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So if you live in the city and you do street parking you're screwed? What if you're doing a road trip?

by baby 6y ago

tenacious_tuna 6y ago
I used to have a model 3; I used to live in a suburb with a garage, and we moved into downtown Chicago. We ditched the Tesla simply because we didn't want to have any car at all. To that end, if you're urban enough to not need a car, the point is moot. In my humble opinion, being urban-yet-still-needing-a-car-but-not-having-a-garage is an orthognal problem: we should put more effort into public transit or bike or walkability (e.g., more compact neighborhoods, with no street parking), with the end goal of reducing *all* car ownership. For road trips, level 3 charging *for teslas* is truly, truly excellent. About a year ago we traveled up to Michigan's upper peninsula, which at the time had no superchargers, but we were able to trickle charge off of a power socket on the porch of the friends we were visiting. We were planning a trip to family in rural Virginia before the pandemic struck, and we could either trickle charge off 110v outside their garage, or we could have backed the car up to the window outside their laundry room and used the 240v32A socket for their dryer. There's plenty of options for charging an EV, especially if you're willing to tolerate minor inconvenience. It is something you should know about, and plan around, definitely--but with the amount of effort Tesla is putting into expanding the supercharger network, and with the gradual rollout of more and more public level 2 charging, it's not nearly the issue I think many people make it out to be. Edit 10:36 CDT: spelling
- baby 6y ago
  While I wholeheartedly agree with you, American cities suck with public transport or transportation in general. I've lived my whole life without a car, and just got a driver license at 32 because I can't really take the train to travel here in SF, and public transport is not good and not safe.
hervature 6y ago
I don't know why you're being down voted. From the parent, >> if you cant level 2 charge at home then yes... having an EV may be quite inconvenient. Seems to imply exactly what you said. I think maybe people are down voting because, if you put enough effort, then those things aren't a problem. For example, I traveled with a family in Colombia and the charging was not an issue. They had a 100m extension cord at one place. Every hotel needed a parking space close to where the electricity entered from the power lines to the building for the portable charging cord. We stopped multiple times for 5 hours which the kids used to play. In the end, we did everything we wanted to. But the driving was dictated by the car. A modern day road trip with a gas and EV is not even comparable. Again, not sure why you are down voted.
pmorici 6y ago
If you want to do road trips you need to buy an EV that supports Supercharging/DC Fast Charging. Same if you live in a home/apartment without a level 2 charger. Frankly the only brand that has good availability of DC Fast charging right now is Tesla. The Bolt didn't even support DC fast charging without an upgrade option until this model year just released. This is an example of why DC fast charging in anything but a Tesla kind of stinks. https://twitter.com/stevenewing/status/1388992276349612032 https://twitter.com/stevenewing/status/1388992276349612032

So if you live in the city and you do street parking you're screwed? What if you're doing a road trip?

by baby 6y ago

So if you live in the city and you do street parking you're screwed? What if you're doing a road trip?

I used to have a model 3; I used to live in a suburb with a garage, and we moved into downtown Chicago. We ditched the Tesla simply because we didn't want to have any car at all. To that end, if you're urban enough to not need a car, the point is moot. In my humble opinion, being urban-yet-still-needing-a-car-but-not-having-a-garage is an orthognal problem: we should put more effort into public transit or bike or walkability (e.g., more compact neighborhoods, with no street parking), with the end goal of reducing *all* car ownership. For road trips, level 3 charging *for teslas* is truly, truly excellent. About a year ago we traveled up to Michigan's upper peninsula, which at the time had no superchargers, but we were able to trickle charge off of a power socket on the porch of the friends we were visiting. We were planning a trip to family in rural Virginia before the pandemic struck, and we could either trickle charge off 110v outside their garage, or we could have backed the car up to the window outside their laundry room and used the 240v32A socket for their dryer. There's plenty of options for charging an EV, especially if you're willing to tolerate minor inconvenience. It is something you should know about, and plan around, definitely--but with the amount of effort Tesla is putting into expanding the supercharger network, and with the gradual rollout of more and more public level 2 charging, it's not nearly the issue I think many people make it out to be. Edit 10:36 CDT: spelling

baby 6y ago
While I wholeheartedly agree with you, American cities suck with public transport or transportation in general. I've lived my whole life without a car, and just got a driver license at 32 because I can't really take the train to travel here in SF, and public transport is not good and not safe.

hervature 6y ago

I don't know why you're being down voted. From the parent, >> if you cant level 2 charge at home then yes... having an EV may be quite inconvenient. Seems to imply exactly what you said. I think maybe people are down voting because, if you put enough effort, then those things aren't a problem. For example, I traveled with a family in Colombia and the charging was not an issue. They had a 100m extension cord at one place. Every hotel needed a parking space close to where the electricity entered from the power lines to the building for the portable charging cord. We stopped multiple times for 5 hours which the kids used to play. In the end, we did everything we wanted to. But the driving was dictated by the car. A modern day road trip with a gas and EV is not even comparable. Again, not sure why you are down voted.

pmorici 6y ago

If you want to do road trips you need to buy an EV that supports Supercharging/DC Fast Charging. Same if you live in a home/apartment without a level 2 charger. Frankly the only brand that has good availability of DC Fast charging right now is Tesla. The Bolt didn't even support DC fast charging without an upgrade option until this model year just released. This is an example of why DC fast charging in anything but a Tesla kind of stinks. https://twitter.com/stevenewing/status/1388992276349612032 https://twitter.com/stevenewing/status/1388992276349612032