Range is the misconception, because people view range through the "sit and fill up then drive till empty" paradigm.
That is not how EVs work or how they should be used. They should be charged overnight/when you are doing something else, and on road trips should be charged to align with other stops even if those stops are 10 minutes. It's rare that I have ever done the "sit in the car for 40 minutes waiting for charge", and extremely common to do the "Put car on charger for 13 minutes while going into [insert any of the gazillion places with chargers in the parking lot] to use the bathroom, stretch legs, and get a snack, or see a landmark"
Also you usually structure it so you arrive at your destination with very low charge, because you fill up while there. I've yet to be at a hotel with a gas pump in the lot.
Again, EVs function differently than gas, and that change of paradigm really gets people ruffled up and confused.
I actually leased a Kia EV6 recently without too much research into the charging situation, assuming that in 2025 it was probably pretty well figured out, and I could just do as you propose and just charge in small bursts at the grocery store etc. But:
- It didn't come with a home charger at all. They're not cheap.
- It came with a J1772 adapter, but no CCS adapter. The car itself has NACS. So I'm limited to Tesla superchargers, which are expensive, unless I buy a new adapter (not cheap, or cheap, but suspicious Temu brands).
- The experience of using all of these different branded charging points is _awful_. You need to create 10 different accounts with a bunch of terrible apps. The maps to find charging infrastructure seem universally awful.
- Pretty common to arrive at a charging location to find that some nutjob has hacked off all the charging cables. The only reliably maintained charge points are the larger, more expensive high speed charging locations.
I think a lot of the issues would be solved if I was more committed to the car and the house that I'm living in, and installed a home charger to charge at night. But the charging experience out in the world is absolutely _dismal_ when compared to gas vehicles, even if you change your behavior.
The thing is, for most people a standard wall outlet is plenty. The math works out that a simple 15/20 amp circuit can charge over 40 miles overnight, and the vast majority of people aren't driving more than that for their daily commute plus errands. Level 1 charging is genuinely sufficient most of the time. I was particularly swayed by the technology connections video on this topic I watched before buying my first EV https://youtu.be/Iyp_X3mwE1w
The real pain point, in my opinion, is whether you have any place to plug in nightly. If you don't, then as you pointed out, it becomes a nightmare to own. Range anxiety is completely justified when public charging infrastructure is still as unreliable as it is, years after the initial build outs. Your points about charging pain are all too common.
If you have a garage with an outlet, you are generally fine. I lived off a level 1 charger for over a year before I decided I wanted the convenience of a level 2 charger.
Sorry, I love Technology Connections as much as anyone, but that's a ridiculous argument. Even people who drive less than 40 miles a day will occasionally need to drive 100 miles a day for two days back to back. That's not even a long distance trip, it's just driving around. With level 1 charging they are stuck and frustrated. With level 2 they're fine. Not to mention the hassle and mental energy required to plug in and out for every little trip.
For most people a 240V outlet is worth it. Not to mention it's at least 10% more efficient, which is quite significant and weird that Technology Connections didn't mention that.
You can use DC fast chargers to fill gaps as needed.
Also if you are always driving 40mi/day, you likely float with a battery percentage around 80%, leaving plenty of capacity for those consecutive 100 mile days with your standard overnight slow charge.
Again, this cannot be said enough, EVs are not gas vehicles, they do not refill like gas vehicles, if you apply gas vehicle logic to them, they look awful. But they are not gas vehicles, they don't follow the same logic and rules of gas vehicles. So you don't apply gas vehicle logic to them.
It's like handing chopsticks to an 18th century westerner, they'll stab their food with it and laugh about how stupid and useless they are. You need to learn and use chopsticks before criticizing chopsticks.
This whole thread (as always) is full of people stabbing their food with chopsticks.
Look, I don't care, I know there are strong opinions about how these discussions sway people one way or another. I'm as much of an EV technology fan as anyone, but I'm speaking from personal experience with this exact situation: if I didn't have a 240V charger in my garage, my EV experience would be garbage and I'd give up on it in frustration. I own one of the most common EVs, I have DC fast chargers in my area, I don't drive my EV that much during the week, but when I need to drive a bunch of short trips on the weekend, this exact scenario arises. I don't care what your theoretical model of an average EV driver looks like, I'm telling you that it doesn't match my reality and I am certain the reality of many others.
What's bizarre is that this should be incredibly non-contentious when it comes to EV adoption. By code, everyone in the US already has two phases at their panel and running a wire and outlet in their garage (or a weatherized cable to the outside) costs $100-150 in materials and a similar amount in labor. This is literally negligible in the broader scheme of the automotive economy. My humble suggestion to you is: save your breath, we're on the same side, raise your voice instead when it comes to demanding a sane EV industrial policy, regulatory policy, urban planning policy, removing subsidies for oil and gas industries, and the like.
That example doesn't make sense, because 100 miles back to back is only 200 miles. You've got about 80 miles from charging overnight those two days and another 200+ miles already in the battery. In that situation you're totally fine. After that there are superchargers of course.
> It didn't come with a home charger at all. They're not cheap.
Level 1 EVSE's are super cheap, almost all of them are under $200. They aren't fast (most are 1.44kW), but that doesnt really matter if you are parked at home for 12+ hours a day.
(also small semantic nitpick, but your car did come with a charger, its built in to the vehicle. the EVSE that connects it to a wall outlet is basically just a fancy extension cord. this is why they are so cheap)
That’s exactly the problem. I’d be happy to use an EV daily, as I drive short distances. But when I drive longer, then I don’t want to waste hours on charging.
The other day I drove 700km in just about 5.5 hours (German Autobahn). Few stops to pee. With EV that would be few hours more (!). If this doesn’t bother you, then it’s fine. It matters to me though.
Sometimes I also drive early in the morning 600km, and in the afternoon back, so I’m home until 22:00. With EV, that’s just impossible.
You are perhaps an edge case. For many people (the vast majority), you end up spending way, way less time refueling, even if the occasional road trip takes a little longer. It depends on how important time is to you.
As long as there's a fast charging station somewhere along the route you'd need more like 30 minutes to charge midway through, not multiple hours.
You also surely recognize that your driving patterns are very atypical and a car not working for them says very little about how suitable the car is for the market as a whole.
A fast charging station that is working, that has the correct connector for your car (including adapters you carry), that your car will work with (Tesla hasn't opened their superchargers to call cars with the NACS connector), that you have an account with... There are too many things that just are not there.
One top of that you need to find a charger. They are all over, but many of them are slow speed chargers. There are also a lot of gaps, if you pass a charger with 50% battery remaining you can't be sure you will make the next one. (most cars can pass several gas station with 5% gas in the tank and still make it to one). You need to ensure you will get back to your car when it is charged so they don't charge extra (this is a problem if you are at a concert or something and are trying to charge while doing something else that can't be interupted)
Someday all the above will be fixed. Everyone agrees NACS is the future connector, but it isn't rolled out. Someday every "gas station" will have a charger with the gas pumps (or perhaps something else?) - at least along routes where people often make long trips. Someday you won't need a phone/account, just swipe a card - or so I hope. But someday isn't today.
In your typical 475km EV sedan, you would only need about 20 minutes of charging to do that 700km.
This is why I am like a broken record repeating that EV misconceptions kill EVs. You are applying gas car logic to electric cars, which is what people do, and stops them from getting an EV.
If you often mowed a town park, you wouldn't buy a hand-push lawnmower and then be upset about lawn mower technology.
The Renault 5 is a town car. Its specs are closer to a golf cart than a motorcar. It fills a niche, but if you are traveling often, a different EV would suite you better.
People assume everyone has the same resources as they do. Your point would be fine, if Renault 5 would be very cheap.
But it’s not. It’s the car what many people can afford.
Thinking that people have “misconceptions”, because they don’t buy expensive EV-s, which have good capabilities, is very strange.
You say EV-s are good and people just don’t get it. But people who buy EV-s for 25k, their experience is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than in EV-s for 50k.
These people are buying those cars, because that’s what they can afford, not because they are stupid to see that a more expensive car can do better.
Look at 25k ICE cars. They offer lot more comfort regarding “charging”, as same price EV-s. They work in a city and outside city as well. No trade-offs.
That’s my point, when I say “price and range”.
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Renault 5 EV is a pretty normal car in Europe regarding its specs. Why would it be a golf cart?
> Renault 5 EV charges with 11kW. This is the size of car I need.
AC only EVs dont exist in the US market any more AFAIK. Looking at the Renault 5 models currently available in the UK market, they dont have any AC only models either (maybe they do in other countries though).
> The other day I drove 700km in just about 5.5 hours (German Autobahn). Few stops to pee. With EV that would be few hours more (!)
If you got an EV with fast charging (and there were fast chargers on your route) it would actually be under 20 minutes more.
For example Ioniq 5 has a range of ~480 km. Let's say you started at 100% and drive down to 10%. That gets you 430 km, so 270 km left to go.
At a 350 kW charger the Ioniq 5 goes from 10-80% in 18 minutes. Assuming you do not want to take it below 10% that's 340 km before you next need to charge, more than the 270 km you need to reach your destination. You arrive with 70 km left before needing to charge again.
Let's do the round trip extra time. That's 1400 km for the trip. Again assuming we start at 100% and we don't let it go between 10%, then we get 430 km using before the first charging stop.
At that point we've got 970 km left that will have to be powered by our charging stops. Every 20 minute stop is giving us 340 km, so we'll need 3 stops, or one hour of stop time.
You might also need a stop, most likely shorter, at your destination if you are going to do a lot of driving there before returning home.
In a majority of cases with EVs charging speed is a bigger factor in how much time you spend stopped than range. Many people overlook this and might be a longer range EV when they would actually have faster trips if they got one with a much higher charge rate even if it had a substantially lower range.
The way to think of it is once you get past the range you got from charging before you left, every km travelled on the trip comes from stops during the trip. If EV X charges twice as fast as EV Y and they both need a stop at the same place, Y is going to spend twice as much time on chargers for the rest the trip as X no matter how many times they have to stop. If the fast charging X has half the range it will stop twice as often, but an X stop will be 1/4 the time of a Y stop actually charging.
Y making few stops does mean less time spent on stop overhead, by which I mean the time when you are off the highway but not actually charging. That should only be a couple minutes or so per stop though since you can overlap time consuming stop activies like visiting the bathroom with the actual charging.
On most trip that saving from less total stop overhead can't come anywhere near the savings from faster charging and so fast charging meh range will usually beat crap charging but great range unless the trip is short enough that only the short range car needs to stop. The great range car also does got farther before needing the first stop, so it doesn't need to add as much mileage during the trip put that too usually doesn't make much difference either other than fairly short road trips.
But “price and range/charging speed” still applies.
I can’t afford an expensive EV with fast charging, but I can afford a cheap ICE. I get it that in US people buy 100k cars as there is no tomorrow. But not everywhere it’s like that.
For 10k one can get a decent ICE. Can you get fast charging used EV for 10k?
We are slowly getting there, the used EV market takes time to build up a stockpile of good and fast charging cars. Also for total cost of driving you need to factor in cheaper charging than fueling on average, lower maintenance and maybe reduced (road) taxes depending on the country.
The big problem here is we need a hybrid stage in between.
I have a hybrid now, it's still a conventional powertrain, and it's not chargeable. That's not exactly what I want, but it's what I could get.
I want a fully electric drive train hybrid with around 100 miles capacity on the battery, then a generator that's big enough to keep it running if the battery is drained.
100 miles gets you through the average day without having to use gas.
An electric drive train turns your engine to a generator that runs at a fixed speed and is more efficient. It also massively reduces the complexity turning into a system more like an EV.
And, if I go on a long trip, the car still gets me to where I'm going without charges (unless I choose to so I can save gas).
On the flip side, it massively increases your BOM and maintenance considerations, as now you have to have all the bits of an electric powertrain and most of the bits of a gas powertrain. All for the few times that you’re driving more than 300ish miles in a stretch?
It’s easy to say that EV charging on long trips should align with other stops until you factor in kids. Doing a normal 2-3 hour one way trip with kids is already not fun, I don’t want to pull over for them to pee 20 minutes before I need to sit and let the thing charge for 30 minutes.
Nevermind the fact that there are very, very few EVs suitable for anyone with more than 2 kids.
I can do a ten hour road trip with a family of four plus a dog in a used (2022) EV that I got for ~30k last year. I think the idea that price and range are problems is exactly the misconception that op was taking about. They are somewhat more expensive, although when I originally did the calculus, fuel savings made up the difference in monthly payments for a new vehicle, but that's going to vary a lot. The is a very small proportion of people for whom range is a legitimate concern.
Now do the range/time/stops calculation with a travel trailer.
Yes, if we're talking about normal family travel, an EV works fine for many trips (though there are still charging "dead spots" in parts of the country - looking at you WV).
But, "truck stuff" like towing, they aren't there yet. Maybe in a few years when we get the next generation of battery and charger tech.
Yep. It takes a massive battery (and massive "normal" range) to pull off towing any distance. Unless I'm wrong, only the Chevy Silverado EV has the range (480ish) to make a reasonable tow vehicle, but only with the big battery, which pushes the price north of $90k.
I actually enjoy doing road trips in my tesla more so than in ICEs, because of the forced breaks. With ICEs, stops would be either for food or for bathroom breaks. A lot of times just eating in the car while driving. But for a 10 hour drive I am forced to take 4 20 minute stops - so once every 2 hours. This ends up making me feel a lot better at the end of the trip and also gives you "guilt free" time to enjoy a random park you've never been to, or sit down and have a meal. So, lets say 80 minutes of added time for a 10 hour trip, vs maybe 40 minutes that I would have added in my gas guzzler. 40 minutes extra on a 10 hour trip just isn't that big of a deal to me and especially so considering all the benefits from walking around for a bit or seeing some new places.
Obviously you could do that same thing in an ICE car, but I feel the pressure to keep moving so it hits different.
For me, it's some intermediate trips where the EV really "fails" (though admittedly the gap closes every year and the use case below is basically a worst case scenario short of trying to tow trailer on the same route).
A common trip for me is DC -> Dolly Sods WV for camping. Less than 3 hours drive time each way, about 150 miles. I only need to stop for gas once during the trip and for only as long as the tank takes to fill (no meal needed).
In an EV, that ~6 hour round-trip takes about 9 hours due to 2 hours of charging and a 60 mile detour. That's using ABRP, with an Ioniq 5 from Reston VA to Dolly Sods Wilderness and back, no overnight charging because it's a wilderness location (gravel parking lot in the middle of nowhere).
> In an EV, that ~6 hour round-trip takes about 9 hours due to 2 hours of charging and a 60 mile detour. That's using ABRP, with an Ioniq 5 from Reston VA to Dolly Sods Wilderness and back
That a fairly dead area of the country charger wise but I see several CCS chargers <5 miles out of the way and a lot more if your Ioniq has NACS.
> This ends up making me feel a lot better at the end of the trip
My SO commented the same after our first long trip with an EV. She drove the whole way.
Yes it took an hour longer due to charging, but when we arrived she wasn't exhausted like she was used to, so she could go out and do stuff right away. So overall she preferred it a lot.
I make sure to have 100% charge before I leave, and then I drive it down to 5-10% and hit up a super charger. The batteries charge the fastest from 0-50%(~15 mins), so I end up having about 60-70% charge by the time I'm heading out. Then I just repeat the process. I also arrive at my destination with 5-10%. I have a 2023 model Y for the record.
I also try to drive in a manner that is friendliest to the battery (ie I'm not accelerating a bunch to pass people or driving 90 mph), and almost all the driving is on a highway. But, that's how I naturally drive in my gas car as well.
I do ~Denver to ~Salt Lake City and back 2x/year through the Wyoming route and I've done it 6 times so far in a Tesla and 4 times in a gas SUV. I do it in the early/late summer so temperatures are warm, which I'm sure helps the mileage.
The tesla mapper site claims you can do it with only 35 mins charging, but I prefer the northern route, and my actual departure/destinations are about ~1hr more driving, but I'm sure that wouldn't add more than 45 minutes to the charging time: https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=LR_RWD_NV36&o=Denver,%20CO,%...
I recently did a road trip to Maine, and the whole week it didn't get above 15F. The difference in range was about 20% less. But I drive at 65mph with cruise control all the time.
Nah. EVs can often charge ~80% in 20-30 mins. Pumping gas takes me at least 5 mins. You win pretty quickly on this metric unless you do a lot of 200+ mile trips.
You can buy 1-2 year old used Teslas and BYD's in Australia for ~30% below retail.
Meanwhile Toyota hybrids not just retain their value but there have been moments where used RAV4's are listed above retail because the waitlist for new was so long.
The poor resale market for EVs just means that people who actually have some understanding of the battery lifespans can get very good deals on 1-2 year old cars
Tesla is a special case because they manipulate their pricing on a monthly, sometimes daily basis, and in the past they've changed the price quite significantly. In the US, the tax credits also really screw with the market dynamics. Lots of people think the car depreciates really quickly because they don't realize the original buyer didn't pay MSRP. I paid $20K under MSRP for my Lightning and in the just over a year I've owned it, the value has dropped about 7-8K. Pretty normal for the first year of a new vehicle.
Most other car prices are "manipulated" on a minute-by-minute basis, insofar as pricing is different for each customer, based on their their willingness to go hard in negotiation, manufacturer incentives, demand levels, stock levels, finance packages, and the current mood of the dealership principal.
The difference with Tesla is that their current "best price" is published out in the open.
That can be true, but at least in the case of Ford's EVs, many (maybe even most, for a while) of us did not really negotiate with the dealer, the price came from Ford. The dealer wasn't even allowed to negotiate, in fact.
Depends a lot on the particular example. My Lightning was less expensive than the Powerboost I had been shopping for originally. And 250-300 miles is well beyond my typical daily driving range requirement (and Superchargers are pretty plentiful in most of the areas I ever find myself).
My 2024 Lightning Flash was just under 51K, FWIW. Extended range, plenty of toys, definitely not the base model.
I admit I was also under the impression they were expensive, and I was shopping for a Powerboost F150 first, until someone told me that MSRP was a lie.
A 600 mile trip can (theoretically) be done with 1 charge, because you leave home with full range, and arrive with 0 charge (and fill up overnight). That one charge is done while eating dinner, or spaced out in increments over the course of the trip, stops which you would take anyway. I know few people who want to bang out 10 hours without stopping for at least 1-2 hours over the course of the trip. And those who do, can be the edge case with gas cars.
So you need to go 600 miles, and you need 1 full charge worth of energy during that.
If that one charge takes 1 hour, you can also break it up into four 15 minute sessions at any time of your chosing.
I'm sorry, but almost no regular person does 10 hours without at least four 15 minute stops.
Range is not at all the problem people make it out to be.
Where can I find chargers on demand like that? There are a lot of slow chargers that won't give you much range in an hour. There are a few fast chargers that will, but they are much less common - enough to make the long trips possible but you need to stop where the fast charger is not where you are going to eat a meal or use a bathroom anyway. (gas stations are everywhere and so if you need a bathroom you can get gas at the same time)
My 10hr drives usually have 2 stops at 30mins-1hr each, for food. Unfortunately, stopping at a restaurant for a meal doesn't leave the vehicle in a location that has a charger, for the most part. Other parts of the world may differ, but the infrastructure to "just spend 15 minutes charging" whenever you want is not there.
I picked Shreveport, LA as a starting location and went west towards El Paso until I found a city that was slightly over 600 miles of distance. The cities are mostly irrelevant unless you pick something that is exceptionally hilly such as routes through mountain ranges or something.
You can get Model 3 LR that will do it for $20k used.
Like everyone else, you are thinking in "gas car" trying to resolve an electric car problem.
You start every trip in an EV with full range (unplug from home base charger). You drive 300 miles. You full recharge. You drive another 300 miles. You plug-in and go to sleep.
A used Model 3 LR cannot do 300 miles of highway driving in almost any condition. Even a brand new one cannot do that. The only way you get 300mi of driving out of a Model 3 is if you drive at 35mph or something, which would be wildly impractical for any road trip situation.
They have worse prices (higher) and worse range (lower, particularly for towing). These aren't misconceptions. (My only car is an EV that I'm happy with. But lying about EVs doesn't benefit advocates.)
Ok, thanks. Current 2026 base trim prices are 29k for the ICE and 35k for the EV. If you told me GM was eating thinner unit margins on the EV version, I wouldn't be shocked either.
> Does this factor in cost of ownership? Gas, oil changes, less complexity?
No, I'm just talking about sticker price.
Lifetime EV costs are relatively unknown at this point, so that would be a relatively speculative comparison. You have to have a pretty optimistic view on long-term EV maintenance costs and charging costs to have EVs pencil out better with long-term cost of ownership.
If you want to talk about ongoing costs like oil and gas in ICE vehicles, you probably also need to be thinking about cost of charging (whether you can charge at home, or only at expensive DCFS) and perhaps relative cost of consumables like tires (EVs might require costlier higher load rating tires and the torquey motors might make it easier to chew through tires faster). E.g., in my area, fast charging has a per-mile cost roughly on par with gas prices (~4x home electricity prices). So if I couldn't charge at home, ownership would be somewhat costlier.
> Towing reduces a gas powered car’s range, too.
Yes, yes, but that's more acceptable when you're starting from 500 miles of non-towing range than 230, and filling up gas is still faster than filling electrons.
> So a car that's free to operate - zero maintenance, zero fuel cost - that cost $10k more than a regular car would not be a financial win?
You're just throwing around fictional numbers. EVs don't have zero maintenance costs or zero fuel costs. Real numbers for fuel can be lower than gas (in particular if you have home charging), and you could certainly color an argument that maintenance costs are lower. But it's not zero. Brand new gas or hybrid cars also have very low maintenance costs.
> Sticker price is a silly metric to solely focus on. Doubly so considering people rarely actually pay sticker.
Pretend I wrote "average out the door price" instead of "sticker." This number is higher than comparable ICE/hybrid vehicles, and for pretty obvious reason -- high capacity batteries are still enormously expensive. This is why range+price tends to be worse than similar gas/hybrid cars. I expect battery prices to continue to fall in the future, which will improve the economics for BEVs. But that's in the future! Not today.
> According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
Hell, ain't true for any gas pickup I've owned, either. Big tanks, and often temperamental bastards that have to be babysat and won't take fuel at full pump speed in any case.
Most road trip stops, according to the AAA, are 15 minutes anyway. Only on the Internet does everyone take 5 minutes to refuel.
~60 kWh still takes 18 minutes to charge at 200kW, and 200kW is a relatively optimistic average charge speed for most EVs at this time. Bigger batteries, or slower charge rates, take longer.
That's more of a Tesla thing. The Korean EVs have a more modern 800V setup and get much closer to the 400kW charger rating. Ford also lags in this department because they're using 400V and a big battery, which isn't a great combo.
The Hyundai/Kia EVs see peak charging above 200kW on chargers that support enough amperage (and native voltage), but not necessarily average charging above that rate. (I'm familiar; I own one.)
They have artificially worse prices in the US where EVs are mostly only getting sold as "luxury" vehicles and competition is hobbled by dealer networks and dealer laws and import tariffs.
Most other parts of the world EVs are starting to be cheaper than the equivalent ICE in the same category.
Range often doesn't need to get better, the impression of range needs to change. That's where a lot of misconceptions play into effect, over-focusing on things like gas-station-like charging stations over at-home charging. Over-focusing on "zero to full tank/battery statistics" when no one keeps a gas vehicle with a full tank overnight every night. Over-focusing on high speed charging and ignoring boring but useful "Level 1" charging, which is "just about everywhere" because our society has been building electrical outlets for a long time. Sure, the experience changes in things like long distance trips, but experience changes aren't "worse" by default of being a change.
