What about the long road trips with kids? In the U.S. some of us travel long distances. After 4 hours of driving the three kiddos in the back, all under the age of 10 and strapped in their car seats, are getting restless. You pull in to the only Tesla charging station you can find in an unfamiliar town. It is 20 deg F (-7 C) outside. You tell the children to sit quietly, while going nowhere for 20 minutes. The charging station is in a sketchy part of town and you can't wait to get the h*ll out of there.

This is more or less a copy of my reply back then.

First of all, most people do only one or two road trips a year, and the average distance is under 300 miles one way. So that typically means one charging stop along the way. And in real life, this isn't how it works. In real life, the kids (and wife and you) will need to stop to pee, to change diapers, to grab a snack, to drink, to clean up whatever mess they made, to stretch their legs, etc. Whether you are driving an ICE vehicle or an EV, you're going to stop, and you're going to stop multiple times, and it usually won't be a 5 minute stop, it'll be longer than that. Just herding all the kids to the proper bathrooms takes a few minutes, then washing hands, other clean up, snacks and drinks, and looking at the "cool stuff" (even travel brochures at a rest stop can be cool to kids) at the rest stop will take some time. And in the real world, the charging stations AREN'T in sketchy parts of town for a few reasons, but mainly because the owners of EVs tend to be more upscale consumers, and because better locations avoid vandalism, and because if you want business from road trippers, you need to locate your chargers at a convenient location just off the highway with sufficient amenities nearby. That's why a lot of new superchargers are at WaWa. The kids **LOVE** WaWa, good place to sit (they usually have a nice area outside with picnic tables) and have a snack, decent bathrooms, and ALL SORTS of snacks available to purchase. Their flavored coffees are a favorite of my wife and hot chocolate for my older kids. On a road trip a few years ago, while still on line at Dunkin, my car sent me a message that it was already done charging, I had to quickly bump it up to a higher percentage max charge to avoid idle charges at the charger! Then as soon as we got our coffees and hot chocolates, I had to run out to move the car to a regular spot while the rest of the family finished their snacking.

I have 5 kids (all born over a period of 6 years) and road tripped with them for years, so this is really how it works in real life, whether in an EV or in an ICE vehicle.

Since then, our family has grown, there are now two spouses, and two grandchildren (with a third on the way). At this point we are an all EV family, with different cars for different purposes, one for short distance errands, for commuting, for longer distance travel, etc. And we pretty much all share the "fleet" of EVs. Tesla makes that extremely convenient because each person, me, wife, 5 kids, and their spouses, all have a "key" to all the cars (except for the one that still uses a fob, of course) and can drive them at any time. It really adds some terrific convenience features that other cars do not have - for example, we can leave a car at the airport parking lot for someone who is flying in at an odd time, and all they have to do is walk to the car and drive home. The key is right in their pocket inside their phone, and it is utterly transparent, just walk up to the car, open the door, and drive away.

There is one feature that I am waiting for with bated breath. I can't wait until any of our cars have the feature that someone can drive it somewhere and then send it (the car) home by itself, or send the car somewhere by itself. Today, one of my kids works about a mile and a half away from home, and each morning someone (usually me) drives them there, drops them off, and drives home so they can have use of the car during the day. Then around 5pm someone drives back to pick them up from work. If the car could do that short drive by itself, it'll save some hassle for us. The car essentially has the capability already because it can drive to me by itself in any parking lot. Just last week when I was done at the gym, there was a torrential downpour, and I had the car come to the front door to avoid getting soaked walking all the way to it at the far end of the parking lot. Heck, if the car could do longer drives by itself, we could even potentially drop one car in the "fleet" because it could drive my wife to work, drop her off, and then drive home again so I could use that car during the day.