Broken and full charging stations. This becomes a non-issue very quickly once EVs can use Tesla charging stations, effectively doubling the number of chargers in less than a year.
Fantastic arrival, perfectly matches my experience.
sghokie
99 pct of the time people don’t take road trips. Last time I planned a road trip when I had an ev I just rented a car.
ZeroWashu
A couple of issues to alleviate ICEing, charging stations need to not be the convenient place to park. Charging locations also need to be setup so that there are physical barriers from it being just one long row of spaces which will eliminate another issue I have faced on long trips, someone with a trailer parked across them all and it never is someone who can charge.
as for Georgia, I live here, like I was told before, unless the property owner calls them they cannot do anything. its private property. don’t bring “but gasoline stations” because it works the same there as well. The difference is gasoline stations are staffed and will call the cops because it interferes with their business.
When I needed to charge at gasoline stations that had EV chargers I never had a conflict. The stations pretty much relied on people charging to buy stuff in the store and so made every opportunity available to keep EV owners happy (some even have great stores – Sheetz and Bucc ees (well the later is a theme park practically)
BenIsLowInfo
Have a Tesla but am concerned our upcoming holiday road trip will take forever because there still aren’t that many Superchargers out there to meet peak demand, especially once you get out of the coasts. We will see but already expecting some long waits at places on the PA and OH turnpike
sziehr
Have tesla. Have done many many road trips. Have had 1 or 2 waits in all my trips not a single dead stall. So mrs secretary your issue your issue is with road tripping in a non nac vehicle right now.
el_vezzie
~~electricc cars~~ US charging infrastructure causes a road trip problem
MathematicianWarm921
Her “advanced team” never heard of ABRP?
MTLBRICK
Lol advance team. What a joke. What was the plan? Have the team block all dispensers then claim victory that the infrastructure is good enough ? “See we did it, it wasn’t hard”
Blocking the spot and expecting it to go over smooth was wishful thinking… I’m glad they got bitched at and had to experience frustration
Der_Kommissar73
Wow, if only they had been driving teslas…
ZobeidZuma
I hope everyone gets past the clickbait headline and reads the article. It’s surprisingly good, balanced and comprehensive. Which is not something I see too often with the state of journalism these days.
phansen101
tl;dr US charging network ain’t great.
Here in Denmark we had 243 public DCFCs and 4,657 public Type 2 by the end of 2021.By the end of 2022 we had 785 DCFC, 7,978 Type 2.
As of July this year, we’re at 1,266 DCFC, and 13,641 Type 2, and it’s projected that we’ll reach around 2000 DCFCs by the end of 2023 / Q1 2024.
Add to that, Tesla having 252 superchargers, with 216 open to other brands, and planning to double the total by Q1 2024.
So, by early next year, we’re looking at up to 20-2500 DCFCs including Tesla’s, and 14-20,000 Level 2, for a country with a population of a bit less than 6 million.
Meanwhile, from what I can tell, Michigan has 200 public DCFCs and 908 Level 2, in a state with a population of 10 million.
Icy-Tale-7163
>Her advance team realized there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So **an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot** for the approaching secretary of energy.
Wow.
>That did not go down well…In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police.
lmao
lilbyrdie
Having done several road trips with no issues, I think it comes down to planning and taking the right precautions. After 4 years of EV driving, I definitely don’t have range anxiety, but I also don’t run them down low on road trips where I don’t know the nuances of local charging.
And not using the cars stupid stuff. I rented a Model Y and it was totally convinced it was OK to arrive at a destination that has no charger with less than 5% SoC. I had to do my own route planning because of how bad it was. I’m glad my own car has Android Auto / Apple Car Play to use regular maps and do it myself more conveniently.
I also see YouTubers going after the low SoC arrivals and it’s just asking for trouble eventually. I wouldn’t arrive at a remote destination 100 miles away from a gas station on E either in an ICE vehicle. (I recently had a road trip that went onto a road with a fuel warning for ICE cars. Midway the road had an emergency stop for diesel, but no regular fuel for an extra long distance. Not always just an EV problem.)
varnell_hill
Title is clickbait. Read further down in the article and you’ll find:
> EVs that aren’t Teslas have a road trip problem, and the White House knows it’s urgent to solve this issue.
It goes on to say:
> Tesla chargers are significantly better than the competition, and most of the electric vehicles in the U.S. are Teslas.
For those that don’t care to read the whole thing, the TL;DR version is the vehicle itself (Cadillac Lyriq) experienced a hardware failure and many of the charging stations they used along the route didn’t work well either for various reasons.
However, this a complete non-issue for Tesla drivers and being one myself I can tell you that I’ve taken several road trips and never once had a problem. Been driving Tesla since 2019 and I think I’ve only ever encountered one broken supercharger stall and I’ve never had to wait in line to charge even on holiday weekends.
Pele2048
> an “affordable” Chevrolet Bolt
> US$30k
Pick one, NPR.
ctiger12
The charging network companies are not serious, with a lot investment from traditional car companies who are not fully on board.
malko2
Damn, we’re spoiled here in Western Europe
Kashmir79
Our family plan is to keep an EV for daily and local trips (<100 miles) and a plug-in hybrid for occasional road trips, for example a RAV-4 Prime which does 42mi on battery alone for day-to-day stuff or 600mi at 94mpg. That combo should be fine for this growth period until the national infrastructure gets sorted out.
19 Comments
Broken and full charging stations. This becomes a non-issue very quickly once EVs can use Tesla charging stations, effectively doubling the number of chargers in less than a year.
Tesla superchargers expanding rapidly https://supercharge.info/charts
Fantastic arrival, perfectly matches my experience.
99 pct of the time people don’t take road trips. Last time I planned a road trip when I had an ev I just rented a car.
A couple of issues to alleviate ICEing, charging stations need to not be the convenient place to park. Charging locations also need to be setup so that there are physical barriers from it being just one long row of spaces which will eliminate another issue I have faced on long trips, someone with a trailer parked across them all and it never is someone who can charge.
as for Georgia, I live here, like I was told before, unless the property owner calls them they cannot do anything. its private property. don’t bring “but gasoline stations” because it works the same there as well. The difference is gasoline stations are staffed and will call the cops because it interferes with their business.
When I needed to charge at gasoline stations that had EV chargers I never had a conflict. The stations pretty much relied on people charging to buy stuff in the store and so made every opportunity available to keep EV owners happy (some even have great stores – Sheetz and Bucc ees (well the later is a theme park practically)
Have a Tesla but am concerned our upcoming holiday road trip will take forever because there still aren’t that many Superchargers out there to meet peak demand, especially once you get out of the coasts. We will see but already expecting some long waits at places on the PA and OH turnpike
Have tesla. Have done many many road trips. Have had 1 or 2 waits in all my trips not a single dead stall. So mrs secretary your issue your issue is with road tripping in a non nac vehicle right now.
~~electricc cars~~ US charging infrastructure causes a road trip problem
Her “advanced team” never heard of ABRP?
Lol advance team. What a joke. What was the plan? Have the team block all dispensers then claim victory that the infrastructure is good enough ? “See we did it, it wasn’t hard”
Blocking the spot and expecting it to go over smooth was wishful thinking… I’m glad they got bitched at and had to experience frustration
Wow, if only they had been driving teslas…
I hope everyone gets past the clickbait headline and reads the article. It’s surprisingly good, balanced and comprehensive. Which is not something I see too often with the state of journalism these days.
tl;dr US charging network ain’t great.
Here in Denmark we had 243 public DCFCs and 4,657 public Type 2 by the end of 2021.By the end of 2022 we had 785 DCFC, 7,978 Type 2.
As of July this year, we’re at 1,266 DCFC, and 13,641 Type 2, and it’s projected that we’ll reach around 2000 DCFCs by the end of 2023 / Q1 2024.
Add to that, Tesla having 252 superchargers, with 216 open to other brands, and planning to double the total by Q1 2024.
So, by early next year, we’re looking at up to 20-2500 DCFCs including Tesla’s, and 14-20,000 Level 2, for a country with a population of a bit less than 6 million.
Meanwhile, from what I can tell, Michigan has 200 public DCFCs and 908 Level 2, in a state with a population of 10 million.
>Her advance team realized there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So **an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot** for the approaching secretary of energy.
Wow.
>That did not go down well…In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police.
lmao
Having done several road trips with no issues, I think it comes down to planning and taking the right precautions. After 4 years of EV driving, I definitely don’t have range anxiety, but I also don’t run them down low on road trips where I don’t know the nuances of local charging.
And not using the cars stupid stuff. I rented a Model Y and it was totally convinced it was OK to arrive at a destination that has no charger with less than 5% SoC. I had to do my own route planning because of how bad it was. I’m glad my own car has Android Auto / Apple Car Play to use regular maps and do it myself more conveniently.
I also see YouTubers going after the low SoC arrivals and it’s just asking for trouble eventually. I wouldn’t arrive at a remote destination 100 miles away from a gas station on E either in an ICE vehicle. (I recently had a road trip that went onto a road with a fuel warning for ICE cars. Midway the road had an emergency stop for diesel, but no regular fuel for an extra long distance. Not always just an EV problem.)
Title is clickbait. Read further down in the article and you’ll find:
> EVs that aren’t Teslas have a road trip problem, and the White House knows it’s urgent to solve this issue.
It goes on to say:
> Tesla chargers are significantly better than the competition, and most of the electric vehicles in the U.S. are Teslas.
For those that don’t care to read the whole thing, the TL;DR version is the vehicle itself (Cadillac Lyriq) experienced a hardware failure and many of the charging stations they used along the route didn’t work well either for various reasons.
However, this a complete non-issue for Tesla drivers and being one myself I can tell you that I’ve taken several road trips and never once had a problem. Been driving Tesla since 2019 and I think I’ve only ever encountered one broken supercharger stall and I’ve never had to wait in line to charge even on holiday weekends.
> an “affordable” Chevrolet Bolt
> US$30k
Pick one, NPR.
The charging network companies are not serious, with a lot investment from traditional car companies who are not fully on board.
Damn, we’re spoiled here in Western Europe
Our family plan is to keep an EV for daily and local trips (<100 miles) and a plug-in hybrid for occasional road trips, for example a RAV-4 Prime which does 42mi on battery alone for day-to-day stuff or 600mi at 94mpg. That combo should be fine for this growth period until the national infrastructure gets sorted out.