[FirmwareBurner]

>It’s not so much of a problem due to the average daily drive being a fraction of range

Most people who own a car in cities in Europe also use it for long commutes to visit family in weekends or on holidays, often crossing borders. Range is then a problem since most families can afford only one car so edge cases matter. Maybe the wealthy Benelux and Scandinavia have top EV charring infrastructure but a lot of central, eastern and southern Europe is lacking.

[Toutouxc]

We're thinking of switching to an EV, and we're basically one of the anti-examples that people like to use. Central Europe (Prague), we live in an apartment, we park our one and only car on the street, no street charging options anywhere. I don't commute to work daily and my neither my nor my wife's workplace has chargers.

But it turns out that the Lidl that we go to has a charger, there are like 10 chargers on the 110 km trip to our families (and they both live in houses with driveways, so "granny charging" is available). Our last two holiday stays were in hotels that had chargers.

Just looking at the options, it doesn't seem like range will be a factor at all. And we're actually looking at cheap cars with 50 kWh batteries, not even the current high end.

[Ekaros]

It is the 1% or 10% case. Like for me going to bigger airport. Renting a car would be complete waste for it to sit a week there. And for range I would want something that can get me there in one go and back also in one go, with week of sitting idle. As adding extra 30 minutes to 1h travel time on top of all time it takes is less than ideal living. And public transport would add even more time or less flexibility those types of trips.

Also there is some possibility that there is no power at for example summer home...

[_glass]

For me it is only the visiting family use case, where rental doesn't make sense. We have car sharing in the city (Miles) which fixes almost all use cases. Driving to the airport only when without kids, as they both still need car seats, that I can't leave. Otherwise car sharing rental is perfect to get to the airport.

[FirmwareBurner]

>It is the 1% or 10% case.

Not based on where I live. Many people I know routinely drive hundreds of KM on a weekly basis to their families and renting a car for that doesn't makes sense.

[NewJazz]

The Hyundai Ioniq 6 has a range of over 500 km, and typical 20-80% charging times are around 20 minutes. Where in Europe can you drive 350 km and not pass a single charger?

[FirmwareBurner]

Where did I say there are no chargers? Charging on long trips increases the time of the journey by a lot. And many EU drivers don't have money for a new Ioniq 6.

[itishappy]

It increases it by 30 min every 3 hours, rounding down. My family used to do 7 hours once or twice a year, roughly 500km, so an EV would have added an additional hour. But we also typically stopped for roughly 30 min for lunch, so it would have only added 30 min to our half-country journey. Add an extra 30 min to the journey if we had a cheap EV with sub 160 km range, or an extra 15m to each stop for a top-up for comfort. This of course depends on charging infrastructure, but I'm betting it's developed enough for most trips at this point.

This was pretty rare for us, though we had family that did 12 hours trips in 2 segments with the same frequency. They already stopped for lunch, so they could in theory have gotten away with only charging then, not adding any time to their trip, but more reasonably it would add an extra 30 min to each leg.

Interested to know how often this stuff happens in the EU.

[NewJazz]

This you?

Maybe the wealthy Benelux and Scandinavia have top EV charring infrastructure but a lot of central, eastern and southern Europe is lacking

[FirmwareBurner]

What was incorrect about that statement? Are you saying EV infrastructure in Bulgaria and Poland is on par with Benelux and Scandinavia?

[Toutouxc]

So my last really long drive was Prague to Amsterdam, last year. We did three stops, first to fuel the car and grab some breakfast, then for a bathroom break and to grab some lunch, and the last one was to get a McFlurry and another bathroom break. The total time spent on the stops was easily over an hour.

If I punch the same trip into one of the EV trip planners online and set the car even to something meh like an MG4 with the 51kWh battery, which is cheap EV that doesn't charge very fast, it's telling me I'd have to stop 4 times (instead of 3 times) and for 1.5 h total (instead of a bit less than that).

I don't know what you do for a living or how much you hate traveling, but for me this is a non-issue. I make maybe 1-2 trips like this a year (and <10 trips around 500 km) and spending like 15 % more time on the road is something I wouldn't even notice, much less care about.

[david-gpu]

No trains? Inter-city trips is where they shine.