[Martinjlm]

Originally Posted by Wyzz Kydd

Come on brother. Don't gaslight. Don't ignore obvious weaknesses in the point you're trying to make.

1. Topping off at the beginning only eliminates that top 20% on the first leg of your journey. After that you're right back to 60% of range or long charge times.

I don’t think I ever implied anything to the contrary. It is exactly that. It requires thinking about travel differently. It requires unlearning the decades ingrained habits of refueling to full.

Originally Posted by Wyzz Kydd

2. Only about 60% of Americans own their own homes and far fewer own homes that are set up for EV charging. All of those people are not covered by your hypothetical situation, so roughly half the country can't do what you described.

Most of the 40% of those people can and will make the choice to NOT buy an EV. But for the 60% it’s a huge advantage.

Originally Posted by Wyzz Kydd

3. You assume that charging stations are located exactly where they need to be in order to enable that 10 hour distance. The reality is that charging stations are almost certainly NOT going to be located right where they're needed and talk about what may be true in the future is just that, talk, not reality.

Actually I do not make that assumption. As I mentioned to your point #1 it requires thinking about travel differently. When C&D did their test they took the recharging stations where they found them, so in essence it can be done. When my wife suggested we take the Model Y for our upcoming trip to Hilton Head it took me two minutes to plot the route, including scheduled stops. That was my attempt to say “I’d rather take the SRX” because personally, I’d rather go straight through. Her response was “Cool. So now we know where we’ll be stopping” Different people have different responses. The Tesla path has us going a completely different route (still major highways) than we normally take when we drive. Two hour time difference. I’m still “Team SRX” on this one. Maybe we’ll compromise and fly.

Originally Posted by Wyzz Kydd

4. Your hypothetical assumes optimal conditions. What if it's 25 degrees outside and I have two passengers and a couple of hundred pounds of gear? Suddenly those C&D numbers don't work anymore.

I make no such assumptions. The term YMMV (your mileage may vary) was coined to describe the fact that different conditions drive different results. It was coined to describe the range of ICE vehicles. Why would I assume that it doesn’t exist for EV?

Originally Posted by Wyzz Kydd

Whoops, sorry Mr. Consumer, suddenly that 10 hours is 20 hours or more and you're spending lots of 'quality' time searching for a charging station, sitting at a Buc Ee's, or walking down the side of a highway in the rain instead of at your destination.

One thing that i DO assume is that people are rational. Just like I would not take my Camaro on a trip for 3 from Detroit to Buffalo (4-1/2 hours) I wouldn’t take an EV on a trip that would require me to charge more than an hour at a time. And before we get to “everybody can’t afford a second car” I’ll start by saying renting a car or flying are options available to both. If you can’t afford either of those options you really ought to be thinking about whether you can afford to make the trip at all.

Originally Posted by Wyzz Kydd

I'm all for debate, it can help get to the truth. I'm not a fan of debate where one side ignores known undisputed facts that detract from their argument.

You ignore access to charing issues at home, limited availability of chargers on the road, less than optimal EV driving conditions, excessively long charge times...and on and on. When those come up, suddenly we're talking about the future where supposedly those won't be an issue anymore.

As a former economist with the US Army Corps of Engineers I'm very familiar with projections; most of them are utter self serving garbage.

Any projections beyond a few years out are highly speculative and should be viewed with a lot of skepticism. Projections by people who have a dog in the fight (for example consultants in that industry) should be ignored completely.

You have hopefully noticed that none of my responses describe a future utopia, even though you accuse me of doing that.

As for consultants having a dog in the fight, you and I have clearly different understandings of what a consultant is or does. My role is to assist my clients in understanding what a situation is, what factors they may not see are present or not present, and in some cases what the expected outcome of strategic moves may present as a result. I am paid to NOT advocate any particular position. I have on more than one occasion presented clients with reports that don’t align with what they had hoped the results would be. I often tell my team that the measure of a good consultant is the ability to tell someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched in the face. It became clear to me that my own personal wants and preferences often run counter to market realities and that I can’t make decisions based only on what I like. I like small, high hp 2-door cars, preferably hatchbacks, that go fast and handle well. In the US market, 2-door cars are all but dead. Hatchbacks ARE dead, and in most cases, go fast or handle well…pick one. If I advocated only the things that I prefer, I’d be a failure. Instead I advocate nothing and analyze everything.