Thread

EV Sales Are Booming in Europe with Gasoline at $10 a Gallon

79 points · 150 comments · blondie9x

gambiting · 1790547426 · focus · HN ↗
I mean, I feel like even if petrol wasn't as expensive as it is, the sales would be booming anyway, maybe a sliver slower - for the simple reason that affordable EVs are now here and they are pretty damn good now. After years and years of lamenting "where are the EVs for your average Joe Smith" - they are now here. Funnily enough, they aren't made by Volkswagen or Peugeot, but they are here anyway. And Europe's cheapest new car - Dacia Spring - is an EV.
1. vjsrinivas · 1790547590 · focus · HN ↗
  Im on the verge of switching from PHEV to full EV. I just need a reasonably affordable EV with 450+ mile of range.
  1. blondie9x · 1790548911 · focus · HN ↗
    It's better for the body to keep driving sessions to 3-4 hours max before you get up walk around and charge a bit. 330 mile range is more than enough. If you only use 60% of the battery to maximize its lifespan you can drive for 3.5 hours roughly before you deplete a battery from 80% -> 20%.
    kube-system · 1790549638 · focus · HN ↗
    There are a number of plausible rural drives in north america which do not have fast chargers for over 400 miles. EV infrastructure in the US is primarily concentrated on high-volume highways.
    sanswork · 1790549832 · focus · HN ↗
    Can you actually name some? Last time I looked the highest I could find was like 100 miles.
    kube-system · 1790551547 · focus · HN ↗
    Sioux City IA to Lusk WY -- 471 miles between chargers
    Kalispell MT to Minot ND -- 688 miles between chargers
    Anything in Alaska that isn't along the route from Anchorage to Fairbanks
    Much of Ontario 11
    All of Newfoundland
    Of course, they're not high traffic routes, but these are places you can still easily find gasoline.
    sippingabonedry · 1790551963 · focus · HN ↗
    Not to mention all of those places are cold, which affects your range.
    sanswork · 1790558939 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe go try chargefinder because I just put your first route in and there are several along the way.
    Furthest I can see on 11 is 250km.
    Newfoundland has a ton of chargers.
    Did you even check before posting?
    kube-system · 1790560446 · focus · HN ↗
    The context in the above discussion was fast chargers
    sanswork · 1790560647 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes and that's what I'm looking at. What is your source?
    kube-system · 1790562646 · focus · HN ↗
    Chargefinder.
    We're talking about people taking long rural trips -- stopping at a 50kw charger adds 50% of time to an 8 hour trip -- nobody driving a gasoline car would stop for that long. You'd need a 250kw charger to do what a person would normally do on a trip like that -- stop, piss, stretch your legs and get some fast food. Nobody who drives that route wants a 4 hour layover at the Speedee Mart gas station in Ainsworth, Nebraska -- if they can get the charger to work.
    sanswork · 1790563245 · focus · HN ↗
    You're shifting goal posts now.
    But yeah those 10 people that regularly drive those routes should probably stick with their ice vehicles.
    kube-system · 1790564852 · focus · HN ↗
    Nah, at no point above did I mean "fast charger" as in "sit at a gas station for 4 hours at a 50kw charger"
    dzhiurgis · 1790569301 · focus · HN ↗
    8 hours. That’s about 900km right?
    You’d need about 135 kwh total energy at 15kwh/100km efficiency. Assuming you leave with full battery - thats about 60kwh or a bit over an hour of charge at 50kw.
    sippingabonedry · 1790551726 · focus · HN ↗
    Taking an EV on US Forest roads sounds like a creative way to get stranded and die.
    zdragnar · 1790552661 · focus · HN ↗
    Aside from the routes the sibling comments mention, you also need to factor in the very real possibility that the chargers won't be functioning. It has gotten better but breakdowns still happen.
    jandrewrogers · 1790554970 · focus · HN ↗
    There are stretches of highway in the continental US that are >100 miles between exits, never mind chargers. That is almost a defining feature of the American West.
    More importantly, these highways can be closed at unpredictable times for an unpredictable duration. It is not guaranteed that the route you planned is the route will take.
    sanswork · 1790559104 · focus · HN ↗
    Well 100 miles would be 300 miles less than what op claimed and well within the range of just about every EV.
    Go check one of the charger maps and get back to me with a distance of 400 miles between charges.
    to11mtm · 1790558848 · focus · HN ↗
    I'll give you a scenario.
    It's not necessarily 'normal', but it did happen to me last year.
    Vacation in St Ignace Michigan. Stayed at an AirBnB rental.
    No proper EV charger on-site at the rental, admittedly maybe the owner had an extension cord or something. Still, Then we'd be charging at a fairly low rate of mileage gain.
    One day trip was 100 miles each way for optimum route. (Only charging stations known are near the AirBnB)
    Another day trip was 76 miles each way for optimum route. (Only charging stations known are near the AirBnB)
    The shortest day trip was 50-ish miles each way, but a whole thing happened where my wife left her phone at the restaurant so it was a total of 200 miles driven that day. (There are charging stations at both points for this one, but none in between.)
    BTW, when I say 'optimum route' for the first two, I mean that for at least one of those the trip wound up being longer because of road construction.
    I know one could say 'Well plan out charging in the morning'. But at the end of the day that just messes with the rest of the itinerary for a vacation where one could instead be exploring what you actually went on a trip for.
    sanswork · 1790560209 · focus · HN ↗
    So in your worst case you were 100 miles from a charger? Not counting the fact you could have charged at the Airbnb if you'd made some prior arrangements? That doesn't sound bad and you were always well within range.
    kube-system · 1790562019 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe not during a summer vacation, but in the winter, the only bridge connecting St Ignace to lower Michigan can often close in inclement weather, along with parts of i75. Having plenty of charge can be literally a life-or-death situation in the winter there. It's not uncommon for people to spend the night in a snow drift. And if not that, you need to plan for overnight contingencies and detours.
    sanswork · 1790563332 · focus · HN ↗
    I'd rather be in an EV in a snowbank where there is almost certainly more than enough power to run a heater for 24 hours. Bonus since I don't have to worry about snow accumulation blocking the exhaust and killing me.
    kube-system · 1790565572 · focus · HN ↗
    Most of the people in these regions would rather have a vehicle they can keep full of fuel because stations are plentiful and carry a shovel.
    I'm not saying this because I don't like EVs -- I do -- but I'm saying it because we have to address these problems to get higher adoption.
    sanswork · 1790567570 · focus · HN ↗
    If you are stuck in a snowbank your fuel doesn't matter. Staying warm until help arrives is the issue. Like above you are shifting goalposts.
    You are raising issues in this post that I would guess impact less than a hundredth of a percent of the driving population of North America. These are really not issues we need to be concerned about and they are very easily solved by installing more chargers. It's a solved problem without demand.
    So bluntly I don't understand the points of your comments at all. Is there places where it will take longer to drive an EV currently yes. Is there are two points in the mainland us where you cannot reach because of a lack of chargers no. Do 99.99% of people find themselves in these areas in a given lifetime? Also no.
    to11mtm · 1790734057 · focus · HN ↗
    > If you are stuck in a snowbank your fuel doesn't matter. Staying warm until help arrives is the issue. Like above you are shifting goalposts.
    They aren't shifting goalposts, they are being pragmatic and honest. The typical person who lives in the UP is going to be ready for the worst case scenarios (or, otherwise, just stay home.)
    > It's a solved problem without demand.
    There's not enough demand to make solving the problem economical for these niche cases. And enough people in the US still have to deal with these niche cases that we are where we are.
    sanswork · 1790735525 · focus · HN ↗
    What exactly is your argument here? That there are a few cases where an EV currently isn't the best case? The original argument was that there were vast parts of the US where the distance between chargers was far enough to make trips impossible with an EV and now we're discussing an imagined situation where you get stuck in a snowbank overnight and somehow running a generator to power your heater is the preferred solution?
    No it isn't being pragmatic and honest it's trying to find some weird edge cases to argue that his original claim(which was false) is actually technically true because under conditions X, Y, Z which impacts basically no one ever an ICE is required. It's silly. 350 million people in the country and you're coming up with situations that impact a few thousand of them a year as if thats a legitimate concern with EVs. Nothing honest about that.
    Coming up with a situation where you make the worst possible travel plans, make the worst possible choices and still it's workable with an EV is not the argument you seem to think it is.
    to11mtm · 1790640480 · focus · HN ↗
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but my general understanding is that if they had a long enough 120V extension cord (and I will admit, they might have in this case) I would have only gotten 5 miles an hour or so of charging at best.
    So, either:
    A- I have to go find a charging station, and pray to god that during a peak tourist weekend there is an open spot, so plan the wait into every day and hope my plan in the day schedule and pray it doesn't get disrupted by the other tourist traffic.
    or
    B- I would get maybe 60-ish miles of range added each night leaving the thing plugged in when we are at the AirBnb.
    I want to be clear about this, I'd be fine with an EV if the charging infrastructure made sense, as it stands today however the ideal state for me and my wife would require a plugin hybrid and an EV or a Plugin Hybrid and a Hybrid.
    sanswork · 1790647897 · focus · HN ↗
    Besides the insanity of picking a place to stay where you are several hours of driving from your planned destinations every day they could have topped up over night then spent a few minutes each day at chargers to fill up completely if they were worried.
    At no point was there any risk of them being without charge even on their longest driving day.
    kube-system · 1790694262 · focus · HN ↗
    > the insanity of picking a place to stay where you are several hours of driving from your planned destinations every day
    That is an entirely normal scenario for someone visiting many of the most popular outdoor destinations in the US, especially in the west.
    sanswork · 1790720062 · focus · HN ↗
    That is not an entirely normal scenario. You would typically book accommodations near each location and move between them if you have a bunch of spots spread out over a huge distance.
    Planning a vacation where even after travelling to your accommodation you require at least 10 hours of driving over a 3 day period just to get to the places you actually want to visit is absurd and uncommon.
    to11mtm · 1790732214 · focus · HN ↗
    > 10 hours of driving over a 3 day period
    Since you're trying to be pedantic about trying to calculate the drive time for the distance, I'll note that (short of the unexpected WTF re-trip) it would have been less than 10 hours; I-75 speed limit is 75 in most of the UP, and the other main corridor roads have a speed limit of 65, because it is so sparsely populated.
    For better or worse, the Upper Peninsula is this thing that your typical car-owning family who lives in the state can actually do an inexpensive but beautiful trip around.
    It's a region that is only about 42,500 Square Kilometers but only has a population of about 300K. Thus the infrastructure gaps.
    On the plus side, that means it's still a pretty drive at least. :)
    sanswork · 1790733851 · focus · HN ↗
    I assumed you would have time between exits on slower roads unless you're driving an hour on the freeway to visit a roadside stand or something.
    I grew up in Ontario and I'm familiar with the area. It still seems like an absurd trip plan but you do you.
    Though we're back to the fact that even in your worst case the most that can be said is it would be slightly more inconvenient given current charger network. In reality you'd problem just do a better job picking a base location or not choosing one given the distances if you were really worried.
    doubled112 · 1790549693 · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t think people understand how convenient it is to be able to go 1000+ KM without thinking about filling up or charging, even if it isn’t in one trip.
    I could do it in a 2002 Jetta. Why can’t I do it in a vehicle 25 years newer?
    adrithmetiqa · 1790550175 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s about 9 hours of driving. Don’t you need to stop at least once to take a leak?
    doubled112 · 1790550847 · focus · HN ↗
    I used to do a ~700KM trip fairly regularly without stopping.
    Like I said though, the whole convenience isn’t just single trip range.
    toast0 · 1790550903 · focus · HN ↗
    I can get about that on a tank of gas in my cmax. I wouldn't drive it non stop, but it means I can fill up before a long (for me) trip, drive a few hours, stop for food and restrooms, and drive on to my destination without stopping for gas. If it's not that long, I may be able to drive back too, without filling up.
    If there's a charger close enough to a restaurant you'll eat at, that sounds convenient, and I've seen a lot more chargers on my long distance drives... but usually not at the restaurants I want to go to.
    doubled112 · 1790551155 · focus · HN ↗
    Exactly. Maybe it is just me, but with a range around 450km I feel like I’m planning trips around filling up. It’s something I never thought about before.
    Now I am stuck in line ups for gas because I can’t decide I don’t need it. This is true even just around town.
    Maybe it’s a first world issue. It gets better all the time though. Maybe next car.
    koolba · 1790551766 · focus · HN ↗
    > Don’t you need to stop at least once to take a leak?
    Not if you have the right plumbing and a bottle with you.
    zdragnar · 1790552942 · focus · HN ↗
    I've driven that long without an extended break beyond running to the bathroom and grabbing a snack. Even a fast charger won't get you much in 3 minutes or so.
    I've also been on 24+ hour trips where we switched off drivers every 6 hours or so. Stopping too long for too many times on a trip like that adds up.
    jandrewrogers · 1790555398 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s a normal run for long-distance driving in the US. You stop for only a few minutes when you run out of fuel to fill the tank, which may coincide with a concurrent bathroom break. I don’t know anyone that regularly makes 20-30 minute stops on these kinds of trips even once. That adds up to a lot of unnecessary lost time.
    Human endurance is more about the end-to-end time. Breaks barely help at all.
    to11mtm · 1790557668 · focus · HN ↗
    More or less agree with this;
    I've done a few road trips (2023, 2024, 2025) where It was 10 or more hours of driving without even factoring stops in.
    Fuel-ups can be as fast as 5 minutes, if you have a co-pilot to run in and grab whatever else you need from inside while you travel. Might have one or two longer breaks in there for a proper lunch.
    > Human endurance is more about the end-to-end time.
    Yep. You also optimize for the drive itself; i.e. metering your overall methods and timing of hydration etc to avoid needing extra bathroom stops, making sure any food eaten can either be eaten quickly, or safely eaten while driving on a long boring highway (i.e. Tacos bad, simple burgers or sandwiches good.)
    For an 800-ish mile drive in one day, longer stops make a huge difference from being able to make it all the way through with reasonable daylight.
    > Breaks barely help at all.
    Yep, too long of a break winds up having a negative effect where you get too relaxed.
    Heck, in 2020 I did a shorter drive to a different region, but instead of a Ford Maverick that got 35-40MPG and 400+ miles to a tank, I was in my WRX which got maybe 330-ish miles per tank, and the extra stops definitely had me much more drained by the end of the trip.
    (Although, it's also worth noting that the Maverick is a lot more 'comfy' than my WRX from a posture standpoint, which may have been a factor.)
    dgently7 · 1790575753 · focus · HN ↗
    to each his own but tbh that sounds like a really terrible travel experience.
    I suppose I get wanting to get somewhere faster, but I honestly don't think Id want to put myself through it vs taking longer and enjoying the journey a bit more.
    if you are putting yourself through that regularly you probably do need an ice car (for now, high speed charging and battery size is making progress too).
    gambiting · 1790577032 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think people understand how incredibly convenient it is to wake up to a vehicle with a full "tank" every single morning. I'll take that over a Jetta that can do 1000 miles on a tank without any hesitation.
    doubled112 · 1790596535 · focus · HN ↗
    The “gas station” being my driveway is an idea I have come around to.
    For the average commuter and vehicle, it would be more convenient.
    My family’s closest family is 750km away. Making that a longer trip sounds like torture, but range is getting better all the time.
    I also rent, so I’m stuck at 120v charging at home. Does that limit the convenience?
    gambiting · 1790607323 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, the question is how often do you do that drive. My family lives 4 countries away and about 12 hour of driving. I do that drive about once a year. But I have a young child so I don't like doing this in one go anymore, we usually stop halfway at a hotel, have some nice food, get some sleep and carry on the next day - so charging is solved(because we can just stay at a hotel with a charger). If you're driving to see them every week then maybe an EV is not quite right for you yet.
    >>Making that a longer trip sounds like torture, but range is getting better all the time.
    On the other hand, my sister drives A LOT. Like 1000 miles(1600km) a week a lot. And she was spending a fortune on diesel, so recently got herself a second hand Polestar 2, even though it's a long range model she gets a comfortable 300km before she has to charge it - and I asked her hey do you find charging it annoying. And she says no, because she usually has to stop for a pee every 3 hours anyway, the car needs 15-20 minutes on a fast charger for a top up and then she can carry on. Saves her an absolute fortune in fuel money. She drives up and down the country and so far it just hasn't been a problem at all.
    >>I also rent, so I’m stuck at 120v charging at home. Does that limit the convenience?
    Yeah, that's going to be the biggest problem I think. If you can't charge at home(or can only charge at ~1kWh/hour of charging) that's not going to be a great experience. Realistically you can only replenish 12kWh overnight using a basic 120V socket and that's just not a lot.
    sippingabonedry · 1790551188 · focus · HN ↗
    > is more than enough
    This attitude of dictating others' car needs for them is one of the biggest hindrances to EV adoption and is also why rolling back CAFE regulations is going to be more popular than you think it is.
    The general public doesn't like being told what to do.
    kube-system · 1790553366 · focus · HN ↗
    The real cause of people's frustration with the US car market isn't CAFE, but the fact that the car market in the US is bifurcated by class and heavily financially engineered. The reason you can't get a cheap car in the US is entirely because US manufacturers are dictating what people can buy -- why give the middle class affordable options when you can make more money by squeezing them for cash for 84 months? What are they going to do, ride the non-existent bus?
    lesuorac · 1790557461 · focus · HN ↗
    Well also as part of the 08 recovery we scrapped a lot of the used car market to create demand for new vehicles.
    kube-system · 1790558159 · focus · HN ↗
    The average car that CARS took in was a 1996 model year with 138,000 miles in 2009. Even if we never did that program they'd be long gone by now.
    The current crazy pricing is mostly due to supply that was cut off during covid -- those would all be prime used cars today -- but many were never made, so used car pricing is crazy -- and manufacturers have no incentive to create cheap new cars if buyers don't have other options.
    lesuorac · 1790583856 · focus · HN ↗
    There’s cars upwards of 20 years still on the road …
    But also the waves overlap so we’d still have about 700k cars in additional supply.
    kube-system · 1790600365 · focus · HN ↗
    Most cars that are 30 years old with 318,000+ miles are no longer in service, which is what the average cash for clunker car would have today.
    And even if they are still on the road they different enough in quality that they are not affecting the resale price of covid era cars. People do not cross shop 2021 cars with 60k miles with 1996 cars with 300k+ miles.
    xboxnolifes · 1790564909 · focus · HN ↗
    That happened so long ago that an entire new wave of used cars exist by now.

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