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Old 03-16-2019, 01:17 PM   #21
equ
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Originally Posted by lemming View Post

You can mop up suburbanites. But you won’t penetrate the urban market in time for the biggies to come with their EVs.
I was about to post on my 340i thread about how Teslas are a much better fit for suburban commuters. A predictable, regular drive, not more than 150miles. For someone like me who lives in an urban setting but drives out to further rural areas, it's not a good solution.
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Old 03-16-2019, 03:14 PM   #22
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EVs generally have a problem with urban penetration. Tesla has so far spent the most time and effort trying to solve that by building out a robust charging network; they have at least a 6 year head start on that.

I guess I don’t see how “the big boys” are any better situated to address that problem, especially given that they don’t really seem to be spending much time or money to address it.

When the e-Tron finally launches—I guess this year sometime?—it will have a shorter range and be more expensive than the Model 3, and will demand more energy per mile. It will not have a dedicated charging network of any kind, and will have to compete for space at the relatively few public DC fast Chargers that exist.

It will have a dealer network, where you’ll be able to go buy one. That’s an advantage, especially if you like the traditional car buying experience.

Forgive me if I think Tesla has a longer head start than most people think, and that “the big boys” aren’t going to be competitive with their first gen EVs*—and maybe not even with their second.



*the i3 and other sub100 Mile cars aren’t even gen 1; more like gen zero.
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Old 03-16-2019, 03:55 PM   #23
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Originally Posted by JST View Post
I guess I don’t see how “the big boys” are any better situated to address that problem, especially given that they don’t really seem to be spending much time or money to address it.
I don't dispute that Tesla's charging network is a huge competitive advantage. I'm not comparing Tesla's to other EV's, I'm comparing EV's to ICE (with Tesla being the representative EV as it's so far ahead in terms of charging).

There is only a charging "problem" if you live in an urban (or remote rural) area and for some reason must have an EV. No EV, no problem...
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Old 03-16-2019, 05:42 PM   #24
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There is only a charging "problem" if you live in an urban (or remote rural) area and for some reason must have an EV. No EV, no problem...
I don't see how you count in the bucket with the "urban" people. You have a house with property on which you can park and charge your vehicles. That's all you need to be counted as "rural" as far as tesla ownership is concerned. I recall you saying you didn't want to run electrical wiring, but that's independent of being urban.

In terms of driving around an urban area like the NYC suburbs? EV's excel at that.

Your road trips? Yeah, the EV might not be great for them, but that's a road-trip trip problem, not an urban area problem.
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Old 03-16-2019, 09:16 PM   #25
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I agree with JST and rumatt — I guess that’s not surprising since we are all Tesla owners.

Here’s my take.

Most Tesla owners are currently suburbanites that have garages and have put in 240V outlets or wall chargers. That gives them plenty of range for commuting (and just charge nightly). If you own a house, you can find a way to charge at home — which will cover 90%+ of most people’s charging needs. The Supercharger network enables road trips to most places - which is a huge advantage to Tesla since it already covers most of the populated parts of North America, Europe and China (with pockets in ANZ, Japan and a few other places,

Apartment and condo dwellers may have a harder time charging at home — and that is a big problem to solve. Tesla has added “urban” Supercharges to try to help, and workplace charging may work for some. But overall, this will need solving.

In my case, I have nearly 95k miles on pure EV, including over 20k of road trips, some of which were not to very plug friendly places (take a look on PlugShare around the Navajo reservation in NE AZ — and we went through there twice in the shortest range Tesla made to date (the 60 kW Model S, with a mex range of 208 miles). My Model S was took us as far south as San Diego, as far North as BC and Quebec, as Far East as DC/Maryland, and visited the westernmost point in the continental US in Oregon. The Supercharge network powered most of those miles, but we filled gaps with slower CHAdeMO and L2 chargers, and even RV parks. It was quite a journey...

JST makes a good point that most of the other DC charging networks only offer a single charger at each station. But that’s starting the change. VW’s dieselgate settlement funded the Electrify America network, which is following the Tesla blueprint. We noticed an Electirfy America station under construction a couple miles from our house today — it has 8 charging pedestals and is very similar to a Supercharger site — in a parking lot just off a freeway with a Starbucks and a few restaurants nearby...
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Old 03-16-2019, 09:23 PM   #26
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Supercharging doesn’t complete the charge in under 20minutes. Which means it’s a so-so solution.

Once you extend beyond your 120mi radius you basically set aside 2 hours to charge? and that’s supercharging. Not a great solution.

So then your argument is “have another car”.

Okay. I think this debate is really dumb.

As for “EVs excel in the city” —have you lived in NYC and tried to charge when there’s a two hour time limit in the garage of the condo association? Sure. That works great for me too. Not.

Let’s be honest: this is still for the one percenters. And the market is near saturation. And then Tesla is faced with a cliff.

I’m not anti EV. I just think the current infrastructure sucks and it’s just a pain in the ass still.

Furthermore: the styling is hideous and homely.

If I was looking at a Model S? I wouldn’t. It’s already dated. I’d be getting a 7 or S.

The Model 3 looks like a Martian drew an AMC Gremlin. No thanks.
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Old 03-16-2019, 09:45 PM   #27
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Most charging is overnight. While it takes hours, it only feels like seconds since it happens while the car is parked. If you can charge at home, you rarely need public charging for daily use. Since moving to OH, I actually only charge at 120V — which has been fine since I’m able to replace my commute miles overnight...

Supercharging on road trips can take anywhere from 10 min to an hour. The thing is that you only need to charge enough to get to your next stop, with a little bit of reserve for contingency. You don’t always fill to full (like you do in a gas car...). On our road trips, we found that the longer stops made the overall trip more relaxing — and our stops averaged 45min in the Model S...

It you live in a city and don’t have charging at home - that is a problem. But Tesla provides the urban Superchargers as one option. Charging at work is another option - and may employers are putting charging in. This is still a problem to solve.
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Old 03-16-2019, 10:36 PM   #28
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Originally Posted by rumatt View Post
I don't see how you count in the bucket with the "urban" people. You have a house with property on which you can park and charge your vehicles. That's all you need to be counted as "rural" as far as tesla ownership is concerned. I recall you saying you didn't want to run electrical wiring, but that's independent of being urban.
You have not had a chance to visit. Sorry to say but you are incorrect. I'm most definitely not in a suburb. Not by any measure, not for EV-charging purposes. Everything is harder in an urban area, the permits, the inches of space, construction, everything.

Assuming I spend but 4 but not 5 digits on wiring, I could park and charge *one* vehicle but not more. We usually have two cars (out of three or four) on the street for various reasons. We do not park our vehicles on the "property", that's a suburb. Forget the condos, 80% of the single family homes around me do not have a private garage or driveway.

Again, these are all moot arguments. The world is not out of gas (which I don't use a ton of anyway), I have no problems at all. If for whatever reason EV's become mandatory, infrastructure and convenience will have improved big time and I can do some version what everyone else around me is doing.

I'm perfectly happy with my cars as they are, not chomping at the bit to jump to the future of driving. If anything, over the years, driving has become less and less fun... I enjoyed driving much more from 2000 to 2010. Too bad I only had crappy grad student cars in the 90's.
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Old 03-16-2019, 11:27 PM   #29
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lemming View Post
Supercharging doesn’t complete the charge in under 20minutes. Which means it’s a so-so solution.

Once you extend beyond your 120mi radius you basically set aside 2 hours to charge? and that’s supercharging. Not a great solution.

So then your argument is “have another car”.

[..]

As for “EVs excel in the city” —have you lived in NYC and tried to charge when there’s a two hour time limit in the garage of the condo association? Sure. That works great for me too. Not.
I'm completely lost. You started this track of discussion by saying

Quote:
Originally Posted by lemming
And obsolete in two years when the mainstream automakers all load up in this EV Crossover space.
I countered by pointing out that Tesla still has a huge advantages in terms of charging infrastructure and this will play a major role in them not being steamrolled by these mainstream automakers you mentioned.

And your counter is that Tesla's charging infrastructure isn't perfect? Whatever criticisms you have of the current state of Tesla's infrastructure, it's 10x (100x?) worse for all the other manufactures.

Quote:
Okay. I think this debate is really dumb.
I agree with you. It's dumb and makes no sense at all because it completely missed the original point, which was that Tesla is not anywhere near fearing the competition, at least yet anyway. The market is theirs.
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Old 03-17-2019, 12:14 AM   #30
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lemming View Post
Supercharging doesn’t complete the charge in under 20minutes. Which means it’s a so-so solution.

Once you extend beyond your 120mi radius you basically set aside 2 hours to charge? and that’s supercharging. Not a great solution.

So then your argument is “have another car”.

Okay. I think this debate is really dumb.

As for “EVs excel in the city” —have you lived in NYC and tried to charge when there’s a two hour time limit in the garage of the condo association? Sure. That works great for me too. Not.

Let’s be honest: this is still for the one percenters. And the market is near saturation. And then Tesla is faced with a cliff.

I’m not anti EV. I just think the current infrastructure sucks and it’s just a pain in the ass still.

Furthermore: the styling is hideous and homely.

If I was looking at a Model S? I wouldn’t. It’s already dated. I’d be getting a 7 or S.

The Model 3 looks like a Martian drew an AMC Gremlin. No thanks.

I don't think we're at the point where EVs make sense for everyone, or even (perhaps) the majority of people. I wouldn't argue otherwise.

And there are a lot of people for whom the EV circle doesn't square. That's cool. EVs won't be mandatory for a while, if ever.

But, honestly, I think the tradeoffs for EVs are just that--tradeoffs. I *hate* going to the gas station, because there isn't an easy one around here, and it's a pain in the ass to get to. Not having to go to the gas station is a real improvement in my quality of life.

And, as I've said elsewhere, the range on my car is about the same as the V8 M3, both urban and highway. Supercharging takes longer than getting gas, but as long as I'm not going farther than 1 supercharger hop the difference is immaterial. For longer distances? The difference starts to bite, but is it unworkable? Not really.

I'm not the evangelist for Tesla I once was; I don't love the way Elon runs the company, and I'm not happy about the way he treats his employees. At the same time, Tesla has remade the future of the automobile. That's not a bad thing. I'd love to have something like an E46 with a stick, but no one was going to build me one of those anyway.

If my choice is between some dumb BMW soft-roader with a ZF 8 speed and a Tesla pretty much anything, give me the latter. At least I won't be killing the planet quite as fast, and my car will be more fun to drive.
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