Check out Boston.com for an article about trying to take a Tesla on a day trip to Mt. Washington in New Hampshire (340 miles round-trip). They spent most of the trip worry about range and more than three hours of the trip shut down for charging. What about doing all of the recharging with renewable energy? WSJ has an article about a $2.2 billion solar-thermal electricity generating plant whose input of cash ($1.6 billion from taxpayers) was presumably at least as much as budgeting but whose output of electricity is only 40 percent of the expectation.
Good reminder for engineers that sometimes the TED talk works better than the final system…
The weather is not as nice in the Northwest as in California or the South, who knew?
I wonder why no one makes a trailer with a gasoline-powered generator that hooks into the car’s power supply. Not an elegant solution, but sufficient for this use case. That said, I think I’ve only made 5 day trips over 250 miles in the last 10 years, so this is far from a deal-breaker for me.
If you can afford a Tesla, you can afford a backup Prius for road trips. Not enough luxury? Opt for the Lexis Prius. Don’t take road trips more than once a year/don’t want to pay for extra parking? Rental. All of these make more sense than a trailer to convert your car into a hybrid. And you can still keep your cool car.
Personally I would like a Tesla with a diesel engine and manual transmission. I don’t have the money to build a one-off car, though.
That power plant may be underperforming as an electricity generator but it is working fine as a quick and clean bird roaster. I hear they’re supplying Boston Market’s comeback.
A Tesla with a gas generator – that would be the Chevy Volt, which actually makes a lot of sense for now. Maybe someday when (if ever) the US is covered with high speed charging stations it will be different but for now a Volt allows you to run on electricity most of the time without having to worry about getting stuck.
There is no replacement for displacement. Tesla owners should own a V12 grand tourer for infrequent road trips.
It looks like it might be closer to 5 hours spent charging (not including the time spent to charge before the trip). To go 340 miles.
That’s around the range of a typical gas powered car. While there might be a need to visit a gas station once (rather than 5 ? times) for that car, that range is more than enough to choose to fill up when it’s convenient. There are ICE vehicles that can get substantially more than that range (I get pessimistically 550 miles per tank).
http://insideevs.com/tesla-model-s-p85d-gets-rated-242-miles-range/
The P85D has a range of around 250 (which is close to the typical gas car range but likely optimistic for hilly terrain).
It’s said that the superchargers give 170 of range in “as little as” 30 minutes, which means it’s probably usually longer. And, it’s possible that the charging slows down as the batteries get closer to capacity. The fastest charge at home is 58 miles of range per hour (this is the dual charge thing which uses 240 volts and is 2 times as fast as the “standard” charger). I wonder if you can bring the charger(s) with you (to be able to use “any” high-amperage outlet.
The superchargers improve things but it’s no where near as fast as filling up an ICE vehicle (10 minutes to get 300-600 mles of range). (Obviously, there are many more gas/diesel stations).
At $105,000 (without any tax breaks), it’s a vehicle for the “1%”.
This article just confirms what people should already know about electric vehicles. That is, they are useful mostly “close to home” where you aren’t driving many miles in a day.
according to a towtruck driver for AAA in North Dallas, he tows more Teslas than anything else. The high temperature in Spring, Summer, and Fall reduce the range of a charge of the pack significantly and A/C (essential for Texas) consumes KW of power when engaged. The car won’t drive apparently if the battery is locked out. I see a problem with scalability with Elon Musk’s designs. Tesla is great for California, less so for other parts of the country, like Boston or Texas, not to mention North Dakota in the winter. What is the % of of the yearly supply of lithium required if everybody had a tesla and a battery wall?… One redneck in California with a .30-06 and the right ammo and the hyperloop is kaput…4000 satellites launched in a few years???
It’s possible to rig up an adapter to let a Tesla charge from a dryer outlet if you are visiting friends or staying at a vacation cottage, etc. (and the dryer is located close to the garage or a window facing the driveway and you don’t have to take apart their laundry room to get to the dryer plug, etc.).
240V@24A (which is what you can safely get from a 30A dryer outlet) will let you charge around 12mi range/hr. This won’t get you a full charge unless you are staying for a really long time. However, this is about 4x the wattage you can get from a regular 120V outlet.
If you plug into a regular outlet, you’ll get around 2 or 3 miles of range per hour, or basically fuggedaboutit. I guess if you are almost dead and there is a real charger in town you could plug in overnight and hope to get enough range to make it to the nearest charger.
http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/using-dryer-plug
Electric ranges usually have 50 amp outlets (which are derated to 40 amps for continuous use) but they are behind the stove and difficult to get to almost 100% of the time (vs. maybe 50% of the time for dryer outlets). Nothing says being a good guest like taking apart your host’s kitchen/laundry room and running cables out their windows.
“At $105,000 (without any tax breaks), it’s a vehicle for the “1%”.”
You can get a lightly used Chevy Volt (one with under 20,000 miles) for under $20,000 and not suffer range anxiety.
The price for a new Volt is $40,000? And there are (were?) tax credits that reduce the price. That’s not -that- far from the average price of around $25,000.
The Tesla is expensive (the high price makes it an impractical purchase). It’s likely that it isn’t the only car the owner has.
The Volt is much less expensive and much less limited. It’s likely that many more Volt owners own no other car.
I own a Nissan Leaf, with which I get about 80 miles out of a full charge. I didn’t have any expectations of taking road trips with it. Rather, it’s a car to go to work and back, and run errands around town. My daily commute is 37 miles round trip, plus any side excursions to stores, etc. I leave the office with a full battery in the afternoon, and that’s plenty of charge to get home (including side trips), and get back to work in the morning.
For that driving profile, it’s a perfect fit.
As far as I can tell, based on reading and a friend with an electric mini, electric cars are fine for around town and going back and forth to work and daily errands, but they are not ideal for roadtrips or long commutes, yet.
Expecting battery powered cars to do everything the internal combustion engine can do is unreasonable, at this stage. A good compromise is a plug-in hybrid, albeit not cheap and not right for everyone.
It’s great to have more choice for vehicle propulsion, and this will only get better. I think electrified freeways, where the electricity could be drawn while driving on the freeway (like electric buses with overhead wires in San Francisco), would really help electric cars a great deal.
“For that driving profile, it’s a perfect fit.”
Yes, it is. Electric cars work well as a second vehicle for local/commuting.
The problem is that it’s too limiting for most people as an only car.
Renting isn’t a option generally because it’s inconvenient (the extra cost of renting isn’t necessarily enough to be a problem).
With current gas prices, you have to drive many miles to see a significant cost saving (considering a high mpg ICE vehicle). The range of electric vehicles is typically to low to save much money.
For most people who want to only own (pay for) one vehicle, a high mpg ICE vehicle (that is not expensive) makes much more sense than an electric vehicle.
davep: to give you an idea, and I realize this is very subjective given the wide variations on electricity and gas prices, but I said earlier I get 80 miles out of a full charge. I pay 10 cents per kWh where I live, and the battery holds 24 kWh of usable energy, so it costs me about $2.40 to go those 80 miles. By comparison, a gallon of 87 octane is about $2.70 here.
We’re a family of four, and we have two cars, an ICE and the aforementioned EV. I got the Leaf in March 2015, it has worked great for us.
Finally, in some areas EVs are allowed the use of the HOV lanes, that can be a valuable benefit.
“so it costs me about $2.40 to go those 80 miles. By comparison, a gallon of 87 octane is about $2.70 here.”
I get 46 mpg with diesel.
As a rough estimate…
40 miles per day for 200 days is 8000 miles.
At 40 mpg at $3 per gallon, that’s $600.
At 80 mpg at $3 per “gallon”, that’s $300.
You are saving around $30 per month.
The Leaf is $27,000 (after tax rebates?).
To recover that expense at $300 per year would take 90 years. If you drove 16,000 miles per year (well above the US average), it would take 45 years. Anywhere from 4-9 times the lifetime of the car.
“We’re a family of four, and we have two cars, an ICE and the aforementioned EV. I got the Leaf in March 2015, it has worked great for us.”
As I said, it could work -great- as a second car.
It doesn’t make sense (really) as an -only- car. It’s too limited for most people as an only car.
The Honda Fit (a decent car) is appropriately $16,000. Or around $11,000 less than the Leaf.
The Fit might get 30 mpg. For 8000 miles per year at $3 per gallon, that’s $800 in fuel. Or $500 more per year than the Leaf. You’d have to drive the Leaf an extra 22 years to recover that extra cost.
That indicates that you’d be better off with an inexpensive ICE car as a second car.
If the more-efficient car is a lot more money than a reasonable alternative, you have to have to drive a very high miles-per-year (20,000+ miles per year) to start saving money. Electric cars don’t really have sufficient range to do that.
The Leaf is a luxury (it’s not practical).
davep: the calculation isn’t as simple as you make it out to be, since I get to charge for free at work (employee perk), so my fuel bill for this car is very small.
My yearly average so far is 15000 miles.
As I said: for my driving habits, it’s a perfect fit.
Beyond the dollar calculation, it’s very comfortable and very quiet car. I’m happy with my decision of getting one.
Getting stuff for free obviously helps you but that isn’t likely going to be the common case.
Somebody is still paying for it, which means the economics don’t change (you are just lucky you aren’t paying for it).
I showed that even 16,000 miles per year don’t make the economics work.
“I’m happy with my decision of getting one.”
That’s great! (I have no problem with that.)
People seem to be very happy with their Teslas too.
Note that I’m not really talking about your particular case.
It should be obvious that the Tesla won’t be practical/economic because of its high price.
The much-more reasonably priced Leaf doesn’t hold up being practical/economic either. That’s less obvious but not hard to show.
The way it doesn’t work is characteristic of high “mpg” (miles per $) cars (it’s not limited to electric cars).
Electric cars are (sort of) a new technology. It might not be reasonable to expect them to be practical/economic at this point in time. There might be other reasons (good ones) but practical/economic isn’t among them.
I have a tesla and I just put on 1200 miles driving through Vermont, the Adirondacks, the berkshires, basically just camping around New England. Spend $11 dollars on electricity, mainly because I parked the car in a hotel lot one night. I haven’t read the article you are talking about but in practice the tesla very easy to do king road trips with, though you do realize the convenience of 100 years of built in infrastructure. The trick mainly is to a) eat and use the bathroom on a super charger stop b) keep it under 75 and c) plug the car in at night. You do need to think about it, which is something we no longer need to do with gas cars, but they aren’t hard thoughts to think.
The range anxiety is real, but doesn’t last after the first week of ownership. And 0-60 in 3 seconds is pretty amazing.