real world EVs review

[Daemon64]

Hello all,

Its been a while and if you remember I had a 2015 Q5 TDI and had to sell it to buy my house. I got an Audi Q5e Plugin hybrid, by around 8 months ago I got out of it for a Polestar 2 full EV.

So this is a review of the Polestar 2, Volvo C40 full electric ( what my wife has ), and the charging infrastructure for non-tesla's in the northeast.

So the polestar 2 has a 8000 miles on it now, it has a 78 KwH battery and a combined range of 260 miles. I have 19's and not 20's running 245 width square setup... Real world highway range in the summer / weather over 50 degrees is approx 238 miles. The charging in warmer weather is great around 15 - 35% battery it ramps to full 150 KwH charging rate, and then scales down slowly to 100 KwH to around 60 - 70%, then steps down towards 60 KwH when you hit around 80% and then slows way down from there. On a long term trip I will generally speaking run around 100 - 150 miles, stop for maybe 20 minutes at most usually less to juice up around 30 = 50% back in that time. My highway usage is around 313 - 333 wh/mile, and in slower speeds around city its around 240 - 290 wh/mile.

Winter driving is a whole other ball of wax. The highway range is closer to 190 - 200 miles, and the usage is somewhere around 390 - 410 wh/mile. Also it has been my experience that I cannot charge over a charge rate of 70 - 75 KwH in cold weather, neither can my wife's car although they are similar platforms... I've seen similar complains from VW ID4 owners, Mustang Mach-E Owners, and Hyundai ioniq 5 owners in cold weather on Electrify America Stations.

Electrify America stations - Their relability was ok for a while especially in the summer, jump in to a charging station all of them up, no real issues... good charge rate and etc... In the last few months however since its started to get cold and more people are driving non-teslas its been nothing but problems. We go to a station often atleast 1 charger out of 4 is completely offline, 1 or 2 is use, and when you do get that last charger often it caps out the charge rate at 70kwh no matter what, and others are reporting junk charging rates like that. Often as of late we've been waiting in queue to charge due to non-availibility and i think the slower C-rate and a charger or 2 is compounding the more electrics on the road. 1 particularly bad day there is 1 major charging station in New Hampshire heading towards burlington VT, and it is an EA, 2 chargers were completely down, and the 2 remaining were maxxing out at 35 KwH charging on the wednesday before thanksgiving, we were queued up for 1.5hrs just waiting to charge, and then took 45 minutes to charge, with many others waiting. No real other lvl3 chargers in the area for 40 or more miles.

While the Polestar 2 and the C40 are a blast to drive, and come with many benefits. Road tripping them in the Northeast during the winter as of late absolutely sucks... it makes me really want my Q5 TDI back for those situations where I could fill it with diesel, drive to my destination, and drive back all on the same tank of fuel for the convenience...but on the flip side instead of paying like $110 to fill the entire tank of diesel up, I literally currently pay nothing for the power at EA, and even had I paid for it, is averages out to around $7.20 for around 180 miles of real world range or .04 per mile, whereas the Q5 would be around .1964 per mile just for fuel. Its times like this that I am reminded that yes road tripping an EV can be fairly inconvenient, but the cost is so much less per mile its stupid.

Lastly keep in mind that both my wife and my car are literally Gen 1 Battery and vehicle tech. Volvo is releasing a late 2023 refresh of the C40, with a slightly bigger battery pack of 78 KwH usable vs 75, and they are switching the front motor from a permanent magnet motor, to one that can be shut off, and they say that this will produce an addition 40 miles of range. Which I do believe because I think tesla made this switch at one point and it made a MASSIVE difference in terms of efficiency. Polestar also has battery tech in production test vehicles for their 2025 model line up, which is a 100 miles in 5 minute charge( it is a chemistry that allows it to take a full 350 KwH C-rate for 5 minutes straight - which doesn't sound like a lot but thats 5.833 Kw / minute into the battery, and should charge is 29 KwH in 5 minutes for a 75 KwH battery that would be massive, as its 39% charge in 5 minutes which is insanely fast ).

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Thanks for this review. You confirm what I've suspected (and seen on videos) about road tripping in a non-Tesla. Although I find EVs appealing in some ways, my MKIV Jetta costs about $.10/mile for fuel even at current prices. And although it's a little unusual, I've driven the car nearly 700 miles since Saturday, and only had to fill it once which only took a few minutes, of course. Sunday I drove to upstate NY, about a 450 mile round trip, and didn't have to stop for fuel. I keep thinking about the challenges of doing something similar in an EV, especially in winter.

As you said, maybe we're not quite there yet.

 

[Daemon64]

Thanks for this review. You confirm what I've suspected (and seen on videos) about road tripping in a non-Tesla. Although I find EVs appealing in some ways, my MKIV Jetta costs about $.10/mile for fuel even at current prices. And although it's a little unusual, I've driven the car nearly 700 miles since Saturday, and only had to fill it once which only took a few minutes, of course. Sunday I drove to upstate NY, about a 450 mile round trip, and didn't have to stop for fuel. I keep thinking about the challenges of doing something similar in an EV, especially in winter.

As you said, maybe we're not quite there yet.

yeaaaaaaa... thing is we need more EA stations, especially along highway routes. They need to build them every 50 - 75 miles realistically. That way you have more options, but also if there are problems at one station you can choose to hop to the next. But also we need the 4th gen EA chargers, they've come out recently in limited locations, and they're much simpler internally, and are so far from reviews in the last few months infinitely more reliable. The easiest way to tell is they only have 1 charging cord, and they're much skinnier. There is a decent picture of them here: https://electrek.co/2022/03/24/elec...ter-display-cable-management-solar-amenities/

 

[Daemon64]

Thanks for this review. You confirm what I've suspected (and seen on videos) about road tripping in a non-Tesla. Although I find EVs appealing in some ways, my MKIV Jetta costs about $.10/mile for fuel even at current prices. And although it's a little unusual, I've driven the car nearly 700 miles since Saturday, and only had to fill it once which only took a few minutes, of course. Sunday I drove to upstate NY, about a 450 mile round trip, and didn't have to stop for fuel. I keep thinking about the challenges of doing something similar in an EV, especially in winter.

As you said, maybe we're not quite there yet.

also the trip we take is from tyngsboro ma.... basically nashua NH( we live on the border) to plattsburgh NY. The only EA station is in West Lebanon NH, there are some other networks in the area but they cap out at 50 or 100 kwh respectively, and thats just too slow for road tripping in a car like mine. These cars need to be able to charge faster for this to be more feasible. I see range as less of an issue, and charge rate being more of an issue in my experience. If I could actually charge at 350, and sustain it for longer, it would be a non-issue... Currently the car tops out at 150, and thats acceptable, hell even 100 kwh is acceptable for that jump if I can actually get it, as its a 238 mile trip. So all i need is 30% to feel very comfortable about getting there, but that 30% can be really slow... so the easiest way to think of C-Rate is this--- if I am charging at 75kwh sustained w/ a 75kwh usable pack, that means i am charging at around 1% / minute, so ergo 30% is 30 minutes. But if i can get a 150 C-rate, for 10 minutes or 20%, and 100 KwH for 8 minutes, thats 30% in 18 minutes. Big difference...

Now imagine being able to pull 350kwh for 5 minutes - 24% battery.

 

[turbobrick240]

I've heard the EA chargers tend to be hit or miss quite often. Same with Chargepoint. A good charging network is definitely a key element to pleasant EV ownership. Supposedly the Cybertruck will have a max charge rate of around 1000kw at the new mega-chargers designed for the electric Semi truck. That would be pretty amazing. Even if it can only charge halfway at that rate. I think Tesla will be opening most of the supercharger network to other makes of EVs quite soon, so that should make a huge difference.

 

[Daemon64]

I've heard the EA chargers tend to be hit or miss quite often. Same with Chargepoint. A good charging network is definitely a key element to pleasant EV ownership. Supposedly the Cybertruck will have a max charge rate of around 1000kw at the new mega-chargers designed for the electric Semi truck. That would be pretty amazing. Even if it can only charge halfway at that rate. I think Tesla will be opening most of the supercharger network to other makes of EVs quite soon, so that should make a huge difference.

For the cybertruck to be able to take that C-Rate the battery would have to be MASSIVE. The current top end Tesla superchargers charge at a max of 250kwh, the top end EA stations can do 350kwh --- but no car can take advantage of the full 350 except the hummer EV i THINK... but likely for a very limited time. This is a limitation on battery size & heat... So the way they are getting higher charge rate is on bigger batteries, because you can push the individual cells less fast, so more cells, means higher rate, but its a nothing burger because that means now you have a massive battery to charge... so it takes more time in the end..... or at the very least the same.... With the cybertruck maybe they are going 800volt, but even then you can only go so far so fast as the chemistry is still essentually the same as the model Y... because i think its supposed to use the structural ??2170?? batteries...

Interestingly on the new volvo C40 for next year they're bumping the max C-Rate up to 200 KwH, will be interesting to see how much of that gets ported into my and my wife's car. As they have upped the charging curve on these cars as they've been out. So has VW w/ the ID4 which has a similar sized battery.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Rich Rebuilds has a video where he took a new Rivian on a road trip to FL. He had a terrible time finding chargers. And one fill he showed cost him $.32/mile. That's probably more than it would cost to run a Powerstroke.

 

[turbobrick240]

For the cybertruck to be able to take that C-Rate the battery would have to be MASSIVE. The current top end Tesla superchargers charge at a max of 250kwh, the top end EA stations can do 350kwh --- but no car can take advantage of the full 350 except the hummer EV i THINK... but likely for a very limited time. This is a limitation on battery size & heat... So the way they are getting higher charge rate is on bigger batteries, because you can push the individual cells less fast, so more cells, means higher rate, but its a nothing burger because that means now you have a massive battery to charge... so it takes more time in the end..... or at the very least the same.... With the cybertruck maybe they are going 800volt, but even then you can only go so far so fast as the chemistry is still essentually the same as the model Y... because i think its supposed to use the structural ??2170?? batteries...

Interestingly on the new volvo C40 for next year they're bumping the max C-Rate up to 200 KwH, will be interesting to see how much of that gets ported into my and my wife's car. As they have upped the charging curve on these cars as they've been out. So has VW w/ the ID4 which has a similar sized battery.

Yeah, I guess the Cybertruck has a 1000V architecture! The mega chargers will probably take some time to deploy. Many supercharger locations may not have the grid supply to accommodate them. A megawatt per truck/charging station is quite a requirement. Pretty cool though.

News: Tesla Cybertruck Will Be the Quickest Charging EV with a 1-Megawatt Speed

Tesla has its Semi Truck Delivery event in Nevada and announces some news related to the upcoming Tesla Cybertruck. The company confirms that the Cybertruck wil

tfltruck.com

.

 

[gulfcoastguy]

I suggest searching for the NEVI program. The federal program to install chargers every 50 miles on most interstates. I agree about EA reliability. Elon says that he is opening the Superchargers to non Tesla’s but he has been saying that for two years. He’s also lacking in details on just how he intends to do that.

 

[turbobrick240]

At one point Tesla was talking about adding an adaptor to their charging stations. Now it sounds like they'd prefer if other automakers adopted their standard by making it open source. A combination of both is also possible.

https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/features/superchargers-opening-to-non-teslas

 

[Lug_Nut]

The remote (non-home) charging location availability and duration of re-charge time was one of primary reasons I limited my EV foray into the range extender models only. The more I use my 1st generation Volt, the more appreciative I am of the 'Jekyll and Hyde' dual capabilities it has.

I've averaged 3.08 m/kWh ( 324.7 Wh/mi) running on grid charged battery, and 38.0 mpg running on gasoline powered generator charged battery. The 10 kWh usable from the car's 16 kWh battery get me 25 (winter) to 45 (summer) miles. The 9-ish gallon gasoline tank adds another 340 miles per fill-up after the battery has been run to it's factory imposed low limit of about 25% charge.
My energy costs have been $0.022 (2.2 cents) per mile for the electric from the wall at my 6.7 cent (generation and delivery) per kWh off-peak rate, and $0.082 per mile for the electric from the car's gasoline powered electric generator.
Since May of 2018 I've driven 33,631 miles on grid electric and 7,353 miles on gasoline powered electric, so for 3/4 of my use the short 25 ~ 40 mile battery range in this car has been sufficient. My most recent gasoline purchase for this car was 7 gallons in August. Before that was 5 gallons in March.
Look at as driving 41,000 miles on 194 gallons (211 mpg), or as driving 41,000 miles and spending $1,341 for the grid electric and gasoline fuel I've used ($0.033 per mile).
My, how my situation has changed! 41,000 miles in 4 1/2 years! I use to rack up 41,000 miles per year.

There are 3rd party adapters (from $55) to go from Tesla's proprietary EVSE plug to more common EVSE plugs such as the J1772 standardized plug in mine. I've only used public charge locations (both were at my destinations and free to use) twice since May 2014. I don't feel I need public chargers, nor Elon's.

<edited to sort out my rambling stream-of-consciousness typing>

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

My, how my situation has changed! 41,000 miles in 4 1/2 years! I use to rack up 41,000 miles per year.

There's the rub for me. I still drive 25-30K miles anually, 22K or so of it in IBW.

 

[turbobrick240]

There are 3rd party adapters (from $55) to go from Tesla's proprietary EVSE plug to more common EVSE plugs such as the J1772 standardized plug in mine. I've only used public charge locations (both were at my destinations and free to use) twice since May 2014. I don't feel I need public chargers, nor Elon's.

The Tesla plug, aka the North American Charging Standard (NACS) is no longer proprietary- it has been open sourced to all manufacturers. It accounts for two thirds of plugin EVs in North America, and has by far the best charging network. Hopefully we see standardization across manufacturers in the near future. Good charging network/s are vital to the majority of EV owners.

 

[Mcgink]

I've averaged 3.08 m/kWh ( 324.7 Wh/mi) running on grid charged battery, and 38.0 mpg running on gasoline powered generator charged battery. The 10 kWh usable from the car's 16 kWh battery get me 25 (winter) to 45 (summer) miles. The 9-ish gallon gasoline tank adds another 340 miles per fill-up after the battery has been run to it's factory imiles I use to rack up 41,000 miles per year.

Does the Volt use the ICE for cabin heat? My Hybrid MPG drops to ~43 in winter due to that and remote start. Spring/summer I'm ~50 MPG and have seen 58 in slow traffic. The solar panels on its roof are alleged to provide 2 miles per sunny day. I've gone only 16Kmi since 7/2021 and expecting that to be closer to 5K annually going forward depending on how many roadtrips verses plane rides.

 

[Lug_Nut]

Does the Volt use the ICE for cabin heat?

It could, but I don't let it. The Volt is intended to run the ICE for its waste heat to supplement the electric resistance heat at temperatures below 25F. I have a selectable EVry mod (just coined that moniker) that allows me to select what ambient air temperature the Volt's BCM is allowed to receive. Switch to one position feeds the under-bumper sensor signal to the BCM, the other position sends a fixed resistor value equivalent to 53F to the BCM.
Most of my trips are short enough that the cabin wouldn't heat much even with the ICE anyway.

 

[greengeeker]

We picked up a 2016 EGolf in Nov 2020 for my wife and have since put ~25k miles on it as a runabout around town (1200mi/month). She absolutely loves it. We'll hand this off to our teenage kids to drive to/from school and we'll replace with another EV.

• $0.036/mile over that time. Note that this includes any preconditioning of the battery and cabin in the winter. July-Sept this dips to $0.02/mile.
• Summer range is ~90miles (original 24kwh battery at 70k miles, 6 years old).
• Winter range is considerably shorter, especially <20F. Probably dips to ~40miles of range. The car enters ECO mode (turns off resistive heater) with 18mi remaining which makes those winter drives even colder. The heater grid in the windshield and heated seats remain active.
• With only a couple exceptions we use the Level 2 charger I installed - technically the power company paid me to install. $0.035/kwh off-peak.
• We use the built in VW charge scheduler to have the battery and cabin preconditioned as well as the battery topped up at our time of departure. We used the VW mobile app during the first year after purchase but chose not to renew. The app was complete garbage: glitchy, limited functionality, poor customer service....just meh.
• My TDI ($0.07/mile average fuel cost over my 300k ownership) is reserved for longer trips and rarely gets driven.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Here's what I get from reading this: EVs work great for people who either don't drive much or don't go far from home. If you get more than half your range from your home charger, or if you drive a lot, it's a hassle, expensive, or both.

I have to comment that the eGolf going about 20 miles in winter before it turns off the heat is, at best, comical. I can't imagine how that is a good thing.

 

[Tdijarhead]

Here's what I get from reading this: EVs work great for people who either don't drive much or don't go far from home. If you get more than half your range from your home charger, or if you drive a lot, it's a hassle, expensive, or both.

I have to comment that the eGolf going about 20 miles in winter before it turns off the heat is, at best, comical. I can't imagine how that is a good thing.

I think that pretty much sums up what I’m reading also.

 

[TrashtruckTDI]

Once Doc Brown figures out a way to get a pole in the back so I can hook up to lighting I'll buy.

 

[turbobrick240]

Here's what I get from reading this: EVs work great for people who either don't drive much or don't go far from home. If you get more than half your range from your home charger, or if you drive a lot, it's a hassle, expensive, or both.

I have to comment that the eGolf going about 20 miles in winter before it turns off the heat is, at best, comical. I can't imagine how that is a good thing.

What I'm taking from the discussion is that people should choose an EV that best suits their needs. If they do a fair amount of longer trips, they'd probably be happier with one of the newer EVs with about a 300 mile range and/or a good charging network. Or a plug-in hybrid. With the price of diesel fuel these days, the savings can be substantial.

 

[J_dude]

With the price of diesel fuel these days, the savings can be substantial.

If you happen to already have an EV maybe, if you’re going out to buy one right now don’t expect to save anything for quite some time.

Oh, and “the EV that best suits my needs” doesn’t exist at this point so...

 

[Tdijarhead]

Oh, and “the EV that best suits my needs” doesn’t exist at this point so...

My MK4 Golf 7-800 mile range...10 minute, %100 fuel up time. Any EV would need to be an improvement on that.

 

[turbobrick240]

Yeah, there is no ideal vehicle for everyone. But on a cost basis alone, a decent gas car beats diesel in my neck of the woods when regular unleaded is $3.50/gal and diesel is $5.60/gal.

 

[J_dude]

Yeah, there is no ideal vehicle for everyone.

AH ok, you get it. See that’s something that I wish people could understand, EV doesn’t work for everyone. But instead I see way to many people and legislation pushing for a total switchover to electric (while we still have almost none of infrastructure to support it, too), in a matter of just a few years, and I don’t think that’s a good sign. We are going to cause some serious problems if we try to do that before the tech to sustain it is developed. I just think everyone telling us to get rid of our diesels and get electric (when it clearly cannot work for all of us) is only contributing to the problem, hastening the impending doom, if you will.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

My MK4 Golf 7-800 mile range...10 minute, %100 fuel up time. Any EV would need to be an improvement on that.

As I'm sure you know, there isn't any new car, regardless of fuel type, that can come close to that. That's why so many of us keep driving rotary pump TDIs.

 

[El Dobro]

Rich Rebuilds has a video where he took a new Rivian on a road trip to FL. He had a terrible time finding chargers. And one fill he showed cost him $.32/mile. That's probably more than it would cost to run a Powerstroke.

I watched that video and I don't know why he just didn't take the interstates.

 

[greengeeker]

Here's what I get from reading this: EVs work great for people who either don't drive much or don't go far from home. If you get more than half your range from your home charger, or if you drive a lot, it's a hassle, expensive, or both.

As the technology matures and the kwh battery size increases, the radius from your home will increase. At this point I think today's (+2022 M.Y) EVs work for most commutes with only at-home charging. Yes, there are exceptions but let's be honest...most people commute 20-60mi every day. Even assuming a 50% reduction due to winter range, that means a 120mi range and most new EVs are 200+.

Even if I had an EV capable of long range, I'd still prefer to road trip my ALH regardless of $/mi. When travelling, I don't want the added stress of planning out 1-3 charging locations (more than one due to likelihood of them not working) every 200 miles.

 

[turbobrick240]

EV range will improve. Charging infrastructure will improve. Vehicle cost will come down as production scales. Asthma rates will come down as air quality improves. It will be good, overall. Still plenty of years to enjoy TDIs as they age off of the roads.

 

[x1800MODMY360x]

EV range will improve. Charging infrastructure will improve. Vehicle cost will come down as production scales. Asthma rates will come down as air quality improves. It will be good, overall. Still plenty of years to enjoy TDIs as they age off of the roads.

As technology improves for the most part, the air quality won't become cleaner as the polluting will remain close or the same. Fossil fuel is still a main source for power, Ice cars still being driven especially Diesel trucks and trains. It will all ways be an endless battle.

 

[Daemon64]

As the technology matures and the kwh battery size increases, the radius from your home will increase. At this point I think today's (+2022 M.Y) EVs work for most commutes with only at-home charging. Yes, there are exceptions but let's be honest...most people commute 20-60mi every day. Even assuming a 50% reduction due to winter range, that means a 120mi range and most new EVs are 200+.

Even if I had an EV capable of long range, I'd still prefer to road trip my ALH regardless of $/mi. When travelling, I don't want the added stress of planning out 1-3 charging locations (more than one due to likelihood of them not working) every 200 miles.

Oh the winter "reduction of 50%" is not accurate at all anymore. With the release of heat pumps and various other changes. You will not that my summer highway range is around 238 miles and in the winter it seems to land around 200. Keeping in mind there will be some variability for average speed driven, stops, etc... So I find a smart thing to do when looking at an EV is to ignore the "combined" range number as my city driving range summer is closer to 300 miles and my winter around 250 - 260 for city... but no one cares about city range. No one is regularly road tripping below 40mph. What you do is go on fueleconomy.gov and pull up the vehicle, and look at the highway MPGe in the case of the 2023 version of the polestar 2 it is 96 MPGe highway or 351.1 Wh/mi ( https://www.aqua-calc.com/convert/e...lon-gasoline-equivalent-to-watt-hour-per-mile ) and you take your total usable battery capacity 75kwh or 75000 / 351.1 = 213.61 miles. Now this is where it gets interesting depending on the manufacturer that is either a minimum you should get or a grass is green everywhere number you're never likely to get. I can tell you w/ the polestar / volvo / audi / vw numbers that is the number you should get on the highway with the heat running in winter, and summer / mild weather only gets better. From my reading not experience I have seen Tesla in specific I cannot speak for other brands will likely fall short of your top end estimates, however their charging network is good enough that it doesn't matter.

As far as "range increasing" this will come a LOT less from bigger batteries in the long run, and a lot more from improvements of the various individual components of the vehicle in terms of efficiency. Like example the Tesla model 3 has a coefficient of drag of just .23. Another example is not running continuous motors on one of the axles thus allowing the vehicle to have less usage, improving the design of the electric motors, software adjustments to how they program the curve for the motors in real time --- this one has netter me additional range in my polestar 2 that I could see from when I bought the car 8000 miles ago to now, making heat pumps standard, changing the temperature range at which they are used....etc...etc...

And finally the biggest change will come from the manufacturers w/ substantially different and newer battery chemistry as they learn a ton of data points from the cars driven on the road. 1 Example is that Polestar / Volvo is working on a battery they dub the 100in5 or 100 miles of range in 5 minutes... basically it can take a full 350kWh charge rate for 5 minutes sustained or 29.17 kW charge over that time into a 75 kWh battery... which is a pretty massive jump in terms of charging speed. Another example is VAG says they have working quantum state solid state batteries that are slated for their 2025 models. Solid state solves a ridiculous host of problems one of which is a much higher energy density to weight ratio. If you can make the batteries lighter than other components on the car can be lighter, which means for the same capacity battery you can have a much lighter car, motors that require less power, etc...etc... which then reduces usage.

But what does not work is this:
We pulled up at a charger last night charging was a rivian R1S it has a 105 kWh battery for a 260 mile range, in the time it took us in the volvo c40 ( same as polestar2 mostly ) 75 kWh battery for a 228 mile range from 20 - 81%, the rivian started before us at 20%, and when we left they were barely at 55%... The same can be said about the hummer EV or etc... you cannot compare pickup truck electrics to more standard passenger cars and SUV and just increasing the battery doesn't do it. Because now you have that much more to charge.

Lastly -

You cannot compare different vehicle classes and draw conclusions.

Rivian R1S / R1T , Hummer EV, Ford F150 Lightning -- They compete with F150, F250, etc...etc.. they are such heavy, non-aero vehicles they will have the hardest and longest time long term. So these are the diesels you'd compare them to, or gas variants.

Audi Q4, VW ID4, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Model X, Model Y -- These compete in your luxury to mid-range SUV market -- So toureg TDI, Audi Q5 TDI, or even gas variants

Polestar 2, Telsa Model 3, Tesla Model S - These are more "up market", IE they compete w/ Audi A4/A5/S4/S5,BMW 3 series...

Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, ( The E-Golf doesn't count it is old Gen 1 tech not on the market after 2019 and 3 years is a lifetime in current EV market ) -- These compete with the Jetta / Golf etc TDI or gas variants

Summarize:

Having said all of that: No modern american vehicle produced can compete with a 600 - 800 mile range that came out of the TDI's... so if thats what you hold dear, then keep that vehicle in good shape until you die because you are very unlikely to find another one ever. On terms of efficiency EVs even the the pickup trucks ( except maybe the hummer ) literally destroy everything else. Where EVs fall flat on their face is price, and convenience. They're expensive, no one denies that, and they are not convenient, Rich failed in his trip by not planning properly... I cannot speak for other EV owners, but I never trust the manufacturers onboard trip planner. I use "a better route planner", which tracks so much data its stupid, it is ridiculously accurate for range predictions as it monitors the car real time, weather, elevation changes, the charging networks, how often chargers are down, how often are they used, etc...etc...etc... This is also one area that Tesla generally speaking has a 1 up on, non-tesla EVs, but using ABRP has made all the difference to me.

This is a lot. I apologize for any heat war I started w/ this thread above. I mean nothing by anything in here, just showing any knowledge I've gained, experience from driving / road tripping EVs keeping in mind that I come from 2 different TDI's and that I hold no emotions in my response, just try to converse and share.