It’s what people care about.
An EV that can only travel 300 miles on a charge is a complete nonstarter for me. It’s simply not enough for trips I take with regularity.
But it it’s stupid because it doesn’t really relate to anything. Different cars have different ranges with different sized batteries and different efficiencies, at different weights and different volumes, so I have no idea what it means.
Wouldn’t it be both more straightforward and more meaningful to phrase it like: x% more power for the same weight as current LfPO used in Tesla standard range
Most importantly, batteries will always be expensive, so most manufacturers will prefer fewer/smaller for a cheaper and lighter car of similar range. Aside from trucks, I don’t see why we’d ever see many 600mile range EVs, especially if we get truly fast charging
But people don’t care about that. They care “how far can x car go with it”.
I will never even consider buying an EV that can’t go a minimum of 500 miles on a charge. I’m not willing to have short weekend trips held hostage by the availability of charging stations. 500 miles is still not a long round trip.
But most ICE vehicles won’t go nearly that far on a tank of gas, they seem to most commonly go a bit over 300. Why should EVs be any different? Many of them already claim a similar range.
The difference is the ubiquity of gas stations. That infrastructure was built out over a century, and we need to do similar with chargers but ten times as fast
How so, I’m curious? Do you drive into no mans land hundreds of miles away from civilization or are you a robot that never needs to take a break?
That’s a 3 hour drive into the mountains, and running out before I get back. It’s not a long trip.
But, yes, stopping on a road trip is also a massive issue, and turning a 5 minute stop once a day into 20 3 times a day (on the limited routes where there are charging options) on an actual long trip would also be a dealbreaker by itself.
I don’t know how remote your mountains are, here there would likely be a charge point less than 50km away but I don’t know where you drive. I give you that.
Your second point though, you might want to reconsider your driving habits. Random google result for breaks when driving: “If driving long distances, you should stop for at least 15 minutes every two hours. Stop often to rest for at least 45 minutes every 4.5 hours of driving to avoid getting tired and stay alert. Plan to stop for a break every 100 miles on your long road trip so that you can relax. Try to only drive for 9 hours a day.”
How about the 2024 Ford Escape PHEV. 37 mile range on electric, which will cover most of dialy driving, and then it switches to gas. Should work out that you can pay 1/3 cost for fuel most percent of your driving, and not have to worry about long range trips. Base price is like 41k, meaning a used vehicle would drop quick.
Edit: apparently the 2025 now starts at 38k. So price came down didn’t find range.
I really don’t get why PHEV never ramped up to be the next thing instead of all this push to go full electric when the tech and infrastructure isn’t good enough yet.
I have a 150mi EV and a PHEV. I won’t be bothering with another PHEV, unless I need something that can tow long distances. Every long distance trip I’ve taken in our PHEV since ~2020 would have been almost identical to a trip in an EV. Drive about 3 hours, and stop for 20 minutes for food/restroom, and back on the road. Even with our PHEV, which can do over 600mi on a tank, we were naturally stopping at almost the exact same points as I would when I planned out the same route in an EV.
As minimal as it is in a modern car, dealing with the ICE side of it just isn’t worth it in a daily driver from my perspective. I have an old classic that’s ICE, and if I’m going to be doing oil changes and such, I’d much rather do them for fun on that, than be required to on my commuter.
There has been a problem with owners not charging PHEVs.
But I suspect the main reason is profit margins. Companies learned that selling fewer premium products could be more profitable than selling lots of cheaper models with tighter margins.
So they all basically fucked on out of the cheap car market. Except for Hyundai/Kia, Mitsubishi and Nissan, you can’t really buy an econobox anymore.
PHEVs are like high end econoboxes with an expensive mix of technologies that make margins too thin. Which sucks because I live in a cold climate and have long weekend drives to help family and occasional traveling jobs that make a hybrid the best choice for the time being.
I agree with the first part, but the second is in the past.
I don’t see why hybrids and plug-in hybrids weren’t huge in the past decade or two, but now the technology is here to go full electric and we just need that little push to get legacy manufacturers onboard, to get prices down and charging locations up. iTs no longer a technology problem but a scaling problem
I have an older fusion energi and don’t plug it in because charging every day is a hassle.
I’m not anti-anything though. Clean energy is good, efficiency is good, the luggage space wasted isn’t awesome but whatever. I’m just explaining why I care about range. That’s not a long weekend camping trip and the infrastructure for pure battery in the places I like to be don’t make low range viable.
Even with a 10-15 mins recharge? A couple of times a year I do make a 500 mile journey and if there wasn’t a sea in the way I would happily do it all in one sitting. But as a teeny tiny compromise I wouldn’t mind stopping to charge once or twice along the way! It would add about 20 mins to the journey sure, but seems like it’s worth the benefits to me.
I don’t think you would get to the charger in 20 minutes. Assume there will be line.
I’d think that too, but I had my first ever ride in a Tesla recently and the way the supercharger network is handled seems pretty clean. Far from a Tesla fan boy but way the car books you a slot and then charges you a fortune if you overstay meant that we had no problem getting a space. Once charging becomes the norm it will be fine.
I don’t go places where recharging is an option.
The long trips are ones where I’d be turning one 5 minute stop into at least an hour of stops per day. That’s not a small compromise any more.
You drive a full day with only one five minute stop? I think taking regular breaks is recommended when driving for long periods.
