The great majority of my gas stops are stop, fill up, leave. I expect those would be eliminated by having a EV I just charged at home though.

Depending on the state, I’d much rather have a bio break, snack, and stretch my legs at a rest stop. Picnic benches, shade and a view, even a pet relief area. Many have water stations to refill bottles. Does require I’ve stocked the car with meals and snacks. In general filling stations lack the nicer amenities, most just suitable for gas and go.

Source: Just did 6338.5 miles encompassing 16 states.

“And while China’s getting there, an executive in the U.S. aren’t so convinced that’s true.”

Why does this sentence bother me so much?

The thing a lot of these people dknt understand is that not everyone has a garage where they can charge a car. I love in an apartment, where am I suppssdd to charge an EV? My parking space is too far away from my parking spot to charge, and I’m positive that my complex would never pay to add charging spots connected to each apartments meter.

Even if they did, I wouldnt trust my neighbors to plug tjeir EV into my charger. This alsomapploesmto people in houses that don’t have a garage. An I supossed to run an extension cord to the street st night so that anyone driving by can llut into my electricity?

I mean. That’s kinda the root cause of Range Anxiety.

Even if it was double the time to charge when compared to filling a petrol car. That would go a long way.

Gasoline cars need to accept grass if they are ever to be a viable replacement for a horse. Like, what if you’re far from a gas station but there’s a meadow right there?

Only fringe enthusiasts can own a gasoline car that doesn’t have a biofuel fermenter attached.

Nobody stops to fuel their vehicle taking gasoline, gets out, rushes as fast as possible, puts as much fuel in the car as possible, and gets back in the car and drives away

This almost reads as satire. Like this has to be a joke, right? No way this guy can really be this stupid (or out of touch), right?

It’s a dumb take on the face of it; splash n dash trips are extremely common, that’s why they put points of sale on the pump stands. It’s common enough for people to want to pay at the pump rather than ever walk into the store. Extremely common weekly errand.

Now, with an EV, likely charged at home every night thus starting most trips with a full battery, that should sharply reduce routine visits to gas stations. That leaves refueling on longer journeys. Which varies.

Me personally traveling alone, I’ll still do quick splash n dash stops on medium length journeys, say 200 miles or so? At interstate speeds that’s about 3 hours of traveling, I’ll use the restroom before setting out and one 5 minute fuel stop will do the distance.

Now, if there is a planned stop, say on a 400 mile trip, I’m gonna stop, bathroom, grab a snack and a drink, and fuel the car. That’s maybe a 15-20 minute stop to use the bathroom, grab a gatorade and a bag of funyuns from the convenience store, pay the clerk, walk back outside, then stand there at the pump while the car fills.

I will grant you, you can plug in your EV and have it charging while you’re in the store, but none are going to charge in 15 minutes. So you’re going to end up just standing there, or sitting there, while it finishes charging. With nothing at all to do. Even simulating the same behavior as with a gas car, stand there next to the charging cable staring at the price going up for ~5 minutes, the car’s not going to have taken on enough power.

I have refueled my car at night at unattended gas stations. Sitting there for a couple hours while a car charges enough to reach the next station sounds real fun.

The reality: “Nobody stops to fuel their vehicle taking gasoline, gets out, rushes as fast as possible, puts as much fuel in the car as possible, and gets back in the car and drives away,” Cutler said.

I, in fact, do exactly that. I pull up in front of the pump, get out, stick my card in, fill up, and leave. It’s been over ten years since I went inside the store at a gas station, there’s nothing in there I want to buy.

However, needing to spend half an hour recharging if I were on a road trip would be fine, because on a road trip I would stop for a break from driving in any case. But, I almost never go on road trips, and 99.9% of my trips around town would be well within one charge, which I could do at home.

So, while I agree that charging doesn’t need to be as fast as gas, it’s not because of his stated reason.

If the charge is 6x longer than filling, then there need to be 6x the charging points. Stations will need to have a much larger footprint which isn’t always possible in urban environments. Then the occupants are stuck there for 30min so there better be adequate security otherwise it’ll be ground zero for crime.

I would like it to be as fast as gas. But, yeah, if you can walk from the charger to a restroom and maybe grab some food, I really don’t care if it take 15-30 minutes to get back up to 80%.

I currently own a Volt and usually charge at home. My last road-trip OK->IA (and back a week later), I found it hard to find compatible charging stations so much so that I barely used them. On the way back, I did go out of my way to find one – the first one had no facilities at all (it was a dealer parking lot at the corner of two 5-lane stroads with no crosswalk signals), the second one was inaccessible behind a locked gate, the third one several blocks away from any facilities but close enough to walk to one restaurant.

I still plan to get an EV when I finally have to replace the Volt, but I gotta say the charging situation away from home is pretty bleak, IME. Maybe it’s better in different parts of the country. It is almost certainly better on DC charging; I found a few convenience store / gas station / fast food combination buildings that also had DC charging that I would have used if I could. (Volt only has AC charging.)

Wrong.

there’s a supermarket by me that has EV chargers for free while you shop. absolutely genius

Uh, the only reason I go into the gas station now is to pick up a six pack of beer.

Longer trips in EVs require one small reframing, at least when compared to how we used to do longer trips before.

In longer trips with an ICE, we would have a meal before the trip, then drive until the destination, and have a meal when arriving.

With an EV, you should plan to have a meal on the road, and charge while you eat.

I’ve had a few experiences with this recently on a 300k trip we do fairly regularly. We do it in an older EV with comparatively poor range, but still we get away with making one stop to eat and charge.