Just my experience in observing how people drive. I’ve known a lot of people who would consider stopping every 200 miles to be foolish, and who hate even spending the couple of minutes to fill up on gas. I have no way to confirm this, but I’d bet there are more of them than the ones you describe.
I was impressed by the size and speed of the supercharger network though. I clearly haven’t checked in a while. That’s getting to the brink of acceptable.
I still don’t think a large percentage of Americans are at the point of going electric. Teslas have a long way to go to get to even 1% of American vehicles. The future is coming, but despite the accolades of the converted, old habits will slowly die out and will need a new generation of drivers whose only experience is with them for widespread acceptance.
Maybe, but you said it wasn’t practical to make long trips. It’s like saying it’s not practical to tow a boat long distances because they’re limited to 55 mph (a similar time loss compared to 70 mph). Well, obviously it works just fine, and if road trips do not dominate your annual driving, you end up with a net savings overall from EV charging.
Tesla’s market share in the US was 1.1% last year. Takes a while to get old cars off the road, of course, so it’ll be a while before they’re 1% of vehicles on the road, but there’s not much they can do about that aside from continuing to grow. Tesla had produced <2000 cars by 2010, but built 140,000 cars just last quarter (and may just hit 500k cars by the end of 2020), so growth is something they’re pretty good at.
They’ll get there much faster in California, where market share is already more like 4%. California isn’t the whole US of course, but it is a large, diverse state that might as well be its own country, so what happens here could happen to the rest of the US, once attitudes change and prices come down a bit.
And again, Tesla is not everyone, and practical alternatives are starting to come out. VW looks to be in the best position at the moment, IMO.
Seems like everyone in this thread takes it as a given that EVs are the environmentally superior option and the only questions are about personal inconveniences. But when I was researching my last car purchase, I came away rather uncertain about the pure environmental tradeoffs. I’m not sure we have a great plan for when the batteries die, either in terms of disposal, or in terms of salvaging the rest of the car (is anyone going to pay for a new battery if they could buy an entirely new car for not much more?) I’m not sure the electricity will be that much cleaner than gas-- what about places where it comes from coal? I’m not sure there won’t be compensatory effects that outweigh the benefits, e.g. people driving more because it costs less and seems harmless (to say nothing of cars being built to be less efficient). So I went with a small, fuel- efficient traditional gasoline engine car, which I plan to drive into the ground. (My last car was retired at 21 years old.) I’ll continue to keep an eye on the emerging technology and reassess when I need a new car. I don’t mind paying extra or enduring some small inconvenience, but I want to be sure it’s worth it.
EVs are still cleaner when electricity is 100% from coal. When some of the electricity is from less-carbon-heavy sources, they become much better. And even better, as generation sources become cleaner over time (as they inevitably will, given the price trends with wind+solar+storage), it automatically improves every EV on the road, even ones built years ago.
As a point of comparison, it takes 7 kWh to refine 1 gallon of gasoline. A Model 3 can travel about 30 miles on that electricity. So, even completely ignoring the gas car’s emissions, the Model 3 is equivalent to a mid-efficiency sedan. Add in the 20 lbs of CO2 emitted from that gallon of gas, and it becomes no comparison at all, even compared to very dirty sources of electricity.
To start, these do not represent existential threats to civilization in the way that climate change does. Not that we should ignore the local environmental costs to lithium mining, etc., but these things are small potatoes in comparison.
The best thing to do with old EV batteries is to reuse them for fixed storage. EV batteries do not just die, they gradually reduce in capacity. An EV might start to feel old if the battery is down to 70% capacity, but that’s no problem at all for a giant fixed battery bank backing up a wind farm. This is already happening; old batteries from Teslas and others have a great resale value. They’re the most valuable part of a wrecked vehicle.
Recycling of the materials is not yet where it should be, but it’s being worked on. The lack of end-to-end recycling shouldn’t be thought of as a deal-breaker, but it’s obviously a good thing. Old EVs just aren’t quite common enough yet for this to be in high demand. If 10x as many EVs are being sold as retired, and most of the latter are being reused, then most of the materials clearly have to be new.
It’s not wrong to go with an efficient traditional car today, but at the moment the only advantage is that they can be made very cheaply, while EV batteries are still pretty expensive. Comparing a Model 3 to, say, an equivalent BMW, the Tesla beats the BMW hands down. Compared to an $18k economy car, it’s a bit of a toss-up. I don’t think it’ll be a question in 5 years, though, so if you’re keeping your car for 20, the near-future EV will almost certainly beat it.
I should note that this is an extreme case–in actual practice, Tesla batteries rarely dip below 90% capacity even after 150,000 miles, and the degradation curve is very flat at that point. They are talking now about “million-mile” batteries.
We may see a point where used batteries appear in new cars. No one wants a car that’s been driven a million miles; every surface is worn out, from the paint to the seats. Not to mention that the styling and amenities are out of date. But if the battery is still at 98% capacity when the rest of the car is falling apart, they can just plonk it in a new body. This does assume that range increases have slowed down, though.
This is right in line with current ICE truck prices. A new crew cab diesel can easily top 80K. Granted, it’s not a base model, but the EV trucks aren’t that much more expensive.
actually … my circumstances have made 180º turn the past couple years … no longer live 75+ miles out. however, if i did … i’d have bought the tesla-3 early last year. so, as such … i clicked the option “get one eventually” … probably shoulda’ chosen “within five years” option. heck, might even be 'lectric scooter.
Currently drive a 2019 4Runner. Need it for the crazy amount of snow we get. Generally about 30 feet a year. Yes 30 feet. No garage, and really no good set up for recharging. I suspect that elec vehicles will be pretty good 4x4’s, but setting up a charger for them at my location is going to be very difficult at best.
Many new-build condos around here are fully rigged for EV charging. Or at least they set up all the necessary infrastructure but don’t actually have individual chargers installed. So the incremental difficulty of adding a charger is similar to doing so in a single family house’s garage.
Ref your second paragraph I went though a similar transition the other way. I had a real gas guzzler truck, but drove barely 2000 miles a year when I lived in the city. I took the light rail to work or entertainment & walked to most everything else. When gasoline spiked from $2 to $4.50/gal many people panicked and quickly sold off their Hummers, etc. Didn’t matter to me how bad my gas mileage was when I drove so little.
Then I moved to the edge of suburbia but my job did not. Suddenly filling that beast every 4-5 days got expensive. Time for a different vehicle.
Right now I drive barely enough annually that an EV makes any economic sense. And my only regular long drive is to work. With retirement looming during the life of maybe my current car and definitely my next car, choosing EV for the dollars makes little sense.
Choosing EV for the fun, and oh-by-the-way the greenery, makes some sense for me. If only the fun EVs weren’t quite so spendy. As you say, one of the side effects of retirement is reduced free cash flow.
Lotta folks in the houses near us have golf carts as second cars. Plenty good for the variety of stores, resturants, etc., available almost within walking range & our usually benign weather.
I’m not quite old enough that my next car is a Rascal, but that eventuality was part of choosing where to live. The car after next might well be.
I currently have a 2016 Prius. My former car was a 2004 Prius. I will likely keep my current car for at least 10 years.
I’m currently a tent camper, but in 2026 I may want to have a small trailer. In that case, maybe a RAV4 Prime may fit the bill.
My commute (non COVID) is 4.6 miles one way. In a year I bike to work about 25% of the time (sometimes 3 days a week, less often in winter so a plug in hybrid would work well. Thinking totally logical a pure EV (and perhaps renting when I go on longer trips) would work, but I’m not sure I can make that leap. Will see what is available in 2026.
My attached garage has only 110V, though a I do have a detached garage with 220, though parking in the detached garage isn’t easy (I have go through my attached garage, and right now the driveway in between is full of brush)
I’m a Bolt owner, and while I use that vehicle mostly for local trips, the Electrify America, EVGo, ChargePoint and other networks are filling in well, especially on the west coast. There are still some stretches in the Great Plains that require careful planning, but if I’m headed that way, I’m flying.
The Bolt certainly doesn’t charge as fast as Teslas (and that is literally my only complaint) but even so, 200 miles then a snack break is not a killer.
There are 5 Supercharger locations in Manhattan, 12 in Long Island, and about 30 locations in upstate new York. Most of them are 120-150 kW stations, so even something like a “full charge” shouldn’t take more than an hour.
This EV trip estimator puts charging time (With a new Long Range Model 3) from Buffalo, NY to Manhattan at 21 minutes (compared to almost 7 hours of on-the-road driving time), but it presumes you’ll be charging overnight at your destination (arriving with 10% charge left).
If you change the settings so that you arrive at Manhattan with a 90% charge, it estimates 58 total minutes of charging time.
“Eventually” as in “They’ll probably be the standard some day and have distance issues, etc figured out and adequate infrastructure but I’m in no rush and have no plans to get one.” I’m not opposed to them but they’re not on the table for me right now.
Put me in the eventually camp, as my current car has only about 40,000 miles in ten years of ownership, so I expect to continue driving it for a while longer. And I’d like to see EVs or PHEVs from more makes, including more cars in the $20-40,000 price range (before tax credits). My last few cars have been Hondas, so ideally I’d get a Honda EV but they said that they plan to make hybrids rather than EVs for the next few years.
My current wheels (Trek bicycle) are perfectly adequate for my needs. If I ever need a car, I’m sure to get an EV. Even though I don’t own a car, I follow EV news at a couple sites dedicated to EVs and renewable energy. Just keeping tabs on how the revolution is going.
A point someone brought up upthread: AFAICT, WV is the only state that still gets almost all its power from coal. There’s probably other sub-state areas that also only have coal power, but they’re becoming less common all the time. Coal power plants have been retiring left and right for the past 15 or so years and not being replaced with more coal. At first they were being replaced with gas plants, now more by renewables+storage. And it’s not because everyone has gotten environmentally conscious. The costs of wind and solar are less than fossil fuels. Laws in many states require the utilities to go with the lowest cost energy.
My commute used to be 1 mile and I would walk once or twice a week. Currently it would have been 5 miles. A plug-in hybrid definitely would have worked for me had I had a place to plug it in and did not take so many road trips. Actually, for my 1 mile commute, my regular Prius would have been great had they not borked the override buttons so I could tell it to not warm itself up: it would kick into electric mode just as I was pulling into the parking lot/driveway
A PHEV wouldn’t be so bad for road trips if it’s battery were entirely chargable with the engine/brakes instead of partially plug-in only chargable. Those mountains out west regularly completely fill my regular battery on the downslope. (And then of course by the time I am at the bottom of the mountain the oh-so-smart engine realizes that it hasn’t been on in awhile so it warms itself up instead of using the built-up charge.)
I have owned a 2019 Hyundai Kona EV for about 18 months now, up in frigid Manitoba… I have a 140 km round trip commute and in summer I can make two + commutes before charging but I plug it in every night, just to be topped up.
I get 365 kms range at 90% charge in summer and 230ish at 90% at -35 C in winter. At work, I park outside with no access to an outlet for a block heater and the car has next to no power loss due to that.
So far, I am very happy, and if I had to do a long road trip where I couldn’t hit fast chargers often enough, I would rent a gas powered vehicle. But, I am too old for road trips so not a major concern.
so a plug in hybrid would work well. Thinking totally logical a pure EV (and perhaps renting when I go on longer trips) would work, but I’m not sure I can make that leap. Will see what is available in 2026.