Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

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warning, I ramble quickly

Because the market isn't there. I know we like to believe otherwise but the majority do not care. They will reply to a survey with what the expect the person asking wants but at the end of the day they have no reason to change their buying habits.

I really enjoy my Tesla 3 but I am a fan of sedans and coupes. The Y will make it more useful to some but even then it won't solve the immediate issue. That for all their supposed warts petrol powered cars don't require you to change anything you are currently doing. The habits we have established over generations are so ingrained that the time spent fueling and maintenance is not an issue. Now of course they could just plug in at home but people see the costs for charging station installs and say screw it. Infrastructure won't fix this. EV's just don't match petrol cars in common capability in the eyes of shoppers.

Finally, there just isn't enough coverage of the type of vehicles people are buying let alone at any reasonable price. Don't get fixated on the average selling price of cars to determine where an EV should be priced. Vehicles not clean sheet designed to be EV show their failings right up front and cause people to price compare to the petrol version; this includes the Chevrolet Bolt, the Hyundai and Kia cars, and even the Audi and Jaguar cars. Those last two are both incredibly disappointing on range.

Range also is only considered valid for fair weather or better. Get into the 40F/4C ranges and watch your range go goodbye. I can travel anywhere in the US easily with the 3 without concern but not in winter, I do damn well better than any other maker's EV in that regard. Range needs to be much higher to offset any concern owners have, to let them be lazy in charging. Charging speeds aren't too much of an issue but will be once range comes up.

Another option in the range category is, get mid one hundred mile range models out but get them as close to 20k without tax incentives. that might get some of the local only crowd to jump but that is a very price sensitive area.

Infrastructure is absolutely the deciding factor for those of us who are not suburban home owners. I live in a building which has 1 EV space for 200-something units. I work in an office building which has 2 EV spaces installed, but they're reserved for the Tesla-driving building owners. There are no public charging stations remotely convenient to either location.

My next car will absolutely be a Prius/Insight/Ioniq, but a full EV is not a reasonable consideration, and not because of range or habits but 100% because of infrastructure. Despite a majority-freeway commute I still pass 5 or 6 gas stations going to and from work every day. I ought to be passing at least one charging station.

I daily drive an electric for the last 4.5 years. I can't see what possible good passing a charging station on my highway commute would do me. If the car isn't going to naturally rest there, that charging station is only useful for emergencies, IMO.

(I bought the LEAF with the intent to mostly charge at home. Since then, our company moved and we have chargepoints at work, but I agree with your overall point that no charging at home or work is a deal-breaker. I disagree that that is meaningfully ameliorated if there was an intra-commute charging station.)

> I can't see what possible good passing a charging station on my highway commute would do me.

Helping people not driving an electric understand that charging stations exist and are in abundance, thereby alleviating concerns that an electric will leave them stranded. I know where at least ten gas stations are in my normal driving radius, and where some are in adjacent towns. I have no clue where the nearest charging station is, even though I'm aware that some exist. To the average person, it appears as though charging stations don't exist at all and gas stations are in abundance. It's a mindshare thing.

I'm not sure that "here's a place where you could park and charge for 2 hours in the middle of your commute home" is a positive influence for adoption.

well to be fair, with a Tesla Model 3 it's not "park and charge for 2 hours", it's "park and charge for <20 minutes" in most cases. (assuming it's at a tesla supercharger)

I feel like throwing out exact numbers is disingenuous at best since a lot of things vary charge rate (state of charge, temperature, type of charger, etc...), but 20 minutes will almost always get you to the next charger or a destination in the Model 3.

And while I agree it's not quite "charge on your way home from work", it is something that at least Tesla is working on. Their "Supercharger v3" stalls cuts the stop times roughly in half in the ideal situations. And IMO "stop for 10 minutes on the way home" is absolutely acceptable.

Yes, but the Tesla Model 3 already has enough range for most to charge 2x per week at most. It's the $20K 80 mile electrics that have legitimate range anxiety issues, not the $40K 200 mile electrics.

My LEAF has a fast charger (CHAdeMO) and a 6.6kW Level 2 charger. My car has seen a CHAdeMO charger exactly once in its lifetime and that was before delivery. Most non-Teslas are charging at 3.3 or 6.6 kW (~12 or ~24 miles per hour of charge).

Well, remember that "range anxiety" is more about "I wouldn't buy an electric because what if I have to make a 200 mile trip?" than "I'm worried it won't make it to my office 15 miles away." The fact that electric charging stations are essentially hidden from view reinforces the notion that an electric car would be a horrible choice because it would be unable to handle anything other than in-city commuting (and remember that not everyone has the luxury of buying a car for tooling around town and one for lengthier trips, hence the desire to have one car that "does it all").

Keeping charging stations hidden from view reinforces the notion that you're SOL for long-range trips. Having them be visible and in abundance, even though they wouldn't need them often, would go a long way towards reassuring people that charging stations aren't these incredibly rare things that you won't be able to find when you really need one.

If you have an 80 mile electric (as I do), take your second ICE car or rent an ICE car. No one is going to add 2 3-hour charging sessions (at 24 miles of charge per hour) into a 200 mile road trip and be happy about it.

How sure are you that you aren't? Compared to gas stations, which require a large underground tank to hold gasoline (and diesel), a small electric charging station may require little additional infrastructure and are often rather utilitarian - no awning and no convenience store, just a charger behind a parking spot or two. They are often tucked away behind a restaurant in rest stops next to gas stations, and not always visible from the main road. (Fortunately the Tesla's dashboard knows where they are.)

> hey are often tucked away behind a restaurant in rest stops next to gas stations, and not always visible from the main road.

Perhaps they need to be, because to the average person it seems as if there is a complete dearth of charging stations.

another issue is, even if there are charging stations in convenient locations, what do you do if you get there and all the slots are being used. I rarely, if ever, have to wait to fill up at the gas station, and when I do it takes less than five minutes for the car in front of me to finish filling up. worse case scenario is I wait for the other person to buy a bag of chips inside the station.

it takes about an hour to charge a tesla most of the way full at a supercharger. no one is gonna wait that long with their car. who knows when they'll be back?

>it takes about an hour to charge a tesla most of the way full at a supercharger.

while you aren't wrong (it's actually much longer than an hour from low-charge to 100%!), there is a caveat that charging in the 20-80% range is significantly faster, so stopping at a supercharger for more than 30 minutes is almost always slower than only charging the range which can charge most quickly and move on to the next one or your destination. And because of that Tesla has begun limiting max charge at busy supercharger locations to help prevent the issue of no stalls being available in the first place.

The superchargers are also networked and you can see how many stalls are open at any time, which really helps relieve any anxiety i had about it. Many other charging networks (like Chargepoint) are networked as well, and can show you how many are available, and even peak usage times.

I thought GM did a great job with the Volt. My Dad has one. He usually only drives around town, so he never needs gas. But the car has a range of 400+ miles on a full charge and tank of gas. He says the switch from the electric motor is seamless.

It seemed like it really solved the range issue while being a true “plug-in” electric vehicle for daily use.

I think he paid $33k.

It completely failed in the market.

Not sure what to make of that.

>Range also is only considered valid for fair weather or better. Get into the 40F/4C ranges and watch your range go goodbye.

This is the biggest concern for me and by extension I assume many others who live in the South of the United States. It's May and temperatures are not yet topping 40C but they're 32+ at the high and projected to stay that way for months. Even with Tesla's heat management and water cooling for their batteries this potentially means slowed charging rates at superchargers and less range because you have to constantly cool the interior.

That is a nice analysis, but tbh, I think it overlooks the big pricing problem that is really at the core of it all. Make the SR+ a 20K car and people would flock to it. As it is, it might struggle to sell more than 300K units per year. But then again, the BMW 3 series only sells about 400k per year at similar price points. The Model Y looks sort of like a cheaper BMW X6. The X6 moves ~50K units per year.

The price points, models, and distribution/service channel limit unit volume more than differences in the operating model of EVs.

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