This is what the Chevy Volt and BMW i3 is. The upcoming Ramcharger is as well.
Like it was said though, by having to put on an onboard engine to charge the battery, you use a lot of the advantage of having an EV. You have to have an engine, fuel tank, exhaust, emissions controls, all that shit. Yeah, car makers can mostly bang that stuff out pretty cheap and quick these days but still. You have to sacrifice battery capacity and weight for those things. As our charging infrastructure grows, there will be less need for this.
I never really understood the degree of range anxiety that a lot of consumers seem to have, how often do you really need to drive >200 miles in one go?
I absolutely don’t need the range for anxiety reasons. For me it’s like, “Maybe some day I will really want to take a long road trip.” and then I’ll be glad I have it.
I’ve definitely lowered my range requirements. I started looking at the Lucid because it had massive range, but the rest of the car was mid, so now I’m good with anything EPA rated over 250. Even if the battery on that massively degrades after years of use I should be good for a long time.
It’s not just about range. With a gas car if you run out on the road all you need is a gas can and you’re good. As of now running out of charge on an EV is a bit more annoying.
But I mostly agree. The EV charging capacity is only going to get better and more convenient for EV owners. Battery tech should improve and ranges will get longer. Chargers will be more available and charging times faster. Maybe EV adoption will outpace charging infrastructure increases making things a bit annoying, but by and large if you are finding EVs and public charging manageable now, it likely only gets better.
Effectively yes. They are what are called series hybrids. The engine is not directly connected to the wheels. It only exists to charge the battery when needed. But if the battery is regularly charged with grid power, the engine basically never come on.
Yes, but both of them have pretty small ranges on all electric and the i3-REx only gets about 70 miles using its ICE engine compared to ~370 miles from the Volt.
It’s so funny how everyones first question when they see I drive an EV is “how many miles do you get on a full charge?” Almost without fail. My response is some form of “I have 33k miles in just over two years, so more than the average driver, and I’ve charged on the road exactly three times for a total of maybe 20 minutes. Range matters so much less than people think it does. But to answer your question, 300.”
An EV would be perfect for me except I don’t have a garage to charge it in, plus a few times a year I drive long distance. Hybrid with a good sound system is kind of perfect for road trips.
Do you have of street parking close to your house? Depending on your setup it may be trivially easy to get a charger installed on your driveway/outside of your house.
Same… We live in South Puget Sound…70 miles from Seattle, about 100 from Portland. We’ve had to charge one time on the road coming back from a day trip to Portland. Parked at a dying mall and plugged in for about 20 minutes. We’ve put 20k miles on the car so far.
Most people bitching about ev range probably drive under 50 miles a day.
You’d spend about 20 mins charging, if the round trip is in one day and/or the mid point destination doesn’t have a spot to plug in to top up. Here’s an example in a Tesla Model Y for a 407 mile drive one way.
And here is a 387 mile round trip with one stop on the way home. I’ve done this drive a couple times (Philly to DC and back) and was able to cut the charge time down to 10 mins and be fine to get home.
This is the way. My parents have done a couple 2000+ mile road trips and they love stopping for 10 minutes every 3 hrs to stretch their legs and grab coffee or go to the restroom. Before driving an EV they would go for long haul stretches without stopping and they find the drive much less tiring now, and therefor probably much safer.
Was seeing a tiktok about a guy who wanted to drive his cyber truck across the country. The trip would require at least 48 hours at charging stations throughout the trip.
