I’m ready to trade in my electric car
latimes.com
latimes.com
I regularly go on ~300-mile drives that need only a single charging stop, lasting 15-20 minutes, on my Tesla EV. By the time I've gone to the bathroom and gotten a drink, the supercharger has added 100-150+ miles of range and the EV is ready to go. All the stalls always work.
No other EV brand offers a comparable fast-charging experience in the US.
For city driving, I charge at home for around 1/3 the cost per mile compared to filling a comparable ICE vehicle with a poisonous combustible liquid.
The thing is, when there is an issue, it’s at minimum a huge pain in the ass, and a complete nightmare at worst.
Compared to Tesla, where you just pull up and plug in. No app, no card reader. It just works. I've encountered 1 bad stall out of like 50 visits to superchargers, and since there are typically 10 to 20 stalls it wasn't a big deal.
The problem with EA (and CCS networks in US in general) - 10x more likely to encounter a broken stall, and that stall will be at a station with 1/2 to 1/3 the stalls of a typical Tesla station, and if the whole station is out.. the next station is probably 2-3x as far as the next Tesla station would have been.
I find EA roadtrip planning to be more nerve wracking than Tesla was 5 years ago, and Tesla continues to build more stations at a rapid pace... so the lead is not closing.
This has been 100% of my Electrify America experiences as well, along with a few other brands. Some have been able to take payment by tap to pay credit card as well without an app.
Most EVgo charging experiences have been plug and charge. I did have one experience a while ago that needed an app but that was one of their older chargers which even still had their old logo on it. All their newer chargers have successfully done plug and charge.
I've had tap to pay work with Google Wallet at Road Ranger (Freewire) and Francis Energy chargers.
> You mentioned taping a card, not just plugging in
That's why I included the language "as well". I've used a number of different brands of EV chargers.
Out of all the times I've used a public DCFC, I had to use an app maybe 10% of the time. And of that, it was only earlier into my ownership, I haven't had to use an app in about a year. Every charger I've used in the last year has been either plug and charge or supported credit cards directly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15118
Now if they could just support it for my i4...
Other stations require payment, but EVGo plug and charge works too if you’ve set it up ahead of time.
Is my experience universal? Of course not.
However, the data on that page has massive sampling bias.
Imagine a light switch or sink faucet working "90% of the time".
Or the gas pump working "90% of the time", knowing that there are no other pumps in a 30 mile radius.
For gas stations, 99.99% of the time the pump works. So much so that I don’t even consider that it doesn’t work. That’s the level of reliability that I expect.
I say this as an exclusively EV driver for 5+ years myself... let's not defend the indefensible (EA's CCS network).
Meanwhile in the last year I've waited in lines several times to get gas, and I've pulled up to a pump only to find it out of order three times this last year and seen many others with bags over the pump handle signifying they're out of order.
It's definitely not 99.99% of gas pumps working.
I haven't personally experienced any failures to get a charge on CCS chargers though. I do agree if the power can't run the pumps it won't run the chargers either, but there hasn't been a similar major power outage since I got an EV and tried to charge on a public charger.
That reminds me, I've experienced bad gas require me to make repairs on my cars. I've never personally had an EVSE break my car, but I do contend it could happen.
And I’ve never experienced bad gas requiring repairs.
I’d say 95% of these fillups were in the US if that matters.
One occasion my fuel filter got badly clogged a few miles from a gas station on a road trip. I've had it happen to one of my vehicles and I've seen it happen to a few friends as well.
The power issues or just being completely out of gas were usually from hurricanes or the big freeze in Texas.
You've also never encountered or seen a gas station that was closed for the night? Every pump has always been 24/7 operations? I'm not even talking about full service stations, but I've encountered many gas stations where the store closes at like 2 or 3 AM meaning no attendant so they can't leave the pumps on. Its the worst when you're running low on gas on a late night road trip, you just have enough gas to roll into town, and the first gas station you roll up to, the only one you can see from the highway, is closed for the night. Bonus points, that small tiny town in the middle of no where also has absolutely abysmal cell reception so no phone maps. Better hope the TomTom shoved in the glove compartment eight years ago knows a couple of other gas stations in the few miles you've got left in the tank and that those stations still exist and are not also closed. Fun times. I've had this happen way more than once.
And its definitely happened more than once to me where credit card processing was down so they were asking everyone to pay cash. I don't usually carry cash on me, so buying gas wasn't happening.
And then finally I'll plan on getting gas at a Costco or Sams Club, see the massive lines, and decide to go drive another mile or two and pay more. Are there never lines at Costco or Sams Club stations near you?
And then finally I've definitely pulled into a station only to realize every handle has a bag on it.
You don't need every pump to be open, just one.
Living in the west coast of the US I spend a lot of time driving around desert areas which are pretty remote. Many times I've rolled into remote gas stations in the middle of nowhere at ~3am where everything was dark but the pumps were operating.
You are either supremely unlucky, or vastly exaggerating the issue. It is very difficult to not find a working gas pump in the US, they're everywhere.
Anecdotes are anectodes, but I've been driving 35+ years and I have many cars and I drive a lot including much time in remote areas and yet, I have not even once experienced any of the problems you assert are common.
In order to promote EVs it is important to be honest about the advantages but also the disadvantages.
Many states require someone to be working at the station to quickly respond to any issues. If there's not enough business at 3am to justify paying someone to work all through the night, they won't keep the pumps on all night long. This will definitely vary from state to state. And places like Costco, those pumps shut off at like 9:00PM.
And I do agree, most of the times where I was unable to get gas at one station I was able to find another working station within a few miles, especially in suburban areas. In times of natural disasters though, I was definitely unable to find any working gas pumps, at least not without potentially risking getting stranded continuing to drive around wasting gas to try and find a different pump. I do agree those are disaster situations and not indicative of the normal state of affairs, and that CCS chargers would probably also have not been operational at those times.
> You are either supremely unlucky, or vastly exaggerating the issue.
Or maybe I just don't have as selective of memory or pay more attention to things around me than some other people. All of these issues work out to a little over a dozen failures for me to get gas over the 600-700ish times I've probably pumped gas, so yeah a pretty low failure rate overall. We should be honest about the disadvantages of pumping gas though, of which there are many.
> It is very difficult to not find a working gas pump in the US, they're everywhere.
I'm not saying I couldn't find any working gas pump, I'm saying I've found pumps not working on many occasions and needed to go find a working one elsewhere. Those are two very different concepts. It may be hard to not find any working gas pump, but given about 30 minutes in any urban or suburban area I could probably find at least one pump not working at the moment.
> In order to promote EVs it is important to be honest about the advantages but also the disadvantages.
I am being 100% honest. I spend more time waiting to charge my ICE car (driving to a gas station, starting the pump, pumping the gas, leaving the gas station, about every week and a half) than I do my EV, by hours a year. I've personally experienced more challenges and frustrations getting my ICE car fueled than I have charging my EV. And I spend more on energy costs for my ICE car than I do my EV, with those costs being extremely variable. Meanwhile my EV's energy costs are largely fixed due to 1-3 year electricity contracts.
> I've been driving 35+ years and I have many cars and I drive a lot including much time in remote areas and yet, I have not even once experienced any of the problems you assert are common.
In 35 years of driving you've never once seen a broken pump? You've never once seen a gas station closed? You've never once seen a line of people at a gas station and decided the wait wasn't worth it? Who's not being honest here?
I realize I'm just one data point in a sea of many, but it doesn't make my experiences dishonest. I'm being 100% honest sharing my experiences here. People don't often make YouTube videos of their experiences when things just go smoothly and right when charging. I'm not going to upload a video every time I plug in my car in my garage and it just charges. I'm not uploading videos every time I plug and charge on some public DCFC. Someone probably is going to make a video when it doesn't work for them though. People are going to share the headlines of "DCFC stations have high failure rates (in this limited geographic area we surveyed, briefly)". If the only reports are the times it doesn't work, you're not going to have a very "honest" set of reports. And I agree, different corridors are going to be different, YMMV. For the places I go, there's a good number of decent DCFC when I need them.
A few minutes later, someone moves. I get to that pump. I try tap to pay. Declined. I put in a chipped card. Declined. Try another card. Declined. I go inside, cash only today for some reason. I don't carry cash with me often, so no gas for me.
There's like 10 minutes of my day wasted and I didn't even end up getting any gas. I'll have to try going to some other pump later.
Meanwhile my wife with the EV left the house with a full tank, just like every day. Zero minutes spent waiting or failing to dispense energy this week for that vehicle.
Let's be honest about the pros and cons of each.
Yes, I do see those often enough. Maybe once a week, so way more than 0.01%
But of course, even the tiniest of gas stations has multiple pumps, four is the smallest I recall seeing and the smallest one around here is 8 pumps.
One or two may be out of service regularly, but in more than 35 years of driving I have never pulled into a gas station where all 4/8+ pumps were out of service simultaneously.
And then, even if that happened, given the way gas stations congregate, there is another one across the street which will be working.
You’re going to hear about the negative experiences because that is what people commiserate about. It’s human nature.
Especially when compared to owning a second care with an ICE just for the occasional trip.
And then there is my friend on a fixed income that's realized it's cheaper to rent a compact car for long drives. Same as above because having the car break down in nowheres is expensive quick.
2. Cost: the rental cost is actually only a small portion of the cost. Extra insurance and other fees end up more than the rent itself.
Your car will depreciate regardless of that road-trip, just by virtue of time passing. Rental companies won't subsidize the wear and tear for you, so you have to pay that anyway.
The use case for swaps is small. The vast majority of trips are short. Trips long enough to require a recharge often require a long stop for the driver.
People have priced in the notion of spending some time each week pouring flammable liquids into their vehicle. If we had started with electric cars everyone would find it disgusting and far too frequent. The speed of it for rare use cases would not impress.
Swappable batteries will not change that. They are too expensive and they limit design too much. Reducing the charge time to five minutes or even zero minutes would not change the minds of people who would simply swap to their next excuse.
Tesla tried it. There was no point Tesla building more swap stations because so few people paid the premium to get a swappable battery. It turns out that people who won't buy an electric car unless they can swap the battery will find some other reason not to buy an electric car if that reason is removed.
Also, I've used lots of chargers greater than 100 kw, and they really don't take that long to charge a car. Combine it with a meal, even a fast food meal and they've generally charged more than I needed in that time anyway.
Fast charging is an outlier anyway. >90% of the time you slow charge at home for a third of the price per mile, and it's lovely to only need to visit a filling station on rare long drives.
I think Renault used to do something like that?
When I tried to charge my previous EV (a non-Tesla) at public chargers, half they time they didn’t work, or charged at unpredictably slow rates.
Yes, that's my experience too. I never worry about range.
It was a key reason for me too. I considered BMW, MB, and Audi EVs, but ruled them out due to horrendous state of non-Tesla charging in the US.
Another reason was software. Tesla's UI has a lot of issues, but it's the only car UI that feels smooth and responsive to me. And now I'm looking forward to this: https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1362/tesla-update-2023-12-...
When I need to make that trip (with more than one person. If just one traveler it's cheaper to fly) I just rent a gas car and can make the trip in just over 5 hours. I'd say that includes gas stops but often I don't even need to stop for gas. One tank will get me all the way across. It's still a good idea to stop for gas because you can find cheaper stations outside of the big metro areas. But a gas stop is 5 minutes offramp to onramp.
I feel like all this comparing of charging times and ranges of various EVs misses the point that NONE of them offer a better experience that a gas vehicle yet. Sure, it's a trade off some people are willing to make already and that's great. But it needs to get even better.
But beyond that, when you pull into a supercharger, you know it's working. If it wasn't working it would say so on the dash. You park, pick up the cable, point it at your port and the port opens. You plug it in. You walk away. Your phone gets a notification when it's time to go. And it charges your card automatically. No goofy app required, no NFC/authorization, no noodling with the charger to make it work, no effort. It's really really nice.
Chargepoint stuff works fine. Stations are often broken (and like the author said, there's no way to know without going there). You have to use an app which thankfully supports an Apple wallet card. Before I figured that out it was super fiddly. I've had stations on other networks that are unusable because they have poor cell service. Then there's a whole "reload your card" thing where you get charged in $20 increments. And adapters, chunky connectors. To be fair I've never tried DC fast charging with anything but a supercharger.
- evgo was decent, but had limited capacity (usually 2 L3 per location)
- chargepoint was usually pretty decent, but mostly was an L2 charger network
- blink was L3, but their chargers were ALWAYS broken.
that was 3 years ago, and switching to a tesla changed a few things:
- the range of the car was higher
- superchargers were in more locations
- had more stalls per location
- were faster at charging
- were more reliable
- one small detail worth mentioning - the other systems had payment networks that were frequently part of the problem - either preventing charging, or having you fiddle with things, or calling in to manually start things
There was a reason why people stayed on the interstates and turnpikes and regularly spaced gas stations was one of them. Many of these were subsidized.
That needs to occur again for EV chargers.
(It occurs to me I didn't even factor in the cost of the electricity to pay for miles his Tesla drives.)
I'm also driving a car with about half to one fourth the environmental impact to construct (if you think the impact is proportional to the construction cost)
I'm about 60,000 miles into owning the car and aside from typical maintenance and a fuel recirc solenoid that had to be replaced, it's not been that expensive to operate.
It has the benefit that no one seems to want to steal it, so my anti-theft package is just to park it next to a Mercedes or BMW.
My battery has never spontaneously ignited and it doesn't cost $24k to replace every xxx-thousand miles.
But it's not all roses, I don't get to ride in the HOV lane, but that's fine. I'm a socialist and prefer the HOV lane be used for HOVs which are CONSIDERABLY more eco-friendly than ANY single-occupant electric or hybrid.
My Fiat is pretty peppy for an ICE vehicle, but yes, not nearly as good at low end torque as EVs. But it's much better than the '71 VW bug I learned to drive on.
But I think my point is... the upfront cost and TCO differentials between ICE and EVs make it difficult to support the argument "EVs are cheaper than ICEs"
They will be, someday. But that day is not now and that vehicle is not a Tesla.
If we rework the example with a $30k Tesla, that's still $26k more than my used car, which brings the break-even point down to about 150,000 miles (if you assume electricity going into the EV is without cost) or somewhere around 225,000 miles if you go with the previous poster's assumption that price per mile is one third of an ICE engine.
I (absolutely) got a cranking deal on my Fiat. But if you compare a new Tesla at $35,000 with a new Camry, it (the Tesla) is starting to look more compelling, but as long as ICE vehicles have functionality left in them, it's probably more environmentally conscious and economically sound to drive them.
That being said... if you want a Tesla, get a Tesla. But if your objective is to drive around cheaply, I don't think it's the cheapest option.
His $80k Tesla was $2M cheaper than a Bugatti Veyron. Clearly Tesla's are way cheaper than gas cars. I don't understand how anyone can afford the millions of dollars gas cars cost.
Or maybe $4k cars that aren't absolutely falling apart and Veyrons aren't the most useful yardsticks of car pricing. I definitely understand the $4k used unicorn, I drove one for years. But IME the vast majority of $4k cars are priced that low for a reason.
I can find a used Bolt for ~$20k pretty easy. Most decent used gas cars are probably going to be around $10-14k. Let's say $10k price difference. At $3.50/gal, 25mpg, 12,000mi/yr, that's $1,680 in gas. At 4mi/kWh, 11¢/kWh, same mileage that's $330. $1,350/yr cheaper, so from energy cost differences that's a seven and a half year break even on 10k difference. If your ICE was $14k, that's only four and a half years.
And that Bolt probably just got a brand new battery from the recall, meaning it'll probably last at least a decade (probably more) without any major maintenance issues. Meanwhile that $10k ICE probably needs a new timing belt soon, probably has some aging motor mounts, and maybe it isn't always shifting into third gear very well.
I'm definitely not telling you to throw away your $4k unicorn. It's good you're getting a lot of life in it. I'm just suggesting that acting like EVs cost $80k and ICE cars cost $4k is stretching those markets to the point where it's pretty unrealistic to most buyers.
Also, that point about batteries spontaneously igniting, I've seen neighbors houses burn down from ICE cars spontaneously igniting. I see gas cars burning on the highways pretty regularly. I've had cars have recalls telling me to park outside. Gas cars catch on fire all the damn time.
Silly comparisons are fun I suppose, but for someone who is poor ultimately the only comparison that matters is how much will it cost this year.
The cheapest non-salvage Tesla I see on craigslist right now is 30K. I also see tons of 2K-4K Honda/Toyota/Mazda cars that will give someone plenty of low-cost miles for years to come. It is not realistic to think a poor person will buy a 30K car on the hope that in a few decades the operating costs will break even and eventually save them money.
> At 4mi/kWh, 11¢/kWh
Here with PG&E they charge 33c/kWh after midnight, or 56c/kWh during peak hours.
Also, I think we're conflating two stories here. The first is about the SPECIFIC example of me and my brother. He bought an expensive car, I bought an inexpensive car. It's going to be at least another 300k miles before my gas expenses meet the price difference. At that point he can certainly start teasing me about how expensive my car is to operate. But I will still be able to call him a reactionary imperialist whose only interest is cheating the proletariat out of their right to travel in the HOV lane unimpeded by bourgeois singletons.
The second story is the general case, where someone who needs a car wants to compare the total cost of ownership of a Tesla vs. some other random non-EV. Let's also make the other random non-EV reasonably nice because if you're bougie enough to consider a Tesla, you would NEVER be seen in a Hyundai Accent. Bing tells me the MSRP on a 2023 Camry is $27k which is DANG CLOSE to a current Tesla after you throw in government credit. But the Camry can go 500 miles on a tank of gas and if you get the long range Tesla, the price starts going up. So there is a bit of a question here about how you might use your car (I mostly only drive city-to-city and use a bus in town, like any civilized person would.) But, I think the point here is the break-even point is MUCH lower than in my case.
There's also a third story I think is a little outlandish because we're comparing frightfully expensive cars with Teslas. This is where we compare the 2022 Rolls Boat Tail at $28M to the standard Model 3 after all the price cuts Elon's been talking about lately. If you can afford a Rolls Boat Tail, you don't care about how much gas (or electrons) cost. You would probably NEVER be seen in a standard Model 3. I think you would have to get a plaid and then gold plate every surface. Or maybe palladium plate every surface because someone told you gold was passé.
A model 3/Y purchase price is pretty much at the average new car price, so a person looking for a new sedan or mid sized SUV would look a step further and look at things like total cost of operation.
I gave a specific example involving an expensive EV my brother bought and a remarkably inexpensive used ICE vehicle I purchased. I did not say that every comparison of EVs with ICEs would exhibit the same relative costs. I was talking about a SPECIFIC example.
We're I logician I might refer to this as an existential: there exists one. I am not arguing it is a universal.
But if someone says "all EVs are less expensive to operate than all ICEs," then to disprove that statement you only have to find a single counter-example, which I did.
Finding a single counter-example to the universal does not imply the obverse of the universal. In other words, saying "hey, I bought a cheap used ICE vehicle and it is considerably less expensive to operate than my brother's EV" does not mean I am arguing "All ICE vehicles are cheaper to operate than all EVs."
I am happy that you like the model 3/Y and wish you many years of happy driving. <snark>At least until you have to sell your children to afford the replacement battery.</snark>
That's all the person you originally replied to says about cost. You emphasize ALWAYS and use the keyword operate, but you've self inserted the extreme always condition and ignore what operate means.
> all EVs are less expensive to operate than all ICE
The only comment in this thread with that language is your comment right here.
> At least until you have to sell your children to afford the replacement battery.
I guess ICE cars never have substantial drivetrain failures which ultimately result in the cost of repairs exceeding the value of the vehicle? The transmission in my 2000 Accord was starting to experience issues, how much would that have cost to replace? And then on top of that, it probably needed an EGR cleanout again along with a new water pump and timing belt. I don't know how many more years the catalytic converter would have lasted, those are cheap though right?
I guess all of those things are pretty cheap, what maybe $50 each right? Wait, rebuilt transmissions are like $2k before labor? Having someone replace the timing belt and water pump is almost $1k these days, and that's something I'm just supposed to do every 60,000mi or so? How many thousands of dollars was already spent keeping that car running?
Meanwhile the battery is practically the only real drivetrain wear item on an EV. No catalytic converter to rust or walk away, no EGR system getting clogged up, no timing belts to fail and destroy the valves, no valves getting gunked up, no piston rings to foul, any seals are under way less stress and far less prone to leak, coolant systems are practically never stressed and under way less pressure and aren't a tiny seal away from making forbidden milkshakes, etc.
If your argument about EV battery life is based around the battery only having a 10 year 100,000mi warranty, I'd hate to break it to you about ICE car warranties these days. Clearly just about every ICE car is just going to fall to pieces at about 60,000mi. Or maybe many vehicles vastly outlive their stated warranty times.
Sounds like a good reason to avoid areas served by PG&E.
Again.
If your objective is to drive around cheaply, neither a Bugatti Veyron nor a Tesla are your best bets.
Can't tell if joking. I guess you read about exploding Tesla batteries in Pravda?
People with families can't load their kids and dogs and luggage into a cute clown car like a Fiat 500. If it suits your needs better that's great. I downsize even more and ride a motorcycle. These things aren't comparable.
The market for $75,000+ cars is small by definition there's really no need to throw shade like this comrade, the comparable cars are in the decadent luxury segment to begin with - which Tesla happens to be dominating for a reason. Horses for courses.
* https://batteriesnews.com/fully-involved-tesla-car-fire-take...
* https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/tesla-electric-car-fire-...
And not in cars, but still batteries manufactured by Tesla:
* https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/05/tesla-megapack-fire-highligh...
* https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/20/tesla-megapack-battery-caugh...
But sure, Tesla batteries never catch fire.
Sure. Every singleton I see in the HOV lane really has a dog and two kids stuffed in the trunk. I just can't see them.
If you want a $75k+ luxury car, by all means, get one. But you're crazy if you say it's cheaper than a $4k used ICE vehicle, which was the initial claim. It's also crazy to say a $75k+ luxury car has a lower TCO than a $40k 2023 Camry.
Also, socialists don't call each other "comrade." You're thinking of European communists [*], and I suspect South American communists. But when I talked with South American communists, they just called me "Amigo."
Interesting fact I just learned: they're apparently still publishing Pravda, but that is not where I heard about Tesla battery fires. I learned about them from living down the road from a power station where Tesla batteries caught fire. Sort of a "Hey! I wonder where those fire trucks are going? Is that smoke coming from Moss Landing?" sort of moment. And while I often wonder if NBC, CBS and CNBC are crazy, they are not, as you suspect, outlets for Pravda.
* Or possibly French social democrats. It's hard to keep up with French political fashion.
Stop that. I did not say never. Gasoline cars explode too, I saw it in a blues brothers movie. Same as you, I've also seen a car fire in real life with the trucks and sirens and everything. Fires are a thing, the night is dark and full of terrors.
Sometimes civilian planes drop out of the sky or even get shot down. Even humans on occasion "spontaneously combust". I can link you news stories demonstrating such events, yet here you are in the day to day not paralyzed by fear of it happening to you. I assume.
> Also, socialists don't call each other "comrade."
Astute. I am not a socialist, amigo. Myself, I was actually thinking of good natured, how you say, Humor[*].
> Sure. Every singleton I see in the HOV lane really has a dog and two kids stuffed in the trunk. I just can't see them.
Never said that either. I said you can't fit that stuff into a little Fiat 500, it is not the same vehicle category. This isn't an opinion. It literally isn't.
> But you're crazy if you say it's cheaper than a $4k used ICE vehicle,
Never said that either!
> It's also crazy to say a $75k+ luxury car has a lower TCO than a $40k 2023 Camry.
Nor that.
Is this a reading comprehension issue or just a relentless insistence on throwing shade?
Once again: If you actually want to compare used ICE vehicles like a Camry to a Tesla, you'd compare to a comparable used Tesla model not a brand new $75,000+ one. Used Toyotas are extremely reliable and affordable, it is a great option! May very well be the best option depending on what is available in your location at a given moment.
A new model 3 can now be had for ~$39,900 vs a new Camry for ~$29,900. (https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#overview)
Most people don't buy new, you might not want/need to, that is a separate discussion. Depending how much you drive, as fuel is expensive, eventually you'll break even - maybe around 10 years / 100k miles, you can look it up and do the calculation yourself.
It may or may not be the right option for somebody but surely has nothing to do with the completely different category of $75,000+ cars.
* Worldly socialists are often unfamiliar with the concept. Ymmv.
Tesla batteries are filled with poisonous combustible electrolyte. The cost of batteries easily dwarfs the fuel cost savings with appropriate discount rate. And the electricity probably comes from coal or low efficiency nat gas turbine.
The Supercharging network is the most under-appreciated, under-advertised feature of a Tesla.
3rd party charging stations are usually only 2-4 stalls. Tesla stations are usually 8-16, with a couple monster stations on I-5 having 50+.
> All the stalls always work.
I wouldn't go quite that far. I have been to a station that had a dead charger. But that's been once. And Tesla from what I've heard, Tesla is usually pretty quick about getting repairs done.
Whenever I run the numbers to decide between an EV or an ICEV, I get payback periods in the hundreds of years. (I can't charge at home. YMMV.)
Edit: This would change if a battery-swapping industry model were widely adopted. If the battery was not included in the cost of the car but amortized over 10 or 20 years by a swapping station, the NPV of an EV looks much better.
That was the eye opener for me: the cost of charging and eventual battery replacement made the ICE a long term better spend.
You couldn't rent DVDs at Blockbuster, or indeed anywhere. Most movies weren't available on DVD, so you could watch only the few that had made it to the format (and had to purchase them for full price, at that). Being a DVD-only owner was limiting and annoying in a bunch of ways, even though the DVD experience was a lot better than the VCR experience.
If in 1997, I had written a blog post about how having just a DVD player kinda sucks, and I want to have a "hybrid" VCR + DVD experience, it wouldn't have been a super hot take -- but at the same time, it would have also been clear that I wasn't saying there's any big problem with DVDs, I was just having normal early adopter problems, and pretty soon they'd all be solved. (By 1999, Blockbuster offered hundreds of DVDs for rental, pretty soon studios were cranking out their entire catalogs on DVD, and not long after that Netflix broke big.)
And... that's about where we are with EVs. If you have an EV today, you're an early adopter, and you're going to suffer early adopter pains. In 2-3 years, things'll be better. In five years, they'll be better yet. At some point, EVs will be so normal that only a few EV OGs will be like "man, remember when it was a whole big thing to find a working charger? Haha, wow, that sucked back then."
Today, that's true only for non-Tesla EVs. Five years ago, it was true for Tesla too. But not anymore.
Speaking from experience as someone who regularly goes on ~300-mile trips on a Tesla EV:
To be fair, that's exactly what I had. You could buy these two in one VCR/DVD players that had a cassette reader on one side and a DVD drawer on the other. Super handy for quite a while.
Hybrid cars will make sense economically for a while yet in my opinion.
"This technology is still relatively new, and if you buy into it, you're going to have some early adopter pains" is a fine message that will help people sort out what they personally want to do, but isn't the same as a blanket "wait until they improve."
Also, you could (and nearly everyone did) add a DVD player to your stack but keep the VCR so you had both.
Sure, the same is possible with cars, but gets several orders of magnitude more expensive to have multiple cars so it's not practical for many people.
Personally I think right now EVs are a great second car for almost everyone because you get the benefits of an EV but can fall back to your gasoline car for trips. We're still in the early adopter phase of "primary" car right now, where you need to be aware of the drawbacks.
Why not just get a pehv
The Prius Prime has a range of 72km according to [0] so it's clearly not "nonsense".
[0] https://www.toyota.ca/toyota/en/vehicles/prius-prime/feature...
And 72km is still higher than the average US trip distance, and it will kick over to petrol to augment any occasions when you go over that.
Its literally the best of both worlds - plug in charging convenience for the bulk of your driving and fast refuelling for the times when you need to do road trips.
Another thing rarely raised is the correlated nature of traffic issues. Charging is fine now, mostly because it seems there is a huge over-provisioning of chargers compared to EVs on the road. What happens with busy days? An evacuation order sending 1M people on the same route at the same time? For ICEV there is an easy solution. Not for EVs.
Haven't seen any solution for instantly increasing charging throughput, and an on-line power is needed, while it is more likely to fail exactly in the kind of events that require mass evacuation.
In June we're driving to northern Maine. This involves a stop halfway through at a CCS charger for 30-40 minutes while we change the baby and eat. Sure it takes longer, but it isn't inconvenient enough.
An evacuation order is an interesting worse case scenario, but not one I'll likely ever encounter living in New England. Our storms tend to be "stay home" affairs instead of "get out".
Toyota/Honda ICE cars my extended family owns usually go many years without more than an oil change every 8-10k miles. Maintenance costs are absolutely trivial if you go Japanese. Heck even the Chevys made it to 200k when we sold them with no major mechanical issues. The costs of ICE maintenance seem to be the most overblown electric selling point. FWIW I dream about ways to rationalize buying a Tesla.
Remember how with a VHS you could skip all the obnoxious copyright and fbi warnings but with the DVD you were stuck with them?
Not all newer is a better experience.
But hey, with DVD there's no need to rewind!
This means they're not that useful for people who live in apartments, and most people who live in a city like SF and park on the street(*).
They're also not viable for road trips. Teslas can make it work but you still have to be willing for your trip to take 20 - 30% longer than it would with a gas car.
For people who have a garage or driveway, and don't need to take a road trip that often (or can own a second car for that purpose), they're fantastic! A better experience in almost every way compared to a gas car.
Long story short, it was useful and viable even though we didn't have charging.
Vehicles are bought to make life more convenient. To introduce constraints and time waste you can just use public transportation.
Having a garage is definitely the best way, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessary. Driving it like an ICE car where you go to the gas station to fill up every couple of weeks is perfectly acceptable.
And on longer journeys, yeah it’s annoying to have to stop every 2ish hours, but I find that by the time I get back from the bathroom, I usually have enough to continue.
Is it perfect? No. Is it an adequate substitution for ICE - definitely.
When I roadtrip (I regularly do 150-250 mile road trips around New England), I'm usually stopping at a supercharger within a mile of the highway at a location equivalent to one I would have stopped anyway. Most times I only need to charge for 20 minutes to finish my trip with plenty of range to spare. I would have stopped at some point anyway so it's adding 5-15 minutes max on a 3 hour trip.
Obviously location and situation dependent, but for me it couldn't be any less of an issue.
Trips do take a bit longer but only because refueling typically takes 20 minutes rather than 10. It's a non-issue. There's no "make it work": The Tesla is an easier road trip car for me than my Audi, full stop.
I absolutely believe that Tesla will eventually figure out FSD. It's still 5+ years away, though. I would definitely agree with recommending people don't buy it, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a scam.
In my experience, 5-10% longer is more accurate.
Very little of my charging time is spent waiting for the car to charge. While the car is charging, I'm using the bathroom or eating.
On average, people urinate about 7 times a day. If you're awake for 16 hours, that's once every 2.28 hours. I'm diabetic so I go a little more often.
I'll only eat about every 4-5 hours though, which means every other or every third charging stop.
I spoke at public hearing last year in favor of an EV ordinance that my city passed. I believe that if we are to involve government with EV adoption, which is necessary, we need to be prepared for backlash and controversy, and it will require non-insignificant effort to arrive at consensus required for government action. After the ordinance was passed I exited the council chambers and I was approached by a middle aged woman who identified her self as a property developer. She told me how unfair the code amendments were because of how much it was going to cost her business. I told her that solutions like this are necessary because people are concerned with range anxiety. She responded that she was concerned with “regulatory anxiety” and the encroachment of government, and briefly grabbed my shoulder during her tirade. After that I quietly and uneventfully left the area.
I realized that if people are edging into getting physical with a small city ordinance that requires developers to provide limited charging stations for EVs, our civilization is woefully unprepared to address climate change, which will require reforms to many institutions, and the retirement of others. We need to make big changes in a lot of areas, and I don’t see the leadership, technical expertise, and outreach required to do that.
Market failures are real, the need for regulation is real (there are, quite sensibly, piles of regulations around how you can store the tanks of toxic chemicals needed to fuel a legacy gas car, and there will be regulations around EV charging as well), but in terms of making sure EV charging places exist where needed, this is probably a place where just "get out of the way, and don't let zoning regulations block necessary construction" gets you 90%+ of the way to where you need to be.
Right? But I can’t buy 5x20l canisters and fill them up with x kWh of electricity. I can to that with diesel or gasoline.
To install EV charging, unless you’re planning on generating your own energy on site, you’re likely going to procure power from your local utility, most of which are monopolies that are heavily regulated by your state utility commission.
Some estimates say it could cost utilities up to $5,380 per EV to upgrade the electrical infrastructure to support them [1]. Although utilities will earn more revenue through selling electricity, this will not completely offset the infrastructure investment. Will the costs be paid by ratepayers, some of whom may not have an EV? Your state utility commission may balk at that.
Of course federal incentives exist to offset costs, but many programs require participation by your state executive branch, who may not be in lock step with federal policy. Your state utility commission may not be in lock step with your state administration. If you can get agreement with your state policy makers, your utility will have to be employed to expand grid access. They may expect certain amount of consumption to make it worth their while, which you may not be able to provide for a few years until EVs gain adoption. Some utilities will charge you extra too if you use too much electricity, called demand charges, to disincentive consumption. Utilities will have their own schedule to build out the infrastructure, which may not match yours. They’re also a monopoly, so you can’t exactly shop around. Then you have the code and permitting requirements of the municipality your setting up the infrastructure in. The permitting process also follows their schedule, not yours.
With EV charging we have a massive coordination problem, with actors you can’t choose who aren’t strictly driven by market incentives. You’ll need some kind of combination of carrots (tax breaks and grants) and sticks (fines and penalties for slow walking a process) to make the infrastructure needed to support wide EV adoption.
[1] https://www.bcg.com/publications/2019/costs-revving-up-the-g...
After owning an EV I have come to appreciate that gasoline is frigging magical and convenient. You just fill up in a couple of minutes and go. I think people are *way* over estimating the middle majority's appetite for EVs. Once you burn through the early adopters (which we haven't done yet) I think it is going to be a long hard slog to convince most folks to move. I think this is going to be a super huge political issue. If the republicans take up the ICE vs EV battle they will move to quickly turn over this 2035 mandate because their constituents love driving these super convenient, cheap, and powerful ICE vehicles, especially trucks. I hope I am wrong.
What we're really waiting for is second hand EVs in real numbers, or the political decision that small, electric cars are the only ones allowed on most streets. That would dramatically cut the death rates from both pollution and vehicular homicide.
If you're actually in a hurry, you can always fill up an ICE car in a couple minutes whereas the EV, not so much.
For example, we had to evacuate during the California wildfires a few years back. The EV wasn't full and didn't have enough range to get to a useful destination, so we left it behind. Luckily we're privileged to have many cars, so we took two of the ICE cars. One was near empty, so we filled it in under 5 minutes and were on our way.
But occasionally we think: imagine if we'd only had the EV and no way to get out ASAP?
(Fortunately nothing happened and the house and EV survived fine. But many others nearby weren't so lucky.)
Try the ABRP (a better route planner) app. It will route based on your vehicle and the charging networks you prefer. It’s free unless you want certain features like live headwinds.
I have been considering getting an electric car but that trip made me realize I'd have to reserve the EV for urban travel only. Otherwise I'd be uncomfortable with the risk. Even with my gas guzzling SUV I can always bring more gas just in case.
I spoke to someone who has an EV and brings a generator with them on long trips so they can charge their car. This seems so wildly impractical to me.
I really look forward to the day EVs exceed the range and energy capacity of combustion vehicles -- without having to stuff batteries in the headrest. But it's just not there today.
Carrying a generator seems very practical to me if you are putting yourself in situations where it could be not just useful but the difference between you being stranded vs self-sufficient.
Nobody said that owning an electric vehicle requires a head-in-the-sand refusal to acknowledge the benefit of liquid fuel. Plus, a generator has all kinds of other benefits in the situation you describe.
As a one-off thing, like driving into a town after a storm, might work. But it’s not a solution to range anxiety generally.
Worried about the smell of fuel from the empty generator you never use? If so, wrap it up in garbage bags. Remember - it's there for emergencies. Odds are good you'll rarely ever use it. And don't transport it with fuel - get the fuel when you can't find a charger but can find a gas station. Let's be sensible about it.
The comment is in reply to someone describing their experience driving to a town that was without power for 24 hours due to a storm. This "road tripping into the unknown" is where taking a generator is applicable, not general range anxiety.
Practically? Generators come in pretty small packages these days. They'll fit on the floorboard of your back seat (or in the back seat), or easily in the trunk just like another piece of luggage.
I mean all of this assumes a particular context - the steps you take to be prepared for risks that are medium probability and high impact are not the same steps necessary when, on a daily basis, those same risks drop to a very low probability and low to medium impact.
If it's the choice between being the guy who, after miles on the road, arrives in a storm-stricken town as GP related with his EV near dead and the townsfolk gathering around to point and laugh at a stereotype of luxurious thinking, or being someone with an inefficient yet practical solution to the lack of chargers, I'd take the latter.
Charging an EV from a portable generator is going to take 8-12+ hours. So now you need to carry enough extra fuel for the generator to run that long.
Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous. Is your typical vacation, like, traveling to Florida to experience a hurricane making landfall?
If you do a lot of travel to remote locations and camping and hiking and things like that, yes, an EV will probably be a stretch for that use right now. But most people in the US live and travel between major population centers.
Even if you are into the remote/outdoorsy stuff, an EV is a perfectly viable second car.
This has been my conclusion - the main problem at that point being the sheer cost. My household’s current secondary car is one that cost $10k a decade ago. (Two years old at the time of purchase.) There’s no EV that’s even in the same ballpark for cost-per-km or cost-per-year. (And for a second city-only car, they almost all come with far more battery capacity than is required, adding weight and expense. The Mazda MX-30 EV is probably closest from a technical standpoint with 160 km of range, but still has a cost problem, starting at $40k locally after taxes and credits.)
I'd crunch the numbers more seriously if I had to replace my secondary car today.
For some napkin math, assuming I only charge at home and my cost of electricity doesn't go up for the next decade, I'd be looking at about $3500 in electricity costs for 10k km/year for the next decade. Say the $14k car depreciates to $4k over the decade, that's $10k in depreciation. To match my existing car costs that leaves me with an average of $1720 to spend per year on maintenance (which, in my spreadsheet, includes tire changes/replacements, yearly detailing, any other misc parts) on a car that will be close to 20 years old with 200k km by the end of the decade. Might be workable? My current ICE car has run about $800/yr in maintenance after subtracting oil/engine-related costs in years 2-12 of its life. Leaf also seems higher risk - with my current low-value car, there isn't much potential for catastrophic failure (like a battery failure would be), and if there were a catastrophic failure, I'm just out the cost of the car, which isn't much.
I ran all the numbers in a big spreadsheet and determined that with fairly pessimistic numbers on the Leaf for depreciation/maintenance, and very optimistic numbers on the Civic for the same, total-cost-of-ownership worked out to approximately the same per mile. Insane.
So I bought the Leaf for $8k about three years ago. In that time it's roughly held its value or maybe appreciated due to the crazy market we're in, and I'm saving roughly $750/year (6k mi/yr, about) in fuel. More than offset the depreciation in my case, so far.
And, more importantly because all these costs are super tiny in the grand scheme of my finances, I'm driving a 2014 car instead of a 1997. More comfortable and probably much safer.
FWIW my real numbers on the Fiesta over the past decade have worked out to 9¢/km depreciation, 6¢/km in ICE-specific maintenance, 9¢/km in non-ICE-specific maintenance and 7¢/km in fuel.
My home electric costs would run around 3.5¢/km for the Leaf, so I'd only be saving 3.5¢/km (or $350/year) in fuel. (And I'm locked in to a 5-year electricity contract at a pretty low rate for the area. If I had to re-sign today, my electric costs for a Leaf would be around 5¢/km.)
1) The insane distances in the US are what make a Leaf unusable as an only-car, reducing demand (and thus resale price)
2) I can’t do the math right now to figure out your electric rate, but my electricity is $0.1/kWh, or about $0.025 per mile (mile!) with pessimistic Leaf efficiencies.
Both of those are pretty strong headwinds vs. my situation.
2) 17¢/kWh in AB, though current rates would be either 23¢/kWh on a fixed-rate contract or current floating rates are in the 25¢/kWh range.
If it were an EV then I would have had to find the nearest place to charge that did have power, which isn't trivial.
I agree if it's just travel between major population centers then it's not as big of a deal. There just happens to be a ton of travel that isn't between major population centers, and I'm not talking about camping.
Simply put an EV is just not as useful today as I wish I were. I'd just like to be able to visit family without getting stranded.
In areas where power outages are common, gas stations have their own generators to continue operating. This is common where I'm from, so very familiar with it.
> Who brings emergency gasoline supplies with them on a family trip with young kids? The suggestion is ludicrous.
This is very easy. I always bring a jerry can with gas (or diesel) on longer road trips, just in case. For more remote destinations (camping out in the desert/wilderness) I bring as much as four cans of diesel to be self sufficient in case plans change.
I have never taken extra gas along on a trip in the USA (I don't do long offroad treks or safaris, and neither do 99% of drivers).
The range and charging time issue with EVs are issues regardless of weird one-off events like the power being out for a day.
Gas stations tend to have generators, yes.
> I have never taken extra gas along on a trip in the USA
Well, to counter your anectode, I have never taken a road trip more than 300 miles in the USA without carrying a jerry can (or more) of fuel, just in case. It's cheap and easy insurance, why wouldn't you? Even if you don't need it you can use it later, so it costs nothing.
If you’re doing road trips frequently and you absolutely cannot find a charging station that coincides with a lunch break spot and you cannot afford a single extra hour, then sure, this seems like a reason to wait for things to improve.
But I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard this argument from people who are more afraid of the possibility than the reality. People who do a road trip once per year or less, for example.
But, from my house, that’s about the only trip I’ve found like this. Any of the beaches are reachable. Most cities within a day or two Drive are reachable.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=9daba0ea-ad2e-449...
Anyway, my only point was there are still some gaps, even in the relatively dense eastern seaboard. But not many.
If you prefer more primitive camp sites this isn't an option but for some kinds of camping an EV is kind of ideal.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=8c9a884e-0429-42c...
30+ mins at a supercharger doesn't need to be a thing. You get the fastest charging 0-50%, which takes about 15 mins, so that is like 180 miles range, or about 2.5 hours in the car.
So you can get about 700 miles with 2 15 minute stops, assuming you do 300 miles on the first charge if you start at 100%. With a gas car you'd be stopping once for maybe 10-15 mins to refuel and use the bathroom(or twice if you're driving with my partner), so it's really only 15 mins lost over 10 hours in the car.
I'll say that's not my natural way to do a road trip, I would previously go on longer legs with less time stopped, but I actually like taking more little breaks and would probably start doing that if I went on a road trip with an ICE.
Last summer we drove the i80 route on our way to Oregon and after Laramie (which I suspect has some super chargers) it looks like a wasteland until Rocksprings and I have no idea if they have them there either. On the southern route, after Grand Junkyard (which I imagine has super chargers) it looks like quite a spell before more. We go play in Moab periodically and it's pretty sparse out there. The distances seem manageable but if you mismanage things a little bit, you could have some trouble. I think I'd top off in Laramie and then probably think about it in Rocksprings, I assume they have chargers there. Even with an ICE out there, there are some pretty long distances between stops, seems like every time our range got below 100miles we were starting to get serious about planning a stop.
FWIW Southern Idaho and Eastern Oregon might have been worse. I think there were more people and it looked like more help if you were to have an issue but it might be farther between realistic charging stations. It's coming, it'll get there and most people aren't road tripping that much but it's still a factor.
You point out a problem with the IRA law, which subsidizes charger build out at service stations, precisely the wrong place for them. They should be building out in shopping areas, various roadside and destination attractions etc.
Chargers should be at full-service stations. Places with a deli or cafe, where it’s somewhat pleasant to rest for 20-30 minutes. Not someplace that the kids want to stay for hours.
I dissent! Just did a 2-day (each way) road trip with young children and those charging breaks are pretty great and well-spaced for letting them run around and blow off steam. It’s not such a bad idea for the adults either…
Only twice in the four trips did we ever have to wait for the car to finish charging. IOW it added 15 minutes to a 3 day trip.
Tesla has superchargers along 17 pretty consistently. The biggest gap is probably Sault St Marie to Wawa and that's only 230 km. The rest of the gaps are all well under 200 km (mostly around 100-150) so you don't have to stop at every location. Highway 11 is a no-go zone.
Destination charging is a little more sparse. I use a welding outlet in the family farm shop, but that's obviously not an option available to everyone. There is a single L2 charger on the whole island and it costs $5/hr which is pretty steep for 7 kW.
I wouldn't feel stressed taking a Tesla anywhere along 17 or the whole main trans-canada corridor. I'd want to plan a little ahead if my destination was a place without a supercharger to arrive with enough charge to get back to the network, but that's pretty simple.
Unless you're driving through an area where chargers are spaced really far out, you shouldn't need to be charging that long.
EVs charge faster at low state-of-charge. You'll spend less time charging if you go from 20% to 50% twice than if you went from 20% to 80% once.
I've got a trip planned from Portland to Santa Clara coming up. My longest planned charge is 20 minutes. Everything else is in the 10-15 minute range, arriving at each charging with about 15% battery.
Every time I consider getting a plug-in hybrid, I'm reminded that they're not for me. Even with daily commuting, I only fill my 12gal tank 10 times annually. I've put, at most, $8000 of gas into my car in the last decade.
I want the geeky toy, but it's just not sensible. If I want to make 50mpg instead of 35, I just have to drive carefully and draft behind trucks.
Same here. We had EVs (two) from 2014 to 2020, it had benefits at the time (HOV access) but it's also a pain to be planning your day around time/distance/charger-access logistics all the time every day.
With the pandemic ending commutes, that wiped out the HOV benefit and it all just doesn't seem worth the hassle anymore. We let the lease expire, no EVs in the household now. Maybe in the future again. For now only ICE cars here and driving life is so much easier.
No more waking up at 2am realizing didn't plug in and going out to the freezing driveway to fix that. No more telling the boss I won't be in until the afternoon because I forgot to plug the car in. No more having to stay in the office until 9pm because I couldn't get a charger spot until 5pm. Now I just get in the car and drive whenever I like. Tank is low? I stop by a gas station, buy some chips and by the time I walk out the tank is full and I'm good to go another 400 miles.
[Talking about Teslas and “EVs” as if they are the same category is like talking about Computer Science and “STEM” in a single category. Often disingenuous and draws the wrong conclusion.]
Is the charger adapter that you plug in on a Tesla or a non-Tesla not standardized like USB-C to the point where you can go to any station (as long as you have any brand of EV and not an internal combustion engine gasoline/diesel car or whatever) and benefit from it/use it/plug it in? Sorry, out of the loop, I've dodged electric cars.
You can buy an adapter to use destination chargers (hotels, etc.) but not super chargers.
(The third major standard for DC fast charging, CHAdeMO, is unfortunately dying out even though it is in many ways technically superior to CCS. Tesla previously sold adaptors for CHAdeMO but no more.)
[0] https://shop.tesla.com/product/ccs-combo-1-adapter
EDIT: This adaptor only works on Tesla cars built after ~2020. Search "how do I determine whether my Tesla can support CCS" before buying the adaptor. The issue is about whether the car can speak the powerline carrier protocol that CCS uses.
Meanwhile, while some folks have had issues with EA, I haven’t, and even if I did, I’d just use a Chargepoint, EVGo, Shell Recharge, or any number of other chargers as needed.
Not to mention that I can buy a Tesla charger adapter for like $60 that lets me use destination chargers at hotels, and that Tesla is opening up to CCS charging because they want that sweet federal money.
Basically: a Tesla is an EV, and Tesla is no longer on top of the EV game, as evidenced by the recent six price drops in the last year, because they are outinnovated and now trying to outprice their competition instead of innovating.
You let me know how your FSD, which is “coming by the end of the year,” does for you. I’ve got some bridges to sell in Brooklyn.
The expansion of superchargers to non-Teslas may indeed cause problems. So far I have seen perhaps one total non-Tesla vehicle. If anything, that should be a new point in favor of EVs compared to the time the author purchased their vehicle, which makes the article even further disingenuous.
I don’t know why you brought FSD into a very specific argument about EV ownership experience. I don’t disagree. Sounds like a canned message from a Tesla hater though.
Elon and the FSD nonsense is one such con. I only brought it up because he just promised it again by the end of this year, and it set off a spate of people going “Tesla is the best” when we’ve all seen this story before.
I credit Tesla with kicking off the revolution; I don’t even dislike their cars. I’ve enjoyed when I’ve rented them.
I just think they’ve stopped innovating in recent years, and frankly, I wish they would. More competition is always good.
Now when it comes to specific physical features on the car or something, I don’t know, haven’t been following that very closely.
FSD may or may not come eventually. I’m doubtful. But as it stands, other makers are improving rapidly and Tesla has produced little innovation to compete with them in recent years, instead choosing to focus on touting features that seldom come (2016 was the first year FSD was coming “by the end of the year”) and cost-cutting measure to improve profits at the cost of customer experience.
That’s not a jab on Tesla as a company as much as it is just disappointment. Their lead is dwindling, and I wish they’d focus on innovating instead of whatever else is happening right now.
Tesla needs to start building something new again, or improving their cars in meaningful ways, or their lead will dwindle.
And the cybertruck ain’t it. (I have a reservation for one, but there are better options now)
Tesla is still very much at the head of the pack for range, efficiency, and charging speed (thinking of the Model 3 and Y especially). These are the fundamental factors that probably matter the most in determining the convenience of a regular-use EV.
Some manufacturers (hat-tip to Hyundai in particular) are starting to come close or match them in some or all of these (which is great!) but it’s absolutely not the norm.
My point isn’t that Tesla sucks. It’s that they’re not inherently superior anymore.
(And yes, Hyundai and Kia are great. Merc and BMW are also giving them a run for their money, though I don’t like their styling.)
To your earlier point, I have literally never once had to wait to get a supercharger, the route planner takes number of open stalls into account. The non-Tesla experience, idk, and we only use them on road trips, so we’re generally not going to any inside big cities, so maybe that’s the difference. Also not in the Bay Area, so they’re not the local “Camry” yet.
I don't see their numbers growing as fast now as 3-4 years ago because there are so many more superchargers now that destination chargers don't give a hotel as much of a competitive advantage, except in places where there is still not a supercharger nearby.
I wonder if the cars could help here: if you plug in and are unable to charge the car could report that à la waze. Though there is a possible false positive if your credit card is declined.
Good luck getting those money back, loser.
If you didn't end the charging session (e.g. by pressing a button or presenting the same card again), you may have given the next person a free charge?
If I leave a comment, I can look in /threads more easily than /new or navigating to profile > upvoted.
They're in some weird kind of panglossian mindset where, if it's not working in the USA then that proves that it is in fact literally impossible.
So rather than sort themselves out and install some more plugs, they just shrug and give up.
I imagine a Chinese General pointing to this article and saying "see, their army will topple like Russia's in Ukraine did, it's all bluster, as a failing nation they can't even install plugs"
"The government is finally getting round to the basics and will probably fuck it up" is not the attitude that put men on the moon.
'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
It's a standards problem, not infrastructure, per se.
I know there's efforts to build more charging stations, so that may improve somewhat. But my question is how do you charge an electric car if you live in a small apartment building? If we're all going to drive electric cars in the future, we're going to need viable ways for everybody to charge them.
Moreover, in the Lucid, I only have to charge once (maybe twice, if it’s convenient) to make the trip.
I'm speechless.
Yes, long-distance drives that are outside the limited refueling network are out of the question, but Toyota provides 21 days of complimentary car rentals for owners of new Mirai models.
So far I enjoy my Mirai. While I wish hydrogen prices were cheaper (prices went from a maximum of $19.70/kg in November to $26.75/kg in January and have remained at that level since), the Mirai is the best car I’ve driven in terms of its drive feel, comfort, and technology; it’s a dramatic upgrade from the Toyota Prius c I used to own, and I even prefer it to the Subaru BRZ I had years ago.
So I think not having a dedicated charger in the city isn't as much of a problem as one might think. Probably can charge here and there or every two weeks if needed. Hassle yes. But living in a city with a car is a hassle.
Next day found a place to charge but only have 17 miles on a good day. But assumed that would be enough to get me to a gas station.
But the gas shortages because of flooding in port everglades extended even up to Palm Beach. They only got four inches of rain not the two plus feet that they got in Miami and no flooding. But, still were affected. I went to a dozen gas stations and called a few, and they had no clue when they would have gas.
We circled around different charging stations within ten or fifteen miles heading north. It was crazy.
We checked again a few hours later and there was a station that had gas.
Feels like climate change might make it complicated for both EV only and gas only. Hybrid seems like the right option but even that was complicated. My mini doesn't use the same plugs as the Tesla chargers. Oh well.
http://www.umc-j1772.com/index.php?route=product/product&pro...
When I sold my Leaf and moved across the country I gave mine to a guy charging his Leaf near a supercharger. He was so excited
You need a Tesla to CCS2, and then a CCS2 back to Tesla. I've only seen videos of this, haven't had the opportunity to test myself.
Makes me wonder what could be done to trick it into charging another EV for free.
This is an _endorsement_ of electric cars. I wouldn't use a hatchback/sedan/crossover for roadtripping, and the idea that everyone is always roadtripping is wild. Just fly if you need to go >300 miles, it's a better experience than trying to roadtrip a Bolt, which is a perfect car for >95% of people. No sweating, no exhaustion at the end; just landing and going.
Is CCS charging unreliable today? Yes, compared to gas station or Tesla Super Chargers... CCS has a ways to go. They are the weak link.
The author doesn't discuss ANYTHING positive, like how its super easy to have a fully charged vehicle all the time because you charge at home overnight. This was just a rant on a few specific points.
Speaking of, plugshare? Is very handy and very decent. Yes, sometimes chargers are hidden away in slightly odd locations, but plugshare has generally had VERY accurate maps. Zoom in and you will see the pins on the map on are on a specific side of the map, or in a very certain location of the parking lot - and in reality that's where the chargers are.
The descriptions also say things like "I-80 exit 156. Four stations along the side of the building.". And the comments will include useful statements like "April 21, 2023 - Still only one (Amelia) of the four is working.". Do you want to read sub-optimal news like that? No, but at least you can plan accordingly.
Also also, Last road trip I did in my Tesla Model Y (about 250mi each way), I stopped more for food/drink/bathroom/etc than I did for charging. Yes, I probably could have drive the entire way (one way) on an ICE vehicle without stopping for gas, where I did have to stop for a charge... but that was an extra 10mn or so. Wooptydo. Keep in mind that during the average week (of non-road tripping) I stop at a gas station exactly never, so I'd say I still stop less with an EV overall.
And yes, if you a doing a lot of long road trips. Going places a little more off the grid. Or generally hate stopping because you're ok peeing in a bottle... then please stick with ICE for now. EV's are still in the early adopter phase and they don't work great for everyone. Apartment dwellers are, for example, very hit or miss (if their garage doesn't have EV charging, it's not a great experience).
The article begins with:
> I love how I never have to buy gas. I love how it glides quietly up the street. I love that it has so much pickup that I can easily blow past gas-powered muscle cars if I want to. I love having stickers that allow me to drive solo in the HOV lanes. I love that routine maintenance consists of little more than rotating the tires.
The author states repeatedly that they love their EV, but the inconvenience/uncertainty around charging on longer road trips is enough to be a deal breaker for them.
> And yes, if you a doing a lot of long road trips… then please stick with ICE for now.
I feel like the tone of your comment is overly dismissive of the author’s complaints, considering that you essentially end up agreeing with them at the end.
My hatchback does 0-60 in about 7ish seconds, and that's pretty fun to do. I'm not likely to win too many drag races, though.
It really doesn't, it's just a side effect. We already have massive tailgating issues across the US, and most folks have zero idea what the limits of their commuter EV are. Kind of a recipe for disaster.
Ferrari of most eras, until recently, were a "go fast slowly and in the style of a Ferrari" type of car.
If a tree falls across a major road, you can bet there will be work crews showing up within hours to cut it up and move it aside to restore access, because a road with a tree across it doesn't function as a road anymore.
We should treat lack of working charging infrastructure the same way: a road without the necessary infrastructure for EVs to traverse it with the confidence that they can charge when they need to isn't a road either.
If EV owners really wanted to press the issue, they could protest by blocking roads. If, say, there's a dozen or so EVs all stuck at one charging station because the chargers are down, they could move their cars to the middle of the adjacent highway and form a roadblock. Unfortunately this isn't safe, as it would probably lead to violence from angry ICE drivers.
There is a significant recent precedent when it comes to vehicles blocking roads: there was the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest
> "Beginning January 22, hundreds of vehicles formed convoys from several points and traversed Canadian provinces before converging on Ottawa on January 29, 2022, with a rally at Parliament Hill. The convoys were joined by thousands of pedestrian protesters. Several offshoot protests blockaded provincial capitals and border crossings with the United States."
...
> "Between February 17 and 20, a large joint-operation police presence in Ottawa arrested organizers and protesters, removed parked vehicles, and dismantled blockades from Ottawa streets. By February 21, most of the protesters had been cleared from Ottawa."
So, if you're right wing, you can shut down major cities for weeks with minimal consequences. I don't think EV owners protesting the sorry state of infrastructure would get the same treatment.
It doesn't happen now because petroleum is available basically everywhere. "I had trouble locating an open gas station" is a problem that's happened to me I think once about twenty years ago, and even then we didn't have to go all that far to find an open gas station. (That I remember it at all had to do with the circumstances of the event. I was on a road trip through the deep south, and the police showed up at the second gas station and questioned us because someone apparently thought we were trying to rob the first gas station we stopped at which was closed.)
The current fleet of cars will take a long time to replace, just because cars usually take a long time to wear out. I think we'll hit an inflection point soon, though, where it just doesn't make financial or practical sense to buy an ICE vehicle anymore.
Infrastructure is a pretty big hold-up at this point. Battery manufacturing is also a bottleneck, but at least lithium prices have dropped quite a lot. There's nothing stopping companies from building a lot more factories for LFP cells.
At home charging is gonna be a pickle for older homes… esp if you have powerlines that are trenched.
I wonder if this changes if they have the 3inch conduit.
If I upgrade to 200amp, which I might if we migrate off of steam boiler to heat pump, it's about $5000. We have overhead power lines though.
Even at 12A charging at home is still pretty viable. 12A * 240V = 2.88kW. I'll round down to like 2.5kW for some charging losses, average at least 3.5mi/kWh, and that's 8.75mi of range an hour. 8 hours of scheduled charging and that's 70mi of charge.
Are you pulling over 100A of power at midnight normally?
Maybe I don't need the 200 AMP main, lets see what they install tomorrow.
Also, I wish all level 2 chargers cost money, a reasonable rate of course. Tesla owners are part of the problem. A large contingent of them are annoying cheap bastards. Typical parking lot: Paid level 3 charging, vacant. Free level 2 charging beside it, filled with Teslas.
Unlike this author, I did research before buying an electric car and determined PHEV was by far the best choice for me. It was 2016, the car has been perfect for me and literally the most trouble free, and low maintenance vehicle I’ve owned.
I mean 23% of the state of California is nonfunctional
Generally speaking I do not consider a fast charging network really possible on scale, for highways (or inter-state in USA too) the only possible and VERY HARD solution might be direct car powering like we have for trains.
This sounds a lot like an intentionally exagerated article, but the underlying issue might be real, if the (publicly available) charging stations do not increase in number according to the increase of number of EV's circulating there will be problems.
On the other hand if many more charging stations are created than what is needed, there might be a waste of resources.
I don't think that is an easy task to "balance" (at a state/country level) the amount of infrastructures as a function of EV's increasing adoption and - besides the numbers - deciding where exactly they are to be placed is another non trivial problem, there is the concrete risk of having many little used or unused charging stations while having queues in many others.
Huge waste when the average driver goes for < 40 miles a day
The 200+ miles of range are more than enough for most people, lugging 1000%+ of the average range "just in case" is crazy, epecially given the weight of these things
For the few that do very long trips, and where a route planning app says it's genuinely not possible, then I'd definitely say go back to hybrid or gas.
But for most city drivers just going to work and back, overnight charging and basically never fast charging is the way to go.
Neighborhoods are having problems with theft, and from what I've been told, those charging cables aren't exactly cheap to constantly replace.
B) When ICE cars are banned, then what? Get a horse?
You must have missed the part where a great many places in the US are not accessible this way. People often go on road trips because it is the only way to travel. This is especially true if you like to spend time in the great outdoors that is the western US. Some of these highways don't even have cellular service.
US government policy has made driving easy and alternatives hard. We are in a very deep hole with respect to automobile dependency.
I do not know why the US Gov did not choose to subsidize existing Gas Stations to build these. Instead they are putting these in places that are close to impossible to find.
I have said this before, until charging is as convenient and fast as getting gas, EVs will only be niche.
The closest charging station to me is about 20/30 miles away. So EVs are out of the question. And this is true or even worse for many places.