Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
The whole range issue (aka national parks) has been argued ad-nauseam. 200+ miles is non ideal, but can be made to work with your use cases. You would rather not "inconvenience" yourself is all. And you already know that your driving pattern isn't typical of most americans, so it's okay if a BEV doesn't fit your needs, since it fits many others. That's the point. A BEV is a viable alternative to an ICE for most consumers, whereas an FCEV is not. There is no "BEV's and FCEV's are both not ready yet".
My driving 'pattern' is skewed towards one end of the spectrum, but while most drivers spend most of their time at the other end or the middle, most of them also want their car to be able to operate in the same situations I do routinely, no matter how rarely they might do so aka 'The Occasional Use Imperative'. Which is why they expect any car to provide 300+ miles of range with rapid, convenient refueling, and buy accordingly. As I've said many times, far more of those in a multi-car family with guaranteed, convenient charging could make use of a BEV (or PHEV) for at least one of those, but most of them also demand ICE road-trip range and convenience from every car, even if they almost never require that simultaneously. Single-car households, especially those without charging, are a different matter. Anyone who demands go anywhere, anytime flexibility with the minimum of inconvenience is still restricted to an ICE/HEV/PHEV.
A Bolt is a terrible road-trip car owing to its excruciatingly slow FC rate, made worse by its inadequate range. A Niro/Kona would be better from the charging perspective, an ID.4 better still, and the Ionic 5/EV6 would be approaching the level needed. Of course, most people coming from ICEs still want ICE-time recharging. From the Castrol survey:
Bringing charge times down to 31 minutes
for all consumers is the first part of this
critical challenge for the industry, but the
ultimate goal is charging as quickly as an ICE
refuel. Two out of three (67%) consumers
told us they believe the majority of new
cars will be electric when the rapid charge
time of EVs becomes comparable to ICE
equivalents.
https://www.castrol.com/content/dam...adoption/accelerating_the_evolution_study.pdf Page 21.
FCEVs are limited primarily by infrastructure at the moment, and price of the cars and fuel. The latter two will be cured by economies of scale, the learning curve and the usual incremental technological improvements, leaving only the former. FCEVs already provide ICE level inherent capabilities.