Sorry I haven’t check in on this thread lately. I have not had any trouble charging when I go to visit my sister in NOVA. We stayed at a hotel last time and there was a charger nearby.
We drove up to Philly from NC last September and I don’t remember any difficulty at all finding chargers. Seemed like there were many options.
Having driven an EV since 2015 (currently a Chevy Bolt) I would quite happily go all EV. My husband nabbed a super cheap used Chevy Volt PHEV back when we needed another car (I think it was less than $6k) but he is making noises about looking for another (used) Bolt.
It’s interesting how people can take different things from the same article.
I’ve driven that stretch of I78 to Harrisburg many times without any charging concerns. There’s ample charging on that route. I can’t speak to south of Harrisburg. But I read the author’s mention of a 50 mile stretch without a charger as pretty much irrelevant because no one driving an EV would end up in that section without an adequate charge. (This route even has a Tesla supercharger just East of Allentown with the magic dock that works with all EVs).
What I took from the rest of the article is a 10 hour drive one way with 30 minutes spent charging, no trouble finding chargers, no waiting for chargers, no broken chargers, no “wandering”. The entire round trip was 1k miles with less than an hour spent charging. No waits or hassles mentioned.
I personally wouldn’t drive 9 hours with only a few minutes stopping so maybe I’m not attuned to the concerns of some people. But honestly some of the worrying about charger availability these days is not grounded in reality.
If we’re talking the Dakotas it’s a different story.
The other thing that people who don’t drive electric cars seem to have trouble grasping is that there are apps that not only locate chargers, but also report on whether they are functioning. So the fear of showing up to a charging station to find all the chargers out of order seems to be yet another red herring.
I recall seeing a tube channel of a rural Montana family that chronicles their experience in their Teslas and a Volt. I don’t follow it, but as I recall even in rural Montana their experience is very positive.
Not sure that’s the case. Most EV owners I know drive to cities all the time in their EVs. They don’t necessarily plan to charge in the city center if it can be avoided, just like they didn’t plan to fill gas downtown for the most part when they had ICE vehicles.
My experience has been that charging in most downtowns is a comparable level of hassle to filling gas. My own approach to both has always been to refuel in the burbs on the way in and out.
The one potential advantage of EVs is that many, not all, downtown areas have ample level 2 charging at garages and hotels, so refueling takes no extra time.
It is well known among EV drivers that Tesla Superchargers are more reliable than Electrify America, EVgo, etc. that provide CCS1 charging (that non-Tesla vehicles, including those in the linked page, use). The recent agreements of other car companies to move to the Tesla plug and access Tesla Superchargers (with adapters for vehicles using the CCS1 plug) will improve things for them, but not yet (timeline is likely several months to a year, depending on the company, although Ford and Rivian can now use Tesla Superchargers with adapters).
A very small number of Tesla Superchargers do have “Magic Docks” that are built in adapters to allow charging any vehicle that uses a CCS1 plug.
I’m a planner and usually figure out my stops before I leave home.
My old Nissan Leaf almost 10 years ago used to suggest chargers when it got low. I usually look at Plugshare and figure out where I want to stop in my Chevy Bolt based on what kind of reviews the charger gets, if there are any good restaurants nearby if I’m going to stop at meal time, etc. There’s a charger at the beach next to this great burrito place, for example.
If the car has a navigation system that locates fast chargers and routes to them when on a trip where the destination is not reachable without recharging, then the car mostly does that job while driving. One of Tesla’s market advantages from the beginning is its development of the Superchargers with integration into the in-car navigation to make using fast charging on a longer trip relatively easy compared to other early EVs.
If the car has a less sophisticated navigation system or no navigation system, then drivers may need to preplan using ABRP, Plugshare, etc. if not already familiar with the fast chargers along their route. Some drivers of EVs with in-car navigation systems described above do this anyway, since ABRP sometimes gives a faster route than the in-car navigation.
Apparently Chinese manufactured batteries may be to blame but still TBD. Apparently most US MB EV batteries are manufactured in Alabama but worth monitoring until investigation finalized.
MB has batteries made by Farasis in China and CATL (a Chinese company) in Hungary as well as a partnership with AESC in the US.
The EQE that caught fire has a Farasis battery.
CATL is best known for its LFP batteries (which are more fire resistant but less capacity dense than NCM batteries), but it is not obvious what type of batteries it is making for MB in Hungary.
I saw one of the Tesla trucks this week driving. It looked like a dumpster riding down the road. I guess it appeals to someone…but I think it’s probably the ugliest motor vehicle I’ve ever seen…maybe since the VW Thing.