General vehicle thread

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Originally Posted by ray1970

Don?t get too wound up. Perhaps my post was meant to be taken in jest.

Honestly, my main reason for having zero interest in an electric vehicle at this time is the range.

While it isn?t something I do regularly, I do occasionally make trips back to the Houston area and like to drive straight there without stops (other than for fuel or the occasional bathroom break).

Once there is an electric vehicle that will go over a thousand miles without needing a charge and it?s priced comparable to similar internal combustion vehicles maybe I?ll test drive one.

Until that day I?ll continue to support big oil and keep destroying the environment.

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Who says I'm wound up? I hear this a lot and I don't tend to meet any of the qualities that most assume drive EVs.

As far as your needs go, if you drive over 13 hours nonstop then an EV isn't for you. Period. You need some sort of Mad Max Suburban with 7 gas tanks that can tote around 100 gallons of fuel to make that run and it's going to be three generations from now before it's something that would meet those very, very unique needs. Especially if you're going to base your entire driving experience on that one, random need should it ever come up again.

What do you drive that goes over 1,000 miles w/o stopping? How do you not have any bio needs in over 13 hours of driving at an average speed of 75mph of no stops? Also, how do you avoid blot clots from sitting for over 3 hours straight w/o moving? So many questions.

I doubt an EV will ever work for us, though I wouldn't mind having one if it did.

I'm very happy with the fuel efficiency of my diesels. On the other hand, diesels aren't for everyone, either, especially in cars (as evidenced by slow sales). Probably a lot of reasons for that.

The DEF message finally came on in my F250 at about 8700 miles. Now I know how long a tank will last.

In all fairness, he did mention bathroom and fueling up. But, fueling up + bathroom takes maybe 5-10 min and one is back on the road for another 300 miles+. How long would it take an EV to charge for that distance?

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Originally Posted by CavSct1983

In all fairness, he did mention bathroom and fueling up. But, fueling up + bathroom takes maybe 5-10 min and one is back on the road for another 300 miles+. How long would it take an EV to charge for that distance?

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Seems like I had this discussion once upon a time. Jer and I did not really reach an agreement.

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Originally Posted by CavSct1983

In all fairness, he did mention bathroom and fueling up. But, fueling up + bathroom takes maybe 5-10 min and one is back on the road for another 300 miles+. How long would it take an EV to charge for that distance?

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Yep. It's 520 miles from here to Salt Lake and takes 8 hours, with stops. It's almost 750 miles to Ketchum and that takes 12 hours, with stops. When an EV can get even close to those times, I'll be interested. So what, another 20 years?

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Originally Posted by CavSct1983

In all fairness, he did mention bathroom and fueling up. But, fueling up + bathroom takes maybe 5-10 min and one is back on the road for another 300 miles+. How long would it take an EV to charge for that distance?

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It depends on many variables and factors but in our instance we stopped about every 2 hours and the total stop was usually about 20min or so before we were able to get back on the road. That was about how long we'd be driving before we were looking to exit to use the restroom and grab a water anyway. You exit, plug in, walk to the nearest convenience store to stretch your legs & use the bathroom, grab some water & some snacks and by the time you got back to the car you had less than 10 minutes to wait in most cases. There really was no point during our 2,500 miles over 5 days that we were wishing we could just keep driving instead of stopping. At no point did we find ourselves saying "another stop? I was just getting into the groove here and wanted to keep going" so I don't put a lot of weight in people claiming that having to stop to charge would alter their lives significantly especially when we're talking about something most people do once a year on average.

Those numbers are close to a worse case scenario within the Tesla lineup as well. It was in a 60kWh car and most these days are north of 75kWh with several in the 100kWh range being made today. The difference is a car that gets around 200 miles of range versus car that gets around 300 miles of range. The new Long Range Model 3 gets closer to 350 miles or range or damn near double the range of the car we have. In the not-so-distant future we'll see cars north of that. Our car with a max range of 200 miles exceeds our normal daily commute by 10x though so I think people put too much weight in long road trips but that too has been addressed by Tesla and continues getting better.

Another key is that recent announcements have stated that Tesla will be not only doubling the Supercharger stations again in 2019 but will also be "significantly increasing the charge speed" all at the same time. Some are predicting that charge speeds could nearly double which will halve the amount of time you sit charging. So instead of 20-25min on average more like 10-12min. That's for cars already made and already on the road today not future technology which could see improvements on both charging and battery side to cut that down even more.

The higher the capacity of the battery the longer the range which is obvious to most. What isn't as obvious is that the higher the capacity the faster they take a charge. This means that those larger capacity batteries not only require less stops but sit for less time when they do stop. Hence my statement that our car is basically a worst case scenario and it was still perfectly enjoyable.

They're also making some advancements that some are speculating will arrive in vehicles in the next few years or so that will both increase range as well as decrease battery and cost to produce. The forthcoming Roadster (supposed to come out in about two years) is estimated to have a range of over 600 miles. That's absurd and coming awfully close to some people's pie-in-the-sky idea of what range an EV should have. This doesn't even factor in what technology upgrades are on the horizon which will make charge times faster, longer range, lower cost and longer life. The deal they just inked buying the battery tech company last week is reported to have pioneered a tech that will add over 20% range to existing batteries and make them longer lasting, lighter weight and lower cost. Some speculate that this tech could see it's way into a refreshed version of the Model S/X or Roadster which would mean that we see that in the next couple of years.

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Originally Posted by Mtneer

Yep. It's 520 miles from here to Salt Lake and takes 8 hours, with stops. It's almost 750 miles to Ketchum and that takes 12 hours, with stops. When an EV can get even close to those times, I'll be interested. So what, another 20 years?

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Yep, 20 years.










...Or it exist already today. I seem to recall doing a similar exercise about these trips that were supposedly not possible for EVs in other threads too and it was crickets whenever I produced the facts.

According to the Tesla Trip Planner that trip from Boulder to SLC can be made in about 9 hours including stops to charge up. The trip from Boulder to Ketchum ID can be made in about 14 hours with stops. Both of those estimates are doing the speed limit so if you go faster than that (which I assume if you're making the times you state with stops for gas) those times would be even closer to the "untouchable" numbers you stated.

Oh, did I mention that if I took those trips right now in our used Tesla Model S all of those miles are free? Thanks to the free unlimited lifetime Supercharging that came with our car. You may have noticed the estimated gas savings in that Tesla trip planner I linked to if you play with it at all.

So, when is the Tesla test drive?

Except the free supercharging for life was discontinued, unless you get a used car that happens to have it transferrable.

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Originally Posted by Jer

It depends on many variables and factors but in our instance we stopped about every 2 hours and the total stop was usually about 20min or so before we were able to get back on the road.

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So at a charging location how many "stations" do they have? Because it seems like this model works great as long as EV's are relatively rare.

If EVs start becoming more common then that "20 minute" charge time can easily be an hour if there are 3 people in line ahead of you waiting to charge.

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Originally Posted by 00tec

Except the free supercharging for life was discontinued, unless you get a used car that happens to have it transferrable.

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That is correct. Any new car purchased as of the date of this post no longer includes it. I say it that way because Tesla may extend this at some point to other cars or offer promotions from time to time which they've been known to do. Also, in times of emergency they've been known to allow free Supercharging and unlock any software limitations on range temporarily. Any used car that was delivered prior to Jan 2017 will include it free for life and it 100% transfers with the car from owner to owner to owner in perpetuity. Even the new cars that don't get it for free don't pay that much of a free to use this network. For those average stops I described you can expect $7 give or take. Still better than what gas would cost even if you do have to pay for it. That's another selling point to finding a used one that has it if that's an important feature to you. On paper it sounds awesome but even if you travel a few long trips every year you're not really saving a fortune. You will over what you'd pay in gas but the difference between unlimited free supercharging and pay supercharging is nominal IMO.

That's beside the point though. I threw that extra tidbit in as an extra bonus to the point which was that the exact hypotheticals he challenged with were entirely doable with today's technology available right now.