You can get a base model 3 today with 263 to 353 miles of range. That's upwards of 3-4 hours of driving with no breaks. Stop to take a break at a super charger for 30 minutes and you can do another 3-4 hours.
How is this still no practical especially combined with all the time and money they save not having to do most routine maintenance.
Model 3 owner here. In practice, I stop every 1.5 to 2 hours on road trips for a 10-20 minute charge. You're never going to realistically charge to 100% and drive to 0%. Staying in the 20% to 80% range is ideal for fast charging purposes and some breathing room in case of emergency.
Standard or long range? To me, this seems pretty close to being practical. Driving for 2 hours and then stopping for 10-20 minutes is about where I'd prefer to be on long trips.
Mine's long range and I find it to be pretty practical. I definitely stop more often than I did in my ICE cars but it doesn't bother me to be forced to stretch my legs, use the restroom, and watch a bit of Netflix in the car or play on my phone.
Edit: On the plus side, charging at home at night every evening is really nice compared to a weekly gas station visit.
My TM3 SR+ (USA made in 2019) latest supercharge was 10 minutes to add 17 kWh going from just under 20% to 54%.
Charge started a 143 kW (on a 150 kW unshared charger) and I ended it 10 minutes later while it was at 80 kW. This was enough to drive 130km to home (non highway) with about 20% battery left so 130 Wh/km.
When I travel on highway I stop at all superchargers, they're usually 1h to 2h of highway driving apart in my country (France), so similar experience.
2 hours is only like 100 miles of driving. Wouldn't it make more sense to run the battery down further, since charging is faster at a lower state of charge?
That also depends on passenger weight, or if you're hauling something. The new electric trucks plummet on mileage if they are carrying weight. I understand that gasoline vehicles do the same thing, but not at such a steep rate.
I don't think a lot of commenters here have much experience living in rural environments.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the ability to repair the vehicles.
All vehicles plummet in range pulling heavy loads at high speed. You notice it more in a vehicle with careful range estimation, and slower refuling. If you need to drive 600 miles a day pulling a heavy trailer, EVs don't work for you right now. Similarly my wife's Toyota Camry does not work for that either.
EVs have less than 20 moving parts in their drivetrain. Scheduled maintenance is brake fluid every few years (as it absorbs moisture over time), cabin air filter every 2-3 years, and tire rotations (~7k miles) and replacements (as needed). Brake pads and rotors under normal duty cycles should last the life of the vehicle due to aggressive regenerative braking (at least that's what Tesla is seeing).
It's possible that they do last longer, but the track record is not there yet. There are a lot of Toyota vehicles with over 1M miles, you can look up high mileage Toyotas for sale. That does not yet exist with Teslas. I have heard (not first hand) of Tesla having some quality problems, so immediately jumping to the conclusion that they are future proof seems like a mistake.
> but electric cars seem vastly simpler from a mechanical perspective.
The electric motor is simpler than an ICE, yes.
OTOH, a modern (and by modern I mean anything in the last ~30 years) ICE engine is supremely reliable, so it's a wash.
Most repair time isn't from having to fix the engine or motor anyway, it's the whole rest of the car.
We have a a Fiat 500e (EV) now sitting it's fourth week (not continuous) at the dealer to get window regulator problems fixed. Those types of problems have nothing to do with whether the car was an EV model or the ICE model.
Mechanically simpler, but (at least in Tesla's case) can be harder to get replacement parts for. Obviously their repair network isn't going to be as complete as a more established brand, but it doesn't really sound like they're prioritizing repairability at all.
Fair point. Unfortunately it's a trend I've already seen over the last decade with battery-operated power tools, and they-re a simplified and scaled-down version of electric car drivetrains.
Pretty much all modern brushless power tools, while mechanically simpler than their brushed cousins, require a full motor and control module replacement when something as simple as the switch fails.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that electric propulsion is the future for efficient transport and that gas isn't a long-term solution going forward. It just seems to me the marketing and hype have gotten ahead of the current offerings, and I worry the 'scrap it and get a new one' approach employed often by tech companies will end up being applied to cars as well.
> The new electric trucks plummet on mileage if they are carrying weight.
Source? Supposedly the F-150 Lightning numbers are including 1000 lbs of cargo. So a full cabin of people still supposedly getting the stated 300 miles on a full charge (For the extended range.)
"Applying these results to the F-150 means that towing a modest trailer would put the highway range at roughly 100 to 125 miles, depending on the pack. Towing anywhere near the 10,000-pound maximum rating on XLT and Lariat models (with the maximum trailer tow package and extended-range battery) at highway speeds, we believe you'd be hard pressed to exceed double-digit miles."
Ohhh there was this YouTube video (from Motortend?) showing a model X in tow that had a drastic reduction in range when towing a trailer.
Now compare that to the LandCruiser that we haul race cars with…
the LC always gets 14 mpg, we have filled it with 6 adults going to Tahoe, same MPG. Haul a 2700lbs sports car. Doesn’t change at all.
Honestly an EV would be nice for hauling stuff to the track, hopefully with the race car, and equipment it can make it to Willows on a single charge, at least the track has RV hookup points, can charge while you race.
> Now compare that to the LandCruiser that we haul race cars with… the LC always gets 14 mpg, we have filled it with 6 adults going to Tahoe, same MPG. Haul a 2700lbs sports car. Doesn’t change at all.
This is physically impossible unless the LandCruiser is just throwing energy away when empty.
What's more likely is that this estimate is not very precise.
It is believable. Towing is more about wind resistance than about mass. A car on a trailer is probably sitting mostly in the slipstream of the LC (they are not very aerodynamically shaped) and so not contributing much to the total wind load. Also engines to a point become more efficient under load. All told, there probably isn't a noticeable difference.
Of course we are talking about towing a light sports car here. Tow a different type off trailer, or a very heavy load and the losses will start to catch up.
In addition to wind drag, the additional weight contributes to the acceleration work required by the engine. This acceleration is occurring during cruise speeds as well as starting from rest (you can tell because your car engine is louder during cruise speeds than it is while the car is idling from rest.) Anything towed or carried contributes to the weight of the car which means the car is accelerating more weight. The curve isn’t perfectly linear with additional weight, as you noted, but the reduced MPG is measurable with a number of passengers in the car, let alone a towed car. A reduction of only 10-25% mileage might not be noticeable to a less observant driver but that isn’t to say it’s effectively the same.
Considering the LandCruiser is pretty much a box with maximal air resistance, it might actually get more aerodynamic by adding the trailer to it :p. So the difference while trailing would be much smaller than adding a trailer to an aerodynamic car. Energy consumption when trailing with constant speed is mostly about aerodynamics.
Well, give it time. As combustion vehicles are outlawed [1] and billions of dollars are poured into charging stations [2], early adopters will pave the path to get to the future you want. I've driven over 50k miles cross country in the US on Superchargers [3], and it's a pleasant experience using them and works for us (most of the time the car is done charging before we're done with our pit stop or grocery shopping). Happy to help drive forward innovation as a consumer (being the squeaky wheel demanding charging infra from any business I interact with that'll listen). See you in the future!
(i am also advocating with policy makers to outlaw new petroleum filling station permits/infrastructure, but that is a topic for another thread. i am applying YC startup school lessons to public policy efforts. please excuse the dust while the electrification of transportation ramps)
I think the charging situation is incredibly overrated. This really only matters for long trips. If you are someone driving 200-300 miles daily, it might be an issue, but at at the same time I can't imagine driving that long to stop for 30 minutes.
If you commute like most Americans (26 minutes), then you just charge at home and never think about it. I don't think people realize that most Telsa owners don't use public chargers.
Which is no problem, if it only takes 5 minutes to fill up. But when I use a route calculator from Tesla, it schedules two charges (one 45 minutes the other 20 minutes), to get to my in-laws. At places where I don't want to stop. There are, apparently no super-chargers between Cincinnati and Indianapolis. Do you know how many gas stations there are on that route?
Right now I can choose what I want to eat, find one of those restaurants and fill up there. You can't pretend as if the opposite (planning around where my car wants to go, and eating what happens to be there) is the same thing.
Nor can you pretend that it is just as convenient to spend an hour and 5 minutes waiting for my car to charge when I normally spend 10 minutes max filling it up.
I just compared, and that's a route where having the long range Tesla makes a big difference. With the long range, the charging is reduced by around 30 minutes, so it only adds 30 compared to the ICE car, and only requires one charging stop.
Do you normally go through Bloomington? Both Google Maps and the A Better Route Planner say it's faster to go through Indianapolis.
Do I know you? Did I say where I was going from and to? Lol. Just a bit confused/creeped out.
But from Cincinnati to WI (the route I’m talking about) I always go through Indianapolis. I used the default car. Didn’t think much about the range differences, but you’re right. That makes a big difference.
Basically all superchargers are placed next to food and the major highways.
It's not "who knows where". Your car knows where and its right off the interstate in a parking lot next to a lot of places to eat. Better than most gas stations actually.
You want to eat while you charge? Get food next to your charger. They have already thought of all this when they were spending billions of dollars on building out charging infrastructure
You can get a base model 3 today with 263 to 353 miles of range. That's upwards of 3-4 hours of driving with no breaks. Stop to take a break at a super charger for 30 minutes and you can do another 3-4 hours.
How is this still no practical especially combined with all the time and money they save not having to do most routine maintenance.