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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

I hate the term "range anxiety". The industry used to throw it around all the time. That term shifts the blame from the product to the customer. The issue is that a vehicle with a range under 100 miles is not that useful. I could drive a car like that to work most days, but I could not make a significant deviation - to go to another work facility, customer or supplier site, or even to see a friend for dinner after work. That is not MY anxiety, it's a problem with the car. You don't overcome "range anxiety" by doing anything with the customer, you do it by putting a big battery in the car like Tesla. You can take a Tesla on a pretty long trip, or you can drive it around town all damn day with no worry.

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Another point to that, is that the default assumption, even for a Tesla is that you can charge it at home during the night. For people living in a flat with car on the street, that means going to a charging station on a regular basis for a full charge.

That is beyond anxiety, it means planning your life around your car range, instead of the other way around. And with the current availability of charging stations, it also determine the place you are allowed to go, that's a very big drawback for people that use their car mainly on the weekend for leisure.

I think this is where self driving, electric, Uber cars will rescue us. The car will be owned by someone who has plenty of charging stations and it'll simply appear at my door 5 minutes before I need to leave for work.

Welcome to Jonny cab!

The problem I see with this kind of carsharing is that it does not scale particularly well to rush hours. I must note though that I'm living in Germany where Uber is not really a thing yet (mostly because of regulatory problems), so if anyone can share insight on how Uber scales to the rush hour, that'd be great.

The long and the short of it is that they raise their prices during rush hour.

At the moment each adult owns one car. (all the adults I know have at least one car each)

I'd say at rush hour 2/3 of those cars are being used. I'd imagine Uber would just buy thousands of cars. Why not? What's to stop them? I'd just scrap my car and have an Uber car parked somewhere close to my house. I don't care, just so long as I can get to work. I imagine that utilities will soon provide automatic Uber car docks and cars will cluster around them at night. There must be a lot of Tesco car parks that are 99% empty at the moment (at night) rent this space to Uber and in the day, the car park would empty as those Uber cars would be driving around.

Also, I don't mind car sharing so long as I don't have to wait. Uber could easily plan trips that pick up and drop off without having to wait like you do for more traditional public transport such as trains and buses...

Fascinating.

And fun fact: I'm 26 and I don't have a driver's license. So do many of my peers. I totally rely on public transit (save for the few occasions where I need to move furniture etc.). Public transit service is exceptionally good and reliable in most of Germany's big towns.

Unless you live in an area with lots of Superchargers or if your works place has electric car charging stations. I feel like that's the reason why so many people that I work with get Teslas.

I thought Tesla sent out letters to people using Superchargers for daily charging, clarifying that they were intended for long-distance travel.

It's probably more likely that you work with a lot of high-income males who are interested in the technology of Tesla and the prestige of owning one.

I live in an area where electric vehicles (and particularly Teslas) are very uncommon. The couple of people I know of who own Teslas fit your description exactly. They are status symbols and playthings, like any other expensive high-line car (and I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just the reality).

Yea, but for those that can charge at home, it is better than having to pay a gas station.

Right up until the day that you unexpectedly have to drive somewhere that is (a) at the limit of your range, (b) not accessible otherwise and (c) doesn't have convenient chargers.

This is interestingly close to the Kozmo/PeaPod/whatever on-demand grocery delivery problem: as long as you only have to service high population densities, you can make a profit. As soon as you try to handle suburbs, the costs of providing service increase at a rate larger than the square of the radius you are trying to serve - and nobody wants to pay that, and the urban core won't subsidize the suburban outliers until you've already dominated the market.

How many people living in a flat with no garage own a > $70-100K car?

It seems to me like people who're buying a car in that price range would either own a house or at least have access to a garage.

That sounds like a very US view.

It's fairly common in London to not have a garage, and even if you do then there is unlikely to be any power there. Most likely is on-street parking, and that's assuming you're not in a flat.

So it sounds like an all electric vehicle may simply not be for them.

People living in densely populated area should be the prime target for zero emission cars. And that is a problem cities can solve. There is no problem to hook a few power plug on the street ( eg: BMW had a strategy for cheap, small charging station specifically target to create a large number of slow power point. )

Beside the cost, European cities are keener on getting rid of cars entirely, so they are reducing the number of parking spaces as years goes by, so you may be right after all, the zero emission solution for people living where I live is to not have a car at all ( which is, to be fair, not at all unrealistic. There is a strong possibility that the technologies to solve my few "not conveniently covered by public transport" will come from some sort of rental/uber before electric car is actually practical where I live )

Bullshit, just go around any single place in san Francisco.

Even just thinking of my brother in law and his wife both make $150k+ live in a condo in sf and even with their garage, they would not be able to install power at their parking spots.

There's a business opportunity for ridiculously long extension cords right there.

I live in Brooklyn. There are quite a few of us here.

I do see a few of them around here and there but it's a logistic nightmare to even consider a power-cable-charged electric car in a city like this.

Go to Boston. Outdoor parking spaces have sold for 6 figures in some neighborhoods.

Also, my garage has plenty of cars in that price range (and far above), but there's no outlets for people to charge cars.

I live in a climate where you can potentially get stuck in the snow for few hours when going between cities (that happens maybe once per year, but today is exactly such a day, for example). In a gasoline car you would at least stay warm while waiting for the road to be unblocked. With an electric car, this might easily turn into a survival situation.

Being stuck in traffic barely drains the battery. It's range anxiety, not time anxiety.

What about running the heater to stay alive and defrosted?

10 horsepower is more than 7 kilowatts of output. I think a typical car heater uses much less than this. Perhaps someone knows more precise figures.

A typical car heater is "free" in the sense that the heat is generated using the engine coolant. An ICE-powered car as a small heat exchanger called the heater box in the passenger cabin. When the heater is on, a door opens and directs air through the heater box before being blown back into the cabin. As long as the car is running and the engine is hot, you get heat.

An EV essentially runs electric space heaters, since there's no engine block to steal waste heat from. It doesn't take a lot to heat a small enclosed space like a car interior. My Leaf uses anywhere from 1000 to 3000 watts to run heat, mostly towards the low end after it's warmed up.

http://imgur.com/smzvL8C

For reference, the battery pack is 24kWh, so it could theoretically run the heater while stuck on a road for 24 hours straight. A Model S with a 85kWh battery pack could keep the heat on for over 3 days.

A fully charged Model S, operating at peak capacity. When it has to heat the battery pack, the interior, and has already been driven for upwards of 100 miles (plus heating), those numbers will significantly smaller. Worse would be the anxiety of retaining enough charge to get the car the remaining miles to your destination once un-stuck.

After 100 miles plus heating, it's got 50 kWh left in the battery. That'll get you another 147 miles driving with the heat on. Sitting in traffic, for hours upon hours, is really not a problem for an EV. The interior and battery pack heaters only use 1.5 kilowatts per hour or so. If you drive 100 miles with the heat on, get stuck in the snow for an epic rescue time of 8 hours, your range is only decreased by 35 miles to 112. Having 112 miles left in your tank is not an anxiety-inducing situation.

It is, if you still have 80 miles to go in weather which got you stuck in the first place.

I live in Montana, so such trips are common, not exceptional. Having a pass close in front of you (or while you're on it) is not terribly exceptional either.

Is it? Then you definitely wouldn't want to make this trip in a traditional gasoline car.

Two drivers leave on this trip you described with the same fuel in the tank (250 miles worth), one in a Tesla and one in a Toyota. Both travel 100 miles before getting stuck. Both have to wait 8 hours in the cold on a closed road. Both have 80 miles to go.

The difference is, the Tesla has 112 miles of range left at that point, and the Toyota only has 86. It consumed 2.56 gallons of gas idling to run the heat, a much larger percentage of its overall fuel than the Tesla.

Assuming neither driver planned to run out of fuel on this trip (since 360 miles is beyond the range of either vehicle), both are within range of either a gas station or a charging station. They're all along the length of I90 and I15 in Montana. The Tesla has a larger margin of error for detours and closed roads on the way.

Refueling a gas powered vehicle at a small town is much simpler than looking for a supercharger or spending the night waiting for a normal outlet to recharge your battery.

Small towns (which for Montana I'll define as towns with a population of around 1,000) with gas pumps are plentiful. Small towns with hotels, a bit less plentiful. Small towns with superchargers are nonexistent.

> You wouldn't have left if your destination wasn't within 80 miles of I90 or I15,

Bozeman to Great Falls, 180 miles. A supercharger on one end of the trip, a hotel on the far end, and lots of nasty winter driving in-between. Also known as Tuesday for many folks I know.

Limiting yourself to 100 miles from a Supercharger knocks out a lot of space in Montana. Most of the interesting parts of Montana are well over 10 miles from a supercharger. Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, the reservations, the feed lines into southern Idaho, Wyoming and North Dakota... No southern Idaho.

There's a joke that says that on the east coast, 100 miles is a vacation, but in Montana, 100 miles is a grocery trip. That applies to a lot of the non-coastal US as well. Have a look at https://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger?redirect=no, and look at how many huge open spaces exist.

I don't know why this keeps getting downvoted. It's absolutely true.

An EV uses 20+ kilowatts to move at highway speeds. It uses 1 kilowatt to run climate control.

Sitting in traffic for an hour is equivalent to driving for 3 minutes, in terms of how much battery you use.

Not only that, but most lithium ion batteries don't function very well below freezing: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_at_high_...

This past weekend the high temperatures in large parts of the midwest were below the cutoff point.

EV battery packs have heaters to keep the batteries from getting too cold. The Model S is the best-selling car in snowy Norway. I'm in Pennsylvania, it's below freezing every night in the winter (and often all day), and my Nissan Leaf doesn't mind at all.

> In a gasoline car you would at least stay warm while waiting for the road to be unblocked. With an electric car, this might easily turn into a survival situation.

Actually, a Tesla would keep you warm while waiting for longer than your gasoline car.

A 2 liter engine, idling at 700 rpm, will consume about .32 gallons per hour. A 15 gallon tank then gives you 46 hours of heat.

A 85 kilowatt hour battery pack can run a 1000 watt cabin heater for 85 hours. That's almost twice as long.

If you travelled 50 miles from home before getting stuck, the gasoline car will have 40 hours of heating time left, and the EV will have 68 hours of heating time left.

Yeah, it's going to be some time until I'm comfortable with batteries-only in cold weather. See here: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/02/winter-chill...

"Range anxiety" is why I like the drivetrain in the Volt.

The so-called "BMW i3 with Range Extender" is a "more true" range-extended battery electric vehicle. Unlike the Volt, the BMW doesn't have any mechanic connection between its wheels and the gasoline engine, and the gasoline engine is properly underpowered not to be considered a primary source of propulsion.

I don't understand why everyone is so outraged that the volt can have a mechanical connection with the gas engine. It's more efficient in some circumstances that just charging a generator.

It still can (and does) go in all electric mode, even up to 100 mph.

The BWI w/ range extender still only goes 150 miles between gas ups. That's pretty annoying. It's great for days when you just need a bit extra to get through. But for road trips, it's nearly a deal breaker. Though I guess you could just suck it and stop every 2 hours.

I'm not "outraged" but I do think that the Volt design is a temporary anomaly, mostly due to path dependence and being built by a corporation that traditionally built ICE vehicles.

A small battery EV with a ICE range extender is simply a better sweet spot and takes better advantage of both mode's unique features and avoids a whole bunch of mechanical parts running through the car.

Also worth noting that the i3 gas tank was electronically limited in capacity (along with other tweaks) to meet California regulations for getting a rebate.

I didn't mean to suggest to were outraged. But the internet was for a while.

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