Driving 1000 Miles in 3 Cars: Gas vs Electric!

Marques Brownlee · 4M views · 2021-09-09 · 19:24

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Overview

MKBHD drives a Tesla, a Mustang Mach-E and a gas car on a 1000-mile loop to compare total trip time and charging experience.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as real-world evidence on EV road trip times and the unreliability of non-Tesla charging networks.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2021–2022

Topics

Cars, EVs & motorcycles

What people said

chroma · 2022-11 · Reference
The supercharger network is now dense enough that you can drive anywhere in the US without worry. The largest gap in the nation is between Coeur d'Alene, ID and Superior, MT, and that's 100 miles. I've gone to rural Montana and Idaho in the winter and I've never had to worry about charging. Also while Plugshare may show more dots on a map, that doesn't correspond to useful charging. Non-Tesla charging stations are notoriously inconvenient, unreliable, and slow to charge. That's why my friend with the e-tron rents a gas car if he wants to go more than a few hundred miles. This is borne out again and again in tests. When MKBHD tested a Tesla and a Mustang Mach-E, the Mach-E itself was fine but the charging infrastructure was unreliable.[1] The Mustang was delayed over 6 hours due to bad charging. I've put almost 30,000 miles on my car and I've never had an issue with a supercharger. You just plug in and it charges. You don't need to install any apps or enter your credit card info. And if for some crazy reason I can't use a supercharger, I have adapters for the other connectors. If you want the electric vehicle that can charge in the most places, get a Tesla. 1. [VIDEO]
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ggreer · 2022-09 · Reference
People have run this experiment. A 1,000 mile road trip in a Tesla is about 8% slower than a gas car.[1] That's 90 minutes over 19 hours of driving, and the difference would have been smaller had they charged the car overnight. Battery and charging technology is only getting better, so that gap will narrow over time. Also consider that if most of your driving is not road trips, EVs save time compared to gas cars. You plug the car in when you get home and wake up with a full tank, so to speak. 1. [VIDEO]
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tantony · 2021-10 · Criticism
Most reviews I have seen have shown them to be extremely unreliable with multiple chargers frequently out of order at charging stations. E.g. this recent video by MKBHD [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Marques Brownlee, played through YouTube.

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