LiCO2 Battery with 7 times the energy density of Li-Ion.

I figure 15 minutes is the magic recharge number. That's what a fuel/rest stop normally takes on a road trip. Great thing about the recharge is you don't have to watch it like a fuel refill.
If you live in a country were you can't pump your own gas, you also don't have to watch it, but I do anyway because I don't trust people.
 
Gas pump speeds are irrelevant when you pull up, pump, walk inside, pay, walk back, pull into the next lot, go have food, go to the restroom, drive on - how fast the "pump" part is doesn't matter much for the overall time spent on the stop.
Umm, it’s pull up, swipe card, fill up, leave...
 
^ This is the truth. Kiki and I just did another run to LA for a family wedding. We will stop for a total of 20 minutes in the 10 hour drive - we fill up at home, stop once for fuel in St. George, Utah; once for fuel in Victorville, CA and then arrive at our destination with 75% of a tank. Driving home is the same with the exception of maybe stocking up on liquor and beer that we can't get in Utah. An EV would add significant time to our trip and be more dangerous due to driver fatigue.

As has been every single revolutionary battery tech since I was five (or ten) :p
Truth. Remember the old NiCad batteries when they were hugely expensive and gave almost no runtime? 24 hours to charge up your RC car for 5-10 minutes of run time. Now we have Li-Ion batteries that can fly a drone for 3 times that long, sure, the market will be years away - but you have to start somewhere. If you never progress due to the time line, you never progress at all.
 
But a full charge takes more than 15 minutes, right?

this greatly depends on driving environment. @leviathan wasnt charging full because regen would take care of the last 20% or so. He was only charging up to 80% at most from what I remember.
 
We will stop for a total of 20 minutes in the 10 hour drive - we fill up at home, stop once for fuel in St. George, Utah
Just yesterday was taking kiddos and wife to a sunflower festival at a farm, get in car, fuel is low, fill up at the station on the way and get on highway.
 
With a Tesla Supercharger V3 and the battery down to around 10%, you get about ~55-60% added in a 15 minute stop in a Model 3 Long Range. Ionity stations in Europe are very nearly as fast, the by now ubiquitous V2 Superchargers a little slower, but not much - the same range gain takes just over 20 minutes-ish. At normal Autobahn speed (130 km/h ~= 80 mph), that gives you an effective range gain of about 200 km.

For me personally, stops like this or a little longer ones (25-30 minutes) every 200-300 km are perfect for highway trips, so it works out nicely. Mostly when I stop during highway drives, I spend more time doing stuff (coffee, toilet, possibly quick lunch etc) than the cars needs for charging - I almost always "overcharge" beyond what I actually need to keep going.

I completely concede that for people who are used to much longer highway stints and do long trips often, the current battery and charger tech is not quite there yet. However, I am fairly sure that the current state of the art is already sufficient or more for a majority of drivers. And I'm saying that as someone who doesn't have home charging and only uses the charger at work once a week or so (thanks to project clients spread all over the place and almost never actually being in our office)... in half a year now I haven't had a single situation where state of charge prevented me from going somewhere or caused it to take notably longer than with an ICE car.

Nevertheless, better tech is always exciting and can only offer improvements for the overall EV quality-of-life, and make it suitable for more people who aren't quite convinced yet :)
 
I agree, I would love to park the Taurus and Xterra - relegating them to "road trip" and "towing or off road" status. My commute is just over a mile and then I go to the gym every evening. An EV is perfect for the vast majority of my driving.
 
True enough, tho IMO we should be building new nukes instead of trying to make better batteries for shitty renewables.

This is why I put that thread in the politics section.
 
I think there's a place for both nuclear power and renewable energy, living in a state that is used as a dumping ground for richer states' nuclear waste, I have some pretty strong feelings about how we currently manage radioactive waste material. Refining spend fuel rods is great, but there's a ton of other radioactive materials generated by nuclear power from protective clothing to radioactive water.
 
^ This is the truth. Kiki and I just did another run to LA for a family wedding. We will stop for a total of 20 minutes in the 10 hour drive - we fill up at home, stop once for fuel in St. George, Utah; once for fuel in Victorville, CA and then arrive at our destination with 75% of a tank. Driving home is the same with the exception of maybe stocking up on liquor and beer that we can't get in Utah. An EV would add significant time to our trip and be more dangerous due to driver fatigue.

:dunno: I can't do 10h of driving without food and restroom stops. If you can and do, BEVs aren't for you and those trips in many years.
 
this greatly depends on driving environment. @leviathan wasnt charging full because regen would take care of the last 20% or so. He was only charging up to 80% at most from what I remember.
That's mostly due to the physics of the battery, charging speed drops when you hit the 80s.
 
Just yesterday was taking kiddos and wife to a sunflower festival at a farm, get in car, fuel is low, fill up at the station on the way and get on highway.

Yes but if the car had been charging quietly all night as is the habit you would get into with an EV that wouldn’t be an issue.

Most people stop every 2-3 hours on long journeys for a break. If you accept that those breaks will need to be 20-30 minutes rather than 5-10 for just a piss and a coffee it’s not that much of an issue. As I said it’s just changing habits ever so slightly.
 
Stopping every 2 hours might be the norm in Europe, but in the American West you can drive 8+ hours and not even hit another city. If I jump in the car and head west right now, the first city of any size I hit is Reno, Nevada (which isn't exactly a big city). It's 7.5 hours away. The first major city I hit will be Sacramento, CA at 9 hours and 40 minutes.

Heading east will take me nearly 8 hours to reach Denver. Las Vegas is practically in my back yard thanks to 80 mph speed limits, I can get there in only 6 hours (it used to be our lunch stop on the way to LA, back when we got fuel there).

Going north - well, there really aren't any major cities in that direction since we just have Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana up there. But let's take Boise, ID as the next good-size stopping point at 5 hours away.

Out here in the West we have to put the miles down. This is one of the reasons American cars have historically been large and comfortable; we spend a lot of time in them for long stretches. Honestly, if I didn't have to stop for fuel, I would probably drive all the way to Barstow before pulling over. My coffee mug keeps my caffeine delivery liquid hot for 6+ hours, pack a sandwich and some snacks, keep a bottle of water nearby and power through. I would regularly drive solo from the Bay Area to my parents' house stopping only for fuel (and to take a leak during that stop). It's a 10 hour and 30 minute drive without stops - and I did it without cruise control.
 
Also relies on living in an area with an infrastructure that supports it. The Italy/Austria/Switzerland roadtrip was fine. But Slovenia and further south along the balkans you would struggle. It's still the dark ages.
 
Also relies on living in an area with an infrastructure that supports it. The Italy/Austria/Switzerland roadtrip was fine. But Slovenia and further south along the balkans you would struggle. It's still the dark ages.

same here, once you go towards chicago it of course gets better but out here, nadda for public charging.
 
I think there's a place for both nuclear power and renewable energy, living in a state that is used as a dumping ground for richer states' nuclear waste, I have some pretty strong feelings about how we currently manage radioactive waste material. Refining spend fuel rods is great, but there's a ton of other radioactive materials generated by nuclear power from protective clothing to radioactive water.
I’m not saying you can’t use renewables, hydro has proven itself to be a very good source for example.
Then there is stuff like local generation where you can have solar panels or wind turbines on your actually property/building and only
rely on grid for supplemental power.
However I don’t think that making tons of batteries, which all require various rare earth elements, far from clean mining and production and eventually some form of disposal or recycling should be a corner stone of our power grid.

There are reactor designs that actually use nuclear waste from conventional reactors. There are also other materials that can be used like Thorium, which produce little to no waste.
 
Yes but if the car had been charging quietly all night as is the habit you would get into with an EV that wouldn’t be an issue.
That assumes you have a place to charge, my point is that until charging times are similar to pumping times, EVs will only work for a limited number of people, those who have somewhere to plug in overnight/day.
 
Boy, that didn’t take long to make this political.
 
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