Yes. Can I take an EV on a road trip and have a good time?

I mean, I get it, it’s not the end of the world. But given the choice, I still would never choose an EV over gas on long road trips. The difference is large enough that it matters. Trips are the time when I have the least tolerance for hassle, and even small inconveniences add up really fast.

Americans don’t get much vacation time. Which makes what limited vacation time we do get much more precious. Losing 30min out of 365 days is a bummer, but losing 30min out of a 7 day vacation is worse. If you have the choice of spending an extra 30min at Walmart vs spending that 30min at the beach or sleeping in at the Hotel, which would you pick? That is exactly the trade off you make when choosing between a gas car and an EV on a road trip.

As you say, this type of thing can happen even with gas cars, or trains, planes, boats, bicycles, etc.

Yes, but it’s worse with EVs. Why would I willingly make my experience worse on a vacation?

Unless every restaurant in town has several stalls of 75kW DC fast charging, a 30min stop during meal break won’t be enough to get you to the next destination.

That’s exactly what I’m saying. You go to a supercharger an you don’t reach 100%, you only get to 80%. That reduces your range. Reduced range is the main problem. Only reaching 80% is a problem.

You call them excuses when you are simply unwilling to accept the reason.

Since apparently we’re hung up on the probably 1% of driving you do (where you go more than 250 miles in a single day)

No you don’t need it 99% of the time, but in that 1% when you need it, you really need it. 99% simply isn’t enough because that 1% is really important.

Time on a road trip is way more important than time in regular drives. I don’t mind being 30min late getting back home from work, that happens all the time from traffic, but 30min late on a roadtrip means you’re missing daylight, or an appointment, or that restaurant you really wanted to try is closed. These are not imaginary hypotheticals, all of these situations have regularly happened to me even with gas cars.

plan out your route and stops. Requires maybe 15 minutes of planning before your trip. You pick a place with food nearby, get out for 30 minutes, stretch, eat your meal, and you are good until the next meal.

You say this like this is trivial burden. It is not. The mental load of constantly needing to plan stops around fueling is a significant difference from gas cars in experience and is a significant barrier to adoption. This is a real problem and must be overcome in the future if we are to reach higher EV adoption.

if you are one of the 80% of households with 2 cars, take the other car for that roadtrip.

We are not talking about today, we are talking about increasing EV adoption, to say 90-100%. If 80% of households have a gas car, you’re not getting there.

get a rental car for your trip. (Remembering that a couple hundred for a rental car is vastly cheaper than paying for gas for 10+ years)

Again, we are not talking about today, we are talking about a future where EV adoption is 90-100%. How many gas stations will remain in that future?

Since apparently we’re hung up on the probably 1% of driving you do (where you go more than 250 miles in a single day), let’s refer to what I already said above you:

Not that crazy. 20% of 300mi is ~60mi which is slightly more than when the low fuel gauge lights up on most gas cars. And most people refuel gas cars long before that light comes up, when there’s ~100mi of range left. Why is such behavior suddenly so crazy when you translate that to EVs? I’ll grant you that it’s unnecessary in most situations, but why is being a little more cautious than others about preventing a very inconvenient situation warrant the word “astonishing”?

Only last winter I was stuck in a snow storm due to traffic and road conditions in my EV. That route took an extra 10% off my battery than calculated due to running the heater. 10% is the bare minimum margin of safety I will ever accept, and I will not feel comfortable at all having only 10% buffer.

Also consider a gas car can be refueled with a can in desperate times, allowing you to get to the next gas station. EVs have no such equivalent. Best case, you’re waiting for a tow. Running out of fuel in a gas car is inconvenient. Running out of battery with an EV is devastating. Considering the difference in consequences, it is well worth the extra caution.

I’m not willing to compromise on my road trip plans. The car can either handle the trip or not. And right now there doesn’t exist an EV that can

This thread is full of delusional evangelists who are out of touch with what most people actually think about EVs. I owned an EVs for 10 years and the range anxiety is not just some imaginary mental block, it’s a real issue that isn’t going to be solved anytime soon. I tell you this from first hand experience

I want EVs, but they’re simply not good enough yet. They need to be much better before they can reach 90% adoption

You don’t need it 99% of the time, but in that 1% when you need it, you really need it. 99% simply isn’t enough because that 1% is really important.

Time on a road trip is way more important than time in regular drives. I don’t mind being 30min late getting back home from work, that happens all the time from traffic, but 30min late on a roadtrip means you’re missing daylight, or an appointment, or that restaurant you really wanted to try is closed. These are not imaginary hypotheticals, all of these situations have regularly happened to me even with gas cars.

And why would a Walmart be any better? Around here, no charging stations have a restaurant neaby. I just looked up all the charging stations near me and none of them have stores I would want to stop at on a road trip

And what will happen to all those gas stations when we are at 90% EVs adoption, as is the goal? Where will you find a gas car to rent? How many gas stations will be left? EVs still need to be much faster at charging if we are going for high adoption

Sometimes you just have to do it

I used to believe the EV evangelists until I tried to drive EV on a road trip. I will never do it again. Why can’t anybody just admit that there are real downsides which sometimes become a deal breaker?

All the arguments are like this. You shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that. Well of course if you can avoid all the downsides EVs would be perfect, but we don’t live in that perfect world in your imagination where everything works and we always do what you think we should be doing. If EVs were as good as everybody says, you wouldn’t have any trouble convincing people to use them. Why can’t anybody just admit that there are real downsides which in some situations become a deal breaker?

Nobody starts an EV road trip with much less than 100%.

That’s exactly the problem. Yes you start a trip with 100%, but that only happens at most once per day. What about in the middle? You willing to sit a fucking Walmart for 1hr to get to 100%? We’re not talking about a trip where you drive 3hr from home to the destination. I’m talking about road trips where you go half way across the country and do 5+hr of driving in a day, across multiple days.

Regardless of degradation issues, I’m still not willing to go below 20% except for emergencies. One wrong exit on a long stretch of highway and you could be out of range for the next charging station. Yes, this has actually happened to me.

What a braindead take. I’ve owned an EV for 10 years, and this is all from first-hand experience. I will never take it on a roadtrip.

My own vehicle. 14% battery degradation, 40% range reduction in winter

Lets say you have a 300mi range EV. that sounds great, until you realize you can’t actually use it all.

We like to save the bottom 20% for emergencies and battery longevity, and fast charging is too slow above 80% to be worth it, so effectively, on a road trip. only the 20%-80% range is usable. Your 300mi+ range just turned into 180mi of usable range. And then factor in ~10% battery degradation over time, or range reduction in winter conditions, and you could easily have as little as 150mi of actual usable range between charging stops. And that’s assuming the charging stations are perfectly spaced apart.

That’s only a little more than 2 hours at highway speeds. And that’s not along time to be driving, even for a single person. In gas cars, we will regularly do 3-4 hours without stopping at all. And if we do stop for a break, it’s rarely at gas stations or places with charging stations. Those are typically awful places to spend the limited amount of time you have on a trip.

In practice, the charging interval is far, far less than the ideal 300mi and far more frequent.