It is interesting to see the demand for the just announced Tesla 3. The demand confirms that the Tesla is seen as the gold standard for electric cars, and the promised performance makes it one of the best cars to own as long as you do not need to travel more than 150km one way (or already have a charger available at your endpoints). This range is good enough to make it a very viable second car for a family, where you have a different car you can fall back to for long journeys. It also illustrates that choosing a range of 340km is a very smart decision: unlike the 100km ranges of commuter cars it covers enough range that you will want more only rarely, and this makes all the difference in justifying the purchase: No backup is needed.
How long the range will be be under practical circumstances we do not know: we lack info on battery aging, to estimate the loss over time. Also I guess the demand as the only car of a household will be limited, as traveling longer distances where you need to recharge during your journey does not work well. It starts with the relatively low density of the charger network, which Tesla is working hard to improve. The stations are roughly 200km apart and typically can charge 6 cars at once. A fast charger needs about 35 to 40 minutes to add another 200km of range, so can serve only 10 cars per hour. This is completely inadequate when there are a few hundred owners wanting to go on holidays on the same day1. The other problem is that the long charge times reduce you average speed significantly: when you are driving 130 km/h normally, adding charge pauses can slow your speed down to just 94 km/h.
The new Tesla will be a success, but it is only a small part of the way forward to a more ecological car fleet. I believe the biggest leap will come when automatic driving will finally allow a complete reconfiguration of travel.
- Building a charger network is a problematic proposition: you need roughly 100x the stations to cover the same number of cars doing long distance travel (40min for 200km vs 2min for 800km fill ups), and because you will normally charge your car at home overnight, charger utilization will be highly seasonal, making it harder to spread the costs. ⏎