[_ph_]

Yes, refuling will always be faster than recharging. That is physics. The question rather is: at which point (and for which driver profile) is it no longer a practical problem? Elektric cars already save you a lot of refuling stops in day-to-day driving, if you plug them in over night. And the Tesla supercharger network is basically almost fast enough, that it reasonably fits with the breaks one would take on long trips when not racing for time. And of course, electric cars give you all the benefits of electric cars, like no exhaust, no noise and better torque, no gear shifts.

[atourgates]

Personally, I think it's when an EV can make a 9-hour drive without needing more than about 30 minutes of total charging.

9 hours is (in my opinion) the max amount of driving you can seriously do without at least a couple hours of resting.

That'd be about 540 miles total, maybe a bit less if you could make those 30 minutes of rest stops at a fast charger.

Right now, EV's are clearly the future. I'd say that when they have a 500 mile range with an MSRP that matches ICE vehicles, they'll go from being "exciting new technology" to "the obvious choice for most people."

[schiffern]

> Personally, I think it's when an EV can make a 9-hour drive without needing more than about 30 minutes of total charging.

The Model S 100D can almost do that already: start in your garage with a 100% charge, drive 300 miles, recharge 80% in 40 minutes, drive another 240 miles. Under ideal conditions it can even achieve it (the EPA range being 335 miles).

Current Superchargers can put out 145 kW, but the cars can only accept 120 kW. So the network already has some future-proofing for when the chemistry catches up.

Of course the old goalpost used to be 300 miles without charging. I have no doubt it will move yet again, and "24 hours of driving with only 5 minutes of charging" will become the new benchmark for practicality. :p

[WorldMaker]

A problem here is everyone's personal anecdotes are different. I have an uncle that has driven 10-12 hour hauls between Kentucky and Louisiana enough that he doesn't blink at doing it all in one day, with as minimal a break as possible.

On the flipside, I know that my limit before wanting to murder people and/or feeling bone-weary exhaustion is somewhere between 4-5 hours cumulative in a day, regardless of the number and length of breaks, but overall better with at least one >30-minute break every two hours and/or 15-minute every hour. (For me, EV's are clearly the present. I'm pretty happy within their travel limits.)

There's such a huge range of extremes with what people are comfortable with.

I've also met a lot of people that need more breaks than they actually take, but don't realize that self-care advantage yet. It's possible that forced, longer recharge breaks with an EV could be a good thing for overall road health. More drivers overall with slightly more opportunities to stretch and rest could be an amazingly useful thing for US traffic and calming some long distance road rage, given the chance.

[myself248]

You make some really good points here. I'm no stranger to long roadtrips; I do Detroit-to-NYC at least every few years, and I've gotten pretty comfy with Detroit-to-Orlando with an overnight stop. It's been a few years since doing Vegas straight-through with a co-driver, but I've done that a few times too.

The trips where I have plenty of time and can stop and go for a jog, or hike up some scenic terrain and take some photos, feel a lot safer than the ones where I'm nose-to-the-grindstone the whole time. I'm simply more focused when I get back in the car because I've had those minutes to let my mind and body wander.

I do feel like 15-20 minutes every 4-5 hours is a good and comfy amount of rest on a roadtrip. I've tried to do the 5-minute fuel stops and it just adds more stress than it's worth. Now, if more Supercharger stations happened to have a park or a gym nearby...

[WorldMaker]

I would think EV chargers should be a tourism gold mine in the near-ish future. A 20 to 30-minute-ish semi-captive audience should be making a lot of business owners drool right now.

I'd been considering for some time that if I were McDonald's corporate right now, I'd be examining EV chargers right now for a potential amenity to sell to franchisees (or possibly even to require from franchisees ahead of demand curves to create favorable headwinds).

I hadn't thought about gym chains, but that's also a great idea. "EV charging at any of our gyms around the country" / "Stop in on your next road trip" just might be an amenity that could sell some gym memberships.

[WorldMaker]

Thinking about McDonald's comment a bit more: McDonald's optimized for fast turnover, so maybe they aren't the best fit. Instead you might want a sit-down restaurant chain like one of Darden's, such as Olive Garden. Picture "Unlimited soup, salad, breadsticks, and EV charging."

It's funny because it could be evolutionary pressure back away from the drive-through model. You could even imagine the classic Drive-In model making a big comeback. A Sonic restaurant already looks like a modern EV charger facility from a distance. (Though personally, I don't ever eat in my car, so that has less appeal to me.)

[elsonrodriguez]

I don't think 500 miles of range is what will trigger it as the obvious choice.

A proliferation of decent, non "ev looking" cars with 200 miles of range will be all it takes for people to realize that they only really drive 50 miles a day, and paying for gas is for suckers.

[myself248]

Yeah, 50 miles a day, most days. My daily commute is quite normal, easily within the range of a Leaf or whatever, but I also enjoy frequent roadtrips to Chicago, Cleveland, Dayton, Toronto, occasionally Kansas City or Washington DC. Most of those are weekend jaunts, but there are longer trips too – I drove to Eagle Harbor last summer and Orlando over the holidays. I’ll probably drive to NYC this summer, as I have in 4 of the last 10 years. I love roadtrips and consider them a wonderful part of the American experience. (Following Route 66 with a few friends from school is an adventure everyone should have, and I simply don’t know if there’s a European equivalent. This is very hard to explain to folks who didn't grow up in the US.)

The standard EV-evangelist response to this is “take the train” or “rent a car for the weekend”, but I’m sorry, those just aren’t comfortable for me – the train lacks the freedom and sense of adventure, and rentals usually smell funny, among other things. Altering my lifestyle to suit the car’s limitations means it was the wrong car in the first place: The car should serve me, not the other way around. The Tesla’s longer range and presence of Supercharger stations along the routes are totally irrelevant for my daily commute, but they completely change the game when you include the other driving I consider important.

With any other EV, I would need a second car to address the other part of my usage, and that means twice the insurance, twice the registration cost, twice the driveway-space, and the chance of forgetting something important in the one car while I’m using the other. And feeling like a glutton for owning an “extra” vehicle.

With a long-range and fast-charging EV, I can finally have a single car that handles my daily commute and my road-trip habit, and that's been the main thing keeping me out of EVs so far. I've saved my place in line and I'm looking forward to the day they call my name.

[hcurtiss]

Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems to me that the solution is standardizing power cell size/shape, and simply swapping them out at stations loaded with pre-charged cells. It seems then you could use a lot more technology to recharge those cells in a single location with a huge power hookup (and cooling).