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Heh, I came to just the opposite conclusion. With serious weather/fires/disasters even the local gas stations may be inoperable (they do need power) or just sw

by sliken 6y ago

Heh, I came to just the opposite conclusion. With serious weather/fires/disasters even the local gas stations may be inoperable (they do need power) or just swamped. Having a go bag and a fully charged charge was quite reassuring. Doubly so because Tesla's are really efficient, so you get the rated EPA range at 65 mph or so, but you can get double that at half the speed. They also do exceedingly well in heavy traffic (stop and go), relative to gas vehicles. It's easy to underestimate the number of chargers around, in my city there's quite a few more charging stations than gas stations. Granted many are much slower than the superchargers, but any port in a storm, right? I couldn't really foresee any scenario with a big fire in central California where I couldn't just get on 80 or 5 and head north/south/east/west to safety and not worry about the charging infrastructure until after I was safe ... even if that meant all the way to Nevada. BTW, I do have the luxury of a garage with power, but I've seen an increasingly large number of Tesla owners parking in driveways, and even street parking with long extension cords.

robomartin 6y ago
The possibility that one should not ignore is the idea of (a) not having a full charge and (b) not being anywhere close to your home or a supercharger you can actually use. Quick google search, in the US: 115,000 gas stations 908 Tesla charging stations The probability of being within driving range of a gasoline station is 100 to 1, and likely better. I say this because to do the actual math you'd have to calculate distance from wherever one might be at the time of need. I think my point stands. The electric vehicle infrastructure in the US is inadequate for mass electric vehicle adoption. This includes power generation capacity. Tesla owners currently enjoy the luxury of charge energy requirements not pushing any limits (at least none anyone is screaming about). And as I said, conveniently ignoring where energy might be coming from. Hint: It isn't all "clean". As the fleet of electric vehicles grows and energy demands increase I fully expect charging costs to go way up. In fact, I would not be surprised at all if charging costs start approximating the cost of gasoline or diesel. This, among other things, would solve one of the biggest items of concern for our politicians, the erosion of the gasoline-based tax revenue. The evolution of this ecosystem will be interesting to watch over the next few years. Before making the decision to wait I built a 13 kW solar array to charge the Teslas we were going to buy by using as much solar as possible. I can easily double the array size at any time. For now it powers the Haas VF2 CNC milling machine in my garage (solar powered CNC!). Garages are not for cars. C'mon! :)

by sliken 6y ago

robomartin 6y ago

The possibility that one should not ignore is the idea of (a) not having a full charge and (b) not being anywhere close to your home or a supercharger you can actually use. Quick google search, in the US: 115,000 gas stations 908 Tesla charging stations The probability of being within driving range of a gasoline station is 100 to 1, and likely better. I say this because to do the actual math you'd have to calculate distance from wherever one might be at the time of need. I think my point stands. The electric vehicle infrastructure in the US is inadequate for mass electric vehicle adoption. This includes power generation capacity. Tesla owners currently enjoy the luxury of charge energy requirements not pushing any limits (at least none anyone is screaming about). And as I said, conveniently ignoring where energy might be coming from. Hint: It isn't all "clean". As the fleet of electric vehicles grows and energy demands increase I fully expect charging costs to go way up. In fact, I would not be surprised at all if charging costs start approximating the cost of gasoline or diesel. This, among other things, would solve one of the biggest items of concern for our politicians, the erosion of the gasoline-based tax revenue. The evolution of this ecosystem will be interesting to watch over the next few years. Before making the decision to wait I built a 13 kW solar array to charge the Teslas we were going to buy by using as much solar as possible. I can easily double the array size at any time. For now it powers the Haas VF2 CNC milling machine in my garage (solar powered CNC!). Garages are not for cars. C'mon! :)