Lessons Learned on Range Anxiety

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The fact that you never know what condition the chargers will be in when you get there, is a contributing factor of "range anxiety". With the billions that have been dumped into the charging system, you would think that things would be a little bit better. I'm interested in actual work being done to reduce the breakdown and reduce the charging time to something realistic.
Also not mentioned here is, what do people do while they wait at a charger? I'm not one to walk away from my vehicle while out. It seems if you sit in the vehicle, your using energy to heat or cool it. Is everyone just comfortable walking away? As @J Alynn said, are you spending more money while you wait?
It’s a fair point. As far sitting in your vehicle, the energy to heat or cool it (or play video games or movies on the screen 😋) is a tiny fraction of what a typical dcfc can provide. The limiting factor is usually what the battery can take so there’s plenty of headroom for the creature comforts. Ie, imagine what a 1500W space heater feels like; that’s 1% of what a 150kw charger provides, even less for a faster charger, so the effect on charge time from power usage is nil. A bigger consideration is if the heating/cooling system is also used to condition the battery, ie it can’t keep the battery as cool if it’s also trying to cool the cabin so it can’t charge as fast as it might. I don’t know how big an effect that might be, but I expect not huge. As far as money, we’re talking max around 50 cents a kWh, so if you’re sitting there for an hour with the ac on playing video games on the screen, it’ll add less than a dollar to the bill.

As far as walking away from vehicle, I expect most folks are fine with that if there’s something worth walking to, eg buc ee’s, restaurant, circle k, nice lounge, etc.
 
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Have owned a Tesla for four years in NC, and have used Superchargers perhaps eight times. Level 2 is installed in our garage on two-pole 30A breaker for 50A (max) charging.

Have never come across a fully offline Supercharger site, but maybe saw one charger out of eight down one time. They seem to be very well maintained.

We’ll charge Traveler on our Tesla Destination Charger, unless it is revealed to be incompatible somehow. Scout Motors should do what they can to make it play on that particular piece of equipment.
 
Tom Moloughney who runs “State of charge” YouTube channel has reviewed these. While each of them has had some minor issues (including teslas adapter), these specific ones seem to be pretty legit, high quality with appropriate safety features.
Follow up on this, apparently ford is now shipping the lectron adapters, so I expect they’re decent. A2Z is probably good too.
 
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This map is out-of-date and doesn't include the city driving one usually does when they're visiting for a few days, but it's fairly representative of our EVs' travels since February 2022.

We have >50,000 miles of pure EV driving (the only fossil fuel vehicles we have now are a tractor and a motorcycle). We don't have a lot of range anxiety, nor, any other kind of anxiety driving EVs. Even with the supposed sparseness of very fast chargers, we seem to be doing okay. We'll be putting another 5,000+ miles on the Lightning before the end of the calendar year and probably a couple thousand on the Mustang.

We've used both the Ford-branded NACS to CCS1 and the A2ZEV NACS to CCS1 adapters and they both seem to work just fine. Most of our DC Fast charging has been done on CCS1 chargers by Electrify America, with a smattering of other brands in there as necessary.

When charging at DC chargers, we almost never stay with the vehicle. We plug in, lock up, and go to the restroom, go eat, go stretch our legs, or whatever. This is the same way we used to do our road trips with gas vehicles, except we had to stay with the vehicle while refueling, then we'd go find a place to park and then go walk, restroom, eat, etc. We don't see any additional time on the road because of the charging unless we've been in a snow storm or it's 120 ºF out and the chargers have been in use for hours before we get to them. Both of those circumstances are rare. We've had a few challenges at charging stations, mostly to do with certain stations on our route being the only charger at a hub. For example, the Electrify America charging station in Kingman, AZ is at the intersection of two major highways, was for a time the only CCS1 charging station in town, and is often crowded, especially when some jerk in a gas vehicle decides to show us ev drivers how cool he is by blocking one.

For charging while sleeping, visiting, etc:
We also have an adapter for the brand-T destination chargers.
We have stayed overnight at RV campsites with electrical hookups, and charged on 120V, 30A and 240V, 50A.
We've charged on 120V, 12A at friends and family's houses (this is slow, but over several days it gets the job done--and we still don't spend any time thinking about it or dealing with it--it still takes less time than going to a gas station).
We've charged at hotel J1772 charging stations.

The closest we've come to running out of fuel is deliberately skipping chargers on our way home so we only have to pay $7 for a 0% to 100% charge on the Mustang instead of a more expensive charge on a DCFC. We pay $13, including taxes and fees, to charge the Lightning from 0% to 100% at home. We pay anywhere from $0.36/kWh for an EA charger to $0.69/kWh for an EVGo charger (just testing a charger nearby). Typically we pay about $0.02/mile to $0.07/mile to drive the Lightning. Our Mustang is about 50% cheaper. And to refuel, we just plug in and wake up in the morning with a charged/fueled vehicle--we don't have to spend any time at a gas station anymore.

Adventures_3Nov2024.png
 
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This map is out-of-date and doesn't include the city driving one usually does when they're visiting for a few days, but it's fairly representative of our EVs' travels since February 2022.

We have >50,000 miles of pure EV driving (the only fossil fuel vehicles we have now are a tractor and a motorcycle). We don't have a lot of range anxiety, nor, any other kind of anxiety driving EVs. Even with the supposed sparseness of very fast chargers, we seem to be doing okay. We'll be putting another 5,000+ miles on the Lightning before the end of the calendar year and probably a couple thousand on the Mustang.

We've used both the Ford-branded NACS to CCS1 and the A2ZEV NACS to CCS1 adapters and they both seem to work just fine. Most of our DC Fast charging has been done on CCS1 chargers by Electrify America, with a smattering of other brands in there as necessary.

When charging at DC chargers, we almost never stay with the vehicle. We plug in, lock up, and go to the restroom, go eat, go stretch our legs, or whatever. This is the same way we used to do our road trips with gas vehicles, except we had to stay with the vehicle while refueling, then we'd go find a place to park and then go walk, restroom, eat, etc. We don't see any additional time on the road because of the charging unless we've been in a snow storm or it's 120 ºF out and the chargers have been in use for hours before we get to them. Both of those circumstances are rare. We've had a few challenges at charging stations, mostly to do with certain stations on our route being the only charger at a hub. For example, the Electrify America charging station in Kingman, AZ is at the intersection of two major highways, was for a time the only CCS1 charging station in town, and is often crowded, especially when some jerk in a gas vehicle decides to show us ev drivers how cool he is by blocking one.

For charging while sleeping, visiting, etc:
We also have an adapter for the brand-T destination chargers.
We have stayed overnight at RV campsites with electrical hookups, and charged on 120V, 30A and 240V, 50A.
We've charged on 120V, 12A at friends and family's houses (this is slow, but over several days it gets the job done--and we still don't spend any time thinking about it or dealing with it--it still takes less time than going to a gas station).
We've charged at hotel J1772 charging stations.

The closest we've come to running out of fuel is deliberately skipping chargers on our way home so we only have to pay $7 for a 0% to 100% charge on the Mustang instead of a more expensive charge on a DCFC. We pay $13, including taxes and fees, to charge the Lightning from 0% to 100% at home. We pay anywhere from $0.36/kWh for an EA charger to $0.69/kWh for an EVGo charger (just testing a charger nearby). Typically we pay about $0.02/mile to $0.07/mile to drive the Lightning. Our Mustang is about 50% cheaper. And to refuel, we just plug in and wake up in the morning with a charged/fueled vehicle--we don't have to spend any time at a gas station anymore.

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Very interesting, do you plan your trips & stops according to charger location’s and staying close to heavily traveled roads or do you just go and find a charger as needed??

Last summer at the Route 66 museum in Kingman AZ they had a line of cars waiting for a charger & several were broken, no idea what kind of chargers they had, did not look that close.

Coming home from Florida we just pointed the nose of the truck in the general direction & made lots of detours stopping at historic sites and finding a hotel along the way. I find this kind of travel when possible is more relaxing & gives us the chance to see/experience America
 
Very interesting, do you plan your trips & stops according to charger location’s and staying close to heavily traveled roads or do you just go and find a charger as needed??

When we first got the Mustang, I did some OCD planning. After the second or third trip, I dropped that as a waste of time.

Now, I plan about as much as I used to with gas vehicles. When we're planning a trip to a place we haven't been, we'll pull out a mapping application and look at what might be of interest along the way. If there's something we want to see (always is), we'll then figure out the timing for that stop. If there's something super interesting but out of the way (say, Death Valley), we will make sure there are options. Death Valley's RV park at Furnace Creek is anti-EV, so we didn't book a stay there and instead slept in a comfortable bed at the hotel nearby and charged up on the Level2 chargers--the car's not doing anything else while we're sleeping, so it might as well charge. There were sometimes lines there. But there are often lines even at the gas stations in Death Valley (and gas is often $7+ per gallon whereas the charging was free). Charging on Level 2 in Death Valley didn't limit any of our exploration of the Park.

While on the road, we remain flexible: As we're charging, we look ahead and consider what's the next most interesting stop, what's the most likely place to charge, etc.

I recommend PlugShare as the key EV app for planning ahead--it has the closest-to-real-time status of charging stations and allows users to rate and comment on the charging stations. A Better Route Planner is also good for a Google Maps like planning application, though it's super conservative and overestimates the time cost, in my experience.

Last summer at the Route 66 museum in Kingman AZ they had a line of cars waiting for a charger & several were broken, no idea what kind of chargers they had, did not look that close.

Those are Tesla Superchargers. I find that people claim brand-T's chargers are more reliable, but in my experience that's not accurate. It's more accurate to say that their unreliability is less impactful because there are so many at any given station. Which is fine. You are more likely to be able to get a charge there than at the EA chargers down the road (only 4 EA posts compared with 16 SC posts).

Coming home from Florida we just pointed the nose of the truck in the general direction & made lots of detours stopping at historic sites and finding a hotel along the way. I find this kind of travel when possible is more relaxing & gives us the chance to see/experience America
That's our preferred method too. When I was 20 and impatient, I would do marathon, 16-hour drives at as high a speed as possible trying to get somewhere. These days, I'm much more interested in seeing the world. We arrive much more relaxed than ever before, so our first day at our destination isn't just recovering from our drive.

The Scout Traveler BEV is planned to have more range than either our Lightning or our Mustang, and if that remains at delivery, I cannot imagine a need for any kind of range extender except, perhaps our 5kWh portable battery and some solar panels, but that's a discussion for a different thread.
 
Addition:
We have not yet had anything of interest be so far out of our way that we missed out because we were driving an EV. We may have had to change the timing of our trip (say, book an RV site for an overnight sleep-and-charge instead of a quick look-see), but it's never been the case that something that far out of the way wasn't worth the stay.

Also, by the time I'll be able to take delivery in 2028, I expect there will be even more DCFCs available in our Northern Arizona / Southern Utah playground (Grand Canyon back country, Moab, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, etc., etc., etc). It won't change accessibility much, but it will relieve the pressure on the chargers that are out there now.
 
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Assuming that’s Canadian so probably just a bit more from our side of the line. Thanks for sharing this as it helps me understand the costs from that side of things
Not for me. I charge at home at night on my Level 2 - I pay six US cents per kilowatt hour. So if I go from 20kWh in the "tank" to 67.5 at my self-limited 90% SoC, it costs me a whopping $2.85 US per charge, which gets me about 150 miles of useable range driving around town for the week. I plug in on Sunday nights whether the car needs it or not.

To date, my home charger has delivered 908.35 kWh in 29 charging sessions. That's around $55 for 29 "tanks" of electrons.

My diesel Land Rover has a 22.4 gal tank. At around $3.50/gal for diesel (it's cheaper than premium gasoline here and sometimes cheaper than regular), that is $78.40 if I went from zero to full, but most fillups from around a quarter tank are on the order of $50.
 
Not for me. I charge at home at night on my Level 2 - I pay six US cents per kilowatt hour. So if I go from 20kWh in the "tank" to 67.5 at my self-limited 90% SoC, it costs me a whopping $2.85 US per charge, which gets me about 150 miles of useable range driving around town for the week. I plug in on Sunday nights whether the car needs it or not.

To date, my home charger has delivered 908.35 kWh in 29 charging sessions. That's around $55 for 29 "tanks" of electrons.

My diesel Land Rover has a 22.4 gal tank. At around $3.50/gal for diesel (it's cheaper than premium gasoline here and sometimes cheaper than regular), that is $78.40 if I went from zero to full, but most fillups from around a quarter tank are on the order of $50.
This is very helpful to those of us new to EV. I’ve been trying to get a cost comparison. I realize charge rates are different around the country but certainly helps get a sense of annual “fuel” costs
 
Most utility companies publish their rate schedule, and have "peak" and "off peak" rates, as well as seasonal adjustments. Your rates, just like gas prices, vary around the country. Don't charge during peak hours, usually 4pm to around 8 or 9pm.

Think of kWh as gallons - you have a 75kWh battery, and it runs down to 25%, then you'll need about 56.25 kWh to charge it back up - then you can do the math. There are usually a few other small charges like utility access charges, infrastructure improvement surcharges, etc - but those are charged at midnight each day and are for your whole house.

Adding running costs like oil changes and coolant flushes, engine air filters, spark plugs, diff oil and transmission services, fuel filters, etc etc over the life of the vehicle and you can see the advantages in running costs pretty readily. Even brakes - regenerative braking takes a significant load off.

Even adding back in an ICE range extender, it should be operating much less frequently and operating at its most efficient constant speed and load, so the wear and tear should be vastly reduced, and with that the maintenance cycles required.
 
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Have owned a Tesla for four years in NC, and have used Superchargers perhaps eight times. Level 2 is installed in our garage on two-pole 30A breaker for 50A (max) charging.

Have never come across a fully offline Supercharger site, but maybe saw one charger out of eight down one time. They seem to be very well maintained.

We’ll charge Traveler on our Tesla Destination Charger, unless it is revealed to be incompatible somehow. Scout Motors should do what they can to make it play on that particular piece of equipment.
Does it cost more to charge a non Tesla at a Tesla charging station?
 
Addition:
We have not yet had anything of interest be so far out of our way that we missed out because we were driving an EV. We may have had to change the timing of our trip (say, book an RV site for an overnight sleep-and-charge instead of a quick look-see), but it's never been the case that something that far out of the way wasn't worth the stay.

Also, by the time I'll be able to take delivery in 2028, I expect there will be even more DCFCs available in our Northern Arizona / Southern Utah playground (Grand Canyon back country, Moab, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, etc., etc., etc). It won't change accessibility much, but it will relieve the pressure on the chargers that are out there now.

Why/how do you stay in a RV park when you don’t have a RV??
 
Not for me. I charge at home at night on my Level 2 - I pay six US cents per kilowatt hour. So if I go from 20kWh in the "tank" to 67.5 at my self-limited 90% SoC, it costs me a whopping $2.85 US per charge, which gets me about 150 miles of useable range driving around town for the week. I plug in on Sunday nights whether the car needs it or not.

To date, my home charger has delivered 908.35 kWh in 29 charging sessions. That's around $55 for 29 "tanks" of electrons.

My diesel Land Rover has a 22.4 gal tank. At around $3.50/gal for diesel (it's cheaper than premium gasoline here and sometimes cheaper than regular), that is $78.40 if I went from zero to full, but most fillups from around a quarter tank are on the order of $50.

How much was it to purchase a level 2 charger and have it installed?

How long to recover that cost??
 
Most utility companies publish their rate schedule, and have "peak" and "off peak" rates, as well as seasonal adjustments. Your rates, just like gas prices, vary around the country. Don't charge during peak hours, usually 4pm to around 8 or 9pm.

Think of kWh as gallons - you have a 75kWh battery, and it runs down to 25%, then you'll need about 56.25 kWh to charge it back up - then you can do the math. There are usually a few other small charges like utility access charges, infrastructure improvement surcharges, etc - but those are charged at midnight each day and are for your whole house.

Adding running costs like oil changes and coolant flushes, engine air filters, spark plugs, diff oil and transmission services, fuel filters, etc etc over the life of the vehicle and you can see the advantages in running costs pretty readily. Even brakes - regenerative braking takes a significant load off.

Even adding back in an ICE range extender, it should be operating much less frequently and operating at its most efficient constant speed and load, so the wear and tear should be vastly reduced, and with that the maintenance cycles required.

We did somewhere around 420 miles today & got “cheap” gas twice in Colorado just cuz it’s “cheaper” than here and spent longer in Costco shopping than in line or topping off the tank

I really hate traffic between Denver & the Springs but had the chance to see a bro at the Academy so we made the trek
 
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This thread inspired me to look up some stats.

I have a 2022 Hyundai Tucson PHEV with 27k miles on it. I bought it, and installed an emporia L2 EV charger at the same time (we already had a 240v outlet in the garage, so it was a cheap/easy add on).

I’ve done 6740kw of charging at a bit over 10cents per kw, for about $685 in charting costs. The efficiency for the Tucson is about 2.4 miles per KW. Which means I’ve done about 16k miles all electric, and the other 11k miles with gas.

We’ve done two 3-4k mile road trips with it so far, which accounts for about 7k of those 11k. Which means about 4k miles have been done locally on gas.

I’ve never used a public charger, so I can’t say how much I’ve saved charging at home vs charging in public. But I can say that the L2 charger has more than paid for itself. Some days we’re getting 2-3 charges in, while on the L1 we’d only be charging overnight.

Paid for itself how? The 16k all EV miles cost me about $700 in electricity. The 11 k gas miles cost me about $1500, or $2100 total, give or take. If I’d done all the distance on gas, it would have cost me ~$3600 to $4000. So the $450 charger has more than paid for itself.

I know public fast charging can be expensive, I just don’t have any experience with it. But home charging is often pretty darn cheap (my PHEV is $1.40 for a “full tank” good for 33 miles).
 
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How much was it to purchase a level 2 charger and have it installed?

How long to recover that cost??
It cost me $1300 all in with installation to code, but I had sufficient capacity in my breaker box - not everyone will, and upgrading a home electrical system could be significantly more expensive. I bought a Blink HQ 200 smart charger. My state gave me a rebate on my taxes last year so I think net it was like $700.

So, as compared to paying for fuel, the payoff is less than a year.

Compared to public charging - don't know, but the couple times I charged from around 30% to 80%, it cost around $13 or so. So that payoff is longer, but within the lease period for my Polestar.
 
It cost me $1300 all in with installation to code, but I had sufficient capacity in my breaker box - not everyone will, and upgrading a home electrical system could be significantly more expensive. I bought a Blink HQ 200 smart charger. My state gave me a rebate on my taxes last year so I think net it was like $700.

So, as compared to paying for fuel, the payoff is less than a year.

Compared to public charging - don't know, but the couple times I charged from around 30% to 80%, it cost around $13 or so. So that payoff is longer, but within the lease period for my Polestar.

Thanks, I’ve been looking into electricians who have experience installing the LV2 charging system & they can’t come out till next month for an appraisal
 
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Does it cost more to charge a non Tesla at a Tesla charging station?
Generally speaking, yes. Rates at Superchargers are higher for non-Teslas. One can create a Supercharger subscription account, which gives lower rates, bit you'd need to do some math to determine whether the cost of the subscription saves you anything in the end. Basically, the ROI tends to only turn out to be worth it if you do a lot of DC fast charging at Superchargers. I  think it's possible to easily create and cancel the subscription, so that approach might make sense if a cross country trip is in the cards.
 
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