Electric cars
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Anonymous
| Does anyone have an electric vehicle? Not hybrid. How do you use them for long road trips? We take occasional long trips (eg Maine) and I’m trying to understand how feasible this is with a car with a range of less than 200 miles. Is it easy to find places to recharge? What is your experience? |
Anonymous
| not what you asked, but chiming in to say that you would probably the best optimization of energy efficiency, range, and price in a PHEV. I actually think that these are better for the environment right now than EVs because they don't require nearly the same amount of lithium, yet they'll still cover most of your miles in pure electric mode. |
Anonymous
+1 Everything I’ve ready about electric versus PHEV pointed my to the Toyota RAV4 Prime. I drive under 50 miles a day, but I drive every single day for kids activities. It will effectively be an electric vehicle for me 95% of the time without the negative battery environmental impact. Im comfortable with the hybrid option for our longer trips. I can’t wait for delivery at the end of the month! |
Anonymous
|
I think the best solution is waiting for either:
- plug-in hybrid with better electric range (rav4 prime is the best so far, but not great) - more options with longer range (400+ miles) -- the real-world mileage is much less than estimated. |
Anonymous
| We have a 300 mile range Tesla. Our first Tesla had 200 miles. I wouldn’t get less than 300. Road trips are doable bc that’s about the distance when we would stop for food ro a bathroom anyways. We just find a fast Tesla charger, grab a coffee and take a bathroom break and it’s all charged |
Anonymous
We have a 400 mile range Tesla and wouldn't get less than 400. 
1) you don't actually get the full range with real-world conditions 2) there isn't a charging station exactly X miles away from your home so you end up stopping sooner anyway 3) there are a bunch of superchargers along 95, but not as many off the beaten path |
Anonymous
| OP here. Pretty sure a Tesla is out of our budget! |
Anonymous
|
OP, we have a 250-mile range non-Tesla EV, and road trips aren't that complicated. Between here and New York, we stop once, in Wilmington, to charge at an Electrify America station that's at a Wawa, where we also get snacks, use bathroom, etc. Within 20 minutes (less, if I go by the estimate the route-planning apps give me), we've charged enough to make it to New York and to drive around if needed while we're there. Coming home, we usually stop twice, once in northern New Jersey and once again at the Wilmington Wawa, for about 15 minutes at each stop.
If the only thing that matters to you is making sure all of your road trips are absolutely as time-efficient as possible with no delays or stops, then an EV will not be for you. Otherwise, I like the way it drives, the fact that I can charge it overnight at home and never need to stop at a gas station, and the fact that it has no direct emissions (and because we have solar panels that generate more electricity than we consume, a reduced amount of indirect emissions). Charging on road trips will only get easier, too, because there's been a huge amount of investment in rapid-charging stations; within a few years, I'd be surprised if you have to plan ahead much as opposed to just hopping off the highway and to a fast charger when your battery starts to get to around 25 percent. |
Anonymous
| Question about EVs: there were some news articles about during Ian, those with electric cars would struggle making it Miami or or other places to evacuate since there aren’t a ton of quick charging stations and traffic could extend trips by many hours. What happens in those situations? Or in CA for wildfire evacuations? I guess it’s not that often but should you keep another hybrid/ gas car around for emergencies? |
Anonymous
In general, trips being extended by many hours due to traffic is usually not anywhere near as much of a problem for EVs as for gas cars, because they use hardly any electricity sitting in traffic and get far, far better range driving slower than they do at highway speeds. I haven't read the specific articles you're talking about, so I don't know the specifics of these situations. But if you've got an EV that you can charge at home and live somewhere where a sudden evacuation is something you generally need to plan for, you can probably keep the car ready to go just by charging it to 80 percent every night. If the power goes out, gas stations don't work, either, so personally, if we ever need to flee the D.C. area (??), I'll be taking our larger, safer, newer EV rather than our second car, which is gas-powered. |
Anonymous
| One other factor to consider on the PHEV vs. EV question is maintenance -- with a PHEV, you've got the whole gas-powered system to maintain. The scheduled maintenance for the first three years of our new EV is basically (a) change the air conditioning filter and (b) check the tire tread. No oil changes, etc. |
Anonymous
We are looking into an EV but if there is a need to escape, we will be taking our much more simple and capable Jeep -- don't want to be limited to roads. |
Anonymous
Yeah, my cars are limited to roads regardless of how they're fueled, so you're at least one step ahead of me, but I'm not all that worried about needing to escape. |