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"I rented an electric car for a 4-day road trip." -Fox Business Article

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(I have no idea if this is the right place for something like this but it seems like the relevant sub for it. Mods, please move, delete, or whatever if this is inappropriate for here.)

So, I subscribe to "electric vehicle" news alerts on google and read this gem of a column. I can't say I disagree with him on any of the facts but the whole time I'm reading it I wanted to scream "WHY DIDN'T YOU RENT A TESLA!!". He would not have had these problems with access to Tesla superchargers.

I'm curious what other TMC members think. If you're feeling really brave you can venture to the comment section below the article which is oozing with some if the most vitriolic anti electric-car hate I have ever come across. I honestly will never understand that, if you don't like electric cars then don't buy one but why so much hate??

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/electric-car-four-day-trip-more-time-charg
 
There's a rebuttal of sorts on the Transport Evolved YouTube channel:
That video credits it to the Wall Street Journal. I don't know if TE got that wrong or if it's showing up on multiple outlets. (Both Fox and the WSJ are owned by Rupert Murdoch, so the latter is quite plausible. Also, the TE video shows some artwork credited to the story that's not on the Fox site, so I strongly suspect it's shown up in both outlets.)

I've only skimmed the article myself, but based on that and the TE critique, I'd say that the problem is that the author did inadequate research before setting out on the journey. Yes, it would have gone better in a Tesla, thanks to the Tesla's excellent in-car navigation and reliable Supercharger network; but even in the Kia EV6 that was used, the words "use A Better Routeplanner," if heeded, would have eliminated most of the problems related in the story. Like the NY Times piece about a trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas a few years ago, the driver hit the wrong charging stations, which is a mistake that only absolute EV newbies (being generous) or people setting out to write hit pieces (being cynical) would do.
 
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FWIW, I've now read the article. It's not specific about most stops, but of the ones mentioned, many seem to be at car (or in one case, motorcycle) dealerships. Two were at WalMarts, so those were at least probably Electrify America stations. When I tried using A Better Routeplanner to plot a course from New Orleans to Chicago in a standard-range EV6, all of the stops were at Electrify America stations.

I'm not too familiar with that part of the US, but it looks to me like the author mapped out a route using Google Maps or something similar, and then tried to find charging along that route. When I did this, Google produced a route along I-55 and I-57 with a total distance of 927 miles, taking an estimated 13:34 to drive. ABRP, by contrast, produced a route of 1,075 miles, curving out to the east a bit to take advantage of a corridor of EA stations. The ABRP route totals 17:23 of estimated drive time and 3:11 charging. I can certainly see how a novice EV driver could make this mistake. The drive time alone from ABRP is almost four hours longer, and that fact highlights the poor state of EV (or at least CCS -- see below) charging on the most direct route between New Orleans and Chicago. That said, I suspect that the better charging infrastructure by deviating east and adding those extra miles would have made for a much more pleasant journey. (OTOH, a lot of the "color" in the story relates to dismal weather, so that would have been constant even with better charging infrastructure.)

I also tried plotting out this journey using my own car (a 2019 Model 3 LR RWD), and ABRP gave me a 965-mile journey that looks pretty close to the one Google Maps suggested, with 14:58 of drive time and 1:34 spent charging. This makes me think that at least an hour of the drive-time difference I noted earlier was probably down to Google Maps vs. ABRP drive-time estimates -- maybe they're assuming different average speeds, for instance. It also shows that Tesla has better infrastructure than exists for CCS cars along this particular route.
 
If you're planning to write a hit piece on electric cars, you won't rent a Tesla. You'd choose a car that depended on the more spotty charging networks and pad the article with some over the top drama.

The biggest missed point is that with some research, planning and practice, any EV owner could cut a decent chunk out of the travel time.
 
If you're planning to write a hit piece on electric cars, you won't rent a Tesla. You'd choose a car that depended on the more spotty charging networks and pad the article with some over the top drama.
I prefer to apply Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." (In this case, substituting "ignorance," "laziness," or "inadequate research" for "stupidity" works as well.) As noted in my earlier post in this thread, the route taken appears to be what generic mapping software like Google Maps would have suggested. The author then seems to have used PlugShare to find charging locations along the route, without enough understanding of different charging rates. I'll add that I just checked, and PlugShare's own route-planning feature made the same mistake, and even tries to route to one "coming soon" location at a BMW dealership.

Experienced EV road-trippers know to use A Better Routeplanner in these situations. (I've heard of at least one other competing app/Web site, but I've not looked into it and don't remember its name.) Tesla's in-car navigation also does a good job of it, but of course the author of this piece wasn't driving a Tesla, and I don't happen to know enough about the EV6 to know how well its in-car navigation would do. The reporter seems to have not known about A Better Routeplanner, and didn't research deeply enough, or learn from the New Orleans-to-Chicago leg to avoid making the same mistakes on the return trip. Of course, if this is what happened, it speaks badly to the reporter's competence; a competent reporter should have done the research ahead of time, by asking experienced EV road-trippers or industry insiders about how to do it.

All that said, I can't rule out the "hatchet job" hypothesis, either. If one did want to write a negative piece about EVs' road-trip capabilities, a route much like this one would help with that goal. Then too, so would using a car with lower range and/or worse DC fast charging capabilities, like a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt. OTOH, those cars are getting a bit long in the tooth; the Kia EV6 is the new EV hotness. I prefer to err on the side of suspecting incompetence rather than malice because it's been my experience that things that initially look malicious do often end up being explained by incompetence.
 
Incompetence doesn't absolve WSJ/Fox or the author of anything though.

A journalist writing an article for a big publication should be doing substantial research. They should have interviewed experienced EV owners or myriad of EV journalists for advice.

The editorial staff at WSJ should also uphold high standards of journalism for their writers, and they are just as responsible for publishing a substandard article. Having more lax standards for articles that agree with a certain point of view is exactly what bias is.
 
@Empiro, I agree with you; but there is still a difference between incompetence and malice. The two are different varieties of bad, which require different responses, and with different prospects for improvement. If the WSJ/Fox was incompetent, then there's hope that they can be educated and do better in the future. If it was malice, then it's harder to see them improving in the future, unless/until management and/or ownership changes -- and then it's not really that "they" improve, but that it's a different "they" at the helm.
 
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Transport Evolved has added clarification regarding the use of A Better Route Planner in the video comments.

BB1BEB34-12CA-44EB-800C-4FB3CBABFACB.jpeg
 
@Big Earl, I marked your post "informative" in the absence of a more shocked emoji.

FWIW, shortly before you posted that information, I wrote a letter to Fox Business:

I've read your article entitled "I rented an electric car for a 4-day road trip. I spent more time charging it than I did sleeping," by Rachel Wolfe. (I rented an electric car for a 4-day road trip. I spent more time charging it than I did sleeping.) I'm sorry to say that Ms. Wolfe seems to have done inadequate research on the subject before writing the article. The article is unclear about precisely how she "plotted a meticulous route," but based on the clues in the article, I'd guess that she either used a gas-car-centric mapping application (Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc.) to plot a route from New Orleans to Chicago and then used PlugShare to find charging points along the way, or used the PlugShare Web site's trip-planning feature to map a route. Unfortunately, neither approach is optimal.

As minimal research in any on-line EV forum would have revealed, the optimum tool to use for planning EV road trips is A Better Routeplanner (https://abetterrouteplanner.com; there are also apps for iOS and Android). This tool has pre-sets for most EVs on the market, as well as information on the charging speeds available at most DC fast charging stations in the United States and Europe. Advanced features enable setting expected weather conditions, adjusting preferences for minimum acceptable state of charge, and so on; but these features are icing on the cake, as it were. Using ABRP, it's possible to plan a trip that will minimize total travel time (including charging time), avoiding the slow and unreliable stations that Ms. Wolfe encountered on her trip. The result sometimes looks like a detour -- when I used Google Maps to plan a trip from New Orleans to Chicago, the result was a 927-mile drive; but using ABRP, the route curves to the east to take advantage of reliable and fast Electrify America stations, extending the drive to 1,075 miles. This drive, though, requires just 3:11 of DC fast charging charging time. (This DC fast charging time would be reduced if an overnight stay at a hotel with Level 2 charging equipment was planned.) This is a far cry from the "more time charging than... sleeping" claimed in the headline of Ms. Wolfe's article. Other routes require no detour at all. I've regularly driven my Tesla Model 3 from my home in Rhode Island to visit my sister in Cincinnati, and I take the same routes I've always taken in gas-powered cars.

Another way to think of the problem that Ms. Wolfe encountered is that there was insufficient CCS DC fast charging infrastructure along the highways she drove. There IS, however, very good Tesla Supercharger support along that route. ABRP claims that a Tesla Model 3 LR RWD (the car I happen to drive) could make that drive, along more-or-less the route that Ms. Wolfe seems to have taken, with a total distance of 965 miles and a mere 1:34 spent charging. Tesla's in-car navigation system should be able to plot this route, too (certainly Tesla's route-planning Web site can). Electrify America, ChargePoint, EVgo, and other providers are building out new DC fast charging sites at a steady clip, so I wouldn't be surprised if today's sub-optimal route that Ms. Wolfe took would work much better in a year or two -- but I haven't researched these providers' plans for new stations along that route, so I'm certainly not making any promises about that.

In the interest of journalistic integrity, I strongly encourage Ms. Wolfe to do this trip again, or perhaps another EV road trip of similar length, but this time use the right planning tool: ABRP. Asking for advice on an EV forum, or from EV industry insiders (from Kia or Electrify America, for instance) would likely be helpful, too; but my one piece of advice (to use ABRP) will make the most difference. In the absence of such a follow-up piece, my confidence in the integrity of Ms. Wolfe, and of Fox Business, is degraded.
I'd probably have tweaked my letter a bit if I'd known that they'd consulted ABRP, ignored its advice, and neglected to mention this fact. This information certainly ups the "hit piece" probability in my mind.

I used this form to submit my letter.
 
I prefer to apply Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." (In this case, substituting "ignorance," "laziness," or "inadequate research" for "stupidity" works as well.) As noted in my earlier post in this thread, the route taken appears to be what generic mapping software like Google Maps would have suggested. The author then seems to have used PlugShare to find charging locations along the route, without enough understanding of different charging rates. I'll add that I just checked, and PlugShare's own route-planning feature made the same mistake, and even tries to route to one "coming soon" location at a BMW dealership.

Experienced EV road-trippers know to use A Better Routeplanner in these situations. (I've heard of at least one other competing app/Web site, but I've not looked into it and don't remember its name.) Tesla's in-car navigation also does a good job of it, but of course the author of this piece wasn't driving a Tesla, and I don't happen to know enough about the EV6 to know how well its in-car navigation would do. The reporter seems to have not known about A Better Routeplanner, and didn't research deeply enough, or learn from the New Orleans-to-Chicago leg to avoid making the same mistakes on the return trip. Of course, if this is what happened, it speaks badly to the reporter's competence; a competent reporter should have done the research ahead of time, by asking experienced EV road-trippers or industry insiders about how to do it.

All that said, I can't rule out the "hatchet job" hypothesis, either. If one did want to write a negative piece about EVs' road-trip capabilities, a route much like this one would help with that goal. Then too, so would using a car with lower range and/or worse DC fast charging capabilities, like a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt. OTOH, those cars are getting a bit long in the tooth; the Kia EV6 is the new EV hotness. I prefer to err on the side of suspecting incompetence rather than malice because it's been my experience that things that initially look malicious do often end up being explained by incompetence.
The writer is not a fan or have much knowledge of EV - his idea was to jump into the Ev with little useful planning with his GF and compare that to doing the same last minute trip in his ice - I don’t think any Tesla. Owners or future owner like me would be persuaded by this article - Alan g
 
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A side comment: A couple of people have used the pronoun "him" or "he" to refer to the author of the WSJ/Fox piece; however, a quick check of the article itself shows the byline is "Rachel Wolf." The pencil-art-style thumbnail associated with the author's Twitter feed appears to show a woman. Thus, I suspect the correct pronouns are "her" and "she." As we're busy criticizing her bias and/or poor research, IMHO we should be sure to not fall prey to the same failings.
 
A side comment: A couple of people have used the pronoun "him" or "he" to refer to the author of the WSJ/Fox piece; however, a quick check of the article itself shows the byline is "Rachel Wolf." The pencil-art-style thumbnail associated with the author's Twitter feed appears to show a woman. Thus, I suspect the correct pronouns are "her" and "she." As we're busy criticizing her bias and/or poor research, IMHO we should be sure to not fall prey to the same failings.
Thank you for pointing that out and you are absolutely correct. I am one of the guilty parties. I read the article and did not look to see who the author was and falsely assumed him/he. I did notice my mistake when I saw the video link the next day but it was too late to edit my original post. I know your comment was for informational purposes and not casting blame but I sure had my tail between my legs when I realized what I did!
 
The writer is not a fan or have much knowledge of EV - his idea was to jump into the Ev with little useful planning with his GF and compare that to doing the same last minute trip in his ice - I don’t think any Tesla. Owners or future owner like me would be persuaded by this article - Alan
A side comment: A couple of people have used the pronoun "him" or "he" to refer to the author of the WSJ/Fox piece; however, a quick check of the article itself shows the byline is "Rachel Wolf." The pencil-art-style thumbnail associated with the author's Twitter feed appears to show a woman. Thus, I suspect the correct pronouns are "her" and "she." As we're busy criticizing her bias and/or poor research, IMHO we should be sure to not fall prey to the same failings.
Thanks - yes I figured that out after I posted - but my comment stands - the writer showed electric charging for non Tesla cars could be a challenge on long trips - the way SHE/HE/person did it
 
I flew 3 weeks a month on business trips and bought NYT & WSJ at the airports. [2 to 6 flights/week] Most serious business people did.
Got subscriptions at the office. Later years at the Library or coffee shops. Now I can't remember the last time I bothered looking at either.
[nor the Financial Times]

Sad to see the downward trend continues in main stream media. I never considered it could get this poor.
 
The author did correctly (if not indirectly) make the rather obvious point that gas stations are ubiquitous, and EV chargers are not.

I can hop in my ICE car and drive anywhere, anytime, without a single thought given to planning. I can even wait until the needle is on "E" and the warning light is glowing, and still make it safely to a gas station.

The lack of a nearby petrol station is so rare that the occasion demands a warning sign:


29uMwi7.png



If planning ahead is not in your skill set, then maybe an EV is not yet right for you.