Quote:
Originally Posted by Garywt
Getting a gallon of gas is easy and you are on your way. For a charge, you wait for the battery to charge, and then when you find a charging station you sit and wait again. In the meantime, the gas vehicle is at least an hour down the road.
Might be nice for around town but not to travel with.
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So, you get a gallon of gas and you are on your way, for what 20 miles? Hope you find a gas station within that 20 miles. Roadside battery quick charge services are becoming available for road service in some places now. It is a pickup truck towing a generator. They come out, plug you in, and in 15 or 20 minutes you have 20 miles.
Best advice, don't run out of fuel - the gas or charge is cheap, the $150 for the road service is a pain, and the hour or two waiting for the roadside service to get to you is a pain.
Also, don't forget that Tesla monitors your charge level and usage, it also knows where all charging stations are, where you are going and which station is the safest to route you to ensure you don't run out of charge on the road.
ICE vehicles can accomplish similar navigation aid, but few offers it built in.
The only REAL differences are: first, time to fuel. gas takes 5 minutes, EV takes 30. Second is cost, gas costs about $0.10/mile, EV costs about $0.04/per - not a major difference but adds up - say 100,000 miles comes to $10,000 for gas and $4,000 for EV. ICE will need oil changes (5 or 10? at $100 each?), brakes (once at $500 to $1000?), and various maintenance visits (service costs to maintain warranty) - say a couple of thousand total if it is a similarly priced car. EV will need little to no maintenance, no brakes, no oil changes, no filters, etc, etc etc.
So, for 100,000 miles in say 3 years (lots of driving long distance) ICE will run you about what in operational costs, $15,000? EV will run you about $5,000. And I am being VERY generous on the cost of driving an ICE. As a consultant for 35 years, I billed $0.35 to $0.50 per mile to drive to and from my client's place. With an EV I could have reduced that to about $0.10/mile and saved them some money.
So, for that $10,000 estimated additional cost, you save maybe 25 minutes each time you fill up on the road. Planned correctly that time is spent eating, refreshing, and getting a little fresh air. At home, around town, unlike the ICE, you might never have to go to a charging station to fill up, your car can recharge overnight every night. So, it is always ready to go the full range. (In case of saying an unexpected hurricane (highly unlikely - LOL) comes and you forgot to get gas, you need to stand in line with all the other ICE cars to fill up so you can evacuate, with the EV you can take off and go 200 miles or more before having to recharge. That will get you almost to Atlanta?
I will completely agree it is very new technology and there could be unforeseen costs that come up down the road - so to say (sorry for the pun).
And the upfront costs are higher - feature for feature. But the long-term total cost of ownership, the EV wins. At least that is what places like the police departments that are brutal on cruisers are finding. The Tesla model 3s pay for themselves in reduced maintenance costs within a year or two, because they drive them hard and over 100,000 miles per year. Companies like Amazon are preordering fleets of EVs (not Teslas, but EVs) for delivery vehicles - again because the cost of ownership is so much lower. The post office is investing in a fleet renewal that is likely mostly EVs. Taxi services around the world are buying. In Quatar they are already using Teslas for self-driving shuttle service to/from the airport. Again the big selling point is the total cost of ownership, not local convenience or "cuteness".
Tesla is a pioneer in the field, they charge a premium, and they get it. They are almost always back-ordered on all models. The Model S (mentioned in the thread? or was it a Y - I forget) is back-ordered all the way into next year. Not so much for practical reasons, but because a lot of people like the idea of a "luxury car" (family sedan) that goes 0-60 in under 2 seconds. LOL. Not practical, but people are not very practical.
Tesla also does not have the highest build quality. It is not bad, but it is not as good as comparably priced cars. They went through a manufacturing learning curve in a couple of years that all the other car companies went through over decades. Tesla does not compare to a nice BWM, Lexus, etc. But, they are learning and getting better.
Anyway, sorry, I tend to ramble - LOL on...