Quote:
Originally Posted by mkoesel
In the real world, comparing the range of a combustion and electric vehicle tells you nothing about the difference between the ownership experiences when it comes to using the vehicle for a trip that exceeds the range.
Instead, the important part is the cost in time to extend. You are talking about a minimum of a ten-fold increase in time (and depending on how you value that resource, decrease in value) with the Tesla or any other electric vehicle compared to a vehicle with a combustion engine. Sure, there are other advantages like cheap electricity and charging at home. But the point is, you absolutely cannot, for any sum of money, buy a five minute recharge for the EV.
How this impacts your life depends greatly on what you do with yourself and how you plan to integrate the vehicle into that. But, I see people underestimate the impact in this change frequently. It's not a minor thing. Or, depending on how you look at it, it is a very minor thing right up until it isn't, at which point you might be staring down a nasty case of buyer's remorse. Now, if you've owned an EV before and have experience, you probably already know all of this, but I think it is worth the mention for those who have not.
|
Good points. Short trips around town shouldn't be an issue if one is charging at home, so EV might actually save time if you don't have to visit gas station.
Long trips- will require a little pre-planning but with newest version of chargers rolling out soon, 30 minute charging should yield 200-250 mile range in most cases.
I usually stop halfway around 2hr mark when traveling between DC-NY with average rest stop time of 30 minutes so charging time seems acceptable for my use case.
Even when I drive coast to coast, I don't drive more than 700 miles a day so even if the highway range is 400 (80% of 500 estimated range miiles), extra 1-2 hr per day shouldn't affect my total trip time that much. Besides most charging will take place during scheduled rest stops so time penalty for charging should be minimal.