What’s the charging network like?
A large part of why is that up til this generation of EVs (Chevy Bolt and new Nissan Leaf and others that are coming), they have really not made sense to drive far. You would have had to stop too often. They were in town or short (sub 30 miles) commute cars.
And having owned the previous generation Leaf for the last 3 years I can tell you 99% of our charging is done in our garage. Once in a while we park somewhere that has charging or my wife will luck into getting a charge spot in a parking garage. But we don’t take it on drives where we need a charging station to complete the journey. We have a gas car for those longer drives right now. But that will change with this new generation that have 40KWh+ batteries.
The cord is part of the fixed charged, and not my problem ... just like the hose on a gas pump.
with regards to my trip comment, the contorted thought processes people go through to justify one hour stops for full recharges plus what can be ten to fifteen minute side trips to charging stations should clue many in on how not ready it is. (and yes it is an hour if not more even for Tesla to fully charge and range dives in winter)
But everybody knows you need to stop a full hour to pee for every two hours of driving else you might die. Think about all the delicious restaurant meals and fun you haven't had because you never needed to wait for your ICE car to recharge in the middle of nowhere.
EDIT, because HN sucks...
70 MPH * 3 hours = 210 miles. You might want to talk to some normal humans who don't frequent superchargers.
The usual drill is to drive around 120 miles and then stop for 10-15 minutes to supercharge. So yes, that is a bit more stopping that I used to do.
Tesla has a trip planner at tesla.com/supercharger
For Palo Alto to SpaceX's factory, it recommends stopping for 50 minutes in Kettleman, which means you're charging for 13% of the trip time.
{Sorry about the comment about 3 hours to go 200 miles, I misread what you said as taking what Shivyeta said about stopping for an hour to charge at face value. Oh, and why do you think that insulting me is an appropriate response?}
Yeah, that was probably snarkier than necessary. But we increasingly live in our own little bubbles, and "folks hanging around the supercharger" is definitely a small one.
I’m not sure what other charging network i would refer to.
BP are adding them on petrol forecourts too.
See this map for example https://www.zap-map.com/charge-points/
Assuming that a charger network was necessary for success, which I would argue it was, waiting for the others to catch up could have killed the company.
Note that there have still been no large-scale deployments of charging standards with more than 50-60kW of power, which is half what Tesla is currently deploying to most of its charging stations in North America.
Have you seen Tesla's charging connector? It's way superior to the bulky standardized connectors. And as said by others, there really is no other game in town right now for long distance travel in an EV.
Disclosure: I own a Tesla Model S.