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I live in Massachusetts, and I regularly visit my parents in Maine, which is about 270 miles away. There are no Superchargers along the route, at my parents' ho

by kylec 11y ago

I live in Massachusetts, and I regularly visit my parents in Maine, which is about 270 miles away. There are no Superchargers along the route, at my parents' house, nor indeed anywhere in Maine. I also live in an apartment, and there is no electric car charging here, so I'd probably have to frequent the local Supercharger to keep it topped off. The "etc" covers things like not having physical controls for adjusting the climate and sound systems, as well as a generally substandard interior for a $100K car. Not dealbreakers per se, but factors that leaned me away from considering the car. I don't know if I'm in the minority here, maybe I am. Maybe most people own a house with a garage and never take road trips further than 250 miles (or own a second car with which to do so), but I'm not one of those people. I suspect, though, that there's more of us than you might think.

mikeash 11y ago
If you can charge at your parents' place (a dryer outlet would do fine) then you should be good to go in that respect. Maybe wait until the Seabrook, NH supercharger is done so you can top up on the way, since 270 miles one way is pushing it. Or buy the CHAdeMO adapter and patronize one of the stations in Portland. CHAdeMO isn't as fast as a Supercharger, but it's fast enough to be a practical bridge for road trips. Lack of charging at home is a big problem for sure. I would not buy a Model S if I couldn't charge it where I lived. Many apartment building owners are amenable to installing chargers, but many aren't. Note that you don't necessarily need a garage, just dedicated parking somewhere reasonably close to electrical infrastructure. Houses with at least carports or driveways are pretty common places to live. "Never take road trips further than 250 miles" needs a strong amendment. "Never take road trips further than 250 miles where charging can't be done at the destination and you're outside the supercharger network and away from CHAdeMO stations." Sure, it happens, but it's pretty rare. If you're staying within the Supercharger network, or you stay within one-way range and can plug in at your destination, then trips over 250 miles are no problem.
- kylec 11y ago
  I don't know if I'd amend that statement that far. Even if there's a supercharger on the route, we haven't yet talked about the time required to let the car charge back up for the remainder of the journey. If you're on a 400 mile road trip, you can drive the first 250 or so on a fully charged Tesla, but then you'll need to stop for a half hour at a Supercharger and let your car charge up to get the remaining 150 miles. If there's no Supercharger around and you need to stop at a conventional EV charger, be prepared to wait an hour or more. Because of the non-trivial time increase once you go beyond the initial range of the car, I know I'd be less likely to want to take trips beyond it, even if they were technically doable.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    OK, then add "and take reasonable breaks" to the amendment. Stopping for 20-30 minutes every 150 miles or so isn't a burden for most people. Some people really like to push. But you really should be stopping that long, that often, regardless of what you're driving. People don't always do it, but they should. As I mentioned in a comment elsewhere, the impact of charging time really depends on what you do in that time. If you can time your charging to coincide with a meal, for example, then the actual penalty from charging is zero. If you're doing a 400 mile road trip and you can make your supercharging stop your lunch stop, then you'll lose less time to charging than you'd lose to filling the tank of a gas car. Obviously that's a big if and it's not at all guaranteed, but the point is that this isn't an absolute, and "30 minutes to charge" shouldn't be thought of as being the equivalent of "30 minutes to fill the gas tank." Personally I love long trips in the Model S. Part of that is just because the car is extremely comfortable and easy to drive, which makes long trips much less tiring. I'm sure that would come with other cars in that price range too, so not something that's exclusive to Tesla. The extra charging time has not so far been at all an issue. I've made three trips beyond the range of the car in the six months I've had it, and my total time spent waiting for the car to charge is zero. I'm sure that will start to become non-zero when I want to do, say, 500 miles in a day, but I still look forward to longer trips in it more than I did in my previous cars.
greglindahl 11y ago
People with situations like yours (bad parking situation, like to drive long trips along unpopular routes) sure like to complain about it on HN. Not sure if it adds anything to the discussion about the customers Tesla needs to convince to make them successful in the next year or two. BTW, different people have different likes and dislikes about car interiors. Sounds like you should buy a car you like.
- kylec 11y ago
  Of course. I fully recognize that the Tesla is a great car for a lot of people. I take issue, though, when those people start saying that it's so much better than other cars, pointing out the ways in which the Tesla is better but ignoring the ways in which the Tesla is worse.
  - greglindahl 11y ago
    And do you find that such postings lead to productive discussions? Because it causes the same discussion every time. And every car has both pluses and minuses.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Ways in which it's worse: range. Interior is debatable and subjective. The only concrete thing where it's worse is range. And everybody acknowledges that as far as I can see. The problem is that a lot of people don't understand how the stuff works, and imagine that the ways in which the Tesla is worse are much worse than they really are. Edit: range and price, actually. But everybody mentions the price too. Don't mistake "nobody mentions the flaws" with "everybody mentions what flaws there are, there just aren't that many flaws."
    - kylec 11y ago
      Here are the downsides that I see. Maybe not all of these are downsides for you, but they are things that might prevent people from buying one as their only car: - price - range - needing to have a charging port at your residence - charging time - charger availability Some of these are related. If refuel time and fuel availability were improved to be comparable to gas cars, range wouldn't be a big issue, and people wouldn't need to have a charger at their residence. If range improved to, say, 500 miles, then charging time and charger availability would become less critical.

by kylec 11y ago

mikeash 11y ago

If you can charge at your parents' place (a dryer outlet would do fine) then you should be good to go in that respect. Maybe wait until the Seabrook, NH supercharger is done so you can top up on the way, since 270 miles one way is pushing it. Or buy the CHAdeMO adapter and patronize one of the stations in Portland. CHAdeMO isn't as fast as a Supercharger, but it's fast enough to be a practical bridge for road trips. Lack of charging at home is a big problem for sure. I would not buy a Model S if I couldn't charge it where I lived. Many apartment building owners are amenable to installing chargers, but many aren't. Note that you don't necessarily need a garage, just dedicated parking somewhere reasonably close to electrical infrastructure. Houses with at least carports or driveways are pretty common places to live. "Never take road trips further than 250 miles" needs a strong amendment. "Never take road trips further than 250 miles where charging can't be done at the destination and you're outside the supercharger network and away from CHAdeMO stations." Sure, it happens, but it's pretty rare. If you're staying within the Supercharger network, or you stay within one-way range and can plug in at your destination, then trips over 250 miles are no problem.

kylec 11y ago
I don't know if I'd amend that statement that far. Even if there's a supercharger on the route, we haven't yet talked about the time required to let the car charge back up for the remainder of the journey. If you're on a 400 mile road trip, you can drive the first 250 or so on a fully charged Tesla, but then you'll need to stop for a half hour at a Supercharger and let your car charge up to get the remaining 150 miles. If there's no Supercharger around and you need to stop at a conventional EV charger, be prepared to wait an hour or more. Because of the non-trivial time increase once you go beyond the initial range of the car, I know I'd be less likely to want to take trips beyond it, even if they were technically doable.
- mikeash 11y ago
  OK, then add "and take reasonable breaks" to the amendment. Stopping for 20-30 minutes every 150 miles or so isn't a burden for most people. Some people really like to push. But you really should be stopping that long, that often, regardless of what you're driving. People don't always do it, but they should. As I mentioned in a comment elsewhere, the impact of charging time really depends on what you do in that time. If you can time your charging to coincide with a meal, for example, then the actual penalty from charging is zero. If you're doing a 400 mile road trip and you can make your supercharging stop your lunch stop, then you'll lose less time to charging than you'd lose to filling the tank of a gas car. Obviously that's a big if and it's not at all guaranteed, but the point is that this isn't an absolute, and "30 minutes to charge" shouldn't be thought of as being the equivalent of "30 minutes to fill the gas tank." Personally I love long trips in the Model S. Part of that is just because the car is extremely comfortable and easy to drive, which makes long trips much less tiring. I'm sure that would come with other cars in that price range too, so not something that's exclusive to Tesla. The extra charging time has not so far been at all an issue. I've made three trips beyond the range of the car in the six months I've had it, and my total time spent waiting for the car to charge is zero. I'm sure that will start to become non-zero when I want to do, say, 500 miles in a day, but I still look forward to longer trips in it more than I did in my previous cars.

greglindahl 11y ago

People with situations like yours (bad parking situation, like to drive long trips along unpopular routes) sure like to complain about it on HN. Not sure if it adds anything to the discussion about the customers Tesla needs to convince to make them successful in the next year or two. BTW, different people have different likes and dislikes about car interiors. Sounds like you should buy a car you like.

kylec 11y ago
Of course. I fully recognize that the Tesla is a great car for a lot of people. I take issue, though, when those people start saying that it's so much better than other cars, pointing out the ways in which the Tesla is better but ignoring the ways in which the Tesla is worse.
- greglindahl 11y ago
  And do you find that such postings lead to productive discussions? Because it causes the same discussion every time. And every car has both pluses and minuses.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Ways in which it's worse: range. Interior is debatable and subjective. The only concrete thing where it's worse is range. And everybody acknowledges that as far as I can see. The problem is that a lot of people don't understand how the stuff works, and imagine that the ways in which the Tesla is worse are much worse than they really are. Edit: range and price, actually. But everybody mentions the price too. Don't mistake "nobody mentions the flaws" with "everybody mentions what flaws there are, there just aren't that many flaws."
  - kylec 11y ago
    Here are the downsides that I see. Maybe not all of these are downsides for you, but they are things that might prevent people from buying one as their only car: - price - range - needing to have a charging port at your residence - charging time - charger availability Some of these are related. If refuel time and fuel availability were improved to be comparable to gas cars, range wouldn't be a big issue, and people wouldn't need to have a charger at their residence. If range improved to, say, 500 miles, then charging time and charger availability would become less critical.