Elon Musk says:
“We don’t want it to be really expensive. I think it got to start at less than $50,000 – it’s got to be like $49,000 starting price max. Ideally less. It just can’t be unaffordable. It’s got to be something that’s affordable. There will be versions of the truck that will be more expensive, but you’ve got to be able to get a really great truck for $49,000 or less.”
Remember how he said that about the Model 3? It has been 2 years since production began and we still havent reached 35K. Meanwhile, the Chinese are making 5 and 7 seater SUVs(Nio) for 50K while the Model X is 100K.
It was kinda-sorta-briefly available earlier this year. With emphasis on the past tense and brief nature of its availability.
Wow, it seems like it should be a slam-dunk for China to import them and get them NHTSA and EPA certified and run Tesla out of the market, right? 
You heard about this nifty new invention called a “generator”? They do a pretty good job producing electricity when grid power is unavailable.
Hell, if preparedness is your goal, in a “grid down” emergency scenario a house with a sizable solar array and a BEV has mobility availability measurable in years, not days. If I were the prepper type I’d be looking real hard at getting a Rivian R1 and a 10kW solar system installed.
I experienced a demonstration of the limitations of typical ICE gearing on the way to DMS last night - my vehicle suffered intolerable cogging at anything less than a ~4MPH creep on I-35. Thus stop-and-go despite traffic averaging a steady rate.
It’s almost like … there’s more to that market than retail price … a je ne sais quoi that defies quantitative measurements.
Standard grid-tie inverters go down by design when grid power fails so they neither overload themselves trying to power the entire grid nor present a hazard to linemen performing maintenance. There are varieties intended to charge battery banks can operate independent of the grid, however they’re more expensive and bring the additional financial liability of a battery bank.
I gather that there are ways around the limitations of grid-tie inverters going down in the event of a grid down situation, however I also gather that they’re not particularly advisable.
For the overwhelming majority of the population the grid is extremely reliable. To the extent that it isn’t, utility-scale investment is apt to be markedly more cost-effective than individual investments in providing for extended outages or whole-house power.
Honestly I was mostly just taking the piss. Absurd and irrelevant edge cases get trotted out like clockwork to declare BEVs somehow impractical every time one of them proves it’s a good vehicle. Emergency trumpet repairs are a running joke on the Ars Technica forums because of one vividly notable case of idiotic exceptionalism.
In point of fact, BEVs are a great help in grid power loss scenarios because you can use them as a backup source for your house, a feature Japan is already leveraging to a notable degree.
Aye, more than enough capacity for days of critical circuits like lighting and comms.
Some of the grander V2G scenarios I’ve seen mentioned … think that’s still a ways off and will depend on denser/cheaper/more-durable battery packs.
Or the resilience of your ICE vehicle when the gas station can’t pump gas because of a power failure.