Jonathan Gitlin
In many ways, electric vehicles are clearly superior to the combustion engine-powered relatives they will eventually replace. They are quieter, they rattle and vibrate less, they accelerate faster and they are much more efficient because they can recover energy during braking. And their batteries should last as long as a gasoline engine. But I’m more and more convinced that the adoption of electric cars will face major problems if we can’t control the reliability of the charger.
Even the biggest EV enthusiast can’t ignore the fact that it takes a lot longer to charge a battery than it does to fill a tank of liquid hydrocarbons, even when that battery is connected to a DC fast charger with very high voltage. For about two-thirds of U.S. car buyers — those who have somewhere to charge overnight at home — this usually isn’t a problem. On average, people only drive 29 miles a day, so even short-range electric EVs should actually meet the needs of most drivers.
That’s the purely rational approach anyway.
But it’s impossible to break free from the cultural context of the automobile, now intimately tied to the American sense of identity after decades of post-war construction that reshaped our built environment to prioritize the individual driver over all others. A car means freedom – being able to travel from coast to coast on a whim – and stopping every 150-250 miles to recharge becomes a hindrance to that freedom. And the fact remains that if you want to travel far enough in 2022 that you have to plug in during your trip, you will get a headache.
Plan first, right?
At this point, some of the more EV-comfortable readers might be thinking, “No, you just have to plan well.” Certainly, good planning is essential and often the most direct route is not possible due to the locations of charging stations. Fortunately, there are some handy apps like PlugShare and A Better Route Planner that make planning relatively easy — at least compared to the old days of paper road atlases — and most in-vehicle navigation systems are aware of chargers. Many will also consider your efficiency to get you to your destination as efficiently as possible through charging stops.
Electrify America
Finding a charger isn’t the problem, though, even if it adds another 50 miles to your road trip. According to the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fueling Station Locator, there are 1,433 Tesla Supercharger locations and an additional 4,564 public DC fast charger locations that use the CCS plug, which is basically any EV on sale except a Tesla or a Nissan Leaf. , will charge.
Between networks like Electrify America and plans from the White House, we as a country are spending billions expanding the charging infrastructure for EVs.
No, the problem is whether one of the chargers will work when you arrive. (Unless you drive a Tesla, as Superchargers are painless to use and seem extremely reliable.)
Man plans, universe is smiling
And at this point I owe the universe an apology. A few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about a missed EV road trip. The headline says it all: “I rented an electric car for a four-day road trip. I spent more time charging than sleeping.”
As a smug EV evangelist and self-proclaimed EV expert, I rolled my eyes. “They just didn’t plan well enough,” I thought to myself, not realizing that I was only hoisting myself on my own petard. A few weeks later, it was time to drive from DC to Watkins Glen in New York’s Finger Lakes region, this time in a BMW iX. And despite a lot of planning, I still spent almost as much time idling arguing with charging machines as I actually drew electrons into the car’s battery during the 600-mile journey.
At every charging stop, in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York, I got into trouble. Waiting five minutes to see if the car and charger would establish communication was always the case. A 10 minute wait was not uncommon. Even then there was no time to relax; more than once a fault somewhere in the loop stopped everything after just a few kWh.
