- cross-posted to:
- elektroautos@feddit.de
- evs@feddit.uk
- cross-posted to:
- elektroautos@feddit.de
- evs@feddit.uk
Alt text:
An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.
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The motors have never been the problem, it’s always been the battery. See train engines, they are a diesel generator with electric motors.
This is where history pisses me off. We should have been headlong into battery research after the oil embargoes. Could have been 40 years faster.
Electric cars is not the solution. Sure, it’s an improvement, but for a real solution you need to get people out of personal vehicles on onto public transportation. Trains, trams, busses, whatever. Build it in a way that doesn’t suck. Assuming american, the US had (past tense) amazing train/tram networks decades ago. Every warehouse had a rail spur, and since walking was considered ok people weren’t obese fatasses.
I drive a scooter. It is possible to live without a car, although it does have some difficulties sometimes. If your job is within 10 miles of your home or less, then you don’t need a car for your commute. If I can do it so can you. I’d still rather take a bus, if it existed.
Just came back from Tokyo. Tokyo’s public transportation is awesome. You do also need to walk a lot at times and the first few days our legs were quite sore. But towards the end of the trip I can feel my leg strength again, felt healthier, and did not miss my car at all. To go to certain places, you do have to plan a little bit ahead, for example, a day trip out to Mt. Fuji area requires booking tickets because right now there’s a ton of tourists. But within the city, the subways are so convenient.
I want an EV. I think its 98% the right choice for me. I also 100% with you. Cars are a terrible solution at a certain density, which is what most industry and thus where people live makes sense.
The issue with this stance is that it’s one of those all-or-nothing points of view. Sure it’s better to have good public transportation, but in a lot of places there won’t be for the foreseeable future. Sure it’s better to use bicycles, but sometimes it’s just not an option.
Electric cars won’t fix traffic, but for the planet they’re still a vast improvement. It’s like a viable 95% solution that is dismissed because there might a 100% one somewhere in the next 200 years.
The issue with this stance is that it’s one of those all-or-nothing points of view.
Not it isn’t. Every single individual person who decides to live without a car is an improvement. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
I think they were trying to say that every individual who uses their car less is an improvement.
I live outside Boston, which has among the best transit in the US but it doesn’t take me everywhere. My town is quite walkable but also hilly and with weather. I do choose to walk, or ride the train when I can, but I still need a car. Improving this enough for most prople to dispense with cars will be a very long time. In the meantime, my use of EV, walk, train is a huge improvement of my brother in the Midwest using ICE car for everything
My job is within 10mi of my home. If I walk there, I get there in 2 hours. If I take public transportation, it takes me 1h45m to 2h20m depending on the day.
I also live in a community where our electricity is from 90% renewable resources, 10% nuclear. Switching to an electric car is a 100% reduction in carbon usage for my commute. Using the bus isn’t.
Why not get an electric bike then? Reasonable price tag, will get you to work within a reasonable timeframe, significantly less congestion on roads, and charges with that renewable energy without using a lot of it.
Also, their point was that adding infrastructure for public transport (aka improving the public transport you’re complaining about) will have a huge effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions across a population and is more easily electrified. Your focus on an individual case is irrelevant to their argument.
Switching to an electric car is a 100% reduction in carbon usage for my commute.
Is it really? Are you positive?
How is your electricity generated. Coal, natural gas, or oil? Congratulations, your carbon usage is HIGHER with an EV than with an ICE! Is it hydro? Go look at the methane produced by those huge reservoirs. I haven’t seen the calculations, but it’s not neutral.
Oh, I know. You use solar and/or wind. Now look up the environmental costs of producing those. And of mining the special metals needed for the batteries. Or if you’re nuked, the costs of mining uranium.
Switching to an EV is not the simple “zero carbon” solution you seem to imagine it to be.
Because building non renewable power doesn’t have a carbon cost right? And buying a petrol powered car doesn’t have a carbon cost, right?
I’m talking about my commute. The carbon cost of driving to work from my home.
Don’t strawman if you want your argument to be taken seriously - because what I read above translates to
I drive a scooter.
Friend and coworker of mine was recently in a deadly accident on her way to work on a scooter. Those vehicles are great but on a road that is still primarily built for cars (and is now inhabited by ever more massive giant pickups) it can be a serious safety risk.
you need to get people out of personal vehicles on onto public transportation
This is really the heart of it. It’s an infrastructure problem. Frustratingly, this is the most difficult and time consuming problem to solve.
I’ve lived in a city with really good transit, and even then, I’d prefer a car if it were affordable here.
TINY ELECTRIC GO CARTS
Idk why ppl are down voting this, bro is literally just advocating for public transportation
Ig it’s all the insecure pickup truck bros
Edit: typos
I think people (not me, I agree with glitchdx, overall) are probably down voting because it’s a classic example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, with a healthy dose of smug mixed in. Smugness is a great dialectical tactic if you hope to entrench people deeper into their views, rather than convince them to consider alternatives through reasoned discussion.
Do I agree that ideally we’d have robust public transit and increased usage of smaller, greener personal transport solutions? Of course I do.
But, incrementalism is progress. Valuable progress. We could argue whether it’s more likely to get us to the aforementioned vision of robust public transit or not, but history has proven time and time again that progress takes time and is resisted tooth and nail by monied interests. I don’t like it either. I want to wave a wand and have everything change. OP is right. Electric cars are not the solution. But treating symptoms while you work on curing the disease is best practice.
bro is literally just advocating for public transportation
Seems to me that bro is arguing against EVs when that may be the best choice in an individuals control. Even if we’re all for public transportation, that takes years and millions to improve, so EVs may be the best choice available for the time being
Not everyone lives where public transportation is really feasible. He’ll EVs aren’t even practical where I live.
So we shouldn’t bother with it anywhere then?
You’re missing the forest for the trees
I never said that, thanks for speaking for me I really appreciate it though. I am simply saying moving away from ICE just isn’t feasible everywhere right now.
The price. The price is the problem for all us poors.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they paired small batteries with backup generators.
But nooo, its 7000lb all electrics or overly complicated ICE-hybrids, nothing in between.
7000lb all electrics
This idea overlaps the big truck mentality: most EVs are much lighter. The weight penalty averages only about 20% over an equivalent ICE, so the type of vehicle you get can be a much bigger impact. My EV is a mid sized SUV that may be the biggest car I’ve ever owned and it weighs 4,000 lbs. I’m not claiming it’s light, but it’s much better than you seem to think
Yeah that was a hyperbole.
Still, there is a weight penalty depending on how much range they try to squeeze in.
And I’m one of those people that gets super salty about ICE cars getting so heavy too, especially crossovers and city SUVs that everyone seems to run now. A small or mid sized SUV should not be 4,000lb with modern tech, ICE or not.
Wait how is what you’re proposing different from ICE hybrids?
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An ICE hybrid is a gas car with a little electric motor shoehorned inside.
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A “plug in” hybrid as they are called is a full electric drivetrain, with a gas generator like you’d buy at Lowes stuck in the boot .
It seems trivial, but the difference is massive. The former is super complicated, heavy, and expensive, as you need all the junk a gas car needs and the electric stuff to go with it.
The later is hilarously efficient. It takes the best part of electric cars, the dead simple drive train, and solves their achilles heel: the massive battery. You can get away with a dirt cheap 3 horsepower generator in such a setup and shrink the battery massively, whereas a ICE hybrid needs a huge car engine and (like I said) all the expensive junk that goes with it.
You don’t see more of the later because:
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Car manufacturers are geared to produce ICE cars, and reserve the electric drivetrain capacitry for profitable luxury vehicles first.
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This is just speculation on my part, but a gas range extending generator “taints” a full electric car, making it unpalatable to people who think it ruins the image, eco friendliness or whatever, when it’s actually better for the environment because the battery isn’t so freaking big.
Gotcha, thanks for explaining!
Of course!
Another point I was getting as is that pure electric cars suffer from the same problem space rockets do: most of their weight is fuel.
Hence they are heavy, need a lot of raw material and manufacturing. Read: Expensive and bad for the environment, compared to a cheaper plug in hybrid.
And a tiny, 5 horsepower gasoline generator is hilarously efficient compared to a car engine. And dirt cheap, and weighs virtually nothing. There are technical reasons for this, but basically it’s not even in the same league, and produces a fraction of the emissions as a full ICE car.
Maybe truth is they started talking about doing a car like that and by the time it was ready for production they ended up with a regular ICE car because they nearly doubled the HP of the generator every time the design got reviewed like you are doing now. Before long it will be a tiny 98 HP generator…
You really don’t need 90hp. Coasting on the freeway takes less than 10hp, depending on how big of a block you drive, so as long as the average is around that, the generator can keep the battery charged forever, and the battery handles any surge in power you need. It’s only a problem if you drive like a jerk, and floor it out of every light or speed down the highway at 100+mph, and do it long enough to drain the battery.
But the brilliant part is that you can design the generator motor for single, constant RPM. I can’t emphasize how much easier and more efficient that makes everything, vs. having to engineer a huge power/rpm range that can handle a dynamic load.
They were a fantastic idea but:
- too many people never plugged them in, so you just have a slightly heavier ICE car
- they would have been a great transition to full EV, but full EVs are now functional enough for most people (we need to get the volume up to get the price down)
I suppose they’re still right for some people but generally it’s just Toyota looking back to do what they should have been doing ten years ago
I disagree. I have folks who are relatively well off, but can’t get an EV due to range anxiety.
And again, a tiny engine running constantly is still massively efficient if it’s done right.
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the price gap is slowly closing, esp if you take into account total cost of ownership. It agree that the upfront cost makes it out of reach for many people.
Really the biggest part of the price gap now seems to be volume. Not enough new cars to offset the R&D and bring prices down. Not enough new cars for there to be a healthy used car market. And especially not enough non-premium cars
Purchase price, higher maintenance costs (EVs eat tires due to the increased weight and higher torque), installation of charging infrastructure (some us need expense electrical service upgrades and added wiring; we don’t all have 200 amp panels and garages with 30 amp 240v service already wired in)
I’d love an EV, but I won’t be afforded Int one for a bit. And used ones, even if cheaper, will have massive battery degradation cutting range way down.
I always heard the concern about electrical service but wonder at the reality. A level 2 charger is the same as a stove circuit: do none of you have electric stoves? You don’t even need that: some people are fine with just an extension cord, some people need a “dryer outlet”, I have never come close to needing the level 2 charger: is it really important that my EV charges in a couple hours vs by morning?
Also, hasn’t 200a service been standard for new homes for a couple decades? If someone can afford an EV, they are much more likely to have a newer home so already have 200a service
Nope. Everything is gas. Range, water heater, dryer, and heat. The only 2 pole breaker I have is for central AC.
My house was built in the 1940s. 200 amp service didn’t become standard until the 80s.
I know level 1 charging is there (although I also only have one exterior outlet), ~3 miles per hour of charging is tight. I need to be plugged in at least 10 hours for just my commute.
And, yeah, you hit on the big problem. EVs are expensive and are only really accessible to those already at the upper end of the spectrum. Belief that gas engines are more powerful or have more instant torque is not what is keeping people from EVs, so the point Randall makes is pretty stupid.
Same here. House built in 1946, gas everything.
But I had a lucky start in a previous owner upgrading to 200a service …. Maybe to install central air? When I moved in, I got all gas appliances, but 20 years later, everything is coming up for replacement. Times have changed. Technology is changing. Our understanding of our impact on the environment is changing.
The timing is perfect.
- I replaced my old gas stove with induction, and a big rebate
- i have teens just starting to drive so I let them use my old Subaru and bought myself an EV, and a huge rebate
- I installed a level 2 charger, with a rebate
My furnace and AC are past their life expectancy and there are huge rebates on heat pumps ….
The barrier in my Canadian city isn’t even purchase price, it’s that I cannot charge at my apartment
Hybrids are more affordable than full electrics, and have some of the benefits… I have a Kia Sorento and its torque was enough to climb out of a pretty deep rut that would have required shifting into low4 on my dad’s 4x4… Plus it gets about 600 miles on a tank.
I’m with you that we need phev’s to bridge the infrastructure gap, but electric motors provide more torque at lower speeds without the need for gears.
Yes, and hybrids have that advantage too, that’s the point I was trying to get across…
I would absolutely love to have an EV. But they are very expensive, especially compared to the gas-powered car I already own.
Well everything’s more expensive than the thing you already own. It’s true, most are available in the higher end markets right now, but the Bolt and Leaf are pretty cheap. In the long run, almost all EVs are cheaper than their gas counterparts.
Maybe in your country. Chinese electric cars are plenty cheap, many of them are cheaper than most ICE cars
Cool. I’ll just go ahead and abandon my whole life to move to China.
You are aware that these vehicles are sold outside China as well, right? I’m not making the point of “in china they’re cheap”, I’m making the point “they are cheap, maybe just not in your country”
Sorry, let me rephrase for you: I’ll just go ahead and uproot my entire life to move to a country that sells Chinese cars.
No new car, of any kind, is cheaper than a car you already own.
True
Here in middle eu they are twice as expensive. Maybe it got a little better to like 1.75 now? Still I would have to be crazy to spend more than necessary on a car and watch it’s value plummet and repair cost suck my entertainment money. But also no way to charge them without living countryside or arrive comfortably at the far destination without long stops.
A car is a necessary tool to get from a to b. Whatever does its job the best at the moment. I despise car owners treating them as status symbols.
You’re making this up.
The average car in Germany costs above 40k€, that’s very similar to what an EV such as the BYD Dolphin can cost (from 35k€ upwards).
You don’t need to convince me that cars suck, I don’t own one as a matter of principle, but there’s no point in lying about the price of things
Eee 40k euros? That’s what I am talking about I buy cars for 20k-25k€ maximum after conversion to local currency
You don’t even drive one so how can you have valuable opinion on this? I drive one and analyse which one is the most efficient purchase and you only deal in theoretical armchair expertise
You buy much cheaper cars than the average German then. Good for you to unironically know better than the average German and understand that beyond the 20-25k mark, you’re paying for stupid stuff and branding.
I can analyse this because I can compare studies and averages, my whole point was “no, electric cars aren’t even that expensive anymore”, not “cars are good and electric cars are always better and everyone should get one”.
Allright maybe they are cheaper than a year ago at least. Still very infeasible here however except for semi upper class countryside
Only you can judge your own circumstances but it really seems like fear of difference makes worries loom larger.
Here in the US
- my Tesla was the most expensive car I ever bought
- but price had dropped and continues to drop
- cheaper than the average new car, cheaper than the custom trucks so many neighbors have
- it was like $120 to buy a full set of adapters and cables to allow me to plugin anywhere to any type of outlet
- installing a level 2 home charger (if you can) was essentially the same cost as installing a new stove circuit - expensive but quite doable
- superchargers are all over the place and easy to find. I know people who can’t charge at home just goto the supercharger once a week
- since I can charge at home, I’ve only used superchargers over 100 miles from home
- it’s really nice to never have to go to the local gas station: charging my car is like charging my phone, get into the habit and it’s always ready to go. Once people get used to this, they’ll never accept the idea of a technology like hydrogen where you would have to go refuel yet again
- it’s roomier, more practical than my Subaru
- it’s faster more powerful than my old Grand Am
- my local garage services them, or at least inspects them, since I haven’t yet needed service
Again, I don’t know what “here” means, I’m telling you that the average new car in Germany (since you mentioned central Europe)costed more than 40k€, and that’s more than some seriously good electric cars like the BYD Dolphin.
in the US you can get a decent ICE car for under $2000, you cannot get a Chinese EV for under $2000 that holds a charge
The average price of a new car in the USA is $47k. Comparing averages is more realistic than going to the lowest extreme example. My point is there exist electric cars that cost less than the average new car.
But I don’t see why I’d ever buy a new car
It doesn’t matter, my point stands, half the people in the US who buy new ICE cars could buy electric cars for the same of less money. My whole point is that the price has gone down a lot.
Do half the people buy new cars?
If you read comments on Instagram and the like, people hate electric cars because…
…they don’t do the vroom-vroom noise.
And I don’t get this. I mean I also love the feel of power you get from a large engine turning over, but really? You over there in that mustang making all that noise and effort, really straining to accelerate, while my Tesla effortlessly leaves you in the dust? Do people not understand how much more powerful it feel to be the fastest car with seemingly no effort?
That’s a very real issue that car enthusiasts have a hard time with. There’s just something about a great sounding engine that is the cherry on top of a car you like. My weak spot is a 4 rotor screaming like a banshee from Mazda’s Le Mans car.
Car enthusiasts are weird.
The whole notion of loud = fast falls apart with electric engines.
Not many people buy cars just because they sound good. It’s usually the engine that makes it sound good.(+exhaust, etc). Which means tha there’s still the need for speed.
But if you want speed, you need to go electric.
The whole macho V8 rumble and manually shifting gears is now less effective than a one-pedal, one-gear, quiet electeic setup.
This must such a huge disconnect in their heads, that they go about posting “electric = gay” on car videos.
Just like listening to loud music with windows down, the loud fart cans are just for seeking attention.
A loud engine is now an equivalent of a dog that barks, but doesn’t bite.
I agree that there are many cars that sound incredible (four rotor Mazdas, Porche Carerra GTs, Black or Brabus Mercs, you name it), but disliking electric cars because they make a silly quiet noise just makes one a poser, IMO.
Electric cars are fun, and I don’t personally mind they’re basically silent. But nothing will replace the fun of a manual transmission ICE.
I don’t think most people get a loud exhaust for attention either, but because they like it. But windows down blasting music is pointless and toxic, IMO.
Also saying if you want speed to go electric is too generic, IMO. What kind of speed and when you’re going to use it is important. For example, if you want speed from a standstill, then sure electric. Want speed once you’re already moving, like a race track, then ICE is fine since you’ll be high RPMs.
There’s more to speed than just speed
Electric cars are fast, but the boring kind of fast
I feel like this is directed towards ICE vs EV cars. If that’s the case, it’s sort of frustrating.
EVs have some very real drawbacks. Even if those drawbacks are solvable problems, they are still problems right now. Pushing this narrative that EVs are universally better or that the biggest hurdle to adoption is irrational consumer sentiment will just make people feel gaslit. It’ll also make people more hesitant to adopt later on, because they’ll be skeptical of positive reviews that are honest.
ok, what are those drawbacks?
Battery cost pushing up vehicle cost, battery replacement cost, battery weight, low battery energy density, batteries that only last half of a car lifespan of 20 years.
We need much better batteries.
For now, plug in Hybrids are a good way to avoid many of these problems.
I agree. ICE vehicles usually have more range, fuel is basically available everywhere, they take minutes to fill, and generally have a cheaper initial cost.
In addition to that, ICE cars, though needing more maintenance, have repair shops in just about every village, town, city… often several of them.
I feel like EVs are a bit of a glass cannon when it comes to anything that might go wrong with them. Whatever goes wrong is very likely to cause the vehicle to stop operation entirely. Most ICE cars will either just keep working when something is wrong, or at worst go into a limp mode, allowing you to get to a repair shop to have the vehicle repaired.
I understand why EVs are the way they are, high voltage electricity is no joke, but then you need a tow truck to get to the service center that’s likely much further away.
EVs are great, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re planning for the worst case and/or failure cases, ICE vehicles just fail more gradually, frequently giving you some leeway to take care of the problem well before the vehicle completely stops working.
EVs are also a major issue for firefighters. Lithium ion battery fires following an accident are ridiculously hard to put out and present a significant safety hazard in confined spaces, like tunnels or narrow streets. It takes close to 6 times the water to control EV vehicle fires.
And while it’s a more minor issue, EVs are heavier than ICE vehicles in the same class, which causes more road wear and more tire wear (and more micro plastics to enter the environment).
And, I guess, finally, there’s no established break-even point for carbon emissions over ICE vehicles. The estimates provided in the literature vary wildly–from 13,000 miles to 94,000.
I love the technology, but I hope solid state batteries become a viable option for EVs.
which causes more road wear and more tire wear (and more micro plastics
I’ll buy more tire wear and microplastics, but argue the reduction in carbon emissions still makes it a better choice. However I don’t think there’s a noticeable difference in road wear. We’ve all heard the claim that road wear increases dramatically with weight, but compared to large trucks, EVs are still in the category of “close to zero”
no established break-even point for carbon emissions over ICE vehicles. The estimates… vary wildly–from 13,000 miles to 94,000.
I once read an article that I wish I kept, that addressed this (for US) by calculating per state, based on each state’s typical energy portfolio. While you’d really need your local energy portfolio, state level really improved accuracy and gave something you could use.
West Virginia and Wyoming really stood out. As the two states still getting most of their electricity from coal the break-even is further out - I think it was as long as 14 years typical driving. Don’t buy an EV yet if you live in those states, unless you have solar.
Several states with more renewables or nuclear, had break-even as low as 2 years typical driving.
For most of us, the breakeven is low enough to consider the switch. It’s important to remember that electricity generation is getting cleaner all the time, even in Wyoming, so it’s quite likely the break-even point will move toward you over the years of owning a vehicle
And while it’s a more minor issue, EVs are heavier than ICE vehicles in the same class, which causes more road wear and more tire wear (and more micro plastics to enter the environment).
Easy solution is to move to Indiana. Our environment means that almost every day from November through April, the temperatures will be in the 30s-50s in the day and 10-20 at night, so the pavement is constantly cracking. Combine that with the lack of investment in infrastructure (Indy literally has a ban on new streetlights and stop lights going back to the 80s) and it doesn’t matter how heavy the car is, the pavement will be just as broken.
By this logic, we would have never moved from horses… which may have actually been a good thing hehehe
Those drawbacks are endlessly discussed online, to a ridiculous degree. Nothing is universally better, but EVs are almost as close as it gets. If there weren’t several whole industries dead set on preventing adoption they would have been adopted much quicker.
Trying to convince people not to burn gas will make them feel gaslit lmao
But remember, electric motors also require next to no maintenance and can last for many years of runtime. Pros and cons.
“On the other hand gas has a much higher energy density than batteries and a much faster refuel rate.”
This comic is clearly about lawn mowers people. Who discusses cars when wearing a hat like that?
He is not wrong, but he is not adressing the actual criticism of electric vehicles, so it is kind of pointless.
And what exactly is the criticism of electric vehicles according to you?
Different for many people. For us it is that we live in an urban area parking on the street and charging it, even with the faster chargers nowadays, just doesn’t fit into our schedule. We’d have to cut working hours if we’d want to get an EV. But other people have other problems with them
Luckily me and the children can completly get around by public transportation, scooters and bicycles. My wife cannot (for now at least). So, at least we only have one car for the 4 ouf us.
But I already know that you’ll belittle out problems and come up with half assed solution (yes I know we can charge while shopping, but we walk to the supermarket). I had this discussion often with EV fanatics. Please spare me.
“I can’t charge at home” should be an easy way to shut down an EV evangelist. That should be a “get out of conversation free” card.
I say that as an EV evangelist myself, and I lived a few years in a condo with an EV and no EV charging in the garage (and adding charging was going to be cost prohibitive if even possible at all due to already crowded infrastructure). It sucked and ain’t nobody got time for that.
Even being unable to charge at home has solutions.
Like when they upgraded the street lights in London to LED, while also incorporating a charger.
Yeah, but that is only in London and only 1300 street lights. Once they’ve done 10+ million of those in the whole of the UK this might get interesting. And it will still be much more expensive to habe an EV for people who cannot charge at home.
Sadly they haven’t even started with that here in Germany. And tbh, I am quite annoyed by this. They keep blowing money into the assess of suburbanites, but completly ignore urban people. Thus subsidizing infrastructure wasting sprawling even more.
As the owner of a Bolt, the only significant criticism is range (mine’s a 2020, gets ~180mi comfortably on the interstate) and charging rate (2020 bolts are limited to 50 kW, so kinda specific). Not great for road trips, but otherwise fantastic. As for electric fires… yeah I wasn’t gonna be able to put that out anyway so the firefolk have it either way.
That is more of a criticism of the Bolt.
There are other electric cars on the market that get 2 ton3 times the range and 4 or 5 times the charging rate.
If you charge at home, it is already possible to have an electric vehicle where “refueling” is something you just don’t worry about 98% of the time. You just drive and the car goes as far as you want to go before you get home again. For longer trips, charging can happen in as little time as it takes to grab a bite, hit the washroom, and stretch your legs. You often have multiple charge stations to choose from so it is easy to pick one next to the amenities you want ( like food ).
Range anxiety” is becoming more something you need to worry about in your gas vehicle if you let the tank get low and are about to get on a highway where the next station is not for a while.
It is, definitely. We own our home and leave it on the level 1 charger all the time. It gets us around the metro just fine, no long commutes so it’s great for us. And as someone mentioned somewhere around here, a longer charge time isn’t necessarily bad if you’re the only driver on long trips. I’m honestly more worried about having to stop in areas with only a couple chargers (Midwest here) and some asshole vandalizing them and leaving me stranded. But that’s a concern that pops up once or twice a year at best. And the various charger apps are pretty good a letting you know they’re down.
I do the same, metro commuting and a short trip to visit family (~50 miles each way) every couple weeks or so. I don’t even have to plug in every time I get home, I only need to make sure I am charged up at least to 75% for the family visit. Level 1 charging is more than sufficient, I’ve only ever used a charging station just to see what it’s like and try to use up some credit I got for them through my dealership.
For those without EVs: level 1 charging is just plugging into a standard 120V outlet. I have no special equipment at home, though I did need to confirm my breaker could handle it. For my 2023 Bolt EUV I charge about 1% per hour on the reduced charge setting (8 amps). If I do need to charge a little faster I can swap it to 12 amps, but I typically don’t need to do that.
Yeah I rented a Mustang Mach-E and drove between Houston, Austin, Dallas, and back to Houston, without very much charger anxiety. And not being confined to a slow charger…except on the way back to the airport. The first charger I found was a slow charger and all the fast ones were occupied. But still had plenty of charge to find the next station and get it high enough to return
They still are…cars. We don’t need no more cars on our streets. Yeah, they could help to replace some old combustion cars but they still are worse than public transport and bicycles.
I think people should consider an EV when it comes time for them to buy a new car.
I think most people should buy used cars, if only because new cars are almost always a bad financial decision
New-to-them I mean, but yes, I agree. New cars depreciate stupidly quick.
We found the Dad with 4 kids that works 50 km from home. Get that man a bicycle.
you think too American!
Some of us are Americans and have to live with these constraints…
And some of us aren’t :) the meme is globally speaking.
I’m all for efficient public transports in downtown, I use them daily myself, but people on suburbs won’t really see a benefit to this.
On the other hand, just switching to electric is a nice start, otherwise we won’t be able to live much longer.
Especially people in suburbs would benefit from public transport and suburbs built for walk ability and cycling.
That’s the problem, only switching the transportation method isn’t enough, there’s a whole infrastructure behind that needs to be built.
In most city centers you can kinda refurbish pre-existing systems, but in suburbs you need to build from scratch, and the distances are way bigger which imposes another challenge.
Don’t get me wrong, im all for it, but we need to acknowledge these problems first.
Suburbs are intentionally designed to not be walkable.
To get to the neighbor behind my house, without cutting anybody’s yard, I have to walk about a mile. We aren’t far. His daughters play with my sons through our shared fence.
And that’s a modest example. Plenty of cul de sacs that are “close” to the main street, as a crow flies but a lot further if you’re an East Asian Chinchilla Monkey running as fast as you can.
Love it or hate it, they aren’t intentionally designed not to be walkable, they’re intentionally designed to discourage traffic from driving through them.
The reason communities like yours and the one behind your house aren’t connected is to reduce the amount of cars driving down your block. To make it safer for your kids to play outside.
Correct. It can be done though. Getting stores and stuff into suburbs would help already, assuming we’re talking us style ones.
Are you sure that the rules here allow reasonable comments like this?
Yeah, unfortunately the Levitt-town style of suburbs (which are all that’s allowed to be built nowadays) are largely incompatible with public transport. We need to fix zoning laws to allow pre-war style suburbs to be built again to make public transport feasible. And all of this will take awhile to fix
If an electric car catches on fire you can’t put it out.
I live in a city where electric vehicles are at least 10% of the cars on the road. I have yet to see an electric vehicle fire, even on the news.
You are accurate. What are the practical consequences?
Gas station fires are devastating. I have not seen one of those locally either so I am not selling my gas guzzler to prevent gas station fires. There are bigger problems.
I have yet to see an electric vehicle fire, even on the news.
100% and you know the first time it happens is going to be super covered too because of the potential for “controversy”.
I’m certain that I won’t be able to put out an ice engine either. That’s fire people territory and I trust them to know their business.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing they rarely catch fire compared to combustion engine cars then.
Source?
Etc etc
Interesting, just read the guardian article, I do think that probably if the ICE fires are less reported that does mean their less bad. But regardless yeah, that is interesting
That’s true for a petrol or a diesel vehicle too.
Real answer: power density. Pound for pound, gas still contains more energy than our best batteries. The weight of energy storage is still a massive deal for anything that cannot be tethered to a grid or be in close practical proximity for frequent recharging, from rockets, planes and cars (sometimes) to chainsaws and lawnmowers (sometimes).
Is this a joke I’m not getting, or just a statement?
The reason I’m pretty much undecided about EVs is the rare metals in the batteries. The pollution by gathering and the inhumane treatment of the workers who extract these resources. I’m still hoping for better alternatives in the energy storage medium
I think of the mining issues somewhat like nuclear power. That mining is also very problematic and destructive to the environment. However in both cases, it’s a relatively small amount. Even if the local environmental or social cost is higher, it is such a small amount of material that the overall cost is still lower.
Also, consider supply and demand. Every article talking about how bad. The mining is, mentions how there’s reasons more developed countries don’t do it. Recent years have seen several announcements of newly discovered resource in the US, for example. Will they be mined, despite higher worker safety and environmental protection? One way to encourage this is higher demand, raising the price enough to drive their profitability
Fwiw mining and manufacturing isn’t as bad as some people want you to believe.
About 40% of lithium comes from brine extraction. There’s a lot of lithium in the ground which are dissolved in brine - a super salty solution of minerals and water. They’re extracted by allowing the water to evaporate into the atmosphere and then retrieving the minerals from that.
While that “wastes” a lot of water, none of that water was usable in the first place. It’s too salty for humans and would kill any plants or fish if used for crops or dumped respectively.
Another 60% comes from normal hard rock mining. This is as environmentally friendly as most mining is.
A small portion - about 2% - comes from clay mining. This is actually rather bad for the environment and results in a lot of atmospheric pollution. Fortunately, it’s a small shrinking portion of total mining.
The other main minerals in li-ions are cobalt, manganese, and lithium.
A large amount of cobalt comes from artisanal mining in the Congo. Artisanal is just a fancy term that means it’s not work being performed by a company at a dedicated mine, but on a small scale such as a single person digging an area and collecting it or a handful of people who run their own mine. Unfortunately, though, we know that slave and child labor are used at a large portion of these mines.
Fortunately, there has been a large push to move to more sustainable mining practices. Some Congo miners have allowed outside observers to verify that all miners are adults working of their own volition.
Other countries such as Cuba and Indonesia have begun mining cobalt and are also following minimum employment practices. As a side benefit, these mines are also the main sources for nickel which reduces the number of mines we need.
Manganese is rather interesting. The current extraction process involves using natural gas to separate the components. However, there are nodules on the ocean floor which are rich in manganese. While these would produce less pollution to process, there are worries that removing the nodules would cause irreparable harm to the local environment.
However, even if your batteries were mined in the most harmful method possible and your power comes from the dirtiest plant of all time, the long term emissions are still much better than driving the most fuel-efficient ICE over the same time period.
They’re still working on this. I’ve more or less been holding my breath on the battery tech.
I want to see, either easily recycled materials that are common (sodium cells seem to fit here), or batteries that last the useful life of the vehicle and beyond (solid state batteries are a good example here). I don’t really care which.
Cheap sodium based batteries, with adequate recycling technology would be a fine solution. Alternatively, even fairly “expensive” (in terms of rare metals) solid state batteries, would also be fine, since a single set of batteries may survive over several vehicles, depending on what solid state batteries can do when they finally hit the mass market.
I just don’t want to have to replace the battery at nearly the cost of a whole ass new EV, well short of the useful life of the rest of the vehicle. Either the battery cost and environmental impact comes down, or we remove the need to replace the batteries with a version that lasts as long or longer than the rest of the vehicle.
I like EVs. I want an EV. I don’t want to buy the current EVs on the market.
Also, if any vehicle designers are reading this, can we cut the shit where anything hybrid or EV looks ridiculous? IMO, a big reason why Tesla was so successful, is that they made it into a car. The model S, though unique in design, isn’t a significant departure from pretty much every other sedan, in terms of design. Compare with something like the Prius, which is generally only a funny looking hatchback, or the Volt… Which also looks pretty dumb IMO. Just give me a regular car.
… Okay, the Prius and Volt probably aren’t the best examples. I’ll put a better one here… The BMW i3. Just… What the hell.
There will always be a better choice on the horizon, but you can’t let that into delaying forever. Batteries in use right now are better the environment, even when judging by the entire lifecycle, and if sodium batteries happen, they are farther off than you’re likely to keep your vehicle. It does not pay to keep pushing it off
It pays for me to push it off. I own my car and I’m not really using it. So I pay very little in fuel and maintenance because the vehicle sits in my driveway most days.
I can afford to wait.
When the day comes that my vehicle is no longer viable, then I’ll consider my options. For now, I’m happy to sit on my hands. I work from home, and the only time I get in the car is for rare site visits for work or occasional leisure activities, like grocery shopping or running other errands.
When that time comes, I’ll have to consider if I even still need a vehicle or if my SO and I should just share one.
All concerns for the future. I’m excited to see what happens with sodium and solid state over the next decade, and I have no problem waiting to see before I make any decisions about my needs. Hopefully we get some progress before I have to make that decision. I spend so little time in the car right now that it would be a shame to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a newer vehicle for it to sit in my driveway.
Let’s not forget that EVs are heavier than their ICE equivalent classes of vehicle, meaning they use more energy. Which is a problem because a) they store ever so much less energy, and b) they’re ever so much less energy-efficient. So you need more energy to move them, and charging inefficiency mounts on top of that, but hey, at least you have shorter range!
EVs are not what is going to save the environment. Indeed depending on your source of electricity (most of the world still uses fossil fuels to generate electricity, recall!) you could well be making things worse by switching to an EV.
You know what will save the environment? Ending personal automobile ownership and instead beefing up public transportation.
This is just incorrect. Lol. While I agree with the ending. EV aren’t the solution to climate change. EVs are a lot cleaner than ICE and use less energy.
EVs do not use more energy than gasoline cars, that’s nonsense. The best ICE engine is ~40% efficient plus the losses from braking. Battery electric is closer to 80%. They are only around 10-15% heavier.
BuT tHaTs SoCiAliSm!
Actually, piston engines are really bad a torque. It’s why they need a flywheel or a large amount of pistons.
Steam engines are ‘piston engines’ and they are pretty torquey, even at low rpm.
Someone has to build quite a few more power stations though. Assuming you’re talking about swapping a large fraction of the car fleet to EV, not just a few here and there. That’s a substantial increase in total electricity demand. Enough to radically impact the load on the grid.
And if you end up burning natual gas / coal to meet the marginal increase in demand - as would seem fairly likely - then much of the thermal conversion losses you’re saving in the higehr efficieny motor just get shifted to the furnace in the power station and transmission/distribution system; so that can erode some of the efficiency benefits.
I guess you could require for every new EV that they also install roftop solar PV and basically buy a spare battery of near same capacity as the car. that might push the up front and periodic replacement cost a bit though - quite nice for the running costs i guess.
Another good alternative is to try to convince people to get together and share their electric motors in things callled trains and do as many trips in those as possible - that’s not too popular with most people unless the road congestion is really bad. Something to do with sharing being communism i think,
