You are perceiving every single thing that is different as a negative just because you don't have experience with it yet.
Still confusing for most consumers, especially coming from gas cars.
It's different because it's not familiar yet. Once you do it, it's the normal and comfortable way, and having to "go to the filling station" and other gasoline car paradigms seem irritating.
Consumers fill gas cars up to full and then always expect to get the same mpg as before based on their current driving habits. So, on my BMW 530xi, I always expect to get over 500 miles per tank on every fill up and always do no matter how it is driven or what conditions.
Sure, and for most of your driving throughout the year, you plug it in your garage, and go in and sleep, and it's always filled to the same amount every morning, and you never have to stop on your way to or from work to "fill it up". It's totally simple. People who have never driven a gas car and are thinking about it like this, seem to look exclusively at road trips, as if that's 100% of their car's usage. That's a small portion.
When going to Tesla and it say 322 of range, I would expect the same thing every time. So, if I average 300 or 280 per tank, I would expect to get that and I would also expect to charge to 100 percent to achieve that.
It's almost the same. You set your charge limit and forget about it. It fills up to the limit every time, and it's the same, just like you say. It doesn't happen to be 100%. It's probably more like 80% or 90%--wherever you pick--but then it just says there, and you don't have to think about it.
I own many battery operated tools, like iPhone, iPad, Milwaukee Lithium M-18 outdoor tools, etc., like most Americans and don’t charge those to 80%, so why does a car need to do that?
Ah, this is actually a really good question, because it seems that there is something really different here. There actually isn't. Lithium ion batteries all have these same characteristics, but it is different business decisions of how the different companies and products decide to handle them to either expose you to damaging the batteries, or try to hide and prevent that.
Filling to completely full and letting them sit there for a long time does damage lithium ion batteries. That's a fact, whether it's iPhone, iPad, battery operated tools, whatever. What would companies choose to do about that?
1. Let you charge to full
2. Not let you charge to full
With option #1, some products will let you charge to full, and it is building up damage in the battery, and in a year or two, they will have degraded capacity and not hold as much energy. Cell phone batteries have generally done it this way. They want you to have the most run time on your phone, and at the same time,
by all means every couple of years they want you thinking how annoyed you are that the phone doesn't last as long and the battery doesn't hold as much energy, and, you know, my provider wants me to buy a new phone and upgrade anyway, etc. etc. They have clear incentive to have the batteries get damaged and not last very long. Frequently the same with laptop batteries. And they can do that, because for some people, it will drive the upgrade phone cycle, but for others, the battery is cheap enough, that they may not mind spending $40 or so every couple of years to replace the battery.
With option #2, some companies just artificially tell you what "FULL" and "EMPTY" are, so they are not really 100% and 0%, since that is damaging to the batteries. They just hide the top and bottom end with control software, so the battery is really operating in about the 10% to 80% range all the time, and the consumers are just not aware of that. That kind of thing usually does apply to things like the power tool batteries, since they sit on chargers at full for huge amounts of time, so they need to keep some of that buffer at the top end to not destroy them prematurely.
And when you thought Tesla having the visibility to set a limit less than 100% was an unusual thing? Several laptop brands like Lenovo, Samsung, etc. have a setting called something like "battery lifetime", which sets the maximum charging level at 80%. This is much better for laptops that are going to be sitting on docking stations most of the time, always hooked up to power. By having them sit at 80% most of the time instead of 100%, it greatly extends the lifetime of the batteries.
So these are not new issues, but companies have usually just not wanted to let consumers know about them before. It was easier to not teach about this, remove choices, and just pick a path to go with their products to keep people blissfully unaware. Tesla is just taking one step further, to put a little more knowledge and responsibility into the customers' hands, so they can access the full capacity of the battery instead of having it hidden, but making them aware that it's something to be careful with, so it's a hybrid between choice #1 or #2.
but for someone who does mostly freeway driving and longer trips, I would expect to charge to full to get full range on those trips.
I saved this for last because it is the one that is the most different and takes some adjustment of thinking. I do love road tripping and am always looking for excuses to travel in my Tesla. In 2018, I got to do one of those gigantic cross country road trips I had always dreamed of doing. I did over 5,000 miles in 11 days, going from Idaho to Michigan, and then taking the longer southern route back through Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.
I know that not filling to 100% seems strange, but you just don't want to do that for time efficiency. Batteries don't fill at a constant rate. As they get more full, they have to slow down the charging. With these batteries, it's pretty similar amounts of time filling from 0-80% as it is from 80-100%. But think realistically about traveling. 80% of 300 miles of range is about 240. At 70 mph, that's still about 3 hours at a shot. Granted, I have talked to some of the hardcore iron-butt guys who are dead set on 5 hour segments and are upset about having to stop for more than 7 minutes in between. (That's kind of masochistic and unhealthy, and their wives usually hate that, but anyway...) So for those people, sure, it's just the reality that nothing will ever beat liquid fuel for its energy density and ultra quick filling.
But bodies have needs. And stopping every few hours for a break to walk across the street and use the bathroom and get a coffee or food or something for a 20-30 minute break is not too bad. You just go into it with a bit of expectation that you're going to plug in and then walk into a shop next door and use up 15 minutes or whatever. So sure, this kind of traveling with breaks does take a little bit more time than strictly gas and go with trying to avoid any breaks and eating while driving. So that's up to each person if they are willing to accept that.
