[aphextron]

> The Nissan Leaf is just not competitive anymore, and I see no sign of a newer version of it with better range.

Depends on your needs. My Leaf has been incredible. I paid $5k for an older one off lease and it gets me round trip to work/school/running errands for essentially zero marginal cost. People are stuck in an ICE mindset where they can't imagine a car being useful with less than 400 miles range. But the reality is that you never end up using a full charge, and charging is available everywhere (in cities) now. I can guarantee that there will be a class of ultra cheap EV's that stick to the 100-150 mile range as it is all most urban dwellers need on a day-to-day basis. If the price/kWh of lithium ion batteries continues falling at it's current rate, we'll see sub $20k ~150 mile range EV's for sale within 5 years.

>People who park on the street have no realistic way to charge their cars at their homes, and all but the newest luxury apartments lack charging stations. Relying on public charging infrastructure is not realistic, and relying on charging at work is unwise -- it will limit your next job opportunity to companies that also have charging stations, unless you are willing to replace your car. Even relying on charging at an apartment is unwise, because it will limit where you can move to.

Not really. I live in a tiny Bay Area apartment and street park my Leaf. Charging has never been a problem. My office has level 2, there's a level 2 across the street from me, and there's two level 3's on the way home if I need a quick top off. Granted we have better infrastructure than most, and I'll admit there's definitely some getting used to how it all works, but I'll never go back to an ICE.

[thinkling]

This is all well and good if you're in a two-car household, but we only have one car and we do pretty regularly do longer road trips, e.g. to go skiing. Even with a 240mi Bolt those trips could be awkward.

[5ilv3r]

This reminds me of a car sales strategy I heard a long time ago. Don't sell people the car they need for the life they have, sell them the car for the life they want. That's one way you end up with huge pickup trucks being grocery getters and such. They were sold on the idea of owning horses and pulling them around, but that isn't the life they have...

The same ideas work well to discourage EV ownership.

[thinkling]

While you bring up an interesting point, I'm not sure why my comment reminded you of it--the lifestyle that makes it awkward for me to drive an EV is the lifestyle I actually already have.

AWD is something that everybody thinks they need while much of the time FWD + snow tires is equally good or better in normal snowy conditions. I was willing to give up AWD because I'd only need it about 1% of the time and I'm comfortable with FWD+snow tires. I wasn't willing to add the hassle of charging the car to a day trip to go skiing.

[takk309]

I live in a rural area that exemplifies what you are saying. The grocery store parking lot is full of trucks and SUVs that, at most, see a bit of snow on the plowed roads in the winter. At the same time I own two vehicles, a Ford F-150 and a Nissan Xterra. I use both for a lot more than grocery getting. I own three horses and tow a trailer regularly. The Xterra is used for camping and climbing trips that require a bit of off roading on a regular basis. All that being said, I would love to have an electric for commuting and short trips. I live 10 miles from work, I don't need much range.

[strange_quark]

Then get a PHEV. I've had my Volt for almost a year now and although I don't drive a ton, I've managed to get about 80% of my driving done on pure electric. The other 20% is road trips where I still get ~40-45 mpg.

[thinkling]

See my other comments--I drive a Volt too. :-)

[Gibbon1]

Random thought of mine is charging becomes less of an issue when the cars range is several multiples of daily use. If say your electric car has 200 miles of range and you drive it 40 miles a day, then it needs to be charged once every 5 days. Which is in line with the US average of 12,000 miles a year. Or 230 miles a week which is about the range of a Bolt or Tesla.

Other random thought. Someone that has charging at work, does not need to charge their car at home. Which emphasizes the idea that an electric car owner just needs charging to somewhat ubiquitous. Charger at work, charger at the store, charger at a parking lot, coffee shop, etc.

[aphextron]

>Random thought of mine is charging becomes less of an issue when the cars range is several multiples of daily use. If say your electric car has 200 miles of range and you drive it 40 miles a day, then it needs to be charged once every 5 days. Which is in line with the US average of 12,000 miles a year. Or 230 miles a week which is about the range of a Bolt or Tesla.

The reason this line of thinking doesn't line up with reality is because of how lithium ion batteries work. Storing your car at a full charge will increase the rate of battery degradation as much as 5x. Similarly, discharging to (or near to) 0% State of Charge is stressful to the battery because you are causing voltage imbalances among the individual cells within each pack. The reality is that most EV drivers keep their cars between 20-80% at all times. This is optimal for battery health and it ends up being the most practical charging pattern for daily use as well.

With gas cars, you are forced to think in terms of "time between fill ups", but with an EV you are constantly "filling up" anywhere you go because it's so seamless to park and charge.