> but I find the tyranny of "it works for me so you're doing it wrong" very real
One could also talk about the tyranny of people living their freedom of personal choice to the maximum.
"My solution works for me but will never scale to work for the entire humanity as we're simply too many on this planet for that and also totally screws the environment for future generations, but hey, it works for me!"
Right now people have an issue with the edge cases of EV range. That doesn't mean they wouldn't ever replace their ICE car with an EV if the range story were better (meaning the range of the vehicle itself as well as the charging story).
I'm in a similar situation. My motorbike does, most of the year, ~50 km trips to go see my parents for the weekend (I take the metro or a bicycle for my commute needs). It could be electric, no problem.
But several weeks a year, sometimes on end, I'll go ride in the mountains where current electrical motorbikes would be useless. It's way cheaper for me to own my current motorbike (which I own outright) than to sell it and rent for my trips in addition to buying an electric one. If an electric motorbike could have the same range as mine and the charging infrastructure in the back roads were useful, I could see myself riding around on an electric bike.
It would be debatable whether buying a new motorbike when mine is still in perfect working condition would actually be better for the environment, but I'd say that's another question.
Also more importantly, the "edge case" argument is just another variant of "if I yell at people, the problem would go away". Rate of success for social problems: 0 (pretty questionable on personal ones too).
EV range concerns have an obvious solution: build more EV fast charging stations and guarantee cross-compatibility. Standardize the billing system (the EU strategy of "figure it out or we'll do it for you" would be a good one to pull on the automakers here).
The solution is not ever going to be another round of people posting caustic hot takes on social media trying to shame people.
Billing system is not standardized in EU though. And for some ungodly reason no charging company is able to just add a card reader, oh no, you got to download an app on your phone! And there's a whole bunch of charging companies, each with their own app. You can of course use a RFID chip, but you still have to add your card details in the apps and then add your RFID chip to the app for each company. I know there's some discussions about using the UUID the car exchanges with the charger and have a centralized payment system, but last I heard it's not going smoothly as every car maker and charging company wants to control the centralized system.
As an aside, range is not a problem with new EV's with 500-600 km range as long as the charging network is good. There was a lot of talk about range anxiety in the early days when cars had 150-300 km range and charging stations were rare. These days with charging stations on every gas station, mall, ferry port, grocery store, random parking lots and what not long drives are no longer a problem as long as you plan a little bit and don't drive through hundreds of kilometers of no mans land without charging up first.
Range is still a problem for many, just a reduced problem overall.
500km is a short drive for some, when you can only fast charge to 80% and cars get far less range in the cold. 500km becomes 400km at 80%, you have to start hunting at 70km range, and at 140km/hr that's just over 2 hours of driving.
(Speed reduces range too)
But as I said in another comment, this will self fix. Charging time will come down, range will extend.
When you can fast charge a car to true 600km range, even at 140km/hr at -20C, with the heater running, and in under 10 minutes, I'd say we're there.
500km is only 310 miles.. that isn't very good IMO, plus once you factor in cold weather, high speed(70-80 MPH speed limit is standard for my long distance road trips in western US), and only charging to 80%.. that ranges drops pretty hard.
Then there is all the routes that just don't have chargers, so you are limited to only the common roads.
Until EV gets way better range, I think plug in hybrids make way more sense.
500 km might not be enough in the USA, but here in the EU? There are seven countries within that range of my apartment (including the country I live in), with a total of five currencies and six languages.
And only two of them are close enough I'd consider it a day trip.
That said:
> Until EV gets way better range, I think plug in hybrids make way more sense.
I absolutely agree. 90% of the environmental benefit with much faster roll-out.
Grid capacity is a bigger problem than people want to admit, just saying charge at night isn't really a solution. My state is already struggling to update infrastructure just from legal marijuana (pot farms use a ton of electricity), more charging stations just makes that harder.
I mean conversely if it's not necessary, then it's not going to happen - that's how governments tend to treat vital services (and voters reward them for it: everyone's got an opinion on why construction crews are working on the poles outside their house).
The reality of grid upgrades is unless we make the problem worse, it won't get better.
> That doesn't mean they wouldn't ever replace their ICE car with an EV if the range story were better (meaning the range of the vehicle itself as well as the charging story).
TBH, that is mostly a communication problem. Tesla already does much better than most non-EV types realize. A shocking number of people think road trips require literal multi-hour charging stops. "I heard from this Tesla owner that he only charges overnight... I'd have to stop at a hotel every 200 miles!" sigh
Consumer education is still important.
Outside of a Tesla... road tripping EVs in the US is often not fun.
The problem is that that failure of the hypothetical scaling up is not priced in (an externality). In other words, individual choices are subsidized by the debt of the whole society. If we could agree on a tax that takes care of that, there’d be no tyranny and we can all go back to individual choices.
One could also talk about the tyranny of people living their freedom of personal choice to the maximum.
"My solution works for me but will never scale to work for the entire humanity as we're simply too many on this planet for that and also totally screws the environment for future generations, but hey, it works for me!"