Comment by epistasis
Comment by epistasis a day ago
We had some visitors to California from out of state recently, and the rental car place gave them an electric car (not Tesla), without basically any education about how to deal with them.
I'm a huge fan of electric cars, and will probably never buy anything except EVs in the future, but man are you right that the non-Tesla experience is bleak.
Charging was incredibly stressful. Few CCS chargers, each with a tiny number of charging spots (4-8), with many chargers broken, and the rest fully occupied.
I know it will get better, but I can't believe how bad it is at the moment, and can't believe that car rental companies are handing EVs out without much much more handholding.
(Edit: plus, the car navigation system had zero knowledge of how to plan a long route with charging. That's table stakes for an EV, and criminally bad management that they'd ship a car that didn't have full knowledge of the chargers out there and also how to route. Traditional US car manufacturers are absolutely incompetent and will not survive competition with Chinese manufacturers unless they clean house on everything software related.)
> Traditional US car manufacturers are absolutely incompetent and will not survive competition with Chinese manufacturers unless they clean house on everything software related.
Legacy American car companies have been fully non-competitive with foreign brands for decades. Their continued existence is completely due to tariffs, and it’s not close. I see no reason to think congress would suddenly allow them to be threatened by Chinese companies.