> A rechargeable car a significantly more inconvenient product for most consumers
Actually, a rechargeable car is significantly more convenient than a gasoline car because you can charge it at home and/or work. You only ever have to wait for charging on long road trips.
If you take road trips over 250 miles on a monthly basis, or you can't charge at home or work, then by all means get a gasoline car. But I think that given people's driving patterns, the majority of people would spend less time overall waiting for charging than they would driving to the gas station and filling up. I certainly do.
This is my exact situation. My electric car is far more convenient for me than my gas car is and, so far, I would extend that to long road trips. Literally the only benefit I find to driving my ICE vehicle is the short fuel-up time but, with every trip I've taken in the EV in the last year since I bought the car, you don't have to charge it all the way to get to the next charger/destination. I can charge to the daily drive capacity in about 20-25 minutes which has gotten me to the next charger with plenty of range to spare.
I live in Seattle and am currently considering what car to buy next. It will likely be an ICE car because during the summer we regularly will drive 70-100 miles in one direction to a hike. There are not and will not be charging stations at the trailhead. Typically we eat breakfast on the road or before heading out, eat lunch on the hike & get back home for dinner. Stopping for over an hour on the way back would be a big change of pace.
This is also true for some of the ski resorts. There are a couple charging stations, but parking is already enough of a disaster at the ski resorts that I'd rather not deal with it.
We'll likely follow the crowd and get a ICE Subaru.
EVs like any car have scenarios that work well and other things that don't. Driving your Tesla 250 miles, doing something for 10 minutes, and then driving home won't be a good experience. But driving 70-100 miles, even if going to Snoqualmie Pass or Mt Rainier, then driving home, that's fine in even a 4 year old model S 85D like mine.
First, did you know that going downhill your car can charge or at worst drive a long way without using any power. Second, the raw range of the car is such that I can go from Seattle to pretty much any place around here and back (Stevens, Olympic Peninsula). My car's modest 265 mile range is dwarfed by a model 3's > 300 miles.
If you don't live in a garage with any charging it can be a pain. I have just 120 volts in my garage, but I rarely need to go to a higher power charger, because I get 50 miles added overnight. If I am going to say ski two days in a row I can get enough charge at home to be ready to go the next day. If I was doing such a drive day after day I'd upgrade to higher power. If I was living in Seattle with a car on the street where I couldn't run power to it, or in a parking garage, I agree that it's too much trouble. But the key thing is the range and power used by your ev can be reliably modeled. Check out (among many such sites), https://www.evtripplanner.com/. Try planning a trip, picking a car, listing the temp, how many people.
It's true that you have to do a little planning if you are going to the limits of your car's range, but I almost never need to do this planning. When I used to go driving around the backcountry in Utah I also had to plan out where I'd get gas and decide if I was going to bring extra gas with me too. I never did that normally of course.
So 200 miles round trip for the hike, plus 20 or so for food/buffer? 220 miles isn't hard to get on a single charge, wouldn't you just charge it when you got back home?
200 miles round trip should be fine in a 300+ mile range car. Also you don't need to stop for an hour if you just need a few extra miles of range to get home. You can add 50 miles in 10 minutes at a Tesla supercharger.
The PHEV prius doesn't have AWD. It's a higher trim for a normal prius only. And the Crosstrek gets pretty poor mileage for a hybrid after the battery is empty, probably because it has "full" AWD. The Prius has a more limited form of AWD, though it is likely enough for most AWD vehicle buyers needs.
If you are interested in a PHEV AWD car (I am interested in PHEV, my wife is interested in AWD), other vehicles to check out are the Hyundai Outlander, the Mini E Countryman S, and a few more expensive BMWs and Volvos. Kia might have one? That's pretty much all of them. Crosstrek seems like the best to me, but has definite downsides and is a compliance car not widely available in the US.
The Crosstrek plug-in hybrid looks nice, but the battery takes up a lot of storage space (and only gets you 17 miles of EV range). We love the look of the Crosstrek in general, but found acceleration in the ICE to be sluggish, and the storage space is the same as the Impreza. In the plug-in Crosstrek, there's a big battery in the trunk, so storage is even more limited. We crossed it off our list and are looking primarily at the RAV4 hybrid.
Or just get an electric with greater range perhaps? Hyuandi Kona would do it. Plus it seems a bad time to buy right now. Lots of new models coming in 2019.
IF you do the math, even for the at home case you spend more time charging the electric car than filling the gas car. The difference is with the electric car part of your routine is pulling the cord off the wall at night and hanging it back up in the morning, and it only takes a minute extra. With a gas car every once in a while - never on schedule you have to make a separate stop that adds 10 minutes. Over the course of a month less time was spent getting gas, but with the electric it is part of the routine do you don't think about it.
It takes me no more time to plug the car in than it does to grab my bag out of the car. Probably less, since the cord is on the driver's side, and plug is up front, so I'm walking that way anyway.
Seriously. This is about 4 seconds of “work” on my way to get my bag from the trunk.
I don’t think people realize the plug has a button which pops open the charging door on it.
It literally takes less time than unscrewing and rescrewing on a gas cap.
Unplugging is even faster. Put hand on charging plug. Press button with thumb. Wait one second for clicking noise signaling that charging is stopped/unlocked. Pull out plug. If the car was fully charged (to the set charging point, e.g. 90%) then even the button click is not needed because it will already be unlocked. Just pull out the plug.
I do have an ideally located wall charger so there is not even a “coil cord” or “uncoil cord” step.
Waking up every morning with a charged (and warm!) car is a pleasure.
I know it’s possible to auto-schedule the climate control warm-up but haven’t bothered with that yet, I jump into the app and click it on after making my coffee.
I'm not disagreeing. However most people do not realize how much time it is costing them to do that act each day. (obviously how much time it costs depends on the specifics of your parking situation)
I just think you're stretching it. I walk past my charger in the garage to get to the door to the house so plugging it in and unplugging it is literal seconds of my time. The convenience far outweighs that.
I'm usually ready for a break every 200 miles or so anyway, so I don't think I'd really need much more than 300 mile range. At 60mph, 300 miles is 5 hours and at 80 (highest legal limit I know of) it's 3.75 hours, which is a long time to go without a break.
If an electric car can get me 200-300 miles on 30 minutes of charging, I'll take the minor inconvenience on road trips to get the major convenience of home charging the rest of the time.
Actually, a rechargeable car is significantly more convenient than a gasoline car because you can charge it at home and/or work
Given how many people I've heard "I forgot to plug in my phone last night" from, I wonder if "I forgot to plug in my car" will become a common late excuse in the future.
That's because people are still using their phone indoors. The instant you pull into the garage you plug in, as a matter of practice, before you enter the house. I have no idea why you'd forget that unless some kind of emergency was going on.
a rechargeable car is significantly more convenient than a gasoline car because you can charge it at home and/or work
There are services (in the U.S., at least) that will fill your car with gas while you're at work, or home, at a hotel, or anywhere they can get to your car.
Hmm, they charge a delivery fee, and they come on their schedule, not yours. Also you have to remember to leave your car accessible and pop your gas cap, otherwise you'll still have to go to your car when they arrive at whatever random time they choose.
Convenience has a cost. Just like people who pay Amazon for Prime membership.
they come on their schedule
Having a service fill my car while I'm asleep is a lot better than waiting in a filthy gas station for 90 minutes while my EV charges.
leave your car accessible
Like in a parking lot, or a driveway. Crazy!
pop your gas cap
I had no idea they still made cars with gas caps that have to be "popped." My car's gas cap opens with one finger. I haven't had a car with a lockable gas cap since the 1980's.
go to your car when they arrive at whatever random time they choose.
Hmm... hanging around wasting time waiting for a car to be refueled. Sounds an awful lot like EV charging.
Actually, a rechargeable car is significantly more convenient than a gasoline car because you can charge it at home and/or work. You only ever have to wait for charging on long road trips.
If you take road trips over 250 miles on a monthly basis, or you can't charge at home or work, then by all means get a gasoline car. But I think that given people's driving patterns, the majority of people would spend less time overall waiting for charging than they would driving to the gas station and filling up. I certainly do.