Owners of electric vehicles are finally admitting that recharging away from home is a total “logistical nightmare,” between finding charging stations, and the fact that in the best case scenarios it takes 30 to 40 minutes, and up to two hours, to recharge.
“We’re going through the planning process of how easily Maddie can get from Albany to Gettysburg [College] and where she can charge the car,” said YouTube personality Steve Hammes, who leased a Hyunday Kona Electric SUV for his 17-year-old daughter, Maddie.
“It makes me a little nervous. We want fast chargers that take 30 to 40 minutes — it would not make sense to sit at a Level 2 charger for hours. There isn’t a good software tool that helps EV owners plan their trips,” he told ABC News.
The report comes on the heels of the Biden administration’s announcement that Tesla would open its Supercharger network to non-Tesla owners by the end of next year – a plan which includes 3,500 Tesla fast chargers and 4,000 of the slower, Level 2 chargers.
John Voelcker, an industry expert on EVs and the former editor of Green Car Reports, said this arrangement will allow Tesla to learn a lot about U.S. drivers — “how you charge, where you drive and what car you have.” He does not expect Tesla to commit to additional charging stations.
“Tesla does not want its highly reliable and tightly integrated charging network to be clogged with people whose cars can’t charge as fast as Teslas,” he told ABC News. -ABC News
To try and cope with an increase in EVs, the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure law has a goal of installing 500,000 new chargers across the country – as well as dramatically boosting EV sales, by 2030.
That said, Voelcker hasn’t seen much improvement in the nation’s recharging infrastructure over the past four years, and says he’s heard a food of complaints over dead chargers and ‘sticky cables.’
“The incentive right now is to get stations in the ground,” he said. “It’s not making sure they actually work.”
Car and Driver editor-in-chief Tony Quiroga, says he’s now been forced to wander around a local Walmart in Burbank, California while his Tesla recharges. He’s also become a regular at a Mohave, California Mexican restaurant, where a Telsa charger is located.
I had the displeasure of having an electric car last year for a period of 2 months.
My job requires me to travel quite a bit, so I put 7200 miles on the car in 60 days.
I would need to charge the vehicle every day at a DC high speed charge station (Electrify America) and sometimes 2 times each day depending on where I went. Each charge session was at least 1 hour long.
Note: Your at home charger J1776 220 volt, will take 10 hour to do the same.
When you encounter cold weather or rain, you range drops by as much as 40%.
Electric cars are NO substitute for gasoline powered cars and NEVER will be.
Too bad that wind-up car technology never took off.
yeah but everyone who buys into the hype and listens to this corrupt government deserves having to watch their lives waste away in a parking lot! fools! it’s all about control and eventually the real truth will come out but it will be to late for all those idiots!
Every time I see a Tesla on the road I feel sorry for the owners for a dozen reasons, the primary one being how easily hoodwinked they are and seemingly proud of it.
All those idiots are dragging us all down with them