webeleafowners said:
Graffi said:
If it is for Local Driving only, then get the Leaf. If you wish to use it for long cross-country vacation driving then get the Tesla. Even the 200+ mile Leaf can not be practical for trips greater than 300 miles. jmho
Just curious. Why wouldn't a 200 mile leaf be practical for trips of 300 or greater miles?
It is not the miles of range that make an EV practical for long distance trips, it is the ability to quickly "refuel", or in our case, recharge. Only Tesla is building a network of Superchargers to allow us to do that.
On our trips we drove for 1 to 1.5 hours, then stop at a supercharger to plug in, find a restroom, walk around a few minutes to get blood flowing to legs and feet, then unplug and be on our way in 10 to 20 minutes. If we do something else at the stop then we got more electricity. Some may ask, why drive an hour and wait 10 minutes? Well, when we drove ICE on our trips we did the same, drive then rest. Using our Tesla does not add more time to our total driving time, it us just more comfortable.
No other EV manufacturing company is doing anything about being able to recharge quickly. NO ONE. If you, or anyone, were to get anything other than a TESLA you could use it for longer drives, but if you have to recharge, then you find an L-2 EVSE that will recharge at a speed of about 16 to 20 miles each hour. This means that you drive for 3 hours, then recharge for 9 hours, drive for 3 hours, then recharge for 9 hours, rinse and repeat, etc. etc. etc. If you were lucky enough to find a DCFC and have that ability on your EV then you can drive for 3 hours, recharge for 1.5 hours, rinse and repeat, etc. etc. etc.
And do not get me started on paying for that electricity. All of the public charging stations available (except for the free ones that are becoming more and more rare) sell you the electricity, plus costs, plus profit. The cheaper one will charge you 2 or 3 times the cost of charging at home, most of the DCFC are even more. I believe you will find that the cost per mile for public DCFC electricity will be greater than gas in and ICE. With the TESLA superchargers it could be free, or if you have to pay, I read somewhere that Elon stated it would be equivalent to the cost of electricity at home (or much cheaper than driving on GAS). Even then, the cost of your time is much more expensive at the slower recharging stations.
No one has the network to allow you to drive for an hour, then charge for 10 minutes, except TESLA. This is the one thing that sets them apart from the field.