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xkcd #3214: Electric Vehicles (imgs.xkcd.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [B] to c/xkcd@lemmy.world
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xkcd #3214: Electric Vehicles

Title text:

Now that I've finally gotten an electric vehicle, I'm never going back to an acoustic one.

Transcript:

Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com

Source: https://xkcd.com/3214/

explainxkcd for #3214

Now that I've finally gotten an electric vehicle, I'm never going back to an acoustic one.
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[–] 2 points 8 months ago (14 children)

The problem is that what you actually do a roadtrip, (and you're not charging at home on a normal "commute" day) is sit on your ass and do absolutely nothing for 45 to 90 minutes at a gas station in the middle of fucking nowhere, hoping no hick "jeds" see you hanging out at the Tesla charger and approach you to tell you that "yuu got a perddy mouf".

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Or just.... rent a car?

    If an EV supports all of my travel/commuting needs except one or two road trips per year, I'd rather just spend $65/day renting an ICE. The idea that you need to solve every problem with one privately-owned vehicle is part of why there's so many idiots using F-150s for daily commutes.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    You seem to have last looked at EVs in 2015. At 350kW, it takes about 7 minutes to charge.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    7 MINUTES?! 7 minutes. To full. FROM EMPTY?!* 7. minutes.*

    I don't believe you. The last video I saw about road tripping with an EV was last year- this one.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Unfortunately that's a Tesla ad. But I was wrong. Looks like at least some of the 350kW charging cars take about 18 minutes. Slower than getting gas, but not much worse than a pee and sandwich break every two hours or so.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    Not to full, you never charge to full on a fast charger... You charge enough to continue with your trip, which, yes, takes about 10-15 minutes in my real-world experience. I've also timed my fueling stops in my gas car, and they also take at least 10 minutes if I have to pee, grab some coffee, etc.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (5 children)

    So I'm not at all opposed to electric cars, but I'm on the old side and what I'm not "for" is spending time charging enough, planning my next charging stop, rather than "filling up" and "there's one on any exit, whenever I see fuel is low again".

    Maybe it will reach that point some day, but if I want to go sightseeing or go to somewhere interesting, I don't want the whole trip being highly stressfull stops of "OK where do we plan to stop next and for how long".

    At that point I'd much rather take a train, and yes I know how insulting that is considering it would be AmTrak here in the united states of late stage capitalism.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    You misunderstand. The roadtrip planning, at least in my EV, is all handled by the car itself. I just punch in my destination and go. It figures out where I need to stop to charge, for how long, etc. When I'm stopped charging, the "time remaining until full enough" is prominently displayed in the car itself as well as in the app, and I get notified (in the car and in the app) that my car is ready to continue. All that time I also have a (very accurate) estimate of how much charge I'll have remaining once I reach the next stop.

    There's no guesswork, the car figures it out on its own, and I can tweak it however I want.

    Also, the actual experience refueling is horrible compared to charging: When fueling I have to stand outside in the cold, breathing noxious fumes while being blasted with loud adverts from the machine... Then I get inside to pay, and if I want to grab a snack, coffee or go to the bathroom, I know that I'm not making progress towards my destination during that time so I'm kind of in a hurry.

    Charging, you just park, plug, and let the car do its thing. You know you have 10 minutes to kill anyway, so you do the same things knowing that your car is doing something productive in the meantime. The vast majority of the time, the car is done before me anyway. It's just a lot more relaxing honestly.

    But all this is something I do what, at most once a month with my car? Day-to-day is done with home charging, where I get home, plug in, and the car is full the next time I need it. No more stressing about running late but finding out you need to stop to refuel, etc.

    All in all, I find my EV experience to be WAY less stressful / annoying than my gas car. Just yesterday, we did a small family trip about 2 hours away with the gas car (the EV doesn't fit the whole family sadly), and on the way back we found out gas prices had jumped 15¢ / liter during the day, thanks to Trump's war... With an EV the price stays a lot more stable over time.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    So- genuine question here, not baiting. So assuming your 4G/etc (telemetry soaked) connection is working, how often would you wind up stopping to charge "up another X percent" along the way? It sounds like it would be having you stop more often than every few hundred miles?

    The home charging scenario is great, near perfect experience FOR SURE, but there are cases where it's not possible, like renters.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    I kinda doubt the genuineness of the question given the comment about telemetry... I'll be the first to admit that these things are a privacy nightmare, but that's a problem with ALL modern cars, not just EVs. It just so happens that most EVs are modern cars, but they're not necessarily worse than your random off-the-shelf 2026 Nissan Rogue.

    Still, genuine answer: Haven't done that many roadtrips where I've needed to charge more than once, actually. But my car can easily leave now and go 2-3 hours at highway speed without stopping. Make that 3-4 hours if I set it to charge at 100% the night before (in case of a planned roadtrip), as I usually only charge it to 80% to preserve battery life. Not sure how many miles that is as I'm to lazy to do the conversion, but this is why I use "hours at highway speed" as a metric.

    A good resource to look at the various scenarios specific to your situation / area would be ABRP.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    I drive a 2024 and it has absolutely no internet connection what-so-ever. I'm glad it works for you. I rent and so do most of my friends, so from my point of view it's completely unattainable.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    A lot of EVs are currently advertising charge times of 30 minutes from 15% to 90%. Furthermore:

    If theres a line for the charging station, everybody is gonna take 30 minutes, so you could realize you have a 2 hour wait.

    If the battery is hot, it can take longer. If you just got off the highway, it could add another 15-30 minutes while the battery cools off.

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