I live in Massachusetts, and I regularly visit my parents in Maine, which is about 270 miles away. There are no Superchargers along the route, at my parents' house, nor indeed anywhere in Maine. I also live in an apartment, and there is no electric car charging here, so I'd probably have to frequent the local Supercharger to keep it topped off.

The "etc" covers things like not having physical controls for adjusting the climate and sound systems, as well as a generally substandard interior for a $100K car. Not dealbreakers per se, but factors that leaned me away from considering the car.

I don't know if I'm in the minority here, maybe I am. Maybe most people own a house with a garage and never take road trips further than 250 miles (or own a second car with which to do so), but I'm not one of those people. I suspect, though, that there's more of us than you might think.

If you can charge at your parents' place (a dryer outlet would do fine) then you should be good to go in that respect. Maybe wait until the Seabrook, NH supercharger is done so you can top up on the way, since 270 miles one way is pushing it. Or buy the CHAdeMO adapter and patronize one of the stations in Portland. CHAdeMO isn't as fast as a Supercharger, but it's fast enough to be a practical bridge for road trips.

Lack of charging at home is a big problem for sure. I would not buy a Model S if I couldn't charge it where I lived. Many apartment building owners are amenable to installing chargers, but many aren't.

Note that you don't necessarily need a garage, just dedicated parking somewhere reasonably close to electrical infrastructure. Houses with at least carports or driveways are pretty common places to live.

"Never take road trips further than 250 miles" needs a strong amendment. "Never take road trips further than 250 miles where charging can't be done at the destination and you're outside the supercharger network and away from CHAdeMO stations." Sure, it happens, but it's pretty rare. If you're staying within the Supercharger network, or you stay within one-way range and can plug in at your destination, then trips over 250 miles are no problem.

I don't know if I'd amend that statement that far. Even if there's a supercharger on the route, we haven't yet talked about the time required to let the car charge back up for the remainder of the journey.

If you're on a 400 mile road trip, you can drive the first 250 or so on a fully charged Tesla, but then you'll need to stop for a half hour at a Supercharger and let your car charge up to get the remaining 150 miles. If there's no Supercharger around and you need to stop at a conventional EV charger, be prepared to wait an hour or more.

Because of the non-trivial time increase once you go beyond the initial range of the car, I know I'd be less likely to want to take trips beyond it, even if they were technically doable.

OK, then add "and take reasonable breaks" to the amendment.

Stopping for 20-30 minutes every 150 miles or so isn't a burden for most people. Some people really like to push. But you really should be stopping that long, that often, regardless of what you're driving. People don't always do it, but they should.

As I mentioned in a comment elsewhere, the impact of charging time really depends on what you do in that time. If you can time your charging to coincide with a meal, for example, then the actual penalty from charging is zero. If you're doing a 400 mile road trip and you can make your supercharging stop your lunch stop, then you'll lose less time to charging than you'd lose to filling the tank of a gas car. Obviously that's a big if and it's not at all guaranteed, but the point is that this isn't an absolute, and "30 minutes to charge" shouldn't be thought of as being the equivalent of "30 minutes to fill the gas tank."

Personally I love long trips in the Model S. Part of that is just because the car is extremely comfortable and easy to drive, which makes long trips much less tiring. I'm sure that would come with other cars in that price range too, so not something that's exclusive to Tesla. The extra charging time has not so far been at all an issue. I've made three trips beyond the range of the car in the six months I've had it, and my total time spent waiting for the car to charge is zero. I'm sure that will start to become non-zero when I want to do, say, 500 miles in a day, but I still look forward to longer trips in it more than I did in my previous cars.

People with situations like yours (bad parking situation, like to drive long trips along unpopular routes) sure like to complain about it on HN. Not sure if it adds anything to the discussion about the customers Tesla needs to convince to make them successful in the next year or two.

BTW, different people have different likes and dislikes about car interiors.

Sounds like you should buy a car you like.

Of course. I fully recognize that the Tesla is a great car for a lot of people. I take issue, though, when those people start saying that it's so much better than other cars, pointing out the ways in which the Tesla is better but ignoring the ways in which the Tesla is worse.

Ways in which it's worse: range.

Interior is debatable and subjective. The only concrete thing where it's worse is range. And everybody acknowledges that as far as I can see.

The problem is that a lot of people don't understand how the stuff works, and imagine that the ways in which the Tesla is worse are much worse than they really are.

Edit: range and price, actually. But everybody mentions the price too. Don't mistake "nobody mentions the flaws" with "everybody mentions what flaws there are, there just aren't that many flaws."

Here are the downsides that I see. Maybe not all of these are downsides for you, but they are things that might prevent people from buying one as their only car:

    - price
    - range
    - needing to have a charging port at your residence
    - charging time
    - charger availability

Some of these are related. If refuel time and fuel availability were improved to be comparable to gas cars, range wouldn't be a big issue, and people wouldn't need to have a charger at their residence. If range improved to, say, 500 miles, then charging time and charger availability would become less critical.

That's reasonable. Just a matter of what you consider to be the root cause, I suppose.

I will note that general availability is extremely good, but it's availability of fast charging that is currently somewhat problematic. If you're patient, you can charge just about anywhere. If you count 120V exterior outlets (and why not, they do work, just slowly) then there are a lot more places to charge an EV than fill a gas car in the US. If your average daily driving is under 50 miles then you can get by on that, although I wouldn't recommend it if there are alternatives.

And do you find that such postings lead to productive discussions? Because it causes the same discussion every time. And every car has both pluses and minuses.

>"With a normal car, you have to worry about how much gas you have, when and where you'll stop to fill up"

Okay, people might exaggerate "range anxiety" on the Teslas. But you're definitely reaching here: when and where to fill up a gasoline car? How about 24 hours a day on almost any street corner in the country. Running out of fuel isn't even on the radar.

I drove gas cars for about two decades, and owned them for about one decade. I've only been doing the EV thing for about half a year. So it's not like I don't know what I'm talking about here.

No, it's not a particularly big deal, but it's a constant low-level refrain. If I'm leaving in the morning for something time-sensitive, do I have to build an extra ten minutes into my schedule for a gas stop? What if I haven't been paying attention and discover fuel is running low when I'm on the highway and the next exit is in 20 miles? What if I pick the wrong street corner and get gouged? (The closest gas station to my house charges $2.49/gallon right now. While driving this morning I passed a station not too far away that charges $3.49/gallon.)

Filling up your gas car from time to time is not difficult. But it is something you have to think about from time to time. If you don't think about it, you'll occasionally find yourself having to make an unscheduled stop somewhere. It's small but non-zero. An EV is easier.

I don't think it's a particularly big deal. It's a nice convenience to have, but it wouldn't make or break the decision for buying a car. But I think it's a useful counterpoint to people who talk about how difficult or inconvenient charging is. 99% of the time it is easier than gas.

What if you haven't been paying attention and discover your batteries are running low when you're on the highway and the next exit is in 20 miles? What are the chances you'll be able to find somewhere to charge before your car stops?

Also, just like how you charge your Tesla every night, I think most gas-powered car owners keep an eye on their fuel and will fill up the night before if they don't have time to stop in the morning. That's really a non-issue as well.

Yes, owners of gas-powered cars will need to make impromptu, unscheduled stops to fill up, but EV owners have to constantly be planning in advance to know that they'll be able to hit the next charging point, because if they don't make it their car is going to be making the rest of the journey on the back of a flatbed truck.

A Tesla requires more forethought and effort for long trips. I won't dispute that.

But my point is that for a gas car, getting gas and not running out of a gas is a constant thing even when you're not on a long trip.

When I had a gas car, every so often I would get in the car ready to drive 60 miles out to the countryside or something and realize, nuts, I need to get gas on the way.

I never let this happen to myself, but I see friends suddenly realize they need to stop and get gas while on a local drive of maybe 40 miles round trip.

And even if you're on top of things and never let it happen, you're still spending a few minutes every week filling up the car.

With an EV, for any trip that's within the range of the car, it's zero effort and zero thought. EV owners definitely don't have to "constantly be planning in advance." For 99% of drives you don't have to even think about it. Just unplug and go. For the 1% of the time you're making trips, then you have to think about it.

My point is simply that the EV isn't worse in this way, it's just different. It's a tradeoff. If, like most people, you mostly do local driving with very occasional road trips, the EV will be less effort overall, not more.

Does "not paying attention" include ignoring the Tesla warnings that you're low on charge, based on your battery level and the distance to nearby charging stations? It's connected to the nav system and knows your route, too. Pretty spiffy.

I don't know, I was using mikeash's phrasing to create a comparable situation. In reality, most cars, including the Tesla, alert you well in advance of running out of fuel so neither case is likely to happen.

A typical car will alert you when you have about 40 miles left. It's not too hard to find yourself in a situation where it's more than 40 miles to a gas station, although it is unlikely.

A Model S will alert you when you're about to drive out of range of known charging stations. If it's 100 miles to the next charging station, it'll start to bug you when you have something over 100 miles left. Not quite the same.

But my point here is, of course, more about the fact that you have to make ~50 (depending on how much you drive and what you drive, obviously) trips to the gas station every year even when you're just local, and thus gas-based range anxiety, while small, is ever-present. In an EV, it's not present at all when local.

Driving at 1 AM from Plattsburgh, NY to Albany, NY, I did worry about whether I would run out of fuel. Including seeing an exit sign for a gas station, and driving a mile out the exit only to find it was closed, only to turn around and get back on the highway with fuel running low.

Driving from Youngstown, Ohio to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania at 1 AM, I also worried about running out of fuel.

People I know who travel across Wyoming, Nevada, South Dakota etc. say it is worse out there.

Fuel is not available 24/7 on every street corner of the country. On Route 95 from Portland, Maine to Miami, Florida it is to some extent. But go a little off the beaten track and it is not.

True, even gas stations don't have 100% coverage, but it's much, much better than EV charger coverage. Imagine you had a Tesla that was running out of power in those situations you mentioned: do you think it would have been easier to find a charging station that it was to find a gas station?

Yes. Every house has electricity. People would look at you funny, but it can be done.