Quote:
Originally Posted by Taylor95
The advertised range is for 100% of the battery capacity, right? I believe you're supposed to charge the battery before it gets below 30% and up to 90%.
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You can use as much of the battery as you'd like until it stops moving; it's about your own level of comfort and leaving enough charge to make it to the charger without sweating. The lower you run it, the longer the car can charge at full charging speeds before it begins to taper.
Typically you stop charging around 80% as the tapering charging speed makes it no longer worth waiting around for that last bit of charge.
If chargers were ideally located, you could leave a 25 mile buffer (10% of 250 mile range) when you arrive at the charger. The real world is that the placement of the chargers dictates when you'll stop to charge.
I wouldn't bother with long distance trips regardless of 250 mile range or 500 mile range. They are both inconvenient.
Another thing to realize is that for very long trips, that 500 mile range battery is only helping in the sense that you get another 250 miles of range before needing to stop to charge for the first charge only. After that first charge, you're still spending roughly the same amount of time charging, because a higher range battery simply takes longer to charge.
Besides all that, how often do you travel 500 miles without stopping? I'd say stopping every 200 miles is reasonable (every 3hrs), and you'd simply charge while using the restroom, stretching, and eating.
You might want a 500 mile range truck at $100,000, but that market is exceedingly small. Small enough to not be worth the effort to develop a 500 mile range pickup.