The article compares the Lucid range with a BMW.

But it's not strictly about range, no car will have unlimited range, it's about time to refill/recharge.

A gas car only needs a 40 seconds splash&go. An EV will always suffer from long recharge times.

You can't beat oil because it's essentially a "battery" which was precharged for millions of years before humans came along and now we get to only do the fun part of using that stored energy.

With batteries you need to mine the material, assemble it and THEN charge it yourself

No, it's about how much time you have to spend in the recharging.

For the majority of users, that time is a few seconds. They arrive home, plug the car in, and walk off. It doesn't matter how long the charge takes because the user isn't involved.

I dunno where you spend 40 seconds putting gas in. It takes longer than that for me just to put the credit card in and get everything prepared, followed by a couple of minutes to fuel. During which I'm in a gas station somewhere, outside, pouring chemicals.

There are situations where that time to re-fuel matters. But that's not what most people face most days.

> They arrive home, plug the car in, and walk off. It doesn't matter how long the charge takes because the user isn't involved.

But I am sorry, when you buy a car...you buy the whole car not 14 hours/day of said car. A day is made of 24 hours, and a week is made of 168 hours.

It's only acceptable to have that suboptimal product when the price is also lesser than a gasoline equivalent car.

An handicapped product should compensate its handicap with a lower price, at an equal price point doesn't make sense, EVs are not even at the same price point, they are much more costly.

So you pay more for less.

I buy a car to go places. A car that takes me the places I want to go has served is function.

I see no point in defining the value of my car around what it's doing for the 160 hours a week that I don't need it.

Unless you live in one of those ultra progressive cities in Northern Europe that close their city centers to gas cars, then you can go anywhere with a gas car too, at a much lower price point and at whatever hour you want, plus you'll have way more material around you (steel, alluminium, leather, wood) on your way there, and decent interiors too.

At the end of the day the purchase of an EV comes down to fear of gas stations (unlikely) or virtue signaling towards self and others (South Park did a whole episode on this)

The third option is cult membership.

It will make sense in 2030 or so if the political climate stays the same and governments keep their promises to increase their share of the tab, taking even more weight off the consumer shoulders. But for the time being it's early, and being early equals being wrong.