Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days • Hacker News Board

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#101

Post by rcurry » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:29 AM UTC

carcostthrow wrote: post #85

>And everyone should stop driving fossil vehicles starting now. [...] There’s no excuse not to. Isn't there? Right now for me to own a Ford Mach E, a Tesla Model 3 or a RAV4 Prime is $3400 to $3700 per year for comprehensive insurance, $1400 a year for liability only. My SUV right now costs $1100 a year to insure comprehensive, but even a 2021 Acura NSX or Jaguar F-Pace is only $1400 for the same level of insurance t…

Same here. Most of my cross country trips are in an ‘08 corvette. It gets about 26 mpg if you leave it on cruise, and takes about 8 minutes to fill up. And I can also stop wherever I want for a nice meal or whatever. Combined with zero maintenance because it’s built for about 10x as hard as you’d ever think of driving it, it works out just fine. I think electric vehicles are awesome, but it’s pretty hard to beat gasoline in terms of power for your money.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#102

Post by drewg123 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

sparrish wrote: post #4

1000 Miles in two days is a pretty lazy pace of a drive. I imagine that's because it takes so long to recharge. 750 miles a day is my usual but 1000 a day is doable.

I did a ~965mi trip regularly in my Model X 100D during the pandemic when I was not comfortable flying. The trip is about 18hrs door-to-door, with about 14hrs driving and ~4hrs charging. Autopilot is very helpful in reducing fatigue, as are the required frequent stops.

The charging time was somewhat inflated, because my friend does not have destination charging at her downtown condo building. That meant that on the outbound leg, I needed to stop at a close by, but slow, urban supercharger and top my car up. And on the return leg, I was not starting with a 100% charge.

This was especially frustrating, because there are chargers in the garage they share w/a hotel, but the chargers are for hotel guests only...

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#103

Post by lttlrck » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #94

notJim wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a post-hoc rationalization to me. I drive a Tesla and I do often find the breaks annoying. I would prefer to drive straight through rather than stand in some random parking lot for 30 minutes. Even if I want a break, I’d prefer to find a park or something. You can take a break whenever you want with any car, the car doesn’t need to force you.

Are the breaks annoying enough you'd go back to a gas car if you had to pay the fully loaded carbon costs per gallon of fuel? At ~$100/metric ton of CO2, that's about 90 cents of carbon tax alone per gallon of fuel.

A few hundred dollars per year increase (at the pump or registration fees) still makes financial sense for an awful lot of people.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#104

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

lttlrck wrote: post #103

toomuchtodo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the breaks annoying enough you'd go back to a gas car if you had to pay the fully loaded carbon costs per gallon of fuel? At ~$100/metric ton of CO2, that's about 90 cents of carbon tax alone per gallon of fuel.

A few hundred dollars per year increase (at the pump or registration fees) still makes financial sense for an awful lot of people.

As long as you use taxes to internalize the cost of those emissions for people who don't want to wait an extra 15 minutes to refuel (and those funds go into air source carbon removal), that's a fine solution. At the rate at which EVs are selling [1], it seems the wait is not an impediment to ownership. It's important those who don't want to wait (and require liquid fuels because of that) don't put that burden (carbon emissions that aren't paid for) on everyone else collectively.

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2020

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#105

Post by alvah » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

"In this context, there’s another number there that I think is really interesting: The “km/c-h”, how far you can get on an hour’s charge. For this particular car on this selection of chargers, it was over 200km (124 miles) per charge-hour. I think that’s enough? Maybe in the lower regions of enough, but there."

So at 110km/h, less than 2 hours of driving for every hour spent charging? In what world is that close to "enough"? My next car will likely be an EV, but the evangelists hand-waving away limitations like this do nobody any favors.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#106

Post by dylan604 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

alvah wrote: post #105

"In this context, there’s another number there that I think is really interesting: The “km/c-h”, how far you can get on an hour’s charge. For this particular car on this selection of chargers, it was over 200km (124 miles) per charge-hour. I think that’s enough? Maybe in the lower regions of enough, but there." So at 110km/h, less than 2 hours of driving for every hour spent charging? In what world is that close to "…

Exactly right. EVs are perfect for day-to-day commutes and what not where it's drive a distance, let it sit for several hours (while at work or at home at night), lather-rinse-repeat. Long distance continuous driving would be brutal with an hour pitstop every couple of hours.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#107

Post by senkora » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

There’s this documentary I really enjoyed watching called “Long Way Up” where Ewan McGregor (plus another actor I was not familiar with) rode from Tierra del Fuego to Los Angeles on electric motorcycles.

They talk a lot about the pros/cons of going electric, and there are issues with like cold temperatures affecting battery performance at the start.

But I also found that I just really enjoyed the show even excluding that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Up

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#108

Post by 1-6 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #100

jmpman wrote: post #98

I just did a 2 day 2000 mile trip in my long range model 3. Total charging costs were around $100, which didn’t include two stops where the superchargers were free (network connectivity problems?). Required a total of 13 supercharging stops. Each stop was between 20min to 45min. I started off completely full, and charged overnight at a Tesla destination charger, (so, 14 stops?). Roughly half the cost of the article’s…

I've done multiple ~1000mi road trips in my Model X, and I've peed in a lot of bushes too. A lot of the newer chargers (at least on the east coast) are located at WaWa's, and have 24hr restrooms. But the chargers at malls are a pain. Either the mall is closed, and you need to pee in the bushes, or the mall is open and the traffic is terrible and the chargers are ICE'ed in. There is one charger in Hardee SC thats in t…

I wonder if the smell of urine is a thing around superchargers.

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#109

Post by geoduck14 » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #106

alvah wrote: post #105

"In this context, there’s another number there that I think is really interesting: The “km/c-h”, how far you can get on an hour’s charge. For this particular car on this selection of chargers, it was over 200km (124 miles) per charge-hour. I think that’s enough? Maybe in the lower regions of enough, but there." So at 110km/h, less than 2 hours of driving for every hour spent charging? In what world is that close to "…

Exactly right. EVs are perfect for day-to-day commutes and what not where it's drive a distance, let it sit for several hours (while at work or at home at night), lather-rinse-repeat. Long distance continuous driving would be brutal with an hour pitstop every couple of hours.

This is the insight that I need. I'm all about EVs, but my fam and I will go on at least 1 500 road trip each year, and we don't stop for sleep (unless we have to).

Re: Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days

#110

Post by nreilly » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 2:02 AM UTC

I’ve done 1300km in two days in an EV comfortably along the east coast of Australia. ~4h driving, 1hr charge and lunch, ~4h driving, charge overnight at the hotel, ~4h driving, 1hr charge and lunch, ~4h driving and arrive at destination. Same in reverse. Cost was only charging at home to 100% before departing (under $10) at both ends. The supercharging was free. The autopilot makes a huge difference to driver fatigue, and keeps paying attention when you’re distracted by kids in the back (saving me from at least one accident). It really has made it more of a difficult choice between flying and driving across the major cities on the east coast of Australia. Going further west is possible, but will just take a bit more planning.