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Old 03-30-2016, 03:40 PM   #31
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Originally Posted by Josh (PA) View Post
Strictly from a personal use perspective, from my house to our lake cottage is between 267 and 297 miles. We do the drive at least 2x / month. We fill up when we leave, average 78mph and don't stop the whole way and make to the cottage in exactly 4hrs. When we get there, we have plenty of gas left to go to town the next morning for breakfast and fill up.

I'd want this car to be my family vehicle and be able to make that drive reliably and plug in when I get there without having to slow down or add more time to the drive. 300 miles is the minimum range a pure ev needs to have for it to work for me.
No, it's not. If you want to do that drive, you need a range of more like 400 or 450 miles.

300 miles EPA rating means 300 miles in weather that is generally pretty good at speeds that aren't crazy high; add rain (or cold, or god forbid snow), or speed up and average 80 mph, and your range drops, sometimes precipitously.

It will be a long time before an EV can do the kind of drive you're talking about, if only because that's a pretty edge case in terms of usage. There aren't that many people who have to be able to drive 4 hours non-stop at 80 mph. I know I wouldn't want to do it, ICE or EV.

Ultimately, a 250 mile EV coupled with strategically placed DC fast chargers can do nearly everything an ICE can do. Can it do everything an ICE can do? No. There are a whole range of scenarios where you have to modify your driving, modify your route, or do something else to take account for the fact that your range is limited and your refueling time is (relatively) slow compared to an ICE car.

If you are waiting for an EV that demands literally no change in behavior, it's going to be a long time. Which is fine! Nothing wrong with that.

But in my experience, for the majority of people, the changes in behavior that you need to make are small, relatively infrequent, and are offset by some pretty compelling advantages. I can't tell you how happy I am to not have to go to the gas station, e.g.

EDIT:

I'm mainly trying to challenge the assumption that there is some magic mark at which the compromises that EV ownership demand disappear. There isn't (or at least, there isn't a realistic one). Instead of thinking "EVs have to hit range X before I pull the trigger," you have to sit down and examine where and how you use the car, and whether there's any change you'd accept in your driving habits to accommodate EV ownership.
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Old 03-30-2016, 03:51 PM   #32
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...that many people who have to be able to drive 4 hours non-stop at 80 mph. I know I wouldn't want to do it, ICE or EV.
Really?

edit: Of course, those are the trips where the autopilot would actually be useful. Ironic.
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Old 03-30-2016, 03:55 PM   #33
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Really. Why do I need to do that? It's dangerous, for me at least. No way I am as alert in hour four as I should be. And what's the difference between getting someplace in 4 hours versus 4.75 hours? I'm not delivering organs.

I'd much rather stretch my legs after a couple of hours than try and do 300 miles in one sitting. Maybe I am just weak.
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Old 03-30-2016, 04:00 PM   #34
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Really. Why do I need to do that? It's dangerous, for me at least. No way I am as alert in hour four as I should be. And what's the difference between getting someplace in 4 hours versus 4.75 hours? I'm not delivering organs.

I'd much rather stretch my legs after a couple of hours than try and do 300 miles in one sitting. Maybe I am just weak.
Old bladder. I get it.

It's more like, do I get there in 20 hours or 23?
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Old 03-30-2016, 04:11 PM   #35
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On the 4hr non-stop thing, my wife and I both do it comfortably and neither of us find it fatiguing. We usually time it to minimize traffic, if we leave too early or too late we easliy add an hour to the drive. That kind of road trip is the sweet spot of operation for the e61, which we use most often.

The 80mph range truncation is a bigger issue for me. On the PA Turnpike, 476 and 15/86 in NY, average speed is easily 75+. If I had to sit in the right lane at 60 to maintain my total range I'd lose my mind.

I get your point re: where do you draw the line on EV = useful daily vehicle. There is no universally right answer and I know my car usage parameters are an outlier. It is same reason why leases would never work for me right now we just put too many miles on our cars. If we didn't have the lake house and / or a kid that played ice hockey with lots of tournaments in Canada, the times we'd want to drive more than 200 miles in a day would be few and far between. I don't see an EV successfully replacing any of my 3 cars. It can't do the long hauls of the E61, it doesn't check the top down fun boxes of the e88 and it doesn't do the bad weatehr 4wd beater, dog carrier, kid car of the e46. Again, I know this is a personal issue and I'm not in the EV target market. Just giving a counter situation to the EVs are all wonderful discussion.

Edit: Just for fun, I went back and looked at time/mileage when I got the e61. We got it on 7/3/2014 with under 55,000 on it. Today it has 105,000 on. We average 78 miles /day ~28000/year. Wow.
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Old 03-30-2016, 05:18 PM   #36
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Obviously, it goes without saying that you should take those specs with a grain of salt, but I'm going to go one step further--take everything you hear tomorrow with a grain of salt. Tesla is not at all above giving aggressive specs that later turn out to be either not right or only technically correct.

See, e.g., the range of the P85D, and the horsepower of same. Neither of those turned out to match, in the real world, what was announced at launch.

That said, there's nothing particularly surprising in those numbers. I don't think the performance version of the Model 3 will have an EPA range of 300+ miles, though it's possible that one of the lesser cars will--that's more likely a steady state cruising range (which is what Tesla generally quotes before getting certification). But I don't doubt a sub-4 second 0-60 time, given what they are already doing with the Model S.

Honestly, the spec that I think is the most optimistic in that leak is the top end of the price range. I'd be stunned if it maxes out at 60K. I'm guessing more like 80. Keep in mind that the price spread on the Model S is nearly $50,000.
I agree that those specs are a reasonable assumption of a fairly high optioned car... I also agree that the top-line Model 3 will be higher than 60k -- I'm guessing low 70s based on the max-spec Model S being almost $145k -- so a bit more than double the base price...
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Old 03-30-2016, 06:28 PM   #37
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As for range:

I agree with JST that ~200-250 miles is the sweet spot for an EV. Anything above that is potentially wasting weight from extra batteries and not needed >95% of the time (and possibly closer to 99% for most people).

I have the now out-of-production S60 -- that originally had an EPA rating of 208 miles, and now displays 195 rated when I do a 100% charge. The drop is partly due to age (the battery is nearing 3 years old...) and partly due to calibration algorithms that are estimates and not always exact (for example a 100% charge I did last December was 188 miles, while last week was 195 -- but the battery was likely holding nearly exactly the same energy). Based on the ~185 mile drive we did last Friday, which had 11 miles remaining, I think 195-196 is accurate and would mean the battery has degraded by 5-6% since new (not bad in 3 years -- Nissan Leafs are known to degrade ~30%+ in <2 years).

Anyway... Out of the nearly 49k miles on the car, about 7.5k has been on road trips -- so 15%. Most of those road trips have used multiple superchargers (a couple were non-supercharger or only 1...). I've found that the pace of a road trip with a ~45 min stop for charging every 1.5-2 hours is really refreshing. You drive for a bit, pull into a supercharger, plug in and go find a place to grab a drink, hit the restroom and sit down and read or take a short walk.
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Old 03-30-2016, 08:39 PM   #38
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Old bladder. I get it.

It's more like, do I get there in 20 hours or 23?
Eventually your spine will catch up with you, you'll see

I find these days I need to stop every couple of hours to stretch my back - a simple walk around is all it takes ... it makes all the difference.
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Old 03-30-2016, 08:46 PM   #39
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amex ready for deposit tomorrow. Are you guys gonna visit a Tesla store in the morning or wait to do it online at the unveil?
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Old 03-30-2016, 08:51 PM   #40
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I haven't decided yet. There is a rumor that owners will be able to do it online before the reveal event. If I can't do that, I may swing by the store early afternoon...
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