I pay way more attention to the range of my ICE car over my EV, because I need to actually go someplace out of my way to recharge it while my EV practically always has more range than I need every day.
I spend more of my time recharging my ICE than I do my EV. It's way less convenient and I never know what the cost will be tomorrow. Meanwhile my electricity is on a fixed rate contract measured in years.
People who are worried about range on EVs are not worried about a usecase that looks like this, obviously.
Home/work plug-in is amazing, and an underrated QOL improvement over ICE, but it’s just not relevant to most of the concern around EV range.
Range concern comes from either not having a charger available as a matter of daily business (street parking) or from frequently going on very long drives.
If that's true, then it may be a matter of lingering perception. As an ICE car owner who lives in LA, I see plenty of charging stations, but not necessarily when I go on drives of hundreds of miles outside the city. Of course, I may be biased given that I don't need to pay active attention to vehicle chargers. But, for me, it would be a deal breaker if I couldn't be confident that my car could still be fuelled up in Bumf*k, Nowhere.
They're there if you need them - not always extremely visible though if you're not driving to one (can see the map here: https://www.tesla.com/supercharger).
If you got a Tesla you'd get a better sense for how many superchargers there are.
What you're saying is relevant though and why until recently I didn't really consider non-Tesla EVs an option to recommend if it was your only car (though now that Tesla has pivoted to opening up the superchargers to other car companies this is less of an issue).
That's very impressive. I was totally unaware to the extent of where chargers have been placed. There's even a supercharger located in Green River, UT, which was exactly the kind of place I was picturing in my head.
Yeah - it's pretty wild, Tesla really committed to this a decade ago and has been chipping away at it since, the investment paid off.
Even better, strategically Tesla created the "NACS" or North American Charging Standard which is a clever name for their far superior Tesla charger. They also pivoted from the superchargers being an exclusive reason to buy a Tesla to licensing them for other EVs - now Ford is onboard, Electrify America is switching to NACS, GM too.
They pulled off this switch perfectly in a way most companies fail to do (ex: blackberry bbm) and as a result their investment in these will remain dominant and everyone will be unified around a superior standard (the EU charging standard CCS plug is a committee designed monster that's worse categorically). They're also continuing to expand.
I love manual transmission sports cars, but EVs today are just superior for regular use and Teslas are the best option for most people (especially when considering their lower cost), putting subjective opinions about their mercurial leader aside. There's a reason the Model Y was the best selling car in 2023 Q1 across all categories globally [0].
HN has historically been poor at objectively evaluating this sort of thing especially about Tesla.
Can you explain why other manufacturers switching to NACS is advantageous to Tesla?
Are they collecting fees or is there some reason bp or Shell or Exxon couldn’t just add NACS chargers to all their real estate and steal share from Superchargers?
I have yet to see any explanation as to how the switch to NACS is actually good for Tesla, other than testimony to the standard design being better than CCS?
It's good for Tesla customers because it means NACS charging infrastructure will be more widely available from more companies. Tesla will have reason (and economic motive) to add more Supercharger sites and make them larger than they'd otherwise be.
It's good for Tesla because it costs them a lot less to have everyone else shift to NACS than for them to redeploy ten thousand Supercharger stalls with CCS1.
Honestly the only losers in the continental shift to NACS are those with significant existing CCS1 investments, like Electrify America. And I don't see why they deserve any sympathy from the likes of Ford and GM. The poor reliability of many CCS1 networks has been an albatross around the neck of Tesla's competitors.
Right so they were backed into a corner by everyone else starting to build out infrastructure and they had to cede access to their previously privileged network to pull it off.
I agree, I have no sympathy for CCS1 investments etc, NACS seems superior and it looks like consumers writ large will win etc etc., I'm just wondering how any of this adds up to a bullish case for Tesla and I'm afraid your comment doesn't clarify that. It just illustrates that the alternative would've been more bearish than this one (which I agree).
It’s bullish for Tesla that their extremely costly NACS investments will be proved correct, they now have increased economic value, and a future risk is eliminated. Having long calls proven right is bullish. This level of influence over the North American automotive sector is bullish.
It also plays into the perception that Tesla are technology leaders the EV sector. Which is a big deal if EV technology is the future of the the automotive sector.
It’s licensed access iirc so they’re getting some payment for it (which they deserve for their investment in building it out despite the odds).
They also charge a higher rate to non-Tesla EVs.
The other benefit is if they continued to refuse access they could have ended up like blackberry. The other companies would have adopted the CCS standard and (eventually) would have a competitive network. Then what was once a Tesla advantage would become more of a liability as the transition to EVs gets more complete.
Few companies make this strategic shift at the right time imo and I think Tesla did. By leveraging their advantage now it’s a win win.
The licensing discussion I heard between Ben Thompson and John Gruber on their Dithering podcast (not sure the details).
Even ignoring that, I think it's still a good outcome for Tesla - they effectively own and control a large percentage of all charging infrastructure in the world. Every other car company adopting their standard means they have a lot of customers that will pay them to charge at their stations (even independent of the licensing).
That plus avoiding a future where without making this transition they could end up isolated with an obscure and incompatible charger that would eventually become a liability rather than an advantage.
Got it! I've been meaning to check out Dithering anyway so I'll give that a listen.
> they effectively own and control a large percentage of all charging infrastructure in the world. Every other car company adopting their standard means they have a lot of customers that will pay them to charge at their stations (even independent of the licensing).
This is the argument I find interesting... IMO if everything does centralize on NACS, nothing (AFAICT) is stopping the really big players like bp, Shell, Exxon, etc from just outfitting their already-existing real estate, already-existing infrastructure with NACS. The petro-companies are ludicrously well capitalized, very sophisticated, and have tons of baked-in advantages. Memes aside, they're also already the biggest players in the energy transition anyway. Basically if I were investing in Tesla, I'd be curious why this doesn't just create a great opening for the huge huge players to mop the floor.
Again, consumers (and the environment, probably) win here, so I'm happy about it!
P.S. Also thank you for entertaining a thoughtful convo. Usually this question just attracts zealots and it doesn't get me closer to an answer. You did -- so thank you!
No worries - trying to engage in thoughtful conversation despite the internet incentivizing craziness is my goal!
Fair point about existing players, I just tend to discount old large companies being able to execute for the same reasons startups tend to eat their lunch. Why haven’t they done it already? Why haven’t they started even now?
Why did it require Tesla to build EVs? Why did existing car companies ignore Tesla for 20 years until they were way behind?
Probably the innovators dilemma - it’s rare existing providers are much of a threat.
Anyone who thinks the utility of an EV is identical to an ICE car in the US is deluding themselves or never gets out of town.
I’ll probably take 10 long car trips a year often for camping but sometimes visiting friends. I know that most of the areas I’m driving through when I go east do not have the infrastructure at all and even if they do they’re still a hassle to use and add a bunch of time to a long drive. My mom had an EV so I have experience with range anxiety and the inconveniences of not running the AC, etc.
It’s a bad purchase in my opinion much better to get a hybrid
Or they just don't road trip when they get out of town, or "getting out of town" to them is within 100mi or so, or the corridors where they do tend to travel is well served with chargers, etc.
I don't know about you, but I don't usually tend to pack my car with me when I go on an airplane. Maybe you do?
The majority of people never fuel in Bumf*k, Nowhere though, and that's my point.
I definitely understand though that EVs don't currently cover everyone's use cases, and I'm not entirely certain they'll cover everyone's needs in the end. But most people are pretty bad about actually thinking about what they actually need, and many car buyers aren't buying based on their realistic uses.
Right but most people buy cars for the totality of the driving they have to do, not just the majority. I bought a car specifically because I was tired of the awful rental experience, so "just rent when you need to go on a longer drive" is not a viable solution.
As mentioned, I spend more time and deal with more of an overall hassle recharging my ICE than my EV despite going on more road trips and putting more miles on my EV than my ICE. And my EV is about the worst range option of the model line I bought and doesn't charge as fast as other options on the market today, so it's arguably not that great of a road trip EV.
Having an EV can absolutely be a viable choice for these people.
Are you really arguing the average car frequently makes 500mi+ road trips?
Either way, your NYC <-> Raliegh trip would be like 26 minutes of charging on an 8 hour road trip. Do you really not stop for somewhat that kind of time for an 8 hour road trip? You don't stop to eat for a minute, you race through the gas station as fast as possible, etc? I know for me I'd probably want to stop a couple of times sitting for eight hours.
You're really arguing the average driver frequently makes nearly non-stop eight hour road trips?
I'm definitely not talking about which car is the most luxurious or comfortable. There's a lot of subjectivity to styling. I'm not really a fan of the Tesla style, but it's not like all EVs are Tesla's and they definitely don't all cost $90k.
I made no claims whatsoever as to what "the average car" does?
I said that "most of your driving doesn't happen on road trips" is not a super convincing response to "I don't want to buy an EV because it'll make road trips a pain in the ass." Because, as I said, people buy cars for the totality of their driving.
The NYC <> Raleigh trip would add 26 minutes in a Hyundai Ioniq 6, which I'll note does in fact surprise me in a positive direction (and also thank you for sharing the cool website!)
In a Model S it'd add an hour, which yes I do find to be an unacceptable cost, and a wildly unacceptable one for the price and comfort difference.
The car question obviously contains many many dimensions. Adding 26 minutes of time is pretty acceptable IMO, but doing so for another $6k of car purchase price and downgrading from a super comfortable SUV to a tiny, tiny sedan... it becomes less acceptable again.
A Volvo XC40, which is pretty close comfort level to the Acura RDX, for example, would add 1.5 hours while keeping price roughly constant.
P.S. to level-set, I actively tried to buy an EV or hybrid. I loved having a plug-in hybrid when all my driving was around town and parked at home in the evening. I agree far, far more people can and should be driving EVs than currently do, but I'm pointing out that the multidimensional problem of car selection is not as simple as "there are lots of chargers now" or "just rent something else for road trips."
A recent Model S would do the trip in a half hour of charging. Maybe whatever generation you had and the chargers at the time weren't the same, but in the EV space you can't assume things stay the same even quarter to quarter much less year to year.
And I do agree, not everyone's needs are fully solved by EVs now and may not in the future. But so many people hear about range being an issue that they assume it is for them, when in reality an absolutely massive chunk of not the majority of passenger cars on the roads can easily be swapped for an with zero negative to the owner's life. But people often actually think they've got to have a car that can go 1,000mi in a single charge otherwise it's just a massive inconvenience even though they may drivea 500mi trip once a year if even that.
I spend more of my time recharging my ICE than I do my EV. It's way less convenient and I never know what the cost will be tomorrow. Meanwhile my electricity is on a fixed rate contract measured in years.