[NetMageSCW]

Why do EVangalists constantly think people don’t take road trips in cars, when the vast majority do?

Reducing 20 - 30 minute stops to 10 - 15 minutes is very worthwhile for road trips, and makes shorter range vehicles usable for those trips.

[4fterd4rk]

That is a marginal improvement to a use case that, for most people, happens once or twice a year tops.

[PaulHoule]

Even back in the 1970s there was a lot of talk along the lines that the overwhelming fraction of trips are short (<50 miles) so EVs would not necessarily need large batteries to be successful.

It ran into the problem that (rationally) people do do road trips to a certain amount and (irrationally) the whole reason people like cars is you can just get in your car anytime and go anywhere and if you wanted just to go where someone else decides when they decide you can go you can always... ride the bus.

For a long term the go-to-market picture people had for EVs was that they were going to start out as short range vehicles that were just marginally acceptable to people, we know now that Tesla's decision to position them as premium vehicles [1] rather than glorified golf carts was key to getting them accepted.

A counter though is that many families have multiple vehicles and if you have one gas car whoever needs to go a long distance can take the gas car and the others can drive a Nissan LEAF or something.

[1] ... look at how many automakers wish they could sell cars at a premium price but don't really have a differentiated product.

[bdcravens]

You're right, but many EVs today can't take full advantage of the faster chargers currently available. I have one of the faster charging vehicles available (EV6) and even at 350kW chargers, I've never seen faster than 200kW, and usually much lower than that.

[officeplant]

I like the current 30-45minute charging stops. Gives me more time to piss and stretch than the typical stop for gas.