Free-Range EVs

WHAT IF YOUR AFFORDABLE EV ALSO HAS TO BE YOUR ONLY CAR?

- KIM REYNOLDS

“Why are you making this so complicated?” my editor asked. “Remember how superior the Model 3 was over the Nissan Leaf Plus and Kia Niro EV during our Car of the Year testing? The Tesla will easily win this. It’s simple.”

He’s right, it wins this. The Tesla is slam-dunk the best driver of these three.

But there’s far more to this story than that one angle. In the real world, very little about electric cars is simple. Especially now that affordable ones with bigger batteries and fast charging rates— abetted by stories of a spreading web of Level 3 chargers—are naturally causing folks to rethink whether an EV should be their primary transport.

For instance, consider the YouTube video taken by Steven Conroy at the Tesla Supercharger station outside the Madonna Inn along Route 101 between L.A. and San Francisco back during Thanksgiving’s madhouse travel days. (Search “Steven Conroy Supercharger.”) When Steve shot it, there were at least 16 Teslas waiting to plug in at its 14 permanent chargers (with even more umbilicaled to a giant Megapack battery that Tesla trailered in to feed the flood of demand).

I’m using the example of Chargeageddon to rattle us out of our routine of seeing an EV roundup as just another car-versus-car hardware comparison test. All those Teslas in the video aren’t local-limited secondary commuter cars. They’re wearing the yokes of primary, go-anywhere transportation.

And because they’re battery-electric ones, they’re tightly interwoven with their respective fast charging infrastructures.

At no time since the gas crisis of the early ’70s would people endure waiting hours to refuel their cars, so this Supercharger saturation is now a troubling issue for Tesla’s bespoke system. If a Model 3 is your only car, are you willing to put up with this possibility on your next holiday road trip?