Waiting an hour to charge sounds horrific. That charges also takes much longer than filling a tank. And what if you need to recharge multiple times on a trip? I agree with the user above. EVs are awesome for short trips. They're terrible for long trips. We hope this improves over time.
This is the worst case outlier where the charger happened to be free in a city center location and I had nowhere to be.
Our typical usage of the car:
Wife drives for work to another city 185km away in the morning and back in the evening. So 370km round trip.
During summer: she leaves with the car charged to 90% and arrives back with more than 10% left. Zero time waited charging anywhere.
During winter -20C: she leaves with the car charged to 100% and battery prewarmed. Arrives at the destination with about 45% battery left. On the way back she spends 10 minutes at a 150kW fast charger next to a service station that happens to serve her favorite Goulash. Arrives home with more than 10% battery left.
It is great to hear it works for your wife. I am forgetful and clumsy, and there would be days I will either forget to charge the car or not plug it in properly. This is not a big deal for an ICE car (petrol or diesel). However, you need a lot more discipline driving an EV car.
This is what the article is trying to highlight. For many people, EV cars are perfectly fine to use right now. However, only 25% of cars on the road are plugin electric (UK figures). Most of these are hybrid cars, reverting to fossil fuels when the EV battery drains. If you want to get to 100%, the government needs to do more than formulate policies.
Going to the gas station every week sounds horrific. I'd rather wait a bit on the one trip I take every other year than be forced to go to the gas station in the winter instead of plugging in when I get home.
This corroborates the point. You almost never travel far, so EVs are great for your use case. For those of us who do travel more regularly, EVs are very inconvenient.
