Most of the traditional car company’s EV’s cover these basis, but as noted above none have produced a good non-mini SUV yet. Of all the ones’s I have test drive, the BMW iX comes closest, though is still smaller than I’d like. Hoping to at least wait out the announcement of the specs for the Volvo Embla before deciding if its worth the wait.
What do you mean Tesla hasn’t supported waze? You can pull waze up on the screen. I used it for a while (it functions somewhat differently but it is waze) but went back to using tesla’s nav system. I don’t always agree with it and will sometimes also run google maps on my phone simultaneously.
We have had a minivan for 20+ years. Incredibly practical. Ton of storage space. And can seat 7 easily (or even 8 if you want). We often fold the back seats down for a long trip for extra storage and then can use all 3 rows when we get there to be able to travel with fewer vehicles at the location we are visiting. Get better gas mileage than SUVs. Are cheaper to maintain and insure. Many people view them as less “cool” than an SUV but to me they are all big boxes. Nothing close to a sports car which are actually cool. And at the end of the day, assuming you were ever cool, its likely that by the time you are looking at a minivan, you aren’t anymore. LOL
But hey, I never complain about the American love affair with the automobile. It drives a large part of the economy. So spend away (and buy/replace as often as you want). 
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Tesla doesn’t have an official, full-function version of Waze. They would either need to support CarPlay, Android Auto or make a deal with Google to have a native Tesla app. A few years ago there was a third party start-up that had a native Tesla app called "TeslaWaze: but it was never official and has shut down. You can also access Waze from Tesla web browser but the browser version of Waze is not as good as the real mobile app version for various reasons.
Are you referring to another way? If so, it was unknown to the Tesla employee on my last test drive less than a month ago.
We have a love/hate relationship with our minivan. Overall our current 9 year old one and the one before it have served us well. We’ve held on to them so long because of the storage versatility. We could care less about the cool or not cool factor.
Our issues with it is it’s just not a great care to drive or maintain. Steering is loose-y, braking is poor, acceleration is terrible, handling is even worse. It’s just not a fun drive – neither van was. And while Honda and Toyota maintenance is cheaper than Volvo or its like, it spend more time in the shop than those. It needs oil changes far more often, it burns through tires and brakes quicker, and its had major repair parts go bad sooner. Its the only car we bought the extended warranty for and we sure ended up on the right side of that deal. The Toyota was similar when we had it. There’s a crazy number of people we know who got the same generation model Honda as us and all eventually have similar experiences. It’s also annoying they didn’t have an AWD version which has caused serious issues a couple times – we simply don’t drive it in conditions we would drive the other cars in.
So it’s a trade off. One that was worth it for a while, but isn’t now.
We have always had Honda minivan. It drives well. Stiffer suspension than most minivans (some people don’t like them because of that). Acceleration is good (for a minivan but most SUVs aren’t speedsters either). Handles well. Repairs have never been an issue either. Regular oil changes and tire rotations. Brakes and tire replacements have been when expected. Replaced a transmission (never was sure the issue because it drove fine but Honda replaced a bunch of them for some reason) but that was covered by warranty. Recently replaced some belts and hoses but that was north of 100K miles for this one. Nothing different than what we did with our cars in terms of maintenance over that time. But everyone’s experience is different.
thats all true. I figure if I want waze or google maps instead of teslas nav, I just pull it up on my phone 
Once I got used to having it display on the larger native car screen and playing through the car speakers – reducing the volume of whatever else is playing for a moment to do so – there was no going back. I have an older car where I still have to use the phone alone and it feels so twentieth century tech. I still use a magnet to hold up the phone next to the car screen and Waze is smart enough to differentiate the phone screen when using CarPlay to list all the directions or accident alerts, so I get two screens of information instead of one.
We live in an exurb and both work at home so not that many miles. We have an Acura MDX and a BMW 335 GT. I used to get my miles going to the airport once or twice a week, but my traveling schedule is diminished. We drive to our cottage on a lake in Quebec maybe once or twice a year (about a 6 hour drive). We don’t have charging there, but I guess it could be installed. We drive to Florida once a year in my BMW and we love the incredibly comfortable seats that came with the Sports package (we feel fine after 12 hours of driving; not so with the Acura).
If I had a choice, I’d wait to replace our cars until there are autonomous cars that really work, but I suspect we will have to wait one car generation for that.
I tried to get Tesla to install solar panels and batteries at my house last year but they were negligently incompetent. My plan was to make it possible to use solar to charge an electric car. We’ll probably put solar in when the subsidies return. If we were to buy today, I’d buy a hybrid as I am not so confident about being able to conveniently charge the car during the drives to Quebec, Ontario (we’ll be doing this later this month) and Florida. But, we can probably wait 3-5 years with the existing cars and so we’ll see where the infrastructure is when we are ready.
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Our Tesla certified solar installer ditched Tesla (actually Solar City) solar products and now installs Silfab, although they still install Tesla solar shakes. Silfab makes their panels in the US and Canada not too far from where we live. We plan on claiming our federal tax credit which is good on panels installed up to December 31, 2023:
Homeowner’s Guide to the Federal Tax Credit for Solar Photovoltaics | Department of Energy
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Sis and husband took an EV on a trip to Washington state. They had trouble finding charging stations that weren’t already occupied. After traveling to two charging stations that were full, they finally found one they could use. But it was slow and they took a long walk to pass the time.
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We have a plug-in hybrid that works great for your use case. For daily local trips, we can run in mostly EV mode because it has 42-45 miles of EV range. We’ve also had to make half a dozen 1000 mile round trips in the last year where we do 500 miles in a day and that is in hybrid mode. One quick stop to put a handful of gallons in along the way is all we need. Both of our cars are PHEVs now.
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I got a quote for Tesla’s solar roof shingles years ago when Tesla first took over the company and they wanted $130,000 to install 40% solar shingles and 60% dummy shingles and even by their own highly optimistic self-estimate calculated it would take 39 years to break even. Don’t expect to own the house nearly that long, so no thanks. Too bad because I would have liked to have solar and my house front is south facing so conventional panels would be unsightly.
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Tesla (formerly Solar City) is not the only solar installer. Many others offer solar panels and installation. Often, the installers were roofing companies and are now do both roofs and solar.
We tried to price out the Tesla shakes but the roofer (Tesla certified) took a look at our roof said that in order to get any meaningful electricity out of the project, we’d have to get rid of all skylights and architectural roof features because of the setback requirements for solar shakes: they can’t be within 3 feet of any ridge or edge. So without these changes, our roof would have ended up being 90% dummy shakes. Plus, the project would have required structural permits in addition to roofing and electrical permits. No go. 
We got a metal solar-ready standing seam roof and will be installing clip-on panels.
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39 years? Solar shingles (or panels) are designed to last only about 25 years, even if you were to own the house for more than 39 years.
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No, incorrect. Solar panels are warrantied for 25 years. They can and will last longer but will lose some of their capacity.
ETA: if one needs a new roof anyway (like we did), that cost can be incorporated in the calculations. For us, a metal roof with regular solar panels came well ahead. Break even point is 10-12 years, not accounting for adding AC.
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FYI: in WA, there is a sales tax incentive for solar and EV chargers install (both hardware and labor to install). No sales tax!! Which is 10% savings right off the bat.
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