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Tesla to lay off everyone working on Superchargers, new vehicles
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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Not to mention the charging infrastructure is one of the reasons some people haven't made the switch yet. Anything holding back charging expansion is a disaster in my view.
I don't think that's it at all. The cost of a new car, any new car, is still out of reach for the vast majority of Americans, much less a dedicated daily commuter vehicle (because you need a gas car for long trips). PHEV is an imperfect compromise, but there simply aren't enough used PHEV models available on the market.
I bought a car last year, and I really wanted to get something electric, but the car I need just doesn't exist at the price I can afford. Chargers didn't factor into it.
You say "you need a gas car for long trips", and "Chargers didn't factor into it".
Isn't that directly contradicting? Why else do you feel like you need a gas car for long trips if it isn't related to either not enough chargers or chargers still not being fast enough for you? Chargers absolutely factor into that part of why you didn't buy electric yet.
But also, the notion that they can't do long trips is already pretty outdated. There are very few places left where you would even need to take a detour to take a long trip in an electric car. The only downside is that charging at max speed takes about 3x as long as filling with gas still, and not every charging station is max speed. As that continues to improve, it'll be less and less of a difference.
So, funding the R and D department of the charging network, as well as the construction of the charging network, are absolutely fundamental to more people adopting electric as their single vehicle choice. And not as their second vehicle only for one small purpose.
Right. If you put in enough chargers, ranges of 300 to 400mi are fine. You need to stop every 2 to 4 hours, anyway, so it's not a big deal in practice.
Stopping every 2 hours is nuts. 4 hours sure ok. I regularly drive long distances for work and if it's 6 hours or less I'm going to try to make it without stopping at all.
You're harming yourself doing this. First, sitting for long periods of time isn't good, and getting up and stretching every 2 hours is recommended. This applies to office work just as much as driving. Second, urination typically happens every 3-4 hours, and if you're not, then you're likely dehydrated or have something else going wrong.
If you really, really want to do this, well OK, but we shouldn't put the whole EV transition on hold just to let you do this.
Yeah nothing's going to stop me and I do far worse things for my health. You're right though.
And yeah I was just commenting on the two hour thing which I thought seemed silly. Nothing to do with the original topic of EVs.
It's not a big deal if you're only driving a few hours. Longer trips, especially business trips, yes that's a big deal.
Not to mention, the real world tests don't support the stated driving ranges for most models. Ideal conditions hardly ever exist in the real world.
In the real world, people don't regularly drive 600 miles in a hurry either.
Most people don't, but some do. I did for a while, when I was working as a construction manager and then again as a generator technician. It's a big country, with all kinds of people. I think you'd be surprised how many people frequently need to drive ling distances in a hurry.
I'm sure there are people, but I think you'd be surprised how few there are. The vast majority of people make long trips very infrequently - to the point that most could hire a car or find some other means for those situations.
Yes, but if only those people who need that drove ICE cars, BEVs would have a 90% market share.
Sure, but first you have to make an EV that 90% of people can afford. And make enough of them for 90% of the market to buy. And maybe do something about interest rates while we're at it. Also, I could use a back rub. And world peace, maybe.
Best I can do is a 12-year financing plan at 18% interest and oh, you're fired.
I get more than the stated range in the summer and less in the winter.
If it's a business trip where time matters where you can't afford to loose 25 minutes every few hours, why are you driving instead of flying?
Because planes won't drop you off at the client's house, even when you ask nicely.
But it's still going to be fast (and cheaper with wages factored in) to fly while using one of the countless 'last mile transportation' options available when the distance is greater than an EVs range while you can't afford to loose time to charging. The only exceptions I see is those jobs who need tools/supplies on site in which case you are almost definitely taking a fleet vehicle and this whole problem is moop.
I appreciate you trying to problem solve someone else's job so that your preferred solution makes sense, but have you considered that maybe you don't have all the answers?
Flights aren't cheap.
Contractors pay for their own transport.
Contractors aren't hourly.
Most small businesses don't have "fleets."
The "last mile" could be 6 hours from the nearest commercial airport.
Direct flights don't always go where you need them to go or leave at convenient times.
You're right about needing tools and supplies which was another reason flying was a non-starter, but a car is also a place where you can sleep in a pinch. If a job takes longer than expected, you might not be near a hotel, much less a charging station.
There are a lot of reasons I don't do those jobs anymore, and I love working from home now. Less than a year ago, I looked for an EV or PHEV that I could afford and would fit four people and a dog. There weren't any. That was my original thesis, that the cars are still too rare and too expensive for mass adoption. Charging networks are a sub-problem that requires attention, but fixing it won't fix the primary issue.
Your thesis is fundamentally flawed though because you are taking your situation and extrapolating to the public as a whole. While I'll agree the market for new EVs is stupid right now the used market is far from. I say that writing this from my 22' model 3 I paid 18k for used. And that price wasn't a fluke.
I'd also like to add the last mile transportation I was referring to isn't public transport or some ride share app but the industry of van drivers who specialize in business transport. Companies like PTI or Halcon who specialize in getting you from anywhere to anywhere.
I wouldn't pay $18k for a model 3 regardless, but that's still a price that is out of reach for the vast majority of people buying a car. I believe you are taking your financial situation and assuming it represents the public as a whole.
And if you think most people driving to work can afford a paid transport, that just reinforces the previous point. You're completely out of touch.
The avarage used car loan in the United States is 26k. That price is not "out of reach for the vast majority of people buying used cars".
The average is not the median, and there's about 20% of the population living below the poverty line that can't qualify for a car loan. If you exclude the top 10% that can afford much higher loans, that average goes way down.
Median is 23k...
according to the 2022 US census the poverty rate is 11% not 20%, it hasn't been above 20% since 1959.
If I want to go anywhere out of my state, I now need to budget nearly an hour every 200 ish miles for charging. That turns what used to be a 6 hour trip into closer to 8 or 9.
It would take most of the charge range just for me to get to anything interesting, and now not only do I have hours of driving to do, but also hours of sitting around doing nothing.
A gas car can be fully refilled in 5 minutes and be ready for another 300 miles of driving. Electrics just don’t have the appeal to someone like me who makes somewhat regular trips over distances. I’d love to take trains, but that’s not viable in my area, so I’m sticking with gas cars for now.
Not an hour, I regularly go from STL to Chicago in my electric car and it adds 25 min if im driving right back. If I'm staying overnight and plug-in it only adds 15. That's also when I go to the bathroom and get a snack.
Just like… you know… filling a normal car up with gas. Take a piss, grab some jerkey, have a smoke if that’s your thing, go on reddit for a minute, then keep driving.
It’s not hard. The paradigm is barely changing. I genuinely don’t get how people fail to understand that.
I get the hesitation though. You see gas stations everywhere, if you don't know what you're looking for you don't see charger stations. My car was the last gas thing I had, mower, trimmer, I already had solar panels from a Illinois solar program. I love taking friends on trips with it and then seeing that it's not scary. I have run into broken chargers twice. Once from vandalism but thankfully it still worked for me as I registered my car so it automatically uses my account to charge when plugged in. The other was a software issue that they had to send someone out to hard reset. Reminds me I told them it would be a cool idea to have registered/trained people that get free charging credits for fixing ones they come across.
As nifty as repair bounties would be, I think there’s approximately zero chance of that happening, simply because of the liability implications. Tesla’s staff counsel would categorically refuse to sign off on that. High-voltage electrics are a far cry from delivering someone’s takeout orders.
Wow, that sucks. I guess Canada is further ahead in that. Electric car charging is 20 minutes per 3 hours here. I can see why it would make a big difference if it's an hour for your chargers.
It could also be the software for your car isn't well optimized, they should ideally be having you stop around 25% battery and charging up to around 75% if you are trying to make the best time. The software should inject the stops as close as possible to that ideal if you tell it to prioritize speed.
But if the only chargers you have on your route are that slow, then I guess there isn't much you can do but hope companies don't stop funding the R and D and contsruction of more up to date ones.
I don’t think it’s the chargers, but the vehicles. Someone correct me if I’m wrong since I’m only familiar with Tesla, but enroute chargers do tend to be super/fast chargers already, and destination chargers really don’t need to be.
A fast charger is theoretically fast enough but vehicles only use its full power for a short time. each vehicle has a curve of the power it can use, where it’s usually not using the full capacity of the charger. I really think we mostly just need improved vehicles, and they have been improving over time
I was mostly being facetious, I don't think it's any different in Canada. The guy was just wrong about it taking an hour every 2 hours of driving.
No, it isn't directly contradictory, because those advancements aren't available now and there is a directionality to the relationship between mass adoption and infrastructure. I wanted to buy one despite the lack of infrastructure, but there were too many barriers to entry.
I know where the chargers are, and I know that I can probably charge at home and at work and at the rest stops where we normally stop for gas. But I also frequently go to places where even gas stations are rare, and it still takes 3 times as long to charge, and I may not always have that kind of time. I may find myself on an unexpected trip where I need to gas up, and without that option, I don't really have a car I need.
Yes, I think we should be investing in research and development, and maybe one day there will be a charging network capable of replicating the speed and ubiquity of gas stations. But that's not going to happen until and unless there is mass adoption, and there won't be mass adoption until the cars are affordable and available. You need people everywhere demanding more charging stations, or the infrastructure won't happen. Business owners aren't ever going install more chargers than they need in the hope that it will sell more electric cars. That's backwards.
Even if that charging network existed today, the existing lineup of cars are still priced at a premium and are difficult to find in stock. I wanted one, and could not find something affordable near me. The additional cost wasn't something I could justify, regardless of whether the chargers were available.
Trying to decide if I agree or disagree, so I upvoted!
The problem is that more people feel that way than would be actually affected. Making numbers up here, but BEVs should handle the needs of 90% but 50% are convinced they can’t. There’s a huge mismatch of expectations.
Combine that with lack of availability, high prices, and manufacturer/dealer resistance to change, and it’s not going smoothly
But the other half of the argument is that things just don’t magically get “good enough”. It’s a progression where some aspect gets a little better or a few more are sold, prompting the need for more investment in another aspect. Any such huge change in something that affects everyone’s life, will be chaotic and take time. How do we smooth that out? Speed the process up?