it's normally upper managers sand baging. Everytime we have a new product they don't involve anyone later stages in pipeline and keep the engineering team in a sealed space lab IN Mars. Then release the product half baked because the eng team quit or got dissolved to work on other more important projects. Then demand the sustainability team to develop it. So now it's in limbo for 2 years but noo we must go to market now. Now it's all trash but marketing cleans it's image.
Never fails to happen.
Worst is new management come and say new product v2 but we are doing it all from scratch and ignore previous team mistakes. Like why?
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.
The fact that airplane travel is safer than cars is a myth invented to promote airplane travel.
Well, it is not fully a myth, but to get to that result they measure per mile, and that greatly favor airplane travel.
If you instead measure how likely you are to die on your next trip, then the dangers of airplane travel will significantly exceed car travel and other means of transportation.
Are you aware how many flights take place every day?
Vs
How many fatal accidents pr flight?
The fact is that almost every time a fatal accident happens in a (commercial) plane anywhere in the world, you hear about it. Because if a plane crashes a lot of people die in one dramatic (and rare) event.
Fatal car accidents litteraly happen every minute of every day. Almost none of them go on the news. (Cause reporting them all would be impossible).
I think you underestimate the number of trips per car per day. Most people will take more trips by car per month than they will fly for their lifetime.
In Sweden , a country of 10 million, we have about 150 people killed per year from car accidents, yet most adults travel by car daily.
That is millions of trips per day, and only half a death.
Sweden , a country of 10 million, we have about 150 people killed per year from car accidents
Yes, and how many die every year from plane crashes in sweden?
If we take a relatively big plane (450 passengers) as an example. One has to fall out of the sky every 3. Years to match the car accident number...
3186 deaths over 10 years
VS
1.19 million every year.
(This is globally. Sweden and Norway(where i live) will naturally have pretty radically lower numbers then globally when it comes to road safety.)
But look at that air travel number again: 3186. Over 10 years. Globally.
Commercial Air travel is fucking safe.
Its horrible for the climate. But its safe.
Whatever way you slice those numbers it comes up air travel i safer.
Feel free to find actual statistics that contradict me. :)
Since 1997, the number of fatal air accidents has been no more than 1 for every 2,000,000,000 person-miles[c] flown,[citation needed] and thus is one of the safest modes of transportation when measured by distance traveled.
So I guess this is the point you are trying to make?
Well, what I want to know is "Am I going to die today?". The distance traveled is irrelevant to answer that question. The only reason to add that to the equation is to make air travel look safer.
I honestly think you are showing a fundamental lack of understanding of statistics.
"Per trip" is a horribly poor metric. Because there is a fundamental difference between a trip down to the store, or a cross country trip, even with a car. Also it would be extremely dependent on where you are going, where you live etc. etc.
For the discussion to have any meaning you have to abstract it to a metric that makes sense for all people, or else you would have to also figure in where you usually travel, how good a driver you are etc etc etc.
At that point its a completely meaningless semantics exercise because for instance taking a plane to work is not realy valid for me since i live in the same city as i work... Or lets do it the other way around: If i need to go to Spain tomorrow, its safer for me to fly then to drive there. (This is based on your own sources)
But per mile measurement for flying implies that every mile of a flight is equally dangerous, but the truth I'd that it is most dangerous to start or land, which is a per trip occurrence. The take off and landing is equally dangerous whether you travel a long or short distance in between.
It's still a terrible metric to compare the safety of modes of transport and the Wiki article just below the table explains it well:
The first two statistics are computed for typical travels by their respective forms of transport, so they cannot be used directly to compare risks related to different forms of transport in a particular travel "from A to B". For example, these statistics suggest that a typical flight from Los Angeles to New York would carry a larger risk factor than a typical car travel from home to office. However, car travel from Los Angeles to New York would not be typical; that journey would be as long as several dozen typical car travels, and thus the associated risk would be larger as well. Because the journey would take a much longer time, the overall risk associated with making this journey by car would be higher than making the same journey by air, even if each individual hour of car travel is less risky than each hour of flight.
If people made similar trips with cars as they do with airplanes, cars would lose in the per journey metric big time.
In the end it becomes an exercise in trying to find the metric that best supports your argument.
We have also been jumping around a bit on geographical limitations. And in for instance Scandinavia, the original premise might be closer to real due to better road safety.
I think implying some sort of myth or ruse is missing the mark hard on this subject.
I think I get what the guy is trying to say. Per journey, air travel might indeed end up being statistically less safe (how many times a year an average person flies vs. how many times they drive their car) but of course the question is whether that particular metric is any useful. Surely if you replaced all airplane trips with car trips, more people would die.
This Wikipedia article contains a table, which if true, confirms it:
If you sort it by Journeys, you'll find that 117 people die in an airplane per billion journeys, while only 40 die per billion car journeys. But the article points out exactly what I said before.
Funny example that illustrates how important the choice of metric is, is the Space Shuttle which is statistically incredibly unsafe per journey (17,000,000 deaths per billion journeys) and even per hours (only skydiving coming first by a small margin) but is safer than bicycles and only twice less safe than cars per distance traveled because of those insane distances it covers in orbit.
Edit: Not that I do not know whether the table counts only commercial flights or all airplane/helicopter journeys. And also the statistics is pretty old (1990-2000) and only covers the UK, so you may still be right and commercial air travel in the last decade might be safer per journey than cars globally. Can't find a better statistics.
I sort of answered this somewhere else but i will reiterate.
Using this metric you are sort of assuming all trips are equal.
No matter how short, or long you are assuming the base danger is the same. This means that driving 100 meters is just as dangerous as driving for a whole day. (See what the problem is?)
And if we look at this premise in isolation: "Am i going to die on this trip"?
If the trip is 100m, then a plane is probably out of the question either way.
And if the trip is to a different country.. then hey, look at that, the sources you cited come into relevance (where pr distance a plane is safer) and you would have to calculate the danger of completing that specific trip in a car VS flying that distance with a plane.
You are generalizing on terms that make no sense, since "total number of trips" in cars include all manner of different scenarios of some times extremely varying degree of danger. So in order to have data that is statistically relevant and in any form comparable you have to choose a different metric.
So to answer the question again "Am i going to die on this trip?" or to extrapolate "should i drive or fly on this trip", if you cant use generic statistics, the answer will be "it depends. You have to calculate danger for the trip specifically".
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.
Trains, scooters and/ motorcycles are convenient for travel? I mean sure, if you never carry anything anywhere and/or you love how every other person in the world smells after they finish their 12 hour shift of breaking big rocks with smaller rocks.
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).
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?"
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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