why is tesla the only viable option?
IMO the plugin hyrbid market is a much more natural transition and some of those vehicles are becoming very good. The Chrysler Pacifica plug-in minivan is excellent for the price and the BMW X5 plugins are by far the best luxury plugin SUVs that I’ve seen.
You can get good deals on used Pacifica plugins too. Typically in the $20k range.
But we still need a good EV option that is close to $20k brand new.
At the low end I would take a Hyundai Ioniq any day over a model 3, and they're comparably priced.
At the high end, I'll concede things are a bit more expensive, but I'll take the barely used Taycan Turbo I got for 70k any day over a new Model S.
That made Ioniq dead in the water for us. Not to mention lack of good life changing features we rely on in our Teslas.
If you only drive local, ever, then the Ioniq could work… but why would you get one?
And now that the Model Y price has dropped so much, you should be comparing the features of the no-haggle straight priced Model Y to the features and charger network of the dealer-marked-up Ioniq, not comparing to the Model 3.
Barely used Taycan… lol I wonder why they gave it up? Could it be the poor efficiency? Or that a Model S Plaid is quicker and costs less? Or again the charger network has a small existential issue.
Depending where you are in the country, this can be a feature.
Where I live (Oregon), Tesla only bothered to build chargers in the big population centers, while other companies have built CCS chargers all over the place.
If you pick a random geographical location in Oregon it's more likely to be closest to a CCS charger than a Tesla charger.
Tesla wins in other counts like "number of charging stalls" because they built 20 at a time, but you can't road trip to a lot of eastern Oregon with one.
What I've observed is that Tesla owners (this includes my own parents) are so convinced that NACS is superior to CCS (which, to be fair, it has a lot of advantages) that they don't want to use CCS. They'll put down CCS any chance they get, and there's this weird sense of "purity" that they maintain by not using an adapter. Also the adapter costs extra money.
I'm sure that not all Tesla owners are like this, but many of them are, especially people who have owned Teslas for longer.
Unfortunately, I have a suspicion that once NACS becomes the standard, all the current CCS companies will simply port their terrible user experience over to NACS rather than having the current experience be standard.
I don't own a CCS adapter yet, although I'm in the market for one. Not because I need it, but because it's nice to have even more options. I did drive through Eastern (edit: Central and Eastern would be more accurate) Oregon twice a couple years on the way to Idaho and back, and superchargers worked fine, but it's always nice to get more granular coverage.
Personally that notion of purity seems alien to me. I also have a CHAdeMO adapter and have needed it once (edit: nope, a few times, just remembered charging at the Nez Perce Casino in Idaho), but it is nice to have the option.
The sienna with a plug would be quite competitive but even that is a bit more than bog standard.
And nobody makes an EV minivan even though it should be a no-brainer.
VW makes them, they just won't bring them to the US. They have officially announced they are coming in June, but time will tell. I'm going to look close when it comes - it could save me a lot of $$$ most months (the pacifica hybrid as much lower range on battery and so wouldn't save nearly as much)
I have looked at them, but my wife is short and so she cannot reach the pedals. We have an older minivan with adjustable pedals that works well.
And the E-Transit isn't available in a passenger version, I'd've seriously considered it.
And I don't know if you can even get the hybrid in the 8 seat setup, and it's more than $10k more than a somewhat similar Kia.
I'm curious if you shopped the PHEV Cayenne to compare? I'm very likely to buy one this month (used) and the few that I've test-driven have seemed pretty great, coming from a 235K miles 2005 CR-V. :)