Jalopnik: Prius Prime

It is common for campgrounds to support L2 charging. KOA Carlsbad e.g. has 50A listed on their site, I presume 240v.

You do not want a BEV so you build windmills to tilt at. People who want a Tesla find it liberating -- even though they may have to network and google a little to use the car fully.

 

That's 90 miles round-trip from the caverns, and it's listed as 120V. A guy commented on Plugshare, "Had to rent RV pull through for 40 amp service. Ok with car/tent camping."

So, it's not exactly BEV-friendly.

I do want a BEV. I'm all-electric on my model airplanes, I do wind energy research, my degree is in EE specializing in power electronics and machines, and I hate using petroleum. The problem is, Ev vehicles need to actually do the same job as conventional cars, but do it better. They don't. Ranges are short, costs are high, charging rates are slow, and chargers are few and far between by comparison. To replace conventional vehicles they need to do *everything* better. That's how technologies in use shift.

The root cause of this problem is that batteries suck.

 

The thing is, many Tesla owners are not BEV pioneers.
If Lee were in Minneapolis, I would invite him to one of our Tesla club gatherings.
There are many people that just drive a Tesla because it is a nice car.
They love the performance, the convenience, the quiet, etc.

No doubt, he has driving requirements not suited to an electric car. But his insistence that everyone else will face the same issue gets tiresome.

Certainly some will, but many won't.

 

If *any* will, they can't replace all conventional cars. And they need to replace all conventional cars.

The disparity is, you think 90+% of people would be fine with one.

I say 90+% of people wouldn't be fine with one.

We agree that some fraction of society is fine without a conventional car.

Of the 10 people I know who drive cars that can plug in, all 10 either drive a plug-in hybrid or have a conventional car to supplement their Ev. The one person I know who went all electric (Leaf + Model S) quickly bought a conventional car to supplement.

 

This is incorrect, no where have I said I think 90% of people would be fine with one.
I am glad you agree that some fraction of people would be fine without a conventional car.

I don't see why you feel BEVs need to replace all conventional cars. Do you feel the same about hybrids? And because they won't do you feel they are a failure?

Please don't confuse lack of market penetration with a product not being able to meet the needs of the market.
Hybrids have less than a 3% market share, yet they are capable of serving the needs of 90% or so of the market, maybe more.

The plugin market is growing, and within a few years will likely surpass the market share of hybrids.

 

You use the word "most".

Because fossil fuels are a finite resource.

A plug in hybrid is what a Tesla should have been.

 

Does Webster's have numerical value attached to their "most" listing?

We can make ICE fuel renewably by several means if chose too. I think BEVs and PHEVs are needed to make 100% replacement of fossil fuels feasible.

A plug in hybrid is more complicated to build than either an ICE or BEV. It would have been an additional burden to success for a start up like Tesla. It didn't help Fisker out.

 

A series hybrid. Think a Tesla with 1/4 of the batteries and a Honda portable generator on board.

 

That was the original Volt concept. It was so successful you can buy one down at the corner for a competitive price.

Tesla is so right, they may even survive the age of trump.

 

I though the Volt was a hybrid with a large engine like the Prius. 1.5L, I think.

You don't think the fact that they are rotten cars has something to do with it?

Tesla is selling extremely expensive vehicles to rich people. Toyota is trying to sell reasonably priced vehicles to average people (or wealthy people who won't spend a ridiculous amount of money on a car).

How much less would a Model 3 cost with one-fourth the batteries? Competitive with conventional cars? And with a generator, it could have the range and re-fueling speed of conventional cars, and Tesla could have saved themselves the hassle and expense of the Supercharger network.

 

At manufacturer costs of $400/kWh, the BEV looked like an exercise doomed to $100k or commuter cars. At $100/kWh, retail costs of the BEV Vs plug-in are within spitting distance of each other and consumers choose based on other priorities. There is a lot to be said for not barreling down the road sitting behind an internal combustion engine. The ~ 400k reservations for the Model 3 is a clue to where a lot of consumer priorities lie and how they view long distance driving based on e.g. an expanding and improving SuperCharger network. There is little reason to doubt that battery prices will continue to decline and the otherwise simple (er) manufacturing and assembly of a BEV may well turn into a strong (overwhelming ?) competitive advantage. So Lee Jay's confident statements of what Tesla should have been are at best myopic and increasingly looking silly.

Speaking for myself, I placed a deposit for a Prime because I trust Toyota almost implicitly to stand behind their cars and I have extreme confidence in the Prius architecture to be reliable. In a sense this is a criticism of plug-ins since I do not consider buying any model other than Toyota. The Tesla may well have teething problems and I do not live anywhere close to a service center but in just about every other way a BEV is a future I can be happy to support and I just about idolize Tesla and Elon Musk.

As someone who also lives in fly-over country (and considerably more rural than either BWilson or Lee Jay,) I place my stake as someone considering a Tesla purchase in the next couple of years as a testament to either 1. being a fool; or 2. evidence of a bright future for BEVs and Tesla in particular.

Lastly, I am coming around to a notion I have resisted for a long time: once EV is experienced the ICE, despite its practicality, is just not very attractive on an emotional level. The mountain of stories from PHEV owners who bend over backwards to avoid ICE use for that last couple minutes of a trip are BEV wannabes.

Plug-ins are their own worse enemy. Amazing irony, that.

 

Around $5000 at the margin, although you would probably want to offset those savings with an ICE and assorted supporting components.

 

I enjoyed this post very much -- thanks.

There is no reason to dispute that Toyota Engineering sublimely balances the plug-in architecture for truly remarkable efficiency in fossil fuel energy use. And truly, if a plug-in owner is running a car at 100 - 150 MPG overall with emissions lower than the grid, that is a very reasonable place to be for the next decade. The problem Toyota faces down the road though is that combustion is ultimately pretty darned inefficient even at Prius Prime levels while electricity is cheap and will only get cheaper. And clean, when the world gets around to it. PV in my yard will result in 0.5 cents a mile fuel costs for my *EV driving, meaning too low to bother counting. And while that is certainly the low side of what is available today, it IS available today, to a regular Joe like me. And it will get cheaper and more widely available in the future. In a world where electricity is so cheap, a penultimate ICE is still a pig.

 

what we don't know is, how many of the tesla model 3 reservation holders consider it to be a good long distance car. likely some, but for all we know, none.

 

Also, especially with a lower proportion of ICE miles driven, biofuels become increasingly viable. There's not just ethanol, there's things like biobutanol (which is more compatible with gasoline ICE fuel systems, combustion characteristics, and IIRC has a better carbon footprint (corn ethanol barely breaking even on carbon footprint)) and (although packaging is an issue for a CNG system) biomethane.

EVs don't have to displace all ICE travel, they just have to displace most (assuming a car is used at all).

 

My ICE is preferably a plane, at least until trains or hyperloops are available.