EV's. More convenient than ICE cars?

its a valid scenario and one of the reasons our second car is ice or will be ice/hybrid for some time.. i realise some people dont have two cars but thats our mitigation..

Don't use a Nissan Leaf 24kWh as your main car is the lesson there 😉

So we're all EVs in my house, so any unforeseen trips are going to have to be handled by an EV

I've a very simple system for this, don't let the long range car (ID.4) drop below 50% of battery when parked at home

That's enough range to get to hospital, back again, hospital again, and chuck in a trip to the beach and maybe a scenic drive home

Maybe for others that'll need to be a bit more charge if they're further from a hospital

And before you say "I live 100km from hospital and therefore need 1000km of range", remember that the time sensitive part is getting to the hospital, if you need to stop for 15 mins to charge on the way home then so be it

Thats a very sound idea, not letting the battery drop below 50%, simple to do too.

Yes and you find this convenient but is it convenient for everyone to keep an EV charged to their required emergency range all the time? How big a convenience is home charging compared to buying fuel and does the added convenience for those that can have home charging outweigh the inconvenience for those who cannot? Is charging on the road inconvenient at all? I don’t see the EV coming out as more convenient overall but some do.

Pretty sure they don't, but as a fun exercise how's about we both ask around a few local stations and see what we find?

Maybe stations in rural areas would but in towns I doubt they'd have backup power

Look at it another way, supermarkets don't have backup generators and they would have much more to lose from a power cut

Having my EV a year I can't honestly say they are more convenient that ice cars..sure I get free charging at work, half price tolls and free fuel from solar at home but it's still an extra consideration if you planning a road trip around where will I charge etc.. day to day I don't care but I'm going to Manchester via Scotland in a few weeks and I need to plan where chargers are etc on the route.. no need to do that with petrol or diesel.. it's by no means terrible but it's not as convenient as knowing I could pull into a petrol station twice on the journey and fill up with petrol or diesel in five minutes and be on my merry way.. am I going to sell my EV and go back to ice? Absolutely not.. I'm all in on ev.. but to say they are more convenient that ice is a cod especially if doing a journey of several hundred miles

I find it a bit more annoying going to Donegal which I do a good few times a year but outside of that it has been easier than an ice car and far cheaper. My last car was far more expensive to fuel and tax but I have similar performance and day to day it is a dream to run.

That is me being cheap by not bothering with the M1 charger and using the granny cable when I get there.

I will say though that there’s no way I’d go Bev with out off street home charging.

Why on earth do you not simply charge at night? 😂

Not strictly true, they all have weight and speed ratings, it is not just the width and profile you need to match up.

EV's are generally heavier and consequently require a higher load rated tyre.

Who is in denial over this? The more common issue is people over exaggerating the inconvenience for what might be a once or twice a year event

Drove 1800km roundtrip last year in my EV across 2 days. Stopped twice each way, 20 mins average per stop.

Planning took all of 5 mins, banged my destination into ABRP and it figured out the charging stops

Didn't queue once, chargers all worked. I doubt I'd have made the trip any quicker with an ICE, I ended up stopping for more bathroom breaks than charging stops and I was exhausted after that distance, so I needed the breaks

So I think the delusion is on the part of the ICE drivers 😉

The tolerance thing is a key overlooked aspect.

Theres a definite variation in how individuals react to EV life even in similar usage case circumstances.

Im an EV enthusiast and would still have one even if no home charging not because its a good or bad idea but because i would want to own an EV badly enough to deal with the issues that present themselves

Yes. A lot more convenient.

In 2023 I've had to public charge on 3 different days (overnight trip to Bantry, twice on way down, twice on way back), and a day trip to Waterford (once on way down, once on way back). On every occasion the charging session averaged about 20 minutes, and we needed toilet breaks anyway so were more than glad to stop. Total spend public charging since last summer = Tesla: €70.59 (4 sessions back in Feb when still expensive), Applegreen: €34.60

Every other day of the year so far (and since last summer), all charging has taken place with the car on the driveway.

Had I been solely using the ICE since last summer, that might have been 20+ trips to the petrol station.

So yes, (for me) a lot more convenient.

Also since April 5th, I've only charged from the grid on 2 occasions for a total of about 25kWh (€5.50), and all the rest (covering around 2,000km) was from solar PV excess. (on Wednesday alone I put 13kWh into the car which equates to about 100-115km).

so yes, a lot more convenient, and also a lot cheaper when able to generate it's fuel on my roof..

Another vote in the "EVs are more convenient column" - for us.

last 18 months, we've home charged bar 2 family holidays (one to Co. Clare, the other to South of France). All of our on the road stops would have happened anyway, and on each occasion the car was charged and ready to go before it's occupants had had a pee, snack and run around the play areas of the rest stops.

Only twice did I think it was less convenient:

• There was one stop in France that we needed to drive 10 minutes out of the way to get to the better rest stop (with Ionity chargers), but arguably we would have done that anyway since that rest stop also has a McDonalds with a pretty epic playground in it.
• Our holiday home didn't have home charging, and the wiring was a tad archaic so I never really trusted it for granny charging. For the 4 weeks, I used a few AC chargers in the local town about 3km away. It was fine for 2 weeks, but by week 4 I was a bit tired of working it into our schedule.

So bar that, we are part of the 30 seconds to plug in, charge while we eat and sleep gang which couldn't be easier. I hated having to either leave earlier to allow for time to get petrol, or on way home stop within sight of home to refill. And with 2 toddlers, it was a real ballache when pay at the pump didn't work. Ironically, the only time I didn't mind stopping was on 200km+ drives when I'd be gasping for a coffee.

Sorry but I disagree.

I drove my EV to Lithuania last summer (in reality though it was from the Ferry in Cherbourg, France to the Ferry in Kiel, Germany, about 1,300km each way), required zero planning needed.. got off the boat in France and put hotel in Maastricht into the nav, and the car did the rest (routing me around busy Superchargers etc...), and I was actually glad of a stop every 90-120 minutes or so as when doing 600-700km in a single day, I need as many breaks as possible.. I actually baulked on one occasion in getting back into the car when it said the next leg would be 2 1/2 hours... So I drove harder/faster to use more energy so the car would route me to a closer charging stop, which it did.

Since returning home from that trip, there's been 2 occasions that I've gone beyond my home range.. I still have a BMW 320d M-Sport, and the thought of taking the BMW over the Tesla didn't even enter my mind. I'd still be stopping anyway whether in the BMW or the Tesla...

It isn’t clear to me what you what is being challenged? That one can consider the conveniences/inconveniences of an ev and an ice for drivers with different living circumstances? If so I think one can. That my opinion on the how the conveniences/inconveniences weigh up for all drivers is incorrect? Then yes this may indeed be wrong but what I have seen, heard and experienced so far brings me to my conclusion.

do I charge an EV at home? No. Have I said that someone with an ev who believes it is more convenient for them is wrong? No. I would say that the statement of mine quoted acknowledges that home charging is a convenience.

The question in the title does not refer to any given person or to one’s own experience. Some may feel the question asked should be answered only for oneself, but I disagree. I think overall ICE is more convenient with consideration to the different circumstances of every driver.

Because there are EV owners for some reason that have become some sort of EV zealots that are starting threads claiming that the few minutes it takes to put fuel in a ICE is some sort of major inconvenience.

For most people it's not, never has been, never will be.

The same EV zealots will also claim without a hint of irony that a hour stopover waiting for and charging their EV when you only really wanted to stop for 20mins at the Obama Plaza is not an inconvenience.