The Opportunity in Former Gas Stations

[jeffandnicole]

I would also include destination stores like Ikea, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, and Micro Center. Shoppers often drive a couple hours just to visit these chains. Best of all, these places could charge vehicles cheaply using solar panels on the roof as most are open during daylight.

Sure. Casinos too. They'd love for you to stop to charge your car, wander inside for "15 minutes"...come out two hours later $1000 in the hole...

Unfortunately when doing a long drive I don't have time to wander mindlessly around stores.

Currently, having a plug-in vehicle works best if that's not someone's only vehicle, and the family tends to take long trips. If you, or the family, have two or more vehicles, a plug-in would work just fine commuting to and from work, rolling around town, etc. But if you're going on a long trip, you would take the other vehicle.

In a reality, there's nothing unusual about this arrangement. Many people may have a low fuel mileage SUV, and a better fuel mileage sedan, and we'll take this sedan on longer trips whenever possible.

Also reality... Not many people go on long road trips.

[Takumi]

Honda and Toyota aren't on the battery-operated train yet. Until they are, I withhold judgement.

I have no interest in a car with such limited range unless they can figure out a way to get me across country with one.

Both are still trying to push for hydrogen, though Honda is partnering with GM to build some electric vehicles later this decade and Toyota is rumored to be bringing the Celica back as an electric sports car.

[Max Rockatansky]

A drawback to how Tesla's are designed that I thought was interesting:

https://jalopnik.com/a-tesla-bricking-itself-on-the-highway-is-a-reminder-th-1847734019

[vdeane]

Honda and Toyota aren't on the battery-operated train yet. Until they are, I withhold judgement.

I have no interest in a car with such limited range unless they can figure out a way to get me across country with one.

Both are still trying to push for hydrogen, though Honda is partnering with GM to build some electric vehicles later this decade and Toyota is rumored to be bringing the Celica back as an electric sports car.

GM?  Ugh.  More ugh after their battery randomly catching on fire problem.  Guess I'll have to abandon Honda once everything goes EV.

I would also include destination stores like Ikea, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, and Micro Center. Shoppers often drive a couple hours just to visit these chains. Best of all, these places could charge vehicles cheaply using solar panels on the roof as most are open during daylight.

Sure. Casinos too. They'd love for you to stop to charge your car, wander inside for "15 minutes"...come out two hours later $1000 in the hole...

Unfortunately when doing a long drive I don't have time to wander mindlessly around stores.

Currently, having a plug-in vehicle works best if that's not someone's only vehicle, and the family tends to take long trips. If you, or the family, have two or more vehicles, a plug-in would work just fine commuting to and from work, rolling around town, etc. But if you're going on a long trip, you would take the other vehicle.

In a reality, there's nothing unusual about this arrangement. Many people may have a low fuel mileage SUV, and a better fuel mileage sedan, and we'll take this sedan on longer trips whenever possible.

Also reality... Not many people go on long road trips.

Plug-in hybrids work great on long trips.  We have a Prius Prime at work and have taken it on (nearly) day-long trips before... it works great.  Starts in EV mode and then operates the same as a regular hybrid once the battery runs down to a certain point.  It's amazing how little gas it uses, too.

Fully electric vehicles are, of course, a different story.  Those are only usable on long trips (Teslas more than others) if one is willing to stop for a while every 100-150 miles or so, and even then only on certain corridors, and with more planning for charging than one would plan for refueling an ICE car ("we'll just stop at a station somewhere along the road" is definitely the wrong attitude for driving an EV!).  Tesla has the superchargers; CCS cars have to rely on Electrify America (which does have reliability issues, though most stations have at least one charger working) as other charging networks don't offer true fast charging.  It says something that there are at least a couple websites out there dedicated to charging and that non-Tesla EV owners will check both in detail in advance of taking a trip outside of their area.

.... Never seen anywhere where a landlord or HOA would ban window AC units, either. ....

Come visit our neighborhood. It's unambiguously written into the covenants. The people who used to live across the street put one in and ultimately got fined, I believe, because they didn't remove it after multiple notices. (Our houses all have central AC, which is why window units aren't allowed, although to be fair the top floors tend to be a bit stuffier because most houses don't have dual-zone HVAC but could probably use it.)

Interesting.  I didn't even consider that one might even want a window AC unit if they have a HVAC system.  Still, it's hardly a ban on having air conditioning at all.

[Dirt Roads]

A drawback to how Tesla's are designed that I thought was interesting:

https://jalopnik.com/a-tesla-bricking-itself-on-the-highway-is-a-reminder-th-1847734019

This can be an issue with other forms of autonomous and driverless vehicles as well.  The safety requirements that allow for egress from a stalled vehicle/train do not permit the vehicle to disengage its brakes whenever it is possible for a passenger to board/deboard.  With vehicles that have truck-sized bogies and undercarriages, it is fairly simple to manually chock both the service brake cylinders and the separate emergency brake cylinders from underneath the vehicle (if you can get underneath on both sides, which sometimes is impossible).  Once you've done all that, you never stop the vehicle after you get it moving.  We generally require the use of a separate rescue vehicle that can couple to the stranded vehicle on either end, and control the brakes (and override the emergency brakes) with pneumatics similar to the way a freight locomotive works.  That's not possible with a Tesla, but I would be fearful of a roadside warrior releasing the brakes on any autonomous car if there is no manual way to control the brakes afterwards.

Another issue is that Tesla's have electrically controlled friction brakes, whereas most other brands (such as the Nissan Leaf) still have hydraulically-controlled friction brakes.  It is fairly easy to switch from software controlled hydraulics (with manual pedal as a backup) to manual pedal control only.  Unfortunately, you've got to have a completely separate backup controller for the electric brakes to accomplish the same function.  (Don't confuse this with the regenerative braking that is available on many electric vehicles; that feature turns the electric motor into a generator to decelerate the vehicle down to a slower speed where the friction brakes take over).

[TempoNick]

Also reality... Not many people go on long road trips.

Also reality ... as it stands now, a Nissan Leaf driven by a friend's wife had trouble making it from Indianapolis to Louisville. Sorry, but that's pathetic. Going to Cleveland from Columbus, tooling around all day and coming back isn't too much to ask.

[tradephoric]

Time to fill up a gas tank:  14 seconds
Time to charge a Tesla:  3014 seconds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9rTCA3LCTY

I think it's marketing genius for Tesla to show how quickly the car is charging in mi/hr.  Just like the guy's reaction in the video when the charge rate hit 1,000 mi/hr... OMG that is sooo fast!  But then you realize it's still going to take over 30 minutes to fully charge.

Assume it takes 3 minutes to fill up the gas tank in an ICE vehicle and you can go 500 miles on a full tank of gas.  In that case it's "charging" at (60/3)*500 miles = 10,000 mi/hr.... or 10X faster than the Tesla.  OMG that is sooo sooo sooo sooo sooo sooo sooo sooo sooo sooo (10 sooo's) fast!

[TempoNick]

The way I see it, you can't go from Columbus to Cleveland to see a baseball game and maybe tool around the city, have dinner and get back. Or if you can, you're cutting it close. Until they fix that problem, these things are a no-go.

In this region, most of the large cities are 2-3-4 hours apart and there is a lot of travel between these cities. (Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Youngstown, Indy, Fort Wayne, Grand Rapids, Akron, Cleveland, etc.). We're not talking about a once-in-a-lifetime trip across the country here. We're talking  about cousin Dee's kid getting married or Uncle Fred's funeral.

As it stands now, these things only work as a second car and they're too expensive for that.

[HighwayStar]

The way I see it, you can't go from Columbus to Cleveland to see a baseball game and maybe tool around the city, have dinner and get back. Or if you can, you're cutting it close. Until they fix that problem, these things are a no-go.

In this region, most of the large cities are 2-3-4 hours apart and there is a lot of travel between these cities. (Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Youngstown, Indy, Fort Wayne, Grand Rapids, Akron, Cleveland, etc.). We're not talking about a once-in-a-lifetime trip across the country here. We're talking  about cousin Dee's kid getting married or Uncle Fred's funeral.

As it stands now, these things only work as a second car and they're too expensive for that.

Yes, they are quite unrealistic, more of a rich person's play thing than a real car. Until the Cannonball run record is held by an electric car I will stick to the Town Car.

[skluth]

Y'all might think Teslas and other EVs aren't much use, but they're incredibly popular in So Cal. They accounted for 8% of total vehicle sales in California last year and sometimes I think half of those are in the Coachella Valley. I see them every time I leave my home; they're no longer a rarity. The way politics are going, all new vehicles worldwide will be EVs by 2050 if not sooner. It won't matter if you find it less convenient. Political reality will eventually mandate oppressive taxes for those insisting on still driving vehicles with internal combustion engines.

All the whining about how it's not going to happen because it's so inconvenient compared to gas vehicles is irrelevant. We're still early in the evolution of EVs. There will be many improvements to EVs in the next 30 years just like there were for autos from 1910 to 1940. It's not a matter of if everyone will be driving EVs; it's a matter of when. Which brings us back to what do we do with all the old gas stations? That is the topic. Please start a new topic if you want to discuss what you don't like about EVs.

[1995hoo]

They're not a rarity here either, but there's still a serious conundrum: Even the most ardent EV fans will generally agree that for long-distance trips, especially trips that don't involve all-Interstate travel, you pretty much need to use an internal-combustion vehicle for now (unless you have the most expensive long-range Tesla Model S). Fair enough, but I think it's equally fair to say–as I have–that if a car is going to cost $50,000 (which pretty much every EV I'd be willing to consider does), I find it reasonable to feel that you should be able to use that car for pretty much everything. Hopefully that'll be viable in the future. For now, I thought it was pretty interesting that the recent EV-focused issue of Car and Driver had a 1000-mile rally-style race involving different EVs, including an off-Interstate segment from Cincinnati to Morgantown, and all the staffers involved said for any long trip they'd use an ICE vehicle instead in the future.