That works fine for the miserable range EV owners have had to live with so far. A dedicated charging circuit that is something more than a 110 v, 15 amp is probably going to be necessary to charge 300 mile, 400 mile, 500 mile range vehicles if EV owners are actually using them as serious transportation substitutes for ICE.
The range of the vehicle is completely irrelevant. It's the amount that you drive it.
This is one of those things that seems to be very difficult for ICE drivers to grasp, since we're so used to going to the gas station when we get close to empty, and filling all the way up. You really never do that with an EV You plug it in when you get home, and the time it takes you to charge depends on how much you drove - NOT the range of the vehicle. If you drove 30 miles today, the charge time on a 120V outlet will be roughly the same whether you drove a Volt, Leaf, Tesla, or whatever.
I only know 4 people with EVs (3 Tesla S, one Leaf). All of them have dedicated charge circuits in their garages for their cars; 220 volt circuits I think for the Teslas. Maybe they just wasted their money on that? Or maybe just a GFI plug run in by their local electrician for convenience.
If you have a long range BEV, or a PHEV, it's nice to have. It's really only a necessity if you have a short-range BEV and you use most or all of your battery multiple times per day. This is a pretty rare use case.
If you have a PHEV, it's nice to have because if you do multiple trips away from home and back during the day, you'll get more EV miles and burn less gas.
If you have a long-range BEV, it's nice to have because you'll be able to do less planning, have less range anxiety, etc. But like I said, unless you drive a LOT of miles, or drive them unevenly, you'll be fine. If you charge 12 hours/day during the week and 16 hours/day on the weekend, that's a little over 19,000 miles of range added per year on a plain old 120V circuit. Even just 8 hours/day while you're sleeping, and never any other time, will give you nearly 12,000 miles per year.
Put into a scenario: I have a 75-mile daily round trip commute. If I start on Monday morning with a fully charged 310-mile long range Model 3, I'll arrive home Monday night with 235 miles. Plug in for 12 hours, and Tuesday morning I'll leave with 283 miles and get home with 208. Repeat for the rest of the work week and I'll arrive home Friday night with 100 miles of range. If I was only away from a charger for 4 hours and drove 15 miles on the weekend, it'd be fully charged again Monday morning. It wouldn't be ideal or allow for much flexibility, but it'd be workable... And my commute is much farther than the average American. 78% of daily commuters in the US drive 40 miles or less per day.
Another high amperage 240 volt plug is more than the current panel can take in many homes, especially older ones.
And running the equivalent of a dryer 10 hours a day is a lot of electricity used.
Again, you're not running it at full tilt all the time. You're only replacing the range you drove that particular day. A Tesla on a 40A 240V circuit can add about 35 miles of range per hour, so most people that have a dedicated circuit for their car will only actually be charging for an hour or less per day.
What’s the real-world at-home utility bill actual dollars cost to daily charge a Tesla right now? I’m guessing it’s a lot more than drying a couple loads of clothes in a dryer.
Multiplied daily, what’s an honest annual $$$ bill to keep a Tesla rolling in electrons?
The average driver goes 12,000 miles/year or 1,000 miles/month, and the average residential electricity rate in the US is 12 cents/kWh. With charging efficiency taken into account, you're looking at about $30-$35/month to keep it rolling.
Remember, we’re talking plug-in hybrid, so once the EV range is exceeded, you just continue in hybrid mode.
Uhhh... We are? The Tesla pickup is not a plug-in hybrid, it's a battery electric vehicle.
I believe the highest point in Florida is 300 ft AGL.
Pretty sure the highest point in every state is still 0 AGL.
I wonder if the number of preorders aren't all from people actually wanting to buy, but to then sell their hold to someone else.
Tesla doesn't allow that. They've cancelled reservations of those who tried in the past.
I'm just looking at the Tesla truck, and it has that big peak in the A-frame just behind the driver's head. By the time you get to where the passenger's head would be, the roof has sloped down significantly. Either the rear passengers have to face rearward, or they ride much lower in the vehicle than the front passengers.
What I heard from a podcaster who was at the rollout and rode in the back seat is that there's reasonably good head room in the back, and there's a ton of extra headroom in the front.
