• EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    11 months ago

    I think it largely boils down to 2 things: How spread out things are in the US that can result in longer trips rather frequently, and the lack of electric car infrastructure.

    These 2 things combined mean people are more concerned about the range that they can get compared to an ICE car. The only EV chargers I know of in my town are just down the street from me and are locked up 24/7 because they’re on the property of an elementary school (stupid idea on the town’s part putting them there). This would mean that if I had an at home charger and an EV with a 100 mile range, I could get about 45 miles out before I would have to turn around and come back to charge it. If I want to go to the city for something (a day trip to the museum, for example), that’s 75 miles - one way. I used to make that drive daily in my old RAV-4 for work, and it isn’t a big deal when the round trip would be a half a tank of gas, but that would mean about 25 miles of battery to find a charger once I get there, or finding at least one stop on the way up and probably on the way back as well. And that’s in optimal conditions. I never saw any EV chargers on that commute in the 5 years I had that job, so it would probably mean going out of the way to find charging stations, which would add additional miles to your battery usage.

    Once the charging infrastructure is more robust (and hopefully isn’t monopolized by Tesla), I think this kind of thing will be much less of a concern, but people are still going to be bothered by it if they have to stop for long periods of time frequently in order to charge their car.