PH

OT

O:

ST

EV

EN

C

ON

RO

Y

WHAT IF YOUR AFFORDABLE EV

ALSO HAS TO BE YOUR ONLY CAR?

Thanksgiving ’s madhouse travel days.

(Search “Steven Conroy Supercharger.”)

When Steve shot it, there were at least

16 Teslas waiting to plug in at its 14

permanent chargers (with even more

umbilicaled to a giant Megapack battery

that Tesla trailered in to feed the flood

of demand).

Free-Range

“W

hy are you making this so

complicated?” my editor asked.

“Remember how superior the

Model 3 was over the Nissan Leaf

Plus and Kia Niro EV during our Car of

the Year testing? The Tesla will easily win

this. It’s simple.”

He’s right, it wins this. The Tesla is

slam-dunk the best driver of these three.

But there’s far more to this story

than that one angle. In the real world,

very little about electric cars is simple.

Especially now that affordable ones with

bigger batteries and fast charging rates—

abetted by stories of a spreading web of

Level 3 chargers—are naturally causing

folks to rethink whether an EV should be

their primary transport.

For instance, consider the YouTube

video taken by Steven Conroy at the

Tesla Supercharger station outside the

Madonna Inn along Route 101 between

L.A. and San Francisco back during

I’m using the example of

Chargeageddon to rattle us out of our

routine of seeing an EV roundup as just

another car-versus-car hardware compar-

ison test. All those Teslas in the video

aren’t local-limited secondary commuter

cars. They’re wearing the yokes of

primary, go-anywhere transportation.

$44,695 $42,690

Chargeageddon! The good news:

People are using Teslas for travel. It’s

also sometimes the bad news if you

need to stop to use a Supercharger.

42 MOTORTREND.COM APRIL 2020

COMPARISON I Kia Niro Eco Electric vs. Nissan Leaf Plus SL vs. Tesla Model 3

Nissan Leaf

Plus SL

Tesla Model 3

Standard Range Plus