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I can see it now, the dangrossman of turn-of-the-20th-century pointing out that these new-fangled motor carriages need these so-called fuel pumps, and t'ain't a

I can see it now, the dangrossman of turn-of-the-20th-century pointing out that these new-fangled motor carriages need these so-called fuel pumps, and t'ain't any in a 10-county region 'round 'im. The OP's point stands, for the target market. dangrossman, to some extent myself, and others like us, are not the target market. And that's okay. This is the Zen of new tech that drags in a significant logistical tail along with it. For those whom the tech works, great, for all others...wait. We are still years away from the days when EV's are soccer-mom-mainstream. In the early days of motor cars, people (mostly men) planned their trips around known fueling and maintenance garages, and we are in a similar phase right now with EV's. Be happy with your internal combustion/diesel/hybrid vehicle until the EV industry works out the infrastructure and products so you can drive to your grandparents without planning the trip, and be happy there are millions of customers in the intervening years willing to shell out the R&D bucks ahead of you to make that eventuality possible. The really interesting options EV's open up are in fuel sourcing. The power generation/storage tech is approachable enough that individuals or small groups can source their own if desired, and with software-mediated assistance, even perform small-scale "load balancing". We've barely scratched the surface in these directions.

dangrossman 11y ago
Funny, I don't know how you got this impression. I drive a Leaf, one of those "new-fangled" EVs, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this page. I plan around that range every day, not just theoretical holidays at grandma's. My comment was about how carmakers other than Tesla are going to be able to sell EVs to early adopters despite not having the Supercharger network because (a) the Supercharger network isn't near most routes in much of the US, and (b) the non-Tesla charging network is even larger and still growing.
- yourapostasy 11y ago
  I think the GP pointing out the Supercharger network as a positive selling/marketing point when contrasting with other EV manufacturers is valid, but it read to me like you were discounting their position; sorry I misread, I can see what you are getting at now. My reply was meant to address that in such early days with early adopters like yourself, gaps in infrastructure for certain individuals---even early adopters like you---are part of the landscape. The Supercharger network was never meant to be a fast-growing, practical, charging network, it served a different purpose and that it doesn't fit your individual use case, I'm claiming, is A-OK in this early state of the market. I suspect the Supercharger network was initially only meant to address a marketing point: an EV couldn't drive cross-country in a roughly comparable time span as an ICE. This was an extreme form of the range anxiety played upon by detractors. The Supercharger stations went a long ways towards defusing that sales objection for the target market. Turn back the pages of history and you'll find exactly the same marketing stunt was performed for ICE's. People planned expeditions across the country on rutted dirt and mud tracks that were only charitably called roads, and staged fuel in advance like mountain climbers staged base camps with supplies, at extraordinary cost and effort. If my suspicion is correct, then the Supercharger network not being near most routes means it was never meant to really serve most routes, only sufficiently enough routes to serve its key initial purpose to TSLA. If that purpose happened to fit some small target market, then TSLA is happy to take that market (and any adjacencies they can take for a marginal cost of adding a Supercharger station here or there), but I don't think TSLA plans on the Supercharger network becoming the way to recharge. The closest analogy I can think of for the net is Google Fiber. I don't think GOOG plans on GF becoming the way to access the net, they are just pointing/prodding the way forward. That leaves me wondering though, if the non-TSLA charging networks have built their charging stations to be easily upgrade-able to higher voltages and amperages in the future; the ones I've casually inspected don't seem to lead to some conduit or similar infrastructure that can easily swap for bigger buss bars or similar. Ripping and replacing all that pavement and underground infrastructure to bring in more current has got to be murder on the capital budget. Someone must have made the calculation and figured out that the adoption rate is too slow to build in that expand-ability up-front.

dangrossman 11y ago

Funny, I don't know how you got this impression. I drive a Leaf, one of those "new-fangled" EVs, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this page. I plan around that range every day, not just theoretical holidays at grandma's. My comment was about how carmakers other than Tesla are going to be able to sell EVs to early adopters despite not having the Supercharger network because (a) the Supercharger network isn't near most routes in much of the US, and (b) the non-Tesla charging network is even larger and still growing.

yourapostasy 11y ago
I think the GP pointing out the Supercharger network as a positive selling/marketing point when contrasting with other EV manufacturers is valid, but it read to me like you were discounting their position; sorry I misread, I can see what you are getting at now. My reply was meant to address that in such early days with early adopters like yourself, gaps in infrastructure for certain individuals---even early adopters like you---are part of the landscape. The Supercharger network was never meant to be a fast-growing, practical, charging network, it served a different purpose and that it doesn't fit your individual use case, I'm claiming, is A-OK in this early state of the market. I suspect the Supercharger network was initially only meant to address a marketing point: an EV couldn't drive cross-country in a roughly comparable time span as an ICE. This was an extreme form of the range anxiety played upon by detractors. The Supercharger stations went a long ways towards defusing that sales objection for the target market. Turn back the pages of history and you'll find exactly the same marketing stunt was performed for ICE's. People planned expeditions across the country on rutted dirt and mud tracks that were only charitably called roads, and staged fuel in advance like mountain climbers staged base camps with supplies, at extraordinary cost and effort. If my suspicion is correct, then the Supercharger network not being near most routes means it was never meant to really serve most routes, only sufficiently enough routes to serve its key initial purpose to TSLA. If that purpose happened to fit some small target market, then TSLA is happy to take that market (and any adjacencies they can take for a marginal cost of adding a Supercharger station here or there), but I don't think TSLA plans on the Supercharger network becoming the way to recharge. The closest analogy I can think of for the net is Google Fiber. I don't think GOOG plans on GF becoming the way to access the net, they are just pointing/prodding the way forward. That leaves me wondering though, if the non-TSLA charging networks have built their charging stations to be easily upgrade-able to higher voltages and amperages in the future; the ones I've casually inspected don't seem to lead to some conduit or similar infrastructure that can easily swap for bigger buss bars or similar. Ripping and replacing all that pavement and underground infrastructure to bring in more current has got to be murder on the capital budget. Someone must have made the calculation and figured out that the adoption rate is too slow to build in that expand-ability up-front.