500
Cars are like horses: people will soon realise EVs are just better, claims VW boss
(www.autoexpress.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
500 points (96.3% liked)
Technology
85167 readers
3872 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Charging at home or work would be great. From my perspective, the biggest obstacle to EV ownership is road trips. I just did a trip last week that was 2000 miles round-trip. Having to stop multiple times a day for charging would be a real challenge, not just for current lack of infrastructure, but also the time spent charging. Fuel stations are everywhere and I can have a full tank in <5 minutes. Until EV charging approaches these numbers, I don't see myself owning an EV. Although I guess there is the option to rent a traditional vehicle for those periods, I usually make multiple 1000+ mile trips per year, so those costs aren't insubstantial.
I don't own an EV either, nor do I have any financial (or otherwise) stake in any EV company or technology. Actually, I don't have any financial stake in any company, except the one I work for because they employ me, so it's in my interest... anyway, I'm getting off track.
Point is, on your road trip, you had to stop for food. The idea is, you'd refill and eat at the same time. Unless you were really picky about your food, you could just eat at the gas station (which also has chargers). That's the idea they're going for with these "rest area charging stations".
You make a lot of trips, which means you spend a lot in gas. Again I'm not saying you should buy an EV. What I am saying you should do is, try to find out what that trip would cost you in fuel and in charging. I bet you pay less than half for the charging. $10 vs $20 (assuming USD because you said miles) isn't nothing, but it's not a vehicle purchase decision. $100 vs $200 isn't really a purchase decision either, but it's a bit more substantial. If you had a way to figure out your fuel costs over a year and then figured out what those miles would cost to recharge in an EV, it would at the very least be some interesting numbers to look at.
Road trips are certainly a weak point for EVs. If you go on more than 3 or 4 per year, EVs are not (and probably won't be for a while) a good option.
But I do at least see it getting better in the next future. All of the pieces are there, just not in one place. When taking a long trip, you're already supposed to stop every 2 hours to stand up and walk around for a bit. You or your passengers probably also need to use the restroom. Every 2-3 of these, you need to stop for food.
Currently, it's a PITA to link these with fast charging. You should be able to pull into a truck stop (etc), easily and conveniently, and plug in while you do the rest. Except the fast chargers aren't usually at truck stops, and apps like ABRP don't have an option to set stops by time.
If this all lined up, and you have a car with reasonably fast charging (like the Ioniq 5), I don't think you'd have to wait on charging very much at all.
It just takes a bit of extra planning. Chart out your desired route with ABRP or such, and hit the road? I'm in Sweden, so we may have a bit more charging infrastructure than your country, but you might be surprised.
On long roadtrips, I prefer planning that I will charge for like 15 minutes every couple hours, then making sure to get a stretch, eat something small, and get a short walk in. The couple minutes it takes to just fill the tank isn't sufficient to prevent deep vein thrombosis and other health issues.