I’ve been driving a battery EV since January 2014. The technology has come a very long way since then. So has the charging infrastructure.
I have never run out of charge. I did come close once in 2014 when I was driving a car that only had about 80 miles of usable range and there weren’t any rapid chargers. I admit the “80 mile” car could be limiting at times. I handed that car back to the leasing company in 2017.
Since then I haven’t had a single problem. My current car has about 160 miles of range, which is more than enough. It takes about 30 minutes to rapid charge the car back to 80%.
But I hardly ever use public chargers. Most of the time I recharge the car at home overnight.
I never have to wait to fuel up. Instead I wake up to a full “tank” every morning.
I don’t have to hunt around for the cheapest gas station.
I save about £120 a month on fuel. (Gas is about 2x the price here that is in the the US, but our electric is more too)
My car is quiet. Really quiet.
In the winter, I can set the car to preheat the interior while it is still plugged in. I come out to warm, defrosted car…
I charge my car from a standard (UK) wall plug. Yes, I can get 2.2kW from a wall plug. Most EV owners in the US get a 240V clothes dryer plug installed in their garage if they don’t have one already. There are EVSE adapters that plug into a clothes dryer outlet.
— There is plenty of capacity to spare if people use the charge timers and charge between 1AM and 5AM….
EVs don’t stress the batteries they way some of us do with flashlights. There are safety buffers at the top and bottom of charge. Most EVs have active thermal management too. battery life is getting better - partly because there is more capacity to play with. My 2014 EV lost about 10% range after 3 years and 30,000 miles. The second EV was down about 3% after 2 years and 22,000 miles. The current car hasn’t lost anything after the first 8,000 miles.
AA and RAC both trialed vans with generators. There was very little demand so they quietly dropped the service. For the tiny handful of people who do run out, AA and RAC flat bed them to the nearest 50kW charging station.
Nissan and BMW both offer a free tow service with their EVs. We used it once to pull the car out of the mud after someone ran Debbie off the road.