for those who only drive a few miles to work, never take road trips and have a workplace that provides free charging.. it might be a good deal. Until.. the battery needs to be switched out, which will total the car basically.
The whole thing is a mess.
I respectfully disagree. Much of the opposite is true, at least from a cost/ROI perspective. Those of us who live out in the boonies and, therefore, drive a lot are the ones who have the greatest chance of driving enough miles for the gas savings to be worth the extra costs that come with an EV. And even then, IMHO it's a bad idea to get an EV unless you need 2 cars anyway (i.e. married) so that one car can be the ICE car for the times an EV isn't good.
There are other factors, too. You pointed out the long trips. We knew before getting our EV that virtually all of our road trips have good charging station options (do your research before getting an EV), particularly since my wife always asks to stop every 200 or so miles and walk around for 10-15 minutes (what charging times are like anyway). If we go on a road trip with few charging options, we'll take the gas pickup (so far we haven't had to, but I'm sure that day will come). Another factor is living in a warm climate (again if we take a road trip up north in cold weather we'll have the gas pickup).
To be honest, even with all of those factors working in our favor for an EV being a good idea when it was time to replace my wife's old gas crossover anyway, I probably wouldn't have gotten it if I wasn't trying to be more self-reliant with our energy. Home solar (again, do your homework before going this route) is great for us and is paying for itself (even before I started selling power to the grid, but I get only a small rate for that). If I could create my own gasoline, both of our cars would probably still be gas cars. But I can't create my own gas. So we have an EV to utilize the free power from solar not just in our home, but out onto the road (at least for local driving and the first leg of road trips). Of the 26K miles we drove the EV last year, 16K of them were charged at home. And our solar provided 83% of all the power our home consumed last year (including charging the EV), with only 17% having to be pulled from the grid.
That's not something that can be done flippantly. You have to do tons of homework to make sure that you're in a good situation to do this. And if you do implement it, do more homework to optimize your settings and such (along with doing common sense energy saving steps to your home, like I should have done long before going solar). But given that the Dims are using their warmageddon cult to control us bit by bit with their stupid energy policies, I think it's important for us to do what we can to be more energy independent.
“for those who only drive a few miles to work, never take road trips and have a workplace that provides free charging.. it might be a good deal. Until.. the battery needs to be switched out, which will total the car basically.”
The average person drives less than 40 miles round trip per day for work or otherwise. So a 300 mile EV is an entire week of driving on a single charge with range left over. In reality a lot of work places have L2 charges as part of the benefit package for employees so daily access to chargers for free is increasingly common. One of the companies I contract for has 15 L2 spots on the front row for free access once you badge into the garage. For that company it’s 106 miles round trip for me well above the average commute by two sigmas.
A model 3 Tesla can make that trip three times before needing a charges but in practice never would. How it would be used was leave the house drive to the L2 charge before lunchtime to 100% then leave for lunch and take a normal spot so someone else can charge up after lunchtime. Drive the 53 miles one way home and park it not charging off the 50amp plug in the garage. The next day drive it back to the parking garage again 53 miles one way so at most the pack would see 106 miles of depletion before charging back to full. That’s 1/3 of its capacity or 30% DOD depth of discharge.
Tesla M3s now have LFP cells the very same ones that BYD uses in their LFP Bladepacks the ones you can drive a steel nail though fully charged and they won’t burn the videos of that test are impressive should one look for them. LFP cells love shallow DOD cycles at 1/2C rates of discharge LFP cells will last for 80000 cycles look down this page note that the scale is logarithmic on the left axis.
https://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium-iron-phosphate-lifepo4/
Still more people have access to 240V in their garage and home 50amp 240v fills up a 300 mile EV over night one night a week. For a daily 40 mile commute a five passenger EV the same size as a S60 Volvo would use 9kWh or under an hour of charge time from a 50amp socket using the same amount of power running a cloths dryer would use in the same hours time. Hardly grid crashing. My wife runs the dryer for 6+ hours straight every Sunday in laundry day sometimes 8+ hours in a row.
As for the pack life look at those charge discharge curves again and plot them for 30% DOD depth of discharge cycles. This is being seen in real life model 3 in high mileage uber and taxi services some packs are well into 250,000+ miles now Tesla themselves expects the LFP packs to make it 300-500K miles. LFP is not anywhere near the same chemistry as NMC which use nickel and cobalt and only have a 1500 cycle life. The reason for NMC cells vs LFP is NMC have 1/3 higher the energy density in a kWh/Kg basis so for the same pack volume and weight NMC cells have longer range in miles. I personally would trade 400mi vs 325 mile in a model 3 for the LFP cells that have ten times or more cycle life. 100% DOD on LFP is still 3000 cycles double the 1500 of NMC not at 100% DPD but the recommended 80/20DOD window.
325 miles of range and 3000 cycle life is 975,000 miles Tesla did say they were wanting commercial Teslas to go a million miles so LFP is the cell tech to do that with. Given the Uber and taxi pack health statistics those packs are going for half million miles to 20% capacity loss which is impressive none the less.
As for road trips I personally have taken rental Model S and Model 3s from Houston to DFW and New Orleans. The tech in the car shows all the superchargers along your route, allows you you to reserve a spot at your expected arrival time and ensures it’s functional before you get there. Along the interstates every 50 miles or less is a SC, every bucees has them ,most HEBs and every outlet mall as well. In Texas you are never more than 50 miles from a SC along an interstate and even less in a major city. It takes 15 min or less to put 200+ miles in a model 3 that’s also the limit of my bladder 3 hours seat time and 200 miles. I stop at bucees on th Houston DFW run 15min is just long enough to stretch the legs, grab a beer and brisket sandwich , piss and get jerky from the counter of 40+ kinds of it. My phone buzzes when the SC has put in the requested amount of charge never been longer than 15 min. With the tech range anxiety is a mental issue not a practical issue certainly not in Texas which is saturated with charge points.My next car is going to be a Model 3 RWD with FSD and LFP cells. It will join the stable of vehicles I already own but will be my daily driver and probably my intercity car as well. I go to Houston and New Orleans at least twice a month in that order Houston first then New Orleans and back to DFW in one big loop. DFW to Houston is one stop at bucess, charge at an L2 at the hotel the night before I leave. Charge again 220 miles outside of Houston in Lafayette , then direct too NOLA it’s only 135 miles from the SC to the French Quarter where I usually stay. That leave 180 miles on arrival too putt around NOLA before needing a L2 overnight for the return trip to Lafayette then Shreveport and direct to DFW area. Harrah casino valet parking will plug you into a L2 for free if you’re a platinum or above Caesars member.