6 ms·

This post completely reflect my thoughts on the whole saga - but there's one more thing which sticks out for me, something briefly touched upon in this article:

This post completely reflect my thoughts on the whole saga - but there's one more thing which sticks out for me, something briefly touched upon in this article: filling up a petrol car to do 500+ miles takes <5 minutes. Charging a Model S to do 500 miles takes over 2 hours. I think that's one of the main issues people have, that to do a journey which would typically be insignificant, it requires a large amount of preparation. If I woke up in the morning and went to my car to drive to work and I found I didn't have enough mileage - despite it having twice as much as I needed the night before - I'd be pretty annoyed. Yes, everyone says that you should leave the car plugged in over-night, but it's such a different way of working with cars and something which feels like it shouldn't be required, which I think makes people a little unsure about buying electric cars.

shokwave 14y ago
We got used to it with laptops (think back to when they were mostly desktops - "I have to charge my computer?") and we'll probably get used to it with cars, assuming the same value to be gained is there (probably is).
- noxryan 14y ago
  The laptop can be left plugged in and still achieve it's primary function of being a computer. I don't really understand this analogy.
abdurraheem 14y ago
I would imagine you would be unplugging your car in the morning before your commute to work, just as i unplug my phone from its charger when i wake up. Also living on the east coast (near DC suburbs) and having made a similar road trip to NYC many times, i cant remember the last time i did not spend 1 hour + at a rest stop to eat. refuel, relax, pee, etc. What car do you drive that does 500+ miles per fill up? My civic will do maybe 450 miles of only highway driving on a 13 gallon tank, and my E350 will do barely 400 on an 18 gallon fill up.
- niggler 14y ago
  It's roughly 250 miles each way. Unless you are just trying to do laps, you take a break when you get to the destination and fuel up before leaving. I do the trip from union square to falls church all the time in a 335 IX and a panamera without having to refuel on the way.
- danielsamuels 14y ago
  > What car do you drive that does 500+ miles per fill up? My civic will do maybe 450 miles of only highway driving on a 13 gallon tank, and my E350 will do barely 400 on an 18 gallon fill up. Hmm, every car I've owned so far? Renault Megane (1996) Renault Clio (2009) Volkswagen Scirocco (2012)
  - abdurraheem 14y ago
    Ah, no wonder you think 'filling up a petrol car to do 500+ miles takes <5 minutes.' You've only ever owned go karts with lawn mower engines that have weaker emission standards compared to their US counterparts.
    - danielsamuels 14y ago
      The Volkswagen Scirocco is a 2L TDI which isn't actually sold in the US, so I'm not sure how you came up with that conclusion. Besides, you're completely missing the point anyway.
nagrom 14y ago
I think of electric cars a little bit like smartphones. I used to leave my old Nokia uncharged for a week. I used to use it in the rain. I used to stick it in my bag and not give a damn about scratching or damaging it. The two main problems that electric cars have are a) image: it's simply not cool to have an electric car. To the majority of people, they're seen as an expensive compromise done to save Gaia and b) they don't offer any obvious functions not achievable by ICE. Electric cars need metaphorical angry birds and social media apps if they're going to smash ICEs the way smartphones did dumb phones.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  They need to get more convenient and quite a lot cheaper. At the moment for someone who just needs a car, a $10,000 used vehicle is a pretty clear win on value.
parfe 14y ago
Most people regularly drive short distances to and from work. An electric car charged overnight perfectly fits that model and covers 99% of most people's driving habits. Just like most people don't need to own a pickup truck. They borrow one once a year. Most people aren't driving hundreds of miles in a day on a regular basis. And if you do need to drive hundreds of miles? Then an electric car isn't for you. I ski most weekends which is ~350 miles of driving and plugging in the car really isn't a huge deal. I did it when I had a diesel with an engine block warmer. The exception receiving so much focus is kind of baffling. People seem really invested in finding faults with electric vehicles.
- checker 14y ago
  One scenario where extended charge times is a huge weakness is in an evacuation setting when you have hundreds of thousands of people hitting the road at once to avoid a hurricane or some other disaster. I can imagine the queues at the chargers being ridiculous.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Holy hell, did you even read the post you just responded to? How often do you fucking evacuate? That is even more of an exception than the occasional ski trip.
    - checker 14y ago
      How is this not a valid concern though? If electric cars are widely adopted, this problem will require a solution.
- ripter 14y ago
  This has always bugged me about people complaining about the rage of electric cars. How often do you really drive 150 miles in a day? Not very damn often. If you do then maybe an electric car isn't for you. It doesn't have to be perfect for everyone. If you are travelling long distance in a gas car, do you put in just enough gas to get to the next station? Hell no, you fill that sucker up. It takes longer to charge a car than it does to put in gas. Duh, we all know that. If anything having to wait an hour between charges is a great opportunity for restaurants and shopping centers.
mtgx 14y ago
Just like with any disruptive technology, it's important to remember that while there will be some great advantages, for the first 5-10 years at least there will also be some big drawbacks, too, which make it not suited for a majority of people (especially in the beginning), and if you don't think the positives are worth the negatives, then you're probably not one of those early adopters, and you should identify yourself as not being one. For example, even 5 years ago I remember friends telling me that laptops will never replace a PC for them, because they are "too weak" performance wise. What do they use now 100% of the time? Laptops. I also remember how virtually everyone I talked to in the first year of the iPhone or so told me that the iPhone is an "inferior" phone because of its lack of good "good specs". The first iPhone had only 2 MP camera while mainstream ones already had 3 MP cameras, no video recording, and much smaller battery life than other "smartphones" at the time, and I think we all remember how much of a big deal the lack of MMS was made to be. I also remember just a couple of years ago people saying how the ARM chips are just too slow and can't possibly compete with Intel in a consumer product. Now, even people on HN are saying that Tegra 4 is "too fast"/has too much performance that is not needed. So my point is that if you're saying stuff like that about Tesla right now, you're probably not going to be one of the early adopters, but one from the early majority or late majority [1]. For the early adopters it's not going to matter that it takes hours to charge the car fully (mostly at night for them, so they won't consider it such a big issue), or 30 minutes to charge half of it. It's also not going to matter that they can't find charger for hundreds of miles at a time right now. For them it's all about "living the future now" and the potential of the technology. You know how they say that the future is already here, just not evenly distributed? Well they aren't the type of people that wait until it's "evenly distributed". They are the pioneer customers. For early adopters it also won't matter that the car is still quite expensive right now, and doesn't have a "mainstream price". Also early adopters are not exactly known as the "pragmatic" type. Now the early majority people, are quite the opposite (which is why the "chasm" can exist, because they have almost nothing in common in terms of how they look at technology, so an early majority guy, also known as a "pragmatist" won't use the early adopter that much for reference. They will look at the situation in a very pragmatic way. "Can I charge the car fast? Does it cost a reasonable amount of money? Can I charge it pretty much everywhere I want? How reliable is it? I don't want to be a 'beta' tester". These are the type of questions he's asking himself. You're probably in this group. And the late majority customers or the "conservatives", are the people who will buy electric cars after they are almost dirt cheap, after almost everyone they know has one, after all the "issues" of electric cars have been fixed, and they are at least "good enough" for evertyhing they need, and from their point of view, at least as good as gas-powered cars. They won't buy them until all those criterias are met. I think it's important to identify people like this, especially as the founder of the disruptive company, so you don't necessarily take the criticism as "maybe I'm just not doing something good here", but as a "these people are just not ready for it yet". And it's important to identify this so you don't immediately think that just because there's a lot of criticism in the beginning, it means it will fail. Of course even disruptive technologies can fail, but if they keep the early adopters happy, and keep improving it until it becomes good enough for the rest of the market, then it should be fine. There are already chargers that charge in 5 minutes I believe, but they might be too expensive right now. It's only a matter of time before Tesla and others are using them. Tesla also promised that within 5 years they will cover the country with their free-charging (another big plus of Tesla's electric cars) superchargers (I believe every 80 miles? and they should expand them even further later on). Within 5 years the batteries should also get 50% or so more efficient, so longer range, or a cheaper price. Tesla also intends to introduce a $30,000 model in 2 years, and probably an even cheaper one 3 years later. So they're getting there, and they are going to make their cars "good enough" for most people within 5-10 years. And I do believe they will also have a sustainable enough business and market to keep them growing until then. I think that by 2020 almost everyone in US will at least seriously consider buying an electric car. Between 2020 and 2030 electric cars should become fully mainstream and almost completely replace gas-powered cars (of course a minor part of the market will probably buy gas-powered cars even in 2040 - the laggards). [1] http://infrae.com/presentations/present_OSSWATCH_osmodel/techadoption.jpg http://infrae.com/presentations/present_OSSWATCH_osmodel/tec...
mdkess 14y ago
I think what you'll see in the future is battery swapping stations, where they'll take your uncharged battery and replace it with a charged one. Certainly some logistic issues, but I still think this would be more efficient than driving giant trucks of gasoline around the country.

shokwave 14y ago

We got used to it with laptops (think back to when they were mostly desktops - "I have to charge my computer?") and we'll probably get used to it with cars, assuming the same value to be gained is there (probably is).

noxryan 14y ago
The laptop can be left plugged in and still achieve it's primary function of being a computer. I don't really understand this analogy.

abdurraheem 14y ago

I would imagine you would be unplugging your car in the morning before your commute to work, just as i unplug my phone from its charger when i wake up. Also living on the east coast (near DC suburbs) and having made a similar road trip to NYC many times, i cant remember the last time i did not spend 1 hour + at a rest stop to eat. refuel, relax, pee, etc. What car do you drive that does 500+ miles per fill up? My civic will do maybe 450 miles of only highway driving on a 13 gallon tank, and my E350 will do barely 400 on an 18 gallon fill up.

niggler 14y ago
It's roughly 250 miles each way. Unless you are just trying to do laps, you take a break when you get to the destination and fuel up before leaving. I do the trip from union square to falls church all the time in a 335 IX and a panamera without having to refuel on the way.
danielsamuels 14y ago
> What car do you drive that does 500+ miles per fill up? My civic will do maybe 450 miles of only highway driving on a 13 gallon tank, and my E350 will do barely 400 on an 18 gallon fill up. Hmm, every car I've owned so far? Renault Megane (1996) Renault Clio (2009) Volkswagen Scirocco (2012)
- abdurraheem 14y ago
  Ah, no wonder you think 'filling up a petrol car to do 500+ miles takes <5 minutes.' You've only ever owned go karts with lawn mower engines that have weaker emission standards compared to their US counterparts.
  - danielsamuels 14y ago
    The Volkswagen Scirocco is a 2L TDI which isn't actually sold in the US, so I'm not sure how you came up with that conclusion. Besides, you're completely missing the point anyway.

nagrom 14y ago

I think of electric cars a little bit like smartphones. I used to leave my old Nokia uncharged for a week. I used to use it in the rain. I used to stick it in my bag and not give a damn about scratching or damaging it. The two main problems that electric cars have are a) image: it's simply not cool to have an electric car. To the majority of people, they're seen as an expensive compromise done to save Gaia and b) they don't offer any obvious functions not achievable by ICE. Electric cars need metaphorical angry birds and social media apps if they're going to smash ICEs the way smartphones did dumb phones.

maxerickson 14y ago
They need to get more convenient and quite a lot cheaper. At the moment for someone who just needs a car, a $10,000 used vehicle is a pretty clear win on value.

parfe 14y ago

Most people regularly drive short distances to and from work. An electric car charged overnight perfectly fits that model and covers 99% of most people's driving habits. Just like most people don't need to own a pickup truck. They borrow one once a year. Most people aren't driving hundreds of miles in a day on a regular basis. And if you do need to drive hundreds of miles? Then an electric car isn't for you. I ski most weekends which is ~350 miles of driving and plugging in the car really isn't a huge deal. I did it when I had a diesel with an engine block warmer. The exception receiving so much focus is kind of baffling. People seem really invested in finding faults with electric vehicles.

checker 14y ago
One scenario where extended charge times is a huge weakness is in an evacuation setting when you have hundreds of thousands of people hitting the road at once to avoid a hurricane or some other disaster. I can imagine the queues at the chargers being ridiculous.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Holy hell, did you even read the post you just responded to? How often do you fucking evacuate? That is even more of an exception than the occasional ski trip.
  - checker 14y ago
    How is this not a valid concern though? If electric cars are widely adopted, this problem will require a solution.
ripter 14y ago
This has always bugged me about people complaining about the rage of electric cars. How often do you really drive 150 miles in a day? Not very damn often. If you do then maybe an electric car isn't for you. It doesn't have to be perfect for everyone. If you are travelling long distance in a gas car, do you put in just enough gas to get to the next station? Hell no, you fill that sucker up. It takes longer to charge a car than it does to put in gas. Duh, we all know that. If anything having to wait an hour between charges is a great opportunity for restaurants and shopping centers.

mtgx 14y ago

Just like with any disruptive technology, it's important to remember that while there will be some great advantages, for the first 5-10 years at least there will also be some big drawbacks, too, which make it not suited for a majority of people (especially in the beginning), and if you don't think the positives are worth the negatives, then you're probably not one of those early adopters, and you should identify yourself as not being one. For example, even 5 years ago I remember friends telling me that laptops will never replace a PC for them, because they are "too weak" performance wise. What do they use now 100% of the time? Laptops. I also remember how virtually everyone I talked to in the first year of the iPhone or so told me that the iPhone is an "inferior" phone because of its lack of good "good specs". The first iPhone had only 2 MP camera while mainstream ones already had 3 MP cameras, no video recording, and much smaller battery life than other "smartphones" at the time, and I think we all remember how much of a big deal the lack of MMS was made to be. I also remember just a couple of years ago people saying how the ARM chips are just too slow and can't possibly compete with Intel in a consumer product. Now, even people on HN are saying that Tegra 4 is "too fast"/has too much performance that is not needed. So my point is that if you're saying stuff like that about Tesla right now, you're probably not going to be one of the early adopters, but one from the early majority or late majority [1]. For the early adopters it's not going to matter that it takes hours to charge the car fully (mostly at night for them, so they won't consider it such a big issue), or 30 minutes to charge half of it. It's also not going to matter that they can't find charger for hundreds of miles at a time right now. For them it's all about "living the future now" and the potential of the technology. You know how they say that the future is already here, just not evenly distributed? Well they aren't the type of people that wait until it's "evenly distributed". They are the pioneer customers. For early adopters it also won't matter that the car is still quite expensive right now, and doesn't have a "mainstream price". Also early adopters are not exactly known as the "pragmatic" type. Now the early majority people, are quite the opposite (which is why the "chasm" can exist, because they have almost nothing in common in terms of how they look at technology, so an early majority guy, also known as a "pragmatist" won't use the early adopter that much for reference. They will look at the situation in a very pragmatic way. "Can I charge the car fast? Does it cost a reasonable amount of money? Can I charge it pretty much everywhere I want? How reliable is it? I don't want to be a 'beta' tester". These are the type of questions he's asking himself. You're probably in this group. And the late majority customers or the "conservatives", are the people who will buy electric cars after they are almost dirt cheap, after almost everyone they know has one, after all the "issues" of electric cars have been fixed, and they are at least "good enough" for evertyhing they need, and from their point of view, at least as good as gas-powered cars. They won't buy them until all those criterias are met. I think it's important to identify people like this, especially as the founder of the disruptive company, so you don't necessarily take the criticism as "maybe I'm just not doing something good here", but as a "these people are just not ready for it yet". And it's important to identify this so you don't immediately think that just because there's a lot of criticism in the beginning, it means it will fail. Of course even disruptive technologies can fail, but if they keep the early adopters happy, and keep improving it until it becomes good enough for the rest of the market, then it should be fine. There are already chargers that charge in 5 minutes I believe, but they might be too expensive right now. It's only a matter of time before Tesla and others are using them. Tesla also promised that within 5 years they will cover the country with their free-charging (another big plus of Tesla's electric cars) superchargers (I believe every 80 miles? and they should expand them even further later on). Within 5 years the batteries should also get 50% or so more efficient, so longer range, or a cheaper price. Tesla also intends to introduce a $30,000 model in 2 years, and probably an even cheaper one 3 years later. So they're getting there, and they are going to make their cars "good enough" for most people within 5-10 years. And I do believe they will also have a sustainable enough business and market to keep them growing until then. I think that by 2020 almost everyone in US will at least seriously consider buying an electric car. Between 2020 and 2030 electric cars should become fully mainstream and almost completely replace gas-powered cars (of course a minor part of the market will probably buy gas-powered cars even in 2040 - the laggards). [1] http://infrae.com/presentations/present_OSSWATCH_osmodel/techadoption.jpg http://infrae.com/presentations/present_OSSWATCH_osmodel/tec...

mdkess 14y ago

I think what you'll see in the future is battery swapping stations, where they'll take your uncharged battery and replace it with a charged one. Certainly some logistic issues, but I still think this would be more efficient than driving giant trucks of gasoline around the country.