[hvb2]

The only use for that is for people that cannot charge at home I would think. After having driven for 4 to 5 hours a 15 minute break is not an issue?

If you can charge while you sleep, you would typically have enough capacity to make it through a normal day?

Yes, there are probably exceptions but if you're not a commercial driver and drive >250 miles a day, that sucks....

[rjsw]

It would be helpful for the current generation of smaller electic vehicles that are fine for daily use but would need to stop every 100 miles on a longer trip in winter.

[hvb2]

I have driven a leaf since 2016 and I can tell you that no one will do this with 100 miles between stops. Because the stops aren't at exact intervals, you might be stopping every 80 to 90 miles since you don't want to risk not getting to the next.

At that rate, you're adding time really quickly as charging might take 8 minutes but getting to and from the charger easily adds another 4 to 8 minutes. At that point you're talking about adding about 10 to 16% to your total time taken

[rjsw]

The listed range of the car that I'm thinking of [0] is 186 miles, I was using 100 miles as the useful range in winter as there are reports that it drops by a lot in the cold, this vehicle gets the largest subsidy in the UK right now. I had been considering this as my next car even before the subsidy was announced but slightly more range would be nice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Transit_Courier#Tourneo_C...

[whatevaa]

Smaller battery, slower max charging. Higher speeds are achieveed by parallelization.

[kakacik]

Man, people have wildly different lifestyles than what you presume, also some of us live in colder climates where official battery numbers become a joke. Those numbers would be unacceptable for me and my family for example, annoying and disrupting every single weekend. Suffice to say we own 2 ICE cars and no electric car is coming anytime soon, the overall costs and inconvenience are simply too high.

[hvb2]

> Man, people have wildly different lifestyles than what you presume

Likewise? If you're in the cold part of the US I can totally see your comment. But just saying, there's not that many people living there. Density wise thats really sparse. Most people live in much better climates, Europe has 1.5x the number of people of all the US and no climate that is remotely the same.

If it doesn't work for you because you're in a remote area that does get really cold, I can totally see that. But I do think that makes you the exception, not the rule. For the US, California has been setting the rules for cars for years, because that's where a lot of the customers are whether you like it or not

[vitorgrs]

For example, some people drive to other cities, by car.

[roysting]

I don’t know exactly, and I’m not an EV driver, but considering how many cars I see at supercharger stations, it seems to have a use case.

I’m guessing it’s an American thing too though, we can drive many more hours and no one is driving straight 4, let alone 5 hours going 75+ mph in an EV because no one is going to run their battery down to zero. On top of that Americans really don’t like taking long breaks on road trips because that only extends the trip that in a fuel vehicle can, well, could commonly be 6-20 hours driving in the past.

All the winning we are doing over here is quickly changing the mobility of American though. But that’s a whole different and interesting topic because it has major implications for America’s survival as a single entity that people overlook. America has held together to a large extent precisely because Americans could afford being mobile during the American century, i.e., the glue that kept the country together and made it feel like it belonged to us, an actual nation. That glue is breaking down for many reasons, one being expensive, impractical mobility.

[hvb2]

Some Tesla owners still have free supercharging so they'll be there because it's free "fuel".

For your road trip example let's say we take a 1000 mile trip. With an EV that can be done in 6 legs (sandbagging it), maybe even 5 or 4 now. So that's 5 stops, over 16 or so hours of driving. If you average charge takes 30 minutes (sandbagging it) instead of 10, that adds 1 hour and 40 minutes or about 15% of total time. And this is pretty much worst case.

I would think that's perfectly acceptable, but that's just an opinion. It'll give you time to go to the bathroom, stretch your legs, have a bite etcetera. If you're going to be peeing in a bottle and eating while driving, yes you can do it in less time.

I would strongly suggest, the next time you do one of those trips. Time how long you actually spend at a stop, it might not be far off the 15 minute mark on average

[dyauspitr]

You don’t get 4-5 hours. During winter you get 2 if you’re lucky. 1.75 hours more likely. This is on my Ford F-150 lightning going 80 mph the entire time.

[hvb2]

If you care about driving far, you don't drive 80 in an EV, it's that simple. It might actually be the same with an ICE, slowing down a bit might save fuel so you end up with one fewer stop so in all it might be faster. Air resistance goes up exponentially with speed IIRC.

I get it. There are worst case scenarios but you buy a car for the rule, not the exception.

I owned a 2013 leaf with a range of 65 miles or so, without fast charging port because it was air cooled. So this wasn't a proper first/only car. But it worked like a charm for my daily commute...

Did I drive 80 with it? No, 65 which was the speed limit anyway.

Did I do road trips with it? No, we used the other EV for that

It's just like software guys. There's no solutions, only tradeoffs

[dyauspitr]

No, the solution is never not driving fast. There are solutions. The solution is fast charging and larger batteries like this article talks about. We’re already there, just unfortunately not in the US yet.

[glenngillen]

Just got home from visiting family a couple of hours away in the highlands here. Battery is now at 40%, it'll take almost 2 days of charging at home to get it back to 100%. Hopefully I don't have another significant open highway drive to make in the next day or so.

Also our electricity rates fluctuate based on the underlying wholesale rate. It's going to be clear and sunny tomorrow at midday. Sure would be nice to be able to set my car to charge at midday when the price is single digits cents per kw, or maybe even negative. Instead I'll just have to drip it in with the higher rates at midnight-6am and know tomorrows cheap rates will average out to a much lower cost.

TLDR: definitely useful even for people who charge at home.

[hvb2]

I have been driving electric for 10 years now...

You talk about rates, but if you care about that, this is a no brainer. You can go to that super charger and charge in 10 minutes. You'll just pay triple your home rate though? So if you care about cost, you would never charge anywhere else.

Also, you say you need 2 days of charging to recoup 40 to 50% of battery (assuming you don't typically charge to 100 which you shouldn't). This implies you charge from a normal outlet. That's fine and I've been doing that for years, but if charge time was an issue you could have a level 2 charger at home and cut that time in 4 or something with not that big of an expense.

[glenngillen]

super charger rate is typically 6x for me. What's the cost multiple difference when my rate is negative (i.e., I'm being paid to help load shed from the grid)?

Anyway this wasn't meant to be a debate about rates. Just that "nobody that charges at home would want this" was an overly reductive claim.

[mdhen]

The byd fast recharging requires a very high voltage, it's not something that will be available for home use