It's more than "somewhat". I can put over 400 highway miles of range into my vehicle in five minutes with a gas pump. It takes 30 minutes to put half that into an EV. I don't want to stop for half an hour every 200 miles.

> This is not idle speculation. I own an electric car. Furthermore, the vast majority of my charging occurs at home, over night. The total amount time I have saved by not having to visit gas stations for literally months is significant.

It sounds like you don't have many days where your driving exceeds the range capacity of your vehicle. The technology in the article, and the post you are responding to, are in the context of long-distance highway travel. It's for cases where a vehicle must be recharged in the middle of a trip, even when it starts with a full battery.

The vast majority of first-time EV buyers also install a 240v charging station, which typically costs about $1200 including labour and will fully charge most cars overnight. Frankly, you'd be mad to spend $40,000 on a new EV but hamstring it by cheaping out on charging.

> The problem with more batteries is charge time. It's not good enough right now.

It's already good enough for most users, assuming you have reasonable access to suitable rapid chargers on your route. Very few people drive continuously for three or four hours, stop to refuel and immediately return to their car - human biological functions are a meaningful factor. You might be surprised at how long it actually takes you to refuel, pay for your fuel, visit the restroom, buy a coffee and stretch your legs, especially if you've got kids in tow. Rapid-charging an EV does take longer than refuelling a car, but you can do other stuff while it's charging.

Most ICE car owners only infrequently take long journeys. Most EV owners who do take longer journeys find that charging times only add a few minutes to the duration of their journey and are not a significant inconvenience. Charge times do remain a major obstacle for people who drive substantial distances for professional reasons, but they represent a small minority of car buyers.

Over the last 18 months or so, between remote work and lockdown, journeys of 350+ miles with minimal stops (< 30 minutes total) probably make up about ¾ of the trips and 90%+ of the miles on my vehicle. A typical pre-COVID year would see about half a dozen trips like that (one way) mixed with commuting and trips around town—with the longer trips still making up a majority of the total miles driven. As I see it, at least in my situation, the ability to handle a 350+ mile trip smoothly and efficiently with at most one stop of 30 minutes or less is a basic requirement for any vehicle I would be willing to consider. Anything short of that would be a significant downgrade in practical terms from my current vehicle—an inexpensive, decade-old non-hybrid Honda Fit Sport which still manages 35 MPG on the highway.

Ecologically speaking, if I'm not using the EV for these longer trips then the environmental benefit of switching would be practically nil. Most of the miles driven would still be in a gas-burning vehicle. The same goes for a PHEV. We need to acknowledge that the shorter range and longer "refueling" times of EVs are significant practical issues standing in the way of EV adoption, and not ignore or downplay them. Fortunately we're finally starting to see some pure EVs with the necessary range, and also making some progress on building out suitable charging infrastructure. Now if we could just address the proliferation of brand-specific and member-only charging networks…

Because it is a lot

> but when those chargers are in Market or Restaurant lots where you can charge and shop/eat then they make sense.

Which would be great, but that's generally not what the charging infrastructure is like today; there's now a decent probability of a route-convenient charger on a long trip, but there's not a great probability that it's in the parking lot of market or restaurant, and an even lower probability that it's one that you would have chosen but for the charger.

Most of the market/restaurant chargers—mostly supermarkets or box stores like IKEA—I've seen are in urban areas, virtually none in the kind of places that are places you need to stop for fuel (or charge, with an EV) on the way between widely spaced urban areas.

Not if you use HVDC superchargers. I've taken several cross-country trips in a Tesla and it's not an issue. It takes 20 minutes to recharge and I do so about every 150 miles. Time enough to get out, stretch, pee, buy a snack, get back in your air-conditioned car (climate controls are fully functional while charging), check your email, and then it's time to go.

I agree, and bring this up often.

During arguments about charging versus refueling, the length of time to charge your EV is significantly greater than fueling up. EV proponents say, "what's the big deal? I just set my car to charge and stretch my legs for half-an-hour".

That works when EVs are 1% of the cars on the road, but not when they're 50%. During road trip season, high traffic gas stations are backed up as it is. Will we need 3-5x the infrastructure (read: "pumps") to service that level of EVs? I mean, we'll get there, but it might be annoying for a long while.

30 minutes if you can drive right up to a charger. Do you think that will be the case once hundreds of thousands of EVs are on the road? Have you ever road-tripped in the summer and had to wait in line for gas, which takes minutes to fill? I have. Often.

Everytime I hear this I wonder if the people saying it have ever taken a road trip. Stopping every 2-3 hours for a half hour on a long road trip seems downright crazy to me.

This is beside the point that during the busy season of summer travel there are sometimes extensive lines at gas stations on popular routes. Imagine if every car took 15-45 minutes to fuel up?

Range anxiety is real. EVs are the ultimate commuting cars: known distance, charge at home over night. But for the immediate future, over long distance, gasoline cars are hard to beat.

While I'm sure it happens, that's never been my experience. You plug your trip into the car's navigation system and it'll plan out the charge stops for you. It's quiet frictionless. Tesla's is really good as it will even plan on sending you to less busy charging stations vs more busy ones (and reroute if that changes).

> Also, charging at public chargers isn't that cheap or frictionless.

Depends on the network. Tesla's isn't terribly expensive and is extremely frictionless. Electrify America is horseshit, both on cost and ease of use.

This is a solvable problem.

> Not compared to filling up with gas and being on your way in less than 5 minutes.

Behavior ends up changing here if you road trip with an EV. Rather than just getting fuel then going somewhere else to eat you'll usually charge while you eat, use the restroom, or go for a walk. If you really don't have anything else to do, you'll probably just catch a tv show on your phone.

That coveted 5 minutes ends up just not being a big deal because you are multitasking with the charging. (Which for me is typically 20->30 minutes).

It will replace the majority of them.

The concept non-EV owners struggle with is that with an EV you don't normally go out of your way to charge it the way you do with an ICE. If you can charge at home, at work, at the grocery store, and at restaurants then why do you need a filling station? If you start your day at 100% because you charge at home then you don't need any of the other infrastructure unless you go on a road-trip.

The amount of charging infrastructure need is also based on both demand and use case. A grocery store or restaurant might opt for DC fast chargers because they know customers won't be around for more than 30 minutes, but an office park can use 3-6kw chargers because users are there for 8 hours a day. The EVSEs are smart too so you can balance output based on demand. Have two EVs plugged in, they both get 3kw. Just one can pull 6kw.

If an EV supports 120V outlets, then chargers are already more common than gas stations by many orders of magnitude. Fast charging is a different story... But for long road trips, taking a break for a couple hours every 400 miles doesn't sound like a bad idea, and we already have ample rest stops along most highways.

That really depends on the quality of EV charging infrastructure in your area. Here in the UK, it's pretty trivial - aside from mid-Wales and the Scottish highlands, there's blanket coverage of EV rapid chargers. It's no big deal to stop at a motorway service station or a supermarket and get a quick top-up on a rapid charger. It's the same story in most of western Europe.

You don't really have to plan your journeys more than you would in an ICE car, because the sat nav system is aware of range and charging points and will re-route you to a charger well before there's a risk of running out. Long journeys are very slightly less convenient, but that's balanced out by the day-to-day convenience of charging at home and waking up every morning with a full charge.

In much of the US it's more of a challenge, simply because you'll struggle to find a rapid charger en route if you're going anywhere rural; that's a political issue as much as anything.

It's worth noting that the range of affordable EVs has been increasing drastically over the past few years. The Nissan Leaf launched in 2011 with an EPA range of 73 miles. The 2018 model does 151 miles per charge and Nissan have just launched a 62kWh model with 226 miles of range. The Chevy Bolt, the Hyundai Kona and the Kia Niro all do about 240 miles per charge. That trend is continuing apace, nibbling away at the long journeys issue.

The inexorable increase of range will help matters, but the US really needs to make a serious commitment to infrastructure. Public rapid chargers aren't hugely expensive to install or maintain, but you need government investment to break the chicken-and-egg problem - there aren't enough charging points because nobody has an EV because there aren't enough charging points.

Less than one hour of extra travel time, three times a year, doesn't strike me as a dealbreaker. You'll save more time than that every month by never going to a gas station.

A Tesla can supercharge 200 miles in 15 minutes

I think the common misconception here is that chargers are often compared to gas pumps. Do you visit the gas pump every day with your car? Most people don't. Most EV owners charge at home, often during night hours, to take advantage of cheaper TOU electricity rates.

The clear difference here is that with an EV, you can wake up every morning with a "full tank". That eliminates the need to use a public charger unless you 1) forgot to charge 2) are on a road trip or 3) drive a lot. The average commute is ~15 miles the last I checked, so I think #3 will happen, but it won't be very common.

tldr: You can't really leave for your destination in an ICE with a full tank. With an EV, you can.

You only need to do that on road trips, which aren't all that frequent for most people. It's not a reason to avoid buying an EV. At home, you just charge it overnight at your wall outlet. Yes, I know, not everyone has access to a wall outlet overnight, but lots of people do. EVs are ready for them right now.

In my experience, 5-10% longer is more accurate.

Very little of my charging time is spent waiting for the car to charge. While the car is charging, I'm using the bathroom or eating.

… from zero to full.

If you just want to top up the 30-40 miles that are driven in a day, then 10-12 hours overnight is fine with a regular plug.

People ask me all the time about how long it takes me to charge my tesla. I tell them that it’s a different mentality than ICE cars:

1. Instead of a cycle of low/empty —> full —> low/empty, it’s a cycle of use —> top up when not using —> use. For most people, a regular wall outlet is fine.

2. If a regular wall outlet is used as the main charging source, then a supercharger may need to be used after long trips to top up. If you have days when you don’t drive much or at all (e.g., if you work from home or have a short commute), then even this can be skipped since you will eventually get full.

3. For road trips, something people seem to think requires long wait times, aim to keep the battery in approximately the 20-60% charge range. This allows for two hour recurring range with a margin for error while maximizing battery charge speed at super chargers. Typical charging time will be the amount of time it takes to go to the bathroom and get something to drink plus maybe a short stretch if those things go very fast. For me personally, bathroom and drink of some sort at a nearby Starbucks (which are frequently near superchargers) is almost perfect timing.

4. The only genuinely sucky thing about EV charging is road trips during peak travel times, especially holidays. The current infrastructure doesn’t handle peak demand well, but I think that will be fixed over time.

On the other hand fast charging still has issues with capacity. If several cars want to fast-charge at the same time, there either aren't enough spots or when there are the charging rate is decreased because there isn't enough power available to fast-charge many cars. And this is with a minority of cars being electric, if everyone switches to EVs this problem becomes much bigger.

There is a lot of work to do on the grid and maybe some form of local storage of energy at larger highway charging stops.