About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters.

From the article: “About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.”

  • HollandJim@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Filling up gas takes ~5 min, recharging an EV takes 20-30…

    Unless you have it plugged in at home or work, then every time you get into the car it’s got full range. If you’re saying you want to drive 400+ miles without a break, then I wonder about how safely you drive. Certainly you’re not suggesting driving MORE than 400 miles, tank after tank, without a break…that’s just silly and dangerous. My range estimates of 2.5-3 hours is about how long I can drive safely without needing a break, not the machine. Otherwise it’s just comparing useless numbers (but that’s how we were programmed for decades to buy cars anyway, right?) But also you’re ignoring any environmental impact of driving on gas and comparing new EVs with a $10k used Prius. So what are we even talking about?

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yes, about 1-2x/year, I’ll drive 600-900 miles in a day. Usually I’ll stop only for gas and to pick up some fast food, and keep going and do it all in one day.

      I’ve done this almost every year for almost 20 years now and have never had an issue. I’ve never had an accident, and I was only pulled over once for expired tags (got a warning). Sometimes we’ll switch off driving (usually I’ll just drive the whole way though), but we don’t stop for more than 10-15 min at a time.

      Here’s a trip I did last year:

      1. Drive to parents house - 800-900 miles, did it in 13-ish hours
      2. Drive from parent’s house to brother’s house - 500-600 miles
      3. Drive from brother’s house to national park - ~600 miles
      4. Drive from national park to home - ~400 miles

      As a kid, we used to drive between my parents’ current house and where I now live (to grandparents house), and I drove most of the way as soon as I could drive because I got car sick otherwise.

      We also occasionally drive to visit in-laws, which is about 600-700 miles, and again, we do that with only stopping for gas (we usually bring lunch).

      Usually I’ll drive about 3-4 hours at a time, sometimes a little longer. I just throw on an audiobook and go for it, or sometimes my spouse and I just talk.

      ignoring any environmental impact

      It’s more complicated than just my own emissions. Here are some of the variables at play:

      • new vehicle production
      • mining for materials (especially impactful for batteries)
      • electricity generation - my area uses ~50% coal (75% back when I bought my Prius), so the eco benefits are less than an area using hydro or nuclear power

      According to this article the breakeven point where an EV would start being more eco-friendly than an ICE car is 13.5-78.5k miles, so for my area it’s probably ~50k miles. My Prius gets 45-50mpg, so I guess that number would be a bit higher (maybe 75k miles?).

      And then beyond just emissions, there’s also the issue that EVs use a lot of conflict materials. My Prius also has a battery, so it’s a little more complex, but it’s a much smaller battery than in an EV.

      So it’s a complex set of issues that it’s hard for me to say definitively that upgrading my older cars (each with well over 100k miles) is the better option. What I can say is that upgrading our family car (minivan that gets crappy mpg) to an EV would require a significant change in lifestyle. We like to go on road trips to areas with poor EV charging, so we’d have to compromise on that or rent when we go. I could upgrade my commuter, but that would be quite costly and it’s probably not that much better than my current car since I already get great fuel economy, so I’d rather wait and see.

      So my plan is:

      • upgrade my minivan (20-22 mpg) to a hybrid (~35mpg) - we only drive 5k or so miles with this car each year
      • wait until I either have a mechanical issue or EV prices for cars with 100-150 miles range become more affordable (I have a 25 mile each way commute 2-3x/week) - so I drive <10k miles with it as is, probably around 7,500 miles

      If I bought two EVs (and yes, we need two cars), we’d need to rent an ICE for those road trips, and that sucks. If there was a decent selection of high range EVs, or the charging network were significantly better, maybe an EV would make sense. But it currently doesn’t.