No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on::Tesla has been slashing prices. Ford just cut the price of its Mustang Mach-E, too, plus it cut back production of its electric pickup. And General Motors is thinking about bringing back plug-in hybrids, arguably a step back from EVs.
Yeah, I want a Mach-E (at least in theory) … but I want it to have a good 500-600 mile range (or for the charging network to be much bigger than it is)… It’s unfortunate really
Is the charging network that bad in the US that you need to get that far without charging?
So for me I make a trek to my parents house ~150 miles away a few times a year.
In good weather (and good battery condition), I could maybe skip hitting the chargers all together, or get a little bit of charging at my parents house from a wall outlet.
Unless my parents (or my grandfather that I also visit fairly regularly who lives the same distance in a different direction) installed a better charger at their place… In colder weather (e.g. Christmas), I’d almost definitely need to use a charger while going at least one direction.
The problem is, in both cases, there are like 5-10 charges total (not charging stations, chargers) where as there are like 5-10 gas stations all right next to the interstate each with at least 4 pumps, many with 8+ pumps.
I’m concerned that during peak travel in cold weather (e.g. Christmas time travel), I could easily find myself in a bad situation where I can’t get a charger because they’re all too far away, broken, or in use. There’s just not enough redundancy.
I’m in the market, and the answer is kinda, for non Teslas. I do a road trip up the east coast a few times a year and the Tesla will reliably add about 4 30 minute stops on each half of the trip. A non Tesla also requires four stops, but they could be anywhere from 20 minutes best case to 1 hr plus, depending on the availability and status of the unreliable chargers.
A lucid with 400 miles of true range would probably cut it down to two stops, but I don’t have $140k
No, there are very few places like that, and most of the populated places are not at all like that.
I took that to mean “I want to complete my common road trip without charging”
A few weeks ago I did my first road trip requiring charging away from home and it really was painless
The charging network actually is about to get much bigger, as Ford will be able to use tesla superchargers starting sometime within next few months. (and is providing a free adapter to owners). I’ve had my Mach e for 6 months and couldn’t be happier with it.
The charging network expansion is something I’ll be watching. I decided the very soonest I’ll buy is after they’ve switched things to the Tesla connector (which seems to be the one that’s going to win).
The adapter is definitely nice but I’d rather not have yet another unnecessary connection adapter in my life lol.
I always wondered why people didn’t talk about this more. Ami the only one that thinks announcing a new charging connector in two years is announcing your current cars are obsolete? It would be annoying to pay so much for a car that will need to use an adapter in two years. I wouldnt do it. That’s got to hit their sales
I test drove the mach-e and really liked it. And it has a surprisingly large amount of storage due to the well designed frunk. The California edition has more than enough range for me. However, the abysmal charging speed has me worried about battery condition. If it’s that slow to charge it means the battery isn’t good under load.