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I don't want to specially handle my car every day. The car is good for in-city usage, but if you're travelling a lot and live in Europe, it's still long from be

I don't want to specially handle my car every day. The car is good for in-city usage, but if you're travelling a lot and live in Europe, it's still long from being usable. EDIT: an explanation of the downvotes would be nice.

drcross 10y ago
>it's still long from being usable. Really? Traveling +300 miles before needing a 3.5 hour recharge still leaves it "long from being usable"?
- TomMarius 10y ago
  The range unfortunately isn't that large because of generally colder weather. Charging stations aren't on the way, and not even a quick detour, but a significant change of the way. When I'm going 1200 km to a client (or visit my parents), I don't have the time to go to the charger and charge my car three times, but it's no more than 10-hour trip with a conventionally-powered vehicle.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    If the route has Superchargers, your 10-hour trip in a conventional vehicle might be a 12-hour trip in a Tesla. Longer, but not horribly so. It depends on how you drive, too. If your 10-hour trip involves running into the bathroom and eating at the wheel, the penalty will be larger. If you sit down for meals and take breaks anyway, the penalty can be almost zero.
- morsch 10y ago
  Some people buy don't buy a small car because they might need to haul a sofa around town once a year. Other people don't buy a car with limited range because they might need to drive more than 4 hours without a long break once a year.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - thachmai 10y ago
    Statistically, I move every three year so far. I do have a lot of stuff though, last time it took half a shipping container for everything. If I extend your logics for my case, I should be driving a container truck every day. We shouldn't optimize for the exceptional cases. It's far cheaper and easier to think of the main usage first and deal with the exceptions when the time comes. Renting a shipping container once every few years is not that expensive.
    - morsch 10y ago
      I agree with you. I didn't give any logical argument, I just presented how people seem to behave, for better or worse. I don't own a car and when I need one it's usually one of the two scenarios I outline -- in which case I rent one.
  - mschaef 10y ago
    > Other people don't buy a car with limited range because they might need to drive more than 4 hours without a long break once a year. This is an easy argument to make, and I've made it myself in other cases, but there are two parts to the equation. The first is how often you might need to travel a long distance, but the second is what the consequence might be if you can't. Personally speaking (this thankfully hasn't happened often) I've had to make literally last minute 12 hour drives to attend to gravely ill relatives. If our only car had been a 300 mile range electric, those drives wouldn't have been possible in anything close to the same duration. (Looking for an alternative/rent car at 11PM isn't really an option. Looking for a Supercharger station in rural Virgina at 3AM even less so.)
    - ambicapter 10y ago
      12 hour drive? Wasn't quicker to grab a plane?
      - 10y ago
- babyrainbow 10y ago
  >Really? Traveling +300 miles before needing a 3.5 hour recharge still leaves it "long from being usable"? Yes. it is a huge step back from what we are used to...
  - Retric 10y ago
    Two 40 minute charges add 80% battery life and cover that distance assuming you start from a full charge. 750 miles is likely to take two refills on a gas car which take 5 minutes and you need to locate a station. So, the tech adds 1h 10 minutes over a 10+h trip, it's the infrastructure that's an issue for you. PS: It's not really safe to drive 10h without taking a few breaks. But, I know the appeal.
    - bluGill 10y ago
      They need to add a few more stations. On the 300 mile trip I take most often there is exactly one, and it isn't in the town we normally stop to eat at. (we commonly leave right after work and have supper 2 hours down the road which is a good time for a break). There is no station anywhere any of the hotels I stay at either. In short, the current superchargers are a good start, but if they want to make electric cars work for long distance they need to have them at every restaurant in the country, and every hotel needs to provide a charging station. In most of the country you can find a gas station every 20 miles even in the least populated parts. (though I can name some areas where next gas is 60 miles) Since a fill up is only 5 minutes I can fill up and then go to the restaurant across the street. With fillups taking 40 minutes we need the charging station to have a different model from current gas stations: they need to be places where humans would want to stop for a long time. Parks, hotels, restaurants, museums and the line come to mind. It will be interesting to see what happens as (if) electric cars become common.
      - Retric 10y ago
        Fair enough, my hope is they will add in road charging on highways which removes any real range issues. Electromagnetic induction is expencive and less efficent, but visually more apealing and fewer weather related issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Electric_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Electric_Vehicle or various forms of direct connections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduit_current_collection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduit_current_collection However, if electric becomes the norm gas is going to have the same issues as there are ever fewer stations.
SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
Is it? A friend has had a few Model S's since launch in the UK (currently a 90D) and due to business interests all over the country covers well over 20K miles per year. We live in a rural area in the midlands, FWIW. I know it's anecdata but his usage has convinced me that electric cars are far more capable and practical than some give them credit for.
- nateguchi 10y ago
  My car can do 260 miles on a tank of petrol and very rarely have I had to refill it more than once in a day...
hueving 10y ago
I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted so bad. It's a fair point to bring up when people bring up these 500+ mile range runs. The Tesla is restricted to being an amazing city car, and that's OK. Even if you're in the US and you live in a remote location, the car is crap for road trips. For example, you live in Rock Springs, WY and want to drive to Buffalo, WY. You will be lucky to make it on one charge and adding a supercharger to the route will take you hours out of the way.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Probably because it fits an unhelpful pattern of comments on a variety of new products or devices, namely: "this doesn't fit my needs exactly, therefore it is stupid/wrong/evil/crap". It's perfectly possible to express these kind of opinions in a way that wouldn't seem confrontational but apparently that's hard for people to do. (e.g. "my town is quite hilly, so cycling doesn't make as much sense for me as it does in flatter areas") In this case, possibly just leaving off the first sentence would have been enough. Probably not though, as it still comes off like the world revolves around their, not particularly common, use case. That's maybe half of it, the fact that their comment is quite possibly just factually wrong, combined with the above means they don't get the benefit of the doubt. There's lots of previous-gen EVs that would probably welcome the label of "good for in-city use", but it seems a stretch to say that is the limited application for any model of Tesla S.
  - verletx64 10y ago
    Not sure personally, the poster says it's good for X case, for Y case it's not so good. Doesn't really fit the pattern you're outlining, he hasn't called Tesla cars bad at all. I'm not seeing the confrontation, I'm seeing concessions made and a balanced comment.
    - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
      I think that's implied by the first sentence: "I don't want to specially handle my car every day", which seems like a claim that you need to do that with Teslas. Which is only true if you want to travel 5 or 600 miles on one charge every single day, which basically nobody does.
kalleboo 10y ago
Then don't buy one.
- verletx64 10y ago
  The poster is making a valid point, in that it lacks range without long breaks dotted about. This isn't a Tesla dealership, this is a discussion forum.
  - _ph_ 10y ago
    I wouldn't call a 40 minute recharge break after 2-300 miles a long break, only slightly longer than the obvious rest/food/bio break time would need.
    - verletx64 10y ago
      And you know, I want to talk about the recharge times further with you, but I'm not going to get the chance to do it if we're shutting down discussion. Is that 40 minutes with the Tesla specific gear for charging?
      - _ph_ 10y ago
        Yes. Tesla has created a network of the so-called SuperChargers, which allow to charge with up to 120kW. So recharge times of 30-40 minutes for a leg of 200-300 miles are possible. Typically SuperChargers are placed on the main roads in less than 200 miles distance. You can find a nice overview of the network here: https://supercharge.info https://supercharge.info
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    Nobody posited that the Tesla 100 KWh battery is all the range anyone will ever need. Just that it was pretty impressive (implying that it will cover many people's use cases, i.e. people who don't regularly drive 1200km in one go). I might just be tired of seeing this exact same discussion on HN over and over again. I was hoping to see discussion on the battery tech, not a discussion about how big of a bikeshed we need. The range anxiety discussion has been beaten to death. It's not insightful. I can read the exact same comments on YouTube.
_ph_ 10y ago
The supercharger network is pretty decent in central Europe, I don't see any restrictions for long distance travel there. And the range of over 300 miles makes it certanly a good car even for long distance travels.
foobarge 10y ago
I live in the French alps and from time to time I see Teslas in ski resorts - these cars are sometimes coming from far away. The furthest away one was from Denmark.

drcross 10y ago

>it's still long from being usable. Really? Traveling +300 miles before needing a 3.5 hour recharge still leaves it "long from being usable"?

TomMarius 10y ago
The range unfortunately isn't that large because of generally colder weather. Charging stations aren't on the way, and not even a quick detour, but a significant change of the way. When I'm going 1200 km to a client (or visit my parents), I don't have the time to go to the charger and charge my car three times, but it's no more than 10-hour trip with a conventionally-powered vehicle.
- mikeash 10y ago
  If the route has Superchargers, your 10-hour trip in a conventional vehicle might be a 12-hour trip in a Tesla. Longer, but not horribly so. It depends on how you drive, too. If your 10-hour trip involves running into the bathroom and eating at the wheel, the penalty will be larger. If you sit down for meals and take breaks anyway, the penalty can be almost zero.
morsch 10y ago
Some people buy don't buy a small car because they might need to haul a sofa around town once a year. Other people don't buy a car with limited range because they might need to drive more than 4 hours without a long break once a year.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- thachmai 10y ago
  Statistically, I move every three year so far. I do have a lot of stuff though, last time it took half a shipping container for everything. If I extend your logics for my case, I should be driving a container truck every day. We shouldn't optimize for the exceptional cases. It's far cheaper and easier to think of the main usage first and deal with the exceptions when the time comes. Renting a shipping container once every few years is not that expensive.
  - morsch 10y ago
    I agree with you. I didn't give any logical argument, I just presented how people seem to behave, for better or worse. I don't own a car and when I need one it's usually one of the two scenarios I outline -- in which case I rent one.
- mschaef 10y ago
  > Other people don't buy a car with limited range because they might need to drive more than 4 hours without a long break once a year. This is an easy argument to make, and I've made it myself in other cases, but there are two parts to the equation. The first is how often you might need to travel a long distance, but the second is what the consequence might be if you can't. Personally speaking (this thankfully hasn't happened often) I've had to make literally last minute 12 hour drives to attend to gravely ill relatives. If our only car had been a 300 mile range electric, those drives wouldn't have been possible in anything close to the same duration. (Looking for an alternative/rent car at 11PM isn't really an option. Looking for a Supercharger station in rural Virgina at 3AM even less so.)
  - ambicapter 10y ago
    12 hour drive? Wasn't quicker to grab a plane?
    - 10y ago
babyrainbow 10y ago
>Really? Traveling +300 miles before needing a 3.5 hour recharge still leaves it "long from being usable"? Yes. it is a huge step back from what we are used to...
- Retric 10y ago
  Two 40 minute charges add 80% battery life and cover that distance assuming you start from a full charge. 750 miles is likely to take two refills on a gas car which take 5 minutes and you need to locate a station. So, the tech adds 1h 10 minutes over a 10+h trip, it's the infrastructure that's an issue for you. PS: It's not really safe to drive 10h without taking a few breaks. But, I know the appeal.
  - bluGill 10y ago
    They need to add a few more stations. On the 300 mile trip I take most often there is exactly one, and it isn't in the town we normally stop to eat at. (we commonly leave right after work and have supper 2 hours down the road which is a good time for a break). There is no station anywhere any of the hotels I stay at either. In short, the current superchargers are a good start, but if they want to make electric cars work for long distance they need to have them at every restaurant in the country, and every hotel needs to provide a charging station. In most of the country you can find a gas station every 20 miles even in the least populated parts. (though I can name some areas where next gas is 60 miles) Since a fill up is only 5 minutes I can fill up and then go to the restaurant across the street. With fillups taking 40 minutes we need the charging station to have a different model from current gas stations: they need to be places where humans would want to stop for a long time. Parks, hotels, restaurants, museums and the line come to mind. It will be interesting to see what happens as (if) electric cars become common.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Fair enough, my hope is they will add in road charging on highways which removes any real range issues. Electromagnetic induction is expencive and less efficent, but visually more apealing and fewer weather related issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Electric_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Electric_Vehicle or various forms of direct connections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduit_current_collection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduit_current_collection However, if electric becomes the norm gas is going to have the same issues as there are ever fewer stations.

SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago

Is it? A friend has had a few Model S's since launch in the UK (currently a 90D) and due to business interests all over the country covers well over 20K miles per year. We live in a rural area in the midlands, FWIW. I know it's anecdata but his usage has convinced me that electric cars are far more capable and practical than some give them credit for.

nateguchi 10y ago
My car can do 260 miles on a tank of petrol and very rarely have I had to refill it more than once in a day...

hueving 10y ago

I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted so bad. It's a fair point to bring up when people bring up these 500+ mile range runs. The Tesla is restricted to being an amazing city car, and that's OK. Even if you're in the US and you live in a remote location, the car is crap for road trips. For example, you live in Rock Springs, WY and want to drive to Buffalo, WY. You will be lucky to make it on one charge and adding a supercharger to the route will take you hours out of the way.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
Probably because it fits an unhelpful pattern of comments on a variety of new products or devices, namely: "this doesn't fit my needs exactly, therefore it is stupid/wrong/evil/crap". It's perfectly possible to express these kind of opinions in a way that wouldn't seem confrontational but apparently that's hard for people to do. (e.g. "my town is quite hilly, so cycling doesn't make as much sense for me as it does in flatter areas") In this case, possibly just leaving off the first sentence would have been enough. Probably not though, as it still comes off like the world revolves around their, not particularly common, use case. That's maybe half of it, the fact that their comment is quite possibly just factually wrong, combined with the above means they don't get the benefit of the doubt. There's lots of previous-gen EVs that would probably welcome the label of "good for in-city use", but it seems a stretch to say that is the limited application for any model of Tesla S.
- verletx64 10y ago
  Not sure personally, the poster says it's good for X case, for Y case it's not so good. Doesn't really fit the pattern you're outlining, he hasn't called Tesla cars bad at all. I'm not seeing the confrontation, I'm seeing concessions made and a balanced comment.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    I think that's implied by the first sentence: "I don't want to specially handle my car every day", which seems like a claim that you need to do that with Teslas. Which is only true if you want to travel 5 or 600 miles on one charge every single day, which basically nobody does.

kalleboo 10y ago

Then don't buy one.

verletx64 10y ago
The poster is making a valid point, in that it lacks range without long breaks dotted about. This isn't a Tesla dealership, this is a discussion forum.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  I wouldn't call a 40 minute recharge break after 2-300 miles a long break, only slightly longer than the obvious rest/food/bio break time would need.
  - verletx64 10y ago
    And you know, I want to talk about the recharge times further with you, but I'm not going to get the chance to do it if we're shutting down discussion. Is that 40 minutes with the Tesla specific gear for charging?
    - _ph_ 10y ago
      Yes. Tesla has created a network of the so-called SuperChargers, which allow to charge with up to 120kW. So recharge times of 30-40 minutes for a leg of 200-300 miles are possible. Typically SuperChargers are placed on the main roads in less than 200 miles distance. You can find a nice overview of the network here: https://supercharge.info https://supercharge.info
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Nobody posited that the Tesla 100 KWh battery is all the range anyone will ever need. Just that it was pretty impressive (implying that it will cover many people's use cases, i.e. people who don't regularly drive 1200km in one go). I might just be tired of seeing this exact same discussion on HN over and over again. I was hoping to see discussion on the battery tech, not a discussion about how big of a bikeshed we need. The range anxiety discussion has been beaten to death. It's not insightful. I can read the exact same comments on YouTube.

_ph_ 10y ago

The supercharger network is pretty decent in central Europe, I don't see any restrictions for long distance travel there. And the range of over 300 miles makes it certanly a good car even for long distance travels.

foobarge 10y ago

I live in the French alps and from time to time I see Teslas in ski resorts - these cars are sometimes coming from far away. The furthest away one was from Denmark.