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Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

Great EVs are starting to appear from other manufacturers? I know of the Chevy Bolt and nothing else. Are there others you're thinking of? I mean, that's one car, which generally seems to be reviewed along the lines of "not as good as a Tesla, but hey, at least it's not a Leaf" — so although it is great that somebody else is doing it too, it seems pretty fair to say that Tesla is still leading the charge here (pun not intended, but it did make me smile).

Even if you like the Bolt better, AFAIK that's literally the only long-range EV that isn't a Tesla. So if you like EVs, you kind of have to cheer for Tesla, or else you really just like one EV.

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How about the BMW i3? The 2017 gets 120 miles to a charge and for a bit more money you can get an onboard generator to bring that up to 300 miles IIRC.

The driver assist capabilities aren't as great but otherwise can't think of much to complain about.

I wouldn't consider it to be in the same class. 120 miles is much closer to the Leaf (which is widely dinged for its paltry range) than the Bolt or any of Tesla's cars.

And the range when burning gas seems kind of beside the point to me since we're talking about battery electric vehicles here, not cars that run on gas. (Like, my 2010 Prius gets 450 miles, but that's because it isn't relying on its battery and instead mostly uses an ICE, and for that reason it isn't usually considered in the same category as the Bolt.)

I..... don't think that's a fair argument to make though. The leaf can't go anywhere when it's out of battery power AND the battery range is short. The Prius PHEV has a very short electric range so you'll mostly drive it on gas (and as far as I've heard, there are speed limitations on battery power). The i3 goes pretty far on battery power, farther than the leaf on battery, but as well you can add gas to get to the next charger and get back to battery power.

Arguably, I'd say the i3 is closer to the bolt than any other EV.

I personally love my i3... I get about 120 miles on pure battery, but once the range extender kicks in I get about 40 mpg on a small 3 gallon gasoline tank.

It actually works out pretty well, because 99% of my driving is well within the 120 mile all electric range, it's super quiet, and accelerates at any speed! For the 1% of the time I need to go on a longer trip (longest so far is about 250 miles), I simply treat it like a motorcycle trip and fill up gas every 50-60 miles, after exhausting the battery.

Huh, I'd just get two 5gal gas cans and call that good, as I'd rather not stop off every hour to get gas at varying prices and levels of quality.

Plus, in good chunks of Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas its easy to go nearly that far without seeing another building, let alone a gas station. There are wind turbines on the ridgelines tho, which are pretty.

Isn't that supposed to be dangerous?

The supercharger network is a huge advantage.

All the other EVs are basically limited to local driving.

Love the i3, shame it only seats four people.

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