Subject: Re: Farley admits reality, mostly
I would just note that you keep saying “on a near daily basis” and “requires a lot more thought” and it isn’t like that. (OK, it’s a tiny bit like that - and in your case without the ability to charge at home it would be different.) But several EV owners have tried to disabuse you of the idea of “how hard it is to monitor” and haven’t convinced you yet. Trust me, we’ll keep trying, because we know - and you don’t.

But...I can't charge at home. Or at work. Which means it's different for me than your experience. And (obviously from this quote) you acknowledge that. So I'm not sure I entirely understand your point.

I'm not disputing your experience, or those of other posters on this thread. But I am suggesting that maybe your experience isn't....universal? For example, if you're rarely charging more than once a week, I suspect you're not driving the 40+ miles per day that is what the average U.S. car is driven. And if you park in a garage, then your "plug in" operation is going to be sheltered from the weather and can be done without going outside even if you forgot to do it on the way in the house.

Which is fine! Lots of people have garages! And lots of people don't drive 40 miles per day. People who tick both those boxes are good candidates for EV's, and are probably already disproportionately representative among EV owners. Because they didn't face the same type of conditions that cause "range anxiety" in the rest of us (particularly those of us with kids).

The meat of Syke's post is:

Reason is that if the battery is low, you simply charge it when you park the car. It is second nature. The result is you never have the "oh crap, I'm leaving the house, but I need to get gas on my way" moments.

My point is that this only works if: i) you can charge it when you park the car; and ii) you always notice when the battery is low. But not everyone meets both those criteria. The first one, obviously - but also the second one. People sometimes run out of gas, or fail to notice that their tank is super low. And the simple solution to that is "if the fuel tank is low, you simply fill it when you pass a gas station" - the mirror to Syke's phrasing above. But sometimes, for some of us out here, we're not paying attention the way we should be.

I suspect (based on decades of interaction now) that you're not the sort of person that would fail to pay attention. Perhaps Syke as well. That's not who you guys are, so your experience with an EV fueling is very positive. But not everyone's like that. I'm the sort of person who (again) might lose their head if not attached, and my teenage daughter can't remember to fill up the tank to save her life. So I know that even if I had at-home charging, I would expect to have at least one - and perhaps many - instance where I get in the car in the morning to find I don't have enough charge to make my day happen.