Something for EV Enthusiasts - 500+ mile range

z31maniac said:

Keith Tanner said:

It's like the same argument about how it doesn't make sense to own a Toyota Tacoma because you might need the towing capability of a one ton Cummins. We all like to come up with justifications for why we need something totally overspecified for that 1% of the time we might use it. An EV will handle everything but that one long road trip every year, and in that case it'll add 10% to the length of the trip? Oh no! That won't do.

Says a guy who used to have a Taco-sized Toyota pickup and replaced it with a bigger Toyota pickup and replaced that with a 3/4 ton Cummins ;) But that Dodge has spent 85% of its mileage doing 75 mph with a gross vehicle weight of about 20,000 lbs, so I think I can truly justify it!

And for the road trip, just rent a vehicle if you don't want to deal with extended stops.

I was really considering a Tesla 3 next year now that I have a pure toy in the NC. Given some of his recent statements........I'm no longer interested in supporting his overvalued stock.

I'd also have to ask, for you, if it really makes sense from a mileage perspective. You probably don't drive enough to see any benefit from an EV, unless the EV was just the best car for you ignoring MPG. Which it very well could be.

I must be fringe. Been doin at least one 1200+mile drive one way per year  and a few ~ 500 as of late. 

Jay_W said:

I must be fringe. Been doin at least one 1200+mile drive one way per year  and a few ~ 500 as of late. 

And how would an EV prevent this? That's the real question. You're not doing a 500 mile trip without stopping. 

shagles said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

300+ mile round trip drives are pretty common, outside of Covid stuff anyways. To my parents house and back is over 400 miles and that happens usually every other month. Visiting out of town friends is 300 miles minimum and happens several times a year.

We have 2 cars but I'd really like to take a trip for pennies in electricity instead of a $100+ in gas.

Is this like a shuttle run? You can't charge while visiting your friends or family?  Or do you immediately turn around and leave?

Also, look up the cost of electricity vs. gas.  It's not pennies.  If you make the trip in a Prius its pretty nearly a wash.  But a Prius doesn't do 11 second quarters

For me it wouldn't prevent it. But an EV with 500+ mile range instead of the normal 300 would let me stop once for 10 minutes to go the bathroom instead of stopping for 1 1/2 - 2 hours to charge.

In reply to ProDarwin :

Not typically shuttle runs, but I usually don't have garage access when visiting other people either. It's a little difficult to charge while parked on the street. And rural east Texas isn't exactly overflowing with Superchargers.

In the end, I make long distance drives often enough that a 500 mile range EV would be preferable, to me in my use case, to a 300 mile range one.

This is basically the reincarnation of the diesel fuel tank thread. There are people who think they can pitstop and fuel and get back on the highway in 15 minutes. If that's you, good on ya. I've not been able to make that happen even on a road trip by myself, and I recognize the average pitstop to take much longer. 

I wanna know if they can turn the power up twice as high and still get 250 miles on a charge. (That's probably not how it works, is it though)

ProDarwin said:

... Ultimately, Lucid is not even remotely close to my price range, but I am disappointed that everyone keeps making bigger, faster, longer range luxo missles when in reality what the average consumer needs is the opposite of that.  The Bolt should meet 99.9% of dual-vehicle families needs and probably 90% of non dual vehicle families needs (excluding work vehicles).  Now sell me a cheaper Bolt!

It's more than I am going to spend for car right now too. The reality seems be in the vehicle business that early adopters willing to take a chance on a new company and/or new technology are at the luxury/premium end of the spectrum. There is interesting technology under the skin that I am hoping to see move down market over the next few years. 

slowbird said:

I wanna know if they can turn the power up twice as high and still get 250 miles on a charge. (That's probably not how it works, is it though)

It's probably fair to say that if you use twice as much power, you will only go half as far :)

mtn (Forum Supporter) said:

z31maniac said:

Keith Tanner said:

It's like the same argument about how it doesn't make sense to own a Toyota Tacoma because you might need the towing capability of a one ton Cummins. We all like to come up with justifications for why we need something totally overspecified for that 1% of the time we might use it. An EV will handle everything but that one long road trip every year, and in that case it'll add 10% to the length of the trip? Oh no! That won't do.

Says a guy who used to have a Taco-sized Toyota pickup and replaced it with a bigger Toyota pickup and replaced that with a 3/4 ton Cummins ;) But that Dodge has spent 85% of its mileage doing 75 mph with a gross vehicle weight of about 20,000 lbs, so I think I can truly justify it!

And for the road trip, just rent a vehicle if you don't want to deal with extended stops.

I was really considering a Tesla 3 next year now that I have a pure toy in the NC. Given some of his recent statements........I'm no longer interested in supporting his overvalued stock.

I'd also have to ask, for you, if it really makes sense from a mileage perspective. You probably don't drive enough to see any benefit from an EV, unless the EV was just the best car for you ignoring MPG. Which it very well could be.

Oh it absolutely does not, especially with how much I've been driving lately. The NC was delivered 4 months ago. Saturday was the 3rd time I've been put gas in it (it still had half a tank, and 1/4 tank the two previous times) so really I'm going through a tank of gas every 2 months. And that's only because the last 2-3 weeks, I've been making a concerted effort to actually get up when my alarm goes off, and go for a little drive with the top down while it's still cool and very few people on the road. It's been a nice way to start the day.

I mainly wanted one for the tech aspect of EVs and the interface for Telsa in general. Seeing all the really cool stuff Keith has showed in his other thread regarding it, really piqued my interest in wanting one.

The fact that they have bonkers acceleration may also play into the desire for one.

I generally try and hit 500 miles between stops in the truck when I don't have a trailer to drag my range down.  Some people are capable of measuring their beverage intake on road trips.  My kids are not those people

This is such a weird argument, especially on a car forum. The last time I checked, EV sales were a small fraction of vehicle sales. Three main reasons- range, price, and most are cars, and cars in general are out of favor. So here is an attempt to address the range issue. So what if 300 miles would be “fine” for most people. The vast majority of car buyers don’t want to have to change their habits to drive an electric car. They don’t want to plan charging stops, bum electricity off people they visiting, drive a different route, or rent a car when their new one won’t do what cars have done for the last few decades. This also sounds a lot like the “cars don’t need more than 100hp 4 cylinders, mine gets me where I need to go” argument. If you want a cheaper, lighter 300 mile EV with a smaller battery, great, but not many other people do. Once someone builds an EV that performs like an average car (SUV) for a similar cost (fuel savings factored in,) ICE cars will go the way of the manual transmission. 

You need to check again. Before the pandemic hit, the Model 3 was outselling the BMW 3 series. For Q4 2019, Tesla outsold Buick and Acura in the US. I'm using Q4 2019 instead of Q1 2020 because everything got weird and Tesla didn't slow down like everyone else. Sure, they're not Accord numbers but they're not a trivial little sideshow anymore.

In real life, you don't really need to plan charging stops. If you're going on a road trip, you plug your destination into the car and it tells you what the recommended stops are. You can easily change that if you want and the car will adapt. It's not as "spontaneous" as driving until you suddenly discover you have to stop for fuel at some random gas station, but it's not exactly highly limiting. When I'm driving from my house to Vegas, I only get options to gas up every 50-100 miles. So maybe I'm just used to having to think ahead when it comes to fuel, because any vehicle that goes west of Green River on I70 with less than 100 miles of range on board is in trouble.

I've never had to "bum electricity" off someone I was visiting. However, if a friend had driven cross-country to visit me and asked if they could plug in, I'd say yes. Just like I would if they asked to charge their phone. It's not like I'm having to dig the jerry cans out of the garage and drive to the gas station for them.

I own over a dozen cars. And if I suddenly have to take a church group on a field trip (which would be weird because I'm not a member of one, but hey, charity begins at home etc), I'd have to rent a van. 

It may be the long ranges may not be directed to long road trips - they may be directed towards the I don't have access to charging where I live argument.  Some users could find I only need to charge once a week or every other week sort of like an ICE vehicle, and making the EV acceptable for many more consumers.

Rons said:

It may be the long ranges may not be directed to long road trips - they may be directed towards the I don't have access to charging where I live argument.  Some users could find I only need to charge once a week or every other week sort of like an ICE vehicle, and making the EV acceptable for many more consumers.

I agree with this.

My girlfriend would have bought a Model 3 when she got her Mazda 3 (weird cross shop) but her apartment didn't have chargers available.  

Getting that slice of the market is going to take a big growth in urban chargers. It's a very different set of constraints from the Cannonballer crowd.

Boost_Crazy said:

The vast majority of car buyers don’t want to have to change their habits to drive an electric car. They don’t want to plan charging stops, bum electricity off people they visiting, drive a different route, or rent a car when their new one won’t do what cars have done for the last few decades.

My point was that the majority of buyers wouldn't need to change their habits.  The majority of buyers don't use that kind of range.  They won't use half that range.  Fringe buyers that are routinely roadtripping halfway across the US do.  And even those guys many only need to alter their habits slightly, but just driving their other vehicle on such insane trips.

ProDarwin said:

Seems like a fringe case to me.  The longest trip I have made in the past 12 months is 170miles.

For me it was about 90 miles.

They could come out with an EV that could go 1000 miles on a single charge, and someone would still say it's not enough.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

 

You need to check again. Before the pandemic hit, the Model 3 was outselling the BMW 3 series. For Q4 2019, Tesla outsold Buick and Acura in the US. I'm using Q4 2019 instead of Q1 2020 because everything got weird and Tesla didn't slow down like everyone else. Sure, they're not Accord numbers but they're not a trivial little sideshow anymore.

In real life, you don't really need to plan charging stops. If you're going on a road trip, you plug your destination into the car and it tells you what the recommended stops are. You can easily change that if you want and the car will adapt. It's not as "spontaneous" as driving until you suddenly discover you have to stop for fuel at some random gas station, but it's not exactly highly limiting. When I'm driving from my house to Vegas, I only get options to gas up every 50-100 miles. So maybe I'm just used to having to think ahead when it comes to fuel, because any vehicle that goes west of Green River on I70 with less than 100 miles of range on board is in trouble.

I've never had to "bum electricity" off someone I was visiting. However, if a friend had driven cross-country to visit me and asked if they could plug in, I'd say yes. Just like I would if they asked to charge their phone. It's not like I'm having to dig the jerry cans out of the garage and drive to the gas station for them.

I own over a dozen cars. And if I suddenly have to take a church group on a field trip (which would be weird because I'm not a member of one, but hey, charity begins at home etc), I'd have to rent a van. 

I was pointing out that it is a small part of the market. Less than 2%. And those 2% customers are the “easy” 2% who are willing to make those adjustments and likely have other cars. Most “normal” buyers aren’t willing to make those trade offs yet. Improvements in range will help increase that 2%. Telling the other 98% that they are wrong and just need to adjust isn’t going to move the needle very far. 

stuart in mn said:

ProDarwin said:

Seems like a fringe case to me.  The longest trip I have made in the past 12 months is 170miles.

For me it was about 90 miles.

They could come out with an EV that could go 1000 miles on a single charge, and someone would still say it's not enough.

The further I've driven without stopping other than fuel/food/pee was from DC to San Antonio in a Ford Fusion. It studied. I've also driven from LA to San Antonio straight, with my xjr in tow. That was in my excursion.

That said, I would never drive that far nonstop in a typical sedan. It would have to be a lwb luxury cruiser if so. But, I much rather drive like that in an SUV. 

A sedans range doesn't mean much. But, an EV Large SUV with 500 mile range? Sign me the berkeley up! 

Btw, my Excursion was getting 1000 miles a tank from San Antonio to Virginia and back. 

I think part of the ongoing obsession with range is that Tesla's quoted range numbers are pretty optimistic and involved flogging your battery, cold weather affects it significantly, and any attachments like roof rack or trailer hitch affect it significantly. 

I'm in the process of trying to convince myself that we can replace our CX-5 family car with a Model Y, but it may be dicey for camping and hiking trips.  Cool Wisconsin weather, limited charging options in rural parts of the state, and a big range hit if we were to say toss two kayaks on the roof and some bikes on a trailer hitch rack.  And for a family car, what is possible may not be ideal.  Some of the trips that we have done recently would require a detour for charging and if that were to interrupt a 2-year-old's nap, the pain is much greater than just an extra half hour for our trip.  But this is for primary family car ( two kids ) and for many people with no kids or who have another vehicle for family hauling, I think current range options are fine.  At least in the world of Tesla, superchargers are sufficiently widely distributed and functional. From what I have read electrify America etc is still more likely to have broken chargers at a station.  I suppose ultimately I would like to see manufacturers focus heavily on efficiency but continue to offer different size battery packs for different scenarios. Rivian is supposed to have three different packs for their upcoming truck and SUV I believe.   

Ultimately I just want a midsize 350-400-mi range EV station wagon, anyone with me?

In reply to ProDarwin :

My point was that the majority of buyers wouldn't need to change their habits.  The majority of buyers don't use that kind of range.  They won't use half that range.  Fringe buyers that are routinely roadtripping halfway across the US do.  And even those guys many only need to alter their habits slightly, but just driving their other vehicle on such insane trips.

You are right for many people, but you are overlooking what car buyers need Vs. what they want. Most trucks never tow or haul near their rating. Most 4x4’s never go off road. Most sports cars never approach their limits. Potential EV buyers want more range. Doesn’t matter if they need it or not. If everyone bought what they needed, the best selling vehicle segment would be minivans. 

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

My point was that the majority of buyers wouldn't need to change their habits.  The majority of buyers don't use that kind of range.  They won't use half that range.  Fringe buyers that are routinely roadtripping halfway across the US do.  And even those guys many only need to alter their habits slightly, but just driving their other vehicle on such insane trips.

You are right for many people, but you are overlooking what car buyers need Vs. what they want. Most trucks never tow or haul near their rating. Most 4x4’s never go off road. Most sports cars never approach their limits. Potential EV buyers want more range. Doesn’t matter if they need it or not. If everyone bought what they needed, the best selling vehicle segment would be minivans. 

 

Fair point.  And Priuses.