I did read your other comments, but I'm still missing something. I fairly often drive 60 or 70 miles and then back home, and that doesn't seem "dramatically different" from the airport trip you describe. Yes, my S has the longest range, but in my experience it's way more than I need. Those trips burn through around 30% of my battery charge. Even if I had half the range it would be no problem, and I don't think Tesla have produced a 3 with less than 200 miles EPA range—have they? What is the spec of your car, I wonder? And how many actual miles is that 70 minute trip?

I once had a fun experience driving my Model S down to our old farm place, through the easement down a very washed-out, rutted and rocky road. I dialed the suspension up to maximum height and carefully eased it down the trail—with proximity alerts beeping at me the whole way, but made it without a scratch.

ICE vehicles do lose efficiency with wear-and-tear on their powertrain. And so far the statistics have shown EVs losing some modest range during their first year-or-so, then becoming very stable with minimal losses for a long time.

After 4½ years and 40,000+ miles my Model S goes further than it did when new. That's a combination of software updates, improved driving on my part (reined in the lead foot somewhat) and putting on more efficient tires.

Probably nowhere near as bad as you imagein. A lot of newer EVs can, in fact, drive over 300 miles without stopping anywhere to recharge—especially if they are mired in heavy evacuation traffic and forced to slow down. Meanwhile, gas can become scarce even before the hurricane hits. Power usually doesn't go out until later, so fully charging up the car is an easy preparation.

That seems to be an assertion with neither evidence nor any line of reasoning to back it up.

In 4½ years with my Model S, I've never yet had to wait for a space at a public charger. In fact, I can't recall encountering a Tesla Supercharger station that was more than half occupied. (I think the minimum size they build is 8 stalls.) Now, granted this is only my experience, and I don't live in California and haven't tried to take a road trip during Thanksgiving. I'm aware that congestion a problem in some places and times, and there are growing pains with the charging networks, but let's not make that sound more widespread than it is.

Charging time is usually either no problem or a minor inconvenience. I mean, I have to take some stops during a day of travel anyhow, and sometimes (particularly at lunch time) the car is ready to go before I am, while other times I have to wait a few extra minutes on it. It's of no real consequence; I end up traveling the same distance in a day that I did before in my old diesel Jeep.

I don't understand why people keep repeating that EVs aren't good in rural areas. I live in a rural, small town, and my Tesla has been fabulous. I can take jaunts to big cities 60 or 100 miles away and back without even stopping to charge. Practically everyone out here is able to charge at home. Not being able to do that is a city folks problem.

I live in Texas. So, it's not Wyoming, it's not Alaska. I don't tow anything with my car. I guess someone could construct a scenario where the EV falls short, but for most of us it's gonna be Just Fine.

What in the world is wrong with your 3? There's no way that you should be having the kind of difficulties you describe.

I have a S. I live in a small town, but I make occasional trips to cities 60 miles away, 100 miles away. Charging stations exist in those places, but I don't bother with them. I don't have to stop anywhere to charge during those trips, it's not even a challenge.

I drove the S from Texas to Minnesota and back (two days on the road), and it wasn't a problem. The nav system knows where the chargers are and guides me to them as needed. I don't have to think about it. Most of the charging coincides with stops I'd need to make anyhow, and I end up going just as far in a day as I did before in my old diesel Jeep.

I took a jaunt through parts of New Mexico and a big loop through the mountains in Colorado, and it wasn't a problem. The S is a mountain goat—Pikes Peak and Guanella Pass were great fun.

I've had the car 4½ years, and it's still going strong. Wouldn't trade it for anything.

I think you must have meant to write, "As a non-Tesla EV owner. . ."

Road tripping in my Model S has been easy and fun. However, I've already seen a Rivian and a Ford Lightning use the Supercharger station in my little town, with their adapters, and it looks like Hyundai will soon roll out the first NACS-native model.

quote: This will result in more than 9,200 charging ports being added, which means each one will cost roughly $56,630

Last year Tesla put in an 8-stall Supercharger station in my little town, and the rumored cost for the entire station was in the ballpark of $250,000. They got it done super fast too. They dug trenches, put in the conduits and thick power cables, then trucked in a couple of pre-fabricated 4-pedestal modules and dropped them into place. They were almost as long waiting for the transformer to arrive as it had taken to build the station.

That national transformer shortage is another interesting subject to look into. The construction manager lamented that we don't have more companies producing modern, high-efficiency transformers. There's opportunity for disruption there, he thought.

When they get down to 10% combustion cars, I'd expect those cars to be expensive, and at the same time not particularly profitable for Volvo. Because at that point economies of scale will be working against them.

Economies of scale are making it painful for all the "legacy" car makers to transition to electric—and some of them are only making it worse by introducing too many EV models and slicing their production numbers up between them. It's a legitimate dilemma, but my sympathy is limited. I think they could handle it better than they are.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear. My point was the fact that I DON'T have to look for the route before I leave. I really don't. I just enter my destination into the nav system, and it works out the route and charging stops for me. Those few places that could be awkward to travel in an EV have become rare, and they're places pretty far out in the middle of nowhere, not a situation I'm going to just randomly blunder into.

For example, here in Texas. . .

I did once cut it close while making the long drive from Amarillo to Sweetwater (250 miles), partly because I got impatient and stopped charging too early. But that was a couple of years ago, and now there is a Supercharger station near the halfway mark at Lubbock, so that trip would never be a problem again.

Running up and down the length of US-281 was awkward, until the new stations were recently built at Hamilton and Santo.

One of the last cities that was hard to visit was San Angelo, but they recently got a station.

A station at Brownwood/Early TX has been in the planning stage for a while, but not yet built. I mean, I have no problem getting there and back, but some folks traveling a different route with a shorter-range car might. San Angelo to Brownwood and back would be about 200 miles, so that's about the worst case I can see.

A station at Terlingua, serving Big Bend National Park, is in the planning stage but not yet built. That will definitely be appreciated when it's online.

A big stretch of the Rio Grande is devoid of stations, including Eagle Pass and Del Rio, and I see nothing on the planning board.

And that's it. If you're not going to those river-border towns, or to vacation at Big Bend, you're covered in Texas.

I've never found my Tesla to be "far more limited in utility" than the gas car I had before it. I've taken it on multi-thousand mile road trips across the USA, and it wasn't a problem. I understand that's not always so much the case for other makes of car, but that should change quickly as Tesla are now opening up their Supercharger network.

Are there some trips that would be awkward? In the past there were, but gaps in the charging network keep getting filled in, and it's gotten to the point now where it's hard for me to find a troublesome route. I almost have to scour the map for something like that. The idea of renting a gas car is laughable. I bought the Tesla to be my road trip car.

The incident that drove me up the wall the most was when MP3.com was sued out of existence. I discovered a ton of music through that site, and I even bought several of their "DAM" CD-R albums, which were print-on-demand releases that included both CD audio and MP3 files.

The most infuriating thing is, MP3.COM weren't even sued over their regular operation, which was all about distributing music that the musicians had uploaded for that explicit purpose. No, it was the new "MyMP3.com" feature they added where you could rip a CD, then upload the tracks, and then be able to stream them—pretty much what Apple Music now does by default. This was a function that seemed redundant to me, and I had no interest in, and yet it ended up killing the company.

It took a long time for other services to emerge to fill the ecological niche that MP3.com's demise left empty. Even today, there are services that are similar in various ways, but nothing I'm aware that really works quite the same.

I've noticed this change for the last couple of days, and I hate it too. It squeezes the comments into not-quite-enough cramped space.

However When I tried (in Firefox, BTW) making my window even narrower, at a certain point the comments disappear from the right side and leap to the bottom of the window, below all the recommendations. Although that's not what I'd call ideal, it does make the comments a lot easier for me to read and respond to.