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Okay, next question, making it a round trip. What's the recharge time for say 3 hours there, loiter around town, 3 hours back?
Three hours is the standard drive time because there is no IH from Austin to Houston. It is either US 290 or intersecting IH 10 out of San Antonio at some point.
Next question is that 65 is a decent speed but IH 10 can be posted 75 in locations. Is there a speed for electric cars where there is a serious fall off of efficiency, of range?
Some vehicles can cover the roundtrip without recharging. For how long it takes to recharge, it depends on two things: what kind of vehicle and what kind of charger. Out in public charging stations, there are usually two classes of charging speeds which are level 2 and level 3 chargers. Here's a brief explainer, but you'll probably be charging at a level 3 fast charger for that time period if you're charging at all which for Tesla's net something like 15 miles a minute, but you can pretty safely assume a fast charger will at least get you at least 3 miles a minute for the very, very low end of fast chargers which is 50kW. One thing to note is that in EV chargers are sometimes within the parking lot or parking garages of the places you're actually planning on visiting anyways (one assumes you went to Houston for a reason rather than solely to make the drive back and forth). This means that parking time and charging time are essentially the same. Part of the reason for that is most buildings/areas have electrical hookups because a lot of places use electricity and there's not that much of a fire, fumes, or spill hazard with EV chargers so they can be pretty ubiquitous like that. So if you were going to an event or a nice dinner that lasted an hour or more and the venue had charging in its parking area, then there's a good chance that you come back to a fully recharged vehicle rather than having to make a dedicated pit stop to refuel.
Efficiency falls off with speed due to drag which goes up by the velocity squared, but that holds for pretty much everyone; EVs or ICE. You'll get more range with slower highway speeds, but EPA highway ratings aren't that far off for 65 mph, but I unfortunately tend to drive quite a bit faster than that, er, sometimes. In that sense, there's no real particular inflection point when it comes to highway driving for range.
One thing to note is that EVs have generally had some pretty significant range increases for new models every year since the Leaf kicked off what's essentially the modern era of EVs in 2010. Back then the max, min, and median range of EVs was 73 miles since the Leaf was your only option.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 02-07-2021 at 05:14 PM..
With a Cold War diesel-electric submarine, one can run at top speed and drain their battery in an hour or they can run on a knot and keep under for two weeks.
Are electric cars in, if you will forgive the pun, in the same boat?
Are we looking at not being able to do 65 mph anymore for 4-6 hours on end, assuming the highways are perfect?
Lets clear up a few things - a Diesel-Electric submarine could run at a top speed for about 2 hours or maybe 3-4 days at 3-4 knots - not close to 2 weeks without snorkeling/recharging.
EVs (and ICE vehicles) do use more power with faster speed but many EVs can easily do a distance of 200+ miles on a charge at 75+ mph.
There was a recent article that tested in real world 70 MPH with a Model 3 and a Model Y and got 290 miles and 276 miles respectively. They also got 238 miles in a Kona and 226 in a Bolt. They did not test the X but I can get at least 200 miles at 75 mph on mine and the new ones have more range. They did not test an S either but Motor Trend went from San Francisco to LA (365 miles) on a charge at 65-70 MPH without issue.
Okay, next question, making it a round trip. What's the recharge time for say 3 hours there, loiter around town, 3 hours back?
Three hours is the standard drive time because there is no IH from Austin to Houston. It is either US 290 or intersecting IH 10 out of San Antonio at some point.
Next question is that 65 is a decent speed but IH 10 can be posted 75 in locations. Is there a speed for electric cars where there is a serious fall off of efficiency, of range?
So if I put in a Model 3 into abetterrouteplanner.com and set to 90% starting charge and 10% finish charge with 110% rated speed (so 83 MPH on 75 MPH road) get the results below
2hr 14min Houston to Austin, 2hr 38min return that includes 13 min charge (cost $3.63) = 4hr 52min round trip of 325 miles with charging included at 110% of posted limit.
There was a guy in Europe (area with no speed limits) that was looking at tradeoff of more speed vs more charging time - where more speed was offset by longer charging times than time saved with speed. As I recall the break even point was somewhere about 90-95 MPH - faster than you would go anywhere in the US. Now that the vehicles charge faster it would be even higher speed.
How fast can electric cars go on the highway and are we in for a worse shock of time spent in travel than we were with the double nickel?
150-160 mph, don't think there's any that aren't artificially limited like you can get on BMW M or Mercedes AMG. Of course that would do hell on your range so it might be faster to just stick to 80 and not stop for a 30 minute charge than do 150-160 like you're doing a mini Cannonball.
150-160 mph, don't think there's any that aren't artificially limited like you can get on BMW M or Mercedes AMG. Of course that would do hell on your range so it might be faster to just stick to 80 and not stop for a 30 minute charge than do 150-160 like you're doing a mini Cannonball.
The new Tesla S plaid+ version is rated at 200 mph top speed.
The new Tesla Model S will do 0-60 in 1.9 seconds, max speed is 200mph, and can travel 520 miles on a charge.
Let's see, that's 166 miles. Looks like a Model S could make the trip (assuming we're ignoring legal issues) in just under 50 minutes. I have doubts as to whether it could make 166 miles on a charge at 200mph (could probably do it easily at 150), but at that speed you're not getting very far even in a gas burner.
The Model S Plaid + with the estimated 520 mile range base price is $138,990.
The Model S Long Range with the estimated 412 mile range pase price is $78,490.
The extra estimated 108 miles of range costs $60,500 or $560/mile of extra range. Getting all that extra range might be an overpay.
The Model S Plaid + with the estimated 520 mile range base price is $138,990.
The Model S Long Range with the estimated 412 mile range pase price is $78,490.
The extra estimated 108 miles of range costs $60,500 or $560/mile of extra range. Getting all that extra range might be an overpay.
Also the <2 claimed 0-60 versus. But anyway, it doesn't exist so the only one you can get is the Long Range. Which, well, it's no slouch either but it is limited to 155. I know, horrible. Whatever shall I do without being able to go faster than that like some peon?
How fast can electric cars go on the highway and are we in for a worse shock of time spent in travel than we were with the double nickel?
The best application for electric cars is local driving they're not good for road trips they're not good for towing they're not good for replacing semis. This means they should be dirt cheap cuz you're going to have a second vehicle and has to cost nothing. Considering I can get a 12-year-old pickup truck and drive it back and forth to Austin 24/7 and it only costs me five to six thousand dollars for the truck money for gas.
When the utility of something that cheap is greater than the utility of an electric car and nobody's going to buy an electric car especially for the money they're asking for.
Well, as an example, I've driven my Bolt at a mix of highway speeds (70-80mph) and 2 lanes (average speed 50, but that means 65 in places and 35 in places) and returned about 300 miles of actual distance traveled. With DC fast chargers, I can go from 20% to 80% charge (about 220 miles) in 20 minutes. So a trip like you're talking about would be easy to leave your house with a full charge, use about 60% charge to get there, take 15 minutes at a DC Fast Charger to get back to 80% and drive home again and get home with 20% charge. Plug in and be ready to go again the next day.
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