To be honest, I would love to get an EV, but unless you have access to charging at work or another reasonable location, having an EV effectively requires you to own your own home, and the home needs a garage. Outside of that, you _might_ be able to get away with a L1 charger, and then topping off at a L3 charger after sustained drives, but even then you'd need a mechanism to secure the charger. I know many chargers now lock into the car for safety, but I don't know if that applies to anything other than L3 chargers, and that would only secure car to charger, and not charger to outlet.<p>I own my house, but I don't have a garage, and I don't have enough land to construct one. I could potentially hire an electrician to run a new circuit out to the pole where I have a lamp that is next to my driveway, but there's no feasible way for me to get anything other than L1 charging out there safely, which would get me very little range.<p>However, if you have a townhouse or an apartment, or even if you rent your home, with rare exception of your complex either having chargers or potentially having a deck for you to park in where you might get lucky in negotiating a charger, you're straight out of luck.<p>I'm casually planning the next car purchase in the next year or so. At this point, unless I expect there's a move in the cards that could put me into a house with a garage where installing an L2 charger is feasible, or the amount of range that I need + accessibility of chargers is so ubiquitous that I will be able to reasonably charge the car when I need range, I'm probably looking at a range-extender style hybrid for the next car.
From the perspective of a single-car, mid to late-mid adopter, EVs right now are a commuter car for homeowners in urban areas. The problem is that they are unsuitable for anyone who:<p>a) rents<p>b) does not have off-street parking<p>c) is not doing city driving<p>d) wants only one car and occasionally drives long distances<p>e) drives medium distances but might get stuck in traffic in winter<p>f) lives somewhere with cold winters<p>g) wants only one car and occasionally drives to remote locations, such as national parks<p>Basically, the recharging situation is just not tenable for an EV to replace a regular car. Waiting thirty minutes to recharge adds up on a long trip, plus there's the uncertainty of how long the wait will actually be, if the charging station is not as fast as advertised. Until these use cases get fixed, EVs are strictly inferior to a regular car. Yes, one could rent a car for some of the infrequent use case, but since a regular car handles them fine, the EV is a less compelling option
Seems to be blogspam of this: <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/08/09/electric-cars-adoption-rates" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.axios.com/2023/08/09/electric-cars-adoption-rate...</a>
The truth is that if you are in this market, the best choice by far is still Tesla.<p>I notice that in the article the sales situation for Tesla isn’t addressed, just crap automakers like Ford or half-hearted EVs from companies like Mazda.<p>The best competitor is Hyundai which is a shitty buy because it doesn’t have a tax credit.<p>I think it’s also worth pointing out that EVs are exploding in China because those buyers don’t have to worry about long distance driving. They travel the country with the world’s best high speed rail system.<p>When the current EV market just barely competes with ICE cars I think it’s logical for people to really converge around the very best option.
This is basically nonsense: the U.S. is consolidating around the NACS (Tesla) plug, and it seems only Tesla is shipping NACS cars right now. Other car companies are trying to charge the same amount as Tesla for cars that are going to be plug orphans, and they are not succeeding.
I need a new car and really want to buy an EV, but having been shopping around for a while it’s pretty clear that everyone is playing catch up to Tesla.<p>Unfortunately even with my tech salary a model 3 or Y is roughly twice what I am willing to spend on a car.<p>I was excited about the upcoming Equinox EV, but now that Chevy is going NACS in 2025 it seems silly to buy a model that’s outdated before it’s even delivered.<p>I would have grabbed a Bolt but the charging time is atrocious. It would be impossible to ever take it on a longer trip even with L3 charging.<p>I really like the feel of the Niro, but without the tax credit it just doesn’t make financial sense because it’s nearly the same price as the Tesla but with FWD and worse specs.
The fundamental problem is that we have conflated the EV with the <i>BEV</i>. These are not the same thing.<p>But because we have done that, we've created a car market that is something akin to what we saw in the Communist bloc. Basically, the government is forcing people to buy cars they don't want, or trying to get people to stop buying cars they do want. It's not even paying attention to even basic economics, as cheaper hybrids or PHEVs are heavily dissuaded against. So people who are less well-off and want to participate are instead told to suffer. The whole thing is a doomed process and will only generate resentment.