Posted on 06/05/2022 8:19:50 AM PDT by American Number 181269513
I thought it would be fun.
That’s what I told my friend Mack when I asked her to drive with me from New Orleans to Chicago and back in an electric car.
I’d made long road trips before, surviving popped tires, blown headlights and shredded wheel-well liners in my 2008 Volkswagen Jetta. I figured driving the brand-new Kia EV6 I’d rented would be a piece of cake.
If, that is, the public-charging infrastructure cooperated. We wouldn’t be the first to test it. Sales of pure and hybrid plug-ins doubled in the U.S. last year to 656,866—over 4% of the total market, according to database EV-volumes. More than half of car buyers say they want their next car to be an EV, according to recent Ernst & Young Global Ltd. data.
By the Numbers
Our reporter’s four-day, three-night EV road trip included many charging stops, little sleep—and less junk food than you might expect
• Miles driven: 2,013
• Number of charges: 14
• Total charging cost: $175
• Hours spent waiting to charge:18
• Hours of sleep:16
• Calories of junk food consumed (estimated): 1,465
• Giant chicken statues passed: 1
Oh—and we aimed to make the 2,000-mile trip in just under four days so Mack could make her Thursday-afternoon shift as a restaurant server.
Less money, more time
Given our battery range of up to 310 miles, I plotted a meticulous route, splitting our days into four chunks of roughly 7½-hours each. We’d need to charge once or twice each day and plug in near our hotel overnight.
The PlugShare app—a user-generated map of public chargers—showed thousands of charging options between New Orleans and Chicago. But most were classified as Level 2, requiring around 8 hours for a full charge.
(Excerpt) Read more at vigourtimes.com ...
I’ve never had an electric car or hybrid break down on the road. As for charging time and range, if this woman had been driving a Tesla instead of a Kia, her experience would have been the polar opposite.
What about the thousands of dollars it cost to replace the battery after 8 years?
Of the effect on car resale or trade in value if the next owner knows YOU drove the car for five years - and in three years he’ll have to shell out $12,000 for a new car battery.
I do not know the rental cost of a Tesla. Also, the range quoted in the article is not particularly lower than the Tesla at a reasonable rental cost. They max at 400 upscale?
This is not an engineering problem. It is physics. Only so many ampere hours can be put into a battery in such and such number of minutes. The charging stations saying they can charge things in less than overnight will also be talking about 80% charge, not full. These are enormous levels of ampere flow. It is not and never will be 3 minutes filling of a fuel tank — and make no mistake here, THAT is the only criteria that matters.
If you can’t put 400 miles into a car in 3 minutes, it is inferior. The I word. Inferior. As to these sales stats, go get data from non EV sources. And get them in a year not recovering from the virus or from virus stimulus fleet subsidies.
Then we’ll see if people want to wait hours to fill a tank.
I leased a Tesla S for a year total biz write off well worth it just for the 0 to 60 times faster than a Ferrari. Level 2 chargers are for chumps. Teslas charge at 250kw putting 200 miles in 15 min. Every major motorway in the USA has a network of superchargers. I routinely took my S to New Orleans , Houston, Midland, OKC and Memphis. With trips as far as Orlando and Miami. I never spent more than 15 min at a supercharger stop, put 200+ miles in the pack while taking a leak, buying a beer and smoking a Cameroon nub cigar while stretching my legs after 3 hours in the seat which is how long it takes to cover 220 miles at 10mph above legal speeds. Most if not all superchargers are near as in right next door to restaurants/bars/retail outlets malls. It was never a issue to find and use a supercharger which had access included in my lease terms so I didn’t even have to pay for the power it was plug and go the charger immediately recognized my VIN number and Bob’s your uncle.
Electric cars, for me anyways, may be fine for commuting but not for traveling.
Among my friends, I have one Tesla true-believer who is always very quick to jump on any Facebook posting about anything contrary to his true-believer status on EVs. I might just make his Sunday by posting this on my page to see his response. BTW, he is an electrical engineer and fully gets the physics reality.
A tesla owner burned his tesla “in protest” when he found out what it would cost to replace the batteries.
Tesla Owner Blows Up Car Rather Than Pay $22K to Replace Battery
That said, the transition to EV's should be guided by markets and improving technology.
Team Biden's approach to EV's is you will suffer pain because "we are your government overlords and resistance is futile".
What does “Bob’s your uncle” mean?
Well look at the bright side. You’ll know who the city dwellers are and you can decide whether to save their lives or not.
What about the thousands of dollars it cost to replace the battery after 8 years?
The 900lb Toxic Battery ?
What a hassle. In a regular car, you’d just hop in and go. Could do it in one day each way stopping for an hour for lunch.
Good to go basically
First appearance of “Bob’s your uncle” in print, an advertisement in the Dundee Evening Telegraph on 19 June 1924
“Bob’s your uncle” is a phrase commonly used in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries that means “and there it is” or “and there you have it” or “It’s done”. Typically, someone says it to conclude a set of simple instructions or when a result is reached. The meaning is similar to that of the French expression “et voilà!” or the American “easy as pie” or “piece of cake”.
I did not consider this. Now I have four reasons. Thanks.
If you’d read the article, you’d know it wasn’t about Teslas…
Sitting third in line at Sams Club to save a dime a gallon of gas was more than enough for me yesterday.
“That said, the transition to EV’s should be guided by markets and improving technology.”
Exactly. If they can serve specific markets in free-enterprise then I am all for it. Government interference and market manipulations can KMA.
When are they building the super grid that will accommodate tens of millions EVs?
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