Query - "Affordable" EV with a 600km range?

[Hairy-Joe]

I'm wondering if there a reasonably affordable EV that can do 600km in one charge?

The reason for asking is that I can have that length of driving to to going places with zero facilities for charging. For example, today I went from Whest Cork to Kildare and back sitting on "about" 120kph on the M7 and M8. Where I was there was no charging stations. I came back home after a few hours. I covered almost 600km. That's not a once off journey. I've others that would be Cork to Athlone and back.

When I'm driving, I don't stop on a less than 3 hour journey. If it's longer than 4, I may stop. Sometimes I'd be leaving Cork at 5am to get to Athlone or Longford for 8ish and stopping for charging means an earlier start in the morning.

[dawg]

I'm wondering if there a reasonably affordable EV that can do 600km in one charge?..

Nope

[SmartinMartin]

Ask again in 10 years.

[DirtNap]

Cork to Kildare and back sitting on "about" 120kph on the M7 and M8. Where I was there was no charging stations.

What are you talking about .
loads of DC fast chargers on the that route.

[Hairy-Joe]

What are you talking about .
loads of DC fast chargers on the that route.

As I said, not at my destination. As also said, if I want to stop and charge on route, it means getting up earlier than 5:30am.

Not everyone has the hour or so to spare waiting for the car to charge.

[DirtNap]

If you think people need to stop for an hour at a DC you need to educate yourself.

[Hairy-Joe]

If you think people need to stop for an hour at a DC you need to educate yourself.

Really, the Kona gets 80% charge in 45 minutes. Allowing time to get off the road, park, get cables, plug in and get back onto the road, I'm allowing an hour. I've read that the Leaf, while getting 80% in 30 minutes, you can't fast charge more than once on a journey and has a much shorter range.

I haven't even gone after my worst case situation.......

[CelticRambler]

If you think people need to stop for an hour at a DC you need to educate yourself.

My entirely anecdotal secondhand experience is that the whole charging process does, typically take about an hour, when you include the deviation from the optimal route to get to a charging station, waiting for someone else to disconnect their vehicle, and then completing the charge process with whatever technology is available at that particular facility.

I am not anti-EV, but I would be in a similar situation to the OP in that my journeys are typically several hundred km at a time, and I would expect to be able to do a minimum of 500km without having to find a source of fuel. Most of my destinations have absolutely no facilities for recharging either, so it doesn't matter that I'll be there all night, the battery's not going to pick up any amps from anywhere until I set out on the next leg.

This is, from my perspective, the same weak point in the EV argument that it has been for the last hundred years, and the one that will - sooner or later, probably sooner - see EVs fall out of favour quite quickly, when an alternative "clean" storable and transportable fuel replaces diesel and petrol.

[DirtNap]

Did you know you can't drive an EV in the rain because of electric shock?

[Hairy-Joe]

Did you know you can't drive an EV in the rain because of electric shock?

...Don't bite the bait.....

[NickNickleby]

Funnily enough, I was perusing an EV thread on eh, the other side, and was astonished at the numbers being bandied about, ranging from 47k to 70k+ . Now in fairness the 70k was an outlier. It seems to be quite expensive to save the planet , if you ask me. But worse, far worse, was how much focus there was on paint finishes and seat materials.

Anyway, I came over here to have a look, and straight away I see a couple of snippy posts in this short thread. Pity really, as I had thought that carry on would have been left behind, over yonder.

As to the topic of the thread, I'd say cheaper electric cars might have to wait till the Chinese start taking aim at us.

Almost 50 years ago I drove an EV - an electric fork lift in a factory. Come 4pm, it would start to really slow down. But it was impressive to think it lasted all day on an overnight charge, and was really put through its paces. I also once drove one of those electric 'bread vans' up Jones' Road. You'd hear CLACK, CLACK, CLACK as it went through the gears (which I assume was something to do with relays operating to provide additional voltage as opposed to an actual gearbox).

[CelticRambler]

Almost 50 years ago I drove an EV - an electric fork lift in a factory. Come 4pm, it would start to really slow down. But it was impressive to think it lasted all day on an overnight charge, and was really put through its paces.

That sums up the problem that has faced the development of electric vehicles for the last last 100 years - small things can be made to move with relative ease, but the concept is inherently resistant to scaling up. There are literally billions of drones flying around the planet these days - it's dead easy to get an aircraft off the ground and whizz around at high speed for quite a long time ... but as soon as you start asking to it to carry a payload, performance drops off rapidly. The same applies to forklifts, cherry pickers, pallet shifters, scooters, electric bikes and city shuttles - all very capable of doing a good job on a reasonable charge.

But electricity is an inherently and inevitably poor source of energy, which makes it a very poor choice for self-propelled locomotive vehicles. There will always be better options - the only question is how much better they are, on a scale from "quite a bit" to "way, way, way better". Right now, hydrocarbons are way, way, way better for most uses other than single passenger short hops. Today's EV's aren't just competing against that (and losing badly) but also against all the other portable fuels waiting in the wings.

[Hairy-Joe]

Sure there were plenty of EV doing deliveries years ago. Milk floats (same as Fr Dougal used in Craggy Island) and bread vans. Yes they had a rubbbish top speed and range but we're ideal for house to house deliveries and what they were used for.