this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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It's a dumb take on the face of it; splash n dash trips are extremely common, that's why they put points of sale on the pump stands. It's common enough for people to want to pay at the pump rather than ever walk into the store. Extremely common weekly errand.
Now, with an EV, likely charged at home every night thus starting most trips with a full battery, that should sharply reduce routine visits to gas stations. That leaves refueling on longer journeys. Which varies.
Me personally traveling alone, I'll still do quick splash n dash stops on medium length journeys, say 200 miles or so? At interstate speeds that's about 3 hours of traveling, I'll use the restroom before setting out and one 5 minute fuel stop will do the distance.
Now, if there is a planned stop, say on a 400 mile trip, I'm gonna stop, bathroom, grab a snack and a drink, and fuel the car. That's maybe a 15-20 minute stop to use the bathroom, grab a gatorade and a bag of funyuns from the convenience store, pay the clerk, walk back outside, then stand there at the pump while the car fills.
I will grant you, you can plug in your EV and have it charging while you're in the store, but none are going to charge in 15 minutes. So you're going to end up just standing there, or sitting there, while it finishes charging. With nothing at all to do. Even simulating the same behavior as with a gas car, stand there next to the charging cable staring at the price going up for ~5 minutes, the car's not going to have taken on enough power.
I have refueled my car at night at unattended gas stations. Sitting there for a couple hours while a car charges enough to reach the next station sounds real fun.
My parents drove from Vancouver BC to Barrie ON (4000km) this spring in their new electric car. Their biggest complaint was that Tesla chargers are very difficult to use because the cable is only barely long enough to get to their charging port, they need to position the car within like 2cm to get it to reach.
Overall it was a great experience, they're retired and aren't really in a hurry. They liked the exploration and walking breaks.
They spent a lot more money in small towns than they did when they drove their Prius.
Biggest concern is if there were to be a road closure.
They will be driving back next week.
Many charge in 15 min. Mine takes 20 min to charge. Who the fuck charges for several hours?
Holy shit
I've had women actually gasp when told I used to shop at Wal-Mart at 2AM so I can't tell if you're being serious or not.
Emphasis mine. I think the "gets out" is the big difference between a daily trip which I think includes the "splash n dash" and the road trip.
Because I think you're right, it's extremely common to pull into a gas station, fill up in 5 minutes, and then drive away. But I would bet the majority of those stops come immediately after leaving or on your way home (or work). So in an EV world we could eliminate those stops completely.
I think for trips where you're traveling beyond one tank of gas or beyond one full charge, then I think the quote is closer to being correct. At that point most people probably take a break and a 15-20 minute charge is fine.
I just did a road trip in an EV and the car's range was greater than the range of our bladders. We stopped more than just our charging stops.
Even the stops where we were just standing around waiting were kind of a nice break from sitting for 3 hours, but that only happened a few times on our 3 week trip. Our longest charging session was only 20 minutes.
With level 3 charging most vehicles don't take multiple hours to charge an almost dead battery to almost full. You don't fill your gasoline car through a straw, why would you choose to charge your electric car with a level 1 or 2 while on a trip (for overnight charges at home the straw actually makes sense)
For example, a mach-e on that 400 mile trip, charging at 150kw you'd need ~1hr total charge time to finish the trip with the same battery capacity as you start with. But considering you likely start with full battery, and if you finish with completely dead battery, charge time required could be as little as 23 minutes.
I could start with an empty tank, fill it in 5 minutes or less, drive to empty, fill it again in 5 minutes or less, and still spend less than half the time refueling as an EV. And I can much more accurately predict the range of said vehicle because ambient temperature especially cold doesn't significantly effect range.
But by the almighty power of not listening, that can't matter. So manufacturers can continue to not listen to customers, customers will continue to not buy their products, and dick all gets accomplished.
Bring a book? Taking a slightly longer break from travel fatigue doesn't seem like a terrible idea to me.
See?