[bovermyer]

I don't know that this is true. To compare, would you expect every house to have a gas station built in?

Granted, a full electric charge doesn't last as long as a full tank of gas, but that's going to be decreasingly relevant as battery technology improves.

[thinkling]

What matters isn't how long the charge lasts, but how long it takes, and how awkward that is when you really need a charge.

If I remember right, the stats for the Bolt were that (when empty) it can charge 100mi of range in 30 minutes, but after that the charge rate falls off quickly, and a full charge actually takes much longer than you'd expect.

If you get unlucky and get to a charge point but the charger is occupied, you're going to be waiting up to 30 mins to get a 30 min charge, taking an hour to gain 100mi range. If I'm on a longer drive, that's just not something I want to put up with.

Imagine going skiing at a place that's 100mi away. It's winter, so you're running the heater in the car, and the ski resort is inherently uphill from where you live, so you use more than 50% of the car's range to get there. When you get to the ski resort, early arrivers have already filled up the chargers. So now you have to park somewhere else (possibly a shuttle ride away from the lifts), and come back off the mountain at lunch see if a charger is available, fetch your car, maybe hang around until the others actually move their cars off the chargers, etc. Ugh. Sorry, but I don't want to be the early adopter in that situation, and I'm wondering if there will be enough chargers to make the problem disappear once EV adoption is high. Range extenders in the car make a lot of sense to me.

[graycat]

Fiction? Just what is it you have against fiction? Fiction can be fun! Besides, we're talking way out there, and between now and then can be some delays, etc.

We had electric cars way back there, likely before the Model T. The problem is the same -- the batteries. Long ago a Ford executive said, "You build me a good battery, and I'll build you a good electric car.". We're still waiting for that good battery. We also hoped for a good capacitor from EEStore, and we're still waiting for that, too. And we tried steam engines and gas turbine engines.

For my car, the problems have been corrosion and the transmission, not the engine. Otherwise the problems have been suspension bushings and springs past their fatigue life. Engines? Mostly fine. Currently a big problem is that it's > $1000 in labor to remove the dashboard to replace the lights that burned out.

Mostly those Tesla batteries solve a problem I don't have and give me new problems I don't have and won't be able to solve.

[twblalock]

> To compare, would you expect every house to have a gas station built in?

If I could get a full charge at a charging station in the amount of time it takes to fill up a gas tank, it would not be a problem to drive to a charging station the same way I drive to gas stations now. But a full charge on an electric car takes hours, even with fast charging.