5 ms·

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 th

by 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?
  - mschaef 10y ago
    At least one or two of the calls were quite urgent - We got the call late in the evening and were in the car within an hour or two. Flying would've meant booking a last minute flight, waiting for whatever flight time, getting to the airport an hour or two in advance, landing at our destination, arranging transport, and then taking a two hour trip by ground transport. There was so much in the way of overhead and transition costs it didn't make sense. (Amtrak had the same problem.... we've tried that before too, but only once.)
  - TomMarius 10y ago
    Not possible for me since my car is full of computers usually.
- mikeash 10y ago
  There's a third part to the equation: how often your trip is one which can't use Superchargers. Most trips can. Coverage is pretty good nowadays. You don't "look for" them, the car tells you where to go. 3AM is irrelevant, they're open 24/7. If your trip is well covered by the network, you're looking at a 10-20% time penalty. If it's not, you're screwed, of course, but people seem to overstate how likely that is.
  - mschaef 10y ago
    > you're looking at a 10-20% time penalty Running the route I'm describing through a trip trip planning website, the travel time goes from 11:12 (h:m) to 15:52 (3:53 charging)... so more like a 40% penalty. In my particular scenario, it would have translated into 4-5 hours of (minor) detours and waiting at Supercharger stations in the middle of the night with sick family waiting. For me, personally, the flexibility to avoid that kind of delay is something I've found valuable at particularly important moments of my life. Aside from the fact there are fewer Supercharger stations, some of this is just an inherent limitation of the technology. Even a Supercharger station (145KW) is slightly more than two orders of magnitude less capable of transferring energy than a gas station pump (16MW). Even if the battery technology got to the point it could handle that level of power transfer, I'd hate to be anywhere near a 16MW electrical charging station. (>2K amps at 7,200 V, not to mention the required >100MW feed INTO something like an 8 car station with that capacity per car.) This makes me wonder about the idea of swapping out battery packs. It seems like that could possibly be made just as fast as filling up on gas.

by morsch 10y ago

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?
- mschaef 10y ago
  At least one or two of the calls were quite urgent - We got the call late in the evening and were in the car within an hour or two. Flying would've meant booking a last minute flight, waiting for whatever flight time, getting to the airport an hour or two in advance, landing at our destination, arranging transport, and then taking a two hour trip by ground transport. There was so much in the way of overhead and transition costs it didn't make sense. (Amtrak had the same problem.... we've tried that before too, but only once.)
- TomMarius 10y ago
  Not possible for me since my car is full of computers usually.
mikeash 10y ago
There's a third part to the equation: how often your trip is one which can't use Superchargers. Most trips can. Coverage is pretty good nowadays. You don't "look for" them, the car tells you where to go. 3AM is irrelevant, they're open 24/7. If your trip is well covered by the network, you're looking at a 10-20% time penalty. If it's not, you're screwed, of course, but people seem to overstate how likely that is.
- mschaef 10y ago
  > you're looking at a 10-20% time penalty Running the route I'm describing through a trip trip planning website, the travel time goes from 11:12 (h:m) to 15:52 (3:53 charging)... so more like a 40% penalty. In my particular scenario, it would have translated into 4-5 hours of (minor) detours and waiting at Supercharger stations in the middle of the night with sick family waiting. For me, personally, the flexibility to avoid that kind of delay is something I've found valuable at particularly important moments of my life. Aside from the fact there are fewer Supercharger stations, some of this is just an inherent limitation of the technology. Even a Supercharger station (145KW) is slightly more than two orders of magnitude less capable of transferring energy than a gas station pump (16MW). Even if the battery technology got to the point it could handle that level of power transfer, I'd hate to be anywhere near a 16MW electrical charging station. (>2K amps at 7,200 V, not to mention the required >100MW feed INTO something like an 8 car station with that capacity per car.) This makes me wonder about the idea of swapping out battery packs. It seems like that could possibly be made just as fast as filling up on gas.