| >It's much more convenient to not stop and just go home. Actually, I'd rather spend three minutes to fill up than have my car plugged in overnight, but to each their own. >It is much cheaper at home, but it's still cheaper to supercharge than buy gas. The latter is universally not true, according to this 2023 MotorTrend article: "Owning a Tesla can save you hundreds of dollars a year on fuel costs, but only if you're able to charge at home or find public plugs with free or subsidized electricity. The premium pricing at Superchargers and other public charging stations often makes driving an EV just as expensive as driving an efficient hybrid or gas car" [1]. >Lots of people take road trips to save money. Driving a 1000 miles is probably at most a few hundred dollars and can carry 4, or more, people. Four flights, plus airport ride/parking, plus rental car is no where near that cheap. That isn't an EV/ICE thing though. I'm not too sure about this, but I also haven't looked into it recently, so let's actually look at it in context of a 1000 mile road trip. Assuming an average speed of 70mph, you're looking at about 14.5 hours of pure driving. The average MPG for an ICE car and truck is 24.2 mpg and 17.5 mpg, respectively [2]. The average US gas price is $3.03 [3], though where you do your road trip will matter greatly [4]. With that, 1000 miles in an ICE car or light truck costs $125 and $173 in fuel, respectively. Now, fuel tank capacity will also determine how often you need to refuel, and a rough estimate for tank capacity for a car and truck is 14 and 20 gallons, respectively. Assuming a full tank at the start of the trip, the car and truck will consume 2.95 and 2.86 tanks of gas, respectively. From that, let's be generous and say both the car and truck will stop 3 times to refuel. With normal maintenance, 3 stops should be the maximum required stops over the life of the vehicle. With bathrooms, food, and a leisurely pace, let's assume each stop averages to 20 minutes, which means the minimum of non-driving time on a ICE road trip is 1 hour. Averaging fuel prices, a 1000 mile road trip with an average ICE vehicle will require 3 stops, span 15.5 hours, and cost $150 in fuel. How does an EV stack up against those three items? First, let's look at stops. After reading a bunch of articles to figure out average EV range [5][6][7], and finally finding this site [8], a good average is be 225 miles. Driving 1000 miles, that translates to about 4.5 stops. Next, let's look at total trip time. The 14.5 hour minimum drive time shouldn't significantly vary. Since it takes three minutes to fill a gas tank, charging time is the single important factor increasing total trip with an EV. On a road trip, an L1 or L2 charger is too slow (unless you're getting a hotel, but that is irrelevant), so you'll need a DC fast charger [11][12]. This webpage [13] shows different miles per charging-hour rates across EVs, and the variance is high, ranging from 179 to 868, with a rough average of 470 miles per charging-hour. With an average range of 225 miles and assuming constant charger availability, you'd need about thirty minutes purely to recharge. With a minimum of 4 stops, that's 2 hours of just charging. That beings the trip time to 16.5 hours. Finally, let's look at energy cost. It's basically impossible to pin this down, and I'm not even going to try because there's so much variance. It will probably be, at most, just as expensive as gas. So, compared to the average ICE vehicle, the average EV will require 1.5 more stops, add approximately 1 hour to a 14.5 hour road trip, and will be no more expensive than a gas car. I'm genuinely surprised by that result. It's impressive how far the EV industry has come. I guess new EVs are pretty close to the gas paradigm, assuming you're able and willing to purchase a new car. Still, EV chassis size determines maximum battery size, which ultimately affects maximum charge rates. Compare a 2020 Toyota Yaris with a 2024 Nissan Leaf. The Yaris has 452 miles of range [9], while the Leaf (base model) has 169 miles of range [10]. A road trip in a Yaris is doable, but recharging a Leaf around 6 times with a 50kW charger would add a minimum of six hours to a road trip, which is a bit too much. To increase charge times, I have a strong feeling that EVs will continue trending bigger and bigger, at least until a better battery technology is brought into production. [1] https://www.motortrend.com/features/how-much-does-it-cost-to... [2] https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10310 [3] https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts [4] https://www.gasbuddy.com/gaspricemap [5] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml [6] https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ [7] https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-advice/a32603216/ev-ra... [8] https://ev-database.org/cheatsheet/range-electric-car [9] https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/yaris/specs [10] https://www.drivingelectric.com/nissan/leaf/range [11] https://pod-point.com/guides/driver/how-long-to-charge-an-el... [12] https://www.power-sonic.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-dc-fa... [13] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-charging.html |