Also if my charger somehow fails in the middle of the night, I can still drive to work without issues.

I'm not going to say that EVs are always perfect, but for many people, the charging experience can overall be a a point in favor, not against. It's not like traditional cars are perfect in this regard, we've just become used to them.

1. For me, my commute is about 12 miles one way, so my Volt has enough electric capacity for my commute plus 1 errand on a single charge. 95% of my days are 100% electric.

2. I never have "range anxiety" - if I do go slightly over my limit the gas engine kicks in. I use a tank of gas about every 4-6 months.

3. Since my car's electric range is only ~38 miles, I can fully charge in about 8-9 hours overnight on a plain 110v outlet - no custom installation required for a home charger.

I bought a low-mileage used Volt - it was a great deal and the best car I've ever owned.

Gas filling is dead simple and fast even though I have no 'account', but filling up our EV at an Electrify America station takes considerably longer to start even with an account already present. The UI on the charging station is really clunky and slow, with some extra steps there for apparently no reason.

I've also heard plenty of stories of persistently broken chargers on various networks, only Tesla seems to have their shit together for EV charging.

More range, more charging stations, faster charging, easier charging, more reliable charging, these are all necessary imo.

If you're not a Musk fan, the field is becoming competitive. There's a handful of models with 150+mi range that are in the <$30k USD bracket when new, and many models on the used market are now <$30k USD as well.

And just because you are charging at WalMart doesn't mean you need to be shopping there on the regular.

An EV fast-charger is not designed to be your neighborhood gas station, they're more like travel stops. Since most EVs will sit in a driveway for 8-10hrs a day, even a 120v charger should get you ~40 miles in that time frame. You should ideally be able to keep your vehicle topped up on Level 1 or Level 2 (240v) charging and DC Fast Charging is more of a road-trip or extended range system.

Most fast-charge capable cars can hit go from 10%-80% in 30-45 minutes, which is a decent amount of time to hit a convenient Wal-Mart for travel snacks and leg stretching. It sounds like a valid idea when put that way.

At the same time, I don't think I would ever want to rent an EV. Do I know that wherever I'm staying I'll be able to charge? Sure they said they had a charger but what if it's busted? Also, these days if I'm renting a car (as opposed to just Ubering) I'm usually going to use it quite a bit - having to deal with range anxiety or planning out charging stops is the last thing I want to do.

EVs are great, but the broader infrastructure is still not as convenient as gas. When I've got a car at my house I know when and where I'll charge it, but when traveling it's just an extra hassle I don't want to deal with.

People who have never owned electric cars just don’t grok this. Yes, some people live in apartments which often have no outlets for charging your car (altho they definitely do some places), but this is a minority of people in the US and so it’s fair to say that overall you likely will spend a lot less time charging than a typical gas car owner spends at gas stations. It’s a perfectly defensible statement.

If you can charge at home (ideally at 240v), and you don’t drive more than the range of your vehicle in a day regularly, it’s gas that has an inconvenience to overcome. I don’t have a gas pump at my house.

If you are an Uber driver and you do 2-3x the range every day, it’s a different story. But if you can charge for free - which isn’t hugely uncommon currently - you can save a lot of money on gas with an EV, so there are tradeoffs.

You just use a Tesla like you use a Plug-in hybrid like a Volt. Charge at 120V every night for about 12 hours or whatever (worth about 60 miles a day and 400 miles a week) and you’ve got a buffer of about 300 miles, which is the same as my Volt. If you ever drop too low, just fill up at a fast charge place. I fill up my Volt maybe once every 6 months and it has just 35 mile electric range. A trip to the Supercharger every 6 months is not a problem, and I’d never need to do it except on road trips (unlike my Volt which occasionally uses up its 35 mile EV range on errands and I need to dig in to that 300 mile buffer). Even with just a 120V charge.

Beats going to the gas station every two weeks like y’all have to do. Comments like this really show that non-EV owners simply don’t understand what owning an EV is like. Buy a plug-in hybrid (one with at least 35 mile range and capable of going highway speeds pure electric), which has no risk of “range anxiety”, and you’ll understand why you really spend almost no time charging compared to how much time you have to spend going to gas stations with an ICE vehicle.

The issue with people switching to non-EVs is they either have a small, pure-electric EV, they have life events that mean there isn’t an EV available that fits their requirements (frustratingly, no one offers a plug in pickup truck today), or they had to live in a place that won’t let them plug in (which is a good reason to consider a plug-in hybrid).

They're all Electrify America, which are pretty unreliable. I'd have to stop at each and every one of them to ensure I could actually make the four hour drive. Unbelievably annoying.

Road trips was something that was I was worried about when making the purchase in 2018, and it turned out to be a complete non-issue. In all that time, I have waited for a charger exactly once, for under 5 minutes, because we decided to stop at a busy outlet mall. During road trips, I'm not going to argue that we don't spend more time charging than we would stopping for gas, but it's not enough to bother me or my family, and if we include getting snacks or a bathroom break, the car is ready to go before we are.

It is wildly offset by the convenience of never having to fill up the car outside of those occasional road trips. People in the comments are talking about gas cars as the ones where you just get in and go without having to think about it -- there's very much a mirror image of that situation with an EV. When I had a gas car, fueling it was a constant chore. I had to think about it orders of magnitude more often. It simply doesn't come up with our EV. Every time it leaves the house, it does so with hundreds of miles of range. The idea of getting another car where I have to watch the gas gauge is almost reason enough that I'm going to stick with electric forever.

It is absolutely true that my experience is highly dependent on where I live, the kind of use I have for a car, the places I go, resources available to me, and just dumb luck. Others' mileage, literally, may vary. I'm not trying to sell you on this. It's just really easy to overestimate the importance of EV range.

People want to top up their batteries, just like they top up their gas tanks.

That means taking up infrastructure space. If 5 minutes gets you 50 miles, get the 5 minutes and go. It's like putting $4 in your tank vs filling up.

With gas, the expectation for most people at the EV income level is that you go and get a full tank every time. But you only need that for long hauls, or if you don't charge at home.

Fast charge then go should be the standard, not the exception.

Put an outlet at every parking spot for topping up while you work or shop in a more remote location, and you'll solve the problem for 95% of all urban cars.

(If your commute is > 80 miles, you have a bigger problem!)