[NPR] Electric cars have a road trip problem, even for the secretary of energy

Why? These things don't come together overnight, we knew that car chargers were going to be a huge problem. I'm sure the system will get much better as time goes on since it's being heavily invested in.

Department of energy found out the real challenges of our charging network. It's a bit silly that they had some staffer take up a spot with their ICE, that definitely was not going to go well if it was a busy charger. That was definitely stupid on their end.

 

Yeah, no one dares to take a long road trip in an all-electric car. Just ask Musk.

 

I'm all in on solar and getting off of fossil fuels... but right now an EV is much more viable as a second car. I can't imagine taking a road trip on Thanksgiving or Christmas and trying to find an open, functional charger while having to deal with all the other road trip things like screaming kids and bad weather. Or trying to evacuate from a hurricane. That game of /hotel is full, keep driving/ just won't work.

 

It makes zero sense to take a long road trip on EV during the busy season. I get it, it's an easy punching bag item for @Os Trigonum to treat us to his op-ed's, but in reality, this EV conversion is going to take time. Currently, even with federal credits, the majority of EV's are highly priced which for most people do not make economic sense. You throw in our current timeframe of higher interest rates and it becomes even less affordable. Then you throw the lack of charging infrastructure. You also sprinkle in there that fast chargers still take time for a car to get a full charge, and well, we end up where we currently are.

It doesn't mean to throw in the towel and give up, but I guess in the mean time, it will be a cute topic to talk about to ensure we stick it to those libtards.

 

Most families I have seen with an EV use it for their daily commute and have another car for long trips.

 

Lol. Wrong interpretation. Not at all pissed at NPR. NPR is one of the few aces left in news media.

 

Yes, seems like more investment is needed to accommodate the transition. It is in the process, and more government investments, grants, and tax breaks might help speed it up.

 

If she's gonna go on a campaign to market EVs, she should acknowledge the complications with EV travel. The report says she's aware there are challenges with EVs. If you're not transparent when promoting a product, you risk worse backlash when users encounter that downside.

She used her privilege to bypass that complication. That's damaging to her campaign. It shows she's unwilling to deal with cons to EV travel. To add further hypocrisy to it, her staffer used an ICE vehicle to block the charger. That's just worse optics.

It's like the Minions panel meme. "EVs are great!" (still uses ICE cars). "No problems with EV travel!" (blocks others from sharing a charger). Very contradictory actions to her campaign.

 

When you want to suck a titty but just can't find one

We need more charging stations and t*tties.

 

Federal money is 80% funding a 4+ unit fast charging stations every 50 miles along interstates and other corridors. The state DOTs are running processes right now for awarding those funds to charging companies. Meanwhile, Tesla has decided to open their charging network -- which is better maintained and more reliable than others -- to other companies, and many other EV manufacturers have pledged to adopt Tesla's charging standard. But that's all just kicked off in the last year. A year from now, you'll be seeing the new charging stations operating. In 3 years, they'll likely all be open. In 5 years, we'll come to realize we overbuilt.

 

In before someone comes along and reminds people that many EVs can go as far on or farther than a comparable gasoline vehicle on a tank of gas, and that they're more than adequate for the vast majority of drivers most of the time.

 

Overbuilding an enabling infrastructure is a temporary problem with a likely long-term positive return.

 

this won't be an issue for very much longer. Also in this article, but conveniently left out of the post:

Riding along with Granholm, I came away with a major takeaway: EVs that aren't Teslas have a road trip problem, and the White House knows it's urgent to solve this issue..Tesla chargers are significantly better than the competition, and most of the electric vehicles in the U.S. are Teslas.
Tesla is opening up its exclusive network to more vehicles, which could transform the charging experience as soon as next year.

For years, Tesla kept its network of Superchargers as a walled garden. Tesla drivers raved about them, but no one else could use them.

That started to change this year when Tesla struck a deal with the White House to open some chargers to the general public. And the walled garden blew wide open after Ford announced it was adopting Tesla's charging technology. Future Fords will come with the Tesla-style plug, and starting in January, existing-Ford owners can buy an adapter and plug in.

"Clearly, we need more high-speed chargers, particularly in the South," Granholm told me at the end of her trip. She emphasized the $7.5 billion investment that the Biden administration is making in building more public chargers — money that's currently being distributed to states.



"By the end of this year, I think we'll start to see [those chargers] popping up along the charging corridors," she said.


This summer, seven legacy automakers — BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis (formerly known as Fiat Chrysler) — announced they were banding together in a joint venture to launch a new, as-yet-unnamed, charging network.

They plan to build 30,000 superfast 350-kilowatt chargers — even bigger and faster than the Supercharger network.



Despite overcrowding, broken chargers and slow speeds, charging on the road worked most of the time for Granholm's team.

"I think two days in, I would totally buy an EV," an Energy Department staffer who was driving an EV for the first time mused halfway through the trip. "Like, it would be pretty easy to do a road trip. You have to stop for lunch anyway, so you stop, charge, keep going."

Road trip charging can be cheap too. Granholm's 770-mile trip cost one of the Energy Department's drivers just $35 total, less than half of what gasoline would have run in a similar vehicle.

On a more basic level, Granholm's team was ultimately able to charge in every town it stopped at. There was no risk of being stranded, which was the fear of very early adopters of EVs, back before public chargers were available.



We are transitioning. To expect it to happen overnight is ridiculous. But it is happening fairly good pace.

 

PHEVs ftw!

 

I ain't knocking it. I'm saying the infrastructure bills Biden got passed are more than adequate to resolve the supposed range anxiety problem for EV adoption.

 

When Os Trigonum posts stuff like this it still shocks me. Is he against electric cars? Being a Texan I love the oil industry just as much as the next Texan for the wealth it has generated but only extremists deny that the Earth is getting warmer. Every year is the hottest on record