Value proposition question - at what distance do you consider your ICE over EV?

[Kachook]

It has been a while since we have traveled more than and hour-and-a-half by car...likely a year or more. I wanted to pose this question for others especially those who do longer trips and have multiple options for vehicles. Let me start out by saying that this is not a question of which vehicle I prefer in my case since I feel supremely confident in driving the R1S v our 2016 Odyssey in most respects from safety to acceleration other than the comfort of the ride which I give to the minivan. Also, most of our other long trips were done when we had free charging in our three EVs from the Rivian charger to the EA credits on our iX to the Ford blue oval network credits.

We drove from Houston to Dallas and back on Friday and Saturday - approx. 230 miles each way. Yes, the wifey was not too thrilled that we did that on V-day but we had family obligations this weekend. We charge for free at home at night based on our electricity plan and started with 100% when we left. We charged twice each way - we could have only charged once probably but it is cutting it close and I don't like going below 20%. With elementary school-aged kids, they enjoyed stopping at Buc-ee's, Walmart and some other BBQ joint/quick-e-mart place. We paid a total of $113 in charging leaving me with about 18% when I got home. We probably also spent another $20 at each stop, but I'm not considering that for this analysis. I also am not considering the time value of money because I really could probably have done the drive w/o stopping on the way there - clear day w/little traffic - and could have saved at least as hour on the way there. On the way back, it was pouring most of the drive and I did go decently faster in the R1S than I would have in the minivan. I am also not considering environmental impact. Also, if I can, I try to average between 80-85 mph.

My question is for those driving long trips, at what point (if at all), would you consider taking your ICE over EV. Our Odyssey has about 80k miles on it. So, I am not really worried about it breaking down, but it is an 8 year old car v. the 2023 R1S w/23k miles. I likely could have gotten to and back in one tank and it would have cost me $50 per fill-up with TX gas prices. Electric charging rates were around 40-45 cents per kWh. I am pretty sure that if it was any longer a drive, for us anyway, the minivan makes more sense.

Curious for everyone else's thoughts...

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[mkg3]

Its not the distance, its the time duration.

Depending on the nature of the road trip, and the time criticality, we make our decision to take an ICEV or EV.

If we need to be somewhere at a certain time, either by commitment or trying to miss the commuter traffic of the arrival city, and don't want to leave super early to accommodate the charging times, then its always ICEV (Outback). OTOH, if there is no time criticality, then we use our EV (R1S, Model 3).

An example is out kids live and work in the SF Bay Area. We live in SoCal. We want to miss the morning traffic (leaving) and afternoon traffic (arriving) in both directions. In our case, each direction travel time is 6 hours for ICEV (only meal stop and no gas required if starting full tank) vs 7.5 hours for EV (2 charging stops with meal/nature breaks concurrently) with no traffic issues. The 1.5 hours difference is just enough to put us in a middle of the afternoon traffic in both directions. With traffic, using our EV can easily make the 7.5h trip into 8.5+ hours.

If its just a road trip, which we've done may with EV, then its not a problem as we are not trying to get somewhere quickly. Just last month, we took a 1,900 mile Utah National Parks road trip (Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands, and Zion). Was great in R!S.

Just curious. Since you have 2023 R1S (same), in the conserve mode, you can easily get 250+ miles driving at 80~85mph on a single charge. We have left the house at 100% charged, and drive until 8~9% SOC without any issue. I'm not at all concerned going below 20%. Often is the case, though, we charge with a natural breaks in the drive and not SOC focused (e.g., meal breaks)

 

[Rade]

Its not the distance, its the time duration.

Exactly. We had several years with my Mother-in-law in an assisted living facility, and would visit her quarterly. I was about a 5 hour drive from RI to Ohio, and we would make the run over a weekend leaving when my husband got home from work at 3:30pm, getting into Youngstown by 9PM. We raced to get there with barely a 10 minute bio / gas / drive-thru dinner break on the way there, swapping drivers, etc. Coming back on a Sunday, of course, was not as constrained. I think if we had to add a 30-45 minutes recharge break on the outbound leg, it would not have been a deal breaker, but it would have changed our overall energy. Time and personal energy were of the essence. Since she passed, we have not found ourselves requiring to make such urgent trips.

We are planning an extended road trip South in the Fall, and are just starting to piece together an overall route and itinerary. This will be the first time we're going to address stops for recharging along the way.

 

[Hereforthesnacks]

I'm going to largely echo the sentiments here.

I agree with the time over the distance. We have two kids and busy schedules. For 90% of long distance driving, our goal is to get to the destination ASAP. Turning a 6 hour trip into a 7.5 hour trip is a no-go. Yes, I know we can all get food while charging, etc... But, we do not want to pick where we eat based on where there are chargers, etc... We just want to eat what we want, at the convenience time, gas up and go. We do not want to plan for down chargers or lines to charge or people being jerks and blocking charging spots.

Second, it's additional convenience on long trips. Take driving 4 hours to the mountains for skiing. We always take our gas car. We do not want to deal with elevation eating into range, cold eating into range etc. When we go with multiple families (happens a lot), we always have one family taking an EV (Tesla or R1 usually). They are always an hour behind us. Their kids are always annoyed that they are the last to arrive. They always have to see if the house we rent has a NEMA plug or something similar to charge at (L3 charging in the mountains is still building out and can have long lines). I'm not up for any of that. I like to make these trips simple with max time to enjoy at the destination as a family. My Bronco can go through any snow with ease. No chains. No regen skidding issues. Nothing. Just, get in and go!

That is all balanced with the fact that we probably drive ~23k miles a year. ~17k are sun powered EV. The rest is gas. So, we get max convenience for all drives and do a little for the environment.

This is just our approach...

 

[Time2Roll]

I would take my R1S no matter the distance. F150 is just for pulling the RV trailer.
Of course at some point I am on an airplane.

 

[Kachook]

Its not the distance, its the time duration.

Depending on the nature of the road trip, and the time criticality, we make our decision to take an ICEV or EV.

If we need to be somewhere at a certain time, either by commitment or trying to miss the commuter traffic of the arrival city, and don't want to leave super early to accommodate the charging times, then its always ICEV (Outback). OTOH, if there is no time criticality, then we use our EV (R1S, Model 3).

An example is out kids live and work in the SF Bay Area. We live in SoCal. We want to miss the morning traffic (leaving) and afternoon traffic (arriving) in both directions. In our case, each direction travel time is 6 hours for ICEV (only meal stop and no gas required if starting full tank) vs 7.5 hours for EV (2 charging stops with meal/nature breaks concurrently) with no traffic issues. The 1.5 hours difference is just enough to put us in a middle of the afternoon traffic in both directions. With traffic, using our EV can easily make the 7.5h trip into 8.5+ hours.

If its just a road trip, which we've done may with EV, then its not a problem as we are not trying to get somewhere quickly. Just last month, we took a 1,900 mile Utah National Parks road trip (Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands, and Zion). Was great in R!S.

Just curious. Since you have 2023 R1S (same), in the conserve mode, you can easily get 250+ miles driving at 80~85mph on a single charge. We have left the house at 100% charged, and drive until 8~9% SOC without any issue. I'm not at all concerned going below 20%. Often is the case, though, we charge with a natural breaks in the drive and not SOC focused (e.g., meal breaks)

Thanks for the considered response re:timing. I didn’t actually think at all about driving in conserve. Whether actual or perceived in the reality of my brain, I feel like having all four wheels active is safer. Because we don’t drive long trips that often, I think I’m a little more cautious and don’t like going below 20%.

 

[TexasBob]

Thanks for the considered response re:timing. I didn’t actually think at all about driving in conserve. Whether actual or perceived in the reality of my brain, I feel like having all four wheels active is safer. Because we don’t drive long trips that often, I think I’m a little more cautious and don’t like going below 20%.

Let me offer a different perspective since we have been all EV since 2018 the only way we have an ICE option is to rent one, which we have never done. Houston to Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Corpus, Padre all nbd. New Orleans is a good drive. As a general rule, we fly when the drive is more than 6-8 hours. Orlando is usually a fly. That said, I have driven Houston to Bentonville (600 mi) numerous times and we are taking the 670 mile trip out to Big Bend in another week or so, and we did do the Orlando drive once in our Model 3. We have never decided to rent an Enterprise for a road trip.

I guess it is just no big deal but more range and faster charging is a LOT better on a road trip.

 

[emoore]

Only time I would consider using and ICE car again would be for towing. Everything else I do an EV is a much better road trip car.

 

[CharonPDX]

None.

We're EV-only. Have driven the Rivian towing a trailer on a 4500 mile trip; drove our Tesla across the country in 3 days last year.

 

[mkg3]

Thanks for the considered response re:timing. I didn’t actually think at all about driving in conserve. Whether actual or perceived in the reality of my brain, I feel like having all four wheels active is safer. Because we don’t drive long trips that often, I think I’m a little more cautious and don’t like going below 20%.

Just a of data point. Most vehicles are two wheel drive including the Rivian DM at freeway speeds. It automatically becomes FWD at the freeway speeds and the driver doesn't have a choice.

That said, you have to feel and be comfortable so you do you.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Don't own an ICE vehicle anymore because we'd rather just take an EV.

 

[drivetorun]

About 6 months ago I did a 5-day roadtrip along the following route: SF Bay Area --> Tahoe --> Bend --> Seattle --> SF Bay Area (going Seattle back to the Bay Area all in one day). Definitely elected to rent an ICE vehicle for that trip (~2.5k miles).

Could it have been done with an EV? Possibly, but that would've also meant having to be more strategic about where we stayed overnight, and that last leg back down from Seattle would've taken a lot longer. Flying wasn't really an option because we had to stop in all of those locations for different reasons along the way (and a one-way car rental to Seattle to then fly home was ridiculously expensive).

Ultimately, it kept miles/wear and tear off my car for ~$200 + gas...well worth it IMO. If for whatever reason flying isn't an option, I'll generally elect to rent an ICE car if any individual driving day will be more than 600mi.

 

[Thedude]

I don’t own an EV anymore and this is one of the reasons, towing being the other and main reason. Moving back up to Alaska also didn’t help with holding onto it. The R1T was a nice truck and fun to drive but the limitations imposed by having to plan around charging stops, especially when towing, are not worth it to me. EVs will get there eventually with better batteries, faster charge speeds and more available charging but for now it’s not worth the hassle. If someone can make a reliable EREV truck before that happens I’ll be back to mainly driving around on electricity.

 

[photoquests]

It has been a while since we have traveled more than and hour-and-a-half by car...likely a year or more. I wanted to pose this question for others especially those who do longer trips and have multiple options for vehicles. Let me start out by saying that this is not a question of which vehicle I prefer in my case since I feel supremely confident in driving the R1S v our 2016 Odyssey in most respects from safety to acceleration other than the comfort of the ride which I give to the minivan. Also, most of our other long trips were done when we had free charging in our three EVs from the Rivian charger to the EA credits on our iX to the Ford blue oval network credits.

We drove from Houston to Dallas and back on Friday and Saturday - approx. 230 miles each way. Yes, the wifey was not too thrilled that we did that on V-day but we had family obligations this weekend. We charge for free at home at night based on our electricity plan and started with 100% when we left. We charged twice each way - we could have only charged once probably but it is cutting it close and I don't like going below 20%. With elementary school-aged kids, they enjoyed stopping at Buc-ee's, Walmart and some other BBQ joint/quick-e-mart place. We paid a total of $113 in charging leaving me with about 18% when I got home. We probably also spent another $20 at each stop, but I'm not considering that for this analysis. I also am not considering the time value of money because I really could probably have done the drive w/o stopping on the way there - clear day w/little traffic - and could have saved at least as hour on the way there. On the way back, it was pouring most of the drive and I did go decently faster in the R1S than I would have in the minivan. I am also not considering environmental impact. Also, if I can, I try to average between 80-85 mph.

My question is for those driving long trips, at what point (if at all), would you consider taking your ICE over EV. Our Odyssey has about 80k miles on it. So, I am not really worried about it breaking down, but it is an 8 year old car v. the 2023 R1S w/23k miles. I likely could have gotten to and back in one tank and it would have cost me $50 per fill-up with TX gas prices. Electric charging rates were around 40-45 cents per kWh. I am pretty sure that if it was any longer a drive, for us anyway, the minivan makes more sense.

Curious for everyone else's thoughts...

We have a GMC 3500 and the R1s max, a home in Reno and a place in Oregon outside of Grants Pass a 350 mile drive that we do regularly. We take the truck if we need to haul a load and spend $80 - $90 each way in diesel at 20+ mpg. The Rivian gets a 20min charge at the Shasta RAN ~$20.00. Both are comfy but the 2018 gimmy does not have driver assist so I grimace when I have to take the truck. Drive time is about the same unless it’s really cold then we opt for another 20min in Susanville. Honestly I don’t understand all the issues with charging and range.

 

[LiamM]

We don’t. we’ve only had EV’s since 2018 (Technically I have an ICE collector car and an ICE motorcycle but those are never alternatives to our EVs) , I treat my EV’s like what they are regular vehicles. I’ve been on many long trips it’s never been a problem or even an annoyance

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