One of the largest issues is the American mindset when it comes to buying vehicles. Many people consider all of their needs, even those that might be yearly. Most EVs have the range to handle 99% of most peoples trips, but they consider that last 1% of a yearly road trip when thinking about range. It’s one of the reasons that Trucks and SUVs are so popular with their higher capability.
It’s more over-weighting rare long road trips compared to everyday use. People are terrified of having to spend an extra 30 minutes charging an EV on a road trip, but don’t think about all the time they can save on a weekly basis by never having to go to a gas station, or never having to get oil changes, etc.
¿Por qué no los dos? I own an EV for city driving, but I also own a gas car for road trips.
having to spend an extra 30 minutes charging an EV on a road trip
I’ve taken the EV on road trips a hand full of times and sometimes it was just 30 minutes. Other times, it was waaay longer than that because there were 5 charging stations, but, surprise, 2 of them are broken and the rest have long lines of cars waiting.
Personally, I find those situations pretty stressful, so I don’t take the EV for road trips now.
Newer EVs use NACS, which opens up a huge number of fast DC chargers all across the interstate system. Unfortunately those chargers are almost all Tesla superchargers, and we all wish there was a less musky alternative out there.
I’ve taken a road trip in the new NIssan Leaf, which has NACS. It wasn’t bad; we had to stop for ~30 minutes every ~300 miles, which lines up with just about how often my aging body needs to go pee these days…
One of the largest issues is the American mindset when it comes to buying vehicles. Many people consider all of their needs, even those that might be yearly. Most EVs have the range to handle 99% of most peoples trips, but they consider that last 1% of a yearly road trip when thinking about range. It’s one of the reasons that Trucks and SUVs are so popular with their higher capability.
How can you not consider your all of your needs when buying a vehicle?
It’s more over-weighting rare long road trips compared to everyday use. People are terrified of having to spend an extra 30 minutes charging an EV on a road trip, but don’t think about all the time they can save on a weekly basis by never having to go to a gas station, or never having to get oil changes, etc.
¿Por qué no los dos? I own an EV for city driving, but I also own a gas car for road trips.
I’ve taken the EV on road trips a hand full of times and sometimes it was just 30 minutes. Other times, it was waaay longer than that because there were 5 charging stations, but, surprise, 2 of them are broken and the rest have long lines of cars waiting.
Personally, I find those situations pretty stressful, so I don’t take the EV for road trips now.
Newer EVs use NACS, which opens up a huge number of fast DC chargers all across the interstate system. Unfortunately those chargers are almost all Tesla superchargers, and we all wish there was a less musky alternative out there.
I’ve taken a road trip in the new NIssan Leaf, which has NACS. It wasn’t bad; we had to stop for ~30 minutes every ~300 miles, which lines up with just about how often my aging body needs to go pee these days…
One of the needs was not driving a huge ass truck for the 99% of trips where a smaller, more efficient car works so much better.
Trucks and SUVs are popular because they can be made cheaper due to government subsidies and lax emissions laws that exempt them.
That’s on top of the massive tariff in place for any truck imported into the US. Its a main reason the Big 3 basically stopped making sedans.
You don’t need more than 200 miles of range if you are using roads in the United States.
So, 260 advertised.
You just don’t.