EVangelism and the 40 mile statistic

[dpeilow]

But mainstream US car drivers are families with kids. The Model S wins because with 200+ miles, it's got enough range that most busy parents driving to work, running kids around and doing random errands have so much range to spare that range anxiety completely goes away for daily driving. Then you plan around special trips or use the other car.

The Model S wins but it's >3x more expensive. Mainstream US car drivers and families can't afford this.

 

[brianman]

The Model S wins but it's >3x more expensive. Mainstream US car drivers and families can't afford this.

To refine the discussion...
">3x more expensive" is relatively precise. Which vehicle (and configuration) are you comparing with?

 

[dpeilow]

The OP's claim of its usefulness vs. the Leaf. Another example of the "just get a longer range EV" argument that we keep hearing.


This is US household annual incomes. I've not seen a stat about how much people are prepared to spend on a new car, but I'd expect from experience that it's around two thirds of one year.That means Tesla might be addressing the top 10% at the moment.

 

[rcc]

The Model S wins but it's >3x more expensive. Mainstream US car drivers and families can't afford this.

True. And the Leaf doesn't have the range.

This is why EV sales are tiny right now in the US. The ones that are practical for the mainstream are too expensive. And the ones that are affordable aren't practical enough.

There is a fairly large niche of people that travel well within Leaf ranges but the problem is that most of them probably don't need a car at all. They take mass transit and/or walk. Or they're a one-car family so they need a car with range for their special longer trips. So most of them aren't buying Leaf's either. (Nissan's selling about 10K Leafs a year in the US, btw.)

Tesla is the only company I know of that looks like it will be able to field a practical EV at a mainstream price. The S isn't it. But if batteries continue to get better and Tesla can mature its software, Gen III should be able to hit mainstream price ranges with 60-85KW Model S range and a proven track record of hw and sw reliability.

There's a number of philosophical differences between Tesla's EV approach and everyone else's. But the biggest is that Tesla is trying to build an electric car that appeals to the the market niche the car is aimed at. It's hard to make a mainstream-cost EV right now so they're trying to make a really good high-price EV using technology that is on a commodity cost-reduction curve. Make money doing that, prove out your technology and wait for commodity battery improvements to make mainstream cars financially viable. That should happen with 3-5 years.

The other companies seem to be trying to build a car that people can afford but the result is a car with a fatally small range that wil fail in the US marketplace.