You're missing his point though. He's got just 43 miles of range and the car suits his needs 99.9% of the time. An all electric car with even just 150 miles of range would suit his needs. An all electric car with 250 miles of range would basically be no compromises. The only time he'd ever have an issue is on a road trip where if his car was all electric, a national charging system would/ will take care of him. So even with just 43 miles of all electric range there's basically been no requirement for change in his driving habits.
this is one case, so i'm not sure how much we can draw from that, and even there is this gas usage dipped into once over this period, or a tiny bit a bunch of times? one would be more inconvenient than the other, but the point is, he hasn't been inconvenienced at al from it ever. and yes if he had more batteries he may not have used gas at all - but the batteries aren't free.
Likewise, ask Tesla owners how many of them are inconvenienced by range.
and similarly to the point above and one i've pointed out before - you've bought yourself out of the problem, which everyone can't afford to do - even with subsidy help. and i still find it ridiculous that these subsidies are going to the wealthiest people - i believe this is mostly truly with prius still but absolutely so with teslas. the proper way to encourage efficiency would be to punish the ineffciency of fuel, not pick electricity and reward whoever adds the most batteries.
If anything is a stopgap it's hybrids. They add complication/ cost to the drivetrain by effectively giving you two of them. In theory the gas engine is taxed less because it isn't really used much but you still retain thousands of potential failure points. We're going to see fewer and fewer hybrids as all electric reaches parity with those setups.
But again, you keep bringing up battery technology/ efficiency as if we're not going to make the shift to electric drivetrains unless there's some sort of breakthrough and the breakthrough in your mind is battery chemistry when in actuality it doesn't need to be that. The breakthrough for now can be price and more than capacity/ efficiency, price has long been barrier to electric vehicles, not battery chemistry.
it is price and convenience and i see them reach parity much further off than you. the only reason i bring up battery chemistry is to try and dispel these claims of transistor technology and moore's law - comparing these to phones or dvd players etc. they don't move like that, they can't move like that, stop thinking of them as that.
Likewise you keep mentioning advances in lithium ion batteries over the years but in the prime of those changes the problems they were solving were stability, capacity and footprint. Stability was solved long ago and capacity and footprint aren't an issue in most vehicles. The issue is price. So you have to consider the problems they're trying to solve with the technology as certain advances were being made and during the 90's that wasn't a consideration. It very much is now though which is why we're seeing a resurgence in price price drops.
you seem to be saying they were sacrificing a for b with research dollars and spending more dollars on b now gets you more b. but they've researched all aspects for a long time, and with chemistry and commercialization, they eat the low hanging fruit first and reach for incremental and challenging roi improvements in general after that. you say it like it's a given that more dollars get more results but the reality of this space is that a walk can turn into a jog but you bring in moore's law like a jog can turn into human flight.
Likewise, ask Tesla owners how many of them are inconvenienced by range. The answer is probably none. The same would apply to Bolt owners. These are things you spend a lot of time pondering before getting the car and then the worries are immediately put to rest when you actually start living with it.
you state this as if range anxiety is my issue when i think i've made it pretty clear that it is charging. i don't want any planned or unplanned stop longer than one i have to take now. note also that despite more people able to work remotely, their average daily commute has been increasing in time as well.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ay-than-its-ever-been/?utm_term=.5cbb308e8c18
you have some selection bias in only asking current owners about their inconvenience as they've presumably already figured out they'd be the least affected by it. i myself would be a good candidate - subtract the track car out of the equation, and i'm working on the couch most days and not traveling very far for anything. that doesn't mean joe 6 pack is nearly as good a candidate as today or tomorrow.
you are also living in a place with pretty gorgeous weather, right? it's not like having to blast the a/c on a hot day does you any favors in an EV, nor does trudging it through a chicago winter. how much range does the bolt get in the winter? how comfortable is it to be inside that thing on a 30 minute commute? etc.
This is an argument you specifically used to make. You used to say these are expensive cars for rich people that can afford other no compromise cars to use when they can't use their Tesla. My Tesla is our no compromise car. It's alternative is a BMW i3. I'm not rich.
how many tesla owners have a similar situation? and i submit to you that you may be living in a cali bubble in your peer comparison, you're not rich rich, but you're surely well into upper middle class and doing quite well. you're out in california hills, driving a tesla, and you're meeting who through your kids' school again ??
So the problem is being attacked from both sides which means that I'm even more likely to buy another electric car when my lease is up in a year.
So despite my love of other ICE cars (535i, A8), I can't bring myself to justify the purchase as my main car. My much more expensive Tesla is faster, more reliable and pretty much at parity with both of those cars when you consider total cost of ownership over 5 years.
if you're leasing the car, what do you even care about these 'problems'? that occasional oil change can't be much more of an inconvenience than the occasional long charge. and i'm sure the tesla is faster straight, don't tell me that pig handles like a 535i though!
one of few people, i personally know, who own's a tesla, runs out of charge frequently, and ditches the fucker wherever he ran out
calls a cab/uber/whatever. gets to where he needs to go, leaves the car
would love for you/him to elaborate on this, sounds crazy, what's his deal??
