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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

> No comprehensive supercharger network. This is a real big deal still.

I agree that this is important, but it is 99% psychological. In the entire time I owned my Tesla, I used the supercharger a half dozen times. Most people with an EV that has 200+ miles of range will rarely use DC fast chargers.

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And I've used (checks file) 56 different superchargers in the last 4 years, some of them many times. It comes down to how many long road trips you make. Fast chargers are totally unnecessary for local-only driving if you have a slow charger at home, but critical for convenient road trips beyond your vehicle's range.

Indeed. Also, GP comment might want to remember we're in a thread about the F-150, a truck that many consumers will want to use to get to job sites. Arguably, such a use case needs even more charging infrastructure than average electric vehicle use cases.

I think GP is pointing out that most people who own an ICE vehicle aren't used to having any limits on refueling their vehicle. If they need to take a long trip they just go. In the vast majority of the country there's a gas station at basically every interstate exit and refilling the tank takes 5 minutes.

All of a sudden with an EV you most likely need to plan your route around charging stations and allow for charging time. This isn't to say that EV's are bad or that they should be avoided - simply that most people don't think about these things in advance and may be surprised the first time they take a long trip with an EV.

I very, very rarely drive my car further than a hundred miles in a day; for my day-to-day work, a 200 mile range would be more than comfortable, and I'd be able to recharge to full overnight.

But every once in a while we drive about 200 miles to visit the in-laws, and I would be super nervous about attempting that in an EV. At best we'd be close to empty by the time we arrived, I don't know the state of the charger system on the highways we use, and we'd be stuck using a low-amp charger at their house, which would take forever.

I was 50/50 on buying an EV last year, but decided against it for this reason; I felt like we were still a couple of years away from EVs being practical for all of my use cases. I'm sure we'll get there soon, but right now they aren't a drop-in replacement for everyone's ICE.

> I don't know the state of the charger system on the highways we use

I totally understand your situation, but sorry, that had me laughing: Yeah sure, there is nothing to be done about that :)

With Teslas, you plug in your destination and it provides directions with charging stops. For example: I drove over 600 miles from Portland to Berkeley starting at 25% battery. It routed me to three charging stops[1] and included times for both arrival and how long charging would take.

If you have the navigate on autopilot feature, it automatically drives you from freeway onramp to exit. It's far less mentally taxing than driving manually.

1. https://i.imgur.com/n8QmiPb.jpg

Tesla's handle this pretty well, it auto routes you to supercharges and tells you how long to charge, etc.

Whether you ever take a roadtrip is not 99% psychological. Sure you more commonly stay within range but for instance I drive several hours to see my family regularly. No supercharging stations would prohibit that or 2-3x the time taken.

Depends on where you live and what you do. I would agree, based on population density in most of the world, that this is probably true.

But in an area like New Mexico, there are lots of people doing jobs where they will drive 150+ miles per day without even thinking about.

What do you do for road trips? The supercharger network is essential for that.

I use DC fast chargers for road trips, yes. I don't have my Tesla anymore, just the wife's Bolt, but conceptually it's the same.

I'm surprised you find it tolerable. My Model 3 can get from Portland to Spokane (350 miles) with one charging stop in Kennewick, taking about 6 hours total.

If I use ABRP to simulate the same trip in a 2020 Bolt, it requires 3 stops and over 90 minutes of charging, bringing the trip time to 7 hours and 23 minutes.[1] It's not clear if the trip is actually possible, as the the first stop is at a used car dealership in The Dalles which claims to only allow Nissans to charge there.[2] The latest checkin says it's inoperable.

With the supercharger network, you know in advance if the station is having any issues (including simply being full). Other charging companies are getting better, but the current patchwork is too uncertain for me to deal with. If I had a Bolt, I'd probably rent a car for long distance trips. (Please don't take this as insulting the Bolt. It's far less expensive than a Model 3 Performance. With the money saved, you could probably fly for every long distance trip for the lifetime of the car.)

1. https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=4912118b-c0bd-486...

2. https://www.plugshare.com/location/1538

> With the supercharger network, you know in advance if the station is having any issues (including simply being full).

We've had a couple of cases recently where this wasn't the case. Supercharger was recording availability as if it was working, but in reality people were plugging in and getting failures. Rare, of course, but it can happen.

Also, that trip plan seems to just be ABRP bugs. Better to stop at the EA in Hood River, OR than the one they have by default.

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