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Exactly. I've been on plenty of gas powered road trips where the next gas station may be 30-40 miles down the road, so you don't want the gas light coming on with no idea how far down the road that next stop may be. So you're not using the full potential range of the gas car, either. You're getting gas when you can and have the opportunity.
And really this comes down to the fact that for most people road trips over 200 miles are NOT a day to day thing. They just aren't. Not even a weekly or even monthly thing. The time spent at a charging station on the rare road trip is offset by NEVER having to GO somewhere to fill up on the daily grind. I'll add a half hour to my road trip gladly to never have to go somewhere to fill up every couple days.
As for planning the route, so what? Right now there are chargers no more than 50 miles away from just about any point in the country. So think a little on where you want to go and use a station close to that destination to top off and go wherever you want. Just like you might do with your gas powered car. And anyone complaining about that has never towed/driven an RV. Talk about trying to plan stops (not only where and when based on range, but where based on whether you can even FIT in the station!). When you get 8-10 mpg, even with a 30-35 gallon tank you need to plan carefully.
It’s stupid that these conversations always devolved into road trip discussions irregardless of the original topic. Now in this case it fits, but only because the CEO fell for this common tactic and felt he had to prove the feasibility of an extreme example that the vast majority Americans will probably never attempt in any vehicle besides a commercial plane.
If they want people to switch they need to ignore these stupid examples that focus on road trips and hammer home what every EV owner who has the car for even a week quickly learns: their strength is daily needs. And they are WAY more convenient in that aspect.
Like not even close. Like laugh at the guys who post millions of comments daily about their “5 minute fill ups” not close. Like stop saying 5 seconds to plug in because its even less than that and astronomically more convenient than gas cars for daily driving not close. Like so clearly better in this sense that one must doubt the intelligence of someone who can’t see it not close.
I have a friend who drove to my house once and thought it was a dig to say “I stopped for gas and still got here in 20 minutes” - ie, 5 minutes more than usual. I told him I could drive to his house and back 5 times a day for a year and never have to get gas ever. What a waste of time. I almost had a stroke waiting at the gas station the other day in my wife’s car.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I remember back in 1979 when my wife and I drove from the San Francisco Bay Area to Casper, Wyoming to visit friends. Much of that drive was country/mountain roads with fewer gas stations, and our 1973 Ford Courier only got 18 mpg and had only a 14.8 gallon tank, so the range was a pitiful 266 miles. That was not a problem since I was able to carry a 5 gallon can of gas in the back of the little truck, and that would get me another 90 miles to a gas station. Some people like us that do road trips often, as much as twice a month, and EV would have a lot more appeal if they had a "spare battery" that would take them another 50-100 miles if needed. Ideally, you could eliminate the range anxiety by inventing a standard battery pack that fits ALL EVs and could be exchanged in 5-10 minutes at any gas station.
But see again, doing so would be reshaping technology that already works for the vast majority of driving to appease irrational fears. Car companies shouldn’t cater to “range anxiety”. I guarantee you that a very high percentage of EV owners will agree that battery swapping is not necessary. It would just be an extra expense to appease the wrong people.
Smarter minds than mine need to figure out how to educate the public that “range anxiety” is something actual EV owners get over very quickly. Us saying it clearly doesn’t help. Especially not against those whose minds are politically closed to the entire topic.
Ideally, you could eliminate the range anxiety by inventing a standard battery pack that fits ALL EVs and could be exchanged in 5-10 minutes at any gas station.
*sigh* not this crap again.
These are not half pound laptop batteries. Even the smallest ones in modern EVs are a few hundred lbs and take an hour to change (on a lift) and bleed the liquid cooling system (something your laptop doesn't have). It takes less time to fast charge than it would to swap that battery.
Second, there would have to be orders of magnitude more batteries made than cars to have enough on hand fully charged ready for any car that might come into the swap station. With resources the way they are is that such a good idea?
Next, on that tip, you buy a new car with a new battery warranty and you decide to go on a road trip, and now your new battery that ONLY NEEDS A CHARGE is swapped out for an unknown age battery sitting at the station that has no warranty. It may have been fast charged thousands of times and have a reduced range from the battery you already had.
Lastly, you're then requiring every manufacturer to make essentially one size and layout car, as a SLIGHTLY bigger car with the same battery would have reduced range and power. And you can't make the batteries modular and only swap out one or two modules, as the charge doesn't get used in one module to empty, then switch to the next module, then get used up in the next module. Batteries, even modular packs, use the charge, load balanced across all modules, so that you'd still have to replace ALL MODULES AT THE SAME TIME. Making it friggin' pointless to be modular. So now you have to have different batteries for compact cars than for mid sizers and different batteries for performance versions than for standard versions.
Your fever dream will never happen. it cannot happen and it's stupid to keep bringing it up like it's even a good possibility, EVEN IF NIO DID IT WITH ONE MODEL OF SMALL CAR!!!!!
These are not half pound laptop batteries. Even the smallest ones in modern EVs are a few hundred lbs and take an hour to change (on a lift) and bleed the liquid cooling system (something your laptop doesn't have). It takes less time to fast charge than it would to swap that battery.
Second, there would have to be orders of magnitude more batteries made than cars to have enough on hand fully charged ready for any car that might come into the swap station. With resources the way they are is that such a good idea?
Next, on that tip, you buy a new car with a new battery warranty and you decide to go on a road trip, and now your new battery that ONLY NEEDS A CHARGE is swapped out for an unknown age battery sitting at the station that has no warranty. It may have been fast charged thousands of times and have a reduced range from the battery you already had.
Lastly, you're then requiring every manufacturer to make essentially one size and layout car, as a SLIGHTLY bigger car with the same battery would have reduced range and power. And you can't make the batteries modular and only swap out one or two modules, as the charge doesn't get used in one module to empty, then switch to the next module, then get used up in the next module. Batteries, even modular packs, use the charge, load balanced across all modules, so that you'd still have to replace ALL MODULES AT THE SAME TIME. Making it friggin' pointless to be modular. So now you have to have different batteries for compact cars than for mid sizers and different batteries for performance versions than for standard versions.
Your fever dream will never happen. it cannot happen and it's stupid to keep bringing it up like it's even a good possibility, EVEN IF NIO DID IT WITH ONE MODEL OF SMALL CAR!!!!!
Agreed, battery swapping causes as many problems (or more) as it solves. I know one Chinese company, NIO, is trying to use this model, but I don't think it will become the new normal.
Agreed, battery swapping causes as many problems (or more) as it solves. I know one Chinese company, NIO, is trying to use this model, but I don't think it will become the new normal.
Having one small company, with one small car try to swap out batteries, still has the problem of there needing to be hundreds more batteries made per car than just having one battery in the car that gets charged by a fast charger. They are also trying to make batteries as a service, which is a problem when you have multiple manufacturers with multiple warranty levels. They are taking a really simplistic view of the EV world and TRYING to make it work when it simply won't on a large scale.
Having one small company, with one small car try to swap out batteries, still has the problem of there needing to be hundreds more batteries made per car than just having one battery in the car that gets charged by a fast charger. They are also trying to make batteries as a service, which is a problem when you have multiple manufacturers with multiple warranty levels. They are taking a really simplistic view of the EV world and TRYING to make it work when it simply won't on a large scale.
I agree that it's a bad idea, for multiple reasons, which will include needing more batteries - both a cost and potentially a resource issue. For what it's worth, I can't think through it all, but I don't think you need hundreds of battery packs for each vehicle in circulation, distributed around the country, if that's what you're suggesting. Vehicles could share compatible battery packs, but you will still need a "reasonable excess" - whatever that is, to cover likely usage scenarios, as you can't and shouldn't try to control where battery packs are left or picked up, so you'll clearly need significantly more battery packs than compatible vehicles in circulation.
And as you say, unless every vehicle from every maker uses some single universal battery pack, you'll need to stock lots of different battery packs - sizes, form factors, interfaces, what have you, and/or you'd need to have different flavors of swap stations, at least one per brand - there are just a lot of complications and inefficiencies when you think about trying to scale this up.
Tesla initially was working on swappable battery packs, and then they abandoned them for charging stations, and I imagine it was due to some of these implementation issues being recognized by them from the start. Heck, just having two different charging interface standards in play is seen as a major logistical issue, and swappable battery packs would increase the headaches many times over.
How many hours did he spend at the charging stations.?
Again, I think that is where a travel itinerary would be useful, but Barossa stated at 0:52 that "he was sitting here about 20 minutes or so, grabbing a quick burger. As soon as it's up to about 80%". Then at 1:19, he said, "The drive today is probably about a 12-hour drive - we will have to charge 5-6 times along the way".
Based on his statements, he appears that he spent about 100 minutes each day charging not including overnights. That's over 11 hours of charging for the week for a trip where he only paced 400 miles per day.
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