Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
I watched a few videos of long road trips with a few of the EVs I'd consider (Mach-E, Kia EV6/Ioniq 5), and I think usage type really comes into it.
The Mach-E video had a LOT of problems getting the chargers to work consistently, it was really buggy (the video was from 2021 and I think I've read they're at least aware of the issues if they haven't been resolved yet). Charging session would crash every 5 minutes, and the rate would go down arbitrarily (unplugging and replugging would get the rate back up again). Basically there's no way normal people could be expected to deal with the quirkiness and bugginess. Plus the Mach-E didn't seem to take elevation into account in its calculations, so the vehicle would alert that there's no charging stations in distance but then the vehicle would have 20% left by the time it got to the destination. The car doesn't show the charge rate so you have to go out to the station to see how fast you are charging.
The EV6 had more consistent charging but because there was no battery preconditioning the charge rates were consistently FAR lower than the platform is capable of because of the cold. EDIT: I think battery conditioning is now available to help the battery get to an ideal temperature for charging.
In both cases the drivers had used Teslas before and while they liked their respective cars they consistently mentioned how Tesla is still way ahead of other brands in terms of software, infrastructure, and usage experience.
For me personally my usage would mean almost none of these things would impact me, and I'm nerdy enough to deal with quirkiness. But I could definitely see how some people might get frustrated at that kind of experience and where a PHEV might be better for their use cases.
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This is why I'm waiting. I really want an EV but I don't like Teslas at all, and the rest are all first gen that will have issues. I'm buying a standard ICE later this year and I think in 5 years or so I'll look at trading it in for an EV when hopefully all the bugs are worked out