really the only reason i can see for having an ICE car at this point is for towing or heavy loads which 98% of all american's don't do.
I definitely agree about the back-room negotiations. In fact, that looked like a certainty to me when GM and Tesla announced a deal. Even with the Ford/Tesla deal to use as a model, I thought it was unlikely that a company like GM would rush into something, starting from scratch, in just two weeks. I can believe Rivian's deciding in less than two weeks after the GM deal, since Rivian's a startup. With Volvo and later, there's both a little more time since the Ford deal and three (now four) deals that are identical or close to it, at least in publicly-facing details, so quicker decisions are more plausible; but even then, ongoing low-level negotiations for months seem quite believable.
Battery manufacturing capacity may well slow EV adoption for quite a few years. To be sure, automakers and battery manufacturers are announcing partnerships left and right, and massive government loans might help speed things up, but as I understand it, battery manufacturing remains a finicky task that's difficult to scale. Tesla and Panasonic had problems getting Gigafactory Nevada up to speed, and Tesla's having problems bringing 4680 cell production up to the levels it wants. Thus, even if demand were to skyrocket tomorrow, the supply side of the equation would necessitate a more sedate transition. OTOH, perhaps companies will figure out how to scale battery production more quickly, so I could be wrong about that.
I was talking to a guy at an auto show this weekend who said he routinely drove 300 miles a day, and sometimes up to 600. His business was buying classic cars for restoration and resale, so he has to drive around the area to inspect the cars before buying them. That's a lot of mileage. An EV with 300+ miles of range could handle the lower end of that range, or even a bit more, without too much trouble, especially in the summer; but driving 600 miles in the winter would likely require multiple DC fast charging stops even in the best modern EV.
Despite the fact that NACS is an acronym for "North American Charging Standard," NACS is not a true standard by most definitions. Most standards are released by industry standards organizations, like SAE, IEEE, ISO, etc. They're created by multiple companies, universities, governments, and other interested bodies who come together to decide how things should be done. NACS, by contrast, was created by Tesla and for Tesla, with (AFAIK) no input from anybody else. It was, at best, a de facto standard, which is something that one company invents and others copy. SAE is simply saying that they'll adopt the NACS specification and release their own version, to be controlled by them. They'll probably start with Tesla's current specification and tweak a few things. They might expand the section on V2X charging, for instance, or add limitations or verbiage on acceptable voltages and amperages.
That'll be the new SAE version of NACS. Presumably it'll be very close to Tesla's version, since Tesla already has a huge installed base. They can't change the overall size of the adapter, for instance, or it'd become something completely new that would be incompatible with current Tesla vehicles and Superchargers, and that would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise, at least from the point of view of Ford, GM, Rivian, and Volvo -- giving their cars access to existing Superchargers. Remember, those companies have considerable sway with SAE, so those companies (plus Tesla and various others) will be steering the process so as to meet the overall industry needs.
To quote Betelgeuse (the character from the movie, not the hot ball of gas), it's "dead, dead, deadski."
How many times does this person stop when driving 300 miles? He would probably need to stop once to charge for that range and perhaps 3 times total for a 600 mile trip. I personally do 700 mile trip (one way so about 1400 mile round trip) once a quarter. In the winter I did need to charge more and it took about 2.5 hrs longer for a 11 hr normal trip. In the summer it took me perhaps an hour longer to drive the ev. I’m about to go on a 3k round trip next week. As for the cost, with the gov incentives the model 3 rwd is now 33k. So that’s on par or less than avg car price. I think this person could make it work also..given he is on the tesla network. I wouldn’t recommend ccs to anyone going on long road trips.
Given what he said of his work, I'm sure he stops pretty frequently -- but that would be at people's homes, or wherever the classic car he was considering buying happened to be. Even in a future world where EVs are much more common, he probably couldn't get a lot of range by using a Level 2 EVSE at somebody's home. This isn't highway road-trip driving, but rather driving around to random locations around a city, state, or even a few states (I talked to the guy in Massachusetts, but I don't know where he was based -- but I'd expect him to be visiting multiple New England states on most days). I'm skeptical that a Model 3 RWD, with 272 miles of range, would work for him. Even on a 300-mile day in warmish weather, he'd need to Supercharge at least once, which would probably be do-able if a Supercharger was convenient; but for a 600-mile day in the winter (effectively cutting the range to 200 miles or less), that'd be an awkward experience at best. Plus which, although Supercharger (or non-Tesla DC fast charger) stations are much more common than they once were, they might not be convenient at the times and places when they'd be needed on at least some days. Remember also that we aren't talking about a regular route, so for this use case, different charging locations would be required each day.
Besides our M3, we have a Motorhome (gas, 8mpg) a wrangler and a grand Cherokee. We tow either the wrangler or grand Cherokee depending on the destination. I don’t see us getting a trailer or hauler to tow the M3 as we don’t have enough room to store the trailer.
Or if you can't charge at home, or if you don't have the disposable income to afford an EV at current pricing (which most people cannot), or if the public charging infrastructure can't reliably support your driving needs where you are...
Making a plan, and executing that plan, are two different things. ICE will be around for quite a while yet, as people who can't afford to buy new cars hang on to older ones or buy used ones and some specialized applications can't feasibly transition to electric architecture. Even if every manufacturer switched 100% to EV production tomorrow it would take something on the order of 20 years to replace the in-service fleet of vehicles in the US.
I have done multiple 650 mile days, in winter, with my Model 3. It has not been an issue in the least.
Was that on a road trip, or driving 650 miles going from one site to another for work? They're two very different things. In the road-trip scenario, you can plan your stops appropriately so that you can rest, go to the bathroom, and eat while the car does a DC fast charge. I've done this myself, many times, and I agree that EV skeptics really over-state the problems of an EV road trip. In the work scenario I'm describing, the stops will be mostly at customer sites, where charging cannot be assumed. That means that charging will add wasted time to the day, which is likely to be quite unwelcome. I know that I wouldn't want to add an hour to even just some work days because of some new piece of equipment I'd have to use.
It amazes me to hear that anyone thinks this.
Based on your knowledge, what do you expect this standardization will mean for us Tesla owners? Will there be any changes for our day-to-day operations?
I'm not saying that there won't be ICE vehicles around for another 20 years or so.
