Many normal ICE cars only get 350-450 miles of range which also drops significantly when driving is dominated by heavy acceleration or even highway driving > 70mph.
This "writer" has no room to criticize writers.
This "writer" has no room to criticize writers.
And the Supercharger that refuels your Tesla in 5 minutes is ... where?
Tesla piloted their battery swap program over a year ago, where you could swap out your battery for a fully charged one in under 2 minutes. You'd get all your range back faster than you could refuel a gas car.
Want to know what happened? No one used it. Because no one cares about refueling in under 5 minutes if a supercharge station takes 15 - 30 or you can just plug in at home. It's literally not a thing people (in general) care about.
I don't know how to phrase this any other way. NO. ONE. CARES.
If: you had pre-made an appointment, first.
And: you paid to use it.
And: you ignored the fact that the pilot program was only in one location, and that location was meant solely to service SF-LA drivers on I-5, but was 15 miles from the freeway, so 2 minutes, plus a 45 minute round trip).
And: you ignored the chargers across the street from the battery swap program.
This is pretty disingenuous. If I was Elon Musk and I wanted to prove how little people "cared" about the time of a "2 minute battery swap", all of the above variables are pretty much how I'd set my pilot program for guaranteed failure.
Source: http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/
Tesla's official marketing has a 10% to 80% charge at 40 minutes, and 10% to 100% at 75 minutes. https://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
For a 90 kWh battery. I guess the Model 3 will have a smaller battery and less range, but practically speaking, filling up from empty is 5 minutes with Gasoline, and 75-minutes with the Supercharger (all the way to 100%)
You can get more efficient by filling up only to 80% charge over 40 minutes of charging... but that's still very far away from your claim of 15 minutes.
The author acts like this is a huge deal. As if every Tesla driver will be filling up their Tesla at a supercharger as often as every other driver fills up their car at a gas station. It seems like a very minor point to most. 400 miles is about the limit of what I'll drive on a road trip, anything more than that I'll take a plane. So if I had a Tesla and I took a vacation once a year within 400 miles, it would mean spending 0 minutes filling up my car for 51 weeks out of the year, and adding an extra hour on each end of the trip. I'd probably be annoyed at the delay if it didn't coincide with a meal but it would probably just remind me how awesome it was that I never have to stop the other 51 weeks..
But I'm still concerned about this long-trip thing, especially because long-trips mean that I'm away from the infrastructure that I've built up myself. (Is there a 240V charger at the hotel I'm staying at? or is it only 110V which only charges ~20 miles overnight in 8 hours?? Reports are 3mi / hour charge times on 110V. https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/charging-110v-ou...)