Road Tripping Around Europe in a Tesla Is Less Fun Than You’d Think

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-road-trip/

by pseudolus • 8 years ago

170 444 8 years ago

Aka we need better ways of storing energy

Or don't use a Tesla for something it's not really designed for? Cars can be rented pretty cheaply. 99% of the driving I do is within a single charge of say 300 miles. I might have to rent once a year for longer trips.

My sister has an old generation Nissan Leaf with sub-100 mile range. It works fine for her use case and when she makes a long trip she uses her partners car or rents one.

No different to how I'd rent a van if I was trying to move a sofa.

thejrk_• 8 years ago

We sill need better ways to store energy like OP said.

dotancohen• 8 years ago

Your last sentence really makes the point. I'll be quoting that, thanks.

francisofascii• 8 years ago

Exactly. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

ghaff6• 8 years ago

No different to how I'd rent a van if I was trying to move a sofa.

That's true. But, for a lot of people, long weekend roadtrips are a lot more common than moving sofas. There's quite a bit of friction associated with driving to a rental place on a Friday, parking your car someplace, driving the rental home, packing it up, and then doing the process in reverse during the rental place's business hours.

natch5• 8 years ago

Bloomberg seems to have it in for Tesla so I take their reporting on this with a grain of salt.

They can easily choose to have a bad experience if they so desire by going to slow stations and avoiding superchargers. Or by using superchargers incorrectly such as by trying to fully top off at every charge, a typical newbie mistake, or choosing shared stations when non-shared ones are open (this guy was in a rental... possibly a newbie).

Also the supercharger network is continuing to be built out rapidly so anything they say here will be outdated in a matter of months if not weeks.

jve2• 8 years ago

Well you are biased too, arent you :)

Ofcourse things are improving, but he just said the current situation with electric cars on roadtrips. And what he said is you currently have to plan more and yeah, you get more trouble as a newbie. Everyone is a newbie until they are not.

Disclaimer: I would like to have an electric car.

Sharlin• 8 years ago

The author's a she, btw.

nicoboo4• 8 years ago

If she would have followed the beta-trip planning navigation on-board, then I'm sure she would have made it with ease. I already made that trip a few times and it's simple with a Tesla.

greglindahl2• 8 years ago

So all those hundreds of thousands of new Tesla owners are having this same bad experience, hate the brand, and tell everyone that?

Oh, wait, Tesla has extremely high ratings from owners.

If you'd like to have an electric car, you owe it to yourself to gather information from more than a single Bloomberg reporter.

ergothus• 8 years ago

trying to fully top off at every charge, a typical newbie mistake

A quick Google didn't give me anything clear here - why is that a mistake?

HALtheWise3• 8 years ago

My numbers may not be perfectly accurate, but the sentiment is. Tesla cars at supercharger stations charge to roughly 80% charge in 30 minutes, then take another 30 minutes to finish topping off to 100%. For that reason, they are typically placed at intervals of about half a battery range, so that you don't need a full charge to reach the next station with plenty of charge to spare. Typically, a well planned long road trip will involve rapidly charging the car from 20% to 70%, then driving 100-200 miles until another supercharger, where you repeat the process. In this way, you need to charge for much less time than if you tried to charge from 50% to 100%

sremani• 8 years ago

miles per minute (range per wait-time) goes drastically down after about 80% of charging because of the so-called 'Stadium effect'.

In simple terms 0-80 takes 30 minutes but the rest of the 20 percent will take 30 minutes too. So it is better to make two stops if you have to and get 80 + 80.

wlll7• 8 years ago

supercharger network is continuing to be built out rapidly

I'm pretty sure this has been the case for a while now, years perhaps, and yet the author seemed to have problems none the less.

You say the reporting should be taken "with a grain of salt", but what did they do to make their lives harder than they could have been?

Or by using superchargers incorrectly such as by trying to fully top off at every charge

I have a petrol car that I fill up completely whenever I am at a petrol station, why should someone not do this for an electric car?

or choosing shared stations when non-shared ones are open

What does this mean? I read the article but couldn't see anything that to me sounded like it matched this statement, but that's likely just my lack of experience.

I get that you might have more experience than me, or the author, but you've not really explained how this was the authors fault, and how the experience could have been made better.

If I buy a Tesla then try to drive from the North of England to Seville, am I going to have the same issues the author had? What knowledge do you posses that would allow me to do the journey more easily than they did?

nicoboo4• 8 years ago

In the Tesla, you have the time required till your next step on a long trip.

So, you don't charge until you're fully loaded at 100% but if you're following the instructions, you'll get at your next stop with around 20% left for best charging conditions. You even get the info on your mobile as a notification so you can know you can go back on the road.

I really mean it's a pleasure to drive.

smileysteve7• 8 years ago

I have a petrol car that I fill up completely whenever I am at a petrol station, why should someone not do this for an electric car?

Because of the time requirements? Plenty of users don't always fill their petrol cars due to time or budget constraints.

Importantly, ICE cars also have eccentricities not all users know about, such as running low on gas often prevents the fuel pump from adequate cooling.

And the 80% rule is true of mobile phones as well.

airstrike3• 8 years ago

and yet the author seemed to have problems none the less.

Based on what other commenters are saying, it sounds like the author purposefully ran into problems so they would have a story to write.

dkonofalski14• 8 years ago

what did they do to make their lives harder than they could have been?

The big issue for me is not following the directions for charging in the manual and battery screen for the car. The navigation has an option to find Superchargers and yet the author used Google Maps to find chargers instead. This means that they got "destination chargers" instead of Superchargers. Additionally, the car tells you not to make quick charging stops and not to wait until the battery is low to charge as it handles all that automatically. The author could have made this trip in 2 stops that would have taken a total of 40 minutes of charging if they had just used the navigation built into the car. They went out of their way to make sure the "range anxiety" lasted for as long as possible.

mlindner3• 8 years ago

I have a petrol car that I fill up completely whenever I am at a petrol station, why should someone not do this for an electric car?

Because batteries asymptotically charge. The closer you are to 100% the slower they charge. The optimum way to drive is to stop frequently for short stops (5-10 minutes or so) and rapidly refill the battery while grabbing a snack or using your phone, and then continue.

izacus8• 8 years ago

... as by trying to fully top off at every charge, a typical newbie mistake, ...

Hmm, in what way? Throwing my usual home trip (~980km) from Switzerland into Tesla charger route calculator shows me that I'd have to stop twice and coast to each charger at less than 12% of battery left. Those are also only chargers on the route, what's the alternative here? Do a 1300km trip and stop three times?

natch5• 8 years ago

There are usually more superchargers than the route planner shows you. That’s just one possible plan. Cancel the route temporarily (for others reading, it’s two taps to get it back) and just look at all the superchargers and you’ll see ones that were not shown in the route planner.

smileysteve7• 8 years ago

slow charging overnight at a hotel or 1 of your meal location; which would be part of your trip planning any way; because biology is going to make you stop more than twice.

lagadu• 8 years ago

If he wanted to go that far, he should've taken a train. I realize that the point of this was to test it out but he is flat-out ignoring that extremely few people here do trips over 200km over once a year, so there's no demand for infrastructure to support that.

jve2• 8 years ago

Everyone is not exaclty like you. Where I live in europe, many people around me do more than 200km ocassionally or often. And when I go on a roadtrip, I notice plenty of cars with registration numbers not from particular country.

smileysteve7• 8 years ago

Everyone is not exaclty like you.
extremely few
many people around me

Studies suggest that "extremely few" and "many people around me" is about 10% of car trips. (At least in the U.S., typically more geographically sprawled than much of europe).

https://www.fastcompany.com/3062902/electric-vehicles-could-...

So, yes, maybe not everybody can have an electric car and may need to rent a better suited car some % of the time; Maybe that's a partner, a neighbor, a car club. On the bright side, renting a van, truck, land rover for longer trips also reduces the wear on your batteries.

netsharc• 8 years ago

Where is "here"?

Well you could also say the target market for this car is city-commuters, and yeah a very high percentage of time, most car owners don't go hundreds of kms on their trips.

It'd be like evaluating a Smart car for road trips: also not fun.

To criticize this article as well: she says around Europe but she drove in France and a little bit in Germany. That's... not... around Europe.

icebraining• 8 years ago

I don't find that true at all, and I live in a small EU country. Multiple coworkers of mine commute more than that every weekends. Trains are great, but they don't reach everywhere roads do.

Symbiote• 8 years ago

While Tesla’s website shows roughly 600 Supercharger stations in the U.S., it has only around 400 in Europe, 65 of them in France (with a total of 220 charging docks). That doesn’t feel like much for a country roughly the size of Texas with more than double its population.

The supercharger network in Europe is strongly weighted towards the west, there's a map [1].

Texas seems to have 39 superchargers, and the journalist didn't have to wait while others were charging.

So my guess is a 715 mile road trip in the USA would be similar — particularly on a leisure road trip, which is less likely to follow the main motorways.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/en_EU/findus#/bounds/65,55,34,-11,d?se...

rgrove2• 8 years ago

I commented here about my own experience taking a ~5,000 mile US road trip from Oregon to Texas in a Tesla Model 3 last summer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18868422

tl;dr: I covered ~600 miles a day and it was a lovely trip.

jakobegger2• 8 years ago

I really don't get why all the charging networks in Europe require you to sign up, get a card, download an app, etc. It's ridiculous. My sister drives an electric car, they have 5 cards from different charging networks, and she still struggles to find a charger that actually lets her charge.

Every gas station accepts normal debit and credit cards. There is no gas station that requires you to sign up before filling your tank. It is ridiculous.

Why can't the charging networks just install a normal credit/debit card reader and let people pay with their normal cards? It's mind-boggling.

pxndx• 8 years ago

Because they can't harvest your information if you don't sign up for stuff.

VBprogrammer4• 8 years ago

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I would be completely unsurprised to find that other than having the data in some poorly secured database it isn't used for anything useful.

Forbo• 8 years ago

Couldn't a card number be tokenized in some way so as to allow for tracking?

ec109685• 8 years ago

Even the us is super cumbersome. They should just support ApplePay, Google Pay and a credit card and be done with it.

Remembering the password for some finicky app just makes the quick fill up too much trouble.

Even better would be if the car had secure handshake so once you’ve registered once for a network, you can just plug in and be done.

floatrock• 8 years ago

Do the charger standards pass any data?

Like could you plug in, the car identifies itself as whatever VIN (add whatever anti-tampering challenge-response you want to armchair-design), and the electrons just start flowing?

tjohns• 8 years ago

I know ChargePoint stations in the US accept standard tap-and-pay, so are compatible with Google/Apple Pay.

airstrike3• 8 years ago

Even better would be if the car had secure handshake so once you’ve registered once for a network, you can just plug in and be done.

I'm really surprised this isn't how it works... Surely if they can figure out autopilot they can make charging seamless. Wait... never mind.

stcredzero2• 8 years ago

Even the us is super cumbersome.

I just present my RFID Chargepoint card, and it pretty much just works.

darkpuma4• 8 years ago

"They should just support ApplePay, Google Pay and a credit card and be done with it."

They should take cash.

ecpottinger4• 8 years ago

That is how Tesla's superchargers work.

arve0• 8 years ago

Because of cost?

1. Cost per charge << per tank, and

2. cost credit car reader >> rfid reader.

Kurtz79• 8 years ago

I would think that if you are setting up a charging station, buying half a dozen of commercial credit card readers would be cheaper than developing/testing/maintaining a specific payment app.

Dylan16807• 8 years ago

Credit card readers are dirt cheap.

You should pay for a reliable model, but the same applies to RFID. Still not very much.

devy5• 8 years ago

European's charging network infrastructure is probably more fragmented whereas in the U.S. there is only a few dominant ones: ChargePoint, EVgo and Tesla. Both can have iOS Passbook / Wallet integration so that you don't need a physical RFID card but rather a digital pass, pair with a NFC-capable phone, physical ID cards are eliminated.

There are a lot of reason the charging infrastructure market is fragmented, mostly due to it's the early days of EV-lution where market consolidation hasn't fully played out yet. Also building charging stations is a capital-heavy business since it involves the land lease/purchase as well as construction/equipments (DC fast charging stations are very expensive, the higher the power the more expensive)/installation (permits etc)/maintenance. A friend of mine spent his own money to install a ChargePoint 50kw DCFC at his restaurant, it ended up costing an upward of $50k - at $2/kwh charging rate, he would barely break even in 3 years.

jackhack• 8 years ago

>he would barely break even in 3 years

from the profit at the charger, agreed. However, it's safe to presume this charger was installed in order to attract more wealthy customers -- ones who likely bring higher food & beverage profit margins than the average Corolla diver.

izacus8• 8 years ago

I really don't get why it's so impossible to just add a (contactless or normal) card payment terminal to the stations. The standard gas stations will have those, always.

stcredzero2• 8 years ago

I really don't get why all the charging networks in Europe require you to sign up, get a card, download an app, etc. It's ridiculous.

2019's "sign up, get a card, download an app" is like 1990's "Leave your name and contact information. Our sales people will contact you."

noer• 8 years ago

Leave your name and contact information. Our sales people will contact you.

This happens far too often in 2019 as well.

anitil2• 8 years ago

I was shocked the other day to see a water dispensing ... thing, that required you to download an app. An app. For water that is free from another very similar water dispensing thing call a tap!

marcosdumay2• 8 years ago

1990's

There are many sites like that on the internet today. Ever had to buy enterprise software?

angstrom• 8 years ago

Or one of the many collect call phone numbers.

Nimitz142• 8 years ago

Leave your name and contact information. Our sales people will contact you.

What would be the right way?

agumonkey• 8 years ago

progress doesn't solve the 'we need money, thus we need clients'; it's a game of whack-a-mole..

jdietrich• 8 years ago

Venture capital.

Selling electricity for money is not exciting. It's a simple and relatively low-margin commodity transaction. It's not going to create a unicorn. Making the transaction more complicated and collecting a bunch of user data increases the bullshit surface area for your pitch deck. If you're vague enough about what your business model really is, you might just fool someone into thinking that you can make them a whole bunch of money.

jaclaz2• 8 years ago

If I may go a step further, usually gas stations also accept "normal" cash, which is even more normal (and BTW leaving less electronic traces) than "normal debit and credit cards".

jakobegger2• 8 years ago

Yeah, it would be awesome if you could just put a few Euro coins in a slot next to an outlet and it would let you take a couple of kWh. But dealing with physical cash is a hassle, so I understand why companies would prefer cards. We have a bunch of unattended gas stations around here, and you can't pay with cash there either.

hrktb• 8 years ago

I think it heavily depends on the gas station.

For instance the cheapest chains (e.g. Total Access, Carrefour, Leclerc) often don't accept cash as there is most of the time no employee on premise, and they don't want to deal with vandalism.

In general France is progressively going away from cash. Using a credit card for super small transactions like buying bread at the bakery were deemed almost anti-social a few years ago, but more and more bakeries start to prefer it for speedier contact less payment for instance.

cfstras3• 8 years ago

credit/debit transactions are too expensive for these small transactions to be viable. many stores have a „no cards below 10€“ policy because of this.

miohtama2• 8 years ago

Not in Europe where card fees are capped

http://www.eurolabour.org.uk/caps-on-credit-and-debit-card-f...

davidgould4• 8 years ago

Is this really true? Around here (Oakland, California) the parking meters take credit cards. Today for example, I paid $0.50 US for parking using a Visa card.

mcv5• 8 years ago

€10?! That is excessive. In the past, there have been shops that asked not to use a debit card for small transactions, but these days many shops welcome them, because handling cash is also expensive. (My favourite cheese shop is the lone exception: they only accept cash and nothing else. Luddites, but great and cheap cheese.)

Credit cards are extremely rare in Europe, and only few places accept them at all, unless they're compatible with standard bank card transactions. Bank card transactions aren't that expensive and used for absolutely everything, including very small transactions.

For recharging your car, there's really no problem at all to rely on standard bank cards.

kokokokoko• 8 years ago

Because capital investment funded companies have very different goals than a traditional business.

A traditional business has cash flow as it's number one priority.

A young capital investment based company has market share and growth as it's top priority.

It's just a product of the priorities of how most modern businesses are created.

CydeWeys• 8 years ago

They'd grow faster if the charging stations were easier to use and didn't require signing up days I'm advance just to charge your car.

The company that fixes this poor experience and offers a simple credit/debit card payment option, like a standard gas pump, is going to win.

PhasmaFelis• 8 years ago

It's still hilarious to me that the great investors and moneymen of the world have all gotten together and decided that "step 1 collect users, step 3 profit" is the best business model.

test6554• 8 years ago

This is probably so that credit card fees can be avoided. An app can offer alternative ways to pay that don't incur a fee for the merchant. Also it's a new industry, so they likely want to collect data on where people with electric cars live so they know where the best location to build a charging station is.

na85• 8 years ago

Yes, I'm sure it's that and not additional revenue from selling the data to advertisers or insurance companies.

timthorn• 8 years ago

At least in the UK, until quite recently most networks were subscription clubs rather than pay as you go. There was no incremental charge for filing up, just a £10/year membership charge.

Now EVs have become more popular, the charging model is changing to a more sustainable system. The government is also working to enforce roaming between networks.

stickfigure• 8 years ago

Every gas station accepts normal debit and credit cards.

On the other hand, skimmers and stolen cards are rampant at gas pumps. I'd be leery of deploying an unmanned roadside credit card reader. Maybe the extra vetting is an anti-fraud measure.

BronSteeDiam• 8 years ago

What about all the vending machines that take credit cards?

ryanlol• 8 years ago

This just isn't a thing in Europe.

Tijdreiziger• 8 years ago

It's quite sad that this comment (which is currently at the top) is full of misinformation.

Yes, you need an RFID card (or keychain hanger), because these are low-margin transactions; transaction fees would make charging more expensive, and the fees to maintain card readers would mean that there would be much fewer charging points as they would be more expensive to install.

No, you don't need an app. Some charge points allow you to use an app instead of a card, if you prefer that. But that's by no means required, you can always use a card instead.

No, you don't need 5 cards. One card (plus a backup one in case of an outage) should be plenty, the exception being if you're going abroad (this depends on the roaming agreements your card provider has). Now, some cards offer cheap rates at some charge points, so by having multiple cards it's possible to save some money. But that's by no means required.

krageon• 8 years ago

The title here is "around Europe", which guarantees "abroad".

londons_explore4• 8 years ago

Electric charging isn't a low margin operation. Sale prices for electricity via them routinely see a 200% margin compared to wholesale electricity prices.

mcv5• 8 years ago

Transaction fees for European PIN transactions aren't that crippling, and the convenience of being able to actually recharge is easily worth a couple of cents. These required signups are just needless fragmentation of an already small market.

What I don't get is why every gas station does not also have at least one charging point. They've got air for your tires, sometimes a car wash, and tons of other conveniences, but no electricity? Electricity should be the easiest thing in the world.

The whole point is of course that eventually you can recharge wherever you park, but that means there must be more places to recharge than there are gas stations, not less. This situation is ridiculous.

pfranz2• 8 years ago

Wifi has been like that for like 15+ years and it seems way harder to sign up to one of those. It effectively means I'll never use it.

londons_explore4• 8 years ago

If someone made a WiFi protocol which allowed me to "autoconnect and use WiFi whenever the price per GB was under $2", I'd make a lot of use of it.

As it is, connecting to "free WiFi" just isn't worth the hassle of clicking through T&C pages, and paid WiFi is even worse.

elhudy3• 8 years ago

I did a 4-day 16 hour round trip drive just this past weekend through the Midwest into the South. Can't imagine having to stop any more often than I already did; in fact at the pace Teslas charge, I'm not sure the trip would have even been possible.

rconti7• 8 years ago

16 hours.. total? or 112 hours total?

The former sounds amazingly brief, the latter, rather long.

beatgammit9• 8 years ago

Yeah, I just drove 14 hours or so one way to visit family and did it in one day. I can see 16 hours one way being correct for "Midwest to South" (both large regions) and can't really see 64 or 112 making sense. LA to NYC is 42 hours or so and Detroit to New Orleans is 16 hours or so, so 64 or 112 hours for a round trip between those regions would have to be quite circuitous.

So yeah, I'm a little confused at OP's math. I'm guessing there were a lot of stops involved in a very nonlinear trip.

elhudy3• 8 years ago

16 hours round trip = 8 hours each way. In four days.

elhudy3• 8 years ago

Just curious, what is amazingly brief about driving two 8 hour (~500 mile) segments in four days? Even if I had the largest Tesla Battery, I would still have had to stop and do a full charge during each segment twice.

nicoboo4• 8 years ago

The funny thing is, I made the trip from Lille, France (near where I live) to Poznan in Poland, a few stops required all along and no problem - more than 2000km on a few days.

In the summer, in France, Lille to Alps then Ardeche and no problem.

Same for my past vacations here in the South of France (Ardeche, France), around 1000 km long trip and same for getting back here.

I've been using my Tesla (TS85D) since Nov2015, and the only time I had a short stress was while I went seeing Elon Musk in Paris because there were hundred of Teslas in the same area.

So, frankly, I respect the author of this article, but I think if you're following what is displayed on board and adding a little logical thinking and planning a bit your trip in some remote areas (Britany for example) (with OpenChargeMap or ChargeMap applications among others), then it's all good.

dkonofalski14• 8 years ago

That's the problem. The author admits to not using the onboard charging navigation but instead used Google Maps to plan the trip. She's intentionally being obtuse to make the article clickbait and make EVs look bad.

reaperducer3• 8 years ago

If EVs are going to go truly mainstream, people are going to have to be allowed to use the navigation app of their choice.

When I ask my car to find the nearest gas station, it gives me the same results as Apple Maps.

Whether this is Tesla's fault, or Google's fault, or someone else's is complex.

alistairSH3• 8 years ago

Do all cars come with a trip planning feature? IE, if she had rented a BMW or Volvo, would she be able to use the Tesla app or similar?

From my perspective, people are used to being able to pull off the highway just about anywhere and fill their tanks. Having to plan everything down to the mile, even for a mostly highway trip through populated areas, is a major change of thinking.

For example, take this trip... https://www.tesla.com/trips/#/?v=MS_2017_100D&o=Reston,%20VA...

In my ICE car, I usually stop in Richmond or Williamsburg to get a snack and use the restroom. Based on Tesla's app, I now have to stop twice (once to pee, again to charge). And that second stop is longer than a 5 minute fuel fill. Not the end of the world, but different. Also, there is no charging station at the destination, so I now need to manage my mileage while at the beach to ensure I can get to the closest charge 10 miles to the south (which then adds time to the start of the return journey). Again, not an insurmountable obstacle, but it sure does add complication to a trip I make several times/year with a car full of family and pets.

Edit - I'm not trying to be snarky or difficult. I really have no idea how people plan their EV trips, as I don't own one (and probably can't any time soon, as I don't have a dedicated parking spot to install a charger at home).

Edit2 - if I change the charger routing to the smaller battery pack, it recommends two stops, adding even more time. This would likely be the case for any EV except Tesla, or possibly a Bolt?

gamblor9569• 8 years ago

The whole point of the article was that EVs (in this case, specifically Teslas) are not yet ready to be driven like normal cars, i.e., without regard to planning refueling stops.

It's not clickbait, it's literally the point of the test and the resultant article.

hndamien3• 8 years ago

It is also quite apparent she drives with zero regards for energy management. The energy usage gauge is prominently displayed in the dash, for similar reasons that you use a fuel gauge. If you are at all concerned that your range may be questionable for a leg, then it is quite trivial to drive more efficiently. The author seems to not care about this at all and wants to drive wastefully. This is fine, but it takes away a lot of weight when whinging about range and poor planning.

clouddrover2• 8 years ago

the only time I had a short stress was while I went seeing Elon Musk in Paris because there were hundred of Teslas in the same area

That's the scenario in which mobile charging stations make a lot of sense. They allow for a temporary increase in charger availability for the duration of some popular event like a sports final or a concert:

https://forbes.com/sites/sebastianblanco/2018/12/27/vw-mobil...

arkh3• 8 years ago

planning a bit

The joy of petrol cars in Europe: you don't have to plan where to recharge. And recharging will rarely take more than 15mn.

williamdclt• 8 years ago

Yeah well, nobody's arguing that the electric charger network is as developed as the gas station network yet. It's getting better and better though

nicoboo4• 8 years ago

You cut a part of my sentence but still. "Panning a bit" in remote areas where you know that even Fuel Stations are hard to find.

c0nfused• 8 years ago

Stories like this vaguely confuse me, typically the driver complains about not being able to find a charger repeatedly.

I bought a Tesla model 3 recently, hooray tax credits.

There is literally a button on the map screen that tells you how to get to the nearest chargers both Tesla and otherwise and if they, for the Tesla chargers, are available. This will then happily navigate you to the charger via GPS.

It seems like for a technology that is pretty frankly an early adopter thing, that using the tools provided rather than expecting it to work like a gas car is expected.

beatgammit9• 8 years ago

Precisely. If I had a natural gas or hydrogen car, I would expect to plan in advance for refueling. For an electric car, I would also plan in advance even though the car has the option to find the nearest station (better to avoid being out of range of a quick charger and having to spend more time than necessary at a slower station).

So yeah, I completely agree that it should be assumed to be more involved than the currently mass-market vehicles.

eastendguy• 8 years ago

Paris to Mannheim is only 3 hours by fast train! Why take the car? Or if money is an issue, it is 7 hours and US$ 25 by bus.

This does not make the authors point invalid. I am just pointing out the good public infrastructure. Even so I have a Tesla, I still prefer public transport if possible. It is an sooo much more productive use of time.

criddell• 8 years ago

If getting from point A to B is the only goal, then I agree with you.

Some road trips are more about the journey than the destination though. If a sign tells me the worlds longest paperclip chain is just off the next exit, I'm probably going to take it.

HALtheWise3• 8 years ago

For anyone planning to take a road trip in an EV, there are really good tools that allow you to avoid almost all of the issues the author faced due to bad planning. The Tesla navigation system has one built in that takes into account supercharger closures, but there are also https://evtripplanner.com and https://abetterrouteplanner.com , which are highly customizable and quite nice.

For this particular route, https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=45a1f1bd-5697-448... finds a route with just under 2.5 hours total charging time, and 10 h15m driving time.

The one issue that might have been unavoidable was having a supercharger be closed unexpectedly while you are driving towards it, but I suspect that Tesla indicates impending closures on the display, and you can also call their roadside support line to clarify details about impending maintainence if you are worried.

pjc50• 8 years ago

By "round Europe" they mean "Paris to Mannheim and back again". For this journey it would be much simpler and quicker to take the train: https://www.thetrainline.com/en/train-times/paris-to-mannhei...

(In general if you want to see a lot of Europe don't do it on the road, get an Inter-Rail pass! Much cheaper than a Tesla)

marktangotango• 8 years ago

Car trips in Europe in general are less “fun” than the US due to the simple fact in Europe most businesses keep sensible hours. Unlike the the US you can’t just drive and expect to find gas, food, or lodging at midnight. This may have changed in the past 10-20 years though. At least today you don’t have to bother with showing your papers at every border crossing.

paganel• 8 years ago

It’s pretty doable to find over-night accommodation, you just kind of need an approximate idea in the morning about the town/city where you’re going to spend the night. I’ve managed to find same-day bed-and-breakfast stays in cities like Salzburg and Trieste at reasonable prices. And driving in Europe is pretty great. Seeing the Alps, the Lago Maggiore and the Adriatic Sea on the same day is quite the nice feeling.

AlexTWithBeard5• 8 years ago

Sorry, folks. A business which is only open when I'm in the office and closed when I actually have some free time doesn't sound sensible at all.

rockinghigh• 8 years ago

It seems that your view is outdated. Most gas stations are open 24/7 if you have a credit card and it has been that way for at least 25+ years. Showing your passport at borders has not been in effect for 3 decades--since the Schengen Agreement in 1985. You could not show up at a regular restaurant in the US at midnight either. For lodging, there are hotels that allow for late check-ins just like in the US.

crooked-v• 8 years ago

Also, if you've got some friends you can get a train car and get some sleep on the way on long trips.

chrisseaton2• 8 years ago

Also, if you've got some friends you can get a train car

What's a train car?

yholio• 8 years ago

I decide to do a full charge as my hotel is still 145 miles away. It takes a tedious 85 minutes, and I dine on a Whopper and fries.

It blows my mind that people think recharging their cars on the go can be the future of transportation. I understand that with good driver education and planning, the hassles of charging can be circumvented. I have a tremendous amount of respect for those that put in the effort: you are doing the pioneering work and boot starting a green revolution, I might join you soon.

That being said, for the average consumer electrics cannot represent a compelling alternative for an internal combustion car until battery swap technology is ubiquitous. The majority of people will simply not give up the convenience of fast refills, unless the cost of driving a petrol car rises significantly while the affordability and electrics increases dramatically. Even then, it will be seen by many as the low cost, inferior product.

A rechargeable car a significantly more inconvenient product for most consumers, so it has a lower value that has to be compensated somehow.

davideous2• 8 years ago

Does any electric car have an option where you can place a portable gasoline generator in the frunk and then trickle charge the battery while you drive on a road trip (with appropriate venting of exhaust).

If not, why not?

I've seen very small, quiet gasoline generators. I would think this could solve this problem easily at the expense of a small amount of storage space.

woofyman• 8 years ago

You’re describing a plug in hybrid or a serial hybrid like the Chevy Volt.

pitaj3• 8 years ago

I've thought about this, too. It can't be that difficult to do, can it? Maybe it's illegal under current regulatory systems.

ghaff6• 8 years ago

Not portable generators--which you'd really want built in for various safety and venting reasons. But you're basically describing a plug-in hybrid. The case against these is that you still carry over at least some of the complexity/maintenance of having an ICE.

semi-extrinsic• 8 years ago

BMW i3 range extender does exactly this.

driverdan3• 8 years ago

A small generator puts out less power than the car consumes. It would extend the trip but not solve the problem.

As others have said, it's more practical to have a purpose built hybrid.

cmsonger• 8 years ago

It blows my mind that people think recharging their cars on the go can be the future of transportation.

It's worth noting that article was written by someone who was driving a Tesla with 215 miles of range and who had clearly not done EV road tripping before. You cannot buy a Tesla model S with 215 miles of range anymore. The shortest model S is 259. The longest 335. And a thing you learn pretty quickly is that charging is super non-linear in its rate. 0->80 is much much much faster than 80->100.

I'm not disagreeing that EVs are worse for roadtripping. EVs are worse for road tripping -- but the car used and the choices of the author are exaggerating the issue.

www.abetterrouteplanner.com tends to be pretty spot on for "time spent charging" in the routes that it produces. If you want a better measure of the inconvenience, that's a good place to get such a measure.

ljoshua• 8 years ago

Wasn't Tesla also working on an option where you would drive up to a special dock, and it would extract the battery pack entirely from the bottom of your vehicle and swap in a new, fully-charged one? That seems like a more proper method for long trips and very cool (probably faster than filling up gas!) but I'm not sure if it's a reality yet.

rip_netrunner2• 8 years ago

I've heard talk about possible implementation of that in the future from both waymo and tesla, but I don't think there are any plans on the drawing board yet. I think fast-charging is what both of them are more focused on now.

wil421• 8 years ago

I think this style would be much better suited for short haul trucking. If you had trucks going from supplier to distribution center you could just swap out for the return trips. If they weren’t running near round the clock it might not be feasible.

extrapickles• 8 years ago

They stopped development of it because to keep accounting simple you had to return to the swap point to get your original battery back. As a result, not very many people used their proof of concept swapping location.

smiley1437• 8 years ago

Tesla had a working automated battery swap system, but it was a paperwork headache to use so it looks like it was discontinued:

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-prog...

ajford• 8 years ago

I really think the path forward for a majority of people is plug-in hybrids. Most people have daily commutes under 50mi round trip. For those people, a car with 50-80mi electric range, then a reduced fuel range is perfect. My spouse drives a Chevy Volt (a sadly now discontinued model), which works well for her 40mi daily commute. Most weeks, the car never fires up the ICE, and we've put probably less than 4 gallons in the last two months. However, we're still able to make long-distance trips with the 7-8 gallon gas tank that gets us around 300 miles with the ~40MPG efficiency of the ICE.

That completely eliminates range anxiety, since once the EV range has run out, you still have a perfectly normal car, and can refuel at any station. And with the spare factory EVSE in the trunk, I can generally recharge at my destination when staying overnight.

rip_netrunner2• 8 years ago

It's just a lot of extra engineering and cost to have two discrete motors in a car. You're probably going to have a seriously underpowered ICE in it as well since available speeds are reduced which makes it less suitable to highway driving. Not to mention the additional costs on maintaining both of those engines.

ghaff6• 8 years ago

For 2-car households, an EV car and an ICE (or plugin hybrid) will increasingly make a lot of sense, especially if the ICE is a bigger vehicle of the sort that people often want for roadtrips.

If there's just one car, my experiences may be flavored by the fact that I go to some relatively remote areas, but I just don't see an EV making sense for many people. I don't see renting a car even every few months because I need it for a wilderness trip. FWIW, Prius plug-in hybrid sales seem to be quite strong. It's not really an elegant solution compared to an EV but it's probably pragmatic.

itsrobreally• 8 years ago

Nashville, TN has electric buses with a fancy inductive charge port on top, allowing them to be fully charged in 5-10 minutes (they do it on a regular extended stop). An arm descends above the bus until the charging port is in place.

I am certain that could be dangerous at car height, but I am also certain some form of this will eventually replace the 220 or 440 line currently in use in most charging stations. I think battery swapping is a good idea, too but it isn't the only solution.

Latteland2• 8 years ago

Seattle has had electric buses for years with charging at the park and rides. I don't think it's inductive, it's kind of a giant slot they drive into, above the bus. It just works, but in the end it's no different than being on any other bus.

clouddrover2• 8 years ago

until battery swap technology is ubiquitous

A simpler way forward is to have faster chargers. The Porsche Taycan and (later on) the Audi e-Tron GT are based on an 800-volt architecture which can charge to 80% in 20 minutes from a 350 kW charger:

https://electrek.co/2018/07/30/porsche-taycan-all-electric-p...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/11/28/audi-e...

The 350 kW chargers are being built out now:

https://electrek.co/2018/12/06/electrify-america-first-350kw...

And Porsche is also working on a 450 kW charger for even faster charging:

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1120457_porsche-already...

Diversity of charging options will also help. The Audi e-Tron GT and Volkswagen's I.D. cars and vans will support wireless inductive charging at 11 kW:

https://www.autoblog.com/2018/11/28/audi-e-tron-gt-concept-e...

https://jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-engineering-behind-vws-...

The Volkswagen ID Buzz Cargo van will also have a solar panel on the roof (though it won't give you much additional range):

http://newsroom.vw.com/vehicles/volkswagen-i-d-buzz-cargo-th...

walshemj2• 8 years ago

Expensive to install and the beefier the charging supply to more risk of nasty accidents - let alone the effect on the Grid.

modeless4• 8 years ago

A rechargeable car a significantly more inconvenient product for most consumers

Actually, a rechargeable car is significantly more convenient than a gasoline car because you can charge it at home and/or work. You only ever have to wait for charging on long road trips.

If you take road trips over 250 miles on a monthly basis, or you can't charge at home or work, then by all means get a gasoline car. But I think that given people's driving patterns, the majority of people would spend less time overall waiting for charging than they would driving to the gas station and filling up. I certainly do.

X6S1x6Okd1st2• 8 years ago

I live in Seattle and am currently considering what car to buy next. It will likely be an ICE car because during the summer we regularly will drive 70-100 miles in one direction to a hike. There are not and will not be charging stations at the trailhead. Typically we eat breakfast on the road or before heading out, eat lunch on the hike & get back home for dinner. Stopping for over an hour on the way back would be a big change of pace.

This is also true for some of the ski resorts. There are a couple charging stations, but parking is already enough of a disaster at the ski resorts that I'd rather not deal with it.

We'll likely follow the crowd and get a ICE Subaru.

bluGill6• 8 years ago

IF you do the math, even for the at home case you spend more time charging the electric car than filling the gas car. The difference is with the electric car part of your routine is pulling the cord off the wall at night and hanging it back up in the morning, and it only takes a minute extra. With a gas car every once in a while - never on schedule you have to make a separate stop that adds 10 minutes. Over the course of a month less time was spent getting gas, but with the electric it is part of the routine do you don't think about it.

dkonofalski14• 8 years ago

This is my exact situation. My electric car is far more convenient for me than my gas car is and, so far, I would extend that to long road trips. Literally the only benefit I find to driving my ICE vehicle is the short fuel-up time but, with every trip I've taken in the EV in the last year since I bought the car, you don't have to charge it all the way to get to the next charger/destination. I can charge to the daily drive capacity in about 20-25 minutes which has gotten me to the next charger with plenty of range to spare.

reaperducer3• 8 years ago

a rechargeable car is significantly more convenient than a gasoline car because you can charge it at home and/or work

There are services (in the U.S., at least) that will fill your car with gas while you're at work, or home, at a hotel, or anywhere they can get to your car.

Here's one: https://filld.com

walshemj2• 8 years ago

But you don't need to do that with an ICE car so you.

userbinator• 8 years ago

Actually, a rechargeable car is significantly more convenient than a gasoline car because you can charge it at home and/or work

Given how many people I've heard "I forgot to plug in my phone last night" from, I wonder if "I forgot to plug in my car" will become a common late excuse in the future.

beatgammit9• 8 years ago

I'm usually ready for a break every 200 miles or so anyway, so I don't think I'd really need much more than 300 mile range. At 60mph, 300 miles is 5 hours and at 80 (highest legal limit I know of) it's 3.75 hours, which is a long time to go without a break.

If an electric car can get me 200-300 miles on 30 minutes of charging, I'll take the minor inconvenience on road trips to get the major convenience of home charging the rest of the time.

eeeeeeeeeeeee3• 8 years ago

Or we just need to move to car subscriptions where you show up and swap the car out and someone else handles charging the car behind the scenes. Could even potentially do it in a similar model to how scooter companies crowd source the charging.

sandrobfc• 8 years ago

I believe that it was the OP intention to do that trip mostly for the experience. It doesn't make sense to ask why not take a train or any other transport instead.

In any case, it just deepens my fear of electric cars. It surely looks expensive (almost as much as gas cars), there are very few superchargers in Europe (where I live there's only 3-4, and very badly placed) and the autonomy doesn't seem to be that great. Maybe I just have to wait for better autonomy and more recharge stations...

diebeforei4852• 8 years ago

Instead of stopping at the Metz supercharger like the onboard navigation[1] would tell her to, this reporter with an axe to grind decides to do stupid things like charging to 100% to make a clickbaity article.

[1] Web version: https://www.tesla.com/trips/#/?v=MS_2017_100D&o=Paris,%20Fra...

iknowstuff• 8 years ago

To be fair, her car had a smaller range, so this is more like it: https://www.tesla.com/trips/#/?v=MX_2017_75D&o=Paris,%20Fran...

dkonofalski14• 8 years ago

Yeah... and whoever told her to make as many little charging stops as possible was clearly also out to misinform her. The Tesla manual specifically says to leave your car plugged in and charge it all the way. You're not supposed to worry about that kind of stuff. Just plug it in and leave it charging until it tells you to stop.

gamblor9569• 8 years ago

Really? Because the advice I keep hearing about Teslas is exactly the opposite: don't charge your car all the way; only let it charge somewhere between 66-80ish percent if you want to maximize battery life.

Can't be surprised that she's confused about it.

mertd• 8 years ago

It reads very similar to the infamous NYT review[1].

[1] https://nyti.ms/W3HSCZ

[2] Tesla's response: https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive

blackbrokkoli• 8 years ago

Holy shit! Did this have consequences?

rootusrootus• 8 years ago

That's pretty interesting. I struggle to believe Tesla's account, though, given their history of playing fast and loose with facts in the pursuit of good PR. It will take a while to earn back trust.

danso3• 8 years ago

From Paris to Metz is roughly 205 miles. Her car had a range of 215 miles and she notes that the onboard estimates have been off "by at least 10 percent every time". But you're telling me that the navigation would still recommend her to attempt that kind of leg, in an area where chargers may be sparse? Seems like bad UI/UX.

zerocrates• 8 years ago

The parent posted a trip plan for a longer-range configuration. Switch to a smaller battery and... it shows a stop more or less right where the author's first planned stop was.

The dialogue on all sides around Teslas is so exhausting. This article isn't even about Tesla, really.

ricardobeat8• 8 years ago

an area where chargers may be sparse

This is a closeup of the area she was travelling through: http://take.ms/bzXNf

Seems to be one of the sparsest zones other than eastern europe.

This is what Europe looks like (map only shows ~1k pins at a time): http://take.ms/U9EKl

A closeup of northern Italy: http://take.ms/E8QVy

btian• 8 years ago

But many Tesla shorts like Greenlight Capital and Kynikos pay Bloomberg $30k/year/seat for their terminals.

It would make perfect sense to tailor their reporting to their customer's taste.

Working as intended I suppose.

carlivar• 8 years ago

You forgot to post how many funds long Tesla also have Bloomberg terminals.

Or are we just doing anecdotes? The plural of anecdote is not data.

golfer• 8 years ago

God forbid anyone say anything wrong about Tesla ever. Must be a conspiracy article funded by Big Oil, Big Auto, the Koch bros, etc etc.

ricardobeat8• 8 years ago

This article is so hard to read. 'Over 10 hours of charging', seven of those being while plugged-in and sleeping at a hotel, and 1.5h wasted on unnecessarily topping up to 100%. She also plays the 'cold battery' card but ends up making it to the destination with battery to spare.

Tesla has a trip planner that routes you to a 12-lane supercharger station [1]. This is not a complicated journey at all and only requires one ~30m charge each way. Somehow the author turned it into an anxiety-inducing odyssey.

https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=MS_2017_100D&o=Paris,%20Fran...

gamblor9569• 8 years ago

She tried to drive the car like a normal car, i.e., by not specially planning for charging.

And in that sense, the trip failed for the Tesla, because trying to drive it like a normal car in Europe was anxiety-inducing. Which was the whole point of the article...

gamblor9569• 8 years ago

Replying to the dead comment: the point of not using the Tesla-specific tools was that she wasn't trying to do a Tesla-specific road trip. She was trying to do a roadtrip in an EV, and just happened to choose a Tesla because it had most range of the EVs available to rent (many of the EVs available to thoses of us in California aren't yet available elsewhere).

rconti7• 8 years ago

I think the author brings up some fair points. I respect that she tried to make it about electric cars in general and not Tesla specifically, which is probably why she tried to avoid relying 100% on the supercharger network. In that way, it could be more balanced than an article merely about the Tesla world.

OTOH, the very first thing I did was bring up the Tesla supercharger map and see 8 superchargers between Paris and Mannheim, with no more than 160km between any of them. It seems like she basically ended up testing the worst of both worlds.

gvhst• 8 years ago

More balanced than an article merely about the Tesla world.

I don't think that was the point given that the article has Tesla in its title.

izacus8• 8 years ago

As most Tesla fans here linking this map, you chose the wrong model with larger battery.

mschuster912• 8 years ago

I know from my time back in the trench digging industry that a huge part of the charger lack issue is caused by the simple fact that ordinary superchargers gobble 150 kW electrical power a piece, which means that six of these things put a peak load of 1 MW to the net. The newer generations are said to be up 500 kW each... so you're looking at up to 3 MW or even 10x more, if you're an Autobahn rest place and aim for a load of electric trucks to be charged!

Your typical gas station, however, has a base load of tiny ~ 22 kW (per [1], divided by 8800h/year). The challenge is now that both the 10 kV electrical uplink to the gas station itself and, especially in rural parts of the country, also the 50/110 kV distribution backbone has to be upgraded, and this is not cheap.

This is the one big advantage of fossil (or synthetic) fuels: the energy density is incredibly high and the cost of shipping a fuel tanker truck is tiny compared to building out all that electricity network.

[1] https://www.next-mobility.news/auch-verbrenner-fahren-mit-st...

ericd2• 8 years ago

Makes sense. But this sounds like plumbing vs. carrying water in buckets from the river. The plumbing is more expensive up front, but cheaper long term.

mschuster912• 8 years ago

We are talking about investments to the tune of dozens of billions of dollars. Who is supposed to pay for this? Or, who is supposed to build it? Europe has a decent shortage of construction workers on one side and in city/government planning and approval on the other side.

In my opinion this is a task for the government if it wants to make sure people move away from fossil fuels, but the US president is holding the country hostage over a wall while the infrastructure is falling apart and Europe is locked up by populists and Brexit so no movement from there (and we Germans can't get HV transmission lines built across Germany either without lots of NIMBY protests and tons of wasted money).

My generation however will have to live with the consequences, and that sucks.

devy5• 8 years ago

Almost all of the issues and frustrations that Marie ran into were new and/or unique to electric vehicle (at least initially), as she pointed out.

- EVs have shorter range: ICEs were similar in that fuel tank capacity hasn't changed much but engine design advancements improve fuel efficiency and in turn increase range.

- Charging stations are far and few between: same with gas stations in the early days - urbanization creates more of them.

- Different levels of charging station (1.8kwh home charging, 6.6kwh public charging and 24kw+ DC fast charging, colloquially Level 1, 2 and 3 charging). This is not the same as fuel grade. But it's obvious that just like a cellphone charger, higher output charger can fill the batteries faster.

- Range meter is a guess-o-meter. This is exactly the same as your ICE's range meter. Driving style affects fuel efficiency. Heavy footers tends to empty their fuel tank quicker same with EV, they tend to run the battery out faster or range reduced faster as the faster you drive an EV and higher current the electric motor requires and the more battery voltage drops. A range at 30mph is much longer than at 80mph. I would point out that EV range is also weather dependent (temperature affects battery chemistry, rain/snow road condition affects traction and in turn affects range as well). Newer battery management systems has mitigations for temperature control etc so it's less a concern.

- You have to be mindful about your road trip planning and charging station locations. This is the same for ICEs, but since gas stations are everywhere in urban areas so it is not a concern. It sure will improve for EVs as we build out charging infrastructure. U.S. regulators were able to negotiate a deal with VW for its diesel gate settlement so VW is contributing hughly in building out charging infrastructures.

- DC Faster charger's reliability. As an early adopter of EV, I felt this pain first hand. The early 400V DC faster charger prioritize safety and hence it gets tripped up and disconnect the charging circuit a lot. But I am seeing less and less this happens in recent years, so I'd say it's only getting improved.

- Charging etiquette. I suspect this is similar as ICE. When you refilling gas and getting some snacks and run for a bathroom break, do you park your car right in front of the gas pump even though it's fully refueled? You probably shouldn't right? Same with using DC faster chargers. Don't squat the charging spot if your car is fully charged and or above 80% of charge (above 80% charge it automatically switch to a slower charging rate), let the people inline to use the charger.

izacus8• 8 years ago

- Range meter is a guess-o-meter. This is exactly the same as your ICE's range meter. Driving style affects fuel efficiency. Heavy footers tends to empty their fuel tank quicker same with EV, they tend to run the battery out faster or range reduced faster as the faster you drive an EV and higher current the electric motor requires and the more battery voltage drops. A range at 30mph is much longer than at 80mph. I would point out that EV range is also weather dependent (temperature affects battery chemistry, rain/snow road condition affects traction and in turn affects range as well). Newer battery management systems has mitigations for temperature control etc so it's less a concern.

The annoying thing here is that the range planners I've been using (Teslas and abtterrangeplanner) cut the charger distances really close on some common routes I've checked - like reaching the charger at < 15% charge. Which, at least for me, seems like a heck of a close call for a situation where road traffic conditions, temperature and possible detours can quickly burn away that remaining battery.

Havoc• 8 years ago

Why road trip with a borderline new tech anyway?

I'm all for EVs but this just feels like opting to play life on hard mode.

Roadtrips are about exploring the unknown, not the moment to try new transportation too

kwhitefoot2• 8 years ago

I've driven Norway to the UK and back three times in the last year with a side trip to Bordeaux. I drove all the way from Bordeaux to Belgium avoiding toll roads and still had no problems charging my 2015 S 70D. It's really not a problem in a Tesla.

It's a bloody nuisance for other EV drivers though because of the lack of a common payment method, a friend of a friend in France has a Hyundai Ioniq and has a wallet full of cards for the various chargers. It's getting better though.

rgrove2• 8 years ago

Last summer I took a road trip from Oregon to Texas and back in a Tesla Model 3. I covered about 600 miles a day over the course of 8 days, for a total of nearly 5,000 miles. I never had a problem finding a supercharger along my route, never had to wait to charge, and rarely had to spend more than 30 minutes charging before continuing.

I stuck to major highways and interstates for most of the route, though there were a few long legs in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas that were on minor highways off the beaten trail.

It was a really fun trip and I'm dying to take more long road trips in the car. My experience definitely wasn't anything like the one the author of this article had.

nwmcsween• 8 years ago

ICE engines have jerrycans, for long haul or emergency use, electric vehicles have nothing.

ctdonath• 8 years ago

A possibly interesting contrast: https://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/democratic-re...

Upshot: what would normally (by Western standards) be an easy 17 hour drive takes the narrator something like 54 days on roads that ultimately destroy the vehicle just before completion.

Nimitz142• 8 years ago

Wow thanks for posting the link that was a great read!

Don't understand why the driver was so against paying bribes though. As one guy said:

Before we were let go one office said "Ce n'est pas la Belgique ici, tu es en Congo!" - "This is not Belgium, you are in Congo". He hissed and gave us a terrifying look

beatgammit9• 8 years ago

Yeah, bribes are just the cost of being a foreigner in many parts of the world, and they're often not too bad (unless you did something terrible).

Before visiting a poor country, figure out how much a bribe should be and consider it similar to a tip here. Policemen aren't paid very well, so it's kind of like tipping an underpaid waitress here in the US. Account for it as part of your overall expenses and you'll be fine.

SovietDissident• 8 years ago

This is exactly how I would have imagined a trip would go. $85 billion market cap for a car that can't travel to most areas of the globe at all or with severe inconvenience? Give me a break.

Electric cars have been around for 100 years, and they've been consistently inferior. We've perfected the car with the internal combustion engine. Empower automobile engineers to make marginal improvements, but otherwise: can we please spend precious capital elsewhere? Think of all the cures or improvements to human life this money could have gone towards, rather than this stupid electric car will-o'-the-wisp. Build some nuclear power plants! Go to Mars! (In fairness, Elon's trying the latter, as long as Tesla doesn't become a financial albatross around his neck.)

Why must the history of humanity always be the story of one step forward and two steps backward?

dTal• 8 years ago

The nuclear power plants you suggest building are of limited utility if the cars on the road still run on gasoline. If humanity is to survive, it needs to wean itself off hydrocarbon fuels completely.

cde-v• 8 years ago

She should have used the onboard navigation of the car with a $85 billion market cap...

coffeemug• 8 years ago

$85 billion market cap for a car that can't travel to most areas of the globe at all or with severe inconvenience?

Pure electric cars have only been widely available for a few years, so there isn't a lot of infrastructure yet. The market cap prices in risk-adjusted growth, so you have to consider what the world will look like 10-20 years from now. Do you think it'll still be the case that electric cars won't travel to most areas of the globe without severe inconvenience?

Build some nuclear power plants! Go to Mars!

Firstly, we can do both. There is enormous amount of capital in the world, and not enough actionable good ideas. Secondly, dictating capital allocation top down is tyrannical. Thirdly and most importantly, there have been human societies that have tried to avoid various will-o'-the-wisp projects and allocate capital only to smart undertakings. Historically, they haven't fared very well.

jillesvangurp• 8 years ago

Sounds fun to me if you don't mind planning a few off the beaten track style detours. Shouldn't be too hard, plenty of tools available for finding and navigating chargers.

A few points about range anxiety:

- To the best of my knowledge, EVs being towed away because they ran out of battery probably happens once in a while but seems to be easy enough to avoid for most drivers that it doesn't seem to be thing. Even the author of this article was fine in the end (and not for a lack of trying).

-You can charge some EVs simply by towing them (regenerative braking). So, not the end of the world if the "worst" actually happens. I imagine charging from a second EV might also be an option with the right equipment; I imagine that will become a common way to deal with idiot drivers getting stranded.

- If you drive 300 km and don't take a break, you are probably getting dangerously tired. Good excuse to plug in and take a break.

- Average yearly mileage in Germany is less than 14K km. That suggests a lot of short journeys and maybe a handful of big ones (if any) for most cars.

- If like many business drivers in Germany you regularly travel the Autobahn at 200 km/hour between big cities that can be as much as 400-500 km apart in Germany, you probably are burning a lot of fuel. You could save a small fortune by going electric! Chances are most such journeys have plenty of charging points along your way.

- For most people this is not a thing. Renting cars is a lot cheaper than owning vehicles that you don't need most of the time. You can have a simple EV for day to day commutes and just rent something with longer range when you need to make that yearly 1500 km journey to southern Europe for your vacation. The savings in vehicle and fuel cost should allow you to travel in style.

mhh__• 8 years ago

Are Teslas fun to drive? I know they're fast but is the suspension etc. as refined as (lets say) an M3

rocky1138• 8 years ago

It's really hard to understand this article due to its use of miles.

rdiddly• 8 years ago

https://www.raileurope.com/train-tickets/journeys/article/pa...

"The average travel time between Paris and Mannheim is 4h49 minutes. The quickest route is 3h05 minutes. The first train leaving Paris is at 06:01, the last at 19:06. There is an average of 27 trains a day between Paris and Mannheim, leaving approximately every 40 minutes."

mlindner3• 8 years ago

I'm rather surprised so many comments here fundamentally misunderstand EVs and think that this bloomberg story is representative of long distance trips with EVs. It's not and no one should consider it as such. She needlessly charged to 100% when she didn't have to and did zero research on the car she was using. The article is a farce.

megaremote• 8 years ago

Good. Road tripping should be a thing of the past anyway, no matter what you use.

thedudeabides5• 8 years ago

I though it was already clear that road tripping around anywhere is not the reason you buy an electric car. The infrastructure just isn't there yet (though that sounds like a good pork project).

On the other hand...he's literally the only person in the world who could post this and I'd take it seriously...

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1083095876392964096?ref_... https://tribune.com.pk/story/1885358/8-elon-musk-serious-fly...

Does anyone have context on this?

laacz• 8 years ago

One thing about roadtrips - we like to take scenic routes. On scenic routes there are very few gas stations, let alone electric charging points. Even with a gas powered car we still have to plan our fuel-ups.

Another thing is that an hour and a half to charge the car is very long time to cut out of your day when on vacation. If you're with kids, you have to find stuff to do. Every day, since you do drive the scenic route which is much more heavy on battery than highways are.

Eating a meal while charging of course is a thing, yet we usually try to cut that time to minimum compensating with late dinner. Also, eating options near charging stations almost never hit home...

I suppose that if technology won't catch up, electric must change the way people travel. Or it will still be relevant for A-to-B trips or daily commuters only.

Road Tripping Around Europe in a Tesla Is Less Fun Than You’d Think

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