8 ms·

I just want to know who the hell all these people are that need to drive 600 miles a day every day, with no opportunity to stop and charge. Unless the only emp

by madaxe 14y ago

I just want to know who the hell all these people are that need to drive 600 miles a day every day, with no opportunity to stop and charge. Unless the only employment in the US is "taxi driver", I fail to see the issue...

potatolicious 14y ago
The Tesla's range is between 160 miles and 300 miles on a charge, not 600. This is well beyond getting you to your office of course, but 160 miles is well within reach for many busy suburban people (read: kids). This and the fact that apparently there's substantial power loss if you leave it overnight without plugging it in (say, you're staying at a hotel on a trip), and the dramatic range loss in cold weather (which much of the US is subject to), and you've got a vehicle that doesn't give people the level of reliability/confidence they want. Not to mention, the car is more than just what gets you from home to work - much of the US lives in extremely large metro areas, particularly in the northeast where the NYT reporter was based. I have many coworkers here who drive hundreds of miles to see family on weekends, for holidays, etc. You have family scattered all the way across the northeast from Boston to NYC to DC to PA, and beyond. This level of social distribution is common in the region, and whatever car wants to succeed in this market needs to account for that. But no, let's just all pretend that everyone pointing out the range problem is corrupt and in the pocket of Big Oil.
- madaxe 14y ago
  Fair points, all. I suppose what I'm getting at is that as a nation, the US is morbidly dependent on the car. 160 miles for the school run and commute is utterly mad. I think we'll be adopting and using electric vehicles in Europe long before they take off in the US - our cities, towns and villages are built around humans rather than cars, and we have a public transport infrastructure. I think the main problem with adoption in the states is that your entire way of life is built around the capabilities and limitations of the ICE.
  - jdbernard 14y ago
    > I think the main problem with adoption in the states is that your entire way of life is built around the capabilities and limitations of the ICE. I have found that many Europeans do not understand how much space there is in an average American city. It is not that our lives are built around the ICE, it is that we generally have to travel larger distances. 160 miles for the school run and commute is a lot, but certainly not mad by American standards. Population density of the US is roughly 34 people per square km. Compare to Germany (229), the UK (260), France (117). America is in the bottom 25% of the world's least-dense countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de.... People in the US tend to build everything farther apart, because we have so much more room. This was true before we had the ICE. We have always found some way of crossing large distances, because we have large distances to cross. Europeans see American car culture and get cause and effect backwards. I don't particularly like our car culture, but I understand it. We don't "build around cars" because we love our cars. We love our cars because they are a necessity given how much space we use. Look at teen culture. For a teenager in the US, a driver's license is freedom in a very literal sense. They can't walk to their school if their school is 7 miles away (mine when I was in high school), or to the movies, to friends in another neighborhood, etc. Public transportation infrastructure will never be as nice as European cities because the costs rise proportionally with the area you have to cover. We just don't have the population density to make it profitable or even useful for most areas of the country.
    - VLM 14y ago
      160 miles for a commute is pretty much mad, even in America. Google finds numerous reports where the average American commute (not shortest, not longest..) at this time is currently 16 miles and 26 minutes each way. I strongly resemble that datapoint. I listen to audiobooks while driving and find a bit less than an hour a day of audiobooks is just about right. 160 miles is utterly mad in terms of time, also. As a balance between urban and rural driving, lets assume 45 miles per hour average, which might be optimistic on the coasts or pessimistic in civilized areas. Adding some realistic delays at each stop, that's about four hours, or about one sixth of each 24 hour day.
VLM 14y ago
"need to drive" Don't confuse aspirational desire with actual need or even claimed need. For a good laugh, compare what SUV drivers actually need in an engineering analysis, with what they claim to need, with what the commercials focus on the product as providing, which is primarily driving offroad in an extreme manner at 90 MPH while carrying 9 people and 7 kayaks.
tbrownaw 14y ago
My parents live about 7 hours away, we go visit them a couple times a year. My wife got a masters degree a couple years ago, that was 2 hours away a couple times a week. If we only had an electric car, either of these would require renting a gas car for the trip. Which could well be reasonable for a couple times a year, but probably not if we visited my parents more often (say, every month). Of course this being the US we both have cars, and there wouldn't be any problem if only one of them was electric.
- smackfu 14y ago
  Yeah, this is kind of the fundamental disconnect. One side sees "this meet 90% of your needs." The other side says "this doesn't meet all my needs."
- VLM 14y ago
  There is also an interesting childcare aspect in that for logistical reasons my wife shuffled the kids around when they were little... car seats are expensive and cumbersome to install and a PITA on a 2dr car, therefore while the kids were small, my car-seat-less little commuter car was quite literally limited to my commute only and we always had to take the giant wife-mo-bile on any (including long) family trips. In practice I really didn't care, although the bigger the vehicle the less comfortable I am on the road (high winds scare me in a tall vehicle, I know if a tall vehicle hits a curb in an accident its rollover time killing everyone unlike my little car, obviously I have to drive more carefully to avoid hitting things because its huge, very low performance by all measures compared to my 2dr sports car, in summary I hate driving big cars). In theory if I experienced the same limitation due to gas vs electric I'm told over and over that I'm supposed to experience extreme agony, although I suspect it would be OK. The startup lesson is to glom onto existing limitation. Oh you can't take a road trip because it doesn't have those little car seat mounting bracket thingies. Not some spooky hidden techno stuff in the engine compartment. Keep it simple, "Oh you can't road trip because it can't hold a car seat". This is a simpler marketing message.
  - kbutler 14y ago
    Your perception that increased vehicle size decreases safety is backwards. Larger vehicles (SUVs, minivans) are safer for the occupants, though SUVs impose more risk on other drivers (because of weight). http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/assets/images/2002/Aug-26-2002/SUV-report.pdf http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/assets/images/20... See graph on page 3: sports cars are far more hazardous to the driver than larger, lower performance vehicles. "Of all major vehicle types, minivans have the lowest risk" "sports cars have the highest combined risk, of all vehicle types studied" And from another paper: "For automotive crash safety, the determining factor is size, not weight: larger vehicles have more crush space to absorb impacts. " http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-Traffic_fatalities_vehicle_weight_changes_vehicle_size http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-Traffic_fatalities_vehicle_weight...
rexreed 14y ago
Here's a simple answer: sometimes you don't want to be forced to charge your car every day. Especially if it's a long charge. I'm already annoyed that I have to charge my phone every day if I want it to work. But at least I can do a short charge or charge it when it's convenient. But if your car is dead because you didn't charge it, then you have few other options. So, in my case, I equate "range" with the need for frequent recharging. If the range is too low, I'm basically buying a car that needs to be charged every day if I don't want to risk getting stuck.

by madaxe 14y ago

potatolicious 14y ago

The Tesla's range is between 160 miles and 300 miles on a charge, not 600. This is well beyond getting you to your office of course, but 160 miles is well within reach for many busy suburban people (read: kids). This and the fact that apparently there's substantial power loss if you leave it overnight without plugging it in (say, you're staying at a hotel on a trip), and the dramatic range loss in cold weather (which much of the US is subject to), and you've got a vehicle that doesn't give people the level of reliability/confidence they want. Not to mention, the car is more than just what gets you from home to work - much of the US lives in extremely large metro areas, particularly in the northeast where the NYT reporter was based. I have many coworkers here who drive hundreds of miles to see family on weekends, for holidays, etc. You have family scattered all the way across the northeast from Boston to NYC to DC to PA, and beyond. This level of social distribution is common in the region, and whatever car wants to succeed in this market needs to account for that. But no, let's just all pretend that everyone pointing out the range problem is corrupt and in the pocket of Big Oil.

madaxe 14y ago
Fair points, all. I suppose what I'm getting at is that as a nation, the US is morbidly dependent on the car. 160 miles for the school run and commute is utterly mad. I think we'll be adopting and using electric vehicles in Europe long before they take off in the US - our cities, towns and villages are built around humans rather than cars, and we have a public transport infrastructure. I think the main problem with adoption in the states is that your entire way of life is built around the capabilities and limitations of the ICE.
- jdbernard 14y ago
  > I think the main problem with adoption in the states is that your entire way of life is built around the capabilities and limitations of the ICE. I have found that many Europeans do not understand how much space there is in an average American city. It is not that our lives are built around the ICE, it is that we generally have to travel larger distances. 160 miles for the school run and commute is a lot, but certainly not mad by American standards. Population density of the US is roughly 34 people per square km. Compare to Germany (229), the UK (260), France (117). America is in the bottom 25% of the world's least-dense countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de.... People in the US tend to build everything farther apart, because we have so much more room. This was true before we had the ICE. We have always found some way of crossing large distances, because we have large distances to cross. Europeans see American car culture and get cause and effect backwards. I don't particularly like our car culture, but I understand it. We don't "build around cars" because we love our cars. We love our cars because they are a necessity given how much space we use. Look at teen culture. For a teenager in the US, a driver's license is freedom in a very literal sense. They can't walk to their school if their school is 7 miles away (mine when I was in high school), or to the movies, to friends in another neighborhood, etc. Public transportation infrastructure will never be as nice as European cities because the costs rise proportionally with the area you have to cover. We just don't have the population density to make it profitable or even useful for most areas of the country.
  - VLM 14y ago
    160 miles for a commute is pretty much mad, even in America. Google finds numerous reports where the average American commute (not shortest, not longest..) at this time is currently 16 miles and 26 minutes each way. I strongly resemble that datapoint. I listen to audiobooks while driving and find a bit less than an hour a day of audiobooks is just about right. 160 miles is utterly mad in terms of time, also. As a balance between urban and rural driving, lets assume 45 miles per hour average, which might be optimistic on the coasts or pessimistic in civilized areas. Adding some realistic delays at each stop, that's about four hours, or about one sixth of each 24 hour day.

VLM 14y ago

"need to drive" Don't confuse aspirational desire with actual need or even claimed need. For a good laugh, compare what SUV drivers actually need in an engineering analysis, with what they claim to need, with what the commercials focus on the product as providing, which is primarily driving offroad in an extreme manner at 90 MPH while carrying 9 people and 7 kayaks.

tbrownaw 14y ago

My parents live about 7 hours away, we go visit them a couple times a year. My wife got a masters degree a couple years ago, that was 2 hours away a couple times a week. If we only had an electric car, either of these would require renting a gas car for the trip. Which could well be reasonable for a couple times a year, but probably not if we visited my parents more often (say, every month). Of course this being the US we both have cars, and there wouldn't be any problem if only one of them was electric.

smackfu 14y ago
Yeah, this is kind of the fundamental disconnect. One side sees "this meet 90% of your needs." The other side says "this doesn't meet all my needs."
VLM 14y ago
There is also an interesting childcare aspect in that for logistical reasons my wife shuffled the kids around when they were little... car seats are expensive and cumbersome to install and a PITA on a 2dr car, therefore while the kids were small, my car-seat-less little commuter car was quite literally limited to my commute only and we always had to take the giant wife-mo-bile on any (including long) family trips. In practice I really didn't care, although the bigger the vehicle the less comfortable I am on the road (high winds scare me in a tall vehicle, I know if a tall vehicle hits a curb in an accident its rollover time killing everyone unlike my little car, obviously I have to drive more carefully to avoid hitting things because its huge, very low performance by all measures compared to my 2dr sports car, in summary I hate driving big cars). In theory if I experienced the same limitation due to gas vs electric I'm told over and over that I'm supposed to experience extreme agony, although I suspect it would be OK. The startup lesson is to glom onto existing limitation. Oh you can't take a road trip because it doesn't have those little car seat mounting bracket thingies. Not some spooky hidden techno stuff in the engine compartment. Keep it simple, "Oh you can't road trip because it can't hold a car seat". This is a simpler marketing message.
- kbutler 14y ago
  Your perception that increased vehicle size decreases safety is backwards. Larger vehicles (SUVs, minivans) are safer for the occupants, though SUVs impose more risk on other drivers (because of weight). http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/assets/images/2002/Aug-26-2002/SUV-report.pdf http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/assets/images/20... See graph on page 3: sports cars are far more hazardous to the driver than larger, lower performance vehicles. "Of all major vehicle types, minivans have the lowest risk" "sports cars have the highest combined risk, of all vehicle types studied" And from another paper: "For automotive crash safety, the determining factor is size, not weight: larger vehicles have more crush space to absorb impacts. " http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-Traffic_fatalities_vehicle_weight_changes_vehicle_size http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-Traffic_fatalities_vehicle_weight...

rexreed 14y ago

Here's a simple answer: sometimes you don't want to be forced to charge your car every day. Especially if it's a long charge. I'm already annoyed that I have to charge my phone every day if I want it to work. But at least I can do a short charge or charge it when it's convenient. But if your car is dead because you didn't charge it, then you have few other options. So, in my case, I equate "range" with the need for frequent recharging. If the range is too low, I'm basically buying a car that needs to be charged every day if I don't want to risk getting stuck.