Yep. I have a Diesel. My average trip length will be roughly 60km. However, 4 - 8 times a year I need to go much further. Last year a single round trip for work was roughly 2200 km. And that was through extreme rural environments. The vast majority of places I stopped to refill the vehicle did not have electric service.
Average trips being serviceable doesnt help me. I dont buy a vehicle assuming it will work on average, I buy a vehicle knowing in will serve every one of my use cases.
Yeah so I went Brisbane - Goondiwindi - Lake Cowal and return on my last trip.
Using ABRP and a random electric it adds a lot of time to the trip, diverting me via Warwick/Tenterfield avoiding the Toowoomba - Gwindi part of the trip. there's also 9 hours 21 minutes of charging.
Thats before determining whether the vehicle is suitably rugged, long stretches of road were uncovered. One of these trips we found ourselves on an unmaintained service road with deep potholes and several down trees.
My next trip is likely to be Brisbane to Mt Isa, and its got a large stretch of red on ABRP.
There is a general drought of Tesla SCs in Queensland / NE Australia, so ABRP can't find a suitable route only using the SC network. Otherwise a scenario for the Lucid Air Dream Edition has it charging 6 times for a total of 4h12m (in "great" conditions, though; I can't change the car's consumption mi/wh on the desktop site): https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=c34a381b-83fc-4bd... - but of course this is one of the most expensive and longest range EVs available today.
The vehicle is mine, I make sure its maintained properly, has correct tires, I make sure its got what I need. I have access to it even when the local rental company has only Nissan hatches. The diesel costs me maybe 15% more than the petrol for my old honda hatch. Its also more comfortable, safer (for me) and a more enjoyable ride.
> The vast majority of places I stopped to refill the vehicle did not have electric service.
They didn’t have electricity?! What country are you in?! How did they power their pumps?!
Ok, I’m being too hyperbolic.
I assume you mean they didn’t have DC fast charging, perhaps making a trip less practical, but I’d find it hard to believe there was no electric service whatsoever. One of the great benefits for EVs is that you can plug in anywhere.
> I buy a vehicle knowing in will serve every one of my use cases.
Vehicles are for already specific use cases; I don’t try to drive my car into the lake. I think a vehicle that can do everything probably can’t do many things well.
A lot of the world is not so developed. Ewan MacGreggor did a show on AppleTV about trying to drive from Argentina to California on electric bikes with Rivian support.
For most of Argentina and Chile and Bolivia there was no electricity at all, except for the occasional domestic windmill. We’re taking about 5,100 km of wild land. They had to charge the Rivians by attaching tow-cables to semi-trucks and being pulled, back and forth, to use the regenerative system. So deisel power, indirectly.
FWIW that is complete hyperbole.
I drove Alaska to Argentina more than a decade before they did [1]. I tried as hard as I could to get as remote as possible and as far from civilization as possible. Only once did I need to carry a jerry can to get than the 600km my little Jeep got from its stock gas tank. Note any place with a gas pump has power (and cellular internet).
I also drove right around Africa through 35 countries getting as remote as possible. Again, I had to work hard to need more than 600km of range.
I also drove 18 months around Australia, including the world's most remote road, also across the Simpson. Again, aside from a few really odd cases (where no normal ice vehicle can get anyway) I was never far from power.
All of those places are developing rapidly, and all have been driven by EVs more than once.
I mean I could have pulled up, gotten out an extension cord and begged for electricity, but clearly I meant advertised bays for electric vehicle charging.
Average trips being serviceable doesnt help me. I dont buy a vehicle assuming it will work on average, I buy a vehicle knowing in will serve every one of my use cases.