That's not the image or the cars they're pushing in Europe. Their cheapest car, at least in Sweden, costs more than the VW id3, and their flagship SUV that they're pushing hard starts at around the same price as a BMW iX with all the 'luxury' frills to match.
Current range is more than adequate. The missing piece is public fast recharge stations.
A 30 minute recharge on a 600 mile trip is not a real issue. You probably take a break anyway for food, rest and bathroom. Most people can't last 10 hours without it.
Like or not, electric is not only viable now but also inevitable --- mainly due to economic forces, some of which remain to be fully developed. And Walmart and BP/Waffle House are leading the charge with plans to add public recharge stations to their locations.
https://theevreport.com/bp-pulse-waffle-house-boost-ev-charg...
https://insideevs.com/news/757648/walmart-ev-charging-networ...
You can cross most European countries with one stop.
Gas cars are still objectively better which is sad and unexpected. I never would have predicted this insanely low rate of improvement 10 years ago. In terms of trucks / tow vehicles, it is even further off. The Cybertruck laughably has 250km of tow range. Disconnecting every 2 hours to charge for an hour is absurd. Until we see a step change in battery technology, EVs are grocery getters in my books. So, might as well double down and make them super cheap with 100km range.
If my commute is less than 100km, I can charge at home, have free solar energy, and only go on long trips once or twice a year, would you still say that gas cars are "objectively better"?
If you regularly go on 400km+ trips or have nowhere to charge an EV overnight then by all means, avoid EVs.
That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. Someone who takes long trips is going to get something that charges fast like in IONIQ 5 or 6. The IONIQ 6 long range RWD model charges from 10 to 80% in 16 minutes at a 250 kW charger. That would be about 350 km of range at freeway speeds in Europe.
On a long trip then, once you've used up the charge you started with and have make the rest of the trip on energy from charging breaks that would be a 16 minute break every 350 km. 350 km is about 2.8 hours of travel, so about 8% of your remaining trip time after you reach your first stop would be spent charging.
To be fair, 20 minutes for an L3 charge from 20 to 80% is technically under an hour.
The difference is that in the Tesla the refueling takes place in parallel to me using the facilities and having a snack. The car refuels itself unattended and it will notify me on my phone when it has enough charge to continue.
I have heard this can be a problem in California but I rarely go there.
... How many people _regularly_ make 400km trips, though? Like, the vast majority of the cars on the road at any given time are not making 400km trips, or anything like it. Some countries in Europe are not 400km across.
(Also that's probably ~4 hours driving; most people are probably stopping for a bit after that anyway).
For electric cars, there _is_ a serious downside to having huge range; it makes them expensive (and heavy). So manufacturers will tend to stop at "sensible for most use cases". I'm sure there are some people for whom electric car range is still a problem, but it's a niche market, especially in _Europe_ (again, you can drive across many countries in Europe in 400km).
In the US, I've traveled about 50k miles on long road trips in a Tesla and I haven't used my ICE car for a road trip since I got the Tesla. Long range and Tesla's excellent network of superchargers made that possible.
I would imagine it's even more doable in Europe since "long distance" road trips there are on the order of 100 miles, while in the US they're more like 1000 miles.
Does Europe have that much variation?
In areas where the ratio is low a non-EV can be cheaper than an EV, especially if that non-EV is a hybrid. In about 1/3 of the states a Prius beats an average EV in highway driving and in around 1/6th the Prius wins in city driving. In around 1/6th the Prius will even beat the most efficient EVs in both highway and city.
It's opposite in places with a higher ratio where even a Prius cannot come near the low energy costs of an EV. In roughly 1/5th of the states gas would have to fall to below around $1.70/gal for the Prius to match a typical EV for highway driving, and to around $1.50/gal to match the most efficient highway EVs. Those are gas prices that even Trump probably can't fantasize about.
Note that the above was all using residential electricity prices. Commercial EV chargers usually charge quite a bit more. I'm in one of the states with a high gas/electricity price ratio and I think EVs still win here with commercial charger prices but not by much. Without having run the numbers, my guess is that for most road trips that span several states, especially if the are going east/west, a Prius is going to be the energy cost champion.
I'm curious if there are any road trip planners that can take all this into account? Say you've got an EV and a non-EV. Are there any where you can give your destination, places along the way you want to see, what cars you have available, and how much extra time you are willing to spend to save money, and it will figure out which car can do the trip for with the least energy costs?
You mean .09 to .34 but I agree there's a lot of variation. I pay about 13 cents at home and my fuel bill is around 1/4 the $ per mile in the Model Y as it is for my ICE car when I recharge at home.
Superchargers are much more expensive; they're typically a minimum of 25 cents per kWh. But even on long road trips using supercharger energy I still pay a lot less per mile than I would for gasoline unless I drive over 80 mph (wind resistance is the efficiency killer for EVs.)
If you want to run the numbers yourself, a Model Y typically can go a mile on 250-300 Wh if relative airspeed is under 60 mph. (I look for tailwinds with windy.com on road trips. I find this fun but I don't expect that's a universal emotion.)
I have not seen a trip planner like you describe. The Tesla will tell you the supercharger rates before you arrive so you could choose a different one but that's about it.
Tesla tries very hard to keep you from running out of energy. Once I drove away from a supercharger toward the middle of nowhere. My destination was a guest house that I knew had a Level 2 charger. But the car didn't know that. As I approached the halfway point the car started nagging me "You are approaching the point of no return. Turn back NOW to avoid running out of energy."
I hit 'Ignore', laughed and kept driving. The car was wrong but I was grateful it had my back.
I've heard that the US has a lot of "food deserts" where you have to go a long way to get groceries, but is it really that bad?
More importantly, the route Google Maps gives me to Paris (1051 km from city to city) is supposedly 11 hr 31 min. Even if the car could do that in one trip, neither my bladder nor my stomach could.
What's TACO?