Switching Harvester to All EV Model?

[R1TVT]

After renting an EV once, I realize now that on long trips I would have to plan my stops and that may include a little longer to "fill up" or waiting on a charger to be available. However, now when I have to pull into a gas station around once a week, I am more aware of that cumulative time and inconvenience whereas with an EV, I would be "good to go" from home charging every day. I can't imagine being able to pass a gas station without checking out the fluctuating gas prices on a daily basis. (Those of you with EV's, do you still check posted gas prices?) AND... I've lived through several gas crunch periods which fortunately aren't often, but when they do occur, it's much worse than range anxiety.

Oh yeah, and waiting in line to get gas at Costco, it typically takes as long as it would to charge an EV. And the closest Costco to me is about 50 miles away.

I am ready for change.

Everyone's use case is going to be different. I pay zero attention to any gas prices, except at the marina (where I buy fuel for a boat) that sells ONLY premium marine-grade fuel (treated with Valvtect) and has stayed at $5.00 Gallon this season.

I would break my driving into 3 main uses cases, which suit me very well with ~300'ish miles of EV range in the R1T:

1. Use case #1 is "around-town". This is probably 80% of my driving and would be least efficient (lower MPG if in an ICE vehicle for sure)
2. The second use case is what I would call weekend driving, which for me is often 2 or 3 hour 1-way trips (with charging at the destination)
3. The last use case is roadtripping in my truck, usually along the I-95 corridor with excellent infrastructure

For the purposes of my 3 main use cases, I save both time and money because of the proportionality of my driving and the fact that I can charge at home for use case 1, part of use case 2, and for the first leg of any roadtrip. If I am charging to 100% at home, I am leaving for a roadtrip. Once out on a road trip, I charge to 80% and stop every three hours or so to eat and stretch the legs (which I would do anyway). Roadtrips become more relaxed with an understanding that you WILL charge and eat. I view that is being more efficient, so I'm 100% fine with the cadence of stopping to recharge myself and my truck. As an added bonus, I feel like I am less wrecked at the end of a long drive from up North down to the Mason Dixon line (for example).

Moral of the story is that when you consider and weigh the majority of your driving time across all use cases (and consider far less frequent DCFC charging stops, at least in my case) you could be very pleasantly surprised - especially since most EV trucks now can blow away their ICE counterparts in terms of performance, comfort, tech, noise, pollution, etc.

 

[Chaz26]

I haven't bought gas since 2017 and don't miss it. To answer your question, no I have no idea what current gas prices are lol

I know that "filling up" my EV at home overnight costs under two bucks and that on road trips it's closer to $15 to fill up but I rarely have to wait for a charger to become available and my car usually finishes charging before I've finished eating or going to the washroom or whatever.

I think a lot of non-EV drivers read stuff and just assume charging stops will take much longer than they actually do. I read a post here saying something like "if we had an EV we'd have to add 40 more minutes to our stop". How do they figure that? They just assumed it would add 40 minutes?

In my experience road tripping with an EV doesn't really take much extra planning at all, it's just different. Sometimes you don't even need to add in a fast charge stop because the destination has level 2 chargers. I think the main difference that people misunderstand or don't fully appreciate is that with a gas car you have to fill up AND THEN do other stuff - actions are done in serial. But with an EV you can charge it WHILE doing other stuff - actions are done in parallel. Once you understand that you realize that your stops don't take much if any extra time at all!

I think a lot of people who don't do any research on EVs just look at the time it takes to get to 100% charge and go off that figure which is obviously significantly longer than just charging to 80% or less and moving on to the next stop a few hours away. So when they say it takes over an hour to charge, they are technically correct, but who plugs in at 0% and goes all the way up to 100%. As you mentioned, by the time I've gone to the restroom and maybe got a drink and a snack the car is usually ready to go before I am. On long road trips I may spend a little more time waiting which is typically only a couple of times a year, but then I figure on that trip I may spend 30-60 minutes extra waiting to charge but then I've saved tens of hours over a year not going to gas stations every week when doing my normal routine.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

My median road trip time to charge is 20-25 minutes. And it’s only this long because I don’t bother to “optimize” time spent at the charger while I’m eating. Of the quite literally hundreds of DCFC charges on road trips, I have had one or two with 40+ minute charge times, but those are very, very rare. A 25 minute stop is often too short for me to even get lunch and use the restroom.

People who drive gas vehicles often fail to time their entire stops and just assume they’re in-and-out in 5 minutes.

A stop in our gas vehicle, even when we were eating fast food on the road instead of stopping and eating was as such:
Get gas and use the disgusting gas station restroom - 7-10 minutes
Get in line at the fast food restaurant, order, get food - 10 minutes
Pull to the side to organize the food - 3 minutes
Total time: 20-25 minutes

Now with our EVs, it’s:
Pull in to charger, plug in, and walk away - 1-3 minutes
Walk to a nearby restaurant - 2 minutes
Stand in line, order, use restroom, get food - 10 minutes
Eat - 10-20 minutes
Run back to the car to avoid idle fees - 1 minute
Head out on the highway.
Total time: 20-35 minutes, but usually 25 minutes or less.

And we’re no longer eating while driving, so we’re safer on the road.

 

[Logan]

My median road trip time to charge is 20-25 minutes. And it’s only this long because I don’t bother to “optimize” time spent at the charger while I’m eating. Of the quite literally hundreds of DCFC charges on road trips, I have had one or two with 40+ minute charge times, but those are very, very rare. A 25 minute stop is often too short for me to even get lunch and use the restroom.

People who drive gas vehicles often fail to time their entire stops and just assume they’re in-and-out in 5 minutes.

A stop in our gas vehicle, even when we were eating fast food on the road instead of stopping and eating was as such:
Get gas and use the disgusting gas station restroom - 7-10 minutes
Get in line at the fast food restaurant, order, get food - 10 minutes
Pull to the side to organize the food - 3 minutes
Total time: 20-25 minutes

Now with our EVs, it’s:
Pull in to charger, plug in, and walk away - 1-3 minutes
Walk to a nearby restaurant - 2 minutes
Stand in line, order, use restroom, get food - 10 minutes
Eat - 10-20 minutes
Run back to the car to avoid idle fees - 1 minute
Head out on the highway.
Total time: 20-35 minutes, but usually 25 minutes or less.

And we’re no longer eating while driving, so we’re safer on the road.

Agreed.

Really, one of the things that helped me, was timing our road trip stops. I did that the last two years, before buying our first EV recently. I literally got out a stopwatch on my phone, and started it when I pulled into the gas station, and when we loaded up and were driving away.

Then I started playing around with ABetterRoutePlanner.com. With different vehicles, routes, speeds, etc. And after doing that for a while, I realized that some models of EV's were getting "pretty close" to speed required to not feel like we were waiting around for the vehicle to charge for "forever".

I've posted it a few times, but the summary is that fuel/pee stops in our PHEV, with a tiny 11gallon gas tank, were usually in the 10-20min range, give or take. With about 15min, feeling pretty average. Our Ioniq 9 in theory charges from 10-80%, in 24min on a 350kw charger. Which gets us "pretty dang close" to normal stop durations.

With the Ioniq, I think we'd probably end up actually stopping for lunch, and making that a longer charge, to make the rest of the drive more "familiar" feeling. Especially because many of the chargers along our route, are slower Tesla chargers (our Ioniq 9 charges at ~230-240kw on a 350kw charger, but only ~120-130kw on a Tesla Supercharger, which gives it a ~30-40min 10-80% charge time on one of those. But hopefully those start phasing out "sometime soon").

ABRP

A Better Routeplanner is the world's most popular consumer EV routeplanner - both for beginner and experienced EV drivers. And of course for anyone curious about EVs.

abetterrouteplanner.com

And a screenshot of approximately the trip we take every year (starting and ending places are in the correct regions, but not the exact cities). 5 total charges, and 2hr 3min of stoppage time (about 1hr or 45min longer than our best times with our PHEV).

We still have the PHEV right now, and it may still be our road trip vehicle. But we've got like 8-9 months before that usually happens, and perhaps we'll be more comfortable with it before then.

Like you said, the biggest change is... well, the change. When we road trip, we cruise, and eat in the car (food that we brought), as our objective is to turn what many may do in 2 days, into a 1 day trip (its ~850 miles one way). With a combustion car, we know that we can fuel up pretty much anywhere, which eases the mind a bit.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Agreed.

Really, one of the things that helped me, was timing our road trip stops. I did that the last two years, before buying our first EV recently. I literally got out a stopwatch on my phone, and started it when I pulled into the gas station, and when we loaded up and were driving away.

Then I started playing around with ABetterRoutePlanner.com. With different vehicles, routes, speeds, etc. And after doing that for a while, I realized that some models of EV's were getting "pretty close" to speed required to not feel like we were waiting around for the vehicle to charge for "forever".

I've posted it a few times, but the summary is that fuel/pee stops in our PHEV, with a tiny 11gallon gas tank, were usually in the 10-20min range, give or take. With about 15min, feeling pretty average. Our Ioniq 9 in theory charges from 10-80%, in 24min on a 350kw charger. Which gets us "pretty dang close" to normal stop durations.

With the Ioniq, I think we'd probably end up actually stopping for lunch, and making that a longer charge, to make the rest of the drive more "familiar" feeling. Especially because many of the chargers along our route, are slower Tesla chargers (our Ioniq 9 charges at ~230-240kw on a 350kw charger, but only ~120-130kw on a Tesla Supercharger, which gives it a ~30-40min 10-80% charge time on one of those. But hopefully those start phasing out "sometime soon").

ABRP

A Better Routeplanner is the world's most popular consumer EV routeplanner - both for beginner and experienced EV drivers. And of course for anyone curious about EVs.

abetterrouteplanner.com

And a screenshot of approximately the trip we take every year (starting and ending places are in the correct regions, but not the exact cities). 5 total charges, and 2hr 3min of stoppage time (about 1hr or 45min longer than our best times with our PHEV).

View attachment 10039


We still have the PHEV right now, and it may still be our road trip vehicle. But we've got like 8-9 months before that usually happens, and perhaps we'll be more comfortable with it before then.

Like you said, the biggest change is... well, the change. When we road trip, we cruise, and eat in the car (food that we brought), as our objective is to turn what many may do in 2 days, into a 1 day trip (its ~850 miles one way). With a combustion car, we know that we can fuel up pretty much anywhere, which eases the mind a bit.

I’ve found that ABRP is both conservative and pessimistic.

First: They assume you have 5% degradation of your battery, even if it’s brand new. That means they’re planning on your overall trip taking up to 5% longer. For a 12-hour trip, that’s an extra 36 minutes.

Second: They don’t respect maximum speed input as well as they should so their estimated efficiency is lower than reality (at least for me). That can lead to another 10% longer charge time than is realistic.

Third: They don’t include level 2 charging overnight, so if your trip is longer than a day, the time to charge includes at least one extra charging stop per day, and depending on timing, they have to plan two extra stops.

In my experience, the 2 hour charge time on that drive is more likely to be about 30-60 minutes of “excess” time spent at a charger.

We took the I-40 from NAZ to SoCal and then the I-5 up to Seattle a year or two ago. ABRP’s prediction was something like four hours more charging time than it actually took us. But we stop after 7-10 hours of driving, and we always charge up overnight.

 

[SaraLiz]

We just did a road trip from Colorado to Michigan and back in August/September. I've been on board the fully BEV train from the beginning, but this trip had me hesitate for one second on it. On the way to MI, we spaced the drive out over three days and it was not a big deal at all. But on the way home, we pushed through and did the whole thing in one go. That drive was all about speed and efficiency, and in my Hybrid Rav4 we get about 450 miles to the tank.

Adding additional stops for charging compared to gas in that scenario is not super appealing, especially since I'm sure we wouldn't get the max range out of the battery at the consistent highway speeds we were going (read: FAST, luckily we didn't get a speeding ticket). I think it would basically take that "push on through" approach infeasible. However, that use case is so few and far between for us, it seems silly to make a decision based solely on that case, when our usage otherwise makes a ton of sense to go BEV. Sticking with BEV all the way!

 

[Logan]

I’ve found that ABRP is both conservative and pessimistic.

First: They assume you have 5% degradation of your battery, even if it’s brand new. That means they’re planning on your overall trip taking up to 5% longer. For a 12-hour trip, that’s an extra 36 minutes.

Second: They don’t respect maximum speed input as well as they should so their estimated efficiency is lower than reality (at least for me). That can lead to another 10% longer charge time than is realistic.

Third: They don’t include level 2 charging overnight, so if your trip is longer than a day, the time to charge includes at least one extra charging stop per day, and depending on timing, they have to plan two extra stops.

In my experience, the 2 hour charge time on that drive is more likely to be about 30-60 minutes of “excess” time spent at a charger.

We took the I-40 from NAZ to SoCal and then the I-5 up to Seattle a year or two ago. ABRP’s prediction was something like four hours more charging time than it actually took us. But we stop after 7-10 hours of driving, and we always charge up overnight.

To be honest, I think that conservative/pessimistic look is actually a benefit here. Its good to know that it should be a "worst case" sort of situation. I'd much rather it be cautious, than get stranded in nowheresville halfway through a road trip.

It was really the stopwatch timing road trip stops, plus playing around with ABRP that got us into the "oh, even if we don't intend this to be our road tripping vehicle, its nice to see that it could do a reasonable job of that" frame of mind.

It sounds like much of the issues you have with it, are actually pretty easy to live with though. There is a setting for degradation, you can just slide that to 0 (or whatever other percentage you desire). If you're staying overnight, just use different plans for each day of the trip.

But what about the maximum speed? That one I'm not quite getting so far.

 

[cyure]

We just did a road trip from Colorado to Michigan and back in August/September. I've been on board the fully BEV train from the beginning, but this trip had me hesitate for one second on it. On the way to MI, we spaced the drive out over three days and it was not a big deal at all. But on the way home, we pushed through and did the whole thing in one go. That drive was all about speed and efficiency, and in my Hybrid Rav4 we get about 450 miles to the tank.

Adding additional stops for charging compared to gas in that scenario is not super appealing, especially since I'm sure we wouldn't get the max range out of the battery at the consistent highway speeds we were going (read: FAST, luckily we didn't get a speeding ticket). I think it would basically take that "push on through" approach infeasible. However, that use case is so few and far between for us, it seems silly to make a decision based solely on that case, when our usage otherwise makes a ton of sense to go BEV. Sticking with BEV all the way!

We did that back in 2023. On our round trip from Illinois to California. The last day we just wanted to get home. We went from NM to Il. Left at 3 in the morning and got to Illinois at 11 at night. It was just too much. So same, have we done it in the past, yes. Do I want to continue that driving pattern in the future, no. BEV ALL THE WAY!!

 

[SaraLiz]

We did that back in 2023. On our round trip from Illinois to California. The last day we just wanted to get home. We went from NM to Il. Left at 3 in the morning and got to Illinois at 11 at night. It was just too much. So same, have we done it in the past, yes. Do I want to continue that driving pattern in the future, no. BEV ALL THE WAY!!

Yeah, I think we left at about 4am and got home between 10-11pm. The two hour time difference heading West helped make it feel more manageable. It was not as bad as I expected it to be, but it wasn't fun by any means. And our dog was definitely over it. He didn't quite understand the whole reason we did it was so he could join us on the lake!

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

To be honest, I think that conservative/pessimistic look is actually a benefit here. Its good to know that it should be a "worst case" sort of situation. I'd much rather it be cautious, than get stranded in nowheresville halfway through a road trip.

It was really the stopwatch timing road trip stops, plus playing around with ABRP that got us into the "oh, even if we don't intend this to be our road tripping vehicle, its nice to see that it could do a reasonable job of that" frame of mind.

It sounds like much of the issues you have with it, are actually pretty easy to live with though. There is a setting for degradation, you can just slide that to 0 (or whatever other percentage you desire). If you're staying overnight, just use different plans for each day of the trip.

But what about the maximum speed? That one I'm not quite getting so far.

My point is less about once you have the EV and more about the way it makes it look like it’s much more difficult to take a road trip in an EV.

I actually don’t even use ABRP anymore. I will sometimes use it like I would use Google Maps, but usually I just use Google Maps. I’ve always mapped out my route, first with paper maps and a few different color highlighters, now with digital mapping technology. For the first, maybe year of road tripping in an EV we would plan charging stops ahead of time. But now we just go. Our first charge stop is considered just as we leave the house. The next stop is considered when we’re pulling away from the first charge stop. And so-on. Overnight trips that involve staying at a hotel, etc., do require pre-planning the overnight stop because we usually need to make a reservation. So we plan that stop. But ABRP isn’t helpful for those.

Regarding maximum speed: I’ve had it reset on me in the middle of a planning session. I usually set it to 75 mph and it’s often reset it to above 90 mph. It was one of the reasons I stopped using it. I don’t know if they fixed the issue or not.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

We just did a road trip from Colorado to Michigan and back in August/September. I've been on board the fully BEV train from the beginning, but this trip had me hesitate for one second on it. On the way to MI, we spaced the drive out over three days and it was not a big deal at all. But on the way home, we pushed through and did the whole thing in one go. That drive was all about speed and efficiency, and in my Hybrid Rav4 we get about 450 miles to the tank.

Adding additional stops for charging compared to gas in that scenario is not super appealing, especially since I'm sure we wouldn't get the max range out of the battery at the consistent highway speeds we were going (read: FAST, luckily we didn't get a speeding ticket). I think it would basically take that "push on through" approach infeasible. However, that use case is so few and far between for us, it seems silly to make a decision based solely on that case, when our usage otherwise makes a ton of sense to go BEV. Sticking with BEV all the way!

We have done one 900+ mile trip in one day with an EV, so not quite a MI to CO length. It was a long day, but we were far, far less tired when we got to our hotel than when we did similar trips in our gas vehicles. The stop to charge makes long drives better, in my opinion, because they break up the sitting and eye focus, and enforce a bit of a reset every 3-ish hours.

 

[J Alynn]

My median road trip time to charge is 20-25 minutes. And it’s only this long because I don’t bother to “optimize” time spent at the charger while I’m eating. Of the quite literally hundreds of DCFC charges on road trips, I have had one or two with 40+ minute charge times, but those are very, very rare. A 25 minute stop is often too short for me to even get lunch and use the restroom.

People who drive gas vehicles often fail to time their entire stops and just assume they’re in-and-out in 5 minutes.

A stop in our gas vehicle, even when we were eating fast food on the road instead of stopping and eating was as such:
Get gas and use the disgusting gas station restroom - 7-10 minutes
Get in line at the fast food restaurant, order, get food - 10 minutes
Pull to the side to organize the food - 3 minutes
Total time: 20-25 minutes

Now with our EVs, it’s:
Pull in to charger, plug in, and walk away - 1-3 minutes
Walk to a nearby restaurant - 2 minutes
Stand in line, order, use restroom, get food - 10 minutes
Eat - 10-20 minutes
Run back to the car to avoid idle fees - 1 minute
Head out on the highway.
Total time: 20-35 minutes, but usually 25 minutes or less.

And we’re no longer eating while driving, so we’re safer on the road.

I actually look forward to this change. We stopping getting fast food years ago when we traveled-lot of tournament travel at 8–10 hours so we started stopping to eat a real meal. Sometimes breakfast in the car but having the break made a huge impact on all our moods and driving focus and if I can continue that and charge while doing it-it’s a no brainer.

We did that back in 2023. On our round trip from Illinois to California. The last day we just wanted to get home. We went from NM to Il. Left at 3 in the morning and got to Illinois at 11 at night. It was just too much. So same, have we done it in the past, yes. Do I want to continue that driving pattern in the future, no. BEV ALL THE WAY!!

breaks are so much better for driving. We are even at a point where t when we fly we try to plan a 1-1/2 to 2 hour layover just to get out of the plane and stretch, have a reasonable meal and just feel better when we get where we are going

 

[JAngley]

I actually look forward to this change. We stopping getting fast food years ago when we traveled-lot of tournament travel at 8–10 hours so we started stopping to eat a real meal. Sometimes breakfast in the car but having the break made a huge impact on all our moods and driving focus and if I can continue that and charge while doing it-it’s a no brainer.

breaks are so much better for driving. We are even at a point where t when we fly we try to plan a 1-1/2 to 2 hour layover just to get out of the plane and stretch, have a reasonable meal and just feel better when we get where we are going

I know you're older than me but I am officially this level of old now lol I need my breaks !