any PHEV pireps?

[FastEddieB]

We recently drove a rental ICE Pacifica California to Missouri to help the nephew relocate.

When we took trips in our Clarity PHEV, we rarely charged - and then just sometimes overnight at friend’s houses enroute. Driving 400 mile days, whether or not the first 45 miles or so we’re electric was trivially unimportant - @ current gas and electric prices there’s just not huge savings to be had, if any, if you’re paying for charging. We just treated it as a hybrid, and getting 42 mpg or so, it shined in that role.

 

[Brad W]

I recently took a trip to Sebring (Florida) to watch the car races. There's very little lodging in Sebring and nearby, so I stayed in Winter Haven. It's 482 miles from my house to Winter Haven. I left my house on Thursday at around 1:30 PM, and arrived a little after 10 PM. Friday, I wanted to be at the track no later than 10 AM, it's an hour and 15 minutes and 54 miles to the track. I left the track at 8 PM, returned the next morning at 7:30, and left for my hotel at 11:15 PM. Sunday I returned home, with a stop at Gainesville to have lunch with my sister.

I was trying to find a suitable non-Tesla EV for this trip. I set a price limit of $50,000, and came up the the Kia EV6, which, according to Inside EV's real world range test has a 245 mile range.
So, let's plan out my trip. For the first leg, there's a ChargePoint station at a La Quinta Inn in Tifton, GA, 205 miles from my house. Better hope it's working, because the next one is in Valdosta, which is 45 miles away and we can't reach that. Let's say I spend 25 minutes charging, then head on down the road with an 80 percent charge. Now my target distance is 160 miles, since we left Tifton with our 80% charge, and I'm going to leave a 40 mile buffer, just as I do when driving a gasoline powered car. I'd like to have dinner in Lake City, Florida. It's 106 miles from Tifton, so that works. It's at a Kia dealership,and there's only one plug, so that's iffy. There are four Level 3 chargers in a truck stop about 15 miles farther, so we'll be eating truck stop food for dinner. It's 160 miles from there to Winter Haven, we can make it to the hotel.

Now, I need to charge overnight, since it's past 11 PM because of the extra stops and length of those stops. There are two level two chargers about three miles from my hotel, so what do I do, Uber to and from? Sorry, this trip is not practicable in that EV.

Here's what I did in my PHEV: Left my home with a full tank of gasoline. Drove to Lane Farms in Fort Valley, GA to get some candy for my wife and daughters, which added 20 miles to the trip. Then I drove from Fort Valley to Lake City, FL, had dinner, spent five minutes buying gasoline, then drove to my hotel, arriving at 10 PM, and with enough fuel to make a round trip to the racetrack. A Tesla Model 3 long range combined with Tesla's charging infrastructure is a usable highway vehicle. A car with a 250 mile range and the non-Tesla charges is not.

Are you still sure that a PHEV is the worst of both worlds?

yeah...pretty much still feel that way. But I'll admit they fill a niche with versatility...

I'll admit to not crunching through the details of your scenario...but will counter with this.
I bought my Audi on the North side of Atlanta but I live in NE Florida. My first EV experience so I was fumbling for sure..... and I had none of that drama to get home as a 1 day trip...even took a detour on the way out of town over to near Powder Springs... AND my audi at about 220 mile range or so when it was new has at best a shorter potential range than the Kia in your thought exercise.

The things that jump out at me is that you were planning around slow chargers
and also using the argument that it takes huge time to charge compared to 5 minutes for pumping gas.... In my experience THAT seems to be teh biggest hurdle to folks paradigm shift. Yes, 5 minutes to pump gas...then you park your car, go in for a pee....maybe buy some food or stretch your legs for 5-10 minutes, etc... so your 5 minute gas stop actually takes about the same amount of time as a charge stop.
Personally my only significant gripe about the experience is that the chargers are almost never where I woudl prefer to stop. I'd rather stop to charge at a nice rest area...or a decent restaurant instead of a walmart for example. The walmart works, but not my preference.

I just plugged it into a better route planner just to see...and this is based on my car not the Kia...and it's just what the program generated first pass...probably not what I would actually do.... One obvious thing, I would probably charge well past 33% at that last charge (if only because it would be higher than that by the time I go in for a pee break and get back) I'd give it another few minutes to get up high enough for a reserve for the next days driving at the destination just in case the hotel's charger is blocked or offline....

 

[Pi1otguy]

the argument that it takes huge time to charge compared to 5 minutes for pumping gas.... In my experience THAT seems to be teh biggest hurdle to folks paradigm shift. Yes, 5 minutes to pump gas...then you park your car, go in for a pee....maybe buy some food or stretch your legs for 5-10 minutes, etc... so your 5 minute gas stop actually takes about the same amount of time as a charge stop

Really? The last few trips, the food stops and fuel stops are often not colocated.

Beyond cross state trips, that 5 min vs 20 min makes all the difference when you forgot to fuel up/charge up the ahead of your work commute. Out here, hitting the freeway 20 minutes later adds a 30 minute traffic penalty.

 

[FormerHangie]

yeah...pretty much still feel that way. But I'll admit they fill a niche with versatility...

I'll admit to not crunching through the details of your scenario...but will counter with this.
I bought my Audi on the North side of Atlanta but I live in NE Florida. My first EV experience so I was fumbling for sure..... and I had none of that drama to get home as a 1 day trip...even took a detour on the way out of town over to near Powder Springs... AND my audi at about 220 mile range or so when it was new has at best a shorter potential range than the Kia in your thought exercise.

The things that jump out at me is that you were planning around slow chargers
and also using the argument that it takes huge time to charge compared to 5 minutes for pumping gas.... In my experience THAT seems to be teh biggest hurdle to folks paradigm shift. Yes, 5 minutes to pump gas...then you park your car, go in for a pee....maybe buy some food or stretch your legs for 5-10 minutes, etc... so your 5 minute gas stop actually takes about the same amount of time as a charge stop.
Personally my only significant gripe about the experience is that the chargers are almost never where I woudl prefer to stop. I'd rather stop to charge at a nice rest area...or a decent restaurant instead of a walmart for example. The walmart works, but not my preference.

I just plugged it into a better route planner just to see...and this is based on my car not the Kia...and it's just what the program generated first pass...probably not what I would actually do.... One obvious thing, I would probably charge well past 33% at that last charge (if only because it would be higher than that by the time I go in for a pee break and get back) I'd give it another few minutes to get up high enough for a reserve for the next days driving at the destination just in case the hotel's charger is blocked or offline....
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I was expecting the charge to take 25 minutes on the average, and planned one of them as part of a dinner break, so no additional time. The trip I took was Roswell to Winter Haven, FL, where I had a hotel room. There's no available lodging close to Sebring, the teams and officials book all of it. Then I needed to make two round trips to Sebring, 55 miles each way, then return to Roswell. The deal breaker was there would be there are no hotels that have charging in Winter Haven. The closest thing I could find that had charging was in Lakeland, which added 20 minutes to each of the Sebring trips.

Your route plan takes your car down to 10 percent of charge. I wouldn't drive a gasoline powered car until there's only 20 miles in the tank, and gas stations are plentiful in this part of the country.

My next trip is to see the Six Hours of the Glen. That will involve a 825 mile drive to Williamsport, PA, then two 195 mile round trips from Williamsport to the race track, then 825 miles back. I plan to leave around 5:45 AM so I can get past Chattanooga before too much traffic builds, stop after 4 hours and get some breakfast, go another four hours and have lunch, then a final leg of 4 and a half hours into Williamsport. I know most people don't do these sorts of drives, but for those of us who do, a PHEV works perfectly, while the EV is inconvenient at best.