To be a bit pedantic, there's really no such thing as "Level 3", just DC charging. I acknowledge that lots of people call DC Fast Chargers "Level 3", but it's really not a correct term. (but it's a handy shorthand, and I've been known to use it myself).

I think that's pretty accurate, but the following study noted some installations as high as $150K per charger (charger, not charger site!).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

It's an interesting read, btw...

Kyle of "Out of Spec" YouTube channel visited a V4 Supercharger site in Germany which had a "tap to pay" credit card capability. I assume that'll happen in the US as well, for the very reasons you're discussing...

Indeed, a skeptic might wonder whether EA (Volkswagen) may have had some ulterior motives in building a highly unreliable charging network, given that at the time the court ordered them to build it out (and still today) they make most of their money selling gas+diesel cars... thus they actually have an incentive to build out a truly shitty charging network to steer customers towards the better experience of a fossil fueled car.

Only Tesla has had a big incentive to build a usable charging network, and guess what? They have! It took them 11 years to get where they're at today, but it certainly answers whether it's possible to build out a usable, reliable network. You just need to have the incentive to actually do it, something that is still only true for Tesla. The other OEMs are getting on board BEVs, but they're certainly not there yet...

I know I shouldn't pick on you, but this seems one of the sillier postings on the subject. Why is it a big deal that you experienced an outage because of the Tesla charging station, compared to say, a backhoe hitting a buried cable? This stuff happens all the time.

As for what happens when the Superchargers go down, sure, it can happen. In 5 years of driving my Tesla it's never happened to me - the biggest outage I've encountered was 1 charger out of 8 being broken at the Chestnut Hill Supercharger... but it can certainly happen. But there are power failures that take out towns for other reasons, and then all the gas stations stop working, not only because it takes power to run the pump, but also to take credit cards, etc. Which is why people tend to fuel up their cars before bad weather comes through. So, same thing with electric cars... A little common sense goes a long way... I don't drag my ass into Superchargers on 5% SOC... when I'm on a road trip I usually shoot for 20% so that if I ever do encounter an entire Supercharger site down, I can make it to the next charger down the road...

As for getting electricity to small towns, yeah, it can be an issue. But it's not as big a deal as you imply... the power companies are in the business of bringing power to new locations. It can take time, and in cases you may have to pay some of the cost of bringing in the new lines, upgrading substations, etc. But it's not like we're going to throw a switch and instantly have to switch the entire transportation infrastructure over. It's going to take 1-2 decades for the transition to take place...

I've been reading some interesting papers about this subject, such as: https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

You're right that they need to be in the correct locations, but it's also true that chosen location can have a huge effect on the price... Bringing sufficient electrical service to a DC Fast charger can be extremely expensive if you pick the wrong spot.

As a Tesla owner of 5 years, they've done a very good job locating the Superchargers. When I got the car in 2018, there was only 1 Supercharger anywhere near me. Now there are 3 nearby, and a bunch further out. Not so true in the rural middle of the country, though.

I agree that there's a learning curve that very few people know about unless they're BEV enthusiasts/early adopters. The same thing happened with email, texting, smart phones (and will probably happen quickly with Chat GPT)... some people (especially older people) won't want to learn about the new technology and will stay stuck in the past. And the times will simply pass them by...

As for needing but not having an adapter... I guess it could happen, but I just keep mine in my glovebox... It's there if I need it. I actually have two, one I use at home, and the one I keep in the car. They aren't that expensive...

Yeah, I don't love that idea, because in inclement weather that means having to throw an icy/muddy/wet cable into my car when I'm done charging. But it's not a thing in the US, only Europe (and probably other continents). It does have some advantages (less cables draped on sidewalks, less worry about EVSE's not functioning because someone vandalized the cable... )

Don't forget cost of fuel. If we require fossil fuel combustion to use carbon neutral fuels, the price of gasoline could be: What does it cost? Porsche pegs the initial price at 10 euros per liter ($44.73 per gallon as of this writing!) but expects efficiencies of scale and technology to reduce that to $7.57/gallon by 2026. (I think 2026 is optimistic, but maybe by 2036...)

If you want the convenience of gasoline and you're willing to pay $8/gallon, I'm okay with that (except in inner cities where ICE should still be banned because of all the other pollutants they emit. We need to remove the hidden incentives by making people pay the full cost of their choice to burn gasoline. That's going to need to be phased in over a decade or so, because you can't instantly add $5/gallon to the cost of people's commute. But $0.50/gallon/year starting now, and use those funds to start building e-fuel / carbon capture infrastructue...

The statistics I read say that about 30% of Americans don't have parking situations at home amenable to charging. That's a lot, and I don't see much being done to address that need. Some of that could be addressed by aggressive incentives for employers to offer charging at work, but that still will leave a number of people without a great charging solution. I have talked to a few people who own Teslas, but don't have charging at home, who hit a Supercharger a couple times a week. It's not very convenient, nor is it good for the battery, and I don't think the average person would choose to do that.

I think you're probably right. It will probably take a combination of high fuel costs, inconveniences (like no inner city driving) and out and out bans to completely change people away from fossil fuels. On the other hand, there may be economic influences on automobile companies where is simply becomes uneconomic to offer gas/diesel cars for sale. If that happens, people may find it difficult to purchase a fossil fueled car, and maybe BEVs won't seem to inconvenient then...

Agreed, and also, I'd guess the Bolt and the Leaf are the leading non-Tesla BEVs in terms of volume. The Leaf charges at a maximum of 46 kW, and the Bolt tops out at 55 kW.

At those rates, the cars take superhuman patience to road trip.

Personally, when my Model 3 throttles down from 250 kW to around 80-90 kW, I unplug and head on my way. 80 kW or lower isn't worth the time waiting for more charge, unless there are some special circumstances (like, you're about to cross a gap that lacks chargers - I haven't personally encountered that in 5 years of driving the Model 3).

I think it's pretty fair to say that there are only a handful of non-Tesla car models, sold in modest/low quantity, that can currently charge at decent DC Fast charging rates...

re: towing... I think two or three things will probably happen - batteries for Trucks will get a little bigger (but I doubt we'll commonly see 200 kWh ) and battery chemistry etc. will improve some more, so range will probably increase, maybe topping out at 500 or so...

The other development is batteries in trailers (such as the Airstream eStream https://www.airstream.com/blog... )... It doesn't make sense for all applications, but it's a way to keep the truck getting ~2 miles / kWh when towing...

The final place for improvement is aerodynamics... Even a very small pop-up camping trailer can absolutely kill range... That's not extra weight being hauled or rolling frictions - that's aerodynamics. I'm thinking we'll see some kind of truck-to-trailer fabric aero-cover to reduce drag.

In any case, yeah, I agree that towing (with a truck or a car) is currently not well handled by EVs outside of around town...

> Spokane to Omak, over the pass to Twisp, then south to Wenatchee, in the winter. Will you make it? Wenatchee does have a fast charger of some type.

The short version is "yes"... I set my consumption to 324 Wh / mile to account for winter... But i have some questions about the route...

Is the goal to get to Wenatchee? Because there's a much better route straight from Spokane to Wenatchee... And if you want to go to Omak for some reason, then ABRP suggests you take 97 to Wenatchee, rather than the detour through Twisp...

But yeah, even if there are reasons to take the route you suggest, rather than the more straightforward route, the car can do it. The Colville Indian reservation certainly acts as a barrier, with no chargers along 395 there, but it's still doable if not as convenient as it could be...

Final thought... There used to be only 1 DC fast charger around here when I bought my car... Now there are about 8-10... So things get better every year - it's improving rapidly...

So, temperature matters for sure... make sure your tires are inflated to a good pressure despite the low temperature. That makes a huge difference.

Rolling through deep snow (or really deep standing water, like in a torrential thunderstorm) does cut your mileage by up to 50%... But here in Massachusetts, we probably get 6-8 storms like that per season... The rest of the time you're driving on cold dry pavement, and that's where I'd say 20-25% is true. On a normal commuter day, the 50% decrease isn't an issue, and it only happens a couple times a year in practice - they're pretty good about plowing the roads here...

So, my 270 mile range is reduced to 202 miles on a cold winter day. And, during a heavy snowstorm I'll probably have to stop every 100 miles. But frankly, if it's snowing hard the speeds on the interstate are going to be low enough that I'll be thinking twice about whether I really want to road trip that day - whether I'm driving an ICE or a BEV. I used to drive Subaru STi which are amazing in snow... but all the other people are going 40-45 if the conditions are that bad, so I can't go fast regardless of what car I'm driving.

In 5 years of driving the Model 3 in New England winters, with a fair bit of driving up into New Hampshire and Maine, range has never been a problem for me.

If my car had 200 miles of best case range, I'd be fine with that commute. The heat pump cars (mine is 2018 when it was just resistive heating) are probably even better...

That's true, but 10 minutes every couple hours is just enough to stretch my legs...

I've had EVs for 10 years now. My first EV had 85 miles of rated range, you could stretch it to 100 if you drove slow. There were no DC fast chargers, so it wasn't able to road trip. Still, for commuting and running of errands it was good for all my needs excepting on average one trip per month ( so I used my Subaru for those trips ).

Fast forward to 2018 and my Model 3, with 270 miles of highway range. I'm not afraid to road trip it anywhere in the country. If we had as many fast chargers as we do gas stations, I'd be happy with 180-200 miles of range, but in 2018 270 was a pretty reasonable range. There are many more DC chargers now, so smaller is now more practical, and that will continue to improve.

You can always concoct some crazy scenario and convince yourself you need some crazy big battery, but the article is basically correct. You should right size the battery to be big enough to not be inconvenient, but smaller saves money and weight, and is environmentally more sustainable.

Also, for those who propose plug in hybrids, we bought a Volt in 2016 which my daughter still drives, but frankly we all think it's a sub-par experience compared to the BEV... If you do lots of road trips, it turns into a ICE after you empty the battery, and remains that way for the remainder of the trip because it can't DC fast charge. I much prefer using the Tesla Model 3 for road trips...

Unfortunately, until you own your first BEV and get some real experience, it's natural to want a larger battery. Given that most drivers still haven't had their "first EV" experience, that means a huge number of people are out there thinking they need a gigantic battery...

My final bit of advice to someone considering buying a BEV - pay less attention to the range, and more to the typical charging speeds. If your car can charge at 150-250 kW on a road trip, you'll be in good shape. A car with a huge battery that can only charge at 80 kW will not be a good road trip car... You'll spend too much time waiting for the car to charge...

>cold weather (I live in the Northeast) saps 25 percent of the battery's range. Then if you use the heater (or in the summer, the air conditioner), you lose another 25 percent.

I think you're overstating and double counting the range loss. I lose about 20-25% in winter, which is due to the combined effects of temperature and running the heat. Also, I have an older Tesla with resistive heat, I expect heat pump cars do even better.

The range loss is real, but you don't need to overstate it. Also, it doesn't affect me much. On short trips I still make it home and have a fully charged battery in the morning. On longer trips, I just have to stop slightly more frequently than in summer. It doesn't end up being the big deal that people are trying to make it be...

>Americans can't plan to charge along the route. The full range (plus a healthy margin of error) is needed.

That's simply not true, nor is it reasonable. I've had EVs for 10 years. There were no DC fast chargers when I had my first EV, but by the time I bought my second EV in 2018 the Supercharger network was starting to be built out. I got a car with 270 miles of range, but my next one could be 200... The DC fast charge network has expanded to where I'd be comfortable with only 200 miles, even with winter shrinkage.

Buying huge batteries has all the negatives the article mentions. Buying a right sized battery makes economic and environmental sense. Eventually as the charger network becomes as prevalent as gas stations, sub 200 mile range will be reasonable...

Lol, no, usually every other stop, unless I'm drinking a lot of coffee.

It does feel good to stop and stretch my legs for a few minutes, though.