Electric cars can't compete against gasoline cars until the price hits about $6/gallon. And considering that crude prices are relatively low, but gas in CA is almost $4/gallon in the Bay Area, it doesn't take much time for normal rates to hit $6/gallon in the next 10 years or so.
At that price, it becomes more economic and that's the time frame probably what they're targeting as well.
no, we're taking Soothing30MinuteRelaxingBreaksAt200MileIntervalsAwesomeHappy™ brought to you by Tesla™ instead
It's there when I need it for the long road trip. But daily life is effectively refueling-free.
What percentage of round-trips are under 200 miles? NHTS recorded the distance from ~750,000 car trips in 2009 and found the 95th percentile is 30 miles, and the 99th percentile is 70 miles. Somewhere on the order of 1 in 1,000 trips needs a Supercharger stop along the way.
IF this is as good as they claim I don't see electric cars as worth it as a first car. They are slightly cheaper for an in-town only commuter car, but the downsides of electric cars (expensive battery replacement, limited range without long recharge times) are something that fans hate to acknowledge. Note that I said first car, once you have decided to have a second car electric is probably better.
With V3 Supercharging, you can drop in with your Model 3 at 15% and be at 80% in 24 minutes. In my road trip experience, that's barely enough time for everyone to use the bathroom and pick out a beverage. [2]
[1] - https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...
[2] - https://twitter.com/privater/status/1103567772301193216/phot...
So if you are starting the day with 95% charge, and ending the day plugged in at your destination with 15% charge, that means you can travel about 450 miles with just one ~20 minute stop to charge along the way.
How is that not fast enough? The only issue is if you can't plug in at your destination. Maybe in that case you have breakfast near the next Supercharge on your route.
Yes, it is something you might have to think about for a minute. The guidance software will map out Supercharging stops for you.
I do expect that they will figure out a reservation system which tracks and queues vehicles en route, like an air traffic controller, to cut down on inefficient ad hoc queueing at the location.
It would be super fun to program such a system, backend and front. Even more so as the cars become increasingly autonomous.
For now at least you can click on the map and see live how many chargers are in use.
You can wait around for 12h to charge, or you can turn in your cores and pay for 100% capacity batts now. And the swap would be quicker than standing around filling up a tank.
But no. Each ev is different and proprietary. The chargers aren't even the same.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1090933_standardized-el...
So swapping batteries is hard to do, and unnecessary for most drives. Sure, you’d want to be able to swap batteries in five minutes like pumping gas. But who’s going to ship batteries out to the middle of Kansas, build infrastructure, and pay technicians just for people on a road trip who want to swap batteries?
But you’d still need to have expensive batteries in stock on location, technicians and equipment. I can’t see that ever being done at scale.
For day to day use EV doesn't need trips for gas station to refuel - so you actually save time.
For long trips - yes.
Because I keep track of my mileage and have to carefully babysit the process (likes to overflow) I’d say I lose at least 10 minutes every time I get gas, and that’s every 130 miles or so.
Only 130 miles? Is that normal? My car can easily go 600 miles on a 15 gallon tank (diesel), but I've had it for so long I don't remember what other cars are like.
Now I'm curious how long it actually takes. Next time I fill up I'll time it.
And the national average (today) is $2.95, you might as well compare Hawaii and Alaska which are also economic islands.
>it doesn't take much time for normal rates to hit $6/gallon in the next 10 years or so.
The national average 10 years ago was $2.45, which is $2.90 accounting for inflation. The only way gas hits $6 is if we have a second Great Inflation or massive political changes in the United States and abroad.
By that measure, Florida or Oregon would be economic islands due to their anomalous taxes.