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If I purchase a vehicle, I'm likely to want it to work for every trip I want to take. It needs to work when I visit my brother in Oklahoma in the winter, and m

If I purchase a vehicle, I'm likely to want it to work for every trip I want to take. It needs to work when I visit my brother in Oklahoma in the winter, and my friend's LAN party in Louisiana in the summer, and my in-laws in Oregon in the fall, and when I pick friends up from the airport (a 45-mile round trip) a few times a year, and on days when I have a bunch of scattered errands all across town. If a car sucks for even one of those trips, I'm going to be hesitant to buy it, and if there are two or three circumstances where it would suck, I'm crossing it off of my list. If I can come up with one trip where I'm going to need to sit there for two hours waiting for my car to charge, then the supercharger network, while not being actually useless on the whole, is not particularly convenient for me and therefore not really a strong selling point.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
You sound like some of my neighbors who drive great big huge pickup trucks because they need something that can carry a full sheet of plywood, which they do once or twice a year. They spend thousands in extra gasoline and depreciation to save $50 in delivery charges.
- lotharbot 11y ago
  If I have to put up with slow charging (and therefore perhaps take an extra vacation day), or have to rent a car or fly, for 2-3 trips, that's thousands of dollars every year, not a $50 delivery charge. If I have to seriously inconvenience my grandparents every time I go to visit them, that generates a lot of stress and potentially puts them at risk (grandpa is turning 95 this year; he doesn't travel well.) But I can buy a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt for a couple grand less than the cheap Tesla (counting the same tax incentives), and it works for every trip. With the gas generator, it has a range of over 300 miles, and can refill about 280-290 miles of range at an ordinary gas station in 5 minutes. So I can spend a similar amount of money for a much more convenient experience by going with a hybrid and ignoring the superchargers entirely. Point being, the argument that the supercharger network covers "almost everyone" is flawed. There are a lot of people for whom it still misses at least some of their trips, where other types of EVs perform better, and missing some trips is far more relevant than you seem to give it credit for. Again, it's not like spending $thousands to avoid the occasional $50 delivery charge for plywood. It's spending basically the same amount on a different type of technology to avoid the occasional flight, car rental, or extra stress on the grandparents. The supercharger network will need to be much more dense before it gets to the point of being a major factor in Tesla's favor.
mikeash 11y ago
I totally agree. It has to work for everything you want, not just almost everything. That's exactly why the Supercharger network is such a big deal. Its existence moves a huge segment of the population from "almost everything" to "everything." Yes, there's still a group of people where it doesn't do that. I totally accept that. But the person I'm replying to thinks that the Supercharger network doesn't matter outside of California because it's "so sparse as to be useless for most people." Which is far, far from the truth.
- lotharbot 11y ago
  I think you're very wrong about the size of group of people that the Supercharger network doesn't move from "almost everything" to "everything". The network matters, but it's only a strong selling point for those it moves from "almost" to "everything", and I think that's actually a fairly small segment of the population.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    The vast majority of the population lives in areas with good Supercharger coverage, and uses major interstates for their long trips, which is where Superchargers are mostly located. I would contend that a majority of the US population's trips would fit within it as the network stands today. Again, just look at the population map of the US and the map of superchargers. It lines up pretty well.
    - lotharbot 11y ago
      I live in a major metro area and use major interstates for most of my long trips. But the network is still a long way from where it would need to be to support all of my trips. Here's an example that I've actually done twice in the last two years: Denver, CO to Austin, TX. That's about a 900 mile trip, and a long but tolerable day -- from Denver south to Raton, NM and then southeast through Amarillo, south to Lubbock, and then southeast again. To stay on the supercharger network I'd have to go all the way over to Oklahoma City (on either I-40 or I-70 to I-35), adding 150+ miles to the trip, not to mention longer and more frequent stops that would likely necessitate adding an extra half-day of travel time each way. My brother lives in Chicago. His trips to Indianapolis would be covered, but not his trips to Denver. Dallas-Fort Worth is a huge population center, with great supercharger coverage leaving north or south, but not east or west. If you're heading to Atlanta, Memphis, or St. Louis the supercharger network is going to be really inconvenient. And while the majority of the US population does live in major cities connected by interstates, the majority of the US population has at least one close friend or family member they'd like to visit, who isn't connected by one of the supercharger-served routes. If you made graphs not just of population centers, but of close personal connections, your "graph of graphs" would have quite a few connections that aren't covered by the network. (While truck traffic and passenger traffic are not identical, figure 2.8 of https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/bottlenecks/chap2.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/bottlenecks/chap2.cfm suggests quite a few heavily-trafficked routes that aren't covered by the supercharger network.) It's not my intent to be overly negative. I'm just being realistic, presenting the analysis I did myself about 6 months ago after my old car got wrecked in a hit-and-run. The majority of the time, I'd be happy with a Tesla and the supercharger network, but a couple times a year it would be a massive inconvenience. This is an area where the difference between 95% and 100% is huge. Tesla/superchargers are getting there, but it'll be several years before the infrastructure is in place for a pure electric plugin with a 200 mile range becomes a truly viable vehicle for the majority of people.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

You sound like some of my neighbors who drive great big huge pickup trucks because they need something that can carry a full sheet of plywood, which they do once or twice a year. They spend thousands in extra gasoline and depreciation to save $50 in delivery charges.

lotharbot 11y ago
If I have to put up with slow charging (and therefore perhaps take an extra vacation day), or have to rent a car or fly, for 2-3 trips, that's thousands of dollars every year, not a $50 delivery charge. If I have to seriously inconvenience my grandparents every time I go to visit them, that generates a lot of stress and potentially puts them at risk (grandpa is turning 95 this year; he doesn't travel well.) But I can buy a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt for a couple grand less than the cheap Tesla (counting the same tax incentives), and it works for every trip. With the gas generator, it has a range of over 300 miles, and can refill about 280-290 miles of range at an ordinary gas station in 5 minutes. So I can spend a similar amount of money for a much more convenient experience by going with a hybrid and ignoring the superchargers entirely. Point being, the argument that the supercharger network covers "almost everyone" is flawed. There are a lot of people for whom it still misses at least some of their trips, where other types of EVs perform better, and missing some trips is far more relevant than you seem to give it credit for. Again, it's not like spending $thousands to avoid the occasional $50 delivery charge for plywood. It's spending basically the same amount on a different type of technology to avoid the occasional flight, car rental, or extra stress on the grandparents. The supercharger network will need to be much more dense before it gets to the point of being a major factor in Tesla's favor.

mikeash 11y ago

I totally agree. It has to work for everything you want, not just almost everything. That's exactly why the Supercharger network is such a big deal. Its existence moves a huge segment of the population from "almost everything" to "everything." Yes, there's still a group of people where it doesn't do that. I totally accept that. But the person I'm replying to thinks that the Supercharger network doesn't matter outside of California because it's "so sparse as to be useless for most people." Which is far, far from the truth.

lotharbot 11y ago
I think you're very wrong about the size of group of people that the Supercharger network doesn't move from "almost everything" to "everything". The network matters, but it's only a strong selling point for those it moves from "almost" to "everything", and I think that's actually a fairly small segment of the population.
- mikeash 11y ago
  The vast majority of the population lives in areas with good Supercharger coverage, and uses major interstates for their long trips, which is where Superchargers are mostly located. I would contend that a majority of the US population's trips would fit within it as the network stands today. Again, just look at the population map of the US and the map of superchargers. It lines up pretty well.
  - lotharbot 11y ago
    I live in a major metro area and use major interstates for most of my long trips. But the network is still a long way from where it would need to be to support all of my trips. Here's an example that I've actually done twice in the last two years: Denver, CO to Austin, TX. That's about a 900 mile trip, and a long but tolerable day -- from Denver south to Raton, NM and then southeast through Amarillo, south to Lubbock, and then southeast again. To stay on the supercharger network I'd have to go all the way over to Oklahoma City (on either I-40 or I-70 to I-35), adding 150+ miles to the trip, not to mention longer and more frequent stops that would likely necessitate adding an extra half-day of travel time each way. My brother lives in Chicago. His trips to Indianapolis would be covered, but not his trips to Denver. Dallas-Fort Worth is a huge population center, with great supercharger coverage leaving north or south, but not east or west. If you're heading to Atlanta, Memphis, or St. Louis the supercharger network is going to be really inconvenient. And while the majority of the US population does live in major cities connected by interstates, the majority of the US population has at least one close friend or family member they'd like to visit, who isn't connected by one of the supercharger-served routes. If you made graphs not just of population centers, but of close personal connections, your "graph of graphs" would have quite a few connections that aren't covered by the network. (While truck traffic and passenger traffic are not identical, figure 2.8 of https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/bottlenecks/chap2.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/bottlenecks/chap2.cfm suggests quite a few heavily-trafficked routes that aren't covered by the supercharger network.) It's not my intent to be overly negative. I'm just being realistic, presenting the analysis I did myself about 6 months ago after my old car got wrecked in a hit-and-run. The majority of the time, I'd be happy with a Tesla and the supercharger network, but a couple times a year it would be a massive inconvenience. This is an area where the difference between 95% and 100% is huge. Tesla/superchargers are getting there, but it'll be several years before the infrastructure is in place for a pure electric plugin with a 200 mile range becomes a truly viable vehicle for the majority of people.