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Thank you

 

Would I also add the snacks and such I buy at gas stations to the other side of the equation?

 

Yes. Total journey cost. Lol

 

There is a solution to that then.

 

Its above really if you don't believe your own words, I can find them for you. If you understand statistics you would understand that the most miles you could possibly travel in all your long distance trips in a year has to be bellow the distance of all non electric miles done in a single road trip, and that would be a high overestimate. If you want I'll walk you though the math.

You are welcome to your own definition but bts defines long distance as longer than 50 miles per leg. They average just under 8 such trips per car, but the statistics are skewed towards shorter trips. Median is less than 200 miles round trip. If you understand that then most cars do less than 2 trips per year more 200 miles in each direction, and only a very small percentage of cars do over 600 miles in a round trip or circle trip. You have repeated that you are an outlier, and I really don't care about your individial statistics. Really early next year tesla will start shipping a 500+ mile bev but it will be expensive, mainly because not many people will want to buy it so it will be low volume using expensive technology. Within 3 years tesla, rivian, and nio will be making such cars.

Please list the distance of each of your five trips if you want any of us to care. Otherwise that really only should matter to you. If you look at stats just on the chevy volt which come from telemetry they range from (3.5%-100% electric miles). GM decided to discontinue because the bulk of their volt customers could do all their trips electrically in a 200 mile range bev. Still there are more phev choices coming and I would recommend you continue driving one instead of trying to convince those on this forum that your drives are typical and that the range of bevs is horrible, and we really need fuel cell phev, which IMHO is a really really dumb opinion. I'm not calling you dumb, but please try to look at some real statistics about what things cost.

 

In the US at least for tesla's they are quite affordable. Here is a recent example.

Tesla Supercharger Network Charging Cost: $70 From New York To Florida

Here the cost of supercharging was about $0.25/kwh or $0.06/mile on this trip but it is different in different states. Some states are more some are less. My gf recently rented a car to drive to see her dad in el paso, 580 miles on fast interstate (most of it is 80 mph (130 kph)). I had planned a trip in the tesla to do this, but I could not go at this time. It would require 4 stops totally 1:15 minutes and would have been much cheaper than the gas in the maxda cx-5 she had rented. Of course she only stopped for about 30 minutes on that trip. Our dog would have been happier with the additional stops. None of those superchargers have been upgraded to v3 yet, if they had all been then we are talking about 45 minutes little more than stopping for gas, food, and bathroom breaks, but it really would have been half an hour more... given it takes extra time to stop each time. YMMV and yes there are countries where charging is much more, and in the US the ccs (same system as europe) is more expensive since tesla is not paying for chargers in that system out of profits per car. When she came back she said she would never drive it alone again. I agree I'd rather fly on this trips.

 

Austin, I don't think you've correctly understood the difference between a trip and a leg.

My *trips* ranged from 900 miles to 3,000 miles. The longest *leg* was 560 miles, but that's not the problem. The problem is that there were two *sections* (more than one leg but less than a full trip) that were longer than 600 miles *between charging locations*. Several others were over 450 miles.

Every trip I took would have been possible in a 250 mile range EV if chargers were available in every town. But I went through many towns with no chargers and I stayed, in one case for 5 days in a row, in towns that had no place to charge.

So, as I said, 650 minimum and 800 ideal range miles with today's charging infrastructure.

There are two ways to solve this issue - battery breakthrough so we can have EVs with respectable range or increasing charging infrastructure by at least an order of magnitude, preferably two.

 

Interesting calculation. Let me do some digging.

I don't think solving the problem you as an individual has is high on anyone's priority list.
The higher priority is solving hurdles to driving electric for the majority of the potential market.

 

The vast majority of the market isn't interested in electric cars. The two biggest reasons are range and charging. That makes current EV owners the edge case, not me. Well, at least those unlike virtually everyone I know who owns one - they all own a conventional car for road trips and for exactly this reason.

 

Thank you

 

Source:

• 48:00 - summary of SuperCharger sessions
  • 5 days, 17 hours 40 minutes total time in a year and 60,000 miles
  • 21 minutes average duration

The 21 minutes, average SuperCharger session matches our experience on Tesla cross country trips. We charge enough to reach the next SuperCharger to minimize charging time and maximize charging rate. We also overlap charging with biology breaks.

Bob Wilson

 

New technologies always have an adoption curve.
The more expensive, and less frequently bought, the more time the curve takes.
There is a great illustration of the adoption curve of a number of products here: Adoption Curves Explained by McKinsey Alum | Examples & Best Practices



From the surveys I have seen, quite a few people are considering an EV when they purchase their next car.
Although they are were introduced a dozen years after hybrids, the market share of plug-ins is very close to eclipsing the market share of hybrids.

I would suggest the adoption of EVs is doing quite well, and will continue to do so for some time.

 

It could easily go the same way as hybrids if gas stays cheap.

 

Except the plug in adoption started and continued with cheap gas, and the cost of gas is going up; $2.99 for regular here.

 

So did hybrids. And the initial rapid growth stalled around the low single digits of percentage of sales.

If EVs are to become dominant, they have to be better in every way - including initial capital cost and ease of fueling/charging. Right now, they are much more expensive than conventional cars and they are only easier to fuel/charge if you charge at home and stay near home. Apartment dwellers and people who go out of town a lot are definitely at a disadvantage when it comes to the EV lifestyle.

 

2004 was the year the gen2 Prius arrived, and it had over double of the previous year gen1 sales. 2005 and 2006 saw double the 2004 annual sales, and Prius sales continue to rise through 2012. Then sales plateaued through 2015, before the steady decline. The increase in hybrid choices has kept the segment around the Prius highwater mark.

Gas prices had been increasing for two years when the gen2 Prius came out, and would continue to rise through 2008. There would be a brief dip before prices hit the high point from 2011 to 2014. Then they would go down to lower than that dip to what we have seen in the recent past.

Prius sales climbed with the rise in gas prices, and those were a large part of its success. The car had other good attributes, but these weren't any different than what the Matrix offered at the time. Only the Rav4 hybrid has come close to selling as many as the Prius in the year. Its sales are aided by Toyota forgoing the profit on selling AWD, and being the most powerful Rav4 available.
Toyota Prius family US car sales figures
U.S. All Grades All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices (Dollars per Gallon)

In 2010/11, the Leaf and Volt came out during that plateau of high gas prices. Neither one sold in numbers better than the gen1 Prius. The Model S came out a view years later, and also didn't sell better than the early Prius, but they were huge numbers for a car in that price segment. Many of the early BEV options were compliance cars, but people outside of California would try to buy them.

The greater number of choices early on than hybrids did help plug in growth, but it wouldn't be until the Model 3 that an individual model had Prius like success. It came out when gas prices were are at the relative low in the recent past.

High fuel prices will help plug in sales. It is why Europe is a bigger market for them than North America. Plug ins just have offered more than efficiency from the beginning, which is all hybrids offered.

Yes, the prices have to come down. I see two main reasons why those coming out aren't. The companies are following the 'Tesla model' of releasing high end BEVs first in order to grab quick profit. The other is that the public in general is still uneasy about them, so the BEVs need long range. 100 to 150 miles of range for a BEV is plenty for most people in this country. Few people in the public realize that, so there isn't much incentive to make and sell cheaper, short range models yet for the car companies.

The cheap car segment is a competitive one with tight margins. A company needs a large manufacturing base for the mass production advantages in order to be competitive. There is few companies with that for BEVs. Tesla is still a small car company in terms of production, and such growth takes time. VW is making the investment, and the short range ID.3 starts under $25k, pre-VAT, last time I checked.

Public charging is expanding. All the gas stations today didn't appear overnight, and it will take time for charger network expansion. Jeep and Rivian are planning chargers near off roading and camping sites. Addressing charger needs of those that don't have access to home charging means making changes in institutions(like building codes) outside of vehicles and roads.It can be done, and Europe might be doing better on that. We'd have to change our Level 1 and 2 AC EVSE design to make their solutions work.

For those with a single car, PHEVs are always an option.

 

Just a thought. Would the values have plateaued for Prius sales as many people kept their older models and haven’t upgraded yet (lockdown etc).
My experience was I only moved from a gen2 to a gen2 facelift after 2 years for an improved screen and satnav so more a features upgrade. I completely skipped gen3 and kept my facelift mk2 for 9 years.

 

If you were King, would you:

a) make Tesla put in Superchargers in all your favorite out-of-the-way spots (that will rarely get used and few will ever "see" them)
or
b) make them put in the same number, but in visually obvious places to help let everyone know EVs are here, thus encouraging faster transition to EVs by the masses

Second question. Same thing but for all non-Tesla chargers.

As King you can't pick any other choices.

Mike

 

Those aren't the only two choices so your question suffers from the fallacy of the false dilemma. The first one isn't even true. Both of my "out of the way" places are National Parks, by the way.

 

Here are my thoughts. UK based I must admit. Having pulled into many service areas with capacity for 2000+ cars and only 4 electric charging points in each. I quote Fleet (M3) , Leeds (M1) and Beconsfield (M25) in this.
As king I would have one electric charging point per parking space.