“Let’s see 350 miles in the dead of winter, in a blizzard, at night, with the wipers and heater on, and the radio on to hear emergency alerts. Oh, and a full load of luggage in the trunk and four people in the car.”

___________

Sounds like a great test. Someone should DO it and publish the results!

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“More like 35 miles, not 350. And Pierre Gosselin and others have done articles on this, with a lot of research behind this.”

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If that is true, then no one who lives in areas with a cold winter should (or would) ever buy an EV. That seems like a big motivator for EV makers to solve those problems.

They’re not permanent problems, they’re not unsolvable problems, they’re engineering problems.

Some companies have a track record of solving such problems better than others. Probably because some companies focus 100% of their car making capacity on developing EV technology, while for other companies, EVs are an afterthought that they don’t really want to do in the first place.

So when we lump them all together, it’s like taking professional athletes, college athletes, high school athletes and grade school athletes and considering them as one ‘group’ of athletes. Then measuring their performance based on an average of everyone, and concluding that they’re not very good.

But the grade school athletes are dragging down the (average) performance of everyone above them, and likewise the high school and college athletes. The professionals are great compared to the others, but that doesn’t stand out if you add up each group’s performance and divide by the number of participants.

Each athlete has to be evaluated on his OWN performance, not on the average performance of his team, or sport, or age level, etc.

Maybe the Prius EV (if there is such a thing) only gets 35 miles under the conditions described above. At least some other EVs would do much better under the same conditions.

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“And the kids that have to mine the Lithium and the other chemicals,”

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Tesla is moving towards an engine that has zero rare-earth elements. Battery technology is continually developing, and I suspect getting away from Lithium (and all the problems it causes) is high on the battery priority list.

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“…and the massive amounts of “fossil fuel” which are needed both to manufacture and “fuel” the e cars, no matter what brand.”

_____________

Economies of scale and intelligent factory design both mitigate that problem over time.

There is no reason why Tesla cannot run their entire Gigagactory on electric power generated from solar. They may not be able to do it today (or maybe they can, I don’t know), but if not, they will soon.

Tesla just recently became the world’s largest provider of electrical power storage systems, which are being sold to utility companies all over the world, to stabilize their electrical grids.

A solar array that generates enough electricity to run the factory when the sun is out, and also charge up the electrical power storage system (batteries) to use at night, could run the entire factory 24/7.

That reduces ‘fossil fuel’ requirements to manufacturing and transportation.

Tesla now manufactures the large majority of parts that go into their cars, it became vertically integrated out of necessity, so Tesla is not reliant on a giant web of 3rd party parts suppliers and ‘just in time’ inventory. They make it themselves, so that would be covered by the power supply model discussed above.

So that leaves transportation.

Tesla EV semi-trucks are already on the road, and should be able to transport finished Tesla cars to wherever they need to go for transfer to buyer.

So except for raw material acquisition (metals, plastics, rubber, etc.), it seems that a large percentage of the manufacturing process can be done using renewable energy sources.

That’s what they’re working on, and they’re making progress.

It’s not ALL bad 😂

There is SOME good to be found!
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And some companies are innovating like crazy, spending crazy amounts of money in R&D, while other companies are being dragged kicking and screaming, and it’s not reasonable to assess the two with the same broad brush.

And beyond all that, in the next couple years, TESLA won’t even be considered a “car company”, cars will just be one of many product lines, with the majority of their sales and revenue coming from other sources, like battery power storage systems, robots, robo-taxis, licensing FSD and other technology to legacy car makers, along with multiple other smaller revenue streams.

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“Nope. Unicorn farts and pixie dust will NEVER win the day…”

_____________

Agreed!

Tesla has real and verifiable profits, growing, month over month and year over year. They already have Gigafactories in CA, TX, Berlin, Shanghai (and maybe one other), and they are building new Gigagactories in India and Mexico, and more are on the way.

These are HUGE factories.

Tesla is practically debt-free and has billions in cash reserves.

I don’t know when it will happen, or what it will take, but at some point, the REALITY of what they’re actually doing and accomplishing will be undeniable.

It won’t be an eternal debate like how did the universe begin, or which came first, the chicken or the egg.

The truth will be clear and undeniable, to everyone.

20 years from now, or maybe sooner, EVs may be 50% of all cars on the road. I think a couple EU countries are already OVER 50%, but they are smaller countries with very un-diverse populations, so I suspect a LOT of group-think and peer-pressure influence is involved.

At the same time, I expect gas-powered cars to still be going strong, so long as we stop the globo-homos from enacting their dystopian vision for humanity.

And if we don’t, then nothing else matters anyway.