As I have said all along, when you drive an EV...you're going to want an EV. Detractors like Bob and AJT will be won over by the product because the product is great...we just need to solve the hurdle of travelling long distances and charging.

Hurdles for me are traveling to rural WV where very few fast chargers exist, especially in a non-Tesla. Example in January my cousin and friends of ours are getting a cabin near Snowshoe in WV, its going to be very cold and 350 miles away with a lot of the end of that trip being country roads...how am I going to charge? I'm going skiing in February in PA...same issue. The solution for me would be to leave my car at home with my wife and drive the Pacifica or to rent an ICE car for those trips but I don't want to do that...so before I can go full EV for myself those issues have to be solved.

 

No, my arguments were not fictitious. I've lived it for 6 months, so I know. Charging and plugging in and unplugging is annoying. Planning trips around sparse high speed chargers is annoying. That's why the Plaid is my fun car around town and rarely used for longer trip. Still a ways to go before EV refueling is as convenient as ICE. Of course, you know this. That's why you still buy ICE and just talk about buying EV.

 

Nobody really every disputed that the driving experience of an EV isn't superior. That's why I've said "all along" that I would be buying one. But being a realist about the negatives doesn't make you a "detractor". Otherwise, you would be a detractor. You could drive one now for 99% of your driving and use one of your alternate solutions for when an EV won't work, you just don't WANT to do that. If you are waiting for EVs to be a 100% solution of every situation, you might be waiting for a while. Obviously. the superior EV driving experience and lack of gas station trips isn't really that big of a selling point for you. Because with just an occasional workaround solution, that could be every day for you RIGHT NOW.

 

How many road trips do you take in a year? just curious.

I for one am glad to never having to stop at a gas station. I always found myself "too busy" to get gas, and wait until the estimated distance goes way past 0. I don't miss homeless panhandling for change at the pump, nor donations from supposedly high schoolers/children. Plugging in every other night works perfect for me. Last time I did a road trip to Yosemite, I just simply rented a car. Tons of Tesla superchargers on the way there, but I didn't want to deal with it.

 

putting bob and ajt in the same group? thanks for the laugh.

you've already said your cousin has a 30A circuit there you could use. piece of cake. done.

even though you've said your s580 is your last ice car, the above sounds like that can't possibly be the case as those 'problems' won't be 'solved' in the next couple of years.

 

We have a vehicle we plug in every night. Every time we get in and out we plug it in and unplug it. Nothing could be simpler and easier. Day to day driving is not an issue because it charges at home. Don’t you not have a home charger for some inexplicable reason?

I absolutely could make that trade off, but at the end of the day I didnt like the EV option as much as the gas option as a car so I didnt do it. If I really wanted the 7 series as a car more than the S Class, I would have done it. Had there been an EV S Class that was identical to the gas one I would have done it.

And absolutely people do say the driving experience is not superior.

Different levels. Both have unreasonable concerns.

I can’t get there on one charge. Would still have to stop and charge and there are still only 3 places to do that along the whole trip, and they all are about halfway. Too stressful.

One or two more chargers along 64 or opening up Tesla chargers to Mercedes and BMW solves the issue. So I think that can happen within 3 years.

There are plenty of Tesla chargers, just not non Tesla chargers.

 

Ever wonder how Rivian can lose billions every year?

Sure it looks great but this is a vanity project right down to the name.

 

Depends. One month we don't go anywhere. Others we go almost every weekend. Either way, ICE makes more sense for most of them. It's doable with EV, just takes more planning. And to be fair, the San Fran gas station experience is probably different than suburbs of Columbia SC gas station experience, so I get that.

 

I don't think anybody would not recognize that traveling is easier in an ICE vehicle. Around town driving though is certainly easier in an EV that charges overnight in your garage while you sleep.

My thing is I don't want to rent a car, I don't want to drive my wife's car...when I go on a trip I want to drive my car, thats partly why I spend so much money on a car, to enjoy it on trips. I can deal with the time required to charge as long as there are plenty of places to charge to where I don't have to plan my trip around charging. For instance on my trip to WV, in a non Tesla EV when I get off I-81 and get on I-64 in Lexington there are no more fast charging options. Zero. Thats 1/2 the trip. So I would have to charge at one of the 2-3 options on I-81 as close to the turn for 64 as possible and get to my destination with 15% or so charge remaining. Thats a little too stressful for me.

Now, if I had a Tesla there are numerous charging options along I-64 and even one about 10 minutes from my cousins house. But...I don't want a Tesla. Once those are opened then I'm good, but I want to see them open before I commit because I don't trust Tesla's timelines. With Tesla stations I would drive all the way to Lewisburg, WV and stop at the supercharger there and I'd get down home with 100 miles of range left. Golden.

 

And remember only V3 and above Tesla chargers are equipped for non-Tesla charging. If it shows below 250kW charging, it won't work unless you have a Tesla

 

Right, I've taken that into account, it would still open up a lot of opportunities.

 

LOL we had a Tsunami warning here in the Bay area, everyone's phones went off. The office was in a panic, the Fremont chief of Police posted on X that everyone should evacuate. I just sat at my desk working and one of my co-workers was urging me to evacuate. I just looked at him and said "Son, if a wave big enough from near the Oregon coast reaches us, we are dead anyway". I just figured I'll sit it out in my Tesla and hope it floats 🤣Then when I was really having fun, this came over our phones:


I get to live another day

 

EV battery replacement will soon cost less than fixing a gas engine: study

A new study claims that replacing an electric vehicle battery will soon cost less than fixing the engine of a gas car. This is one of the most notable arguments that supporters of combustion engines use to attempt to disprove the effectiveness of electric vehicles.

Recurrent found that the cost of electric vehicle batteries and where they are headed in terms of pricing is on pace for the replacement of an entire pack to be less than a gas engine repair by 2030.

This was supported by the projected cost of EV battery prices in a new study from Goldman Sachs. The firm said that by 2026, battery prices are projected to reach $80 per kilowatt hour (kWh), roughly half the price of what they were priced in 2023.

In just three years, the cost of EV batteries was sliced in half, but the movement could continue to work in the favor of consumers and EV drivers. Goldman Sachs continued to report that their projected cost for batteries is $64 per kWh, but some, like RMI, have it as low as $32 per kWh.

The report from Recurrent states:

Goldman Sachs’ October 2024 report puts the estimated pack price in 2030 at $64/kWh. Compared to other estimates, this number is high. In January 2024, industry leader RMI estimated a 2030 cell price of $32–$54/kWh, or $45-$65/kWh for the pack. However, over the course of 2024, CATL began offering LFP cells as low as $56/kWh and BYD followed. This summer, Clean Energy Associate predicted that the global market for lithium-ion batteries will remain oversupplied through 2028, meaning even lower than anticipated prices.”

The study continued:

“This puts pack prices at or under $50/kWh. For a huge, 100 kWh pack, replacement costs might be $4500-$5000, or $3,375 for a more standard 75 kWh pack. That’s on par with an engine replacement!”

This would effectively mean the cost of replacing an EV battery pack would drop to 30 percent of what it did in 2020.

Goldman Sachs detailed the causes of the prices per kWh dropping in its report:

“A continued downturn in battery metal prices. That includes lithium and cobalt, and nearly 60% of the cost of batteries is from metals. …Roughly over 40% of the decline is just coming from lower commodity costs, because we had a lot of green inflation during 2020 to 2023.”

The EV sector is still young, but the encouraging studies that show prices for battery replacement going down are big news for both companies and consumers.

Companies can likely rely on these price reductions to help increase sales and start seeing some return on their massive investments in EVs. Meanwhile, consumers will be less weary of the expensive task of replacing a battery pack.

https://www.teslarati.com/ev-battery...-engine-study/

 

$3,375 for an engine replacement I don't think so you'd be lucky to get a used engine put in for that. Here's a Toyota engine used in dozens of models, not that these need replacement very often just like a battery pack.



Swapping a battery is 2-3 hour job swapping an engine is 20 hours.