so i've watched a few videos by people driving EVs long distances showing their charging 'experiences'.

here's one, just last month going just 1000mi in an EV6.


i counted and they stopped TEN TIMES to charge. a gas car would typically require 2 or 3 fill ups.

this one's a year ago, a cannonball run across the country in a taycan. i lost track of how many times they stopped.

the main talking head on the video is super nerdy, and this video is almost 2 hours (!) but it's hard to stop watching.

 

Thats Kyle from Out of Spec. He's pretty well known in EV circles / forums, etc. His methodology is to charge only to about 60% because the charging curve becomes slower after that and rip it to the next charger and try to get there with about 5-10% charge. At that level of charge, you are guaranteed to hit the best part of the charging curve so if you are doing a long road trip, its actually faster to drive fast and get to a lower charge and utilize the best part of the charging curve vs. driving slower and longer and more efficiently.

I think if you have an efficient EV, its about 1 hour of charging for every 7 hours of driving. Not everyone will be okay with using an EV for road trips.

 

huh? a typical EV does what, 250mi. on a charge, and that's a FULL charge. at 80mph that's 3 hours.
most people would be recharging from say 20% - 80% so maybe adding 150mi. of range, good for just 2 hours driving before you have to do it all over again.

 

I don't know where you get your numbers. Go to abetterrouteplanner.com and input Model 3 with 18 inch wheels. I can go from San Diego to San Francisco in 7 hours and 30 minutes and its made up of 6 hours 40 min driving and 50 min of charging. Abetterrouteplanner is extremely accurate as it accounts for all variables and most EV users use it (its the most used planner tool for EV users). I've tested it on multiple occasions and its dead accurate. The longest indicated charge on that trip is 17 min and will fill the battery from 10% to 60%.

I've recently done a 300 mile roadtrip and I charged for about 25 min total which was also predicted by Abetterrouteplanner. Of course California is littered with 250kw Superchargers so its very easy to do a 7 hour drive to 1 hour charge ratio. At this point, I've done many medium range road trips and its predictably easy to charge anywhere now.

 

Don't you have to pay for using one of these charging stations? Of course it's going to be much cheaper than the $7 per gallon gas. I was pissed that it cost me $78 to fill up my ES and that was only at $4.79 lol.

 

Yes you have to pay. It depends on the utility in that area but its roughly 25-35% of gas prices. Right now, its probably in the low 20% given the rise in prices. I'm thinking an ICE will be about 10-15min max for refueling vs. the 1 hour for charging so I would never say EVs would take the same amount of time on a roadtrip.

 

A 22 gallon ICE tank takes 1:42-2:35 for a full fill. I time my refills and it usually finishes as I'm done checking all tires, lights, and under hood.

 

u said 1hr charging for 7hrs of driving and i was thinking no way can someone drive 7hrs in an ev before charging for an hour, but you're saying the 1hr of charging is spread out across the route.

it's a different mindset from gas of course... as you don't stop frequently to add 3 or 4 gallons (unless you have a weak bladder ).

just did that, thanks... millions of variables there, i picked a 2018-2020 model 3 rwd 18" wheels and it said only 36minutes of charging at 3 stops. while the amount of *charging time* may be small, that's still 3 stops which would certainly add more than 36 minutes to the trip (getting off interstate, back on, assuming the chargers aren't already occupied, etc). but i do get the point that stopping just 3 times on a 500 mi. trip is hardly unusual. but as usual, you're looking at sunny california. videos i've been looking at show people almost freezing to death in deserted walmart parking lots while waiting for their cars to charge.

again, the first video i posted has them charging TEN TIMES for a 1000mi. trip, vs. 3 times for a 500mi. trip you mentioned. big difference.

 

That first video you posted was the owner's first time in an EV. He picked up the EV6 a thousand miles away and drove it home and he was completely unoptimized in his planning. He could have shaved off noticeably more time and been more efficient but, a lot of people will go through the same things because the mindset is so different.

A couple things to consider though. The unoptimized route is due to the car not having a good navigation and route planning for optimal charging. You can use abetterrouteplanner and solve a lot of those issues but it helps if your car can route optimally on its own real-time. The Tesla software is many many times better than the Kia/Hyundai solution as its vertically integrated with its own charging network and its planning system is extremely accurate. You don't even need abetterrouteplanner if you have a Tesla...will get you there in about the same time to your final destination.

Also, the EV6 is noticeably less efficient than the Teslas and its BMS isn't quite as good with the thermals. EV6 and Ioniq 5 just aren't as efficient in the cold as the Teslas hence you see them stopping tons of times...also the driver was a noob and didn't take his battery pack down below 20% which you should do on a long road trip. But he had a ton of range anxiety and played it way to conservatively as it was his first EV experience.

A Tesla will also pre-condition the battery for optimal charge so when you get to a charging station, the car will charge at the rated speeds pretty consistently. The EV6 and Ioniq 5 don't have preconditioning so it will charge much slower in freezing temps until the battery can be heated enough for the faster charging speeds. A Tesla will consistently outperform the EV6 and Ioniq 5 in charging in the real world. Supposedly the EV6 may be getting pre-conditioning with an update but i'm not holding my breath.

If you see Kyle's cannonball run with the Taycan, he does it much better...and of course the Taycan is much more efficient overall due to better BMS. In the end, EVs will always do worse in cold but there is a big difference between the EV makes. Tesla is still years ahead in powertrain and BMS and charging as expected.

 

i watched that whole 2 hour video and charging for half the trip was a disaster on the 350kw chargers they'd hoped to use. Kyle went to the trouble to try and make sure the battery was the right temp as they arrived at those fast chargers only to find the chargers then put too much electricity into the taycan and it shut down, again, and again, and again. they were more successful with the 150kw or less chargers, until kyle tried bringing the taycan to the 350 chargers with a much colder battery, which worked better as the charge rate increased to over 200 as the battery warmed up while charging.

anyway, it's just ludicrously complicated and unreliable today. yes, obviously tesla has the best charging network and software, no question.

what's amazing to me, as kyle points out at one point, is electrify america is owned by vw who also owns porsche (or porsche owns vw depending on the day of the week) and they can't get it to work well together.

 

It is a huge inconvenience no matter how you slice it, and it only gets that much worse with cold weather and even more worse if you do some spirited driving.

 

If you take an EV with 400 mile range, most people report 10% degradation almost right away, so that leaves you with 360 mile range. Since the usable range is between 20-80%, thats only 60% of 360, which is 216, of which another 40% is lost in cold weather, so that leaves you with 130 mile real world range. No thanks.

 

Where do you get 10% degradation immediately? The Model S doesn't report that and its pretty much the only 400 mile range EV I know that sells in volume. Source please.

40% loss...this is 2022. Everything with a heat pump is far more efficient. Most cars will lose less than 20% in freezing temps. I've even provided ranges by model if you're interested.

https://www.axios.com/the-cold-hard-...a693436dc.html

 

I've already done several longer trips where I needed to hit a supercharger, and I've had zero issues. On one trip it took 30 minutes to get from 20 percent to 85 percent, but that's a non issue for me because I rarely have to use public chargers, and I've spent that much time waiting in line at Costco gas stations. In three months I've only been to a gas station once (to fill up my IS350...$57 for half tank). I've talked to several Polestar owners that regularly drive between SF and LA, and the trip takes about 1 hour longer than if they were driving in a gasoline car. Bottom line for me is, in three months and 2000 miles of driving I spent a total of $109. I would spend 40 minutes at a charger for that savings.

I'm not saying there are no hitches to public charging. 350kw chargers are fairly new and not many EV's right now support that rate of charging. I think the technology is still a little buggy, it needs some more time. Anyway to me it's worth it, my experience with EV's has been nothing but positive, I'll never go back to ICE, you'll have to pull my EV from my cold dead hands...

 

With a Tesla, I'm not worried about the SC network. If I had to rely on Electrify America chargers...I would probably be more conservative given how often they seem to be out