Availability of reliable charging is crucial. No other manufacturer is even close to Tesla yet for road trips.

As a former Tesla owner of six years and now a non-Tesla EV owner of one year, I will second this. The Electrify America charging network is probably the most widespread in the US after Tesla and it is absolutely horrible in comparison. If you pull into any EA charging location I would be surprised if you find even half of the chargers functioning. In over six years of Tesla ownership I only recall having to switch stalls once due to a supercharger not working. Some of the other providers like EVGo who Pilot is partnered with seem to be better but it may just be due to the fact that their hardware is mostly newer than EA. Time will tell. I personally can’t wait to get supercharger access hopefully later this year for our non-Tesla.

If I didn’t have access to home charging, like some in apartments, I wouldn’t own one…

Agree here too. I tell people that if I owned one vehicle only and/or didn’t have access to charging at home, I wouldn’t own an EV either yet. The number one question people ask is “don’t you worry about charging it?”. I always say “Do you worry about charging your iPhone? No you don’t. You plug it in at night and wake up with a full charge. I do the same with my vehicle.” If I had to take my iPhone somewhere to “fuel it up” that would definitely be inconvenient.

General charging infrastructure needs to get better over time for the people that do not own homes to make the switch. Even something as “simple” as widespread availability of standard 120V outlets in longer term parking locations/street parking could be quite valuable for many. I was at the airport in Regina, SK a few years back and they had 120V outlets for engine block heaters at nearly all the parking stalls so probably easily done in the US too in many parking locations. Cars spend so many hours just sitting that 1-2KWh charging can still give most drivers 30-50mi (or more) range daily.

We still own one gas powered car but I really have no desire to own another. The convenience of EV 99% of the time for how we drive in our day to day lives far outweighs the minor compromises we might have to make the 1% of time we drive more than ~250mi in a day. I think if we were to go fully EV I would even be ok renting a gas powered car for any drives over 400-500mi. Or just fly.

Jeff

Berkshire Hathaway FAQ

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