“I feel the need for speed,” said my friend who flew the F/A-18 for the U.S. Navy to the Hertz folks in Tampa. They rented him a Volvo XC40 EV, purportedly capable of 293 miles of range. It’s 190 miles and 3 hours to get from Tampa to our neighborhood in Jupiter, according to The Google. It took him more than 7 hours, an average speed of 25 mph. He found various chargers along the way, e.g., from ChargePoint, but they often charged at only 6.5 kW, less than what you’d need to feed a climate-safe induction range.
Adding insult to injury, as he watched the divergence between miles to destination and miles to empty he was treated to an NPR broadcast about the irrationality of range anxiety. As with inflation, if Americans were only a little more intelligent they would see everything the same way that the D.C. ruling class does.
Perhaps there would have been some way for him to plan the trip around the availability of high-speed chargers, but that’s in a theoretical world, not our real world. His take-away: “I will never buy an electric car.”
Non-Tesla EV’s are sunk without compatibility with the Tesla network
It’s a feature, not a bug!
They want you disarmed and immobile. (In addition to weak, sick, fat, ignorant, opiate-addicted, castrated, and dead.)
Hertz has really harmed their clients.
Here is the hertz location in Delray – https://youtu.be/XpdWqCwq7rA
Your friend didn’t do his homework. Can’t fix stupid, so let Darwin handle it.
I left Rochester NY at 9am 11/28 and arrived in St Pete Fl (1350 miles) at 9 am 11/29.
Anyone who hasn’t done that in a GAS car should refrain from having opinions about long road trips in an EV.
Basically, if you INTENTIONALLY rent anything other than a Tesla, you haven’t done your homework and I’m not sure sympathy is warranted.
Ted: If you rent from Hertz aren’t you getting a car from a category rather than a specific brand of car? In other words, if you agree to electric you’re not guaranteed to get a Volvo or a Tesla or any other electric car.
Philip is correct; a guy I know had a terrible Tesla rental experience, so for his next trip, he paid almost double the Tesla rate to reserve a “Maxima or similar”, but was emailed 3 days before his departure “You may get to drive an EV!”
At the counter, he pulled a “Ruprecht” using his son to get an ICE vehicle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKDUDF3cgRA
WordPress ate my first clip 🙁
FB: My last Hertz rental was in the “minivan” category and they tried to give me an SUV instead (this was at DCA and the mission was helping my mom to clean out her “independent living” apartment and move, so the SUV wasn’t going to work). My recent rentals in California have been of “full size car” (cue the picture of the mighty and awesome Toyota Camry) and then when I show up they try to give me an electric car instead (I’ve ended up with Teslas and Volvo BEVs).
This video might apply – https://youtu.be/1IyzgMxuXOE?si=mtwqvPNwZT48X1rd
Ted: Our next-door neighbor has an electric Jaguar. He says that it is unusable for non-local trips and the only way that it is practical to own is because the family also has a gasoline-powered car.
Regarding your theory that anyone who can’t travel as quickly over long distances in an electric car as in a gasoline car is “stupid”, this neighbor is a mechanical engineer with an Ivy League education and his wife is a specialist physician.
I rented a fiat 500e last week in Paris. EV database says real range is 235km, it has done exactly that on a mix of the peripherique, city and rural roads
https://ev-database.org/car/1285/Fiat-500e-Hatchback-42-kWh (WLTP range 330km)
Their Highway – Mild Weather (i.e. Florida?) real range for the most basic EX40 is 310 km, or right around the limit for the drive he had to do. Coincidentally, the lowest range is listed as Highway – Cold Weather (i.e. not Florida) of around 245 km, so a quick coffee stop would have done the trick.
So what is his story? Lead foot? Needs heating in what many places call mid summer temperatures?
phg: He said that, in an effort to maximize range, he drove 10-15 mph slower than if he’d been in a gasoline car (typical highway speeds in Florida are 65-85 mph). Certainly he wouldn’t have been running any heat, though probably some A/C. A friend’s daughter was recently driven to an athletic event about 4 hours south of Boston along I-95 (should be rich in chargers!) in a Tesla. The trip took more than 6 hours due to required charging. The punchline is that the Tesla owner (father of a teammate in the same sport) spent much of the 6 hours extolling how great it was to own a Tesla.
Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything
Last month I reserved a compact SUV from Budget at MCO for a 900 mile r/t to Columbia, SC. They gave me a 3-row Chevy Suburban. At first, the Suburban seemed way too big, but I quickly got used to it, and it was a very comfortable and safe-feeling ride up I-95. With the seats folded flat I was able to stretch out and catch a 30-minute nap in a rest area on the return trip.
The problem with vehicle range indicators is they are usually based on the realized fuel economy of the previous trip. If the previous trip were local, the range indicator would be inflated by the electric economy of low travel speeds.
Was there an easterly trade wind that day? I recently took a trip in a gassuv, and got 25mpg one way and 36mpg on the return trip. The reason was a strong wind parallel to the highway. Wind has an underappreciated affect on fuel economy.
Other possible explanations include tire underinflation, need for an oil change, poor alignment, previous battery abuse, bad highway condition, a gator stuck in the undercarriage, and just plain bad driving. There’s always a mechanical explanation!
oil change in an EV?
@Anonymous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
I meant lubricant issues not engine oil but phrased it stupidly.
Anyway seems like the rude commenters showed up tonight.
The vast majority of people who complain about range in EVs don’t understand aerodynamic resistance or haven’t done the arithmetic.
In gas cars, improving engine efficiency at high gears usually offsets aerodynamic resistance up to speeds of 60-80 mph, depending on the type of car, so normal drivers don’t notice an efficiency drop at highway speeds.
In EVs, fuel economy maxes out at very low speeds and falls off a cliff as soon as aerodynamic resistance becomes significant, usually above 50 mph. This can be a problem if there is a 20+ mph headwind, which means the fuel economy falls off a cliff above 30 mph instead. There is of course a tradeoff between minimizing aerodynamic drag and minimizing time stuck in a strong headwind, so driving 30mph isn’t optimal either.
This is why I always ask what the weather (and driving habits) were when someone bitches about their EV range. There’s usually a reason, even if it is over the heads of the previous replies.
Imagine the vehicle range was calculated at 50mph with calm winds.
You decide to drive 70mph into a 20mph headwind.
Your drag is more than 3x greater than in the test conditions, but your speed is only 40% greater.
That means your vehicle range could drop by more than half, depending on rolling resistance.
Gas engines have positively sloped thermal efficiency (which isn’t the same as fuel economy). This is because the engines are oversized and also gear ratios are chosen for torque.
Positively sloped thermal efficiency offsets a lot of sins. Drive 100mph instead of 70mph and your drag doubles, but part of that is offset by increased thermal efficiency. The same is true if you need more power to overcome a headwind or a flat tire or a bike on the roof.
EVs have no such luxuries. The batteries hold the energy equivalent of 2 or 3 gallons of gas, and the engines are 90+% efficient. Any f* up will wreck vehicle range far more than it does for a gas car, because the engine efficiency curve is flat. That’s why EV range is sensitive to a long list of possible f ups, including adverse weather and poor maintenance.
@Steve, it is not the all-EV vehicle range that is holding back an all-EV vehicle, it is the charging time. Today, if you are lucky, the best you can do is 20 minutes to charge your EV and for that you need special chargers and this special charger will not charge your EV vehicle battery to 100% [1].
For an all-EV vehicles to become main stream, you need to bring the charge time down to less then 5 minutes. There is simply no alternative that works even if you replace every-single-gas-station to a fast charging station — the 20 minutes time will not be acceptable, no one will wait 20 minutes at a gas-station converted to EV-station for 20 minutes (just imagine the lines too).
Saying you can charge at home/work, is not realistic either. Each family has 2+ cars, it is not an easy task or even realistic, to add multiple chargers at home or in the parking lot of an office, or a downtown garage or a parking lot at a mall, streets, etc. Even if you do, the power grid to the homes, offices, malls, etc. will not be able to service the demand.
This demand problem on our power grid, is yet another issue no one talks about. If you convert just 10% of all vehicles on the road to an all-EV, you will overload the power grid and force the electric companies to issue rolling blackout far, far more frequently than what California faces today [2].
I don’t understand what this an all-EV vehicles fad is all about. To me, an all-EV vehicle is like creating a colony on Mars, but yet we haven’t been back to the Moon since 1969. Till we fix the time-to-charge problem for an all-EV vehicles, the best alternative is hybrid, which easily gets 60 mpg — and that’s what our government need to mandate, not some fad dream like California is mandating [3].
[1] https://www.transportation.gov/rural/ev/toolkit/ev-basics/charging-speeds
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/business/energy-environment/california-energy-grid-heat.html
[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-epa-hold-hearing-california-2035-ev-sales-mandate-plan-2024-01-05/
@George A., thank you for a very balanced contribution to this discussion. This is increasingly rare, as EV discussions seem to bring the worst in culture wars.
I sold my last combustion car and have owned only different EVs over 8 years, and driven many more rental models. I have driven hundreds of thousands of km’s with EVs, including some pretty long road trips across Europe. When it comes to range, manufacturers have been allowed to scam us for too long. No matter if it is a Tesla or a Leaf, range estimates or ratings are excessively unrealistic. People need to understand this. The range quoted by manufacturers should be seen as maximum ever range in ideal conditions and a brand new car, not as a typical range. Even so, I’m quite skeptical of even the EPA range estimates. Battery decay, going at highway speeds, and using the A/C will affect the range significantly. If you half the given range and plan accordingly, you should be fine.
The (fast) charging speeds you point out are really important point, and something that is hidden from most EV users until they actually need to do it. Manufacturers again hide the real numbers behind unrealistic standard numbers. For example, take the Nissan Leaf first models that charge with CHAdeMO. The quoted number was that it charges at 50 kW, and takes 30 min from 20% to 80%. Having owned one, I can tell you these numbers are complete bullshit. In typical Norwegian conditions, if you’re lucky it takes 1h to go from 20% to 80%. I have often observed the quick charger doing less than 10 kW, sometimes even down to 6 kW! To say it can do 50 kW is completely unrealistic. I don’t know if it will be possible to do a quick charge in less than 5 min. Guess it depends on how much you want to drive. Most people don’t need a tank full of gas multiple times a day, so I’d argue that charging speeds of some models are already fine for most people.
I believe a common misconception from people transitioning from combustion to EVs is that you should charge in the same way. With your gas car it is quite simple. When the tank is nearly empty, you fill it up and that’s it. With EVs, the strategy needs to be different. Battery chemistry means that the charging profiles have very different speeds when the battery is low vs when it is nearly full, so it often makes little sense to charge in one go from nearly zero to 100%. Instead of one long and slow charge, it is better to split it in several smaller and faster charges. For example, leave it until the battery is between 10-20% and charge until it is 60-70%. That way, your car will charge much faster. Each of these many not take 5 min, but is not too far off, at least with a Tesla (can typically charge over 100 kW average for the first 60% of charge). And if you make a little toilet break, perhaps have a coffee, it will easily take a little over 5 min.
Your comment about “just imagine the lines too” is partly true, but doesn’t have to be in the future. I have seen large queues for EV charging, but the more modern superchargers have many more outlets than gas pumps in a typical station. I’ve been in some fast chargers with more than 40 chargers, and this number can realistically double in some cases. Just think about how much parking space there is around. Adding EV chargers to a car park does not add a lot more space. I could show you many garages, shopping malls, streets, etc, with EV chargers in Norway (admittedly, most not fast chargers). If everyone plugged in while doing their groceries or having a meal, it would be much easier. In this respect Tesla is again ahead of the pack, and when routing it can use the supercharger load information and send you to a different one if the original one is full.
I also don’t agree with the claim of not being realistic for everyone to charge at home. Maybe in the US it is more challenging because of the poor decision to go with 110V, but even in Norway with its ageing 230V IT system this is possible. Nearly every single one of our neighbours has at least one charger at home, and we have two. If you charge with single phase at 16V that gives about 3.7 kW, which overnight is enough to charge about 100 miles of range. Two chargers for two cars is 7.2 kW, or about 31A on a single phase. Most houses have at least 50-64A supply. So to drive two cars 100 miles per day is quite standard with the grid we have right now. In other places in Europe, with the better TT system, 400V and three-phase, you can easily get 11 kW for a car charger (some cars can do 22 kW, but they are a minority), or about 300 miles charging overnight. Now, if everyone used this much power, we’d be in trouble, but I doubt most people will need to drive 300 miles daily.
@George A
You lost me at ‘government mandate.’
@Steve: thanks for your detailed and informative response.
Unfortunately, everything you said weakens the case for EV’s and strengthens the arguments that EV’s are not FIT FOR PURPOSE as ICE replacements under most real-world conditions, and won’t be for the foreseeable future.
It’s a bit like replying to the statement “Gov. Greg Abbot should not become the starting running back for the Dallas Cowboys” with “That’s not fair: he’s older than most players’ grandfathers and has been confined to a wheelchair for 40 years.”
Such negativity! Imagine the first 20 years of ICE vehicles.
But then we were not dependent on a superior, preexisting alternative that was being outlawed.
The irony is that electric battery powered – vehicles predate gasoline-powered internal combustion engine vehicles.
Some people will say that the ICE manufacturers stamped out the nascent electric vehicle business. But as soon as the gas/petrol infrastructure was established, the obvious benefits of this high energy density fuel doomed the electric vehicle. Even by the end of the 20th century we saw the replacement of electric trams by diesel buses and the end of battery-powered milk deliveries.
Today’s batteries are becoming realistic for those applications, but still at least an order of magnitude poorer in energy density (say 1 vs 47MJ/kg) than fuel for real cars, like the Bidenmobile.
The comments on this post are interesting. So many bloggers today turn comments off and by doing so I think they miss an important feature of blogging.
I can’t say I’m sold on EV for road trips, at least for now. It’s fine for getting back and forth to work, provided you can charge it at home and the stated range is at least double your expected trip.
The main issue is people expect EVs to be “as good” as gas cars in every scenario, as well as cost competitive. Clearly, they are not.