It was an impressive 41 second run. They found an event where this car can compete. More impressive was the approximate 6 minute run at the Nurburgring. Still, after about 6 minutes the car "runs out of gas". No way can it compete in an endurance race or for even one hour. VW also said at 77F the ambient temp was a bit to hot for the batteries. I guess they can hold special races for the extreme range limitations of such cars.

 

Even faster now - below 40 seconds. Amazing.

 

Well the first event they found where it could compete was the Pike's Peak run, where they set the world record last year and still hold it. That's a race that's been going since 1916. Also, they built the car specifically to try to set that exact record on that exact race. Somehow this means the exact opposite of what you're trying to say it means...

Yes, I agree...the fact that a car built specifically for a single short hillclimb also managed to post the second fastest Nurburgring lap in history, only behind the same auto group's dedicated killer-lap-setter is in fact more impressive! Again, the clear implication is roughly 180 degrees from what you seem to imply.

This is where you go so far off the rails you're in a wagon. Just to reiterate: this is a car purpose-built to run a very short hillclimb! As such they gave it a battery and cooling system sized and engineered to go to 11 for not very long. Nope, it's not going to win an endurance race. What on Earth or any other planet makes you think that's a reasonable thing to expect it to do? Are there gas-powered Pike's Peak cars winning Le Mans?

Please stop taking incredibly specific examples and wildly generalizing them to the EV world writ large. You're a walking fallacy.

 

You wrote that in a tone that suggests you've tried to do that. But you haven't, right? You said you looked at an EV, but didn't want a Tesla. And you apparently think it's hard to get around CA in an EV (Tesla or no), which is just a little bit hilarious. Please don't pretend to have experience you don't actually have.

So...do you have some information on supercharger availability on that route? Or are you just picking a worst case and throwing FUD around? Cause that is absolutely the worst case, certainly in America and probably globally. And it didn't sound like you know that the Tesla will tell you how many bays in each of the 50 charge stations in that part of the world are open.

Pretty sure you can make that drive on that date if you want. But you'll need to actually try to do it, instead of pretending you tried and it was problematic.

 

Perhaps it's the internets failure to transmit tone but it seems that you've got quite the attitude towards others.

Note the date I picked ... Thanksgiving. Or take any other holiday. Short of a 500 mile range charging will be required. And during holidays the 5 is bumper to bumper and slow (high density low flux conditions = lots of cars from LA to the 580 cut off). Exits for gas can be backed up onto the freeway. Gas pump lines are long even with the relatively quick fill rate. Reduce that fill rate and do the math.

And don't tell us that there are more recharge stations than fuel pumps to compensate ... Not today. And the idea of drive through "on the fly" battery swaps doesn't seem to have panned out.

Rather than putting words in my mouth realize that while it is possible to get around California in an EV it is not without compromises. Two brother-in-laws based in Southern California will state that very clearly.

As the country gradually shifts to green energy, infrastructure is put in place, and the laws of chemistry and physics are expanded I am sure there will be an EV in my future. In the meantime they are a great around town commuter option if you have a budget and space for a second car or the willingness to rent for the longer hauls.

Don't take it personally when someone says an EV doesn't fit their particular needs or lifestyle. It's their right to make that decision.

 

Well, I have a very negative attitude toward specious arguments, particularly when people are persistent with them. I think if you look over my other posts (particularly outside this thread) you'll see I'm not usually so harsh. But yes, I was a little hot responding to you, and I apologize. I apparently misinterpreted your tone (I'll take your word on that, and I agree that the innerwebs poorly communicate tone in general) and I had just responded to Fahrer's 95th incredible slagging of EVs based on terrible misrepresentations of facts and logic. You didn't deserve to be painted with that same brush, so, sorry about that.

That said, I stand by the actual content of my post. I'll expand a bit:

Your first post in this thread claimed that you looked at EVs but found that it would be impossible to drive from the bay to San Diego. That's incorrect. I took you at your word that it was a good faith error, in that you didn't say you looked at EVs but ruled out Teslas for unrelated reasons. And I didn't press you on the fact that you apparently only considered making the drive and stopping to charge off of a 120V wall outlet, which is not how that works. Nobody serious is suggesting you can just drive long distances and plug into any wall outlet around to keep going. Looking back at it, your first statement was unqualified: you really did say you can't drive an EV from the bay to SD. That's the sort of thing that's going to set me off, and I think it was completely correct of me to take issue with it. I also think in that initial response I wasn't sporting any "attitude."

But then after I made some general comparisons to charging stations vs. gas stations, and pointed out that they should not need to have numerical equivalence, you said "try driving through CA on Thanksgiving." While I may have misunderstood your tone, your point necessarily involves two things. First, that you're intentionally bringing up the worst conceivable corner case you can think of. And second, that you're implying that it will be somehow problematic, with no evidence of that fact.

I don't have much evidence on that subject either. I can say that my parents have driven their Model S from New Mexico to Missouri every Thanksgiving since 2015 (4 times) and have never had to wait to charge. Obviously there are more EVs in CA than the interior west...but there are more charging stations too, and Tesla appears to use vehicle data to inform their decisions on where to put them. The car knows where they all are, and knows how many bays are free at each of them. I don't think it is at all a foregone conclusion that you'll have any problems making that drive.

So, to cool down my point from above: if you want to say you'll have problems making a CA drive on Thanksgiving, I think you should provide some evidence of that. Your post did not; you simply said it like it was obviously not going to work.

Minor notes on the rest of your response:

So there are a couple things worth noting here. First, you're suggesting that it's a problem that you might have to wait to charge your EV, and then you turn around and say you often have to wait to fuel your gas car at those times. So to what degree is that an actual meaningful complaint about the EV? Second, if it's 5mph bumper to bumper, presumably with a lot of stop-and-go, you're going to get some impressive range out of an EV with regenerative braking. And finally, once again...it's probably very helpful to have the car know which chargers have free bays.

I did not say these things. Or at least not in the context you imply.

The battery swap thing I only mentioned in passing in the context of the FCV discussion. If someone's going to talk about 3-minute fueling with hydrogen, which necessarily requires theorizing all sorts of things happening to infrastructure, it's a fair point that you can get there with batteries via swapping with less breakthroughs. I did not ever say that was available today, nor do I think it's an important thing that has to happen for EV adoption.

Much more importantly, I did not ever say there are more recharge stations than fuel pumps. In fact you'll note that above I actually quantified how many of each there are; many more gas pumps. However, I also noted that there are a tiny fraction as many EVs as gas cars, and thus the ratio of vehicles to chargers is pretty favorable. Once you consider that most EVs are charging at home most of the time, the ratio is extremely favorable. I don't see any reason this logic doesn't hold on Thanksgiving. Among other things, the vast majority of EV drivers also own gas cars, and many of them are likely to choose the latter for their Thanksgiving weekend excursion.

I did not put words in your mouth; I just took them from your previous post. You said:

This is a false statement, full stop. You didn't say there would be compromises; you said you can't drive an EV from the bay to SD. You also made it a blanket statement covering all EVs, when in reality you knew the Teslas could easily meet that requirement but had ruled them out for other reasons. That's fine, and again I accept that it was a good faith comment. But understand why I took issue: what you said, as you said it, is flatly wrong.

I hope you and others here can recognize that I am not in fact insisting that any of you buy EVs. While I did once own a 1987 Chevy S-10 with 24 6V flooded lead acid golf cart batteries and a 9" DC motor, I don't currently own an EV. I drive a 911! There is a difference between swatting down wrong arguments and demanding people do something they don't wan't to do. Drive whatever you want. If you read back over this thread you'll see one point raised a few times that I never took issue with: "I don't want one." Or another way, "I like gas cars because they're fun and loud." Well, me too. That's fine. But there's been an awful lot of claims in this thread that EVs don't work, aren't viable, will never take off, or whatever. That's the part I have a problem with. Mostly that hasn't been you...but in the context of all those posts, when you say you can't get from the bay to SD or that a drive in CA on Thanksgiving will obviously pose problems...well, those are sort of corollary to the wrongness in a way that I think needs response.

It's not personal at all, and I think if you read back through my posts you'll find zero instances of me taking someone to task for saying it won't fit their own needs. I have consistently taken people to task for saying it won't work for the public at large, and then supporting that with bad facts and/or logic.

For what it's worth, I'm heartened you're considering EVs for the future. All the things that are current drawbacks are improving, so hopefully they'll get where you want them to be soon. I hope this book-length expansion of my thoughts about your posts has helped clarify things. I certainly hold no ill will toward you...just a couple things you said. My apologies again for being impolite about it last night.

 

Here's a review on a Tesla for a long road trip that validates many of the points each of you are making. Having done a 2000 mile road trip in a Turbo S in 2.5 days, I can say it's a challenge, the dream of going 99mph and completing it in a little over 20 hours of driving isn't close to reality for a single driver. Neither for a Tesla owner....

 

I see someone isn't reading every post.

 

Norway e-car uptake - https://www.wired.com/story/norway-e...icles-tourism/

They also have a sugar tax so a can of Coke and a candy bar will cost about $12.

One morning I was walking in Oslo and saw some dangerous criminal types selling contraband out of the trunk of their car. Several shifty looking characters opening and shutting the trunk as people walked by while they looked out for the police.

As I walked by, I couldn't believe what I saw, yep - these were hard case criminals. Selling 2-liter bottles of Pepsi smuggled in from Sweden.

If only these were our problems.....

 

OK, so I finally watched this video, and I must say I was really surprised. Despite the clickbait headline about "how miserable is it" to roadtrip a Tesla, it was actually really positive! His ultimate result was that he drove 31 hours, charged about 7 hours, and dealt with a flat tire for another 7. Honestly, 7 hours of stop time in a 2000mi drive strikes me as minimal; I probably stopped that much (not counting the working and sleeping stops) on this past week's 1600mi trip in the 911. And there are at least a few things worth noting about his specific drive:

1. Obviously a flat tire has nothing to do with the EV drivetrain. He's clear on that point, though he does obliquely say "it's a bit of an ordeal dealing with a flat in this car" which I think is likely way less true than it would be for a 911.
2. He says at the beginning "basically you go 200 miles and then charge 50 minutes." But his actual data says he drove more than that on average and charged less than 40 minutes on average. And then he mentions that the longest charge (52 minutes) was not actually because it took that long, but because he spent that long eating. So IRL it's less than he's saying, probably by quite a bit.
3. He says he kept a 15% buffer; in planning each stage he wanted to be sure he'd have at least 15% left when he got to the next charger. This is really overly conservative; amongst other things, when you hit zero the car doesn't stop...because the engineers put a buffer in there too. And as he notes, by doing this you miss out on the fastest part of the battery to charge. So he's charging slower than he would be if he ran 5% -> 85% each time instead.
4. He has only good things to say about the car's comfort and ability, even without having autopilot.
5. While he kind of has a wish list of fancy features for the charge forecasting, he also does say it's super easy and makes it dead simple to plan a road trip. You tell the car where you're going and it tells you where you want to stop to charge, and for how long.

Like I said, overall it's a really positive review. I wish he hadn't decided to put a word like "miserable" in the title when he clearly does not think anything about the trip was miserable. I encourage all the EV skeptics here to watch it and see how he really felt about going that far.

And finally: please, please, please understand that we're talking about a hugely unrepresentative use case here! A 2000mi road trip is absolutely not what cars are used for the vast majority of the time! We're talking about whether 7 hours of charging is a big deal......on the trip you make maybe every few years. When I did 1600mi this week in the 911, it was the first time in over a decade I had done more than 1000. Over 95% of single-day car usage is under 50 miles.

 

Just doing my Rodney King homage.

@HLCinCOU Those seem like long stops for a guy accustomed to making time. But after I've done a few roadtrips with a wife and a toddler the frequency and length wouldn't be any disruption at all.

Question to any Tesla drivers - ever had to wait for a charging station to free up ?

 

Yeah, I can imagine. For my own part, I admit I would get a bit antsy spending 45 minutes of downtime if I wasn't doing something else with it. I'd probably take the same approach he did in the video and try to coordinate around meal times. My parents are retired and just generally relaxed people in a way I'm not, so it doesn't bother them. And I know I'm joining you in your "Rodney King homage" but again this is really only an issue for road trips. If your driving pattern involves a ton of road trips, and you would be bothered by this amount of stoppage...well, maybe it's not for you. But that's a very small slice of the car-driving public.

One other related point though: we've spent a fair bit of time on how big a drawback the charge time is during road trips...but we haven't given any credit to the time saved in more normal usage patterns. Consider this hypothetical: you drive 50 miles every day, and take one 2000-mile road trip each year. Now compare an ICE car with 400 mile range (somewhat more than my 911) vs. the Model 3 in the video. Assume that for the gas car you refuel at 15% just like he did (even though most of us probably refuel much more often) and that it takes 5 minutes each time you do it. Over the course of the year, you'll spend 5 hours* fueling your ICE vehicle. Or you'll spend 7 hours charging the EV, all of which will occur during the road trip. All your daily driving was handled in your own garage. Sure, that's still longer...but it's a lot different comparison than we've been thinking about so far. Of course the length of your road trip matters too; at 1500 miles instead of 2000 you're at parity for the year. And really, which is worse? Having to stretch your legs and maybe eat for longer than you ordinarily would in the middle of a marathon driving session, or burning 5 minutes sixty different times in the middle of a drive to work where no rest or refreshment is needed?



*(365*50+2000=20250; 400*.85=340; 20250/340=60; 60*5=300)