This is one of the things that will come, and be a big deal over time. There's huge research being done on making batteries cheaper, lighter and more energy-dense. That's the kind of improvement that may not sound really thrilling, but can make a solid difference to adoption of the technology.

as for problems with different driving habits between the difference power-sources, I don't think that's going to be meaningful at all. Human variability in how we choose to drive is already pretty divergent. EV vs ICE seems like a smaller difference than that.

 

I remember a trip to the service department shortly after I got my Tesla in 2019. There was another guy there with a Model X, and we got to chatting for a few minutes while we waited. He had owned Teslas for years, and I asked him if he ever got range anxiety. With zero hesitation, he responded “No. It’s not even an issue.”

Three years later, I have to agree with him. I don’t even think about range unless I’m on a road trip, and I stopped caring about efficiency altogether. The cost of gas always made me try to drive efficiently by controlling my speed on the highway, coasting to stops, and trying to stay in the highest gear possible. But with my electric car, I just don’t care. Higher speeds are less efficient, but it’s pretty tough to kill an EV battery during your normal daily use. And driving “hard” has less of a penalty because of how much energy is recovered through regenerative braking. I drive how I want, which is a lot harder on the tires because of how much fun it is. My current car will do 0-60 in 4.5 seconds, and the Lightning is even quicker. I hope circumstances line up and the deal makes sense when my number comes up.

 

Range anxiety is subject to the use and environment.

There are places we travel through on a regular basis in WY, MT, UT, ND, etc... that we don't see ANYTHING for a long time. This May when we were traveling through WY, we stopped in Cheyenne for fuel to get our range back up to 480 miles because we were not sure where the next fuel stop would be.

I would feel comfortable with a 500 mile range and less than 20 minute back to 100% charge time. Until then, the EV is not a suitable replacement for any of our 4 vehicles, each of which has a specific use it was designed for and excels at.

 

Who's half the people?

 

I’m trying to figure out why anyone would think EVs would cause throngs of drivers to go slower on the freeway. You suggested lower speed limits would make sense because of that, but I think it’s the opposite in most cases.

 

Short distance drivers probably not... Long distance drivers maybe so...

 

Speaking of range anxiety. This video was posted on another sub-forum and I brought it here for clarification. I am not 100% sure, but it appears to me the woman in the video and her spouse had trouble finding an EA charger with the proper connector. This trouble subsequently led to them having the Lightning towed to a charge station with the proper connector.

Is that what others have surmised?

At first I thought the Lightning had a component failure, but that is not what I understood the message to be. Clearly they are frustrated and perhaps I am wrong, but I thought there were adapters available for every charge station to utilize on any EV. This is my perception from a brief search a while back while identifying the limitations or pitfalls of long distance traveling with an EV that "they" don't tell you about. Just like with anything, there are "gotchas" that pop up or things you would have liked to have known.

 

I did not watch the video you posted Sous.
I have watched another video on U tube about a couple men that drove a Lightning from Colorado to Alaska.They showed in the video 6 or 8 cords with different caps so they could charge at different locations. Camp sites and such. All these two foot cords with different caps I would guess costs over 100 bucks each. I don't recall them saying what they costs. I kept.hoping..

 

The video I posted is only 1 minute long, but she is clearly flustered and upset, so it is a bit hard to follow in my humble opinion. I watched the video you referenced, well as much of it as I could as the TFL guys get on my nerves.

I guess what I was attempting to understand from the 1 minute video was whether or not the failure to charge was user error or a design flaw in the charging connection. If the owner simply didn't have the right adapter, I chalk that up to user error and a lesson learned. If the connector does not have an adapter available to the consumer market, then I chalk that up to a design error and something that should be resolved in short order either by Ford, aftermarket or the charging station company.

High amperage adapters, especially ones with proprietary connections can be very costly. They charge the ridiculous amounts they do because they know as consumers we are stuck with the price they demand. I am currently going through this with a 30A to 50A upgrade in our 5th wheel. I am attempting to source the parts, wire, connectors and associated hardware for reasonable costs, not post-pandemic or "supply chain issue" times. Absolute BS in my opinion, but 1st world problems are great problems to have.

 

Yes. They got on my nerves also.

 

There are many NEMA configurations, as I am sure you are finding out in what you are doing. And things change.
Example, older campsites might have the 30A crowsfoot three wire plugin. Just like the old dryer cord.
Then the NEC changed the code. That 30A dryer plug on new installation now has to be 4 wire.
So if one changes dryers one must save old cord.
Not so easy on a camping trailer
If old camp sites don't upgrade 3 wire crows foot, newer trailer has 4 wire cord..

 

None of the above; it was the result of broken charging connectors.

You don't fast-charge on a trip using a NEMA AC adapter; that would put AC into the J1772 connector on the truck, feeding to the onboard charger that steps up to pack voltage. That's how you charge at home, and is limited to either 11 kW or 18 kW depending on battery size. None of this is what happened to the unfortunate couple in the video.

There are three standards for fast charging. The first is Tesla, which is a proprietary connector for their cars only. The second is CHAdeMO, which used to be the standard years ago. It's still quite popular in Japan, but the rest of the world has moved on. Currently, the Nissan Leaf is the only car being sold that supports CHAdeMO, so it's a dying breed. The F150 Lightning, along with just about every other mainstream EV, uses a standard called CCS. All CCS plugs in the U.S. are the same, and they plug directly into the truck. This is a photo of an EA CCS connector that I used in July. I took the photo because it was missing the outer trim piece.




There is no adapter to buy; the end of the cable goes directly into the charge port. Every DC fast charging station I've seen has CCS connectors, but not all support the older CHAdeMO because of how few vehicles use that connector. Most Electrify America stations have multiple CCS chargers as well as one that has both a CHAdeMO connector and CCS. I've never seen an EA charger that doesn't support CCS because I don't believe they exist.

EA has been having some serious reliability problems in recent months, and the internet is full of people complaining about them. I dealt with some of that during my trip in July, and we all think EA needs to do a lot better. I haven't seen a station with no working chargers, but it's certainly plausible. This really needs to get fixed for people to get confidence to make the switch to an electric truck. You'd think this would be an easy thing to solve, but...

 

ON edit, just to clarify what I mean, this is another photo I took at an EA station. The charger in front of my car is the only one here that had a CHAdeMO cord. But it also had a CCS connector, so both my car and the Lightning could charge from it. And every other charger you see here. Assuming they worked.

 

Thank you for clarifying what the issue was with the couple in the video. I had not even considered the durability or reliability of a charging station handle, cord or the components in the station itself. Hence, again why I am here attempting to learn the pitfalls and gotchas well ahead of time...

If this applies to Tesla to CCS, please disregard the following question.

Are there adapters for the Tesla charging station which will allow your KIA EV6 to charge there?

To clarify, you are referring to EA stations?

Sounds like they made claims they are not able to fulfill.

 

Not yet. I have a Tesla-to-J1772 adapter that allows me to use my Level 2 Tesla charger with my car, but Supercharging isn’t compatible. Tesla is opening their charging network to other brands in the coming months, and they will be installing CCS cables at their Supercharger stations by the end of the year.


All stations except Tesla. I’ve never seen a CHAdeMO-only station, and I don’t expect that I ever will. It’s a dying standard at all places not Japan.


Absolutely. Everyone is disappointed, and hopefully this will get sorted out soon. If they continue to suck, competition like EVGo, ChargePoint, and others will eventually eat their lunch.