The Model X has 250 mile range. But you think it's "largely true" that electric cars have a range problem?
There are ~600 charging stations worldwide, and that's increasing to 1200 during 2016. But you think it's "largely true" that there's no charging infrastructure?
Not the person you're responding to, but yes and yes.
600 charging stations worldwide? That's worse than I thought. I'm traveling across country as we speak (I live in an RV). I've seen one electric car charging option in the past few weeks...I've filled up over a dozen times in that period. Realistically speaking, you cannot take an electric car on vacation.
That doesn't mean I don't love electric cars (I even held TSLA for a while before needing to sell some stocks for a major purchase...I kept my GOOG and sold my TSLA).
One can love electric cars while still acknowledging what they cannot yet do. There was a time when horses were a better cross country means of transit than automobiles because there wasn't infrastructure for cars yet. We're at that stage for electric cars. It'll pass.
You may not have seen that many dedicated electric car charging outlets, but I bet many of the RV parks you've stayed at have a 220 V / 50 A NEMA 10-5 connector, which can give you about 30 miles of charge per hour in a Tesla. Not a supercharger, but decent.
Availability of non-Tesla electric charging depends vastly on where you are. In the northeast, there are a bunch of places that have 2-4 EV spaces with a CHAdeMO connector which (anecdotally) are always full. So if you're planning a trip cross-country, you basically have to stick to the interstates for superchargers.
If you have an RV, you probably think that traveling cross-country via only the interstates is a pretty bad way to see the sights though :).
EVs have a range problem. 250 miles is fine for day to day driving, but most Americans routinely need to travel farther than that. Travel to nearby major cities, visiting relatives, vacations, etc. The supercharger network is a long way from being about to support travel for most people, and even once it is the charge time (30 minutes for 170 miles range) is a significant inconvenience on any trip long enough to require recharging.
The bottom line is that even if an EV meets your daily needs, it isn't going to be good enough to be your only car. That really isn't going to be the case until EVs regularly have a 350-400 mile range, the supercharger network is reasonably dense, and a supercharger can top off your car in 10-15 minutes, tops.
There are 600 "super chargers". They are 100k+ regular high powered chargers. At my office alone there are 20 charging stations, including j1772 and high powered (40 amp) outlets.
They do have a range problem, but not in the way that you probably think.
If you take a look at the affordable EV segment, in the 2011 to 2016 era, it has been represented only by Nissan Leaf.
People are reporting anywhere between 15-30% of capacity loss within the first 45,000 miles.
The problem with battery powered vehicles is that there's a guaranteed loss of capacity after N charge cycles, which currently seems to be ~600-800 charges (77 miles of range x 600 charges = 46,200 miles)
Teslas have obviously not run into this problem yet, because their range is 200+, so you'd only start seeing significant capacity losses at 120,000 miles driven, which I'm guessing not many people have done since 2012.
But for smaller range vehicles this presents a significant problem: the commute you are able to make in the beginning of ownership may suddenly become impossible in just 3-4 years of driving.
And how do you get more range? You need more batteries.
In fact the first vehicle to solve this and have a decent enough capacity buffer at an affordable price will be Tesla 3.
On the other hand, this will put the nail in the coffin of the "not being able to scale" argument. In fact, Tesla 3 will be successful ONLY if they're able to scale.
Yep. I have just one car, and I don't want to rent a car every time I need to drive longer than half the day. And I certainly don't want to turn a long trip into a day-long or days-long trip because I need to stop and recharge my battery every so often.
Electric cars are getting there, but you need to be in a specific location and have specific requirements for owning one to make sense.
I love electric cars but I totally agree that it's largely true that _most_ electric cars on the market have a range problem (eg cars that are priced in a way that they are _almost_ accessible for the general population).
There are ~600 charging stations worldwide, and that's increasing to 1200 during 2016. But you think it's "largely true" that there's no charging infrastructure?