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> spend an hour at a charging station

This is exaggeration. A half hour for a well-loaded truck, sure, but an hour is generally exaggeration.

And as for five minutes for a fill up, it's usually more than five for a regular fill-up on a regular passenger car for me compared to just continuing on.





Yeah 5 mins is not true, its 1 minute actual 'charging' as in refill from empty to full.

I don't know what your family does on the gas station, but my wife and 2 small kids can cover toilet visit (as long as there was no accident) for all 3 combined under 5 mins. So can I with paying, so at the end its 5 mins stop total all counted in. Eating as in lunch is once a day, and when we travel we certainly don't need restaurant experience of sitting around, quick sandwich is more than enough, driving on full stomach sucks anyway.

Never understood people loitering around gas stations for long time, but then again when we travel its often 500km or more, the typical trip cca 2x a year back home is 1500km.

EVs are not for us for quite some time, US EVs seemingly never.


I've timed a number of the pumps around my home filling ~20gal. None of them have come close to filling in a minute. They're often 3-4 minutes of pumping, after spending a few minutes negotiating payment. I don't think I've ever spent less than 8 minutes between pulling off the road, pulling up to the pump, getting out of my car, negotiating payment, pumping, finishing up, getting in my car, and returning to the road.

It takes a few minutes just getting the kids in and out of their car seats. No way everyone is getting out of the car, through the bathroom, and then back in the car ready to go in 5 minutes.

Seriously, time yourself sometime. You're way underestimating the actual time you spend at a stop.


That is still significnatly less time than an EV charge time. (new EVs are starting to come that can do really fast charges, time will tell how this changes)

I do agree, from the perspective of the total time to get the energy into the vehicle it is significantly more time, easily a bit over 2x as long for a "quick" road trip stop.

But take a look at it from another perspective. Its another 10-15min on a several hour road trip. On a 5hr road trip that's like 3-4% more time for the total time of the road trip, assuming you're definitely doing a fast stop on that 5 hour trip and not sending the kids through the bathroom and you're not stopping for a quick meal. Is adding 3% to your travel time really that significant?

And as pointed out, if you're having to get the family through the bathroom or stop for a quick bite (even just sandwiches in the parking lot, although I usually pull off to a rest stop when traveling in an ICE car when having a quick bite) its not even more time, its the same total time.

On the route I often drive for a road trip (between DFW and Houston), I'm normally going to stop for lunch or dinner anyways somewhere on the route. I just stop where there's a charger (a few good options), have a quick bite, and hit the road. I'd usually do that even with my gas cars even if I didn't need gas, normally stopping at one of the rest stops on the way to stretch my legs, have a quick snack, use the restroom, and continue on my way. On paper taking the EV adds something like 15 minutes or so to the trip (which my EV isn't really great for road trips compared to others: smaller battery AWD Mach-E) but in practice for how I road trip its practically the same.


This is getting into some F1 pitstop type behaviour.

And that’s a race thy would be amusing to watch.

Feed and toilet a family of four and also refuel the car. How long?


Right? These people are apparently taking off their seatbelts while rolling to the stop, sprinting to the bathroom, emptying their bowels in a few seconds, not thoroughly washing their hands, and sprinting back to the car as fast as they can to shave a few minutes off their several hour trip. God help them if there's only one toilet, I guess the family is going to share today.

Forget that. Take your time. Be comfortable. You've got a few more hours to go, enjoy yourself. Stretch, have your snack outside of the car so it doesn't get as messy and you're not hungry in a little bit (and as the driver, so you're not distracted trying to eat while driving). Don't get me wrong, don't just be idle at the stop, do what you need to do and get moving again. But you don't need to rush. Its not going to make that big of a difference in the end.


I know more than one person who has done in 21 hours a trip that google says is 22. This is not safe, but it is done more often than many realize.

If you live in the US you likely are a two or more car family. You can argue the need for an ICE for one of those cars, but for most it wouldn't be hard to plan "honey I need your car tomorrow for my long trip so remember to take my car".



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