First of all, it’s ridiculous to claim that EVs have been around for 150 years, given that for a century or more, there were very few of them being sold. Second assuming we do understand that these things are in the “early adopter” phase, can we please stop with the stupid arguments about how expensive they are?
Tesla also open sourced their patents to help the transition along. Musk has repeatedly stated that he wants to see the rest of the automotive world step up their EV game.
As I see it, Tesla has done more or less exactly what you’re describing in that the X is based off the S and the Y is based off the 3. That’s really nothing new, though as automakers have done that a very long time as far as using an existing model to branch off another.
Remember, too that a Tesla can recharge at pretty much any charger and can use the Superchargers as well thus giving them a pretty big advantage. Much of that infrastructure build up is one reason why the car sells at a premium.
A 120v outlet gets you less than 50 miles of range according to actual sources, generally in the range of 2-5 miles of range per hour of charging. This means that the assumption that the car will be fully charged each night is wildly incorrect, and that someone in the ‘less than 100-200 miles per day’ will not actually be starting the car with a full charge the next morning, only someone in the 20-50 miles per day category. So wall charging is not actually adequate for the kind of driving that was being touted as ideal for using an EV over an ICE.
In most houses that I’ve experienced, this stuff would be an incredible pain in the ass to do - you’re talking about carrying around 100’ of 240v rated power cable and unrolling it, plugging it in, then completing that cycle when you’re done. If you’re using the dryer plug, in many houses, plugging and unplugging a dryer is an ordeal, for example to get to my dryer’s plug requires moving a table, then pulling the dryer out of the enclosure it’s in, then repeating that the next morning to plug it back in (there’s not enough clearance to get the plug in and out while the dryer is in its usual place). Also it means that I can’t dry clothes, so if the person staying over needs to wash their work clothes for the next day tough luck. Also, that cable is now a trip hazard running right through the area where we’ll likely be doing things, and keeps my front door from fully closing. And there’s only one dryer plug at my house, so this trick doesn’t even work as soon as a second person turns up with an EV. And that’s if you’re at a house with parking right at the house. If you’ve got to park a bit down the road, you need to take a longer power cord down the street or across a neighbor’s yard. And you’re going to have to demand dibs on the close-by-the-house parking, which other drivers might not appreciate.
But what if you’re not at a house? Then this works even less well. If they’re in an apartment with a parking garage, tough luck. If they’re in an apartment where you park on the road or in a non-adjacent lot, again tough luck unless you want to try running a cable through a block or two of city street overnight. If the apartment is in a multistory building and not on the first floor, you’re going to run a cable down stairs. In places that do have lots, leaving a trip hazard on the sidewalk overnight is often frowned upon by management. At a hotel? You’ll have to check their policies, but I doubt that they’re all that friendly to someone running cables overnight in places to trip guests and keep security doors from closing securely. And you can’t just be busy, arrive late, and park wherever you want, you have to have retire early so you can guarantee a spot that you can get the cable to, if you’re parked in a distant part of the lot tough luck.
“Just bring a charger” is nowhere near as practical as EV proponents in this thread are trying to make it out to be. With an ICE, you just park wherever works. With an EV, you’ve got all kinds of limits on parking, and have to make pushy demands of people. I can say that if someone turned up at my house for a game night insisting that people stop games and that I move things around to give them access to my dryer port which they’ll then use to rev up my electric bill, then everyone stop games and move stuff again when they’re done, I’d just deinvite them. That’s just pretty asinine to ask someone to do when everyone with a regular car can just park and go.
And once again somebody says that something is happening, and we get a description of why it won’t happen.
Good point. The Sentinelese really aren’t suited for electric vehicles, no matter how much we rich city folk with two cars think that EVs are nifty and should be adopted more broadly.
Good point. Why don’t we ever consider the plight of people who live on houseboats? Man, I’ve been nailed.
Well, I was more talking about how the cite you provided was specifically US-based, making it non-indicative of other populations one way or the other, but your take works too.
To be honest, I thought that most of this discussion was specifically about US residents and perhaps middle-class or higher residents of other industrialized countries.
Oh, so they do have a garage where they could install a charger. So why did you say that they didn’t?
Apartment dwellers where I’m from almost all have 120V outlets available in their parking lots. I suppose now you’ll tell me that other places can’t do what is done here.
It is, but when you’re casting about for some reason, any reason why your personal unsuitability for EVs must be the norm for all humanity, some boundaries must be pushed.
The boundaries that need to be pushed are battery technology and infrastructure.
If you read my other post, right after that one, you’ll notice that I was talking about people who drive 50-70 miles a day. Such a person can get away with just 50 miles the nights she spends with her boyfriend. And she can easily top off the battery at home with her 240v outlet. Yeah, I don’t think EVs are currently suitable for most people who have 200 miles/day life styles.
Cool beans. I don’t actually have a dryer plug (gas drier) and if my friend wants to charge at my house, she makes due with the 120v outlet in my garage. But when I had a dryer outlet, snaking a cord from the dryer to the garage would have taken about 10 minutes, and it would have taken me perhaps one minute to point my friend to the outlet, she would have dealt with the rest.
You know, if she’s at my place for hours, I’m probably feeding her, too. The marginal cost of the electricity she’s using is completely insignificant.
Also, it’s not really fair to count both the nuisance of getting at the 240V outlet and ALSO the low output of the 120V charger. Pick one and go with it.
I mean, when friends visit, I let them make phone calls, use my toilet, turn on my lights, and heck, even eat my food and drink my booze. It’s just not that big an ask to ask to plug in a car.
And once again EV proponents ignore the world at large in favor of “If I can do it with a handful of people in a specific lifestyle in a specific location, everyone must be able to do it, and anyone who points out the large groups of people and/or situations this won’t work for is just in denial!” EV proponents keep trying to gloss over a host of practical issues that EVs run into for people who aren’t in their very specific circumstances, and I do like how EV proponent stories contradict each other.
Earlier the idea that someone might forget or not bother to charge one night was dismissed as absurd because it’s so trivial to charge there’s no way anyone wouldn’t do it. Now we find that, in many circumstances, the ‘charging so easy there’s no way anyone could forget’ involves a carrying around a hundred feet of charger cable, running it from a car to a dryer, unplugigng the dryer, then leaving it out overnight, then replugging the dryer, and recoiling the cable when you leave. Somehow I think that’s a level of effort that a person just might forgo on occasion.
Or maybe… apartments? Like were mentioned in the post? It’s weird how often EV proponents try to pretend like really common living arrangements, like apartments, are some kind of silly edge case like houseboats.
And I’m talking about the general applicability of EVs, and the specific claim that they’re an improvement for people who drive ‘less than 100-200 miles per day’.
The only people talking about 200 miles/day life styles are EV proponents trying to ignore realistic scenarios.
Then why would your friends ask to use the drier’s 240v outlet? You posted this like it was common behavior for them, with a clear implication that this was something that’s no big deal to do, but it’s not even possible.
It’s especially hilarious that people in this thread are berating me for pointing out that the situation isn’t universal since ‘it’s happening’, and it turns out that it’s not even possible for the person using it as an example.
Estimates for the cost of charging an EV for 50 miles on wall current are around $6-7. That’s not an insignificant cost to just dump on someone, especially of we’re talking about the kind of situation you laid out where “My friends with EVs charge at places without chargers all the time.”, which implies that they pretty routinely hook up their car if they’re just hanging out. If I’ve got a dozen people over for a game night and half of them have EVs like proponents here say should happen, we’re looking at me bumping my electric bill by $20-30 every time I do one.
No, I’m going to point out the limits of charging technology that EV proponents are trying to get people to ignore, I’m not going to ignore 50% of them because you declare that I must for no particular reason. 120v current is a pain in the ass and insufficient for the ‘always fully charged every day’ assumption EV proponents make in this thread, 240v is even more of a pain in the ass and is not possible at all in many cases, like yours.
Dude, that’s 73,000 miles per year! That’s six times the average American’s mileage. Why should EV manufacturer’s even think about that use case? Why should any discussion about EVs’ suitability for typical drivers be concerned about that sort of use? Typical drivers don’t drive anywhere near that much.
Estimates for the cost of charging an EV for 50 miles on wall current are around $6-7. Operating a toilet, making free phone calls (though I don’t have a land line anymore), and turning on lights doesn’t cost anywhere near that much. I don’t routinely have a bunch of people over and provide food and booze for them, I will either get them to throw in to offset costs or bring their own beer/food - it’s really not that common for people to want others to bring their own beer.
I also question the long term viability of relying on people not to notice the cost of charging EVs. Right now they’re rare and places want to encourage them, so are more likely to offer free outlets. But as they become common, I question how many apartment complexes will be fine with adding figures like $1800/month to their electric bill (10 cars per night for 30 days) without attempting to recoup costs somehow. Parking in a garage overnight will typically cost something like $10 near me, I can’t see how a garage operator will stay in business if a significant number of cars start burning 60% of the cost of a park in electricity costs. While the charging infrastructure will certainly improve in the future, I think the ability to freeload off of other people’s electricity without paying for it will become much less.
At .2-.3kWh/mile, 50 miles is 10-15kWh. Where do you live that electricity is $0.40/kWh?
Do you realize that 77% of Americans live in houses? Sure, at 20% apartment living is common, but why should that change the usefulness of an EV for the rest of us? Even if only 50% of new car sales were EVs, the reduction in CO2 and other pollutants would be tremendous.
That’s a fair approximation of things, but I don’t think it’s quite as cut and dried as that. My personal observation is that the “traditionalists” tend to have a very active imagination about what they can’t do with a product but a very limited imagination about what they can do. So there is an inherent bias toward the known against the unknown.
The fix is education–not necessarily in information dumps but just exposure to the new thing. My parents were very skeptical of all EVs. When I bought a Tesla and I was able to answer questions about how it worked, they opened up a bit. But they didn’t really understand them until they bought a PHEV (which they only got due to a cheap lease deal). It had only a 24 mile pure-EV range but once they could see their own usage pattern fits nicely in that, and that they were able to go from fillups every couple of weeks to every couple of months, they understood. They now love seeing how far they can stretch those 24 miles, and even optimize their trips so that they avoid using gas as much as possible.
Maybe. Personally, I see them as having massive advantages due to their investments across many axes for several years now. For years, we’ve been waiting for the “Tesla killers” to arrive and we’ve finally seen the first batch of them. They aren’t bad, but Tesla killers they ain’t. They don’t match Tesla’s EV tech, they don’t have a comprehensive charging network, they don’t have a strong software stack, and they don’t have over the air updates.
Tesla seems to be taking the Apple approach of having only a few models and putting all of their effort into those. And they have no fear of competing against themselves or somehow damaging their “legacy”. BMW seems to have no intention of releasing a proper electric 3-series, nor will Ford release an actual EV Mustang. Their culture won’t allow it for whatever reason. But it doesn’t seem to bother Tesla to release a Model 3 that eats Model S sales.
Tesla is not yet in the big leagues unit wise, but they are still growing quickly. I expect the Model Y will bring them to >1M units per year, and these aren’t low end vehicles.
I also expect Tesla to have a battery advantage for the foreseeable future. Tesla uses more total cells than any other manufacturer, have their own huge factory (with another coming online soon), and has an entirely separate product line (grid and household storage) to consume their product. Other manufacturers are only barely making plans to expand their production–GM just announced a factory that should be ready in ~2023, about 7 years after Tesla’s factory opened.
That isn’t to say Tesla will have an easy time, but so far the competition isn’t quite there yet, and Tesla isn’t resting.