If I had a car that could go over a thousand miles between fill-ups, I would never fill it all the way. I’d rather not haul around half a tank of gas that I won’t need, and which marginally hurts the mileage. I also wouldn’t want to have gallons of gas sitting in the tank for months, which is what the result would be if I filled it.
Of course, this line of thinking is why I’d never buy a vehicle with this capability. I’d rather buy one with fewer features, a smaller gas tank, and/or a smaller battery.
Only because they don't need it. Most people are comfortable with a ~300 mile range, knowing they can refill in 5 minutes. So most cars are built with 10-to-15 gallon tanks.
Build a car with a 30 gallon tank and you could easily be in the neighborhood of 1000 miles range.
This is useless. No one wants to (or should) drive 20 hours without stopping. Car manufacturers could also start selling gasoline cars with a 200L tank but they don't, because there is no use for them.
If your current car tripled or quadrupled its mileage, would you also stop filling it up? Seems a silly idea to me as you never know when you're gonna want to go a little bit further than you normally do on a tank.
I drive so little that I only fill up about monthly and I could fill up weekly to 1/3rd tank to save a little bit of weight penalty, but that would be silly and a waste of all that gas station time when the gas in the tank does just fine for a month (a year might be different.)
Biological needs and taking a break don't necessitate 20-30 minutes every 300 miles, though.
I think this is the only advantage combustion engines still have. It seems to be a big one. To refill a tank takes less than 10 minutes, with the range stated by parent.
> So I can die on the road with enough energy to drive another 50 km?
My gas car has a 42 litre tank, if i wait until the light has come on and the gauge is on (and then drive another 20km past that), I can only get 38.5 litres in.
It's simple: A car needs a source of energy. Then a 15 gallon tank of gasoline is just super tough to beat. Can beat it a little with a 15 gallon tank of Diesel oil. A few hundred pounds of batteries with a charge from the electric grid? You gotta be kidding.
Now, what to do with that liquid in that 15 gallon tank is a question, but the basic fact remains. Did I mention that that fact is simple? A car needs energy, and that 15 gallon tank is tough to beat. For the rest, we have a lot of possibilities, but that 15 gallon tank is tough to beat.
> It's also possible that it keeps a buffer of ~1 gallon of gas that it never tells us about, when quoting the total range, and it eats into this buffer without telling us.
This is quite likely. My car supposedly has an 11-gallon gas tank, and if I refuel right when I hit 0 miles remaining then it only takes 10 gallons of fuel to fill the tank.
I mean if we're just going to live in fantasy world why have a tank that needs to be refilled at all? Just have infinite energy in the car.
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