9 hours is (in my opinion) the max amount of driving you can seriously do without at least a couple hours of resting.
That'd be about 540 miles total, maybe a bit less if you could make those 30 minutes of rest stops at a fast charger.
Right now, EV's are clearly the future. I'd say that when they have a 500 mile range with an MSRP that matches ICE vehicles, they'll go from being "exciting new technology" to "the obvious choice for most people."
On the flipside, I know that my limit before wanting to murder people and/or feeling bone-weary exhaustion is somewhere between 4-5 hours cumulative in a day, regardless of the number and length of breaks, but overall better with at least one >30-minute break every two hours and/or 15-minute every hour. (For me, EV's are clearly the present. I'm pretty happy within their travel limits.)
There's such a huge range of extremes with what people are comfortable with.
I've also met a lot of people that need more breaks than they actually take, but don't realize that self-care advantage yet. It's possible that forced, longer recharge breaks with an EV could be a good thing for overall road health. More drivers overall with slightly more opportunities to stretch and rest could be an amazingly useful thing for US traffic and calming some long distance road rage, given the chance.
The trips where I have plenty of time and can stop and go for a jog, or hike up some scenic terrain and take some photos, feel a lot safer than the ones where I'm nose-to-the-grindstone the whole time. I'm simply more focused when I get back in the car because I've had those minutes to let my mind and body wander.
I do feel like 15-20 minutes every 4-5 hours is a good and comfy amount of rest on a roadtrip. I've tried to do the 5-minute fuel stops and it just adds more stress than it's worth. Now, if more Supercharger stations happened to have a park or a gym nearby...
I'd been considering for some time that if I were McDonald's corporate right now, I'd be examining EV chargers right now for a potential amenity to sell to franchisees (or possibly even to require from franchisees ahead of demand curves to create favorable headwinds).
I hadn't thought about gym chains, but that's also a great idea. "EV charging at any of our gyms around the country" / "Stop in on your next road trip" just might be an amenity that could sell some gym memberships.
A proliferation of decent, non "ev looking" cars with 200 miles of range will be all it takes for people to realize that they only really drive 50 miles a day, and paying for gas is for suckers.
The standard EV-evangelist response to this is “take the train” or “rent a car for the weekend”, but I’m sorry, those just aren’t comfortable for me – the train lacks the freedom and sense of adventure, and rentals usually smell funny, among other things. Altering my lifestyle to suit the car’s limitations means it was the wrong car in the first place: The car should serve me, not the other way around. The Tesla’s longer range and presence of Supercharger stations along the routes are totally irrelevant for my daily commute, but they completely change the game when you include the other driving I consider important.
With any other EV, I would need a second car to address the other part of my usage, and that means twice the insurance, twice the registration cost, twice the driveway-space, and the chance of forgetting something important in the one car while I’m using the other. And feeling like a glutton for owning an “extra” vehicle.
With a long-range and fast-charging EV, I can finally have a single car that handles my daily commute and my road-trip habit, and that's been the main thing keeping me out of EVs so far. I've saved my place in line and I'm looking forward to the day they call my name.
The Model S 100D can almost do that already: start in your garage with a 100% charge, drive 300 miles, recharge 80% in 40 minutes, drive another 240 miles. Under ideal conditions it can even achieve it (the EPA range being 335 miles).
Current Superchargers can put out 145 kW, but the cars can only accept 120 kW. So the network already has some future-proofing for when the chemistry catches up.
Of course the old goalpost used to be 300 miles without charging. I have no doubt it will move yet again, and "24 hours of driving with only 5 minutes of charging" will become the new benchmark for practicality. :p
