500 + Mile Range Debate

[Battpower]

1) Chargers are spaced every ~170 miles or so. How often do you think people are driving even ~200 miles w/o charging let alone ~300. <1% of my miles are in excess of 200 miles w/o charging and it would easily be 1/10th that >300 miles if I had a car with 400 miles of range.

2) The point is that a linear increase in range results in an exponential increase in road damage. Why carry weight that's ~never useful?

We need more fast chargers. 110% agree. We need battery chemistries that can charge fast to a higher SOC without tapering at 50%. 110% agree. We get that and range over ~300 miles just means more road wear for ~no benefit.

IMO, the issue of huge capacity batteries is something of a marketing ploy at the moment, capitalising on a not totally unfounded concern over lack of available charging and adverse conditions effecting range.

The medium to long term objective shouldn't be to make every heavier cars but rather to make lighter, less resource-hungry designs perform ever better.

But it will take time for infrastructure and owner confidence to find a balance.

 

[Giampigua]

1) Chargers are spaced every ~170 miles or so. How often do you think people are driving even ~200 miles w/o charging let alone ~300. <1% of my miles are in excess of 200 miles w/o charging and it would easily be 1/10th that >300 miles if I had a car with 400 miles of range.

2) The point is that a linear increase in range results in an exponential increase in road damage. Why carry weight that's ~never useful?

We need more fast chargers. 110% agree. We need battery chemistries that can charge fast to a higher SOC without tapering at 50%. 110% agree. We get that and range over ~300 miles just means more road wear for ~no benefit.

I notice a first improvement in your notes: before you said that extra range miles are only 0,1% of the cases.
Now is 1%.
it’s a 10 times improvements.
Now you are asking how often I think people drive more than 200 miles.
I already answered that in my case is 20%.
clearly your conclusion is that there is no benefit in ncreasing range. I agree for your case. But not in my case.
On road use: as said above a single truck counts as 9600 cars.
If we stop eating bananas in our countries, drinking San Pellegrino in the US and US steaks in Europe we will save much more road maintenance costs and CO2 than a 5% increase of battery weight for the very few fellows like me

 

[nwdiver]

I notice a first improvement in your notes: before you said that extra range miles are only 0,1% of the cases.
Now is 1%.
it’s a 10 times improvements.
Now you are asking how often I think people drive more than 200 miles.
I already answered that in my case is 20%.
clearly your conclusion is that there is no benefit in ncreasing range. I agree for your case. But not in my case.
On road use: as said above a single truck counts as 9600 cars.
If we stop eating bananas in our countries, drinking San Pellegrino in the US and US steaks in Europe we will save much more road maintenance costs and CO2 than a 5% increase of battery weight for the very few fellows like me

No, it's the same. I said

1) Chargers are spaced every ~170 miles or so. How often do you think people are driving even ~200 miles w/o charging let alone ~300. <1% of my miles are in excess of 200 miles w/o charging and it would easily be 1/10th that >300 miles if I had a car with 400 miles of range.

Also never said people don't drive >200 miles. I said '<1% of my miles are in excess of 200 miles w/o charging and it would easily be 1/10th that >300 miles if I had a car with 400 miles of range.

What makes more sense? Carrying ~500# of weight that's ~never useful or stopping to stretch your legs for ~10 minutes on the rare occasion you need to drive >300 miles?

 

[Giampigua]

No, it's the same. I said




Also never said people don't drive >200 miles. I said '<1% of my miles are in excess of 200 miles w/o charging and it would easily be 1/10th that >300 miles if I had a car with 400 miles of range.

What makes more sense? Carrying ~500# of weight that's ~never useful or stopping to stretch your legs for ~10 minutes on the rare occasion you need to drive >300 miles?

"And if you only use the extra range >300 miles 0.1% of the time and that 0.1% of the time it's only saving you a few minutes of charging..." your message of 17th sept..

But, tell me: do you really read what I write or you just give a glance to it?

I wrote that "I agree for your case. But not in my case.".

Now you say again that it doesn't make sense to carry additional weight "on the rare occasion you need to drive > 300 miles. If it is a rare case (your case) I do agree with you. if it is not a rare case (my case) I do not agree with you.

Then you should also consider that there is a big difference between advertized/EPA range and real world range - winter issues included.
the "300 miles trip without stops" today is a theoretical number: real number is 250. that's an additional reason to aim for a rated 500 miles range.
you should also consider that sometimes (to me pretty often) the one way trip is below 250, but the round trip is higher than that. And if you have no chance to charge the car at your first destination (maybe it is a client), even if they are two legs practically it has to be considered one leg. Adding half an hour (not 10 minutes!) to an already hard working day is something I'd prefer to avoid or limit.

Finally, I do not mean to oblige anyone to buy a heavier car. But let me the chance to buy it at the needed higher price. it's called "freedom", as I let anyone to buy a boat and a trailer and use it all the time, even if it causes higher damages to the road than my "surchargeable car".

 

[OzarkEV]

I think there's a disconnect on time frame here. Under current conditions, 500 EPA miles would be very helpful. When level 3 charging is as common as the gas pump, 300 miles is plenty. If you live in a coastal state, you're probably close enough that. My old pickup is only trusted to 250 miles because the fuel has shown empty since 2009.

I have a monthly trip to south Kansas City, which eats 55-60% of my charge. Until I got the Chademo adapter, this meant adding 40 minutes plus charging time to the return trip in order to hit the Supercharger. The detour to charge was aggravating.
If work takes me to Poplar Bluff, it's 2 hours to get to the Sikeston Supercharger, charge to nearly 100%, and get back to Poplar. This route has no level 3 currently, and only RV parks for "level 2".

 

[nwdiver]

And if you have no chance to charge the car at your first destination (maybe it is a client), even if they are two legs practically it has to be considered one leg. Adding half an hour (not 10 minutes!) to an already hard working day is something I'd prefer to avoid or limit.

Finally, I do not mean to oblige anyone to buy a heavier car. But let me the chance to buy it at the needed higher price. it's called "freedom", as I let anyone to buy a boat and a trailer and use it all the time, even if it causes higher damages to the road than my "surchargeable car".

I agree we need more places to charge.

No one is going to stop you from hiring a custom shop to double your battery capacity. It won't be cheap and it might void your warranty but with enough money almost anything is possible. Or buy a Lucid Air. But this idea that Tesla should offer an option that might be useful for a handful of people is silly. The whole objective of mass production cutting costs is to get as close to a single version as possible. Should there also be a 1000 mile option? I'm sure you can find a few people that think they need 1000 miles of range....

I would love to see the charging data Tesla has. If for ~99.9% of trips <50% of the battery capacity is being used between charging sessions they're not going to be very motivated to offer larger battery packs.

 

[Olle]

We sometimes drive from Orlando to the Gulf of Mexico or South Floria for the day, 2 adults and 2 kids. At 100 to 150 miles each way it’s just about too short to need a break. Wasting 4 people’s time if we have to stop.
The problem is that at the beach there are few chargers per EV, you’d be lucky to find one, especially if you and your passengers want to enjoy your destination instead of hunting for parking with charging. I’d say one in 20 times we’ve found an open charger. What ends up happening is we drive home on half a battery and sometimes even have to slow down at the and and arrive with a nail biting coupe of miles of charge left. Got the exact same feeling when we drove to crowded ski slopes in NY And NJ. Hunt for charging or ski? I really don’t see how this will change until every parking spot has electricity and/or until FSD is ready to go look for an automatic charging arm on its own. Until then, 500 miles will be the sweet spot. IMO.

 

[Giampigua]

I agree we need more places to charge.

No one is going to stop you from hiring a custom shop to double your battery capacity. It won't be cheap and it might void your warranty but with enough money almost anything is possible. Or buy a Lucid Air. But this idea that Tesla should offer an option that might be useful for a handful of people is silly. The whole objective of mass production cutting costs is to get as close to a single version as possible. Should there also be a 1000 mile option? I'm sure you can find a few people that think they need 1000 miles of range....

I would love to see the charging data Tesla has. If for ~99.9% of trips <50% of the battery capacity is being used between charging sessions they're not going to be very motivated to offer larger battery packs.

Market will tell…
Till 8 years ago for 99,999% of people would have been silly to buy a tesla

 

[kilpatds]

Is it sillier to build charging stations in the middle of nowhere for the benefit of only a handful of people, or to offer a car with more range for the benefit of only a handful of people?

Because I'm currently unable to readily go some places I'd like to go due to missing charging stops... and sure, Tesla could add supercharger stations in the middle of nowhere that no one will ever use... or they could charge me $10k for a bigger battery.

(Or, I could buy a non-Tesla with a bigger battery)

Or am I just a wrong/bad person for wanting to go into the wilderness on paved (but not commonly traveled) roads?

 

[OzarkEV]

Tesla doesn't need to build the podunk chargers. Several convenience store chains are testing the waters with level 3 charging. Out here, a charger at every Casey's would let me go anywhere in the state without a detour. We would need a CCS to Tesla adapter capable of better than 50 kw though.

 

[TomServo]

We just completed our second LONG road trip to see our grandkids. We traveled from southern IL to southern MD which is about 1800 miles without ANY deviations or side trips. Here ate the results:

30 Jun - 6 Jul

Sept 16 - 21

We took I-64. We are 69 years old and we stopped for BIO breaks whenever we needed to and used SCer's as our rest stops and meal breaks. We have driven this route with 3 different ICE vehicles since 2016, with almost the exact same elapsed time as we'd be making those stops regardless.

We never worried about range, speeds etc. So for us, there is ZERO difference between our LR AWD Y and any ICE vehicle we used on previous trips.

Now if Tesla could get the cost of their battery pack down to the point capacity is CHEAP then by all means offer various ranges. But today how much much more would a 500 mile EV Tesla cost?

 

[ThomasD]

Do you have to stop more often to charge when making the trip in the Winter

 

[Candleflame]

Do you have to stop more often to charge when making the trip in the Winter

Depends how deep they discharge. If they only go down to 20% they can probably go down to 5% instead.
Also on road trips the heating isnt as significant as once the cabin is heated up the maintainance heating is similar to aircon, but it takes around 1-2 hours to heat the cabin fully through.

 

[kilpatds]

We had to change our weekend plans because my M3P doesn't have enough range to get to the trail we wanted to, and back reasonably. ABRT was telling me to do a 100% charge and keep below 50, and that wouldn't get us to the trailhead while it was still empty.

(If someone could put a DC-fast charger in Newhalem WA, that'd be great...)

 

[Kee_Chain]

One thing that makes me annoyed is the great availability of third-party chargers such as ChargePoint, EVgo, Electrify America, etc and their impeccably trash reliability. I have had about 7 cases where I needed to use an Electrify America station or a ChargePoint station and they didn't work. A reboot remotely from EE didn't work on 3 cases. In one of those cases I was stuck for 30 minutes until one of them magically started working again. EVs in general will need a reliable network for long range trips and Tesla is the only experience that has not failed me so far... I think the government also needs to start backing EVs more and less on ICE cars...

 

[DblOSmith]

Is it sillier to build charging stations in the middle of nowhere for the benefit of only a handful of people, or to offer a car with more range for the benefit of only a handful of people?

Because I'm currently unable to readily go some places I'd like to go due to missing charging stops... and sure, Tesla could add supercharger stations in the middle of nowhere that no one will ever use... or they could charge me $10k for a bigger battery.

(Or, I could buy a non-Tesla with a bigger battery)

Or am I just a wrong/bad person for wanting to go into the wilderness on paved (but not commonly traveled) roads?

I agree 100% with you. Maybe Tesla themselves doesn't need to build them, but they need to be built. It's not 300 vs 500 miles. 70-80+ MPH realistically brings range down to 200 miles. Around Branson, Missouri for example, you can't really do exploring becuase it's a DCFC deadzone. ...and it's close to even go from Springfield, MO to Little Rock, Arkansas let alone explore along the way even if you leave with 100% soc.

I don't think anyone says a peep when they pass a dusty gas station in small town. It's there if/when the people need it and good for them. Same would be true with charging stations, and I'm betting charging stations have fewer regulations and require less maintenance than gas stations. I'm like you. I enjoy exploring small towns and taking the back roads to places. The best way to get rid of range anxiety is to make charging stations as ubiquitous as gasoline stations. Then you don't ever have to think about it.

 

[21EV]

I shake my head at these threads. Lots of commenters stating that if something works for them it should work for everyone else. I’ve taken trips in my EV that were very easy because I had a Tesla, some that would’ve been easier in my old ICE and others that would be easier if I had an EV other than a Tesla because of the presence of CCS charging stations on a route but no Tesla superchargers.

In the end I like all of the options currently and coming online, from Tesla, Ford, GM, Rivian, Lucid and others. Enough people buy cars and their individual use cases vary widely so one manufacturer can’t possibly meet the needs/wants of the entire market. That is why we have both Jeeps and Ferraris. For my next EV, to replace a Honda Odyssey, Tesla doesn’t offer anything that will work. If I buy an EV to replace the Odyssey it won’t be a Tesla. Right now the Rivian is only one close to what I’d need (with number of seats and utility) and that isn’t even officially release yet though I did see one on the highway north of Ann Arbor, MI right after Christmas.

 

[Jim in Houston]

My MX 2020 LR+ shows 330+ miles for a full charge but in reality I get about 250 + miles here in midwest. Also super chargers are only on interstates in midwest.

 

[Chicagoandy]

I think it's telling that the most popular Model Y sold today is the "Long Range" version. People are more than happy to pay more for more range. I also think most people who own the MYLR would say the range really isn't very long, and they would definitely use more miles if they had it.

We say stops for charging on the long road trips are a nice break. But I think if you asked a follow-up question, would we take those rest stops if we didn't need to charge, the answer would be 'no'. I'd happily go back to how I used to do road trips, quick drive-thru meals, then back to the speed-limit + 20 in the left lane.

The biggest argument for more range isn't the rated number. It's the number we actually get. I'd be happier with my MYLR if it got 320 miles at highway speeds below freezing, and the only way to get there is with a much bigger battery.

 

[giannywin]

More range would be better for people that live in colder climates

me