Hacker News Reader

Comment by jknoepfler | Hacker News Reader

Personally I live in the Midwest. I make fairly frequent drives of around 200 miles to visit friends and family. I drive a pluggable hybrid. EV charging stations exist at both destinations, but are very spotty in between.

During the winter, range plummets. That 200 isn't getting me all the way from A to B. Having a hybrid fueling option is just much more practical for me.

I'm not saying I couldn't get it done, I could, but sitting for hours waiting for some slow-ass EV charging station in the middle of winter is not bullshit I'm signing up for.

View on HN

Not that I am trying to argue with you, I'm not, but people have a "gas station mindset" about EVs and it leads to confusion, so let me spell out how this trip would look with a "charging station" mindset:

Leave home at 100%/200mi

Drive to destination (approx 3 hours) arrive with ~0%/0mi

Charge while at destination to 80%/160mi

Begin driving back home with a 20%/40mi deficit of range.

Stop anywhere/anytime after you get below 60%/120mi

Charge for 20%/40mi (~10 minutes)

Complete drive home and fully charge again.

Total extra time on 400 mile trip vs gas (assuming 300 mi tank range, so 1 fill-up): ~5 minutes (or 8 minutes if you stop for a quick charge on the way so you don't have to white knuckle down to 0%).

For cold driving in the winter, it would probably be closer to an extra 20 minutes.

> Charge while at destination to 80%/160mi

If you can. I have some family that doesn't have any power near where I park when I visit. I'm also there for less than the _many, many_ hours it would take to get an EV from ~0 to ~80% on a standard 15A/120v outlet.

In one case, they have a pretty big tesla super-charger something like 40 miles from them so I can top all the way up just before I get there if I go slightly out of my way. In the US, we still have a long ways to go in the US before _high current_ charging options are as ubiquitous as gas.

I love my EV, but you're really not being at all realistic here. That's more of a perfect possible case scenario based on numbers from a website, not a real world scenario. I take a ~350 mile drive to Milwaukee in our 300 mile range car (2025 Ioniq 5) and we have to stop three times on the trip in each direction.

You're not actually going to get 200mi from 100% when you have 2 people and baggage loaded and traffic exists, and no one sane would be comfortable arriving with literally 0% battery. Charging stops take minimum 10 minutes just accounting for getting off & back on the freeway; usually more like 30-40 minutes because why would you not just charge back up to 80% since you're stopped anyway? Your destination hotel almost certainly does not have a charger, or if they do they charge an idle fee, so you can't just leave it overnight, so really that has to count as another charging stop.

For a 200mi each way trip, realistically you're talking probably two 30 minute charge stops in each direction. That's not completely unacceptable (eg just have some lunch at one of the stops) but your 5-8 minute quote is absolutely not realistic. A bump up to 300mi range would drop that down to one stop in each direction, which would be a real benefit.

Sorry to be blunt, but if you need to stop 3 times to charge to go 350 miles in an 300 mile range EV, you are doing something severely wrong or there is a problem with your car.

The only way I can make this happen in my head is the combination of driving in freezing temperatures, with the heat blasting the whole time, while doing ~80mph.

Mind you we do trips to Maine in the winter and only have seen ~20% range loss. Heated seats, cruise control at 65, heat on only as needed (about 5-10 minute an hour).

A drop from 80% to 20% in a 300mi car is 0.6 * 300 = 180 miles. It's a 350 mile trip. 350 / 180 = 2 80-to-20 discharges, and that's assuming no little detours for stopping at a cheese store or whatever. So we could do it in 2 stops if we were OK arriving with 20%, but we need some charge at the destination for getting around MKE, so it's three stops. And yeah, we drive 75 because that's the speed of traffic and the HVAC does whatever it does to make us comfortable.

Why are you leaving home with 80% charge and why are you limiting discharges to 20%?

Also using heat instead of seat warmers just hurts you for the same level of comfort.

There are 30-50 mile (>10%) stretches with no fast chargers in WI. I'm not going to risk being stranded if one is broken and I need to make it to the next one. I'm not really interested in nibbling around the edges & hypermiling to save one half-hour stop.

I occasionally drive 300 miles in an EV rated for ~319 miles, and I have to stop once in each direction, but I also have to charge at my destination. There's a Tesla station near there, and the rates are fantastic if you get there before 7 AM.

I keep it at 65 and let the heater do whatever it wants to do so that people are comfortable. Temperature, elevation differences, and wind definitely change things.

There's a section of the drive where I average something like 1.3 mi/kWh on the way up the mountain, but something like 6 mi/kWh on the way down. On the return trip, it's kind of fun to see the guess-o-meter show 110 miles remaining over the course of 25 miles, or have it actually increase.

I'm sure that gas vehicles follow a similar pattern, but I don't pay attention to usage like I do in an EV.

A few things -- I am not op, but I do drive an EV and sometimes drive it through some rural areas.

> Stop anywhere/anytime after you get below 60%/120mi

This is the aspect which isn't really possible in very rural areas. There is nowhere to stop at to charge, or the options are very limited. It's getting better, but it's the reason why people want more range.

Plus, in the midwest, the ranges tank in the dead of winter, due to sub-zero temperatures and headwinds.

Slow ass ev charging? My f150 charge from almost dead to almost full in 35-40 minutes and it has 300+ mile range and 135kWh battery. And its still a 400v architecture

> Slow ass ev charging? My f150 charge from almost dead to almost full in 35-40 minutes

Unfortunately a lot of people only really have a level1 class charger at home and that's a 10+ hour charge on a F150. Probably somewhere around 5-7 hours for a level 2 charger but that's only a "given" on new construction.

If you live close to a level3 charger than you can get topped up in under an hour but that also isn't as convenient as plugging in when you get home and forgetting about it since you have to drive to the charger.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com