I'm not saying my situation is the "norm", but I am saying that you are way underestimating the number of people who drive long distances in a Tesla. There are reports of people doing multi-thousand mile trips.
FTR when it was just my wife and I, we have flown up to MA. We'd sometimes drive, sometimes fly. Flights are relatively cheap.
But the hassle of driving to the airport, flying with 2 kids, taking their booster/carseats with us, checking/getting luggage, for a 500mile trip is not worth it. No freaking way.
I don't understand why you want to nitpick my numbers, but sure, here's my response:
The flight time from DC to Boston is obviously not 2 hours but I get that there might be some traffic. But you neglect that there might be some traffic between DC and MA?!?
My bad, you're right it's 1hr 28mins according to Expedia. I assume that includes gate-to-gate. So take 30minutes off my estimate.
Driving costs 3.5 hours in a Tesla (2.5 hours in an ICE) as compared to flying. Money aside.
Obviously some Tesla owners like you drive 500 miles. Is it really 500? It is pretty hard to get 500 miles in 8 hours. Possible yes - but must be perfect supercharging arriving with 10%.
Door-to-door it's ~480miles, but I live in the suburbs of DC, and in-laws live in the suburbs of Boston (DC to Boston itself is 441 miles according to Google maps).
I have charging down to be between 55 minutes and 1 hour and 5 minutes (I think my best record for when it was warm, and my worst for when it was mild. never did the trip in freezing weather). So I rounded to 1 hour of charging. I think this is a fair estimate.
480 miles / average of 70mph = 6.8 hours. I usually set TACC to 75mph, and the speeding accounts for some minor traffic.
Driving late into the night, in an ICE (where I may or may not have been speeding.......), I've done the trip in around 6 hours.
So my 7 hour number and my 1 hour charging number are both accurate, and repeatable.
A Tesla with 100k in 5 years will be worth about $10k.
Agreed. But you can't have it both ways.
Your last comment says people who can afford a Tesla make a lot of money, so they don't care, yet here you say that depreciation will make the car worthless. If the people have a lot of money they don't care about depreciation
Maybe in NC we are different. We certainly don't need to arrive 1.5 hours before flights.
Here it depends on the airport.
I've gotten to Reagan, was the only/first person in line for security and walked for 3 minutes and was in the waiting area for the flight. Is that normal? No, but it has happened.
I've also gotten to Dulles, and between security and getting to my terminal which I had to take transportation for, I had to run to the flight and was the last person to board.
1.5 hours is a good safe number. Even for Reagan, I never get to the airport with less than an hour to spare.
You mention family - are you 1 car family? Most families aren't. The number of Tesla families that have 1 car is probably less than the two Tesla families. (Families defined as 2 adults for this argument).
2 adults, 2 cars (one ICE, one Tesla), 2 kids.
We used to have an ICE SUV as a family car, but due to several reasons (Tesla included) my wife downsized to a smaller car. The Tesla is the family car. It gets most of the miles driven on it.
We'll be putting a deposit on the Model 3, so in a couple years, we should be a full EV household. In our neck of suburbia, it's very hard not to have a car per adult.
Most people that can afford a Tesla make a lot of money. Most people who are frugal don't buy a Tesla. The rich didn't become rich because they were frugal (the vast majority of the time). But hey - I have a Tesla and I can be cheap.
Agreed.
