If I recall the last spec I saw, the expected battery capacity for a Chevy Bolt at 8 years was better than 80%. This idea that EVs are useless after a couple of years doesn’t not bear out in reality. And, yeah, the market has to mature for even less expensive EVs to appear, something that I am sure will happen. But consider the extremely reduced maintenance costs for an EV plus an equivalently large reduction in fuel costs, that super inexpensive used gas auto will be substantially more expensive to own than a slightly more expensive used EV.
With either of my vehicles, that’s like a 20-30 minute charge stop. It doesn’t involve a motel. Maybe a lunch or dinner break.
Is this grid problem an ongoing issue anywhere other than Texas?
Exactly. Back then there was hate for small Japanese cars. Then it morphed into generalized hate for smaller fuel efficient cars. Then hate for hybrids. And now hate for all-electric vehicles.
In every case, it’s a certain segment of the population who resists change, and who feels like each of those instances I described are examples of the government forcing something upon them/allowing something negative to happen. Japanese cars = not protecting US workers. Fuel efficient cars/hybrids = government overreach and forcing us to accept worse performance and higher costs in the name of the environment. EVs are more of the same, except with the added spice of being directly associated with climate change.
And there’s always a certain level of ignorance about environmental/climate change issues. It’s the Tragedy of the Commons writ large. Because they can’t see, smell, taste, feel, or hear any of the direct impacts of driving a conventional vehicle in immediate ways that can be tied back to their specific actions, it leaves them with the ability to hand-wave it away as natural fluctuations, or sunspots or wizards or whatever… anything except the results of millions of people just like them driving cars on the highway, equipment in the fields, and industrial pollution.
It’s basically a grown-up(?) version of a kid saying “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my real father!” except to the world about stuff like what car they can buy and what it can be equipped with.
You can abuse an EV, and wear down its batter prematurely. But you can also abuse an ICE, and wear down its motor prematurely.
In some ways, this is even better for the second hand market, as diagnostics can return the health of the battery far better than a technician can tell the health of the engine on a used ICE.
This could work out better for people on a budget, as they know what they actually need, and can get a car for cheaper if it has less range. I personally could get by just fine with a 50 mile range, and if that brought the price down substantially over a similar car that still had 200 miles, then that’s a benefit.
The ER has an express lane- 5 stitches or less.
Because Tesla reintroduced electric cars to the world and is still the major producer of them.
And currently EV’s are more expensive than their contemporary ice counter parts which means they require a higher income to purchase. As the prices come down on EV’s the more they will sell. The idea that they’re hated doesn’t match the shortage of them.
Not sure where you’re getting $151k as the cost of a Model-S. They start under $100K.
There will be some kind of solution - reconditioned batteries, after-market batteries, or something else. Nobody’s going to let a bunch of old EVs go to waste if there’s a huge demand for used vehicles.
That’s a vacuum that nature and market forces would totally abhor. It may not be cheap versus a used ICE vehicle, but them’s the breaks. Nobody owes anyone else a cheap car.
At some point, fuel availability will become a problem- it’ll be tough to get. You’ll have to go out into the country or something like that to get it.
Right now, the current EVs are on the cusp of having enough range (~350-400 miles) with being able to be charged overnight via a standard 220v circuit. I think once they crack the 400 miles per charge and 8 hour charge @ 220v, that’ll be the game changing thing, assuming that the cars aren’t too expensive. That would let people take six hour road trip legs without recharging, and let them recharge overnight. And it wouldn’t require destination owners to have weird voltages/plugs/etc… regular old 220v circuits like are available everywhere.
But right now, we’re looking at like 260 miles per charge, and 8 hours per charge (Chevy Bolt). That makes driving from Dallas to Houston or Austin, or Houston-San Antonio inconvenient, because all of those are either right over, or right near the maximum range per charge. And that’s not a particularly long road trip for one day. People might buy one of those cars for a daily driver, but they’ll probably have an ICE car for their second vehicle, just for road trips, etc… (which is what @aruvqan is saying about middle-distance trips too!)
That’s exactly what I was thinking of! 
But here your ignoring the presence of DC fast charge stations along the route. You make it sound like you can only drive a distance without the range of a full charge and can only charge at either the start or the end of the journey. To make either of the trips you mention in either the Tesla or the Bolt we have, you’re looking at like a 15-25 minute stop somewhere along the way.
Let’s take a look a California. They’ve come a long way from pollution issues in the 70’s. I was there back then and was bad… Today a substantial amount of their electricity comes from renewables and they are the leader in greenhouse transition with their push for EV cars.
But they are struggling to keep up with the demand place on them by EV’s. According to this article ( California’s electrical grid has an EV problem) EV’s are expected to add an additional load of 40% by 2050. That is not a small number. It will likely require charging stations at work and coordinated charging times at home.
It’s great that EV’s are going to replace ICE vehicles in the very near future but It’s going to be painful if the grid isn’t up to the task.
Here is an Jalopnik article from November 2020 describing how the writer bought a used 2011 Nissan Leaf (so about ten years old). Note that this was an early generation Leaf that even new had only a 75 mile range or so, and as a used car had only about 48 miles of range and some wear and tear issues. That might not work for you, but it would meet the needs of many people, especially for the $2,000 the car cost him.
And as EVs are bought and sold, there will be more and more cheap ones on the market. (I expect there to be some way that a prospective buyer can get a fair evaluation of the range of the battery pack in a used car.)
IMHO in their point of view it’s because the electric cars disobey sharia law. At least the Christian version of sharia law as they interpret it.
Your ideas about range and charging are weird. Go over to ABetterrouteplanner.com and play with that route with some different makes and models. For shits and giggles compare the results (including the cost) with your ICE
What restrictions against owning private vehicles?
About 67 million cars are sold worldwide each year. Manufacturers don’t think about you and your individual needs now, they didn’t in the past, and they won’t in the future. They think about how to grab the biggest share of those tens of millions.
So EVs will get better. Their range will increase. Their features will grow. Their price will decrease. The time to charge will lessen. The ability to charge will become easier. There will be a larger used market. In a generation everybody will have forgotten about the early, uncertain years.
How do I know? Because that parallels the exact history of the ICE car in the early 20th century.
It’s not so much that they don’t exist, but that a LOT of people drive those trips in one shot, and wouldn’t like the idea of being forced to stop for up to a half-hour just to complete their trip. And in a lot of cases, the places where the charging stations are, aren’t where the restaurants that you want to eat at are.
So it’s a combination of having to stop, and not even being able to stop where you want. That’s going to be a hard sell. Many people will just wait until every restaurant has charging plugs in the parking lot, or until range increases.
There’s a Tesla Supercharger with 14 stations right off the freeway here at Birch Bay Square. The one ‘restaurant’ restaurant is Bob’s Burgers & Brew. They have more than burgers. There’s also Woods Coffee, Subway, and Jack In The Box. (The BBS website also lists Sahara Pizza, but I’ve never seen or heard of it and the SP website doesn’t show a location there.) Across the street, at the Shell station, there’s a Domino’s. Not a lot of choice, but there’s food available. Oh, The Market supermarket has a hot deli and a cold deli.
But, yeah… Without my wife, I could drive to L.A. or Orange in one go.
hospital/grocery store as in the facilities are available in Tonopah, but not Goldfield. If we lived in Goldfield and had to make a hospital run or grocery run to Tonopah, there would be no place to recharge batteries for a return trip if we had one of the older EVs with the 100-150 mile trip charge. On Rt 95 in Nevada, the people really do drive 80 -90 miles per hour, so if you can not make that speed you are impeding traffic and presenting a hazard for some trucker who is at the end of his driving timer and is perhaps tired - he comes around a curve or over the crest of a hill and whams into you, making you a part of the scenery.
It sometimes comes up when talking about autonomous vehicles and how private vehicle ownership could end. It’s a silly idea in the short to medium term.