I don't agree. It's way way better than charging an electric battery. For those who can't charge at home this is a real pain in the ass right now and a big time waster (which driving already is compared to public transport where you can at least do something with that time, like read, study, watch something)
Charging at home is a time waster? You just plug it in right? Idk where the waste is there.
In the US driving isn't really a time waster compared to public trans because pub trans is usually slow, doesn't take you to your destination so you gotta walk, doesn't come frequently and you put yourself in more physical danger. Hard to read when there is a guy tweaking next to you.
The costs of doing this plan mean that it will absolutely never happen. The grid is there, super chargers are easy to use, no fluid storage or machines to manage fluids. No fluid leaks, no extra infra.
Plus battery tech and ability to recharge is always changing.
No, I mean it wastes time if you can't charge at home because you have to regularly wait while it charges elsewhere.
You can sometimes combine it with a shopping spree or something but if you don't happen to need to do that (which for me is most of the time) you're stuck waiting.
I mean when I still had a car I used to hate going out just for a tank run (like before a night trip to the airport) and the station was within half a mile. I couldn't do that every few days plus have to wait around for that thing to charge. My car was to make my life easier, not harder (and even then it failed at that because I hate driving so much). Glad I live in a city now with amazing public transport.
Well made electric vehicles are A) getting faster to charge B) already have the infrastructure in place C) Way cheaper to install. No fluids to exchange, no facility to create/store/handle fluids.
Standard Model 3 has 272 miles of range. That 4.5 hours of driving, which is way more than most people are doing in a day. I drive 30k miles (~3x the average) a year but average about 80 miles a day.
Unless you are driving across the country frequently this isn't really going to make any sense. Then on top of that you are going to have to support totally different battery tech, then also the density of these batteries isn't great.
Based upon their example "just about as fast as filling up a gasoline-powered car." Is not exactly accurate for a number of reasons.
On paper, it would be more like filling up and emptying 4 gasoline-powered cars. That's about 8x the process in the ideal case.
Other considerations would be the necessity for 8x as much storage in gas stations, 8x as many refilling trucks to supply and empty those stations, and above all, the development of a nationwide network of such infrastructure as pervasive as the existing fuel network.
That doesn't matter. The infrastructure cost makes it completely infeasible for the rare few times you'd have to fill up on the road and the small amount of time it would cost you.
