And price, and convenience.
> more convenient
No it's not. The lower range, low number of charging stations, and long charging times make it quite inconvenient for long trips.
I bought a used car 3 years ago for less than the cost Tesla charges for replacing the batteries on its car (which you are estimated to need to do after about 8 years). This car is a station wagon, so has much more storage space than a Tesla. I go camping every year, about 550 miles from where I live. I can make that trip in about 10 hours including food and gas stops. For the same trip, I would need to make at least two hour long charging stops at Supercharger stations along the way (if I had the highest-end battery option). But there are no Supercharger stations along my route; so I would need to find places to charge with ordinary power sources. If I used ordinary 10 kW 240 V sources, it would charge at a rate of about 30 miles of range per hour, effectively tripling the length of the trip; now what was a long 10 hour drive has turned into a 30 hour trip, which means finding places to stop and sleep overnight (which hopefully can give you a charge).
Furthermore, I live in an apartment, without a dedicated parking space. I need to park on street. So there's nowhere I could charge my car at home; I can't exactly run a power cord down and across the sidewalk to my car. Neither is there anywhere to charge my car at work. There's no way I could even use a Tesla for commuting right now, let alone longer trips.
With a gasoline powered car, I just fill up at any gas station, my car holds the gasoline overnight so it doesn't matter where I park, and for the above describe trip, I need to stop for gas once before leaving and once on the trip, each a 5 minute stop.
The Tesla Model S is an amazing car. But claiming that it's more convenient, or is a better car in every way but range, is a vast overstatement. It would be absolutely awful for me, and many other people with similar needs.
Some of these problems are solvable; there will be more Superchargers installed, the price will probably come down, there will probably be more electric vehicle infrastructure. But it's still a gamble to say that they will completely eliminate all of these advantages that a gas powered car has over an electric car, at least unless the price of gas spikes dramatically.
Obviously convenience is different for different people. The OP is probably someone who finds car maintenance very inconvenient and as the owner of a used station wagon I am guessing you are not. If you don't take frequent road trips and have the ability to charge at home, the Model S is indeed very convenient--never have to worry about fuel and hardly ever have to worry about maintenance.
But anyhow, I'm not claiming that there are no convenience advantages of a Tesla; just that there are also a lot of things that are quite inconvenient, especially if you don't have a driveway or need to take long trips. Claiming that the Tesla is better in every regard but range is vast hyperbole. For some use cases, it may be more convenient; for mine, far less.
Beyond that, the price is a major disadvantage; at 4 times the price of a new economy car for the entry level model, and twice the price of lower-end luxury brands, it's well outside many people's price range; and you don't even save that much because you're not buying gasoline, as the combined cost of electricity plus replacement batteries winds up being pretty close to the cost of gas you would pay for the same number of miles (depending on exactly how long the batteries last, and assuming that the relative costs of gasoline vs. electricity don't diverge too much; of course you could say that gas prices are likely to go up faster than electricity, but they may go down too).
Doesn't the maintenance bit kind of remain to be seen? It seems to me there are two factors working against each other there: the high failure rates in new product categories, and the low failure rates associated with a simpler engine. I don't know that you can say which will win out yet.
- No engine.
- No fuel system.
- No alternator, starter, or belts.
- No oil.
- Single speed transmission! No shifting,
no transmission fluid.
- No fuel system.
- Lower brake wear, thanks to regen braking.
Seriously, it's "safer, faster, roomier, more fun to drive, more convenient, etc," than "any other car on the market?" Really?
Some of that is true. But there's also a lot of opinion there and a few total inventions. The Model S is the safest car on the market? My Mercedes stops itself if I don't see traffic in front of me hit its brakes. It gives me night vision. It will nudge me back into my lane if I drift. There's about 100 more cool safety features I can talk about, and all this in a car that costs less than the 80kwh Model S. And there's even more safety tech on the S Class which is just another 10-15k on the top Model S price tag. And of course BMW and other manufacturers have similar.
I have a friend who turned that off after his car unexpectedly braked hard in traffic because a piece of paper blew across his lane.
Not to say it isn't a good feature. But it isn't perfect.
I'm not denying the Model S is a great package. It clearly is. It scores high on a number of features. But like in any complex market with lots of variables -- there are other choices. Even to go through GP's list: safer (Not sure what it has that is safer particularly?), faster (Not compared to M5, etc), roomier (My Navara carries more equipment, there are bigger sedans, tarrago, etc), more fun to drive (compared to a 911? Ferrari? ft86? LF-A? Lotus Elise?), has more storage (My Navara + Canopy wins here. Also Station Wagons etc), quieter (Nissan Leaf probably wins), more convenient (TO do what? Camping? Road Trip? Park overnight?), and less polluting (Nissan Leaf probably takes the cake here. Also - my Electricity comes from Brown Coal. It's about as polluting as Petrol/Diesel).
It's a bit like claiming the iPhone is better than every other phone in every way (except battery life). It's clearly not true. The Model S and the iPhone are great products - but "better in every single regard" is just pure nerd-bait.
He's not saying that these cars are better than the tesla at all things, but only in the things they make it a point to be beter at. Which should be immediately obvious if the OP wasn't resulting to hyperbole and a rather thin attempt at covering his bias towards this company.
It is not the safest, it is not the fastest, it is not the roomiest, it is not the most fun to drive, it does not have the biggest storage, I am sure some evs match its noise levels, it isn't the most convenient, it isn't the least polluting (I am sure the manufacturing process is more polluting than many cars even when considering the entire lifetime of the vehicle).
If you mean that it is the best overall, then that is very subjective and there are plenty of other candidates.
>Tesla is ahead of ALL other vehicle manufacturers...
If you mean with regards to electric cars specifically then perhaps, but with cars like the SLS Electric Drive[1] in production, I am not sure this is accurate either. If you mean in general, then that is ridiculous.
I love electric vehicles and I am looking forward to when they, hopefully, replace ICE vehicles but your comment is ridiculous. It is better to be realistic about the state of the technology.
I also suspect the majority of them will be sold to teenagers with fairly under-powered vehicles ;)
(Well, Tesla towing capacity is kind of crap I think, and it would be a poor choice if you street parked, drove to a far away location without superchargers enroute, etc.)
Tesla S is a great car, worthy of car of the year, great for many kinds of uses, and I really want one. But let's keep it real.
Electric vehicles will displace combustion vehicles. Everything that makes a car, the electric car does better.
Right now the electric vehicle market is small, but soon (one decade?) it will eclipse the combustion market. Tesla is ahead of ALL other vehicle manufacturers, and that lead will translate into significant market share. As the electric vehicle market grows, so will Tesla's value.