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We drive the Bronco Sport Sasquatch, Hummer EV SUV and more | Autoblog Podcast #846

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Continue reading We drive the Bronco Sport Sasquatch, Hummer EV SUV and more | Autoblog Podcast #846

We drive the Bronco Sport Sasquatch, Hummer EV SUV and more | Autoblog Podcast #846 originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 30 Aug 2024 10:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Experts say Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ system is dangerous

DETROIT — Three times in the past four months, William Stein, a technology analyst at Truist Securities, has taken Elon Musk up on his invitation to try the latest versions of Tesla’s vaunted “Full Self-Driving” system.

A Tesla equipped with the technology, the company says, can travel from point to point with little human intervention. Yet each time Stein drove one of the cars, he said, the vehicle made unsafe or illegal maneuvers. His most recent test-drive earlier this month, Stein said, left his 16-year-old son, who accompanied him, “terrified.”

Stein’s experiences, along with a Seattle-area Tesla crash involving Full Self-Driving that killed a motorcyclist in April, have drawn the attention of federal regulators. They have already been investigating Tesla’s automated driving systems for more than two years because of dozens of crashes that raised safety concerns.

The problems have led people who monitor autonomous vehicles to become more skeptical that Tesla’s automated system will ever be able to operate safely on a widespread scale. Stein says he doubts Tesla is even close to deploying a fleet of autonomous robotaxis by next year as Musk has predicted it will.

The latest incidents come at a pivotal time for Tesla. Musk has told investors it’s possible that Full Self-Driving will be able to operate more safely than human drivers by the end of this year, if not next year.

And in less than two months, the company is scheduled to unveil a vehicle built expressly to be a robotaxi. For Tesla to put robotaxis on the road, Musk has said the company will show regulators that the system can drive more safely than humans. Under federal rules, the Teslas would have to meet national standards for vehicle safety.

Musk has released data showing miles driven per crash, but only for Tesla’s less-sophisticated Autopilot system. Safety experts say the data is invalid because it counts only serious crashes with air bag deployment and doesn’t show how often human drivers had to take over to avoid a collision.

Full Self-Driving is being used on public roads by roughly 500,000 Tesla owners — slightly more than one in five Teslas in use today. Most of them paid $8,000 or more for the optional system.

The company has cautioned that cars equipped with the system cannot actually drive themselves and that motorists must be ready at all times to intervene if necessary. Tesla also says it tracks each driver’s behavior and will suspend their ability to use Full Self-Driving if they don’t properly monitor the system. Recently, the company began calling the system “Full Self-Driving” (Supervised).

Musk, who has acknowledged that his past predictions for the use of autonomous driving proved too optimistic, in 2019 promised a fleet of autonomous vehicles by the end of 2020. Five years later, many who follow the technology say they doubt it can work across the U.S. as promised.

“It’s not even close, and it’s not going to be next year,” said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety.

The car that Stein drove was a Tesla Model 3, which he picked up at a Tesla showroom in Westchester County, north of New York City. The car, Tesla’s lowest-price vehicle, was equipped with the latest Full Self-Driving software. Musk says the software now uses artificial intelligence to help control steering and pedals.

During his ride, Stein said, the Tesla felt smooth and more human-like than past versions did. But in a trip of less than 10 miles, he said the car made a left turn from a through lane while running a red light.

“That was stunning,” Stein said.

He said he didn’t take control of the car because there was little traffic and, at the time, the maneuver didn’t seem dangerous. Later, though, the car drove down the middle of a parkway, straddling two lanes that carry traffic in the same direction. This time, Stein said, he intervened.

The latest version of Full Self-Driving, Stein wrote to investors, does not “solve autonomy” as Musk has predicted. Nor does it “appear to approach robotaxi capabilities.” During two earlier test drives he took, in April and July, Stein said Tesla vehicles also surprised him with unsafe moves.

Tesla has not responded to messages seeking a comment.

Stein said that while he thinks Tesla will eventually make money off its driving technology, he doesn’t foresee a robotaxi with no driver and a passenger in the back seat in the near future. He predicted it will be significantly delayed or limited in where it can travel.

There’s often a significant gap, Stein pointed out, between what Musk says and what is likely to happen.

To be sure, many Tesla fans have posted videos on social media showing their cars driving themselves without humans taking control. Videos, of course, don’t show how the system performs over time. Others have posted videos showing dangerous behavior.

Alain Kornhauser, who heads autonomous vehicle studies at Princeton University, said he drove a Tesla borrowed from a friend for two weeks and found that it consistently spotted pedestrians and detected other drivers.

Yet while it performs well most of the time, Kornhauser said he had to take control when the Tesla has made moves that scared him. He warns that Full Self-Driving isn’t ready to be left without human supervision in all locations.

“This thing,” he said, “is not at a point where it can go anywhere.”

Kornhauser said he does think the system could work autonomously in smaller areas of a city where detailed maps help guide the vehicles. He wonders why Musk doesn’t start by offering rides on a smaller scale.

“People could really use the mobility that this could provide,” he said.

For years, experts have warned that Tesla’s system of cameras and computers isn’t always able to spot objects and determine what they are. Cameras can’t always see in bad weather and darkness. Most other autonomous robotaxi companies, such as Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and General Motors‘ Cruise, combine cameras with radar and laser sensors.

“If you can’t see the world correctly, you can’t plan and move and actuate to the world correctly,” said Missy Cummings, a professor of engineering and computing at George Mason University. “Cars can’t do it with vision only,” she said.

Even those with laser and radar, Cummings said, can’t always drive reliably yet, raising safety questions about Waymo and Cruise. (Representatives for Waymo and Cruise declined to comment.)

Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies autonomous vehicle safety, said it will be many years before autonomous vehicles that operate solely on artificial intelligence will be able to handle all real-world situations.

“Machine learning has no common sense and learns narrowly from a huge number of examples,” Koopman said. “If the computer driver gets into a situation it has not been taught about, it is prone to crashing.”

Last April in Snohomish County, Washington, near Seattle, a Tesla using Full Self-Driving hit and killed a motorcyclist, authorities said. The Tesla driver, who has not yet been charged, told authorities that he was using Full Self-Driving while looking at his phone when the car rear-ended the motorcyclist. The motorcyclist was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities reported.

The agency said it’s evaluating information on the fatal crash from Tesla and law enforcement officials. It also says it’s aware of Stein’s experience with Full Self-Driving.

NHTSA also noted that it’s investigating whether a Tesla recall earlier this year, which was intended to bolster its automated vehicle driver monitoring system, actually succeeded. It also pushed Tesla to recall Full Self-Driving in 2023 because, in “certain rare circumstances,” the agency said, it can disobey some traffic laws, raising the risk of a crash. (The agency declined to say if it has finished evaluating whether the recall accomplished its mission.)

As Tesla electric vehicle sales have faltered for the past several months despite price cuts, Musk has told investors that they should view the company more as a robotics and artificial intelligence business than a car company. Yet Tesla has been working on Full Self-Driving since at least 2015.

“I recommend anyone who doesn’t believe that Tesla will solve vehicle autonomy should not hold Tesla stock,” he said during an earnings conference call last month.

Stein told investors, though, they should determine for themselves whether Full Self-Driving, Tesla’s artificial intelligence project “with the most history, that’s generating current revenue, and is being used in the real world already, actually works.”

New tech features can cause headaches for buyers

New cars are packed with all sorts of tech and safety features, but more isn’t always better for buyers. J.D. Power’s 2024 U.S. Tech Experience Index Study found that the loads of features in new vehicles can be polarizing for owners, with some praising the tech and others saying it was frustrating.

The organization ranks vehicle features on a “problems per 100 vehicles” (PP100) scale. Owners reported 43.4 PP100 for gesture controls, with 21 percent of them saying that the feature lacks functionality, according to a new performance metric J.D. Power included in this year’s study. Other tech, such as the myriad of hands-free driving assistance systems, received low scores for usefulness, and more advanced versions of those systems didn’t fare much better in the study.

That said, some advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) received favorable ratings. Owners like features like blind spot monitoring, which address a specific need while driving rather than introduce an innovation that they don’t understand.

Few owners responded positively when asked about passenger display screens, with many classifying the feature as “not necessary.” Automakers have pushed to include more screens in higher-end models, but only 10 percent of vehicles regularly have front passengers, and dealers have struggled to educate owners on how to use the displays.

Tesla, one of the most tech-forward automakers around, but it is experiencing growing pains as it expands beyond eager early adopters into more mainstream buyers. Some features in the company’s repertoire trended downward in this year’s study, with tech such as the direct driver monitoring system causing issues for owners.

J.D. Power collected responses from almost 82,000 owners of 2024 model-year vehicles within 90 days of their purchase. This year, the organization introduced a new return on investment analysis, which it will use to help automakers determine the best tech features for new vehicle models.

Free Parking: How to find free, low-cost and convenient parking near you

If you live anywhere near an urban center, there’s a good chance that you will spend more time than you’d like looking for parking. Planners try to incorporate as many parking spaces as possible, but it’s rarely enough to handle the influx of commuters and everyday drivers that most cities endure. Waiting on a solution can take a lifetime, so it’s up to the market and technology to help frustrated citizens find parking.

Smartphone apps are the perfect answer to this problem because they enable on-the-go assessments of parking spots and can provide maps or directions on reaching them. Most people have a smartphone, so the barrier to entry is low, and many apps are incredibly cheap or even free. They don’t solve every problem, but a solid parking app can help you save time, money, and stress.

Parking apps typically compare prices for garages, lots, and other parking locations to help you find an open spot for a better price. Some allow in-app payments to speed through entry and exit, and you won’t have to keep track of a ticket through the process. That said, you’ll need to ensure the app you choose works in your city and with the particular garage you’re hoping to use. Most apps feature similar layouts and interfaces, but not all apps work in all places.

Apps and Websites to Find Free Parking Near You:

Before we get started, we should talk about apps that help locate free parking. Most of the tech solutions to parking woes focus on paid parking lots, because there’s money to be made, but few offer information on free spots. Parkopedia.com is a good place to start your research, as the site has amassed a database of thousands of free parking lots, including street parking and garages. Others, such as Spot Angels, focus on specific cities and neighborhoods to deliver free parking information. 

Parking Apps:

BestParking

If you’re looking for an app that works in dozens of cities and airports across the United States and Canada, BestParking is your jam. The app has been featured in several major publications and media outlets, including ABC, Fox, CBS, and NBC. It’s got great reviews and boasts 850,000 active users. Parking locations are sorted by price, so you can easily find the best deals around you. 

SpotHero

SpotHero promises discounts of up to 50% off the price you pay at the entry gate. The company is able to do this through partnerships with parking facilities. SpotHero gets to sell the last remaining parking spots for a steep discount, which could save you big on regular parking. The app works in most large cities.

ParkWhiz

ParkWhiz has thousands of parking partners across 35 states and 50 cities. The company purchased BestParking in 2015, expanding its empire, and it owns a business parking subsidiary that helps companies provide and manage parking for employees and customers. Sweetening the deal, ParkWhiz offers discounts of up to 60% in some cases, which bests the industry average.

ParkMe

ParkMe has more than 84,000 locations in over 64 countries, and its app offers an easy way to find, reserve, and pay for spots. If you have a stored credit card, you can pay to reserve a spot early, and the app can track parking spots up to two weeks in the future.

Parking Mate 

Parking Mate provides logs, so you can see where you’ve parked in the past, and the app tracks your time parked to help you avoid expensive tickets and tow bills. If you live in a place with wonky parking laws, Parking Mate enables you to track your parking time and will notify you when your time runs low to prevent towing. The app crowdsources local information, so if you see a spot or learn about a new parking rule, you can share that information in the app for other drivers. 

America’s EV charging network is growing but not fast enough

In a report, the White House released new figures on the build-out of the nation’s EV charging network, a small positive development in what is typically a sore spot for EV adoption.

In its third quarter update, the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation revealed there are over 192,000 publicly available Level 2 or DC charging ports in the US, an increase of approximately 9,000 ports from Q2, though down from the 13,000 ports added in Q2.

The nation’s charging infrastructure includes mostly privately owned networks, though the government, through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, is funding this build-out as well as state initiatives to increase publicly owned chargers.

President Joe Biden has put tremendous political capital into the EV transformation of the US, and part of that is a $7.5 billion build-out of the nation’s EV charging infrastructure. Through the use of public and private funding, the White House is targeting 500,000 new chargers by the end of the decade via the NEVI program.

The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation said the size of the nation’s charging network has doubled since the start of the Biden-Harris administration.

In March, the White House took some heat when it revealed only seven publicly funded charging stations had been built with 38 ports available for charging since the program began in 2021. The White House countered that it took its time with the program to “get it right,” and that the build-out would speed up as 2024 progresses.

“Currently, there are 69 NEVI-funded public charging ports in operation across 17 stations in eight states, more than twice as many operational NEVI ports as last quarter. A total of 40 states have released at least their first round of solicitations,” said the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation in the Q3 report. “Of these states, 29 have issued conditional awards or put agreements in place for over 2,800 fast charging ports across more than 700 charging station locations.”

Experts believe the delay is also down to state and local governments, who, despite NEVI funding, have little to no experience building out charger infrastructure.

Nevertheless, the build-out and sheer increase in the number of publicly available chargers is crucial to the administration’s goal of electrifying the nation’s fleet of vehicles. The White House’s new vehicle emissions target, though less severe than originally planned, still requires more EVs on the road by 2030.

And a huge component of that is charging. A Yahoo Finance-Ipsos poll conducted in late 2023 found that the main reason Americans are holding back from buying an EV is a lack of charging stations or home charging, with 77% of respondents stating that concern.

“I’m often asked if there is a magic number for the number of public charging stations we need in the United States. That’s a very difficult question to answer since so much of having an adequate charging infrastructure is predicated on the number of EVs on the road, access to home charging, use cases, etc,” said Brent Gruber, executive director of J.D. Power’s EV practice, to Yahoo Finance. “Instead, I look at the number of charging ports in terms of how well they’re satisfying EV owners with their availability.”

Gruber notes that while the number of charging ports in the US is growing, satisfaction with the availability of chargers is mixed. J.D. Power’s latest survey found satisfaction with DC fast charging availability rose by 20 points year over year (from 673 to 693), though the much more prevalent and less powerful Level 2 charger availability fell (from 593 to 583).

“With the satisfaction levels for both categories being as low as they are, we’re certainly not yet at the level we need,” Gruber said.

John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an automotive trade group, doubled down on that sentiment earlier this year, noting the administration’s EV adoption plans are at stake.

“America’s EV transformation goes hand-in-hand with reliable EV charging infrastructure. You can’t have one without the other, he said. “Getting more Americans comfortable with going electric starts with making sure they’ve got access — no matter their ZIP code — to reliable and ubiquitous public charging.”

Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.

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Study: These are the best states to own a car

At a time when many people are feeling the crush of higher prices and stagnant wages, any ability to save money can be a lifeline. Owning a car is a significant expense of a substantial number of people, but it turns out that where you live can have a big impact on how much it costs to have a vehicle. National Business Capital recently released a list of the best states to own and operate a car in 2024, looking at prices, taxes, and other factors to calculate the costs.

The study found that people in western states face the highest car ownership costs, with stout gas prices and higher registration fees. Vermont topped the list as the best state in which to own a car, with low average annual insurance rates of $400 for minimal coverage, cheap used cars, and low sales tax rates. At the same time, Vermonters pay more in gas prices and registration fees than dozens of other states. The remaining top ten best states to own a vehicle include:

  1. Vermont
  2. Ohio
  3. Minnesota
  4. Delaware
  5. Pennsylvania
  6. Indiana
  7. Wisconsin
  8. Texas
  9. New Hampshire
  10. Mississippi

Those states had reasonable insurance rates and gas prices, and people there paid less in registration and use taxes. That said, the states at the other end of the spectrum pay exorbitant prices to own a car. Nevada was ranked as the worst, followed by California, Colorado, Illinois, and Washington. Those states have “more aggressive environmental policies,” according to the study, and higher fees for less “green” vehicles.

National Business Capital also looked at used car purchases. It found that used vehicles are cheaper in the Northeast and Midwest due to several factors, including lower car prices, plenty of choice, and the potential for rust from the harsh winter weather.

Utah lowers DUI BAC limit to 0.05; NHTSA says fatal crashes there drop 20%

As National Public Radio reports, in 1983. Utah became the first state to lower its blood alcohol content (BAC) threshold for driving under the influence (DUI) from 0.10 to 0.08. The U.S. Congress didn’t mandate a 0.08 BAC until 17 years later, after all states had already done so thanks to lobbying by groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which had been formed in 1980. Utah has again led the way in lowering the BAC threshold, dropping the official limit for a DUI classification to 0.05 on December 30, 2018, the lowest of all 50 states. A New York Times piece out today looks at the National Highway Transport Safety Administration’s 2022 review of the effects of Utah’s change, called, “Evaluation of Utah’s .05 BAC Per Se Law.” According to the paper, fatal crashes fell 19.8% when comparing the full-year 2016 data to the full-year data for 2019. The NHTSA used 2016 because Utah’s governor signed the measure into law in 2017, although the law didn’t take effect for another 21 months.

A graph in the document shows fatal crashes falling in Utah starting in 2015, falling nationwide starting in 2016. Comparing the same years, 2016 vs 2019, the number of fatal crashes fell nationwide by 5.6%.  

Digging into the Utah-specific data, though, the NYT used unadjusted vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for the state. From the paper, “In 2019, despite increased vehicle miles traveled (VMT), Utah recorded 225 fatal crashes and 248 fatalities, which were lower than the 259 fatal crashes and 281 fatalities for 2016.” Using the adjusted VMT for Utah, the decline was actually 13%. And mind you, these aren’t alcohol-related fatal crashes, these are all crash-related fatalities in Utah.

Also, since 2019, crashes and fatalities have risen nationwide, including alcohol-related incidents, and including in Utah. Utah’s Department of Public Safety Highway Safety Office documents show 332 fatalities in the state in 2021, 319 in 2022, higher than the figures for 2016 and 2019. Opening the alcohol-related portal, state figures show 22 alcohol-related fatal fatalities in 2019 out of 932 alcohol-related crashes, this being the first full year of the lower BAC law, such a crash defined as “only those incidents where at least one of the drivers tested positive for alcohol and had a BAC of > .05 starting January 1, 2019; (> .08 prior).” In 2021, that number had risen to 56 out of 918 crashes, in 2022, the number was 61 out of 911 crashes, and for 2023, the number was 41 alcohol-related fatalities out of 814 alcohol-related crashes. 

The rising numbers have, of course, led to local outlets like The Salt Lake Tribune declaring in 2023, “The data all points in the same direction: The law hasn’t worked.” The Tribune piece believes the problem isn’t the law itself, it’s that the law “isn’t targeting the real problem — those who drink well beyond any legal limit and get behind the wheel.” Instead, more than 2,000 drivers with a BAC below 0.08 were arrested between 2020 and 2023, while arrests of drivers with a higher BAC reading fell 45% on average. The Tribune, and quite a few commenters at that piece and the NYT piece, aren’t arguing for a relaxed drunk driving rules, but are asking for laws that focus on aspects like repeat offenders and those with high BAC levels. 

5,000 miles, nine countries and an electric VW ID. Buzz, what could go wrong?

Completing a 16-day, nine-country rally around the Baltic Sea is hard enough. Doing it in an all-electric car seems like, well, madness. Right? Well, that’s exactly what my husband and I did, tackling the 2024 Baltic Sea Circle Rally in a European-spec short wheelbase Volkswagen ID. Buzz Pro EV.

The Baltic Sea Circle Rally is the brainchild of Hamburg, Germany-based rally organization Superlative Adventure Club (SAC). Run since 2011, the Baltic Sea Circle Rally is part fun run and part competition, touring through backroads with no GPS and only paper maps, packed with a massive sense of adventure as teams camped along the way.

Each year, the Baltic Circle Sea Rally (both summer and winter iterations) asks teams to raise at least 500 euros (approximately $540 USD) for their favorite charity. We chose to support The Jessi Combs Foundation – the charity named in honor of the late racer and TV personality, which educates and supports young women seeking careers in automotive trades and similar fields. Along with several generous donors, we raised $3,239 USD (over 2,985 euros) for the nonprofit.

Unlike some competitions in North America, like the Alcan 5000 Rally, the Baltic Sea Circle Rally is an adventure rally where unique daily challenges and off-the-wall missions created an exciting journey around the Baltic Sea while basking in the midnight sun. There were 140 teams entered in this year’s Baltic Sea Circle Rally, with all but one team not from Europe or its nearby regions: us. My husband and I traveled from Oregon to Germany to compete. We were also the only team piloting an all-electric vehicle this year — an incredible feat given we needed to travel 5,000 miles through nine countries.

Where did the rally take us?

Some rallies, like time-speed-distance competitions, are based on precision and particular routes. But the Baltic Sea Circle Rally has a suggested course that’s noted in a thick spiral-bound roadbook. It can loosely be followed, as long as you cross the finish line. Or, as some teams did, you could massively deviate from the course or head home early if you chose.  

Teams started in northern Germany and worked their way through the eight of the nine countries that meet the Baltic Sea, plus Norway. Over the 16-day duration, June 22 through July 7, we drove a clockwise route through Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Despite the name, we didn’t actually spend much time near the Baltic Sea.

That was especially true when we achieved one of our personal goals: drive to the northernmost point in all of Europe: Nordkapp, Norway, aka the North Cape. This special place beckons adventurers with its steep cliffs and iconic globe sculpture located at 71°10′21″N 25°47′04″E. Nordkapp is just 1,306 miles from the North Pole and is considered the mid-point of the Baltic Circle Sea Rally.

A big green box with a Ququq BusBox

Our 2024 Volkswagen ID. Buzz Pro arrived sporting a very cool Bay Leaf Green paint job with a matching Jade Green/Mistral two-tone interior. Unlike the minivan-like three-row ID. Buzz that will eventually come to the United States, this was the Euro-spec, short-wheelbase two-row model that’s basically an enormous hatchback with sliding doors. Emphasis on enormous. Besides its sheer capacity, it features several smartly designed areas for storage, including a clever floor-mounted center console with bins, drawers and cubbies that’s removable and reversible, making the most of the vehicle’s storage capabilities. It even includes a secret bottle opener.

Our ID. Buzz Pro van also featured a Ququq BusBox-4 camping system for sleeping, cooking, and storing gear — an extra installed for the rally. This unique interior camp unit is easy to set up in any ID. Buzz. Simply fold the rear seats down, secure the Ququq camp box in place, and voilà, the ID. Buzz turns into a camper van. The system works super-well; it’s well built, thoughtfully designed, sturdy and easy to use.

Volkswagen’s volts

This Euro-spec ID. Buzz has a single rear motor that generates 201 HP and 229 pound-feet of torque, which is the same output as the ID.4 Standard sold here in the United States, albeit with a bigger, 82-kilowatt battery. Considering the ID. Buzz is a bigger vehicle, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s quite slow, hitting 62 mph (100 km/h) in 10.2 seconds.

As this was an earlier-built 2024 ID. Buzz, that 82-kWh battery was said to achieve 250 to 262 miles of range, but that’s on the uber-optimistic WLTP European testing cycle. Here’s what it actually managed.  After 36 charges and extensive statistical analysis, our ID. Buzz Pro netted a wide range of total kilometers after charging to 100%. On the high end, we actually surpassed that WLTP estimate. For instance, we charged in Molde, Norway, arriving with 57% and 272 kilometers (169 miles) of charge left. We had a lot of remote traveling coming up, so we decided to top off. After 38 minutes to reach 100% charge, we bumped our ID. Buzz up to an impressive 467 km (290 miles). We also managed two other charges that topped over 440 kilometers (273 miles). Conversely, we amassed a few charges that barely topped 200 miles when fully charging it.

Our VW ID. Buzz Pro was said to have a 30-minute charge time from 5% to 80% SOC (state of charge), if you used DC charging at 170kW, the max it would handle. This time frame seemed accurate compared to our figures.  

Most of the chargers in our nine-country jaunt were 150 kilowatt (a few were faster), though when we crossed from Finland into the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, ultra-fast chargers were hard to come by. Most were 22 kW or lower, with occasional 50 kW units mixed in. We packed patience and left earlier each morning as other teams still slept so we could keep pace with the competition.

Volkswagen ID. Buzz impressions

“I was worried about whether or not we’d have enough range between charges,” my husband Andy said. This was his first long-distance endurance event in an all-electric vehicle. “There were so many unknowns having an EV in Europe; I worried we might run out of charge in the middle of nowhere.”

However, after finishing, Andy was confident in traveling longer distances with an EV, especially as we were driving one with a relatively modest range like the ID. Buzz.

Beyond its EV-ness, the ID. Buzz has great outward visibility and it was able to do everything we wanted to do in it, including sleeping, storing gear and cooking. The ID. Buzz never lacked a place to put gear, and remember, we had the smaller, two-row model. The one that’ll show up in the United States will be bigger, complete with a 91-kWh battery and a more powerful 282-hp motor from the updated ID.4. A dual-motor, all-wheel-drive variant good for 335 hp will be available.  It’ll also have an updated infotainment system and interior controls, unlike ours that was still blighted by what came in the original ID.4.

Charging challenges (and consequent wins)

Previous ralliers told us to cover at least 310 miles (500 km) a day to finish the rally in time. However, we pressed beyond and forged our way through 500 miles (800+ km) multiple days.

Most days we charged least three times, maintaining continual reserves in case broken chargers, missing machines, etc. delayed us. That was a good call, it happened multiple times.

Turns out charging an electric vehicle in Germany is rather difficult for Americans. We could not download German charging apps to our U.S.-based phones, nor could we pay with our American credit cards at German chargers as they inevitably required apps, special charging cards or RFID keys. Thankfully, we knew this in advance and enlisted my German nephew, Pual, to give us a hand. Not only did he procure a number of those special charging cards, he loaned us an old iPhone that would in fact work with the various German charging apps.

Once in Scandinavia, however, we were able to download charging apps and could use our phones to pay for charging. We also were able to use Tesla Superchargers.

The eastern side of the Baltic Sea brought new challenges. Once we crossed into Estonia, no app would work, including the new ones we loaded. Our initial research showed they should have, but that seemed to be incorrect. The Baltic nations’ Circle K chargers were apparently not the same as Scandinavia’s Circle Ks, and that app didn’t work, either. Even Tesla no longer worked in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, plus Poland.

We weren’t dead in the water, though. New QR codes and app download instructions on charge machines came to the rescue. Greenway is the largest charging system in Poland, and once we figured that out it became our go-do charging system until back in Germany.

All told, it was fascinatingly complicated to figure out how to pilot an all-electric vehicle through nine countries and 4,771 miles with European phones and credit cards. That’s an infrastructure, technology and banking issue, though. Once charging sessions were authorized, our 2024 ID. Buzz was seamless and trustworthy, giving us smooth charging experiences time after time.

There is also hope for the future. By 2027, new European EV chargers will be mandated to accept credit cards without needing charging accounts, with existing units being retrofitted. Only two of the 36 chargers we used had direct credit card capability.

Crossing the finish line

In short, we successfully completed the 16-day, nine-country international rally in our electric Volkswagen van. After crossing the finish line, we became the first duo that lived outside of the European Union or adjacent country to compete in and finish an SAC rally with an EV. We also proved an important point: Long-distance EV travel is possible. It takes planning, patience and flexibility, especially when things need to change, but what we accomplished is a whole lot harder than trying to travel 4,771 miles through nine American states. Our charging infrastructure still needs a ton of work, but at least you don’t need to borrow your nephew’s phone or download 13 different charging apps.

New Yorkers have the longest commutes in the country

It doesn’t matter how much you love driving or how nice your car is, commuting often sucks. Nobody wants to spend hours of their life sitting in stop-and-go traffic on the way to work, only to have to do the same thing again eight or more hours later. Commuters in some states have it way worse than others, however, as this week’s Energy.gov Fact of the Week shows. New York drivers top the list for the longest commute time in the U.S. 

Drivers in New York, Maryland, and New Jersey had the longest commute times as reflected in data gathered in 2022, with New Yorkers averaging 33.2 minutes one way and the other two averaging more than half an hour.

Top 10 states with the longest commute times:

  1. New York
  2. Maryland
  3. New Jersey
  4. District of Columbia
  5. Massachusetts
  6. California
  7. Illinois
  8. Georgia
  9. Virginia
  10. Florida

These states beat the national average of 27 minutes, sometimes by a considerable margin, but remember that averages tend to favor the most prominent members of a given data set. States like New York, where one or two metro areas hold the vast majority of the population, tend to be a bit skewed because of the numbers coming from the major urban centers.

It’s also important to look further down on the list, as rural states like Maine and Indiana have longer commutes because of the extreme distances between places. Here in Maine, it’s easy to spend upwards of an hour commuting to Portland (our largest “city,” where all the jobs are), even when there is little to no traffic on the way.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, people in South and North Dakota spend the least amount of time commuting, and you can learn more about states with the best commute times here. Both average less than 18 minutes of commute time, followed closely by Wyoming, Montana, and Nebraska. It’s possible that in these areas, people live and work in the same small town, and the relatively low population density across the state makes it easy to get around, even in the busier areas.

Here is the full chart of findings, taken from U.S. Census data:

Average one-way commute time by state:

Junkyard Gem: 1985 GMC Suburban K1500

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