Tesla MagicDock upto around 75 locations now.

And then what will happen to the EV transition? Could go backwards. May be actually be happening right now. They need to fix the problem (charging infrastructure) they created. Kinda late to hand it over to free enterprise now and expect quick results.

 

Its not going backwards. The lull you see in the market is happening for multiple reasons - loans are more expensive now, the economy in general isn't moving as much so people hold off on new purchases, there are people also holding out until NACS is in all EVs, etc. Every major car manufacturer is ramping up its EV manufacturing infrastructure right now anyways. The inertia is already in favor of EVs.

The problem with the infrastructure was more or less a direct product of government. Thankfully the US never mandated a charging standard so now we get the better NACS standard. Now that NACS will be the standard, it will just take time for all the car companies to smooth out the software issues. That shouldn't take too long to do. So yes, gov getting out of charging would almost instantly fix the problem going forward.

There are also tons of groups who are super adamant about getting people to drive EVs, which is great and they should make paying for infrastructure a part of club dues, fund raisers, etc. No reason why you cant have local NGOs handle giving out their own grants for constructing stations. The benefit of a private organization doing this is that they aren't as bound as the government is to ridiculous parameters and can react more flexibly to changing conditions. If it were private organizations working to build stations, there would be no stalls with resources wasted on CHADEMO

 

Agreed. While it's been reported that EV sales are falling and inventory is building, what's really happening is the rate of increase has slowed. Modern American journalism doesn't seem to favor nuance.

 

I don't think that would happen anyhow. I suspect that the V2 chargers can't be upgraded to use either the Magic Dock or adapter.

I think that's going to be an issue for you OneEV as it seems to be more likely to run into a V2 station when outside of Minneapolis.

It looks like roughly 6.9 million dollars needs to be spent to outfit the CCS vehicles currently registered in Washington state with adapters.

There roughly 65 Tesla locations in Washington state, some of which are V2.

 

Yep
And we all know how things go when the government gets involved.
To me the whole problem is the transition itself. The bridge to EV world was not very well thought out at all.
The biggest thing for me is as a EV owner, I still do not know how reliable these cars are going to be. My last 5 ICE cars I had never had to go into a shop for a fix. Just change the oil every 5k or so miles. I’ve had 2 EVs and have for a total of about 18 months and have been back to the dealership at least 5 times! while we’re on the subject of EV technicians vs ICE mechanics……no contest here at all! I have to drive 50 miles for a EV technician to look at my car and btw only a handful in that city are able to work on my car. My ICE car…..I have 5 shops in my town within a 3 block radius. If I need them!

 

Part of that is because EVs are newer and they offer different flexibility in design, so manufacturers are taking certain liberties with the design of the cars (especially the newer companies like tesla and rivian). Some of these designs are fairly poor from a repairability standpoint, so any repairs that need to be done are extremely expensive - hence why hertz dropped tesla cars. It seems that a lot of old lessons need to be relearned and will be in future cars. It doesn't matter how wonderful and maintenance light the drive train is if the rest of the car requires expensive maintenance.

 

Hertz dropped many of the Tesla cars, but you can still rent one.

Hertz biggest problems were the massive depreciation that Tesla caused, the issue with the cost of replacing tires too frequently, and renting to ride share.

See Consumer Reports cost of ownership a car over ten years for Tesla.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-maintenance/the-cost-of-car-ownership-a1854979198/

 

How does the claim in this article square with the tire replacement frequency you mentioned? Also, the model 3 and Y have not been sold for 10 years yet. The X will only have been in production for 10 years next year, so i'm not sure i trust those numbers.

 

Further on the EV transition... TSLA vs GM. GM reigned in their EV production and selling more trucks now. Tesla sales and profits faltering. What does that tell you?

View attachment 22504

 

Well then think Porsche and Mercedes.

I was listening to one of the "Out of Spec" podcasts interviews with a car sharing company in California. The person being interview said they took a pass on EVs due to the massive deprecation and the cost of tires. I would think that Herz would have both of these issues. Has Herz ever said where the excessive repair costs are coming from?

Consumer Reports wrote that their readers reported Tesla maintenance to be one of the lower cost vehicles over ten years. So I guess if you own a Tesla, plan on keeping the car until the wheels fall off, and try not to chirp the tires.

 

I believe that article covers a 5 to 10 year span.

As far as tires, do you believe that folks drive a rental harder then their own vehicle?

And when the car has instant torque and can accelerate much faster then a regular ICE vehicle, do you think folks will be hesitant to chip the tires on a rental?

Do you believe that EVs with instant torque are going spin the tires a tiny bit when accelerating from a stop? Do you think that tiny bit of spin will grind the tires down faster?

Also note that Consumer Reports rates the Tesla model 3 and model Y drive trains as being very reliable. Plus I don't think their is much to maintain there.

I don't own a Tesla, but I would think tires are their biggest maintenance issue. Outside of their build issues, the cars seem pretty reliable.

 

The majority of Tesla cars are less than 10 years old. Incomplete dataset

That is probably the case, but that still indicates that maybe the maintenance savings are exaggerated by pro EV people. Like I said earlier, who cares how low maintenance the drive train is if everything else is more expensive to maintain/repair due to build quality? Body work on many EV models seems to be more expensive than ICE because of certain design choices.

 

I doubt 2024 will be 10% EV sales, but I think that 2025 will pass that threshold. It wouldn't surprise me if 50-60% of all new car sales were EVs by 2030.

 

We'll see what happens at the end of the year. I think most of these models get released much later in the year - maybe even during December.

 

Hertz costs/problems with EV's was mostly a 1-2 punch of stupidity, and the cost of repair. Not the repair of the drive-train, the repair of everything else. Rental cars get banged up way worse than most POV's. A crunched fender on a Nissan, they have the needed agreements and infrastructure in place to get it quickly and inexpensively repaired. Not so much with a Tesla. Then they tried to rent them without figuring out the charging issues associated with a bunch of people renting electric vehicles that had no clue as to how charging works.

The NACS plug adoption is a prime example of how the market is drastically better than legislation. Legislation has been promoting massive infrastructure around a soon to be obsolete standard. This is going to cost a ton of money in the short term for the charging companies. Had it been even worse, we may have had to deal CCS for another 20 years. If the government will step away the market is robust enough to level itself out where needed. A light touch with legislation, maybe modest tax incentives for small businesses to put in better L2, and working with the distribution network. Maybe force our way past some of the regulatory stupidity and get a few Nuclear plants built.

 

A favorite Mel Brooks joke shamelessly stolen from:


Given my Tesla has both NACS and CCS-1 capability, I'll probably drop out. As for my BMW i3-REx, it carries its own, gas powered charger.

Bob Wilson