owning a BYD EV here in Australia, 80% of my charging is at home, just plug in to a wall socket powered by mostly solar from my roof. 15% is destination charging eg when buying groceries, plug in, shop, unplug and go and only 5% is charging on a road trip.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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The reality: “Nobody stops to fuel their vehicle taking gasoline, gets out, rushes as fast as possible, puts as much fuel in the car as possible, and gets back in the car and drives away,” Cutler said.
Say what? Outside of a long road trip, that's very much what I do every time. I haven't been into the store at my gas station in years. I'm hardly alone, I see plenty of other people fill up and leave.
The "charging problem" is most completely addressed by doing less driving. Obviously.
We just came back from a trip. Started with below 50 percent, first stop was a nice caffee for a second breakfast. Within 20 minutes, charge went up to 80, giving uns around 400 km range. The car was full before we even finished.
The planing simply changed. Instead of rushing through a gas stop, we prefer a route with places for a nice break. Or, in a pinch, nearly every McDonald's now has a row of quick chargers.
It is becoming a non-issue.
Literally my solution in a nutshell. I'll take a longer trip with a nice place I can stop for an hour-ish, then move on.
In the context of EVs, your daily grind refueling is a scenario that doesn't really exist - and shouldn't exist. Your weekly trip to the gas station should be replaced almost entirely with AC charging, either at home or at work. DC fast charging should only be used when you are driving an extended amount in a single day. And if you've been driving 200 miles that day, you probably need some food and a restroom.
Coincidentally, it solves one of the biggest (and least explainable) gaps on fast charging. If you make your regular rest/food stops the same thing as your charging stops, then you'll spend very little extra time charging on a road trip. It's always been weird to me that fast chargers have traditionally been nowhere near amenities like food and restrooms.
Yeah, same for me. But it is true that it doesn't necessarily apply when charging at home, overnight.
We have been wanting an EV (something other than a Swasticar) for our next vehicle and think we could deal with the extended charging times required during a long drive or trip, but we ended up ruling it out.
For us the big problem is the difficulty getting parts and service. Service for the models we looked at is only available at dealers (and only some dealers), and parts are regularly not in dealer stock.
We really don't want to risk taking a cross-county trip and having the car break down 200 miles from the nearest mechanic. With the additional real possibility of having to wait weeks (or months) for a part, an EV is not an appealing choice for us, at least not yet.
You guys don't have insurance? If my car breaks down away from home, I can get a rental brought to me so I can continue my trip while my car gets fixed.
What are you expecting to break down? A modern internal combustion engine plus continuously variable transmission is one the world's most complex pieces of engineering in common use today.
An electric drive system is trivial in comparison.
This is the truth. 4 years with a Chevy Bolt EUV and so far I have only replaced the tires and windshield wiper fluid. As someone who worked on several ICE cars for 2 decades, it's kind of a dream to have so few things that can go wrong. The number of moving parts in a EV is a couple magnitudes less than an ICE car.
People don't account for the time I am not spending at gas stations sniffing fumes every week or getting oil changes. The handfull of times I don't charge at home are a fraction of time spent dealing with ICE routine maintenance.
The only thing I am slightly worried about is that my car has 3 coolant loops, which is one of my least favorite repairs.
I'd be worried about some of the electronics, modern cars, electric or not, tend to be overcomplicated with tablets and server connections and what have you. I might also worry about getting into an accident.
Hate to tell you this, but cars have been like this for about 15 years now.
Been a long time since ol Joe at the gas station could fill the tank and tune your carburetor with a screwdriver.
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My biggest problem with my EV is that I was stupid to get the service pack as it never has any service needs. Breaks last twice as long. No oil changes. No critical fluids other than wiper fluid. The easiest to fail part is the 12v battery which is standard for any car. If something hard to replace fails it is going to be a sensor and I've had that happen on a gas car before and no one had it in stock because no one stocks random sensors.
How often are you taking cross country trips on the spur of the moment? Take the advantages of owning an EV and then just rent something for the trip.
Often enough and the trips can be for a few weeks. Checked car rental rates recently and a small SUV had a nearly $2K base rate.
Sounds like a plug in hybrid would be right up your alley. Many of the benefits of an electric vehicle (regen braking and the ability to charge at home, foremost) while still being able to fill up instantly using gas. Unfortunately you lose out on the basically-no-maintenance-required part of a pure EV, but frequent road trips are basically the ideal use case for a PHEV.
That's exactly we're looking at.
For context, parts are as available as they need to be. IOW, parts are in stock when they are frequently needed. If a part is rarely needed, it won't be in stock locally.
If you choose a common EV model, like GM, Hyundai, or even Tesla, you are extremely unlikely to suddenly need extensive service. Dealers (with EV mechanics) are common, with multiple in every major city, and a parts network that can have anything shipped overnight.
The only time i seen a new EV breakdown is due to...that 12v battery. It usually happened around 2 or 3 years down. Other than that i still haven't seens any EV breakdown yet.
Also for the part availability, logically newly released car tend to not having part laying around because logically no one will expect a new car to break down and waste a storage space for it, so no matter what car you buy it will be the same. But if a new car(released only 2 to 3 years) have parts widely available, then logically speaking, is that car still reliable?
EVs can break down. It tends to be less frequent but more expensive. I just had a bigger repair on mine. I'll be crunching the numbers one of these days to see what the average cost of repairs has been.
No argument on that, just that it be strange to worry about replacement part for an EV that isn't 5 or more years old. You will make as less sense if apply that to ICEV too, no new vehicle are expected to breakdown. Whatever module that might break on an ICEV will break on an EV too, but that's not enough to dismiss the point that EV is much more reliable solely because there's significantly less part required to run it.
You won't find any readily available part for a newly launched EV the same way you won't find any readily available part for a newly launched ICEV.
I was worried about that, too. My EV came with 6 vor 7 years warranty, so I decided not to care.
I'm in the process of running a 6-20 outlet for ev charging that doesn't heat up mt panel or cause a huge draw. 240@16Amps is like 6+miles. Which means my commute is charged up in just under 3 hours. Yes, I could just hardwired something more exciting, but I want to slow charge my battery, but give it at least 240v to avoid the losses in winter.
All the messaging about fast charging speed is focused on the wrong thing. EV drivers should be able to do the vast majority of their charging at home or at their destination. The messaging should be about getting chargers in more homes, apartment complexes and workplaces. Speed doesn't matter as much if you're going to be parked for half the day or overnight. That's something that gas simply can't do.
Fast charging stations should only be necessary for road trips, where you should be taking a break every so often anyways.
The fact that so many people don't think about this or are unaware shows how well the propaganda worked.
Here is a car that is by far the easiest car you'll ever own, the power to run it is the cheapest you'll ever see, and 99% of your trips will be within one charge/tank meaning you'll never need to worry about range ever - but the propaganda convinced them all that that's a deal breaker.
As an EV owner the road trips we take are the vast minority of driving anymore. When we do there are options.
- plan out your route and stops. Requires maybe 15 minutes of planning before your trip. You pick a place with food nearby, get out for 30 minutes, stretch, eat your meal, and you are good until the next meal.
- if you are one of the 80% of households with 2 cars, take the other car for that roadtrip.
- get a rental car for your trip. (Remembering that a couple hundred for a rental car is vastly cheaper than paying for gas for 10+ years)
I can vouch for this 100%. Have had an electric vehicle for 6 months now.
The vast majority of my charging has been done at home on 120v. Granted, my wife and I both work from home most of the week and have short commutes. Our grocery store has free 240v charging so I top up while I shop.
We took one long trip in those 6 months and rented cars for the drive to/from and used public transit while we were there.
I used a fast charger for the first time this weekend to drop off a kid at the grandparents a couple hours away on Friday and then picked them up in Sunday. Didn't have enough time between trips for the trickle charge to leave me in a comfortable range. 20 minute fast charge did the job for about $15.
I can't help but feel if EVs were invented first, convincing people to adopt gas cars would be impossible.
- "You mean I have to take it somewhere and stand outside every time I need energy?"
- "Why do I have to put all these fluids in it? And why does it need all these filters, brake pads, and maintenance?"
- "These things are so slow, why would you ever want to drive one?"
- "What do you mean I can't turn on the climate control anytime I want? You mean I have to wait for this thing to heat up?!"
The saddest part is that EVs were invented first, but it was easier to tanker fuel everywhere, rather than building out the electric grid in low-density areas.
Ha, I never thought of it that way but yes, that tracks perfectly. The "inconveniences" of EVs aren't worse than gas cars, it's just that the gas car inconveniences are considered "normal" right now.
First, just to be pedantic, EVs did exist first. They go all the way back to the early 1800s. But battery technology didn't advance enough to make them a good option until recently, so your point remains.
I fully agree with you that the only thing keeping gasoline going is inertia. There have been parodies applying the same logic to other fields, like the gas-powered phone.
There's a reason why 80%+ of EV owners say they'll never go back, and a good chunk of the remainder are just waiting on the field to mature a bit.
the vast majority of their charging at home or at their destination.
Absolutely true, which is also why I found it extremely annoying when reviewers began claiming that range wasn't as important as fast charging speeds in daily use. Luckily most have stopped that shit, probably realizing there's a reason most people want good range, and this is one of them. Also charging at home/destination cost way less than using a fast charger, and it's better for battery life too.
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"Nobody stops to fuel their vehicle taking gasoline, gets out, rushes as fast as possible, puts as much fuel in the car as possible, and gets back in the car and drives away"
WTF? This is exactly how I have refeuled every single time I have ever gotten gas. If I could pay a little extra for a pit stop style refuel I would. Who wants to linger around gas fumes, processed "food" , and energy drink boner pills?
A big draw of EV for me is that 99% I don't need to stop anywhere to recharge. If I do though I want it to be as fast as possible.
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