Here at Top Comments we strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either to topcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find!
Last weekend, Hubby and I took a trip to Portland, Oregon, where we rented an electric Mustang to get around. Hubby, who regularly drives a Tesla Model 3 (bought before it was clear that Elmo had completely lost his mind), and he was hoping to rent one while on our trip. At the car rental desk, we were told that all the Teslas were spoken for, but an electric Mustang was available. As I want to eventually replace my Honda Fit with an electric model of some sort, but not a Tesla (as long as Elmo has anything to do with the company), I was curious to be able to compare the experience of driving a non-Tesla electric car in order to compare the experience.
As far as driving the car goes, it passes with flying colors. Naturally, it took a little time to get used to where all the knobs and switches are (since there is no standard, or even a habit, for where to put them yet), but that was pretty minor. The one big problem with the electric Mustang was its charging network. We took a fairly long drive into rural Oregon during our trip, and finding a charger that would charge the car in less than several hours turned out to be a challenge. The Mustang has an on-board navigator to assist in finding nearby chargers, but apparently its database is not necessarily accurate. For example, the first charging station we were directed to was no charging station at all, just some random place on a country road with no charging station apparent. A second time, we were directed to a charger that had been decommissioned. A third time, we found a charging station that would not accept any of my credit cards. All this time, the charge on the battery was dwindling, and I got a real taste of the dreaded “range anxiety.” Even the faster chargers provided by Electrify America (rated around 65 kW) paled in comparison to the speed of Tesla superchargers. (There were also chargers rated around 22kW that would require hours to charge the car. Using such chargers is fine while you’re at work or asleep with no need to go anywhere, but if you need a fast charge, they’re useless.)
It seems to me that if non-Tesla electric cars are going to be as convenient as cars that run on gasoline, Electrify America and other companies that provide charging services for electric cars are going to have to step up their game. In 2021, Hubby drove his Tesla across the country from Pennsylvania to California (with me following in my Fit), and there was never a problem with finding a supercharger and getting back on the road in a reasonable amount of time. However, the Tesla charging network is currently not open to charging non-Tesla cars because (1) the charger plug doesn’t match—you’d need an adapter; and (2) Tesla owners register their credit cards within the Tesla charging system such that all you have to do is plug your car in and the system knows immediately what credit card bears the cost. If you don’t own a Tesla, it’s not clear there’s an easy way to get into the Tesla network.
In any case, the non-Tesla charging network needs to increase its number of high-power chargers, improve the accuracy of its maps allowing drivers to find functioning chargers, and making the experience more uniform so that there are few (or better yet no) surprises. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt to increase the power of the fastest chargers to bring them up to a similar speed of the Tesla superchargers. If we’re to have any hope of moving away from a petroleum-based transportation system in a period of time short enough to limit damage to the environment, the charging network need to be aggressively improved.
Top Comments
From PvtJarHead:
In my own diary about the Florida MAGA supporter who turns out to be an undocumented alien — if there is a Hall of Fame for Top Comments here I would hope it would accept the following comment coming from absolute truthiness for consideration.
Top Photos