Totally disagree. While not at gasoline car levels, Tesla has certainly passed the 'toy' mark in range. What's the range on a 5 series tank? 500 miles or so? 300 miles is more than enough to cover my daily needs at least. I imagine it is for most people, unless you fill up more than once every two days.
I would not take Tesla on my camping trip, or my ski trip, or my ~700 miles road trip. And I honestly do not want a car I cannot use outside of my commute.
There is an entire, large, class of people for whom 300 miles range is more than adequate to cover a regional trip, if there is a place to charge the car overnight (e.g. at the hotel parking). Anything further is a plane ride + car rental anyway, so it's not a big deal. Your use case differs. To think this matters to a statistically significant group of people is merely logical fallacy.
But that makes you the outlier in most American households. Lots of American families have a car for a specific purpose: minivan for the kids or a pickup for going to Tahoe.
There is no reason that the Tesla has to make a value proposition which assumes it wont be paired with a more utilitarian vehicle by buyers. And with the superchargers, you really can drive the SF-LA corridor, which in CA at least, is very very good.
For most people today, an all-electric car is a pricey second car that you can't use on longer trips. Nothing inherently wrong with that. Lots of families have a couple vehicles, one of which is an SUV/minivan and the other a car. It's not even exactly unheard of for one person to own a couple of vehicles (I do). The main issue today is price which does indeed tend to put Teslas in the same category as owning a BMW as a second vehicle.
I suspect the issue is as much the comparative inconvenience of refilling as the actual range.
In fact, 300 miles sounds perfectly adequate. Many cars won't go much further before they need more fuel. But if refilling involved more than spending 5 minutes at a petrol station (of which there are plenty, everywhere) it might start to sound a bit less reasonable...
I think part of the problem is also that many people underestimate the amount of time it takes to stop for gas. For city driving, you start with a full battery in the morning and never worry about stopping for gas (so the only place charge time matters is on the freeway).
The amount of time spent actually transferring liquid into the tank may only be 5 minutes. But then you need to add the time it takes for your card to authorize, the time it takes to go inside to use the restroom and buy snacks, etc. Then there's time it takes to get on and off the freeway (it always seems like there's a red light at the end of the off-ramp and another one to get out of the gas station). If you stop for fast food, that adds another 10 minutes (30 for a sit-down restaurant). Someone is sure to chime in that a gas car with three drivers and an empty container can drive 23.5 hours per day: I'm sure we've all done that at least once in college, but that mode of transport is much less appealing after one grows up.
My point is just that when all is said and done, the comparison is less like 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes and more like to 25-40 minutes vs. 40-50 minutes. The electric is still slower, but not 6 times slower, and you have an excuse to eat slightly less unhealthy food.
What I would enjoy is never having to stop for gas before commuting to work. Charge it overnight, and I am certain to have enough. No more driving on fumes because I forgot I was low and I don't have time to do it in the morning.
The sum of all the time spent at the pump will be greater than the times you spend at Superchargers for the occasional long distance trip.
I suppose my thinking is just that while most of the time it will be fine, you won't have to look that far or try that hard to find a journey that would need a recharge to complete. Visiting friends, let's say. Now, what are your options? You could visit the super charger, which could work, but that assumes there is one nearby! (There are currently all of six, and all in California as far as I can tell. Yes, there will be 150 in 2015, they say - but it is 2012.)
You could find a car charge point. They're also somewhat rare, though certainly more common than the super charger, and, currently, have inevitably lower throughput than a petrol station. So it may take longer to find a free one.
You could use a plug. Better hope you're visiting somebody who doesn't live in a flat, or who has nearby parking on the street! Also, now you're hitting up your hosts for the cost of your transport. And let's hope it's not a big get-together, and everybody else lives nearby :)
(Or, if you're staying at a hotel, expect to pay for the use of their electricity the same way you pay for the use of their phone and their drinks cabinet. If you're taking your children somewhere child-friendly, you should probably expect similar mistreatment. And so on.)
I am vaguely negative based on the current situation, and I don't really trust grand claims about the future. But should the outlook change, I will be sure to change my tune accordingly. I have no particular desire to spend more on transport than required, nor do I have any specific emotional attachment to the internal combustion engine.
I think the idea is that most people drive near where they live most of the time.
If it does turn out you need to drive out to the boonies you can rent a car for that on a case-by-case basis, much like how we don't all drive box trucks on the off chance that we might need to move a big TV back home someday. But in the meantime you'd still get the benefit with your normal car.
If you drive long distances more often though, then that obviously changes the decision for now... at this point a Tesla wouldn't be for you until there was more Supercharger infrastructure around the nation.
Honestly we already have something similar going on, at least where I live (in DC) I see those tiny little Smart cars every so often, but you can bet your ass that you don't hardly ever see them outside the Beltway, no one is dumb enough to risk their life in one of those little things on a long-distance trip out of, and back to, DC.
Well, you're right: It is 2012, and there are (at the time of writing) all of 6 supercharger stations, which can fill a battery at up to 120 kW. The current incarnation (heh) of the Tesla S battery limits the rate to about 80 kW for the first 50%, or so.
However, there are probably more places to plug in than you'd expect. For example, there are tons of RV parks all around the country, many of which have NEMA 14-50 sockets for grandma and grandpa to plug their big camper into. Those sockets can deliver about 10 kW. Then there are electric clothes dryers, found in many homes: They typically use a 240V, 30A circuit, which can deliver about 5 kW continuously.
That last option isn't really practical on the freeway, but how far do you plan to drive to hang out with friends for half an hour? Let's say you drive a couple hours and stay for the afternoon: Their dryer socket will refill almost half of a Tesla's battery for the grand sum of $5--that'll be enough to get you home (there are practical problems with the approach, but it's not a bad 0th-order approximation). Are your friends so worried about electricity that they wouldn't accept a 6-pack of their favorite brew in exchange for a power outlet?
Electric car owners who frequent online forums report that hotels are very reasonable about charging, and some even install free-to-use chargers as a value-add to attract customers. In the long term, if electric car adoption increases, hotels will obviously either need to add a surcharge or raise room rates. But, even if a hotel did sell electricity at a 100% markup, the customer's energy cost for driving a mile on electricity would still be less than half the cost on gasoline.
Certainly, electric cars won't work for all trips, and the infrastructure needed to move electrons from the grid to the car is missing in many places. On the other hand, equipment for 10 kW charging (that's a charge rate of about 30 miles per hour) can be installed almost anywhere in the continental United States for between a few hundred and couple thousand dollars (and in many places it already exists). For new construction, before landscaping is installed and where a right-size breaker panel can be installed in the first place, the cost of installing 240V, 50A service in the garage is almost inconsequential.
