> "The average round trip daily commute in the US is ~45 miles."
You can't just look at an average trip and say "this vehicle can handle it, therefore it's completely viable for the average person", because the average person sometimes takes trips other than their average daily commute. Sometimes they go visit their grandparents or cousins out on the farm. Sometimes they visit their sister who lives two states over. Sometimes they make their ordinary daily commute but then follow it up by driving to a sporting event or a get-together some distance in the opposite direction. If an EV is suitable for your daily commute, but not for your occasional trips, then it's still not on par with a gasoline vehicle.
The takeaway is that about 1/4 of the US population lives in metro areas that are well-served by the supercharger network in all directions, and 3/4 lives in areas that have significant gaps for at least one significant direction of travel.
My uncle and my wife's grandpa were EV enthusiasts going back decades. I drive a plug-in electric (with a gas generator, which solves the not-well-covered trip problem) and so do my in-laws. I've been watching carefully. Right now, there are still lots of reasons for lots of people to stay away from pure electric vehicles, and while that list of reasons is getting shorter, it's still a long enough list that for a lot of people it's a non-starter as a primary vehicle.
You can't just look at an average trip and say "this vehicle can handle it, therefore it's completely viable for the average person", because the average person sometimes takes trips other than their average daily commute. Sometimes they go visit their grandparents or cousins out on the farm. Sometimes they visit their sister who lives two states over. Sometimes they make their ordinary daily commute but then follow it up by driving to a sporting event or a get-together some distance in the opposite direction. If an EV is suitable for your daily commute, but not for your occasional trips, then it's still not on par with a gasoline vehicle.
Even the supercharger network has a long way to go; here's a comment I made about it a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11431401
The takeaway is that about 1/4 of the US population lives in metro areas that are well-served by the supercharger network in all directions, and 3/4 lives in areas that have significant gaps for at least one significant direction of travel.
My uncle and my wife's grandpa were EV enthusiasts going back decades. I drive a plug-in electric (with a gas generator, which solves the not-well-covered trip problem) and so do my in-laws. I've been watching carefully. Right now, there are still lots of reasons for lots of people to stay away from pure electric vehicles, and while that list of reasons is getting shorter, it's still a long enough list that for a lot of people it's a non-starter as a primary vehicle.