Many electric vehicle-owners are finding that charging on the go is neither easy nor fast

[pknopp]

Years from now, when say 50% of the vehicles on the road are EV's, imagine the snarl you'll have when all these vehicles are constantly looking for charging stations.
When it takes as long as it does to charge, they'll need several times as many charge stations as there are gas stations.

Years from now nothing will be the same as it is today. But really, you know this.

 

[hadit]

Gonna take a while to develop that infrastructure. I'm not even sure it's worth it to go down that road. It quickly becomes apparent that charging is not going to win the day if you're spending 15-30 minutes at a gas station every 400 miles on a road trip. Gasoline engines take 5 minutes tops. Americans, by and large, have money for more expensive gas if they are taking road trips. What they don't have is an abundance of time.

The better option going forward would be to do what the Chinese have done. Just like you have an Exxon or Chevron credit card, you get an account with a company that supplies batteries for cars. When you need one, you pull in to the station. A robot from under your car takes out your depleted battery and puts it into a charger located under ground. Once it does that, it takes a charged battery and installs it. You're on your way. They have it down to 3 minutes in some cases. You never get out of your car.

That's the technology needed to make EV's fully viable as a replacement for ICE's. There are still kinks to be worked out, but if enough batteries can be manufactured, it could be the way to go in the future. People are just not going to accept a step backward from a 5-minute fill-up to an hour.

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

You can take a long trip in an EV.
But you have to stop for 8 hours every 250 miles.
This means that it would take about 10-11 days to drive from LA to NYC.

 

[pknopp]

You can take a long trip in an EV.
But you have to stop for 8 hours every 250 miles.
This means that it would take about 10-11 days to drive from LA to NYC.

Why lie?

 

[whitehall]

A vehicle can be in and out of a gas station on a normal day with a cup of coffee in about ten minutes. I have no experience with electric stuff but I expect you might as well order a meal and expect a couple of hours to lectric up.