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Comment by clouddrover | Hacker News Reader

> Range - So, here’s the thing: Range doesn’t matter. No, really, it doesn’t.

False. Of course range matters and making excuses for the limitations of BEVs lacks ambition.

Claiming range doesn't matter simply fails to consider what it means when the entire fleet is electric. Over-building the fast charging infrastructure to support a national fleet of low range EVs is wasteful.

Longer range means less time at fast chargers and more time slow charging over night. Slow charge infrastructure is much cheaper to build out.

The Lucid Air gets 500 miles highway range:

https://insideevs.com/reviews/562511/lucid-air-range-test-re...

Less expensive EVs should aspire to 400 miles range as a minimum.

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This is taken out of context a bit. What's said is that range doesn't matter if you're not doing long hauls (which he defines as 150+ miles).

I tend to agree with him, as the majority of drivers are rarely driving over 150 miles in a day. In that case any car with 200+ miles of range will easily meet day to day needs with no fast charging. I've personally found this to be true as I come up on 6 months of EV ownership. I've only needed to fast charge 1x, and that was due to me accidentally not plugging my car in all the way one night.

He explained his viewpoint more thoroughly in a post linked just after your quoted line:

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/09/01/How-Much-...

"with no fast charging" --- this assumes you can charge 150mi overnight, which I cannot in the townhome I'm now renting.

A fair point, but even then 150 is probably on the high end. I commute 60 miles a day and made it through the first ~2 months using only a level 1 home charger (standard wall outlet). My total charge trended down through the week, and then made up for it on the weekend.

~10 hours of level 1 charging gives me about 50-60 miles. Slightly limiting for my commute, but all in all, not impossible to work around.

> What's said is that range doesn't matter if you're not doing long hauls (which he defines as 150+ miles).

Yes, he's only thinking about an individual driver. He's not thinking about the requirements across the entire fleet. There will always be plenty of people doing long hauls across the whole fleet.

Interesting argument (from a waste perspective). If 99% of all trips are 10-20 miles isn't over-building battery capacity more wasteful than building out charging stations with a much higher utilization? Cars would be more expensive, and, presumably heavier and do more damage to the roads. Charging infrastructure is relatively cheap compared to the millions of additional cells that would require mass quantities of non-renewable resources

> Cars would be more expensive, and, presumably heavier and do more damage to the roads.

Not with better batteries. Until there are better batteries, use swappable batteries.

Or you could always go fuel cell. They do well for long range driving, even in the cold:

https://electrek.co/2022/01/03/hyundai-nexo-sets-hydrogen-en...

There are a few counter arguments to that idea, many of those linked to battery weight. An efficient car with a 40-50 kWh battery could weigh at least 200-250kg less than a 85kWh one. This has a direct effect on:

- energy consumption. Having to drag along 250kg is not free.

- maintenance cycles. Tires, brakes and more need more frequent maintenance on a heavier car.

- road maintenance (!)

A simple 7.2 kW charger is more than enough to charge a 40-50 kWh battery overnight. That's plenty for a large majority of use cases. Proper charging infrastructure can help one along on the exceptional further trip.

Also, don't underestimate the number of people that don't want or can't spend 5000€ on a car.

Every point you've made is an argument for ICE vehicles over BEVs. ICE is the no-compromise option in your scenarios. The best BEV you could get under the terms you've set wouldn't be worth owning.

The amount of unnecessary battery that you are hauling around for 400+ range is crazy. If anybody is going to go long range they need to do it via a removable boost battery that you can leave at home for the 99% of your driving where you don't need it. I have a plugin that only gets 29 miles of battery and I go for months of time occasionally sipping at the tank before I need to fill up.

> If anybody is going to go long range they need to do it via a removable boost battery that you can leave at home for the 99% of your driving where you don't need it.

Cars with swappable batteries enable you do up- and downsize the pack as needed. Nio does 70 kWh to 100 kWh packs with a 150 kWh option supposedly on the way this year:

https://insideevs.com/news/537644/nio-4-million-battery-swap...

Other brands are introducing cars with swappable batteries as well:

https://electrek.co/2022/01/22/geely-backed-maple-leaf-60s-l...

https://thedriven.io/2021/04/28/nsw-based-janus-electric-pre...

> Slow charge infrastructure is much cheaper to build out.

Plus much cheaper to use and (presumably) less damaging to the battery.

Because having a fleet of car with a range of 400miles to commute 50miles is not wasteful ?

I like that at the moment the top comment is that people do not have the money to follow the autor ideal and you want even bigger battery pack which is I believe the most expensive part of the car ...

There's that lack of ambition. Instead of making excuses for cars with compromises, you want better batteries: cheaper, safer, more energy dense, more power dense, faster charging, more recyclable, longer duty cycle.

Batteries need improvement in all metrics.

> Longer range means less time at fast chargers and more time slow charging over night. Slow charge infrastructure is much cheaper to build out.

Typical driving profiles already mean that you rarely need fast chargers. The bottleneck will be holiday seasons and similar, when suddenly the demand for fast charging will go up 100-fold or more.

> Of course range matters and making excuses for the limitations of BEVs lacks ambition.

High-end BEV already have similar range to comparable (on horsepower) ICE cars. They don't need much more.

> Slow charge infrastructure is much cheaper to build out.

At a highway rest stop, why would a fast charger that can charge 1 car in 6 minutes be any more expensive than a bank of slow chargers that can charge 10 cars in 60 minutes?

While the peak usage is the same, they have other differences. The ten-charger setup will cause many fairly modest load changes on the electricity network, while the one-charger setup will cause a few giant changes. That may plausibly have some impact on the price of the infrastructure needed and what the power company will charge.

In order to charge 10x faster, you need to deliver 10x the current. That means all the wiring and electronics need to be upgraded to handle the huge increase without melting.

Also, the rest stop won't just be installing a single fast charger, it would install more than one. So you can't really compare 10 slow chargers against a single fast one. That means the wiring service for the entire rest stop would likely need to be upgraded as well.

A fast charger has AC-DC converter provide DC power to car, which is expensive. Slow chargers are AC, which are very cheap in comparison.

In your scenario what you're describing are all DC fast chargers.

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