For commuters with reasonable commutes of less than an hour each way, EVs make perfect sense. People living in the boonies commuting 2 hours each way...no way. I only use my car occasionally (a tank of gas a month) walking to work instead, so I'm not the ideal target for an EV.

What does the boonies mean? I drive 30 miles away from work and it takes me over 1 hour, sometimes up to 2 hours when something horrible has happened.

The newest generation, like the Bolt, gets 230 miles. Are you saying you are driving over 100 miles in each direction a day?

My dad used to work in grand gulf nuclear station but lived in Vicksburg. 42 minutes each way according to google maps. I thought he was crazy for doing it, but it felt much longer when I was younger.

So ya, you could do that with a bolt or tesla. I guess I have to redefine what I mean by boonies.

42 minutes could mean say 40 miles. That's near the upper level limits for a round trip without recharging for older generation cars like my Leaf.

The newer Leaf will make it with plenty to spare. Same with the BMW. Next generation Leaf coming up will go 200+ as well. So things are changing and costs are dirt cheap.

For most of my time owning my car, I charged only at work on the weekdays. It was free. Think I've personally saved over $8K in fuel costs total.

So for me, the total cost of ownership is around 27K. For an civic, I would probably be well above 30K by now.

Get an electric car if you can swing it. Total savings is great!

I use a tank of gas a month, if that even, and commute by foot. Electric car doesn't make sense for me yet, but maybe someday.

It would have been ironic if the nuclear plant my dad worked at didn't have electric car chargers. Well, I mean now, he retired a decade ago.

How often do people take a 'road trip'?

How often do people drive to work?

You only have to tow your boat to the lake a few times a month before commuting in a pickup truck is the best option.

You only have to go on a road trip a few times a month

Fielding a fleet of the minimum number of vehicles that do everything poorly is almost always cheaper than fielding a fleet of anything but the minimum number of vehicles. Throw the non-free parking that HN seems to love into the mix and it disadvantages specialized vehicles even further.

This is why crew cab trucks and crossovers/wagons are so popular.

FWIW, I've driven from Portland to Yosemite twice in a Model S and the charge times were no problem. At the time I had two small kids and their needs (food, bathroom, stretch) surpassed the charging time in all but one stop, and even then it was only an extra few minutes before we were ready to go.

A rental car for a week costs, for a comfortable four seater (Nissan Qashqai), 400€. Just factor that cost in.

Is that supposed to be cheap? You must be going on vastly more expensive road trips than I have ever been on.

Ever sit down and figure out the cost of taking your own vehicle: amortized cost, maintenance, extra expense of gas (versus driving EV) when you're not on a road trip, things like that? I'm not saying it'll come out to 400 Euros, but it ain't free.

If the EV saves that over the year, the total yearly cost still comes out below. Plus, you don't have the wear and tear of a long trip on your own car.

There are a lot of Tesla owners raising kids in the suburbs, and going on road trips. Totally fine if you don't want to be one of them.

I can't wait to be a hipster ICE collector.

Electric vehicles just feel and sound like shit. Auto racing is dead, for example, if we move to all electric. No more rib rattling exhaust, the wonderful smell of 2 stroke exhaust burping out of a bike, and the general feeling of driving seven thousand contained explosions every minute.

Electric may be nice, but it's boring as hell.

FWIW, I'm having a lot more fun watching Formula-e than Formula 1. It's the awful sound of current F1 cars, coupled with the Indy-like equality of Formula-e cars. Lots of overtaking, very competitive, very dependent on the pilot. Formula-e is proving to be quite fun.

I'll concede it's not F1, and I'll also concede that I'm a disgruntled ex-fan of F1.

I'm surprised you don't find it fun to be in an accelerating Tesla.

Sure, spectators at an all-electric NASCAR would keep their hearing, but the rest of the excitement would be there: the close calls, the crashes, the thrill of racing.

Horse racing is fun despite it not vibrating your seat.

Before a Model S, I owned a WRX. Both were a joy to drive. Like all cars, electric will have a mix of fun and boring. But I can promise you that instant torque and low center of gravity is not "boring" :)

There's already electric car racing, a couple of kinds, actually.

Lots of ICE cars with turbos already pipe fake engine noise into the car cabin, all you need is loudspeakers and a stereo.

Have you actually watched formula e? The race is so quiet and uneventful that they have a dj playing shitty edm music.

I am merely noting that it exists.

If I want to see an event with electronic music that might involve carnage, I watch SpaceX launches.

That problem is <2 years away from being 99% solved.