flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
(Wow... I didn't know until now that PoA has a character limit on posts. Did @denverpilot buy himself an exemption from that? 
)
Once you drive electric, it's hard to tolerate going back. Late last year, I turned in a plug-in hybrid in favor of a fully electric vehicle, and since our other vehicle was late in its lease and already over miles, I drove the EV almost exclusively for three months. But after a couple months of that my wife and I both needed to drive to separate places one night, and I drew the short straw and got the gasser. I was sitting at a stop light and literally thought for a second, "Dammit, why is this thing VIBRATING so much?!?!! Oh. Right."
The up-front charge for enabling supercharging on the few early Model S cars that came without it was $3K, and that was built into the cost on the rest of them. That's about 24,000 miles worth of electricity, and most people don't use it that much since they're charged up at home.
I think part of the reason they moved away from that model was that the Model 3 is going to invite a lot more apartment-dwellers who don't have the option of charging at home, which changes the equation significantly.
EVs are the driving equivalent of Pringles. Once you pop, you can't stop. Having driven a couple now, I don't think those predictions are far off. Of course, it depends how much of your lifetime is remaining.
The main thing the others are missing is a comprehensive charging infrastructure like Tesla's supercharger network. Tesla's Superchargers are relatively evenly spaced along the Interstates and other major highways and run at 120kW. The other fast charging standards, SAE-CCS and CHAdeMO, have far fewer stations, are concentrated in population centers, and are mostly limited to 50kW (though in the real world, I normally see only 34 kW on mine). Until someone - be it government, an oil company, or the manufacturers themselves - builds such a charging network, Tesla will have an advantage that the others won't be able to overcome, in addition to some of the other things that put Tesla ahead of them (OTA software updates, no dealers, etc)
I don't think the Model 3 is going to ever go for that price either. That's what the Leaf, etc. are for. Just like you won't see those BMWs or Audis going for those prices. However, I do think that the base Model 3 is not just going to be intruding on BMW/Audi/Mercedes territory, but also the higher end of Ford/Toyota territory. If you look at the car market as a whole, Tesla doesn't really need that big of a percentage of it to sell 500K/year. The big three each dwarf that on their own, as do the mainstream foreign brands.
)Once you drive electric, it's hard to tolerate going back. Late last year, I turned in a plug-in hybrid in favor of a fully electric vehicle, and since our other vehicle was late in its lease and already over miles, I drove the EV almost exclusively for three months. But after a couple months of that my wife and I both needed to drive to separate places one night, and I drew the short straw and got the gasser. I was sitting at a stop light and literally thought for a second, "Dammit, why is this thing VIBRATING so much?!?!! Oh. Right."
The up-front charge for enabling supercharging on the few early Model S cars that came without it was $3K, and that was built into the cost on the rest of them. That's about 24,000 miles worth of electricity, and most people don't use it that much since they're charged up at home.
I think part of the reason they moved away from that model was that the Model 3 is going to invite a lot more apartment-dwellers who don't have the option of charging at home, which changes the equation significantly.
EVs are the driving equivalent of Pringles. Once you pop, you can't stop. Having driven a couple now, I don't think those predictions are far off. Of course, it depends how much of your lifetime is remaining.
The main thing the others are missing is a comprehensive charging infrastructure like Tesla's supercharger network. Tesla's Superchargers are relatively evenly spaced along the Interstates and other major highways and run at 120kW. The other fast charging standards, SAE-CCS and CHAdeMO, have far fewer stations, are concentrated in population centers, and are mostly limited to 50kW (though in the real world, I normally see only 34 kW on mine). Until someone - be it government, an oil company, or the manufacturers themselves - builds such a charging network, Tesla will have an advantage that the others won't be able to overcome, in addition to some of the other things that put Tesla ahead of them (OTA software updates, no dealers, etc)
I don't think the Model 3 is going to ever go for that price either. That's what the Leaf, etc. are for. Just like you won't see those BMWs or Audis going for those prices. However, I do think that the base Model 3 is not just going to be intruding on BMW/Audi/Mercedes territory, but also the higher end of Ford/Toyota territory. If you look at the car market as a whole, Tesla doesn't really need that big of a percentage of it to sell 500K/year. The big three each dwarf that on their own, as do the mainstream foreign brands.
