No Toyota, EV Charging Is Not an Issue
Toyota has run a misleading campaign about its hybrid vehicule, claiming they are “self charging”. Why I laud the Japanese manufacturer for its innovation that reduces fuel consumption, their cars still run on gasoline, and that’s not a good thing for the environment. Interestingly Norway was the first country to ban the ad in 2020, observing that it should have clearly stated you still needed to go to the gas station.
But Toyota’s claim is interesting as it tends to say charging is a key reason for people not to switch to an EV.
I’ve owned a Tesla Model S 85D since 2015, and I got to experience the best and the worse of charging, in many settings and places, including a major blackout while in the middle of nowhere. Here is my experience and my recommandations to would be buyer of EVs.
Most of the time, you charge from home
The first habit you need to adopt when you buy an EV is to connect your charging cable to your car when you get home. No more gasoline smell, no more stop at the gas station…
80% of my trips are covered from charging at home. This means refilling is totally transparent to me. It’s a no brainer in my day-to-day life.
The only feature missing on the Tesla app is the ability to change the power settings, ie. how much juice you fill in per hour, and more importantly, something that would be much smarter: the ability to have the car charged and ready by the time you leave in the morning. The benefit of this is battery preservation as the less juice per hour you fill in, the more you preserve your battery. It would also flatten grid usage, a good thing when electricity comes from renewable sources. Fortunately other manufacturers are implementing those features.
Travelling to a house within range of your EV
On week-ends or holidays, if you travel to a destination that is whithin reach of your car, the only thing you’ll have to do the night before is set the charging limit to 100% so that your car is fully charged when you leave.
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Once arrived, you’ll plug your car to whatever electric outlet is available. The charge may take time, but over the course of a week-end, I’m always able to hit the road back home with a car charged at 100%.
This covers another 16% of my usage time.
Travelling to a house with one or more stops at the supercharger
The major key success factor of Tesla is their supercharger network. Stopping at a station enables you to refill quickly your car to continue on to your final destination or another supercharger inbetween. Other networks are being deployed by other manufacturers.
Going long distance with my Tesla has always been an adventure. In 2015, the supercharger network was not as dense as today, and you needed to plan your trip, making stops at restaurants or other places where you could charge, even if more slowly. Today, it’s a fairly relaxed adventure with superchargers everywhere, but with one issue (at least for me), supercharging takes too much time. I do not know whether this is true for new cars as well. I suspect Tesla slow down the speed of supercharging for older vehicle to preserve the battery.
My advice: if you need to go far away quickly with more than one supercharger stop, just rent an ICE. You’ll still be doing your share for the planet, but at least you won’t be spending hours at the supercharger.
Let me balance this recommendation with the fact that battery capacities are going up by about 5% per year, meaning by 2025, EVs should have an actual range of 500 miles / 800 km on one charge. This positively impacts supercharging, as the speed of charge is always faster at the beginning since the electron find space easily in the battery.
If you travel with your Tesla, once you’ll have reached your destination, you’ll be back to the previous use case, charging at the house or the hotel (Tesla then calls this destination charging) you’ll be staying at.
When going somewhere new, always check how you’ll charge your car there
In some cases, the place I’m staying at has no charger (rental condo at the beach) and I have to look for a public station. This is something you need to anticipate. I recommend you buy a charging cable suited for public charging stations. My experience here is however that it is less and less an issue, ie. I always find a solution nearby as more and more public stations are deployed.
In conclusion Toyota, “Self charging” is not a benefit, whether for a car owner or for the environment, and absolutely not an issue for 96% of my travel. Educating prospective buyers is key to have more EVs on the road and less pollution in the air.
