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Having owned a Model 3 I would argue that it’s basically “done” at this point, pending software updates for better FSD. It already charges in 20-30 min at Tesl
by aetherspawn 2mo ago
Having owned a Model 3 I would argue that it’s basically “done” at this point, pending software updates for better FSD.
It already charges in 20-30 min at Tesla chargers and has a practical range of around 600 kms, so super fast charging is a bit of a straw man.
Their big downfall is they lack an advertising department willing to spend $1B on pro-electric propaganda to debunk all the Trump/big oil propaganda. IMO EVs have addressed all the main product concerns, and the last ones are buyer stupidity.
- asdff 2mo agoI can’t own one because I can’t install a fast charger at my place.
- aetherspawn 2mo agoYeah this is the kind of thing people say on a day to day basis.
- Grombobulous 2mo agoMost people don’t need a fast charger to own an EV. Most people would actually be just fine on a household outlet.
- asdff 2mo agoSounds terrible if that is your only car.
- medler 2mo agoWhat is terrible about charging at home from a regular outlet? As long as you average <50-60 miles a day, like most people, you basically never have to go to fast chargers (or gas stations). It’s amazing.
- stavros 2mo agoI have a standard plug (not even three phase) and charge 30 kWh in ten hours (overnight). That's around 90 miles, which is plenty. If I'm going on a long trip, I just make sure I start charging from > 50% the previous day, and I'm good. It's trivial to manage the state of charge when you have a charger at home and a planned trip coming up.
- medler 2mo agoIn the U.S. our standard outlets are 120V, so you only get about 1kW or so out of them. Plenty for most people, but annoying if you need >50 miles of range a day, or if you want to boil water in an electric kettle. The situation is much better in Europe, and most of the rest of the world, where you have 220+V
- Grombobulous 2mo agoNot really. The average person in America drives about 37 miles a day. EVs gain about 3-5 miles per hour on a household 120V charger. You sleep for about 8 hours and are probably home away from work and errands for an about 12 hours. Do the math: 3 miles per hour for 12 hours is 36 miles. And even if you don’t keep up with your pace, the weekend can act as additional time to charge. Or if you drive more on the weekend, you can basically decide that you’re going to go to a fast charger every 2-4 weeks just like a gas car (or maybe even less frequently than a gas car). Let’s say you drive 50 miles a day but you’re only able to charge up 35 miles per day at home. If your vehicle’s range is 250 miles that means you need to go to a fast charger every 15 days including a little room for reserve power. Also, all of this is even less of a concern if you live in a country with 240V power.
- stavros 2mo agoI forgot that the US uses 120 V, that's a bit less convenient, but I agree. I live in a country that uses 240V, and I ~never need to worry about charging. I'll usually intentionally not charge for days/a week because I wait for the battery to go down to 20%.
- asdff 2mo agoSo you forget to plug in one night and are screwed for work the next day it sounds like
- abenga 2mo agoYou are probably never starting from zero on workdays, are you?
- asdff 1mo agoDepends if you did something after work the day before
- cevn 1mo agoIt's worked for me for about 10 years. Maybe don't forget if it's so critical that you get to work the next day. Sounds like you have a skill issue
- stavros 2mo agoThat's my only car, and it's the best thing ever. I'm never going back to ICE. I have a normal wall plug in my garage and I charge once or twice a week overnight, and I never need to worry about gas station trips. The fact that I can do 100km with 3 €, even with our expensive electricity, is icing on the cake. If you don't have a charger at home, though, an EV is a chore, I agree.
- realityloop 2mo agoHave been charging my model 3 from an outlet since 2020, we only need fast charging occasionally when taking a long trip
- stavros 2mo agoNot to mention that fast charging degrades your battery faster. I've had my car for a year and a half and I charged at a fast charger maybe four times.
- reverius42 2mo agoI don't have a gas station at my house, and yet I still own a gas-powered vehicle. I also don't have a fast electric charger at my house, and yet I still also own an EV.
- belorn 2mo agoI have compared prices in fast-charging stations to gasoline here in Sweden, and a gasoline car get more miles for the money. The price can be up to 100x, or 10000% that of the market price that the fast-charging stations buy their electricity from. And even with that, very few places seems to be willing to build competing charging stations that will undercut those prices. The only way to actually save money is to have a charging stations at home or at work where you pay the normal (through still very high) cost that the utility company take.
- reverius42 2mo agoI have found fast-charging prices near where I live to be fairly competitive with gasoline per-mile. The lower maintenance costs of an EV are icing on the cake, so to speak. But I actually do most of my charging as trickle-charging from a regular home outlet, despite it being slow; it adds about 40 miles of range per 24 hours of charging. My car sits in my driveway most of the time so that's actually sufficient most of the time.
- asdff 1mo agoIf it was about reducing lifetime ownership costs, you'd be hard pressed to ever exceed what you pay for an EV with say a couple grand used japanese ice car with a basic 4 banger engine and manual transmission.
- reverius42 1mo agoGood luck getting a working car at all for a couple grand these days.
- stavros 2mo ago
- reverius42 2mo agoI am very skeptical that your Model 3 has a "practical range" of 372 miles. EPA range for the long range model is 342 miles, and I would expect usable range to be considerably less (since you probably want to start charging at around 10% remaining, and you probably want to stop charging at 80-90%). 0% - 100% is kind of not "practical" as it would require you to fully deplete the battery, and then wait for the slow charging at the margins (90 to 100% tends to be pretty slow).
- aetherspawn 2mo agoPractical meaning I don’t plan to ever drive more than 600km per day so if it’s 600km from A->B, and then a 8 hour charge, that’s fine by me… if I want 700km I’ll stop and charge for 5 min at 30% SOC or so
- stavros 2mo agoBut the GP is saying a Tesla won't do 600km on one charge, which does sound reasonable. I agree with you about just stopping to charge for a few minutes along the way if I need more, though.
- ben_w 2mo agoNot everyone wants the same thing from a car. Some care most about the price, some about the efficiency, some about the size, some about the comfort, some about the charging speed despite what you say. If Telsa were still innovating, they'd have rounded out their offerings to fill in the gaps that are now getting filled with other brands in the world outside the USA.
- Grombobulous 2mo agoI keep shouting from the rooftops that Tesla’s lack of offerings has them completely hamstrung. Tesla sells more vehicles than Mazda, and both brands are in a similar semi-premium non-luxury segment. Compare lineups between these brands. How does Mazda have 3.5 SUVs and Tesla only has 1.5? (The .5 is counting the CX-70 and CX-90, and the Y and YL as essentially the same car) Mazda is able to offer a sedan and hatchback variant of the 3. They also have a city car in Europe, the Mazda 2. Absolutely nothing in the segment from Tesla. And of course, Mazda has the legendary MX-5, which chugs along selling a very respectable quantity while the Tesla Roadster remains MIA. Where is Tesla’s lineup? For being a being China-focused brand, where is their premium/luxury van? For being a US-focused brand, where is their family 3-row Grand Highlander killer? How did they botch a truck made in Texas?
- foogazi 2mo ago> Tesla sells more vehicles than Mazda Isn’t that all that matters ?
- Grombobulous 2mo agoMy point is that they don’t have a wide enough breadth of models and that’s holding them back, and the fact that lower volume brands have more models and appeal to a wider range of customers helps demonstrate that.
- ben_w 2mo ago> Isn’t that all that matters ? Where the ball is vs. where the ball is heading. Musk (and TSLA shareholders keeping the price where it is) is arguing the ball is heading to robotics and AI; I think we're at least a decade from the robotics+AI vision he's trying to sell the dream of, and in the meantime he may lose the car business by everyone else out-innovating on vehicles with regards to stuff he's either lost interest in, or lost the trust of the best designers an engineers to hire to work on for him.
- kccqzy 2mo agoYou think it’s done only because you are not ambitious enough. And neither is Tesla. A Hyundai charges faster than a Tesla. Chinese cars from several brands are getting five-minute charging times. If you think that’s a straw man I don’t know what to say; a buyer wants charging to be as fast as pumping gas, and are you going to blame buyer stupidity for not delivering on that?
- Grombobulous 2mo agoChina is even doing 90 second automated robotic battery swap stations.
- aetherspawn 2mo agoBut which brands last longer than a Tesla? None. That’s because faster charging wears out the battery. Charging fast is not marvellous, actually it requires a lot of self-control from the manufacturers to limit charging speed for longevity, even though most people won’t understand why.
- satvikpendem 2mo agoNo, because Chinese EVs have advanced in battery technology too above Tesla. > CATL also says the battery retains more than 90% of its original capacity after 1,000 ultra-fast charging cycles https://www.evdances.com/blogs/news/hongqi-unveils-ultra-fast-ev-battery https://www.evdances.com/blogs/news/hongqi-unveils-ultra-fas...
- ivewonyoung 2mo agoTesla buys batteries from CATL.
- satvikpendem 1mo agoIt's not the same batteries. CATL sells its better ones to Chinese EV makers.
- 2mo ago
- medler 2mo agoI’m convinced super-fast charging will be a game changer, because it will eliminate the ~only remaining downside to EVs. If Tesla had charging tech like BYD the market in the U.S. would look very different
- tialaramex 2mo agoI don't buy it. "Recharging == Fuel" is the wrong way to think about it. Think about your phone. Do you plan how you'll charge that quickly? Do you know where you can get a quick charge at a local mall while ordering coffee? Nope, it just gets charged over night when you're asleep, no problem.
- medler 2mo agoI agree charging at home/work is best, and ideally we would have ubiquitous slow charging at apartment lots, workplaces, and on the street. But that’s not really realistic right now in the U.S., and more importantly, it isn’t under Tesla’s control. Whereas they could have solved the problem for people with less charging access by making their fast charging faster like BYD has done. With respect to your phone analogy, if I weren’t able to charge my phone at home or at work, I would definitely be interested in being able to fast-charge it at some conveniently located business
- stavros 2mo agoI think you're both right. An EV is wonderful if you can charge at home, and a chore if you can't. Fast chargers help, but they're expensive and still not as fast as gas. If you have a wall plug at home, an EV is basically always full. I'm shopping for a flat and one of my non-negotiable requirements is a parking spot with a plug. The one I'm looking at now even has a three-phase plug, which is a nice extra, but not really necessary.
- satvikpendem 2mo agoYes I do get the fastest charging speed and highest battery capacity phone, which are Chinese now too like OnePlus. Once you know you can depend on your phone for a few days, it's a game changer.
- Grombobulous 2mo agoI think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China. The products aren’t “done.” They’re stagnant. Where is their proper 3 row SUV, not a hacked together half-effort like the YL? Where is their passenger premium van product for China? Remember that this is a company with a huge factory and presence in China, and they were the first mover in that market, but they’re getting eaten alive by competitors. Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch. And I haven’t even brought up the Cybertruck selling a couple hundred thousand units below company expectations, that is kind of a low blow cherry on top.
- plqbfbv 2mo ago> I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China. Apparently not so much, the restyle and a consolidated assistance and charging network make people prefer it over the homemade products lately, which keep innovating but you essentially need to re-learn from scratch every time (my original source article is in Italian - https://www.vaielettrico.it/troppa-scelta-poca-fiducia-i-cinesi-confusi-tornano-alla-tesla-model-y/ https://www.vaielettrico.it/troppa-scelta-poca-fiducia-i-cin... ; this is the closest I could find in English: https://paultan.org/2026/01/21/tesla-model-y-again-best-selling-suv-in-china-followed-by-geely-xingyue-l-boyue-l-byd-is-outside-top-five/ https://paultan.org/2026/01/21/tesla-model-y-again-best-sell... ) > They’re stagnant. To some degree, I agree. Esp. on the 800V part which could make charges a bit faster. But I think they're overall stagnant: they pushed a ton of boundaries in the first 10-15y because they had to make something people could buy and use, but now that innovation push has diminished greatly: the cars work for most people, and the range is acceptable and not such a big inconvenience that pushes people to other brands. So no sense in going axial flux motors (that everyone is experimenting with) or bigger battery capacities, or even 48V + Ethernet instead of 12V + CANbus (the CyberTruck has these, but I don't think it has trickled down to the other models). > Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch. Yes, but the Model Y remains the single unique best-selling car. VW needs to put together a few vehicle models to get to the same numbers. And I think the reason is the same as with China: Tesla has always been EV only, and built assistance and infrastructure for it, while VW doesn't have a very clear direction and makes products which are perhaps slightly mechanically superior, but feel inferior on the software and UX side. A car with hardware equivalent to Tesla (which now has 2 trims and 2 battery picks) costs anyway more than the base Tesla (you need to add a few optionals to the VWs). What Tesla is lacking in Europe are smaller models with ~450-500km range.
- cadamsdotcom 2mo agoFor me Tesla's brand is irreparably damaged. That's worth accounting for - I'm likely not alone.
- Danox 2mo agoThey cost too much…