The author also fails to mention the most appealing aspect of the car for the performance oriented: instant torque. After getting a Model S, I could never go back to the days of gears (even manually controlled gear changes are sluggish in comparison).
> I’m the “shit talker” for boggling at the idea that people are going to be happy about waiting around for half an hour to forty-five minutes to get back on the road again? We’re talking waits-to-get-going that are 150 times the typical 5 minute refuel with a gas-engined car.
Yeah I'd balk at a 12.5 hour wait time too.
Tesla claims 170 miles after 30-minutes of "super-charging". I think it is fair to say 30-minutes of super-charging is a fair amount. 40-minutes of charging goes from 0% to 80%, while it will take 75 minutes total to go all the way to 100%.
If you argue against these numbers, you're arguing against official Tesla marketing... so you better give me a good citation why supercharging is only 15-minutes.
Maybe the typical supercharging stop is only 15-minutes because that's all the patience people have. In any case, they're not getting a full charge in 15-minutes.
So 15 minutes gets you 85? 90?
Versus 3-4 minutes getting me 450 miles in my Audi, for example.
So the complaint is that the article implies that every 3-4 hours you might need to stop for 30-45 minutes, while the reality is that every 1.5-2h you might need to stop for 15 minutes? (assuming there's a supercharger there)?
Not sure that's better.
Also not sure that you can correlate "how long an average driver uses the Supercharger for" with use cases, as those are unknown. Do they need a boost to get home? Or are they more content with stopping every 90 minutes on a longer trip?
Unless you're driving cross country, the super-charger network isn't a major issue. Unfortunately, most people I know drive cross country at least once a year (beach trips across State lines, vacations, etc. etc). So its definitely a concern.
I think a pure electric vehicle makes for a great commuter car, since you charge at home and never have to go out to a gas station.
But for long trips, the lack of gas stations becomes a flaw, as opposed to an asset.