Extra, Extra....Read All About It!

[chucchinchilla]

But generally I’d like to get to the point where we don’t need charging route planners anymore. I want to know that there’s likely to be a charging station soon so when I get down to 10-20% I can start looking for a convenient one, just like gas stations, which I can see from the freeway and there are signs that tell me if there’s one at this exit coming up.

We're definitely getting there, some places faster than others. Here in California I'd say we're probably there unless you're in some very random remote part of the state where there aren't many services anyways, gas stations or otherwise. Case in point, if you did an SF-LA drive, this would be your selection of fast chargers.

I picked a random halfway point for a charge/lunch stop about 3h in and got this...

Electrify America: 6 chargers
Rivian Adventure Network: 6 chargers
Tesla Supercharger: 56 chargers?!
..had to check out the Tesla Supercharger and yup, they have a ton.

So yeah, at any random point on the drive you could do a quick check of the next charger and pull of. Eventually the rest of the country will follow this path as well.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

SSB are gonna be a reality in China, now Elon needs to take this to Tesla, and bring the technology to the US at mass production to start making it affordable. And giving others manufacturers a way to reverse engineer for their own SSB. Because we sure as hell know that QuantumScape and PowerCo have another 40 years until they bring it here.

These are semi-solid, not fully solid. Semi-solid is more resistant than liquid to thermal runaway and other catastrophic failures, but not immune. They’re somewhat more energy dense than liquid electrolytes, but are not as dense as true solid. They are more expensive and more complex to manufacture than liquid, but may be a good stepping-stone between liquid and solid.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

We're definitely getting there, some places faster than others. Here in California I'd say we're probably there unless you're in some very random remote part of the state where there aren't many services anyways, gas stations or otherwise. Case in point, if you did an SF-LA drive, this would be your selection of fast chargers.
View attachment 11396
I picked a random halfway point for a charge/lunch stop about 3h in and got this...
View attachment 11397
Electrify America: 6 chargers
Rivian Adventure Network: 6 chargers
Tesla Supercharger: 56 chargers?!
..had to check out the Tesla Supercharger and yup, they have a ton.
View attachment 11400
So yeah, at any random point on the drive you could do a quick check of the next charger and pull of. Eventually the rest of the country will follow this path as well.

We’ve done the drive between Redding/Sacramento and LA (or Barstow and then east on the 40) and between SF and LA a dozen or so times.

The only problem we ever faced was in 2022 and we took the 99 instead of the 5 from Sacramento to Barstow. Traffic was stop-and-go for hours, and several chargers were crowded with people who had rented a car and had been given the keys to an EV without any education what-so-ever. That trip was our worst trip in an EV. But that was years ago. We just don’t travel on the 99 anymore. It’s a pretty terrible road anyway, IMO, with all the agriculture trucks doing their best to throw their produce onto the roadway.

 

[Logan]

There are only a few areas in the US where I would feel uncomfortable just getting into my fully charged Lightning or Mustang and going for a 3-day one-way road trip. Mostly chunks of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. I would have to plan which route to travel across those states. Everywhere else has enough charger density that if a friend in Chicago or DC or Atlanta or Bangor or Seattle or ... called and told me they needed me and my Lighting as soon as possible, the only questions would be about extension cords and tools.

I hear you there. My yearly road trip takes us through rural WA/OR/ID/UT, and if we take the other route, a bit of Montana as well. And that is one of my concerns.

Sometimes there are no services (of any kind) for quite a long time. But of those services, so far, you're still more likely to find gas at those types of places.

I'm really curious if we'll be brave enough to try a road trip to UT with the Ioniq 9 this summer. But man, thats a rough use case. The speeds are high (speed limit most of the way is 80mph), I've got a mountain bike hanging off the back, and we've got ~850 miles to do in a day. Plus, with fast charging, I don't think we'd really even be saving much money in "fuel" compared to our PHEV getting ~30mpg.

I've said it before. The Ioniq 9 is a good vehicle. We bought it "mostly" for regional/around town usage, but felt more comfortable with it because it charges fast enough to be "close enough" to comparable to a gas car (unlike a first gen Subaru Solterra, or a Chevy bolt or something that has wayyyy slow charging speeds).

And the one road trip we did so far... didn't even require public charging. So we're at over 2k miles... with 0 public charging .

 

[6-ScoutFamily]

Scout being dropped by VW is a possibility on the table due to low money. Most car companies would have money issues if they didn’t pay executives huge paychecks maybe reduce their pay, and stop cutting workers.

Maybe, maybe not. That’s a pretty slick presentation of sound-bite mini newslets. There’s no real analysis, but a dependence on emotion provoking language. Scout just headlined the list. As for the truth of it, who knows?

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I hear you there. My yearly road trip takes us through rural WA/OR/ID/UT, and if we take the other route, a bit of Montana as well. And that is one of my concerns.

Sometimes there are no services (of any kind) for quite a long time. But of those services, so far, you're still more likely to find gas at those types of places.

I'm really curious if we'll be brave enough to try a road trip to UT with the Ioniq 9 this summer. But man, thats a rough use case. The speeds are high (speed limit most of the way is 80mph), I've got a mountain bike hanging off the back, and we've got ~850 miles to do in a day. Plus, with fast charging, I don't think we'd really even be saving much money in "fuel" compared to our PHEV getting ~30mpg.

I've said it before. The Ioniq 9 is a good vehicle. We bought it "mostly" for regional/around town usage, but felt more comfortable with it because it charges fast enough to be "close enough" to comparable to a gas car (unlike a first gen Subaru Solterra, or a Chevy bolt or something that has wayyyy slow charging speeds).

And the one road trip we did so far... didn't even require public charging. So we're at over 2k miles... with 0 public charging .

We have a trip planned that was supposed to be for this past summer but will have to wait until sometime next year that will take us from northern AZ up through UT, ID, OR, and WA, then up into Canada. It’ll be mostly on 2-lane roads, some highways, and a bit of interstate freeway. The planning so far has been to pull out a paper map to look for fun things to visit. There are plenty of places to charge even off the highways.

We don’t do many iron butt runs anymore. We’ll be doing a 920 mile drive between Redding, CA and northern Arizona sometime this winter. It’ll take about 16 hours, and we may do it in one day. It’s taken us 16 hours the two other times we’ve done that marathon in the past 20 years.

 

[THil08]

Maybe, maybe not. That’s a pretty slick presentation of sound-bite mini newslets. There’s no real analysis, but a dependence on emotion provoking language. Scout just headlined the list. As for the truth of it, who knows?

The only plus if it does, is that ScoutMotors is structured to be a public company. Or at least that’s what Uncle Scotty told me.