I’ll try to clarify a bit of my thoughts on this topic. Rechargers will exist, but will be no more than a niche service. Tesla will have them as a marketing expense to get some ‘on the fence’ buyers to feel more comfortable with an electric car. There will be a few here and there to pick up stragglers who are taking unusually long trips.
Roadside charging stations/swap stations will not become ubiquitous gas station alternatives that solve the range problem for electric cars. There will not be a network of semi trucks carrying charged batteries to the swap station, there will not be rechargers on every street corner, restaurant, and mall parking space to top you off while you shop.
In Connecticut the Tesla Superchargers are at service plazas on I-95 and the Merritt Parkway (in Milford, Greenwich and Darien). So there are gas stations, convenience stores and fast-food places all located there. (Well, except for the Greenwich travel plazas, which don’t have fast-food outlets.)
My Walgreens (Zip 95833) has a parking space reserved for electrics.
It has a huge cable and plug.
Eventually, the electric will be the standard, and the gas will become the niche.
Once that happens, whatever can make a profit will certainly try its best.
Have you seen a large urban space with nothing but vent pipes coming out of the soil?
That was once a gas station with very leaky tanks.
Lots of people said the “horseless carriage” could never replace a good team of horses and a fine carriage. See the autos from the 1890’s and compare them to the most refined carriages of the same period.
The autos were less comfortable and less useful than even a buckboard with a padded bench.
One technology had a future, the other didn’t.
For those who love irony: the horseless carriage was viewed as the solution to the problem of urban pollution - namely, animal feces. Between the horses used for personal transport and the oxen used for heavy drayage, the Sanitation Department had its hands full.
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After 300 miles I can “recharge” in less than 10 minutes at any of the 168,000 stations in the US that sell gasoline. A Tesla still does 2/3rs -3/4 of that and takes three times longer to charge, provided you’re near one of the 500 rapid charges. They need to work on all three (range, charging time, and locations), to say nothing of price before it becomes revolutionary.
I don’t know what kind of cars you guys drive but 600-700 mile range seems ludicrous. I think my SUV and sedan gets like 250 miles on a full tank and my fun car probably gets less.
Tesla should sell the cars and lease the battery, that way you don’t give a crap which battery you get at the service station (kind of like propane tanks for your grill).
The owner of a BP station in Effingham, IL shares your line of thinking. He reached out to Tesla to get superchargers installed at his station, reasoning that while Tesla owners won’t buy gas they will buy snacks, soda, etc while waiting for their car to charge.
Charging at home is already revolutionary. I seriously don’t understand how people continue to fail to account for this. For all but a few outliers, the vast majority of the time you never have to visit a charging station. For most, this more than makes up for the time lost on rare road trips.
This isn’t my own speculation; it’s what the data (like the report that Cheesesteak linked to earlier) says. Trips over 50 miles are already rare, and those over 100 miles are extremely rare.
That’s not to say that Tesla shouldn’t continue to improve things. They can, and should, and will. But unless you’re a few standard deviations away from a typical driver, a 200+ mile car with access to a supercharger-like network is already a huge net win in total time saved.
I average 500km of mixed driving on a tank of gas for my smallish car.
Large diesel sedans / SUVs around here will be comfortable at about 900 -1000km per tank on “relaxed” driving (i.e 70-80 mph on the highway, no special car taken)
I regularly take 400-600 km road trips - at that sort of distance, a break for lunch in the middle would be enough if my car offered Tesla like electric performance.
Why does the range problem have to be solved? Let’s say 10% of the people need more than 300 miles per charge. That still leaves a market for the other 90%. I mean according to that logic, no one would ever own a Mustang in Colorado.
The amount you can charge from a roof-top solar panel is miniscule, compared to the power needs of the model S or probably even the 3. In the time it would take you to charge up enough to make it to the next wall socket, you could walk to town and call a tow truck.
And if it could handle a bigger battery, it’d have a bigger battery. 85 kwh is freakin’ huge; it’s 1,200 pounds of battery. Adding another 100 pounds as an emergency reserve isn’t going to help much.
Also bear in mind that the ranges listed by Tesla these days are after the chop 20-40% of total capacity, because when you charge it to “full”, you’re only charging it up to 80-85%, and when you drain it to “empty”, it’s still got 15-20% of a charge left. You can override both of these if you’re going on a long trip, which will extend the distance somewhat, but it’s at the risk of shortening the life of your battery.
Their original range on the Model S was 350 miles, but when people found out that was (a) driving from 100% full to 0% and (b) 55 mph with no accessories on, they called bullshit on that and Tesla has now revised their ranges downward to the numbers the average driver will see in the field.
Also bear in mind that the Model S can be a mobile hot spot, so if the battery runs low enough that you can’t drive, you should still have enough juice to call for a tow truck from your car.
To put some numbers to this, a roof-mounted solar panel could best case give you 500 Watts. To completely charge an 85 kWh battery, you’d need 170 hours at perfect efficiency. To get a 50% charge (just to get you to that final leg of your trip), it would take half a week. Realistically, more like a week for a half-charge.
That brings up another wrinkle, that particularly effects people who live in cold-weather areas. In a regular car, heat is free. You can run the heater all day without affecting your fuel economy. This isn’t the case in an electric car. That was probably a big part of that disastrous test drive in the NYC/Connecticut area a few years ago (where the Tesla ran out of juice and ended up having to be towed). It took place on a cold winter day, and like any normal person the driver had the heat turned up, with the result that the range suffered. (To be fair, there was also an issue with the driver deviating from the planned course, apparently to avoid traffic jams in NYC, but the weather & its effect on range was the elephant in the room that Tesla very subbornly ignored.)
I have a Volt, which gets 35 to 40 miles on a charge, and then switches to gas. 85% of my driving is electric only (I get a report every month). If I had a 100 mile range, i don’t think I’d ever use gas. Thus, a Tesla giving me over 300 miles would be perfect, in cold or hot weather. I will buy one as soon as I have the money.
My belief is that pure electric cars won’t be considered an equivalent replacement until you have super long range batteries. They will remain a niche product, though perhaps a sizable one, until they can be reasonably considered on par with gas powered cars in terms of range.
Wow, I never thought of that, though one of the big advantages of my Prius is that I only need to get gas every two weeks. But I’d love to avoid going to the gas station altogether. A fully electric car would be a great time saver.
Electric cars will remain a niche vehicle much like hybrids until the industry can surmount far more formidable challenges than range or battery life. For starters, addressing the 15.5 million trucks in the US, of which 2 million are large tractor/trailers, addressing the roughly 4 million motorcycles in the US, addressing the millions of Pickups, RVs, vans, off road vehicles, construction equipment, farm/lawn equipment. There are millions of vehicles that are not passenger cars that are standing in the way of electrics as a “revolution” to how Americans drive. Right now, all these are serviced by the same infrastructure for fuel. Anything that is going to replace cars will also need to address these to make any real impact. Until then, it is just a niche that will fit a few people and it will remain more convenient to purchase vehicles that share a fuel source.