the USA or Australia a few extra wagons with the ability to carry vehicles would seem to be a small problem if they relay put their heart into it

[strad]

I've said that an EV is not viable for me.
It doesn't matter if people only drive 25 miles round trip to work. For most people I know they still face a couple of hurdles
1.) Initial buy in price especially for a second vehicle. With the added initial cost of wiring up a home charge station.
2.) Charge time especially on long drives.
2.5.) Lack of charging stations convenient to the main Highways like petrol stations.
Even I am an odd case I maintain that until they overcome those hurdles, and maybe some I forgot, they won't take over the mainstream market.
Stay safe guys.

[Jolle]

I've said that an EV is not viable for me.
It doesn't matter if people only drive 25 miles round trip to work. For most people I know they still face a couple of hurdles
1.) Initial buy in price especially for a second vehicle. With the added initial cost of wiring up a home charge station.
2.) Charge time especially on long drives.
2.5.) Lack of charging stations convenient to the main Highways like petrol stations.
Even I am an odd case I maintain that until they overcome those hurdles, and maybe some I forgot, they won't take over the mainstream market.
Stay safe guys.

This situation in the EU is quite different. Especially at restaurants at the motorways they have fast charging stations so you can take your EV on holiday. A typical very long drive a day is around 1000-1200 km, only really on holidays. Trafic is much more dense, so after 400-500 km of driving (around 4-5 hours) you really need food, coffee and be away from the wheel for at least half an hour. More then enough to charge your car for the next leg.

I can imagine the US is more difficult but it must do something to stay in the market. Yes, Tesla showed that you can have a premium usable EV, but if everybody else is going to pretend its just a fase... Detroit will be hit once again the same way when the Japanese turned up with superior engineering.

[djos]

I'd argue going 2355 miles in a private car is extremely uncommon.

I'd still argue that the issue of EV's is not the range but the recharge time. If I'm using a car to ping-pong aroung urban areas my travel time is usually 10-20 mins.

If I need to stop to charge during one of these journies, even at a fast charger, I will in the best case at least double my travel time and in the worst case I will need to cancel appointments because I'm stuck at a 2,3 kW charger and wont be moving for hours. And for 97% of the car buying population this doesn't cut it - especially given the price premium of EV's.

Many sports cars have a range of <400 km but you don't hear people complaining about range because it takes 2 minutes to fix the problem.

Maybe it's not common in Europe but long road trips are part of the driving cultures in the US and Australia. We drive from Melbourne to Adelaide (~800 k's each way) and Melbourne to the Central Coast of NSW (~950k's each way) once each year to visit family on our Holidays. When I lived in Sydney I used to drive 1,400k's to Adelaide (each way twice a year). This is fairly normal here - Australia is a vast country. It's literally 95% the size of the USA - you could fit all of the European landmasses in Australia and still not match our vast country.



I agree with you that Charge time is the real issue - but only for long road trips, for day to day imo it's a non-issue for most ppl who can charge at home.

[joshuagore]

I've said that an EV is not viable for me.
It doesn't matter if people only drive 25 miles round trip to work. For most people I know they still face a couple of hurdles
1.) Initial buy in price especially for a second vehicle. With the added initial cost of wiring up a home charge station.
2.) Charge time especially on long drives.
2.5.) Lack of charging stations convenient to the main Highways like petrol stations.
Even I am an odd case I maintain that until they overcome those hurdles, and maybe some I forgot, they won't take over the mainstream market.
Stay safe guys.

I actually agree with all those points, I live near a major metro and often have 150 mile days visiting customers or vendors, The i3 used for $15k doesn't even meet my needs with the range extender, plus it can't use a supercharger, I dare not think about its range with a bike rack. My initial entry into hybrids, was the first gen insight, in a manual, I loved the car as a technical achievement but it was virtually useless outside its narrow purpose. High efficiency fun but basic transportation. Things need to come a long way, and I believe other form factors with less drag or lighter duty energy needs are the best place for electric, that is why my investment is in electric bikes. Bikes are one form factor where the human couldn't eat enough to beat batteries and charging, and gas engines are less welcome.

https://files.meetup.com/1468133/Ebike_Energy.pdf

[Andres125sx]

Maybe it's not common in Europe but long road trips are part of the driving cultures in the US and Australia. We drive from Melbourne to Adelaide (~800 k's each way) and Melbourne to the Central Coast of NSW (~950k's each way) once each year to visit family on our Holidays. When I lived in Sydney I used to drive 1,400k's to Adelaide (each way twice a year). This is fairly normal here - Australia is a vast country. It's literally 95% the size of the USA - you could fit all of the European landmasses in Australia and still not match our vast country.

https://takrawesome.com/wp-content/uplo ... europe.jpg

I agree with you that Charge time is the real issue - but only for long road trips, for day to day imo it's a non-issue for most ppl who can charge at home.

The key here is what I highlighted, once or twice a year

Maybe a day will come when it will financially make more sense for you to rent a vehicle for those use cases, and the savings of limiting the utility of your primary transport will make that scenario viable.

A car wich is more economic for daily use (once EVs prices go down), and then renting a vehicle once or twice a year for the needed long trips, wich btw will be more appropiate for that long trip as you can rent what you want and need for that specific situation instead of using your own car, will be a lot more reasonable I think.

But EVs prices must go down, I agree on that part, but that´s not that far away

[Just_a_fan]

This is fairly normal here - Australia is a vast country. It's literally 95% the size of the USA - you could fit all of the European landmasses in Australia and still not match our vast country.

https://takrawesome.com/wp-content/uplo ... europe.jpg

Cool image there. I do like that.

Australia is a big lump of land but the population is less than half that of the UK alone. Which is amazing, really. Shows how populous our little island is.

[djos]

This is fairly normal here - Australia is a vast country. It's literally 95% the size of the USA - you could fit all of the European landmasses in Australia and still not match our vast country.

https://takrawesome.com/wp-content/uplo ... europe.jpg

Cool image there. I do like that.

Australia is a big lump of land but the population is less than half that of the UK alone. Which is amazing, really. Shows how populous our little island is.

It is amazing - there's a huge part of Australia that you really wouldn't want to live in (~50%) but even so, 25 Million people is not a big population for such a large continent.

[djos]

Maybe it's not common in Europe but long road trips are part of the driving cultures in the US and Australia. We drive from Melbourne to Adelaide (~800 k's each way) and Melbourne to the Central Coast of NSW (~950k's each way) once each year to visit family on our Holidays. When I lived in Sydney I used to drive 1,400k's to Adelaide (each way twice a year). This is fairly normal here - Australia is a vast country. It's literally 95% the size of the USA - you could fit all of the European landmasses in Australia and still not match our vast country.

https://takrawesome.com/wp-content/uplo ... europe.jpg

I agree with you that Charge time is the real issue - but only for long road trips, for day to day imo it's a non-issue for most ppl who can charge at home.

The key here is what I highlighted, once or twice a year

True but 2,500+ k's of road trip driving per year is still getting close to 20% of our average yearly total of 15,000 k's driven for that vehicle.