| I totally agree with 1 & 2 as being major differentiators in any EV discussion. I owned a Nissan Leaf gen1 and it was painful. It was about 2.5yo when I purchased it, and it claimed nearly 50mi range according to the range estimator (famously called the guesstimator in leaf community). Within about 6 months it fell to barely 40mi range on a good day. My wife hated to drive it due to range anxiety, and more than once I ended up sitting outside a restaurant using either 120v and a beefy extension cord or when lucky a hotel using their complementary Level 2 charger. That feeling has completely flipped with our Chevy Volt. We usually last weeks or more on a tank of gasoline, thanks to much more reliable 50mi range of the Volt. Compared to the Nissan Leaf gen1, my Gen2 Volt has a highly accurate range meter. And if I'm at risk of depleting my electric range, I can still drive on gas until I can charge up, with no risk/concern for the EV systems. I wish 5 was less of a concern than it currently is. While I applaud Tesla for it's initiative concerning wide availability of a charging infrastructure, I wish they wouldn't have created an incompatible charging infrastructure. For the most part, the North American EV industry has a rather cross-compatible charging port, the SAE J1772. I believe this is equally common in Europe, but I haven't kept up with that. Functionally, the Tesla charger operates very similarly, except they use an auth handshake to enable charging for Tesla vehicles. This means that while Tesla vehicles can take advantage of non-Tesla infrastructure, it's harder for those with non-Tesla vehicles to make use of Tesla infrastructure, though I can understand why they made that choice as a company. I think the best result we could hope for would be a solid and standardized federal infrastructure with some kind of point-of-use charging system. Ideally, something like a gas station for charging, where you can pay at the pump without need for registration or signup. I've tried once or twice to 'pay at the pump' with these privately owned charging kiosks and each time was unable to get to the point of charging due to network issues and/or being unable to register, which does not help with range anxiety in any way. |