What? They compete today with significantly lower fuel cost. You see 100+ mpge on every electric car I know of today, you're looking at half-1/3 the per mile cost in an electric car. That more than makes up for the higher upfront cost over the lifetime of the vehicle, with cars you can go buy right now, today.

And that doesn't even take into account the superior UX.

I don't know why you got down voted on this. My experience of EV vs ICE (sometimes in the same vehicle - daily driving in a Prius plug-in) agrees entirely with your comment: the lovely EV experience of linear, quiet acceleration is so pleasant compared to driving a petrol car, even an automatic. And my Prius in EV mode isn't even a that great an electric experience compared to that of an i3 or 2018 Leaf.

ICE cars cant compete with convenience of: * not needing to refuel * less maintenance needed * not spewing particulates in air etc (if you care about what you breathe)

* not needing to refuel

no, we're taking Soothing30MinuteRelaxingBreaksAt200MileIntervalsAwesomeHappy™ brought to you by Tesla™ instead

I don't know about you. I've driven the last 5 months / 5,000 miles without using a Supercharger once, except for the first day I took delivery just to try it out.

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.

[1] - https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips

I go on vacation a few times a year. Renting a car just for that is more expensive than extra cost of fuel. Not to mention most rental cars won't let me use my truck as a truck (putting rock in the back damages the bed, and a trailer is right out - both things I do only a couple times a year but I still own a truck for just those few times).

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.

Battery replacement is not really a factor under any kind of "normal" use. One Tesla owner driving for Tesloop was able to burn out a battery after extensively (exclusively) Supercharging from low charge to 95-100% charge after about 350,000 miles. Maintenance cost over that time was calculated as $0.05/mile. [1]

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...

Interesting stats on the battery replacement, but if my family/youth groups/etc. routinely took 20+ minutes for a gas station bio break, there'd be words. Especially if we had to do it every 150 miles (80-15%).

I go both ways on that one. On the one hand I want to get there. On the other hand my doctor wants me to get out and take a 10 minute walk every hour anyway.

Also worth mentioning that 65% of the LR Model 3 is over 200 miles.

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.

How long are you waiting in line to get a chance to charge? I've been driving with my friend with a Tesla and he visited 2 places before giving up because the line was too long.

I wouldn’t know, I’ve only gone the one time.

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.

Bizarre comment. Being able to quickly refuel is one of the key advantages internal combustion engines have over electrics.

Depending on your assumptions.

For day to day use EV doesn't need trips for gas station to refuel - so you actually save time.

For long trips - yes.

But nobody makes trips to the gas station to refuel. Re-fueling is something that's done on the way at a convenient gas bar, and typically takes only 2–3 minutes.

I’m very skeptical about 2-3 minutes. Maybe if you disregard lost momentum and don’t keep track of your mileage or wait for a receipt or have to go around once or twice to find a spot or...

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.

Well, the speed depends entirely on how fast the pump is. Some are faster than others, but I never have to wait for a spot, and printing a receipt takes 5 seconds. Maybe diesel pumps are faster? I sometimes use the truck pumps at freeway service centres, and it comes out like a firehose.

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.

No, 130 is definitely not normal. Theoretically I can go 200, which itself is pretty terrible, but my fuel pump sensor is shot and I just prefer to play it safe.

This is accurate in my experience. Pay at pump takes ~2.5 minutes for the whole process. I note mileage and reset OBC when I do this - included in the time. I typically buy around 50 L.

But A small Gas station can refuel several cars in that 10 mins

If the ev car companies got their shit together, they could have used swappable battery packs.

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.

I mean the battery technology for EV companies is their special sauce. If they are all the same that takes away their differentiator. I agree it would be better for customers but it's understandable why that isn't something they want to do.

Much like swappable batteries in a smartphone, there are tradeoffs to such a scheme. And an electrical “pump” is vastly simpler to implement than something that would allow swapping out a car-sized battery.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1090933_standardized-el...

Swapping an EV battery is like swapping an ICE transmission. You can do it if you have a car lift and a scissor jack to drop it.

Sure, but one can argue that a EV could be designed/optimized for faster battery replacement. While it would still need at least a forklift to move the batteries, I believe the time needed for battery swapping could be greatly reduced with a proper design.

I’d much rather have an EV optimized for efficiency, battery endurance, etc. given that battery swaps would only really be useful for long distance road trips.

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.

Tesla did that for a while. They abandoned the plan. Batteries are big and heavy. It turns out to be far more important that engineers have the ability to fit them around the other parts (suspension...) than the ability to swap a standard battery.

Yep, the batteries are ridiculously heavy and they’re used as structural elements in the car.

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?

> gas in CA is almost $4/gallon in the Bay Area

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.

That's very US centric though. It's already much higher where I live (Vancouver, just minutes from the US border): $1.70 CAD/L ~= $4.80 USD/gal. I don't think $6 is far off at all in many locations.

Gas is currently about 1.56€/liter ($6.6 per gallon) in Finland.

That doesn't make it an economic island by any means. This is simply due to regulations that virtually only affect gas prices.

By that measure, Florida or Oregon would be economic islands due to their anomalous taxes.