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by bryanlarsen 933 days ago
Good point. But we didn't always have destination AC charging; sometimes we were charging overnight on 120V instead.

If you're driving this theoretical 600 mile vehicle you can't charge it overnight on AC anyways. A level 2 charger is typically 10kW or 40amps. A 600 mile battery is likely at least 200kWh, a 20 hour charge at 10kW.

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Still, a 10 hour AC charge would get you a sizable chunk of that total range and eliminate a stop that where must charge at for at least one day of your trip.

Selfishly, I have family in this range where it would be nice to get all the way to their house without needing to charge. I would probably pay to have a decent AC charger installed in their house. Spend the weekend there and I’d leave with a full battery, and never touch a DC fast charger.

Assuming that you mean your family is 500-620 miles away, are you saying you'd drive that far without stopping? At the minimum you'd think that'd require 2 10 minute bathroom breaks, and if that was enough to add 300 miles of range to a 300 mile car it wouldn't slow anybody down.

We have a >300 mile range on our car. You can recharge that over a long weekend on 120V; no need to install any extra equipment.

Of course I would stop multiple times, but it would improve the trip if I didn't have to stop in some of the obscure places where many EV chargers are located and instead stop at normal rest stops along the highway. That's supposed to be a short term issue as charging networks expand but truthfully there hasn't been very much movement in that regard.

Try to plan a trip from Atlanta, GA to Miami, FL. You aren't in a Tesla and your charging stops must always include a restroom. I think it might be legitimately impossible.

It's not like a gas car where you can just not plan anything at all and expect to find a place to stop to fuel your vehicle that has a restroom and convenience store all in the same place. You will instead expect to be in places that aren't really designed for short stops like Walmart/Costco/shopping mall parking lots. A 5 minute stop turns into a 20 minute charging stop plus a second stop to use the restroom or get hot foot.

The status quo is that you pay more for an EV and get a worse experience than the people who are paying less.