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by Shivetya 3296 days ago
plus the model 3, like all current EVs, is still highly limited it. It makes a great commuter car but any trip requiring a recharge will quickly show you the limitations of such. Have more than one recharge and you best have the time. Figure four hours at best on road and one off; superchargers require close to an hour to full charge and add in time to and from it based on where you are going.

When I mentioned "At best" EVs suffer disproportionately from the effects of cold weather, the colder the worse it gets and elevation changes aren't your friend either.

I am really curious what the average pricing will be on IIIs. I do remember Tesla talking about how you could get into a S for a little over 60 yet it always seemed people just talk about the 90k and up versions.

3 comments

Occasional long distance travel in a Tesla, using the superchargers, is a fine thing. A supercharger stop is generally 15-25 minutes, not an hour -- charging is fastest if you charge only enough to get to the next one. And they're conveniently placed on major travel routes.

So, basically, your complaints are all things that most Tesla owners don't complain about. Almost every discussion about electric cars features a subthread with the same back and forth about these same topics. No sign of any learning.

Ah well.

This argument is a no-go here in Canada, where distance between reasonably large cities can easily range in the few hundreds kilometers.
Assuming that by "few hundred" you mean more than 400 km, sure, many countries have long trips in sparsely populated areas that aren't going to work for electric cars. That comes up in most electric car threads, too.

Tesla and other EV car companies successfully sell cars in Canada, so apparently it's not all Canadians: http://www.fleetcarma.com/ev-sales-canada-2016-final/ In fact the market share of EVs in Canada is similar to the US.

Of course, most of Canadian population lives in cities. Also, people who have the means to buy a Tesla have also the mean to have a second ICE car, thus making this a non-problem. However, commuters who have to live outside of the cities won't have that option. Heck, their apartment complex aren't even wired.
Yes, that's also a traditional comment in every EV-related Hacker News discussion.

I'd be surprised if Canada was that different than the US: some apartment complexes will install chargers because it will eventually be an important amenity (that's why I have chargers at my apartment complex), some communities will start requiring them for new construction (Palo Alto does this already), you'll find chargers installed for on-street parking (already happening various places), and eventually the government will probably mandate installing chargers in all larger parking lots (probably when EVs are a lot more popular than today.)

Another place you might charge is at work. Facebook has ~ 170 chargers at their headquarters, last I looked. They're ahead of the curve, but you'll find that more and more over time.

probably gonna be another recurrent comment, but Facebook and Palo Alto are hardly a generalization of a trend, more of an exception actually.
The Supercharge network also won't be free to use with the Model 3.
It has 215 miles(346 km) range. For a long distance trip I would plan a 30 min break after every ~ 300 km of driving.
Why? That's just a hour and a half to two hours of highway driving.
Bladder. Sore/stiff muscles. Eye fatigue. People certainly love their 6+ hour non-stop drives enough to keep doing them, but my human body likes to stand up, stretch, maybe relieve itself every couple of hours.
Yeah, I didn't mean to drive for 6 hours straight, but at least 3 is the norm.
My experience is that the normal reality is that your first stop is after about 2.5 hours, because you leave with a 100% charge from home, then you stop about every 1.5-2 hours, depending on supercharger placement and destination. That worked out pretty well for the 6.5 hour drive that I did most recently, with two stops one way (up into the mountains), and one returning (downhill helped with range). I think it would be more impactful on 10+ hour drives, but still within the realm of reasonable. If you are someone who does 10 hour drives regularly, then EVs aren't for you.
We should be talking about range, not hours of driving. I'm regularly driving 600km/day, but on a highway, in 160-250 km/h range (my car says that average speed of my last trip to Berlin was 218 km/h). I can't go 3 hours at this speed because I would run the battery dry, and stopping for charging prolongs the trip by at least 2 to 3 hours. Time is money, and I'd rather spend this time with my family or working, not waiting to charge.

I know that EVs aren't for me, that's actually what I'm trying to show. Some people have the feeling that charging is just a little inconvenience and everyone should buy one. For someone like me, charging doubles the trip.