8 ms·

This kind of press is akin to hailing the 20 gallon gas tank over the 10 gallon gas tank. In the future consumers will understand kWh per mile is more important

This kind of press is akin to hailing the 20 gallon gas tank over the 10 gallon gas tank. In the future consumers will understand kWh per mile is more important, just like mpg is today.

seedless-sensat 4y ago
The article does talk more about efficiency and weight instead of just capacity
- hedora 4y ago
  It does, but it doesn't actually talk about $/kWh. This car was on HN a while back, and, if I remember correctly, it is actually much more efficient than current production vehicles.
cwilkes 4y ago
Not as important … to whom? Currently there’s a lot of areas in the country with long distances between fast charging stations. Sure that might change in years but for now “range anxiety” (as mentioned in the article) is real.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  I would disagree with the statement "there's a lot of areas", but I absolutely would advocate pouring more money into DC fast chargers at locations that make sense (grocery stores or similar locations with facilities and are open large swaths of each day). Don't put them at gas stations, that model is dead. If your EV range is 250-400 miles, and DC fast charging continues to expand rapidly (which it is based on both Tesla and other networks deployment rates), you're paying for and dragging a whole bunch of cells needlessly around (not to mention paying financing/capital costs on that unnecessary equipment). Today, you're never more than 100 miles from a DC fast charger [1] [2] [3] with the caveat being northeastern Montana, the Kansas/Oklahoma border, central Nevada (which could be solved withe a station in Ely), and southeastern New Mexico. Heck, I can hop into my Model S or Model Y today and drive from Central Florida to Acapulco, Mexico, Prince George, BC, or Quebec/Newfoundland, CA. Range is solved, charging infra is the challenge (which is also why the UK phased out EV subsidies to move towards charging infra financial support [4]). [1] https://plugshare.com/ https://plugshare.com/ [2] https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map | https://ibb.co/n8x05j7 https://ibb.co/n8x05j7 (100 mile range circles on North America, red is active, blue is planned, cones are under construction) [3] https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/find/nearest?fuel=ELEC https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/fi... (Uncheck Level 2 from charger selection to scope only to DC Fast charging) [4] https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/16/uk-ending-electric-car-subsidies-to-concentrate-on-ev-charging-infrastructure/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/16/uk-ending-electric-car-...
  - timapplesauce 4y ago
    The simple fact of the matter is that if you take an EV for a long road trip across America today, your choice of route will be very dependent on where charging stations exist. With an ICE vehicle, it's barely a consideration. For the few areas where you know you'll be too far from a gas station the solution is simple: A cheap gas can or two filled with fuel. What's the reasonable and cost effective equivalent for an EV? The other issue is that even a fast charger takes considerably longer than a gas pump to refill your car. This, coupled with the relatively low availability of them overall, means that you are more likely to have to wait in line for your turn and you spend even more time not on the road traveling to your destination. With all this being said, I think an EV is very compelling as a secondary vehicle for 90%+ of use cases so long as you also have an ICE vehicle and a sufficient way to charge your EV at home.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      People may continue to pay for $4-5/gallon gas if they so choose. It is a free country, after all. Gas prices will not go back down so long as refinery capacity is constrained [1] [2] [3] (which it will be in perpetuity, as investment will not flow to it with fossil fuel phase outs in progress, and refinery lifecycles are measured in decades). Let the free hand of the market do its thing. People will figure it out [4], pricing signals and all that jazz [5]. You can lead a horse to water but drowning it does no good. Let it drink when it is sufficiently thirsty. Maybe gas prices prices have to go even higher, who knows! I am morbidly curious to see. [1] https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/062122-us-refining-capacity-falls-to-lowest-mark-in-8-years-amid-record-prices-eia https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight... [2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distillation_capacity https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distill... [3] https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-margins-smash-records-but-few-plan-to-build-more-plants/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-marg... [4] https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-price-increase/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-pr... [5] https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-cheaper-to-drive-us-high-gas-prices/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-ch...
- googlryas 4y ago
  I've had my tesla for a year and used fast charging literally once, when I went on a 900 mile road trip. Before that, just charging at my house has been good enough. If your average daily use of a car is less than the equivalent of driving from Philadelphia to New York and then back again, you will have no problem with keeping your EV charged with a 50A charger in your home.
gamblor956 4y ago
Curious, just a few weeks ago Tesla stans were claiming that it was just capacity that mattered, not kWh/mile. But it seems now that Tesla is no longer the range champion they have to come up with a new metric. BTW, this is exactly what everyone predicted would happen when the legacy automakers finally moved into the EV space: they would start using their decades of automotive knowledge and bring it to bear on building EVs. And with the exception of Toyota's recent EV crossover bzwhatever, every review notes how much better the legacy automaker's EV under review is compared to a Tesla vehicle.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  I am no Elon fan, but I am a Tesla fan (respect for execution, ambition, and results). By the end of this year, Tesla's Giga 3 Shanghai factory will reach a run rate where that single factory builds 50% of what Mercedes sells annually. If Mercedes had not divested its Tesla investment in 2014, that investment would've been worth more than all of Mercedes more recently. Cadillac has a potential $300k flagship EV (the Celestiq). No one wants a $300k Cadillac EV in volume. I don't have tremendous faith in the execution nor insight of legacy automakers. I want to believe, as every EV sold is a win, but it ain't looking great and Tesla isn't slowing down. EDIT: Thanks V__, I misremembered this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/vk11qi/tesla_prepares_to_upgrade_gigafactory_shanghai_to/idnge0a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/vk11qi/tesla_p... (referring to https://electrek.co/2022/06/24/tesla-prepares-upgrade-gigafactory-shanghai-produce-21000-evs-week/ https://electrek.co/2022/06/24/tesla-prepares-upgrade-gigafa... which sources from Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-23/tesla-said-readying-its-china-factory-for-even-greater-volumes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-23/tesla-sai...) I have corrected my above statement. Facts matter! EDIT: @gamblor956 I have heard Tesla is going to die since 2009. The broken record is getting old. Scaling is hard, but they have not failed yet. Obsession enables success.
  - V__ 4y ago
    > Shanghai factory will reach a run rate where that single factory builds more vehicles annually than Mercedes does. Mercedes sells about 2 million non-commercial cars a year [1], a bit more than Tesla has produced since 2009 [2]. [1] https://group.mercedes-benz.com/unternehmen/ueberblick.html https://group.mercedes-benz.com/unternehmen/ueberblick.html [2] https://fortunly.com/statistics/tesla-car-sales-statistics/ https://fortunly.com/statistics/tesla-car-sales-statistics/
clouddrover 4y ago
> understand kWh per mile is more important The Mercedes Vision EQXX does have better kWh per mile. Efficiency is the point of it. Some of this will make its way into commercial cars: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-concept-debut-ces-2022/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-conc... https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43771/how-mercedes-built-an-air-cooled-battery-for-the-vision-eqxx-concept https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43771/how-mercedes-built-an-ai...
bcrl 4y ago
It matters to someone like me. The range of current Telsa's is just on the edge of what I need under normal conditions, which means that it falls short (fails) under worst case winter conditions. When I'm driving around to a few customer locations during a work day, I don't want to be wasting time sitting around waiting for my car to charge as that's time I don't get paid for. 747 miles range would mean it handles the worst days, and even handle the case of driving to a data center in another major city round trip. It's nice to finally see a company pushing the range envelope a bit further!
roflyear 4y ago
Nah.

This kind of press is akin to hailing the 20 gallon gas tank over the 10 gallon gas tank. In the future consumers will understand kWh per mile is more important, just like mpg is today.

seedless-sensat 4y ago

The article does talk more about efficiency and weight instead of just capacity

hedora 4y ago
It does, but it doesn't actually talk about $/kWh. This car was on HN a while back, and, if I remember correctly, it is actually much more efficient than current production vehicles.

cwilkes 4y ago

Not as important … to whom? Currently there’s a lot of areas in the country with long distances between fast charging stations. Sure that might change in years but for now “range anxiety” (as mentioned in the article) is real.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
I would disagree with the statement "there's a lot of areas", but I absolutely would advocate pouring more money into DC fast chargers at locations that make sense (grocery stores or similar locations with facilities and are open large swaths of each day). Don't put them at gas stations, that model is dead. If your EV range is 250-400 miles, and DC fast charging continues to expand rapidly (which it is based on both Tesla and other networks deployment rates), you're paying for and dragging a whole bunch of cells needlessly around (not to mention paying financing/capital costs on that unnecessary equipment). Today, you're never more than 100 miles from a DC fast charger [1] [2] [3] with the caveat being northeastern Montana, the Kansas/Oklahoma border, central Nevada (which could be solved withe a station in Ely), and southeastern New Mexico. Heck, I can hop into my Model S or Model Y today and drive from Central Florida to Acapulco, Mexico, Prince George, BC, or Quebec/Newfoundland, CA. Range is solved, charging infra is the challenge (which is also why the UK phased out EV subsidies to move towards charging infra financial support [4]). [1] https://plugshare.com/ https://plugshare.com/ [2] https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map | https://ibb.co/n8x05j7 https://ibb.co/n8x05j7 (100 mile range circles on North America, red is active, blue is planned, cones are under construction) [3] https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/find/nearest?fuel=ELEC https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/fi... (Uncheck Level 2 from charger selection to scope only to DC Fast charging) [4] https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/16/uk-ending-electric-car-subsidies-to-concentrate-on-ev-charging-infrastructure/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/16/uk-ending-electric-car-...
- timapplesauce 4y ago
  The simple fact of the matter is that if you take an EV for a long road trip across America today, your choice of route will be very dependent on where charging stations exist. With an ICE vehicle, it's barely a consideration. For the few areas where you know you'll be too far from a gas station the solution is simple: A cheap gas can or two filled with fuel. What's the reasonable and cost effective equivalent for an EV? The other issue is that even a fast charger takes considerably longer than a gas pump to refill your car. This, coupled with the relatively low availability of them overall, means that you are more likely to have to wait in line for your turn and you spend even more time not on the road traveling to your destination. With all this being said, I think an EV is very compelling as a secondary vehicle for 90%+ of use cases so long as you also have an ICE vehicle and a sufficient way to charge your EV at home.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    People may continue to pay for $4-5/gallon gas if they so choose. It is a free country, after all. Gas prices will not go back down so long as refinery capacity is constrained [1] [2] [3] (which it will be in perpetuity, as investment will not flow to it with fossil fuel phase outs in progress, and refinery lifecycles are measured in decades). Let the free hand of the market do its thing. People will figure it out [4], pricing signals and all that jazz [5]. You can lead a horse to water but drowning it does no good. Let it drink when it is sufficiently thirsty. Maybe gas prices prices have to go even higher, who knows! I am morbidly curious to see. [1] https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/062122-us-refining-capacity-falls-to-lowest-mark-in-8-years-amid-record-prices-eia https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight... [2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distillation_capacity https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distill... [3] https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-margins-smash-records-but-few-plan-to-build-more-plants/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-marg... [4] https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-price-increase/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-pr... [5] https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-cheaper-to-drive-us-high-gas-prices/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-ch...
googlryas 4y ago
I've had my tesla for a year and used fast charging literally once, when I went on a 900 mile road trip. Before that, just charging at my house has been good enough. If your average daily use of a car is less than the equivalent of driving from Philadelphia to New York and then back again, you will have no problem with keeping your EV charged with a 50A charger in your home.

gamblor956 4y ago

Curious, just a few weeks ago Tesla stans were claiming that it was just capacity that mattered, not kWh/mile. But it seems now that Tesla is no longer the range champion they have to come up with a new metric. BTW, this is exactly what everyone predicted would happen when the legacy automakers finally moved into the EV space: they would start using their decades of automotive knowledge and bring it to bear on building EVs. And with the exception of Toyota's recent EV crossover bzwhatever, every review notes how much better the legacy automaker's EV under review is compared to a Tesla vehicle.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
I am no Elon fan, but I am a Tesla fan (respect for execution, ambition, and results). By the end of this year, Tesla's Giga 3 Shanghai factory will reach a run rate where that single factory builds 50% of what Mercedes sells annually. If Mercedes had not divested its Tesla investment in 2014, that investment would've been worth more than all of Mercedes more recently. Cadillac has a potential $300k flagship EV (the Celestiq). No one wants a $300k Cadillac EV in volume. I don't have tremendous faith in the execution nor insight of legacy automakers. I want to believe, as every EV sold is a win, but it ain't looking great and Tesla isn't slowing down. EDIT: Thanks V__, I misremembered this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/vk11qi/tesla_prepares_to_upgrade_gigafactory_shanghai_to/idnge0a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/vk11qi/tesla_p... (referring to https://electrek.co/2022/06/24/tesla-prepares-upgrade-gigafactory-shanghai-produce-21000-evs-week/ https://electrek.co/2022/06/24/tesla-prepares-upgrade-gigafa... which sources from Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-23/tesla-said-readying-its-china-factory-for-even-greater-volumes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-23/tesla-sai...) I have corrected my above statement. Facts matter! EDIT: @gamblor956 I have heard Tesla is going to die since 2009. The broken record is getting old. Scaling is hard, but they have not failed yet. Obsession enables success.
- V__ 4y ago
  > Shanghai factory will reach a run rate where that single factory builds more vehicles annually than Mercedes does. Mercedes sells about 2 million non-commercial cars a year [1], a bit more than Tesla has produced since 2009 [2]. [1] https://group.mercedes-benz.com/unternehmen/ueberblick.html https://group.mercedes-benz.com/unternehmen/ueberblick.html [2] https://fortunly.com/statistics/tesla-car-sales-statistics/ https://fortunly.com/statistics/tesla-car-sales-statistics/

clouddrover 4y ago

> understand kWh per mile is more important The Mercedes Vision EQXX does have better kWh per mile. Efficiency is the point of it. Some of this will make its way into commercial cars: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-concept-debut-ces-2022/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mercedes-vision-eqxx-conc... https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43771/how-mercedes-built-an-air-cooled-battery-for-the-vision-eqxx-concept https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43771/how-mercedes-built-an-ai...

bcrl 4y ago

It matters to someone like me. The range of current Telsa's is just on the edge of what I need under normal conditions, which means that it falls short (fails) under worst case winter conditions. When I'm driving around to a few customer locations during a work day, I don't want to be wasting time sitting around waiting for my car to charge as that's time I don't get paid for. 747 miles range would mean it handles the worst days, and even handle the case of driving to a data center in another major city round trip. It's nice to finally see a company pushing the range envelope a bit further!

roflyear 4y ago

Nah.