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).
A pound of dead battery doesn't help me when I'm camping 10km from the nearest access to the power grid. (There are actually powerlines not even a kilometre from my favourite campsite, but those are going to be measured in kV, and so aren't really useful to me.)
Now, if I had enough solar panels in a mobile setup, probably folding out of a trailer, I could make it work, but solar panels are expensive.
Sure, but even then there are plenty of cases where a solar panel doesn't make much sense either. If you're cutting down a tree in the woods, would you rather grab your gas-powered chainsaw out of your truck and cut down the tree, or grab your solar-powered chainsaw out of your truck, spend minutes setting up solar panels to pick up the small amount of sunlight which makes it to the forest floor, and then cut down the tree?
The point is there will always be a market for ICEs until there are batteries with competitive energy density to gasoline. You don't see solar- or battery-powered trains or construction/mining equipment because these things need huge amounts of energy to work, energy which can be easily stored in a fairly small fuel tank (which can be quickly topped off when necessary).
Absolutely, just like there's some things a horse can do that a car just can't.
I don't plan on buying a horse or needing to do those things, and I don't think the vast majority do either.
The end result is that there will still be ICEs in niche applications, but those who know how to operate them and the supply chains that currently make them cheap and dominant will slowly die off.
A dead battery is far worse than an empty jerry can, atleast the jerry can is light. Hell there are even some real nice collapsible ones and thats not even accounting for fuel bladders. Electric is useful but it is also rather rigid as well.
Electric car batteries have 270 Wh/kg (converts to 0.97 MJ/kg)
Gasoline has 46 MJ/kg
So the math here says electric gives you (0.97 * 77%) 0.75 MJ/kg output and gas gives you (46 * 30%) 13.8 MJ/kg output. Plus, as someone else said, spent gasoline no longer weighs you down.
I like the idea of electric, and I want to see it replace gas as soon as possible, but fair is fair.
And let's not forget that fueling your car requires a tank, a decently sized pump and 2 minutes of your time. A quick charge will hopefully charge your battery to 80% in 30 minutes, while giving you less km and running 300kW of power through hefty cables and big transformers, consuming the amount of energy that a family house consumes in a few days.
(And yes, battery manufacturing and disposal consume enormous amount of resources)
Electric and gas have different situations in which they shine. Gas/diesel engines are just a bunch of steel and some control chips, optimized in more thana century of technological development if we couls develop carbon neutral fuel, electric cars would not be needed. Unfortunately, it woulf be difficult to do at scale of current fuel consumption. More (electric, battery-less) public transport, less road goods transportation, more nuclear, electric for vehicles that move 100% of the time (delivery and logistic vehicles) and carbon-free fuel for other kinds of vehicles (personal transportation) is a good balance, in my personal, ignorant, armchair opinion.
The argument that I've heard is that electric cars aren't actually cleaner because of the pollution caused by mining the minerals required for the batteries.
I'm sorry but I'm too lazy to dig up links to back up my claim. But you are correct in that electric vehicles pollute far more being produced than combustion engine cars, however the electric vehicles gain that back over it's lifetime if your charge from mostly non-fossil sources. The figures I have read says that over the lifetime of a car, electrics output 70% less CO2 than combustion cars, and that includes the production of each of the cars.
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,
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.
liquid fuels still have to get from the ground -> refinery -> distribution -> gas station -> vehicle so there is transmission cost and loss there
"we can't immediately solve all of the problems so let's not do it" is a pretty bad take. Incremental progress is better than waiting for perfect which basically means never doing it.
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,
I 100% agree everywhere it's practical. Still, people are going to have to get to train stations somehow. Multi-modal transit could somewhat cover that, but some people would still practically have to drive. Convincing those people to only drive to the nearest station and not all the way to their destination is another challenge to solve.
I can see it making sense. If you're blind and you hear the sound of a waterfall approaching you, you're not going to immediately think "that's a car."
Not really. The cities across the world are introducing public chargers in lamp posts and at the kerb. While it is kind of an issue today, it won't be tomorrow.
Hopefully it won't be, but charging an electric car is still not a standard thing for apartment buildings to offer tenants. So, for the moment, that's a major reason for renters to not take the plunge.
My apartment block in London has underground parking with allocated chargers. There are multiple lamp post chargers over here and other types of chargers. So, for the moment it's already fine.
Unless you take road trips often having a place to charge is literally any random Outlet. You don't need a fancy dedicated fast charger if you drive less than 100 miles in a day. Think about how many hours your car is just sitting at home, it has that many hours to charge it doesn't matter if it charges in 1 and 1/2 hours or 9 hours as long as it gets charged
So even as a renter as long as you have any kind of outdoor outlet or garage you've got somewhere to charge
I'm not who you replied to, but you are assuming a lot of the living situations for millions and millions of people. I live in a building built in the 40s and only have street parking. I do have a pretty damn good public transit system at my disposal, though. That's within reach for my short travel needs today.
I have an EV and charge at home. I love it. That said, I've lived in tons of rentals in college and immediately after. Not one of them would've had a practical option to charge, even on a regular outlet.
When I rented I only had street parking. In that situation an electric car is just another thing to manage. If you've got a garage to park in, sure, even with a basic 220V outlet.
A 2 year old Polestar 2 with 12,000 miles just cost my buddy slightly less than $25k. You can't even get an Accord with that age and mileage that cheap these days! Hertz dumped a bunch of them on the market recently, they were too much fun to be a profitable rental so they're absurdly cheap right now
I myself recently went from a '19 car with 220k km to a '05 one with 460k km because I realized my car's getting driven so much recently, the depreciation is killing its' value. For context, in 2022 when I acquired the '19 car, it had 140k on it.
I'll have to do some wheel bearings, brake pads, belts and pulleys, etc, on the old beater, but all that is way cheaper than the depreciation on a newer car.
To be clear, I don't advocate most people do this, I already knew beforehand what the engine and transmission are capable of. And if need be, I'll even do engine repairs or get the transmission refurbished. The ONLY thing I'm afraid of is bodywork because I can't paint for shit lol
It's not all Kazakhstan either. I'm in Estonia and half of those "200k km" German cars that get imported here have had their odometer rewinded.
Oh, the charging station. Charging port I think would mean the port it plugs into on your car. Yeah, I guess that could be an issue, but it's not really something that needs to be considered by a consumer. The fact that you're much less likely to have mechanical issues I think more than makes up for the rare case of vandalism, which can happen to any piece of the infrastructure, for gas and electric.
It's an extremely unlikely situation, and the same thing can happen with an ICE. An ICE is, in fact, much more likely to experience mechanical failure. For either the solution is the same: you have to get towed.
Luckily if it's just needing a charge there are other options than a fast charge station. You can go to an RV park and get a faster than a regular outlet charge, or go somewhere with a regular power outlet and ask if you can use it. Either of those could require spending the night, depending on how much you need, but it is very unlikely to be required and they are possible.
Regarding battery degradation - I've owned my EV for 4.5 years now, and its battery is still at 93% of its original capacity. That equates to maybe 10 miles of range lost, from an original range of around 230 miles. At that rate, it'll still be giving usable range in 10, 15 years from now. It's even warrantied to keep over 75% of its original capacity for 8 years / 100,000 miles - if it fails to achieve this (likely due to some defect), it's replaced for free.
And when it does eventually need replacing, it can be recycled into something like a home storage battery - where the power demand is not as high, but still more than enough to power everything in your home for days. Meanwhile, the car can be upgraded to a brand new battery, which will likely last even longer.
Edit: In fact, I tell a lie - I did have to replace a battery on my EV recently. The 12v lead-acid battery, that ICE cars also rely on.
Well, mine has gone through 1 set of rear axle bearings,one stupid oem heater bypass pipe assembly thst i swapped out for a stainless steel replacement, and two propeller shafts
Electric vehicles a bad product for 95% of people right now. When is America just going to invest in public transportation.
Pouring billions of dollars widening highway widening projects and giving automotive companies a tax break to charge a premium on electric cars has always been idiotic.
Edit: I was never criticizing electric car owners nor do I care if it works for the specific use case of a small group of individuals. I'm glad some people are adopting a new technology for the sake of helping the environment(I don't care about individuals doing it for clout).
Most people can't even reasonably afford new cars and have an outlet to park next to at the end of the day so you're doing good so long as you plan to keep the car for at least 20,000 miles give or take to offset the carbon emissions of manufacturing the battery. Food and shelter is just more important.
Hybrids are a good stop gap until they dramatically improve battery technology and standardize parts. Plus there are plenty of used hybrids around and are just getting cheaper as more get released onto the market. Hybrids often get released at lower prices due to the cost of manufacturing battery packs.
The ability to reliably get to work and the super market shouldn't be restricted to the ones able to afford and maintain transportation but a basic right of all citizens.
What do you mean by bad for 95% of people? 95% of people drive less than 60 miles in a day. Which is something that can easily be recovered overnight with a standard 15 amp outlet not even a special dedicated charger they would have been fine with early electric vehicles much less what we have today
Pretty sure they're the type to think that if you live within a mile of someone else, any car is bad and every non-walking movement you make should be with public transit. Basically the fuckcars type.
(For the record, I get the frustration on the reliance of cars in everyday life. But the last mile problem is real and getting a practical transit option outside of moderately-sized cities is pretty much impossible)
How many of you guys live in a house you own and can install a fast charger or have reserved parking with even an outlet. How many charging stations are available on your routs. How many of those chargers don't get vandalized and the copper cables cut off with bolt cutters. How many of you guys can afford a typical EV and the cost of charging at a fast charger on your salary.
Most importantly how does it solve the issue of long distance travel, driving in cold weather with reduced range, and towing. If anyone read my post I said EVs are not ready for 95% of people yet.
Ok, so you are kinda dumb if you believe only 5% of people can pass through your scrutiny.
I charge at home. I'm fortunate enough to be a homeowner, but not top-5% fortunate. GM paid for my charger install when I bought the car, but if they hadn't it would've been about $1500 for a more complicated installation than average (circuit breaker panel is on the other side of the house). Even if I were stuck on a regular outlet, 10 hours of charging per day would get me about 35 miles nightly, or almost 13,000 miles per year. Which is about average. All that means I don't need to care about local charging, and neither do others in a similar situation to me (which, again, is not 5% of people)
The car itself (Chevy Bolt EUV) was about $35K new with bells and whistles included. That has since gone down significantly, especially on a used car. Charging cost is a laughable concern - when I charge at home, it's like paying $1/gallon for gas so I'm coming out ahead there. Happy to show you the math there. Fast charging on a road trip is a lot more expensive, but I rarely use it. I don't miss the forest for the trees, especially when it brings me roughly to gas prices anyway.
Long distance, I normally stop for food, stretching, gas, and bio breaks. It's not hard to plan so you do all those things while charging. My car can get about 150 miles of range in under an hour, and I can start full and arrive empty (charging overnight). My car is also arguably the second-worst at this, others are far better.
Cold weather is no problem when I charge at home daily. Maybe I need to spend a little more charging on a long trip in winter, but not impossibly so.
If you think 95% of people tow, that's laughable. I do, usually a rented U-Haul around town. I'll admit I have an ICE to complement my EV for long-haul towing and a few other things, but that's not because my other car is electric. It's because it's small. So many families get by just fine on Subarus and Honda Civics, because they have no need to tow or anything like that. An EV would most likely be just fine for them too.
You don't have to justify your purchase to me, just enjoy it. I never criticized anyone for owning a car.
I'm glad you're having a good experience with your car, I just find there's a lot of compromise and issues that would make it difficult or near impossible for most people to own one.
Something like plugin hybrids and regular hybrids would just be a better fit for 95% of people and public transportation would solve a lot more problems in the long run. It would definitely solve the ballooning cost of infrastructure maintenance and ever growing traffic as well as being better for small businesses.
I wasn't trying to be modest or justify my purchase, I was trying to point out that I'm a pretty normal person who wouldn't be the lucky 1 in 20 for whom an EV would make sense.
Maybe I have to charge a little more on a big road trip once or twice a year and that trip will take an hour or so longer (keeping in mind I stop for other things anyway). Over that year I've saved time in other ways by not going to the gas station or getting my oil changed (or doing it myself). Saved money that way too. Oh, and the car is a battery and a motor. There's no series of accessories given by a belt moving at 2500 RPM. There's no catalytic converter to worry about. All that's to say, less maintenance over time. No need to check emissions. The car is quiet and an absolute pleasure to drive.
I'd say having an EV works damn fine for me. The question is, why am I not part of the 95%?
Because you thought the benefits out way the downsides. The idea of a bad product is subjective and in my opinion the alternatives are just better for the vast majority of people for now.
It's will take standardization of parts and the ability for owners and mechanics to work on it, ability for third parties to produce parts, a track record that proves their claimed reliability and longevity, a more competitive market, better battery tech, more infrastructure for charging, more reliable charging and better range during the winter, etc. all that before it's suitable for more individuals in my opinion.
I still hear plenty of stories involving people trading their EVs in for a gas powerd car either before or after their lease runs up. And I've seen actual people in my life considering an EV and getting a hybrid because of this or that. There are just so many reasons it's impractical for people. It doesn't make them bad and your not wrong for owning one. They just fit your use case better than most.
And I've seen plenty of people go from a Chevy Volt (hybrid) to a Bolt (full electric). But that's not the point. None of what you said was. I told you my car has worked great for me and why, and asked why I'm not part of the 95% of people you mentioned when my life is generally pretty average. You failed to answer that pretty basic question.
I don't know why you want me to explain you and your situation. I really don't see why it would be the same as everyone elses. I'm pulling from stories, other people's experiences, studies, real world cases, the research I did when I was interested, what mechanics are saying, and so on.
Maybe it's different where you live but I come from the Midwest and many of the places I've been, what family members, neighbors, and friends think think are the same story. I really was hoping for actual substance in this conversation but seeing as it's becoming cyclical I'm going to move onto more important things and I hope you do too.
I did have one case where someone enjoyed their Tesla, he was a retired firefighter that barely drove and he liked the way it rode. He didn't know much about it though when I talked to him.
There's a ton of pretty baseless, biased, and flat out wrong anti-EV stuff out there. Don't trust everything you read on the Internet.
95% of people is a huge number. I'm harping on it because it's such a bold claim that an EV wouldn't work for such a huge number, so I'm trying to see how you can back it up.
And for the record, I live in Colorado and am from Minnesota. So I'm reasonably familiar with winter.
It pretty much boils down to living in a small town where there are no chargers and if you're renting especially there is typically no place to plug in. Also issues with not being able to make road trips that don't have chargers along the way, reduced range in cold weather, and if you need to tow it's pretty pointless in an EV.
I never said we couldn't but it's pretty impractical if it's hard to find a charger. A lot of people don't live in houses and at least where I live there is one EV charger in my town. That's one charger not a station, and the town community center shut it down because upkeep was too expensive.
I agree public transport is the better option, but electric cars are a good option for the vast majority of people as long as we're going to need cars.
I agree but if you can't park near an outlet and you have no charging stations in your town it's pretty impractical to own one. Everywhere I've lived so far that's the case for a lot of individuals. There's also issues with long trips, reduced range in cold weather, and towing being pretty much pointless in an EV.
I mean I live in America, my perspective will be American. I'd argue Americans are typically really into cars and the freedom of the open road. I mean we pretty much made electric cars popular so I don't get your point.
I don't know the state of Estonia but I do pay attention to the rest of the world. Most European countries that embrace and properly build out public transportation have happier citizens, livelier public spaces, and healthier business overall.
We can be civil, no need to be combative for no reason. If you like electric cars that's fine, I like electric cars too but we don't all live in California.
Most people live in apartments here and the only charger available was closed down because maintenance and upkeep was too much for the community center that installed it.
You live in the city? I'm just curious, I've noticed cities typically move much faster than small towns if at all. I think it's really cool you have that kind of luxury to be honest.
I live in a small town that tries to be modern but it often results in something like free wifi city wide that doesn't really work or a walking path that goes from an Indian park to the opposite side of town for some reason. The one charging station was one of those things that didn't work out but it was neat that they tried.
They are trying to lay optical fiber and trying to convince people to sign up, its super expensive compared to privately owned ISP's but better than coax I guess.
Yeah, I live in a city. In London to be more specific. But on street charging options are growing fast all over the country, you can read more here and you can find a map with all the spots there as well https://www.zap-map.com/ev-guides/on-street-charging
The idea behind on street charging is that infrastructure is already there (lamp posts, etc), adding charging points is relatively cheap and that will generate additional income for the local councils. So it's a win-win for everyone.
That's neat! I think having the ability to charge outside of your apartment/work would be a huge help for people interested. I still think public transportation, bike paths, and walking paths done right is better but cars that polute less is a good step towards the right direction.
It's personal preference but I still think hybrids and plugin hybrids are better for most people, at least until electric cars improve.
I think there was a Renault that worked like this. I think the main issue is that you need a decently sized battery that can supply enough power or else the ICE needs to start every time you hit the gas pedal like was the case with the older Prius models and then you might as well connect it to the wheels and you can have a smaller electric motor.
But batteries keep improving and you can pull more power per kWh now. Maybe with solid state batteries this power train could become the more affordable option.
Hybrid cars were a topic in germany a few years ago. Laws provided funding for them too (grouped as EVs), despite their huge weight and low efficiency. I think it was solved since then?
Gas engines have decent range. Gas engines are cheaper (as the electric engine prices are artificially inflated, just look at Chinese prices), with gas engines you can listen to the sound of the engine to diagnose problems before they occur, batteries don't degrade (you still have car batteries, but when they degrade, you can still drive a car for as long as with the new battery. You can refuel it in a couple of seconds. Anyone can make one sided arguments. There isn't a best thing for everything.
The reason why you may be able to diagnose an ICE by sound is because they're complex. That's not a positive. An electric motor has just a few moving parts. If it goes bad you don't really need to work to figure it out and fix it.
The rest of the arguments can be made, but as you imply they're disingenuous. The sound one is just not a benefit at all.
I was apprehensive about EVs but the first time I rode in one I immediately fell in love with it. I get carsick easily, and the super-smooth ride without the chug-chug-chug of an internal combustion engine made the experience surprisingly much more pleasant for me. I do not use a car, but if I had to buy one, I don't think I could ever stomach an ICE again knowing that this alternative is available.
I knew that motion sickness is triggered by frequent starts and stops and frequent turns, but even I was not aware of how big a contribution the engine vibration makes until I got to experience a ride without it.
At a stretch, I guess you could say that a battery that's going bad doesn't make a sound.
But yes, electric motors are way more reliable than internal combustion engines and objectively superior. You would never use an ICE over an EE for any application where you have a reliable supply of electricity.
Either they are priced higher or they aren't. They are priced higher and as such I won't be buying one anytime soon. Not until they are a decade old on their original batteries.
Yeah, I understand perfectly that you're hilariously wrong. My car is paid off. It's just maintenance at this point. How is that going to be more expensive than buying an EV?
Reddit moment. You're right, but you let this guy frustrate you into responding to the same nonsense multiple times in a row, and some people thought you were being mean.
I think you are having trouble understanding the English language. Most people have heard of a thing called context.
“A programmer is going to the store and his wife tells him to buy a gallon of milk, and if there are eggs, buy a dozen. So the programmer goes shopping, does as she says, and returns home to show his wife what he bought. But she gets angry and asks, ‘Why’d you buy 13 gallons of milk?’ The programmer replies, ‘There were eggs!’”
Now as we are describing car types one with a gas and one with an electric engine, and comparing their prices, maybe put the LLM context tokens slightly higher before responding.
Range anxiety is largely a perception thing. The vast majority of car journeys are well within the range of an EV, you just need to get in the habit of plugging in like you would your phone. For journey's long enough for it to be more than a single charge you really should be stopping for more than a few seconds anyway as you need recharging.
you just need to get in the habit of plugging in like you would your phone
Yeah but not everyone lives in suburbia with ample plug-in options available to them. Where I live the street-side charging spots are usually occupied, and the parking spot that I rent has no charging.
For journey’s long enough for it to be more than a single charge you really should be stopping for more than a few seconds anyway as you need recharging.
True to some extent, I have to check my travel logs but I do feel like stopping for an hour every 300km or so is longer and much more often than I would normally stop on long road trips. My (diesel) car has a range of well over 1000km so often I stop for only 15 minutes for a coffee and to stretch my legs, or just for a restroom stop and a driver swap. We usually plan just one big stop (1h) for dinner. Most destinations I've been to I could reach without refueling at all.
There's also the issue of contention for charging spots. On gas stations near the big highways towards popular destinations you often already have to queue to get gas. This will become worse when EVs become common place and people occupy a charging spot for an hour instead of a fuel pump for 30 seconds to top up.
Little anecdote: every year around the holiday season, there are several company wide e-mails from EV driving co-workers requesting to swap cars (with a co-worker who has a CE car) to go on holiday. So I think the practical experience may not be as rosy as you paint it.
Okay, but it is still jumping through hoops which doesn't exist with gas cars. What if I have 3 people driving, like in a road trip? You can't continuously drive after refueling anymore. It isn't just a perception thing, it absolutely requires planning and stops you wouldn't take otherwise.
jumping through hoops which doesn't exist with gas cars.
You have to physically drive to a different location to get petrol. That's a hoop. Just because you're used to it doesn't mean it's not there.
What if I have 3 people driving, like in a road trip? You can't continuously drive after refueling anymore. It isn't just a perception thing, it absolutely requires planning and stops you wouldn't take otherwise.
It is a perception. The vast majority of trips this won't be an issue. In the once in a bluemoon that you'll be driving more than the range of the car, yes, it could be. This is where it's perception. People seem to think that they'll run commuting to work or half the journeys they take will be affected. Whereas it's really really rare.
So what you are saying is "I don't care about the points you raised" essentially. I said specifically "hoops that don't exist with gas cars" not "gas cars don't have hoops to jump through". Electric cars have issues with trips longer than their range, which you then need to charge for a very long time compared to just refueling the gas car.
Sorry about the hoops issues, I clearly slightly misread
However, two can play at being pedantic. I addressed your point about range anxiety before you even made it. As I said originally it is largely perception. I even went as far as to agree with you that in the 0.000001% of journeys you identified it would be an issue.
It's not going to work out. Battery connections need to be standardized across manufacturers, which is a lot more complicated than standardizing a plug. The garages to do swaps are a lot more complicated than chargers. It forces certain decisions on battery placement, which cuts out things like integrating the battery into the frame to save weight.
Charger deployment has raced ahead. We need a lot more of them to support the EVs we already have, and need even more for the EVs that are going to be purchased over the next decade. Switching over to swapping would send the EV market into whiplash that just isn't necessary.
I'm not understanding your "it can't be standardized if it's too complicated" argument. That hasn't seemed to have been a big issue for, for example, computer motherboards.
Motherboard standardization is not even close to comparable.
You have to standardize the dimensions and unlatching mechanism of a huge battery out from under the car and latching a new one in. It has to support a battery that weighs around 2 tons. This isn't just a matter of scaling up a AA battery connector. And then you have to convince all, or at least most, of the manufacturers to do that in order for network effects to help the process. Since we've had to do a lot before manufactures settled on a plug design, we're not likely to do the same for batteries.
A counterpoint to that is things like batteries, ram, motherboards, etc. in laptops (and pretty much every other device that uses rechargeable batteries). The fact is that for better designs the batteries are probably not going to be easily standardized in electric cars (also kills innovation).
PC motherboards aren't trying to use the least amount of space possible, because desktops can be large. The same isn't true with cars, the space matters.
You jump through all sorts of hoops with gas cars. We've all made it part of the habits of our lives and don't think about them, but they're absolutely there.
I'd honestly love to just plug in every night instead of having to spend time getting gas every week. Sure it's only a few minutes, but that's probably a few hours of my life every year. Getting an electric vehicle and renting cars for road trips would honestly make much more sense for me.
Unfortunately, it looks like it'd be financially irresponsible for me to buy an electric car right now while I still have a perfectly functional ICE car.
Range anxiety is not just about a single trip. You are assuming that not only will we all be able to just charge whenever and wherever we park our cars, but that we'll never fail to do so. You also assume that only one person will be driving the car.
If I forget to plug in my phone it's not a big deal. I can just plug it in on the way to work or bring a battery pack. And it is not uncommon for my kid to bring our car home on empty. And then of course there are broken charges and unreliable utilities. I can't even count on a reliable internet connection wherever I go and that can be supplied wirelessly.
I have lived far enough out in the country before that I've had to deal with range anxiety in ICE vehicles. The threat of running out of gas before you can make it to a gas station is a very real and stressful issue. I can only imagine how much worse it is going to be when it takes more than just a gas can and a few minutes to get you going when you screw up.
If you live in the Balkans, you can hardly charge your electric car anywhere and if you go on holidays, It takes way longer, since you have to recharge multiple times and it takes a couple of hours.
Ok, what's your point? Did I say it's always and in every single niche scenario people are going to come up with a perception issue? Or did I in fact say it's largely (as in most of the time and in most cases) a perception issue?
It had just started to feel like people were trying to say that I thought range anxiety was absolutely never legitimate.
In reality most people will do maybe one journey a year where it could possibly be. For them they'll have saved so much from reduced maintenance and running costs of an EV that they could hire an ICE vehicle for that one trip and still have saved themselves money.
Of course if you're way off the top end of the bell curve with your usage an EV may not yet be the best option for you.
Yes, I was also a little extreme about range anxiety. There still are EVs, that have decently long range. The reliability is what we need with all technology. I'm actually interested what could actually break in them other than battery or storage chips.
the vast majority of the cost of an electric car is in the battery, every phone I've had really degrades in battery after a couple years, and my dad still drives an ICE car about the same age as me
Your argument is with electric cars vs ice cars. xkcd likely specifically was talking about engines just so all the range arguments don't work. It's just engine vs engine and there electric is far superior.
That's like saying a sword is a better weapon than a gun because the sword can bei used for cutting, hitting und thrusting and also as a tool while the gun can only hit and shoot while needing additional components to function that quickly run out while being more complex to build.
You cant just ignore the context to make your argument. He's clearly talking about cars here.
Well for the lawn mowers, I think it doesn't matter that much what specs you choose. You don't need to be comfortable using it if you don't mow the lawn every day, but it's still better if you choose a better, longer lasting product.
Specs absolutely matter. Incline of your lawn, outdoor outlet location, type of grass you have growing. I'd never recommend a plug in electric lawn mower to someone who needs to mow six acres of hills.
That said, electric mowers by and large are better for most consumers.
Sound depends on whether you value low noise. And not sure about tactile feeling, but ngl, the feeling of drivint an ICE car is awful after switching to EVs. The instant acceleration and responsiveness is just great.
As a US citizen I am painfully aware that I could dip down to mexico and buy a competent EV at 35~40k USD value in MXN. Alternatives in the states, even produced here, are upwards of 50k for the poverty model. Maybe the engine itself is cheaper, but the vehicles absolutely are not (unless you are being denied options by your government as part of an ongoing slap fight).
I'll keep my ICE and ride a bike. I'll still do less environmental damage than you because I am human powered for all but the trips to the mountains, and then I don't have to worry about being stranded without a plug.
And I have yet to hear a convincing argument that taking my perfectly working vehicle off the road to buy another manufactured product is still more environmentally friendly than... not buying anything at all.
I don't give a fuck about initial torque. I'm going to be laughing in my wheetabix when there's not a single EV older than a decade on their original batteries.
Pretty easy to make a comparison to the average American. It's like BMI -- it's bigger than the individual and not a metric useful for individual comparison.
Drivers reported making an average of 2.44 driving trips, spending 60.2 minutes behind the wheel, and driving 30.1 miles each day in 2022. Projecting these results to all drivers nationwide, 255 million drivers made a total of 227 billion driving trips, spent 93 billion hours driving, and drove 2.8 trillion miles in 2022, all of which represented small but not statistically significant decreases relative to 2021.
It's totally relevant. You said "I’ll still do less environmental damage than you" and your reasoning for that is based on what the average American does.
So unless you believe that you're only talking to average Americans, you are using a meaning of the word "you" that literally no one else in the world uses.
So you sure claim you do. And the evidence you gave was, again, you were talking about the average American. So, again, how do you know that everyone here- that anyone here- is what you describe as an average American?
And I have yet to hear a convincing argument that taking my perfectly working vehicle off the road to buy another manufactured product is still more environmentally friendly than... not buying anything at all.
That’s because nobody is making that argument. The only statement I’ve ever heard from environmentalists/scientists is that the most beneficial thing to do is keep your old ICE car and maintain it well.
I certainly know of some "get rid of your car and bike everywhere" environmentalists, but most of them realize that isn't actually an option in, for example, rural Montana in February.
Yeah, at least they’re sticking to their ideals and their suggestion would help the environment. But as you pointed out, it just won’t/can’t happen in much of the US.
In fact, I just recently went on a road trip from Pennsylvania to Tennessee that took me through parts of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. I can’t think of any places I saw where public transportation would be feasible. Maybe long-distance trains to augment air travel as an option, but nothing last-mile.
I saw more signs about reasons god might send me to hell, or how Trump is awesome, than any form of public transit. Even buses. Because I saw zero of any of it.
Not sure if this was a thing anywhere else but in some UK cities like London there were "scrappage schemes" that incentivised scrapping your car to replace it with something more efficient, which I always thought was missing the point
Approximately nobody is saying you should sell your 2020 compensator for scrap, in fact the general consensus is that the best thing you can do is keep your current ride in good repair as long as you can.
You don't have to invent boogeyman just because you have a weird parasocial relationship with big oil.
Because the first model year for the Nissan Leaf was 2011, not 2010.
Most cars are physically manufactured a year or so before the model year. If you want to search for Leafs (Leaves?) manufactured in 2010, look for model year 2011.
I mean, I wouldn't call riding a motorcycle "safe".
I'm not even arguing against them, it just feels like calling it "safe" makes it easy to dismiss all the safety precautions you should take and safety gear you should use whenever you do ride one.
Someone once referred to motorcyclists (specifically the ones without helmets or leathers) as "meat crayons" in front of me and I can never get it out of my head.
In the medical industry they refer to motorcycles as "donorcycles", since, in the event of a fatality you can usually still salvage at least one or two organs from the corpse.
Inside the motorcycle community, there are two polar opposites: ATGATT (All the gear, all the time), who always brace for the worst and wear the heaviest gear they can find and SQuIDs (Super quick, immediately dead) who go at full speed wearing shorts and sandals. Pick your side.
I always found it interesting that Rolls-Royce had to let vibrations and noise in the back of their cars. Moving in a car without identifiers really trips with the brain.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
xkcd
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