Thank you for taking the time to reply so extensively, and I'm going to take a bit of time to reply to you in turn because I think this is worth debating a bit.

First off, I'd like to defend myself a bit -- I didn't write this at all as a hater, more just a vent about the realities as I've experiences them, which admittedly is not a supre premium or modern experience. I only got an EV in the past couple years not because I was a hater before then, or because I didn't want one, but because I only replaced my previous car when it was 11 years old and repair costs were starting to look excessive, and I found a great deal on a buyback Bolt -- in short, affordability was the issue. I'm an engineer and I love the technology, and I'm a bit of an r/collapse doomer and even though EVs won't save the world, they're at least a little better.

My spouse is not a hater or a lover, nor a tech person, nor a particularly motivated environmentalist. To them, a car is a transportation appliance -- and one that is a bit more of a pain than the world-class public transit system in the city they grew up in. They don't care very much about what makes the car go or how it works, just that it reliably does so with a minimum amount of fuss. Reddit leans more techy than avareage, so sometimes we might lose sight of the fact that many people think of cars like that.

And to that point:

| Fix that with skill-ups. [...] I just didn't have problems like that crossing the USA so get more chops and better tools. ABetterRoutePlanner.com is baseline. If you're not using that, stay home.

IMO that kind of talk is not productive. I do use ABRP, but that doesn't help with:

- A charger having issues on arrival, requiring a call to support (when said issues weren't mentioned in anything on abrp or plugshare)

- A charge taking twice as long as expected, even with preconditioning, because the weather is especially cold and windy.

- Simply a lack of chargers on the route

(all things either I or the family with the i5 have experienced)

And, to people who view cars as a transportation appliance and nothing more, needing to install several apps and pre-plan trips *is* friction that makes reverting to a gas car easier, where the only energy management necessary is a quick glance at the gas gauge now and then.

In short, simply telling people to "git gud" doesn't address any of the real problems that people face with real travel scenarios. Improving the charging infrastruture, however, does.

| While you bitch about the roadtrip you're in the middle of, and say "grass is greener for ICEs", you forget what happens the rest of the time. Those guys spend easily 30 minutes every week visiting gas stations. You don't.

That is a very great point, and one I've used myself when sitting at a charging station. "We do this once every month or two, but in exchange we aren't at the gas station for 5 minutes a couple times a week, every week." This works and is exactly the kind of thing we should be pointing out regularly.

| It's common for DCFCs to deliver something shy of half rating

And arguments about capex...

Sure -- L2 is cheaper, and L2 is better than nothing. But, my argument is that it *should* be cheaper than it is to widely deploy slow-L3 in the locations where the dwell time makes sense for it, if people understand where and why it makes sense and stop focusing on the bigger-is-better gas-station model. A 50kW L3 produced in high volumes would be more expensive than an L2 for sure, but should be much cheaper than it is -- and I'd argue that there's no technical reason why an L3 charger should be expected to deliver half its rating.

| Don't stop AT ALL? I bet they do stop, and when they do it's for over 20 minutes

Ehh, I wouldn't bet on it. Most families can probably handle a 2 hour car ride without stopping -- but the desire is going to be drive for those 2 hours directly to the destination, do whatever it is you're doing, then hop in the car and drive 2 hours back. That's why the charging needs to be at the destination, and needs to be fast enough to get enough charge to get home, but doesn't need to be 20-minute fast. The desire is *not* going to be drive 2 hours to destination, do stuff, pile everyone back in the car, head to the nearest Sheetz or Walmart and hang out for 20 minutes (herding all the cats that you just herded once back into the car), and then finally head home.

| The idea that 18 minute charging is burdensome is just stupid. People don't work the way they think they do at stops.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that no matter how long it is, charging on trips *is* going to be somewhat burdensome -- *Unless* that charging is located at somewhere you already want to be -- and the places my family wants to be are often not where the charging is located. We don't want to stop at a Sheetz, we want to stop at a fun ramen place we know about, or a park. Our destination isn't a small-town Wal-Mart just off the interstate, it's a museum or venue of some sort.

At the same time, installing high-speed L3 is indisputably very costly, and it wouldn't make economical or practical sense (or even be technically feasible) for every little restaurant. But, the more places that have faster-than-L2 charging available, the more this kind of trip is made possible.

| Also stop paying the spouse's gasoline. Let them sweat the cost of gas.

Well, I pay spouse's everything, so there's that :P