GRA
Well-known member
jlv said:Just the Bay Area to Jasper NP is over a 1300 mile trip. It's actually doable with an S100D using just SCs right now, although you'd need charging at the destination in order to make the return trip. With an X or smaller battery S you'd need longer SC stops as well as an additional stop to charge after Kamloops to reach all the way to Jasper NP.GRA said:I had some outdoorsy friends who recently completed a road trip from the Bay Area: I-5 to Ashland, OR, then cut over to U.S. 97 via Crater Lake and up through Peachland, Kelowna, Revelstoke, Golden and Lake Louise to Jasper NP in B.C., then back to Lake Louise, Waterton NP, Stanley ID then through SE Oregon (Steens Mtns.) and NE California (Warner Mtns) and back to the Bay Area; not sure whether they came down U.S. 395 to Reno and then I-80 or cut back over to I-5. If they had a Tesla the Leavenworth SC site (wasn't open yet) plus the 'coming soon' ones listed for Okanogan and Osoyoos would have been needed, plus several others that aren't even posited by Tesla as of yet.
Yup, all they need is a $95k car to do a trip that any $15k ICE can do easily as well as faster.
Now we're down to only $49k, when the median LDV price is currently $36k, and the favorite vehicle type for such people are wagons or CUVs. Sure, such trips are a minority, but I and many of the people I know make many such trips, if not typically that far then to places just as far away from SCs and in many cases any other charging. I've driven to Colorado and back 3 times on such trips, to Wyoming once, Utah several times, Oregon, Washington and New Mexico, many of which remain impossible to do with SCs (e.g. there aren't any on U.S. 50 across Nevada). While active outdoorsy types are a small minority of car buyers, they have a very strong motivation to go ZEV for environmental reasons. They are a natural market which currently remains unserved because as of yet the cars and infrastructure can't get them where they want to go, at least not without designing the whole trip around the needs of the car and wasting a great amount of their precious free time waiting for the car to charge, in places they have no desire to be.jlv said:Alternately, with a 3 LR you'd be able shave almost an hour of charging time, but incur $65 in SC fees.
But that's already an exceptional trip -- a fraction of 1% will every make such a trip.