Not owning a personal vehicle is only okay if you live in the heart of a city and don't go outside of that little bubble. All other scenarios massively benefit from a personal vehicle; even going from one side of a city to another.
Not owning a personal vehicle is only okay if you live in the heart of a city …
Like most people in the western world (and indeed likely in most of the world) do.
… and don’t go outside of that little bubble.
Because rental of smaller vehicle services (like taxis, etc.) is totally not a thing.
The problem here is that you have the American disease (even if you're not American). You're so infused with the cultural insistence that there's only one way to do things … the way things are done now … that you literally cannot conceive of a life without cars (or guns, or with public health care). Despite this being, you know, the norm for most of the world.
Im sorry but how else do you drive 2 hours into the middle of the woods where there are no other people around so you can get away from godawful society for a while if not owning your own car? Im certainly not going to pay someone else to drive me out to a favorite low/no traffic spot just to show everyone where it is and then ruin it.
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.
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".
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
I know it’s mostly better but it’s not feasible yet where I live. 1) more expensive.. I mean I already typed all the things once
Wait tho why do I have a feeling like we are arguing even though we just repeat our own experiences? It’s all cool, some place electric cars are viable elsewhere they aren’t. I hope they will become feasible here where I live (middle eu)
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Cool but they sound like shit. No aesthetics in evs. You don't feel connected to the car. Don't feel the engagement. But hey, cars are all about stats, right, right??
Edit: ok so I get downvoted for having a differing opinion from the majority of Lemmy users here. I'm wrong in saying that EV engines sound like shit?PLEASE one downvoter, explain to me how such a statement deserves a downvote?
Majority of you probably just use your car as a means of transportation. I don't. I also drive to have fun. That's also why I never drive automatic as it is (to me) more engaging and challenging with a manual gear box. Let me give you another example: weight. EVs are heavy, always. I don't like heavily cars because I don't find them enjoyable to drive on small roads.
Please understand that there is more to the world of cars than numbers.
being on a track and being able to hear what my tires are doing, individually, in the absence of engine and exhaust (and intake) noises, is a pretty cool level of connectedness and engagement.
Fair enough. Do you do track days yourself? I would love to learn more about what I can from listening to my tires.
Still, no engine noise.
I'm not a EV hater, just saying that there are more to cars than 0-100km/h stats and range. And to me, most of these aesthetic qualities are lost with EVs. The only EV that looks interesting from a aesthetics point of view is the inonic 5 n, imho.
Two track days in my Taycan - one at Portland International Raceway, and one at Pacific Raceways.
One rallycross event at Dirtfish in a Fiesta ST
Two day AWD rally racing instruction at Dirtfish (their owm WRX STI sedans)
Several track days in a Cayman at Pacific Raceways and one at The Ridge
And awhile back, track days and autocross in RX-8 and Genesis Coupe. Even a winter autocross in the RX-8 once, which was interesting and challenging.
I totally agree that driving cars for enjoyment which have engaging qualities like three pedals can be that much more enjoyable. And I agree that the Ioniq 5 N offers a really compelling feature for folks like us in their simulated gears - I REALLY wanna try that and I hope the concept spreads to other sporty EVs!
Edit: to answer the start of your post, I can hear which tires are losing grip, which can mean a whole bunch of things, like if the fronts are squealing in a corner I could lift off a tiny bit to shift weight forward and give them more grip, or remember to brake earlier before I hit that same turn on the next lap. Nothing I don't already intuit from steering wheel feedback and the "butt feel" of inertia, but it's another dimension of that awareness
how does that matter if the drive by wire has force feedback.
people argued over fly by wire in planes when it started emerging, how it was taking the safe controllable mechanical link away or whatever, but ultimately it has proven its safety and reliability over mechanical linkages anyway
I'm not disagreeing that it's better but I just prefer the direct feel of hydraulic steering. It's the primary reason I drive a 15 year old BMW and refuse to get something newer haha
I've tried the new models but the feel just isn't there
Lemmy user base will not understand your comment but yes, I will miss the roar of an engine in the future, and the ability to feel the road through the steering wheel. EVs are simply not fun nor interesting even though I can't deny they are 'better'
Nope. Hoped Lemmy would be better but it's just like reddit: disagree -> downvote....apparently. I thought up/down voting was supposed to help filter out bad contributions, not silence people with opinions that are different from your own.
We agree.
True but 'better' in what ways? EVs are, as you know, extremely heavy. Is this better or worse? If you don't have a car that you like to drive for the sake of driving, then it might not matter. If you are like me and like to fun on small roads then you might hate heavy cars because of the handling. Most EV lovers don't understand such things because they have a car for the purpose of transportation, not for the purpose of "the drive". Maybe bad generalization but I have yet to meet a person who have had as much fun in an EV as in a more traditional sport oriented car.... Except for the ionic 5 n, but I think there's a novelty factor involved here.
If I only needed my car for transportation, the I would buy an EV, but only because of the reduced fuel costs.
I mean weight is a huge issue too just due to safety. I drove my buddies model Y recently and it felt extremely nimble, probably due to the center of gravity being so good thanks to the batteries
But you can still feel how heavy the vehicle is and I imagine crashing into one would fucking hurt. I mean my GMC Sierra is lighter, it's absurd really
Pros and cons as with everything in this world. Great to hear that you had a good time in the model Y. Thanks for letting me know that I'm not all alone with these not-lemmy-approved comments
I agree that the EV aesthetics suck. Half of them are crossovers which I hate, and the other half are pretty boring - where is my EV in the form factor of a Miata or a Camaro? They made a Mustang EV, but for some absolutely baffling reason neither of the Mustang EVs look like a goddamn Mustang. I get that aerodynamics are important, but I would gladly eat a reduction in max range in order to drive something that looks good or handles better.
As for the sound of the EV engine, I actually like the "whirr" that they make before you get up to speed and it gets drowned out by the tires rolling and wind rushing. It sounds like the future.
"But if my car doesn't massively contribute to noise pollution and wake up half the neighborhood when I touch the gas pedal, how will I know I have a penis?"
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.
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
An ICE hybrid is a gas car with a little electric motor shoehorned inside.
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:
Car manufacturers are geared to produce ICE cars, and reserve the electric drivetrain capacitry for profitable luxury vehicles first.
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.
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.
No I’m with you and have always kind of wished that’s the direction more EVs would have gone. I have a minivan for all the shit going on with kids and I love it but I have to drive six hundred miles half a dozen times a year so they can visit their mom. I higher range EV that I can refill with gas would be a game changer. Instead I got an electric golf cart that is street legal I use for the majority of my local commuting so I only drive the minivan a few times a week. I was really just being a turd because your first comment said 3 HP and the next one said 5 HP.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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 ….
so my sisters Mazda MX-30 has more HP than my uncles Peterbilt 389? cool, I'll use it to haul my horse trailer. define "more powerful". Makes the point but XKCD usually does better.
I hear this complaint a lot about charging times, but for 99.99% of people they are never in a single day going to drive beyond their cars range, meaning even a standard level 1 slow charger over night at home can manage their entire car usage.
It's only people doing long distance road trips that have to worry, and that's by far a minimum. Instead of boosting gas cars for that we could be looking at investing in rail so people don't have to make the longer trips in a car anyway.
Not only that, people going on those long trips are going to be looking for something to eat in a similar time frame that their EV takes to fully discharge. It takes EVs about 15-20 minutes to get from 0-80% charge. That's less time than it takes to sit down and eat at a restaurant
I rarely go inside restaurants to eat on a long trip. I grab a burger and wolf it down and go again. I eat the fries while I'm driving and they're gone in an instant, and i'm still going.
This is incredibly short sighted. I usually bring my own food on a long trip because I dislike stopping or buying crappy food. I eat while driving on long road trips because I have a schedule and want to get where I'm going. My gas car gets double the range of an electric car, so I'm stopping less often as well. I'm often in places where getting gas or food isn't within an hour's drive, and almost none of those places have the ability to charge a vehicle anyway.
Look, everyone has different use cases. I think electric cars for the in-city drive around town use case are great, and we should continue to encourage their use. I'm just saying that for wider adoption we're going to have to solve the charge rate, range, and charger accessibility issues.
And for about 50% of Americans, they don't have a place to plug in an electric car at night. It's only people above a certain level of wealth who have the luxury of their own parking space with a charger.
For the rest of us, we must take time out of our day to sit in a grocery store parking lot while the car charges.
EVs generally have adapters that allow you to plug into a standard home outlet, it's just significantly slower to charge to full due to the lower amperages. And even if you only have 1 plug in your garage, it's not hard or expensive to add more.
The only real hurdle for that is if you rent a house and aren't allowed to make those easy changes
99.99% of people they are never in a single day going to drive beyond their cars range, meaning even a standard level 1 slow charger over night at home can manage their
You're saying 1 in 10,000 people will never drive more than ~200 miles in a single day? What country is that statistic for? Source?
I love the idea of rail, but it doesn't work in large spread out countries like where I live. Sure cities can be connected, and we should definitely do that, but the idea that I could get to all the natural and wild places I love in this beautiful country by taking mass transit is impossible.
The point is that, for most journeys, you just charge at home overnight. It's rare to plug in and wait for it to charge. With petrol / gas, you always have to wait
I don't know what to do with you people.... We both have 5km range left. You plug in the cable juice and I plug in the gas to refuel. Who leaves the station first?
So your electric car has more range than a similarly sized gas car? Unlikely.
Given both vehicles start at "full", drive until you have low range left. Now talk about convenience of filling up in the middle of nowhere, or when in a hurry.
Is this use case common for everyone? Definitely not, but I run into it a few times a month.
So you admit you are talking about edge cases. This is why no-one cares what you think. You are arguing for slower, less efficient, more polluting vehicles just cos it'll save a few minutes on a long run. Get outta here. Jokes.
I'm talking about millions of occurrences of this edge case a day.
I'm not sure what you're trying to fight. I said multiple times that we should continue to encourage and expand our use of electric vehicles. But to blindly fanboy electric cars without being able to honestly admit that we have some improvements to make just makes you stupid and smug.
They don't mention it in the video because they could get in trouble but best estimates for how long they had been driving 360 miles for is 5 hours and on the Porsche it shows a drive time of ten hours. That's well into take a proper break from driving time. 45mins every 4.5hrs for a total of 9 is considered safe with some extra hour extensions.
"when you are empty, and you have to drive right away, its faster to refuel your car with petrol"
My relatives dont have a charger at home, they just plug their car into an outlet, and get ~40km range over night. That more than enough for the daily commute.
And my relatives don't have personal parking spots.
Poor people's time gets no respect, because the rules are made by rich people with tons of time conveniences and they just aren't conscious of how the other half lives.
They ban our shopping bags, failing to realize that for someone with a car and a garage, a disposable plastic shopping bag doesn't have much utility over re-usable bags, or dispsable paper bags. But for a person with no car and no garage, a disposable plastic shopping bag means they can carry like three in each hand and walk miles home in foul weather.
And if you want to just bring bags with you in advance, you gotta carry them with you all day.
It's doable, don't get me wrong. But it's more of a hassle. And the amount of hassle that it adds is far greater for poor people.
I rent a car for Uber. I'm working up to buying a car, but until I do I have to rent. Uber has decreed that all rentals must be electrics. To save the planet. The electrics cost about $100 more per week to rent than the gas cars did, and as a poor person I can't charge them at home because all I have is street parking.
This means that every day I work driving for Uber, I have to stop about once a day to charge the car. So that's about $25 a day I'm losing to charge instead of refuel my vehicle, so $125 a week I'm losing and then the other $100 per week it costs because it's a special car, I'm losing $225 per week due to this decision.
So I'm doing my part, but unwillingly. And I strongly, strongly suspect that the people who made this decision at Uber, that their contribution to climate action was going to come out of my cut, didn't think the cut would be so big because they live in houses or in fancy apartment buildings with chargers.
I just feel like nobody talks about how time poor poor people are. We lack time just as much as we lack money, and when we get new rules imposed on us that take up more of our time to comply with, the people creating the rules don't realize how must time it's costing us, because their own lives are relatively time rich. Many of the forms of their wealth come in the form of time conveniences, and those change the equation. They think the electric car's hassle consists of having to charge it occasionally on long trips, because they have a home charger.
Just across the board, we need to be aware of the time cost of these changes, and also to be aware that the time cost is often many times higher for poor people than it is for middle class people.
Overnight isn't "right away".
"I have to get to y right away!" "Sure! I'll just charge the car and you can leave tomorrow!".
Listen, I'm not saying that EVs are shit but they are currently not my cup of tea. It's just all this BS. Of course it's faster to refuel a car with petrol than to charge a battery. Would you also deny that it's faster for me to fill up a glass of water than you charging your phone?
I ENVY the great fuel economy that EV owners get. This sucks for petrol cars.
Lv 1 charges are pretty shitty...takes my car about 12 minutes to get a mile-worth of charge on a 120v. I could still make it through a week of commuting doing that, but my range was a little lower each day until the weekend when I didn't have to commute. That being said, I ponied up for a 220v outlet in the garage, and the Lv 2 charging is much better. Takes about 15 minutes to recharge from a days-worth of driving (usually 30-40 miles between work and running the kids around to all their activities).
How much did the 220 outlet and the L2 charger cost to put in? Was it a turnkey thing from an electrician or something or were you able to do it yourself?
I had to get an electrician to come run the 220 line for me because I don't trust myself with high voltage electrical work. Bought the charger itself on Amazon for around $300. I installed that part myself. Wasn't too hard, basically jist mounted the converter to the wall and plugged it in.
Driving to work 110 miles a day meant I had to get gas once per week, driving out of my way, stopping to get gas cost me 500 minutes per year as opposed to the two seconds to plug in at home. Totally a no brainer. I HATED stopping for gas on the way home from work at 11 in the evening, or whatever hour really. I think of people tied to ICE engines the way people were tied to outhouses a hundred years ago.
My EV sits in the driveway and soaks up excess production from my PV setup.
My main problem is it's never really empty enough.
If I'm on the road, a high voltage DC charger gets me from 10% to 50% in about 10 minutes. Barely enough time for a coffee and a leak, then it's another 2 hours of driving. Rinse, repeat.
Sure, you can't barrel down the Autobahn for 10 hours straight without stopping but who wants that?
I make a 9-10 hour drive to see my family multiple times a year. I normally stop twice to get gas and use the bathroom, and that's it. Sounds like you'd be adding most of an hour to my travel time each way. I've tried stopping longer and grabbing food, it's not worth it for me.
With that said, I drive 25-40 miles a day the other 360+ days of the year, so it'd really make much more sense for me to have a short range EV and rent something for travel when I have too much luggage to fly.
But much better for the environment, sometimes others matter more and when more people use rail it's more likely our country will catch up and build hyper train networks.
I'm glad you think I can afford to triple my rent, but that's not happening.
Edit: If you mean the road trip scenario, my family works in various different industries, and the opportunities are better in different cities. That's also not happening.
I do. We have family that we visit a few times each year. If I leave at 2am and drive straight through, we get there in 7-8 hours. If I make the drive during the day, it takes 10-13 hours.
Some real examples that are specific to the trip I take:
There is no rail service that goes there. It would be a combo of trains and busses that takes significantly longer and costs more than the gas.
Our dog comes with us, generally isn't allowed on mass transit, and the much longer trip would stress her out if she was.
There is little to no mass transit in the town they live in to get around once we arrive so we'd end up borrowing or renting a car anyway.
With limited amounts of time off, making the trip overnight adds a full day of getting to see our family to the trip.
The only other realistic means of getting there is flying but, I enjoy driving and hate everything about air travel. It's a pretty cheap flight for one person but becomes more expensive once you add in the rest of the family and the dog can't come.
Why on earth do you get down votes? This is the truth. Downvoters just straw man argue pointing out that 'just charge your car at home', which isn't the matter of discussion. There isn't even a discussion to be had - it is faster to refuel a car than recharge. Might this matter to you? Maybe, maybe not.
That just isn't true, you just said you could ride a train. You choose not to, that's a big difference.
But saying rail is significantly slower you narrow your nationality to maybe 5 major nations one happens to be significantly more represented on Lemmy. The "need" to drive safe over reaction to the guess means I'm almost certainly correct. Am I not?
Tbf to the guy you're responding to, getting the extra 2-3 days of PTO necessary to take the train may also be a contributing factor. There's a hidden work reform issue baked into this that also needs addressing.
An optional "profession" that steals money from qualified taxis and is also super abusive towards its employees. That's not an excuse, that's an explanation an kinda of a bad one at that.
An optional "profession" that steals money from qualified taxis
It's not stealing if it doesn't take it out of their wallet. Maybe the issue is instead the expensive restrictions on becoming a taxi driver? Or the virtual monopoly many taxi companies have. Or just that almost always a taxi is a worse experience.
That's literally what it does. Taxis didn't have monopoly, they have a licensed job specifically because unlicensed taxis were dangerous and people at the time were getting shanghaied.
Radio is licensed to transmit at certain levels on certain frequencies, Spotify does not transmit in open air.
Point to where I said it was happening. I said taxis were licensed because of crazy shit like rapists driving people to word places and having at. You don't get that with Uber.
You suggested it as if from my interpretation it was a problem with Uber. If not, what is? And again, how's it any more theft than CDs stealing from record manufacturers
It is, no one checks to see if your driver is a multiple murderer, serial rapist and yes for reference incidents of rape from unlicensed taxis such as Uber and Lyft and much much higher than with medallioned taxis.
This is a bit inaccurate. What about truck drivers? They are extra shitty then. But they wouldn't be extra shitty if they didn't deliver your Charmin to Costco for you to purchase.
Short range point to point trucking (day trucking) is necessary, pretty much any other truckload is better taken by rail both faster and cheaper in countries other than the US because oil companies didn't intentionally kneecap American rail.
If it’s not a concern for my phone, why should it be for my vehicle? It is so nice never having to go to a local gas station, when all I need to do is plug in at night
To be fair the comic said nothing of batteries. Case in point: there are "gas engines" that are basically a generator connected to an electric motor because it's more efficient than just using an ICE. The generator is optimized for small constant torque and the electric motor delivers as much torque as the system demands.
Probably easier than thawing the gasoline in the ice engine, which freezes at -40. And your diesel generator won't run either unless you kept it plugged in to keep the fuel from turning to gel (that process starts at -10).
Edit: downvote me all you want, it won't make electric cars charge any faster, have any more range, be any more affordable, work any better in the cold, or be any more fixable by their owners.
No I get it. Electric cars are definitely cool and have advantages, but also have some disadvantages that this just kind of ignores to make a gotcha moment
Generators, fans, boats, planes, lawnmowers (sit on and push), strimmers, powered dumpers, diggers etc etc. if you Google it you'll probably find more.
I hope the prices keep falling here in the US as well. Right now they're pretty much all as expensive as more luxurious cars, and the ones that are affordable kinda suck.
one of the major reasons is that new cheap evs cant compete with used premium ones, hence the desire to develop a cheap EV, at least in the states, is economically prohibitive.
basically because of how picky people are, especially with budget cars, the risk of devlopment on them are extremely high. Make the wrong cut and youre suddenly a bankrupt company
Just did a quick eBay check. The cheapest 350hp ICE I could find was a rebuilt $3,000 Chevy engine. A new one is more like $6-8k. An equally powerful, brand new Siemens motor was $1,500.
This makes sense when you think about it though. An electric motor is basically just steel with a bunch of coiled wire with some control electronics. An ICE is hundreds of pounds of precision cast and machined metal. The cost driver in electric vehicles is not the motor, it's the batteries.
Read it closely. It's making fun of petrol heads who try to justify keeping gas engines. Electric power plants are way more efficient, generates more torque and horsepower in a smaller package.
Then scroll this thread and you see all the same people doing the same thing.
That's really the only thing holding EV's back. If we can get away from lithium batteries and get something like graphene batteries (one can dream), range, recharge, etc. everything immediately get's better.
But electric engines are far superior.
Ev are awesome. Once they get to 1000 mile range I'm going to buy one. Work sends me to the sticks often, and I need 4x4 and can sometimes be 500 miles away from a charger
Time really, it takes me 5 minutes to fuel for 400 miles, it takes most ev owners much longer.
I work with a lot of EV I'm not just some hater. I wish they could charge faster or hold more range, I drive 1000 miles a week for work and can't spend 5 hours a week at a charger sadly.
Sometimes it's 500 miles in a day. And in rural zones
My home won't allow for fast charging. Nor can I afford to replace my reliable vehicle with an ev that won't have the other features I need (a bed, ground clearance, 4x4, etc)
Your home doesn't need to charge fast. Just charge overnight. In Europe, after a few hours on a three phases plug your car will be full, after a night on a single phase as well. In the US, a night on an ordinary plug should give you enough range to do more than average stuff or at least get to the next fast charger.
To be honest, if you truly need a truck that's of course an issue as you picked the biggest status symbol of them all, which makes it the most expensive type of car. There are plenty EVs with AWD and some ground clearance, maybe check them out and consider a small trailer if you need to transport your stuff?
However, you seem to already have decided to dislike EVs, so I doubt you'd be enjoying it. If you're bent on hating something, chances are you'll find a reason to do so.
I'm not saying your truck in particular is a status symbol, I'm saying trucks are status symbols and therefore generally expensive. If you're in the US, it's hard to find something like a Honda Acty and you'll always pay for the machine to be oversized.
I'm also not saving EVs have no drawbacks at all. The drawbacks they have are, however, manageable. A car will always be a compromise, and the fact that electric cars have to be charged is something that can be dealt with.
So, I get where you're going, but first: it takes much longer, but I do it at home while I'm asleep, so that doesn't really count. It's more the opposite, I really enjoy not having to stop at gas stations anymore. You just never wake up to an empty car anymore.
Then, for longer trips, it obviously takes more time to recharge than to refuel. But as a family of five, we had breaks before we had an ev. Last time we made a longer trip, we picked up my inlaws and wanted to visit some other family members that were about one and a half charge stops away. We took three breaks because someone had to pee, someone was hungry or someone wanted whatever. If you're a flying sales person that that wants to drive 2000 km in a day it'll obviously be annoying. For anybody else that takes some reasonable stops along the way, I doubt it changes much. Just stop the car at a charger and grab a coffee at the next supermarket. Once you had that you can usually drive again.
You know, it actually does. Taking a 20 minute break every 3 hours doesn't hurt anybody badly. That's all it takes to no longer locally burn fossil fuels and reduce the emissions significantly. I get the problem that electric cars are too expensive and I understand that some people can't afford them. But this entitlement of "my precious 20 minutes that I can spend doing some situps or have a coffee are too much to ask from me, so I'd rather keep burning carbon" is just nonsense. People should walk more and bike more and use more trains. However, if none of that works, electric cars are a working alternative to produce much less carbon dioxide. But if a slight inconvenience of taking not even the recommended pauses while driving is already too much to ask, this planet is fucked I guess.
An interesting article about the Muskmelon, Tesla, and fuel cells. []https://energynews.biz/will-tesla-release-hydrogen-car/ (take the article with a spoonful of salt I think) It's perhaps another attempt at a pump and dump stock fraud as he does need money for twitter. But, I've seen a couple of these blurbs lately and I can't find where they originate from.
Even the ketamine wonder wants to sound like he thinks Tesla is going to abandon pure EVs and build and sell something with a hydrogen fuel cell evidently. If so,and you can't rule out it out completely yet, the ICE engine might not be done yet - just swapping a fuel source.
A fuel cell does not mean it's an ICE. It will still use an electric motor and probably even a small battery.
Hydrogen ICE exist, but are more complex and less efficient.
You could use Hydrogen to produce so-called e-fuels (we had a huge debate about them in Germany), but those can typically be used in normal ICE vehicels.
ICE with hydrogen has some racing applications, but that's about it. It's taking something that already has efficiency issues compared to batteries and making it even worse.
Fuel cells use hydrogen to generate electricity to spin a motor. There are issues with that, as well, but there's no future in ICE either way.
Personally, outside of some niche applications, I don't think fuel cells are going to replace EVs. The losses in efficiency are just to great in the conversion from water to hydrogen/oxygen gasses to electricity - unless someone figures out how to harness the energy released in a hydrogen bomb. But I wouldn't hold my breath for that. I do think that Tesla isn't as long for this world as Musk would have hoped for though. I personally hope he ends up broke and mocked as soon as possible. The world will be just a tiny bit better place IMO.
There's also expected future battery improvements to consider. We can't make a useful battery-powered airplane right now that could do passenger service from LA to Sydney. EV long haul trucking is also in its infancy at a barely feasible level for a limited number of cases. Then there's heavy construction equipment like cranes. All of which are cited as niches that hydrogen would be useful.
Thing is, our battery tech tends to improve--about 5-8% capacity by weight each year, at the higher end of that over the last few years. That's a doubling every 10-15 years. We're not at theoretical limits yet, money is still being pumped into both fundamental research and large scale deployment, and we have every reason to believe this trend will continue. That's going to squeeze out the niches where hydrogen is useful.
A fuel cell generates power through an electrochemical reaction, not combustion. So no, even if we went to hydrogen fuel cells, the ICE engine is done.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
xkcd
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