Its just a shame that Tesla doesn't have a smaller car, the Model 3 is huge.
* My bike has a 500 kilometre range, which is about the maximum I'll ride in a day. Electric bikes have a smaller range than what I usually cover in a day. On the highway, the range drops so much that I'd need to take an extended lunch to finish my journey.
* I can extend my range by 200-300km by carrying extra fuel. This is not possible with electric cars.
* I can fuel up in 5 minutes. Refuelling does not dictate my schedule.
* I don't need to find a gas station that's within walking distance of my hotel (I have two heavy boxes to schlep around). Refuelling does not dictate where I can sleep.
* If I run out of fuel, I can ask someone to bring some from a gas station. I don't need to tow the car.
* I can't begin to imagine the logistics of finding a convenient power outlet everywhere I stop.
With a comfortable motorcycle this is perfectly reasonable. I have a 2017 V-Strom 650 and it's perfectly suitable for the task.
Motorbikes on the other hand are optimized on a specific setting (think how an enduro handles different than a superbike and so on) which makes it really hard to add weight and you end up with a much bigger trade-off between fuel volume and range.
I've wondered about this. What if for a long EV car trip you put a small gas or propane generator in the trunk or a small trailer, and ran it to provide some charging while you are driving and/or when you stop to rest or sleep?
Could that provide enough extra to overcome the losses from carrying the generator and fuel for it, and if so, could it be enough to make a noticeable difference?
> put a small gas or propane generator in the trunk
I'd prefer you didn't pass out from carbon monoxide poisoning while operating a vehicle on public roads, thanks.
My buddy has a Zero S[1], which has a battery pack of about 6kWh nominal. Using a portable 120W solar panel and a total efficiency of 50%, that's 100 hours of sunlight to recharge the battery.
And that 120W panel is pretty darn big to lug around.
Even with a power socket, it takes 5-9 hours to charge an electric bike.
It's not. People are somehow really dreading having to (predictably) stop for a 45 minute charging stop in the rare case they actually do have their trip exceed the maximum range (again, unlikely if you leave on a full charge and don't plan to leave the country).
It will tell you when you step into the car what your range is and you can plan right then and there where to stop for lunch/coffee. Most EV drivers do exactly that. Problem solved.
ICE car drivers don't do that and typically just have unreliable data instead. You might have 70 km of range or 20. Hard to tell when the needle is close to 0. You might be going up hill or downhill and that might affect what the needle says. It doesn't even indicate range, just fuel volume.
So, premature/redundant fuel stops are probably more common than running out of fuel, or indeed battery. By the time you run out of battery, your car will have been drawing your attention to that for quite some time. So, you'd be right to feel anxious about that happening to you because you'd end up looking like the fool you are.
Most drivers take the annoying planned charging stop over that some tens of miles before they'd run out. It's more a case of range annoyance than anxiety. In the end everything has a price and if you can afford to fill up your gas guzzling SUV to burn way more fuel than you'd strictly need to get from A to B, that probably has more to do with other forms of anxiety than with the actual range of the car.
Range anxiety is the same -- most of the time, people drive between home and work. For most people, this fits in the range for an electric. If you really want to drive across the country, you can just rent a car, and this will be much cheaper than owning an ICE for how often you'll actually need to do it. If you're lucky enough to have the space and money, and need two cars in the first place, then it makes sense for one to be electric: the one driven most often, and then the ICE vehicle for when electric is not appropriate.
Also, if I'm driving with what I call the "idiot light" (low fuel) on, then I'd best go fill the tank. When that warning appears if I have less than 50 km of range I'd be surprised. A low range BEV would feel to me like always having that light on.
In many European countries, that would be a border-to-border trip.
But as the saying goes: Europeans think 100 miles is a long trip and Americans think that 100 years is old =)
There are a few charging stations around my neighborhood but there are a ton more cars.
Usually, I end up just spending ~40 minutes at the local KIA dealership that has a level 3 charger.
If I had access to the office, I'd end up charging there as well.
Also many cars have a built-in POI list for charging points.
If you own the parking spot, you can usually install a car charger.
That's not always the case. Even in Silicon Valley, where electric cars are popular, a lot of condo HOAs will not allow chargers to be installed. They require upgrading the electrical infrastructure of the property in some cases -- most buildings cannot handle installing 10 or 20 chargers, which might all be in use at the same time. As a matter of scale, it's very different from installing a charger or two in the garage of a house.
Of course, even if that problem went away, that would still only solve the problem for people who own their parking spaces. What are renters supposed to do?
Until the infrastructure problem is solved, electric cars only really make sense for homeowners.
I also wish someone was looking for work for the displaced workers from electrification. I did have an idea - “Electrification as a service.” But you’d probably have to be Tesla to go down that path.
And nobody can bring you a container of electrons if you do run out of juice on the road.
There’s also this misconception that you have to charge all the way up. Doing so will do more long term damage to your pack and take forever the higher the SoC.
Fully Charged on YouTube had a video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTsrDpsYHrw
https://www.inside-digital.de/news/hyundai-adac-mobile-charg...
A regular tow truck/wrecker can carry 20 gallons of gas in just 2-4 containers to provide 10 cars 2 gallons each, probably good for 50-60 miles in most vehicles.
Also, the amount of battery capacity that currently exists is nowhere near where it needs to be. Most manufactures now try to expand and secure supply, but supply growth is simply not growing fast enough for large companies to switch to EV fast.
Tesla doesn't have a smaller car because even for them making a smaller car would mean that compared to other smaller cars it would be massively expensive. They have to further improve cost to be able to make a competitive small car. ICE industry had 100+ years to reach the scale it has.
To make money with EV you need to produce way more then 250k of cars, so you can absolutely not relay tax credits to improve margins.
Also, Tesla is now competing successfully without tax credits against many companies who still have theirs. Tesla is actually making a pretty good 20% automotive margin, and that is with Model Y still being a small part of sales (and we know that Model Y has better margin).
Btw... Have you seen the new VW ID3 ? I guess it’s the closest thing to a mass market small car you can get nowadays.