I’m banking on after the pent-up demand has been met. Is there still a waiting list for the model S? I know the 3 there is.
What point am I missing that I-40 isn’t a major highway??? 
This info was reported by Pantastic; I specifically stated I wasn’t fact checking him to see if what he reported was accurate as I hoped it was. However, even with what you’re stating, a 101 mile gap between chargers is half a tank, based on a 80% charge on a 250 mile range vehicle. One would need to be stopping way more often, & have a slower charging rates than getting down to 5-10% optimal recharge level.
So a situation that doesn’t apply to you personally, but does to others should be discounted? Good to know that we only need chargers where jz78817 plans on driving. :rolleyes:
101 was the *max *I saw. Most are less.
It’s not that hard to check this stuff out. A Better Route Planner is a little nicer than Tesla’s planner since it has more controls for fine-tuning. Here’s a route along I-40 from the coast (Wilmington) to Nashville. 715 miles, with 12:06 drive time and 1:27 charge time, for 13:33 total. Charge always stays above 10% and all of the stops were 10-20 minutes. That’s with the Model 3 SR+, the 250 mile version.
I tried again with my model, the LR RWD with aero caps, and it shaved off an hour, partly due to charge time, and partly, it seems, due to being able to take a more optimal route. That’s a noticeable improvement but probably not worth it unless you were doing these kinds of routes more than once a month.
I removed the constraints that kept the route along I-40 and the SR+ time went down to 12:02, with a charge time of 1:14.
All in all, there’s no problem at all with that basic route, either with the basic or longer range Teslas.
Maybe I’m missing it, but I think you may have misread Pantastic. I don’t see him complaining about I-40. There is a little triangle on the NC coast between I-40 and Hwy 64 that isn’t as robust as it could be.
Mainly, that I have specifically said that Pantastic’s argument against the fact that Superchargers are virtually always within a very short distance of the exit of a major highway is invalid, because he’s just picking places that don’t have Superchargers. You are doing the same. The error is that where there are Superchargers, you should be attempting to show that they are far from the highway (like in a city center or something), rather than pointing out where there are no Superchargers at all.
But also, there are quite a few Superchargers along I-40. Not as many as I-95, but clearly a sufficient number to travel cross country in any Tesla.
Note that the superchargers being claimed as serving I-40 in Millbrook (Raleigh) and Cary are not actually ‘a block or two from the highway exit, just like gas stations’. The one in Millbrook is 11 minutes away from I40 (so 22 minutes to and from) in an area that gets pretty congested during rush hour (so longer during rush hour times). The one in Cary is 9 minutes (18 minutes round trip) and requires use of a toll road, and also gets congested during rush hour.
While EV proponents like to blithely claim ‘you just need 20 minutes at a charging station’ and berate anyone for assuming that a charging station is anything but ‘just a block or two from the highway exit’, that just isn’t actually the case.
I will note that I’m ‘just picking places’ that are places that I live and travel to, so this seems an odd criticism.
Yet again, you presume wrong. The total I-40 route is not actually faster than the route I would actually use as it is a significantly longer distance and requires 86 miles of non-freeway driving along NC 56 and NC 24 (one lane each way, not divided, 55 speed limit) plus going through Jacksonville. It’s also not the route that I would drive for a day trip (especially coming home), as it requires paying close attention to speed limit changes when passing through all of the little localities that like the revenue from speeding tickets rather than just setting cruise control and cruising. Google maps lists the difference in trip times as 20 minutes which (not coincidentally) is the amount of diversion I mentioned and which is also decidedly optimistic, your 15 minute estimate is not based on anything substantive.
You seem to be advocating a trip going in on US70 into the beach, then back diverting to I40, which I would not consider reasonable at all - if I’m doing a day trip, I will take the same route to the destination and back, so that if there are issues with roads on the way I will encounter them on the way in during daylight when I’m rested instead of in the dark while I’m more tired. This is especially true if I’m going to rely on very non-major roads like you advocate here. That means that the 20 minute diversion will need to be 40 minutes, as it will happen on both legs of the trip.
So what we’re looking at is about an additional hour (20 minute diversion on both legs plus 20 minutes charging) and significantly worse driving conditions along local roads, with the annoyance of frequent speed limit changes and stop lights instead of mostly freeway driving. Which is exactly the 20+ minute diversion I talked about, and presses into ‘not feasible’ territory as a day trip doing that much non-freeway driving is significantly less appealing to me.
“A 20+ minute diversion,” which was my specific claim, does not imply adding “hours to the drive.” The route you advised would add approximately one hour plus would be a significantly less pleasant and more risky (in terms of speed traps) trip.
On this board dedicated to fighting ignorance, I think that disputing demonstratably false claims is reasonable. It’s not ‘stupid quibbling’ to point out that there are major routes, including freeways, that do not have superchargers. And the claim that “where there are Superchargers, the Superchargers are very close to off ramps” is also grossly misleading; there are locations where, while the supercharger is close to an off ramp, getting to that off ramp requires a diversion from the ‘major route’ (for example, I-40 in Raleigh) and in other cases (one mentioned earlier) the convenient off-ramp has spent a year or more under construction, again requiring a significant diversion to get to the Supercharger.
Again, I have never made that assertion. I will again repeat my request that you stop inventing strawmen, but I don’t really expect you to change.
In order to have a productive conversation, EV proponents like you and Ravenman should stop making sweeping false claims about how available chargers are, and instead stick to actual facts. And the ‘spotty’ and ‘major route’ equivocations need to go entirely - dismissing the actual limits of EVs with ‘well, that doesn’t count as a major route’ or ‘well, coverage is spotty there’ is rather silly when your ‘spotty’ areas seem to be ‘the entire Midwest and Southeast except along specific interstates’. This is especially true if you’re going to be condescending and insulting to people who try to examine actual routes. Or, like you did just recently, where you seem to be saying that the route that mostly takes freeways is the ‘not major route’ and the route using local highways that go through towns is the ‘major route’.
I agree that a dragster is a completely awful car for travelling or commuting. If someone was claiming that a dragster is ‘faster’ when discussing commuting and road trips, I would also dispute the claim. I also don’t think EVs are going to take over the drag racing circuit anytime soon, so I’m not really sure what comparing dragsters and EVs does to add to the discussion here, but you do you.
Pantastic, I have absolutely zero interest in purchasing an electric vehicle, but your arguments in this thread are so bad (and you are so clearly pushing an agenda for some reason) that I’m practically considering switching to EVs. You should really just stop.
I think the “argument” is that there are not enough conveniently located fast chargers for EV’s to do long distance travel. And anyone who says that this does not impact them for their own personal circumstances is a crazed EV “fanatic” who must be slapped down.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding that the changeover to EV’s is going to take place quite slowly, as personal automobiles do not have a very fast turnover for purchases. People keep them for years, and used vehicles stay around even longer.
Meanwhile, Range will improve. It is not going to stop improving tomorrow. EV charging infrastructure will improve. But some are acting like TODAY is the pinnacle of EV performance and EV infrastructure, and this will never change.
I fail to see any problem with traveling I-40 in North Carolina with a Tesla. If I started at Wilmington, I wouldn’t need a Supercharger until Burlington or Greensboro. Both of which are clearly along the route. And if I’m heading East, clearly I could stop at either one, or even Wallace, to make it to Wilmington with ease.
But, you know, I have actual years experience with EVs, so I clearly know less than someone who has done a little googling with an agenda.
Cue more whinging about “straw man arguments.”
I think it’s simple; if you don’t think the range of the available EVs and the availability of charging stations along routes you expect to take are sufficient, don’t buy an electric car. Full stop.
Seems simple enough. No idea why we’re 1,300 posts into this discussion.
But they are making inroads. http://www.nedra.com/ There’s a company in Australia that is making an electric Top Fuel dragster they are hoping will crush a bunch of records. Mind you, they’ve been at it for over two years so soon is a relative timeline.
Because there’s essentially two sides to this thread:
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EVs are great, and while we are decades away from the end of ICE cars, EV adoption is slowed down by misinformation. More people should take a look at them, even if they aren’t for everyone.
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People who seem to have their feelings hurt by that stance, and will say ridiculous things to push back.
Excellent summary. You win the thread.
Oh jeez oh man, you caught me in a falsehood. I mean it’s obviously not the case that when constructing a throwaway list of stations along I-40, I might not have zoomed in on the map enough to note that the Millbrook station is a block from an I-440 exit, or that the Cary station is a block from an I-540 exit. No, obviously it’s super important that we treat this list as being strictly about I-40 and therefore you’ve caught me making demonstrably false claims about Supercharger stations generally being a block or two from the routes they serve.
Thread over. **Pantastic **is the winner. I’ll put my Model 3 up on the used car listings tomorrow and hope I can find someone stupid enough to buy an obviously useless car.
nitpick- “Top Fuel” means the dragster/funny car is running on nitromethane, so there can’t be an electric “Top Fuel” class. They do list dragster and funny car. But they’re way, way behind what a nitro-burning car can do. Their dragster record holder posted a 1/4 mile time of 7.27 seconds at 186 mph trap. Last month in Top Fuel dragster, Brittany Force set the record of 3.66 seconds at 337 mph trap*. so electric still has a ways to go.
(*yes, I know Top Fuelers run 1000 ft instead of 1/4 mile, but that’s minor here)
I get that but the site I was on below is that is the class they are going after. Here if you are interested. http://www.topevracing.com/ Like I said, they have been saying this for two years so it’s like vaporware at this point. After seeing what cars like White Zombie did I don’t see that they won’t be able to overcome thier challenges. I’d love to see them pull it off.
TL;DR: It’ll be a while before Brittany is running electric…
It is actually quite important (at least as important as anything in a messageboard thread) - you and other EV proponents keep making demonstrably false claims even after their falshood has been pointed out (I’ve mentioned that the Raleigh chargers actually are actually a distance from I-40 before in this thread) and keep berating me for not accepting said claims as fact. People ask ‘why don’t you just accept what people who have experience with EVs say’, and this is why - you repeatedly make false statements, and instead of gracefully conceding that reality differs from what you originally thought, you double down and attempt to use various forms of bluster (here the exaggerated apology that attempts to dismiss the inaccuracy as irrelevant, at other parts of the thread condensation, insults, and a mix of strawman and ad hominem arguments) in an attempt to ‘win’.
If someone is looking at buying an EV, they should bear in mind that EV proponents tend to gloss over or ignore issues that arise from actually using EVs, and not just out of ignorance. And they don’t just gloss over it and say ‘oh yeah, whatever’ when it’s brought up, they aggressively deny easily checked facts and attempt to attack the person who’s pointing it out. Supercharging stations are only along some major routes and are not always right at the exit on those routes, this is fact. It doesn’t mean ‘EVs are worthless’ or ‘no one should get one’, but it does mean that if one is evaluating getting an EV they should actually look at the location of chargers where they’ll be driving and not just take the blithe assurances tossed out in the thread.
And yet another EV proponent resorts to throwing in a strawman to beat up instead of saying anything of substance. It is amusing that you’re throwing this much of a tantrum because I did exactly what you said and looked at the Tesla website for charger locations, but it might be nice if you actually just stopped making false claims.
Yes, I have that terrible agenda of fighting ignorance that’s up there on the header for this website. What arguments exactly are ‘so bad’? Be sure to reference something I’ve said and not something that one of the EV proponents say I’ve said, as they have a tendency to be aggressively creative in that department.