America clearly has an EV industry (Tesla, Rivian) but its adoption is pretty limited by infrastructure.
Also charging at home is a significant part of EV infrastructure which is also sorely lacking in the US
Above, I said the current level of the adoption of EVs in the US is 1% to 2%. That’s how many vehicles on the road today are EVs.
As I’m sure you know there’s multiple places to charge electric vehicles. You can charge them at home but when you’re on a long trip, you have to charge them somewhere else.
We need more infrastructure investment, both in public charging and in residential charging. The public charging infrastructure that exist today supports that 1 to 2% of vehicles that are currently EVs.
Yes, chargers are everywhere here. But making multiple “stops” to charge that you wouldn’t otherwise make definitely isn’t saving any time.
The seats are horrid.
Watching the windshield wipers freak out over nothing is funny.
“Full self driving” is a bit of a joke.
And yes Teslas aren't for passengers but for drivers.
I’m not sure it’s the infrastructure so much as the cost for these vehicles. Well, Tesla has political problems but Rivian and Lucid don’t - but they are priced quite high.
Of course there are also new vehicles that cost quite a bit less than a base Model 3, but they invite a discussion of not being all that comparable.
Lucid and Rivian don’t have those problems but they are quite expensive relatively speaking.
37k with 20% down payment means you borrow $29k at say, a 4.79% interest rate for 60 months so... $556/month. I know we're on HN with high salaried tech workers but c'mon, that's a lot of money and doesn't even include insurance.
That and their base model 3 is RWD which makes it a non-starter for anyone who drives in snow/ice. The AWD model starts at $47k.
I've owned a base model 3 RWD and live in Ohio where we regularly get all of the weather, sometimes the same day even. I would rather drive that than an AWD Honda or Toyota or similar. The weight and center of gravity, especially with the right tires, makes it a very nice vehicle to drive in adverse conditions. Those "average" market SUVs aren't very good in snow/ice either. At least in my experience.
I'm not sure people are reading my comments above as making 2 comparisons. I used "decent hybrids" as a group of cars that are roughly comparable to the Model 3, but more convenient in areas where chargers are sparse (in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, you pretty much have to plan your route to the available chargers).
And then I noted that there are cars that are available for quite a lot less, so anyone that is price sensitive probably isn't going to be shopping for a new electric vehicle that costs nearly $40k.
As an aside I've been to the UP and it's lovely up there. At the time (2020) there weren't really any charging stations except Maciniac City where there was a Tesla Supercharger and Marquette where, my wife and I found ourselves for about 12 hours charging our car in a parking garage. But Tesla has built a few new Superchargers in the area and they are to varying degrees open to other EV manufacturers.
I also know a lot of drivers who plan to get an EV when their current car stops working. A lot of people are feeling economically anxious right now. They know gas is a dead end so they are squeezing every last mile out of the cars they currently own. Car companies can't exist on the wishes of their customers. Everyone is doing a lot of hoping that its the right time. The EV rebates were a great tool in getting to that tipping point but they were cancelled too son in my estimation.