I like the idea of electric vehicles, but haven’t figured out how it would work to drive somewhere of distance, if the car had to be recharged every so often. And even if you could find an outlet, how long does it take to recharge? Seems more practical if you’re just driving locally.
Where you live, it's probably fairly practical. Our Redmond kids are leaning toward a Tesla. Where they live, you can't swing a cat without hitting a charge point. We have had 2 Priuses (Priui?) so the idea of a semi-electric had appeal, and we'd become used to the performance- quick acceleration and the like. DW wanted her car to be more electric than less, and I wanted to be sure that whatever we bought would replace another vehicle. It makes no sense (for us) to have an 'in-town' car and a 'road car'.
We looked long and hard at all the offerings. The local Toyota dealer wasn't prepared to sell us a Prius Prime. The Hyundai dealer wouldn't even bring in a plug-in Ioniq because then he'd be forced by Hyundai to train mechanics to work on them. The nearest BMW or Lexus or Tesla dealers are between 150 and 250 miles away. Which boils down to the Honda Plug-in Clarity. It goes some 50 miles on pure electric, charges overnight on household current, and can take advantage of freebie chargers at hotels, shopping centers, parking garages when we travel, AND it has a 1.5 liter gas engine and 7 gallon tank which removes any 'range anxiety' over taking an electric car on a trip out of town- especially out here in the low infrastructure Intermountain West.
We simply use the EV mode around town and when we are going to our second home, I switch it to Hybrid as soon as we get on the highway, and save the battery power for in-town driving when we get off the highway. It's user-switchable.
At least this article attempted to use real world range. The range estimates on electric cars are a total joke and border on fraud.
We've noticed this too. Where DO they get those numbers? Honda says our car will give 47 miles of EV range. But if it's winter and super cold, the best it will charge to might be 35 miles, and now, it regularly charges to 55ish miles on an overnight charge. And around town, using regenerative braking (handy little paddles under the steering wheel to convert rolling energy to battery power) we get waay more range, and on the highway at 80 mph, those electrons deplete very fast, probably about 1/3 of it's around town range. I don't know if 'fraud' is an accurate term, but for sure, putting a number on range it a bit squishy.
These are our experiences in the real world. Overall, we like the electric car experience- quick acceleration. virtually instant heat and cooling inside the car, smooth, quiet ride, overall economy- now, after some 10 months, we are at combined over 75 miles per gallon. That's about 30% better than a Prius.
Jim