Congrats on the car, should be fun to figure out all the features and track your driving / energy usage.
Iām still figuring out the leaf, but itās been mostly good so far. Only thing that sucks is Iām in the northeast, so the winter heat and defrost reduce my efficiency by a decent amount. Still doing better than in the previous gas car, but Iām looking forward to warmer weather.
I did have a range limit issue the other day, but that was because I forgot to charge several nights in a row, then got stuck needing to run an extra errand and was nervous I might not make it (Iām still getting comfortable with the range limit, especially in the cold weather). I just came home and took my wifeās car to finish up the errand, so not a big deal, but probably will need to get better about charging more often. I imagine if Iād paid the extra money to run the 240V line out to the garage, I would just plug in almost every night, but Iām still not sure it wouldāve been worth what the electrician was quoting us.
I doubt youāll have that issue much in the Tesla with itās longer range, unless you start doing lots of long trips. Will be interested to hear how it goes and whether it lives up to your expectations.
Some production and delivery woes including their initial cars having less than advertised range, and they scrapped a plan to let buyers lease the battery rather than buy it (this was actually to reduce cost for the consumer).
However, this is still the big news item IMO:
The company is waiting for final regulatory approval to begin construction of a $4-billion plant in North Carolina.
Foreign company investing in U.S. manufacturing, in our state. Big deal if it happens and they donāt screw it up and deliver disappointment like the above.
All F1 cars are hybrids. They have been for years. Reports are they are the most efficient engines on earth as far as power generation per liter of fuel.
I did my first long road trip in an electric. While it wasnāt on the level of nightmare scenario like some of the articles that came out around Christmas, I wouldnāt recommend it. I drove to south Florida so I needed 3-3.5 charges.
The trip down wasnāt bad, but on the way back the chargers on my first stop had a line and 2/6 chargers were down. There was a bolt on the fastest charger, when it can max out at 50kw anyway. Takes the bolt an hour to do what I can do in 18 minutes on a 350kw charger.
At another destination electrify america had all their chargers limited to 50kw for maintenance.
I will say that Florida power and light has some kick ass chargers that work well and had me charging faster than my car is technically rated for by 7kw. I wish Duke would start installing charging stations as well.
I normally would fly to anything over 400 miles, which is probably the max distance Iād be willing to cover in this thing until charging networks are more common and reliable.
If you road trip frequently I would still recommend getting a hybrid or a regular gas car.
I still think EVs are best for people in cities, or paired with another vehicle in a typical 2 car family. Insurance companies who track this stuff still say that the majority of all Americans drive less than 50 miles a day, which makes perfect sense if you think about it (50x365 = 18,250).
I usually only do about 2-3 long road trips per year. Dunno how average I am, but in casual conversation with friends that seems fairly normal. Most of my longer drives are āto the lakeā or ādown to Rock Hillā or āup to Winstonā or Asheville, etc. All of which are easily within EV range, especially if you top off the car at each destination.
One thing I found interesting was that some manufacturers were beginning programs where buying an EV from them entitled you to, for up to 30 days per year, swap your EV for any of their other vehicles. This was expressly setup so that a typical EV user could do long road trips more easily. Dunno how that works out with peak demand though.
Bottom line is: until we get SSBās and better infrastructure, I think the future will involve multiple solutions, and not one size fits all. EVs just arenāt there yet.
