"EV drivers who charge up at home spend about $11.60 per 100 miles"
Hmm... My Bolt gets something over 4m/kwh, let's call it 4 even, so 100 miles is 25kwh - about $4 at current pricing in Colorado. So I'm not thinking I need to pay much attention to this article.
One reason I cannot just agree is Norway, which has anything but a mild climate, a low rate of garage ownership, and a lot of long distance rural journeying to go to places like Tromsø, and yet has 8 out of 10 new car buyers selecting EVs:
And, in anecdata, I just did a 1000 mile road trip in my 2016 Tesla through many frigid places in the USA. It was fine. Your argument sounds a lot to me like "people don't/shouldn't ride bicycles when it's cold or snowing" and that's also demonstrably false in my opinion:
Norway is the pilot country for EVs. Their adoption rates have always led the world. Again, this is due to their peculiar wealth ( they have so much money that they can destroy their economy if they spend it domestically), and public policy that supports this end.
Pointing out their unique social environment doesn't change the fact that people there are happily driving EVs that fit their lifestyle, despite living in a cold place with few garages and large rural expanses.
> the fact that people there are happily driving EVs that fit their lifestyle
Source?
Like the commenter you replied to, I think I'd have bought an EV for my last car if my ICE car had a 70% tax applied to it, but I wouldn't be happy about it, and it would only fit my budget, not my lifestyle.
I mean, my source is that I lived in Norway and know a lot of driving Norwegians, which I do understand is far from hard data on their true sentiments nationwide.
A 70% tax on petrol cars will shift the scales somewhat. I really doubt 8/10 of new cars would be EVs if the VAT and purchase taxes were applied to them as for ICE cars.
"Mostly local" might need to be better defined here. I routinely do a 200mi round trip two times a week with no other commuting otherwise. The implication might be that EVs can't do long distance, but that wouldn't be true.
EVs come with other conveniences too like lower maintenance demands and costs. As with all things, there are just tradeoffs. I would also expect the software to be better in non-traditional manufacturers' cars - though this is not EV specific.
But... you should absolutely have a place to charge that isn't a Supercharger (or other fast charger). I think it's crazy people buy Teslas and go to the Supercharger every other day for ~30 minutes+.
I did a simulation of the vehicle market in grad school for my PhD. My results showed EVs were only going to be attractive to high income consumers, however I did not take subsidies into account.
It's not exactly the same metric, but whenever I get the idea to replace my ICE car with 100k miles with an EV, I realize how much gas the $30,000 difference will buy.
I've been looking at electric cars recently and am disappointed that I can't find any plugin hybrids with an electric range of 60 miles or more. 60 miles would handle all my family's commuting needs accept for the two or three times a year we go on vacation to a place with out good charging infrastructure. I don't want to have to waste time driving out of the way and sitting at a charger when there are small children in the car.
1) Do the calculation for a mid level ICE
2) BEVs must drive unintended miles to reach charging stations
3) waiting for charging has an opportunity cost
Funny, in our local newspaper there was a letter to the editor today, where an EV driver complained about exactly that and how he has resorted to driving his ICE again because of costs. There were no details mentioned.
https://jalopnik.com/driving-100-miles-in-an-ev-is-now-more-...