Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Dear Electric Cars!”.
Hey what’s up mkbhd here, okay, i’m gon na have to oversimplify some things in this article, but i think it’s necessary to get my point across. So at this point in 2020 there are two types of electric vehicles. There are teslas and there’s everything else and i have messages for both and i’m one of those people that honestly believes that electric cars are the future of cars but they’re just that they’re the future, and so there’s a lot of work that both have to do To get there also, apparently, apple is also working on an electric car that could launch sometime in the next couple of years likely with some sort of high-end battery tech sounds really interesting, sounds very expensive too also. Are we sure it’s going to come with a charger, but seriously jokes aside? Let’S say apple is working on an electric car for the next somewhere in the next decade. They won’t be alone a lot of people, a lot of companies. A lot of the biggest in the world are working on electric cars to be at the forefront of their innovations for the next little bit. So as someone who’s been driving a lot of electric cars and who lives with one and all of its flaws and all of its upside and feel strongly about the whole thing, i’ve got a lot of messages.
So, let’s start off with this: dear electric cars, if you’re coming out today with a premium electric car with 200 miles of range you’re already behind so range, is of course super important and to me it’s the number one baseline indicator for just how good the electric Car program is within a certain manufacturer: it’s like a baseline metric. So today, right now, the highest 10 electric cars are going, what 250 to 400 miles on a full battery right. So the king of the hill right now is tesla’s long-range model s. That’S a 100 kilowatt hour battery 402 miles and that’s right now.
Today, in 2020, people are driving that car right now. So when someone comes out and says we’re gon na launch a new electric car sometime in the future, maybe in a year or two and it’ll have 200 miles of range to some. That number sounds pretty good. But to me, when i hear 200 miles, that’s still pretty low, that’s low enough that i still have to spend mental energy thinking about remembering where and when i’m going to charge. This thing think about this. The median range for a full tank of gas for a typical gas car is about 400 miles today, with the best ones getting about 600 700 miles on a full tank of gas.
That is what you eventually want. Electric cars to match – maybe even do a little bit better since there’s less gas stations. So that’s why you see tesla’s already announced plans for a truck that’ll do 500 plus miles next year and then a triple motor model. S that’ll go 520 miles and a two-door roadster that’ll eventually do 620 miles when it eventually comes out, i’m guessing in 2022..
All of that comes from years of r d. Priority on battery tech, drive trains, efficiency, all the tech in the cars arrow weight reduction. All of that stuff to ultimately achieve the same level of convenience as a gas car and speaking of gas. Dear electric cars, gas stations are pretty underrated, like the electric car is only half the story.
The charging network to charge these cars is the other half of the story, and it’s arguably just as important as the car itself. It’S something we kind of take for granted, but the confidence of being able to just run your car down to nearly zero and just know that there is going to be a gas station somewhere within a mile, or two of you probably is kind of amazing. It’S huge and so in this world of electric cars that obviously doesn’t exist yet so it’s being built and uniquely it’s being built, often by the car maker themself, so tesla, building and owning their supercharger network and actually electrify america is owned by volkswagen group. And so there’s more popping up every day, and so my bold hot take is, i think this part of it needs to be a collaborative effort and look, i know, that’s a lot more complicated than it sounds, and i know that’s easier said than done, but think About this at this very moment in time, i find it pretty much impossible to recommend an electric car for daily use.
That is not a tesla if you plan on doing any road trips – and this is a mostly u.s perspective – that’s because tesla’s, large and growing supercharger network here is literally as important to the car as the range or the build quality or literally any other feature. Honestly, maybe even more so matter of fact, i’ve said this in the past and i’ll go ahead and say it on record in this article again. If the porsche tai can could use tesla superchargers, i would rather have that than a model s. To be honest, just because of my set of feature priorities obviously build quality inside, but the way the car drives, it’s still a four-door with plenty of space, and the software is good enough. I don’t use autopilot all that much. I would rather have a tie.
Can if it could supercharge, but it can’t there was just a story recently about a couple who got their shiny. New hundred thousand dollar. Electric porsche went for a road trip and it took them nine hours to go 130 miles nine hours. Basically, it came down to them having an unlucky streak of like a bunch of chargers in a row they visited either being out of service or slow or full or or whatever like they couldn’t see that stuff on the map, because there was no guarantee.
You were just sort of going where you thought you could find a good one and they even passed some shiny, new tesla superchargers and couldn’t use them because the porsche is not compatible. But imagine if it was that would be, in my opinion, a game changer. For that car i could actually recommend cars like that way. More often, so, literally because of road trips remember road trips, i eventually think we’ll get back to that, but because i need to go to an ultimate tournament or go visit family in another state.
I literally cannot recommend or buy for myself any electric car. That’S not a tesla, because the charging networks aren’t quite there yet for any of them. So here’s my question: why aren’t more electric cars compatible with tesla’s supercharging network like it seems like a win overall right? It would be fast charging available for your car in a bunch.
More places makes it way easier to recommend your car. What is there so? Maybe there’s some sort of licensing fees or some sort of hidden terms that tesla’s built in they said they’ve made it available. Why hasn’t anyone taken them up on that? I actually tweeted this last week wondering why it hadn’t happened, to which elon casually responded, that tesla superchargers are being made available to other electric cars, but just the fact that this isn’t common yet is fascinating.
To me, i’m not saying make your car dependent exclusively on superchargers. No, no, no, no, that’s a bad idea, but just adding that compatibility on top of the existing compatibilities already. Wouldn’T that be great, but hey! This may never happen.
Maybe this is like me, asking apple to add a usbc port alongside the iphone’s lightning port. Just because hey it would make it compatible with way more things. It’S only a benefit to your product right, but they obviously have dreams of a lightning ecosystem.
That’S turned out pretty well and i feel like in the car world. A lot of these manufacturers have dreams of their own lightning, their own charging network, their own secret sauce which isn’t built yet, but that’s their dream. But look if the long-term goal is to match the convenience of gas cars, then you want to eventually get the range. All the way up to match the gas cars and then build up enough electric chargers to be as common as gas cars. Now i can see the range getting there eventually, but to build up all these chargers to match how many gas stations we have is going to take a lot and there’s no way. You do that all yourself, so you might as well make it compatible with the ones that are already the most built out, i’m just saying anyway.
Okay, so there’s an article on electric, pretty recently about someone at ford, pretty high up sort of throwing some shade at tesla, saying things like the doors fit properly about ford cars, the plastics and other materials color match the bumpers, don’t fall off, the roof doesn’t come Off when you wash it he’s saying, buyers will not have to make these compromises with ford’s electric vehicles, but see what he’s obviously leaving out and what i see so often when talking about the electric cars coming from these other big manufacturers is, there is still a Compromise – it’s not that compromise, but there is still a compromise because the mustang machi, which i’ve driven and that i love, and that i think, is great. I think it’s one of the most user-friendly and reasonable and well-thought-out electric cars to come out so far that mock e, the entry-level model goes 210 miles on a charge and the fully max spec best version. They can possibly make 60 000 mach e goes 300 miles on a full charge and by the way, of course, none of them will do supercharging with tesla’s network. That is a compromise, and so guess what ford and many of the others people have been. Choosing the tesla a lot lately you might have noticed, and so that means you’re right to use the word compromise, but people are often picking the one with the great battery with the performance and fun to drive stuff and the tech features over the one. That’S actually better built, it’s just facts. There’S a lot of people like me out there who would drive a super minimal, very plain car with not that many bells and whistles. If it went a thousand miles on a charge over the best built thing, you could possibly make if it only goes 200 miles. It’S an exaggeration, obviously, but still that’s the priorities that a lot of electric car buyers have right now, because there are no chargers everywhere.
So for all those advantages, the big automakers have of being able to mass produce quality cars at huge scale, with great materials, awesome designs, tight tolerances and a ton of skus. They are still three or four years behind in the battery and drivetrain technology and the charger networks, which are enough for people to not really want to leave the gas cars that they know and love. And it’s the reason i don’t drive a thai can or a maki or an e-tron right now, and it’s the reason that a tesla feels like the only financially responsible version of a premium electric car as far as convenience goes, which brings me to tesla.
Oh, you probably thought you were safe from this video tesla, but no, i drive one, which means i have to deal with all the upside and all the downside that comes with them, and i have some messages for you too, dear tesla, this one advantage that you Have that’s very real that we’ve talked about is eventually going to go away right. Eventually, tesla has gone all in on their battery technology and their drive trains and their efficiency and their years ahead on that right, so they’ve been building their battery. Their gigafactories they’ve been building their electric motors and slapping a car on top and that’s almost like the least important part of the car itself, because when you drive it, it’s so fun and it goes so far and you can plug it in so easily.
So a lot of people out there buying their first electric car, getting a tesla that have never owned a porsche or an audi or bmw or a ford aren’t really super used to super high quality. Interiors they’re fine with the interior of a tesla because it matches their priorities and that’s great, but eventually there’s the other half of people who, when they spend 50 70 90 000 on a car, expect a certain level of interior quality. Eventually, tesla you’re gon na have to match and invest in matching that quality of build and fit and finish. You know. I’Ve had a lot of little random quirks with my model s things like wind, noise, things like water in the taillights, of course, there’s that one drivetrain failure i had years ago and then that model y that i reviewed here a little while ago this year has Some weird quirks some strange, build quality flaws in a review car, but it’s not just about me.
Lots of people have had way more severe issues than me, and the rate of these issues with tesla is still currently high enough that you eventually got to address it. Now, when is that point? When should that focus shift and that’s hard to say, you know obviously tesla’s doing super well right now, their investors are really happy. They continue to make big strides in battery they’re about to drop. Eventually a roadster that’ll do 0-60.
In 1.9 seconds with 620 miles of range like that, take money to create – and it’s crazy – i’m looking forward to that car so much, but it’s also kind of a shame that i feel like. I already know that that car is going to have some build quality shortcomings, or at least some quirks or some plastics or some panel gaps as much as i hate saying it. Just because that’s what we expect from every new production line from that californian car company. At this point, so here’s here’s my take see this graph here. This graph is a little old, it’s from 2016, but it still applies here. It’S showing the minimum maximum and median range of electric cars out, plug-in hybrids and gas cars, so electric cars are way lower than gas cars as you can see, but they bump up a little bit every year as the technology improves in 2020.
The max is around 400, so maybe in a few years when the roadster finally drops with the max around 600 and the median is coming up with it, because the tech lowers in price, i think when we eventually get to the point where the median range for An electric car at a certain price matches the median range of a gas car for the same price. That’S when i would love to see tesla, take a little more investing in fit and finish and hit that last whack-a-mole of just build quality. Just just finally focus on build quality like you, obviously still continue to invest in battery technology and drive trains and all the stuff that makes tesla tesla but yeah. Eventually, the others are going to start to catch up in that department and you’re going to want to catch up in the department you’re lacking in which would hopefully put everyone on the same playing field in both respects.
So there you have it now. There’S a lot of other things i could rant about in the electric car world from the naming schemes of these things to the software updates that they should all definitely get to all the grills that they can definitely slowly get rid of to these weird door handles They all feel the need to do. There’S a lot happening in electric cars, but the bottom line is: electric cars are coming and they’re coming fast and they all if they’re gon na make it they ought to all get better together in all the ways where they struggle. That’S, basically, it hope this helps. That’S how i feel about it. Let me know in the comments below, if you’re into the idea of this electric future, and do you think your next car will be electric or not.
I think that’s a fun question either way, that’s been it thanks for watching catch. You guys the next one peace .