I made a Model 3 thread over a year ago when it was first unveiled:
http://www.clubwrx.net/forums/new-cars-prototypes-forums/134533450-tesla-model-3-a.html
Maybe merge threads?
While that is a good range, as it the Bolt's, you start out on a trip with a full charge, going 75 miles somewhere (plenty of reserve range). You get there and get a call from a member of your family that X is in the hospital with an appendicitis. But you do not have the range to get to where you are going directly, but need to go home (the wrong direction to the hospital), to get your other combustion fired vehicle (if you have a second car). Or rent a car, etc. I am not ready to make the change yet, but not ruling it out down the road.
As for the Tesla 3, the front end looks like an alien. Complete turn off to me. Though the rest of the car IMO, is good looking.
I live in Oregon - one of the EV hotspots - and there are charging stations everywhere, including my workplace parking lot. DC fast charging (basically the generic "superchargers" that Leafs, i3s, Bolts, etc can use for an 80% charge in 20 minutes) is widespread, so I'm never more than a few minutes from a top off if I need one. Currently, this is highly regionally dependent, but charging station numbers continue to grow across the US.
Also note that the picture you showed is the pre-Alpha prototype. Here's what the actual production car looks like, and it's a bit more sleek with an improved front end design:
There would need to be an unprecedented discovery in energy storage that from what I've seen isn't likely to happen outside of nuclear options.
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Hmm, I don't think that's true at all. Battery technology has had exponential growth in the last ten years, and how much range do you really need? Storage isn't the issue at all, refill time is the challenge: My Outback manages about 290-ish miles to a tank of gas in the mixed driving I do with it. I typically fill it up every two weeks in about 10 minutes at a gas station for about $40.
Now a 75kWh battery pack in a Model S gives it a 259mile range, a 30 mile difference, and every EV owner I know tops off the charge overnight when they go home, giving them a full battery pack when they set off the next morning. I only have to drive 250+ miles in a day maybe once or twice a year at most. So for commuting, it's a total non-issue, the battery capacity is plenty and I never have to stop at a fuel station. 600V DC fast charging is coming very soon (Audi and Porsche are pushing this tech), so then you'll be able to fully charge a 300+ mile EV in just a couple of minutes.
I'd argue the range of a vehicle by itself is meaningless, the TRAVEL TIME is what's actually important, and the only differing times for fossil fuel and EVs are refueling times, since things like breaks and traffic are the same for both vehicles. For example, say you need to make a 500mile trip, and your car gets 300miles to a tank of gas. That means a 15minute fuel up somewhere along the way. Now say you have a 150 mile EV, but that you can fast charge in 5 minutes. That's 3 recharges in 15minutes, so your overall travel time is the same, assuming the charging infrastructure is in place to make that trip (and I readily concede it isn't in a lot of places quite yet).
I know we aren't quite there yet with full proliferation of fast charging, and that even fast charging isn't quite that fast yet, but infrastructure and charge speeds don't require a quantum leap in technology to figure out, and Tesla isn't the only EV manufacturer putting more charging stations out there.
The bottom line is, if an EV has equivalent range to your gas car (and I'm taking 300miles as an average here), and can "refuel" just as quickly (getting close), how is that a bad thing?
